Videos

climateadaptation:

Wild dolphin “asks” for help to get untangled from fishing line and a fishing hook stuck in its skin. Openly trusts divers as they cut off the line.

I know, I know. At first, I didn’t believe the title or description either. And even as the video unfolds, I remained skeptical. But then it happened – the dolphin clearly ‘asks’ for help. I’ve never seen anything like it (well, maybe except in domesticated pets). Definitely gives pause to reflect on the meaning of sentience.

From the description:

This video of a dolphin in need is really something on so many levels.

It turns out that the dolphin had fishing line and a hook stuck on one of its fins, so it approached a group of divers who were watching manta rays at night near Kona, Hawaii. Fortunately one of the professional divers was able to help remove some of the fishing line that was restricting the movement of the dolphin, though in the end they were unable to remove the hook.

Via BoingBoing

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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hautepop:

Coca-Cola’s new ‘Coming Together’ advert
January 2013

“There’s an important conversation going on about obesity out there. We want to be a part of the conversation.”

I’m interested in this sentence – the positioning of the advert moreso than the actual content.

Now there’s a brand that’s bought into social media listening and the narrative that social has turned advertising on its head. No longer are brands able to broadcast what they mean at passive audiences – no! instead consumers are having conversations, and constructing webs of signification with each Like and Reblog, and all a brand can hope for is to humbly generate content in the hope that it might be used as currency in this attention economy.

“Consumers’ most valuable relationships are not with brands but with other consumers,” says Mark Earls – hell, I’ve even used that line myself…

“The Rise of the Empowered Consumer” – MediaCom, PWC, IBM.

It’s “The Real Thing”, right? Well. I’m less interested in this as a truth-statement or Big Idea that Coca-Cola are reorienting their entire marketing strategy around; instead it’s something we need to examine as ideology. This is the story that brands are choosing to tell us. Us as marketing professionals, us as consumers.

Is it a defensive strategy – as in, this IS the new reality and their only hope of survival is to acknowledge the new paradigm?

Or does capital’s capture of signification continue unabated, and we are now only being told that we are free and powerful in the hope that we might slip the bonds of regulatory guidance and indulge in that refreshing icy-cold beverage we have always wanted, but, since 1989, have been replacing with mineral water and sports drinks?

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1971.

(Source: http://hautepop.tumblr.com/)
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