Posts Tagged “haiku”

No-snowed out of snow shoeing, I took a walk with L about five miles from Harvard Square to the Boston Common, by way of the Harvard bridge and the Howard Yezerski Gallery, where we saw a fun show called “Inside the Box, A Diorama Exhibition Curated by George Fifield & Phaedra Shanbaum” (don’t be afraid, step on the pedal, it’s worth it!) but the real gems were the delicious Daewoud Bey Polaroids from his Class Pictures series in Yezerski’s back room.  Another hidden gem of the Newbury Street gallery scene is the collection of mostly black and white photos adorning the Banana Republic store at #28.  Don’t miss the Eric Lewandowski triptych on the ground floor.

Wintry clouds scumble
the sky over chic boutiques.
Sunset on the Newb.

The tallest in my
NYC will always be
The Chrysler Building

My view is that it’s not enough to be tallest in meters alone, but a building must earn that stature with great design. The Empire State building certainly has more going for it than the WTC ever did, but I don’t think it holds a candle to the Chrysler. It’s a bit like the comparison of Boston’s Prudential Center and John Hancock Tower, (I favor the taller Hancock this time) or China’s Jin Mao Tower and Taiwan’s Taipei 101. For me, 101’s additional height doesn’t give it sufficient edge over Jin Mao’s unity of design. Plus, the top floor of Taipei 101 has a touristy observation deck, and Jin Mao has a swanky bar at its summit. Those in search of way too much unpoetic and literal information on the topic of the tallestness of various buildings may wish to consult the Wikipedia article on same.

I was starting to worry that the market for paid search was getting as crowded and overheated as email marketing has become. People were subjected to my “reaching out vs. being found” lecture (PPT slides available on request) several times per week. When new budgets were approved, I saw the price of many keywords jump up on the first of the year. Then I saw these ads, and my faith in the mediocrity of most marketing was restored.

Nothing sets my teath on edge like lousy writing, especially marketing writing. It’s not just any word they got wrong, it’s the thing their product works on! I should go back and click on that ad to make them pay. In fact, I encourage all limeduck readers to click on bad search ads whenever possible. Just make sure you don’t buy anything or fill in any forms.

In any case, my point, such as it is, is this: even if the search market is overheated and the click prices inflated, nobody’s going to get much out of this if the ads are not appealing, and if the user experience after clicking delivers on the promise that the ad made. Short ads like these are like email subject lines, conversation hearts, magic 8-ball answers, fortune cookies and haiku — they have to get a lot across with very few words. As this turgid post affirms, it’s easier to write a lot at low quality than to write a little at high quality.

In semi-unrelated fortune cookie news, it turns out that the Japanese invented them.  Who knew?  (For extra credit, note the reporter’s middle name)

Sunburnt, lined, blue-veined
Stretched loosely over the earth
The skin of the sea

Undulating sea
meets the sky at right angles.
Is that a lighthouse?