Friday Find: Warming my Cold New England Cockles

It's no secret around here that I'm originally from New England. This means I'm contractually obliged to be a New England sports fan. And by contractually, I mean there's a blood oath which, I assume, breaking is punishable by death. At the very least, definitely by disownment.

If you're also from New England and you are on Facebook, I'm sure you've already seen the video below.

If you're not, you might appreciate it anyway. Not that I care if you do. (Oops, sorry, my Bostonian popped out.)

The pride of our city, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, got together with the other pride of our city, Tom Brady, to raise money for three causes by promising every New Englander's dream: drinking beer and eating pizza with the three of them.

Omaze is running this fundraiser, and from what I can tell they're doing a bang-up job of it. They buried the lede a bit, in my opinion, but then again maybe they didn't. (It was not intuitive for me to find information on the charities it benefits. I had to Google them, but could only find out about two of them, because I couldn't decipher the logo of the third one. The charities were not linked on the fundraiser page. Is this somehow by design, or is it a horrible oversight?)

To find the video, I Googled "tom ben matt boston" [sic] [lazy] and look what I got back. That is one smart Google Ad: they know their audience.

The more you donate, the more prize entries you get. And look at what's up for grabs, besides the beer and pizza thing:

Again I say: SMAHT. They do indeed know their audience.

Anyway, you should watch this video, and you should also check out the fundraiser here.

Marketing Monday: Brilliant Ad Copy

If you've watched any amount of TV lately and not fast-forwarded through all the commercials, you've likely seen some of these State Farm TV spots. They've ingeniously written ad scripts where the meaning changes completely depending on how the lines are delivered by the actors. The scripts & delivery serve to illustrate both the good and bad in life, and how State Farm has what you need in both cases. Or as they put it, "State Farm knows that for every one of those moments, there's one of these moments."

This is some seriously brilliant copywriting. As any copywriter knows, the smallest, punchiest lines can be the most difficult to write, and when I watch these ads I often imagine the struggle. I've no idea whether this is remotely accurate, but I picture a round table of writers yanking their hair out as they test lines in various voices until they all start to feel like they're going crazy. These are the kind of lines that I imagine were tested out on family, friends, and around the water cooler. "But if they say it like this does it sound more exasperated?" "Would a thief say this? Is this believable? What if he says it like this?"

I'm curious about the process here. If it were me, I think I'd start by writing the 'good' side of the ad first, then test it out in the 'uh oh' voice. The comedic element might be more natural that way, exactly as it's delivered in the videos. How would you approach it?

Video descriptions on YouTube continue to perfectly capture both the individual videos, and the services offered. 

1) "State Farm is always there, with car insurance, for when things go wrong. But also here with car loans, to help life go right." 

2) "State Farm is always there, with renters insurance, for when things go wrong. But also here, with a rewards credit card, to help life go right."

3) "State Farm is always there, with car insurance, for when things go wrong. But also here with car loans, to help life go right."

Friday Find: Seinfeld Bloopers

I've always loved Bloopers. As a kid, one of my favorite parts of watching my favorite shows was when they showed a gag reel at the end. Fresh Prince of Bel Air always did a particularly good job of this. Of course, this was back when YouTube didn't exist and dinosaurs roamed the earth. Nowadays, YouTube is of course a treasure trove of blooper reels.

I recently found a lot of great Seinfeld ones so you don't have to. Enjoy!

The second scene in this one might be my favorite:

Seinfeld is a sitcom that originally ran for nine seasons on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself.