Would you spend $220m to make a movie?

Avatar, everyone is talking about it. It's the most expensive movie ever made. I thought we were trying to dig ourselves out of a financial crisis?!

Also what about that long tail thing? The internet opens the supply, everyone has infinite choice and flocks to all these niche products. So how come Avatar is out there and American Idol and X-Factor are getting bigger and bigger? Seems like in these tough times people need the big hits as social currency

In a world like this where you have to be a huge hit or a nice little niche, content companies have to make it big if they are spending a decent chunk of change on anything. If Avatar doesn't crack $500m it will be deemed a failure (albeit a beautiful failure). If you do 'ok' on opening weekend you get dropped from screens and then you are in a dog fight up against all the small, low budget stuff out there.

That leads to a lack of risk taking all round, which is a shame... and for that, you have to root for Jake Sully and his big blue friends from Pandora

Tiger Style

Tiger, you are crazy... untouchable? With everyone as a journalist did he ever think he was going to get away with it? Tiger Woods has been 'romantically linked' to at least 10 women, and now his image is firmly in the toilet.

Nielsen data in the US highlights that prime time television ads featuring Woods have disappeared. This is a guy that (used to) makes over $100m from Nike, Pepsi, Gillette, Gatorade and Accenture.

I'm sure that Tiger 'High performance, delivered' Woods may be desperate for privacy right now but the tweets and TMZ just won't let up. On top of that everyone blogs or microblogs so its far too juicy not to pitch in. News these days is curated at rapid speed; no one is safe so why would any 100 year old, self respecting brand associate itself with a highly paid, testoterone-fuelled sports star or actor with too much time on his hands

P&G is a company that has always taken a moral stance (remember Mr Clean?) - looks like the Tiger will be back in the wild shortly

Twitter making Dell money?

Big-box desktop maker Dell is telling us it has made $6.5m in revenue directly through Twitter since it's first tweet in 2007. That's amazing news don't you think?

$6.5m is a big number - that's the sort of number that gets the attention of the New York Times. However for a business that rakes in $61bn a year in revenue it represents 0.01% of its annual revenue. Basically, analysts like me would be hard pushed to pick that effect out of the revenue data over and above the noise - but that's the beauty of the internet...trackability!

It makes you think if those Twitter sales are truly incremental? Everyone buys a Dell online so would those customers have bought elsewhere? Had any of Dell’s other sites had seen a similar decrease in sales?

Either way, it has to be commended. Dell has embraced social and ultimately the ongoing relationships they are developing with their customers will prove more valuable than these sales, and ultimately result in even more incremental sales and less sales lost in the long run

I had one of these the first time around!

You don't to wear that Monaco or Perpetual on a daily basis and that Nooka just screams too try hard (although I like it) So when you are looking for a watch for every day, you need to choose one that is simple and stylish but doesn't shout too loud.



The Timex Rose Royce watch gives us that 1980s simple digital clock interface, stopwatch to 1/100th of a second, is slim enough to fit under your shirt cuff and doesn't follow that flourescent fad that every boyband member is sporting these days

Harry Nesbitt

With all this talk of digital, tweeting, convergence in all blogs these days its great to get some perspective. Maybe its how I am feeling these days but this really hit home

A Day In The Life from Harry Nesbitt on Vimeo.

I love what Harry is doing here, he seems to create a real sense of empathy with a simple one minute video...beautiful stuff

N 45.45955 W 101.91356 - where would you want to be?

Thanks to B in Denver for this - Brilliant!

There are over 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the US, or about 1 for every 23,000 Americans. But even market penetration this advanced doesn’t mean that McDonald’s is everywhere. Somewhere in South Dakota is the McFarthest Spot, the place in the US geographically most removed from the nearest McD’s. If you started out from this location, a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east), you’d have to drive 145 miles to get your Big Mac...what's going on Ronald?



This map is the brainchild of Stephen Von Worley, apparently McDonald’ses have a notable tendency to occur on highways and, specifically, to cluster at crossroads!

I'll resist the urge to say 'I'm Lovin' it' at this point!

Symphonia

This symphony ad from Vodafone New Zealand has a real feel good factor about it; I have no idea how they did it...or if it is truly for real to be honest but great nonetheless - 1000 handsets playing the 1812 overture? Wild!



I am not sure if an ad like this would really drive new subscriptions but the viral effect of over 300,000 views so far must have got some MMS messages sent just talking about it