March 31, 2004
ipod speakers
Thus spake Seth Godin. Again, the guy's got a knack for brevity. Wonderful.
Fred Wilson loves Apple too, even if he uses Windows far more often.
I love Apple. You love Apple. Everybody loves Apple. I wish corporations would come up with more things to love besides Apple and the new VW Beetle. Gets irritating loving the same things as everybody else all the time.
March 30, 2004
personal faves
In case you haven't spotted it yet, a reminder:
On the top of the sidebar, in the "Basic" section you'll see a link for my "personal faves", which has a dozen or so of my sentimental favorite cartoons.
There I've also written a few paras on the personal story behind each cartoon. I've been told it's an OK read...
back of the taxi
One of my favorite early ones. Laminated. February 1998, NYNY.
Funny. It was drawn on the back of this business card a certain girl gave me. She and I never saw each other again after that evening, in spite of what transpired in the back of the taxi.
congrats hazel & dave
David Mackenzie (one of my best friends and director of Young Adam) and his partner, Hazel had their first baby arrive this morning at 9.30am.
A daughter. 33 hours of labor. Ouch.
All 3 are fine and healthy. Hooray!
OK, I'm going off to have a weepie...
2 million
Technorati just passed the 2 million mark a few minutes ago. That is a good thing, for reasons I've stated before:
"... if this curve continues for another year or two the blogosphere will have the population of Dallas or Chicago, and perhaps the population of New York or LA a year or two after that. Not a bad demographic."
I wrote that 10 days ago, when it passed the 1.9 million mark. Right now Technorati is growing by 10,000 blogs a day. TEN THOUSAND.
Staggering.
March 29, 2004
technorati
Besides my readers, my fave thing on the web is Technorati.
I'm playing around with this idea I call "the death of traffic". Traffic was how we measured website success back in the bad ol' dotcom days.
"We got a million hits in November!"
Eh. Gapingvoid's gotten a million hits in 24 hours. It's no big deal. It's called a "spike"- people come, but then they leave just as quickly.
For the vast majority of us bloggers, what's far more important long-term is what I call "hum". To pass on your link from one person to another requires energy. The more often this happens, the more energy. The more energy, the louder the hum.
And that's what Technorati is good at measuring. "Hum".
Technorati allows you to see who is linking to your blog right now. It gives you as good a snapshot of who's digging your work at this moment in time- who's reading your site, and who's reading their sites. It gives you a real-time quality assessment of your audience.
"Quality" is more important than quantity. As a blogger, you don't need thousands of visitors to validate what you're doing. You just need one or two of the right kind of visitor.
What is the "right kind"? That depends on your own agenda. For me, an advertising hack, the right kind is the person who will offer me a job one day.
And of course, it also does the same for sites similar to your own. Makes it easier to evaluate how well you're faring compared to them, within a certain "space" etc.
Measure your blog by size alone, and you will fail. Measure it by "hum" and you are more likely to succeed. Technorati allows you to do this better than any other tool out there, as far as I know.
Hum, hum, wonderful hum...
simplicity
A nice wee rant on the virtues of simplicity from Outsidethefence.
Once, when Lincoln signed a document, as he usually did, "A. Lincoln," some asshat at his side said, "Shouldn't you add, "President of the United States?"
Lincoln replied, "I don't think I need to say, 'this is a horse.'"
Churchill, early in the war, sent a memo to his top commanders asking them to deliver to him that same afternoon, on one side of standard sheet of paper, their plans for prosecuting the war in Europe.
The Gettysburg Address is Ten Sentences.
I have this same problem trying to explain blogging to people. Simplicity scares people. We're too used to being told what to do, think and feel by what my father calls "The Clever Little Pricks".
laptop
(Loic Le Meur, European head of Six Apart (The company that owns blogging software Movable Type, Typepad etc) blogged this one yesterday. Thanks, Loic!)
March 28, 2004
pj carney's
Another early laminated one. Drawn at PJ Carney's, an Irish pub on 7th & 57th, NYNY. February '98.
usual reminders
1. The best way to support this site is to buy a box of blogcards.
2. I want to spend more time in New York. Looking for advertising work.
3. You can syndicate the site via RSS.
4. Yes, the originals are for sale.
blog millionaire
(Diet Coke & Lime website here)
As Bill Hobbs and I mentioned before, Blogads just signed their first big corporate account- Time Warner's Roadrunner high-speed internet service. I think the story is huge- I am genuinely surprised more people aren't talking about it.
As business models, the advantage Blogads has over say, Gawker Media or Weblogs Inc is lower overheads. It doesn't have to pay cash for original content (Gawker) or enter into deeply involved equity-sharing partnerships (WeblogsInc).
Basically, what Blogads does is so much simpler, easier and cheaper for all parties concerned.
I also think Blogads delivers the advertiser's message at a much deeper, diverse, non-mainstream level than any big website. This increases the effectiveness. Once Blogads' clients witness this effectiveness work on their own products, word will spread through the corporate world like wildfire.
Which is why I think Blogads is the most under-reported media story I've ever come across. Then again I'm not surprised- media journalists are paid to come up with stories that are "big & sexy". Gawker was big & sexy for a while, so the hacks typed away like dervishes. Blogads beginnings were more low-key. A harder story to pitch to an editor.
My prediction: Henry Copeland will be the first blog millionaire. You heard it here first.
March 27, 2004
old site
Don't forget to check out my old site. It's still there- over 400 drawings. The link is on the side bar, marked "old site" in the "Basic" section.
It was built before I discovered blogs.
front & back
(Another early one: front & back of the same drawing. Laminated. New York, 14 January, '98)
This was drawn in a very crowded bar, very late at night. I think it shows.
corner bistro
(Drawing on Corner Bistro matchbook cover- eventually torn off and laminated on blank business card. New York, August '98)
March 26, 2004
why content is free on the web
The price of information has not only gone into free fall in the last few years, it is still in free fall now, it will continue to fall long before it hits bottom, and when it does whole categories of currently lucrative businesses will be either transfigured unrecognizably or completely wiped out, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Certainly that's true with large advertising agencies. It's not that their stock prices will plummet overnight. It's more of a "death by a thousand cuts" process. A layoff here, a layoff there. Senior people getting shafted, juniors working longer hours etc. Clients demanding lower fees. Working weekends becoming more the norm.
This is not a bad, post-9/11 patch we're seeing.This is permanent meltdown.
amy langfield uses blogcards
Amy Langfield says: "Get your own Blogcards to increase your powerful geek points in the blogosphere."
Heh. Thanks, Amy.
blogging is amazing
1. You're sitting at the the bar, getting buzzed on caffeine.
2. You doodle something on the back of a busines card.
3. When you get home later you upload the image onto your website. Takes all of 2 minutes. Costs practically nothing.
4. Within hours hundreds, sometimes thousands of people all over the world are seeing it. USA, France, UK, Japan, Estonia, Brazil, Portugal etc etc
5. Well, I think it's amazing, anyway.
UPDATE: And SPAIN. Never forget SPAIN, or risk suffering the fury of a certain woman's scorn.
"making blogs a business"
Jeff Jarvis is giving a talk at Bloggercon (the big annual blogging conference at Harvard) on "making blogs a business". If this is an area that piques your interest at all, please, please, you must click on this link.
Steve Hall from Adrants makes an excellent point in the comments:
It's not all about using a blog to make money though. A blog can also be a representation of a company's intellectual capital through "expert opinion" posts. So many corporate sites are flat and without any redeeming information value. Blogs can fill a gap here.
Henry Copeland from Blogads.com does likewise:
"Potential business"... why the future tense? Blogs need PR? What better PR than having 200 going on 200,000 of America's smartest writers mentioning blog advertising to their friends, neighbors and co-workers?My two cents: the blogosphere is ablaze with gossip about Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis. Frankly, I think Henry's Blogads is a much bigger story.
A rising tide of advertisers is placing ads on a network of the best and brightest -- bloggers like Tim Blair, Markos Moulitsas, Atrios, Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, Daniel Drezner, Kevin Drum, Daniel Drezner and hundreds of others -- through blogads.com.
Who wouldn't want to see these infopreneurs succeed and call their own shots? And who wouldn't want to shake the opinion epicenter?
Blogs have already run more ads this year for different political campaigns and causes than the Washington Post or CNN or Advance.net. Blogads are THE STANDARD for online political advertising.
Folks on the street may not realize it yet -- particularly if they don't read the WSJ or MediaPost or NYSun or Minneapolis Star Tribune or Raleigh Observer -- but blog business is Here and Now.
UPDATE: Speaking of, Nick Denton will be moderating a Bloggercon panel to do with Clay Shirky's Power Law. Thanks for the tip, Cynthia.
the wal-mart effect
The Wal-Mart Effect
So you’re watching a dumb TV show. Suddenly a commercial pops up for Colgate toothpaste. You’ve been using Crest for years, there’s no way you’re switching to Colgate, so why is Colgate wasting your time?
Well, what you have to remember is that Colgate isn’t just using that commercial to sell to you. Colgate is also using that commercial to sell to Wal-Mart.
With certain low-value brands, unless you’re selling at Wal-Mart, you’re not really in business. You’re certainly not a player. So when the Wal-Mart guy asks the Colgate guy, “why should we put your toothpaste on our shelves”, the Colgate guy comes back with “well, we just launched a $40 million advertising campaign”. The Wal-Mart guy is impressed (especially as the competition is only spending $35 million this year), and agrees to display 250 million tubes of Colgate.
The bread and butter of advertising is not Apple Computers or Mercedes Benz. Most of the profit made in the big agencies is for low-value items like Colgate Toothpaste or Coast Deodorant Soap. And most of these brands have, repeat have to have Wal-Mart on board in order to stay market leaders, because the "Big W" accounts for between 10 and 40 per cent of their business. You want to lose your job as a senior brand manager for Unilever? Then walk in to your boss’ office and tell him Wal-Mart is no longer going to be carrying your brand. BOOM! You’ll be cleaning out your desk in 5 minutes.
So the next time you're presenting a storyboard to the Colgate client, just remember he's not thinking about you. He's thinking about that big meeting with Wal-Mart in 2 months when he has to show them the new commercial. The meeting his job utterly depends on. We agency folk are just bit players in comparison.
Anybody who wants to work in a big agency should read every single word written about Wal-Mart he can get his hands on. Otherwise he’s a fool.
young adam receives NC-17 rating
Just talked to Dave Mackenzie...
Young Adam has received an NC-17 rating for its US release (April 16th). As Dave told me, "basically, the Yanks consider it porn."
Yeah, well, after seeing what Tilda Swinton is capable of as an actress, I'm not really surpised.
Heh. Obi Wan Kenobi in a porn flick.
(pic of Dave directing the Young Adam shoot)
March 25, 2004
the sex & cash theory
(Early bizcard drawing. Laminated. New York, August '98)
The Sex & Cash Theory: From"How To Be Creative":
The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the assignment covers both bases, but not often.
A good example is Phil, a NY photographer friend of mine. He does really wild stuff for the indie magazines- it pays nothing, but it allows him to build his portfolio. Then he'll go off and shoot some catalogues for a while. Nothing too exciting, but it pays the bills.
Another example is somebody like Martin Amis. He writes "serious" novels, but he has to supplement his income by writing the occasional newspaper article for the London papers (novel royalties are bloody pathetic- even bestsellers like Amis aren't immune).
Or actors. One year Travolta will be in an ultra-hip flick like Pulp Fiction ("Sex"), the next he'll be in some dumb spy thriller ("Cash").
It's balancing the need to make a good living while still maintaining one's credibility. My M.O. is gapingvoid ("Sex"), coupled with writing advertising ("Cash").
I'm thinking about the young writer who has to wait tables to pay the bills, in spite of her writing appearing in all the cool literary magazines.... who dreams of one day of not having her life divided so harshly.
Well, over time the "harshly" bit might go away, but not the "divided". As soon as you accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster. I don't know why this happens. It's the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way- who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy job and moving straight on over to best-selling author. Well, they never make it.
Anyway, it's called "The Sex & Cash Theory". Keep it under your pillow.
i am cross
OK, what's the deal with Gawker? They allowed the world's most annoying banner ad ever to be posted on the top. You know, the Microsoft-box-lookalike one that shakes to the point of making the viewer epilectic, with the ultra-sincere "Cograts, you have won our hourly prize" headline. Uuugh. Just the very sight of it makes me cross.
I hope they're being paid well for the privelege of allowing their Gawker brand to be schlocked like that.
But on a positive note, Gawker thinks the person who wrote that awful, dreadful, disgusting, sanctimonious, self-pitying, lame-ass rant for Salon about how it sucks to be a "serious" mid-level writer is... Amy Bloom.
Schadenfreude. Works for me. Works for these fine authors too.
March 24, 2004
nia
Got a nice letter from Nia, one of my frequent posters:
This is probably going to sound terribly naïve to you, but a beginning's a beginning. You've inspired me to get more people to see stuff I make, with all you've said about how selling is not about selling an object but about selling information. I'm selling getting-to-know-me. I have a stall in a crafts market at University this week. And I have a very active role in a literary forum/board/chatroom in Spanish; my nick translates as "XXXXXXX" and I'm known for being a helpful person with an ability to make things seem simple. Nice, useful people can become very popular. So. This weekend I've posted a message telling people that they have the chance (what? the chance? the privilege, baby!) to meet "XXXXXXX". The trick of course is that they have to come to the crafts market to do so. I didn't say "oh please go to the crafts market". I said "come and see me, we'll have a chat". Nia.
Well, she's proving one of my pet theories: "Blogospherics" works away from the computer, as well.
jazzroots
Hugh MacLeod, talented artist of gapingvoid fame, suggests “trickle 360” as part of the "Jazzroots" idea. People have been talking a lot about “trickling down” or “trickling up”. Jazzroots trickle, all right, but unlike coordinated efforts, gravity is neither present nor reversed. Ideas spread, trickling any which direction they can. Thanks, Hugh, great analogy.
JLuster coined this phrase, "Jazzroots". A more improv, more fluid concept of "grassroots". So we were talking about it some.
I was thinking: economic theory really isn't about "Trickle Up" or "Trickle Down". Really, money behaves a lot like internet links i.e. "Trickle 360".... Hmmmmm.
Going away to think more about this one...
road runner
From Blogads: "And welcome also to Roadrunner, which, as blogger Bill Hobbs notes, is the first major corporation to advertise on blogs."
Yep. This is huge. Roadrunner is owned by Time Warner, who also own the Looney Toons character.
I happen to know for a fact (my spies are everywhere) that Blogads.com is having a REALLY good year. Well done, Henry.
Though I agree with Fed Wilson that Google Adwords and Adsense are changing advertising beyond all recognition, there's a certain humanity about Blogads that Google just don't seem to have.
Anyway, all you corporate marketing types out there, buy Blogads now. In a year's time they won't be nearly as cheap.
kottke's sixth
Kottke.org just turned six years old. That's around four billion in blog years.
March 23, 2004
young adam
Please remember to click on the Young Adam link on the sidebar at least fourteen times a day. Thanking you in advance etc.
nice thought
"If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment,
it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea
simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or
disagreeable."
-- Justice William J. Brennan
(1906-1997) U. S. Supreme Court Justice
Source: Texas vs. Johnson, 1989
confessions of a semi-successful writer
An article in Salon about the hell that is being a mid-level "serious" writer.
There was a time, just a decade ago, when my life as a writer brimmed with hope and promise; when the world of work and words seemed open to endless possibility; when the music my editors and I made together -- the appreciation and, yes, the love they felt for me, the appreciation and love I felt for them -- made my heart sing in my chest and my words sing on the page.There was a time when my life as a writer overrode my innate cynicism and doubt, moved me to tell my young daughter, cornball as it seemed even then, that dreams do come true, if you really want them to. Because what is a book made of, if not the spun sugar of a writer's wildest dreams?
"Does it ever get better?" I asked Patty, my most successful writer friend, recounting my midlist author's tale of woe.
"Not substantially," she answered. "My books sell well now, but I never stop wondering what'll happen to me when they don't."
Yeah. It sucks. Guess what? I have no sympathy whatsoever. The amount of books she sells in a year is comparable to how many people read a semi-decent blog in a good week.
"Oooh! But I'm so clever! I deserve better!" That was the subtext I got out of it.
The whole article sucked. She was trying to expose the horror of the publishing business- all she managed to do was expose the horror of being a mediocre talent with highly-developed sense of entitlement.
As an artist, you are responisble for your own experience. I despise artists who never accept this. And why the hell do they all seem to write for Salon?
Scalzi concurs with this delightfully scathing reply to the article.
Cynthia Rockwell also posts some stuff. Smart, witty blog.
untitled (reverse crescent)
Another early laminated one. January '98.
I've been enjoying posting some of my obscure, early "laminated" pieces. I'm sort of feeling nostalgic for those days, when the whole thing was new. Before they got "discovered", as it were. When I was just this crazy-ass New York nobody sitting at the end of the bar, doodling away, mumbling incoherently.
angry young man
(A very early business card drawing from December '97. Laminated)
red sea
I've had SO MANY people call me this one: "Dude, wasn't it was Moses who parted it, not God, right? In the movie he did..."
Aaaargh.
"And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. " -King James Bible
guardian blogroll
The Guardian just put me on their Onlineblog "links we like" section. Hooray!
Thanks, Neil =)
(NB: I did some weblog-related cartoons for them in January)
puritanism hurts profits
I just love watching guys in suits consign themselves to the dustbin of history. From Jeff Jarvis:
Ad Age reports (it's not online yet) that advertisers say the indecent indecency legislation and the FCC's increased puritanism will hurt the entire broadcast industry:...media buyers are concerned it could hurt broadcasters' ability to compete with cable and satellite media and make it more difficult to reach a mass audience.
"It has the potential of raising the average age of the network TV audience," said Allen Banks, exec VP-North American media director for Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi.
That is death to the broadcast business. You want to talk about how you want more voices in media? Well, this will only lead to deeper business problems and thus more consolidation.
takegawa.net/blog/
The further away from home my blog is read, the happier I am. The less like me the reader is, the happier I am ( less like me, as in white, midde class, American, male etc etc.).
Like Beth (who is gay) once told me, "I really like the fact that over 50% of my readers aren't lesbians."
Funny: Beth, already a gapingvoid fan, wrote something about seeing Mr Hell on the TV, not realising that I created the cartoon character. Heh.
st. vincent's
I was missing New York today. Then I saw a picture of St Vincent's hospital on Amy Langfield's blog. It was around the corner from where I used to live. Seeing it made me so homesick I almost wanted to cry.
March 22, 2004
new york women bloggers
Good article by Rick Bruner in The NY Daily News about the more interesting New York women bloggers on the scene.
They're all good. Worth checking out is Maccers, whose site seems to have gotten really popular lately. She writes a kind of first-person 'Sex & The City' type blog. Glam hungover downtown lawyer chick who ought to know better, and probably does (see above cartoon), but to paraphrase Toby Young, "throwing your life away can be a lot of fun."
Left off the list (a mistake, in my opinion) is Here I Type. She's amazingly talented and funny, though I don't know if she actually believes it herself.
UPDATE: Laren in the comments kvetches that she wasn't included.
donato
Jane over at The Guardian is looking for a new digicam in the sub-£200 ($350) range. I said I knew jack-all about cameras, but I would ask around.
I'll ask Donato (an uber-techy gadgety geek, also the guy who prints my blogcards).
(Insert corny "power of blogs" statement here etc.)
advertising adrants on gapingvoid
I advertise on Adrants. Now I'm advertising it back on the homepage sidebar etc.
What an incestuous bunch we bloggers are.
March 21, 2004
Euroblogging
Ublog becomes the exclusive agent of Six Apart in Europe, Middle-East and Africa and has started distributing its leading weblogs publishing products, Typepad and Movable Type.
Congrats, Loic =)
Update: Jeff Jarvis, ever up-to-date in these matters, issues Loic a rather compelling challenge:
The most important thing blogging companies can do to change the world and build democracy is to translate their tools into (this is my order of preference) Arabic, Chinese, Persian, Russian, other Asian languages, other Eastern European languages -- for these are the parts of the world where the people need a voice to be heard.When I saw Loic Le Meur at ETech, I pushed him on this idea -- because his company was already international -- and he got excited about it. Now Loic is the agent for SixApart in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (see the post directly below) and so I throw out to challenge to his new partners -- since they are making their company international -- and to their investor -- who understands the power citizens media bring to emerging democracies -- and to to other blogging companies.
10 rules for professional movie blogging
Taking on board what I've learned from blogging Young Adam, this is how I'd design a commercial blog for a big-budget movie.
1. I would keep the blog entries as short and sweet as possible. Movie goers have short attention spans.
2. I would post links to do with all the people invloved. If John Travolta was the star I would blog all the interesting stuff on him I could find. His love of flying airplanes or whatever. The blog would become as much an A-Grade source for Travolta information as it would for the film.
I would do likewise for all the other actors, and the director, and even the producer. The point of publicity is to make the recipient feel like he/she is getting real, juicy, insider info. A feeling not unlike the college student gets when the bouncer finally lets him in to the club.
"Make them feel like they're getting behind the velvet rope" etc.
3. I would keep on hammering away on why I think it's a good movie. I would never let them forget I think it's a good movie. Ever.
4. If the movie was getting any "buzz", I'd report on that too.
5. I would make sure the blog had an authentic voice. Of course, if it's a great movie my job is easier. If the movie is a total dud, I would dig deeper in order to find whatever merit I could.
The way to do that, obviously, is not to compare it with Citizen Kane. Better to realize that even a mediocre movie has a good story behind it- the combined results of millions of dollars and roomfulls of smart, driven people. Try to find the brightest people on the project and try to bring their energy in to the equation. Even if it's the worst movie ever, there might be some amazingly wonderful person working in the costume department or whatever. Try to tap into that side of things.
6. Talk about the actual business. Perhaps explain to people the compelxities of a distribution deal or whatever. Try to make them see where the movie fits within a billion dollar industry. Cultivate intrigue. Again, people want to be 'insiders', it's hard-wired into our systems to want to belong to the Alpha Group. Get them beind the velvet rope, any way you can.
7. Start early. To build awareness of the movie properly needs at least least a year, preferably two. It's not about telling millions of people at once. You talk to a few thousand at a time. Let the word spread gradually. Give it time to seep into the Zeitgeist, like absinthe on a sugar cube.
8. Buy media. Word-of-mouth is good, but not always reliable. Buy the means to drive the necessary eyeballs to your site, and charge it to your client at an honest profit to yourself.
9. Allow comments. Let your readers contribute, the more the better- it builds interactivity, word-of-mouth, and most importantly, credibiltiy. That being said, have no qualms about deleteing rude ones and banning ISP addresses. "Trolls" are never helpful. Be prepared to police your blog vigilantly.
10. All this is in vain without some kernel of intellectual honesty informing your every action.
blogs as mass-advertising medium (cont.)
Danny made a good point in a previous post:
That is where I think the ultimate evolution of this concept will take us. Let's say Ford creates a blog for F-150 enthusiasts. Ford gets to take advantage of a DM setup with the added advantage of actually creating relationships with customers and potential customers--it's a cheap, effective way of creating buzz among a highly targeted audience for your new projects AND a simple way to gather highly targeted market research.Plus, automotive accessory manufacturers, hunting/fishing/outdoors manufacturers and retailers, and probably a hundred other tpyes of companies can place an ad in an environment where easily 80 percent of its readership is in their target market as well (Isn't that pretty much what happened with Hugh and AdRants?).
In this light, credibility and readability are going to be paramount concerns when companies set out to create a blog for self-promotion, as opposed to the "I wanna be like Jennifer Anniston" complexes driving the ad placement for TV.
Ah. Nice to see somebody who gets the whole "blogvertising" schtick.
I had a phone conversation with a big-ad-agency friend in Chicago the other day.
"Sorry to be harsh," he said. "I don't care what kind of media it is- newspaper, magazine, website, whatever- but all that matters to a big advertising client is how many people read your thing and what kind of people they are."
I actually do agree with that; it's exactly what they care about. Am I mistaken to think such a narrow view might be wrong?
microblogged
It's kinda weird to come across a blog with just links, and nothing else.
free content
I have no trouble with the concept of free content. And Larry Lessig doesn't, either.
I found out more about what Joi said about me (me! it's all about me!) yesterday at that conference.
Basically, he used me as an example as a 'creator' (i.e. cartoonist) who uses his cartoons not as a way of making money directly, but uses them indirectly to interact with people, in the knowledge that such interaction will most likely lead to other opportunities down the road.
Yep. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
'Free content' works, simply because it allows one access to people and social networks who wouldn't be interested if one had "pay me first" tattoooed on their forehead.
And perhaps that access is more valuable long-term than any crappy little publishing advance.
March 20, 2004
random sketchbook drawings
Random sketchbook drawings from Rube.
I know there's a lot of art on the net. But it surprises me how few artists are blogging. And it it really surprises me how really few cartoonists are blogging.
did the spanish elections incentivize terror?
Another reason why she's probably the smartest blogger I know:
Even assuming that the leadership of Al-Qaeda is so thoroughly evil that they wish to inflict maximum damage whether or not it has any effect whatsoever, their suppliers, of capital and labour, surely are at least somewhat responsive to effectiveness. Al Qaeda now has a wonderful new sales pitch for its financers: Give us money. We can alter the outcome of elections. It has an even better recruiting tool: your work may be dangerous, but look how much effect a few people can have!.
The Economist liked her blog so much they offered her a job. Not bad, eh?
young adam plug
(Y'all are going to see it when it opens, right? Huh? Huh? Are ya? Are ya?)
Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Emily Mortimer etc.
Directed by David Mackenzie
'Young Adam' opens in the US April 16th
(NB: No, I'm not being paid to plug this movie. The director, Dave Makenzie is a really good friend of mine and I'm trying to spread the word etc.)
hire steve hall
Since I seem to be in serious pimping mode these days:
Steve Hall, my favorite advertising blogger/media guy is looking for a job over at Adrants.
If you know somebody, please blog/e-mail the drawing/ad etc.
Thanks.
joi ito and larry lessig
Joi Ito just finished giving a talk in Japan in front of hundreds of people about Creative Commons. Larry Lessig was also on the panel.
I've since learned that Joi talked about me to the audience for about 5 minutes on what I was doing. And he showed them his blogcards.
Pretty cool, huh?
If anybody has any notes on the talk, please let me know.
fragmentation management
A good Fast Company article about "blogvertising" i.e. business blogging.
Some of it will be quite old news to the hardcore blogvertising geeks (or anybody who reads gapingvoid, heh), but it's a good read nonetheless.
Dynamite, indeed. The burgeoning blog world--1.6 million keyboard tappers at last count--is making big inroads into corporate culture. From tech companies like Microsoft (which says it "respects and supports" blogs like Scoble's) and IBM to decidedly nontech outfits like Dr. Pepper, companies are starting to use blogging both as a medium to market products and monitor brands and as an internal knowledge-management tool. To meet corporate demand, both UserLand and Six Apart, makers of popular blog software programs, are coming out with enterprise-level products later this year.
The issue isn't about whether micromedia will ever become macromedia. The issue is about how/when macro will become micro. I say 'faster than most people in the biz would prefer'. Sure, there will still be old-school sponsored TV shows and whatnot for a long time to come. Henry Ford didn't make the horses extinct.
The big money in advertising is not in 'creative' or 'media'. It's now in something much bigger than either i.e. "fragmentation management".
church sign generator
Curious Frog directs me to a Church Sign Generator page.
I actually like those roadside church signs. Cheap, effective, no-frills communication etc.
March 19, 2004
wolf vs sheep 2
One of my cartoons has started a theological discussion over at Darren's site. Wow.
seen.blogspot.com
One of the more elegantly designed blogs I've seen for ages.
la di da
Elle was one of the first people to pubish my cartoons regularly. And she's still at it. Her day job is college prof. She seems to publish my "stupid people" themed cartoons the most. In fact most of her posts seem to remind me of the stupidity of mankind. Wonder why...
iGod
iGod. You're probably going to Hell just for clicking on the link. Spotted on Moosiferjones.
how google is revolutionizing the ad game
This article from Fortune Magazine on Google was sent to me by Laren. Apparently it made her think of me. Heh.
Re. the way Google is changing the ad biz: "I don't yet see the other media businesses reacting sufficiently and adjusting their own strategies accordingly. Being in the magazine business myself, that kind of makes me nervous."
Everybody in advertising should be worried. It's not so much what Google does that is so interesting. It's that it has given the client the paradigm of accountability. We were so good at not offering it in the past.
the gapingsphere
Clay Shirky, who I am a great fan of, writes about The Power Curve: "Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality."
Basically it means that in any community sphere, a disproportionately small amount of members get a disporortionately large slice of the pie.
A good example would be: in Hollywood 20% of the actors make 80% of the money (or whatever). I've heard a 20/80 ratio is quite normal in most economic spheres.
Another example would be "The Blogosphere", though with that it often seems more like 2% of the bloggers get 98% of the traffic. Heh- and studying all this would be what I call "Blogospherics (TM)" (Yeah, I coined the term, as far as I know).
You know the scenario. An uber-popular blogger like Instapundit writes something. We go "Oh, Cool" and immediately write in our blogs "Instatpundit said X. Instapundit rocks!" etc.
Next thing you know, there are 10,000 people out there telling everyone how great Instapundit is.
And this process is repeated all the way down the food chain to ever-lesser degrees. The higher up on the food chain, the more people are out there singing your praises.
Welcome to the Power Curve, O Willing Participant.
Now there's no rule saying you have to combat this, nor should you necessarilly want to. There's nothing wrong with posting the same links as everyone else ("Yes! We're all individuals!!"). However for me, after a year of watching the same blogs go by, it's starting to get old. I want to bring it all closer to home. I want to talk about the people I actually know (and vice versa) are doing, not just rant on about some A-Lister pundit in Virginia.
Goodbye, Blogosphere. Hello, Gapingsphere.
technoLAHgy v0.15
"technoLAHgy v0.15 - Monitoring Malaysian Inventions"
"Thomas Friedman on America's innovation."
'America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products...'
amalah
She buys blogcards. Apparently they work well for her.
(PS: mandatory blogcard plug here)
franny hums
(Not safe for work. Not really. Caution recommended etc.)
bs generator
Grooverracoon points to the B.S. Generator. He talks fondly of his father.
mandatory young adam plug
Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Emily Mortimer etc.
Directed by David Mackenzie
'Young Adam' opens in the US April 16th
(NB: No, I'm not being paid to plug this movie. The director, Dave Makenzie is a really good friend of mine and I'm helping him out)
what the blogosphere needs...
Technorati just passed 1.9 million blogs on its register. As I've said before, if this curve continues for another year or two the blogosphere will have the population of Dallas or Chicago, and perhaps the population of New York or LA a year or two after that. Not a bad demographic.
What the blogosphere really needs is more Jason Calacanises and Nick Dentons. We already have enough Docs Searls and Dave Winers.
You know, entrepreneurs- people who can actually sell real stuff for real money to real people with real needs. Because nothing is real till economics enter the equation.
March 18, 2004
the groucho
Another laminated one from 1998.
(The Groucho Club is a famous media & celeb watering hole in London)
howard stern
Great post from Jeff Jarvis about Howard Stern.
"To Howard, he said, it's a simple First Amendment story -- 'not an issue of him going too far but of the government going too far.' Amen."
In case you don't know the full story, Stern, a very popular US radio talkshow host, was fired from his job for being too controversial. Later it emerged that his bosses, Clear Channel (big media conglomerate) fired him because of political pressure from Washington. But Howard's fighting back, and doing a great job.
One of my favorite things about America, in all seriousness, is that an American wrote this:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
"But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we may take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
-Abe Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
selling the originals (cont.)
Well, since I went public on how much I sell the original drawings for, the number of e-mails I get has risen noticably.
Make of that what you will...
losing my hair
Another early one. A friend's business card with a scrap of doodled notepaper stuck on the back. Laminated. Spring '98.
Nia
Methinks Nia is cross at me for what I said earlier. Sniff!
EGO cards
If you thought my Blogcards were a ripoff, you should see these EGO cards.
1000 cards for $1100.00. Eleven hundred bucks. But you do get your own built-in social network website to freebase as well. Ooh! Aah!
Is it just me, or does the whole social networking website thing seem as awash with lunatic wishful-thinkers as Dotcom did 5 years ago?
the two best kept secrets in blogging:
The two best kept secrets in blogging:
1. It's a ton of work.
2. Nobody reads your blog.
Of course, this was written by a journalist.
"No, we're the professionals! We're the important ones! Can't you understand that??!!"
UPDATE: A big mea culpa from me. He's a pro-blogging former journalist, not an anti-blogging practising one. And yes, I do think his two rules are basically correct. Still, there's more to leveraging communication to acheive one's ends than just the numbers game.
Like I told my techie friend the other day, you don't need a lot of people reading your site. You just need the guy who's going to eventually offer you a high-paying job.
In the advertising game, we call this strategy "highly targeted".
March 17, 2004
cossack
Another laminated one from 1998. A drawing of a Cossack on the back of a matchbook cover, stuck on a biz card.
"So the Sultan wrote the Cossacks a very long, rambling letter, demanding that they submit their sovereignty to the High Porte. To which the Cossacks replied:
"You may be a great Sultan and ruler of all the world, but can you kill a hedgehog with your naked ass?"
(True story, apparently. Thanks to Tangra for that one.)
shut up shut up
This one of the very, very, very earliest bizcard drawings. December, 1997. Laminated.
poet or a corpse
This is another early one of mine. January 14th, 1998. Laminated. I laminated a lot of the very early ones, I'm not sure why.
my friend dave is the director:
Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Emily Mortimer etc.
'Young Adam' opens in the US April 16th
UPDATE: The final US release schedule hasn't been finalized yet (which cinemas, where, times etc), so I'm still waiting for that. It would be nice if I had a link that allowed my readers to find where it's playing and book tickets online etc.
ben's venn diagrams
Only hardcore gapingvoid fans will appreciate this one.
Ha!
Thanks to Ben Hammersley for pointing this out to me (NB: Ben syndicates my cartoons on his daily RSS feed).
March 16, 2004
dan, tina and me
The picture is of my friend Dan Hug, Tina (his girlfriend at the time) and me there on the right with the glasses.
The photo was taken in Chicago in late 1997, at the Rainbow Bar photo booth in Wicker Park. The drawing was done soon after in SoHo, NYNY. In early 1998 I laminated the two together, to make this single piece.
Dan and Tina were a sweet couple, but they didn't last. That may have been the best outcome possible, but somehow that still saddens me.
the scarlet letter
From Seth Godin: "Humans are really bad at extrapolating, which is why brands work and you should care a lot about making a significant first impression you can live with.
"Janet Jackson was a third-rate brand. Michael's sister, okay singer, hit record maker, decent dancer. Nothing exceptional, no 'Mona Lisa' only-one-in-the-world qualities to her. Until February. Now she's got that scarlet letter. She's been branded. Possibly forever."
For what it's worth, Seth is the best marketing writer I've come across since David Ogilvy. Both men embody the same principles: Clarity, Lucidity, Brevity.
i love blogads
I love Blogads. Here's an example of how I use them: I'm in the ad biz, and I advertise on Adrants. It gets a couple of thousand visitors a day... my CTR is 1-5%, so that means every day a couple of dozen ad folk learn all about me. If you think how much networking in the real world costs (cocktails and whatnot), it's terrific value.
The point of the Adrants campaign is not to shift product. It's about getting my name around a certain profession, slowly but surely. Averaging 30-odd people a day is over 10 thousand people a year. It adds up.
Even if the big advertisers- Ford, Coke etc- never use Blogads, who cares? I'll bet there's at least a million or so professionals who could use Blogads in a similar fashion to me- lawyers, marketing folk, accountants etc. An average Blogad is what, $30 a month? So that's potentially $30 million a month, Blogad's commission is 20%, ergo $6 million a month. Laugh all you want- Henry Copeland's on to something.
March 15, 2004
advertising creative is dead
From Marketingwonk: Creative is dead. It's all about media now.
The trouble with ad agencies, creative departments especially, is that they're far more interested in advertising ("Ooh! Ah!") than their client's actual business. I've been ranting on about that for years.
This ought to scare a few of them. They should be scared.
spanish bombs pt. two
Jeff Jarvis makes a few good points about the election in Spain.
1. Millions of Spanish rally en masse to protest the bombings.
2. Yep. Nothing like a good street demo to get Al Qaeda to fall in line.
pimping young adam again!
"The best Scottish movie ever. An utter masterpiece of seething, beat-novel-film-noir sexuality." - Hugh Macleod
Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Emily Mortimer etc.
Directed by David Mackenzie.
(all my Young Adam links are here)
THOUGHT: With RSS getting more and more popular (certainly with me and other bloggers who I admire), this kind of advertising format ("advocacy model") is going to get more popular. Banner ads are history. I wonder what Blogads are going to do about it.
Like Bret said, this movie better be pretty damn awesome to justify all the pimping I'm doing...
Disclaimer: No, I'm not being paid to plug the movie. Dave, the director is one of my best friends, so I'm helping him out as best I can in time for the US release (April 16th).
UPDATE: Speaking of Blogads, they got a mention in The Wall Street Journal today. Congrats, Henry Copeland!
