Brilliant.

Metro has a new mandatory recylcing regulation for businesses they are enforcing. This is their training video.

By the way. I went to Oregon City transfer station today with a load of garbage. I studies the recycling effort and I find it hard to beleive all of those many bins and separation pencils out in any way whatsoever.

The tremendous manpower used just there is a big drain on it's merit.
When a Metro guy is taking one board at a time out of a large roller bin, he already loaded at the dump area, and is now throwing them one by one in a bigger wood pile I find that just a little troublesome.

The rest of the operation is also labor intensive just to separate the many items and it appears to me that there can't possibly be net beneift for separating so many different items.

IMO at the end of the process it will have devoured more energy than it has saved resulting in an environmental detriment instead of gain.

Stories like this seem to make it true.

http://cleantech.com/news/3948/report-calls-recycling-waste-energy

I loved the tail end where the green cops bust the regular cops for drinking coffee out of foam cups.

Of course in PDX, the regular cops would put the greenies on the ground, call them pricks, and shoot them.

Maybe not so bad an idea for grene cops, after all.

VBG

at 0:12 did I recognize one of the Colonial style houses on about NE 26th? But the street trees at the intro seemed to be sycamores and we usually don't have those. I did laugh when the 'Bridgeport' police officer was pulled over for the foam cup violation. The writers knew they would have us if the one's usually writing tickets got one instead.

That ad really said something. Frankly, I thought it was borderline genius.
I also loved the Leno/Letterman one. I hope it got them past the ridiculous bad feelings between old friends, that has bothered comedy fans for decades.
I was disappointed by the volume of Pete Townsend's guitar leaving the vocals too out front.
But just when I thought ads like the green police one would have the most profound message, some old Who lyrics jumped out in a 2010 context that was quite amazing. Perhaps it was because I had just read an article about how pleased the military weapons industry is with President Obama:

"There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are out-phased, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And their beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss"

Even the most anti-government Sarah Palin tea-baggers, who probably loved the green police ad, are also head over heels in love with a huge government program called war - the ultimate trickery, where they use your patriotism and take your kids to go die for the military industrial complex.
I thought the Who came off as profound in their own geezer way.
But, please, Pete: Crank the guitar.

Hidden in the Green Police ad is a little VW with an Audi badge and a $10K upcharge. No wonder they need the force of law behind their marketing.

The Letterman/Winfrey/Leno commercial was The Thing — it was worth sitting through everything else to see it. The NY Times has a great blog post today about how it happened, whose idea it was and how it all went down. A take-away lesson: these principal actors, at least, seem to know the difference between TV and life.

I'm in Denver CO consulting for a service-business cartel a few years ago, soaking up Denver and her, ahem, culture. If I heard it once, I heard it a million times. You're from Portland, why would you move here? Portland is such a great little city, they'd say. It's such a liberal city, and so clean, and that's like the recycling capital of the world, right? I really liked all of the [Insert whatever hippie pass-time is appropriate.] going on there.

Well, that's not a very good way to state my position. Which is, there is Portland, then there is the Portland in the brochure. This second Portland is the one defined by mostly newcomers who, wouldn't you know it, read the same brochure.

Portland was headquarter for The John Birch Society, for how long? Our republican Senator Packwood chaired the senate-house finance committee for how long - funded how many parks? For 14 years we had the highest per capita murder rate in the country. I'm actually proud of that 'cause most of it was from drunken, rowdy, ding-a-lings having at each other.

This was a rough-and-tumble port city for the ages. A hardy folk as conservative in some ways as we were liberal in others. Well, somewhere far left of liberal. Sure, a collection of small-town refugees from the state's rural towns, but the pig-farmer with Hemmingway on the shelves, and a good bottle of red on the floor by the arm-chair; type pig farmer.

I'm proud of that. It's genuine, and fairly drips with the communal propriety that once dictated we all have manners, decency, an open-mind, and above all, tolerance. It infuriates me this tolerance was viewed as, welcome. It infuriates me that we are now known nationally for what the tourists have turned us into, quite against our will.

Sure, we show them tolerance, only to end up on the receiving end of a pointed finger decrying that my ideals are not welcome here. That I'm not part of 'what Portland stands for'.

It just sickens my soul to see that this is how the rest of the country views us.

Frankly, I thought it was borderline genius.

The ad was hilarious, but I don't see how it works as a marketing tool. The true believers are going to be offended that "green" is being mocked. The eco-deniers are going to laugh, but then solemnly point out to one another that the ad is pretty close to being reality. Who is the target audience? Are they trying to get the greenies to buy the Audi? No way after that ad. Are they trying to get the eco-deniers to buy it? You just confirmed their belief that we all need to burn coal just for fun to make sure the planet doesn't get too cold.

Spooky:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnungspolizei

Miles,
You just spent part of Monday morning reacting to the ad.
It worked.

Miles,
On second thought, that wasn't fair.
Will it sell Audis? I don't know.
That's not what I liked about it.
What I see is an all-encompassing corporate media that feeds us one message after another, and here was some slick creative mind managing to get a message about our march towards a police state.
Yes, it uses the green movement but the images of ordinary citizens getting arrested by an out of control police force are powerful.
I could definitely imagine a meeting somewhere in the shadow government this morning, where they're wondering how it ever got past them.
That to me was the borderline genius part.

eco-deniers?

wtf?

over at the wsj, this ad is leading for Best and Worst Ad.

At first, I thought we'd have another reason to recall Samadumbs for mismanagement of city finances, but then I realized it was just a car commercial, not a plug asking folks to move to Portland.

I just pray that Randy Leonard wasn't watching the game - he's bound to insist that a new city agency be created to complement his HIT / goon squad.

One good thing about the ad - it resurrects the best Cheap Trick song of them all, the massively underplayed "Dream Police."

eco-deniers?

wtf?

Exactly.

You're right, Bill, it was genius. But I don't think it will sell cars.

Portland was headquarter for The John Birch Society, for how long?

Ummmm, never.

For 14 years we had the highest per capita murder rate in the country.

Not in any recent decade, we didn't.

This ad was great for both sides of the green divide, but as for product placement it was at best adequate.

Best ad bar none was the vintage Rainier Beer ad with the motorcycle... Well, go and watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz-WuLQz_ns

If you don't know the product after that ad you are dead.

Mark Sherman

It can't be Portland. You don't have roving bands of hipsters surrounding people at the Fred Meyer buying noncompostable cat litter and hissing "Shun the unbeliever! Shuuuuuuuuun!"

As soon as I saw that ad I was screaming at the spouse, "OMG I hope Randy isn't watching".
BTW...palm trees in the background would indicate a more tropical shooting local.

So true for Portland.

Only in Portland, do all the greenies tell everyone to ride TriMet (in particular MAX/Streetcar) but then the greenies have no problem getting into their "clean" car (usually a Toyota Prius, but also frequently a Subaru Outback) and driving as a single-occupant on the freeway (while simultaneously complaining about the plans for the 12-lane Columbia River Crossing) on their way to Seattle (when they could be taking Amtrak - or better yet, Greyhound, which is more environmentally friendly than Amtrak.)

It can't be Portland -- the cops didn't shoot any unarmed suspects.