SLOW BURN MARKETING
  • Home
  • Portfolio
    • Branding
    • Audio / Video
    • Print
    • Web
    • Collateral Etc.
  • About
    • Blaine Parker
    • Honey Parker
    • Testimonials
  • Services
    • Do You Fit?
  • Stuff
    • Speaking
    • Books
    • Newsletter
  • Story Lab
  • Contact

Is This The Primrose Path Down Which Your Digital Doyenne Is Leading You?

3/15/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
I'VE RECEIVED A GIFT THAT IS SOMEWHAT TROUBLING 
 
I know the Fabulous Honey Parker is going to be displeased when she reads this.
 
It is, after all, a birthday gift she bestowed upon yours truly last week.
 
The gift is Amazon's Echo.
 
If you're not familiar with this interesting little device, it's not unlike having an iPhone with Siri specifically for using in the home environment.
 
But, instead of being an iPhone, Echo is a WiFi cylinder roughly the size of a tennis ball can packed with audio speakers, microphones and electronics.
 
And instead of Siri, Echo connects to Alexa, which is an Amazon voice service providing interconnection to other web services.
 
NOW, ON THE FACE OF IT, THE FIRST TROUBLING ASPECT OF ALL THIS IS THE AMAZON BRAND
 
You know what we say around here: the brand is the one way your core customer should feel about your business.
 
Amazon used to be the world's biggest bookstore. It felt like I could get any book there.
 
Now, it's kind of the world's biggest store, period. It feels like I can get almost anything there and have it shipped free via Amazon Prime.
 
But then came the Amazon-branded electronic devices.
 
First, it was the Kindle, making Amazon the world's biggest ebook store. If it's not on Kindle, it's probably not available as an ebook.
 
Then came Kindle Fire, which is a tablet.
 
Then came Fire TV, which is an HDMI device that competes with Google Chromecast for streaming video to my TV. (I have both devices. Chromecast mainly lies fallow. It feels kinda pointless.)
 
Then came the Fire Phone, which feels like an abject failure as a competitor in the smartphone market.
 
BURN YOUR FIRE PHONES, EVERYBODY!
 
So Amazon goes from being a bookstore to a general retailer to an electronics manufacturer...
 
And a cloud computing provider.
 
You never really think about that, do you? (Unless you happen to be someone like faithful screed reader Steve Cunningham, who is our token uber geek here at the screed.)
 
Amazon Web Services, or AWS, covers the entire world with what amounts to cloud-based virtual server farms for enterprise IT.
 
AWS is a mind boggling cloud service.
 
And Amazon Alexa is distinctly linked to Amazon Cloud when it comes to using Amazon Echo.
 
WHAT ON EARTH IS THE AMAZON BRAND, ANYWAY?
 
What am I supposed to feel about it?
 
The failure of the Fire Phone should help illustrate the fact that Amazon certainly doesn't feel like a cellular phone company. Their mediocre phone is still better than many, but constitutes a failure nonetheless.
 
Amazon feels like a general retailer with proprietary tech products.
 
But beyond all that brand confusion (I really don't know how to distill the Amazon brand into a single, concise sentence), there's a bigger challenge here for me.
 
What the hell do Echo and Alexa say about our culture?
 
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE TEACH KIDS TO VOICE COMMAND EVERYTHING TO A COMPUTER?
 
There are already endless complaints about Millennials exhibiting excessive entitlement and narcissism.
 
What's going to happen when entitled, narcissistic nitwits wire the house with do-this-for-me electronics that absolve their children from any responsibility for performing the simplest tasks?
 
Will Generation Do It For Me have been unleashed upon the world?
 
Will a population of helpless fools signal the final, drain-circling spiral of the American character?
 
Will it all put the control of the world in the hands of Amazon, Google and Apple, with IBM sitting there, wondering how on earth Big Blue missed the boat on world domination?
 
WHAT REALLY IS THE IMPLICATION OF GIVING A COMPUTER CONTROL OVER THE SIMPLEST TASKS?
 
Are we ultimately turning control of our lives over a series of Great Satans hell bent on running all human behavior?
 
Will you use a Siri-controlled phone to summon your Google driverless car to pick you up at the front door after you tell Alexa to feed the cat and lock the door behind you?
 
Will it tie your shoes? And what if there's a power failure? Will we all just sit here in the dark, afraid?
 
Is this the beginning of the artificial intelligence paradigm that eventually leads to the War Of The Machines and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger coming back to us from the future fully nude, except for a flesh colored man girdle, to save us from termination of the species?
 
How happy is GoogleAmazonApple going to be when all their DriverlessAlexaSiri machines belch digital napalm back in their faces and assume command of all the global package-delivery drones, using them to drop Amazon Fire Bombs on all the C-suite executives who thought they had all this madness under control?
 
"WHAT HAVE I DONE?"
 
One of the best last lines from any movie ever.
 
Spoiler alert: if you haven't seen Bridge On The River Kwai, I'm about to ruin it all for you.
 
A Pre-Obi Wan Alec Guinness is commanding Allied prisoners of war in Burma who are forced to build a railroad bridge for their Japanese captors.
 
At the end of the movie, when Guinness discovers evidence that the Allies are about to blow up the bridge, he comes to a sudden realization about his part in this madness, and gets blown away by mortar fire as he says, "What have I done?!" and falls dead on the detonator, blowing up what he's done and sending an important enemy train into the river.
 
What are we doing?
 
AND WILL WE BE ASKING, "ALEXA, WHAT WE DONE?"
 
Will this end up being some kind of publicly-traded digital dystopia that makes The Minority Report and The Hunger Games seem like last decade's TV sitcoms by comparison?
 
Will I be sitting in my house, transformed into a helpless and drooling, Alexa-fueled bonehead who can't even tie my own shoes because there's a power failure?
 
I don't know.
 
But I do know this: Amazon Echo is pretty cool.
 
Even if Alexa has no idea what I'm talking about when I say, "Alexa, find me a paella recipe."
 
The good news is, I can change the name I used to address her.
 
Maybe I'll change her name to Puppet Master.

0 Comments
    Picture

    Author

    Blaine Parker is prone to ranting about any and all things related to brand. In many ways, he is a professional curmudgeon. While there is no known vaccine for this, the condition is also not contagious. Unless you choose it to be so. 

    Archives

    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015

    Categories

    All
    Abe Lincoln
    Advertising
    Advertising As Art
    Ad Writing
    Amazon
    Apathy
    Art And Advertising
    Attack Ads
    Authenticity
    Beat Bobby Flay
    Besotted
    Best Ads Of 2017
    Big Ideas
    Billboards
    Bobby Flay
    Book Marketing
    Brand Advertising
    Branding
    Branding Book
    Branding Santa Claus
    Brand Names
    Bud Light
    Budwieser
    Burger King
    Burger King Advertising
    Burning Man
    Burning Questions
    Business Book
    Buy Now
    Car Advertising
    Carefu;-ish
    Careful-ish
    Casablanca
    Christmas
    Commercials
    Commitment
    Communication
    Content
    Core Customer
    Corny
    Corporate Culture
    CoupleCo
    Couplepreneurs
    COVID 19
    COVID-19
    Crazy Ivan
    Creativity
    Creativity Over Message
    Cult Brands
    Customers
    David Ogilvy
    Dick Orkin
    Diisruptive
    Down Market
    Dr Sam's Eye Care
    Effectivness
    Electronics
    Entrenched
    Exceeding Expectaion
    Facebook Advertising
    Feeling
    Focus
    Focus Grouping
    Fonts
    Food
    Fraud
    Gary Vaynerchuk
    Hair Club For Men
    Hanukkah
    Holidays
    Hotels
    Hugo Boss
    Hurricane Relief
    Ideas
    Influence
    Inspiration
    Internet Radio
    Jeep
    Jerry Lewis
    Johnnie Walker
    Jungles
    Krylon Spray Paint
    Lawyers
    Lightning Branding
    Logos
    Lulu Lemon
    Mackerel
    Make Customers Care
    Marketing
    Masks
    Meaning
    Media
    Medical Tourism
    Membership
    Me Too
    Millennials
    Milton Glaser
    Must See TV
    Napa
    Nastalgia
    New Clients
    New Skills
    New Years
    Nicaragua
    Niche Brands
    Offers
    Ogilvy On Advertising
    Outdoor
    Pasta
    Patriotism
    Pen & Paper
    Personal Brand
    Pizza
    Podcasts
    Poetry
    Point Of Purchase
    Political Advertising
    Political Correctness
    Price Advertising
    Pringles
    Procrastination
    Product Experience
    Publicity Stunts
    Punctuation
    Puppy Monkey Baby
    Radio
    Reader Question
    Reality TV
    Relationship Marketing
    Repeat Customers
    Research
    Rhode Island Tourism
    Road Trip
    Romance
    Rosser Reeves
    Sailing
    Sales Staff Writing Radio
    SEO
    Small Business
    Small Business Branding
    SnapChat
    Social Media
    Social Media Marketing
    State Farm
    Story
    Struggling
    Subaru
    Super
    Superbowl
    Super Bowl Ads
    Sushi
    Sy Sperlling
    Taglines
    Thanksgiving
    The Big Short
    Trademarks
    USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
    Vail
    Velcro
    Vernacular
    Vocabulary
    Wine
    Words Good
    Writing
    Writing Advertising
    Zeitgeist

    RSS Feed

OFFERING:
Branding & Marketing
Speaking
Books
Newsletter


INFO:
Services Breakdown
​
Clients
About
Testimonials
Contact
STORY LAB
Picture
​
​
© Copyright 2020 Slow Burn Marketing LLC
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Picture
  • Home
  • Portfolio
    • Branding
    • Audio / Video
    • Print
    • Web
    • Collateral Etc.
  • About
    • Blaine Parker
    • Honey Parker
    • Testimonials
  • Services
    • Do You Fit?
  • Stuff
    • Speaking
    • Books
    • Newsletter
  • Story Lab
  • Contact