Two quick things: One, there were significant format concerns with Thursday’s newsletter; Revue states it was a bug. I enjoy conference newsletter readers in individual, so please say hi if you’re there!
u can tell how evil a business is by how touching their incredibly bowl advertisement attempts to be
— Desus Nice (@desusnice) February 3, 2020
Are you prepared for some football-assisted Big Tech brand rehab?
With the techlash in full swing, and Congress investigating the giants for different privacy and antitrust problems, tech companies have few apparent levers for reversing the disintegration of public trust But the Super Bowl, which brings together a critical mass of inebriated Americans before their tvs to enjoy unnaturally big men reduce their lives, provides an appealing opportunity to reset the story on friendlier terms. On Sunday, three of our giants shot their shot.
Let’s see what they had to say.
Google, with its heartstring-tugging ad “Loretta,” made an emotional case for the collection and preservation of extremely personal information. “A little assistance with the little things,” the ad concludes, as make-you-cry piano chords tinkle in the background.
Anyway the advertisement is based on the experience of actual Googlers, so if you don’t like this advertisement you’re a bad person!
Over at Amazon, # BeforeAlexa— yes, the ad was named after its own social hashtag; get it trending fam!– included Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi wondering what life was like prior to the intro of the company’s voice-activated assistant. (The period prior to Alexa covers all of human history before November 2014, when DeGeneres and De Rossi were 56 and 41, respectively.) It goes on to show a lot of tasks that were eliminated by automation.
It’s pretty amusing, particularly the opening shot of a housemaid decreasing the temperature level by grabbing a flaming log from the fireplace and throwing it through a glass window. However it also seemed a bit tone deaf– not simply by buffooning the idea of humans doing labor, however likewise a bit where a newsboy tells a customer who asks him for the day’s headings “Doesn’t matter. It’s all phony.” Provided how often that charge is leveled by the president against the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, the line’s inclusion here was beyond odd.
In Other Places at the Super Bowl, Bezos came out as a Lizzo fan, prompting a heated Twitter discourse about whether being pals with the billionaire makes you a class traitor.
Both Google and Amazon are Super Bowl advertisement veterans; Google did its first 10 years ago. Facebook had actually kept away till this year, when it tasked Wieden Kennedy with making an ad that flaunted “positive ways to use the platform,” according to Quick Company The outcome is “ Prepared to Rock,” an advertisement that suggests the firm’s quick was to make the outright least offending commercial possible.
In it, we see a variety of Facebook groups loosely themed around “rocks”– Moab rock climbers, rock buggies, amateur exp