Brand Bowl & a midget Darth Vader

As is the tradition, every time the Super Bowl comes around you have a huge bunch of corporates running around creating various TVCs that they want to air during that time, seeing as almost the entire North American populace is watching the telly. Not including Canada of course. Or Alaska.

Brands usually spend the around the same as the GDP of an African nation to secure a spot during the Super Bowl. Suffice to say, getting a spot is quite the pinch to the wallet, so much so that even the Super Bowl organizers do their own bit to track overall sentiment and who basically wins the Brand Bowl. Many iconic TVCs have been conceived, produced, aired and made popular by the Super Bowl. In fact, PepsiCo has been notorious for creating some of their most popular ads for the Super Bowl spots, including the celebrity gladiator match with Beyonce, Pink, Britney Spears or the Pepsi Stuff ad with Justin Timberlake.

Come Super Bowl 2011, companies release their ads to the hungry eyes of the world to see. At the time however, young Mali was asleep. The following morning finds young Mali sitting at his terminal at work, clicking and typing away furiously, social media guru that he is. (Yes, Mali occasionally refers to himself in third person). His good friend Arun linked him to something. He said it was a Super Bowl ad. He said I'd like it.

One minute and two seconds later, total productivity = zilch. Amazement = +infinity. Star Wars fanboy = +500 Force.

What I liked about this ad, besides a bite sized Darth Vader, was that the parent played along and boosted the child's imagination. It also represented VW in a more relaxed fashion, playing along consumer passion points. T'was refreshing!

My bid goes to VW for this year's superbowl. Have you guys seen their Beetle ad yet?

Oh dear, I've fallen into it again..

Well it's true, after spending a lot of time contemplating my return to the blogosphere, I did give in and will resume blogging, effective immediately! My initial concern was that I will not have enough to blog about or any specific things I may want to write about. However, what I did discover is I do have things I want to talk and blog about.

I will hereby turn this blog right around and you can expect to see me blog about the following topics:

1. Motorsports. I've recently joined my company's racing team. This adds to my previous track experience, so I guess it's about time I start talking cars as much as I love driving them.
   
   
2. Paintball. Cuz it's awesome. And now that I have all my gear, it's time to terrorize the office.
   
   
3. Video Games. I play a lot of them. It's time to take it a bit seriously.
   
   
4. Campus Radio ME. Along with Ritesh, I started this almost a year ago. Here, I will talk about recent news, updates etc.
   
   
5. Movies. I spend a lot of nights burning through DVDs. Why not share my views? :)

By any means, this list is not exhaustive. But possibly a teaser of things to come.

See you guys around!

M

Guess who's back?

...yes. I'm back.

I'll be honest here, I'm fairly certain it'll take me awhile to get back into full swing blogging, but things are starting to slow down in the real world, and I'm hoping that I'm going to have a little more time to dedicate to my blog. Today was the first time that I set eyes on my blog ever since I went on this break, and I WANT CHANGE. Not now, but sooner or later, I'm going to make a massive change to this blog and make it a lot cooler. It's nice to be back.

I went on hiatus, officially, on the 1st of this month, and it's funny that I'm back within the same month. If I am to be honest, I really expected to stay away from blogging, blogs and all such things for a couple of months at the very least. It wasn't writer's block. It was more of a lack of motivation TO write. Which I could blame on other things, but I won't and I'm glad I can start accepting responsibility for my actions.

Funnily enough, the moment I decided to go on hiatus a number of things popped up and my first thoughts on them were, 'Oh I should blog that!' And then I remember that I've gone on a blogging hiatus and then it's, 'DOH!'

Either way, stuff I'm looking forward to blogging about in the near future:

1. My University
2. Work Ethic
3. My First 'Job'
4. A Memory of a cousin

And other stuff, that I can't remember at the moment. But rest assured, the ZOMG is back and I'll be writing again.

Bring it.


xx


M



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Hiatus.

I know that I have very few dedicated readers, so to those of you I must apologize because this post isn't an update of any kind.

I'm just here to announce that I will be going on an indefinite hiatus from blogging. I might at a later date resume blogging, or, I might not. I'm not sure really.

Will let you know when I know.


Cheers :)


M

xx


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Twiddiction

Image via CrunchBase

Right.

I've an excuse. Really. I'm addicted. The only reason I've not blogged in so long is because I'm addicted. Yes, it's true. It's called Twitter.


I could go on about my addiction to that service for quite some time now, but I really shouldn't and should spend some time to focus on this post.

* At this point the date is now the 20th of February. This post was created on the 14th. Twitter is slowly taking over things. *

So for my first meaningful post in all of February, I'm quite surprised as to how quickly Twitter has grown onto me, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to somehow find time to live my life in between all my tweeting. It's come to the point where I'm considering the purchase of an iPhone or BlackBerry just so that I can stay updated and update my tweets while on the move. Time spent away from my computer makes me constantly think of Twitter and all the tweets that I'm going to have to catch up on once I'm back at my workstation at home. Wow. It's so pathetic BUT I LOVE IT!

Anyway, February has been a relatively eventful month. On the 12th we had the Twestival at Barasti at Le Meridian Mina Seyahi and I attended that along with Lhjunkie. It was fun! We met a whole bunch of people that we only knew as screen names and avatars. It was great fun getting faces for the names. It was also interesting how we referred to each other by the screen names. People like "DaddyBird", "MBzle" etc. Soon after that we also took the time to go meet DaddyBird again on the 16th for his birthday.

Hmm, something else happened in February too that I wanted to blog about at the time, but I can't seem to recall it now.

My eldest brother, Masroor, and his family left for the USA for good. It was always on the cards, but when he actually left, it was weird. I remember telling myself that I won't really mind him leaving because it's not like I'm going to miss him or anything. But on the morning of 14th of February at the airport, I realized how much I was going to miss my brother. Sure we had fights a lot and I'd swear at him (in my mind) but now that he's gone I really miss him. He was the moderator of the house and it was always fun having him around. He also kept me grounded and my big ego needs someone who can pop the bubble from floating and keep me firmly on the ground. Masroor used to do that. I miss him :(

Oh well, too bad he'll never read this. He used to make fun of my blog a lot too.. moron..

Either way, now that I've finally gotten down to writing this post, I'm hoping that it will help me snap out of Twitterdiction and let me focus on writing some more articles.

More posts as addiction is controlled!!!

Cheers!


M


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(PS. OMG I'VE NOT UPDATED THE WEEKLY STUPIDS IN FOREVER!!!! Somebody shoot me.)