I know that you have all been waiting with bated to breath to see who has won our Honeyshed competition. Without further adieu, let us now introduce our celebrity judge for this event, Steve Landsberg, ex-Chief Creative Officer of DDB, New York and Ogilvy Toronto, as well as co-founder of new agency Grok. Take it away Steve!
“Here are my thoughts after reviewing the reviews:
Overall, there was an impressive display of knowledge, passion and creative vulgarity. Special mention to a few reviewers first: The Founder, for technical knowledge and a well-meaning sense of outrage. To Beatrice_Hogg and Matty for their thoroughness and thoughtfulness. Time to Show for the sheer display of anger and hostility emboldened by anonymity.
(Boy, I’m gonna hear about this.)AdvertisementAnd finally, the winner is… eburrante for a review that was clever, thorough, intelligent, well-written and amusing. You had me at “sociopathic sassitude”.
Congratulations.”
There you have it folks. Eburrante? Please email us at agencyspy at gmail dot com to collect your prize. If you missed his/her review, you see it in its entirety after the jump.
To all the entrants, you fucking rock. Thank you!
“As the Honeyshed logo glow-animates across my computer monitor, my TV is tuned to a CNN report about the presently desolate state of economic affairs in this country. Soon the Honeyshed “Intro” starts, and I’m immediately tempted to click the “skip it” button. Instead, but only since I know I’m about to write this review, I allow myself to be eye-raped by the three spokesmodels that in turns try to seduce, denigrate, and threaten me into “knowing that I want it”. “You know you want it,” incidentally, strikes me as a tagline that Paris Hilton might have used in junior high school for about a month. What is it I’m supposed to know that I want? I don’t even know what this site is about yet! And seriously, that brunette on the end looks like she wants to decapitate me with her borderline sociopathic sassitude… I know I don’t want that to happen to me. What follows is a blur of what might be described as hip-hop Laugh In, Stoner Hee-Haw and a less tasteful version of Benny Hill.
My eyes defocus for a few minutes and when I come back, the intro still isn’t over, but that’s ok. I’m starting to get an idea of what’s going on here… this literally is a home shopping website. See, it’s the home shopping channel for the “digital generation”. Yeah, they went there. There’s an entire generation on this planet that is digital. And do you know what digital means? It means post-modern and ironic. What what? The digital generation doesn’t want a hard sell–it wants satire. This is the home shopping channel that makes fun of your mom’s home shopping channel–so it’s YOUR home shopping channel! They’re actually trying to sell a Volvo C30 (which I think my Mom actually owns) with clown cops in hot pants, a zombie child, and a super hero mafioso emcee. I watched it for 3 minutes before they made any mention of any features (dual exhaust… shouldn’t there be some clever twist in the delivery though? Hel-lo… fart joke? Strangely no). Ok, moving on… from a 22k car to a $125 pimped out baseball cap. Who wants one of these hats? I can see people wearing them… but it seems like kind of a niche market of LA Dodgers fans that go clubbing and are highly patriotic.
Flick Picks isn’t bad. It’s like a movie review show where the hosts try to explain the movie to people that have never even remotely heard of the movie they’re reviewing or the stars of the movie. It’s a tough concept to pull off, but they do it kinda ok. The actors are a bit more likable here because there are fewer layers of nauseating self-consciousness here. But teenagers are nauseatingly self-conscious, and I assume that they’re the digital generation. It takes me back to when MTV launched in the 80s, and they had all of these avant garde shorts playing all the time. That shit was cutting-edge artsy-fartsy. This is like MTV for the Target generation… but would an average 15 year old buy a $125 hat? Would they even WANT to buy a Volvo?
Here’s the thing about this site: There’s a lot of non-sequitar skits. Remember when MTV started transitioning from playing music to original programming? That was annoying because you didn’t know what to expect. I think they went all-rap for a couple years in the 90s, too, which was a little disorienting. Well, that’s what’s going on here… it’s annoying.
The site is best focused when dealing with girl stuff. The Girl Fashion section shows American Apparel-type models talking about clothes. That’s like having the girls from TV’s The Hills sit around talking about their feelings. In other words, that’s what girls do and probably what they want to see. Like the opposite of The View, ie, attractive people who get along well. I’d be willing to guess that everything other than the Beauty and Fashion sections of Honeyshed gets the boot in short order.
This launch is a nice start. But the economy has taken a non-ironic nosedive and frivolity is not in the consumer lexicon at the moment. So cut the skits, the weird, dead-end attempts at humor, and just sell our teenage girls their clothes and beauty products. And thanks for taking me back to a surreal version of the 80s!”