“I don’t know how many nukes the United States has pointed toward China, but one would be too many. China isn’t going to attack its biggest customer. And in the unlikely event that some other country attacks China, we’d offer military assistance in a heartbeat. There’s too much money at stake on both sides.”
Scott Adams presents his “Money or Bombs” theory
This phrase was coined in 2007 by Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens. I found it in a story on the Salt Lake Tribune website. The story is about viral video campaigns, specifically, the "Will It Blend" series by Blendtec.
If this is true, how can those of us who sell advertising use this insight to help our customers?
I quote Seth Godin so often I gave him his own tag. And sometimes he writes/thinks something so dead-on that I have to quote the entire post. Every word is gold:
"You can improve your writing (your business writing, your ad writing, your thank you notes and your essays) if you start thinking like a blogger:
What would happen if every single high school student had to have a blog? Or every employee in your company? Or every one of your customers?"
I’ve been corresponding with a few political bloggers who I chided for being anonymous. Because, they explained, their ideas are so controversial, so inflammatory, so powerful… they risk their jobs or worse if they sign their names. But –they insist- they aren’t anonymous. They are “pseudonymous.” I had to look it up in the dictionary:
pseudonymous – writing or written under a false name
anonymous – not identified by name, of unknown name
So, if I write something and don’t sign any name to it, that’s anonymous. And if I sign a false name, that’s pseudonymous. Yes? Is this a distinction without a difference? Or, if I sign my letters “The Shadow,” readers won’t know who I am but they’ll know the letter was written by someone who calls himself “The Shadow.” And if I don’t sign the letter at all, the reader will have no way of knowing subsequent letters were written by the same person. Is that it?
I went to two of the smartest people I know for clarification. First, Bob Priddy, a long-time broadcast journalist and author:
“One hides behind a fake name. The other hides behind no name. Steve is a name. Anonymous is a word.
It’s the difference between hiding behind a red curtain or hiding behind a blue curtain. I suppose those who use pen names do so because they don’t want to be anonymous. It’s much more rewarding to hear people discussing who Howard Beale is than it is to hear people discussing who anonymous is because anonymous can be anybody and Howard Beale is somebody. Nobody discusses anonymous. Everybody discusses Howard Beale and therefore the sniper feels some kind of importance. Both are gutless but one is gutless with an ego.
My friend Kay Henderson (also a journalist) wrote this:
“I have never heard or seen the word “pseudonymous” before. Interesting. My first thought was of George Eliot who wrote under the male pseudonym because writing, at the time, was a “male profession.” My second thought was “Primary Colors” was written by “Anonymous” as you’ll recall.
I may be behind the times here, though. Is “Alice Cooper” or “Marilyn Manson” a pseudonym? How about “Madonna” or “Cher” or “Diddy” or “Snoop Dog” or any number of professional athletes who adopt a stage name? Our culture has grown so used to people who adopt another name/character/stage name in public that perhaps it’s not that much of a stretch to expect it to happen on-line.
Is political “speech” subject to different standards than are considered the norm for the rest of the culture? I will agree with my colleague that the cloak of a pseudonym is too often used by bloggers. But who will be the blogger police? Perhaps it will take something akin to pulling back the curtain and having Dorothy expose The Wizard to change the on-line culture. Perhaps more sites will forbid “anonymous” posting in the comments sections. I find the requirement of a name, however, laughable in most instances if you read the “names” which are used.”
I suspect we got such passionate response to this because the phantom bloggers would like to be out. No doubt all of their friends know of their secret identities (“That ‘Howard Beale’ guy? That’s me. Seriously.”). Questioning their ethics or courage stings. I’ll try to stop.
Presidential Aide: Mr. President, two airliners have been flown into the World Trade Center Towers.
George W. Bush: Those are the big ones in New York, right?
Aide: Yes sir. We think there might be as many as 3,000 dead.
Bush: Who did it?
Aide: We think they were Saudis.
Bush: Damn, I’ve played golf with those guys.
Aide: No sir. These are probably extremists.
Bush: No shit. What are we gonna do about it?
Vice President Cheney: Mr. President, we have to invade Iraq but we need to invade Afghanistan first to make it look good.
Bush: Do we think that prick Saddam had something to do with it?
Cheney: Sir, we don’t know that he didn’t.
Bush: I’d like to nuke that fucker. Does he have nukes or chemical weapons or something.
CIA Director George Tennent: There’s no evidence of that, Mr. President.
Cheney: Take another look.
Tennent: Yes sir.
Cheney: When we invade, I think I can get my friends at Halliburton to pitch in.
Bush: Cool.
[Fast forward. The Liberation of Irag is not going well]
Bush: Goddamn it Rummy, I thought you said this thing would take a few weeks and we’d be greeted as liberators. Everyone going to Camp David with me and the First Lady, take one step forward… not so fast Rummy!
[Later]
Bush: Karl, we’re in the shit here. What should we do?
Karl Rove: Well, you’re in your final term… just drag the thing out and leave it for the Democrats.
Bush: Can we do that?
Rove: I don’t see why not. We can say things we’re looking good when we left.
Bush: But things look like hell!
Rove: Just wait. They’ll look a lot worse.
Bush: But won’t history show that I screwed the pooch on this?
Rove and Cheney: (Looking at the floor and ceiling respectively)
Cheney: Uh, no sir, Mr. President. All anyone will remember is the Middle East exploded on the Democrats’ watch. Uh, listen guys, I gotta run. I’m going skeet shooting with Scooter.
Update: Just in… a plan for withdrawal.
From George Mason University’s History News Network:
“In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.
“Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history.”
“The reason for the hesitancy some historians had in categorizing the Bush presidency as the worst ever, which led them to place it instead in the “nearly the worst” group, was well expressed by another historian who said, “It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush’s presidency is the worst ever, though it certainly has a shot to take the title. Without a doubt, it is among the worst.”
I bet they’re all Democrats. I think W will get his wish. He’ll be remembered for a long, long time.
I was scanning AdRants when the quote above caught my eye. Here’s a couple of chunks from the post:
“Want to hear an interesting conversation about social media and it’s impact on marketing, advertising, public relations and journalism? Want to know how the role of public relations is changing in the world of public relations? Want to explore the differences in mentality between new media and old? Want to now whether or not it’s sinful to publish a story before every last detail of the story is known? Want to know why readers, who are now commenters, are so important to the whole of the story? Then give this podcast a listen.”
I caught about 15 minutes over lunch and look forward to hearing the rest. It sounds like a pretty good peek into the minds of some PR pros, with the focus on New Media (whatever that is). If you blog, send or receive news releases… I think you’ll find this worth the listen.
The guys (no gender implied) at AdRants are big fans of Twitter:
“Writing on Entrecard Graham Langdon makes the argument Twitter will be bigger than Facebook. He’s right. Twitter is many things but it lacks the baggage and some of the “creepy” aspects of Facebook. All within 140 characters, Twitter is IM, email, mobile app, chat room, focus group, news source, a wall on which to bounce ideas, a research resource, presence indicator.
It’s usually the simplest of things that have the most value. Facebook is bloated. Twitter is Internet Lite (I refuse to dub it anything with a 2.0 attached). It’s a simple but ever so powerful interface that brings so many things together and functions as a jumping off point to an endless collection of resources and information.
It’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll interpret this as idiotic puffery but until you use Twitter, really use it for a while, you won’t really understand what you’re missing and you don’t realy have the right to comment. Seriously. Give it a try.”
I confess I’ve given up trying to explain Twitter. And it took me more than a year to come around.
From the monthly newsletter written by my brother and his wife:
“During Medieval times when there was a theft in a village, the people set up a “Hue and Cry”. This meant yelling, “Thief!” at the top of one’s lungs so that the other villagers would be alerted and the thief would be caught. The system worked so well that often the hue and cry would be heard several miles away from the scene of the actual theft.
Here in Indonesia, a third-world country, there is also a system of “Hue and Cry”. Only, the word thief is changed to the Indonesian word for thief, “Maling”. As we and I sat down to lunch today, we heard the local “hue and cry” of “Maling! Maling!” and we ran outside to see who the thief was. He was a cowardly one; that was evident by the way he yanked the necklace off my next door neighbor’s neck and continued on his way ON HIS MOTORCYCLE!
This is a frequent occurrence in this country and if/when the thief is caught, he is usually beaten by the crowd while waiting for the police to show up. He then may or may not receive a fair trial, depending on how much money the family can put up for his bail.”
The local newspaper here in Jefferson City has been locally owned for a long time. It was recently sold to a group with headquarters in Arkansas. As George and I discussed this over coffee a couple of weeks ago, he wondered why someone would buy a newspaper when it seems like –nationally– their profits are in free fall (I love that expression).
During our chat, George said he thought the local paper only had four full-time reporters. I have no idea if that’s accurate but, for the purposes of this post, let’s assume it is. It started me thinking. What if the local paper just shut down? What sort of online alternative would be possible? Could you create one using volunteers?
You might start by evaluating what’s currently in the paper: Local news, state news, world and national news, features, business and finance, entertainment, opinion, sports, community, obits, weather and classifieds.
I certainly won’t be the first to point out that much of the information in the local newspaper is available from other sources (weather, state news, national news, etc). The one area a local paper can and should do better than anyone else is local. Local news, sports, business, entertainment… local, local, local.
What if you had one, maybe two “professional journalists,” coordinating a group of volunteers. Could you do a credible job of covering local news and events? For example, could a dozen highly motivated volunteers –armed with digital cameras and recorders– cover the local news as well as four paid staffers?
Hey, no question it would be different but I see no reason it couldn’t work. We’re already seeing a growing number of examples around the country. And, yes, a number of these efforts have failed.
Even the smallest newspapers have massive overhead. Paper, ink, printing presses, etc. That means you need LOTS of advertisements. What I’m envisioning has virtually no overhead. A few hundred dollars a year for web hosting. You could cover a lot of local news for the tiniest fraction of what a “real newspaper” costs.
I suspect that some small town papers are morphing in this direction already and one day the print edition will just disappear and the transition will be complete.