Jamie Russell's Blog of Provocative Oddities

This is a great video series put together by @Gatorade celebrating the career of Peyton Manning.  From an advertising perspective, what a great campaign by Gatorade.  But also what a fantastic celebration of a pro athlete that did it right and was able to retire from the sport without the drama and downfall that follows most of our sports legends lately.

My son Max is totally freaked out by the idea of the Bermuda Triangle.  That said, we found ourselves in the Bahanma’s on Spring Break on a Disney Cruise trip and went snorkeling at this little obscure remote island and had a blast! Once back home I was looking at where we were on Google Maps and noticed the “Bermuda Triangle” tag right next to the tiny island we snorkeled around.  Max freaked when we showed him. If we had been filming is reaction we would be famous right now...

I recently binge watched “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” miniseries on HBO.  I am a big fan of anything HBO puts out, they always make it worth watching.  My wife was also excited to watch it since it is basically a “Dateline” or “48 Hours” on steriods.

It is a crazy wild story that spans decades, three murders, and some crazy happenings surrounding Robert Durst (now 71).  What I found most interesting is how the documentary fatefully turns into the actual story.  There are many twists and turns in The Jinx that makes it interesting to watch so I am not spoiling too much when I jump to the end and tell you that in the very last scene Durst admits to the various killings via a microphone he did not know was still recording in the bathroom saying “Killed them all, of course.”  He was driven to this when the director of The Jinx uncovered some very incriminating evidence during the production of the documentary.

Below is a snippet where Durst confesses while stepping into the restroom:

Here is Need for Speed on IMDB Coming from a guy who likes action movies, cars, video games, unrealistic stuff, things that can’t happen, every Fast and Furious movie excluding “Tokyo Drift,” and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) from Breaking Bad this movie was for me.

The story line evolved quickly in order to get in some serious race scenes, car chases and other vehicular shenanigans. Shenanigans not only from the fast cars but from aircraft as well.

For the car fans out there... they seamed to successfully cover the gamet of racing and car styles from old school muscle cars to new school muscle cars to the exotic sports cars.  

For the Breaking Bad fans out there... you get a pretty good performance from Aaron Paul, there are signs of the Breaking Bad Jesse but overall I felt like it was a solid performance. I am curious to see more big screen showings from Aaron Paul.

For the video game fans... they added a few effects to mimic the game and make it all tie together.  They also include some fantastical maneuvering and car crashes to make it game worthy.

I enjoyed a unexpected casting of Michael Keaton and a slew of new gen actors that create their own funny personalities and memorable scenes. 

Only downside is I took my oldest son Max and there was some unexpected cursing and brief nudity that he promised to not tell his mom about.  Typically I check the rating using "Kids in Mind" but figured since we were on a Disney cruise it would be kid (11 year old) friendly… I was wrong. However, Max thought it was the greatest movie ever! When leaving the theatre Max commented, "They named the movie appropriately because those guys really needed a lot of speed!'

Each year I like to break down the strategies advertisers choose to use to bridge their audience from the TV to their web site, social media channel, or online conversation.

I did think that last year's 2013 Super Bowl with all its power outage drama would be hard to beat.  In the end I was right, this year was much more tame than last year's Super Bowl saga.

Below are some observations I took away from this year's Super Bowl advertising frenzy. 

Also see my past two Super Bowl breakdowns: 2013 Super Bowl Breakdown and 2012 Super Bowl Breakdown

26+ commercials displayed twitter hashtags (ex. #NoContract) 14+ commercials displayed domain names (ex. BeatsMusic.com/ATT) 2+ commercials displayed social media links icons 2 Shazam badges (ex. Bud Lite & Jaguar) 1+ commercial displayed no links, hashtags, or social icons 1+ commercials displayed twitter account URLs 0 commercials displayed QR code on the screen (none since 2012) * My numbers may not be precise, I could have missed a ad or two.

I couldn't go through all this analysis and not at least put together my top 5 favorite commercials. So here goes.

Audi - The "Doverwawa" had me laughing five commercials after this Audi commercial was over. 

VW - Thought the idea of every 100k miles a VW turns over, and engineer in Germany gets their wings was funny and could live on for a while in VW lore.

TurboTax - I just loved the "Love Hurts" commercial. I thought they really took a otherwise boring brand and brought some life to it.

CarMax - The "Slow Clap" spot had me at Rudy. 

Ford Fusion - Had to respect the two spot approach and how the second spot with James Franco was twice as "awesome" as the first. 

Fun Fact: Steve Jobs is the father of the Super Bowl commercial.  He only ran his epic Apple commercial once and it was during the Super Bowl in 1984. 

I don’t go to movies a ton, but when I do, I use an AMC Stubs card.

A few years back I signed up for a AMC Stubs Rewards account. After hearing the way it worked I thought it would actually save me money, especially when I take my three kids. With all three of my kids I am lucky to get out of there for under $50, especially if we go at night.

In a nut shell, for every $100 spent you get $10 back. Here are some details.

It includes money spent on food and drinks (because we all know that is where the money is made!)

Free upgrades on drinks and popcorn.  Buy a small get a medium. Buy a medium get a large.

No sir charges when purchasing tickets online. I use the Fandango app and it has my Stubs card number already stored in it for easy purchasing.

They also have a AMC Stubs app that allows you to add your AMC Stubs card to Passbook so you don’t have to carry around the card all the time. The app displays the status till your next reward, total amount of online fees ($17 for me), total concession upgrades (38 for me) and your total AMC Stubs rewards of your account. Mine is at $163. See the screenshot above. One shortcoming of the app of course is that it only shows you movies available at AMC Theatres, but I would have done the same if I were AMC.

ProTip: Buy the tickets for large groups when you can. It is an easy way to get your rewards back quicker without spending all the money yourself. I typically tell my friends I am doing it so I don’t seem shady.

A few additional factors specific to me:

I do NOT go to dollar movies. I found Jimmy Hoffa stuck to the floor in one of those one time.

The AMC Theatre closest to me has the reclining leather seats. So I have a great nearby AMC option.

I decided to add a Fitbit Force to my fitness technology arsenal this year in my effort to track calorie intake, sleep, water consumption, activity, etc. So far I have been more than pleased with the Fitbit tracking and functionality. But it looks like it is going to get better next month.

I recently learned that Caller ID will be pushed with some updates to the Fitbit Force.  I never anticipated this type of feature on a fitness related device but if you think about it the infrastructure is all there, they just needed to add the functionality and contacts integration. More to come next month once the upgrade hits!

I figured if Tom Hanks could save Private Ryan he could easily save Mr. Banks... sorry, I had to do it.

The planets aligned recently on a Friday off work and my wife and I actually went to a movie together! Feeding my recent curiosity in the life of Walt Disney and thought Saving Mr. Banks would be a good movie to introduce me to a small section of his biography. That it did!

Typically anything with Tom Hanks in it is going to be a win, and it was. Hanks played a great Walt Disney (to my knowledge at least). But the story was more about the author of the book Mary Poppins (Wikipedia) P.L. Travers played by Emma Thompson and how Disney was determined to get rights to allow him to produce the movie as a promise to his children. The author had such a deep tie to the characters that she was extremely reluctant to grant these rights to Disney. As the story unfolds so does the story of the author’s childhood relationship with her parents. As a result you begin to see the reason for her reluctance. It’s a great story and well worth a visit to the theater.

If anything this film made me more appreciative of the movie Mary Poppins and allows me to appreciate the intricacies of the story line, set, character names, and who the story is really about. I need to watch it again real soon.

This movie was packed with some great actors:

Colin Farrell did a great job in this film

Ruth Wilson who I am use to seeing in the BBC show Luther.

Paul Giamatti always has a way squeezing every ounce of greatness out of any character he plays.

Bradley Whitford - Who was my favorite character in The West Wing and in Billy Madison.

B.J. Novack - Glad to see he made it into a movie production.

Jason Schwartzman - Never disappoints.

I have been lugging an Apple laptop around for a long time and for the most part I have always been a fan of the care Apple took with their power cords and the magnetic connectors, etc.  However, it has always been a bit bulky to wrap up when on the go. Recently I learned about the "Double Wrap" technique (photo seen above) and wonder how I never picked up on this on before. I leave a little length on my wall plug so most of the time I never even have to unwrap it, and it is always ready to pack up. It's the small things... right?

A long while ago I shared some twitter "Easter eggs" I found out about at one of my trips to South by Southwest. For those not sure what I mean by Easter egg in media go here. This specific Easter egg allowed you to easily switch between accounts from anywhere between the app, it also helps you get to your Direct Messages quicker.

See the now out-of-date original posts here: "Awesome Twitter Gestures"

For those of us that switch between Twitter accounts frequently it was a convenient find. However, Twitter recently launched a new update (6.0+) where your Direct Messages are located in the footer. That update took away these features... kinda.

Recently I found that while on your profile page you can pull down your avatar area towards the bottom of the screen (see above left screenshot) and the account selection screen comes up. I also noticed that on the account selection screen the most recent account used is on the top and they stack from there.

Admittedly, this does not save several taps like the first Easter egg did but at least I know Twitter did not take all their secret away, they just added different ones.