Up to here

Things that are on the verge of making me want to punch a kitten:

• Augmented Reality – Unless you can explain it to me in a way that doesn’t make it sound like an “upload your photo” tool in reverse I’m going to think you’re full of it.
• JK’s Wedding Video or whatever it’s called – Some guy creates a memory that he’s going to look back on in five years and realize he’s so ashamed of he’s unable to talk about it to his children and I’m supposed to learn valuable marketing lessons from it? Really? With a straight face you’re telling me that?
• Personal branding – I have a reputation. I don’t need a brand. Thanks anyway.
• Beer summit – Oh wow. The President used the same tactic guys have been using since the invention of beer and we’re supposed to think this is news? Would have been better if, like half such resolution sessions, they’d had so much to drink that it wound up in a fist fight.

Visuals

While emergent and seeker-sensitive churches that are looking to be more engaging or whatever add big screens and funny pictures, I’m both condemned and comforted every Sunday when my Pastor regularly points to the only visual that’s necessary: the cross.

Wrong question

If you ask people if they’re fans of cookies (the little files that are dropped on your computer when you visit most websites) they’ll say “no.” Public opinion is that they’re intrusive and people don’t like being tracked like that.

Ask the public if they like more targeted, relevant ads and having the social networks/forums they frequent remember their login information and they’ll likely say “yes, that’s useful.”

So the question is not whether people are in favor of cookies, it’s whether they’re in favor of the experience that the use and delivery of cookies enables.

A media experiment

With the conversation around media organizations erecting paywalls around all their content gaining steam and ridiculous ideas like the AP throwing out the idea that you need a licensing agreement with them just to link to their content, I thought I’d run an experiment both here on MMM between now and the end of August.

The idea is that what bloggers – including myself – send to mainstream news outlets in the way of traffic will be worth more to them in the long run, both from a monetary and brand familiarity point of view, than the money they’ll make from the small percentage of people that will pay for online access.

So between today and August 31st (including in this post) I’ll be using Bit.ly short URLs for all the links I include in my posts. Bit.ly lets me see how many times someone has clicked through to the source link. It also shows how many other clicks that’s generated, with my own as a sub-set of that overall number. I’ll use an assumed $.05 in ad revenue per click to generate an estimate of how much I helped those newspapers and magazines earn in that period, which might be generous but I don’t think is overly so.

The other half of this that I have in mind is that, if Steven Brill’s idea for a media industry wide clearing house for content payment should come to fruition and actually be implemented, this should be the amount that is taken off my bill for the next month. So if there’s a $10/month fee to access the news from the pubs I want to subscribe to and in the previous month I sent $6.50 in ad revenue generating traffic their way, my bill for the coming month should only be $3.50. I’ll sign up to be part of an affiliate program to get that sort of advantage – not a problem. Sign me up, give me a URL tracking code to use and I’ll be there first day.

TwitEcho

Neville Hobson walks through just how the interactive ad for “Dollhouse” Season One DVDs and their integration of Twitter works. Pretty cool.

Fun with Catholics

So Tom got married a few weeks ago. I was supposed to go but things didn’t work out for me to attend, unfortunately. But I did spend some time brainstorming ways to by annoying by combining two of my favorite things to do: 1) Make fun of my friends and 2) Make jokes about Catholicism and the Lutheran Reformation. Since enough time has passed I thought I’d share some of my ideas here:

• Get to the church early and slip a copy of the Augsburg Confession into the bulletins/programs.
• Cough repeatedly during the ceremony and say “Grace alone,” “Faith alone,” “Christ alone” and “Scripture alone.”
• Find a nun, get in a fight. Find a nun, get in a fight. Repeat until I’m extradited back to Illinois.
• Respond to all questions by reciting the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope.
• Keep my opinions on church rituals and concepts of justification to myself and act respectfully and quietly. (This one was rejected pretty quickly.)
• Wear a button on my lapel that says “Melancthon FTW!”
• Become belligerent when introduced to the priest, ending with a clenched fist and my exclaiming “I’ve got 95 reasons while I’m going to kick your celibate hinder Luther Style.”

Cause these are the sorts of things I devote brainpower to.

Hero up

As I’ve stated before, I’m kind of looking forward to the cartoon version of the Super Hero Squad toy line. Seems like it has the potential to be kind of fun and it has a nice cast list that’s just been announced.

Restless

It’s hard not to read this story about the “Quarterlife Crisis” and all the hand-wringing that people in their late 20’s and 30’s are doing and not feel like we’re reaping what we, as a society, have sown over the last 40 years. Sex isn’t a big deal, religion is something to be viewed with skepticism, families are anchors weighing you down…these are all attitudes that are borne of the societal shifts that began in the 60’s and so were passed down to many of those who are now 25 – 35.

While I’ve certainly had my moments of wondering what the hell my life was “about” I don’t think I have it as bad as some of these people, due in large part to the fact that my parents were, let’s just be honest, too square to be part of the 60’s as they’re traditionally defined. So I was raised to value my religious beliefs, that work was something that was necessary and wasn’t actually supposed to be entertaining (though I’m lucky in that my job is) and that family ties were important. You keep you’re head down and work hard, try to be a good husband and father and that’s about what you can expect out of life.

I’m not saying there aren’t dreams and fantasies that I wish would come true. But if my life continued along the path that it’s on right now that would, in all honesty, feel about right and about like what I expected it to be when I was five years old.

No big picture

An absolutely ridiculous story posits that the 1969 launch of Walmart (wow…two stories about them in one day….WTH?) impacts the average American more in 2009 than the 1969 landing on the moon. Of course the story overlooks the myriad technological advances that we now enjoy the benefits of that resulted from drive to land on the moon. Those advances, I’m willing to bet, have more of an impact on our day-to-day lives than the creation of a super store.

Distracted by the circus

Oh to the hell…

But while (Sonia Sotomayor’s) confirmation hearings drew plenty of coverage last week, the level of media excitement hardly matched that surrounding Mark Sanford’s Argentine affair, Sarah Palin’s Alaskan exit or Michael Jackson’s untimely departure.

Focus, people. An “informed electorate” does not mean being able to name the doctor that was treating Jackson.