Everyone will still watch the intro, everyone will still be impressed. The video out there is probably grainy, shot from a weird angle, and jumpy. I haven’t seen it, but I’m willing to be that the portions that the camera phone caught will be at least 100% better on TV and 1000% better in-person.
From an artist-standpoint, I can see why the director would be furious over the leak. I wouldn’t want someone to see my unfinished product.
From a marketing standpoint, I think that a grainy 2 minutes of a 50 minute performance is a good way to generate buzz about the performance.
So long as the final product cannot be duplicated or substituted, samples are great for business.
So to the director of the Olympic performance: Relax. It’ll be ok.
For the comments, am I justified in my opinion about samples?
Yesterday at Crossfit.com, out of nowhere, The Coach posted a 15K as the workout of the day.
The comments are pretty funny, considering the workouts typically call for, at most, 2 miles broken up into 400m increments.
When you’re normally giving your customers one thing, and then you switch the game on them, make sure that they’re prepared to handle it. While a lot of the commentators on the site said that they didn’t want to do the workout, you’ll see that there are a lot of people who did do the workout. (Some in the hot, Iraqi sun!)
If you expect a lot of out people, sometimes they’ll give it to you. (Especially if they’re getting something from their efforts!)
“Jeremy”
21-15-9 For time:
95lb overhead squats
Burpees
My Time:
“21 Shots” (courtesy: Mike Savitch)
For time:
Start: 20 pushups and 1 situp
End: 1 pushup and 20 situps
–do 1 less pushup and 1 more sit up for 20 rounds–
My time: 21:20
**Hardest part of this is keeping track of what round you’re on. For real.**
Regarding the Madden curse? I don’t remember the curse ever turning in on the game itself. But as John Madden says in the most recent issue of Time:
No, and I don’t think players believe in it either. If you go back to the history of the Madden game, I was probably on the cover of it half the time. So if I was to believe there was a curse, I would also have to believe I’d been cursed. And I’ve never had that feeling. Full Post
Why hasn’t EA gone back to using the gregarious announcer on its cover? What’s stopping them? I’m not sure if, at this point, it’s affecting sales that much to have an NFL star on its cover. (Now, on the other hand, if there were limited runs of 30 players (one for each team), I wouldn’t be surprised if that boosted sales.) With the exclusivity liscence, EA is the only company with NFL players in it and I’m won’t be shocked the company never puts Coach Madden on the cover ever again.
I would tend to think that after this fiasco, they are going to stick to current players with active, long-term contracts.
For the comments, what would you do if you were EA if Favre goes to another team? Do you ever put John Madden on the cover of another version of the game? Why hasn’t Madden been on the cover since 1998? (Bonus Pop Quiz - who was the FIRST NFL cover athlete for the series? No Googling allowed.)
Blackberry is sending out Bold’s to users. Real users. People who are trying to sync their phones to their Macs, their Windows XP machines, and maybe even an Ubuntu machine. They’re using them in real world environments.
I’m sure if there’s a problem, someone at the home office is going to hear about it.
What happens when you’re not beta testing properly? You get super-fans and power-users going on 2700 word diatribes about how awful your product is. [For those not in the know, the author of this blog post is Just Blaze who's put in his work. Warning: Video below is for super-nerds.]
How can you tell if you’re beta testing properly?
1) What controls are you using? Are they the same controls you’re going to be using at launch?
2) What is the profile of your beta tester? Is it exactly like the profile of your user?
3) What will you do if something big is found out to be wrong. Like, not just big, but BIGG. Two G’s. Are you going to be able to fix it? If not, you’re not beta testing. You’re a little bit further into your release than you thought. (Delta launch?)
4) If there aren’t any known bugs in your beta release, it’s not a beta release.
5) If you’re working with software, are the improvements to the full release going to be substantial enough that you can fight back (the right way) against piracy?
For the comments, what makes your beta releases worth the effort you put into them? How do you get your feedback?
The Blackberry Bold got pushed back (video) to September ‘08 and I have the reason why!!
I think that with the popularity of the iPhone in the US and RIM’s CEO Mike Lazaridis being what we in hip hop call a hater, Blackberry is trying to hedge it’s bets.
I believe that you will see the BB Thunder/Storm released in the same breath as the Bold.
RIM will try to flood the market with multiple phones to give users the option to 1) switch from their current phone to a “safe, buttoned” experience; or 2) an alternative to the locked-down iPhone.
Personally, I want Thunder to be released yesterday. I’m not willing to give up my $100 new-every-two credit to go to AT&T and their weak singal in my apartment. And while the iPhone is really cool, I don’t like the idea of having everything locked-down like Pelican Bay.
Objectively, I dislike the marketing strategy. If RIM is looking at the *buzz* that Apple got with their phone’s release and is looking to duplicate the feat, it’s not going to happen. Part of BB’s strength is that the phone is really utilitarian and appeals to a very functional purpose - to feed Crackberry addicts. While the company may earn the front page (or egad! the biz section) of the comic book known as USA Today, I can’t see this device generating the same 2hr lines that the iPhone did. (After all, most BB users have jobs! ZING!!! ..heh - I’m getting a little punchy today!).
For the comments, why do you think the Bold got pushed back? Was it a technical reason? Was it a marketing reason? Was it something else? Conspiracy theorists, unite!!
"I'm an artist, and if you give me a tuba, I'll bring you something out of it." (c) John Lennon 
