It's Friday, it's hot, here are some links:
- There's buzz in the marketing blog world about Agency.com's "viral" video pitch for Subway. To be honest, 9 minutes is way longer than my attention span, but Karl over at ExperienceCurve has some insight into it: "In a world where agencies shit their pants at the idea of failure they tend to be more conservative than the companies that hire them. They cave to clients cost constraints, and totally skip the important “creative� bit at the beginning and then waste a tonne of money on the execution. That being the case Agency.com just did an experiment in the 'fuzzy front end', no money on the line, no deadline, just some ideas and some playtime." In response to Agency.com, the folks over at Coudal have been nice enough to provide their own, unsolicited, gem of a video. The sandwiches taste like shit, now that's an insight.
- Chartreuse is paying the way for some people to go to New Orleans and document what's really going down. Follow the action at New Orleans Now.
- While we're on the topic of Chartreuse, his post How All This New Media Stuff is Going to Make You Famous and Rich (Or a Happy Ending is Just a Story That Isn't Finished Yet) features a gigantic picture of me with my tongue out. Once you get past the fear, however, he's got some serious thoughts on the future of stardom: "Smart companies are thinking about how to exploit all the power of all these individuals to sell shit. Smarter companies are being set up to bridge that gap between individuals and the companies that need them."
- This was the week of transparent marketing blogs for me. First I run across The Chocolate Blog promoting the LG phone and then Yodel, the Yahoo! blog. Both are refreshingly honest. Here's how they set up the chocolate blog: "LG recognises the influence that the internet has on people’s perceptions and purchase intentions and is keen to engage with consumers online. They realise that consumer-to-consumer recommendations carry a higher trust factor than virtually all other forms of advertising, and that word of mouth is a frequent factor for purchase. They also recognise that bloggers are the most important initiators of online conversation right now." Thanks for admitting it.
- Scott's got four ideas on how to make money with user generated video: Attention, advertising with revenue sharing, subscription revenue sharing and free bandwidth in exchange for advertising. I'm sick of all the C's personally (CPC, CPM, CPA, CPXYZ), but who am I? All I know is YouTube is going to need to figure something out with a $1 million a month bandwidth bill.
- Aaron Swartz on blogging: "So that's what this blog is. I write here about thoughts I have, things I'm working on, stuff I've read, experiences I've had, and so on. Whenever a thought crystalizes in my head, I type it up and post it here. I don't read over it, I don't show it to anyone, and I don't edit it -- I just post it. I don't consider this writing, I consider this thinking. I like sharing my thoughts and I like hearing yours and I like practicing expressing ideas, but fundamentally this blog is not for you, it's for me. I hope that you enjoy it anyway." I think that's the best description I've ever read.
- Snakes on a Plane will make a lot of money and that sucks for movie fans.
- What's more important in design, process or outcome? I'm an outcome kind of guy, since "everything eventually comes down to design".
- Last, but not least, a really long article about that current state of brand management that isn't necessarily revolution, but is still quite interesting.
That's it for now. I'm going to Barcelona next Thursday and I'm trying to figure out what to do with the blog in the meantime. Supposedly I'll have WiFi, but I'd really like some disconnected time. If anyone feels like writing something, drop me a line. That's it. Stay cool.