Churbuck.com

Yesterday’s return from Manhattan was interrupted by a pilgrimage to the temple of pizza, Pepe’s in New Haven’s Wooster Square. This is where I want to eat my last meal.

ForbesOnTech: Web-based Eco Indulgences– Does It get any Better?

Jim Forbes riffs on online carbon credits as the Holy Roman indulgences of our times. His counter proposal — plant a tree for a loved one — sounds a heck of  a lot better to me than offsetting my fossil fuelishness with a PayPal transaction.

“Now, I can offset my ATV-driving, and red-wine making commutes to the California Gold Country by donating money to some web-based entity lacking recognized audit practices who will invest money in projects that generate clean air, green or blue vistas, and make me feel better by adding their URL to my list of Internet often Interbet visited sites, right underneath CalTrout, Ducks Unlimited, the Sierra Club, the NRA and the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.”

While riding crosstown this morning on 43rd Street, in thick traffic, late for an appointment, I saw three examples of outdoor advertising/marketing worth a quick comment.

1. Between Sixth and Broadway, in the entrance to a parking garage, I spied a phalanx of shiny Vespa motorscooters. I like Vespas. My dad owned one when he was a graduate student in the early 60s, and I am an Italian design snob. There were at least a dozen lined up in a row, parked next to a sign that said something to the effect that the space was free for Vespas courtesy of Vespa USA. Brilliant. Owners get a free service for their loyalty, a service that is not cheap in a big city, nor practical. How does one park a motorscooter in a city? On the street? Chained to a parking meter? In a garage? Vespa gave them shelter this summer, but in a way where the row of Vespas is visible to the world, with a little sign saying, in effect: if you owned a Vespa you too could park here for free. I saw it. I saw a lot of scooters — like a storefront dealership … only better.

• Chinatown — 174 Centre Street, between Hester and Canal Streets
• Midtown — 412-422 W. 33rd Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues
• Theater District — 1120 Avenue of the Americas, near 44th Street
• Tribeca — 15-21 Worth Street, between Worth Street and West Broadway

2. On the next corner, on Times Square, the cab was stuck in traffic, and there before me, on the corner of the Reuters Building, was a big Jumbotron sign with a digital Japanese paper doll on it. This was Harajuku — the Japanese fashion movement most identified with Gwen Stefani — who is HP’s latest celebrity (Vera Wang, Jay Z, Mark Cuban, The Chopper Guy) spokesperson for HP printing. There was an 800 number on the jumbotron. I dialed it, and after connecting was told I had 60 seconds to “dress the doll” on the screen. There were numbers next to the 50 foot tall Harajuku doll. On next to the head, the torso, legs, feet, etc. I pressed that number on my phone and the number highlighted on the screen.

I pressed another number. The dress changed. I pressed the number next to the feet and the shoes changed. I looked at the bazillion people on the sidewalks and no one was aware that I was the man behind the curtain …. Freaky. I had total control over the image. Well, not total, but I was messing with it and in control and that was cool ….

Props to Eric Kintz …. great campaign, great stunt.

3. Finally. What is up with ass marketing? I got two major out-of-home ass impressions in the same cab this morning. One from some really bad but new toilet company– which apparently is selling a bidet device that washes your netherlands and makes you feel clean. Clean. Do you hear me? Clean? And which features pictures of six people’s naked rear ends with smiley faces on them. I cannot remember its name. Nor will I try. Please. This is right out of the birth of Public Relations handbook, when the way to sell soap was to convince people they smell so they’ll take more baths.

Then, on the next block, is a delivery truck for Georgi Vodka with a huge picture of another ass. This one with the brand logo across the rear-end bikini. Okay. I looked. I admit it. And while I am at it: what is the deal with words on the derriere of shorts? I delivered my daughter to college last week and while sitting in the car waiting for her to get her ID I saw three women walk by with words on their butts, ranging from the name of the college to “Juicy.”
“Juicy” is not a sentiment I would flash on my withers.

Final night in Manhattan, then back to the sandbar for the holiday weekend.

Just did a midnight conference call, then picked up the copy of the Guest Informant, the curiously useless but sumptuous magazine/book found in nearly every NYC hotel room. I like how the “articles” are about the advertisers — but what really struck me is this is the safest print media in the world. As long as there are hotel rooms, and as long as there are bathrooms, there will be a need for the Guest Informant.

And there’s no need for an online strategy — no one is going to log onto their $9.95 a day hotel room wifi connection and say, “I think I need to buy a pair of lizard skin cowboy boots in Soho, wonder if guestinformant.com can help….”

And the name is sort of sinister, like someone is watching. The secret appeal of a hotel room is the anonymous misbehavior that occurs in them (which is why you don’t want to wave a blacklight over the bed before sleeping in it). Why else would they stock it with exactly enough alcohol to get you shattered, provide on-demand smut, and a creepy magazine book that purports to spy on you?

And those of you familiar with the reason I do not stay at the Soho Grand (aka the “OhSoGrand”) anymore (it involved the removal of the room’s door by hotel security while I was inside), are not permitted to share details in the comments.

Pursuing the Web Strategy mission as a Forrester Analyst

Jeremiah Owyang leaves Podtech — goes to Forrester. Good grab by Forrester.

“I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be joining Forrester Research as a Senior Analyst focused on Social Computing and Interactive Marketing. Forrester is the leading industry analyst firm focused on this emerging industry, and thanks to luminaries like Charlene Li and team, they’ve produced tremendous thought leadership in the space. They’ve produced a large growing library of resources, and as an analyst, I will also be conducting research, publishing reports, and advising Forrester’s clients. I really believe this to be a perfect fit and am excited to start on October 1st, 2007.”

 ’Hey! Nielsen,’ Why Are You Going Viral? Researcher Develops Social Network To Measure TV, Internet, Music, Celebrities – 08/24/2007

Pete Blackshaw posted this link on Facebook. Interesting. I need to check out. Reminder to self to blog on social recommendation/critic engines.

“FIRST THERE WAS MYSPACE. THEN there was Facebook. Now the world’s biggest researcher is launching “Hey! Nielsen,” a new online social community where people can discuss – and influence – TV, music, movies, Internet sites and celebrities. “Part opinion engine, part social network, and part buzz tracker, Hey! Nielsen is the place to share opinions on your favorite entertainment,” reads the description on the beta version of the site, which is currently open only to Nielsen employees, but which will go public by the end of September.

TheDay.com – More Falsehoods From Mashpee Leader Come Out

The Wampanoag tribe is reeling from the news that the chairman of the tribal council, the man who led the tribe to federal recognition, and the inevitable quest to have a casino of its own …. played fast and loose with his resume.

It’s one thing to claim a fake college degree, it’s another to claim five Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. There are sites devoted to uncovering this sort of thing, and today Glenn Marshall of Mashpee probably wishes he hadn’t.

Will this torpedo the planned casino from being built in Middleboro, Mass (a good distance from Mashpee, the seat of the Wampanoags) probably not. That torpedo lies in the hands of the governor.

Ah, local politics ….

And let me go on the record against casinos. Gambling, it is said, is a tax on people who are bad at math.

Facebook users resisting Wal-Mart’s latest Web 2.0 endeavor

Good piece in Computerworld after Wal-Mart getting toasted for its Facebook play. Interesting to see marketers get slammed as they make the first move into tight communities with their own mores and social customs. Second Life I’ve gone on about in the past, but I can see how a wise college student, accustomed to having Facebook to him or herself for the past couple years, would react to an invasion by any company looking to peddle transactions. I think the appropriate entry point is not through a new application — roommates coordinating purchases — but a simple listening post. In our case, campus tech support perhaps.

“Jeremiah Owyang, a blogger who writes about Web strategies and who is also director of corporate media strategy at PodTech.net, blogged that Wal-Mart shouldn’t give up the effort even though he expects that the “battering of the [Wal-Mart] brand” on Facebook will probably continue. He recommends that Wal-Mart start discussion group forums to try to “segment the conversations about going back to school and even consider keeping folks on topic. Continue to allow critics (you can’t stop it anyway) but try to use the forums as a guide to a discussion about school.”

He commends Wal-Mart for being “bold” enough to continuing to try social networking efforts despite previous failures, and for not abandoning the Facebook site despite the criticism from users.

“I highly recommend that Wal-Mart consider trying a community strategy using a transparent and authentic blog or video blog series that addresses the very brand issues that they are getting slammed on,” he wrote. “I took a look online for a ‘Wal-Mart blog’ and didn’t see any from the company. It’s going to be very difficult to try a community marketing strategy with eCommerce hooks without first addressing the brand detractors.”

Southwest Keeps Fans From Straying

From AdWeek (tip of the hat to Chris Kobran at CNET for passing the link via del.icio.us)

“Southwest says that online social marketing is a natural extension of its offline efforts to connect with customers. “It fits like a glove on a hand. We were doing social networking long before it was cool and digital,” said Krone. “If customers are digital, we will be digital. If they are online, that is where we have to be,” he said.”

But apparently not monitoring anything happening outside of their own blog.

I returned from Virginia to find a long box on the dining room table with a pair of new spruce Shaw & Tenney oars to replace the faithful, but fast fading crap basswood oars that have served me for the last six or so years.

Shaw & Tenney is an ancient company in Orono, Maine that makes very nice (and expensive) oars and paddles. I ordered my pair back in June, and finally, with summer on the wane, they arrived. After placing dead fat last in the morning skiff race, I opted out of the second punishment, came home, and sat down on the back deck with my ditty bag to get some leather onto my new blades.

Chafing is the enemy of the sailor, and a lot of seamanship is devoted to cutting down on friction. A frayed line, a chafed sail, or a worn spar can mean disaster at the wrong time and in the wrong conditions, so one does what they can to keep a boat from rubbing itself apart. Leather is a staple of any ditty bag, generally high quality tanned stuff for applying to spars where they rub against other spars. Boom crutches and gaff jaws are two places where some well applied leather will protect the brightwork (varnish), but nowhere is it more useful (and good looking) than on the looms of a nice pair of oars.

I have collars and buttons on my old oars, but I tacked the leather in place with bronze brads — a bad but quick way to get the leather on and the method preferred by my grandfather on his ash oars. Bronze looks good when it corrodes green with verdigris, but one is putting two rows of small holes into the oar which will eventually let water in and cause the oar to swell, split, and fail. So I decided to put my collars and buttons on the old school way — with needle and thread, and for an hour today put my ditty bag to good work. Paul Gartside, a boat builder in British Columbia, has excellent instructions on how to do this.
First, I took a leather collar kit and marked the leather around the shaft, centering the leather about 24 inches from the end of the grips. Shaw & Tenney recommends 20 inches, but I like to have my oar handles close together, so I move the collars out.

I marked the circumference of the oars on the rough side of the leather and cut it with a single-edged razor blade using a steel ruler as a straight edge. Then, with the ruler as a quide, I marked twenty points 3/8ths of a inch apart on each edge, and popped them through with a hammer and nail over a piece of scrap wood (an awl also works well). The holes don’t need to be particularly large, just punctures to guide the needle.

I lace with a six-foot piece of dacron sail thread thoroughly waxed with beeswax. I use two egg-eye needles — stout and blunt tipped on each end of the thread. Some experts call for shorter thread for ease of use, but I go with a long piece so I can have one continuous piece. I laced these leathers on by putting the oar across my lap, and had my sailor’s palm on my right hand to help drive the needles through. The stitch is easy — essentially the same pattern as a shoelace.

I start with a few passes on the top edge, pulling the dacron very tight to bring the two edges of the leather together. I cut the leather about 3/16ths short in the expectation that the lacing will bring it together super-tight around the loom of the oar.

I run the thread up and back, and wind up with this:

I finish it off with a Turk’s head over the button, and with some care, these oars should last at least ten years.

Monday – 8.27: Cotuit

Tuesday -Thursday 8.28-30: NYC

Friday-Monday 8.31-9.3: Labor Day Weekend, Cotuit

Following week, Morrisville, NC

In deference to Peter Kim’s M20 list of marketing blogs, of which this feeble effort now resides in 12th place, I need to stay on topic and be pedantic about marketing.

In the spirit of this week’s random theme, here are some random topics which I have been thinking about lately:

1. Facebook: joined in January to the horror of my daughter, who has lived on the thing since it was launched. Now spend more and more time there without knowing why. I intend to do a deeper anthropological study of the phenomenon and make the argument that the company needs to be there in a big way. Initial fears: it is a closed system; it is spammish; it is a great demo for our public sector/college marketing efforts. It needs to be watched as part of our Social Media Marketing monitoring efforts.

2. Vibrant Media/Intellitext: I remain opposed to this insertion of advertiser links within editorial copy. This begs the question of can an ex-journalist be effective as a marketer?
3. Corporate Blog Policy: Ours is being reviewed. A new general counsel and the discipline of an annual review is now in process. I have a new personal corporate blog policy: I am going to see how long I can go without mentioning the “L word” and I don’t mean Lebanon. Why? This remains a personal endeavor and if I want to talk about the company I’ll do it on a company blog.
4. Agency Disintermediation: The “D-word” of the 90s, you know, the end of the middle-man, death of a travel agent, extinction of the human modem — the crumb catchers who act as a go-between. Ive been thinking a lot about the role of the traditional advertising agency and clients given the rise of the global interactive network and the consolidation of ad servers by the big players. I need to think carefully on this topic, but for now, I see clients going direct to the networks, and fragmenting their interactive operations across boutiques (viral agencies, microsite developers, ad servers, email outsourcers, etc. etc.)

5. Content Effectiveness: I need to embark on a project to rigorously quantify content effectiveness, fall out points, A/B and multivariate testing. I know the framework exists, I just need to focus on discovering it.

6. Social Media Metrics: lots of thoughts about the marriage of social media monitoring, actions/outreach and impact/ROI. Need to spend some time in NYC this week discussing the metrics, but I believe there is a major brand management move in the offing.

7. Conferences: I’m not a conference goer, but there are more and more beginning to pile up on the calendar. I thought conferences were somewhat doomed, but now the whole BarCamp thing seems to be breathing life back into them.

Spot the day when Valleywag came after me.

I am back in Cotuit, doing the post-vacation inbox dance, but as it is lunch and I have much to bloviate, bloviate I shall.

• I need a vacation.
• Cruise control is one of those accessories that I never understood until driving 1,500 miles over three days. My right gluteus maximus, (aka, right ass-cheek) is seriously compromised from sitting too long in the same seat pushing the same gas pedal.
• Those wireless dee-vices that purport to enable an iPod through the car radio? A sledgehammer is too good for them. Why I didn’t get an IceLink installed is beyond me. I need to hardwire the iPod … and now. (and yes, Uncle Fester, you were right two years ago)
• Radar detectors are illegal in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Do the police have detectors for detectors?
• (What is a “commonwealth” and are there any others than Massachusetts and Virginia?)
• Why do highway signs now set off radar detectors? Is it to create false-hits to freak out lead-foots like me? Or is it some brilliant thing that permits the sign to go dark when there is no traffic, thus saving power, and light up when the radar sees a moving vehicle?
• A Garmin GPS is one of life’s essentials and I am indebted to Fester for buying me mine.
• Driving the Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah Vally on a foggy day is a moron move.
• Angry customers will call me even when I take three days off. This makes my wife angry. 12-hour car rides are a good test for marital compatibility, or is it martial compatibility?
• Charlottesville, Virgina is a better place to go to college than New Haven, Connecticut was in the late 1970s.
• Never take me back to school shopping with a daughter and a wife who is a professional interior decorator. I act like a four-year old.
• I need to tour some Civil War battlegrounds
• The best Mexican food I have eaten outside of California can be found in Front Royal, VA at the Jallisco Authentic Mexican Restaurant

In Charlottesville, Virginia this week, bringing my daughter to her first year at UVA. I woke at 5:30 to catch up on email, and this is my view as I review some Olympic pavillion designs with Beijing.

Lots of standing in line ahead, some up-and-down stair move-in, then a tour of the Jefferson-designed campus. Tomorrow my wife and I make the 650 mile drive back to the Cape. I am on cell and stealing blackberry looks if anyone needs me.

Site officiel du Paris-Brest-Paris 2007

From RUSA – Randonneurs USA

“In August 2007, more than 4 000 randonneurs will gather in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines to enter into the legend of the PARIS-BREST-PARIS (P.B.P.) Randonneur. Since 1931, thousands of randonneurs have tried their hand at the most famous brevet at “allure libre” (self paced rides), the 1200 km PBP, which must be completed in 90 hours, the present maximum time limit.”

This is what I am dreaming of doing — buying a replacement bike, riding the Boston Brevet Series, then the Boston-Montreal-Boston — and cap my cycling career with the Paris-Brest-Paris, the world’s longest and most venerated cycling event. It’s run every four years and is going on now.

8.20 – Cotuit

8.21/23 – On the road, Charlottesville, VA, OTR

8.24-26 – Cotuit

“In a world with just one time zone (“Now”), business must source materials, innovation, talent, logistics, infrastructure and production wherever they are best available. And we must sell wherever profitable markets exist, anywhere in the world. In today’s global economy, companies must worldsource.”

Forbes.com has a piece by Bill Amelio today on “Worldsourcing” — this is an interesting thesis I heard expressed at McKinsey in the Global Strategy Practice. We were working on a book about financial reforms in emerging markets driven by the globalization of credit and the accompanying export of stringent regulatory regimes by the dominant market economies. IE — if you want to borrow money in Brazil, you better be prepared to deliver a financial statement acceptable under Sarbanes Oxley. Amelio’s argument — admittedly China centric as Lenovo was founded in China, and China is taking a pasting for product quality control — is that the best way to bring FDA types of standards to an emerging market is to engage in that market and source product from it.

Hence, who is better prepared to kick a foreign supplier into line than a buyer operating under a strictest quality regulations? By default, that exports those regulations into the foreign domain.

read more | digg story

Among the funniest 5-minutes in the history of film

Mother?
Not mother? This kills me.

The Times today has a piece on how Netflix, in an effort to distinguish itself through customer service, based its call center in Oregon (I guess as opposed to some off-shore, accented locale) and dropped email as a route to customer service, feeling people wanted to talk to a human. Fools. Phones are for losers. Phones are for the digital have-nots. Phones are for lonely people who would otherwise talk to their cats.

“Netflix’s decision to greet anxious consumers with a human voice, not an e-mail, is also unusual in corporate customer service. “It’s very interesting and counter to everything anybody else is doing,” said Tom Adams, the president of Adams Media Research, a market research firm in Carmel, Calif. “Everyone else is making it almost impossible to find a human.”

Southwest Airlines also doesn’t read its email, and this post is sparked by yet another pissed off SWA customer who was beached somewhere due to a delayed flight and is perturbed she can’t fire off an electronic hate missile. (I‘m still waiting, SWA, just ask, and the post gets croaked).
Okay. We all hate email. I hate receiving it, have nearly a 1,000 cluttering my work inbox, and have three other addresses ranging from my churbuck.com vanity address to various spamcatchers and Gmail variants. Yes, electronic mail sucks ass as its name is usually spam, but the notion of cutting off email as a customer service mechanism is utterly insane to me.

I dislike the phone a lot more than I dislike email. First off, I don’t want to talk to some solicitious human (who may be monitored to insure blah blah). I don’t want to navigate phone prompts, press star, say “More Options”, and finally get to some perfectly nice stranger who, for all I know is in maximum security prison doing time for heinous crimes. The phone sucks, is low-tech, and when it rings in my house it generally brings bad news in the form of bill collectors, college fund raisers, or the Police Athletic League looking for money to put another graduating class through the Sheriff’s Youth Camp where it is better to build boys than repair men.

So, go for it Netflix, turn off your email. Next time my copy of the 300 skips and pixelates and I want satisfaction I do not want to talk to you about it. I want to email-the-facts-Jack, and be done with you. If I want a conversation I will call my Mom.