||||Shawn Baden

Great commercial.

If you are not ashamed by your product when you launch it, you launched too late.

– Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn)

via @loic

The great commercials keep rolling in. Kobe Bryant, Jimmy Kimmel, and numerous other celebs come out to fire off some rounds for Call of Duty: Black Ops. Set to the only song (“Gimme Shelter”) by The Rolling Stones I like.

I enjoyed the series premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead. A couple observations:

• The initial scene was reminiscent of the the beginning of Dawn of the Dead. Both have a little girl that looks innocent enough until she reveals herself to be a flesh-eating zombie.
• The intro was a direct copy of the intro from 28 Days Later. Guy wakes up in a hospital bed after a long period. Guy finds hospital trashed with evidence that something “very bad” has happened. Guy limps out of hospital to find world has been turned upside down and the apocalypse has arrived. Guy runs into survivors and acts incredibly clueless about it all.
• Besides the 28 Days Later vibe, there was a strong Jericho vibe as well. There were 2 reasons for this: 1) Post apocalyptic world. 2) Lennie James starred in Jericho and plays almost the exact same character (anxious, distrusting) in The Walking Dead.

So plenty of shameless copying of previously-successful post-apocalyptic zombie shows. Nothing wrong with that.

I’m a little concerned about the longevity of the series. There needs to be a strong human component and it appears they’ve got the beginnings of one with the love triangle between the husband (and main hero), his wife, and his police partner who’s having an affair with said wife. But a post-apocalyptic world needs to be grounded in reality to keep the audience on board. I hope the writers can pull it off. My bet is it will last a couple seasons.

Note: In my previous post I called the show “The Living Dead.” My bad.

I do love “Post Apocalyptica” and this incredible video of Six Flags New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina certainly satisfies.

Six Flags New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It has been abandoned ever since. This film was made in October 2010. The park is scheduled to be demolished in January 2011.

Update:
Unfortunately the video has been taken down. Too bad. Here’s a wonderful set on Flickr of Six Flags New Orleans:

Update:
Woohoo. Someone else posted a copy of the video. Original is on the bottom.

Exhilarating. Sabine Schmitz is a legend. Watch this video and taste a piece of the Ring.

My name is Sabine Schmitz and the people call me the ‘Queen of the Ring’ or the ‘fastest taxi driver in the world’.

I’m on a commercial kick. This NBA TV commercial featuring is just great: good pacing, perfect music, and most importantly, tells a story by getting the watcher caught up on what happened since the 2010 NBA Finals.

Also, a perfect example of less is more. Here’s the 60-second version (the above is the 30-second version) and it’s not as compelling.

Nike commercials are really hit and miss. This one is great. Awesome Don Johnson cameo at ~ 0:53 ala Miami Vice.

What should I do? Should I be who you want me to be?

Not quite as attention grabbing as Really but it’s still a fine commercial, which is saying something considering the *very* poor record of past Microsoft advertising campaigns. Microsoft has a point, “a phone to save us from our phones,” and they keep hammering it home. Well done.

Memo from Ray Ozzie titled ‘Dawn of New Day.’ A couple choice bits:

Success begets product requirements.

Complexity kills.

So true. It’s a fine line to listen and incorporate customer feedback versus letting it control the direction of your product.