I am not the world's biggest fan of EA Sports -- or really Electronic Arts in general. But I have to say their approach to marketing the new Tiger Woods game is nothing short of genius. It's raw and authentic, yet polished and professional and it gets what the Internet is all about.

The Ad Age article that turned me on to this quotes Carolyn Feinstein, EA Sports' consumer marketing VP:

The plan now is to let this thing go and see how much buzz it generates ... What we're talking about a lot around here is the idea that 'I don't want to interrupt your entertainment experience to tell you what I want to tell you, but that I want to be that entertainment experience.'

At this point, I'm beginning to seriously wonder if the Parents Television Council is on the payroll of the CW.

First, the PTC's supposedly derisive quote of "Mind-blowingly inappropriate" is used by the CW as a headline on a Gossip Girl ad. And now the PTC is going after the new Beverly Hills 90210 exactly when the CW is trying its hardest to hype the show.

Ostensibly, the PTC is claiming the CW's decision not to screen the new 90210 for critics or advertisers is the network's way of hiding some kind of ultra-lewd, culturally-destructive content from public scrutiny. (As we mentioned when we first wrote about this, we are hoping for naked Darcy.)

Does the PTC realize that releasing a statement criticizing a show for "glamorized drug and alcohol use along with casual teen sex, including threesomes" makes people interested in seeing it?

So Joe Biden is Barack Obama's running mate, huh? I can't say I'm too enthusiastic about an old white guy who's been in the senate since 1972. So he takes the train home to Delaware every night -- big deal. That doesn't inspire me to think of him as someone I'd gush about running for president in 2016. At least Evan Bayh looks the part of an heir apparent.

Obviously Obama made his decision to counter the objections that he has no experience, especially with foreign policy. I feel like a better approach might have been to take this objection and turn it around; make experience out to be a problem, something we don't need when 200 years of experience has made poor people poorer, rich people richer, the powerful more powerful, and the weak more voiceless than than ever. This seems like business as usual.

Given the contentious religious discussion argument going on over at Wakeup Naptown on a post entitled "How common Christianity affects our moral and intellectual integrity", I thought it might be worth telling you about a similar drama that recently played out on some Philadelphia billboards.

The story — at least according to this Philadelphia CityPaper article — goes something like this:

A group calling themselves The Philadelphia Coalition of Reason put up a billboard that read, "Don't believe in God? You are not alone."

As soon as that board went down, a new one was erected in the same spot by a "mysterious group that does not appear in the phone book and has no online presence" calling itself Holy Souls Ministries. The new board implores viewers to "Say one Hail Mary" and features an image of the Virgin Mary levitating a heart between her hands.

Actually, that's really not much of a story. Personally, I prefer the billboard that Pastor Marc Royer put up in Goshen, IN. It reads, "Obama had one. McCain had two. Let me be your crazy reverend."

If, like me, you come home from work and immediately seek out one of the five channels playing Seinfeld reruns, there's a good chance you remember that a Macintosh was prominently displayed in Jerry's apartment during the seminal 90's sitcom (actually this is not unusual; set designers typically have hard-ons for Macs).

Alas, word has just broken that Jerry Seinfeld is Microsoft's new pitchman. The thought is that Vista is bombing so badly it needs the comedic one-two punch of Seinfeld and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to change its fortunes.

No word yet on how this will affect the Seinfeld Campus Tour.

In a crowded market, differentiation is key. Instead of slugging it out over a hotly-contested position, it's better to find unoccupied ground and plant your flag there. (This is one of the reasons I find myself asking if Indianapolis really needs another media property aimed at twentysomethings or if I should be going back to the drawing board.)

Anyway, today I read that, in response to Fox News's success in owning the "conservative" position, MSNBC is repositioning itself as the "liberal" news network. (I've always thought CNN was the liberal one so it'll be interesting to see what they do in response.)

Meanwhile, we've all been scratching our heads over how MillerCoors should differentiate its two titular brands now that they're under the same roof. Well, today news hit that Miller Lite is going back to the old "less, filling, tastes great" tagline. Since Coors Light has been doing explosive business with the "cold refreshment" position, this makes their overall strategy clear: Miller light tastes good, Coors Light will refresh you.

From the complete other end of the spectrum comes news that Target is going after Wal-Mart's value position. This goes against everything in the book; Target owns the practically uncontested "better living through design" position — why abandon it to go after Wal-Mart for the hardest territory to get or defend? Naturally, Target execs see this as simply emphasizing the "cheap" part of their "cheap chic" brand. But I suspect that, like me, Target execs are masochists.

When movies are bad, studios don't hold screenings for critics. The idea here is that if bad word-of-mouth gets out, the movie will tank... but if the studio can keep a lid on things, they can still do good business on the opening weekend just by running a shitload of ads.

This tactic is immediately what popped into my head upon reading that The CW is not screening the new 90210 for critics.

The article quotes a CW press statement:

We're not hiding anything ... simply keeping a lid on '90210' until 9/02, riding the curiosity and anticipation into premiere night...

Well, that instills a lot of confidence in me! Also, note the way the statement squeezes in the date of the premier. (Take notes.)

I actually remember watching the premier of the original 90210 way back in... well, whenever it came out; 1990 maybe? Anyway, the new one has Darcy from DeGrassi so with any luck the big secret is that she appears nude.

So last night I checked out Tropic Thunder (which is awesome, incidentally; my full review is over at Wakeup Naptown).

Now, as someone who grew up watching movies like Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, one of the things I really appreciated about Tropic Thunder was its soundtrack, which is filled with those awesome 60's and 70's songs that make you feel the dread and confusion in the air at the time. (Another thing that I appreciated was that my cherry Icee came with a free refill.)

Anyway, so while a song like "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield (Stop! / Hey, what's that sound / Everybody look what's goin' down...) may not be explicitly about Vietnam (although I suppose it might be) it's hard not to read it as an encapsulation of what people were feeling because of the war.

So as I ponder the complete lack of anti-war songs now, I have to wonder (in a Seinfield-esque tone) what the deal is. Sure, Liz Phair squeezed out a song about being afraid of a draft during the first Gulf War back in '93 but it seems like the only songs we're getting today are "Bombs Over Baghdad" and stuff by Toby Keith -- basically pro-war stuff.

Is it just that culturally we got hurt enough by Vietnam that we're just not going to feel things that deeply again, even if it's basically the same situation? Or is it that today's musicians are generally too focused on other things to be the voice of the people? (Imagine what kind of music Kurt Cobain would be coming out with today.) Or is it really that we basically don't care? (Myself included.)

Together with Jenn Mehalik, I've just come up with the most brilliant Web 2.0 idea ever. How brilliant is it? Well, I don't even like Web 2.0 and I'm pumped!

Right now I'm hearing Bil Browning talk. Never met him before but he's the publisher of The Bilerico Project, which is one of the top LGBT blogs in the country. This is probably one of the most valuable sessions as far as breaking in to the larger blogosphere, although my interest is more in bootstrapping a local media property, which is a slightly different beast. Still, Browning is your classic opinionated media queen and this session is about whipping the stupid out of you.