July 23, 2004

Top 10 Songs of All Time

Jeff gave a whole bunch of people a year to come up with their top 10 songs of all time (with explanations for why each is on the list). It's an interesting challenge and much tougher than it sounds. He has just released his top 10:

1. Don't You Want Me, Baby - Human League
The most entertaining song I've ever heard. If my life comes out the way I hope, my wife and I are going to duet this song on our wedding day. Think about the concept of the refrain: "Don't you want me?" It's a tootsie pop with sadness inside.

2. In The Ghetto - Elvis (written by Scott Davis)
I'm not sure why I love this song. I just do. I didn't grow up in the ghetto, though I hated kids for North Arlington and often fought them. For me, its probably the coolest sung song I've ever heard and the lyrics are really touching.

3. A Better Son/Daughter - Rilo Kiley
The best lyrics I've ever heard in a rock song. If you know me a little, you know why.

4. The Superbowl Shuffle - The 1985 World-Champion Chicago Bears
My very first memory is these buffoons singing this song is the cheesiest music video of all-time. I have loved the Chicago Bears ever since. They've been responsible for three near-suicides, one dead relationship and for two weeks in fall 2001 - joy, when I didn't think I'd find it.

5. Barcelona (from Company) - Stephen Sondheim
The song that made me love musical theatre. Its brilliantly crafted and endlessly clever and most importantly real. If I can write one song as good as this in my career, I will be a success.

6. Freshmen - The Verve
Second best rock lyrics I've ever heard. Just a really really powerful song that I listened to on-loop for about two years (and then revisited with Lou during my frosh college year).

7. I Saw Red - Warrant
Well, a hair band had to get on the list. I'm sorry. The day I walk into a karaoke bar and this is on the list...every woman in the room will want to fuck me. I'm convinced of this.

8. Jeremy / Garden - Pearl Jam
I could have chosen any songs from this album. It is the greatest album of my lifetime.

9. Beyond the Sea - Bobby Darin
I sang this song in a karaoke bar in Dundee, Scotland called The Fort which prompted the captain of police to invite my uncle and I to his home for Sunday roast.

10. (tie) Summer Nights (from Grease) - Jim Jacbos / Warren Casey
10. (tie) Getting Married Today (from company) - Stephen Sondheim
The two songs that made me love Marie's Crisis in the West Village. I sang one with Alexandra to begin the craziest romance of all time and sang the other to prove that I know more about musical theatre than any other straight guy in the universe. Oh shit, I just realized I'm straight.

Honorable Mentions: Jessie's Girl (Rick Springfield), For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield), What's the Use of Wondrin' from Carousel (Rodgers & Hammerstein), Pretty Women from Sweeney Todd (Sondheim), Closing Time (Semisonic), Mr. Jones (Counting Crows), If I Were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof (Bock & Harnick)

I'm still working on mine (lists are due in December). Everyone is invited to join in (and if I know you and you add your list, you'll get a copy of everyone elses CD). Add your list in the comments.

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Marketability of Blogs

Are blogs a viable marketing tool? That is the question that Jim Meskauskas addressed in yesterday's Mediapost OnlineSPIN titled Flogging the Blog: Welcome, Marketers!. Mr. Meskauskas attacked the idea that blogs were really a new marketing tool at all. "My personal opinion about blogs is that by and large, they are simply web sites that serve as personal diaries being offered up to the masses in the hopes that someone will care about what the author thinks," Meskauskas writes. I don't completely disagree with Meskauskas, many blogs are nothing more than personal web sites or diaries. However, there is an important tool of blogging that Maskauskas fails to mention. RSS is an important part of what makes blogs so powerful. The ability to deliver constantly updated information to the reader (or consumer in the case of marketing blogs), makes this a very powerful force.

I don't believe Mr. Meskauskas and I see eye to eye on what a marketing blog is. His only example is Gawker's Art of Speed website for Nike. While this website was interesting and one the first major forays into the blogging field by a non-tech blue-chip company, I don't believe it should be held as the ideal for what a corporate blog should strive to achieve. What about all those companies out there that are allowing their employees to blog? People like Microsoft's Robert Scoble are giving a huge corporation and real face and a human voice. This is essentially a marketing blog, even though Scoble often writes on topics far removed from Microsoft. But if the goal of marketing is to make honest connections with consumers, then haven't Microsoft and Scoble achieved their goal now that Scoble has a loyal stable of readers?

I couldn't agree with Meskauskas more when he says that blogs are "individualistic personal expressions that are supposed to be for their authors' authentic manifestations of the self. To let companies co-opt that is to undermine the very power blogs have that is attracting marketers to them in the first place." This is a fine point, however, by only examining Art of Speed, you Meskauskas missed thousands of other examples of companies using blogs correctly.

What about a blog to keep consumers informed of what's going on with a product? Blogs are the most powerful tool for this because of the constant updates and RSS capability. People are interested in knowing what's going on, and this is a great way to keep those interested people informed. Especially as products are in development, blogs can be a powerful tool for building excitement. How can Meskauskas completely ignore this function?

What about the other advantages to blogs? Things like trackbacks allow people to link to one another to continue a conversation on a different webpage completely. It opens up the dialogue and makes the blogosphere a social networking dream-space. Not to mention the comment field that goes along with most blog entries, which allows people to ask questions directly of the blogger (or company) with the answers available for all other readers to see. Isn't this a valuable tool for technical support? When new functionality is added, developers can be in dialogue with users. Blogs can help maintain brand loyalty.

This is not to say that Meskauskas is completely wrong, and that many marketers won't use blogs completely wrong. However, I think it certainly nullifies his last paragraph:

But there is nothing unique about blogs that makes them better for this than other environments. Like all new things, to quote Frank Herbert, the author of the original "Dune" novels: "'this too shall pass away' applies to all the known universe."

Art of Speed may pass, however, blogs and the technology, like RSS, that has been pushed forward with them are here to stay. If Meskauskas wants to stand in the way, bloggers will simply link around him.

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ALF on DVD

I was informed today that ALF, the furry alien from Melmac, will finally be coming to DVD (it's going to be four discs of cat eating wonderfulness). This is some of the most amazing news I've heard since they announced ALF's Hit Talk Show on TVLand (which was really terrible, a fact that pains me as an ALF fan). Anyone looking for more ALF info should head towards Stephen's ALF Page.

By the way, is there anything better in the world than the full body ALF shot? Come on, when you get to see ALF waddle around like a midget in a furry suit, it's so good. I love that show.

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July 22, 2004

My Summary of the Executive Summary

I read the Executive Summary from the 9-11 Commission report. I pulled paragraphs that I found interesting out of the 31-page document. The only time I removed pieces from paragraphs were in the bulleted lists, where I removed bullets that I found less interesting. So, without further ado, here's my summary of the Executive Summary:

At 8:46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States became a nation transformed.

The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise.
Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill
Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin
himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of
Islamist terrorism grew over the decade.

Until 1997, the U.S. intelligence community viewed Bin Ladin as a financier
of terrorism, not as a terrorist leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin
Ladin and four others issued a self-styled fatwa, publicly declaring that it was
God’s decree that every Muslim should try his utmost to kill any American,
military or civilian, anywhere in the world, because of American "occupation" of Islam’s holy places and aggression against Muslims.

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were far
more elaborate, precise, and destructive than any of these earlier assaults. But by
September 2001, the executive branch of the U.S. government, the Congress,
the news media, and the American public had received clear warning that
Islamist terrorists meant to kill Americans in high numbers.

The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin shapes and
spreads his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols
of Islam’s past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider
themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and
religious allusions to the holy Qur’an and some of its interpreters. He appeals
to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization.
His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources—Islam, history,
and the region’s political and economic malaise.

By September 11, 2001, al Qaeda possessed

• leaders able to evaluate, approve, and supervise the planning and direction
  of a major operation;
  
• a personnel system that could recruit candidates, indoctrinate them,
  vet them, and give them the necessary training;
  
• communications sufficient to enable planning and direction of operatives
  and those who would be helping them;
  
• an intelligence effort to gather required information and form assessments
  of enemy strengths and weaknesses;
  
• the ability to move people great distances; and
  
• the ability to raise and move the money necessary to finance an attack.

During 2000, President Bill Clinton and his advisers renewed diplomatic
efforts to get Bin Ladin expelled from Afghanistan. They also renewed secret
efforts with some of the Taliban’s opponents—the Northern Alliance—to get
enough intelligence to attack Bin Ladin directly. Diplomatic efforts centered on
the new military government in Pakistan, and they did not succeed.The efforts
with the Northern Alliance revived an inconclusive and secret debate about
whether the United States should take sides in Afghanistan’s civil war and support the Taliban’s enemies. The CIA also produced a plan to improve intelligence
collection on al Qaeda, including the use of a small, unmanned airplane
with a video camera, known as the Predator.

During the spring and summer of 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies received
a stream of warnings that al Qaeda planned, as one report put it, “something
very, very, very big.” Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told us,“The
system was blinking red.”

The day began with the 19 hijackers getting through a security checkpoint system
that they had evidently analyzed and knew how to defeat.Their success rate
in penetrating the system was 19 for 19.They took over the four flights, taking
advantage of air crews and cockpits that were not prepared for the contingency
of a suicide hijacking.

Nonetheless, there were specific points of vulnerability in the plot and
opportunities to disrupt it. Operational failures—opportunities that were
not or could not be exploited by the organizations and systems of that
time—included

• not watchlisting future hijackers Hazmi and Mihdhar, not trailing them after they traveled to Bangkok, and not informing the FBI about one future hijacker’s U.S. visa or his companion’s travel to the United States;
• not sharing information linking individuals in the Cole attack to Mihdhar;
• not taking adequate steps in time to find Mihdhar or Hazmi in the United States;
• not linking the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, described as interested in flight training for the purpose of using an airplane in a terrorist act, to the heightened indications of attack;
• not discovering false statements on visa applications;
• not recognizing passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner;
• not expanding no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watchlists;
• not searching airline passengers identified by the computer-based CAPPS screening system; and
• not hardening aircraft cockpit doors or taking other measures to prepare for the possibility of suicide hijackings.

The missed opportunities to thwart the 9/11 plot were also symptoms of a
broader inability to adapt the way government manages problems to the new
challenges of the twenty-first century. Action officers should have been able to
draw on all available knowledge about al Qaeda in the government.
Management should have ensured that information was shared and duties were
clearly assigned across agencies, and across the foreign-domestic divide.

There were opportunities for intelligence and law enforcement to exploit al
Qaeda’s travel vulnerabilities. Considered collectively, the 9/11 hijackers

• included known al Qaeda operatives who could have been watchlisted;
• presented passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner;
• presented passports with suspicious indicators of extremism;
• made detectable false statements on visa applications;
• made false statements to border officials to gain entry into the United States; and
• violated immigration laws while in the United States.

The civilians, firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, and
emergency management professionals exhibited steady determination and
resolve under horrifying, overwhelming conditions on 9/11.Their actions saved
lives and inspired a nation.

Since 9/11, the United States and its allies have killed or captured a majority of
al Qaeda’s leadership; toppled the Taliban, which gave al Qaeda sanctuary in
Afghanistan; and severely damaged the organization.Yet terrorist attacks continue.
Even as we have thwarted attacks, nearly everyone expects they will come.
How can this be?

The problem is that al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a
finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs. In this
way it has transformed itself into a decentralized force. Bin Ladin may be limited
in his ability to organize major attacks from his hideouts.Yet killing or capturing
him, while extremely important, would not end terror. His message of
inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would continue.

Because of offensive actions against al Qaeda since 9/11, and defensive
actions to improve homeland security,we believe we are safer today. But we are
not safe.We therefore make the following recommendations that we believe can
make America safer and more secure.

No president can promise that a catastrophic attack like that of 9/11 will not
happen again. But the American people are entitled to expect that officials will
have realistic objectives, clear guidance, and effective organization. They are
entitled to see standards for performance so they can judge, with the help of
their elected representatives, whether the objectives are being met.

In October 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked if enough was
being done “to fashion a broad integrated plan to stop the next generation of
terrorists.” As part of such a plan, the U.S. government should

• Define the message and stand as an example of moral leadership in the world. To Muslim parents, terrorists like Bin Ladin have nothing to offer their children but visions of violence and death.America and its friends have the advantage—our vision can offer a better future.
• Communicate and defend American ideals in the Islamic world, through much stronger public diplomacy to reach more people, including students and leaders outside of government. Our efforts here should be as strong as they were in combating closed societies during the Cold War.
• Expect less from trying to dry up terrorist money and more from following the money for intelligence, as a tool to hunt terrorists, understand their networks, and disrupt their operations.

The strategy we have recommended is elaborate, even as presented here very
briefly.To implement it will require a government better organized than the one
that exists today, with its national security institutions designed half a century
ago to win the Cold War. Americans should not settle for incremental, ad hoc
adjustments to a system created a generation ago for a world that no longer
exists.

We call on the American people to remember how we all felt on 9/11, to
remember not only the unspeakable horror but how we came together as a
nation—one nation. Unity of purpose and unity of effort are the way we will
defeat this enemy and make America safer for our children and grandchildren.
We look forward to a national debate on the merits of what we have recommended,
and we will participate vigorously in that debate.

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9/11 Commission Report

Anyone looking for a project for the day can head over to: http://www.9-11commission.gov/. The 9/11 commission has just released their, suposedly harsh, report on 9/11 including the many intelligence failures. Enjoy. (You can download the whole document as a PDF, or download single chapters, the first of which is called Chapter 1: "We Have Some Planes.")

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Has Gmail Already Reached its Trucker Hat Phase?

In today's New York Times there's an article about the lure of beta testing as a status symbol. The article is titled "For Some Beta Testers, It's About Buzz, Not Bugs" and primarily focuses on the buzz around Gmail accounts. I have talked on another page about the brilliance of Google's Gmail marketing strategy (and will paste that post below). Anyhow, what really made me laugh in the Times article was the last line, which compared the current state of the Gmail to that of the formerly ubiquitous trucker hat.

But if some beta versions live by hype and buzz, they die by it as well. As with all status accessories, digital status symbols come stamped with a sell-by date. Gmail accounts were lucky to go for $5 last week on eBay.

"Once everyone has been invited it's no longer cool to be invited," Mr. Loukissas said. "I mean, it works the same way as fashion: once everyone wears a trucker hat, it's over."

I don't really think that's a fair comparison and I certainly hope that Austin Kutcher stays away from Gmail. Also, I noted that this hype was fading a month ago when I wrote this other post. It's just another example of the Times' inability to stay on top of cultural trends. Here's that old post from another site:

June 24, 2004: Gmail Toss-Up

There is a certain brilliance in Gmail's invite system. From a marketing perspective, they created a buzz around their product and allowed indivuals to promote for them. By opening the system to Blogger users first they were guaranteed to have a group of people who cared about the internet (most likely more than average). By bringing the invites out in cycles they were able to keep people interested and happy at the same time.

The only question is how google will finish this performance. I read someone this morning suggest that it would be pretty funny if it were all an April fools joke and, in fact, they never opened Gmail to the public. This would mean that Yahoo! and Hotmail were forced to up their storage capacity to compete with an email system that only had a limited number of users. It certainly got Google a lot of attention.

But seriously, what if Google never opened Gmail to the entire public? What if, instead of doing a giant 'grand opening' they continued their invite system? They would then control supply and demand and keep their name floating around. (Although right now it appears as though most people who want Gmail have it. Pretty much anyone very serious about the internet has already gotten an invitation and it has moved on to the mass public. When I go to a party and have three people mention Gmail to me the initial hype is officially over.)

Anyhow, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but I do think it has been a fantastic strategy. They put a great product into the hands of people who care most about their computers and the internet and let them do the promoting for them. I know I have touted the advantages of Gmail to any number of people over the last few months and I will continue. It is far superior to most any email application I have ever used and I really enjoy. I have even been stingy with my invites, only giving them to people who I knew would be using Gmail as their main account (no one who just wanted to dabble in Gmail and stick with Hotmail was invited). This is exactly what Gmail wanted with their invites and they got it. We've been duped -- but we've gotten a great product out of it. So there's the toss-up.

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July 21, 2004

Mercury Prize Shortlist

For those not aware, the Mercury Prize goes to the UK album of the year. The prize was awarded to Dizzee Rascal - 'Boy In Da Corner' in 2003. Here's this year's list:

Amy Winhouse - 'Frank'
Basement Jaxx - 'Kish Kash'
Belle & Sebastian - 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress'
Franz Ferdinand - 'Franz Ferdinand'
Jamelia - 'Thank You'
Joss Stone - 'The Soul Sessions'
Keane - 'Hopes and Fears'
Robert Wyatt - 'Cuckooland'
Snow Patrol - 'Final Straw'
The Streets - 'A Grand Don't Come for Free
Ty - 'Upwards'
The Zutons - 'Who Killed......The Zutons'

Of these I've listened to Basement Jaxx, Belle & Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand, Keane, Snow Patrol and The Streets. So automatically I've got to cut the list in half. Out of those I was least impressed by Snow Patrol. Their album wanders with a few standout singles (I love "Chocolate"). It seems to try to hard to be Emo and comes out sounding boring and generic. Not very impressive. Keane I only listened to two or three times. I should probably give it some more time, I enjoyed it, but it's never something I feel like listening. So we're down to four. These four are legit:

Basement Jaxx - 'Kish Kash': This is what electronic music is supposed to be. It's funky and fun. With some interesting guests including J.C. Chasez, MeShell Ndegeocello and, my personal favorite, Dizzee Rascal (if your a Dizzee fan and haven't heard "Lucky Star" off 'Kish Kash,' do yourself a favor).
Best song: "Lucky Star (featuring Dizzee Rascal)"

Belle & Sebastian - 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress': I didn't love this at first, then I tried listening to it again during the springtime and I got it. It's very pop ('If You're Feeling Sinister' fans beware). Just a good album for a sunny day.
Best song: "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" (though "I'm a Cuckoo" and "If She Wants Me" have also been my favorite song on this album at one point or another)

Franz Ferdinand - 'Franz Ferdinand': Everyone's heard this by now. It's a fantastic album. Not much more to say.
Best song: "Take Me Out" (with "Michael" a close second)

The Streets - 'A Grand Don't Come for Free': I love The Streets. I thought 'Original Pirate Material' was the best album of 2002 (and one of the best hip-hop albums of the last 5 years easily). This album is a serious shift away from Mike Skinner's original sound. The entire album is a narrative of losing a grand (as the title would suggest). This is much less accessible than his first album, but after a few listens I was rewarded with a very well put together complete album (which is rare). Skinner has slowed down many of his beats, which I am okay with, but it also means that it's a little bit harder to walk around and listen to it without feeling a bit depressed (I do most of my music listening on the move). Skinner was also fantastic live, which gives him points in my book.
Best Song: "Could Well Be In"

My winner: Franz Ferdinand - 'Franz Ferdinand' defeats 'A Grand Don't Come for Free' by a hair, just because it's a little more upbeat and fun and that's what I feel like listening to more often.

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RSS: The Next Big Thing

MediaThink has writte a new white paper on RSS titled "RSS: The Next Big Thing". I'm not sure that the white paper itself is revolutionary, although the fact that it exists marks the first of its kind (to my knowledge). It's fairly amazing how little research has been done on RSS considering the number of people that are using it and just how influential those people are. RSS has amazing potential to completely change the way people use the web and Mediathink highlights that. I think the study focuses too much on aggregators and not enough on the demographics of the users. However, those demographic numbers are much more difficult to come by. Here are some of the highlights from the white paper:

We strongly believe that RSS is the web's Next Big Thing. It is potentially most disruptive to email and applications relying on email, though it is important to understand that RSS is not at all likely to replace email. New media rarely ever replace old.

Implications for Marketing

Marketers can reasonably see both salvation and threat in RSS. Salvation comes in the form of easy distribution of online content. The RSS threat lies in its ability to draw attention away from email and other direct marketing channels. While RSS can make more marketing messages more relevant, it also makes them more easily filtered, potentially shrinking the reach of marketing communications deployed with it.

Rich Media

A rich media RSS standard (RM RSS) would allow publishers to make such content available online in the same way news articles are today. Instead of simply streaming audio or video, we see users enabled to create personal broadband "channels" with the RM RSS viewers. Essentially, we see TiVo or a TiVo-like device connected to the web and subscribed to all types of rich content.

Mediathink Summary

We see RSS as the single best method available to receive information from selected sources. RSS possess the unique ability to eliminate the usual chores of search, navigation, and interruptive marketing avoidance currently required to receive most of today's valuable news content. By its virtues, we see RSS disrupting email's current hold on point-to-point communication and growing its share of user attention faster than any web technology preceding it.

There you have it.

Also, I have been trying to think of a traditional media analogy for RSS. The best I could think of is that RSS is like being able to subscribe to certain television stations 'On-Demand,' so that when you get home you can simply chose what show to watch from the list of shows since you last logged on. What do others think?

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Icons Getting Political

It seems like everyone is getting political this election season. There are interesting articles from The New York Times and Salon on Carlos Delgado of the Toronto Blue Jays and P-Diddy, of bad hip-hop and MTV fame. Here are some excerpts:

New York Times: "Delgado Makes a Stand by Taking a Seat"

Last March when the United States invaded Iraq, Delgado, in his own quiet way, said that for him, enough was enough. He had stood for "God Bless America" through the 2003 season but vowed not to do so this season. In an act of a simple, mostly unnoticed, protest against the war, Delgado, a 32-year-old first baseman, has chosen to remain in the dugout while "God Bless America" is played.

Good for him. In the world of mainstream professional sports, where cookie-cutter athletes rarely take a stand on any issue, let alone one as highly charged as a war, Delgado is a rarity. He is unafraid to question a ritual that he does not agree with. Delgado's protest this season has been so quiet, so subtle that Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, didn't know about it until I called him to talk about it on Monday.

His well-thought-out opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is just one part of a larger issue for him. Delgado, a native of Puerto Rico, sees his protest as consistent with his earlier opposition to the Navy's use of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a weapons testing ground. In many ways, the United States military waged a form of war for 60 years on the tiny island, using a 900-acre site for bombing exercises.

Delgado is doing it right. He believes in something and he's making that known. He's not doing it for exposure or publicity, he's just a baseball player who follows politics and is doing what he believes is right. I'm glad someone gave him the recognition he deserves and I hope he is not treated harshly by any fans for his decision.

Salon: "P. Diddy's appeal to youth: 'We will attack all of your senses'"

Combs says that he will utilize all of his "God-given talents as a marketer to market this election" and "make politics fashionable."

Combs thinks that his effort to market the presidential election will attract the "largest youth and minority voter turnout in history." His plan to make it happen? "We will attack all of your senses," Combs says. That means huge "Vote or Die" signs on street corners, a new P. Diddy album about voting out before November and a last-minute celebrity blitz in swing states in the days leading up to the election, including trips on Combs' own campaign jet.

Mobilizing the black community to vote is incredibly important and no matter what I personally feel about 'Diddy,' I commend him for using his resources and marketing know-how for a good cause.

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