March 31, 2005
Winning Photoblog
Congratulations to Joseph Holmes, a friend whose photoblog, Joe's NYC, just won two Photobloggies, one for best photojournalism and the other for best new photoblog. I like to make fun of awards (the awards I don't win, anyway) and these awards were strictly a popularity contest. That's fine by me. Sometimes the popular kids are popular for a reason. Way to go, Joe!
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 05:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Media Overkill Plus Big Closet News
Eric Boehlert's "A Tale Told by an Idiot" on Salon (subscription or day pass required) is blunt about the recent Terri Schiavo circus:
"It was fitting that reporters were in danger of outnumbering pro-life supporters outside Terri Schiavo's hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., on Thursday morning. When one man began to play the trumpet moments after Schiavo's death was announced at 9:50 a.m., a gaggle of cameramen quickly surrounded him, two or three deep. Has there ever been a set of protesters so small, so out of proportion, so outnumbered by the press, for a story that had supposedly set off a 'furious debate' nationwide?
"... The 'furious debate' angle has been a crucial selling point in the Schiavo story in part because editors and producers could never justify the extraordinary amount of time and resources they set aside for the story if reporters made plain in covering it every day that the issue was being driven by a very small minority who were out of step with the mainstream. Clearly, the press went overboard in its around-the-clock coverage of the right-to-die case. But at this point, that type of exploitation is almost to be expected from news organizations, particularly television, desperate for compelling narratives that can be stretched out for days or weeks at a time. And it's not fair to suggest that the Schiavo story was a manufactured one, or that it didn't spark genuine interest. It did. What is telling about the excessive coverage is how right-wing activists, with heavy-hitter help from Washington, were able to lead the press around, as if on a leash, for nearly two weeks ..."
An important topic, sure, but Salon really dropped the ball on the closet front. Could this be a match made in heaven? "MINNEAPOLIS, March 28 /PRNewswire/ -- For homeowners with little time to get the house in shape for spring, organizing the home or garage is as easy as visiting a local Target. Beginning in April 2005, Target will carry the California Closets(R) Life, Stuff, Storage(R) line of ready-to-assemble furniture from the leading designer of custom home storage solutions and Dorel Industries, Inc. From dressers and shelves for organizing apparel and shoes to utility cabinets and a gardening center for storing tools in the garage, the new ready-to-assemble storage and organization products offer high-quality, design solutions that allow Target guests to live and work the way they want."
Target guests? Too weird. That only products from Target allow, hmm, let's call them shoppers, to live and work the way they want to is the kind of malarky that must be throttled. Still, I'm grovin' on the CalClosets-Target connection. Wonder if it will make the king of custom closet fittings seem somewhat down-market. But if the Kmart thing worked for Martha, the far-more-fashionable Target will probably be a happy home for the life-stuff-storage folks.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Eurostyle Motel 6 Without the Luxe
One of the highlights of our road trip was staying in Malmö at a place our child called a freeway hotel, which is close enough. In Malmö, as in many European cities, it often feels as though a traveler can choose to stay in a hotel or choose to eat but not both. There are hostels with family rooms but those aren't always downtown and are often booked. So when hubby stumbled on a hotel that charged a piddling 330 crowns per night per room, I was thrilled. (Have you noticed that not once, in any of the recent corporate-excess scandals, has the phrase "freelance writer" appeared near the word "overpayment"?)
Formule1 was quite the experience. In Sweden it has hotels in Malmö, Stockholm and Göteborg. The global chain is part of Accor Hotels, which encourages customers to "listen to your dream," even if it involves, say, "unashamed indulgence." Formule1 caters to the lower end of Accor's clientele, people dreaming of vermin-free lodging. It was about as luxe as a minimum-security prison, minus the tennis courts, and difficult to get into because we didn't have an actual reservation (thanks, honey) and so couldn't use our credit card to get the magic 6-number code that let us into the hotel and our room. A living, breathing employee was on hand to register guests only between 5 pm and 7 pm and then made a reappearance in the morning hours to supply an institutional breakfast of rolls, margarine, jam, honey, cheese, coffee and tea, which could not be taken into our rooms but must be consumed while we sat on small hard black stools, which did not swivel, at a U-shaped orange Formica-like counter. Did I mention it felt like a prison?
All rooms are identical and sleep three (assuming rock-hard foam mattresses send you to dream land), thanks to a brutal design efficiency. There's a long bunk bed affixed on one side of the room, above the head of a double bed. On the left side of the double bed is a ladder leading up to the bunk. A clothes rod with hangers runs between the ladder and the wall. On the far side of the double bed, in the left corner, is a sink. On the right corner is a shelf, a chair, and a small wall-mounted TV. The vertical fluorescent light fixture built into the bunk support *did* swivel but was weird and annoying. The room had an automatic lock opened by punching in the right code on the number pad outside but no inside lock, which was creepy. Hmm, did I mention it felt like a prison?
Since the room was almost exactly the same size as our tiny cabin in the woods (16 square feet, maybe), we could cope. The sheet story was mysterious. Instead of having two sheets, each bed had a single, double-length sheet that was folded over. Another mystery: The double bed had one single weird, long pillow instead of two. And then there were the toilets and showers down the hall, seriously plastic modular units that screamed porta potty. A pair of green and red lights above the toilets let you know if the units were occupied. You didn't flush manually; unlocking the door triggered the flush mechanism, which the signage suggested was some kind of fabulous self-cleaning system.
Which is not to say I hated Formule1 entirely. My favorite part was the many notes and signs taped to the front door in Swedish and English. The best, in Swedish, had a drawing of a little dog with a huge camera in its face and said, "Don't pound on the door, you're being videotaped." And because it was clean and because it was cheap and because the kid thought the place was adorable, god help me I may even go back some day.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2005
Road Warriors and Salvation Army Bargains
Happiness is hard and I'm not good at it. So there's no explaining the warm glow that I'm basking in right now. Maybe it's because our tiny triangle (spousal unit, energetic daughter and cranky scribe) survived our first truly long road trip and just got back whole and relatively unscathed after an Easter vacation that entailed eight or nine hours on the road between Stockholm and Malmö, (a "city in transition" according to the English-version of the site, such a welcoming headline) then seven or eight hours heading north to Karlstad, then today a weeny little jaunt of three hours back to Stockholm, the newly christened Capital of Scandinavia. (Can't find the link yet but will. Are you shocked, shocked to learn that no one in Norway, Finland or Denmark was consulted about this blatant marketing move?)
So I'm tired but not exhausted. My kid is dancing wildly to Swedish bubblegum pop called Superduper Kille (Superduper Guy) while my very own SuperDuper Guy is sipping a brewski, cleaning up the kitchen and working on dinner. (Some wonder why I married a Swede. Duh.) All the small irritations of the trip--the kidlet threatening to jump out of the speeding rental during a freeway spat; the husband's snarls in response to calm, reasonably expressed concerns about parking in dark, gloomy parking garages filled with sneaky evil thieves; the wife's clear, appropriate setting of boundaries by threatening to force-feed her daughter an entire Bratz doll on the spot--are behind us now. So what's left? Plenty of stuff.
*The small teak magazine display rack bought near Ales stenar. We didn't make it to the ancient stones but we sure as hell found the flea market.
*The tasteful sewing kit in faux leather my daughter bought for 1 crown at the same place.
*The summer wardrobe my daughter picked out at the Salvation Army outlet in Örebro.
*The four fabulous 80s-era do-it-yourself home decorating mags I scored there.
*Hubby's haul of comic books.
*Four groovy square glass candleholders and
*My kid's 80s-era IKEA teen chair, which she bought with 7 bucks of her good-behavior money. (Repeat after me: It's only a bribe if they get it before they meet the agreed-upon goal. It's a *reward* if they get it afterward.)
Tomorrow I'm going to go pick up a teak office console (low, lean, accordian-doors it is soooo cool, way cooler than I am) that a friend is giving me. Of course, I don't need it; I don't need any of the stuff I picked up today, either. But I enjoy flea markets and Salvation Army outlets and antique stores. So maybe the miracle of the trip wasn't just that we survived but that we were able to take turns doing stuff each of us enjoyed. (One of my ears is still leaking liquid from the water park we were at today.) It's kind of a crazy concept, this taking-turns thing. Like win-win, it's not exactly a world view native to our little tribe. But we're home, we're happy, we're each doing a little jig, so maybe we're about to get the hang of it.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Medieval Manor/Media Reformers
Yesterday we made it to Glimmingehus. And what might that be? So glad you asked. "Glimmingehus, situated in the county of Skåne in southern Sweden, is the best-preserved medieval manor in Scandinavia. Jens Holgersen Ulfstand began to construct the stately fortress in the year 1499. You can search for ghosts at the fortress, try your hand at Middle Age-chores, relax in the herb garden or enjoy a medieval meal." But can you do the hokey-pokey? We didn't spot any ghosts but my daughter did get a dark red-purple egg, dyed with onions, to etch with a lovely Easter design as swanky, fine folk did waaaay back when. We had a fine time but I can't wait to get home to Stockholm.
Meanwhile, are you itching to reform mainstream media? Hey, take a number. There's an entire conference planned for folks like you and it's called the National Conference for Media Reform. "Fed up with the media? Want to do something about it? Activists from across the country will converge in St. Louis on May 13-15 to mobilize to fix our broken media system. Please join us for one of the most exciting and inspiring events of the year. The three-day conference includes panel presentations, workshops, discussion sessions, video screenings, book signings, and speeches and performances by renowned guests."
I don't mean to be cranky--no, wait, I *do* mean to be cranky--since when has any conference anywhere fixed anything? Hey, if you conference goers can fix the media system, be my guest. Once you get that little job out of the way, feel freel to tackle those other broken systems we all find so annoying, including health, politics and the ever-growing heartbreak of advertising clutter.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:01 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 28, 2005
Ales Ancient Stones
Today we were supposed to visit Ales stenar in southern Sweden. They are ancient and mysterious and way more entertaining than the tourist trap with the plaster of paris gnomes in No Cal near the Redwoods. At least, I imagine they would have been had my daughter been willing to brave the freezing, gale-force winds and climb the 700 meters up to the top of the hill to view them.
"If the site is not a grave, what function can the monument have had? One theory is that the ship setting was constructed to honour the crew of a ship who perished at sea. Another theory is that the ship was built to determine various times of the year. The alignment of the stones in relation to the sun is such that the sun sets over the north west tip of the monument at midsummer, and rises at the opposite tip at midwinter." Maybe, just maybe, the builders thought it was beautiful. That might have been enough.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 25, 2005
Stockholm: Spring Edition
Spring has sprung, even here in Stockholm where the sunshine makes us chipper and perky and happy to have survived another bleak, souless winter in the North. When I lived in California I never realized that I took light for granted. In Stockholm, it feels as though every year we have to earn spring. That this shift in seasons is not some inevitable, mandated event but something wonderous, tentative, fragile. During my first year here I was a little puzzled, during the earliest days of spring, as to why I'd see people standing stock still, their faces turned toward the sun. But now I've done it too. Because it feels like we've hibernated all winter and have just climbed out of our caves. So we need to stand just for a moment, blinking in the light, and wait for our eyes and souls to adjust.
In the spring, we are told, a gal's fancy turns to cleaning. Now there's a commercial-fueled myth if ever I've heard one. Natually spring cleaning calls for spring cleaning tools.
"For those hard to reach places in the bathroom, Good Housekeeping suggests you try the Mr. Clean Magicreach. This tool has a flexible head so it pivots around curves and gets into corners. The handle extends up to four feet and it uses two types of disposable pads, one for tub and tile surfaces, and another for floors.
"To clean every crumb, Good Housekeeping recommends the Leifheit Nook & Cranny Broom for its angled bristles and 7-foot telescopic pole. The triangular head can be removed for hand sweeping or attached to the pole where you can pivot it to get into corners and hard to reach areas."
But maybe you don't want to clean every crumb. Maybe you'd rather toss out the whole damn thing. Well, it seems that Craigslist and Freecycle now have a competitor in Throwplace. Not such a snappy moniker but perhaps it doesn't matter.
Happy Easter, dear reader. The family and I are heading south in a rental car loaded with Easter Eggs for Big Fun in Ystad and elsewhere. Hope you have fun too.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 24, 2005
High School and the Blogosphere: A Consideration
Ages ago Doc Searls, who is justly popular and whom I adore, posted the following: "This isn't high school here. We don't have to suck up to the popular kids, or try to be like them." No, we don't. But honestly, who doesn't want to be one of the cool kids? My rueful feeling about being number 50+ on the Google search for "Deborah" instead of in the top ten reminds me that while the blogosphere isn't high school, it's not always so very different. Remember those compare-and-contrast essays from our school days? Here's my extremely serious, fair and accurate comparison of the two:
1. In high school, girls rule, boys drool. In the blogosphere, boys rule, girls drool.
2. In high school, it's jocks vs. nerds. In the blogosphere, it's wonks vs. nerds.
3. In high school, there are the popular kids, then everybody else--and it really, really matters. In the blogosphere, there are the popular kids and then everybody else. And so what? We're adults now and this is blogging, not serious business. (Um, except when it's serious business.)
4. In high school, there's plenty of foul language. In the blogosphere, there's plenty of foul language.
5. In high school, teens can't wait to enter the real world as independent adults and escape their adolescent misery. In the blogosphere, adults can't wait to start blogging to escape the real world and its misery.
On balance, then, it's clear that the blogosphere is almost exactly like high school, from the school assemblies to the awards to the pointless insults. But at least we get to skip P.E.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:41 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 23, 2005
Piping Hot Thought Leaders
Those wacky kids at Cutting Edge Information have a new report on "how top pharmaceutical companies rely on thought leader relationships to enhance marketing activities and gain an exceptional return on investment." Apparently these are some heavy-duty relationships. "Well-planned and executed thought leader communication averts a communication disaster by involving opinion leaders in a variety of research activities including:
* Testing marketing concepts
* Conducting positioning studies
* Testing initial product pro.les [profiles, maybe? db]
* Advising on product trademarks"
Which sparks several questions, including: Who knew thought leaders had so much free time? And, can't we just execute them and skip the communication part? Speaking of thought leaders, Phil Gomes has made us all a little cheerier with the Gomes Index of Executive Happiness (thanks, Steve), which tracks the press-release use of the phrase, "we are pleased." A quick search on PR Newswire shows that at least seven fine organizations are pleased today, including Coca-Cola (but only because execs haven't tumbled yet to my posting about the Danish knock-off), Color Kinetics, the Prostate Cancer Foundation (hmm), Spirit Airlines and Northern Trust.
That's all good and well but just how pleased are they? A full ten companies are actually "delighted," including Coca-Cola, which is apparently tickled pink over changes to the management team. Well, enjoy it while you can, guys, that's all I can say.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Healthy Body, Healthy Brain (Fat-Deprived Spirit)
Lost your keys again? "The problem isn't a loss of memory, says LaVoie, associate professor of psychology at St. Louis University. The problem is a loss of focus. People aren't paying attention, aren't taking the time to do one thing at a time and make the whole experience a permanent memory."
True enough but some folks do develop Alzheimer's. But maybe some cases can be prevented "by taking steps like eating low-fat diets rich in antioxidants, maintaining normal weight, exercising regularly and avoiding bad habits like smoking and excessive drinking," notes NYT health columnist Jane E. Brody. "Several other practices - including remaining socially connected and keeping the brain stimulated by reading, doing puzzles and learning new things - also appear to protect the brain against dementia."
Note that excursions to Mama Mia, hair salons and ice cream parlors are not on this list. Bet that Brody gal is big fun on weekends.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 22, 2005
Ourmedia.org Coolest Org Ever
Marc Canter, J.D. Lasica and friends have just launched one kick-ass operation. Way to go, guys!
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)
What's Wrong With This Picture?
Yesterday I bought this soda at Netto. Thanks to Netto, there's been a big price war among the grocery chains in my neighborhood of Kungsholmen. Near Fridhemsplan there are two ICAs, one Coop, one Vi and, starting some months back, a Netto. Two other Netto stores opened in Stockholm as well and this Danish-owned giant made its competitors scramble to catch up. ICA had a national TV campaign to promote supposedly sweeping price cuts that took place March 7, good news for all of us who eat. So I'm not down on the Netto concept (for the moment, at least, the company doesn't appear to be locking in its cleaning people).
But it's slimy that Netto is peddling a knock-off cola that looks so much like Coca-Cola without being Coca-Cola. (The text reads, "Original American Taste, Original Cola Classic.") According to the can, Danish brewer Harboe produces this soda specifically for Netto. The cola that Harboe markets to its other customers is not such an obvious copy.
My husband (thanks for the pic) and I have a friendly disagreement about the legality of this practice. Since neither one of us is a patent or trademark attorney, we're happy to devote hours to debating stuff we're in no position to actually judge. But if the package design above isn't illegal, it should be. The design is a clear effort to piggyback on the success of Coca-Cola's brand in Europe and elsewhere. That's wrong and it should stop.
In other news, what the hell happened yesterday? I mean, 1500 words? For free? On a blog?? Sorry about that.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2005
MessageCast, Blogging, RSS, Advertising and Cold, Hard Cash
MessageCast wants to win the hearts of bloggers as well as corporate clients. During Friday's telephone conversation, MessageCast head Royal Farros told me his company is still working out its business model but plans to pull in advertising revenues by wooing bloggers to LiveMessage. Then he gave me the goods in a Stuffola exclusive. The idea is that MessageCast will add context-appropriate ads to RSS feeds. Nope, that's not the news. (You knew that.) The news is that by the third quarter of this year, MessageCast plans to roll out a keyword program that should be as attractive to the folks who read blogs as it is to the folks who create them. How? By sorting single RSS feeds into categories.
The keyword program is for people like Robert Scoble, says Farros. (I didn't come up with this example, Robert, honest.) A commercial service like Marketwatch provides a variety of topic-based RSS feeds for readers but many (most?) bloggers, including me and the Scobleizer, use software that publishes a single feed that encompasses all the items we blog. What LiveMessage keywords will do is allow a loyal but time-pressed reader to be alerted whenever Robert mentions, say, Microsoft or Firefox or his upcoming book. According to Farros, the LiveMessage keyword program "will allow you to be able to type things in and then well be able to parse the RSS feed and say, 'This says Firefox. Get this to Deborah.' " (Of course, a more realistic example would involve phrases like "get rich quick," "easy money" and "hangover cure" but maybe that's just me.)
Clearly MessageCast (like so many other, eager hopefuls) wants to succeed the way that Google did, by making nice with all the denizens of cyberspace. That means satisfying users (aka the advertising audience), bloggers (aka content providers), the advertisers and the instant message system owners (for now, Microsoft; later, if the partnership stuff works out, AOL and Yahoo).
I like the idea of a LiveMessage keyword program for several reasons. I never tinker under the hood of my car and I only muck with HTML when I have to. Although I adore the legions of girl geeks, I am not one of them. I will only learn a new technology if I'm staring down the barrel of a loaded gun: at the absolute last minute and under duress. Maybe there are lots of ways to split the RSS feed on my blog into multiple topics but I'm too lazy to find out. Should MessageCast give me an easy, painless way to make that service available to my readers, though, I'll register in a hurry. Especially if I may make money in the process, thanks to the ads.
The future LiveMessage keyword program is also interesting to me as a reader. First, a little context: Last week a blogger whose name escapes me (it was a one-post stand on my part) complained about the fact that RSS readers treat trusted news sources (hereafter TNS') and the self-indulgent blatherings of people like me (and him, for that matter) equally. Since this guy quickly skims through headlines, he sometimes mistakes a blog for a TNS (the horror, the horror) thus wasting time. In a similar vein, my friend Pete Gontier mentioned a while back that he thought RSS readers were overrated. At the time I had just signed up at Bloglines (remember, I'm the Reluctant Adopter so I'm always late to the party) and was massively enthusiastic about RSS readers. For, like, three weeks. Now I haven't gone near my account in months so by now I'm very very afraid of it. Guess I'm just not that into RSS readers. They encourage oversubscription (it'll be fun! so easy! let's subscribe to 50!) so trying to read new stuff is like trying to drink from a fire hose; it can probably be done but do you really want to drown in the process?
That's why I got so chipper after Farros told me about his plans for LiveMessage. Remember, LiveMessage sends alerts via instant-messaging systems (but not in IM windows, so it's not true two-way communication as I oh-so-mistakenly implied in my earlier post). You can configure LiveMessage to chase you down, so it can send an SMS to your cell phone if you're not online or send a standard e-mail to your inbox or PDA. Anyway, the point is that nobody will have to drink from a fire hose and settle for personally sorting through every headline or full post from a RSS publisher. Just as we can sign up for Google e-mail alerts to follow specific news developments today, in the future (knock wood), we will be able to sign up for LiveMessage real-time alerts to follow specific topics covered by participating publishers, from the well-heeled Big Cos to the less-solvent independent bloggers. That ability should be good for readers and writers and maybe even marketers too. Why?
Back to Robert as an example. Over at the Red Couch, Robert advises corporate bloggers to write in a granular style. "You want people to talk about you, right? And pass around your information, right? So, make it easy for them. Make one post contain one idea, or set of links. One guy who makes it hard is Mike Gunderloy. His list of links is one of the best on the Internet for programmers, but look at the RSS file his site generates. It has his entire list of links in it. But often we want to e-mail or IM just one of his links. He makes it hard on his users. Instead, it'd be better to split the list up to make it more friendly to RSS news aggregators and make it easier to talk about each link and pass that around in e-mail or reblog it."
No, no, no, responds Cori Schlegel. "Granular blogging is great for granular blogs. Other kinds of blogging are better for other sorts of blogs. Some people (like you, Robert) blog in a stream of consciousness fashion, and read blogs the same way. Others blog differently, and that's just fine. A wide variety of voices is what's needed here."
That's true: a wide variety of voice is what we have, and what we need to keep. But Robert is also right: from a marketing perspective, it makes total sense to whip out Perfect Little Link Nuggets that are easy for readers to digest and share. Some folks generate PLLNs naturally; lots of others don't. If the LiveMessage keyword program works and Mike Gunderloy signs up for it, it may not matter so much that he throws everything into his blog because LiveMessage will help readers pull out the stuff that's important to them. (Note: It will help readers but I don't expect it will do all the work and pull out individual paragraphs or sentences tied to keywords from a single posting but if I'm wrong about that, MessageCast can let me know.)
Company execs say the current LiveMessage offering, never mind the future service, is unique. Well? "They are pretty unique, in that they provided a unified messaging system across different channels," notes Charlene Li, the principal analyst at Forrester Research who kindly responded to my e-mail SOS on the issue (thanks again). "To my knowledge, no one else is doing something exactly similar. But it wouldn't take much for the marketer to allow consumers the ability to *choose* where they preferred to get marketing/content alerts -- through their RSS readers, e-mail, or IM. The difference is that MessageCast is platform agnostic and follows the reader wherever they are. Great for the marketer, but at times, could be cumbersome for the reader to configure just right."
In my first interview with Farros, we discussed click-through rates, not conversion rates or actual sales. Everybody loves to hear the ka-ching of the cash register but Farros couldn't tell me if the use of LiveMessage had actually spurred sales among customers. "Right now most of the stuff we are doing is in information delivery, not necessarily in sales delivery," notes Farros, who adds, "We completely love that focus and we hope that explodes for us."
But he's also big on the blogging-advertising angle. "Remember the old days when you had to buy radio spots or buy TV spots or buy magazine ads and 30,000 dollars upfront and bingo cards and you never knew how they pulled and it was just a disaster," says Farros. "Think of what Google and Overture did for the market. They just took this old way to advertise and threw it right out the window. Now I'd love to spend a million dollars on online advertising because today, I can spend 5000 of it, get a sense of if it's working or not. If it's not working, try something different, if it is working, go in and buy 50,000 of it and have a nice step function up to success."
When it comes to bloggers and revenues, "what we eventually split with the content providers will be heavily dictated by the major platforms" but whatever arrangement MessageCast ultimately develops has to be fair, he says. "To me, thats the ultimate formula. Every important component gets their piece of the pie. ... The great thing about the blogging space is that if everything is fair, everything explodes virally. And if things aren't fair, you get called to the mat instantly."
So will LiveMessage explode in popularity or go down for the count? Operators are standing by here at Mixed Metaphor World to take your comments. Is the vision behind MessageCast smart or sucky? You tell me.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 05:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2005
MessageCast Woos Marketers
I spoke to Royal Farros yesterday about his latest company, MessageCast, which he cofounded in early 2002 and runs with a bunch of other execs he worked with at iPrint, where he was also a Big Cheese. (If you don't know Farros, the tech industry veteran is living proof that the term entrepreneur does not necessarily translate to asshole. He's one of the nicest executives in Silicon Valley.) Currently MessageCast powers the Microsoft Alerts service using Microsoft Messenger. It's also working furiously to win partnerships with AOL and Yahoo, the other gorillas of instant messaging.
Online advertisers face at least two problems these days. One is the enormous growth in unwanted bulk e-mail, which makes people reluctant to sign up for marketing messages and, worse, makes it hard to notice wanted information because it ends up sandwiched between all that spam. Another problem (which Farros and I did not discuss) is a shortage of online content that can be used for keyword-based advertising. (I know, I know, it's hard to believe there's any shortage of verbage in cyberspace.)
It seems to me that MessageCast, in theory anyway, can address both issues with its LiveMessage service, a riff on permission-based marketing that the company calls, lord help us, alert engine marketing. AEM sidesteps spam because the opt-in content (alerts) is sent via instant-messaging systems. These private, corporate-owned, real-time networking pipes have built-in authentication schemes that make spam impossible. [Note: this said "filter out spam" earlier, which is wrong. I can't figure out how to do strikethru fonts so you'll just have to take my word for it.]
There are three kinds of alerts: time-based alerts, RSS-based alerts and event-based alerts. The idea is that consumers sign up for an organization's alerts and the information is delivered however they want it: in alerts using IM systems or in e-mail to their computers or PDAs or in SMS messages to their cell phones. Say I'm a rabid Hallmark Christmas ornament collector who's signed up for special offers, and Hallmark sends me this message: "Only 35 Elvis-in-Hawaii tribute ornaments left. Click to order." Will I be hammering on that link in a heartbeat? Farros says yes. He says LiveMessage alerts have high click-through rates (35 to 60 percent for the client examples he gave me) for the obvious reason that people are receiving messages they want in a form they have chosen. (Damn, forgot to ask him about what really matters--sales, baby, sales.)
LiveMessage can also give advertisers more places to piggyback their ads, which helps address the content-shortage problem. Here's what Farros told Publish in December (I think it was December. The site doesn't date all its stories, alas.):
"RSS is the universal data trigger in AEM. Here's the opportunity. There are a zillion blogs being created, capturing very specific audiences. Advertisers would indeed covet sharing their message with such targeted audiences. The problem: Without RSS, you have to custom develop an alerting mechanism for each blog. Clearly impossible to scale. The solution: An alerting mechanism that triggers off RSS updates. The brilliance: Info in the RSS file also helps make the ad relevant and therefore useful."
So naturally MessageCast offers free LiveMessage alerts for bloggers to let readers know about those all-important updates and charges (or will charge--haven't figured that out yet) advertisers who want to go along for the ride. LiveMessage is not the Holy Grail of marketing (this just in: there *is* no Holy Grail) but it's an interesting approach. I still have questions about LiveMessage (I had to cut the interview short) but plan to grill Farros on the company's competitors, price structure, that nagging conversion issue and more at 7:30 AM Pacific. Gotta question for him? Let me know at dbum at ureach dot com.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 17, 2005
13 Things That Don't Make Sense
From New Scientist. (Thanks, Peter!) "DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.
"This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.
"So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect for decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don't know."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
Upcoming Trump Book--Yawn
"Warner Business Books, an imprint of the Time Warner Book Group, announced today that it will publish a book by New York Times investigative reporter Timothy L. O'Brien titled 'TRUMPWORLD: The Art of Being the Donald.' It is slated for publication in October 2005.
"TRUMPWORLD takes readers inside the world of Donald Trump -- a world of style, substance, and money. Yet beneath his shimmering facade lies a man the public doesn't see. O'Brien, who has covered Trump for years, pulls back the velvet curtain to offer a unique, personal look inside the life of Trump, who is one of the most captivating -- and mysterious -- personalities of the modern era. Featuring interviews and insights not only with Trump's closest friends and associates but also with The Donald himself, TRUMPWORLD promises to be a publishing event of Trump-sized proportions."
There are many words to describe Mr. Trump but mysterious is not, perhaps, the first that springs to mind. Do we really need to know more about what lies beneath his "shimmering facade"? I hate most press releases and this one is no exception. I might have been won over with teasers: why does Donald take a stuffed animal to bed? why does the Clintons visit Margo-del-Lar (or whatever it's called, if they do), why etc. etc. Stupid examples I know but Trump is Mr. Overexposed. Just a glimpse of the guy makes me queasy. If there's going to be yet another book about him, don't tell me he's captivating and mysterious, show me, even in some small way, that he's captivating and mysterious. Or fuggettaboutit.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)
Skeletons in the Closet
Usually it's just an expression. "Skeletons in the closet were a real-life problem for Ashford Price when he opened a cupboard in his late aunt's bedroom to be confronted with dozens of human remains." According to the Western Mail, these turned out to be a stash of bronze-age relics from the family caves (your family has caves, right?), put at the bottom of auntie's old oak wardrobe for safekeeping.
"Ancient bones, Nazis and archaeology make for a tale that reads like something from an Indiana Jones film, and Mr Price admits that the circumstances are unusual. 'I do not think anything like this has happened before. We have had to be very careful with them and we have spent all winter looking for a suitable place to put them in the caves. They are the remains of our human ancestors after all, so we cannot really just dump them in a bucket and chuck them somewhere.' "
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2005
Charmin Scores
Oh my gawd. Real Simple touts the MegaRoll as a problem-solver under "Life Skills." What next, a tribute to vibrating dish brushes?
According to Jack Neff in Ad Age last November ("Charmin preps super-size roll"), "P&G recently made toilet paper rolls smaller before it made them bigger. P&G, along with rivals Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Kimberly-Clark Corp., raised toilet paper prices in July by around 6% through sheet-count reductions. The brands similarly reduced sheet counts in another price increase in 2000 on the strategy of maintaining price points for packages on retail shelves. Some retailers and industry executives correctly predicted triple and quadruple rolls inevitably would follow the downsizings.
"Previously launched Charmin Triple Rolls had faced resistance from consumers and some delistings because the rolls had proved too big to comfortably fit in toilet paper holders, retailers said. The problem, said one buyer, is that consumers have resisted modifying their toilet paper holders in the past. 'It's not convenient, and consumers just aren't willing to do things that aren't convenient,' he said." Yeah, but Real Simple sez it *is* convenient so there.
As it happens, I rent office space from a Neanderthal who doesn't provide paper towels in the bathroom (eeww) and the TP supply is spotty. So I'd snap up a gross of MegaRolls in an instant if they were available.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
Bathroom Business
Early this year I took a great promotion class taught by Sandra Beckwith and Jen Haupt and hosted by Freelance Success, an excellent, subscriber-based online community for freelance writers run by Jennie Phipps. (You won't find a nicer, smarter, more supportive group of professionals anywhere.) Part of the class was devoted to tip sheets, press releases that you send out to promote something that are based around useful information rather than actual news. Then there are the psuedo-news releases, like this one from Charmin, which has apparently hired a psychologist to get to the, er, bottom of distressing bathroom issues in order to promote Procter & Gamble's Charmin MegaRoll. And what is the Charmin MegaRoll? Toilet paper with four times as many sheets as a regular roll of Charmin.
But the good news doesn't stop there: "Each package comes complete with the Charmin Extender, which provides extra 'spinning space' for the slightly larger diameter of the MegaRoll. The extender fits into most existing toilet paper holders, and positions the roll further from the wall, where it has adequate space to spin freely. Packages of Charmin MegaRoll include a basic clear plastic Charmin Extender, though designer editions are sold separately in gold, chrome and white."
Of course they are. But where the hell is the Q&A with the shrink? Oh right. "Why do we have such a strong emotional response to finding an empty roll of bath tissue on the holder? 'This issue is always contentious, for two main reasons,' explained Dr. Miller. 'Finding that the bathroom is not ready for us when we need it can be extremely upsetting, especially when there is a sense of urgency. Furthermore, once we realize that well have to work to have the comfortable bathroom experience we expect, we are forced to confront the most intimate of bodily issues in the open, which is difficult for many people. Using a product like Charmin MegaRoll means that the bathroom will be comfortable and ready for anyone that needs it for a longer period of time,' said Dr. Miller."
Remarkably, Dr. Will Miller is an actual human being and not a parody. The fact that he's a comedian as well as a psychologist helps explain the new gig for Charmin. On Monday he was in New York "out on the street interviewing passersby about what frustrates them about the bathroom. Which way should the roll hang? Who changes the empty roll in your house? These are the burning issues I have decided to lend my expertise to processing." Yup, we all gotta eat. Question is, will mainstream media actually cover this stunt? A few years back Ask Jeeves got plenty of TV from sending butlers to various cities to help people on the street so this may work as well. So depressing.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:57 AM | Comments (2)
Gas Station's Swanky Lavatory
The LA Times happily reports on the lavish lavatory at a West Covina gas station (reg required). Kitschy? Natch. "In an era when many service stations can barely keep their restrooms open, much less clean, Moghadan's is a sight for sore eyes, not to mention bursting bladders. A chandelier sparkles overhead from a recessed ceiling. Sculptured art and a floral arrangement adorn faux tumbled rosa marble walls. Ornate silver columns rise from the Italianate slate floor to support a wide granite counter and reach to a soffit that hides a pair of recessed spotlights. Gold-plated fixtures are attached to a graceful oval sink."
Why do I label this marketing? The owner is convinced his groovy bathroom has created more customers.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 08:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 15, 2005
Apple Stores Threat to Tekserve
Rebecca Dana reports on the threat to Tekserve in the Observer. " 'Were about history. Apples about the future. Thats just the way it is,' said David Lerner, not at all fatalistically, sitting beneath a Jimmy Carter campaign poster circa 1980. Mr. Lerner co-owns Tekserve, an independent Macintosh computer-repair shop in Chelsea where hes been fixing Apple products for 15 years (with the companys official blessing since 1993). And he vowed he will go on reviving laggard iPods and recovering lost first-novels-in-progress even after Apple opens two competing stores in Manhattan (thats in addition to their sleek Soho flagship)something the company has all but announced it will do in the near future.
" 'Theyre bastards,' said Christina Mercurio, a 31-year-old Tekserve employee with black hair and a rebellious demeanor. Like many others who shop or work at the store, she believes Applea company that has expensively branded itself as 'independent'is targeting Tekserve, a true indie, with its new locations. Ms. Mercurio, a former barista, compared the situation to watching Starbucks steamroll over local coffee shops. 'But the community would rally around them and save the local place,' she said. 'I think thats what people will do with usI hope.' "
Last year I went to Tekserve for the first time. A service rep tried not to laugh at my notion of buying a bulky old Mac and shipping it to Stockholm and explained nicely why it was a bad idea. Yup, he actually turned down my money. That helps explain the loyalty many New Yorkers have for this place, which the Observer describes as "an old Mac warehouse, kitsch factory, and meeting place for artists, Communists and surviving fans of the Grateful Dead." The joint exudes the old user-group ethos of yore and is full of cool, smart, helpful people. At least, it was the afternoon I showed up.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:36 PM | Comments (3)
Arts and Crafts Goodies
On March 17 "the Victoria & Albert Museum in London will unveil an ambitious exhibition exploring the evolution of the Arts and Crafts movement in its widest international context," sez the Financial Times. "Reproduction Arts and Crafts furniture and works of art, available through both high-end retailers and manufacturers such as Mastercraft or mainstream retailers such as Pottery Barn, have become a multimillion dollar business. Collectors will pay top dollar for first-rate originals, such as the $2m for a table lamp in leaded glass and bronze designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The greatest of the US Arts and Crafts architects and designers took a trend with roots in Victorian England and turned it into America's first indigenous national style.
"Even in Britain, where patriotic collectors are more spoilt for choice and prices are considerably lower, an iconic and probably unique diamond-shaped teapot designed by Christopher Dresser from around 1896 is expected to sell for more than £250,000 when it is offered at auction by Lyon and Turnbull of Edinburgh on April 19."
Check out the museum's web tribute to arts and crafts here.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
Creepy Celebs
Since we have Michael Jackson, America wins the creepy-celeb contest hands down. But there are creepy celebs in other places. "According to Shakti Kapoor, his wife sees nothing indecent about his 'proposal' to a struggler-turned-female journalist on spy cam. There's complete harmony at home, he says. The screen baddie, who was apparently caught making promises of stardom to the girl in return for sexual favours, says he was falsely implicated in a sting operation orchestrated by a satellite news channel. Besides an overwhelming show of solidarity from the entire film fraternity, Shakti claims he's proud of the fact that his wife Shibani Kolhapuri and other family members have been unwavering in their support even after the damning video footage was aired on TV.
" 'At this difficult time, I am happy that my wife is by my side. She treats me as her only God on this earth. She is a typical Hindu woman who is very religious. She sees me as her Pati Parmeshwar and the video has done nothing to change that image. All this false and distorted exposure has not shaken her confidence in me one bit. In fact more than me, it is my wife who has jumped to my defence. If she has her way, she will go up to Mr Illiyasi and give him a good thrashing.' "
Clearly the Hindustan Times has got the tabloid approach nailed. I'd like to see somebody thrashed but not Mr. Illiyasi, whomever the hell he might be. Hey gals, are you treating your man as your only god on Earth? Me neither.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2005
Seductive Spam
Normally I find spam anything but amusing. But lately I've received a series of missives with engagingly goofy sender names, including:
*Nepotism L. Warned
*Schmaltz T. Magistrates (aka victimization@finosa-reality.cz)
*Unpleasant G. Spherical (aka mongoloids@creations4christ.com)
*Tonia T. Scud (aka incorrigibly@funkboerse.de)
*Stagnating F. Conclusive
Naturally I still hate spam. Even so I have enjoyed this tiny wink from the spammeister(s) clogging my in-box.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
Man Living in Teen's Closet
Now that I live in Sweden, a country that's practically a stranger to storage, I'm missing out on all the hot closet action. Don't believe me? In Texas, according to The Facts newspaper (reg. required), "a Brazoria man arrested after police said they caught him having sex with a 15-year-old girl in a parking lot in November is back in jail — this time on suspicion he was living in the same girl’s bedroom closet." But wait, it gets better. "A Brownsville woman searched her daughter’s room ... after the teenager had installed a lock on the outside of her bedroom door. ...The woman found that the closet door was locked from the inside, and when she peeped through a crack in the door, she said she could see a man inside."
She called the cops who busted the guy and in the process descovered he had "the mother’s credit card, the girl’s father’s Social Security card and jewelry and money that were missing from the house." The cops estimate the 27-year-old guy in the closet had been living there about two weeks. For once, the Internet is not to blame. Apparently the two lovers met through a telephone dating service.
That girl is, like, *so* grounded.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)
Chilling Quote
"There was one gentleman that told him to please stop and think about it," she said, adding, "The people who died were very nice people." Chandra Frazier, 21, explains to the New York Times how Saturday's gunman in Brookfield, Wisconsin, stopped to reload at one point and then resumed shooting.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 12, 2005
Bush Administration PR Champ
It's slimy when private companies do it and it's slimy when the government does it. "Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 different federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production." The New York Times examines Bush's PR successes today and they are many.
So maybe it's not surprising that California's Governator, who's even more media savvy, has followed suit although not without flack over it, according to KTVU television. "The criticism initially focused on a video that promoted regulations that opponents say would threaten workers' meal break guarantees and proponents say would give workers more flexibility in when they take those breaks. But the administration later acknowledged doing similar videos on Schwarzenegger's efforts to reshape state government, delay tougher nurse staffing requirements at hospitals and alter teacher pay and tenure requirements, Romero's aides said."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2005
That Microsoft Love-Hate Thing
"Hello. My name is David Byrne, and I'm going to do an introduction to PowerPoint." The former Talking Head sang the praises of PowerPoint in Berkeley earlier this week. Meanwhile, former celebrity chauffeur Grant McCracken, author and anthropologist and committed PC user, is edging away from Microsoft. "In one week, I defected twice. I left Outlook for Gmail. And I left Explorer for FireFox. The immediate cause was spam. The deeper cause: my confidence in Microsoft now had the stability of a California split level teetering on a rain soaked hill side. Yes, I heard that Bill Gates was now thoroughly steamed about spam. But even this, a direct intersession from Zeus himself, would not change things. It was too little, too late. ... The thing about innovations is that it hard to eat just one. No sooner had I abandoned Outlook and Explorer than I began to think about whether there isn’t a better word processor and spread sheet out there. And it wasn’t long before I then began to wonder whether I should sell the handful of shares I have in Microsoft. If I can throw off inertia and walk out of this brand house, there are millions poised to do the same."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)
Cool Blogging Visualization
Natalie Glance of BlogPulse and Lada Adamic of HP Labs have analyzed "the degree of interaction and behavior among top conservative and liberal political bloggers during the November Presidential election." You won't be surprised to discover that there wasn't all that much interaction between the two groups, according to the paper, called "The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog." There are some interesting numbers tossed around but I'm not convinced they mean much. Does it matter that "conservative blogs showed a greater tendency to link to other blogs"? The report says 84% of the conservative blogs linked to other blogs, and 82% received a link while 74% of the liberal blogs linked to other blogs, and 67% received a link. Okay but so what?
Here's the real news, if you ask me: "Conservative blogs tended to rank higher overall than liberal blogs, with the top 20 conservative blogs falling in the 44 most-cited blogs while the top 20 liberal blogs fell in the top 77 most-cited blogs." Download a PDF of the report at BlogPulse so you can watch the cool GUESS visualization of the community structure of political blogs. Maybe I'm easily entertained (don't answer that) but it was a joy to watch the speedy graphing of blue and red blobs flinging links, growing and even occasionally interlinking. Cheap fun, don't miss it.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2005
Circuits is Dead, Long Live Circuits
Guess I haven't been paying attention. Turns out the NYT memo on the demise of Circuits got posted at Romenesko a mere 18 minutes after it was sent to staff late Monday afternoon. Michelle Slatalla's column will survive as part of a new "mid-week cousin of Sunday Styles, focused on fashion, fitness, beauty, smart shopping and lifestyles." But wait, there's more: "On Thursday, the focus will be technology, and Bizday will absorb the core content of Circuits, including David Pogue, whose popular column will begin on the Bizday dress page. On Saturday, the focus will be personal business. On Monday, we will be beefing up and enlivening our coverage of media and related business, such as marketing." Ooh marketing, gotta go work on some queries. Now that I've read the memo, the changes actually make sense. Guess there's a reason why Bill Keller's running the joint and not me.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)
Hot Blogging Action
San Francisco's first blogging politician is doing so on the government's dime, notes the SF Chronicle. Meanwhile, today's NYT covers celebrity blogging via Wil Wheaton and Rosie O'Donnell. I thought Media Bistro was a little unkind when it carped recently about all the blog coverage in the Times. After today, I'm not so sure. Still, I'd hate for the paper to pull the plug on Circuits: after all, today's blogging tributes appeared in Arts. Besides, I like Wil's blog and hadn't known about Rosie's so the coverage was a good thing. In any case, last week the New York Post made this claim: "The New York Times has finally caught on to the idea that the dot-com bubble has burst. Executive Editor Bill Keller is said to be planning to end 'Circuits' as a stand-alone section covering the high-tech world by the end of April." Well that wasn't a bit snippy.
Circuits needs tweaking, not axing. Katie Hafner, David Pogue and Michelle Slatalla are terrific writers, though Slatalla and her readers deserve a meatier topic. That online shopping gig is getting old. But I'd write that column in a heartbeat: it's fun, free form, easy, the total dream date package for a freelancer. No wonder she sticks with it. ("Valley Talk" was a delight from beginning to end and I would have kept writing it but tragically for me, Fortune figured out that whole end-of-tech-bubble thing several years back.) Circuits could be compelling much more consistently, given the folks who write for it. But are there enough advertisers willing to back it? I'm sure Pogue's column and blog will survive in some form, he's become a cottage industry (and more power to him). But where will it land?
Link to the Post item (scroll down), found via Jossip.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2005
Espresso Duels
"It's like Iron Chef, except the time limit is 15 minutes instead of an hour. And the ingredient is always the same: coffee. You have 15 minutes to prepare four espressos, four cappuccinos and four signature drinks of your own invention." My buddy Richard Reynolds writes about espresso duels in today's NYT. Don't miss it. Link
Just noticed another gourmet buddy, Derrick Schneider, gets some ink in today's SF Chronicle. "Schneider learned to cook from magazines and classes; it didn't take him long to learn how to whip up terrines or torchons. An Obsession With Food is where he shares his know-how, with a big dose of personality." The article claims Derrick wants to be a food writer when, in fact, he's already a food writer but hey, it's hard to get all this stuff right. Link to article, link to Derrick's excellent food blog.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)
Quote of the Week
" 'There are so many factors other than teeth that give some people a great smile,' Dr. Addleson said. 'I can fix the teeth, but I can't put the twinkle in someone's life. Sometimes it's not the teeth; it's the soul.' "
From "Sometimes, Your New Smile Will Make You Frown" by Mary Duenwald, NYT, January 4, 2005
Link
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2005
Human Billboards 2
I am so behind the curve. Turns out Doc Searls was all over this more than two years ago. But it was more of an entrepreurial effort in those days. Now middlemen are jumping into the mix. A press release issued today heralds one such company. "BodyBillboardz.com is a new classified ad type of website that brings the advertisers and those willing to rent their human ad space together. This website launched on February 2, 2005 and is enjoying millions of website traffic hits and exposure from this exciting new trend." Exciting is one word for it.
BTW, apologies for the screwed up RSS feed, among other things. I work on Safari so I only just noticed that the blog title (Stuffola: Adventures in our lust for stuff, our desire to acquire) is invisible for Explorer users. I'm the anti-geek (don't tinker with my car, either) so it will take me a while to figure this out. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Red-Letter Days for Organizers
You, me and Google think it's International Women's Day but that's only because we haven't been paying attention. It's actually Organize Your Home Office Day, which is baffling. All of January was Get Organized month and January 10 was Clean Off Your Desk Day so what's left to organize? I wonder if this is a marketing ploy by the NAPO folks. Did I mention that March is Shower Deborah With Gifts month?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
Human Billboards
This ad stuff is a vicious cycle: marketers create intolerable advertising racket, whine about the difficulty of being heard above the noise, then go make more. Today's LA Times (registration required) covers the growth of a new marketing horror.
"SnoreStop is thrilled with its investment in Fischer's forehead. On the day SnoreStop won the auction, its website received five times as many visits, and since then Web sales of the product have also shot up five times. Revel reports that in-store sales are up by 50% as well. SnoreStop has also since been approached by about 150 Andrew Fischer-wannabes, each offering marketing ideas as diverse as permanently changing their name to 'Mr. SnoreStop' for the same money the company paid Fischer or serving as SnoreStop's foreign forehead correspondent.
" 'I'd like to offer you Canada,' Tony Devlin, of Ottawa told Revel in an e-mail, requesting $5,000 a month for his services. Sorry, Tony Canada is already covered. A Vancouver company, TatAd.com, launched in November and has already expanded to the U.S. with about 1,000 members (SnoreStop however isn't one of them). TatAd.com serves as a middle man between sponsors who want to slap their logo in permanent tattoo form on someone's body and the people eager to sell themselves as human billboards."
Most of the tatoos are temporary; some are permanent. Yikes. For some companies, human billboards probably get the job done. Like that first snort of cocaine, they jolt the system and deliver a sense of euphoria. But as more marketers adopt the tactic and the novelty (and press coverage) wear off, the euphoria is bound to disappear. Users will eventually crash back to reality and begin to search for a new high. What then: literal branding? For the right money, I'm sure someone would be willing, and the difference between a permanent tatoo and a brand is a difference of degree, not of kind. Picture a hip, colorfully tatooed musician with a well-designed brand on his body next to the slogan "Absolut Statement." Why shouldn't a cutting-edge company advertise to, say, body-modification enthusiasts and urban tribal types via spiffy logos seared into human flesh? Link.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 08:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 04, 2005
Product Placement, Celeb Edition
"Psychologists and economists are using sophisticated brain scanners to tease apart the automatic judgments that dart below the surface of awareness," notes the LA Times. "The why of buy is a trillion-dollar question. By one estimate, 700 new products are introduced every day. Last year, 26,893 new food and household products materialized on store shelves around the world, including 115 deodorants, 187 breakfast cereals and 303 women's fragrances. In all, 2 million brands vie for attention."
And it seems like half of them were handed out in celebrity goodie bags at the end of the month. I mean, just read the fabulous press release below. And while you do, ponder this question: If the celebs went for the instant appetite suppressant and ignored the macaroons, does the product-placement firm owe the cookie company a refund?
"Stars Receive Goodie Bags Valued in Excess of $17,000 at Ebony's 60th Birthday Bash
"( EMAILWIRE.COM, February 26, 2005 ) Beverly Hills, CA -- The stars came out last night to Crustacean to commemorate Ebony's 60th birthday at "Hollywood in Harlem." Oscar nominees, honorees and special guests including Oprah, Samuel L. Jackson, and Wyclef Jean received gift bags produced by Luxe Bags (formerly Buzz Bags). The goodies were contained in beach totes from Hadley Pollet and deluxe duffel bags from FedEx.
"Contents included a gift certificate from Arizona resort/spa Sanctuary on Camelback ($7000), Platinum Jet Gift Card from Executive Charter Services ($2500), pair of ballet flats from London Sole ($155), Fashion Fair Cosmetics by EBONY, handbag designed from vintage LP covers (Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, etc.) by Carry a Tune ($165), Altoids Smalls, biotin nail strengthener Appearex, instant appetite suppressant Slimmints, Body Mint all-body deodorant tablets, hand-made chocolate macaroons by Melfer's Macaroons, Silhouette Titan Minimal Art sunglasses ($300), Adidas Adrenaline Man and Adidas Adrenaline Woman fragrances, Pro-V Relaxed & Natural collection by Pantene (www.pantene.com), Ray: A Tribute To The Movie, The Music, and The Man" etc. etc.
Product placement is big business. (I wrote a bit about it in a feature called "Under the Radar" for CMO magazine recently; gotta register to read it in the December issue.) How else to explain the Fab Four's foodie, Ted, dragging some poor guy to Costco for buffet supplies? Do not try to tell me that Ted goes to Costco when he's off duty. Which points to an important point about successful product placement: it has to be believable. That the gourmet member of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would recommend Costco pushes belief; so does the frequent appearance of those tooth-brightening strips in practically every episode. No wonder viewership declined by last fall. It was fun to follow the Cinderella makeovers of these slobs, including the magical visits to luxe shops. There's nothing magical about Costco.
Marketing Profs has a primer on the fine art of showering celebs with freebies and describes three techniques, along with a little history: "Centuries before Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped into his first Hummer, an 18th century potter named Josiah Wedgwood began supplying his wares to England's Queen Charlotte. Receiving the title 'Potter to Her Majesty' led to a huge amount of publicity for Wedgwood, which he took advantage of by using the term 'Queen's Ware' to describe his product."
Because it's all about the product. Alas, I don't get Turner Classic Movies but others can enjoy this month's film festival on Friday nights that's a salute to product placement in Hollywood, a very old if not always very honorable activity. (I'm thinking about the blatent product placement in The Muppet Movie, among other films, that got Big Tobacco in trouble some years back.)
If computers should ever turn out to be carcinogentic then Apple will be in big trouble as one of the champion product-placement practioners of all time. Brandchannel gave Apple its "Lifetime Achievement Award for Product Placement" (that and four bucks will get you a latte in Cupertino) and in the process, raises this inescapable issue:
"...Apple's global market share for computers dropped to less than two percent in 2004. ... While its iPod is certainly gobbling up market share, it is Apple's computers that have been onscreen for the last 20 years. In terms of product placement's effectiveness this raises some huge questions, one of which seems to imply that, at best, the effectiveness of product placement is completely unpredictable or, at worst, product placement doesn't really work at all."
Hmm, a marketing technique that that produces unpredictable sales or none at all? Staggering news. Up next: dog bites man. Still, gotta admire Brandchannel for refusing to gloss over this point.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:14 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
March 03, 2005
The Life You Save
Why spring cleaning is a really good idea.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:41 AM | Comments (3)
Pickle Forks
Paperback Writer details her fight against clutter and how she pissed off her family by imposing a strict limitation on gifts. Then she sends us off to Country Living, where all thoughts of clutter control evaporate in the reflection of gorgeous photos with captions like this:
"James sets his outdoor dining table with 19th-century Blue Willow transferware, heirloom linen and a mix of old family silver and vintage pieces he has collected. The pearl-handled pickle fork and engraved butter trowel are favorites."
Well of course they are.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2005
Moving Sale
When I sold my house, I thought it had to be empty. Silly me. Nearly two years ago a woman sold her neglected old bungalow in Chicago. Then she cut out. You know, took off. (She did call an auction house first to have the furniture removed.) The plucky (soon to be dusty, downtrodden and exhausted) young owners had planned to renovate an empty house, not excavate through thousands of items left by a stranger. But they rolled up their sleeves, got rid of the rocks (yes), dusted off notable finds, and put them up for sale. To get an education in what people keep, start at the top, with the first item offered. Not that you need an education; checked the garage lately?
I adore stuff. Shiny new, crappy old, cool, uncool, it doesn't hardly matter. As a result, I'm fascinated by the human lust for stuff, by our desire to acquire. And by the companies that profit as a result. There are true minimalists in the world but they're rare and an affront to nature, like whole-wheat pie crusts and Michael Jackson. I used to blog about PR and the media. But those topics pale next to blogging about, say, the lure of the sassy Hello Kitty boombox on my desk, there courtesy of fabulous friends in the States. Friends like Pete, Tim and Mitch, Derrick, Melissa, Chris, Peter, Joe, Mik, Caroline, Ingrid, Jess, Joanne, Sara and Sarah. (Did I forget anybody? Thanks, Toys!)
The boombox was a gift sparked by my move from California to Sweden nearly three years ago. Before the move, I too had thousands of items, most crammed into the garage-basement of my small bungalow. Some of the things came to me after the deaths of my mother and grandmother but others just followed me home. The help of many, many friends and relations was required to sort through the stuff, get rid of most of it, and ship the pitiful remains to a new apartment. (In many parts of Europe, closets are mythical and more difficult to locate than elves or unicorns. There's a reason why Swedish retailing giant IKEA carries all those wardrobes.)
The sorting process was long, nightmarish and incomplete. (Um, don't mention it to hubby but at the very last minute I stashed a few things in Oakland. And maybe a few other things in Berkeley. Or was it El Cerrito?) The move dampened my ability to acquire but not my lust for stuff. Welcome to Stuffola. I hope you'll be happy here.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack