Taking matters into your own hands sometimes is the only way to get anything accomplished. Even if they are rather tiny hands. But that’s just what a bunch of fourth graders from our very own Brookline, MA have done.

These kiddiewinks were appalled enough by the trailer of The Lorax that they made a petition on Change.org to get the basic premise of the story—that of “greed, exploitation, and the consequences of environmental rapaciousness”—put back into the movie adaptation.

As you probably recall, this is not the first time Hollywood has made a complete and utter mockery of a classic Dr. Seuss tale. The upcoming pièce de barf is, unsurprisingly, one of those watered-down, feel-good, hey-everything’s-okay-in-the-end-because-he-gets-the-girl-and-isn’t-that-what-really-matters type of flicks that makes people cry in a good way. I know Hollywood makes these movies because we pay to see them, but when fourth graders are telling you something is wrong with the way society is represented in a film, well, that should be a big red flag right there.

Hey, what a great parable for the real world! Just pretend like we’re not decimating the environment, flash a lot of smoke and mirrors (“clean energy destroys jobs!”) and the problem will go away. Right? Right?!

Apparently, even fourth graders can smell bullshit. Feel free to sign the petition and tell Hollywood to cut the crap.

Happy Friday: Listen closely to this video. Pretty funny stuff. Do you think a big company would consider airing an ad with this voice over track?

Regarding Captain Fred’s earlier post on Google’s transforming digital to analog, another lesson can be learned for content creators, especially those of the video/audio persuasion.

Sometimes, a peak inside the production can itself become another story to be told. The entire production can be an asset to be mined for additional content. For me, the behind-the-scenes action can be just as fascinating as the final deliverable.

We’ve all become accustomed to watching the EPK—the electronic press kit—in our latest Hollywood blockbuster DVD purchase, rental, stream, or download. Making-of shorts and special effects breakdowns even seem to be popping up on cable TV too.

Different aspects of the production can be highlighted depending on the target audience. For instance, a video magazine could focus on the camera equipment used, or a prop makers blog can talk more about the set design.

Peter Jackson has done the same thing recently with his Hobbit production videos. The blog posts act as extended trailers, whetting every fangeek’s appetite for a return trip to Middle Earth. One of my favorite TV shows, “Leverage,” also did a quick show ‘n’ tell with the making of one of those wide canvas slo-mo freeze-frame TNT promo shots.

Leave it to Google, the most virtual company imaginable, to create a brilliantly 3 dimensional, hands-on (literally) model of what google maps can do for you. Here’s a write up from AdWeek, and a peek at the video:

What’s great about this is that it so clearly, cleanly, and fun-ly (okay, I know that isn’t a word) takes something that lives entirely within the digital world, the world of ones and zeros, and makes it as simple to follow as a children’s toy. You really connect to what Google maps is doing for you.

And here’s the takeaway – the more virtual your product or service is, the more you need to make it real, tactile, HUMAN. The world around us has changed dramatically, but we’re still wired pretty much the same as cavemen (er, cavepeople). If you can hold it in your hands, if you can see it, you can understand it. It makes an emotional connection. As marketers, that’s our job. And in this execution Google and Venables Bell have hit a homerun.

My parents, living in a remote corner of Vermont, used to fork over $70 bucks a month for their 150 cable TV channels. They had to. It was the only way to get the good shows and movies. Today, I get most of that content via the Internet, thanks to high speed wireless that’s now available even in very rural areas. $19 bucks a month for wireless, with zero cable bill. According to the most recent Deloitte survey of viewing habits, I’m far from alone: 9% of respondents have cut their cable cord, while 11% are thinking about it. This trend is going to accelerate. For advertisers, it’s one more data point that shows that interactive online marketing – driven by good content – will be THE dominant force in marketing (even more than it already is). The push towards Internet-delivered content will also likely get a major boost when Apple introduces their own TV system; you know it’s coming, right? They’re going to do for TV what the iPhone and iPad did for communications and computing, crushing other technologies and transforming how we enjoy our entertainment, and by default how we engage with advertising.

Happy Friday, read a good book this weekend.

There are so many good ideas still floating around in the advertising ether, you’d have to be blind not to see that. Er, sorry blind people, I didn’t mean to leave you out. You probably get that a lot. Actually, someone is thinking of you. And they’re thinking of you in perhaps the juiciest, most delectable way possible—through dead cow patties.

In an effort to get the word out about their braille menus, a restaurant named Wimpy, together with their ad agency, made 15 burgers with sesame seeds on the buns which spelled out messages in braille. These burgers were offered to 15 blind patrons, and the whole shebang was filmed, resulting in the requisite INSTANT VIDEO SENSATION SWEEPING THE NATION! Because of 15 special burgers, 800,000 people now know about Wimpy’s braille menu.

Wimpy’s did a lot of things right: they (presumably) named the restaurant after what may be the most OG hamburger-loving character of all time, they targeted their audience and appealed to them in a meaningful (and memorable) way, and they didn’t spend a whole lot of money to get the message across. And they undoubtedly changed the way a lot of people look at a small and largely inconsequential food product. (Really, what business do sesame seeds have being on all burger buns all the time? So the buns don’t look too naked? Sesame seeds are the pasties of the fast food world.)

So if Boston is due for a blizzard, The Weather Channel might give a heads up to a flashlight or backup generator manufacturer that they should snap up some air time to advertise.

The Weather Channel hired a meteorologist for a particular role—vice president of weather analytics. What does he do in this role, you ask? He will sell highly targeted weather predictions to the channel’s advertisers.

If you woke up this morning and were wondering what the formula for Bernoulli’s Principle is, you’re SOL. That’s because you’d probably use Wikipedia to find your answer online, but today, there is no Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has blacked out their domain name today in protest of the SOPA and PIPA legislation that is currently under discussion in congress. The SOPA and PIPA acts, if passed, allow the government to block certain domain addresses (i.e. www.captainsofindustry.com) to prevent Internet piracy. In plain speak, that means if a website is hosting a pirated version of Pirates of the Caribbean, the government can block that website from United States users by imprisoning their domain name. To still access that site you’d have to type the IP address in your browser—very hard to remember if you know it at all.

This is a good example of serious “brand issue awareness,” if you will. While lots of people who use Wikipedia know about SOPA, my guess is that there are millions of others who have no idea what the law is. When they wonder today why Wikipedia is down, they’ll all discover SOPA, and the negative effect it’s had on their ability to gather information from the Internet. That’s some serious issue awareness.

Well Wikipedia has never taken a stance on an issue before this, but here’s why their taking action, just FYI:

When Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment.

AWESOME TIP: The IP address for Wikipedia is “91.198.174.225″. Now you can still use it all day!

One of the long-held ideas and manifesto proclamations here at Captains of Industry is “websites are now TV channels.”

As of late, it has occurred to me the inverse is also true: “TV channels are now websites,” or a more specific corollary, “TV shows are now websites.”

One of my idols, Joss Whedon, writer of Toy Story, producer-writer-director of Buffy, Firefly, and writer-director of the new Avengers movie was recently quoted saying that making internet videos or web shorts are “the punk rock of filmmaking.”

In 2008 when the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike, Whedon and his merry band of collaborators created a low budget web series called “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion among others. It was wicked awesome! And for the time and for an internet series, it was huge.

More storytellers embraced the medium to tell episodic narratives, from the wonderful Felicia Day’s The Guild (www.watchtheguild.com) to local funny dude Rob Corddry’s “Children’s Hospital.” Others followed like www.thecastingoffice.tv and www.watchtheleague.com.

Once upon a time, TV shows were brought to you by and sponsored by singular products. In the early internet age, TV show-related web sites were treated like ads for the TV shows, just additional marketing to push people to watch the program with interspersed product commercials. Later, shows like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” used their online offerings to further expand the world of its characters through original web shorts.

Will the future bring us a traditional broadcast TV show that is merely a vehicle to push eyeballs to a website? The online series itself is becoming the product.

Regarding this punk rock DIY digital story-telling evolution, Joss Whedon said “I want to be a part of that.” As content creators, how can you be part of that? As an avid TV follower, if the stories are well-told and the characters are compelling to watch, I will tune in. As long as I can relax on my couch while clicking, surfing, and viewing.