What do skateboards, Velcro fasteners, computers and electric guitars have in common? They are all inventions that came from the same place, the minds of people just like you, states the homepage of www.inventnow.org, a new website designed to get kids to explore and discover their own innate inventiveness and curiosity. Designed by Visual Perspectives Internet, Irvine, Calif., the site features interactive games and allows children to explore their inventive interests in space, sports, design and entertainment.
Two ads created pro bono by Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco, direct audiences to the site. The entire PSA campaign, launched by The Advertising Council, the Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation (NIHFF), seeks to make inventing and developing new ideas part of American children’s lives.
In one spot, a group of boys are enjoying an afternoon outdoors when their friend Mark shows up and they begin questioning him about why he hasn’t been around. He reveals that he lost his cat, so he’s been busy making a “cat magnet.” The boys think that sounds cool and ask him if it works. Mark replies “sort of” and demonstrates his invention. He points it in the air and a sandy colored cat comes out of nowhere and sticks to the magnet. The boys are impressed, but Mark tells them it needs a little work because that’s not his cat. The spot ends with a voiceover telling viewers, “Anything is possible. Keep thinking. Get started on your own inventions or just play some games,” as the website address appears across the screen.
In the other PSA, a brother asks his sister about the noisy contraption she’s made that rolls by them. He asks her what it is, to which she replies, “Something I kinda made.” “What’s it do,” he questions. “What do I do?,” a teddy bear attached to the machine responds. “Well thanks for asking. I ring my bell and I like to dance.” The boy, mesmerized and obviously a little perplexed, is distracted long enough to allow the device’s robotic arm to pull a Band-Aid® from his bruised leg. “Ouch,” he cries. “Yeah, it needs a little work,” says his sister about her “Band-Aid® puller.”
Baker Smith of harvest films, Santa Monica, directed the PSAs. “Baker Smith gets absolute real performances out of people and then he always adds these little touches that make him great,” said Jon Soto, executive creative director at Publicis & Hal Riney. “One of my favorite parts of ‘Cat Magnet’ is the kid hitting the stick on the ground in the beginning. It’s such a kid thing to do.”
Research conducted for the campaign found that children are innately curious and inventive but they do not realize the impact of their creativity. Soto said the creative challenge for the team was telling kids without being preachy that inventing things is not something they have to learn, it’s something they are already doing naturally. The team wanted the PSAs to show in an entertaining way how fun and rewarding it can be when you do have a thought and you take it a little bit further like the kids in the spots. They also wanted them to recognize how their imaginations can lead to the technological advances of the future without sounding too intimidating or scientific.
Soto is pleased with the warmth the spots exude. “When you get into inventions it can get into the technical aspects of what you are doing and it loses a lot of warmth. I think there was a warmth and fuzziness to the spots that everyone seemed to gravitate to,” he observed.
Young audiences are already gravitating to the campaign. “What was nice was going to Washington D.C. to launch this campaign at a press conference,” said Soto. “The front of the room was filled with kids. And it was just really fun to watch these kids light up and ask questions about it. They are being shouted at all the time.
“It’s nice to do something that respected their intelligence and looked at their intelligence from their level instead of talking down to them.”
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More