Friday, November 21, 2008

Those Who Don't Know History...

Good thing I know random, irrelevant history. It seems to come in handy never in blog postings.

I read today that Dr. Pepper is almost accidentally giving away Dr. Pepper until Feb. 28. All you have to do is get a coupon on Sunday at 12:01 a.m. I'd have my calendar marked because I LOVE free stuff, but unfortunately (?) I'm going to be in Berlin this weekend.

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So why the free soda?
Dr Pepper is making good on its promise of free soda now that the release of Guns N' Roses' "Chinese Democracy" is a reality. The soft-drink maker said in March that it would give a free soda to everyone in America if the album dropped in 2008. "Chinese Democracy," infamously delayed since recording began in 1994, goes on sale Sunday.
I think that's a hilarious compilation between the two parties. But hey, it gets some people free soda and others the amusement of a new Guns N' Roses album. Win win.


It's similar to something that happened in the 1920s + 30s that I read about a few years ago and somehow managed to recollect. Burma-Shave, a shaving cream was famous for it's had a series of clever poems on roadsides. Eventually, they crafted half-joking promotions like this one :
Free Offer! Free Offer!
Rip A Fender
Off Your Car
Mail It In For
A Half-Pound Jar
Burma-Shave
Not surprisingly, people actually sending in their fenders. The amused employees traded the junk yard scraps or toy fenders for jars of Burma-Shave. The next series, the company believed, would surely be realized as spoof.
Free — Free
A Trip To Mars
For 900
Empty Jars
Burma-Shave
Arliss French, though, Chicago's 1920s BAMF managed to procure the necessary jars. After a series of rhyming telegrams (web 0.0)....

Burma:
If A Trip
To Mars You Earn
Remember, Friend
There's No Return
French:
Let's Not Quibble
Let's Not Fret
Gather Your Forces
I'm All Set
Burma:
Our Rockets Are Ready
We Ain't Splitting Hairs
Just Send Us The Jars
And Arrange Your Affairs
.....Burma-Shave agreed to send French, his wife, and 12 children to a German town pronounced "Mars."

Of course, all of this amounted to massive publicity to Burma Shave (obviously, because almost 100 years later I still know about it). I think it's a great story of a company that was years ahead of it's time.



Cheers!


Burma info from Snopes. com + pictures from Digital Media Library and couponcravings.com

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Interaction in London

Two of my less-strange but still diverse interests* are technology and art and I've gotten to see some interesting public art in London recently. There's a great and surprising exhibit in Trafalgar Square right now called Under Scan by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.



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Lozano-Hemmer set up two projectors that create videos in passerby's shadows. It's a strange concept because when people in Trafalgar Square look down, they are greeted by an image of a person waving at them. The exhibit is set up so that the projected people look directly at a viewer, interact with them, and appear to lose interest as the viewer walks away.

Neato. And a lot less eerie than the exhbit I just saw in the Saatchi Gallery, where aged models of world leaders in electric wheelchairs roll around in the basement.



More information on Under Scan here.




* Example: I'm graduating with a Minor in Visual Art and a Liberal Arts Concentration in Political Science. Woooo.

Pictures from BBC, Three Cities and the Saatchi Gallery
 
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