JibJab has come out with another classic ‘toon to relieve the dark mood about the economy and the sniping that passes for campaignin’.
What’s more interesting than the entertaining usual suspects, is that this time around, being a social media election and all that, you can insert yourself into the video! Then post it to your social networking site, or grab the link.
There has been a lot of talk about CEO blogs. Not everyone is cut out for it. That’s why there’s a Fake Steve Jobs blog, while the real Steve concentrates on better things. There was as Fake Jonathan Schwartz blog, but it hasn’t been updated for a while. Pity, as the writer does a good job at it dropping names and taking a few swipes.
I don’t know if Richard Branson has the inclination to blog, but his fake Branson blog could very well be his, written in the style of his book, Screw it, just do it.
The other Steve’s fake blog is more entertaining and revealing. The Steve Ballmer’s fake blog, that is. Consider this post: I’m not Steve Ballmer, not pretending to be me.” How could you resist? The banner (above) ought to win a blog branding award, despite its being a cliche!
So what lesson do you think we could draw from these fake CEO blogs?
Some options:
But …they could also help this way:
Beijing, 2008
Someone’s going to pull off an ambush next month in Beijing. It may be a brand ambush, but it could also be a story ambush. There’s going to be a PR controversy over a brand defending the tactic, or someone attacking the ambusher.
I say this because of two trends that have collided:
It could happen in a variety of ways, such as the old methods of sneaking in a T-shirt with a logo, a sign with an caustic slogan, or accidental product placement. But there are more sophisticated ways of beating the logo police. The whole idea of ambush marketing is to get attention not inside the Olympic village, but outside it. To you and me.
And that means defying not the logo police but the publishing police. Portable media such as smart phones and cameras can do that all too easily. Naturally the authorities have been cagy.
Rings around social media. And how about video sharing, live streaming, blogging? It’s so easy to stand up in front of an Olympic landmark -even a competitor’s sign –shoot a video and post it in a few clicks. The Official TV sponsor, NBC, may have the rights to all the venues, but rights means nothing to someone who has audience.
Rush to blog. Blog policy is being debated for obvious reasons. NBC has made sure it won’t be usurped by some media upstart, and is embedding its own journalist-blogger, Alan Abrahamson, at the games. Other blogs have cropped up fast, such as the New York Times‘ Rings, and The China Beat written by a group largely comprised of academics. Not media people, mind you! If I remember correct, athletes are still allowed to blog.
At the time of writing, there are 23,800 YouTube videos that come up for the keywords “2008 Olympics.” This includes a BBC clip using a ‘pollution detector‘ that tells a damaging story. In sixty days you can bet that number will be a lot higher, and quite possibly include a few that document tales of ambush.
“”We are all Hussein.”
“Twitter is the public square. Lots of noise, little signal. Blogs are like a speech. Signal, but little noise.”
“Google is the perfect example showing reputation does not correlate with ad spending,”
“In this election the internet is for the Democratic Party what talk radio was for the Republican Party in the last 15 years”
“I’m not retiring until every American agrees with me.”
Rush Limbaugh, quoted in the New York Times, in a story on his $400 million contract with ClearChannel.
“Twebinar”
“Police wnt u to fight crime w/txt msgs.”
“Your Personal Brand may be doing much more harm than good… to others.”
The attribution war between the Associated Press and bloggers may end somewhat amicably, but the problem is not going away.
Businessweek has called it “an early skirmish in what’s likely to become a protracted war over how and where media content is published online.” Who knows, one day they may involved in one.
The “AP way,” as Jeff Jarvis called it, may go down as trying to establish a top-down business approach in a bottom-up world. Or to put it another way, trying to force ‘monetization’ through the funnel of ‘syndication.’
It’s an odd time to try to lock down content and charge for it. I recently tried out Encyclopedia Britannica (and interviewed Tom Panelas) and came to the conclusion that instead of trying to set up snipers on the ramparts of the walled garden, Britannica has basically decided to create a new type of walled garden –leaving the keys to the entrance under the mat, so to speak. If a 240-year company can recognize the value in collaboration not confrontation, a ‘younger’ content repository like AP could surely follow suit.
If they don’t want to take a leaf from the page of Britannica, how about this experiment by David Balter of BzzAgent? He’s simultaneously selling and giving away (free download) a book called Word of Mouth Manual Volume II.
“Crazy like a fox, that Balter,” says Todd Defren, whose blog PR Squared is one of the venues selected to allow those free downloads.
“Protection is no strategy for the future,” says Jarvis.
“Content wants to lose the handcuffs,” says little old me.
The stunt by a French daredevil tells us something about how far someone would go to ‘create awareness’ and target the media. Forty-five stories to tell his story.
Alain Roberts climbed the brand new New York Times building right to the top. No harness, no ropes. Just a banner in his hand which he hung out with his message –and a web address — about global warning.
What does it tell us about sending a message? Guerrilla marketing is quite tame compared to ‘culture jammers’ like Mr. Roberts and street artists like Bansky. They have figured out that it doesn’t require a grand media buy to take the message public. Banski’s ‘art’ (left) is stark, much cheaper than a billboard, and always packs a good story.
In Roberts’ case, he was literally taking the message to The New York Times which of course, carried the story. And a video clip. How could they resist? The story was right outside their window! They updated the story online too as a second man attempted to climb the building.
The banner, and the risky act of disobedience was for the audience outside. Two audiences. One guy and a banner. A funky web site. Lots of stories.
How far do you go to tell your story?
A Pew Research story this week based on research into The Daily Show by Jon Stewart says that he blurs the line between comedy and journalism, but also followed the agenda of the news media, albeit selectively.
However they also note that:
Maybe controversial. May it’s pushing the envelope, but when all other envelopes are being pushed, bent out of shape and torn to shreds, Stewart could be setting the stage –or reflecting a shift– in the new journalism.
I have a fascination with Front Pages of newspapers. I have saved some of the front pages of The Arizona Republic on 9/12 –the day after. Dipping into the large format book “Page One” with hundreds of front pages of the New York Times from 1900 onwards is like a sweeping history lesson.
The Newseum which recently opened in Washington, DC has an exhibit capturing the same sweep of history for us, but in a digital realm. From the Gulf News featuring Obama, to the tabloid-like The Sun from Kuala Lumpur and 500 other newspapers, they have the front pages of world newspapers digitally transmitted to the Newseum.
But even as many are anxious to write an obituary for the newspaper (since newspaper reading habits are on the decline) there is a positive trend: “the total audience for what newspapers produce is rising, not falling,” says the State of the News Media, 2008 report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
“What newspapers produce” may not be elegant snapshots of each day that we can archive or thumb through in a book, but the news about where news production, consumption and distribution are headed is not so bad, after all.
I am a frequent reader of the State department’s blog, Dipnote, that attempts to give a human angle to foreign policy -beyond the press releases, official statements and ‘code words’ we have come to know so well.
Dipnote links to an @Google interview with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her British counterpart David Miliband (a MIT graduate who happens to have his own YouTube channel, and blog.) This interview is hosted on …YouTube. Suddenly foreign policy via social media doesn’t look so dry.
Rice makes an excellent, passionate albeit slightly flawed analysis of Iraq; between her and Miliband, you get a sense that this is the kind of discourse we (and the world) missed in the last eight years. I’m not saying that social media made this happen, but without doubt these discussions were stifled by the old media that only permitted slogans and sound bites. Only at a venue like this could she say that “we are not, as a government, ever going to ‘improve’ the image of America.” That’s what the people of America do best, she concedes. Which is another way of saying that the government should not be in the business of image building.
The new managing editor of Dipnote, Luke Forgeson, calls the blog the online version of a town hall meeting. As Miliband observes elsewhere, “diplomats need to reach out beyond governments to talk to people – at home and around the world.”
“Hillary against the machine.”
“Talk of Hillary exit engulfs campaigns.”
“Pundits declare the race over.”
“Hillary pulls race card…”
Hillary: This is nowhere near over.”
“A cable operator buys a social network. Hmmmm.”
“Microsoft is like a bad restaurant – no matter what the incentive, you don’t want to eat there. Their product isn’t working and their share of the market proves that.”
Hoipolloireport 