Dana's Mixed Bag

The NCAA has just over 350 Division I basketball schools. The popularity of these teams’ sports has spawned much media and internet focus, including pages about the schools, the sports programs, and references to these programs on sites for betting, statistics, and schedules. Unfortunately each site seems to have their own system of naming these teams, which makes it extremely difficult to compile information from multiple sources. For example some sites refer to “NC State” as “N.C. State”, while some refer to it as “N. Carolina St.”, and others list it as “NCSU.”

These schools belong to a governing body, the NCAA, which needs to send guidance to media outlets as to the official names of these programs. Each team needs to have a long name for uses such as those on scoreboards. Additionally each team needs to have either a standardized numeric or alphabet-based code system to help differentiate teams consistently.

In the 1960s the Pantone system of standardizing colors was created. Now over 2,000 colors have been indexed, and help web designers, printers, textile designers, and paint artists with a consistent system of colors. It is a numeric system, however, so there is no intuitive basis for understanding a referenced color based simply on the number. As well, assignments that use numbers imply a hierarchy that is at odds with the NCAA’s mission.

In the 1960s the IATA devised a system of 3-letter codes to identify airports. This system is used today, and offers a fairly intuitive hint to the user about the airport referenced. Because this system doesn’t have inherent bias, as a numeric one does, a 3-letter alphbet-based system is what the NCAA needs to implement in order to guide all markets referencing their members.

I created a system for 356 Division I teams based on a few simple rules:

• If the school name begins with a consonant, use the first 3 consanants in the name.
• If a name begins with a vowel, use that vowel and the next two consonants
• Schools that begin with a directional name (eg,”Northern”), begin with the directional consonant, then use the first two consonants in the school name body.
• Schools that end with “State”, always has “S” as their third code letter. The other two letters are either from a state’s postal code, or use a logical two letter code for the body of the school name.
• In the case of duplicates, the next logical consonant or vowel is used.
• Offensive 3-letter combinations should be avoided, and use logical alternate lettering.
• The letters “U”,”C”, and “I” are always avoided when representing the words “university,” “college,” and “institute.” This is contrary to historical standards at some schools, but a consistent standard for all teams, applied as equally as possible, is more important for intuition than classic naming.

The table below shows 356 unique names for Division I schools. If an NCAA representative wants to discuss this, please contact me as soon as possible.

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One of the new Christmastime ads on TV is by Honda and it features the song “Holiday” by Vampire Weekend. If you live in the real world you may not be aware of the emotional convulsions being displayed by hipsters over Vampire Weekend’s “sellout”. Both Honda and Vampire Weekend are now guilty of mass marketing schlock instead of the preservation of their art. Alice Cooper joined saying that the Paul Simon sound-alikes have no balls.

Funny that we never heard that same vitriol pointed at bands like The Kaiser Chiefs, Yael Naim, Orba Squara, Feist, Bob Dylan, and scores of others who sold out to Apple Computer for their ads. Selling cars and selling tech products destined for the landfill in 3 years are the same thing. You have to grab the audience’s attention, then present the good being sold.

There is one little band I left out of that list that is the most interesting of all: The Beatles. For decades companies have tried to use Beatles’ identities and music, but were unable to in most cases. In those rare use cases it was usually a cover version of a Beatles song by another band.

So it’s 2010 and along comes Apple, the computer company. A month ago they announced that it had finally joined other music outlets and reached an agreement to carry the Beatles’ music, The response from the public: meh. More importantly, though, this deal allowed iTunes to use select Beatles songs in advertising. The Beatles’ original versions of “Revolution” and “All You Needs is Love” are currently running from the ad campaign, and they raise an important question in advertising: is Apple trying to sell The Beatles’ music or is Apple using The Beatles to sell Apple Computer products? The commercial doesn’t parade around the iTunes brand so much as it just shows stills of the band in an attempt to draw in the viewer for the climactic logo splash.

Yeaaahhhh…about that logo splashhhh. First the iTunes logo appears, then the Apple Computer logo for, get this, an equal amount of time. It appears the boys in The Beatles’ legal department got duped. Original music and photos by the band are going used to sell Apple’s products, just like Honda is doing with Vampire. Well..OK, the Apple Computer ad doesn’t show their hardware product for the full 30 seconds, however it is the same exact mechanism of distract and present.

Why all this talk about Apple Computer? Apple seems to be doing some more of their blur marketing at a deeper level than it appears. At Apple Computer press announcements Steve Jobs has wonderfully blurred the truth about the popularity of his operating system and his products while ignoring his flops (notice how you never hear about Apple TV sales figures?). Why should we expect more honesty from his ad campaigns?

The Beatles’ place in history is well understood, and the millions of copies of their 45s, albums, and CDs out there are kept and loved by many. When young and old fans reach for these physical media, what record label is prominently displayed? That’s right, Apple Records. It may have been a coincidence, originally, that the computer company had the same name as the record company (and that record company sued the computer maker over that name and lost many years ago). However the line between the most popular band in history, their label, and a computer company with the same name is more blurred than ever in the consumer’s eyes. That young person discovering his parents’ and grandparents’ music is quite likely to think of a computer company when loading up an album now.

So what we’ve seen here is a clever little takeover of a brand. When you think Beatles, you are supposed to think Apple, the computer company. It’s a clever manipulation of a brand, The Beatles, that is going unnoticed. Meanwhile Vampire Weekend, a band that has only sold a few million albums, is being tied to the stake for a classic hipster execution. If only the vampires could have been so clever.

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There are some great Cosby shows coming on in the next 48 hrs. Here are three of our favorites:

Thanksgiving where Cliff gets sent to the grocery store over and over:
2/25 1a  CENTRIC (TWC Channel 458)
2/25 12:30p WRAZ

Thanksgiving where Cliff shows Theo how to carve "the buuurrd":
2/25 12p  WRAZ
2/25 1:30p  CENTRIC

The Gordon Gartrell shirt episode:
2/25 11a CENTRIC

The family lip syncs a Ray Charles song, featuring Rudy whaling “BAYBAAAAAY”:
2/25  3p CENTRIC

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Media Center and Windows 7 enter a new era this Fall. The new version unshackles Media Center from it’s old draconian locked down model and suggests to users to integrate the Media Center lifestyle into their existing lives. Tonight’s press conference answered many questions/desires of those who already appreciate Media Center’s fine package.

• Finally cable subscribers will be able to put premium channels into an existing PC setup. This is good news as users previously had to by a computer blessed by the manufacturer (ie way more expensive
• Cable systems having been converting channels over to SDV delivery in order to save bandwidth. What this meant is that systems involving anything but standard cable boxes were losing the ability to tune these channels. As expected ATI will issue a firmware upgrade for their CableCARD tuners so existing customers can tune these channels
• DRM previously restricted users to watching recorded shows only on their own Media Center systems. With the ensuing update customers will be able to move shows recorded on most channels over to their laptop for beach trips, to portable devices, and to other hardware.
• Microsoft is allowing users to add many, many more tuners to their systems than ever before. In Vista, one could record/watch up to four channels at once. Windows 7 offers the ability to add many, many more. Kevin, one of the presenters, said that he is currently using 13 tuners and 6 extenders in his current Windows 7 setup.

While Microsoft answered many questions tonight, they left many unanswered:

• What is the future for extenders? Do they really think that we are going to put XBox 360s in our kitchen?
• What role does the ZuneHD play in the future of Media Center?
• When and how are SDV integration going to occur.
• Will there be a remote guide application?
• Will there be Netflix integration into Windows 7?
• Can users form Live Mesh pools to share recorded content?

Perhaps some of these and many more questions will be answered before the release of Windows 7 (Oct 22), or even sooner (like, when I read the press materials they just dumped in my lap!)

No celebs on hand, and the press conference was brief and hit simple high points, but it appears that Microsoft has made some excellent moves to get computer-centric television and media consumption closer to a reality for normal families.

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Content marked “Copy Freely” can be transported from machine to machine.

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