Doug Mills/The New York Times

Good morning Giants fans. Go ahead. Lord your supremacy over us Patriots fans. I’m originally from Rhode Island and so became a full-blooded Patriots fan last night at a bar in Saratoga Springs, NY. What to do when surrounded by Giants fans? Become the #1 annoying fan and learn to avoid thrown glasses.

Being that I’m in the ad industry, my main interest in the Superbowl is the commercials and according to a study by Hanon McKendry , 54% of Superbowl watchers are just like me. For $3MM for 30 seconds, let’s give these ads their due respekt. Thus spawns, the Marauder Top 5. Unlike the USA Today Ad Meter which employs ratings from its web site or Facebook to determine a winner, I’m using a much simpler and valuable rating system: YouTube video views combined with my own opinion. To qualify those views, I am also listing out the upload date as most of these commercials were uploaded a week out from the Superbowl itself. Below my top 5, you will find the commercials I was not a fan of but listed as they pulled considerable weight in video views.

Daily Marauder Top 5: Superbowl 2012 Commercials

VW “The Dog Strikes Back”

5 MM views

Upload Date: 1/30

Kia “A Dream Car. For Real Life.”

4 MM views

Upload Date: 1/31

Chevy Sonic “Stunt Anthem”

743K views

Upload Date: 1/27

Sketchers “Go Run”

450K views

Upload Date: 1/26

Bud Light “Rescue Dog”

150K views

Upload Date: 2/3

Notable Mentions: Superbowl 2012 Commercials

Acura “Transactions”

Almost a winner until I saw the appearance of Jay Leno. Instant fail.

15 MM views

Upload Date: 1/30

Honda CR-V “Matthew’s Day Off”

Here’s the thing. “Ferris” just looks old and bloated. I felt depressed after watching it.

12MM views

Upload Date: 1/26

That said, while likability is fun to assess, it matters less in translating to brand sales. Many brands attempted to take their Superbowl ad buy one step further by creating a digital link using Shazam for TV. While many think of Shazam as a mobile app to identify what song is playing, the company recently updated to allow users to Shazam TV as well creating a digital extension both from TV episodes and commercials alike. This affords the TV commercial some digital legs allowing an easier transition from TV to digital. The best example from a brand last night came during the Toyota Camry commercial. Users could Shazam the commercial for a chance to win 2 Toyota Camrys during the game.

In other news, Facebook prepares for its IPO, Path doubles its user count to 2MM having re-launched 2 months ago, the Susan B. Komen Foundation reverses its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood , Pinterest wears the big kid pants in the social media family, and the Grammys piles on some interesting digital extensions to their coming broadcast.

Some more Cool Sh-t:

Commercial Crashers: The Old Spice Guy

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

While the Republican candidates continue to crucify each other in debates and public speaking engagements, Twitter has become a critical tool for candidates to engage their audiences. With 10 times more users on Twitter than during the 2008 election and the sites’ ability to break news faster than major news outlets, Twitter is certainly flexing its muscles in the political campaign space.

While Twitter fist pumps in politics, the site felt some public backlash over the weekend. Forbes claimed that Twitter had committed “social suicide” when they released news that they would be withholding tweets in particular countries (i.e. China, etc) Twitter users like Anonymous planned an online revolt on Saturday January 28^th claiming they would not tweet in protest of Twitter’s action (#twitterblackout).

This move by Twitter was certainly not motivated by their desire to censor but more importantly to try and infiltrate China, a market which had 485 million online users at the end of June, more than any other country in the world. Twitter is banned in China, based entirely on the fact that the company, up until now, has refused to allow the government to censor tweets. Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, has allowed open access to the government. The site is used by 250 million users. On Friday, I sat down with Ruby Zhang who moved from China to Los Angeles to study at USC’s Annenberg School. She walked me through Weibo and explained the advantages to Twitter:

• Mainly, her friends from home all use the site and therefore the clear advantage in China is simply that it has mass scale. Twitter will have a difficult time infiltrating given this fact.

• Images in line on Weibo.com’s home page. Many Twitter folk don’t visit the online site but instead connect through Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and others. Visuals are processed by the brain far faster than text. Twitter has made inroads to add visuals in-line but they certainly have room to grow.

• Easier list and categorization features. When’s the last time you used a Twitter list? Fantastic feature but it has been de-emphasized in design updates.

In other news last week, President Obama’s State of the Union got a snazzy interactive update showing side-by-side graphics while the President spoke. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) may be even more insidious than the more well-known SOPA/PIPA, USA Today’s Superbowl Ad Meter will finally include Facebook ratings, Apple delivers blow out earnings proving that more iPhones are sold per day than babies born in the world, Pinterest is showing serious strength in pushing consumers to retail and Facebook plans to file their IPO next week.

Some more Cool Sh-t:
Re-Imagine: What’s Outside Your Car Window

Barton Silverman/The New York Times

It looks like you Giants fans have something to celebrate this morning with the Giants win last night over the San Francisco 49ers. This will bring the NY Giants to face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. Being that I’m from Rhode Island, I just might care about this one. Usually, apart from the Thanksgiving holiday, I’m content to ignore the blatant football around me, instead busying myself with perfecting my latte art skills or hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains. This time, with Facebook before me, it was a bit difficult to ignore the game and the overtime field goal which caused celebrations in the east.

Speaking of the Superbowl, last week Volkswagen promoted their Superbowl with what else, an ad. This one featured adorable pooches howling out the Star Wars theme song in an ad dubbed “The Bark Side.” The ad already has over 7MM views on YouTube which is fairly incredible if you consider that this is simply a teaser for…a Superbowl ad. For an explanation of how it was produced, click here. If you remember from last year’s Superbowl, the VW spot featured a young Darth Vader practicing his force and won big as one of the top-rated ads from the game.

In other news, last week saw the internet retaliate at the legislation on the docket dubbed SOPA or PIPA. Rather than an homage to British royalty, these two insidious pieces of legislation threaten to change the infrastructure of the internet and threaten freedom of speech globally under the auspices of copyright law. As someone who worked for an entertainment company (HBO) for 4 years, I am well aware of the value of content. I have been on multiple sets, I am friends with executive producers, I have welled up while listening to Ross Katz discuss his creative process while filming Taking Chance; I am someone who understands the cost and undertaking devoted to creating quality content. That said, the idea that control will fix the problems ailing the content industry is misguided and frankly a sign that consumers’ needs have lapped Hollywood’s delivery of content. I recently read VC Fred Wilson’s plea to Hollywood entitled ‘Scarcity is a Shitty Business Model.’ This has been shown time and time again to be undoubtedly true.

Consider Napster. When Napster was shut down in 2001 and iTunes came raging onto the scene in 2003, many argued that consumers would not buy music for $.99. However, the slick user interface and sheer online availability of music settled that debate quickly proving that consumers would in fact pay if given an easy process for transacting and lots of content.  Back to Hollywood. The window structure is simply killing the industry. The window models were created based on an infrastructure that not only no longer exists but will trend farther from its origins over the next few years.

I’ve been recently watching the British series Downton Abbey. In one episode, the wealthy Crowley family updates their lavish home with innovative light bulbs replacing their dimmer cousins, the candles. The grandmother, Dowager Countess of Grantham, expertly acted by Maggie Smith, expresses her discord that the new bulbs are burning her eyes and far too bright. Change is always uncomfortable but inevitable nonetheless. To ignore it and try to squeeze and manipulate the inevitability will always fail. In other words, SOPA/PIPA won’t do justice to their objective, protecting the content and its creators. Furthermore, by censoring the internet under the guidelines that it poses, the legislature threatens to impede innovation across the internet simply because the entertainment industry refuses to innovate.

So here’s my plea to the studios. Innovate the business models, with a considerable shift in availability to speak to consumers’ needs. Eradicate the window structure. Yes, I know the drill. So many companies are involved here that eradication is made difficult. The solution to the problem is never easy but it stands just the same. Allow viewers to watch content on any platform they wish all at the same time, but create a revenue model for each. Think long. Don’t think short. The iPod was a gateway drug for Apple to the success they thrive on today. Consider that the revenues won’t immediately signal success when considered back-to-back (I’m looking at you Jeff Zucker and your digital dimes analogy). Become a misfit and make a revolutionary change. Make some waves, shock the other studios, and consumers will follow you to the bank.

Finally, the Super Bowl gets a social media command center and former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno dies at 85 re-igniting the debate of his misconduct in ignoring the abuse of his subordinates.

Some more Cool Sh-t:
Be Your Own Souvenir: The Ultimate in Memorabilia

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Last night, the Golden Globes descended upon Hollywood. The critics’ acclaim and 3 Golden Globes for the silent film, The Artist, got me thinking about a general trend in our culture at large, something I spoke about last week as well. If you’ve seen The Artist, then I’m sure you were also struck by the sheer simplicity of the film. Make no mistake about it, I’m not saying I liked it, just that it filters to a true simplicity not seen with most other films. Love, greed, empathy, pain, these were the simple messages evoked in the movie. While watching the film, my friend commented that perhaps she was not intellectual enough to understand the acclaim driving reviews. I don’t think that’s it at all. I think the passion around this film is simply that we are overwhelmed with entertainment and messaging.

Recently, I watched a variety show from the 70’s called Soul! and was struck by the sheer number of lengthy pauses in which the silence was deafening to my modern ears. In my former 5 years as a radio DJ, I would periodically have nightmares in which I was sitting in front of a blinking sound board paralyzed with dead air blaring from the studio speakers. In the modern era, sometimes watching Gossip Girl can literally make me feel like I’m in a dance club with a strobe light. The transition between scenes is on warp speed as our collective attention span has constricted. In some ways, we’ve acclimated to become faster human engines of efficiency. In other ways, we’ve become unaccustomed to the phrase, “stopping to smell the roses.” Back to The Artist. I think the insight into this film is not that it is good or well-acted in fact. I think Harvey Weinstein, the man who purchased the first silent film in over 70 years, is simply an innovator, one who sees what we all want before we want it. We all have been yearning for the simpler life, but without someone to bring this to us in entertainment form, we did not realize it. So Harvey Weinstein, I say well done. I didn’t like The Artist, but I understand it’s inherent value and for that the Golden Globe wins seem warranted. I can’t say the same for George Clooney I’m afraid.

On to the digitalverse. This week, the largest consumer electronics show wrapped up in Vegas. As I said last week, I am not a fan as usually the show produces a compendium of crap rather than one true innovation. This assumption was proved correct. Can’t say I told sold…oh wait, I can. That said, here’s a bit of a round-up from Mashable and a note on how the word ‘ultra-book’ is nothing more than a marketing campaign from Intel. The one highlight for me is really the focus on creating ecosystems rather than attempting to force consumers to purchase new gadgets that they don’t need. In other news, the iPhone 4S helped close Apple’s gap on the Android, especially interesting to note given the number of devices running Android. On the heels of that data, a very interesting post from MG Seigler (formerly of Techcrunch) emerged on why the writer despises Android. You’ll take note of the fact that it has less to due with Apple’s user interface and more on Google’s broken promise to make the consumers’ needs most important.

In other news, Facebook launched a “Listen With” feature which the community at large immediately compared to Turntable. To contradict that theory, I think Facebook discovered a more interesting insight which is that the mass audience does not want to do the work of playing DJ all day on Turntable. They simply just want to know what their friends are listening to. Hey Facebook, I’m still not turning on my listening data in Spotify. A girl has her secrets and you’re not getting all of mine. Nice try though… In bigger Facebook news, Facebook’s IPO is rumored to be hitting late May. And finally, TED returns to Long Beach, CA at the end of February.

Some more Cool Sh-t:
From Gaming to Escape our Real Lives to Gamifying Reality

Photo: Tina Fineberg / AP

As I looked back in 2011, my posts were a little light. Why? Well, simply stated, I’ve been working long hours. Since 2010, I have been in charge of Innovations for an ad agency working with clients like Dr. Pepper, Snapple, Lionsgate, VIZIO, Kia, and Hyundai. My team creates a strategy, brainstorms opportunities and executes innovative marketing strategies across all marketing platforms. In essence, I’ve been busy yo!

That said, in an attempt to give you what I think will be most valuable, I will be starting a weekly digest of the most important news of the week, a curated list of what’s happening in the digital era. Now, I’ve been curating since 2006. I’ve had a bit of experience fine-tuning this operation. In this age of clutter and mountains of information, I hope you will find this helpful. In essence, this will be a cool shit of the week list. And it begins…

As you sat mulling over your recent set of New Year’s resolutions, so did the world and survey says, one of the most popular is disconnecting from social media. Why? Quality, not quantity. If you sat busy reading Steve Jobs’ biography over the holidays like I did, the emphasis on focus should have been clear. If social media is over-used, we fall prey to a lack of focus. In addition, if we spend so much time sharing with strangers all day, we sometimes miss sharing the important things with the ones we hold most dear. If you’ll be at SXSW this March, I will be on a panel on this very topic: “Are We Killing Social With Social?” Come, join and weigh in.

This week, CES comes to Las Vegas. CES draws together the biggest in consumer electronics companies, tech reporters, bloggers, and interested groups in one city. For a list of expected trends from this year’s event, click here. Simply stated, they are ultrabooks, more tablets, smart TV’s, connected everything (cars, appliances, etc), and somewhat lame attempts at copying Apple’s Siri. Microsoft has announced they will no longer make their big announcements at the event as of next year. Apple will continue to hold their own events for announcements. I have been attending CES as a blogger and attendee since 2008. Every year, the big innovation is announced at MacWorld rather than CES. While CES is a collection of the largest consumer electronics’ companies and for that reason alone, important to watch, the sheer mass of gadgets without one clear line of innovation, reigns in the importance just a little bit.

In other news, Kodak has hit the bankruptcy skids, Warner Brothers is making consumers wait even longer for movies to hit Netflix, Lenovo releases the first TV running the Android platform and Apple is planning an event in New York at the end of this month supposedly to reveal plans on publishing and iBooks.

Ah, the holidays. The smell of freshly sawed pine in the air and a tower of sugary treats left unattended on that table outside your office. What better time for this year’s Holiday Light Show Death Match. This year, both brands and residents alike submitted serious contenders for the death match. Here’s Daily Marauder’s list of the top 6.

1)    Angry Birds Do Christmas

2)    Christmas: Sexy and I Know It

3)   Saks 5th Avenue Gives You a Holiday Shopping Light Show

4)   Heavy Metal Slashes through Christmas

5)   How Art Basel Does Holiday: 8Bit Gaming Style

6)    Thank You Troops & Veterans: 2011 Land of the Free Christmas Light Explosion

Photo Credit: Subwaysigns.com

As a former New Yorker and daily commuter on the New York City subway, it never dawned on me that the transportation system itself could be a form of art.  In the daily grind that is a work commute, the act of observation is not a highlight.  Since leaving New York City and re-locating to Los Angeles, a city lacking a well-used public transportation system, the subway I used for eight years started to have more shine. 

After learning more about my grandfather’s work as a change agent and then a motorman on the NYC subway beginning in the 1940’s, I decided to seek out a vintage subway sign. I poked around for a bit and settled on one of the only remaining signs still available from Manhattan.

Photo Credit: Subwaysigns.com

The sign above used to live on the R9 train, a train that ran along the IND or Independent line. I located the sign on Subwaysigns.com, the first and largest online store for vintage signs from the subway system. This particular sign was on the original 8^th Avenue line. Before the current system we enjoy now, complete with the 1, the 9, the A, and my most traveled L, the lines were the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit), the BMT (Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit) and the IND (Independent Subway System). The remains of these lines still exist today with the BMT trains & IND trains translated to the lettered trains and the IRT trains translated to numbered trains. The original subway lines (BMT & IRT) were independently owned and operated while the IND line, which came along in 1932, was owned by the municipal government. The first subway fare was only 5 cents.

My grandfather, William Giegerich, worked on the IND line, from the time he returned from World World II till he retired in 1974. The R9 trains were retired from service in 1977. As it turns out, the sign I purchased could have lived on a train my grandfather operated. This was a fact that I did not come to know until after purchasing the sign and learning more about my own family history from my father. It’s hard for me to imagine the stories my father tells, of my grandfather picking up my father on the train and taking him to Coney Island. The weight this sign will carry in my home will be palpable.

Gramps and I 1981

As the world progresses and our family histories are transpired over social networking pages and email to each other, what physical reminders will we leave behind for our grandchildren? If one of mine is reading this some day, I suggest an L train sign. While I personally loathed getting on the train at 1^st Avenue for my daily commute, I will never forget the 4 years I spent coming home along that line.

I will never forget my favorite waiting spot or the many ridiculous moments that transpired over the pathways of each train. I will never forget the moment I heard that a friend fell between two cars at a station in Soho and the train severed her leg. I will never forget the day World Trade fell or the city blacked out and every New Yorker was forced to find a new way home. I will never forget the day I sat mesmerized watching dancers back flip flawlessly while the train was in motion. I will never forget the day I saw a woman step in front of the train and take her own life.

Every moment while along the subway system, either within the underground or on the platform, is an instant I will try to hold on to as long as I live. This connects me to every moment my grandfather must have shared along the same tunnels I traveled every day. The subway system is a living, breathing memento of our lives, each train and pathway a reminder of those seconds, minutes and hours shared. The next time you step onto the platform and wait for that train, think about all the moments you’ve spent throughout the tunnels in NYC and the ways these have defined you. Art, after all, is a reflection of our own subjectivity. Reflected in this vintage subway sign hanging on my wall is a collusion of histories: my grandfather’s, my father’s, and my own. From New York City to Los Angeles, from the 1940’s to today, the sign continues to transport.

If you’re looking for more on the history of the New York City subway system, also check out Steve Duncan’s trips underground.