 |
 |
 |
|
Now the pioneer in short attention span retailing Amazon.com reportedly likes to up the price of merchandise if you don't buy it on the first look. See here. Log rolling
Back in November of last year, Dan was already warning that "there may be no air on planet.com." He opened that month's issue of AdBull with this quote from Fred Gibbons, founder of Software Publishing, circa 1982: "When the tide comes in, even the dead fish rise. Dan sees the rocks, plus a whole lot more. He's been there, and he knows. I first met Dan in 1985, when he was a principal with Tycer•Fultz•Bellack, a legendary advertising agency in The Valley. My agency, Hodskins Simone & Searls, was fresh off the plane from North Carolina, and we had just won some hotly contested clients after competing head-to-head with TFB, which was then the biggest and best agency in the Valley. I thought this made a good story, informed one of the business editors at the San Jose Mercury News, and did my PR-guy's best to make the story as easy as possible for the guy to write. The result was huge — so huge I could hardly believe it. There was my face on the cover of the Business section, plus a story that took up the entire upper half of Page 2. The story cast our agency as David and Dan's agency as Golliath. In other words, great PR for HS&S, and not so great for TFB. To Dan's credit, he took the high road and went out of his way to make friends with us. It was an extraordinarily gracious move on his part. Later he sponsored my membership in the PRSA, became a friend of our agency after he went off on his own consulting career. Last week he recounted much of this while introducing me to the Silicon Valley chapter of the BPA. It was by far the most knowing and gracious intro I've ever had. At lunch I encouraged Dan to make AdBull a weblog. Or to do a weblog that feeds into AdBull. Whatever, it would be perfect for him. And for the business he knows so well. By the way, one of Dan's pages is TFB in Exile — a great way to keep up with community of TFB veterans. Makes me think somebody ought to do the same for HS&S. Hmm.... Here's something
But, for the heck of it, I typed www.thesunmagazine.org and hit Enter. To my surprise, there it was. Good. Makes it easier for me to hustle it. The Sun started as Sy Safransky's weblog. I met Sy when he was selling the first issues on the street in Chapel Hill in 1975. Not long after that I was among his stable of regulars. Sy was (and still is) not only the best editorial essayist I had ever read, but the best editor as well. He could reduce one of my pieces by half or two thirds and I wouldn't know what was missing. The answer, of course, was nothing. I still miss him. I want to say how wonderful this magazine is, but Sy has always been his own magazine's best copywriter. Here's an excerpt from the about page: The Sun isn't "literary" or "political" or "spiritual" in the usual sense. It begins where those labels end, which is where life gets interesting. Each month, in essays, stories, interviews, and poetry, people write in The Sun of their struggle to understand their lives, often baring themselves with surprising intimacy. Our writers aren't afraid to take risks, to look at something ugly — or beautiful — and describe it honestly. If you're looking for where Cluetrain started for me, start here. Because it sucks. Cats know that. My favorite new quote: Nature abhors a vaccum. So does my cat. — Ed Vielmetti Ed is the proprietor of the weblog Vacuum.
|
