http://youtube.com/experiencewii

I see it every day in my job as a marketer. Highly intelligent people who have a relatively simple job — sell things and ideas to people — overthink things nine times out of 10.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Videogame controllers.

The history of videogame controllers is fraught with pendulum shifts from simplicity to complex. Bill Harris over at Dubious Quality wrote an amazing piece on this history a few months back, and we’ve covered it on my gaming podcast.

Recently, there’s been a return to simple intuitive controls with the Wii and music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, though things are already starting to become convoluted.

Good old Guitar Hero introduced a drum set for its upcoming “Rock Band killer”… with 5, not 4 drum inputs!

And Konami just announced a 7 input drum kit for its upcoming Rock Revolution, which is EXACTLY what the world needs. A look at the comment section on Joystiq indicates that people aren’t terribly impressed.

Learn from the videogame industry: complexity ultimately creeps into everything… and rewards those who resist it. Keep it simple, stupid.

The reason I mention this is I’ve been trading back quite a few of my old games in recent days.

I was actually about to trade in my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV (after all, it’s the popular titles that score you the most cash) when I had an epiphany that a) stopped me from making the trade; and b) made me realize just how pervasive videogames have become in my life.

I live in Long Island City, NY, an industrial/residential outpost in Queens and shining example of the pleasures of urban decay.  The industrial landscape, however, is rapidly giving way to luxury condos, which, while it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, means that what many people love about the area from an aesthetic perspective may cease to exist in a few years.

Enter Grand Theft Auto IV.  I’m not a terribly prolific photographer — and the last time I assembled a photo album was more than a decade ago.

In GTA, however, I can spend hours driving past a perfect facsimile of the Citicorp Tower, the graffiti-coated exterior of the 5 Pointz, P.S. 1 and a reasonably good representation of Jackson Ave.  The act of playing, for me anyway, becomes an interactive photo tour of sorts.  I’ve fed nostalgic feelings for old videogames by playing them, but this is the first time that a game has actually shown the promise of feeding my nostalgia for real life.  Strange.

Digging around the Web, I’m not the only one who’s marveled at GTA IV’s ability to conjure up NYC:

‘The Real-Life Restaurants in New York City from GTA IV’ @ Serious Eats

‘GTA IV Trailer Stills and Real New York Photo Comparison @ Digg/Games Radar

‘Sightseeing in Liberty City – Matthew Johnston @ Flickr

Ever had a similar feeling?

If it is indeed real (as some commenters on BoingBoing suggest) this is one of the most brazen ways I’ve seen a supposedly conservative brand deliver its key message (in this case, unparalleled cleanliness).  If not, well, who cares?  Any brand interested in getting into the social media game could learn a thing or two from these filmmakers.

I hear a lot of chatter about how companies can connect to individuals via social media channels — generally, these focus on new technology platforms and fun buzz-phrases like “join the conversation” and “the consumer is in control.”  The one element that’s often ignored here is content, the creative fuel that enables brands to actually act in accordance with said jargon.

As this video, its rapidly increasing view count and the fact that Boing Boing wrote about it suggests, licking toilets is one hell of a way to spark a social media-based conversation.

Now get licking.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised earlier this evening.  I went to Court Square Diner in lovely Long Island City, NY.  Ordered a banana split.  The waiter tells me, “Sorry, we’re out of bananas, but we have a bunch of fresh strawberries.  Want me to make something with those?”

Despite the fact that I’d been craving a banana split (not sure why), I was taken aback by the guy’s resourcefulness.  Yes, sir; yes, I would love a strawberry split.

It shouldn’t be any big deal, but as soon as the words “out of bananas” crossed his lips, I assumed that that would be the end of the story.

Thank you, resourceful ice cream-serving waiter, for restoring my faith in humanity.  Good night and god bless.

I’ve had nothing but decent experiences with the company.   Their people are friendly.  The planes are clean.  I like their snacks.  Even during its ingloriously public crises, I’ve always felt that jetBlue approaches corporate communications with a sense of decency, humanity and, most importantly, honesty.

But their (relatively) new marketing campaign, “Happy Jetting,” contradicts pretty much everything I love about jetBlue.  In place of a folksy, humane voice, we’re left with a hollow, snarky campaign that touches on a culturally relevant conversation (namely, the miserable experience known as “flying”) without adding anything meaningful to the dialogue.

I wasn’t surprised to find out that an ad agency came up with this one.  In jetBlue’s attempt to separate itself from “flying,” it breaks a few fundamental rules of marketing in this Web-enabled age:

1. Acknowledge your company’s reality. Look, I’m sure the concept of “jetting” vs. “flying” seemed appealing to all involved over at jetBlue, given the negative connotations attached to air travel.   That said, stranding hundreds of customers during peak travel periods would seem to be at odds with the “jetting” experience.  Anybody consider that?  If so, why isn’t it on jetBlue’s “History of Jetting” page?  Get real, people.
2. If you’re going to engage in a culturally relevant conversation, speak through action, not empty slogans. You know what my favorite moment in the history of “jetting” is?  The moment that jetBlue enacted a Passengers’ Bill of Rights, responding to its own issues by taking a cue from an existing communal conversation.  What’s funny is that, while the Web site’s “History of Jetting” page features this moment, it couches it in some ridiculous fiction about the airline industry and a CEO named Bruce.  What a waste of a real, meaningful gesture.  How about, instead of making up airline fairytales, jetBlue reminds people that it’s one of the few companies that actually listens to and acts on consumer feedback?  That’s jetting.  No quotation marks needed.
3. Create a conversational Web experience. There’s a difference between interactivity and conversation.  The “Happy Jetting” site is immaculately designed, true, but lacks in the kind of experience that brings me, as a visitor, into the real experience of “jetting.”  The site’s “Jetting Cares” page is a perfect example — instead of spitting Flash-based text at me, how about getting me involved in your efforts by, I don’t know, showing me what jetBlue actually does through video or real interaction with its employees.  Considering that jetBlue is all about marketing through amazing experiences, I’m disappointed that jetBlue and JWT decided to abandon their ideals.

But to reiterate what I said at the beginning of this post (albeit in a slightly different way), I probably wouldn’t be as critical if this campaign were coming from anyone but jetBlue.  But that’s just another downside to building a solid brand, ya know?  Happy jetting!

Just kidding, The Dark Knight is selling ten tickets per second.

Gawker has already found it.

The hardest lessons for many brands to learn are quickly becoming the most important lessons of web marketing and PR: people don’t care about your brand the way you do. Given a choice between saying something profound and saying something funny, we will invariably take the latter. Taking your communications online can’t be done just for its own sake; you must be serving a larger strategic purpose by doing so.

The funny thing is, the thousands of parodies that will have emerged by this time tomorrow could just have easily been made without the Blue Box Challenge – just add Photoshop (or even MS Paint) and a little creativity. But it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to do so without the Challenge. On Wikipedia, we have a phrase for this.

(thanks to @nancy_martira)

Twitter’s load-bearing capability is as robust as a matchstick house, and a solution for that continues to be its greatest need, but a close second was a decent search functionality. They’ve solved that today by announcing that they’ve acquired Summize, which now resides at http://search.twitter.com. Instead of trying to spend developer hours trying to reinvent the wheel, they’ve brought an excellent solution in-house.

This is a shot in the arm that Twitter needed badly. Twitter knows this as well as anyone; according to Om, it’s a shot that they might given away 10% of the company to get. There’s no shortage of pretenders to Twitter’s throne (Plurk, FriendFeed) but Twitter has one indisputable leg up on both: a large established audience, albeit one that has a love/hate relationship with the service. Plurk, in particular, feels like a ghost town.

An interesting thing to watch for now is to see what will become of the others who stepped up to fill Twitter’s search vacuum, like Tweetmeme, Tweet Scan and TweetIP.