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Brandsplat Report on Beer Machines, Jet Packs and Shamu

 

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Hi. This is Enzo F. Cesario with another edition of the Brandsplat Video Report. I'm here with director, Ben Porter, behind the camera. What's going on in the world this week? There are some goofy things that I uncovered, and one serious thing at the end that I want to talk about.

Have you ever wanted something cool, or wanted to get a gift for somebody and didn't really know what to get them? Check out this site: It's called iwantoneofthose.com. They've got some really cool stuff. I was just browsing around and I found, for example, the giant, inflatable hair dos. AWESOME! I want the black one. That one's cool.

And what about the beer machine? What guy would not love a beer machine? I just hope it's easy to use, or you can just put it on and it keeps making beer.

But what they didn't have… they didn't have a jet pack. I always wanted a jet pack ever since I was a kid. But I've never been able to find one… until now. I found one. I did a search online. Here's another company: Martin Aircraft Company (martinjetpack.com). They make a jet pack. Isn't that neat. It's a New Zealand company and they're selling these babies for seventy five thousand smackeroos. That's a hefty, hefty price. You'd think if you're selling something for that amount of money, the guys would have at least a blog, or they're tweeting or they're doing something on social media. I couldn't find anything. But maybe that's because they're going after an older demographic. I don't know. I know younger people don’t trust brands that aren't on social media.

BEN: And old people do like jet packs…

ENZO: And old people love jet packs. Well, I do. I'm old.

On a less light note, by now everyone has heard the story of the killer whale that killed its trainer in Orlando. Very sad. Very tragic. Before the incident, I had been following Shamu because Shamu has a Twitter account (twitter.com/shamu), and I've been following the tweets. Soon after the event they kind of shut his account down. Basically they said, "At this difficult time @Shamu will not be active on Twitter, as users who follow @Shamu have come to expect posts that are light-hearted and perhaps a bit quirky." But that's it. Should they say anything else?

It's very weird because obviously Shamu isn't really tweeting. There are real people behind, pretending to be Shamu. But what do you do? I know in social media you're supposed to address stuff in real time. It just kind of felt weird to me. What would you have done? Would an apology be appropriate, or something else? I don’t know. I don't know what the answer is, but it is an interesting problem when you have someone who is tweeting and they're not real, and something bad happens.

So, that's it. I'd love to hear what you think about it.

That's it, for this week. Thanks for joining us. This is Enzo F. Cesario. See you next time.