webofevil: (Default)
webofevil ([personal profile] webofevil) wrote2006-05-25 10:16 am
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Whether Orange stands fast and stays with this knuckle-chewingly bad idea to the bitter end or cuts its losses and scarpers like a private company giving up trying to run a school*, I want to commemorate it here and now before all the images are consigned to the memory hole.

Orange has sunk £10 million into the kind of campaign I would concoct as a vicious parody in the middle of one of my rants about marketing. Are you a dolphin, a panther, a canary or a raccoon?



Among many others, The Register had a lot of fun with this when it appeared ("The Raccoon package - 'For people who want no nonsense basics'. People who can only afford to live out of bins?"), and it looked for a while as if the whole campaign would collapse under the weight of the public's scorn. Orange denied rumours it was about to pull the plug, however, and so far it hasn't, as it urgently tries to recoup its—count them—£10 million.


This other campaign shows that maybe Orange needed to be edgier in their use of animals; appeal to a younger, hipper demographic, kids ready to stick it to the MAN. To hell with your sheep-like conformity, GRANDAD! I'm not going to be a bovine drone and slavishly devote myself to that corporate consumer item! I'm going to rebel by being a bovine drone and slavishly devoting myself to THIS corporate consumer item!



For those who find themselves resolutely unintrigued enough to click through, here's what you get after you've waded through a few pages of modish graphics and curiously vigorous anti-iPod ranting:
This site and the iDon’t campaign (check out our cool posters above) are the creation of several of us renegades behind the new Sansa player, from SanDisk. And this is our playful way of saying “Enough!” Yeah, we’re just fed up with the ever-expanding flock of iSheep swarming through our cities. You’ve seen them. They’re everywhere. Every bus, train and city sidewalk is a mass of white headphones. Blindly they’ve bought into the hype without ever realizing there are other mp3 players out there...
... and suddenly that cute girl you've met at a party turns out to be racist and she wants to tell you all about Jesus. Five won't even get you six that these people are about as "renegade" as weather forecasters. Sly as anyone who ever cruised shopping malls recruiting kids for a cult, this campaign leaves me feeling so greasy I want nothing to do with its product on principle.

[Poll #735796]
EDIT: Not literally "what animal are you". I'm assuming, perhaps rashly, that everyone who posts at least on my journal is human. We're trying to pin down what kind of animal you are in your mind.

ext_22879: (Default)

[identity profile] nja.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 09:25 am (UTC)(link)
Human beings are animals.
ext_22879: (Default)

[identity profile] nja.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 09:33 am (UTC)(link)
It seems to pull the grease out of your hands onto the velvety feeling metal surface.

This is a good review, according to the edgy rebels.

All of the controls respond well, but the navigation ring and the center button feel loose. In fact, if you shake the player you can hear the center button rattle. The scroll wheel is great for flipping through hundreds of songs easily, but it doesn’t feel smooth. If you look at the picture of the inside of the wheel you can see that it is basically a gear and it feels that way. You can actually hear the gear turn as you rotate the ring. Everything is durable and works, but it doesn’t feel right.

[identity profile] moleintheground.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 09:33 am (UTC)(link)
The thing that makes the Orange campaign so bad is the impenetrability of the animal types. We all know what a rabbit universally represents - lots of sex, or floppy cuddliness. But a racoon? Even racoons don't know what racoons represent. They're an ennui-stricken bunch, racoons.

Baffling clues:

[identity profile] judge-death.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 09:34 am (UTC)(link)
My first is in space but never in moon.
My second in quaint but never in taint.
My third is in mud but never in made.
My fourth is in bike but never in bark.
My fifth is in cud and also in mud.

[identity profile] judge-death.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 09:36 am (UTC)(link)
Also, I think MPs should be allowed to swear on the floor of the house, so long as they do it like Asterix characters.

Re: Baffling clues:

[identity profile] webofevil.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 09:40 am (UTC)(link)
You're a puuid?
(deleted comment)

Re: !

[identity profile] webofevil.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 09:43 am (UTC)(link)
Duly noted.

(Anonymous) 2006-05-25 09:37 am (UTC)(link)
And illiterate, FFS. It's a raccoon. R A double C double O N.
(deleted comment)

[identity profile] webofevil.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 11:57 am (UTC)(link)
Do the Brits even get a say in how it's spelt, given that we don't actually have rac(c)oons over here?

[identity profile] chiller.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 09:54 am (UTC)(link)
It's pretty widely acknowledged that I'm a stoat.

[identity profile] internetsdairy.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 10:56 am (UTC)(link)
I would welcome the racoons and their friends if Orange would only cease their f***ing cinema campaign which has blighted the start of almost every film I've seen since, seemingly, a good ten years before the invention of the mobile phone. But they hadn't as of last Saturday.

[identity profile] moleintheground.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 11:31 am (UTC)(link)
I've never seen you angry before, [livejournal.com profile] internetsdairy. It's a bit upsetting.

[identity profile] internetsdairy.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 12:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Do you want to feel the back of my hand?

[identity profile] webofevil.livejournal.com 2006-05-25 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Why, is it very smooth?

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_moggy_/ 2006-05-25 11:32 am (UTC)(link)
I'm a bear mostly but sometime's I'm a cat.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_moggy_/ 2006-05-25 11:32 am (UTC)(link)
AAHHH rogue apostrophe!

[identity profile] psychonomy.livejournal.com 2006-05-26 11:40 am (UTC)(link)

Actually, I'm not an animal. I just wanted to participate in the poll. Actual answers are secondary to the thrill of clicking 'submit'.