Marketing Pop Culture

Still more Radiohead

In case you're not familiar with The Couch Sessions, you should point your browser in that direction and head over there.  Stone and Jerome have their ears to the ground when it comes to highlighting great music from the urban underground.  While they tend to focus on underground hip hop and R&B, a better way to position them would be to say that they're just fiends for great music of all genres.  They're particularly plugged into the DC music scene, so they provide a lot of valuable intel for those of us who want some sense of what's happening outside our computer screens and in other parts of the country.

What's this got to do with Radiohead?  As usual, Stone and Jerome  get new tracks from artists and producers hot off the presses, which they then turn around and share with their readers.  Case in point: Producer Amplive of Zion I has dropped a couple of remixes of tracks from "In Rainbows".  So, if you found yourself blown away by the album, like I was, you'll want to hurry to TCS and check out these and other offerings.

Keep up the good work, fellas!

No Shortcuts to Authenticity

I really wasn't going to spend time talking about Wal-Mart's fake blogs--flogs--until I came across this article in today's Online Media Daily from Mediapost.  Turns out that Wal-Mart's PR firm, Edelman, has been outed again for running two other flogs that, instead of being written by "working families who are supportive of Wal-Mart", were actually being produced by three Edelman PR employees.

The big dustup is that neither Edelman nor Wal-Mart were being transparent, i.e., hey, folks, our PR team is really writing this. 

Wouldn't it have been easier, in the long-term, for Edelman to find some consumers who really are passionate consumers of Wal-Mart?  Why not a big group of these consumers and provide them with some non-cash incentives to generate blog posts?  If Edelman were really driving the point home about participation, why not figure out what kinds of activities these passionate users are also passionate about and help facilitate that?  Then, there'd be some conversational value generated.

When I started blogging, I went around and asked people immediately for links.  Rightly, they said no.  They didn't know who I was, and I'd built no credibility in the blogosphere.  Over time, the fact that I'm on a number of blogrolls is a testament to the fact that I've built my blogging cred.  That, and the fact that I'm not a shill for anyone but myself.

Some background on the initial Wal-Mart/Edelman fiasco can be found here and here .

Number 101 and counting. . .others

crowded, originally uploaded by thebittermonk.

One of the joys of having been blogging for close to three years (my 100th post was the previous one!) is that I’ve not only developed a small following, but have become part of a community of marketing bloggers.  Now, an even cooler part of this is when you get to meet in an offline setting other people you’ve read or who are familiar with your own work.

I had such an experience last night, when I hooked up with a few other bloggers and marketing folks courtesy of Noah Brier.  So here are some of the bloggers I’ve recently met, both through Noah and Piers over at psfk through their likemind breakfast series.  All of these blogs are impressive in their own right and are definitely worth a visit:

• David Armano of Logic +Emotion

• David Berkowitz of Marketers Studio

• Prince Campbell of Chartreuse

• Ed Cotton of Influx Insights and his colleague James Friedman of Emergetrends

• Nichelle Stephens of Chicks and Giggles

• Noah Kagan of OkDork

• Christina (CK) Kerley of ck-blog

These folks are also doing some cool stuff:

• Casey Pugh of Feed Hole (check it now while it’s still in beta and BEFORE it blows up!)

• Shout out to Casey’s colleagues at Fearless Concepts: Chad and Vanessa

• Loren Feldman at 1938 Media

Short attention span takeaway: It’s a conversational economy: Get out, meet your public and share the love.

The Envelope, Please--Part 2

Updates: The voting deadline has been extended to Monday, June 26, due to the massive amounts of traffic to MarketingSherpa's servers.  As a result, they've switched the survey to another server, which you can get to via the link the earlier post.

The Envelope, Please. . .

I want your vote.  But, first a little backstory. 

Both my wife Bridgett and my friend Katie Gallagher at Plan B Marketing nominated this blog for MarketingSherpa’s 2006 Reader’s Choice Blog and Podcasting Awards.  Out of the 1,028 submissions, Marketing Pop Culture made the cut of 14 in—gasp!—the Advertising category.  Hey, I’ll take it.  After all’s said and done, there are some killer blogs in this category, some of which are daily reads for me.  It may sound cliché, but it’s great to be included.

Be that as it may, I want your vote.  Here’s the deal:

• Follow this link. 
• Scroll down to the “Advertising” category.
• Click on the appropriate “Excellent” button. 
• Scroll further down and click “Submit”.

Hurry, voting ends this week, I think.

Thanks!

Tags: blog awards, MarketingSherpa

We Interrupt This Blog For An Important Public Service Announcement

You’ve probably heard the one about “a rose by any other name.”  This is fine for a flower but not, I think, for a marketer. I mean, I’m supposed to be in the business of clear, effective communication, right? Right. I take some small comfort in the fact that I’m hardly the first marketer that didn’t follow his or her own advice. To correct this situation, I’m happy to say that “The Spark” is no more.

I admit it, I was so in love with the idea of “The Spark” and all of what I thought were wonderful creative applications of the name. “Spark insight. Connection. Solutions.” You get the idea: Navel gazing. Problem was, “The Spark” didn’t really tell anyone what the blog was about. Fine if you’re dealing with an established brand. Not so good if you building one from the ground up, which was the case here.

I talked about reframing in an earlier post. This move is a bit of that. Yes, clarity’s a wonderful thing. The new name—a re-branding, if you will--communicates more effectively what my two big interests are and that which you’ll find covered in this blog. The new name also provides me with a lot of latitude to come at either topic, marketing or pop culture, and dive as deeply as I want in either direction. For example, expect to see more coverage of music and the music industry. Net-net: I’m very much re-energized about what I can contribute within this space.

A final note: If this had been a real emergency in marketing or pop culture, you would’ve been instructed where to go and what to do.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog. . .

Reaching Niches Through Rigor

Another of the blogs I regularly check out is Harry Joiner’s Marketing Headhunter. Why? Because it’s useful. All of us are thinking about how we are developing our careers (some of us, more than others), and Harry provides that much needed perspective of a recruiter who’s filling searches for top companies day in and day out. His posts are really good at focusing on the skills and ways of approaching problems/challenges that his clients are demanding.

Great food for thought, including this post yesterday, which is particularly relevant for all of use trying to help our companies locate targets in our ever more fragmented world.

Tags: niche marketing, marketing career development

You are who you can reach

In an increasingly networked and digitally connected world, this may  be a logical evolution.  See the link highlighted by the Institute for the Future on the strength of performative ties.




Previewing a future history of media?

For those still not convinced that consumers will be heard, check out the latest numbers put forth by Technorati, the site that tracks what’s going on in the blogosphere.  The report is called State of the Blogosphere, October 2005 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth.

David Sifry, Technorati’s CEO, provides the detail here, including a look at the increase in the number of fake blogs going up. Spamming has reached the blogosphere (splogging).  Meanwhile, a number of interesting sites have also noted the release of the information, including those of Andy Lark and Steve Rubel.

This is a crazy connection, but I recently revisited the what’s been called a “future history of media” in 2014, Epic 2014.  If you haven't seen this 8 minute short video, do so, because it's fascinating to say the least.  Certainly, this growth in the blogosphere is one of many factors that make this a possible future. Hats off to Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. I’m looking forward to seeing EPIC 2015, the update, when it’s back up.

technorati tags: blogging, EPIC 2014, personalization, consumer control of media, Splog