Blame Tina Fey if you want.  I do.

The SNL alum had the nerve (along with her cohorts) to call out the mainstream media and seriously question their objectivity on the Obama vs Clinton primary battle for the Democratic nomination for President.  It does seem the media has been taking it easy on Mr. Obama and the SNL folks don’t seem to like it much at all.  (View Fey’s editorial rant here.)

There’s more to review by visiting a blog set up to provide the video YouTube won’t show.  Give it a look (here) and let me know what you think. (more…)

Welcome to Stage 9.

Disney has just launched their first (?) on-line production studio, Stage 9 Digital Media (summary, article).  And with the launch of their studio, they also introduced their first of twenty made-for-web series.

That’s right, twenty. (more…)

The Bulldog Reporter’s “Daily Dog” newsletter reports (here) that Richmond, VA-based AgencyFinder.com is launching an agency rating system for the agencies registered with its service.  The rating system helps rank agencies that meet the criteria required by the searching client or consultant.

As a disclaimer, let me say that I’m friends with the folks at AgencyFinder and have used their service to conduct a search for a new agency for a client.  The service is free to those who are looking for a new agency - the cost of the service is borne entirely by the agencies registered in the database. 

From my point of view, AgencyFinder’s new rating service will help keep things fair and objective (the first round of evaluations is done “blind” - meaning the client doesn’t know the name of the agencies they’re reviewing).  Keeping everything on an “apples to apples” basis will put small and large agencies on a relatively level playing field.

Congratulations to Chuck and his team on this new innovation.  I can’t wait to see it in action.

There’s an interesting piece in AdWeek this week that talks about a demographic class I hadn’t seen before … the “working wealthy.”  This group of consumers (also known as “middle class millionaires”) is defined by authors Lewis Schiff and Russ Alan Prince as having the following attributes:

Middle-class millionaires — the 8.4 million households in America with $1 million to $10 million in net worth — are setting the pace for innovation in new and fascinating ways. Although the word “millionaire” may conjure up images of first-class lifestyles and financial peace of mind, middle-class millionaires work exceptionally long hours to maintain their expensive lifestyles and most think of themselves as just plain “middle class.”

Though the working wealthy share many of their values with the rest of the middle class, they also exhibit traits that set them apart. For example, they consider themselves to be influential in their community. They are 50 percent more likely to say that they “tell lots of other people about products or services they like” than middle-class survey respondents. They also report “being asked for advice on what to buy” five times more often than our middle-class survey respondents.

I encourage you to read the whole article - you’ll find the information to be helpful in your marketing planning and of interest to your clients, as well.

Forty is too young to die.

I can say that now, as I’m all of forty-five.  Last week’s news of the death of DDB’s creative chief, Paul Tilley, hit home for me.  Here’s a guy about my age with a bunch of kids and a wife and (apparently) all the upside in the world.

But with the upside comes pressure.  And with the pressure, a darkness.

Ad Age had a very solid piece on Paul Tilley and the reactions to his suicide.  You can read it here.

One line in the Ad Age piece referred to a New York Post story (found here) that referred to the “Blogs of Death” - specifically AgencySpy and AdScam.  The “Blogs of Death” epithet is more the result of bad headline writing than any claim staked by either blog.

Do yourself a favor.  Don’t get caught up in the self-indulgent introspection of trying to figure out who’s to blame for this tragedy.  It won’t bring Paul Tilley back and it won’t make life any easier for his wife and kids.  Just morn the all-too-soon loss of a husband and father who, as it just so happens, was a creative director that did some excellent work.

Godspeed, Paul Tilley.

The irony of writing this post the day after an on-going e-mail exchange with a guy who wrote a post about the lack of civility in advertising hasn’t passed me by, but …

I received an e-mail from a friend of this blog today who filled me in on an interesting online exchange between a blogger and the president of a company he blogged about.  As it turns out, the post written by the blogger provides a less-than-friendly portrayal of the president’s company. 

Nineteen months after the fact (Tuesday, as a matter of fact), the president contacts the blogger with more than one nasty e-mail message.  Threats of lawsuits follow and the ‘libel’ word is thrown around liberally.  The blogger was sufficiently po’d to contact another blogger, who wrote about the exchange and then passed the information on to me.

And now I’m blogging about it - albiet third-hand and without using names or quoting accusations.  You see, I don’t know either party involved in this broughaha and can’t vouch for them.  But that’s not my objective here.  Instead, I’d like to dive into the tactics employed and their ramification on reputation and, eventually, market share. (more…)

Maybe there’s something to this “social marketing” thing.  I mean if a bunch of drunk rugby fans with a fast Internet connection could do this, why not us hopeless Cubs fans?

I found this very helpful post on the Small Business Trends blog on developing a “marketing kit.”  There are some very helpful tips here for B2B marketers who typically have to rely on a library of brochures, spec sheets and direct mail pieces to educate a prospective customer. (more…)

Diego Rodriguez’s metacool blog started me on a search for sites and blogs that tracked the evolution of different brands.  There’s something about this that appeals to both the marketing guy and the historian in me. 

Check these out:

Evolution of automobile brands
Evolution of tech brands

Let me know if you find any more studies like this!

Is civility in our every-day communication dead?  Judging by the amount of political advertising, lyrics on rap records, studies on the use of profanity by teenagers and dozens of other “bellweather indicators” - the answer appears to be “yes.”

Especially if you’re Steve Yastrow (writing for the Tom Peters blog) or Richard Rappaport (writing in Ad Age).  Rappaport wrote this tome for Ad Age and decried the rise of “snide” advertising.  Yastrow followed Rappaport’s article with this blog post declaring that “advertising is a sick business.” (more…)

Kudos to Saatchi & Saatchi who hold a bi-annual competition to find great ideas with “to make a positive difference, and maybe even change the world.”  In this article by Saabira Chaudhuri, Saatchi’s ECD, Bob Isherwood explains why the ad agency holds the competition:

“We’re an ideas company. We rebranded ourselves in the advertising world in 1997 and took the word advertising out of our name entirely.”  

The winner of the competition receives a $100,000 prize ($50,000 in cash and $50,000 in consulting services).  The award is given to an innovative idea that has the potential to reach the largest number of people and make the biggest impact.

Read more about the competition and the winner (the LifeStraw, which aims to provide the developing world with clean drinking water) by clicking here.

All the marketing pundits are starting to weigh in on the problems businesses are having in converting social media eyeballs into cold, hard dollars and cents.  In his article on the “Inconvenient Truth about Social Media Marketing,” marketing pro Aaron Wall says:

“There’s just one — major — problem with spending so much time and effort on capturing the eyeballs of social media users. Social media is easy to hype because there is a lot of traffic on social media sites. But if you try to do anything with social media traffic to convert it to revenue, you will be hard-pressed — unless you are selling CPM-based advertising.”

But that may, in fact, be just the problem. (more…)

Leave it to John Jantsch, the author of the Duct Tape Marketing blog, to provide yet another great idea for those of you who need to make a big impression on a new business prospect.

John points out that with the new, low price of the iPod Shuffle, it makes a very appealing (and impressive) premium vehicle to carry your B2B pitch via podcast.

Read the whole post here.

According to MarketingVOX, CBS television has announced it will serve up classics like Hawaii Five-O, Melrose Place and Star Trek (The Original Series) on the three hundred-plus sites that make up the CBS Audience Network.  According to a news release from the broadcaster, all of the shows will be ad-supported and, as a result, will be free to viewers.

Book ‘em, Danno.

It’s an interesting journalistic question brought forward by Steve Rubel in this post on his Micropersuasion blog.  Steve refers to this piece on the Editor’s Weblog which lays out the issues surrounding the use of Wikipedia by newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.

The problem, of course, is that sites like Wikipedia are tempting resources for journalists precisely because they serve as a repository for interesting and offbeat information you can’t usually find through more carefully vetted resources.

Other, more specialized wiki’s might serve as a more reliable source of information for a reporter, though.  Wiki’s built around special interests can attract very specialized experts and, because of their extremely narrow focus, aren’t attractive targets for mischief (after all, how much fun is there in pissing off a few thousand Trekkies?).

It seems wise to keep in mind the following about all wiki’s (from Wikipedia’s “About Wikipedia” section):

“… it is important to use Wikipedia carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in standard and maturity.”