United Airlines allegedly broke a passenger’s guitar and refused to pay for the damage. Unfortunately, he was a professional musician who knows how to gain a following. Join the millions who have heard his song and seen his video on YouTube:
Archive for the ‘humor’ Category
New study says consumers like ads. And it won’t change a thing.
Friday, July 17th, 2009Adweek Magazine and its parent company, Nielsen, have released a study that shows consumers believe in advertising, they accept adve
rtising as a way of subsidizing other content and, in some cases, they actually like it.
They’ll use this to try to change the rush of money out of traditional advertising, and they won’t succeed.
In an article announcing results of the study, Adweek states that: “67 percent of respondents agree …. (including 14 percent agreeing “strongly”) that ‘Advertising funds low-cost and free content on the Internet, TV, newspapers and other media.’ Likewise, 81 percent agreed (22 percent strongly) that ‘Advertising and sponsorship are important to fund sporting events, art exhibitions and cultural events.’ ”
The only thing startling about this is that such a large percentage of people seem to understand the media business model.
Adweek also wrote: “Respondents also acknowledged that advertising is useful to them personally as they navigate the marketplace. For example, 67 percent agreed (14 percent strongly) that ‘By providing me with information, advertising allows me to make better consumer choices.’ Respondents even confessed to enjoying advertising, at least some of the time, with 66 percent agreeing (13 percent strongly) that ‘Advertising often gets my attention and is entertaining.’”
This means two things:
1) Adweek is doing its job; it is, after all, a magazine for the people who produce ads, plan campaigns and buy space for them. This study will be a tool used by readers to convince advertisers to shift money back from the new and social to more traditional ad campaigns.
That’s especially evidenced by this finding in the article: “And there was a lackluster rating for ‘ads served in search-engine results,’ with 4 percent trusting these completely and 37 percent somewhat. Ratings for old media were closely bunched, with TV getting a typical rating for these of 8 percent “trust completely” and 53 percent “trust somewhat.”
In other words, Google’s astoundingly ascendant paid search model — traditional media’s Great Satan — isn’t as effective as many believe. At least, that’s the kernal that media reps are likely to grab onto and use.
Which raises the second meaning of the information:
2) There are lots of highly respected voices in media and advertising who still don’t get it. The epochal media meltdown we’re experiencing has nothing to do with the opinions of consumers.
Advertisers aren’t pulling campaigns because they don’t work; they’re pulling campaigns because they can now do what they’ve always wanted to do: reach consumers directly without an intermediary media.
Back in another era — the Internet bubble of the late 1990s — this was called disintermediation.
Disintermediation is why people book flights directly with airlines rather than through travel agents; it’s why Progressive and Geico have a higher profile than the independent insurance agents who used to do most of the selling in their industry; it’s why people will visit a magazine advertiser’s website instead of filling out a reader-response card in the back of a magazine.
Disintermediation is a simple process of applying new technology to eliminate an old and costly middleman. Heck, media is the root of the word; is it really a surprise that media is now a target?
So it doesn’t matter if old advertising works; it ads a layer that is no longer necessary. Just as there are still travel agents and insurance agents, there will still be media — as we recognize it today — far into the future. But it will be smaller than it used to be, and it will find its success by serving niches.
You can download the full Nielsen study here: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/trustinadvertising0709.pdf
A thought on leadership
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
Team Blue Thunder, rally in progress
I’m coaching my son’s youth baseball team. I’ve found that leading a group of 11-year-old boys is pretty much the same as leading a group of adult professionals.
In both cases, the job involves:
- keeping them focused
- keeping them motivated
- removing roadblocks to allow them to remain productive
- assigning each individual a role that benefits the entire team while complementing that person’s skills, interests and style.
Finally, here’s a quote on leadership, with which I wholeheartedly agree, that’s attributed to the book, The Four Agreements: A practical guide to personal freedom:
“The primal responsibility of leadership is to prime good feeling in the people we lead.”
How does one do that other than by helping them fill a role they enjoy, and then helping them to stay motivated, focused and productive?
OK, there may be one difference between adults and kids: Adults aren’t as motivated by the promise of pretzels and a juice pouch.
‘The King of Pop is Dead’ social-media time trial
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
Who was first to report on Michael Jackson’s death?
It’s just after 9:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, June 25 — the day of Michael Jackson’s death.
The first tweet from my admittedly small ‘follow’ list came at 5:24 as a retweet from Daniel McCarthy, who I don’t actually know, but rather stumbled across him in a retweet from a former boss for whom I have a lot of respect. McCarthy’s tweet was a retweet of a source that claimed Michael Jackson died from a sleeping pill. Suicided, accidental overdose, adverse reaction?
C’mon, it’s 140 characters. Ambiguous to be sure. Call it an unfortunate aspect of the medium. Or the fog of war/celebrity reporting.
The next tweet with the news from my list came in 5:45 p.m. (+21 minutes from the first report/+19 minutes from the event) from TimAmikoff in Tehran, Iran (if I thought it was true, I’d ask if he doesn’t have anything else to do. And how did he end up on my follow list anyway?) TimAmikoff’s was a retweet from CNN Breaking News, linking to a CNN story online that cited the LA County Coronor as the source, with the death declared at 2:26 p.m. I’m considering that to be the original primary source. It said nothing about cause of death, other than a third-party quote from one of Jackson’s brothers that he had collapsed in his home. I’m inferring (because the full story was vague) the state times were local, which would be time of death of 5:26 p.m. EST — two minutes AFTER I received the very first tweet announcing his death.
Let’s say my computer clock is off two minutes. Practically a probability.
So while CNN’s story took about 29 minutes to make it’s way to my computer via Iran, the news was out to at least one source within a minute or so of Jackson’s declared death.
That’s the one I got from Daniel McArthy, who was retweeting Wierd News, which linked to a Top News Stories site owned by Global Associated News — which seems to be an empty logo used by Fake-a-wish.com — a spartan website unencumbered by “About us” links — that in its entirety seems to be a dynamic content generator about fake celebrity news. Seriously.
The story said Jackson had died from a sleeping pill (later elaborated to “cardiac arrest after consuming more than two-dozen sleeping pills.”
At the bottom of the Wierd News Page was this disclaimer: (this story was dynamically generated using a generic ‘template’ and is not factual. Any reference to specific individuals has been 100% fabricated by web site visitors who have created fake stories by entering a name into a blank ‘non-specific’ template for the purpose of entertainment. For sub-domain info and additional use restrictions: FakeAWish.com.)
Can it be a coincidence that FakeAWish would generate this story even as it was happening? Or is somebody sabotaging FakeAWish by placing real big breaking news on it — within seconds of it becoming available, and then updating it?
At 6:22 (+58), CNN Breaking News tweeted that Jackson was in a coma — +37 from first reporting he had died.
At 6:30 (+1:06) TimAmikoff cited the LA Times as confirming Jackson’s death. CNN Breaking News followed within a minute, confirming from multiple sources.
A 6:42 (+1:18) the Wall Street Journal tweeted that he had been rushed to the hospital.
At 8:37 (+2:53) The Onion tweeted “The last piece of Michael Jackson dies.”
What it all means is that I still don’t know where the news really comes from. Except I didn’t get it from any of this. I was busy elsewhere. When I looked, it was all there, preserved by my Tweetdeck utility. But I learned the whole thing at about 7:00 in a phone call from my brother-in-law.
I have just reached the point at which…
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009I have just reached the point at which … … as I’m sitting down at the computer to work, I would rather spend an extra 10 looking for my reading glasses than just gutting through the session by straining my eyes.
That’s got to be some kind of tipping point.
American Pie send-up on media
Friday, June 5th, 2009
Anyone living through the media meltdown will enjoy this clever 9-minute rewrite of the old Don McLean anthem.
The difference between liberals and conservatives is … genetic?
Friday, May 29th, 2009Nicholas Kristoff writes in the New York Times that your political leaning isn’t your fault.
Liberals and conservatives not only think differently, he writes, they feel differently. Which means that when a person accuses you of a horrible misunderstanding about the way the world works, an argument doesn’t have to ensue.
First, you should know that this poor confrontational soul has been trained from the day he or she was born — and maybe even programmed in the womb — to disagree with you on pretty much anything that matters.
This is important to a whole bunch of folks, like those at Civilpolitics.org who seem to think that we ought to be able to discuss our differences without calling each other idiots and nitwits.
That’s just crazy talk.
We should care precisely because polite dialogue is a waste of time that we don’t have. Anyone who uses this knowledge to increase the amount of talk should be sent to Guantanamo. The rest of us will use this insight can be used to get right to the heart of the matter ASAP. We can finally settle the critical issues of our time: abortion, gay marriage, access to health care and whether the Constitution is a living, breathing document.
What we need to do is conduct more research into the workings of the political mind. This could get costly, so the government might need to subsidize it. But it would be one area of study that we can all agree is worth the price. Am I not right?
Soon we will know with certainty which end of the political spectrum is not a choice, but rather an unfortunate disability. Once we know that, it’s an easy step to an infrastructure of subsidized treatment centers offering therapy, behavior modification, enhanced cognition techniques and, eventually, carefully monitored release of individuals back into society.
Which side would get this assistance and care? Liberals or conservatives?
It’s obvious already. And if you have to ask, fill out the form below; your plastic bracelet will arrive in the mail in a few days.
How fast can one company lose customers?
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009According to Shelly Palmer at imediabytes, Sirius/Xm Radio lost $36 million in Q1. And that’s nothing. It lost 400,000 customers — which I’m thinking is more customers than Johnson & Johnson lost back in the 1980s when someone started putting cyanide in its Tylenol products. 
I mean, 400,000 is a mid-size city. It’s a lot of customers. I’m not sure you could get rid of customers that fast if you paid telemarketers to call them up at dinner time and swear at them.
And if you’re the folks at Sirius/XM, it’s the kind of number that puts you into a full-blown panic attack. When you lose 400,00 customers in 3 months, you start asking questions like, “Are we doing the right thing here?” and “WTF?”
My personal experience is that I had been a subscriber for 2 years when I got a note from Sirius/XM in February 
warning me that I would no longer be able to access programming for free on my computer unless I paid for the full year in advance right away.
It annoyed me, and I immediately assumed it was a cash-grab. But I bought the 12-month subscription because I thought it was important to me. Two weeks later I lost my job, and a week after that, in an effort to cut all unnecessary costs — and because I was irritated at being leveraged in the first palce, I called to cancel my subscription.
Their response? The nice lady with a Punjabi accent asked if they could keep me as a customer if they reduced the annual subscription rate by 50%. Now I was really mad, realizing that all along I’d been paying twice what they were willing to take. I told her no.
A month later, I got a direct-mail piece asking me to come back at 4.99 a month for six months — 38% of the original price. I suppose this was supposed to entice me. But it made me feel even more stupid for having paid $12.99 in the first place.
There’s one other thing: All along, Sirius/XM has advertised that it’s commercial-free radio, which should be worth paying for. But it’s not true. If you listen to any syndicated programming that’s re-broadcast via satellite, you’ll get the same amount of commercial time as you would on commercial radio.
And if you listen to their original programming — some of which is really pretty good — you still get advertising. And it’s the most irritating kind: low-budget stuff for whole-body cleanses and businesses that you can run from home without any skills or experience required.
I originally bought my XM subscription because I didn’t want to be my own DJ; I’d rather have someone else do it for me. But these are hard times, you know. Worst times since the Great Depression. So now, when I get in my car, I plug in my i-pod or put in an old CD. I still don’t want to be my own DJ. But I’m guessing that 399,999 other people agree with me that it’s not all that bad a job.
