‘The revolution will not be televised.’ is the title of the book by Joe Trippi, the man who gave Howard Dean the reputation of the first politiian to tap into grass-root networking, a.k.a. blogs.

Let’s temporarily assume that television is passe (not entirely true, loking at what’s going on in China, or with digital TV in Europe, etc). How much further could the communications revolution go once it has been open-sourced, blogged, webcast, and podcast? Or to put it another way, what else is there on the horizon? 

When Web 2.0 meets enterprise IT,  open sourc-ism will takes off says says Kim Polese (This and more at IT Conversations, which, not by accident is a free podcast.) It means the top-down models have to run for the exits as the bottom-up ones come into being. Polese calls it the ousting of the ‘Industrial ego system’ by the new eco system. Ego Vs Eco! So unlike a techy to phrase it that way!

It’s all about interoperatibility –that awful 18-letter word that describes how the new economy works. I was asked yesterday how podcasting will change communications when phones blend with ‘pods’ or MP3 players. Imagine what would happen if your MP3 player could send a message to mine. Or you could stream your content to a few folks in a room at a seminar. Would anyone care about your PowerPoint presentation at the far end of a room, when you could podcast it directly to a personal device that attendees can save –or even respond to at question time?

Broadband is making a lot of these things possible (Ever tried Skype?) as the pipes –or more accurately the wireless signals– that move data, text, audio & video transfer larger files at faster speeds.  WiMax is going to be the new standard for wi-fi, and should be here in laptops and pda’s by next year.  The revolution in content distribution and access, means that content will be shared on large scales, enterprise-wide. Check this out: MSNBC handled over 100,000 simultaneous ‘streams’ in May, when people logged on to watch the new Pope being elected in Rome. This was just on the web. The content delivery was handled by Limelight Networks. By the next Olympics in 2008, we will probably be watching (and sharing video) on wireless devices. Three years from now, marketing will be in a different league as our phones and ‘pods’ morph into 2-way, multi-media communication devices. Strong content and on-demand (permission) marketing will then play a big part in this new eco system.

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Guerila Marketing is not some stealthy, controversial gimmick using street teams –though some of it has been that way. (See MSN’s butterflies, and Sony-Ericsson’s ‘fake tourist’)

It’s often doing the unthinkable, in  a new and unusual way –with an unusual budget, I may add.

Consider what Jetstar, a low-priced airline out of Singapore did to promote low fares. Ogilvy handled a campaign where the airline flew a well-known blind busker to Hong Kong. Beside his instruments was a sign that read "Gone to Hong Kong fpr $48.

For LG Electronics, Ogilvy PR created an outdoor event called ‘Pucker Up New York’ that launched a 76-inch interactive plasma screen at Times Square.

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Speaking of Wi-Fi, imagine what wireless connectivity could do for marketing, when, say your end-users are suddenly more connected, not just from their PCs but from every other interface and non-work environment. Cell phones are already building Wi-Fi into their features, and soon every other gizmo on earth will have to go down that road with Wi-Fi or RFID (radio frequency Identifiication) chips.

Two stories stand out this week. The first, is no surprise, but the story is creepy. The Wall Street Journal story on the use of RFID –essentially chips-within-chips– in blacjack chips. Suddenly the pit bosses have more’ insight’ into of the players at the table, because their chips ae reporting back data in real time!

Another story this week, on gaming of a different sort, if from Nintendo that plans to provide some 1,000 new Wi-Fi hot spots across Japan, possibly at no charge. Online multiplayer gaming is a big business here in the US. Just ask Shockwave, or do a Google search and see! You may not be in the game category but if you’re a marketer, you’ll need to pay attention to what’s going on here.

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GoDaddy is not the first nor the last company to experiment with controversial advertising. Much has been written about the domain name company’s controversial Super Bowl ad. But looking at the post-Janet Jackson ‘wardrobe malfunction’ storyline again, I cannot help noticing the clever details of the satire.

1. The  C-span-like footage opens with a title that places the ‘hearings’  in Salem, Ma.
2. The station identification says G-spin   
3.  The Chairman of the committee, at the back of the room, drops his head in disgust when the model demos the ‘routine’ she will be doing on the Go-daddy commercial –the commercial apparently under investigation.
4. Cut to what seems like the committee chairman, seen holding up an oxygen mask to his face.
5. The commercial ends with a title screen that says "See more coverage at GoDaddy.com"

Coming at a time when the media is being investigated for a number of controversies, the trial re-enactment is funny. More so, after it was pulled off the air after airing once. It’s also has a more serious criticism built in: old people trying to understand the dot-com business. Also, the pun must be deliberate -the end frame invites viewers to see more ‘coverage’ at the Go Daddy web site.

Speaking of more coverage, the commercial (actually a commercial about a commercial) looks like the start of a new dimension for GoDaddy, which now has Radio GoDaddy, which webcasts programs on topics such as viruses, and domain name issues. Then there’s Bob parson’s own blog. If you don’t know this already, Parsons is a the CEO of the company. In a world where corporate blogging is still considered risky business, the CEO-blogger pulls no punches.

Seth Godin once thought that CEO-Blogging was not going to happen. He listed 5 ingredients to keep a blog alive: Candor, Urgency, Timeliness, Pithiness and Controversy. Guess what? Bob Parsons seems to have all of the above. Plus one more: Guts. Check out how he says exactly what’s on his mind about the SaveToby.com site (registered with GoDaddy, that people want him to take down.) Zero spin.

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Speaking of quizzes, see if you can guess who said the following:

1.  "I only have a small number of spaces and a huge demand for them."
(a) Vin Diesel, the actor-writer-producer-director on his next movie he plans to film in Baghdad.
(b) Reality show producer Mark Burnett, on selling product placement slots on NBC’s insanely popular hit The Apprentice.
(c) Microsoft corporate communications director on plans to invite controversial talk-show hosts to rant on ‘MSN Spaces’ –its late-as-usual entry into blog territory.

2. "Our brand reputaton has been affected nationally. We are determined to find out what really happened."
(a) Media spokesperson for the Sri Lanka government on the international backlash after a journalist was found murdered.
(b) Wendy’s fast food restaurant chairman, on the incident where a woman claimed she found a human finger in a bowl of chili.
(c) Steve Jobs on the new search feature in the latest Macintosh operating system, Tiger, after an Apple employee drilled too far down into documents on the company’s computers, and posted the results on a public site.

Those who get both right will be featured in an upcoming post, with their faces obscured, to protect them from getting too famous.

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There’s an open debate about viral marketing: is too stealthy to be adopted by mainstream marketers, or is stealth the very basis of good marketing. The other question mark that hangs over such tactics is about the branding value of word of mouth ‘advertising.’

I found this example (from a member of a discussion group, Marketing Vox) a good start at using WOM to spread something more than a pointless story for marketing something. The ‘product’ that the client is trying to spread is a quiz, with a twist: Anyone can create a 4-question quiz and email it to friends, whose answers are automatically emailed back to the others, The hook is that every one of the participants are entered for a prize. Of course the final product is a movie being promoted via a web site aimed at the teen demographic –the market for the movie.

The client is Warner Brothers.

The buzz tactic is for a new movie ‘Sisterhood The Travelling Pants.’

Check the quiz here.

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The cover of the New York Post, featuring a close up of a soldier’s face, with a cigarette hanging from his lips, does bring the stark reality of war. The Post ran it with the headline ‘Marlboro men kick butt in Fallujah.”

You’d think people who were upset by it should have been talking of the horror of war or the stupidity of the headline –in the face of so many deaths- but no, they are wondering if the Marlboro people were actually using it for a marketing purpose.

“How much did Phillip Morris pay for the front cover advertisement?” asked a reader, thanking the paper for "promoting cancer."

Then there was one reader comment in the Post who went:

“Thank God New York isn’t occupied by terrorists. Mayor Bloomberg wouldn’t allow a Marine who smokes to enter the city.”

Is this a byproduct of the mindset of folks who (still) believe Iraqi terrorists perpetrated 9/11?

But back to the cover, I wish people would treat the soldier in question, Cpl. James Blake Miller, with more dignity than make him out to be a poster boy in some reality show. How could we explain this comment, for instance from a Rush Limbaugh listener, at this Conservative site, who seems to want to get her hands on him.

"Rush mentioned this pic, so I checked out the site…need to see if my B&N has today’s issue…that is an GREAT picture…if he’s single, women are going to be seriously trying to track this guy down!"

If you’ve spoken to the mother of any soldier out there, the least she would ask for is some respect for her son. Behind the grime, behind the cigarette, behind the tough demeanor, is a human being doing an awful job –and not at the behest of some tobacco company or some dating ring.

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You can tell that the media is under the microscope in the same week that Bill Clinton chastises the media and CBS announces that Dan Rather will resign.

It’s not as simple as it seemed before the U.S. elections, when the big 3 networks, with Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings were cast as the anti-Bush liberal lobby that was automatically pro-Kerry. (see RatherBiased.com cartoon of the CBS logo!)

People tend to forget –and Clinton reminded Peter Jennings– that the networks did relentlessly chase after every angle of the Monica Lewinsky story.

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Here’s a different angle on last Friday’s post on Ads and politics, about attack ads and the ‘attack media.

It shocks me that so many are so shocked at media bias. It’s about time people stopped complaining about media ‘agenda setting’ and started accepting the reality of media ownership. It’s not just elections that bring this up. People questioned the BBC’s ‘objectivity’ in on his hostility concerning religion, and coverage of the Iraq war.

A recent Bivings Report looks at it from the perspective of advertisers, and essentially says that frankly, my dear they don’t give a damn.

Frankly, it does not ultimately matter. People have become accustomed to hearing advertisements for day-to-day, politically neutral products in all kinds of contexts that are biased. How many people have abandoned a company because it runs ads during NBC’s liberal drama on the Presidency, “The West Wing?”

Frankly, the media –be it cable, satellite radio, AM radio, NPR, or network TV– always throws in a dose of opinionated commentary, hate talk, political bias, and disregard for social norms. If advertisers are so upset by all this, they should be rushing for the exits from the Fox network (because of such fare as Trading Spouses) and the ABC (not because they don’t see eye to eye with Nightline, but because of fare such as Desperate Housewives.)

Just for the record:

Here is a top-10 list of media distortions, from Conservative Web site, MediaCenter.Org/

And here’s a link to Journalism.Org‘s study about people’s attitudes to media. (Increase in the percentage of people who believe the media is inaccurate, biased etc.)

If this is the reality of the media, no wonder advertisers hold their noses and continue to slot their ads.

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The anti-Kerry “Volves” commercial gets fact-checked here at FactCheck.org

As for that oft-repeated claim about the Bin Ladens flying around when air-traffic was grounded, here’s what FactCheck.Org has to say.

If you’re wondering who’s behind FactCheck.Org, its a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

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