thoughts on media and marketing

YOUR (TWITTER) FOLLOWERS ARE NO MEASURE OF YOUR INFLUENCE
Social media is fast becoming a popularity content and warping our notion of who and what is influential. The biggest source of offense: the Twitter following, increasingly a short-form method of tallying someone’s influence. In reality tells us not much more than how good someone is at using Twitter, which is a far cry from influencing real behavior. (Ad Age, 1/3/2011) Link/PDF

INSIDE AN AUCTION FOR BRANDS
“Collier’s, the weekly magazine that published investigative journalism, essays and fiction from the likes of Hemingway, Cather, Lewis, Salinger and Vonnegut, was shut down in 1957. Now it exists as brittle, yellowing copies and, more abstractly, as a trademark that, just before noon today, was purchased for $2,000 in an auction held in a chandeliered meeting room at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.” (Ad Age, 12/08/2010) Link/PDF

HOW FACEBOOK IS REDEFINING RELEVANCE
What are you doing this weekend? What’s your favorite book? Where’s your ideal vacation? These are all questions that are boring patter from friend’s lips, but, when asked by a brand, people perk up. My article looked at how random, conversational and even banal questions are often the most engaging forms of branded content on Facebook, exploding traditional notions of how marketers can communicate with consumers. (Ad Age, 11/29/10) Link/PDF

CREATIVE EXODUS IN ADLAND
Why are high-profile and highly-paid advertising creatives leaving big agencies for the vagaries of start-ups? I took a look at this in an article that kicked up more than a little dust, with more than 1,000 Facebook likes and about 50 comments. (Ad Age, 9/20/10) Link/PDF

MAD MEN RECAPS
One of the biggest challenges of my journalism career was to summarize each episode of the best series on television. You want your writing to aspire to the level of the show’s. Which is just about impossible. (Ad Age, 8/10-9/10) Ep. 13 PDF/Ep. 12 PDF/Ep. 11 PDF

THE CASE FOR KILLING NEWSWEEK.COM
In the days after the merger of Newsweek and the the Daily Beast, news surfaced that the combined company planned to kill the newsweekly’s site. Immediately counter-intuitive, the idea makes a bit more sense when you look closely at implications for the site’s traffic and for search-engine optimization. (Ad Age, 11/16/10) Link/PDF

CAN BOGUSKY BECOME THE NEXT RALPH NADER?
Alex Bogusky is probably the most famous ad man of the 21st Century. So when he decided to leave the business that made him rich to become a consumer advocate along the lines of Ralph Nader, I had to call BS. This column in Ad Age takes a hard look at the move and how it might have been been executed. (Ad Age, 11/1/2010) Link/PDF

WHY A TWEET IS MORE POWERFUL THAN A PHONE CALL
For an angry customer looking for satisfaction, why is an angry Tweet now more effective than a civil phone call to a company rep? A look at customer service contradictions. (Ad Age, 10/11/10) Link/PDF

FIVE THINGS THAT WILL MAKE THE INTERNET LESS AWESOME
An article about how content farms, trolls, web death wishes, interruptive marketing, and anti-net neutrality places could make the web a less fun and useful place. (Ad Age, 9/27/10) Link/PDF