ColemanMedia Report

Only days after the much ballyhooed and bewildering launch of social media tool Google Buzz, search giant and political lobbyist Google has announced the upcoming launch of “UsToo,” a new platform that will allow the media conglomerate to quickly and underwhelmingly copy virtually any popular social, mobile or web application.  According to the announcement, “UsToo” will give Google the flexibility to release confusing and relatively useless applications that mirror whatever the hottest new future trend may be.  ”We learned a lot from Buzz,” said Google co-founder Sergey Brin.  ”We were late to the game with a social sharing tool that quite simply, even we didn’t understand.  With ‘UsToo’ we’ll no longer be late.  We’ll be nimble enough to release perplexingly forgettable applications almost immediately after a far better version of it becomes popular with the general public.  Because, quite frankly, I’m getting bored of running an immensely profitable search engine.”

According to a report issued Monday by the social media watchdog group Friend Feeder, Facebook users have created more than 16 million new fan pages with the express purpose of generating more fans than every person, public figure, or brand that they dislike, don’t agree with, or simply want to make fun of.  The pages and groups, which started as jokes about pictures of domesticated animals getting more fans than Glenn Beck or Nickelback, have quickly snowballed to collectively waste more than 189 million hours of Facebook user time in the last week alone.  ”We see this as the beginning of the end for Facebook,” said Matthew P. Whipplebottoms, a research analyst at Friend Feeder.  ”It started with lost cows wandering on to people’s walls, where the utility of keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances gave way to the mindless time suck that is ‘Let’s see if this one-eyed mole rat can get more fans than the Verizon Guy’s glasses.’”

HardSell Media Western Regional Sales Manager Charles Lamonica wants to kick things with your client into high gear, according to a voice mail and follow-up email sent Tuesday morning to Junior Account Coordinator Jordan Ringley.  Lamonica reportedly wants to “jump-start” the new year and the new quarter by “diving in headfirst” to some “6-figure-minumum” ad buys on his behaviorally targeted network.  According to the messages, sent within 16 minutes of each other, Lamonica feels strongly that if you test big, he’ll be able to deliver big.  ”Look,” said Lamonica in his phone message, “I’m through with these little tests.  Let’s turn things up and start spending some real dough.  The volume’s only at 3 kid, but this dial goes to eleven, you know what I mean?”  ”Did he really just make a Spinal Tap reference?” said Ringley.  ”I’m 24, I wasn’t even born when that movie came out.  Who buys into this crap anyway?”

Less than three weeks after Apple’s highly-anticipated announcement of its iPad tablet e-reader, Apple fan tracking service MacAddicts revealed that nearly 6 out of 7 self-professed Apple fans have been diagnosed with suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms over the lack of recent Apple-related news.  According to MacAddicts, only 7,239,922 online articles, unconfirmed rumors and blog posts have been published about new Macintosh products over the past 10 days.  The withdrawal symptoms, which range from minor headaches to crippling seizure of their wireless Magic Mice, have reportedly quadrupled over the last 3 days as the non-news begins to pile up.  ”This is the longest we’ve gone without some sort of announcement or rumor,” said Mac fan and withdrawal sufferer Mick Davies.  ”Usually we would already be talking about the next generation iPhone, or arguing over what brand of black turtle neck Steve Jobs is wearing, but it’s been nothing but silence.  Terrible, unbearable silence.  Where’s my rumor of a 1TB video-enabled Nano, or 3D Apple TV?  I have nothing to talk about with my friends!”

A quick search for restaurants near the West Los Angeles apartment of Jenni Whitfield in Google Street View mode Tuesday afternoon revealed that Jake Hanson, the media buyer’s live-in boyfriend, had indeed left the toilet set up again earlier in the day.  According to sources close to the scene, the 26-year-old had long suspected her boyfriend as the culprit, but until logging into the 360-degree photo-based mapping service, didn’t have the evidence she needed.  ”Omigod, I totally knew it!” said Whitfield.  ”He always tries to blame me and I’m like ‘why would I leave the toilet seat up?  Hellooooo, I’m the only girl in the apartment.’  He is so on dish duty when I get home.”  Further searches within Street View revealed the whereabouts of Whitfield’s lost earring, her pink rhinestone Blackberry case, and a full view of her black CoCo de Mer whispering chemise.  ”Okay, this just turned from cool to creepy, like, really fast,” added Whitfield.

A report issued early Tuesday by online media measurement firm comScore revealed that 2,572 separate video networks tied for the coveted top spot for December 2009, according to comScore’s new Digital Advertising Return To Basics On Average Relevant Dealio (darTBoarD) measurement standard.  The new standard, which takes into account audience size, video completion rate, and sales PowerPoint slides, ranked all 2,572 video networks as #1 with your desired key demographic.  ”These results are solid,” said David Bates, Director of Research and Other Useless Stats at comScore.  ”Not only do they show that each network is indeed #1, but they clearly demonstrate that pretty much anything you want to purport as fact is true so long as you have enough screenshots.”  A planner at Epicenter Media, who declined to be identified for fear of losing her spa privileges, responded ambivalently to the report by asking: “What’s a comScore?”

A study released late last week by the Center for Environmental Irony revealed that the carbon footprint of media coverage of commercial and industrial environmental impact actually increases the total carbon footprint of mankind by approximately 25.3%.  According to the study, every occurrence of the words “carbon footprint” actually releases 2.3 metric tons of carbon monoxide, the gas widely believed to be at the root of global warming, into the atmosphere.  ”The results are quite shocking,” said Klaus Von Chimneyschwiep, a fellow with the CEI.  ”We always thought that reporting on the causes of global warming would have a net positive effect, but the exact opposite is true.  Every time the media reports on the environmental impact of something, they actually make that impact 2.4 times worse on average.  In fact, simply by reporting these facts to you, two cute and cuddly kittens have suffocated to death on deadly toxic gases.”

Not to be outdone by Alex Bogusky’s promotion to Chief Creative Insurgent of Crispin Porter + Bogusky parent MDC Partners, Chicago-based agency Boo, Yahka & Shaw officially announced the promotion of Deputy Vice Comptroller of Keepin’ It Real Brian Sheenwicky to the newly-created position of Chief Pretentiousness Officer late Monday.  Under his new role, Sheenwicky will be in charge of creating innovative and confusing new business practice and department names to make the agency sound more cutting-edge and ahead of the curve.  ”In the new media landscape, agencies need to stop worrying about being reasonable or accountable,” said Sheenwicky.  ”It’s all about bewildering the hell out of your clients and competition with abstract concepts, half-baked assertions, and unprecedented monikers.  As long as you can appear to be one step ahead of everyone else, you’ll never have to prove your actual worth.”

A study released early Monday by the Center for Speculative Media & Measurement revealed that only 5 days after the official announcement, online media coverage and chatter around Apple’s iPad tablet device has surpassed all media coverage of the January 12th earthquake near the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince.  According to the study, 622 million news stories, blog posts, & Twitter feeds flooded the world wide web during the first hour of the iPad news conference in San Francisco, quickly surpassing the number of news reports, text messages and celebrity outcries combined around the Haitian earthquake.  ”The instinctive spirit of coming to the aid of our fellow man during a humanitarian crisis is one thing,” said lead researcher Karl Von Schnitzengrubel, “but nothing captures the attention of our collective psyche like the announcement of a highly-anticipated and gratuitously nonessential gadget.  The announcement of the iPad is the single-largest collection of media events in modern history around a product that hasn’t even hit the shelves.”

A report by the Bell Center for Media Prognostication predicts that mobile advertising sales pitches will become 93.2% more aggressive in 2010 on the heels of three very public acquisitions of mobile ad companies AdMob, Quattro Wireless and AdMarvel by media giants such as Google and Apple.  According to the report, advertising agencies can expect a 57% increase in meeting requests, an 83% increase in “the year of Mobile is here” claims, and a 726% increase in “you’re missing the boat by not buying with us” hard sells.  ”Our comfort level with these projections is very high,” said Chuck Waterford of Bell.  ”Reckless investment of this scale in any industry tends to give sales organizations the confidence to make largely unsubstantiated claims in order to pressure buyers into buying into the hype.  Like the claim that death of the PC is near.  Come back to me with that one in 5 years.”