Nirvana - You Know You're Right

Coincidentally, I just put Nirvana's In Utero CD in my car changer this week. What a great album. John Mudd -- who has a great PR and Marketing blog BTW -- points us to the new (old) Nirvana song, You Know Your're Right, which I haven't heard yet. Really cool song. Makes me realize what a great artist Cobain was. I think the musical landscape would be entirely different if he were still with us.

Neil Armstrong

Got this email from my Dad ....

Guaranteed to make you smile......especially, since it's a true story.

On July 20, 1969, as commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. His first words after stepping on the moon, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", were televised to Earth and heard by millions. But just before he reentered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark: "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled. On July 5, 1995, in Tampa Bay, Florida, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question. In 1938 when he was a kid in a small Midwest town, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in his neighbor's yard by the bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky! As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Sex! You want sex?! You'll get sex when the kid next door, walks on the moon!"
True story.

Eldred v. Ashcroft

I've been doing a lot of absorbing of this case and the issues surrounding it which is just weeks away from argument in front of the Supremem Court. Deborah Branscum points us to an excellent and very well written article by David Streitfeld of the L.A. Times. Streitfeld captures the history of the case and Lessig's conviction in the cause. What's facinating is how Lessig "reframes" the copyright argument and becomes the first person to challenge copyright extensions to the Supreme Court in 180 years. I'm rooting for him. I think his argument is sound and this will be a great win for the "advancement of science and useful arts" and the freedom of speech.

RSS At Last

Being that I'm the furthest thing from a techie, I thank Rick Bruner for passing along this link (for those of you who are in my boat) and explaining what it's all about. It's very quick and easy if you have Blogger Pro.

Oops
Rick tells a really funny story about an email screw-up at a "big well-known company" where a newly married guy meaning to send an email to his wife --- one of those emails --- accidentally sent it to some other important people in the company. Check it out.

Personalities and Conversion
Really, really interesting issue of the latest GrokDotCom email newsletter by Future Now. Grok talks about different personality types and how they affect the "paths of activity" when going through the buying process online. Paramount to success is designing your site to meet each personality type, keeping in mind that personality types are not clear cut and are usually combinations. Then listen and adapt (Grok says optimize).

AMIABLE
Attitude: Personal, activity oriented
Using Time: Undisciplined, fast paced
Question: Why is your solution best to solve the problem?
Approach: Address values and provide assurances, credible opinions rather than options

ANALYTICAL
Attitude: Businesslike, detail oriented
Using Time: Disciplined, methodically paced
Question: How can your solution solve the problem?
Approach: Provide hard evidence and superior service

EXPRESSIVE
Attitude: Personal, relationship oriented
Using Time: Undisciplined, slow paced
Question: Who has used your solution to solve my problem?
Approach: Offer testimonials and incentives

ASSERTIVE
Attitude: Businesslike, power oriented
Using Time: Disciplined, strategically paced
Question: What can your solution do for me?
Approach: Provide options, probabilities and challenges

...Acknowledging personality types online is critical - you are conducting business in a self-service medium. You aren’t there to modify your persuasion tactics when you notice they’re falling on deaf ears. You only notice you’ve missed the mark when you check out your Web logs.

Online, it’s the responsibility of your hyperlinks to establish, maintain and offer alternatives to your “dialog.”

aggghhhh, just hit backspace and lost this entire post ... will try to recreate ....

Trellix
My company just sent out this release on our new partnership with Trellix. The main purpose of the agreement is for what we call dealer page programs .... we design templated web pages for our clients that have distributed networks of franchisees, authorized dealers and/or retail stores.... now they can use Trellix to update their pages, customize them, etc. But what I'm really excited about is that Trellix has a blogging application. Been working on ideas on how to use Trellix's blogging tool as a solution for our clients so they can better engage with their customers. I'm really excited about the possibilities. Might be pretty groundbreaking.

Also, MonsterMoving, a great site with lots of useful moving tools (if you happen to be moving anytime soon) just acquired Moving.com (actually, TMP acquired Moving.com ....) This could be really exciting. Of course we're not sure how the two will co-exist. But both are tremendous resources, so check them out.

This gives you a little taste of what I do .... since I don't touch on that much here.

When I Grow Up I Want to Work in Advertising
Anyone working in advertising or aspiring to work in advertising has got to check this out. Hysterical!

[I've since noticed everyone else under the sun has posted this clip ... but conisidering I work for TMP ... parent to Monster ... I don't feel so bad ;-)]

Inluminent
New marketing blog. Reading it purely for the articles ;-) You'll see what I mean.

Feeling Renewed
Saltire:

I have been reminded over the past year of things that I have always known, but sometimes allowed to be clouded by the frantic pace of day's events. You get up each day and roll with the punches and jabs that the world throws your way. Some days the world is gonna knock you on your butt. At that moment you have the choice to stay down or to dust yourself off and get back on your feet. At that moment you decide what kind of person you are and what kind of world you want to live in.

Leap - By Brian Doyle
I thought I was done posting for today, until I came across this.

A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.

Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows....

But a man reached for a woman’s hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands...

I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead, and the harrowed families of the dead, and the screaming souls of the murderers, but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.

It is the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil evidence hourly that love is why we are here.

September 11, 2001
Never forgetting ...
Washingtonpost.com
NY Times
CNN
Doc
Kottke
Saltire

God bless.

Gary Turner shares with us his rememberence.

A Smaller Circle of Friends
Ed Cone bares his heart and tells us his story of September 11th.

Communication Arts Annual Interactive Annual
Nice designs but some of these almost seem to slick for the web. I think next year they should add an amatuer publishing category. This year's categories include Advertising, Info Design, Business, Self Promotion and Entertainment.

Less is More
Tig just spent three weeks in Europe and writes about his pleasant experiences with the advertising environment across the pond in the latest ClickZ. I've always believed clutter is one of the biggest problems with the state of advertising in the U.S. I don't care how good an ad is, how is it supposed to work it's magic when it's surrounded by so much noise?

Online news browsing was pleasantly free of pop-ups. TV news would run 10 minutes before a commercial break. The experience was like surfing PBS.com rather than ABC.com. By the time a sponsorship appears, the viewer's ready for a break. Creative receives a great deal more viewer attention as a result. European advertisers don't squander that attention. They run with it.

Tig also says something else which really made me think about the full potential of online advertising. Tig is talking about offline media, but think online:

Creative is more engaging, using humor, cleverness, and eye-stopping images. An American gets the impression Europeans trust their audiences to understand word play and subtle nuances of humor. Of course, Europe's smaller markets are much more ethnically and culturally unified compared to our vast melting pot. A more tightly knit community can be trusted to get the joke. [emphasis mine]

Although I hate the "C" word when it comes to marketing, the internet is best for allowing tightly knit communities to exist without the physical boundaries of space. An advertiser who is truly engaged with a community can deliver a message to that community better than if he is an outsider.

Blogging To My Own Clock
It's been 13 days since my last entry ... almost 2 full weeks. You ever get to the point where you're blogging because you feel the need to have an opinion on absolutley everything? You write about everything you find remotely interesting? While I know it's the blogger's mantra to write what you think and ask for forgiveness later, I am trying to instill a little dicipline now and then. Afterall "they" always say a good conversationalist is a good listener.