The saddest Ad I've seen

This latest TVC for the iPad really hit me quite hard. Most examples shown are what I would consider a natural extension of technological communication and media interaction, but there was one snippet that made me really sad.

The kid learning to write on an iPad in what looks like a crayon style just hit home how removed our future generations will be from reality. If future generations will learn to write using an iPad then what understanding will they have of the crayon 'font' if they have never actually seen or used a crayon.

The gradual extinction of pen and paper and the rapid move to a digital world lived behind a glass tablet is one of the saddest things I've seen recently.

Non-linear video consumption and other fancy terms

A big hat-tip to the folks at Viocorp for pointing me towards a blog post on Glee's new Superfan video player.

The player has been designed for watching re-runs and has some pretty swanky functionality, none-more-so than the ability to drill down into non-linear content. For content producers and marketers alike I can see the salivating already occuring.

From a content producers point of view imagine that a bit-player in the show walks into shot and the fan isn't quite sure of the back-ground of the character - one click and it brings up a bio with background story of how they fit into the show.

From a marketers point of view, those product placements really can work for the money. Context sensitive links will now allow you to click on those sweet kicks the star is wearing and find out where they're on sale.

The other social functions of the player including Facebook and Twitter connections I have already written about previously and more and more these are a given with video consumption.

Truly social and interactive video consumption is coming very very quickly.

Image credit: Glee on Fox

Chinese youth culture today

One area of marketing that I would love to study further is youth culture throughout Asia. Below is a great presentation on Chinese youth culture. It shows the evolution of Chinese youth to an individual yet inclusive culture, where millions of youth are facing similar societal pressures. It shows that when the youth do not find the cultural values they seek within China they will turn to international cultural consumption from Taiwan to Thailand and Japan. This is in-turn feeding new cultural industries within China melding external influences with local Chinese culture.

There are too many insights to summarise here so I suggest you view the presentation to get all the great information!

Ypulse Mashup presentation: Building deeper connectin with China youth

View more presentations from Lisa Li.