I have seen the future of retail and it looks like an Oreo

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:06:00 +0000

When B. Bonin Bough leaned toward the microphone in a standing-room-only meeting room at 9:30 Monday morning, his voice crackled as if his lungs were clearing out a pickup truck's worth of rusty nails.

"Sorry," he apologized. "It was a long night last night."

It was only the first of multiple occasions on which Bough, the V.P. of Global Media and Consumer Engagement at Mondelēz International, sparked raucous laughter from the crowd. I don't know if I'd normally expect an audience that came to hear a panel on changing demographics, retail sales and ad budgets to be so approving of late night carousing, but that, I guess, is SXSW in a nutshell.

Once his voice cleared, Bonin proceeded to show why there wasn't an empty seat in the house with his incisive analysis of how social media, mobile technology and personalization data were remaking the retail landscape. As he did so, he solved a minor mystery for me: Why Oreo was such a huge presence at SXSW 2013. Yahoo and Esurance, sure. Pepsi and Doritos -- they're everywhere, all the time.. But Oreo? At a tech conference?

The best and worst of Super Bowl 47

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 11:22:00 +0000

It had moments for the record books. Memorable ads. A scorching halftime show. An unexpected time out. And a wardrobe malfunction very different – yet infinitely more horrifying – than Janet Jackson's ever was. It was the 47th Super Bowl, and we put down our nachos long enough to rack up the best and worst of it.

The Bad

The Blackout

It was so strange, so unexpected, you could feel the audience and announcers not quite registering what was happening at first. When a surge knocked out half the power at the Superdome minutes into the second half of the game – and moments after Jacoby Jones' crazy spectacular return -- it set off a frenzy of frantic ad-libbing from the booth, busywork stretching on the field, and jokey speculation on Twitter. Best response? Dave Weigel's post halftime show theorizing that the stadium was not, in fact, ready for this jelly.

Jim Nantz's tie

Salon.com > oreo

I have seen the future of retail and it looks like an Oreo

The best and worst of Super Bowl 47