Wordsushi

I heard a number of people gripe that none of this year's Superbowl commercials were that good. I especially heard a number of you out there say the Go Daddy Superbowl commercials with Danica Patrick weren't that good.

The concept is tired. Give it a rest... etc, etc... 

Honestly, do you armchair critics even know what the fuck you're talking about?

I understand a number of you measure "how good" a commercial is by some kind of artistic yardstick. 

In truth, the only metric a commercial needs to be measured by is how much revenue did it generate and, secondarily, how much brand awareness did it create?

Both Go Daddy ads in the Superbowl created instant and massive spikes in traffic to GoDaddy.com and were responsible for once again shattering the company's previous year's record setting sales for the event. 

Go Daddy was also the only company to really leverage the power of social media and the internet. Their commercials were once again discussed and written about by major news outlets in print, on the net and on TV. 

And above all generated millions in revenue for the company and many thousands of new customers. 

So really, the results speak for themselves. You may not like the "artistic" content of those ads go but as far as effectiveness goes, those Superbowl ads not only hit it out of the park but were dead, solid perfect. 

Just my two cents... 

And of course if you want to save a few bucks at Go Daddy, use these GoDaddy coupons 

Really, doesn't anybody take a look at these ads and realize what they've done?
This, and perhaps Apple's less-than-fortunate name for it's new tablet are most likely examples of what could go wrong when you work and create in a vacuum.

Story pitching is not unlike relief pitching in baseball. You're alone and everybody is looking at you and for that moment, you have the ball. You're in control and everything hinges upon you delivering that pitch down the strike zone. 

You know the drill or you've pictured it in your mind a thousand times. The room, the chair, the exec who you have to impress with your latest masterpiece. 

The same exec who hears a dozen pitches before lunchtime each day. The person whose job it is to say no... something he or she does 99.9 percent of the time. 

And trust me when I say I've blown a pitch before. I won't bore you with details. 

Recently, I did a major studio pitch for a project that has been years in the works... years. (as of now we're still waiting to hear back) but we succeeded in one thing, getting the highest ranking exec in the room, in this case a division president, to tell us he would essentially "take the project upstairs" for further consideration. He complimented me more than once on a pitch I delivered well, telling me they should just videotape me giving the pitch and release that. LOL. 

Trust me when I say how well the pitch went in the room was mostly due to us having a good story but also me following the few simple rules below.

You see, when I was in the Warner Bros. Drama Writer's Fellowship program a few years back I learned a very valuable pitch lesson. 

THEME. 

I look around and see stuff (or hear audiobook podcasts) and I feel that a lot of the time the material suffers because the writer doesn't have a grasp on the importance of theme. 

So I was told, start with theme... and it works. When you pitch the first words out of your mouth should be "The theme of this story is... "

Next, nobody wants to hear all the details of your story no matter how cool they may seem. Your first act better establish who, what and where so quickly establish the world in which it takes place. 

This is the important part... know your act structure and don't be afraid to vocally mark your act breaks. "Act two begins and we..." 

Next, set up the action which bookends your midpoint. Then proceed directly with the one or two key events which take you to the end of act two and then wrap up with how it all ends. 

Yes, it sounds simple and this is obviously a gross oversimplification but hopefully you get the basic idea. Know your theme and act structure well and be able to boil it all down to a couple minutes and most importantly of all, make sure in those couple of minutes you define your character arcs. But yes, be brief and if your story is solid, your pitch will be, too. 

Okay the first few changes to the site are in effect. Videos I create will now be their own section, as seen above in the header. 

As this site is primarily about my writing, I will of course still be posting episodes of THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEK here under the video category from now on. 

You can see last week's funny news here: http://www.wordsushi.com/video/2010/1/8/tiltw-avatar-deleted-sex-scene-and-charlie-sheens-wife-in-al.html

Okay... as I get a little better picture on what my new media plans are for 2010 and beyond I've decided to make some changes to this site. Basically, I'm gonna put everything in its own category (video, stories, blog, audio) and I'm going to be releasing the text versions of some of my better known work chapter by chapter. 

I'm also planning on putting together an iPhone app for the site soon but I'm gonna hold off until at least the Apple Tablet announcement later this month so I can make sure the app reflects what will be functional for the iphone, touch and tablet all together. 

So pardon the dust while I do some renovations.. 

Oh, and I'm hoping that I will FINALLY be able to tell you more about my new novel soon... in the meantime I'm tinkering with a few ideas for SHADOW FALLS 3 which will essentially be a bridge between that world and this new franchise. 

Stay tuned... 

M

Once upon a time there was a form of entertainment that practically everyone enjoyed and then someone invented a gadget that would bring that grand entertainment closer to the consumer.

I'm talking about movies.

Used to be the only place you could enjoy one was on a big screen in your local theatre located somewhere downtown and it used to be those local theatres were opulent palaces with balconies and chandeliers.

Then came the television. Eventually, someone smart realized you could broadcast movies on those as well.

Of course the purists cried, "Movies can't be enjoyed on a tiny screen." The picture was fuzzy. The sound was tinny. "This is not the way movies were meant to be enjoyed."

But television, and watching movies on television, only became more popular over time despite the obvious and quite noticeable drawbacks and limitations in the technology. And then the purists cried, "Watching movies at home will kill the theatrical movie business."

They did. They really did.

But even though the glowing box in the living room may have cannibalized some of the theatrical movie business because of its ease of use, people are still going out to the movies in droves. In fact, the theatrical movie business makes more money (in total dollars, not unadjusted gross) now than ever before.

And those who once fought the proliferation of the easy-to-use, access-friendly television because they feared it would cannibalize their business soon found ways to create even more monetization streams through home video and licensing. In fact, the marriage of movies and this new home technology is so lucrative, many theatrical releases often find their way to profitability through home video.

While this is a gross oversimplification of the facts, there is no doubt that television, the divisive consumer-technology which even decades later is still inferior to the in-theatre movie going experience, is a very successful medium for movie makers.

People don't care that the image is smaller or the sound not as full because even on the small screen, if the story is good people find themselves absorbed into it. Consumers get lost in the experience and the actual medium fades away.

Kinda like what happens when you read an eBook.

Reading on the Kindle is a very similar parallel. On screen, the fonts are the same from book to book, the presentation very similar. All you have are words. And if those words are strung together in an interesting way, getting lost in the story is no different than reading an old fashioned book made from dead trees.

Even though the screen is black and white and the page refreshes are something you have to get used to. But in the end, the result is the same, the medium of presentation soon fades away and a good book is a good book is a good book.

And this is a format that translates even more purely than movies to television because with text only you never lose the aspect of cinematography.

So again, why do people fear the eBook? Why do they fear the eReader?

Because that's what people do. Whenever there is a new technology, it is human nature for those who make their living with the old technology to decry that with it comes the end of civilization as we know it.

Remember what happened with mp3's? With the iPod? While the overall sale of the physical medium may have suffered, in the last 10 years the growth of digital music has exploded. The same can, of course, be said about downloadable movies and television. From these emerging markets have grown full industries.

And still people go to the movies in theatres. People still watch television shows on TV.

People still buy music on vinyl--and while this can be described as a "specialty market". It is also one indentified with the more discerning consumer. One who still likes the sound, and arguably the warmth, of vinyl and the way the format physically feels and looks.

So I propose to you that eBooks will not be the death of the publishing industry--an industry that has changed very little in over a century, which is quite a run I do say. But eBooks and eBook readers are not going away. They will only get better and easier to use and most importantly, cheaper.

Just like television.