2008 was the year of Manchego. The sharp and stout Spanish cheese was a great way to introduce everyone to the world of finer cheeses without insisting on the soft and aromatic goats and bries that everyone considers "Fancy". Manchego is what I describe as a "stealth sheep" so good, that the green can't fathom its complexity. We can also say that 2008 was the year of Humboldt Fog. A fine California cheese with layers of taste AND ash that made it a particularly exciting cheese when cut right.
2009 was completely owned by Roaring Forties Blue Cheese which is widely accepted as the most exciting Blue Cheese in years. To eat a sliver is to have a dance in your mouth of almost a minute as the complex veins and flavors dissolve on your tongue. I'm salivating just thinking about it.
2010 is a challenge for all my From-Friends. It is a commitment to adventure, and a financial investment in a cheese that is a landslide of complexity. Mimolette the cheese made to order by Louis XIV, is my new love of the year. Albeit a touch pricey, Mimolette, like Manchego , has the rustic base that appeals widely, but a refinement that cheese lovers can really hang on to. The nuttiness makes it an ideal "Beer Cheese" but you can pair it with any strong wines.
He does this every day by hand and gives it to my grandma, who then types it up and E-mails it. Then, Grandpa gets fussy about e-mail until we receive the confirmation, at which time Grandpa starts research for the next day's column.
Of all the kooky bizarre things the Catholic Church has to offer, the veneration of Saints has to be my favorite. Just like a pantheon of pagan gods, saints are assigned patronage to specific things and praying for their intervention in their area of expertise or causes of which they are the patron is a time honored tradition, in spite of common sense.
We are all familiar with Saint Patrick the patron saint of Ireland, snakes and toothaches, and of course Saint Valentine, the patron saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, and young people. I know. Bee keepers, right?
Saint Nick? Patron of bankers and pawnbrokers, I shit you not.
National saints? Sure thing. England has Saint George, Scotland has Saint Andrew , Wales has Saint David. Austria gets five with Joseph, Maurice, Coloman, Leopold, and Florian. Italy tops out at six, with Bernardine of Siena, Catherine of Siena, Francis of Assisi, Our Lady of Loreto, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and Our Lady of the Snows. What about the U.S of A? The Blessed Virgin Mary herself is our patron, while Papua New Guinea gets St. Michael the Archangel, who also happens to be the patron Saint of Paratroopers, which is pretty badass.
The whole thing is fascinating if nothing else and you can get your saint fix anytime at CATHOLIC ONLINE .
Why all this sudden fussing about saints, you may ask? Well, after our team of four were declared "World's Greatest Santa" at the LA Santa-con yesterday for trouncing everyone in the Scavenger hunt, i figured i should refresh my knowledge of the actual Saint Nick, and see if I was wrong when I claimed he was the patron saint of beards and facial hair. Not only was I wrong, since there is no patron saint of facial hair, but i was giving the title to someone far less deserving. Saint Nick's beard holds nothing to what I stumbled on.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give ye Saint Wilgefortis.
Betrothed to a heathen king by her father, so the story goes, Wilgefortis who's name is a derivation on the latin "Virgo Fortis"or "Strong Virgin", prayed to god that she would become hideous and therefore be spared the unhappy marriage. Sad, right? So the next day, she wakes up to find that she's grown a full beard!
God is hilarious.
The pagan king is grossed out, and the marriage is cancelled. Hooray!
But Wilgefortis' dad is so pissed off that she and her god did this, that he has her crucified. Boo!
THE END
Talk about your joke backfiring, huh? You'd think God in his omnipotence could have seen that coming, right? Whatever.
The cult of Saint Wilgefortis was all sorts of popular in the middle ages, so much so that the monks at the abbey where her wooden statue was, had it plated in silver to prevent erosion from all the pilgrims kissing her feet. It is said that when a poor minstrel played at the statue, one of the silver slippers came off as a reward from the saint. Which is a nice way of saying "It was stolen". However, that explains why she has only one shoe in the statue above, but it does not explain her enormous Sasquatch feet in the same sculpture.
Needless to say,that Wilgefortis with her sad story of a heavenly practical joke gone horribly awry, should absolutely without a doubt be new patron saint of mustaches and beards in general, as well as the patron saint of bearded ladies, which she already is. I encourage the Vatican's commission on gobbledygook and totes ridiculousness to look into the matter as soon as possible.
Now enjoy this lovely music video i found of a song by Rebecca Clamp about Wilgefortis.
As I look forward to seeing the much ballyhooed and newest "Disney Princess" in THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG I find myself tickled by photographer Dina Goldstein's less than idyllic take on what the future holds for our fairy tale heroines. The super saccharine characters are easy enough to lampoon, but Goldstein manages to add just the right amount of sympathy to the general sense of comeuppance that we all crave, to make it almost as poignant as it is clever.
Or should it be "DM ergo sum"? Regardless of the Latin, there's a point to made. As a marketing professional, i often have forbidden fruits dangled before me.
"I've produced an algorithm."
Is usually the first sign of trouble in Social Media. Followed quickly by the words "Viral" and "Blast". All of those connote a detachment from the wondrous teeming, bubbling, and ever evolving mass that is Teh Webz and how, despite the technology and ways of "tricking" people into receiving your message, there is nothing as powerful as a loyal customer spreading your message of his/her own accord. As my dear friend mAcslost said, "What is the ROI on a friend that helps you move? What's the price on that long term relationship?"
So true. Like any friend, a SM professional needs to know what favors to ask and what is too much of an infringement on their relationship with their followers. We often walk a fine line, understanding the necessity of mass e-mails but not wanting to go into the SPAM folder. Needing to reach out, but not be so callous and so to the point that your customers learn to disregard your message.
Two things reared their heads this previous week that I'd like to address. Both were tempting in their effectiveness and both I ultimately passed on, simply because I am personally uncomfortable with how intrusive they are.
Firstly, i had myself an apoplexy when i received a DM to my company's Twitter account from one of our competitors. "You have been invited to (EVENT DETAILS)"
I was livid. I received that message on my phone, in my E-mail, and on my Twitter. 3 messages at once from my competitors made me angry at the invasion, and jealous that their message had infiltrated so entirely. I looked to my SM peeps to validate my outrage. By a huge majority we all agreed that a mass DM was considered "Twitter Spam" and would ultimately damage them more than help. Officialy, you give people who you follow the right to DM you, and they are within their rights to do so. However it is in bad form, and a breach of "Twettiquette". Though I sit here in my SM tower and cast judgment on their SM fumbles , though our SM community dwarfs theirs in numbers and community involvement , I also know that their one Spammy, BS, DM was seen by every one of their followers. The temptation to follow suit is enormous.
The second was similar in nature. Text message marketing. I know people must opt in, I understand that its highly effective, I just don't like it. I think our brand needs as much goodwill as possible and douchey marketing like Texting, overzealous E-mail "Blasts", and "Twitter Spam" are harmful to our image.
Ultimately, it's a personal decision for SM professionals. For my money and many of the people that i work with, goodwill, respect, and a knowing nod to our community acknowledging that we "Aren't like THAT" is worth more than the potential returns from such direct and aggressive advertising. There are people who market by wrapping a building in their message, there are people who buy electronic billboards, there are those who blast and spam and plan to "go viral". I am not one of them, and my brand will not suffer those indignities. We aim to build a community out of respect and goodwill. We will talk to our customers when we e-mail them, and direct message them, we will not be talking at them.
At an astoundingly douchey mixer held by the club promoters of the digital world (Digital LA), I was approached by a very pushy young man who was hocking applications. After figuring out my position in our Company and my affinity for Social Media, he posed the question "What is your ROI?".
I thought about it for a moment, and I responded. "We don't speak ROI, we speak relationships and community."
He laughed nervously, and i ran away.
ROI? Good grief, doesn't he know that social media is all about Teh Gudwillz and teh Relashunshipz? I have since obsessed. The positive impact of our SM campaigns is evident to me, but our bottom line would still seem unaffected. How do I convince the boss folk that this is a good investment?
Below is a starting point. Obviously for a small business like ours, it's not necessarily all applicable, but its a start on what I'm sure will be a lengthy discussion as SM begins to settle into its place as in the world of brand management, public relations, and marketing.
An exchange in the WH Situation room with The VP and the President's advisors.
"Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent.
It is a shock, no doubt. Nobody expected our President to receive the Nobel Prize. What has he done? He's only been in office for less than a year? Hell! He was only eligible to win as president for 2 months before nominations were closed. Is this the Nobel committee's way of giving a final insult to the Bush administration, who's critics (Al Gore, Paul Krugman) seemed to be winning prizes left and right for the last few years? Or is it more important than that?
I think the key to the Nobel Committee's decision lies in the brevity of time that Barack Obama has spent as President. Just as it is the most shocking part of the announcement that mere months into his presidency he's won a prize given to MLK and TR, the fact remains that President Obama has turned the global conversation back towards unity, hope and diplomacy in a VERY SHORT TIME. A few years ago, this country was still coping with the fact that we tortured detainees. We were mired in conversations about whether or not Waterboarding was considered torture, and dealing with a war fought under false pretenses. Remember the awful images of Saddam Hussein being executed? Remember? It seems a world away. We are now debating taking care of each other (Health care), our focus lies in bettering this world and not in creating tactical nukes and alienating friends with missile shields.
President Obama, through peaceful political means changed the entire direction of global politics by inspiring the world's most powerful nation to hope and better ourselves. We are now talking to Iran, with a heavy hand and backed by all our allies, including those who previously supported Iran. The world is already a safer, and more united place because a Hawaiian-born African American man from Chicago decided we still could. Imagine this world under McCain and Palin. Remember this world under Bush and Cheney think of how much has changed in a year, and then ask yourself in 2009 who else has done so much to bring people together? I can't think of a single more powerfully uniting figure.
I know. I know. This is my second post in a row about Twitter that has a question as its title. I know the posts have been Social Media heavy lately, and I know I owe you all my analysis of Chicago's failed bid for the 2016 games, but bear with me my dears, as I spin a yarn of greed, ego, and the powers that our personal accounts and engagement are up against.
Gather round Tweeps, and Facebook friends. Tumblrs and MySpace pervs.
The whole thing began about a month and a half ago when one of the top 6 agencies in town sent over someone who referred to himself as a "Social Media Agent" to meet with the celebrity I work with from time to time. Astounded at the notion, since social media doesn't pay off directly, and talent agencies are very aggressive in monetizing everything, and 10% of nothing is bupkes, I was eager if not thrilled to see what this guy knew and what his insight might be into monetizing SM.
When he arrived, I was a touch shocked. Was it possible that a man well into his forties could have insight into SM ? I'm in my early thirties and I can barley keep up, could it be that this man had the tech savvy that I lacked and therefore some sort of insight into monetization that would make everyone very rich? I listened to his pitch with five people present in the room.
The pitch went as follows:
There is a huge amount of money to be made by celebrities who Tweet.
He has a Company that is willing to pay per commercial tweet according to the amount of followers a celebrity may have.
The company hosts a variety of brands that the celebrity can choose from, so the celeb could choose brands that are applicable.
The company requires every fifth tweet to be a commercial with up to 40 tweets a day for it to be profitable.
With the formula pitched, Ashton Kutcher could make over one million dollars monthly.
Naturally there were questions to be asked.
Firstly, the Celebrity in question has an honest but unimpressive 5k followers. Not nearly enough for it to be worth it. "That can be easily addressed with a service we employ that can artificially boost your numbers. We could have you up to 50k in 2 weeks."
They don't pay per click, they pay per follower? "Yes, but who knows how long they'll be doing that for. So we have to get on this right away so we can get the numbers up and the tweets going."
Is the tool you use to boost the numbers Ok by twitter?
"Well, not exactly. Which is another reason why we would need to get on this right away."
Who else is doing this?
"Well, if say Ashton Kutcher would do it.."
Is he? "No, but if he were.."
Why wouldn't he want an extra 1 million a month?
"I don't know."
Ok, so Ashton doesn't do it, but you haven't told us who. So who else would be interested in doing something like this?
"Well, we want to keep clients protected."
At this point the celebrity interjected. "Do I have to tweet and choose the ads myself or can my guys do it?"
"Oh for sure your staff can do it, 40 daily tweets is a lot."
The celeb's assistant sank into his chair. But the feeling of all in the room is that this bit of sketchiness would not see the light of day. I was glowing at being able to thwart something that would be detrimental not only to the celeb's brand, but to the Twitter community as well. After all, posting for a profit defeats the idea of sharing. Its filling a quota and manipulating. It goes against what the Twitter community is all about, and leaves the door open for the profit hungry "Man" that drove MySpace into the ground. I had come head to head with the capitalist machine and managed to defend my online socialist utopia for another day. God bless the EFF and Creative Commons, keep your filthy corporate greed out of our web, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
This was 45 days ago.
Yesterday it all resurfaced with the acquisition of 2 interns who's duties include Tweeting. Calls were made and the whole mess is a "go". Now it is up to the Twitter community to react. Do we reject advertisement as a part of feeds altogether? Is an individual endorsement more valuable when not contractual? (See? It does connect to the previous post.) All this remains to be seen. I have faith that something so sneaky and ill conceived has little to no place in the twitterverse. However, i have noticed something that insists on a caveat for this sort of marketing on Twitter.
Which leads to this site.
Although i believe that weight loss products and Acai Berry drinks are beneath LAist, their tweets are transparent, and we do not expect a personality or a connection to a website like we would a brand. Their twitter feed is simply links to their blog and their blog makes money off of ads, ergo this is fair play. This cannot be said of corporations and celebrities who use twitter to further their personal brand. Their unspoken contract with the web and in social media participation is to provide the public with information about themselves with goodwill and without trying to make a cynical buck off of us. However, if we find ourselves following celebs, and clicking on their every link with the same blindness with which we accepted hookers and club promoters as our MySpace "friends" then the FAIL Whale is upon us and we can only watch the potential of yet another Social Networking site diminished and destroyed by corporate greed. It really is up to us.
"The ways of the Living Force are beyond our understanding... But fear not. You are in the hands of something much greater and much better than you can imagine." ―Qui-Gon Jinn
A Protocol Droid fluent in over 6 million forms of communication, and able to communicate with binary loadlifters has only NOW discovered the value of Twitter? So it would appear, as Twitter-friendly nerdery everywhere welcomed Anthony Daniels, who is better known throughout the galaxy as C3PO, to the world of Social Media. His newly minted Twitter account handle bears the name ADaniels3PO and he boasts a modest following of 1700 accrued in the short time of 5 days.
It would make perfect sense that someone who owes his career to the genre of Science Fiction would be tapping into the Nerd/Geek rich world of social media, where no matter how mainstream things are, they retain an air of geeky innocence. However, such has not been the case for Mr. Daniels who's recent discovery of Twitter happens to happily coincide with a new website and the beginning of his national tour with Star Wars in Concert. Is it possible that someone in the marketing department for Star Wars In Concert was prescient enough to see Mr. Daniels as an indirect marketing tool? Contractually obliging him to a twitter feed seems contrary to the "Feel-Good Community" of Twitter, but the opportunities for the concert can hardly be ignored. When a visual music and lights show starring your favorite movie rolls into town, who better to be a spokesperson than one of the stars? It takes the notion of celebrity, product, and word of mouth to a whole new level.
Do I think it was a draconian marketing person who put him up to it as a part of some awful, greedy contract? No. Should Marketing people encourage it and make available all resources to those who are promoting their goods? You bet! Anthony Daniels should have the full support of the enormous companies affiliated with Star Wars and the concert, and they should all be touting his Twitter feed. I bet they could pump those numbers well past the 2k mark they have now, and in turn give Mr. Daniels a powerful tool for his personal brand as well as allowing him to maximize his role as a spokesperson for their brand.
Let me put it this way:
I wouldn't know about Star Wars in concert if it weren't for Anthony Daniels. Anthony Daniels would never have told me about it unless it was through his Twitter feed. His Twitter feed inspired this blog post, which in turn, touts Star Wars in Concert. The force is strong in that.
This is the guy who cuts my hair. He is fantastic. He charges $10 if you have a mustache gives you a glass of rum and a damn fine shave and a haircut. Every guy i know should go to him.
Richie The Barber 7303 Melrose Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90046 (323) 935-2494
Hours: Mon-Sat. 12:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. No Credit Cards
On this day in 1808, sick of the opression of white Europeans, white Mexican-born Spaniards threw off the yoke of Imperialism and placed it promptly on the indigenous peoples of Mexico. A practice that continues to this very day, and is celebrated with "El Grito!" or "the squeal!", where the President of the republic dons his sash and rings a bell in honor of his American and Narco Overlords.
And an old timey movie that explains the Mexican national anthem and pokes fun at Napoleon III.
I had "One of those moments" yesterday, where something I've always felt true was verified by a moment or an authority. I met a young lady yesterday who had graduated from a University with the twin majors of Marketing and Social Anthropology, and she expressed delight in my excitement for her choices. To which I explained that i see the two as being permanently intertwined.
I have always maintained in the inherency of the human experience. A unifying feeling that we have all been through this before, and we all share basically the same journey with minor variations. In marketing, this can be applied in different ways. Our need to breed can be preyed on, the manipulation of imagery is well known, and wordplay, copy, font decisions, music and etymological wizardry can come in handy when attempting to create a reaction to a product on a superficial level. Social Media however, has the honor of having the customer come to you. The customer has found you and they will deliver the message on your behalf, but you must equip them with the ability and desire to spread your message. You must build on their loyalty and do so at a level which connects beyond the obvious and at a very deep level.
Mad Men, is a fantastic show that I adore simply for the Cro-Magnon brazenness of 1960's advertising and how different it is from what we try to achieve through the intimate world of Social Media. When print and television were the only game in town, it was absolutely necessary to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, but when the customer is coming to you as is the case with social media, what sort of message are you sending out in order to be the most effective representative of your brand?
The clip below has received a large amount of attention for the way in which the lead character, Don Draper, during a pitch to KODAK, appeals to emotions that are not sexy or exciting but deeply moving and speak to us on a much more intimate level. So much so, in fact, that one of his colleagues who is having marital issues leaves the room in a rush.
A masterfully written expression of what all social media professionals must inevitably learn. As my mentor Stephen Fry put it so eloquently during his address to the Apple iTunes festival "Deep inside we are very soft people who yearn to love and yearn to be loved, and everything else is incidental, irrelevant, cynical, and not interesting to us fundamentally."
The feelings of belonging, and community that are recreated by our online families within our social media outlets are very real and must speak to that level of connectedness. It is a powerful tool, and when yielded wisely and with sincerity it can have wonderful results. Understanding that connectedness and what make societies and individuals tick at a rudimentary level,like an Anthropologist would, will make you more likely to achieve that goal.
"The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable."- JRR Tolkien
I had an interesting real-time social media moment today that bears repeating as a warning for those who underestimate the immediate power of SM and the PR as well as promotional benefits of being able to listen to your consumer.
I have several Tweetdeck alerts for ongoing projects, brands, etc. One of these is The Comedy Store, my place of employment, which is an incredible, but badly damaged brand. It is a hard sell most of the time, and our product is still not in great shape after 20 something years of complete neglect and a pretty gnarly reputation for being unfriendly to outsiders.
My mantra since arriving here has been built around this Brand Heaven and Hell illustration that I found when I first started dawdling in marketing.
(If anyone can tell me who is responsible for it, I'd love to give him/her credit.)
If you'll note, one of the most basic steps, the FIRST step, in fact, is "Positive interactions".
A customer had a negative interaction today with one of the guys who works our phones. He tweeted about it approximately five minutes after his interaction. Seconds after he tweeted, I received a notice, and read this tweet: "Just called "The Comedy Store" to find out about open mic and the guy was a dick... so nothing unusual."
With that comment, not only was the customer able to let me know that we had dropped the ball, but he also let his 198 followers know as much too. Not only did he tell them that our customer service was terrible, but he also told them we had a history of such things. BAD brand karma. I tried to recover from it, offering the usual free admissions and apologies, but the damage has been done. In real time, with a nearly immediate effect, I saw our brand depleted by one idiot employee's insensitivity and i saw that message delivered into 200 people's feeds, and I pray he's not linked his twitter ans Facebook accounts. This is the world of Social Media, where the negative can be spread as quickly if not more so than the information you export. For someone like me who spends most of his waking hours attempting to paint the kindest, most sincere and positive picture of this place, it is infuriating when that is derailed by an insensitive employee who frankly, is not doing his job. Like Sauron's evil eye, a Negative interaction will find you through social media and "pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable."
Ugh.
*** UPDATE!! After my overtures the customer above decided to swing by on the day we were holding a special promotion for new comics. I was greeted by this tweet from his stream this morning which I promptly retweeted: "Had a great time at The Comedy Store... people were really nice and it was great fun watching new comics work."
