Category: Smart Bloggers

My good friend Marcus, has a FANTASTIC series unfolding at present — the topic — "If I were a client today". This series does was Marcus does best … teases out a story, a personal narrative chock full of insight, self-reflection and humour. There are nuggets of truths universally shared. We nod. We agree. Sometimes we even get as angry as Marcus. Please, make sure you read it.

Go there now, and then come back. I have something else for you below.

…

You see, when I saw this on Angus’ blog, my first thought was "this is something new from Marcus". Only it wasn’t. It was another deeply felt, strongly worded, strident cry (again, please read in full):

I fucking hate advertising.
I fucking hate what it is doing to the world.
I hate the way it rots your brain.

If I was to visualise it, I would think of Munch’s The Scream. And in many ways I have been there myself. My first posts were attempts to give shape to my own sense of dislocation, to radiate the signs of my worldly discontent and to shout my own chaos into being. But slowly, surely, I found myself far from alone on a bridge. Or in a field. I found myself rooted, stretching out and connected to others. Also shouting. Also reaching. I think that finding others has been my greatest blogging joy.

But far from being over, this blog has afforded my opportunities for which I am grateful. For blogs and social media allow you to turn your ideas into actions very simply. And effectively. You can become linked to a cause. Or you can start one. You can bend your mind towards solving "large problems". And you can contribute to easing the pain of others.

If what you do for a living means compromise (and it almost always does), then there are ways of offsetting this. But it does mean DOING something. Even if it is just reaching out. David, I hope we see your prodigious talents here. There is no recognition … but you do get a karma credit.

Commenting on other people’s blogs is fun. Emailing is good. And Skype chatting is a great, cheap and personal way of bridging the distance between Australia and the rest of the world … but it doesn’t make up for meeting people face to face.

That is why I am so excited about Blogger-Social — April 4-6, 2008 to be held in New York City. Sure there are meet-ups like BlogWorldExpo (which I would have loved to be able to attend), but Blogger-Social is special — it is a purpose-built event and it is social. I am sure there will be plenty of IDEAS hatched and PLANS made … but the purpose of the event is to bring us all together.

I am particularly keen to meet all the folks from Age of Conversation … Drew McLellan,CK, Valeria Maltoni, Emily Reed, Katie Chatfield, Greg VerdinoMack Collier, Lewis Green, Sacrum, Ann Handley, Mike Sansone, Paul McEnany, Roger von Oech, Anna Farmery, David Armano, Bob Glaza, Mark Goren, Matt Dickman, Scott Monty, Richard Huntington, Cam Beck, David Reich, Luc Debaisieux Sean Howard, Tim Jackson, Patrick Schaber, Roberta Rosenberg, Uwe Hook, Tony D. Clark, Todd Andrlik, Toby Bloomberg, Steve Woodruff, Steve Bannister, Steve Roesler, Stanley Johnson, Spike Jones, Nathan Snell, Simon Payn, Ryan Rasmussen, Ron Shevlin, Roger Anderson, Robert Hruzek, Rishi Desai, Phil Gerbyshak, Peter Corbett, Pete Deutschman, Nick Rice, Nick Wright, Michael Morton, Mark Earls, Mark Blair, CB Whittemore, Mario Vellandi, Lori Magno, Kristin Gorski, Kris Hoet, G. Kofi Annan, Kimberly Dawn Wells, Karl Long, Julie Fleischer, Jordan Behan, John La Grou, Joe Raasch, Jim Kukral, Jessica Hagy, Janet Green, Jamey Shiels, Dr. Graham Hill, Gia Facchini, Geert Desager, Gaurav Mishra, Gary Schoeniger, Gareth Kay, Faris Yakob, Emily Clasper, Ed Cotton, Dustin Jacobsen, Tom Clifford, David Polinchock, David Koopmans, David Brazeal, David Berkowitz, Carolyn Manning, Craig Wilson, Cord Silverstein, Connie Reece, Colin McKay, Chris Newlan, Chris Corrigan, Cedric Giorgi, Brian Reich, Becky Carroll, Arun Rajagopal, Andy Nulman, Amy Jussel, Kim Klaver, Sandy Renshaw, Susan Bird, Ryan Barrett , Troy Worman, S. Neil Vineberg!

Please remember, plans are being finalised and bookings for attendance must be made by November 15, 2007. So, if you ever needed a reason to visit NYC … this could be it! I hope to see you there.

Now these guys have a great name — Zeus Jones. And a fascinating blog. And when they start their credentials pitch with "We need to use marketing as a chance to do things for people, not an excuse to say things to them", then you know that this is an agency who are doing things a little differently.

This presentation by Adrian Ho captures some of their thinking around shifting from "designing communications" to "designing interactions". Thought I would share with you all. Enjoy.

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OK … so Sean, Paul and I are doing a little experimentation with Kaltura at the moment and having a bit of fun. In this clip, Sean takes exception to the spammer who claims he is "responsible" and able to work "auto …", "auton …", "autonymously". Actually … I can’t seem to get the clip to work (Sean must have disabled those permissions again). Update: seems to be working!

(But if you really want to see some good thinking on customer experience and SPAM, check out Cam’s latest MarketingProfs post.

Liz Strauss is holding the 2nd Annual All-Day Open Comment Birthday Party this Wednesday, October 24, 2007, 7a.m – 11p.m. Chicago Time (Central Time/GMT -6hrs) … and EVERYONE is invited.

All you need to bring is:

… a link to a page, a picture, a post that demonstrates, celebrates, illuminates your success and outstanding-ness as a blogger.
Or bring that ebook, that manifesto, that photo, that priceless work that you want to offer as a birthday gift to everyone.

Also, on the subject of birthdays … The Servant of Chaos quietly slipped past the TWO YEAR mark this week. I knew it was coming, but just forgot to keep an eye on the date!

AND … this week is the first anniversary of the Sydney bloggers coffee mornings. And while I haven’t been in person for a while, I certainly am there in spirit (or is that just the coffee fumes?). I think I had better make a special effort this Friday … hope to see you there!

Joseph Jaffe’s new book, Join the Conversation is now available on Amazon. It promises to be a provocative and interesting read.

And for the rest of today, by clicking this link you will be helping to drive the book into Amazon’s best seller list — and Joseph will be donating the royalties to charity.

Right, I am off to buy mine now … and then I just have to wait, oooh, one million weeks for it to arrive.

Robyn McMaster has a very interesting blog. She focuses on the brain and explains how thinking and doing impacts your life — on a micro level. Robyn has a great way of being able to explain the science underlying a thought process or a bodily function, link it with emotion and tell the story in a fun and engaging way, which is great for me as I just don’t get the pop culture interest in all-things-science (sorry Dr Karl).

This post is a great example — where Robyn explains why it is important to look after yourself — by taking some "me time" … apparently it is all to do with relieving the impact of Cortisol (aka the stress-inducing chemical). But can you believe that just THINKING about having some "me" time has benefits — releasing seratonin and making you feel happy. Who says "daydreaming" is bad for you?

Oh, and while you are checking Robyn’s blog, check out this post on smell. The moral to this post is make sure that your marketing doesn’t stink by making sure it doesn’t stink.

Diana Ceausu points out this great initiative by Daniel Mejia which seeks to replicate the success of blog ranking systems such as Mack Collier’s Top 25 Marketing Blogs, Ad Age’s Power 150 and Peter Kim’s M20 — only this time the focus is the top 27 ad blogs by people under 27 years of age. Daniel will be updating this list every other month — so if you qualify but aren’t on the list, you have two months to do something about it.

The inaugural Young Minds list is:

# Blog Name 1 Noah Brier 6 188 167 85 446 2 Jack Cheng 5 50 32 140 227 3 What if they did 3 28 78 90 199 4 Heron Preston 4 20 53 74 151 5 AdStructure 4 23 45 76 148 6 Cellar Door 5 36 52 35 128 7 Confessions of a Wannabe Adman 4 18 72 24 118 8 Exit Creative 5 40 37 27 109 9 Serial Thoughts 5 24 42 18 89 10 The-Ad-Pit  5 21 38 25 89 11 Organic Frog 5 15 37 32 89 12 Dead Insect 3 11 34 35 83 13 Vincent Thome´s Blog 5 20 43 11 79 14 Do.palicio.us 4 14 26 25 69 15 Adlads 3 12 38 10 63 16 Nicola Davies 4 10 27 22 63 17 Big Secret Pizza Party 4 9 25 12 50 18 A Closet 5 9 30 4 48 19 Junior Planner I Am  0 5 27 12 44 20 Nil Desperandum 4 9 20 5 38 21 Michael Karnjanaprakorn 4 11 21 1 37 22 Creative in London 4 6 24 0 34 23 Wowee, wow 2 3 17 5 27 24 Diginative 2 7 0 17 26 25 Adspace Pioneers 0 4 4 17 25 26 Channel 8000 4 2 13 5 24 27 Breaking & Entering 4 1 11 3 19

I have a terrible memory for names … but faces I am pretty good with. But names … I can meet someone, say hello, and seconds later completely forget the name of my new acquaintance. It can be rather embarrassing — for both me and my new friend.

Of course, I have created strategies to help myself and have even tried clever strategic approaches to casually eek out the name of someone weeks later. But they don’t always work:

Once I was introduced to my next door neighbour but forgot his name between his letterbox and mine. Over the next few weeks we would chat as we walked to the bus stop together … and each time I would try to direct the conversation in a way that would reveal his name. I would live in fear that I would have to introduce him to someone that I knew on the bus!

Some time passed and I was becoming more and more concerned about this state of namelessness. Then for a change one morning, I was driving into work with my wife, and I saw my neighbour walking to the bus. This was a great opportunity — I asked my wife to introduce herself. I pulled over and offered him a lift. As he climbed into the back, she turned and said, "Hi, I am Angela". He smiled, extended his hand and said, "Hello, I am your next door neighbour!".

Foiled again!

In tribute to Seinfeld, we started calling him "Mulva" — but not to his face, of course.

And because we all have experienced a Seinfeld moment or two, I am sure you marketers out there will nod your head with some of Bill Gemmell’s clever observations on marketing. Check out his free eBook — Seinfeld on Marketing.