AdWeek > IAB Mixx > The Race is On: Consumer Content v Original Content held at the Crowne Plaza Times Square

Writeup claims

“Publishers across the media and entertainment spectrums are looking for the winning formula to provide marketers with the best opportunities for brand alignment. What will marketers choose? Sites that deliver consumer generated content or programming that is strategically created by professionals? Hear from all sites of this hotly debated topic – from well known brands like MTV Networks to the newly created sites like Heavy and directly from the consumers that are creating their content. Who will win – David or Goliath?”

Simon Assaad, CEO, Heavy.com
Rob Bennett, General Manager, MSN Entertainment & Video Services
Keith Richman, CEO, Break.com
John Trimble, SVP Branded Sales, FOX Interactive Media
Moderator: Stacey Lynn Koerner, President, Consumer Experience Practice, Interpublic Media

For my reaction, play the video.

I’m angry. Angry!

Text Edit keeps giving me this WYSIWYG crap and I can’t hand-code the .html of an ultra simple web page I’m trying to put together for ANP=10×3. WTF?!

Is there a version of notepad for the Mac? Why the hell can’t I futz with source code on my lonesome? What gives?

Also, is there anyway to import the XML feed from my friendsterblog into an .html dashboard of all my digital versions of self, or will I have to figure out .php sheeeit to parse the bidness first?

Harrumph.

If any of you are in Berlin or are planning to visit before November 4th, please be sure to check out my friend Katherine Newbegin’s solo show at galerie OPEN. “Waiting Room” showcases Katherine’s ability to capture that which is not, that which hangs heavy, the spaces in between.

The photographs as well as the video installation of the New York artist Katherine Newbegin show passing through spaces – temporary spaces. Abandoned hotels, cinemas, cafes or asylums: the concentration of her works is the absence of the human, which is not the main subject, but the traces of their live are sensed. Katherine Newbegin has investigated those left traces of human being in the US, Cuba, Rumania, Poland and Germany. Although every country was a new project, it is surprising to find the global similarities of passed time, which not only can be sensed but be seen due to the left relicts.
Her video installation American Landscapes however takes place in the United States - travelling across the country. The combination between sound and noise, with sequences of closing and opening elevator doors and human spaces being accessible, creates a feeling of paranoia and a moment of feeling lost and forgotten – just as the spaces your are entering.

As I’ve said before, her work resonates with me emotionally, and her piece ‘Chandelier’ is the showcase of my growing collection of art.

More images of Katherine’s work available here.

Go. Go!

–

Katherine, I’m so very proud of you. I love you and am grateful for our continued friendship. x! o!

As part of Ad Week NYC 2006, I attended a presentation entitled Brand Sirens: Today’s Super-Influencers: Who They Are, What They Do, and How Marketers Can Engage Them, presented by Starcom MediaVest Group and CNET Networks.

Goal: Help marketers understand how to reach today’s elusive population of 13- to 34-year-olds

Methodology: Interviews and discussions with more than 10,000 young people through 30 ethnographies, followed by a series of online surveys and conversations.

Study highlights:
• Two-thirds feel there are important differences between brands
• More than half talk to friends often about brands
• Seven in ten will spend more to purchase a brand they know and trust

Brand sirens have been defined as the 15 – 20% “distinguished by their deep expertise in their passions and interests, their constant quest for information on those interests, and their desire to share what they learn with large groups of people who rely on them for advice.”

Brand sirens exhibit some key features;
• Almost 100% more likely than the average consumer to talk about brands with their friends
• 87% love sharing info about brands
• 70% send emails to friends about products and services

For my thoughts I had during and immediately after the presentation, play the video.

My best friend’s fellow lawyer friend just started as in-house counsel for a chain retail store. Her friend commented on the tension between legal and marketing, especially with regards to the rewards program and sweepstakes. Ah, the sweet ring of familiarity!

As a marketer whose best friend is a lawyer, my advice to anyone who operates as in-house counsel:

1. Tell the crazy marketers what they absolutely cannot do
2. Tell them what you would advise they not do, so that they can minimize risk
3. Provide them with the legal context for 1 and 2
4. If you really want to be a superstar, provide suggestions for alternate approaches

The marketers that are idiots will always bitch and moan about lawyers telling them no. Ignore them; they will eventually get shuffled over to the “strategic initiatives” group and work on projects that will never bear fruit.

However, there are some marketers out there who are not dumbasses, and they are coming back from meetings with legal saying things like, “Legal counsel is here to counsel, not run our business!” whilst tossing down manila folders loudly and stomping around the floor with their hands on their hips (ahem). Turn them into your ally and educate them with bullet point three.

Failure to provide the legal context — throw us a piece of legislation, or some case study — will make us think you are a fear-driven jackass who went to a shitty non-accredited law school and has no idea about anything.

Kind of like how lawyers probably think that marketers are hungry consumer-abusing jackasses only interested in cash money now dot com…

Anyone else have advice for in-house counsel?

FedEx had just acquired Kinko’s with the stated purpose of fueling its retail outlet expansion and driving growth of its transportation services.
- Autumn 2006 ish of strategy + business

Basically, FedEx didn’t have enough pipes to access its customers, and wanted to maximize usage of its existing pipes (i.e., the truck fleet).

So it’s all about, as I’ve chanted since Winter 2004, owning the pipes. Buy ‘em if you don’t got ‘em, and stuff ‘em full o’ shit once you do.

Damn I hate being right!

Yale lets Princeton marvel at its crumbly football stadium on November 11th, 2006. 12:30 kickoff. The alumni tailgate may not be happening in Coxe Cage this year, but I bet we can pluck perfectly edible barbecued foods out of the hands of drunken SAE children.

Gripped off a rando’s album on Flickr

I’m getting myself an alumni pass to PWG and splashing around in its big bad pool while in the ‘Have.

More importantly…

10 IF FUN = TEDIUM THEN GOTO LINE 50
20 SAVE THE WEEKEND: 10/27 - 10/29
30 ANP TURNS 10X3 IN NYC
40 SEND SNAIL MAIL ADDY FOR INVITE
50 END

Read the Deep Springs article in the Sept. 4 New Yorker tonight. Was reminded of The Academy, esp. when reading these snippets:

Deep Springs’s form of repression … allows its students to feel wildly, hedonically free… They build things, break things, play pranks …

Mostly… the freedom lets them explore the boundaries of their own personalities.

The shock of returning to the world of social norms can be profound… “… when you get to the wider world you think of it as a shoddy allegory for Deep Springs. You’re nostalgic for the thing that was supposed to prepare you for an engaged, generous, disciplined world outside. You realize you’ve become this very self-serious creature, obsessed with aesthetics — and if that’s the case then it’s just a really satisfying frat, and that’s kind of amoral. It’s helped you get an intuition for interconnectedness, but you have to start learning about people all over again… ”

You have to start learning about people all over again. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I donated a few bucksh to the Yale Alumni Fund (work study reprazent!), and I received a thank you email that contained a link to a ridunculous thank you multimedia affair.

Wo! A little slow, but, hey.

Kudos to the alumni fund peeps who decided to kill the direct mail action and amortize some presentation development costs across the entire donor base.

Photo gripped from Flickr. Not taken by me.

I gotta take a road trip to the ‘Have this fall. Princeton game, anyone?

I recently read a great article in Booz Allen Hamilton’s strategy + business magazine regarding complementary genius.

Tourist guides and automobile tires are what economists today call “complements.” Simply put, complements are products that tend to be consumed together. Think of movies and popcorn, or plywood and nails, or personal computers and digital cameras. Economically, complements have an interesting symbiotic relationship. If you expand the supply or reduce the price of one product, demand for its complements tends to go up. Cut the cost of electricity, and you’ll increase sales of vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Make it easier for motorists to find a decent hotel room, and they’ll take longer trips in their cars and, in turn, replace their tires more frequently.

Summary: Complementary businesses can expand your core business
Examples:

• Demand for Michelin tires (the core) was boosted by publishing the Michelin guide (the complement), which boosted demand for travel
• Weekend demand for mass transpo (the core) was boosted by creating Coney Island (the complement)
• Demand for washing machines (the core) was boosted by creating lines of credit (the complement)
• Etc.

Failures also abound. Think “Free Personal Computers” and their supposed ability to boost demand for internet access…

This celebration of complements flies in the face of the “focus on the core” oft-heard mantra. Agree that focusing on a core competency and offshoring / outsourcing non-criticals is the mark of an efficient organization. However, we can’t pretend that the acquisition of MetaReward by Experian wasn’t a brilliant move, or that the ownership of media outlets by companies that rely on said media outlets for advertising distribution doesn’t make sense.

Own the pipes, n’est-ce pas?

Now, The Bank would be wise to invest / create some complementary bidnesses of their own, but I’ll put that into a .ppt and shop it around up the food chain in order to angle for a promotion before I start bloggin’ ’bout it.

Don’t worry, Ari; I’ll be sure to use sig figs appropriately in all my forecasts.

With love,

Robo ANP