blending the mix

These are my links for January 8th:

• minha selecao - My selection: Pimp my Keyboard - Tracking the conversion of a standard IBM keyboard to an olde-worlde typewriter
• Twittertale - You kiss your momma with that mouth? - Watch the potty-mouthed kids on Twitter
• Politweets - When Twitter gets political - Using the Twitter API to track political commentary on Twitter
• Pluck: Leaders in Social Media - Aggregation of social media content
• Groups for Twitter; or A Proposal for Twitter Tag Channels | FactoryCity - Chris Messina - along the same lines. Grouping Twitter feeds
• How I created a TwitterGroup for Gnomedex « kosso’s braingarden - creating twitter groups using the API - way cool.
• Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike - New York Times - Interesting piece about how to stop being fogged by convention to continue being creative
• 50 Ways To Improve Your Life in 2008 - US News and World Report (usnews.com) - 50 ways to improve your life this year.
• Communication Overtones: Advertising in Disguise: Cough up a Few Million and Call It Social Media - Advertiising as Social Media - what a load of pants!
• Yahoo mounts fightback against Google | Technology | Guardian Unlimited - Yahoo to take lead on mobile for 2008
• Search Wikia - search - a Wikia wiki - wiki-powered search from the creator of wikipiedia

These are my links for January 7th:

• TechCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz … and Cash -
• The Next Web - Now! - the next web - a blog from the orgainsers
• Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption and How You Can Respond - ReadWriteWeb - how to overcome objections to social media marketing
• Content Labels, explained in plain English - Paul Walsh explaining what could be THE next big thing
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Gates hails age of digital senses -
• Gates bids farewell to the computing industry | Technology | Guardian Unlimited - Bill Gates’ final words as boss of Microsoft.
• Disruptive Conversations: The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007… (aka Why and How I use Twitter) - How to use Twitter
• Terraminds twitter search - a twitter people and subject search engine

These are my links for December 6th through January 6th:

• Dear Head, meet Heart…and vice versa | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon - how treating customers with you heart benefits the head too. Class stuff again from Tara.
• Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Podcast: marketing, bananas and more - podcast with Hugh MacLeod about Social Objects
• Andrew Olmsted: Final Post - the last words of a dead US soldier in Iraq posted by a colleague. Moving and powerful.
• Mogulus » Channel » podtech_ces_live - scoble, le meur and gang on the Microsoft CES bus
• Postalicious - a cool auto-posting bookmark tool -
• Sainsburys community -

this is my imagini profile badge ————->

I stumbled across Imagini today, which, with 4.2M + members is a surprise I haven’t already stumbled accross it!

With so much content (and inevitably, text) being created in social networks, imagini takes a refreshingly different approach.

By answering lifestyle questions with your choice of image form a selection of 15 per question, Imagini builds up a profile of the type of person you are - and it works!

Delving deeper into the "profiling", you are able to create a wish list "My dream holiday is here…, I wish I could drive…" etc.

Imagini then locates web-based resources that either show me the most stunning places I might stay on holiday or a track-day where I can drive my dream car.

With a facebook applicatin on the way, Imagini is an ad-man and marketeer’s dream. Product placement, paid-for links to exterior product sites…"tomorrow Rodders we’ll all be millionaires".

Try it, you’ll love it.

Tags: imagini, facebook, social networking, myspace

In a stark statement of "we haven’t got a bloody clue what it means yet but we desperately want to sound like we do…until we do" Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy’s executive creative director insults all our intelligence with a thinly veiled piece of 1990’s reminiscent PR crap stating in a terrible piece of marketing journalism:

"Like any community, you have to earn your place within it."

No, really…I am mean REALLY is that what we need to do?

It gets better:

"Brands must demonstrate their value, rather than preach to the audience."

Revolutionary. Truly revolutionary thinking.

Then again, this coming from a company promoting "Global 360 Degree Brand Stewardship®" - in other words, going round in circles…

To be fair to Rory (who I do not know) precisionmarketing’s appallingly conceived, clearly sponsored article is a sham and even originates as something to do with Equifax and how social networks are rife for ID thieves. Did Rory really know what drivel he was being part of?

Do these people really think this type of journalism still washes?

What utter, pathetic journalism. Is this really as good as modern marketing journalism get?

Precision Marketing - be aware that better print magazines are going out of business and they infinitely more on the ball than you.

As the incomparable Hugh MalLeod puts it:

"Technology changes - humans don’t"

Tags: ogilvy, precisionmarketing, facebook, equifax, marketing, journalism, pr, gapingvoid, hugh

I AM ANGRY!

Rachel at behindthebuzz has a great story from yesbutnoybutyes about an approach Scaramouch received by the agency representing Anheuser-Busch (the Budweiser people).

To cut a long story short, they made a lame movie that they wanted to take viral. They "scoured" 1500 blogs on the net (although Technorati currently track 73 million blogs so how much scouring they did is a bit of a mystery!) and decided to select yesbutnobutyes as one of the lucky few.

The agency needed only 150 people to get the ball rolling. Viral? eh? Surely the whole objective behind viral is to put something out there and let it grow freely. If you have scoured 1500 blogs, why not send something to all of them? Why should there be a limit to how many people get seeded? Does that mean they have a limit on how many people they want to see the movie too?!

What REALLY takes the piss though is that the agency weren’t happy to let the blogger run whatever type of post he wanted (embedded movie, screenshot, text posting or any other) they insisted that it was a banner ad. A bloody banner ad and run it for 2 months!

Do they have ANY idea what they are doing? Don’t answer that!

On this particular site, a skyscraper for the period would cost $1600 for two months - yet all the agency were offering was a $50 Amazon e-voucher. How pathetic.

I am starting to get angry now! (Just like Mr. Balmer above!!)

How DARE people who CLEARLY don’t understand the changing online environment make such derogatory offers. If they understood blogging - they wouldn’t make these types of approaches. when will they learn?

Tags: Blogging, Amazon, agency, web2.0, blogs

Maybe I am months if not years behind, but in doing some research for a client, I noticed just how powerful Google Maps could be for chainstores.

Get your stores on Google Maps and let people see what you do, how you do it, why you are worth a visit. Let others join you in adding comments about your facilities.

Say you are a coffee house…tell people about your local cake specialities, if you are a club or bar, publish special events. If you are a gift store, highlight something different.

BLOG…lik to your blog…let people see another reason to visit you.

In my experience in-site store locators do nothing more than give you an address and phone number - here is a great opportunity to have so much more to say than a name and address.

Tags: google, googlemaps, blogging

If honesty was a business, you’d buy from it.

If honesty was a currency, it’d be traded more than the dollar.

If you don’t think one guy stood in the snow in front of a supermarket talking about himself and his feelings is the future of marketing then you are truly missing a major shift in consumer attitudes.

Hugh…this one’s for you…

Tags: tesco, gapingvoid, blogging, hughmcleod

…there ain’t nothing evil about luurvve!

The BBC reports on how an ENTIRELY unheard of group, Koopa have managed to get a Top 40 hit, with no recording contract!

Recent changes to the way the UK Top 40 Music chart is compiled (now taking into account ANY music downloads) have meant that on download sales alone, Koopa have managed to enter the charts at Number 31.

All around the world, there are A&R men and women crying into their champagne. The people have spoke. They don’t need a record company telling them what band they should be listening to next.

myspace, flickr tour tags, WOM, forums have replaced conventional music marketing and put it in the hands of the people.

I find it fascinating to see how the music industry has been able to demonstrate such a responsiveness to these new techniques and wonder what other industries can/could so publicly demonstrate such. success

Vive La Revolution!

Tags: koopa, bbc, itunes, music, myspace, flickr

p.s. don’t think I’m mocking redundancy…been there, done that…on the cusp of it again!

16th January update: Music Zone the once popular music retailer is now in liquidation.

Steve Rubel reports on Edelman’s new press release software which allows businesses to make new press releases incorporating many Web 2.0 media. Technorati, delicious, Digg, Trackback and comments as well as an RSS feed are listed to encourage readers to spread the message around the world as well as receive feedback.
Maybe I am behind the times (quite likely!), but the biggest coup for me here is the integration of these networking methods to encourage distribution of not only the outbound message but also the ensuing conversation.

Another interesting angle is that it is now clear that Edelman’s adoption of Digg, Technorati and delicious are now no longer “nice ideas” or passing fads, but fundamentally useful tools but in PR and marketing.

Technorati Tags: RSS, Digg, Technorati, delicious, PR, marketing