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Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Thought for the day 
| | Ever notice that the companies that tolerate, and even encourage, blogging... also suck at branding? I mean, they succeed as companies. Meaning, they market well, in their own ways. But their advertising has never been award-winning stuff. They don't hire expensive agencies and employ Professionals who Manage The Brand. Their image isn't top-drawer. Companies that rock at branding (by which I mean, they do really good, award-winning advertising).... Apple... Sony... Coke... Anheuser-Busch... Nike... Gap... aren't known for their bloggers. |
| | This just came up in a conversation with Hugh. |
Sense, not dollars
The continuing death of TV As Usual
| | For many of us, the current model of political spin is not just intellectually unsatisfying, but frustrating. Most of what passes for TV news reporting is nothing but a very bad talk show, filled with party flacks and tired hosts endlessly regurgitating the current "buzz." |
| | When viewers say they have learned something from "The Daily Show," it's not because they confuse the concept of TV news and satire. It's because the satire is done in a way that it provides a wider spectrum of opinions and viewpoints than you'll find on most news programs. |
| | Watching the frail and cranky Novak rail about Stewart is a reminder to many of us that the news channels still have not figured out a way to consistently engage viewers under 40. |
| | We don't believe that endless roundtables about the Swift Boat Vets and Dick Cheney's gay daughter provide any illumination about a Presidential election that promises to be the most important one in a generation. |
| | We want to hear about the real issues. We're not too stupid or too easily bored to discuss more serious matters. The news channels are just doing it wrong. If you're CNN or Fox or MSNBC, and your numbers go up when you're discussing Laci Peterson or whether John Kerry was really in Cambodia, than the fault is yours. |
| | I like this criticism because it shows how the news networks go for the easy money. They haven't yet learned how to zig while the others zag. Or, more importanly, how to involve an audience that isn't just an audience anymore. They're producing. A lot more every day. |
How about some Republican ones, then?
| | p2p-Politics.org is brand new, and has launched with 150 clips from MoveOn.org. Not necessarily because those represent the site's politics, but because entries to MoveOn's ad contests are released under a Creative Commons license. |
| | Anybody can upload their own video clips under the same terms. |
Unlocking Corporate Blogging, Lesson K
| | Want to motivate your boss to get blogs? Have him do some homework on the Kryptonite story and look at the brand equity that has gone away due to their response (or lack thereof). |
| | An excellent post. Read the whole thing. |
Not even with small body parts
| | At this Tuesday¹s BayCHI event, Don Norman discussed User Experience and why so many organizations believe they own it. His perspective touched on many important points: |
| | Vertical Organizations are the most common because they are the easiest to manage (one set of domain knowledge vs. many). Products, however, are by their very nature horizontal. As a result, vertical organizational structures can often impede the product design process. In fact, vertical silos in many companies are clearly visible within the products they produce. This is especially apparent when companies maintain vertical reward structures that ultimately may pit individual group benefits against company-wide (or product-wide) benefits. |
| | Dunno about you, but I hate the idea of anybody "owning" my experience. |
And therefore, still on death support
| | A new licensing deal struck between the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) representing commercial radio stations in the US will cover (press release) streaming over the web. Valued at US$1.7 billion, the deal gives commercial radio stations the freedom to stream the same music on the web that they broadcast over the air. |
| | ASCAP, which is responsible for collecting royalties on broadcast music, and RMLC had been locked in a battle over licensing fees for the past couple of years with the ASCAP looking for a separate fee structure for webcasts. The new deal, which was approved by a US District Court judge, is backdated to cover fees for 2001-03 and will extend through 2009. However, the deal does not cover webcasters with an online-only presence. Hence, Internet-only broacasters are unaffected by the deal. |
| | Thanks to Jay for the pointer. |
Get flat
Seeing things
| | I first ran across Dan Heller's photography a little more than three years ago, when I was looking for shots of the late World Trade Center. His photo looking North at sunset from the Windows on the World Restaurant felt especially moving to me. I remember sitting in seats like that — perhaps those very ones — with my mother, on an equally clear day in 1993. The restaurant was one floor below this shot here. |
| | Some of ya'll might remember Dan as the founder of Z-Code Software, which made the first commercial email system designed for the Internet, in 1990. I've never met him, but I really like his stuff. |
| | His site is also easy to navigate, and searches actually bring results. |
| | The one thing I'd like to see him do, that he's not doing now, is blog. Or moblog. Or photoblog. Newsetters are cool, but a blog would drum up even more interest in his work. |
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