How to buy a blogger

I wrote a while ago about Alltop - a virtual magazine rack - and how Guy Kawasaki was doing some great things so it was with much disappointment when I saw Guy's latest blog entry in his blog entitled "How to change the World" all about an Audi R8 and how he had been loaned the car for a week in return ...well apparently nothing....but in reality some great coverage on his blog, lots of pictures and a discussion about what car he would get next....A Q7 it seems from the blog. Whilst I think the R8 is a great car and would love to own one it seems that the strategy of influencing influential bloggers has led to the point where any blogger however well respected and followed (like Guy) can be bought. Maybe

I am being too much of a purist but surely the point of a blog (especially one called "How to change the World") is to share your thoughts with your readers and the blogosphere generally and not to be influenced by outsiders in return for a cheap thrill - but then again maybe this is a sign that blogs really are becoming the newspapers of old where a few well placed complimentary favours are rewarded with complementary copy !

Challenger Agency Tactics

Came across an great article on Ad Age by Milan Martin of Gyro International in New York entitled "A Few Steps to Help Your Challenger Agency Thrive" which made some very interesting points - read the artciel in full to get the whole story but the main points were:
Be better suited to create big ideas
1) Be better suited to create big ideas
2) Don't hide your creative people
3) Offer skin in the game
4) Share the hatred
He concludes "All in all, it's business as usual for us challenger agencies. These are the things we do in good times, as well as bad, to show our clients that there is a better way. As we would tell our clients, from crisis comes innovation and change."
We couldn't agree more with all the points and would add - the ability to be agile, keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on and consistently deliver great Client service - I am constantly amazed how the bigger boys just don't do this for example how many big agencies practice what they try and preach about the importance of new media by writing blogs and setting up their social media profiles ???
The time seems right for poacher to become gamekeeper.

Ever wondered how often you "get busy" with someone ....or yourself !

I blogged in the past about weird social networks but then I saw this site nd things really can't get any weirder !
As Springwise describes it "Bedpost is an entirely personal application, password-protected from the prying eyes of others, and stresses that it offers absolutely no social networking features. Rather, it is a way for consumers to keep track of the sexual encounters they've had by logging in and entering some key details after each one. Users begin by creating a profile for the partner involved in their most recent encounter and then clicking on the calendar to indicate when the encounter happened. Then, they enter not just the time it happened, but also how long the encounter lasted, some descriptive tags and a star-based rating of the experience. The site then records all that information and presents it in a map of activity for the month on the user's dashboard. For a historical view, Bedpost tracks summary statistics including frequency, average rating, and totals for the month and year so far.
Hilariously "Solo sex" tracking is also available ! Sensibly (and I guess pretty integral) they have been very specific about privacy and data and instead of hiding the privacy policy in a link at the bottom of the page they have made it very clear on the home page. There is a point that all the data is kept by third party companies so they cannot absolutely guarantee that your closest darkest secrets don't end up in a skip or worst still in the inbox of your closest friends !