My Name is Kate

Flickr's Interestingness ...

Leaving
Originally uploaded by FAK3.

If you haven't played with Flickr's Interestingness feature (also known as "explore") Go. There. Now. Some of the most amazing photography.

Friday Cat Blogs and the Rise of Customer Endorsements

In honour of Friday Cat Blogging (NY Times, reg potentially required), I post these excerpts from "The Feline Physics Laws" (see extended entry) ...

For those of you who aren't cat blogging fans, the NY Times also covers Brand Blogging (a year later; clearly, porn doesn't drive internet development -- a love of one's cat does).  From the article ...

For these bloggers, intertwining their personal stories and commentaries gives them a stake in defining the brand's image while linking them with fans of similar mind across the country.

"They feel like they own the brand, that it's theirs," Jackie Huba, author of the book "Creating Customer Evangelists," said of the bloggers. "They feel they're doing the world a service," she said.

[ ... ]

Robert V. Kozinets, an associate professor of marketing at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, said he thought consumers would be wary of bloggers sponsored by a company. "Consumers are skeptical of things told to them by companies," Mr. Kozinets said. Most consumers are searching for unbiased opinions, a niche that blogs can fill. A testimonial from one blogger can speak directly to readers in a way advertising does not.

Absolutely!  We trust those who are like us.  We have a higher likelihood of success when a recommendation comes from someone like us.  It's why celebrity endorsements will ultimately phase out and customer endorsments will rise again.

US Speaker of the House is Blogging

At BlogOn during the "Power of Communities" panel, I wrote a note in the margin of my notebook: "Who will be the first presidential blogger?"  I really didn't think high level politicians in the US would ever really jump wholeheartedly into blogging, at least not for a while.  Well I am thrilled to find out that I was totally wrong!

Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert, is blogging! (no RSS feed though, at least not one Bloglines could find).

And in his first post, items like:

Speaking of the Hurricane season, renewed attention has been brought to the way we refine gasoline in this country. Today, energy companies started reporting their 3rd quarter earnings, and while Americans paying were record prices at the pump, energy companies were making record profits.

This is America. And Republicans don’t believe in punishing success. But what are these oil companies doing to bring down the cost of oil and natural gas? They haven't built a refinery here in America since the 1970's. They've built refineries overseas, but nothing here at home.

We want some answers and you folks out there in the blogosphere do too. When are new refineries going to be built here in America?

                                                           

Wow.  As Tom Cross says ... the blog world just got interesting.

[Via Micropersuasion who got it via Tom Cross]

New day dawning in client/agency relationships?

A lot of my time is spent dealing with working with agencies: ad agencies, interactive agencies, media firms.  Agencies do a lot of great work, but they have a bit of a *tone* when dealing with clients.  Particularly, as I am finding, when dealing with clients in the oil and gas industry, an industry they don't particularly view as "Internet savvy".

I had a meeting with a new agency today, one that might be able to help us with a viral campaign.  The sales guy was nice enough.  But, h was late -- both for the time I had rescheduled the meeting to as well as the time that he thought it was at.  He was also a little patronizing.  Now, to be fair, when you go meet a client who "wants to do something viral", they may not be up on the latest thing.  But a) he was surprised when I said I hadn't made a close study of his company's website and b) he asked me if I knew what blogs were.

Putting those two together ... I wonder how many times an agency biz dev guy doesn't Google the potential client he's about to meet.  (And this isn't so much about an ego-bruising, but more about context.  If he had had some context about my background, our meeting would have likely been more productive.)

A related thought inspired by the recent BlogOn panel "Markets are Conversations": 1) with the current focus more on transparency (particularly vis a vis corporate reporting) and 2) the trend that an exceptional individual's career will cross multiple-companies -- are these driving the trend towards authenticity?  That *I* as a communications professional who might move from CompanyA to CompanyB to CompanyC need to protect my own brand reputation as an authentic and transparent blogger, rather than focusing on putting a "spin" on a company's message.

What does this have to do with my biz dev guy?  For these folks, I believe they will have to develop a conversation with customers (in the same way they are advocating that their clients do).  A good example, Organic's Three Minds blog.  Are other agencies blogging?

Thank you, Rosa Parks ...

For having moral courage in an uncertain time; for inspiring us to have moral courage now.

NY Times Obit

And, because I'm a blogger, Blogpulse's tribute.

The "Eh list" ... aggregating blog stats so you don't have to

Ever wanted all of your blog's stats in one nice feed?  Well, proud Canadians Chris Nolan.ca and Kekova bring you the Eh List.  From Chris' post:

The blogosphere has this notion of "the a-list blogger". What's that all about, eh?

Introducing Eh List (http://ehlist.ca/). Eh List collects rankings and statistics about your blog from around the web and gives you daily updates. Once you ask for your information once, it will keep updating it on a regular basis. You can then subscribe to the feed and have the information in your feedreader/inbox daily.

What is this good for other than the vanity? How's it different than all the other services? It's different in that it's a mashup of all the other blog sites out there (ok, only google and technorati right now but it's still in early beta). If you just want the high level ratings, you no longer have to check all over the place. It will also give you the heads up on potential problems. For example, what if your # of pages indexed by google takes a steep dive one day? That could affect your page rank and your advertising earnings all at the same time. It may also make some of the services more accountable. What's the "world live web" if it sits un-updated for a week or more at a time? Try it out today. You can add their badge to your sidebar too.

This is great, Chris and Jen!  Looking forward to future developments!

Do you *dig* Yahoo!?

Came across a post on PSFK today about Yahoo! (UK) Digging.  Digging is (according to Yahoo!):

The art of acquiring collections of cool stuff - vintage clothes, rare records, classic scooters, anything hip or unusual basically. It used to be about trawling old shops for rare items. Now, modern diggers spend their time online, hunting and trading to enhance their personal stashes. This is the realm of the savvy and educated operator. Only the creative and curious need apply. You dig?

Awesome.  I buy in and click thru .. and, it's My Web. 

Oh. 

Just marketed differently in the UK.  Which is actually something.  With the debate that's being had over the design of Yahoo!'s homepage (and the thinking that it exposes internal fifedom battles over prime real-estate), I was quite surprised to see that Yahoo! Digging has an extremely different look that any Yahoo! site I've ever seen.  You click through and are taken to the familiar Yahoo! interface style, but the initial page is a breath of fresh design to a slightly musty portal.

Best of luck to Larry Tesler, Yahoo!'s new VP of user experience and design.  This will be a fun one to watch!

Bonus link: great Adaptive Path article by Indi Young on the maturity reflected in a company's homepage

Wrangling your Typepad blog into helping you make a good first impression ... WILTI #2

A few weeks ago, I started a "Why I Love the Internet" (WILTI) series.  Today, WILTI #2 -- helping your blog make a good first impression.  John T. Unger (artist and fellow Typepad user) worked out a solution, with the helpful support folks at Typepad, to have a persistent post at the top of your Typepad blog (see Grow a Brain for an example).  I really appreciate John taking the time to work it through and then post the solution for all of us to use, another reason why I love the Internet.   Also, John has some very cool art (mosaics, furniture and sculptures) over at his studio site.

Upcoming Media Trends ...

David Verklin, from Carat Americas, predicted three media trends at a recent Media in Canada forum:

1. The first is the ascendancy of digital as a primary motivator functioning in a DM-style role. Verklin noted Carat had observed that ‘80% of people going into a Hyundai dealership had been online first,’ and predicts that while online creative work is rarely discussed, ‘it will be the center play.’

Absolutely! For two key reasons. 
1) It's interactive.  It's way easier to take elements from an interactive media and apply them to a static media than the other way around. 

2) The pervasiveness of the channel.  The digital channel is *everywhere*.  It's bits, so it is easy to distribute across multiple websites as well as multiple digital devices.  And as a consumer, I am much more likely to interact with digital media than offline.

Prediction #2: ‘Advertising to the interested is the future.’ Verklin says firms will experiment with 100% composition technology, where marketers are looking not at simple CPM numbers but at targeting their bull’s eye. TV commercials will be a portal, the beginning of a process, where the consumer will push a button to get expanded information.

I think the jury's still out on this.  I use my TV for viewing movies and PVR'd TV shows with friends.  The size and location of the screen are an integral part of a *social* experience, not a marketing experience.  It isn't a jumping off point for me.  It's a lean-back media as opposed to online which is lean-forward.  I engage with the online channel in a very different way.  Now, maybe the delivery of TV-esque commercials online will be the start of a marketing relationship, but it really does rely on an outmoded model of consumer behaviour which assumes I will respond after I am talked at.  Consumers are becoming much more sophisticated and immediate in their marketing requirements.  Perhaps this is a case of "right idea, wrong media".

Thirdly, Verklin foresees a collision of commerce and cause where marketers will combine their efforts with philanthropy, creating a new, and hybrid medium.”

Yes! I'm excited to see Verklin mention this.  This is exactly the opportunity that brands (like my own) that are looking for ways to move beyond commodity status should seize on.  This kind of activity will be integral to building a brand that customers want to fall in love with.  By tying philanthropic activity to marketing activity, marketers will be able to speak to customers who are looking to do *more* with their dollar, but who may not have the individual resources to make a significant impact.  The next phase of marketing is demostrating to the customer that there is something to believe in beyond the product I am purchasing.

[Via Mitch Joel's blog over at Twist Image, original reporting in Strategy]

BlogOn2005 Session Note: David Weinberger Rocks My World

[Updated Oct 25 2005 to include Weinberger's comments]

Following are my session notes on David Weinberger's keynote on Day 2 of Blogon2005.  They are being cross-posted at One Degree, along with the rest of my session notes.

BlogOn 2005 Presentation: What Blogs are Not.

David Weinberger - Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society and co-author of the Cluetrain Mainfesto

I’ve been a fan of Weinberger for quite a while (not so much the Cluetrain Manifesto, but for his newsletter JOHO – Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization AND because he has the best email address in the universe [email protected]). He certainly did not disappoint from an energy or content perspective. Weinberger (possibly by virtue of being a Harvard Fellow) gave a presentation that was a perfect mix of some ivory-tower stuff with some actionable takeaways.