First, our Portland office created a new site for Old Spice Pro-Strength Antiperspirant. It allows you to get your TV Medical Doctor certification. Here’s mine:

You may have seen the commercials which feature Neil Patrick Harris. They’re pretty good too but couldn’t hold the stethoscope of (NPH as) Dr. Horrible. Greg March put me onto it with these two posts. Give it a watch:

And finally, Leland recently posted an interview of Stephen Colbert with the guy who wrote OBD (Obsessive Branding Disorder)…brought to you by Dr. Pepper. Check it out:

There is a reason Absolut approached him in the first place. Likely they felt that his type of humor connected to their target of LDA-25. (That’s a guess, and LDA = Legal Drinking Age for anyone who has not worked with a liquor, spirits, alcohol company.) Sure there were definitely a few rules in place, such as: no underage drinking, binge drinking or death. But otherwise, AV gave him the creative freedom. They realized that there’s no worse way to lose authenticity and relevancy with your audience than to change (even subtly) his brand of comedy!

Zach enlisted Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Coincidentally or not (depending on Zach’s motive for bring those two in), the sign-off to their show is Tim’s father rich saying, “Abso…lutely” and their production company is called Absolutely. (Apologies followers for having to use the term awesome.) And as of now, the first in a series of I hope more than two has around 55K views on FoD, where it was first launched. Don’t let that (low?) number fool you, though. It has 280K on YouTube as well as 138K on MySpace. The second, which was added about two weeks ago, is at about a quarter of that total number. But even if it this number didn’t even reach that illusive 6-digits (the 100K view mark on YouTube I’d say is the metric lots of clients set), I’d call this a successful foray into the world of branded entertainment.

BONUS: As you’ll see, the comedians (I’m assuming) even came up with a great tag-line for the content: “In an Absolut world, friends would get together more often.”

Here’s Part 1:

And Part 2:

Amy from the tour blogged her insider experience on FOD here. The New York Times blogged its take here, which includes a smart perspective on how the promotion of the tour underwriter, ‘Semi Pro’ was more subtle than limited. NYTimes concludes:

…this audience demonstrated how well Mr. Ferrell knows his fans, and how a Web site can drive an entire comic enterprise. Except for a quick opening clip, the stage show included nothing about the movie; with all the online hype, it didn’t have to.

I have to agree…and if you’re new to this blog or it hasn’t been apparent from recent IOI posts, I’m hooked on FunnyOrDie. Yet the point of this post was less to recap the event (that was just the hook) than to test out my new flip video. I bought it earlier that Sunday and have since found it ridiculously easy to take videos and download them to my computer—it runs on two AA batteries and has a USB arm that flips out (hence the name) and connects directly to your computer. Now I wanted to see how easy it is to upload my first-ever thirty-seconds of video (my walk to the show) to YouTube in order to embed here…and here we go:

Not hard at all though the .AVI file took a few minutes to upload to YouTube and then lowers in quality vs. viewing in Quicktime on my laptop. Any tips/suggestions from owners on process or use? Oh yeah, that and I hate my voice…but I knew that already. Unfortunately as I’m spending more time videotaping/being videotaped, videoconferencing for work, on Yahoo Live!, Seesmic, and who knows what else in the future, so I guess I’ll get used to it.

Let’s start with an “oldy but a goody” (can guys say that phrase?) in Nick Thune’s Late Show performance.

Next let’s get some Breakfast in Bed. Props to Honey Bunches of Oats for trying something new and interesting.

Now if you’re ready like spaghetti, Rod Benson lets you in on the Boom Tho movement.

In case you missed V-Day because of a date with the parole board, this should set you free.

Plus some sites that have caught my eye these past two weeks: The FAIL Blog, Hotties Who Leave, Science Fair Experiments, and the most ridiculously named of the group, Buge Hoobs.

And finally, in case you need an “ad wizard” to “fit into your new business model”, let me present Alex Perez. Found through Chet.

Here’s a link.

Greg Giraldo killed it.
(Hurry up and watch before Comedy Central snags it back.)

Anyway, I have to say I really enjoyed it. I also have to wonder if media planners could account for the fact that this same dude (and potential target) was going to watch the U.S. Open but in looking for USA channel went through programming lists and saw this and decided to just assume that Roddick would win.

Some random observations:
-Roasting of Flav = Roasting of everyone on Stage. While it is standard proceedure to stick it to everyone in the spotlight, the roasters spent very little time on Flava Flav. I was wondering if it’s because they didn’t know him that well (enought to make jokes or predict his reactions) or didn’t think he deserved to really be roasted.
-Though there is certainly a bit of Roasted by association. Every Brigitte Nielsen zinger was an “oh, snap!” moment where you’d divert your attention and embarrassment to Flav. Problem was, then you were embarrassed for him and a bit grossed out in general and then looked at Carrot Top, who just confused you and so you’d find safe haven in Patton Oswalt but would try and remember his name and get embarrassed and annoyed, so would look to Ice Tea who frightened you a bit,
-Also got me thinking about who is the best type of person to roast? Past roastees include Pam Anderson, Denis Leary, and Jeff Foxworthy. This one was my favorite because of the random assembly of comics, the inability to identify with Flav in any way, and also how he became an empathetic character but you never felt so sorry for him that the jokes crossed the line (the way you did with Denis Leary who, while he’s a comedian so should be more able to take it, has real problems).
-That made me think about how “It’s funny because it’s true” is a weird statement. So is it’s sad because it’s true.
-Regardless of what you think of him, you cannot deny that Flav has a great sense of humor. Or at the very least likes to laugh.
-And finally, execution matters as much as or more than strategy. While many of the Comedian-roasters chose the same key areas to make their jokes—Flav’s darkness and nastiness, Lisa L.’s love of black men, Jimmy Kimmel’s luck, Kat Williams’ height, Carrot Top’s lack of talent, Brigitte N.’s amazonian manliness, Snoop’s love of the sticky-icky, and Ice Tea’s age, etc.—only some connected. This was based on creativity and timing (not just comic, but when you went in order of comedians). That said, I was impressed how many ways they could insult Brigette’s manliness but the seemed to have difficulties finding new, funny ways to joke about Snoop’s smoking habit. All in all, if you like the clip above, you may want to peep the rest on repeat.

Here are two examples of Sophisticated Stupidity or SS comedy:

1. FOTC (A clip of Flight Of The Conchords, not from the HBO show – I think funnier.)

2. GW (A clip of George Washington showing us what patriotism really means – created last year but gained momentum this Independence Day.)

SS comedy may also be more subtle and a bit stuffy. It feels insidery and when it gets too mass, its finders move on to deciding what else is funny. Perhaps Larry the Cable Guy + crew was the Napoleon reaction. If these two from New Zealand blow up, can we expect Asia’s Jack Black will be here soon. I think I could dedicate some serious time to comparing Tenacious D and FOTC, but have to work. Plus, there’s a geographic inside-out, outside-in dynamic to the flow of comedy (dare I say cool comedy) I haven’t quite figured out yet with fireworks still blaring in my ears and spotting my sight.