ouroboros

Lego Bricks It

NYT's Andrew Newman reported today that Lego prohibited the makers of the Spinal Tap "Unwigged and Unplugged" tour DVD from using a two-year-old stop-motion animation video of "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You" (below) created by Coleman Hickey that they had been using on their tour.

And why was this piece of content disallowed?

"We love that our fans are so passionate and so creative with our products,” said Julie Stern, a spokeswoman for Lego Systems, the United States division of the Lego Group, a Danish company founded in the 1930s. “But it had some inappropriate language, and the tone wasn’t appropriate for our target audience of kids 6 to 12."

Cluephone, Julie - 6 to 12 year olds aren't the only ones who love Lego products.  Nor are they the ones, typically who BUY it.  Their parents do.  The same parents, probably dads, who love Spinal Tap.  And loved Lego.  And would have loved to see this little mashup - maybe as much as the Spinal Tap guys themselves, who worked it into their stage show for their recent tour.

Lego is making a classic error.  They don't own their brand anymore.  More than anyone, they should know that - they've been giving their brand to their fans to play with for years, in the shapes of those little bricks and every other shape they make.  And we have played with them - making things Lego never dreamed up, including an entire genre on YouTube of stop motion animation.

Which is of course where my five-year old got his first intro to animation.  through legos.  on YouTube.  Unfortunately it was watching this classic:

When other brands would KILL to get the kind of mashup Lego was just handed (Lego + stop motion + YouTube + SpinalTap Tour + DVD) rolled into a compilation DVD as a free ad for their product to adoring fans, why did Lego kill the fun?

“YouTube is a less commercial use,” Ms. Stern said. “But when you get into a more commercial use, that’s when we have to look into the fact that we are a trademarked brand, and we really have to control the use of our brand, and our brand values.”

Darn, Julie. 

You can't control your brand anymore. 

You can choose who to spotlight though - and Coleman Hickey LOVED you. 

Loved you enough to take the time to build a movie using your product.  So what did the now sixteen-year-old Mr. Hickey have to say about the silliness?

“In a way I’m disappointed that it won’t be forever memorialized in a DVD.  It’s not like I was going to get any money for it, but it’s too bad. Lego has the right to do that, but it’s unfortunate that they don’t have a little more of a sense of humor.”

You nailed it, Coleman.

Twitter::blogging as USA Today::Monocle

For the long silence. 

For anyone still reading here (Hi, Mom!), I've been having a bit of an internal debate on the value of blogging.  It's resulted in my near complete migration to twitter for sharing insights and info. 

And questioning why one would post thoughts to a blog, or provide links to cool stuff via one, when it's so damn much easier to 'bit.ly' great stuff, punch it out in 140 characters or less and move on, and get the 'social credit' for having done so via the twitter community.

Twitter has become a great medium for the zingy barb aimed at a Retweet.  Many of my friends play Twitter like a game, with RT's and @replies as their scorecard.  And I'll admit - it's pretty satisfying to get a reply or RT.  Human beings want to interact. And a comment-less blog post isn't a conversation.  An RT or an @reply feels more like one.  And so the draw.

HBS tells us less the median for tweets is 1.  Yep, one and done.  Back in 2008, Technorati told us 95% of blogs hadn't been updated in 4 months.  Remember Second Life?  I still think 90% of their registrations were from ad agency jackasses trying to figure it out to sell tot heir clients.  But people want feedback.  They need feedback.  We are hardwired to seek it out.

A draft White Paper entitled "Tweet Tweet Retweet" (Download TweetTweetRetweet) by Danah Boyd, Scott Golder and Gilad Lotanon even names the phenomenon of "Ego Retweeting".  Some of the data cited (and yes, the paper leads with a 'do not cite' header):

"Based on 720,000 tweets captured at 5-minute intervals from 437,708 unique users, they found that: 

• 22% of tweets include a URL (‘http:’)
• 36% of tweets mention a user in the form ‘@user’; 86% of tweets with @user begin with @user and are presumably a directed @reply
• 5% of tweets contain a hashtag (#) with 41% of these also containing a URL
• 3% of tweets are likely to be retweets in that they contain ‘RT’, ‘retweet’ or ‘via’ (88% include ‘RT’, 11% include ‘via’ and 5% include ‘retweet’

Based on 203,371 retweets captured from 107,116 unique users, they found that:

• 52% of retweets contain a URL
• 18% of retweets contain a hashtag
• 11% of retweets contain an encapsulated retweet (RT @user1 RT @user2 ...message..)
• 9% of retweets contain an @reply that refers to the person retweeting the post

It doesn't take much thought to zing off 140 characters of self-indulgent crap (exactly the reason many dismissed Twitter in the first place), but it does take time to compose something meaningful. 

We need more ways not just to connect, but to connect with each other.

And we'll migrate to the tools that do it best.

**UPDATE**

Oh thank god there's an ironic T that summarizes this whole damn post.

******

Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford and the web nearly die.

"Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

"It could go down as the biggest mobile event in history...people wanted to keep tabs on this story, but if you're an accountant you're supposed to be working on your spreadsheet. So they were using their personal cell phones to do so,"

CNN reported a fivefold rise in traffic and visitors in just over an hour, receiving 20 million page views in the hour the story broke...Twitter crashed as users saw multiple "fail whales"...Google Trends rated the...story as "volcanic."

Neda?  Iran?  Iraq?  Sanford?  Korea?

MJ.

But in the midst of the MJ tsunami that crippled the web last week, a fake story about the death of actor Jeff Goldblum (and Harrison Ford) starting making the rounds, requiring public debunking.  It was this site that generated the spoof celebrity death stories - the Goldblum and Ford riffs were spread through social nets, twitter, etc, and became "trending topics" - a near-guarantor of exponential meme proliferation.

Generating templated fictional stories that then index well on search engines and proliferate through social media (impacting organic and paid search results) was the strategy behind W+K's 2009 Silver Cyber Lion-winning "Swaggerize Me" effort for P&G's Old Spice.

As Linnie Rawlinson and Nick Hunt reported for CNN in regards to the fast spread of fake news:  "The Web can disseminate news -- but like any form of communication it can also help us create what we expect to see next."  Or - don't believe what they tell you about Mark Hamill.

conspiracy thought #42: when it wakes

<wtf>

I'll go back to advertising in a second, but humor me:

We increasingly use technology to externalize our inner life, and in so doing become an interconnected web of socio-cultural dendrite/axon linkages across social nets and microblog tools, newly capable of collective/connective action.  These micro-thoughts accrete to an outsourced 'collective unconscious' in the cloud - the new "reservoir of the experiences of our species."

Buddhist thought calls the dichotomy between inner and outer, between self and other, 'maya', or illusion. 

So what if we aren't individuals, per se, but in reality, 6 billion neurons, creating linkages and meaning for a mind that's slowly waking up with each new neuron that connects to the whole?  The world coming on line, connecting, a being shrugging off sleep in geologic time?  And when Jormagundr finally releases his tail, we're just an intergalactic Willy Loman with a meeting to make? 

Or that our new/accelerating interconnections aren't creating something new, but unleashing/unveiling something very very old?

And when it wakes, we go back to just being a billion bizarre little neurons in a greater consciousness?

"In the mythology of the Aztecs...the present fifth epoch is called Nahui-Olin (Sun of Earthquake), which began in 3113 BC and will end on December 24, 2011. It will be the last destruction of human existence on Earth. The date coincides closely with that determined by the brothers McKenna in The Invisible Landscape as “the end of history” indicated by their computer analysis of the ancient Chinese oracle-calendar, the I Ching. The Mayan calendar comes to an end on Sunday, December 23, 2012"

Or will someone hit snooze for another millenia or two and give us a shot?

</wtf>

alright, alright, I'll go back to looking for a brand using twitter well.

and reading Perry Bible Fellowship comics.

Xob on it

Basic premise for Claire Miller's Monday NYT piece on tech startups = "you need more of a business model that ad revenue off eyeballs".  My favorite quote on the subject comes from Jeff Bonforte, CEO of Xobni (a search tool/functional layer  for Outlook):

"Ads are an inefficient business model, making indirect revenue as a result of behavior and advertising to people who don't want to see them or for whom they're irrelevant."

Wha-BAAAAMMm.

Fun Stuff

If you saw Kutiman's "Mother of all funk chords" youtube mashup, now you can watch it on yooouuutuuube.  Gotta tell you - addictive.

Just in time for Mother's Day, MomsRising.org offers a personalizable "Mom of the Year" video through, yes, "CNNBC.com". Yes, I made and sent.

And Google releasing O3D api.

Facebook Rights - and Ad Model Fail

We were having an internal debate about the Declaration of Independence today, while at the same time, voting is closing on the proposed Facebook Governance Documents. 

I know you know.  And I know you know that if Facebook were a country, its 200+MM population would make it the world's 5th largest (they just passed Brazil)

And here are the proposed "Guiding Principles" (hum "Mine eyes have seen the glory" as you read):

1. Freedom to Share and Connect

People should have the freedom to share whatever information they want, in any medium and any format, and have the right to connect online with anyone – any person, organization or service – as long as they both consent to the connection.

2. Ownership and Control of Information

People should own their information. They should have the freedom to share it with anyone they want and take it with them anywhere they want, including removing it from the Facebook Service.  People should have the freedom to decide with whom they will share their information, and to set privacy controls to protect those choices. Those controls, however, are not capable of limiting how those who have received information may use it, particularly outside the Facebook Service.

3. Free Flow of Information

People should have the freedom to access all of the information made available to them by others. People should also have practical tools that make it easy, quick, and efficient to share and access this information.

4. Fundamental Equality

Every Person – whether individual, advertiser, developer, organization, or other entity – should have representation and access to distribution and information within the Facebook Service, regardless of the Person’s primary activity. There should be a single set of principles, rights, and responsibilities that should apply to all People using the Facebook Service.

5. Social Value

People should have the freedom to build trust and reputation through their identity and connections, and should not have their presence on the Facebook Service removed for reasons other than those described in Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

6. Open Platforms and Standards

People should have programmatic interfaces for sharing and accessing the information available to them. The specifications for these interfaces should be published and made available and accessible to everyone.

7. Fundamental Service

People should be able to use Facebook for free to establish a presence, connect with others, and share information with them. Every Person should be able to use the Facebook Service regardless of his or her level of participation or contribution.

8. Common Welfare

The rights and responsibilities of Facebook and the People that use it should be described in a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which should not be inconsistent with these Principles.

9. Transparent Process

Facebook should publicly make available information about its purpose, plans, policies, and operations. Facebook should have a town hall process of notice and comment and a system of voting to encourage input and discourse on amendments to these Principles or to the Rights and Responsibilities.

10. One World

The Facebook Service should transcend geographic and national boundaries and be available to everyone in the world.

Wow.

Impressive, inspiring, thought provoking.

SO where does the "Ad Fail" part come in? 

Despite near-continuous, above the fold, high visibility FB profile page placements for the past week or so, only 536K+ members have voted.  

That's about .2%. 

And only 109K FB'ers (that's ~.05% of the total pop) have become "Fans" of the ''Facebook Governance Page', meaning they will receive updates and posts about any conversations or proposed changes to the documents. 

So in a community of 200MM+, only about a half million are participating in creating the global guiding principles.

Wow.  All they had to do was click and vote.

Twice as many people voted for the guiding principles of what has become for many an indispensable social utility, as were sacrificed for Whoppers in a single promotion.

Clarification - Yes, Virginia, brands should engage in social media

A comment on my last post made a good point:  as an employee of an agency for Old Spice, it wasn't really fair for me to call out Axe or BBH without disclosing that I work for an agency that handles a competitive brand.

In the interest of full disclosure, W+K handles Old Spice.

So while that commenter may have wanted to write off everything I posted as bias (how I love the interweb), that doesn't really jibe with all the positive callouts I have done on this blog for other "competitive" agencies...and yes...brrrrr...even competitive BRANDS, doing great work.   

Amusingly, the person used an email address that masked their identity to upbraid me about a lack of transparency - "[email protected]".

More importantly, and why I actually felt it important to follow up, is I was accused of "bashing brands going 2.0" by that commenter, and a few others may have gotten that feeling too.  Whooaa!  By no stretch of the imagination did I mean to suggest brands should not engage in social media - quite the contrary.  I have often stated that it isn't actually up to brands whether to "do social media" - frankly, their only choice is whether they will choose to participate in the conversations already happening and maybe start some interesting ones themselves.  That is the reality.   And I love it dearly.  Maybe too much.  SO GET IN THERE!

But I believe that "participating" in "social media" isn't just pointing at stuff.  Brands just pointing at stuff without a point of view feels like either (a) a bad replacement for a good idea, or (b) a half-assed compromise with a legal department:

Brand/Agency: We want to do social media.  Engage in conversations!

Legal: WHAT?  ARE YOU HIGH?  And get sued when someone posts a music track?  I don't need [record label] crawling up my [expletive].  Who's going to vet all this stuff?  What's the review process?

Brand/Agency: It's social!  We have to let what happens, happen!

Legal: [stony silence]

Brand/Agency: S...s...soc...social media?  Web...2.0?

Legal: [stony silence]

Brand/Agency: Right.  Ah....what can we do?

Legal: (grumbling) IF you want to "feature" content freely available elsewhere (subject to terms of service, of course), and IF we merely point/link to it, and make it clear we ARE NOT curating it, and you CLEARLY attribute it to a third party, we may be able to do that.  I'm not saying it's not without risk, but it would theoretically be acceptable risk...as long as we post our privacy policy and T&C's...

Brand/Agency: YAY!  Wild and crazy "Social Media", here we come!

No I was posting to call out LAMENESS.

A lame brand is a mirror that simply reflects the world we know now (hence my distaste for creative focus groups, an entirely different subject). 

A dynamic brand listens well, engages provocatively and relevantly, and leads me somewhere new. 

Do we at W+K always pull it off?  No, not always. 

We are all learning just how dynamic a brand can be.  And how fun and challenging it can be. 

No sleep 'til Brooklyn, No time for lameness.

Brands go web 2.0. Give me a F---ing break.

So now Axe's BBH tries to go all web metafilter for their new site, following on the heels of Agency.com's blatant Modernista! rip off for Skittles.  Will we get the usual round of forehead slapping cries of brilliance from the tiny community who gives a crap?  Time will tell.

The only folks I don't see deriving ANY benefit out of this 2.0 wankfest are normal people.  Now arguably, Modernista! isn't trying to create a consumer proposition with their website.  But Skittles is.  And so, presumably is Axe.

Which begs the question: if I and most folks didn't give a crap about the TV ads companies used to slap on their brochureware sites, why the f--- do I care about how well distributed their brand voice is online?  Does the average 18 year old CARE what the AXE effect is on Stumble Upon?  let me think...ah....NO.  Does the average kid give one flying hoot what people are saying about Skittles on Twitter?  Well, NO.  but then they may not be able to get past the age gate to experience the distributed joy of Skittles ANYWAY.

Wait a second - Skittles has an AGE GATE?  Why yes.

Because that big web out there might have some bad stuff in it. 

I'm sorry, folks.  this reeks.  If you're going to be social or meta, DEAL WITH IT.

Could brands stop being so scared of social media that they let their agencies hoodwink them into feeing like it's ok now that their brand presence simply be a catalogue of links and posts? 

That in the absence of a voice or an idea, dreck's a great subsitute?  (and no, doing your metafilter in the correct brand CMYK pallette doesn't count)

Coraline Marketing

[ Mike Baker's reconceived pulp 'Coraline' cover, from his blog 'Knack for Art':]

You haven't seen a lot from me on W+K's marketing efforts behind Coraline. 

The best gauge of a campaign is what other people say about it anyway, right?   And other folks have done a great job of covering it - Ward @ Drawn and The Future of Ads pretty much nail it, and if you missed anything, 'Evil Buttons' is the unoffical blog we've all been reading to track the campaign and its offshoots. 

Phil Knight was interviewed by AdAge about the Coraline marketing effort and had this to say:

"The original agreement was that Focus [Features] would do the advertising, but in some of the early meetings, it was clear that we had a difference of opinion on the advertising -- "target audience" being one. They were used to doing "data" advertising: They wanted to push this more as a kiddie film, because that's what the data told them. And Nike and Wieden & Kennedy together had grown up with what I call "emotional essence advertising" -- the essence of the product is its emotional core, and you push that. It was two very different approaches, and it kind of became clear in some of those early meetings that we had a very strong difference of opinion. And to Focus' credit, they said, "OK, why don't you guys try it? There's no use in fighting this thing. Let's negotiate a different way to market this thing."

Marketing Quals ("emotional essence" types) and Quants ("data" advertisers) have been slugging it out for a while, so I wanted to share this nugget:

Pundits projected a $9MM opening weekend for Coraline, and $32MM total run gross.

We are damn proud that after a $16.3MM opening weekend take, Coraline's 3rd week US gross stands now at $53.93MM and counting. 

Riffing on Brands, Shared Experience and Decision-making

I'll give you the end, then the ramble:

Brand is your personal window into a shared experience.

Bear with me.

I've long held that the music industry wasn't in the music business  - it was in the CD printing and distribution business.  I caught the edge of Steve Knopper on NPR last night, and he highlighted another key role they play now: the minting of celebrities.  This, he suggested, would be their primary role going forward, now that musicians themselves have distribution tools and marketing strategies of their own.

So if Music's core proposition is not printing but minting, can they exploit that?  and can they carry (and monetize) that core expertise out of the music vertical, when IMG and CAA and Paris Hilton and Shaun White are already out there? 

And then, take advertising. 

Advertising isn't the ad business, it's the influence business, right?  Because done well it influences decision making.   And knowing 'job one' is to enhance our client's business and brands, the question to ask is:  What is brand x's most effective way to influence your decision making?  And not just your decision (though they love you, the REAL you, trust me, they do), but the decision-making across enough wallets to support the infrastructural investment to make the widgets you so hotly covet?

And that question now leads you in a variety of directions, from product, to experiences to software to films, music, games, and yes, possibly "ads".

We are creating the next generation of shared experiences - synchronous and asynchronous.  Facebook is fundamentally asynchronous, though the "chat" functionality tries to bridge that...even Match.com trys to relationship build on dead drop boxes til you meet.  How do we use tech to bring us together rather than isolate us, while the reality of "Shared Experience" is in flux?

Because brands, regardless of whether they 'do' beverages, sneakers, mobile devices or hotel rooms, are at the core, in the "Shared Experience" business.  They both reflect and create narratives that invite folks in.

Now that technology has eliminated barriers of distance, geography, time (through multi zone and asynchronous interaction), language (google translator) and even caste/culture ("noone knows you're a dog online") - we get a magical new sea of hyper-accelerated idea propagation, ambient intimacy and spontaneous group/community formation at scale.  The ability to create new narratives, individual and shared, is wide open to anyone.  Net, we've removed barriers of manufacturing, distribution and communication/marketing.  Anyone one can affect everything.

So look at your business.  What is your core proposition? 

Music Industry = Celebrity
Advertising = Influence
Nokia = Connection
etc.

Now all you need to do is make money at it, using all the tools at your disposal. You know, the EASY part.

Goodvertising vs. Badvertising

Three examples:

Saatchi & Saatchi LA's "Catch of the Day" for the Surfrider Foundation, highlighting the realities of trash-strewn beaches [via Jeremy Elder's Shape+Color]:

Red Bull's Robbie Madison New Year's Eve jump in Las Vegas:

'Coraline' movie marketing efforts spawning (amongst other things) fan websites dedicated to tracking the marketing effort, unboxing homages, and eBay sales of promotional keys:

 

There is hope.

Screw Badvertising.

\o/ FrontlineSMS Makes Us Better \o/

Ken Banks (@kiwanja on twitter) is an honest-to-goodness tech hero.  When much tech-related news and developments wallow in wonk and wank, or seem aimed at folks with more daily discretionary spending power than many global households make annually (PS3 Home launches!  Waaa waaaaah), Ken's FrontlineSMS (@frontlineSMS on twitter) is a free piece of software that enables NGO's and grassroots organizations worldwide to communicate rapidly and effectively with geographically dispersed groups using basic text-messaging (SMS) technology.  If you can get a signal, you can communicate/aggregate/congregate/advocate.  And it works in spite of the natural disasters and power outages that regularly cripple other tech solutions. 

Just how far ahead of the curve is Ken?

After a year of exhaustive research and millions spent, Larry Brilliant's Google.org announced (at TED 2008 last year) that they'd arrived at the conclusion that an SMS-enabled tool could be a good idea to invest MORE time and money to create a team to build and research and prototype and maybe, just maybe, deploy.  Net: according to Google, it would take years and millions to do, in effect, what FrontlineSMS had been doing for years.  Like announcing in 1973 that a moon trip looked "feasible".  Proof yet again that insitutional hubris and groupthink can blind even the smartiest of smartie-pants to nimble people with a passion doing a reverse windmill dunk over them.  [See "Salamis"]

Sure W+K sells soda and sneaks better than anyone, but we love passionate folks using innovative technologies to make peoples lives better.  We were honored to work with Ken on his web presence and logo - both of which had to work on low speed connections and use text characters (since many folks would interact with them only via text message).  BTW - the logo we developed with Ken is ASCII friendly and does some great stuff when you paste it into skype.  seriously. 

And it looks good on a button (see photo above).

\o/

Ouroboros. Why?

Susan Bratton asked me why the hell I called this blog Ouroboros.

The original concept was this:  there's lots of new stuff, but I have always believed successful new technologies meet fundamental (read: pre-existing) human needs.  we live in cycle of new technologies that risk isolating us at the same time they can enable deeper human connections.  Hence the best tech is the tech that makes us more human, rather than less.  Successful emergent technologies provide supercharged solutions for re-mergent need states.  The serpent eats its tail.

But in our conversation, I was reminded of the old saw about our bodies replacing every cell every seven years.  The Ouroboros represents many things, including eternal regeneration. 

We are in a time of fundamental rewiring - social, cultural, technological.  When and if we take a moment to freeze evolution to consider the totality of our present being, I would argue that technology (in some way shape or form) will be incorporated not just into our lifestyles, but the realities of who we are.

The serpent eats its tail, and is more than it was.

Thank you, Susan.

"Flash Marketing Sucks". Or, "Crap in a Flash"

This gem in my e-mail box, next to two Nigerian e-scams, from a "Flash Marketing" sales rep:

Dear Renny.gleeson

Do you want the top position in the major search engines? We will give you a free site review and show you why we are the best at getting you the most. Email us today at [name redacted]@gmail.com and include the best way to contact you.

Sincerely,
[name redacted]
Flash Marketing

Ahhh...the power of search meets the power of spam?  Crap like this gives us all a bad name.  And news flash, Flash: I don't write my name with a period.  very.  often.

Remember when I said "Yaari.com Sucks"? Well, they continue to suck. But don't worry - it's apparently my fault they suck, not theirs.

Last week, I screwed up and I signed up for a social site called Yaari.com. 

In the signup process, I was asked to import my contacts.  It's not optional.  Then I was asked to check the boxes for those I wanted to receive an invite to join me on Yaari.  What I didn't realize until I started getting a wave of emails from friends I'd not heard from in some time was that they ignored the one box I checked and sent invites to EVERYONE IN MY ADDRESS BOOK.

Then some of those folks, when they got an invite from me, in turn registered.  And guess what?  THEIR ADDRESS BOOKS GOT SPAMMED, TOO.

So I wrote to Yaari:

"..I sent a single invitation to a friend to join Yaari, but instead, apparently Yaari has sent an email to all the people on my email list. Please RETRACT THE INVITATIONS IMMEDIATELY WITH AN APOLOGY, and notify me when this has been completed.  Thank you."

This is what I got back from Yaari.com's Prerna Gupta (my bolds):

"I appreciate you contacting us regarding this matter. However, please note that we have not emailed your contacts without your approval. By registering for Yaari and agreeing to the Terms of Service, you authorized Yaari to send an email notification to all the contacts listed in the address book of the email address you provided during registration. This is clearly stated in our Terms of Service and on the Registration Page...Based on feedback we are receiving from users like you, we are making changes to our invitation procedure to avoid any misunderstandings in the future. If you send me a comma-separated values list of email addresses that were affected by this, I would be happy to send an apology email."

So a couple of key takeaways: (a) when I checked the one name in my address book to which I wanted to send an invite, that was apparently my "approval" to spam EVERYONE in my address book, (b) I'm not the only one pissed off about the (c) "misunderstanding", and finally (d) they've spammed my friends, many of whom gave me deserved crap about this whole thing. 

Worst of all, I realized in the T+C's that by registering I am also required to provide an email address at which I can receive "commercial emails".

So this was the last letter:

"Prerna, I thank you for your quick reply.  But with all due respect, your assertion that you "had my approval" to spam my address book is inaccurate.  To quote your T+C's:

"The email address(es) that you supply to use this service will only be used to send invitations to connect with you on Yaari. By registering for the Yaari website, and by giving Yaari member's email address and password, a member agrees to the Terms of Service and consents to allow Yaari to automatically send an email from the member to member's contacts, encouraging member's contacts to register for the Yaari website. Invitation emails will be sent on member's behalf, with the 'from' address set as member's email address."

When I imported the list from Yahoo, your interface provided check boxes to select who, from my imported address book, I wished to send an invite.  I selected one. YOU SPAMMED THEM ALL, as apparently you did with my friends' address books as well.  Given that, I'd rather not send you a comma-delimited address book.  Why?  I've got no guarantees as to what you might do with that information,  based on your T+C's:

"Yaari reserves the right to modify or amend this Agreement at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, at Yaari’s sole discretion...as a Member it is your sole responsibility to keep yourself apprised of any such modifications or amendments. Should Member object to any terms and conditions of the Agreement or any subsequent modifications thereto or become dissatisfied with Yaari in any way, Member's only recourse is to immediately: (1) discontinue use of Yaari; (2) terminate Yaari registration; and (3) notify Yaari of termination."

You left out (4),"refer you to the Better Business Bureau of Georgia", which is my next step. In the meantime, I'll blog about this and forward your email to the folks you spammed.

I was very eager to check out your service.  I won't make that mistake again.  My account is deactivated as of this email.  I'll be watching with particular interest to see whether I continue to receive 'commercial emails', as also intimated in your T+C's."

Acknowledged - I was silly to give a real address - many friends of mine maintain multiple email accounts for exactly this reason.  I got suckered, and dragged friends into this mess.  Stay Tuned, folks.  We'll see what the Georgia BBB has to say.

Don't sign up for Yaari.

I test out a lot of different web services in my job for W+K.  Of particular interest to me has been Indian social networks. 

One that irked me this morning was Yaari.com.

First red flag: Yaari requires you to import your contacts to sign up.  But I ignored the irritation and plowed ahead. Sadly.  Using my personal email address.

After you check off whom you'd like to invite to Yaari, something really special happens: based on the emails I've been getting inundated with, Yaari ignores your selections and spams your entire f--king address book.

Now that's special.  Yaari, until proven otherwise, you SUCK. 

PLEASE IGNORE the request to join Yaari I DIDN'T SEND TO YOU.

BTW, when I carped about this to the inimitable Ted Yukawa of W+K Tokyo who got Yaari-ed by me, he shared this story (names and places redacted so you can live in terror while traveling):

"xxxx was handed a chocolate on a bus from a friendly local in xxxx. Some other tourists did too. Next thing he remembers is he's on a hospital bed without any possessions. He learns the other tourists were killed and organs were missing!! He's a lucky man. I guess he didn't pass the merchandisable organ holder test."

"Getting it" and "Not Getting It"

Random thoughts.  You've heard the saw: some agencies "get it", some "don't get it". 

Seems to boil down generally to this:

• "digital" shops tell you "traditional" shops don't get (meaning, of course, 'understand' or 'do well') "digital", "social media", "viral marketing", or a host of specific functionalities - e.g., SEM, SEO, mobile development, etc., etc., etc.
• "traditional" shops tell you "digital" shops don't "get" "branding", "craft", "storytelling", or "advertising".

Behind those two positions are a few things, including:

• creative control, as in, "who's that stupid traditional agency to judge the unparraleled brilliance of my interactive idea when they don't know s--- about interactive or the specific nuances of the digital ecosphere?"; or, "who the hell are those untalented f-ers at the digital shop without a conceptual bone in their bodies to tell me about engaging brand stories when the best they can muster is a s--- tech app 'because its cool or because they can', rather than 'because its spot on with brand strategy?"
• client relationships (and with it, fees).  Digital shops often look to go straight to the client because they don't believe traditional folks they occasionally have to partner with understand their ideas well enough to represesent them effectively to the client, and traditional folks see digital folks talking about their ideas in isolation from the bigger picture - the old "if the only tool you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem
• The belief at many shops that "interactive is still an unproven medium being heavily pushed by the uninformed out of fear or because the market is telling them they have to", or that "interactive is the fundamental game changer that renders all previous communication prosaic and dated".

The problem?  Everyone is right.

More later.

I <3 NY.

How will we roll?

A stumper has been why the Mayans, for whom wheels were both sacred (in the forms of their calendaring and astrological systems) and mundane (in the form of wheeled childrens' toys) never 'discovered' the use of wheels as a tool for facilitating transport.  No wagons.  No hand carts.

In the future, what will they look back on us with disbelief saying "how could they have missed THAT application of technology?"

At least now you can get Maya wheels.

Clarification

<personal>
I got a comment on this, and it worried me - for the record, I was being sarcastic in my 'bio' when I said I "worked in video games until I became so wealthy I needed work only for love."  I hope my video game pals got the (bad) joke, but for anyone who actually thought I was carried in on a velvet pillow every day and ate peeled grapes and bonbons while living off the royalties from the episodic/node-based historical-narrative games I built in my youth - please revise your mental map. 

In spite of my best efforts, I am not fantastically wealthy, but I am happy knowing I do save lives every day by working in advertising, rather than being a doctor as my folks suggested.  Repeatedly.

</personal>

American Brandstand BS

Piece in today's NYT entitled "American Brandstand" focusing on brands stepping into the sucking void left by the "whipsawing" of the music business by "digital technology" completely misses the point.  The bigger story isn't about brands underwriting music - it's about traditional command and control distribution models being exposed as costly barriers to innovation and emotional connection rather than facilitators.  It's about a digitally-enabled new playing field and new players popping up in industries where they weren't expected.  That's a story - and one that will rewrite a lot of marketing playbooks.

Which should all be burned anyway.

This "whipsawing" crap is an excuse you hear in a lot of industries facing the digital tsunami and chosing to go down in their cellars rather than get out the boards and surf - the music industry industry didn't just "miss" the digital distribution revolution - they ignored it because their financial self-interest was wedded to another model.  When Hurricane Fanning hit the music business, the klaxons shouldn't have sounded only in the lawyers' suites - the business brains and creative hearts needed to sit down and ask themselves what their industry proposition was.  Maybe they'd have realized they weren't in the "music" business, they were printing houses whose medium of delivery was being eclipsed.  The future, now presently emergent,  business is "music experience" or "music supply" - regardless of format - and still offers phenomenal opportunity.

And then a couple of folks go on record in the article saying it's "not about the money".  Bilge.  Of course it is.  This isn't the corporate responsibility group doing these deals - the intention is to associate and by association drive sales.  Or you don't do it.  And for the bands, it's promotion.  And distribution.  And ultimately...oh right - revenue.

Richard Bishop of Cornerstone had a nice sound bite:
“I think in the world today, it doesn’t make a difference to the consumer if a record comes out on Warner Music, EMI, Red Bull or Diesel Jeans.  Artists may be better advised to put their music out with a brand to get better reach and bigger advertising.” 

Damn straight. 

Smart artists are using every loophole they can to explore new possibilities.  They are trying to extricate themselves from the burning building of the old music industry, while the record business is still running room to room trying to douse the flames with single-serve Evian bottles.

The story for me here is that while the lame end of the music business is floundering through a slow motion car wreck  trying to maintain their command and control CD-printing model,  new music experience/music supply players - iTunes, brands, movies, video games, you name it - are stepping in.

So where will this happen next?  Well...what's another command and control production distribution model?  Oh...how about...movies?  TV?  Books?  Games?  Advertising?

Brands with money to spend to create powerful emotional connections have the world at their fingertips.  But it's a messy world, to put it mildly.  Some will execute well, becoming new gatekeepers and kingmakers.  More will tank this thing, with their delicious brand mismatches and missteps excrutiatingly well documented.

We are all experimenting.  The brand lab is huge.  Music is just one tool - look for brands in more businesses than you'd expect.

Design - High and Low

Got a review copy of Adaptive Path's "Subject to Change".  I'm 100 painful pages in to this 160 page book that seems so far to be at least 100 pages too long.  In a nutshell: think about design.  Oh - and think different.  There.  You don't have to buy one.   The "quotes-by-interesting-people" sprinkled throughout the book only serve to show you that meaningful ideas and insightful thoughts lie elsewhere - in other books that you've probably ALREADY READ.  I am forcing my way through it just to see if there's a twist that reveals this isn't just an painfully long and patronizing Adaptive Path credentials presentation.  If there is, I'll glady come back and revise this entry.

Contrast that with Undoboy's new site.

 "Design Brings Happiness" he suggests, then he sells it to you in the form of his Superbastard toys.  Short, sweet, to the point.  Elegant.

"Karp Rocks", or "The Innovator's Dilemma", or "My Shiny New Mantra"

Thank you, Publishing 2.0.  Scott Karp's "Google AdWords: A Brief History of Online Advertising Innovation" is a post well worth the read for a look back to when Google's global supremacy was not a foregone conclusion.  In it, Karp lays out the historical context and decisions that set Skynet on their current trajectory.

At the article's conclusion, Karp says this:

"The challenge of innovation is that we are all boxed in by what we know, by our assumptions about how things work...The next Google-like innovation is right in front of us — we just need to see past our own assumptions."

"Forget what you know."

A life philosophy in four words.

Is Canoe the Cable Industry's Maginot Line?

The eBay TV ad auction marketplace died a quiet death.  The only real surprise was that this DOA defensive action's demise even warranted a story.  As I recall, this "coalition of the billing" was created to try to keep Google out of broadcaster knickers (Google was at the time looking for broadcasters to partner with to test their own auction-based TV model, and no-one wanted them mucking around in the special sauce.  eBay was easier.  Less threatening.  And uncompetitive).  With no real mandate, poor funding, lackluster participation and an agenda driven by fear, not innovation, I'm honestly surprised it lasted this long.  Did they finally go through all the stationary they had printed up?  Run out of creamers and call it a day? 

Next up: Canoe.  As in 'up the creek without a paddle'.  The cable industry sees Canoe as "[their] solution to the growing amount of ad dollars flowing to the Web."  David Verklin (ex-Aegis/Carat) had this to say:

"We will have all of this new data and features that can prove to clients that people are actually watching the ads."

Darn.  He could have said a lot of things.  Things like "I'm excited to examine how we can continue to improve our value proposition and provide real value for our customers and marketers?" or "Advertisers need to create more compelling viewer engagement experiences and we're here to help them make sense of the opportunities", or "Brands needs to serve their brand communities more effectively in an era of infinite choice", or "Cable and broadcast still command massive audiences and we are seeking new more creative ways to leverage those effectively for advertisers and respectfully for viewers?".   Naaaah.

TV (cable and broadcast) isn't going away.  Not by a long shot.  Among other things, it's getting smarter and more interactive.  Does the cable industry really need an industry group stuffed with folks not incented to innovate OR collaborate?  Heck - I was a sales guy once.  Damned if I'd have given over my best inventory - the stuff I could count on to help me hit my numbers - to a 'consortium' for the 'good of the industry'.

"Something that may concern programmers -- and damp enthusiasm: Because targeted advertising theoretically offers more bang for the marketing buck, advertisers may end up reducing their overall cable spend."

Unless there's more here than meets the eye (and there may be), Canoe, like the eBay SNAFU, strikes me as another Maginot line for an industry in need of forward motion.  Canoe may last - but not in this incarnation, and not with this roster of participants. 

"Why I HATE 360 marketing", or "VZW suffers from AT&T retention strategy jedi mind tricks"

This is the tray table I folded down on my American Airlines Flight.  I felt so dirty.  Like by unfolding the tray I was "opting in" to their ad.  "No, no", thought I.  Then I accepted a drink (seltzer,  baby, everytime!), and had to put it somewhere.

Damned by my own thirst.

I already had no room.  Getting the "can you hear me now guy" in my lap - boy, what a treat.  Did business class and First get this crap, too?  No clue.  But boy - a few hours of this smug gal and the irritating pitch hack dude - wow - do I HATE them now.  VZW's media agency probably got a great deal - can't you hear the pitch?   "Just think - high value target audience, limited visual distractions - and if they're delayed?  JACKPOT, BABY!  They may be trapped without food or water for hours on the tarmac at SFO, but you'll OWN them!"  (And the green jacket: wtf?  Niiiice propping.).  With rising aviation fuel prices, I gotta imagine this will only get worse.  I have nasty visions of being delayed at O'Hare in a cabin stickered up like a NASCAR vehicle, begging for the only food and drink on board: Brawndo and piss-flavored Chex snack bags.  For $14 dollars.  Exact change, please.

Hey - here's some "360 marketing" - put a person on the transcontinental flight who CLEANS THE BATHROOM after each use.  NOW I like your brand.  Barring that, put "can you hear me now" guy's face on the toilet paper.