I'm I to take it that I'm supposed to believe this notion that Scooter Libby released Judith Miller from her confidentiality agreement weeks ago and that she was hanging out in jail for no reason?
I call bullshit.
I missed most of the morning of the show, as I scrambled to get a proposal out the door. I did make it to the show by 3:00, though.
I spent some time at Henry Copeland's panel on consumer-generated content. I liked this panel a lot, as it featured a number of executives who had used blogs and podcasts to help market products and services. Notice I said "market" as opposed to "advertise." Advertising alone isn't the answer, and some of the folks on the panel were talking a bit about how people in their organization participated in distributed conversations, instead of simply advertising on blogs and in podcasts and hoping for the best. The whole panel was further affirmation (for me) that corporate America needs to re-align itself to deal with these conversations and become meaningful participants. I can't think of too many marketers that are set up to do this.
During Henry's panel, I was thinking quite a bit about the last OMMA show and how Bob Garfield talked about how the Internet isn't ready for prime time. One of his biggest supporting arguments for this notion of the Internet not being ready for the influx of dollars that will pour into it over the next several years was that there's not enough quality content.
Not enough quality content? I couldn't reconcile that with the conversation we were having at OMMA East about the explosion of consumer-generated content. We're lacking content in one sense, but in the next breath, we're talking about a content explosion? That makes no sense to me.
Later on, during the closing "Spin Board" panel, I would mention this as a huge red flag. I recapped Garfield's earlier speech and noted that he did say we didn't have the content to get the job done. Then I talked a bit about consumer-generated content and advanced the notion of consumer-generated content delivering the content we need. I think there's something here.
But to get there, we need tools, processes and systems. Recently, a client asked me to look into whether blogs could deliver on a niche interest - skiing. Unlike the last campaign we did that had blogs as a component, I had no personal knowledge whatsoever of any potential venues. So what to do?
Of course I did the usual searches on Blogdigger, Technorati, IceRocket and Google's Blog Search. I couldn't find any blogs that consistently covered skiing on a regular basis. So I did the next best thing - I sent e-mails out to Henry Copeland, Jason Calacanis, Nick Denton, my rep at Burst! and the rest of the folks I know who sell ads on blogs.
Now, why don't we have a tool for media planners that would handle all this? Planners cannot be expected to know every blog within every content category, so why isn't there a tool that would allow one to book ads on blogs automatically and find the blogs they'd like to sponsor based on keyword searches?
Think about it. I could log in to an interface, search for "skiing," "snowboarding" and any other search terms that make sense. A list of blogs would come up on a page, along with rates and availability for sponsorship. I could dive into the content of these blogs and use the interface to find out how long they've been covering skiing, how often they post about it, whether they have categories dedicated to skiing, etc. And if I wanted to sponsor, I could simply pick my dates from a list of avails, check rates, and book the whole thing on my corporate Amex. As the flight dates drew nearer, I could upload ad tags through the interface and have them automatically come up on the blogs I've selected
So where is this tool? How come the blog networks of the world have no such self-service tool? How much time could they save by not having to fill out proposals? How much time could the planner save by doing this all on their own schedule and getting real-time feedback? How big would this be for advertisers who DO want to get involved in consumer-generated content and distributed conversations?
Let's do it.
Anybody ever hear anything like this?
Last night at the OMMA All-Stars reception, I looked down at my Treo and found that it had died. No signal, no flashing lights - the Palm screen wouldn't even turn on. Another attendee noticed that I was experiencing some weirdness with my Treo and came over to me. He said that HIS Treo had just completely died as well five minutes prior.
Very strange. I'm going to charge this thing up again, but I fear it's not a lack of juice that's causing the problem. I didn't get any low battery warnings last night.
Perhaps an errant electromagnetic pulse?
Hmmm... Maybe the collective conscience of the nation is beginning to wake the hell up.
Yesterday's OMMA East show went quite well. I was there for most of the day, first moderating a panel on Behavioral Marketing in the morning and then introducing myself around to new potential vendors and clients.
I did not get a chance to get over to MIXX, unfortunately. The big talk of the show is how OMMA, MIXX and the iMedia Brand Summit are all head to head this year. I'm hearing a lot of bellyaching about people having to shuttle from one show to the other.
I'm about to head over to the Marriott Marquis again. Later in the day, me and the other Spinners have a panel that will close the show. Many folks are looking at this one as the panel "most likely to involve chair-throwing." Dave Smith will be moderating and he's the perfect guy to stand in the middle of five strong personalities to make sure we answer tough and interesting questions.
More on OMMA later.
I wasn't feeling terribly well on Saturday, so I spent most of the day resting.
On Sunday, however, I gave Craig and Dennis a hand laying Belgian block around Dennis' driveway. Craig mixed concrete while I took the mix in the bucket of Dennis' skid steer to the areas where we needed it and shoveled it into the shallow trench around the driveway. Dennis came by with a trowel and a block hammer and set the stones.
This three-man team knocked out the driveway project in half a day, even though we needed to go to the Home Depot for about two dozen additional blocks and some cement.
Most of the rest of the day was spent brainstorming additional questions to ask my panelists for tomorrow's Behavioral Insider panel.
One of the quickest ways to getting on my bad side is engaging in bullying behavior. There are few things on this Earth that get me as worked up as having to deal with someone who is a bully.
But one of those few things is people who refuse to stand up for themselves when they are bullied. If you're one of those people who doesn't take a stand out of fear, then to my mind, you deserve to continue to be victimized by those who pick on the weak.
It is the pathetic coward who simply rolls over and plays the victim. There's no end to that cycle. Resign yourself to being picked on and you will always be picked on, not only because others will directly observe weakness in you, but also because you'll be projecting it in the form of low self-esteem.
And that's about all I've got to say about that.
I finally figured out what it is that turns me off about those yellow magnetic decals people put on their cars that say "I Support The Troops."
Actually, there are a number of reasons I dislike these things:
1) How, exactly, do most of these decal-bearers support the troops? I'm sure that a small minority send care packages to soldiers, write letters to their elected representatives to help secure needed equipment for the troops, maybe give to the USO, etc. But I think it's safe to say that, for the majority of decal-bearers, the extent of their support is limited to spending $2 at a 7-Eleven for the decal and keeping the troops in their thoughts. I'm not saying that's completely worthless, but if one cared more about the troops than about informing the people cruising the nation's highways that one does indeed support them, perhaps the $2 would be better spent on a charity or on something other than token support.
2) "I Support The Troops" is little more than an answer to a question that nobody has asked. Who could object to supporting the troops? Nobody. It's completely politically correct. But let's face it, people don't want to know your stance on whether or not you support the troops. If they're interested in your opinion at all, they want to know whether you support the war or not. And regardless of your stance on the war, everyone can get behind supporting the troops.
It's like somebody asking you whether you're pro-choice or anti-abortion and you respond, "I love babies." Well, sure. Everybody loves babies. But that doesn't answer the question and it doesn't require defending a tough position or even committing to one side of the debate or the other. And it's only tangentially related to the real issue at hand.
3) They're not even permanent, for Chrissakes. Putting a bumper sticker on your car at least conveys some sense of permanence. (Sure, you can get bumper stickers off with a razor blade and some "Goo Gone," but it's a pain in the ass.) But a MAGNETIC DECAL? It's almost like those decals say, "I support the troops, but not enough to potentially risk my car's paint job."
4) Herd mentality. See #2. Displaying "I Support The Troops" on a decal is morally equivalent to a sticker that says "I Love Cocoa Puffs." It doesn't require you to think, it doesn't require you to take an unpopular position and hey - everyone else is doing it. Geez, have some stones and at least put your opinion on the war out there. Otherwise, keep the lame attempts at taking a political position to yourself. Nobody likes an unthinking herd.
Now that I've got a vehicle that's appropriate to stick stuff to, I'm trying to think what bumper stickers I'd like to put on my rear window. My big thing is that I don't want to put things on there that are going to get my truck keyed or make cops want to pull me over.
I tried making a Flying Spaghetti Monster hitch cover weekend before last, but the plastic hitch cover blank I have seems to be made out of some space-age plastic that hot glue won't stick to, so the printout of the FSM didn't stick to it. It's a shame, too, because it looked really nice.
Submit your bumper sticker ideas in comments.
Craig was kind enough to lend me his Bobcat for the weekend. So I spent most of Saturday and Sunday prowling the lawn in this 10,000-lb. contraption, at first getting used to the controls and practicing digging/leveling, but later making adjustments to the grade of our property, getting rid of lawn features I didn't like and spreading topsoil.
The side yard where we have our new extension had a rather aggressive slope to it, and it was washing out from all the rain. No longer. It's now quite level. And that stupid planter in the front yard with the bushes surrounding the bird bath? Gone. I used the 4-in-1 bucket on the Bobcat to pluck out all the bushes and put them in the street, then I leveled it off and spread some topsoil on top of it.
I also ripped out everything in the old vegetable garden out back. It no longer gets enough sun to be garden again, but it definitely has possibilities. I was thinking of surprising Rob by turning it into a putting green, but we'll see how much time I have in the coming weeks.
Link.
Okay, I'll explain this so that everybody can understand it...
Gillette is going to add another blade every year or so until PEOPLE STOP BUYING THIS CRAP. So go buy a vintage brass razor and get your blades at the hardware store like a real man. That'll teach these idiots that no matter how many blades and slime strips one adds to one's flagship razor, it's all just crummy marketing and we don't have to buy into this shit.
BTW, here's an article from The Onion completely satirizing this concept. The people at Gillette are laughing at you while they make plans for introducing the first 6-bladed razor.
Someone please adopt my sister's dog, Madison.
We are looking for a new home for Madison because my sister will be having her baby in November and we are worried that the dog might not get along with the baby, considering its need for attention.
Madison is a medium-sized, black dog with a white spot on her chest. I have no idea what kind of a mutt she is, but she looks like she has some Labrador in her. She is trained, however sometimes she will deliberately make a mess if she isn't getting enough attention, which is happening with increasing frequency lately since everyone in the family is busy preparing for baby's arrival.
If you are interested in adopting Madison, please leave me your e-mail address in comments, or e-mail me at tom@hespos.com. I will bring the dog to you, provided you live within the NY/NJ/CT area. We'll also provide her crate, leash, collars, and all that stuff.
Unfortunately, if we cannot find a home for Madison soon, we will be forced to give her to a local shelter, as we can't risk her hurting the baby.
This makes my eyes burn.
At least it wasn't offensive like the McDonald's I-Am-Asian site, but it's awful. Just awful.
Sorry I've been out of action recently. Mostly, it's because we're busy as hell here at the office. The last few weeks have been crazy, with at least three pitches going on at any given time. The end of this week and the beginning of next week are critical times for us, pitch-wise, so things might continue to be light here for a bit.
I also haven't been blogging because I've been absolutely dumbfounded. Bush actually admitted to a mistake this week. And John Roberts actually said something I agreed with during his confirmation hearings (The "umpire analogy").
Hell didn't freeze over, the earth wasn't knocked off its axis, the dead didn't rise from the grave. But I'm a little weirded out.
So "Stop Playing the Blame Game" is now apparently an official Republican talking point. After all, we wouldn't want anyone to become distracted from the tasks at hand by a game of Pass The Buck, would we? How ironic that this comes from the party that manufactured at least two major scandals during the Clinton administration, aimed directly at the President, both of which distracted him from major initiatives underway at the time.
Here's my even bigger problem with this. The Blame Game seems to be the only thing lighting a fire under the asses of the people who need to get their butts in gear. Remember that the storm had already started to batter the Gulf Coast and New Orleans well before the first grumblings about lack of resources, structure and order started up. Only when certain lazy assheads started to have the attention of the nation focused on their incompetence did resources start flowing.
Where personal responsibility fails, fear may succeed. (Fear of losing one's job, fear of becoming an object of national ridicule, etc.) That's why I don't think it's distracting for people to be looking around for the folks who screwed up here. In fact, it's helpful, even as we struggle to pump the water out of New Orleans and start to undertake the gruesome and trying tasks ahead.
So if you had to craft a progressive talking point to counter "Stop playing the blame game," it might be along the lines of "Well, the blame game seems to be the only thing motivating people to get things done."
I've started labeling newsletters (even ones supposedly "relevant" to my industry) that I've been force-subscribed to as spam within Cloudmark's SpamNet. Especially if the newsletter publisher absolutely refuses to unsubscribe me.
I wish more people would use P2P solutions for keeping spam out of their inboxes. One of the biggest differences between P2P solutions and others is that it democratizes the process of determining whether or not a sender is a spammer. I think that makes the penalties for force-subscribing people to newsletters much more strict - if enough people decide that the newsletter publisher isn't playing by the rules, the newsletter isn't received by anyone who subscribes to the P2P tool. And getting unblocked isn't as simple as calling some ISP or blacklist provider and getting whitelisted again - it will be re-building reputation to the point at which a majority of P2P users whitelist a publisher.
According to the Beckett price guide people, nobody's paying anything for baseball cards made after 1980. That is, unless they're in a condition called "Gem Mint" which is unattainable by a piece of cardboard that has been lying around for decades.
Dad, I know you're reading. Sadly, our gamble did not pay off. And it doesn't pay to continue to store these things, since they take up most of a 10x10 storage space. If there are any specific cards or sets you want, let me know. Otherwise it's all going up on eBay. Anything that doesn't sell on eBay will be donated. Anything that can't be donated will be burned with the autumn leaves.
Spent most of the weekend camping with the gang at Sears-Bellows. The weather was quite nice all weeekend, and we really lucked out from that perspective. Sunday was beach day and we took a couple vehicles to Shinnecock and hung out on the beach all day. I took my truck down on the beach and went swimming most of the day.
I'm closing the office so that my overworked staff can have an extra day for the weekend. Odds are I'll be taking conference calls from my house tomorrow morning. But nobody better call tomorrow morning, wanting a campaign up by the afternoon (which tends to happen right before Labor Day. Trust me.)