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 ]

1 Comment »

In an effort to counter Apple’s must-see Mac vs. PC ads, Microsoft is paying Jerry Seinfeld $10M to appear in Vista ads.

Yes, nothing proves you’re hip like hiring a retired, 1990s sitcom star.

Sure, I love Seinfeld repeats. But re-read my lips: Reeeee-peats. I think maybe the problem is that Microsoft, in its irked ire, is unable to see that on the Apple ads, even the PC guy — John Hodgman — is hip. Hodgman’s book, The Areas of My Expertise, is brilliant. Apple even gets cool guys to play the uncool guys.

On the other hand, Microsoft has hired Michael Gondry to direct the ads. Expect the Eternal Wait-times of the Spotless Mind?

[Tags: microsoft marketing seinfeld ]

Microsoft has launched a blog about the development of Windows 7

Windows 7 codename: “Do-Over”?

1 Comment »

I got this from FlyClear.com, a quick-pass, iris-scan lane system at some airports. I don’t recall ever applying for membership. For one thing, there’s no FlyClear lane at my local airport. So, this big hunka hunka of steamin’ disclosure is disquieting:

Dear David Weinberger,

We take the protection of your privacy extremely seriously at Clear. That’s why we announced on Tuesday that a laptop from our office at the San Francisco Airport containing a small part of some applicants’ pre-enrollment information (but not Social Security numbers or credit card information) recently went missing. None of your information was in any way implicated. However, we were prepared to send those applicants and members who were affected the appropriate notice on Tuesday detailing that situation.

Before we could send out that notice, the laptop was recovered. And, we have determined from a preliminary investigation that no one logged into the computer from the time it went missing in the office until the time it was found. Therefore, no unauthorized person has obtained any personal information.

Again, none of your personal information was on the computer in any form, but we nonetheless wanted to give you details of the incident that could have affected others applying for Clear memberships because the incident involves Clear’s privacy and security practices and policies.

We are sorry that this theft of a computer containing a limited amount of applicant information occurred, and we apologize for the concern that the publicity surrounding our public announcement might have caused. But in an abundance of caution, both we and the Transportation Security Administration treated this unaccounted-for laptop as a serious potential breach. We have learned from this incident, and we have suspended enrollment processes temporarily until all pre-enrollment information is encrypted for further protection. The personal information on the enrollment system was protected by two separate passwords, but Clear is in the process of completing a software fix - and other security enhancements - to encrypt the data, which is what we should have done all along, just the way we encrypt all of the other data submitted by applicants. Clear now expects that the fix will be in place within days. Meantime, all airport Clear lane operations continue as normal.

As you may know, our Privacy Policy states that we will notify you of any compromise of your personal information regardless of whether any state statute requires it. This letter is a good example of our policy: no law requires that we notify you of this incident because our investigation of the recovered laptop revealed no breach and because in any event none of your own information was affected. But we think it’s good practice to err on the side of good communication with all Clear members, especially when, in this case, we did make a mistake by not making sure that limited portion of information was encrypted.

Please call us toll-free with any questions at (866) 848-2415. Again, we apologize for the confusion.

Sincerely,
Steven Brill
Clear CEO

P.S. A reminder: One of Clears unique privacy features is that all members and applicants are given an identity theft protection warranty which provides that, in the unlikely event you become a victim of identity theft as a result of any unauthorized dissemination of your private information by - or theft from - Clear or its subcontractors, we will reimburse you for any otherwise unreimbursable monetary costs directly resulting from the identity theft. In addition, Clear will, at its own expense, offer you assistance in restoring the integrity of your financial or other accounts. So had there been any actual compromise of your personal information, you would have been additionally protected.

If this is intended to counteract the bad publicity the breech has engendered, well, Google News only has one hit reporting the breech in the first place. If it’s not - if FlyClear’s policy is to broadcast every near miss - then, well, I guess it’s admirable for its candor.

It’s also pretty scary example of putting all your irises in one basket. [Tags: flyclear security disclosure pr ]

7 Comments »

From the Spam Pile (Category: Self-Disproving):

Hello, my name is [redacted] and I am an internet marketing specialist. I was looking at websites under the keyword playing cards and came across your website http://www.hyperorg.com. I see that you’re not ranked on the first page of Google for a playing cards search.

Nice targeting, Mr. Redacted! As a quick look at my blog reveals, I am heavily into playing cards. I am a playing card fanatic, a playing card speculator, a playing card industry watchdog. Why, my readers are exactly the Influentials anyone in the playing card industry would want to reach.

Sheesh.

[Tags: marketing spam ]

3 Comments »

Peter Shankman, a marketing/PR practioner/speaker, has set up a service called HelpAReporter.com that intends to bring together journalists and sources. It’s free and very informal — you sign up for emails, you respond to requests for help — which is an appropriate way to start. But it’s so ripe an opportunity for abuse by people pushing their clients’ points of view, or just pushing their clients’ brands, that it’ll be interesting to see whether journalists avail themselves of it. Because it’s a mailing list that arrives up to three times a day, my guess is that it’ll mainly be PR folks and lobbyists who attend to it closely enough, and that will (?) drive down its utility for journalists. But, I’m rarely right, so we’ll see…

[Tags: marketing pr journalism media ]

[Later that day: See Peter S’s comment about how he handles abusers. Sounds pretty effective to me :)

4 Comments »

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 ]

1 Comment »

Way back when, the magazine Movieline was one of my many guilty pleasures. (Aren’t we supposed to feel guilty about all pleasures? Oy.) It was an irreverent mag for people who felt a little bad about liking pop movies.

Apparently there weren’t enough of us, or we were the wrong demo for the advertisers, because Movieline became Hollywood Life, which was more interested in the lifestyles of the rich and boring than in teasing the people we had secret crushes on. Then Hollywood Life stopped publishing, and, frankly, I didn’t care.

Now it’s back and in my mailbox as HL, an ultra-glossy, high glamor, near-card-stock magazine that epitomizes just about everything I don’t want to see in a magazine or, frankly, on paper:

The topics are out of date. The first three one-page profiles are of the big name stars of Indiana Jones, Savage Grace, and Leatherheads, three movies that came out weeks ago, and one of which failed miserably months ago. Jeez!

It fetishizes the sorts of objects no one actually buys and few of us care about: Diamonds, obscenely expensive perfume, furniture too ugly to sit in, clothing only Jessica Alba’s prepubescent sister could fit in.

The font is tiny, and although it has serifs, it is far from angelic. The stems are so fine that it is almost illegible when it’s printed white against a dark background, which it frequently is. It’s even worse when it’s black against a blue and black background photo of a shag carpet, as it is on a two-page spread. Print is not intended to be op art.

The photography is dark ‘n’ trite, because you know that’s how us jet-setting couch potatoes like it. And when they run a full page photo of Malcolm McDowell printed on blue paper, not only is his dark jacket nothing but a black lump, they tell us who provided it for the shot. John Varvatos, call your agent. Or your lawyer.

The writing is awful. Here is the opening line of the piece on Harrison Ford: “Harrison is like … a fine wine.” And that’s proudly in all caps as the lead-in. (The ellipsis is in the original.) The big article on Cannes takes three long paragraphs of value-free blather (”sleepy fishing village,” “charmed circle,” “could hardly have imagined,” “celebrity hot spots,” “breathtaking vista,” “windswept pines”) before telling us what it’s about: Some glamorous Cannes spots you might to visit. Even then, it lacks the sort of information that might be useful to a traveler.

As you’ve guessed, HL doesn’t give a flying celluloid crap about anyone new and actually interesting. For example, a two-page spread tells us that the Halcyon Company — “one of Hollywood’s most cutting-edge and innovative entertainment groups” because, well, it hasn’t actually produced anything … be sure to tip your PR agent, boys — plans on “reinventing” sci-fi by picking up the Terminator franchise. Yes, there’s nothing more cutting-edge and innovative than picking up a franchise.

Oh, they have a “portfolio” of young Hollywood actors…whom they portray as 1940’s noir-ish stars (oddly claiming the photography is an homage to the Silent Era). In fact, overall the photos are retro as if a magazine proudly proclaiming that print isn’t dead can only prove it by looking like something you might have found in your upscale dentist’s office forty years ago.

Do you think when I mulch it, the varnish on the pages will cause my geraniums to wilt? [Tags: hl reviews magazines movieline hollywood dead_trees dead_geraniums ]

1 Comment »

In the June issue of Harper’s, Gary Keizer has an article called “Turning away from Jesus: Gay rights and the war for the Episcopal Church” that I kept trying not to like, I think because he’s too right and too good. But the article won me over. Alas, Harper only posts miniature, unreadable images of the pages, so you’ll have to do something primitive like trudge to your local library to read it.

Gary paints a picture of a church traditionally less interested in enforcing doctrinal homogeneity than in ministering to those in need. He personally favors the ordination of gay clergy, but the article focuses a level up from that: How can a church handle disagreement and difference? And he explicitly applies those lessons beyond the church to the country and the world.

It made me think of AKMA’s idea of differential hermeneutics, a theory of interpretation (which is to say, of understanding) that assumes we’re never going to agree. He opposes this to what he calls “integral hermeneutics,” which aims at resolving issues, and thus showing that one person’s interpretation is right and another’s is wrong. And, yes, AKMA is fully aware of the issues that arise from his position. (I blogged about this here.)

I am convinced that Gary and AKMA are raising exactly the right questions, and are answering them the only way that lets us live together in peace, which is not to say in harmony or quietude. And I find what they say based upon their similar religious convictions to be quite in line with what I understand the Jewish attitude toward interpretation to be: The arguing continues all the way into the next life. If you’re so lucky. [Tags: episcopalians gay_rights gary_keizer akma peace judaism everything_is_miscellaneous ]

4 Comments »

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

6 Comments »

“Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.”

I’ve always assumed — based on nothing — that when the recorded voice says that, it’s basically lying. How many recorded calls do they need for their extensive training purposes? Or do they have some ulterior purpose in capturing every fascinating syllable of every fabulous service call?

[Tags: marketing privacy ]

9 Comments »

Note to designers of memorials: Naming your road “Memorial Drive” won’t memorialize the people you’re trying to remember because who it memorializes won’t outlive the memories of those who are currently living, thus defeating the very purpose of memorializing them.

Let me put this differently: When I asked a roomful of Bostonians who “Memorial Drive” is dedicated to, no one knew. Several guessed correctly — Google tells us that it’s those who died in WW I — but isn’t the point of a memorial to obviate guesses and trips to Google? You might as well name it “Think of Something Parkway” or “Guess Who We’re Honoring Turnpike.”

[Tags: memorial_drive marketing cambridge boston ]

6 Comments »

So, I was chatting with the driver of the limo my hosts in Las Vegas kindly supplied for me. When I said that I write about technology, he told me about his startup. It’s a social network that he’s confident will knock FaceBook and MySpace off the map. So, when I got back home tonight, I took a look. The Zenzuu explanatory page consists of a 6-minute video right off of late-night cable.

The pitch is that if you check into Zenzuu 30 times per month, they’ll give you 80% of the ad revs. And if you sign other people up, you’ll get a cut of their ad revs. All of which is fine, and reminds us of the absurd amounts of money we users generate for the social networks we use. But Zenzuu is so focused on the revenues that the video doesn’t mention a single feature of the site.

The fact that all the ads on the site are for Zenzuu itself pushes it over the edge into self-parody.

By the way, would you surprised to learn that Zenzuu’s privacy policy seems to suck, although I’m not sure because it’s in a font designed by and for squirrels.[Tags: social_networking_sites facebook myspace zenzuu ]

43 Comments »

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 ]

1 Comment »

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 ]

12 Comments »

A couple of days ago, a post on a Canadian newspaper’s blog gave me credit for something I didn’t do. Before I could leave a comment correcting the post, the site insisted I register. Registration there is free (in the “no cash changes hands”) sense, but it required me to supply not only my email address and name, but also my sex and age. It also permitted me to enter yet more demographic data, which I declined to do. I didn’t want to have to supply any info, but i really wanted to correct that post. It even made me confirm an email they sent to the address I registered, because, I suppose, otherwise the terrorists have won.

The experience made me worry yet again about the efforts to put individuals in control of their own identity information. That sounds like an unarguable good, since the alternative is unarguably bad: letting others have control over your identity info. But the effect of these good-intentioned efforts will be — I’m afraid — a rapid decrease in personal privacy. For, the personal ID efforts not only give us control over our information, they also make it easy for us to supply it to others. Rather than having to type in our home address yet again, these new ID schemes will enable us to furnish information simply by pressing a button.

Since just about every vendor on the Web would like to know more about you rather than less, why won’t just about every vendor ask for more information rather than less? It’s all just a button press. Of course, you can choose not to deal with vendors who ask for too much info, but most of us will compare that with the post we want to correct, the sweater we want to buy, or the vacation we hope to win, and will just press the button.

We are making it easier to supply personal information without making it harder to ask for it. That should worry us.

Since the efforts to give users control over their personal information will inevitably continue — and the who I know who are involved in this are among the greatest champions of Web openness and personal freedom — here’s a suggestion for making it harder for vendors to ask for more information than they need. Suppose we were to create some rough categories of “asks,” and give them unambiguous names. For example, we could call the ID info that does nothing but verifies that you are who you say you are when buying something the “Credit Card Authorization Swipe.” The “ask” that wants to know your name and email address could be called the “Email ID Swipe.” The one that wants to know your demographics could be the “Marketing Personalization Swipe,” etc. The aim would be to get vendors to use those names with some uniformity, so that we not only would know what we’re giving, but there might be some market pressure (or at least some shame) not to ask for the full demographic roster when someone’s just trying to correct an error in a post. These nomenclature packages could even be graded to indicate how invasive they are.

I’m just thinking out loud here, but if we’re going to make it easy to give out our personal information, we ought to be thinking about the norms, market forces, or rules that would make it harder to ask for that information.

* * *

I’m on the road, so I may be pokey about replying. [Tags: identity id privacy marketing ]

7 Comments »

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

[Tags: marketing games boingboing ]

1 Comment »

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 ]

13 Comments »

During the end session, the moderator asked the panel why topic maps have not been catching on as quickly as they should. I suggested that one reason was that people think they’re graphical representations, when in fact they’re a data representation that can be displayed any way that makes sense.

I hit some resistance among the panelists, however. Some maintained that maps themselves are abstractions. Sure, but when you say you’re going to give someone a subway map, they expect a piece of paper with colored lines on it, not an abstract representation of the relationships among the stations.

If I were in the business of selling software that implements topic maps, I’d come up with another name, and at some point mention that underneath is an ISO standard called “topic maps.” Some people at the conference talk about “subject-centric computing,” which is still pretty techie but I find much less confusing than “topic maps.” [Tags: topic_maps marketing ]

7 Comments »

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 ]

2 Comments »

I was pretty excited about finding myself on a “BetaBlue” JetBlue plane because they touted it as providing free inflight email and more.

It turns out that above 10,000 feet you can indeed do email and more, so long as your email is a Yahoo email account and the more is Yahoo instant messaging. No browsing, no one else’s email or IM.

I really don’t understand JetBlue’s thinking on this. They’re likely to annoy more passengers than they please, some of whom will be petty enough to write snarky blog posts. without even mentioning that they’re posting their snarkiness via the excellent free wifi JetBlue provides at its Long Beach gates.

[Tags: net_neutrality jetblue marketing ]

2 Comments »

I am so disappointed that I had to miss Lisa Stone’s Berkman talk. She’s blogged a transcript here, and pretty soon the video will be up here. Sounds like a great talk…

[Tags: lisa_stone ]

Be the first to comment »

I’ve been at Euroblog 2008 yesterday and today, and will be tomorrow as well. It’s a mix of academics and practitioners talking about marketing and public relations in the age of the Web.

The conference seems to assume that we agree that the Web has changed the marketing landscape, that customers are not mere consumers, that marketing has to change right down to its skivvies. The academics at the conference have generally backed this up with actual research. What marketing can and should be, however, is a matter of more controversy here. As it should be. [Tags: euroblog2008 marketing public_relations]

* * *

Catharine Taylor has a new blog about social media as a marketing platform. Yes, it’s a problematic formulation — which is one of the points of Euroblog — but Catharine is skeptical about the importance of social media, albeit not yet expressing much skepticism about the propriety and effectiveness of using them for marketing.

1 Comment »

MoveOn is sponsoring a “Make your own Obama ad” contest — thirty seconds to explain wnhy you think Obama should be the next president.

I hope they pick something funky and home-made, instead of a superslick Doritos style ad. [Tags: politics obama marketing doritos]

Be the first to comment »

I’m on the road and haven’t heard George “Mr. Metaphor” Lakoff’s reframing of the Democrats, in an interview with Dave Winer, but I hear it’s good. [Tags: politics geoerge_lakoff dave_winer democrats ]

Be the first to comment »

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 ]

1 Comment »

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 ]

4 Comments »

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 ]

Be the first to comment »

After trying the various phone numbers on the AT&T Wireless site, including 1-800-331-0500, 611 from my cellphone, and 800‑288‑2747 from GetHuman.com, it seems that AT&T provides no customer service on Sunday. So, if your phone or their software is broken, you are SOL.

Jeez, remember when major corporations acted like major corporations? Or maybe this is how major corporations act.

(There’s gotta be a national security angle to this somewhere. Do terrorists and hurricanes take Sundays off? Yeah, that’s the ticket!) [Tags: att customer_service vrm ]

2 Comments »

Ryan Terry is an illustrator and a Flash guy. His home page is like one of those poke-n-play CD illustrated books for kids, except better. His previous one is at least as good. (Thanks to Marc Nathan for the link, via Twitter.

[Tags: ryan_terry flash illustrations home_page resume marketing ]