Cannes Shopping

Tiny Micro Bikini

First up, we’ll run through a short history of the bikini (no sniggering at the back, please) and see how we arrive at the micro bikini.

The two-piece swimsuit we know today as the bikini has only been marketed and sold as such for 60 years. But archaeologists have discovered Minoan wall paintings from 1600 B.C. and Roman mosaics from 300 A.D. that show the bikini, so the ancients were livin’ it up! Still, it is the debut of the modern bikini in 1946 and its later modifications that truly define the swimsuit.

The bikini was invented and launched by two French designers: Jacques Heim and Louis Reard. Heim was a swimsuit designer who had created a two-piece suit to be sold in his beach shop in Cannes. He marketed the swimsuit as the “atome,” (named for its small size and meant to be compared with the atom, the smallest particle of matter known). No doubt, it was an outrageously tiny swimsuit.

The same year, Reard was creating his own similar, two-piece swimsuit. He named and marketed his swimsuit as the bikini, claiming that it was “smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world”. Reard christened his swimsuit the bikini in honor of experimental atomic bombs being detonated in the South Pacific, near the Bikini Reef.

So Reard’s name stuck, though by today’s standards, the bikinis of the 1940s and ’50s were positively modest in their coverage. Bottoms were cut above the navel, and tops fully covered the breasts.

Getting smaller by the year

The bikini went through several changes as time passed. Designers experimented with many varieties for the swimsuit, including a bikini top with attached propellers (!), a suit made entirely of red hair, and even a version made of porcupine quills.

As early as the 1950s, the bikini was already so small that it could be packed into a matchbook, but even more drastic shrinkage lay in store. In the 1970s, the sexual revolution in the United States caused designers to make the bikini even more revealing.

So we had string bikinis, which exposed the navel by fitting the bottoms on the hips. The top, too, provided only bra-style coverage. In the 1980s, the popular thong bikini arrived on the scene. Designers claimed the thong bikini originated from the clothing of Amazonian tribal groups in Brazil. As we know, the thong bikini leaves the bottom virtually uncovered and the back of the suit disappears into the buttocks.

Micro bikinis

In the 1990s and 2000s, designers have continued to revamp the bikini and innovated new styles. While the thong and string bikinis retain their popularity, the micro bikini has recently been added to the growing selection.

Essentially, micro bikinis are bikinis combining a micro bikini top and a thong bikini bottom. Needless to add, it is scantier and more revealing than traditional bikinis and hence its name.

Buying micro bikinis

· A word of warning: you need to be careful that you don’t opt for a string bikini when you mean to buy a micro bikini. There are enough illustrated examples online to show you the difference.

· Numerous sites offer essential advice like how to shave your bikini line (hairy exposures will NOT do). Make sure your pubic area in particular is well shorn.

· Choose the fabric well. Test your skin for itches and allergic rashes, particularly since you will be spending a lot of time in the sun wearing your bikini

· Have plenty of sunscreen handy. You need to use liberal doses all over your body since you obviously will not have much on in terms of protection from the sun’s rays!

Happy bathing!

Micro Bikini

First up, we’ll run through a short history of the bikini (no sniggering at the back, please) and see how we arrive at the micro bikini.

The two-piece swimsuit we know today as the bikini has only been marketed and sold as such for 60 years. But archaeologists have discovered Minoan wall paintings from 1600 B.C. and Roman mosaics from 300 A.D. that show the bikini, so the ancients were livin’ it up! Still, it is the debut of the modern bikini in 1946 and its later modifications that truly define the swimsuit.

The bikini was invented and launched by two French designers: Jacques Heim and Louis Reard. Heim was a swimsuit designer who had created a two-piece suit to be sold in his beach shop in Cannes. He marketed the swimsuit as the “atome,” (named for its small size and meant to be compared with the atom, the smallest particle of matter known). No doubt, it was an outrageously tiny swimsuit.

The same year, Reard was creating his own similar, two-piece swimsuit. He named and marketed his swimsuit as the bikini, claiming that it was “smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world”. Reard christened his swimsuit the bikini in honor of experimental atomic bombs being detonated in the South Pacific, near the Bikini Reef.

So Reard’s name stuck, though by today’s standards, the bikinis of the 1940s and ’50s were positively modest in their coverage. Bottoms were cut above the navel, and tops fully covered the breasts.

Getting smaller by the year

The bikini went through several changes as time passed. Designers experimented with many varieties for the swimsuit, including a bikini top with attached propellers (!), a suit made entirely of red hair, and even a version made of porcupine quills.

As early as the 1950s, the bikini was already so small that it could be packed into a matchbook, but even more drastic shrinkage lay in store. In the 1970s, the sexual revolution in the United States caused designers to make the bikini even more revealing.

So we had string bikinis, which exposed the navel by fitting the bottoms on the hips. The top, too, provided only bra-style coverage. In the 1980s, the popular thong bikini arrived on the scene. Designers claimed the thong bikini originated from the clothing of Amazonian tribal groups in Brazil. As we know, the thong bikini leaves the bottom virtually uncovered and the back of the suit disappears into the buttocks.

Micro bikinis

In the 1990s and 2000s, designers have continued to revamp the bikini and innovated new styles. While the thong and string bikinis retain their popularity, the micro bikini has recently been added to the growing selection.

Essentially, micro bikinis are bikinis combining a micro bikini top and a thong bikini bottom. Needless to add, it is scantier and more revealing than traditional bikinis and hence its name.

Buying micro bikinis

· A word of warning: you need to be careful that you don’t opt for a string bikini when you mean to buy a micro bikini. There are enough illustrated examples online to show you the difference.

· Numerous sites offer essential advice like how to shave your bikini line (hairy exposures will NOT do). Make sure your pubic area in particular is well shorn.

· Choose the fabric well. Test your skin for itches and allergic rashes, particularly since you will be spending a lot of time in the sun wearing your bikini

· Have plenty of sunscreen handy. You need to use liberal doses all over your body since you obviously will not have much on in terms of protection from the sun’s rays!

Happy bathing!

Increasing Traffic Using Simple Ways

I’M sure you’ll agree me if I say that increasing traffic is the way to increase our AdSense earning. The more traffics means the more chances to get bigger earning. The problem is, how to increase traffic?

‘Old crack’ netters understands that the answer is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO could be done by putting some HTML codes to web template or using a software to place a web on the top of searching result list. Is it effective? It’s interesting when webmasters says different opinion about it. SEO for most of them is very helpful, but some webmasters says the SEO contribution isn’t too maximal and below 10% of their traffic increasing. Which one is the right opinion? Don’t think about it. Here I’ll show you another techniques to increase your traffic.

Actually, there are some other techniques can be used to increase traffic. But before explaining more, I think ‘technique’ isn’t the right word for it, so let me write it using the simpler one; ‘way(s)’. The most interesting point is no skill or knowledge needed to apply these ways except reading and computing. So, the blogger newbie without programming skill and even the internet newcomers can do it in a second after completely reading this article. What’s that?

First, blog walking. It’s easy. Just visit other’s blog and leave a message including a link to yours on their guest book or chat box. Don’t be hurry to close the blog after sending your message. Look at the other visitors messages then click the links one by one. A guest book normally store up to 10 messages. It means you have 9 blogs more to visit from a guest book. Visit them and leave a message to their guest book, keep doing this ‘till you feel bored. ? Off course you should have a guest book on your blog first, so the blog owners you visited can leave their message when they visit you back. Don’t have a guest book? Go to Shoutmix.com, Cbox.com or Oggix.com and take one for free.

Second, link exchanges. The more blogs link to you using a keyword that match to your blog keyword, the better position you get on search engines. So, never reject any link exchanges offers come to you. Make a special column on your sidebar to place the exchanged links and named it as “Links”, My Friends” or something similar. To get your own button to be displayed on another blog, visit Blogflux.com to make a standard tiny 80×15 pixels button. It’s—of course, for free.

Third, set your blog address as an email signature, so you could promote it with the email you send to a friend. Your friend will be excited to your blog and directly click the URL address to see how your blog looks like. But remember, never send an email to strangers. That’s SPAM and SPAM is the cyber crime! Promote your blog with ethics and morals, so you’ll get both good response and respect.

Fourth, submit to free ads site. There are so many free ads sites, optimize it to popularize your blog through free ads. Just ask Mr. Google to search those sites using keyword “free ads” or some words similar. And the last, try to promote your blog to friends using short message service (SMS). It’s an effective method to promote something directly to the ‘targeted’ person, so just try it.

Do those ways work? Honestly, I cann’t give you a guarantee. The result may vary depend on your effort. At least, those ‘techniques’ are working to my blog, www.jogja-inside.blogspot.com. I only need to spare 20-30 minutes a day to visit at least 30 blogs, and Jogja-Inside traffic reached 1000 hits in two weeks. Now, its daily hit is more than 100, good hit for a new blog. Believe it or not, you’ll only know by applying it to yours. Wish U luck!

Turning Chinese

While the judges in Cannes were fawning over Dove’s “Evolution” video, another ad for a beauty product came to my attention.

This ad was for a product called “Fair & Lovely,” a skin-whitening cream that’s heavily marketed in India. The commercial showed a young girl who dreams of being a TV reporter, but as she narrates, “the obstacle to obtaining my dream job was my skin.” Her skin was too dark for her to get hired. So in the ad, she proceeds to whiten her skin, land that dream job, and even score a date with a studly cameraman.

What’s the problem? Turns out, both Dove and Fair & Lovely products are made by the same company: Unilever.

The Dove video (part of a campaign which I praised in a past column) shows the effects of makeup and retouching and says, “no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.” The Fair & Lovely ad suggests if you whiten your skin, you’ll get your dream job. So how does a company like Unilever justify distorting the perception of beauty in India but celebrating “real beauty” in North America? Can you really just chalk it up to differing cultural mores, or two divisions of a huge company that don’t interact?

I put the ads side by side on AdPulp.com, where people could see the dual messages for themselves. Then, a reporter for Radio Sweden interviewed me about the Internet’s role in exposing the variations of global marketing. So what is an American guy doing on Radio Sweden talking about a company headquartered in Britain and The Netherlands who approved both a video created in Canada and celebrated in France along with a condescending ad created for India? I demonstrated that the world is getting too small for global companies to hide contradictory business practices. The advertising industry better wake up to this reality.

Global advertising is far more complicated than doing a 2 page visual solution spread ad for laundry detergent. I know very clearly that every day, my clients are impacted by decisions being made on the other side of the world. Your clients are impacted, too, no matter what category they’re in.

You’re personally affected, too. But only if you buy toys. Or dog food. Or shrimp. Or tires. Or toothpaste at the dollar store.

Have you heard the news recently? When the U.S. Food & Drug Administration decided to warn Americans against the use of imported Chinese toothpaste because it contained a chemical found in antifreeze, officials in China excused it away saying, “So far we have not received any report of death resulting from using the toothpaste. The U.S. handling of this case is neither scientific nor responsible.”

That’s a great USP to advertise: “Cooldent Fluoride. No one’s died brushing their teeth with it. Yet.”

Sorry to say, you can’t use that line for dog and cat food imported from China, which has caused at least 16 pet deaths in America. Oh, and do you have kids? So far this year, 24 toys have been recalled for safety reasons. That’s one toy a week. They were all made in China.

Or try this one: 450,000 Chinese tires sold here in the U.S are being recalled due to the possibility of tread separation. Of the recall, a spokesman at the Hangzhou Zhongce tire company said, “This is concocted out of thin air.” Someone needs to give the Chinese a good PR lesson.

More and more goods being made in China are becoming health problems. And since more and more goods are being made in China, the problem will get worse and American companies and brands will get affected. Is your agency mostly catering to clients in service categories? Doesn’t matter. Those little custom imprinted tchotchkes you order for your client’s trade shows likely come from China.

This isn’t just a health problem. Or an outsourcing problem. It’s a brand management problem. Nothing kills a brand faster than a few toxic ingredients. Imagine if someone had died in a car crash due to those faulty Chinese tires. There would be a major uproar faster than you can say “Firestone.”

Believe me, I’m not picking on China or India alone. American companies, importers, regulators and retailers are all complicit. There’s nowhere for global brands to hide. Unsafe products, abusive employment practices, and condescending advertising can’t get swept under the imported jute rug.

And thanks to the speed of global business, along with the power of the Internet to instantly communicate, consumers can find out what’s going on for themselves and make purchasing decisions accordingly. Whether its distinct cultural mores, lopsided trade imbalances, or simply language barriers, companies who do business around the world will now get quickly exposed for duplicity when it exists, like Unilever and their brands.

As advertising and marketing professionals, we have an obligation to serve our clients as best we can, and yes, that often means we must focus on the details of small projects or short-lived ad campaigns rather than fixate on whatever impact we’re making on the world as a whole. But like the viral sensation Dove’s “Evolution” video became, every piece of work we do for our clients reflects on us, on them, and the values of our society. We can have a positive effect, and we can have a negative one.

Our industry is all agog over new media and the power of images and messages to reach critical mass in the blink of an eye. As a result, the whole world is now paying attention. Are you?

Cheap Designer Sunglasses ? The Future of Facial Fashion

Perhaps, the most visible fashion statement that a celebrity makes is the pair of sunglasses he or she adorns as a routine. Chances are you’ll never see a celebrity, like Britney Spears, Rihanna, or Beyonce not wearing a designer sunshade, except for some photo ops during film fests, like Cannes. Otherwise, in public life, they always try to hide themselves behind those designer glares. No matter which brand they prefer, the celebrity fixation is enough to provoke you into buying a similar one from the nearest store, even at unimaginably high prices.

In this backdrop, it makes for an interesting reading when someone talks about cheap designer sunglasses, because the word ‘cheap’ before ‘designer sunglasses’ sounds more like an oxymoron. More often than not, you are likely to skip the topic due to several misgivings associated with cheap designer sunglasses. In fact, those who tend to exploit the people by selling fake products that disintegrate within the first few days of their use are the ones responsible for giving a bad name to cheap designer sunglasses. And when you are fixated by the celebrities, buying a cheaper option is the last thing on your mind.

So, what are these cheap designer sunglasses that have generated an intense debate? Actually, these are inspired by designer sunglasses that have the same look and feel as that of the authentic designer sunglasses. Simply put, these are the exact look-a-like of the celebrity sunglasses. The only perceptible difference is the low price tag they carry. When we are talking about the same look and feel, it implies that an onlooker cannot make out if what you are wearing is an original or cheap price sunglass. Moreover, as a wearer, you won’t be able to differentiate the feeling between the two.

Such perfection is attained by imitating all the features, without any exception, of designer sunshades. The raw material used in their manufacture is of top grade available in the market. And the UV protection is similar to that afforded by the original ones.

Going by the immense popularity of these compared to designer sunnies, the day is not far off when the designer houses would be seriously thinking about the outrageous pricing policy they have adopted. At times, when the global economy is spiraling downwards with no signs of improvement, more and more people are looking for cheaper options in terms of fashion accessories. And when the cheap designer sunglasses are offering enticing features like quality, looks, design, safety, and style, the future of facial fashion looks to be in safe hands.