The first of two things I’d like to talk about is something I’m sure I’ve ran into the ground, in a coffin and with a wooden stake. Yes, the Twilight boom has certainly exploded; causing three TV series about Vampires to burst into production, countless books resurfacing onto the end caps of Barnes & Noble and of course the jump the shark/nuke the fridge moment; when they appear in commercials.

If you missed Verizon’s vampire ad, it’s pretty much a scene from twilight except the hot vampire leaves the Debby Downer girl because she has bad coverage, and the werewolf sweeps in. Then you have the Bing commercial of the vampire that drags a girl into his room to eat her, which clearly isn’t creepy at all. And of course the most recent was the American Idol commercial for Ford where they did a confusing rendition of The Bravery, all decked out as vampires.

And now, the newest cue that apparently screams Gen Y market money is Ke$ha. If you don’t know who or what a Ke$ha is, it’s a singer. A girl that sings about waking up in random peoples homes from partying too much, brushing her teeth in whiskey and getting drunk for the party that night so it repeats itself. Not the most likely Grammy candidate but it’s sold like wildfire on iTunes, and now it’s invading commercials.

Well, not just commercials. The first real cue was during Fox Rocks week, where they recreated The Simpsons intro and featured Lisa singing her drunk anthem “Tik Tok”.This immediately sent the internet in one of two rages, one of the show officially being over because they’re using something aimed at teenagers and pushing it out of Lisa, a character who considers 90% of everything in that song blasphemy. The rage was how The Simpsons should be more like this, more relevant. And as expected, this voice was cried out on Youtube and Twitter, the perfect echo of a Gen Y group who already has the song on their iPod.

But more recently, it’s appeared in another bizarre place; the trailer for the movie Marmaduke. How a movie about a giant goofy dog relates to “errrybody gettin’ crunk crunk” I’m not sure; but throw it into a movie based on a comic no one from this generation knows and people will look up at the screen just to see what’s playing the song.

However, all this being said, relevance is still relevance, I mean after all I am talking about it right now, so they did their job. But, it’s not memorable. I think the same effect, but on a polar opposite view is the Betty White push. When Betty White, in all her awesomeness(I’m not biased at all am I?) was in that Snickers commercial, everyone got Betty fever, and soon people wanted to see her everywhere.

What’s the difference? You have Betty White appearing in original situations where you’d never imagine someone who’s 88 years old. It’s still a forced fad, but it’s one that people can appreciate, because it still holds a breath of originality. And if you’re going to force something without being original, you’ll get the hits, but what are they worth if nobody really cares?

You can find anything online on April Fool’s Day, canned unicorn meat, pets as food, fake movie and game trailers, altered headlines. And while this is all in good fun, for those of us in the insight world it means twenty-four hours of “is this true” and verification time. But I won’t go into that, what I think is more interesting is the spirit of online April Fools jokes.

When you think about it, there’s not much to it. You just type some text, post an image or video (of course, some groups like IGN go all out and make budgeted and scripted productions) but beyond that you don’t really have to leave the comfort of your home to pull one off.

However, when most brands pull a fast one, they seem to forget they go trigger happy with a lawsuit when anyone does it to them. Finding a sense of humor in our own brand is a smart move, because if you don’t then there’s a 90% chance someone else will.

Take the iPad, within an hour of announcement, the joke names had higher rankings on Twitter than the announcement itself. People need to prepare for this, because the Internet is many things, and a kind little lamb is not one of them.

We’ll be talking more about Brandalizm in the upcoming quarterly report, so I don’t want to spill too much, but I do think it’s funny that brands who otherwise get offensive about brand hacking are completely accepting of it one day a year.

And for now, I’m off to eat my unicorn meat, watch the Legend of Zelda movie trailer in my tauntaun sleeping bag, read up on some LOLcats and try that new Krispy Kreme diet.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, the picture above is actual “Obama acid blotter. Yes… LSD….trippyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

It is safe to assume that you have achieved ultimate pop icon status when your mug is featured on a sheet of acid in the style of an Andy Warhol print!

We don’t know what is worse, the physiological effects of this item or the “change” puns it is guaranteed to produce.

E.G.
Finally, the change he promised us is here at last.
- jeligula

Trippin’ for change…
- VagabondAstronomer

The audACIDy!….of Dope
- pmarble

ahem….

I think that my point has been illustrated.

Definitely not an official site by any means, it’s quite simple – they pull in mentions of HSBC from the Twittersphere, then classifies them as a Fail or a Win for the bank and compiles the results in the fail pie chart, pictured.

Here’s a sample: “I hate HSBC with the biggest dissatisfied passion. Don’t tell me one thing and then tell me something completely different. ANGER” from tfooksbale

“HSBC must have the worst online banking / customer service in the world. How have they not collapsed yet?” from JGoldsteinNYC

Yikes.

As of 2009, HSBC is both the world’s largest banking group and the world’s 6th largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine.  My gut tells me this site could be just like an annoying fly at the picnic for them but it made me think about the Human Truth™ of Brandalizm™

““You don’t own your brand, I do.”™

Twitter and other social networking sites have taken public opinion sharing to a level that has not previously existed.  That’s great news if your brand is being praised but can be a sobering reality check if it’s not.  Bottom line is: you have no control of this… the only thing to do is not give these blabber mouths any ammunition!  Have you done a “realtime mention” search of your brand or company lately?

Brandalizm says: “You don’t own your brand, I do.”™

And what better example than some random house in Mexicali representing one of the world’s most exclusive brands.  How would the fabled House of LV feel about this humble abode sporting it’s exclusive monogram?  Will they sue? Probably not but we’ll keep you posted.

“…The happily ever after is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues…I began to imagine Disney’s perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues.” -via

True, many of Disney’s fairy tales originated from the rather dark versions collected by Brothers Grimm, where Walt Disney obviously tweaked to make his happily ever after endings. However taking Disney’s famed characters and putting them in such a controversial light makes it a Brandalizm™ life evidence piece for two reasons.

First, there’s a direct, aggressive brand association by making the models in the photographs look almost identical to that of their original movies. Here’s no mistaking who they are unless you truly were born in a barn or raised by wolves.

Second, because it places those otherwise cheery characters in scenarios implying controversy, death, sadness, anxiety, and even hopelessness. The artist truly makes these characters stories her own by defacing Disney’s versions of what happened to the young beauties. They are truly impressionable, check out the whole collection here.

In this case we have the power duo marriage of a PSP and iPhone, bringing together a  user interface in an all-in-one device that will do everything except print out 4X6’s. Internet, phone, video reorder, TV tuner, projector, gamepad, media player, RFID, scanner, and flashlight are some capabilities out of this baby. Calling it the iWish, we’re impressed!

There’s no debating the concepts these fans have design are entirely free of will, and looking at the detailed work put into making some of them, you can begin to understand just how passionate the promotion or destruction of a brand(s) can be.  Brandalizm™ is a wave that screams “You don’t own your brand, I do™”, and even if these are just concepts, it doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way.

They posted a step by step recipe online and the link to the “late night/after hours snack/drink” got forwarded around and ‘dugg”- as you would expect anything called The McNuggetini would.

Probably not enough to even register on McDonald’s radar but after a few of rounds… I’m sure these ladies are saying “YOU DON’T OWN YOUR NUGGESTS – I DO!!”