Mar 6, 2008

Further Proof: It is all about cats

It is often said that the Internet is all about cats. One reason why the classic LOLCats - Icanhascheezburger struck such a chord. 

Blog headlines site alltop has a category for Cute that is mostly blogs about animals, often cats, sometimes puppies, being, well, overwhelmingly, distressingly cute. Gems like stuffonmycat.com.

But my mom sent over some YouTube videos today that just sum it all up for me. Please enjoy Simon's Cat by director Simon Tofield.

Let Me In!

Cat Man Do

Tags: Simon Tofield, Simon's Cat, cats

Posted @ 1:03PM in Humour | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)

Dec 4, 2007

Internet pets on strike in support of the WGA

So I am in the middle of writing a fairly serious post about customer service, and then I found this video by the writers of the Colbert Report on YouTube.

Enjoy.

Tags: WGA, writers strike, Colbert Report, pets, cats, dogs

Posted @ 10:12AM in Humour, Media, Politics/Policy | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Jul 5, 2007

Birthday Reading List

So is it Monday or Thursday?

Doesn't matter to me because today is my birthday and I am pretty much goofing off, playing with puppies and clearing out my feed reader of all that good stuff I "saved for later."

Enjoy!

Marianne Richmond in The Blogstorm: If you sell your soul, how much should you get for it? has some terrific insights on blogger relations.

The Common Craft Show, fast becoming a favorite for its simple explanations of complex Web 2.0 topics, explains social networking.

In the category of not to be believed, AdRants tells us of a client demanding that its agency AE ask permission to take a vacation...

Speaking of passive-aggressive, if you haven't checked out passive-aggressive notes.com, do it today for a real gem.

And have a terrific weekend!

Tags: blogger relations, social networking

Posted @ 12:07PM in Advertising, Blogger relations, Humour, Social networks | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Jun 29, 2007

Understatement of the year?

So I got this email today:

Understatement of the year or what?

Have a great weekend!

Tags: iPhone

Posted @ 11:06AM in Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Jun 11, 2007

More amusements

Tips of the hat to Elisa Camahort and Karen Rani for pointing out passiveaggressivenotes.com

And to my friend Sydney for forwarding the link to Women in Art.

Posted @ 2:06PM in Art, Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Jun 10, 2007

Sunday Funnies: All about email

Tip of the hat to Sandy for this one. All it is missing is hot stock tips and deceased Nigerians.

Posted @ 6:06PM in Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 16, 2007

Are we sure it isn't all about cats?

Cartoon by Randall Munroe, xkcd

Posted @ 10:05AM in Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Apr 28, 2007

Yes, it is all about CATS

At New Comm Forum in March, one of the points on keynoter David Weinberger's slides was that the Internet was not all about Cats.

Well, maybe. But it does seem like there are an awful lot of cats online. Some recent data points:

• when you sign up for StumbleUpon, you are offered an interest category for Cats, but not Dogs;
• this gem, LOLCat Builder, via Elisa Camahort:

In case you can't quite tell, the animal emerging from the pet door is one of our scottie puppies. 

So take a break from twitting and go build your own clever cat image. And, don't worry, if you don't have a cat of your own, there are plenty of images to choose from :-)

Because yes, it is all about cats.

Tags: cats, dogs, scottie, scottish terrier

Posted @ 4:04PM in Douglas/Dogs, Humour | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

Apr 5, 2007

Rabbit redux

I know I posted this last year, but hey, it is still funny :-)

Have a great weekend, enjoy the (hopefully) Spring weather and if you are celebrating Easter or Passover, enjoy the time with friends and family.

Posted @ 3:04PM in Humour | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Dec 19, 2006

A little holiday cheer

A little viral cheer from OfficeMax (first seen on Whedonesque)

And don't forget to track Santa on Norad

Tags: viral marketing, christmas

Posted @ 8:12AM in Holiday, Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Sep 22, 2006

Pets, links and updates, September 22, 2006

My friend Yvonne DiVita has started a new blog devoted to pets called Scratchings and Sniffings. The blog is sponsored by Purina. Early days yet, but it seems to have struck a chord with pet lovers if the comments are any indication. Check it out!

Speaking of pets, don't forget to check out the Gourmet Station Get out of the doghouse contest. 

Happy Belated Birthday to Mike Driehorst of Mike's Points.  Mike asked for links for his birthday, which was Monday. Enjoy!

Updates on ongoing sagas

• Farscape still rocks.
• Good Technology still hasn't bothered to reply to me or do something to alleviate the problem. And yes, we had our weekly Verizon user call for support. Do I wish these folks could make the connection that GetGood Strategic Marketing is NOT related to Good Technology? Absolutely. Do I understand how they get from a problem with a download link http://get.good.com to http://www.getgood.com? Absolutely. We are conditioned to add the www. So, to repeat: if you have a mobile phone and are having problems with the "get.good  file," calling GetGood Strategic Marketing will not help. You need to contact Good Technology at www.good.com. Please.
• Web site and blog redesign progresses. More in October.

And to start your weekend off right, do not miss this (first seen on Media Orchard and Just Shelley).

Tags: Scratchings and sniffings, Purina, Gourmet Station, Yvonne DiVita, Mike Driehorst, Good Technology, Susan Getgood, customer service

Posted @ 12:09PM in Blogging, Customers, Humour | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Jun 12, 2006

It's all in the name...

Brangelina really should have consulted somebody on the name for their newborn daughter. Bad enough that they used the masculine form Nouvel, versus the feminine Nouvelle, but the blogosphere has coined a nickname for poor Shiloh-Nouvel Jolie-Pitt --  Shovel.

It would be awful if it weren't so funny, n'est-ce pas?

(from CityRag, via Fashiontribes)

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May 21, 2006

Sunday Funny for my Number One Fan

I've been meaning to blog this for weeks.

William Shatner as  "Rocket Man" (seen on Media Orchard last month).

Until Boston Legal, I thought Shatner was pretty uptight and white, but you can definitely see the signs of an off-kilter mind in this.

Hope you enjoy it.

Tags: William Shatner

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Posted @ 10:05AM in Humour | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

May 4, 2006

No Pants Day

Gotta love it. Tomorrow is No Pants Day.

Hat tip to Benjamin at I Got News For You

Puts it all in perspective, doesn't it?

Tags: no pants day

Posted @ 12:05PM in Humour | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

May 1, 2006

THIS is real satire - Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner

Take note, would-be satirists, THIS is how it's done.

Stephen Colbert's bit at  Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner (tip of the hat to Peter Caputa at PC4media, first place I saw it)

Other links of interest: Editor & Publisher's report on the event; a number of threads on Atrios -start here.

See it on YouTube.

UPDATE 5pm: Two interesting posts by Peter Daou and Chris Durang on The Huffington Report about the major media essentially ignoring the Colbert perfomance, and focusing instead on Bush's appearance at this event. I originally posted this item in awe at Colbert's masterful performance. Funny, disconcerting, uncomfortable, courageous.

But given the way the coverage has played out, I think it will have far more long term impact than perhaps even he realized as he wrote his material.

As Durang points out, before C-SPAN and blogs, many of us (myself included) wouldn't even KNOW about Colbert's performance.  How important are blogs? What HAS happened to mainstream media? For a great essay on this, check out Lap Dogs of the Press by Helen Thomas in the March 27 06 issue of The Nation. Not surprising that she had a supporting role in the Colbert video.

I'll be coming back to this.

Tags: Stephen Colbert, White House Correspondent's Dinner

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Posted @ 10:05AM in Humour, Media, Politics/Policy | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Apr 15, 2006

Bunnies

Happy Easter everyone.

Image courtesy of Alex. Thanks for brightening my day.

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Posted @ 6:04AM in Holiday, Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Apr 14, 2006

Explaining evolution to a six-year old

Explaining evolution to a six-year old is not the smartest thing I ever tried to do, but so you have it. I was reading this post at PR-Squared which had this picture:

My son, home from kindergarten on Good Friday, is looking over my shoulder and chuckling at the monkey who turns into a man at a computer. Fool that I am, I tried to explain.

He listened carefully and then asked: "Mom, did you used to be a monkey?"

Uncle.

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Posted @ 11:04AM in Blogging, Douglas/Dogs, Humour | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Apr 12, 2006

Cleaning out my Bloglines Closet

I read a lot of feeds, on a variety of subjects, and take advantage of bloglines "keep new" to save things to look at/blog later. When I'm busy, the "blog closet" gets pretty full, and quite often, many of the things I've saved for later are over and done with.

But some things are timeless.

• Like this 1975 live interview with members of Monty Python. (via Boing Boing) Check out the hair!
• And this short historical analysis: The Founders Never Imagined a Bush Administration (via Talking Points Memo)

Others worthwhile.

• The wonderful Yvonne DeVita is going to jail... for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. You can help her make her bail, or check out her blog  for some other suggestions on how you can help.

And of course, some things, you just know I am going to comment on.

Like character blogs.  At Beyond Madison Avenue today, Mack Collier writes that character blogs would be a good solution to carry on cancelled TV shows. You betcha. Just take a look at the sheer volume of fan fiction on the Internet.  I would still pay for a Whedon-produced character blog featuring the characters from the Buffy/Angel-verses.

Great advice from the Copyblogger. Writing about this week's NY Times article "This Boring Headline Is Written For Google," which discussed the ramifactions of search engine optimization on the news business, he reminds us: "Write for people, people." Amen. We don't need fancy footwork (or cute headlines) as much as we need clear, concise writing. A little time spent there can save a boatload of hassle, not to mention cost.

Bonus links

Two from Neville Hobson: a European business blogging survey and some info on search behavior

Tags: monty python, character blog, seo, search engine optimization, MDA

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Posted @ 8:04AM in Blogging, Charity, Fake/Fictional Blogs, Humour, Media, Politics/Policy | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Apr 7, 2006

Nobody and "just me"

I've been beyond busy this week with my client Bid4Assets' special auction next week, so this is the first time I've had to say for the record, I am more than happy to proclaim myself  a nobody. As Ike Pigott said, the company is stellar.

Once again (as I often am,  it's amazing how many situations lend themselves to this),  I am reminded of Alice's Restaurant (Arlo Guthrie):

"You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends, they may think it's a movement."

And to some degree, that IS what blogging is. It is a movement, and it makes all of us nobodies, somebodies. I am both proud and humbled to be part of it.

Speaking of nobodies who are really somebodies, somebody I'm pleased to have gotten to know better in the past week is Robert French from the  University of Auburn. Robert invited Andrea Weckerle, Kami Huyse and me to speak with two of his classes earlier this week. Conversation ranged from the unfortunate PR character blogs to what it is like being a professional businesswoman to the issues/ills of the PR business to career planning.

 It was absolutely terrific to speak with the students. And we were all honored when Robert asked us to become contributors to Marcom Blog, a blog in which PR and MarCom professionals mentor his students. Robert, your students may have had momentary angst when you assigned their final projects, but I am sure they know how lucky they are to have you as a professor.

On a semi-serious note, to end this post:

When I phone my mum, I often self-identify as "just me." The other day, she called me on it and told me that "just me" was a pretty important person. Now, she's my mum and she's supposed to say things like that. But.... all joking about nobodies and somebodies and fake characters with delusions of grandeur (if you follow this blog you know who I mean), one of the things that I like most about blogging is that even a nobody is somebody to someone. All you need is one reader and you can make a difference.

Tags: nobody, blogging

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Posted @ 8:04PM in Blogging, Humour, Marketing, PR | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Mar 31, 2006

Excellent Advice for April 1

TDavid has some excellent advice  for April Fool's Day -- don't take things too seriously over the weekend.

I think I may just leave the computer off and enjoy the nice spring weather. And if it rains, I'll take my kid to see the new Ice Age movie that he's only told me about four times this morning alone.

Enjoy your weekend. See you Monday.

Tags: April Fool's Day

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Posted @ 9:03AM in Blogging, Holiday, Humour | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Mar 10, 2006

The Week in Review: March 6-10

A new (and very interesting) client has just come on board,  I had deadlines for some other projects, and I had to take a quick trip mid-week. Time has been tight, so blogging has been light.

So this post is going to be the week in review --  comments on the things I probably would have blogged in more depth had I more time.

Of course, the top PR blogging news of the week was the Edelman-Wal-Mart blogger relations story, starting with the New York Times article on March 7th, and continuing on with commentary from just about every PR/Marketing blogger on the planet. Except me of course. I was at a client :-) Check out the great round-ups of the commentary written by  Constantin Basturea and Tom Murphy. And don't miss Richard Edelman's post. For more coverage, here are the google and technorati searches on "Edelman Wal-Mart"

My .02 -- this really does look like a simple effort at blogger relations, perhaps not the best execution, but not intentionally sinister.  In fact, I think Wal-Mart would be foolish to not engage in grassroots blogger relations, given how well organized its critics in the blogosphere are.

Here's my take-away from this tempest in a teapot:

First, we have to be fair in our criticisms. Part (but not all) of the outrage about the Wal-Mart outreach was outrage about Wal-Mart in general. You have to put both your friends and your enemies to the same test. If something would be okay if your buddy did it, but it is bad if the evil empire does it,  you are not being fair. This is not dis-similar from what happened in the initial outrage more than a year ago about character blogs. GourmetStation and others were being lambasted for having characters as the blog authors. I pointed out a certain inconsistency using the example of Spencer F. Katt, the PC Week/eWeek mascot for 20-plus years who has both a column and yes, a blog. Somehow, a character everybody knew and liked was okay. It was only the new ones that were bad blogging practice :-)  Wrong. Be consistent in BOTH your flames and your kudos.

Second, as PR practitioners start reaching out to blogs... as they should, and as most of us have preached, dare I say ad nauseaum, we have to expect mistakes. Given the ongoing commentary on PR blogs about the general quality of much PR practice, we shouldn't be surprised if some PR agency efforts at blogger relations are better than others. I have no particular opinion about Edelman's blogger outreach program. Time will tell whether it was good, bad or something in between. I am certain however, that no blogger outreach program will be (or should be) successful without complete transparency. You MUST be completely honest about your role and your vested interests. And not surprised if your entire campaign is published on a blog somewhere.

Again, a comparison. When I started to get a great deal of media exposure as spokesperson for Cyber Patrol in the late 90s, I was very careful to make sure that my public statements passed the ultimate test: would I be embarassed if this were on the front page of the NY Times? Different times, same general principal. Ain't no such thing as "off the record."

Moving on, conferences. Without a doubt, the model of conferences where the panel is presumed to be the "experts" and the audience the "students" is outmoded. In tech and in marketing, the two arenas where I have spent most of my professional career, the audience often knows as much, or more, than the panelists. I've written about this here a bit, and it was one of the inspirations for the Room of Your Own proposal for Business Blogging currently under consideration for BlogHer 06. Our idea is that the panelists are there to kick off the discussion, but in fact the entire audience is the panel, and an active part in building our takeaway "best practices" for business bloggers.

This week,  some smart bloggers asked some great questions about the "conference issue:"

• Kent Newsome, This is not the summer camp I remember
• Christopher Carfi, On The Conference Thing: Etech, SXSW, Unconferences and Monocultures

And if you haven't figured it out yet, Elisa Camahort brings it home: BlogHer is the conference that takes a truly different approach. See you there in July.

In the category of smart business advice:

• PR Squared has a series of three posts of "bad advice" about customer references which of course are excellent advice for PR and MarCom pros. Here they are:  one, two, three
• Converstations gives some great advice on how to best write your posts in A Blog Posting Mantra.
• And Jill Konrath has some great advice on thinking like your customer.

In the news:

• Boing Boing continues its campaign against Smart Filter
• Google settles a click fraud case. I remember asking an SEO rep about click fraud about a year ago. "Not a big problem," she said. Yeah right.

And finally, if you stuck this post out this long, you deserve some fun. Don't miss this clip on trendspotting from the Daily Show. Thanks to Small Business Trends for the link.

Tags: Edelman, Wal-Mart, PR, Public Relations, blogger relations, BlogHer, conferences

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Posted @ 8:03AM in Blogging, BlogHer, BlogHer06, Fake/Fictional Blogs, Humour, Marketing, PR | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Feb 26, 2006

Roadmaps This and That

Fred Wilson: New York Magazine Got It Wrong and Tristan Louis Got It Right

InfoThought: Higher Jumpers Is Not The Same As Lower Barriers, or A-list Change != Rebuttal. While I don't always agree with everything Seth Finkelstein says, I do think he has a point here. He concludes:

"Having more competitors who can jump over higher barriers is not the same as barriers being low for everyone."

Neville Hobson, Sharing your favourites

Tris Hussey, Technorati adds favourites ... the good, the cool, and the darkside

Posted @ 9:02PM in Blogging, Humour, Marketing, PR | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Nov 6, 2005

Today's Blogthing

From Blogthings: What does your birthdate mean

Your Birthdate: July 5

You have many talents, and you are great at sharing those talents with others. Most people would be jealous of your clever intellect, but you're just too likeable to elicit jealousy. Progressive and original, you're usually thinking up cutting edge ideas. Quick witted and fast thinking, you have difficulty finding new challenges. Your strength: Your superhuman brainpower Your weakness: Your susceptibility to boredom Your power color: Tangerine Your power symbol: Ace Your power month: May

Posted @ 8:11AM in Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Jul 7, 2005

Roadmaps Round-up: decision making, pitching bloggers and Gartner's Magic Quadrant.

Finishing up with my blogroll for this week:

From Andrew Lark, Tomcruiseisnuts.com I needed something light after the news of the bombings in London, and this fit the bill.

Another great post from Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users - You're emotional. Deal with it. She covers the surprising news (VBG) that decisions are most often based on emotions, not logic, regardless of how we choose to justify the decisions. Of course this won't be a surprise to marketing folks and most women I know, but news like this just might rock the world of a few tech CEOs.

Tom Murphy has an excellent post that lists posts from PR bloggers on the right (and wrong) ways to pitch bloggers. The post that triggered his, from Anil Dash, on how not to pitch a blogger, closed with an admonition about my favorite peeve: PDFs. About four weeks ago, I ripped into someone (privately) who sent me a pitch about a book with at least 3 PDF attachments plus a huge graphic in the HTML email.

Get a simple website, people, post your information there, and include the links in your emails. If you don't have the technical ability to do this, find someone who does, like a college student or fourth grader. The people getting your pitch -- whatever it is -- DO NOT want their email bogged down with tons of attachments that they DIDN'T ASK FOR!!!!! It doesn't matter whether they are on dial up, broadband, corporate network or a blackberry. They don't want 'em.

BONUS RESOURCE FOR US FOLKS: If you don't have your own child to help you with this tech stuff, techstudents.net can help you find a college student to do this work for you.

Also from Tom Murphy, I learned about changes Gartner is making to the infamous Magic Quadrant and a new blog (new to me that is): Analyst Equity.

We'll have to see how it plays out, but I don't really see how these "changes" are going to make the whole Magic Quadrant process any less capricious. It still sounds like a "black box" where the analyst doing the Quadrant will decide the key elements based on his or her own opinions and biases, and the companies involved will have a devil of a time figuring it all out.

Posted @ 11:07AM in Blogging, Humour, Marketing, Mathom Room, PR | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Jun 30, 2005

Summer Fun

You Are Coffee Ice Cream

Energetic and lively, you are always on the go. You're doing a million things at once and doing them well. You tend to motivate others and raise spirits. You are most compatible with chocolate ice cream.

Posted @ 11:06AM in Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Jun 13, 2005

A word from Tom Lehrer

"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!" and

"I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up."

If you've never heard anything by Tom Lehrer, I urge you to start today.

Posted @ 1:06PM in Humour | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

May 5, 2005

The "What is" Meme

Posted @ 9:05AM in Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Mar 23, 2005

Roadmaps Round-up

Later this week I will have a post about calculating lead ratings, requested by a reader in Korea. I do love the Internet, and the way it lets you virtually meet people from all over the world.

It is a fairly involved topic though, so I probably won't get to it until the end of the week.

In the meantime, I have a few links that I have been saving up to write about, and just won't get the time before they are stale. So here they are in list form:

Courtesy Topaz Partners, a link to an article in CMO magazine about marketers embracing the blog form.

A post from Working Smart about Corporate Blogging Rules. Commentary by NevOn on same. I will come back to this topic I am sure :-)

From AdRants (and others), Forbes article on the top corporate hate sites

From CorporatePR blog (Elizabeth Albrycht): 10 ideas for corporate RSS feeds

UPDATE: from Media Guerilla, a post about Feedster's public blog policy.

Posted @ 12:03PM in Blogging, Humour, Marketing, Web Marketing | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Mar 19, 2005

Saturday Marketing Funny

From John Wagner: Marketing agency spoof website -- You just have to check it out.  BL Ochman also commented on it here.

Posted @ 8:03AM in Humour, Marketing, PR | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Mar 2, 2005

Mid-Week Link Soup

Guaranteed to be tasty!

From BL Ochman: How to Set a Corporate Blogging Policy  Links to great article from down-under about the corporate blogging phenomenon. Her what’s next blog is a great source of information about corporate blogging.

From Dan Gillmor, and also Steve Rubel, news of the Citizen Journalist Starter Pack. Posted in other places as well I am sure. I have nothing new to add to what already has been said, other than it is really funny, and I wanted my most loyal reader (my mom) to see it!

I don’t tend to comment too much on tech issues, although I do follow them. For example, the recent “discussions” about the Google toolbar. Others who focus on the search space have been far more articulate than I could ever hope to be. Here's the exception: you have to check out the Dougal Evil Toolbar, which I found on Threadwatch.

For non-techies, Dougal is such a crystal clear way of showing just how evil manipulating search results could be….

If you want to follow the search engine wars, you should check out Threadwatch.

Posted @ 5:03PM in Blogging, Humour, Mathom Room, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Feb 20, 2005

From dogs to cats...

It has been said that a significant number of blogs are related to or have pictures of cats. Up til now, this blog has avoided that trend, going more "to the dogs" recently, but I saw this on Buzz Marketing with Blogs and just had to post it. Go to Susannah Gardner's post first, which links to this website and video.

Meow!

Posted @ 3:02PM in Douglas/Dogs, Humour, Mathom Room | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Feb 7, 2005

Super Bowl Ads

Okay, everyone's talking about the Super Bowl ads, so here's my two cents. And literally just two cents. Got lots of other things to do.

Liked Anheuser Busch's Veteran's ad and the FedEx ad with Burt Reynolds and the bear. Kind of liked the Brad Pitt Heineken ad (okay okay, so Brad Pitt is gorgeous, and maybe that's why. So sue me. Guess somebody somewhere knows that women watch the Super Bowl too. Or at least the ads.)

The GoDaddy ad was pathetically stupid, and why did they name a DOMAIN REGISTRY COMPANY GoDaddy? One might wonder if it was so they could have a scantily clad woman in their advertisements jiggling her breasts and wiggling her butt saying "Go Daddy Go Daddy" YUCK YUCK YUCK. I can't even comprehend the level of absolute yuck.

Did not see the McDonald's ad about the Abe Lincoln french fry with the link to the fake blog. Stupid stupid stupid.

That's it. The game was better than the ads. I miss the frogs.

Update: Here's the link to ifilm where you can see all the Super Bowl ads.

Posted @ 9:02PM in Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Feb 2, 2005

The Hard Life of an Action Figure in Iraq

Thanks, Jeff Nolan for this summary post of the coverage of the most recent Iraq Atrocity, the sad kidnapping of action figure Cody. I needed a little lift, and your post was just the ticket.

Posted @ 10:02PM in Humour | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

EXACTLY!!! Chris Locke's post: bloggers as migrant knowledge workers

Chris Locke has it EXACTLY RIGHT in his post over at Chief Blogging Officer: bloggers as migrant knowledge workers You have to read the whole post, written in Locke's unique (and fun) style, but here's the bit that got my attention:

Instead, here's an idea! What if companies first: paid attention to who's writing about what, and what for, and how well; and second, picked someone who seemed to be talking to people who overlapped with some part of that company's market?

Take an example. We can all laugh at cat sites. Ha, ha-ha. We are so above that. But look, some people really are that into cats. And at least one of these cat fanatics must write cogently enough to draw an audience of less articulate but no less enthusiastic cat fanciers. Right? Are you tracking? I know this is pretty complex stuff.

So wouldn't it make sense for Purina Cat Chow or IAMS or one of those to underwrite such a skilled cat-o-blogger? Yes, it would. And would this person then turn into a shill for Purina or IAMS? Not if the corporate braincase had retained sufficient neural capacity to understand that such a move would alienate the very audience it wanted to impress with how blog-savvy it had become.

So what would our cat blogger change after becoming the beneficiary of such underwriting? Here's what: NOTHING. No, she would continue just as before to chronicle the ineffable cuteness of kitties and the insufferable yet endearing aloofness of cats. And there in the upper left corner, say, of this fabulously catty blog's pages it would say something like "Underwritten by Purina -- Your Pet, Our Passion™" or somesuch.

EXACTLY!! And I'll take it a step further. I think that under the right circumstances, a company can create an authentic blog at the intersection of its and its customers' interests by developing the blog with its customers, and calling on its committed and articulate customers to be the blog's writers.

What are the right circumstances? The company has to be willing to work with its happy customers to develop the blog's "Editorial Mission" as it were and then let 'er rip. That doesn't mean that the company can't also participate as a writer or respond to comments. But it DOES mean that the writers can write whatever they want on the topic, no editing by the company, no backdoor lobbying to get a writer to change his mind if something is slightly negative about the company or a product. Everything in the light of day. Takes a strong stomach to commit to this, but the companies who do this right are going to kick ass.

Posted @ 12:02PM in Blogging, Humour, Marketing, Web Marketing, Weblogs | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

Jan 22, 2005

People everywhere just wanna be free

Thank you Tim Stahmer over at Assorted Stuff for posting this item linking to a Washington Post article that pointed out a thematic resemblance between W's inauguration speech and a 60s song from The Rascals. Note: when you follow the link in Tim's Post to the original article, you need to be a registered user of Wa Post (free).

UPDATE: 6/3/07 Comments and trackbacks closed due to spam.

Posted @ 5:01PM in Humour, Mathom Room | Comments (0)