“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Monday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013-14 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Program scripts from week of April 7, 2014
(These scripts didn’t get posted on schedule and we’re catching up now. Pardon our tardiness)
My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Comic Book Movies
One of my great joys in life are movies. My father was a movie buff and I inherited that love from him. We didn’t agree on everything about the movies. He thought colorizing classic black and white films was a great idea. I consider it heresy. Over the years I’ve watched a lot of movies. I like just about any kind of movie as long as it’s well done. Foreign films, action movies, dramas, comedies I’ll watch just about anything.
The other day I was watching one. The thought occurred to me that the movie was illogical, had no understanding of the laws of physics, no understanding of the rules of economics and finance, had virtually no character development, didn’t contain a single original concept and the humor was both utterly predictable and a little juvenile. The movie was “Pacific Rim” and I’ve got to be honest.
I loved it.
“Pacific Rim” is a really fun example of what I call “Comic Book Movies”. The category isn’t just Batman and Superman and all the Marvel Universe characters. The category includes any movie that includes most of those characteristics I mentioned before. They don’t care that what they show is physically impossible or that there’s no way that even the entire planet together could afford to pay for all the stuff in the movie. So the “Men in Black” movies certainly qualify as “Comic Book Movies”. You could even argue that the “Rocky” movies or the “Die Hard” movies include at least some of the characteristics.
“Comic Book Movies” aren’t Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet”, they’re not “12 Years A Slave” and you know what? They’re just fine with that. You know what else? So am I.
I am always amazed when people go to a movie like “Pacific Rim” and get all high art hypertensive about stuff that really is irrelevant to the movie. But you’re missing the point if that’s where you are starting with your critique.
Trust me, it is more than possible to make a bad “Comic Book Movie”. It can be a very fine line, a very careful balancing act between the good and the bad.
But when the time comes and you plunk down your money to watch a “Comic Book Movie” just remember that the idea is to sit back, relax and enjoy.
Using the Tools
Unlike the last time I was in the hunt virtually everything is done digitally today. You either e-mail in your materials (even audio checks for radio jobs) or you fill out an online forms. Some of the online forms make me a little crazy. There are the ones that require you to basically repeat what is already on your resume (which they also require). Now I’m sure this is to help the HR department with one of the more odious modern trends in my opinion. The use of algorithms to sort through applicants. This is fine if you’re content with a cookie cutter pool of candidates. In my experience some of the best people aren’t cookie cutter candidates. The algorithms make sure that HR never sees them. That’s the HR Departments loss but it’s utterly frustrating from the job seeker’s point of view.
Then you have the recent form that required specific codes for certain information. Those codes are not provided anywhere and I only got them because I guessed. Seriously. And this was a major mid-west University site. Astounding.
But my favorite issue, or least favorite depending on how you want to look at it, has to do with something much simpler. The simple act of communication. Years ago I designated employers who do not even acknowledge your materials as “black holes”. One former employer of mine maintained it was just too expensive to send out letters. In the age of e-mail that excuse is left at the wayside. Yet some place still do nothing. Even in an age when that function could be automated.
Far more frustrating are places that simply stop communicating in mid-process. I assume I’m no longer in the mix but have no idea because no follow up contacts from me get any response.
The reality is that this is probably telling me something very important about those companies and organizations. What puzzles me is that so many companies seem to be so blind to the impression they are creating of themselves.
In an age when doing it right is so simple, that’s really inexcusable.
I was fascinated by how a recent story in the media news and a recent study on the Millennial generation showed a new issue that advertisers are going to have to keep in mind.
The Millennial generation is going to have a huge impact on our culture. Why not? Baby Boomers have had an impact in line with the size of our generation and the Millennials are even bigger. Latest figures put Boomers around 77 million people while Millennials clock in at 82 million. So if you’re in marketing you need to figure them out.
One of the conventional wisdom pieces about the younger group is that, unlike their elders, the Millennials don’t have any brand loyalty. A new study from the folks at Adroit Digital says that is not true, but that we may need to reassess how a product or service gains that loyalty. In an interesting twist 24% of the surveyed see themselves as MORE brand loyal than their parents. The really interesting note is that 77% say they use different criteria for deciding where that loyalty will be given.
Millennials are much more interested in what a company stands for, what is called corporate conscience, when it comes to deciding who is going to get their money. Consequently public statements about current issues and controversies can have a much greater impact on the bottom line with this generation.
So I was not much surprised when I saw the furor that blew up around the former CEO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich. Mozilla is the company that gives us the Internet browser Firefox and the e-mail manager Thunderbird, among other things. Eich was a co-founder of the Mozilla Foundation and creator of the JavaScript programming language. There’s no denying his credibility in computer circles. Eich also is an opponent of marriage equality and made a private donation in support of Proposition 8 in California that opposed gay marriage equality. The resulting firestorm pushed him to resign his position with the software company.
There’s plenty to discuss about the whys and hows of this situation. Questions about protected political speech and intimidation are getting plenty of discussion For the more bottom line folks out there this should serve as a cautionary tale. If you’re marketing to the Millennial Generation, what you stand for makes a difference..
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Stories Are My Life 
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