Eminem and Bruno (Sasha Baron Cohen) get into an odd squabble at the MTV Movie Awards. The event has caused a stir, and shock at the MTV Movie Awards, leaving ‘anti-anything’ rapper Eminem red-faced in an apparent stunt gone bad at the star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles, California (May 31, 2009).

Eminem cursed out Cohen (of course MTV bleeped out the words), before bodyguards threw the shock-actor off of the rap megastar. Eminem got out of his seat and walked out of the event. He had performed minutes earlier live on stage to a standing ovation. Stunt or not, the whole ordeal was quite entertaining and quickly spread word-of-tweet via twitter and visible to the world online via YouTube (thus making it to TECHAFFAIR).

Videos feature guest speakers: Chamillionaire, MC Hammer and Mistah F.A.B.

Hakeem Seriki (born on November 28, 1979), better known by his stage name Chamillionaire, a portmanteau of “chameleon” and “millionaire”) is an American rapper, singer and musician from Houston, Texas as well as the CEO of Chamillitary Entertainment.

MC Hammer (born Stanley Kirk Burrell; March 30, 1962) is an American MC who was popular during the late 1980s and early 1990s, known for his dramatic rise to and fall from fame and fortune and his trademark Hammer Pants.

Stanley P. Cox, (born January 23, 1982) better known by his stage name Mistah F.A.B., is an American rapper from North Oakland, California. He attended Oakland Technical High School and Emery High School.

The event took place July 22-24, 2008 at the Arillaga Center on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, CA:

“The AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford is a two-and-a-half day executive gathering that highlights the significant economic, political and commercial trends disrupting the global technology industries. The AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford features the most innovative companies, eminent technologists, influential investors and journalists in keynote presentations, panel debates and private company CEO showcases. The AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford’s goal is to identify the most promising entrepreneurial opportunities and investments in the global tech industry.”

Videos filmed and produced by Shaun Tai.

Justin Long is NOT Cool (think Dodgeball, think Herbie)… nor does he make us want to purchase an Apple (think “Get a Mac”). In a recent eMarketing MBA course at UC Berkeley, one graduate student even felt disrespected and offended by Apple’s ongoing advertisement campaign:

“The Get a Mac campaign is a current (2006–present) television advertising campaign created for Apple Inc. by TBWA\Media Arts Lab, the company’s advertising agency. Shown in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Japan, the ads in the campaign have become easily recognizable because each ad follows a standard simple template: against a minimalist all-white background, a man dressed in casual clothes introduces himself as a Mac running Mac OS X (“Hello, I’m a Mac.”), while a man in a more formal suit-and-tie combination introduces himself as a non-Macintosh personal computer running Microsoft Windows (“And I’m a PC.”). The two then act out a brief vignette in which the capabilities and attributes of Mac and PC are compared, with PC—characterized as formal, stuffy and overly concerned with work—often being frustrated by the more laid-back Mac’s abilities. Some recent ads have shifted focus away from comparing features of the computer systems to a more general comparison. The most recent ones, however, are mainly concerning Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows Vista.

The original American ads star actor Justin Long as the Mac and author and humorist John Hodgman as the non-Mac PC, and are directed by Phil Morrison.” Source: Wikipedia

What the controversial advertising campaign does teach us is that traditional advertising (television spots) mixed with Web 2.x (i.e. twitter), namely word-of-blog / type, creates a unique forum for bi-directional communication and dialogue. Check out these creative, yet clashing video advertisements courtesy YouTube:

“Hi, I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” Full TV Advertisements (15 total combined)

“I’m a PC” Full TV Advertisement

Laptop Hunters $2000 – Sheila gets an HP HDX – Full TV Advertisement

So who wins – Mac or PC? Or is it really, choosing your poison???

On the eve of the launch of Geoffrey Miller’s book “Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior”, we discuss the key role of openness, the importance of dialogue, and the true reason for advertising.

Geoffrey, a tenured professor at the University of New Mexico, combines an evolutionary framework with a data driven mindset to create insights about consumers. Openness, perhaps the least studied of the Big Five personality traits, and inherited to a large degree, is often underestimated. As we reflect on how our time as graduate students in Cognitive Psychology at Stanford has shaped us – Geoffrey worked with Roger Shepard and I with David Rumelhart — we discuss how marketers used to force-communicate customers, and got away with ignoring the deeply social characteristics of humans. Furthermore, Geoffrey explains, the traditional goal of advertising was to demonstrate to a few potential buyers the large symbolic significance of a product for the broad masses. Communication now having primarily become C2C, consumer to consumer, and C2W, consumer to world: what is the impact of the Social Data Revolution on advertising and consumer behavior?

Courtesy: Andreas Weigend, weigend.com/blog

Purchase the book today @ Amazon.com! Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior

Andreas S. Weigend, Ph.D. speaks with David Riemer (ex-Vice President of Marketing at YAHOO!) currently an executive in residence at the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley.

Andreas Weigend is a former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com and the author of over 100 scientific papers on the application of machine learning techniques to finance and business problems.

David Riemer is one of the leading marketers in the Internet industry. He spent the last decade developing and bringing great products to web users worldwide. Following his career as an ad agency President, David brought his strategic and marketing leadership to two start-ups and an internet titan, Yahoo!. In various roles over six years at Yahoo!, David led the marketing teams on both the BtoB and Consumer sides of the business where he managed marketing for virtually all of Yahoo!’s products across their customer base of 500M users.

David is now advising emerging Internet and consumer technology companies. He specializes in helping businesses clarify their product strategy, go-to-market approach and business model. David also serves as Executive-in-Residence at Haas Business School (Berkeley). David earned his undergraduate degree from Brown University, and an MBA from Columbia University. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife and two (very web savvy) teenage children who help keep him honest.

Relevant read! The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing

Video filmed and produced by Shaun Tai.