Category: Media Bob

End of an era …

Post author By Bob Benz
Post date August 1, 2004

I had a meeting with the Associated Press in New York on Friday, and it turned out to be the last meeting held in their space at 50 Rockefeller Center. Kinda cool to be there at the close of a 66-year run. When we arrived and told the guard we were there for a meeting with AP, he looked at us like were were nuts.

“They moved. Are you certain it’s here?”

“I’m positive,” I told him. He called the person we were meeting with and we were ushered up, but not before they went through my suitcase at security.

50 Rock is a very cool, art deco building. It’s also right there in the thick of things near Times Square. It would be sort of a drag to move somewhere else.

The AP office had the look of a space in transition. Barren walls. Piles of boxes. Electrical cords that connect nothing. Hard to believe this was the brain center for coverage of major events during the past six decades.

The meeting came and went and an era ended.

Building an empire …

Post author By Bob Benz
Post date February 26, 2004

I recently picked up a copy of Civilization III, a computer game that allows you to build an empire. It didn’t take long for me to get addicted. My fledging Roman empire already has wiped out the hated Egyptian and I’m now battling Greece. Those bastards. They sacked and pillaged one of my southern cities, took my catapults and used them against me and have cavalry units that are causing me no end of pain. I become so obsessed that I’ll sit down and start playing and realize several hours have passed.

It’s really a mix of chess, Risk and Dungeons and Dragons without all the tedious dice throwing. Some of the subtleties they’ve built into the game really are impressive. Attacking armies gain advantage based on the terrain they hold, and units gain power with each victory they score. It also allows for building monuments and other features that add a neat dimension.

I learned quickly that it’s important to build features that help ensure domestic order or your cities will dissolve into revolt and disorder. After a few failed attempts, I built my next city near vineyards and immediately built roads to them, giving my Roman citizens an ample supply of wine. That’s keeping those suckers happy while I wage war against Greeze.

Apparently, you can take a civilization all the way up to the modern day. I’ve never been much into computer games. Until now.

Today, Greece. Tomorrow, the world.

Media Bob

Marketing army …

Glenbot has a link to a Forbes piece on how Procter & Gamble is using word-of-mouth marketing among teens to push its products — and other companies’ products, too. It’s pretty cool stuff, though I think the P&G folks might be a little full of themselves here …

“The mass-marketing model is dead,” says James Stengel, P&G’s global marketing officer. “This is the future.”

Well, we’ll see.

But it really is prevalent, and there seems to be some potential here. When I went to the site for the remake of the Dawn of the Dead, it offered a chance to join the Zombie Army. How could I refuse? Then, less than a week later, this arrived in my inbox.

zombie army

Seems they’ll give me “points” for telling friends about the movie and generally doing things to promote it. I can redeem the points for cool zombie shirts and zombie posters and zombie screen savers.

Kinda ironic. Turning today’s youth into an army of marketing zombies, eh?