gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

t-100

gapingvoid just made the Technorati Top 100. Sitting at Number 99, at time of writing. Very cool.

[CAVEAT: "T-Rank" tends to fluctuate a bit, so I might not still be on the list by this time tomorrow, but what the hell.]

the future of marketing is being able to create stories other people will want to tell

Over the past six months or so English Cut has scored a few major PR coups [thanks mainly to Dave Parmet, kudos etc.]

You would think a big PR coup [e.g. a plug in the New York Times] would have a huge and immediate impact on the business, but actually, not really.

Sure, there was an increase in web traffic, but nothing major. Maybe a 50-100% increase for a day or two, maybe a few extra sales, but then back to normal.

That being said, it all helps the business long-term. A plug in a major paper is good for the brand. People see the credentials and think, "OK, he's been in The Times, he must be good." This triangulates our brand against a trusted media authority. Grounds it in a favorable reality etc.

This also firms up our relationship with our existing customers. Seeing us mentioned in the paper helps validate their decision to give us their business. Being able to say "They were in The Times" makes them more likely to want to tell the story to other people, to spread the word, to recommend us to others etc. etc.

Which brings me to the major point of this post. Reduced to the most basic level, the main reason English Cut is currently growing as a busines is simply because people like telling the story to other people. Because they like telling it, that's what they do. Ergo, the story spreads.

So ask yourself this question: Do people like telling your story? Seriously, when people talk about what you do for a living, do their eyes light up?

If not, you've got a bit of a marketing problem. Seth Godin is correct- the future of marketing is being able to create stories other people will want to tell.

smoking

congratulations, george!

The Budget treasure hunt just announced its first $10,000 winner.

One city down, fifteen to go. Rock on.

[UPDATE- 8.00pm:] Winner Number Two in Chicago. Congrats, Willie!

quick links:

1. The schedule for Les Blogs 2.0 in Paris this December has been posted. See you there.

2. My business partner, Savile Row tailor Thomas Mahon was interviewed by Public Radio's "Marketplace" when he was in New York last. Apparently the interview airs tonight.

[UPDATE:] The interview's permalink is here. I'll also post the MP3 once I can get my hands on it. Dave Parmet was aslo interviewed. Nice to hear his take on it.

[UPDATE:] When it rains, it pours. Check out the new Businessweek podcast interview of Thomas. Just went live.

3. Fortune Magazine has a new blog out, called "Business Innovation". Rock on.

the stormhoek thing

Gives "Sponsored Link" a whole new meaning bwah ha ha ha...

What do us bloggers like getting more than anything? Links, of course.

So my client, the groovy cats at Stormhoek, decided to up the ante.

Here's the deal. If you're a blogger, and I link to you under "The Stormhoek Thing" banner, Stormhoek will send you a complimentary bottle of Stormhoek wine.

[CAVEAT: We can only ship bottles to where it's legal to do so. Which means, for example, until we get the new U.S. distibutor up to speed around New Year's, you Americans may have to wait a while for the bottle to arrive. Apologies in advance.]

If you get linked by "The Stormhoek Thing", just drop me an e-mail with you mailing address and I'll pass it along to Charles, the Stormhoek guy in charge of shipping. With a bit of luck you'll get your bottle via DHL [our main courier] within a few days.

You're free to have the bottle, no strings attached. No need to blog about it or anything. And yeah, if you want to blog something negative about it, that's perfectly OK as well. Frankly, we'd prefer the honest feedback, good or bad.

On one level, yeah, call it shameless marketing [Shameless! Hurrah!]. On another level, the Stormhoek guys dig the whole blogosphere thing, and would rather blow their marketing budget on us, than blowing it on traditional media. So what the hell.

This is just an experiment. I have no earthly idea why I'm doing this, other than I think it could be rather groovy. Whatever. Watch this space etc.

Anything else I've left out?

Thanks.

[The Stormhoek Thing:] First bottle goes to Suw Charman, for wearing an iMachiavellian t-shirt in the New York Apple Store. Hey Suw, if you want, please send me your mailing address. Thanks. Rock on.

does this mean the blog is now officially mainstream media?

As you know, for the last few weeks I've been busy. Very busy. But it's over now.

So... anyone fancy $10K?

The client is Budget, America's third-largest car rental company.

Kudos to B.L. Ochman for coming up with the idea and getting me the cartoon gig, and to Komra Moriko for designing the site.

Blogads' Henry Copeland calls it "a quantum leap forward for the medium", and also says, "Budget has launched the first blue-chip marketing campaign created by a blogger, illustrated by a blogger, run on blog software, advertised exclusively on blogs and first reported by blogs."

MarketingVox quotes Ochman: "There's no press release for the game. It's all blog, Baby."

Steve Hall writes more about it here. Steve Rubel calls it "a big test for the medium." And MediaBuyerPlanner says:

Ads are running on about 40 of the top blogs that cover the topics of lifestyle, music, and baseball, among others. "The point is to prove that traditional media does take the news from us these days," said Ochman. With that in mind, Budget has not even prepared a press release about the campaign.

By the time we're done with them, I want Budget "owning" two words:

"Road" and "Trip".

We have some other ideas in the pipeline. Watch this space.

[NOTE TO SELF:] Does this mean the blog is now official mainstream media?

[Bonus Link:] The number of blogs Technorati is tracking just passed the 20 million mark. Wow. When I started blogging the number was less than 100K. Now that latter number is pretty much added to the pile every 24 hours or so.

"bernbach was wrong"

Two weeks ago I was in Germany, speaking at the Word Of Mouth Marketing Conference.

On Day Two of the event I gave a small speech, entitled "Bernbach Was Wrong". This is what it basically was about:

Bill Bernbach, the founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach, famously quipped back in the 1950s:

"Word of mouth is the best medium of all."

-quoted in Bill Bernbach Said (1989), DDB Needham Worldwide.

Later the equally reknowned David Ogilvy paraphrased him, to wit: "The best advertising is Word Of Mouth".

From these quotes came the current holy grail of the advertising industry, known in the business as "Word Of Mouth".

With traditional TV and print advertising in meltdown, suddenly the ad industry is trying to jump on the W.O.M. bandwagon in the hope of saving their jobs. "Yeah, yeah! We'll make advertising that creates word of mouth! Yeah, yeah!" etc.

So suddenly we're deluged with crazy stunts designed to generate word of mouth. Turning up in Times Square and spraying people with blue paint. Using bad language. Turning up the volume on sexually charged imagery. High-impact stuff. Attitude City. Whatever.

The amusing thing is, Bernbach was wrong.

Because the best advertising is not word of mouth. The best advertising is "Disrupting Markets".

What does disrupting markets mean? It means going into a market and changing the rules of the game.

Here's some examples:

Henry Ford disrupting the idea that automobiles had to be expensive luxury items only for the very well-off.

Starbucks disrupting the idea that fast food (or fast coffee) had to be served in depressing environments with orange and yellow furniture and flourescent lights that made you want to flee them within 10 minutes.

Harley Davidson disrupting the idea that bikes had to be cheap and Japanese.

Apple disrupting thre idea that computers had to be large mainframes. iPod disrupting the idea that people wouldn't pay for downloads. Linux disrupting the idea that software is something you have to pay for [Thanks to cyberrigger for suggesting that last one].

Starbuck's is a very interesting case to me. For instance, instead of getting talked about by spending $100 milion on a hip n' edgy advertising campaign, they invested the money instead in giving their customers wifi. And this was very early on. And people talked about it. A lot. And lots of people started checking it out. And a lot of coffee was sold.

I can just hear some typical marketing meatpuppet objecting to it in the brainstorming session:

"But we don't want them talking about wifi! That's borrowed interest! We're not a tech company, we're a coffee company! We want them talking about the great taste of Starbuck's coffee goodness!"

No, actually, you moron, people don't want to talk about frickin' Starbuck's coffee goodness. People want to talk about wifi. So give them good wifi and you will be mentioned in their conversation. Don't try to change the conversation, try to improve the one they're already having.

The trouble for Madison Avenue is no client is going to pay them x-million for suggesting, "Hey, maybe you should give your customers good wifi." So the have no incentive to think that way. They only have an incentive with ideas like, "Hey, maybe you should spend $100 million on buying hip n' trendy TV ads, based on an idea one of our creatives ripped off some obscure Lithuanian animator..."

Their thinking is deliberately limited by their money-burning business model.

Like I said, Bill Bernbach was wrong. Sorry, Bill.

english cut and american growth

English Cut just wrapped up its third, and by far its most successful U.S. visit. Poor Tom and Lucy are exhausted. Heh.

While he was there, Tom was interviewed by Businessweek's Stephen Baker, for an upcoming podcast. He was also interviewed by Public Radio's "Marketplace" for an upcoming segment. Full credit goes to our PR man in New York, Dave Parmet for setting those up.

Meanwhile, yesterday English Cut was briefly mentioned yesterday in the same breath as The Manolo Shoe Blogger (one of my favorite blogs) in The Guardian. I was so happy. [You can see the print version here. Thanks to Phagnat for scanning it.]

The Manolo, of course, is an anonymously-written character blog based on the famous shoe designer, Manolo Blahnik.

So it turns out the real Manolo's press secretary isn't too pleased with her good employer being parodied, as written here in the London Times:

It�s a good thing that I checked with Lesley, Manolo Blahn�k�s trusted press secretary and right-hand woman, that Manolo, sorry Mr Blahn�k (she calls him this), isn�t in fact the same Manolo who described John Galliano in his online blog as a �freaky little fashion troll�, or captioned a picture of Hugh Hefner looking old in a Hawaiian shirt with the words �someone call the coroner�. That Manolo, says Lesley, is an impostor, some guy in New York who is obsessed with shoes and uses the pseudonym �Manolo the Shoeblogger� to launch his bitchy sartorial bombs.

If English Cut ever got around to buying advertising, would we buy space in a magazine? A newpaper? TV and Radio? No way. It would be a blogad on the Manolo Shoe Blog. No question.

The amusing thing is, a certain tailor I know (I won't say who) used to cut suits for the real Manolo Blahnik, back in his Anderson & Sheppard days. Small world.

Yep, so there's been plenty of English Cut stuff happening recently. That's always the case when Tom's in America.

The good thing is, we're not trying to compete with the designer labels. Let them worry about the factories in China, the $40K magazine ads, the celebrity freebies, the politics involved with getting Bloomingdale's to carry their lines, their ever-more hollow methods of trying to convince the uneducated that their stuff is the real deal.

In America, the common perception (and an erroneous perception, in my opionion) is that the Italians make the world's best suits. We've created a niche for people who beg to differ. We've created a niche for people who are anti the generic globalisation of fashion.

And America is easy for us. You turn up, you attend to your appointments, you sell some suits, you return to England a few days later, you make the suits, a few months later you get back on a plane, you try the finished suits on your customers, and you keep repeating the process.

Whether we sell twenty suits or two hundred on a single U.S. tour, it takes about the same time i.e. 7-10 days. Then it's just a question of getting back to England and getting the suits made in time for the next trip.

But when the London business gets busy, things are far more disruptive. Suddenly Tom is spending half his time on the London train (a four hour journey), going back and forth between Savile Row and his tailoring studio here in Cumbria, staying overnight in a hotel. In short, the London selling process doesn't scale as well, and at least when it gets busy, it seriously delays his U.S. delivery schedule.

So the immediate plan is for English Cut to spend more time building our trade in the USA, and less time worrying about the other markets, including London.

Of course, we'll still keep a regular foothold on Savile Row. Tom is a Savile Row tailor, and needs to be there, period. But that doesn't mean that's where all the business' growth has to come from.

Ah, the joys of creating a Global Microbrand. I highly recommend it.

gravestone

[Bonus Link:] Nice wee quote from ThinkJose:

The Global Microbrand is so much more than being self-employed or even putting yourself on the web. It is all about finding the one thing that makes you dramatically different, that one story that you can tell better than any one else. The beauty is that we all have that power to do one thing really well and gather an audience that is looking to hear that story.

As the global audiences become more savvy on finding the one niche they are looking for, and the web 2.0 tools make it easier to find that one individual, the Global Microbrand will become more and more powerful.

i just want to be rich

how to be so-so creative

I wrote "How To Be Creative" well over a year ago and it seems people are still linking to it pretty regularly. Thanks, Everybody. Yeah, it's amazing how things can take on a life of their own.

Not that I'm feeling that "creative" these days, of course. Too busy on other things.

I drew cartoons there quite obsessively for about a decade; but I've slowed down a lot in the last year or two. In retrospect, it's not difficult to see why I worked so hard at it. A wee voice told me this was my ticket out of the dreary and nebulous world of Madison Avenue. An obsession born out of desperation etc.

Once gapingvoid started doing quite well and I no longer needed the crummy day job, the obsession & desperation was no longer there.

Sometimes I miss it.

miss rogue's blogcards arrived

[front]

[back]

Tara "Miss Rogue" Hunt's Blogcards just arrived. She seems happy enough with them. Thanks for the business, Tara!

[Order your own set here etc.]

[UPDATE:] Turns out Debbie and Maryam ordered the same design as well. Rock on.

t-shirts going fast...

My t-shirt limited editions are running low. Two designs are already sold out, and a third isn't far behind. Once they're gone, they're gone etc.

global microbrands 10/19/05

PeopleCall.com is a small Spanish company that sells low price telephone services... in 53 countries. The CEO, Herme Garcia also has a Spanish blog.

Martin's Cages. A small firm that makes pet cages for guinea pigs and whatnot. Since discovering the internet their business has apparently exploded. [Link: Marcus Grimm]

English Cufflinks. A team of English jewelry designers that make high-quality cufflinks. No relation to English Cut.

Avin writes about a fictitious microbrand: a small olive oil company.

Andyt13: Art, music, poetry, sex...

Rogue Project. Oriented towards serving a loosely-connected group of technology developers and program managers from the US Department of Defense, NASA and related industries.

globalmicrobrand.com

I now own the URL "globalmicrobrand.com". I haven't decided what to do with it yet, but the "Global Microbrand" idea is where my thoughts are increasingly headed these days.

Whether your business is in marketing or sailboats or software or retail or plumbing, there's something about the idea of the global microbrand that I find utterly compelling. And I don't think I'm the only one.

So if you know of an interesting global microbrand, your own or someone else's, please feel free to suggest it in the comments or mail me a link, and then maybe I can write something about it later (including, of course, a link back to your blog). This is something I want to get more involved with. I'd love to hear from you.

david chimes in

David Mackenzie, the director of Hallam Foe joins the conversation in the comments:

I would like to let everyone know that I am doing this film through my own company and as much on my terms as a film can be, so I am not beholden to a slew of studio execs telling me what to do with the script. Nor of course will I be under any obligation to adjust my script according to any comments received during this experiment. But my hope is that I might receive ideas from the blogosphere that are helpful to the process.

[BACKGROUND:] David, one of Scotland's leading film directors, decided to make his upcoming film, "Hallam Foe" more Cluetrain-friendly by posting the entire film script on gapingvoid as a Word Document and seeing what the Blogosphere has to say about it.

[UPDATE:] Dave asked me to stop with the downloads while he tweaks the script a bit. Watch this space etc.

spam filter hell

[MEA CULPA:] I had trouble with my spam filter yesterday, so a lot of people would not have been able to leave comments. The problem is fixed now, so please try re-posting. Sorry about that. Thanks.

hallam foe: open source filmmaking

Long-time readers gapingvoid will know my old friend, the Scottish Film Director, David MacKenzie.

Two years ago he made a film with Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton called "Young Adam", which I blogged about.

On the back of that success he made another movie last year called "Asylum", with Sir Ian "Gandalf" McKellen, which I also blogged about.

Now he's got another movie in the works, which is currently in pre-production. He starts shooting in January.

It's called "Hallam Foe", based on the novel by Peter Jinks, who's an old friend of both David and myself.

The main actors appearing in it are Jamie Bell (of Billy Elliot fame) and Connie Nielson, who played Lucilla, the Emperor's sister in "Gladiator".

All well and good. Yesterday I was in Glasgow, having a long brunch with Dave. We were talking about the film business.

"The trouble with film critics, amateur or professional," says Dave, "is by the time they offer any useful criticism, it's too late. The money has already been spent, the film is in the can, and there's nothing I can do to realistically address their concerns."

"Then maybe you should involve the audience earlier in the filmmaking process," I say.

"What, Open Source Filmmaking?

"Something like that."

Then David had a very groovy idea:

"Maybe we should post the script on your blog and get people to tell us what they think."

So here's what we decided. Like I said, filming begins in January. Between now and then David has to do one more re-write. The script in its current form is on a Word Document here.

The main fix needed in the upcoming re-write is simply that it's about fifteen pages too long. Dave wants to cull fifteen pages without losing the flow of the script, and is interested in hearing suggestions from the blogosphere. And of course, any other insights are most welcome.

So please feel free to download it and tell us what you think. David doesn't have a blog himself, but he'll be happy to answer questions in the comments.

From my perspective, it's no-brainer. The idea is to get the script "out there" to the world at large as early on as possible, so if there's any glaringly obvious flaws with it, at least that can be dealt with before the shooting starts. This is not rocket science- the earlier you get your audience involved with the marketing process, the easier and cheaper it is; the easier and cheaper it is to form relationships with your audience. Most film marketing is, to quote David, "Too little, too late".

The interesting thing for me is we're not just trying to use blogs to pimp a movie. We're trying to use blogs to actually help in the making of a movie. Not only that, this isn't a low-budget indie art-school project. This is a commercial, mainstream movie from an established director doing the Cluetrain thing.

As I'm fond of saying, this is just an experiment. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I hope you'll check out the script. Rock on.

[UPDATE:] Dave asked me to stop with the downloads while he tweaks the script a bit. Watch this space etc.

the global microbrand rant

[UPDATE: My "Global Microbrand" archive is here. Thanks.]

Since I first used the term here in December of last year, I have been totally besotted with the idea of "The Global Microbrand".

A small, tiny brand, that "sells" all over the world.

The Global Microbrand is nothing new; they've existed for a while, long before the internet was invented. Imagine a well-known author or painter, selling his work all over the world. Or a small whisky distillery in Scotland. Or a small cheese maker in rural France, whose produce is exported to Paris, London, Tokyo etc. Ditto with a violin maker in Italy. A classical guitar maker in Spain. Or a small English firm making $50,000 shotguns.

With the internet, of course, a global microbrand is easier to create than ever before. A commercial sign maker in New England. Or a sheet metal entrepreneur in the U.K.

And with the advent of blogs this was no longer just limited to people who made products. We saw that any service professional with a bit of talent and something to say could spread their message far and wide beyond their immediate client base and local market, without needing a high-profile name or the goodwill of the mainstream media. People like Jennifer Rice, Johnnie Moore and Evelyn Rodriguez come to mind.

But it's not just limited to cottage industries. The great Tom Peters talks about "Brand You", a personal brand that transcends your organisation or job description. The grand-daddy of this space is probably Robert Scoble, who may work full-time for Microsoft, but whose brand is much, much larger than any job description they could give him; that's worth far more than anything they're ever likely to pay him.

Once I created my own fledgling global microbrand (i.e. via this weblog) I started helping other people do the same. A bespoke Savile Row tailor. A Master Jeweler. A small vinyard in South Africa. It was something I really wanted to know about. It was professionally the most compelling idea I had ever come come across. I was hooked.

Of course, "The Global Microbrand" is not conceptual rocket science. You don't need a Nobel Prize in order to understand the idea. What excites me about it is the fact that I now live in a small cottage in the English boonies, and careerwise I'm getting a lot more done than when I lived in a large apartment in New York or London, for a fifth of the overheads. For one fiftieth of the stress levels.

This year I've been spending a lot of time in London. Any more than 2-3 days down there I start feeling really stressed out. For years I thought it was just me. No, actually, everyone down there is really stressed out. It's just considered normal. And the same applies in all the other big cities I know well.

I was talking to a friend on the phone about this yesterday.

"There's only two ways to deal with life in the big city," he says. "Alcohol and high prices. Immersing yourself in high rent, luxury items, trendy, overpriced cocktail bars, flashy restaurants, tall leggy blondes who don't give a damn about you, just to act as a buffer zone between you and the abyss."

"Which you pay a lot for," I say.

"Which you pay a hell of a lot for," he says.

It seems to me a lot of people of my generation are locked into this high-priced corporate, urban treadmill. Sure, they get paid a lot, but their overheads are also off the scale. The minute they stop tapdancing as fast as they can is the minute they are crushed under the wheels of commerce.

You know what? It's not sustainable.

However, the Global Microbrand is sustainable. With it you are not beholden to one boss, one company, one customer, one local economy or even one industry. Your brand develops relationships in enough different places to where your permanent address becomes almost irrelavant.

With English Cut, both Thomas and I are selling $4000 suits to Americans, Canadians, Australians, Europeans, Asians, Arabs etc. Neither one of us cares much for the high-maintenance lifestyle. Sure, we travel all over seeing clients and speaking at conferences, but the day-to-day is far more low key. We go to the pub twice a week, we go to the local cheap-and-cheerful Chinese restaurant once a week, we have dumb hobbies we like to do, like taking the sailboat out on the weekend, or drawing wee cartoons. We both drive second hand cars and pay cheap-as-hell rent.

Again, it's not rocket science. But as long as we keep blogging, avoid high overheads and keep making the best suits in the world, nobody can take it away from us.

And the same principle applies to the other projects I work on.

Frankly, it beats the hell out of commuting every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city, something I did for many years. Just so I could make enough money to help me forget that I have to commute every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city.

There are thousands of reasons why people write blogs. But it seems to me the biggest reason that drives the bloggers I read the most is, we're all looking for our own personal global microbrand. That is the prize. That is the ticket off the treadmill. And I don't think it's a bad one to aim for.

new blogcard designs

Twelve new Blogcard designs are up, including some of my favorite cartoons from The Hughtrain. I hope you will check them out.

[Bonus Link:] "Web x.0". Japanese venture capitalist and all-round jolly good fellow, Joi Ito writes about "Web 2.0" (a term he doesn't particularly care for) and what the second wave of dotcom mania means to us.

english cut in america

Thomas visits the States this Friday, if anyone fancies a $4000 suit.

This will be English Cut's third U.S. visit. Chicago, San Francisco and New York etc.

Thomas and I are spending more energy these days growing the U.S. side of the business, worrying less about growing the other fronts- London, Paris, etc etc. America just seems to be where all the interest is coming from.

gia's film blog goes live

Gia's film blog, which I mentioned three posts ago, goes live: "Sunshine DNA".

the assimilated negro

This guy is one talented writer. Love it:

If We Bring Back The Slave Days, Look At The Cool Products We'll Have!!

SlavE-Bay– Why pay ridiculous retail prices for your slaves??? Bid on SlavE-Bay and get your own personal slave at up to 75% off the price you’ll find in most commercial slave outlet stores. We have all types of slaves – house slaves, field slaves, athletic slaves, sex slaves. They’re all here for the whippin’ at SlavE-Bay. In fact I have my own slave typing and uploading this post for me right now. It’s awesome!! And I was able to “buy him now” for only $13.88 and $15.00 shipping. Steal of a deal!! Only way to beat this bargain is to build a boat and go to Africa yourself.

TiVNegrO– Have you been so busy creating capital that you have completely missed out on all the Negro antics this week? The ballgames, the latest hip hop shoot-em-up, or “GirlFriends” … well fret no more, when you get TiVNegrO all the latest Negro shenanigans will be available to you 24/7, whenever you want. TiVNegrO keeps a record of all negro activity in the country in its newly patented Digital Negro Library. You can watch that negro throw a chair across the crowd again, again, and again. Slow-motion, fast-forward, you can even stop live-negro-action for those times when your negro friends come by and you don’t really want to “get into that whole race conversation.” With TiVNegrO you just pause and watch it later. TiVNegrO works for you, on your schedule.

Apartheid Housewives– These segregated housewives are craaaaaaazy. Watch the hijinx unfold as these oppressed women wash their laundry in a creek, and try to figure out which white man has the AIDS vaccine.

big news in blogland:

1. AOL buys Weblogs Inc. Congrats to Jason Calacanis.

2. VNU, the Dutch Media conglomerate, has done a deal with Gawker Media. Congrats to Nick Denton.

3. Wow.

[UPDATE:] Dave Winer's Weblogs.com sells for $2.3 million to VeriSign. When it rains, it pours etc.

maybe big media is all about being fake and getting away with it

Just because your client wants a blog doesn't mean your client "gets" blogging. And yeah, that can be a nightmare.

Case in point: Gia is making a blog for a new Hollywood film [backstory here]. But instead of just getting on with it, they ask questions. Too many questions.

Poor Gia rants:

How much factual information do the readers want?
How much opinion do the readers want?
How slick do the videos have to be?
Should the videos be rough?
Do all of the images have to be exactly the same size?
Do all of the photos have to be landscape or portrait?
Will readers be unable to deal with photos of different aspect ratios?
Will the whole world crumble if a video isn't an item that you'd see on a movie programme?
Will the internet cease to exist if one post is too short or too long?
What is too short or too long?

And so on.

It's OK to have a commercial agenda on a blog. It's OK if you want your readers to hire your consulting service, buy your company's widget, recommend your band's new album to their friends, or in this case, splash out for some movie tickets. Whatever.

But if you over-strategize, you soon stop treating your readers like human beings, and start treating them like "consumers", there to be manipulated like labratory animals.

I don't think Gia's paymasters are stupid or evil people. It's just that what works in Hollywood and Madison Avenue doesn't work in the blogosphere, and it's taking them a while to accept the fact.

One thing you notice when you start attending the blog conferences and hanging around the more well-known and respected bloggers on the planet: None of them seem to take it very seriously. They just get on with it. If what they do works for them, it's because it all comes naturally.

But maybe Big Media doesn't want it to all come naturally- maybe they want it to all come artificially. Maybe that's why it's so utterly dominated by celebrities, advertising and wannabes.

Maybe Big Media is all about being fake and getting away with it.

adriana and hard diamond

A few months ago I set up a blog for Master Jeweler Paul Hatton, called Hard Diamond.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I recently gave the account to Adriana to run with. She blogs about it here.

Very cool.

[Bonus Link:] "Don't include the words 'Web 2.0' in a presentation."

this week's "beyond lame" award goes to...

Fake blogs are pretty lame. But fake commenters? Wow.

The brilliant Tom Coates (one of my favorite reads these days) tells the whole sad, "beyond lame" story. And he makes a very salient point:

I'm going to give them the benfit of the doubt and say that this whole enterprise is based on clumsiness and stupidity rather than evil, but we have to make a stand and make it clear to these people that if you live by the sword you die by the sword. It's not good enough for just these marketing people to realise that they've screwed up and damaged the brands they were associated with, we have to keep making examples of them to stop other clumsy organisations viewing our self-created territories as nothing more than sales opportunities. Do not lie to us because we will expose you. Be honourable, or we will erase you. And all anyone will see when they search on Google for your products is that there is no depth to which you will not stoop to get another few bottles into someone's shopping basket.

[UPDATE:] So they write an apology to Tom:

We are writing to you in response to the Barry Scott posting on 30th September 2005. We’re all aware that Barry Scott, the advertising character is a marketing creation and we have been responsible for raising his awareness. The posting on 30th September was unplanned and an error of judgement and we unequivocally apologise for this. We recognise that it was inappropriate in context.

Lee Bryant makes the point in Tom's comments: "I would hate to be the minimum wage young PR wannabee who has to carry the can for this." Amen.

Moral of the story is, if you're going to pimp in the blogosphere, be open about it.

[Cough] Anybody want to buy a bottle of wine? How about a $4000 suit?