I blogged yesterday about wanting a word processor that reflects better how we actually write. Islamoyankee in the comments suggested Scrivener, a Mac tool I tried once but didn’t take to, for whatever reason.

This morning, I took another look at it and found this paragraph on its home page, at the end of its product description:

Because Scrivener is about shaping chunks of text into a final typescript, Scrivener knows nothing of pages until it comes to exporting or printing and therefore does not have the page layout viewing features of modern word processor applications. So if you are just looking for an alternative to Word you might want to try Nisus Writer or Mellel. If you are drawn by Scrivener’s full screen mode but aren’t bothered about its large writing project management tools, try WriteRoom. If you came to this page because you have struggled with traditional word processors in trying to manage or finish a large writing project, try Scrivener by downloading the 30-day trial. And if after 30 days you decide that Scrivener isn’t the tool for you, be sure to check out the Links page for a list of alternative writing tools.

This is how a company acts when its confident of its product and is genuinely on the side of its users.

[Tags: scrivener marketing cluetrain ]

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NBC tried to keep us Americans from seeing the Olympics in real time. So, how’s that working out for NBC? From the NYT:

NBC, which owns the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States, spent most of Friday trying to keep it that way.

NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.

In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

Temporal slapstick. It brings me odd joy. (Thanks to Jonathan Distler for the link.)

[Tags: olympics fort_business cluetrain ]

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From BoingBoing comes this hilarious set of Amazon reviews of $500 audio cables from Denon. Best of all, BoingBoing points to the tags people have associated with the cables.

Oh, market conversations! What claims and brands won’t you take apart?

[Tags: market_conversations denon everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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The message I received from M80im, a PR social media company, ends by saying:

M80 encourages full transparency. We welcome you to let your readers know that M80 and Fox contacted you to offer information regarding The Onion Movie.

Excellent. I appreciate M80 making that clear and explicit.

The problem is, M80 and Fox didn’t offer just information. Yes, the message says that because I’ve written about The Onion, the agency wants to let me know what there’s an Onion movie coming out. I can have some artwork, etc. to post on my blog. But, then it continues:

Please email me back if you are interested in working with us in promoting The Onion Movie by posting information regarding the release date of the DVD. I can send you a copy of the DVD on the release date as appreciation for your post.

I recognize that the lines are smudgy. As my disclosure statement says, I sometimes get free copies of books — sometimes unbidden, and sometimes publishers offer to send them to me if I want — and sometimes I do blog about them. And I frequently get into conferences for free as some type of media person. But, the Onion offer feels too much to me like a straightforward pay-for-posting deal.

Does it to you? Tags: marketing pr blogging cluetrain

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Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell and Forrester person, pointed to some good sites in her keynote at Community 2.0. The Starbucks suggestion box is nicely done, but I especially like the way Tivo participates in the independent forum, TivoCommunity.com

By the way, the Community 2.0 conference was an interesting gathering of people interested in various aspects of the various ways businesses build and are embedded in communities. [Tags: cluetrain marketing charlene_li groundswell ]

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I wanted to find out what Microsoft Expression Media — or, as Microsoft puts it, Microsoft® Expression® Media — is, so I did what any red-blooded Netizen would do: I googled it. The top hit is Microsoft’s home page for it. It wants to show me videos, but I don’t want to sit around while being slowly pummeled with Microsoft’s marketing messages. If I’m going to be marketed to, at least let me skim. So, I clicked on the “Why Buy?” link, thinking I’d get a features list. I just want to know what the product does.

Nope. That loads a popup that asks me to install Silverlight (oops, I mean Microsoft® Silverlight®)The popup conscientiously informs me that once installed, Silverlight “updates automatically,” where “update” means I am giving Microsoft the right to load stuff onto my computer without asking or informing me. In addition, the privacy statement says Microsoft will only transfer information it gathers about me and my computer to third parties if it really wants to. (The privacy statement puts it a little more formally than that.)

So, here I am, trying to find out about a Microsoft product, yet I’m being required to install software I don’t want in the first place, and that has the right to mutate itself without my knowledge. And to get this authorized virus, I have to agree to a privacy-violation agreement that scares me.

Can you imagine the snorting that would occur if a start-up company insisted on this?

So, take this as an example of either inept marketing or implicit bullying by a dominant force. Or both. [Tags: microsoft marketing silverlight ]

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This BoingBoing gadget lets you smash corporate shillery in a most amusing way.

[Tags: marketing games boingboing ]

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Francois Gossieaux reports on experiments described in Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational that show just how influential our expectations are: People who paid more for an energy drink were more refreshed by it and even solved more puzzles. Francois concludes: (1) “We are doomed,” and (2) “…who said that messaging was dead? The things you say about your product may indeed be more important that the product itself…”

Almost from the day the Cluetrain site went up, I regretted point #74: “We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.” We are so not immune. Branding works. We think of Volvos as safe and the Ford Fiesta as a car for young folks. We think of Coke as the original and Pepsi as the copy. We can characterize someone as a “wearer of Birkenstocks.” Branding and advertising in some important sense work.

Now, we certainly can undo some of the cognitive damage advertising and branding do. Market conversations in fact often are about the ways in which a product’s promises and sloganeering don’t live up to its reality. But that’s a lot different than saying we’re immune to advertising. We’re not.

I’d still urge companies to move their marketing away from messaging, however. Assuming the studies Francois cites are correct, our reactions to products do seem shaped by what we’re told about them. No surprise there, although it’s always depressing to find out what big dopes we humans are through no fault of our own. But, customers (= all of us) are going to increasingly resist and resent marketing that focuses narrowly on messaging — that is, on finding the simple idea they can pound into our heads over and over. Telling us your drink will make us refreshed or more alert may indeed make us more refreshed or alert, but treating us like freaking morons by droning the same words at us over and over will make your product less interesting to us. The real challenge marketers face in a world of online conversations is how to help us find what’s interesting about their products.

(By the way, although Francois an I have been friends and colleagues for many years, I just this morning realized that his last name uses each of the vowels just once.) [Tags: francois_gossieaux marketing branding advertising cluetrain ]

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Paul Gillin has posted draft chapters of his new book, Secrets of Social Marketing, for our enjoyment and, more important, our commentary. I haven’t taken a look at them yet, but I like to see people practicing what they preach, and Paul’s The New Influencers was good.

[Tags: marketing paul_gillin business ]

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authenticity: An industry consortium “sponsored” a course at Hunter in which students were supposed to create a fake blog to discourage people from buying knock-off fashion items. Jeesh!

[Tags: authenticity marketing cluetrain blogs sockpuppetry ]

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Harvard Business Review this month is running a “case study” (pure fiction) I wrote about whether companies can and should be authentic. The case study is intended to be even-handed in its presentation; it’s followed by expert commentary. They’ve posted the case on their Web site and have opened it up to readers for discussion. There’s also a video of Julia Kirby (one of the editors) interviewing me on the topic, on that same page. FWIW, I am not at all convinced that the term “authenticity” is helpful — or maybe even meaningful — when applied to business.

[Tags: marketing authenticity hbr ]

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Given Wal-Mart’s size and its heavy-handed approach to so much of life, the fact that it’s letting its buyers blog freely is welcome news. (Disclosure: I consult to Edelman PR, which has Wal-Mart as a client. But all I know about this is what I read in the linked article; I assume but don’t know that Edelman was involved. And, yes, this disclosure is now longer than the post.)

[Tags: wal-mart blogs cluetrain ]

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Kudos to the TSA — the airport security folks — for opening up a lively blog.

As the first poster, Kip Hawley, says (and you can read about all the bloggers here):

One of my major goals of 2008 is to get TSA and passengers back on the same side, working together. We need your help to get the checkpoint to be a better environment for us to do our security job and for you to get through quickly and onto your flight. Seems like the way to get that going is for us to open up and hear your feedback…

And if there’s any evidence required that the public wants to engage, that very first post — a mere welcome message — has gotten over 300 comments so far.

[Tags: tsa blogging security airports ]

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One of my cousins sent this photo around to the family mailing list. It must be as old as the Internet — old enough to have lost its attribution — but what the heck.

The title of the photo is “Winner of this year’s ‘Not My Job Contest’“:

[Tags: humor photos white_lines roads ]

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The Harvard Business Review blog ConversationStarter asked a bunch of people what they think the issues for managers will be in 2008. Sean Silverthorne has compiled a list.

I wrote about the need to deal with a world in which customers, information and relationships have all scaled.

(Note to self: In 2008, try to use the phrase “got big” rather than “scale.”) [Tags: hbr 2008 business management ]

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Alitalia lost my luggage. It happens. It’s been two days and they still haven’t delivered it. It happens.

But here’s what shouldn’t happen. When you’re at the airport registering the lostness of your luggage, the last step before they send you home to live in the clothes you arrived in is the Bestowing of the Toiletries. The little bag contains the cheapest possible bathroom utensils the airline can find: A toothbrush as rigorous as a cotton swab, a chunk of deodorant floating loose in its container, a razor blade fashioned from the sharp edge of a tuna can. But the last straw was the one piece of clothing included: A white undershirt on to which they’ve printed their logo. Not only does this render it useless if you happen to be wearing a shirt of any translucency, why do they think I want to advertise their business for them? What part of “I’m pissed off” don’t they understand?

Likewise, when you’re put on hold by a business, why would they think you’re in a mood to listen to their ads…especially if you’re put on hold while trying to get technical help? What are they thinking?

If you have an emotional IQ above than that of your average rattlesnake, you can figure out that marketing to customers when they’re pissed off at you requires apologies, extra care, patience, and humility, not happy jingles and cheery logos.

Grrrr…

[Tags: marketing business pissed_off ]

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I’m glad Facebook decided to reverse its most egregious defaults so that not clicking “yes” will now mean “no.” Good.

But in this matter Facebok overall is showing itself not to be on its users side. There is no reason not to give users a big red opt out button — making the whole thing opt in would be even better — except that FB knows we would use it. FB is choosing its own interests over its users’.

And, no, not every company does that. Sure, there’s self-interest in all that we do and all that our organizations do. But companies choose sides. Almost all companies use their customers. A few are truly on their customers’ side. Now we know where FB stands. [Tags: facebook ]

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I’m watching the tivo’ed version of episode #9 of Heroes. And because so many of us have the audacity to watch programs when we want to and not when the network says we should, the network has posted in-place ads over the episode as if it were a Nascar race car.

Wow. How customer-hostile can you get? [Tags: advertising marketing cluetrain heroes ]

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