Wordless Wednesday: Which startups will rule 2012?

What to look for out of the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show

Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable, wrote a good CES trends story last month on CNN.com and you can read it here. TechnoDad's take on this year is that it will indeed be the 'year of the tablet,' as more and more consumers move away from their desktops and even their laptops. Tablets and smart phones are the future of computing, evidenced by Pete's reference to voice control (Siri on the iPhone 4S for example) possibly taking off this year.

Of course the big unknown is what Apple might do within the TV realm beyond their present minor presence with the Apple TV. We'll have to wait a while for that. And of course, I'll be reporting on what we see at CES in a few weeks. Here's to a technology-rich 2012!

Wordless Wednesday: Toys Get Techie

In the spirit of this Holiday season, our Wordless Wednesday gives tribute to the most popular holiday toys since 1981. From dolls to iPads one thing is for sure, kids are getting increasingly techie. 

 

Pop-Up Video is Back With Creative Advertising

As a fan of behind-the-scenes features on rental DVD's, I have always been drawn to the quirky and entertaining VH1 show, Pop-Up Video. Aired in the mid-1990s, the show quickly became the highest rated on VH1 due to its music video trivia and comedic tone. The show went off the air in 2002 until its revival this past October.

One of the best parts of the shows comeback is its marketing efforts. In addition to the standard music videos getting the Pop-Up treatment, the channel has also begun adding a trivia element to certain commercials, and posting them to the show's online site. “Pop-Up Video has been a fan favorite for years,” says Marc McIntire, Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing for VH1. “Because of that, we knew we’d have to do something new when we brought it back.”


To promote the show, select commercials are getting a layer of pop-up trivia. The first company to jump on board is Fiat with their 500 Ambarth subcompact "seduction" commercial. The spot not only supports the new Fiat 500, but also the new season of Pop-Up Video. The VH1 creative team and the advertiser's creative agency work together to come up with the final product. 

"We have a whole new season of Pop-Up Video coming up," McIntire says, "so I'm sure we'll be working with other advertisers." 

I am excited to see more commercials like this, partly because I love getting the inside scoop behind production, but also because it's an interesting display of dual-promotion. A commercial for a show within a commercial for a product? It's like inception for the advertising world. Wonderful.

R.I.P. Saab

Quirky, weird, different. That's what Saabs were all about. The very first car I borrowed from an automaker as a journalist was a 1984 Saab 900 Turbo. It was a revelation to me, having been brought up with a series of very mundane domestic cars. The Saab was FAST and FUN with an aromatic leather interior that really fit your body contours, and of course, an unmistakable chunky shape that was unlike any other car. Saab obtained its highest sale volume in 1986, and it has been on a steady decline since then.

There was some hope that after the GM bankruptcy in 2009, that Swedish Automobile CEO Victor Muller could pull off a miracle and get Saab back on track, but it wasn't mean to be. Saab was declared bankrupt by a court on Monday. A new 9-5 was trotted out to the press last year, but it wasn't different enough to create much of a sir. There are just too many good cars out in the marketplace now; it's harder and harder to stand apart.

My wife's car is a Saab 2000 9-3 convertible that my daughter now drives. Even back then, Saab was beginning to slip into conformity thanks to the badly-managed GM ownership that eventually killed it. I'm sorry to see Saab go, even if it was only a ghost of what it once was. There are just too many vanilla cars out there.

Some automakers have taken up the 'different is better' gauntlet, including Subaru, VW and MINI, not to mention Nissan with their weird but somewhat lovable Cube and Juke vehicles, and the brand-new Fisker performance hybrid.  Let's hope there will always be cars that have distinct personalities that are also fun to drive.