Where do your emails end up?

The short answer is; you never ever know, so treat each one as if you’re telling the world. Countless court cases have come down the wrong way due to so called ‘private emails’ being made very, very public.

The lesser end of the spectrum is just personal or professional embarrassment.

Below is a screen capture of an email that was forwarded to me from a friend who received it from one his friends.

It’s a funny little analogy. But to me, what makes it even funnier is who it’s coming from. Or more correctly, the profession of the originator – a counsellor  (sort of a budget shrink).

When the ‘joke’ and the signature are read together it’s a short walk to see this guy is pretty much saying, ‘if your life is fucked, I can’t help you’.

So the lesson for today; learn how to remove your ‘business’ signature when sending unrelated emails.There’s probably others to do with professional misconduct but I’m no expert in those matters.

Social Media Takes Time But Pays Off

Excellent article* about the amount of time required and potential success from investing nothing but time in social media marketing.

Social Media Takes Time But Pays Off.

(*Also called proof or evidence)

Hil-airy-ass Ikea ad from Mother

I Believe in Advertising | ONLY SELECTED ADVERTISING | Advertising Blog & Community » Ikea: Peace, Love & Storage.

How the Pros Measure Social Media Marketing Success

Excellent article on ROI for SMM. Or as I call it, the Holy Grail of Social Media. Because after all, if you can measure it, you can charge for it.

How the Pros Measure Social Media Marketing Success.

IDEO: Five Companies That Mastered Social Media’s Branding Potential | Co.Design

Big tips from big players for little fishes.

IDEO: Five Companies That Mastered Social Media’s Branding Potential | Co.Design.

Popular Science has sold 10,000 iPad magazine subscriptions

In mag land, cover price usually covers printing and newsstand distribution. So if you’re delivering it electronically, and giving 30% to Jobs et al, then your profits have just increased.

Interestingly, is this 10,000 new subscribers or existing. Or a mix of both. Either way you look at it, magazines may start to breathe a sigh of relief if this trend starts to appear for all publications taking the step towards iDistribution.

Popular Science has sold 10,000 iPad magazine subscriptions.

Check This Out: Googles Very Own “Like” Button | Fast Company

Google’s next step in their social media strategy, which I think is called internally Project: Fuck Zuck

Check This Out: Googles Very Own “Like” Button | Fast Company.

I want to tell the world everything; except you.

Facebook’s privacy statement now nudges 6000 words. The US constitution is a mere 4543.

Now I’m pretty sure the Facebook privacy statement doesn’t have to deal with trivial matters of interstate commerce, the right to bear arms and whether a negro is or isn’t worth three fifths of a man.

The US constitution, on the other hand, isn’t concerned with the who said what about who and making sure your ‘besty ‘ can see what you’re up to but your ‘ex-besty’ can’t.

The New York Times article below has a great graphic of the new Facebook privacy statement.

Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options – Graphic – NYTimes.com.

Protected: They call me Mr No

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AdNews: Social media penetration hits 90%

AdNews: Social media penetration hits 90%.

Nuf said!

Big agencies discover the 21st century

In a refreshing albeit late-to-the-party realisation Leo Burnett global creative head Mark Tutssel has woken up to the fact that consumers will not tolerate being sold at.

AdNews: Selling is dead: Tutssel.

Burnetts is one of the oldest and in a past era most respected advertising agency networks. Now, just like every other agency around the globe they are struggling to find exactly where they fit in the marketing mix. However, as the trusted confidants of many of the worlds mega brands they are in a unique position to be able to guide their clients in a new direction.

Problem is they don’t know how to make money out of the logical progression (social media marketing) therefore they can’t/won’t take their clients there. Agencies work on many revenue models but mostly it comes down to a clip on the media. No paid media, no clip, no revenue, no lake houses in St Barts.

There is a great episode of The West Wing in which a group of cartographers (that’s map makers) demonstrate the inequalities that current world maps portray, mainly because trying to flatten a sphere isn’t easy. At the end of their presentation they also demonstrate that there is absolutely no logical reason for North to be up.

So the big old agencies, no matter how they try to reinvent themselves, are stuck in a world which is moving upside down.

Twitter, Facebook use jumps 82 percent – Holy Kaw!

You shouldn’t really be that surprised. I thought it would have been more.

Twitter, Facebook use jumps 82 percent – Holy Kaw!.

Old dogs. New tricks.

This story makes perfect sense and is no great surprise at all (apart from the fact it took Fairfax so long to write about it!)

With the release of the easiest (ie least scariest) version of Windows the oldest of the Baby Boomers can now get online without many of the fears they once faced. As long as they don’t start falling for the Nigerian scam or believing that they have won the UK Pools or that their bank account details and other personal information needs to be sent to their ‘bank’ manger for re-authentication, they’ll be just fine.

It also means they can take part in the social media revolution, catching up with their friends, telling their families what they are up to and generally taking advantage of all the other positive aspects of Facebook etc.

Oldies flock to Facebook.

Merging all your social accounts

The reality is that it is not possible to have all your social accounts appear in one website and retain all the functionality of each of the original sites.

However, taking advantage of the email notification functionality of your social networking sites may make life a little easier. THis excellent article from Fast Company explains more.

IMHO, an even better solution is to make your blog the focus of all your social networking activities.

Work Smart: Mastering Your Social Media Life | Fast Company.

Australians world’s biggest users of social media

Full story care of Mumbrella is right here. And read the comments; there are some serious big thinkers and idiots out there – especially #22 (Brilliant).

A brief look at the future

Porn Stars Again

The dirty little secret about the internet is that if not for the porn industry it probably wouldn’t exist today. Or if indeed there was a version of the internet that started without the massive investment of the porn industry it would be vastly different than what we enjoy today.

The whole concept of displaying images via the internet was thanks to the porn industry. There’s only so much you can do with letters to the editor that start off something like; “Dear Penthouse, I read your letters every month and never thought anything like this would ever happen to me…(insert details of threesome, the good kind, here).

Then consumers demanded video. The porn industry delivered.

Then instant messaging. Helllllo, porn industry.

And of course the porn industry is like any other enterprise and wants to be be paid for the services offered. So they developed the technology for high security payment platforms years before the banks had heard of internet banking. There’s a famous story about a research group at HP testing the technology of a scanner they had just invented. They wanted to email the scanned image to colleagues in the UK over the internet and determine if the result was acceptable by comparing it the original image. How do you get the original image to them for comparison? Their solution was to scan an image from a publication that is printed identically around the world. They chose Penthouse. As it turns out Miss November in the US is the same Miss November in the UK.

The latest advance that the porn industry is leading us towards is 3D TV. smh.com.au has a story about it here. Are they trying to make us go blind?

What date is this?

1/12/2010.

For reasons I am not completely aware of, actually, completely unaware of, there are two answers to this question depending on where you went to school. It’s either January 12th 2010 or 1st December 2010.

Surely it’s about time (bad pun) the world adopted a standard method for writing dates. I advocate that both the DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY can be improved upon using YYYY/MM/DD  - the International Date Format. Some applications that use databases already subscribe to this method such as Apple’s Aperture and I’m sue there must be many more. Aperture is a file management and editing application for professional photographers. In the file structure images are organised into folders within folders within folders where the top folder is the year, the next folder in is the month and final folder is the day of the month. Images are individually numbers by the camera in either a standard 0001 sequence or precise time of shot in the HH:MM:SS format.

When naming files using YY/MM/DD there is no confusion about the date. The brain seems to automatically understand that you’re looking at the year, followed by the next smallest container, ie the month and then by the smallest container, ie the day. This is the same way time works. First the hour (the largest container), then the minute and finally the seconds. Why have we been treating years, months and days differently? A truly correct date and time should be YY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS. That precise instant in time can be understood by anybody with no room for error. Just like latitude and longitude have standards so that every navigator knows how to read a map, find their position and calculate a route. There is no ambiguity.

Who cares? What’s the big deal I hear you you ask. I can give you a real life example of where the DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY completely suck. I received a cheque a while back from an Australian company that was using US software to print its cheques. The software probably referred to them as checks. I received the cheque on 14th April and it was dated 4/11/09. Alarm bells ring. Sure enough when I presented it the bank in mid-April they read the date as 4th November 2009, considered it post dated and refused to accept it.

So I had to go back to the company and tell them the story to get another cheque issued. Perhaps it was just he particular teller at the particular branch of the particular bank I went to that didn’t want to put this cheque through but the company told me that no one else had had issues when banking their cheques. I did however persuade the accounts clerk to make the necessary change to their software; it was just a click in the preferences settings – no biggy!

But let’s look at some disaster scenarios which involve more than just me having to make a phone call and wait a couple of days to get my money. What if the expiration date on pharmaceutical supplies or drugs made in the US but being used in Australia had 10/11/2010 stamped on them, and the actual date  was 15 Oct 2010. These supplies are either still good until 1o Nov or expired 11 Oct. Remember that some drugs become more active after their use by dates.

As I write this post I can see that WordPress is already creating a folder using YY/MM/DD in the database. When the data needs to be called back it can found much more easily.

Another solution which I am not a fan of would be to use the 2 or 3 letter abbreviation for each month instead of numbers. The above date would then be Jan 1, 2010 or 12 Dec 2010. That’s fine for visual representation but it won’t work with file nomenclature. Computers will only sort alphabetically as default when looking at file names in folder structures. Of course with file naming protocols the ‘/’ wouldn’t be used so the date would just be 20100101, 20100626, 20101225 etc. Using this format takes advantage of the inbuilt sorting methodology of all computer systems platforms to put the oldest at the top and the most recent at the bottom of any list of files.

So these three dates  for example 1 Feb 2010, 1 Apr 2010 and 1 Dec, 2010, while in correct chronological order would appear in file order as 1 Apr, 2010, 1 Dec, 2010 and 1 Feb, 2010.

So give it a go. I believe if enough people start writing dates in this manner a groundswell will encourage institutions and government to adopt the standard. It must, or we wouldn’t have two standards right now.

IMHO, unless we adopt this standard soon we could face another Y2K style scenario as the need for the world’s databases merge over time. And the beginning of the year is the best time to start this movement.

So happy 2010/01/01 to you all.

UPDATE:

I found this website while looking for motorcycle porn (naked bikes, not naked women). These guys have already realised the importance of the YY/MM/DD format and incorporated it in their site. Check it out and tell me if you don’t think that the date format used is instantaneously recognisable. They are a Japanese company doing business in Europe. This kind of cross cultural, cross economy communication is where this new standard is needed most.

Technology makes starting up cheaper and faster.

Here’s the link to a great post titled ‘The New Bootstrapping‘. The term usually refers to startup businesses and how they have to do everything themselves. Or at least by the founders. A short excerpt…

“I’ll even put numbers on it: What cost a minimum of $500,000 and took nine months and lots of engineering talent in 2004 can be done today, thanks to technology changes, by smart people with some Web awareness or the willingness to learn, for less than $20,000 in three months…”

That’s an incredible saving. At $/mth alone it’s a 833% saving.

A brown undie moment

OK, so you may not immediately get what this is all about but basically twitter.com has been hacked. At the time of posting it’s been down for i/o for about an hour.

A timely reminder if ever there was one to check your hosting security.

What will the kiddies do without twitter? In Sydney on Friday arvos the Social Media gliterati assemble for #SHTBOX (beers at a pub). But without twitter to co-ordinate them they may just wander the streets aimlessly.

So if you see a trendy young thing staring blankly at their iPhone, carrying a MacBookPro in their Crumpler, just point them to the nearest pub and stroke their ‘swishing’ finger reassuringly.

The Whale will be back soon.

Proof twitter works as a marketing tool – if you needed any more!

Excellent article and case study from one of my favourite magazines (Fast Company) about how one of my most hated companies (Dell) is using turing #tweets into $. Actually in $$$$$$$$$$$$. $!

Enjoy!

The Third Epoch of Marketing

We are now in the third epoch of modern marketing. The first epoch was ‘Yelling and Screaming’ where an advertiser would pay enormous amounts of money to advertising agencies, television and radio stations and newspapers to yell and scream their message ‘at’ you. People don’t like being yelled or screamed at. Advertising agencies charge a lot of money for their slogans. Television and radio stations and newspapers are very expensive mediums. The only companies that can afford them are the well-established mega brands.

A century ago William Lever of Lever Brothers (now Unilever) famously remarked, “I know only 50% of my advertising works. But I don’t know which 50%.” Now the 50% has shrunk to about 10% and it’s even harder to find exactly which bit is really working.

The second epoch was built around two relationships; the public adoration for famous faces and the murky love/hate relationship between the media and public relations. PR (or spin) took the trust that sporting champions, actors and journalists had built with their audience and polluted it with sales messages. As the public became more media savvy holes formed in the charade that was PR and the bullshit came flowing through.

‘Cash for comment’ was ironically the public’s insight into how the media and business conspired together to create the illusion of trust. Sort of in the same way as a scorpion will feign stabbing itself with its own tail when it fears being killed. The mea culpa of these events did little to earn the public’s trust again. Once bitten, twice shy.

How do I know this? I’ve been a professional practitioner at each one during the glory days of the first two epochs.

Now we enter the third epoch of modern marketing. Advertising is expensive and doesn’t provide bang for buck. The public is media savvy, which means media weary. That leaves the public themselves as the medium for your message.

Social Media Marketing is about creating a presence in communities where your desired target markets reside. No longer can a target market be defined in the short phrase form of the first epoch; 20-30 year old women, fat men, boys who like bikes. Today we talk about target markets in the form of what inspires and brings them together; the one single thread that a vast group of people are interested in, while perhaps having no other single unifying common ground. People who are committed to saving whales, people who love the art of knitting using black wool from New Zealand sheep feed on grain and only use #3 needles. This group may be small, but they will be passionate. And passionate people have a unique attribute to a marketeer – immense loyalty!

The Secret to Writing Great Copy…

… is not using typographical tricks like placing an ellipsis at the end of a headline to “lure” the reader in.

I mention this because I have just received another marketing/spam email offering me the opportunity to learn the ‘Top Tips’ of a master sales copywriter. I’ve already learned the craft of copywriting from some of the legends of the industry; writers who can take the smallest or most seemingly insignificant benefit of a product or service and create a big idea to entertain and persuade their audience to change their behaviour. No easy task.

In the email I received there are at least another 30 “Top Tips” that the so called expert copywriter is willing to teach ordinary people. (I’ve never meet an ordinary human especially as there are 6 billion unique models running around the planet).

Let’s be very clear; the best copywriters in the world work for the best advertising agencies in the world. They do not write spam emails about how to write spam emails under the guise of Internet marketing.

So here is my three top tips for spotting scam copy online or in an email;

1. It’s very, very, very long – You’re halfway through it before you have any idea what it’s about except you’re promised that your salary or penis will be much larger for little cost and/or effort just by clicking a link.
2. It’s too good to be true – turn your annual salary into your monthly, weekly or daily salary. Quadruple your profits overnight. But you only get to the ‘offer’ after reading a type of prose which is a written in a style that is half evangelical and half brain washing.
3. It’s full of praise – Typically the praise is for a person or system that the sender is trying to convince you to use.

What I really hate about this kind of Internet marketing is that it preys on the naive, gullible, simple or desperate. And for this reason alone I will do my best to educate people as to the different types of deplorable tricks that the majority of Internet marketers use.

Truth told not so well

In late April of this year two young creatives from the advertising agency George Patterson/Y&R created the attached video. It’s all very funny. Their premise is that by taking an ordinary item on eBay and reselling that item on eBay but by adding ‘creativity’ they can increase profits.

So that’s what their little video proves. But we’re also asked to suspend reality because there is no way in Hell that any of the statements made in their eBay ad could be applied or translated in any way whatsoever to a real world product. And not get fined by the relative governing authorities or ridiculed by the public. Contrary to the belief of some PR hacks, controversy does NOT create cash.

Rather then demonstrating how ‘creativity’ can help sell, I think all this exercise does is to further portray advertising as a profession based on telling falsehoods; that we lie for a living. Real advertising is so much more and it’s a pity that these two kids, and their bosses at what was once the largest agency in the country, think lying is what advertising is all about.

McCann-Erickson have a great corporate motto which I have always tried to live up to in my advertising days; truth told well.

Australian advertising creativity gets sponsored into the 21st century

http://mumbrella.com.au/googles-creative-push-sees-it-become-award-schools-main-sponsor-10609

With the new sponsorship arrangement between AWARD and Google there is a high probablilit that future copywriters and art directors will be taught beyond the full page ad or 60 sec TVC.

For many years these formats have been the holy grail of a creatives’ career. The effectiveness as a marketing tool however has been sliding for almost the same time.

Kate Miller Heidke on Social Media

Behind the scenes with Stephen Colbert. And some dude with big ears.

So some back story. In June 09 Stephen Colbert packed up his late night political satire show, Colbert Nation,  and took it on the road to Camp Victory, Iraq. It was brilliant. Just 4 eps but each one brilliant. On night one he interviews General Raymond Odierno (Commanding General, Multi-National Force—Iraq). Watch it here from Comedy Channel. Then watch the video below. And wait to the end to see what Stephen does…

Very rubbery figures from ANZ

In the first week of each month the ANZ Job Advertisements report is presented to the media as if it is some kind of key indicator (and predictor) of the health of the Australian economy. Two things have always struck me about this monthly event;

1. Each and every month the news outlets jump on this data, and
2. It is complete rubbish.

Let me explain. Anyone who has ever had anything to do with the recruitment industry knows that for numerous reasons some ads just aren’t real. They do not exist. These jobs never have existed and never will. They are creative figments of the recruiter to lure candidates into their databases. Bait to create the illusion of a talent pool to be used to further entice companies into the client list.

This is not all jobs put forward by recruiters of course but let us do some conservative assuming…

There are in this country around 10,000 recruitment consultants. Now let’s assume that just 50% of these place a bait ad every second month (50% of the time). That’s 2,500 jobs every month that never, ever existed except inside the mind of a recruiter.

Is that a big deal? 2,500 is surely not going to make any impact. Wrong. The September 2009 report had a total of 10,863 ads. That means the conservative 2,500 extra ads calculated here accounts for an error of about 25%.

I have more faith in astrology as an economic predictor than the ANZ Job Advertisement report.

For many years Reuters, one of the finest media outlets in the world, didn’t bother to even report the fiction that is the ANZ JAR.  But the Australian news media is so devoid of original thinking that they pounce on these rubbery figures and say, ‘thank you, thank you ANZ PR hack for not making me have to think today.’

The Best of YouTube. By YouTube.

What's Your TweetRate?

I think a new metric needs to be added to the social media mix. Actually a slew of new metrics to better understand your own tweet/ing habbits.

Your +TweetRate is the number of tweets you average (create) in a 24 hour period. Easy to calculate and easy to compare account v account.

Next is your -TweetRate. This is the number of tweets you are receiving from the people you follow in a 24 hour period. Again, easy to calculate. I hope some geek is writing an API for this right now!

Lastly, and most importantly, your =TweetRate. This is the number of tweets in a 24 hour period that you have read and, if appropriate, clicked on the link and read the contents of that link.

All these metrics provide fascinating insight for the individual twiterer so you can easily delete followees who fill your timeline with “having coffee”, “need beer”, or “my boss is a <insert expletive here>”

My rationale for wanting to clean the timeline is simple; it’s easy to miss the gold when the stream is full of shit.

But until some geek or nerd creates the above tools it’s a manual chore that most people haven’t the time for and subsequently great tweets get lost. Cleaning your timeline may even mean unfollowing friends or colleagues who ‘tweet because they can’.

In my timeline, these are the first to go.

Well done PepsiCo!

Great article from the masters of mischief about PepsiCo ceasing its US$1.3 Billion dollar advertising budget.*

*This article proudly brought to you by our sponsors. That’s them, just under the ‘Print’ button in the ‘Article Tools’ box.

The Science of Twitter

This interesting article from Fast Company features new research that proves 9 ways you can increase the ‘retweeting’ of your tweets.

Interesting stuff except that it’s one of those research projects where now that the evidence has been published, the circumstances will change. I predict within 6 weeks, if not sooner , these ‘rules’ will be out the window.

A common occurrence with this kind of ‘benefit’ research is that the mid section of the bell curve (the big bit) will adopt these tactics in their tweeting methodology. On some levels that is not so bad. I for one like complete sentences and punctuation. I also like that if the majority of people adopted and adhered to Point 3 then twitter traffic would drop by at least 50% and therefore junk tweets may disappear altogether. Epic Win!

But if everyone tweets, as per Point 9, at 4Pm on Fridays, then there is going to be an Epic Fail as twitter falls over.

Whale fail special edition during dust storm in Sydney. Thanx to @warlach for the headsup about this image.

No news here, news.com.au

Just when I was starting to think that news.com.au was lifting their game comes this story;

Advertisers pay for personal Facebook information

Shock horror! Oh, the humanity. On what planet does this constitute news. It may be to the ‘journalist’ who wrote this story but for every other person on Facebook its well known. Actually, expected.

Perhaps rather than coming from a journo this ‘story’ has fallen from the mind of a Myspace (owned by News Corp) PR hack and published on all their sites in some half hearted and poorly conceived strategy to bolster the flagging fortunes of Myspace.

And the comments on the story should give the editors some food for thought – if they do in fact think at all. Consumers expect to be advertised to when they receive a service for free.

Stories like this prove that news.com.au and the larger organisation is out of touch with their audience.

And you thought social media was a fad

Sit back, don’t relax and be amazed. The revolution has begun. Get on board.

The latest series of ads on my Facebook page

They are starting to know me too well.

China now has 338m internet users

Story at news.com.au
I just want to borrow a dollar from everyone of you for a day. I promise to give it back tomorrow. Deal?

Affiliate Internet Marketing

Have spent the day in a live event with Shaun Stenning and Sean
Rasmussen all about making money online.

Absolutely fascinating stuff learning from the gurus (even though they
don't talk about themselves that way) in online marketing.

I've posted about one of Sean's books at my other blog. I highly
recommend it!

Absolutley amazing

This is Philips new ad for their latest TV range. Apart from being an amazing piece of SFX cinematography, this ad is not for TV or cinema release. It's purely for viral marketing.

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2YFkcwtpGZo&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2YFkcwtpGZo&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

How to Sell Your Soul on Twitter and Who's Buying – ReadWriteWeb

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_sell_your_soul_on_twitter_and_whos_buying.php . Twitter is all about sharing personal experiences and thoughts to help
create personal relationships. If you start using the Magpie service
referred to in the the above link you will be DOOMED in your efforts
to build any kind of worthwhile relationships.

I think the thing that most people forget is that people are just like
you and me; and they are a wake up to being scammed and conned. 

If I truly appreciate (even love) a product or service then you can bet all the
dollars in your pocket against all the dollars in my pocket that I
won't be getting paid a Zimbabwe $ to post/tweet/say it.

Personal Domains

I sure hope you have all purchased your own domain name like
craigashleyrussell.com. They will be the most valuable piece of real
estate you own in the near future. For a couple of bucks, what’s
stopping you?

Ask me if you need help getting yours.

Hello, welcome and thank you!

Hi, yes I'm talking to you. I just noticed that the number of people reading this blog has jumped by 50% in the past week. So I thought I should say hello, welcome and thank you. I hope you enjoy or at least find interesting the posts. 

I would however encourage you to comment, add your thoughts to my thoughts and start discussions on any of the posts you read here. If your already here you are amongst like minded people. So comment away.

Don't wait. Start now… just click the 'comment' link below….

Advertising Judas Lays a Big, Fat Dookie!

Can Alex Bogusky Help Microsoft Beat Apple? 

Apparently not.

I need not comment as enough kilobytes and pixels have been created about this story. In essence, Microsoft engaged Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky to save them from the guys who have just 5% of the market.

The top link is to the May 08 story in Fast Company. The second link is to one of the hundreds of posts about why the new Microsoft campaign is rubbish.

Who are you, really?

I spend a lot of time at LinkedIn and with Soloists, SOHOs and SME operators. One of the things that always intrigues me is the lack of thinking that goes into their professional title. 'Director' for example says nothing about what you do except that you have have a $2 shelf company. And for anyone who hasn't got an ACN, just an ABN then you are lying when you have 'Director' on your card unless you are a film or TV director. But I digress.

A compelling professional title is an essential part of triggering a positive gut reaction from a prospective client/customer/employee/supplier/associate etc

Look through LinkedIn and it won't take long before you see the soloists who are simply 'owner' or 'designer'. That leaves me cold and with no real interest to find out more.

But there is a flip side when soloists go to the other extreme. I think that a designer, working away by themselves is having a giant wank when they use a title like 'Chief Creative Officer'. This is a real title and reserved for those who really do all the tasks and have all the responsibilities associated with the title like Lee Clow of TBWA/Chiat/Day, who has now seen the title devalue to a point where he is now Global Director of Media Arts. How long before some soloist pinches that one?

My maybe-soon-to-be-former wife has a great title; 'Director and Chief Storyteller'. It speaks volumes in milliseconds. She runs a boutique PR consultancy, Left Field. When married together in a business card for example, or email footer, she is able to communicate a myriad of positive brand attributes.

In my careers I've had many titles including Senior Creative (which just made me sound old at 30), Associate Creative Director (which made me sound like a fill in CD) and other titles which were really just job functions and altogether unimpressive. These were when I was working for large corporations.

At Mister Big my title is 'XXL'. Get it? Everyone does and laughs. Relationship built. Memory made.

At Left Field we developed a formula for all staff titles; Job function (tells people what you do) 2 things you were good at (one semi-serious/one for fun). So Virginia Kim was Account Executive, Speed Ball Master and Phone-a-friend. Mine was Creative Director, Chief Swashbuckler and Know-of-things. At the very least we each always got comments on our cards when handing them out. Can you say the same thing? Does your card help to build relationships with prospects or just fall into the ho-hum yawn circular filing cabinet.

So think about your title. Think about your market. Think about how you can stand out from your competitors. In these tough economic times creating a laugh, making a memory and starting a relationship with a prospect is going to earn you serious kudos.

Earth Hour 2009: Success or Failure?

2009 is the third year Sydney has participated in Earth Hour, an annual event where people are asked to switch off their lights (just their lights) for 60 minutes. I've made time lapse movies of the event each year from different locations. 2007 I shot the city from my balcony in Watsons Bay. In 2008 I ventured into Fleet Steps near Mrs Macquarie's Chair near the official Earth Hour function site. Both these shoots were west facing and showed the Macquarie street neons plus the neons on Castlereagh and Elizabeth streets.

The 2007 event was very impressive as many building owners and managers communicated with their tenants to turn their lights off for the hour. Now, this shouldn't be too hard a task really because many buildings have centrally controlled BMS (Building Management Systems). Of course some organisations do have late weekend shifts, especially those who deal with US or European HQs or the NYSE.

2008 was also pretty good.

This year I ventured to the other side of the city to shoot looking east, over Darling Harbour (the body of water, not the tourist destination). I found a great (secret) location, set up the gear and started shooting. Sounds boring? Not at all. I was joined by Chris Larson (Larso) and we both proceeded to 'gar up. Me; Monte Christo A – superb! Larso: Hupman Magnum. Must have been good because he went for another.

Coincidentally an Earth Hour volunteer happened by. The Lars and I were thinking that this year the result was no so great. We saw some lights go off here and there. The major neons were off. Not so we were informed by Sara/Sarah. Best year ever we were informed. More companies participating than ever etc etc.

However The Bond, Australia's first 5 Star Green Rated building was lit up like a Christmas tree. Or so we thought. Because when Earth Hour finished they somehow found even more lights on the top floor, north end to burn up. The Bond is a 5 story low rise on the left side of the shots below. It's right above the light of the harbour beacon which thankfully stayed on all night, unlike a certain passenger vessel with 5 drunk idiots on board that ventured into the main channel without any navigation lights on. Fools!

Below are 4 pix of the event. Now you tell me; based on the fact that Earth Hour is a symbolic event to educate the public and enterprise that even something as simple as flicking a light switch off can make a huge difference to global warming, was Earth Hour 2009 a success?

For my money – I don't think so. I think the environment still plays second fiddle to the economy and Earth Hour this year should have tapped that idea ie save money, save the environment, and would have much better buy in.

7.30 PM – 1 hour before the official start

8.25 PM – 5 minutes before the official start (that's a plane, not a UFO)

9.00 PM – The half way mark

10.00 PM – 30 minutes after the official finish

(Technical notes – these images were shot on a Canon 30D using a 10-22mm f/3.5 Canon EF-S lens @ 10mm. Each exposure is 5 secs @ f/8. The ISO was set at 1600. They have all been cropped from the standard 4:3 to 16:9 ratio. Next time, I'd shoot much tighter to retain more image quality at larger sizes)

Jobs Are The New Assets – 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now – TIME

1. Jobs Are The New Assets – 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now – TIME.

This is a timely reminder to those who have jobs to not take them for granted. It’s also a call to return to basics and that out-of-date, old fashioned, wealth creation technique call budgeting – and living within one.

Fitness First; do not get any ideas from your Finnish brothers

I swear, if I see one of these interactive billboards/poster sites in my outings I will destroy it beyond recognition. I got 3 words; invasion of privacy.

(If you can't tell what's going on, you sit on the seat and your weight appears on the GIANT FUCKING BILLBOARD)

Unemployed using Web 2.0 to get jobs

Unemployed using Web 2.0 to get jobs. 

This is an interesting albeit very short read, especially the comments.

However, until we (Australians) can get twitter updates via SMS then this option is just for those with iPhones, iTouches and web enabled smart phones.

The Boss – For Twitter C.E.O., Well-Orchestrated Accidents – NYTimes.com

The Boss – For Twitter C.E.O., Well-Orchestrated Accidents – NYTimes.com.
Nice little bio from the sort-of-founder of twitter, Evan Williams.
I particularly like the para, “My life has been a series of well-orchestrated accidents; I’ve always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism. I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.” I feel your pain, brother.

Mad Money about to go the same way as Crossfire

This is just too fantastic.

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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

I am not ‘Craig’

What's the bet this turns out to be some kind of marketing stunt like the three previous attempts I've blogged here:

1) World's best job – tourist destination ad

2) Cinderella jacket – fashion advertising

3) Video blogging – for a TV show.

Is Craigslist getting a .com.au space perhaps? It shows a 404 error….

Craig who? Poster mystery baffles Melbourne | smh.com.au.