It’s Friday and everybody is grumbling about work–how much of it they have to do, how much they hate doing it, or how much they really need some so they can pay the bills. Even if you love the gig you’ve got now, chances are you’ve had one (or five) that have sucked. Hard.

Naturally, if you’ve had a job like that, you have also fantasized about quitting that job in some kind of fantastic way. No wonder the story about Steven Slater, the put-upon JetBlue employee who quit by calling a passenger a naughty name, grabbing a beer, and escaping down the emergency slide, became such a working-class hero tale. And of course, when one meme goes viral, dozens of copycats are bound to follow, which led to this heartwarming story: a pretty young girl, after being harassed by her evil boss, quits by writing snarky comments on a dry erase board, photographing them, and emailing them to the entire company.

The interwebs FLOCKED to this unknown Jenny’s banner. She was a hero. Until we realized that the story was FAKE. A hoax, put together by the same comedy website that did that story about Donald Trump and the $10,000 tip. Her name isn’t even Jenny! It’s Elyse!

Rats. No cute girls quitting spectacularly. No stickin’ it to The Man. Just a meme. Disappointing, but no big deal, right? Right.

Unless you’re in social media marketing. In which case, you are now going to have to try to convince the suits above you that there is no formula for a viral video. At least with the Old Spice commercials, they probably noticed that the people responsible put a LOT of work into it. But with “Jenny,” all they had was a whiteboard and a pretty girl! That’s gotta be cheap and easy, right? So go make us a viral video! Community manager Evan Hamilton explains why this is going to be a major pain in the ass for social media workers everywhere: it’s going to re-convince executives that there is a viral “button.”

Good luck proving to your clients and executives that the only way to get real buzz about your brand is to put in the real effort.

Everybody knows this job market is one of the worst since the Great Depression. I’m not going to harp on about that…it’s freaking depressing. Everybody knows that the current generation of 20-somethings is full of existential angst, has a short attention span, and has no idea where it’s going. All the pundits are saying, “Kids today, blah blah blah, get off my lawn.” The kids themselves are freaking out over the fact that they’re having to live in their parents’ basements while they hunt for a job—any job—and try to pay off some of their student loans. Parents freak out over having to support their kids when they themselves are already stretching every dollar.

I know. I’m one of those kids. Moved home. Having to defer my student loans. Repeatedly. Biting my nails and arguing with my folks about money, jobs, and who does the dishes. And it sucks. It really sucks, not knowing what’s coming next. I’ve always hated uncertainty of any kind and it’s worse this time, because there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. No more “when I go back to school in the fall” or “when I graduate,” because I’m done with school. No more “when I save up some money” because that’s probably not going to happen. For a long time.

It’s really easy to get depressed about…well…everything. But I came across this article on an education blog the other day with a really thought-provoking title: “Dancing Towards Uncertainty.” The author, Josh Barkey, a teacher, describes a confused student:

“I think Brandon is confused because he is living in a confused world. Like most young people, Brandon is searching for a passion equal to the raging tornado of yearnings that perpetually spins inside him. Yet he knows that as a privileged member of a privileged class he is gifted with a lot of potential and wants some meaningful way to live it out, but what he sees with his razor-sharp mind is a collapsing house of cards…Brandon is left wondering why he has bothered to conquer the academic mountain in the first place. He wants his life to matter, and is told that the way to do that is only to keep on climbing.”

Barkey goes on to theorize that perhaps our current obsession with security, with success, with finding that perfect, meaningful, lucrative path as quickly as possible, is what is keeping us in the dark. Perhaps we are too focused on looking for one CERTAIN thing, and as a result, we are missing out on countless wonderful opportunities.

“I…am tired of the coldly constructed educational approach that demands a clear answer to every question. I believe that before growth can happen there has to be a period of doubt and uncertainty. Certainty kills innovation, and while I need a degree of certainty in the surgeon poking around in my brain or the pilot flying my airplane, I also hope that somewhere along the line they have learned how to be creative. When problems develop for which they have been provided no textbook answer, I need them to be able to step back, take a breath, and lose themselves in the dance of the moment.”

By insisting on certainty, we are killing innovation. If we could bring ourselves to calm down and explore the uncertainty for a while, perhaps we can discover something new. Penicillin was the result of moldy bread, and microwave ovens were the result of melted chocolate in a researcher’s pocket. After all, research has shown that the main distinguishing characteristic between lucky people and their less fortunate counterparts is being observant. Yep, just being able to spot an opportunity.

So maybe we should all just relax and enjoy the dance.

I was going to write a snarky post about this Onion article and how I’m totally sick of the tired old copy about how “it’s a new way to connect in meaningful ways! Content! Connect! Blah blah blah!” and how I would like one of these new social network upstarts that claim to be revolutionary and provide real-world results to do something that actually translates to the real world…

But then I saw this HILARIOUS book trailer for Meg Cabot’s new novel, Insatiable, and my snarky mood vanished! The trailer manages to describe the plot of the novel while making fun of itself and the genre of teen-hormone-fueled vampire fiction spawned by Stephenie Meyer and her (bloodcurdlingly awful) Twilight Saga. This trailer does two HUGELY AWESOME things for me:

1. It makes me want to read the book. And I haven’t read a Meg Cabot book in 10 years (sorry Meg, I burned out on Princess Diaries).

2. It makes me believe that publishing is not dead. People will want to read this book. They will buy it. Hardcover, paperback, Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Nook, and every other format you can think of. They will buy it. They will read it. And they will want sequels.

So what’s the problem? Why are you worried?

Because so few people are seeing them and even fewer books are using them. If publishers spent more time and energy creating deliciously exciting, funny, enticing things like this, and empowering their authors to do projects like Cabot’s crowd-sourced zombie-couture Fashionably Undead audiobook (co-written by the author and 50 of her Twitter followers, for BBC Audio), instead of having conference after conference bewailing the end of the industry as we know it, they’d be doing just fine. Readers would be excited and engaged, and above all, they’d KNOW about the fabulous books being written ALL THE TIME instead of drooling endlessly over Robert Pattinson fansites.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, some FANTASTIC transmedia projects, book trailers, and crowd-sourced book clubs:

It’s a Book! Trailer, explaining the difference between books in dead-tree vs. ebook form.

Neil Gaiman’s Instructions trailer, narrated by the author.

Meg Cabot’s magnificently insightful blog entry about her Insatiable trailer.

Meg Cabot’s celebratory online Dracula reading group, working up excitement for the new book, complete with prizes!

My personal favorite, the #1b1t discussion group, the first Twitter-wide book club, currently reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, started by Jeff Howe, the inventer of the term “crowdsourcing.”

Hear that, publishers? Quit sending your people to nonsense conferences and quit writing articles about how the industry is dying and DO SOMETHING TO SAVE IT.

Or get Zach Galifinakis to be in your book trailer.

I’m going to repost something I put on my personal Tumblr…I’ve been trying experiments with my personal (not affiliated with Nostrum) blogs to see which I liked better, Tumblr or Wordpress or what, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far, for my needs as an individual blogger. For Nostrum and our purposes as a multi-writer blog, I definitely like our current system of a WordPress blog with all of us writing and a Twitter feed for the little spur-of-the-moment things. For individuals, however, I’m thinking Tumblr will come to play an increasingly useful role, although for the moment the point is kind of moot since so few of my friends are on the site!

Repost starts now:

“Okay, I’ve tried it. I’ve decided to stop linking my Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr feeds. It’s waaaay too crowded. What feels like a totally normal amount of communication on Twitter seems excessive (embarrassingly excessive) on Tumblr, and just AWFUL on Facebook. Some people may be all about the integration and the one-stop-shop publishing, but it seems to me to be completely redundant. Why would a reader go to 3-10 different platforms to read the same information? A little cross promotion to alert followers form different venues that one platform has been updated is one thing…the same thing all over is just lazy.

I guess this makes sense considering what I use each service for. Wordpress is for really long, drawn-out, detailed posts. Tumblr is for medium-sized notes. Facebook is for communicating ONLY with people I know in real life. Twitter is for stream of consciousness posting of things I find interesting, fan-girl worship of authors and comedians, and Etsy/craft madness. It comes as no surprise to me that Twitter is still the one I like best. Call it a symptom of modern ADD or whatever you like, but I like being able to catalog the things that strike my fancy at a particular moment. Honestly, I sometimes find it the most useful to go back and read what the hell I was thinking about this morning at 10am.”

In essence, what I’ve discovered (I always knew it intellectually but actually remembering NOT TO DO IT is a totally different thing) is that publishing the same content across every single one of your platforms is a BAD IDEA. Cross promotion is good and useful, but the same content on every site makes it pointless for a user/follower/friend to go to more than one platform, and therefore you’re likely to cause your readers to miss something when you DO post something new on one site and not the others. In other words, keep it fresh. Don’t be redundant.

I’m not going to be bitter about the fact that I’m not going to SXSW this year. Or that I haven’t been before. Ever. (sob)

But just in case I ever DO get to go, and for the benefit of all the lucky SOBs who ARE going, I want to find out what the best SXSW-targeted apps are.

So far there are the obvious ones like Foursquare (they’ve even got special badges ready), location-based stuff on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Then there are these:

PlanCast

Hot Potato

Anybody know any other ones? Tell me which ones you like (or hate) and why.

Also, keep in mind the How Not to Be a Douchebag at SXSW panel if you’re unsure of what to do. And here are some parties and events on the don’t miss list. Please go to them and blog about them so I can live vicariously through you! Put links in the comment section (with explanations please) or tweet them!

Following up on Mike’s previous post about Google Buzz, I totally get the furor about it. The service definitely needs work, and Google has definitely made a whole lot of big mistakes.

But hey, it’s new. That’s the downside of a service being released by such a huge, publicly visible company. Twitter and Facebook were NOT famous when they were released. They weren’t globally famous for years after they were founded. They had plenty of time to make changes, fixes, and tweaks based on quiet user feedback. Google Buzz had the disadvantage of going very public, very quickly. It wasn’t finished. And it got slammed. Now I wonder whether Google will have enough time to fix it and realize its potential before it gets laughed out of existence.

I think it would be nice if Buzz went back to beta. Google definitely needs more time to tweak it, and they need a setting to get real constructive criticism instead of media snarking. I still think the service has a lot of potential. I like Pete Cashmore’s take on it. If you insist on using an analogy to define Buzz, try this one. Think of Facebook as the local bar, where you go to hang out with your friends, play some games, and just shoot the breeze. Think of Twitter as the village square where you get all the news and have public conversations. It’s a public forum. Then you have Buzz, which SHOULD eventually become a place to focus detailed conversations on IDEAS. Not news, not people, not “what are you doing” or those awesome photos you took on your trip to Cabo this spring, man. It’s a platform to talk about content and have major brainstorming sessions about concepts and projects.

If Facebook is the local bar and Twitter is the town square, Google Buzz (I hope) will be the local college campus.

I’ve said before that I like Google Wave as a productivity tool–an easy way to keep work projects neat, tidy, and collaborative at the office. I don’t find much utility for connecting with friends about random things. It’s a business thing, and I like it that way. I think Buzz will end up being sort of similar in market, although I hope more concept-oriented and less business-y.

If it lasts that long.

To be completely honest, this should probably be Part 1.5. This isn’t actually a blog (it’s a shopping site, I think) and I don’t actually know what they’re saying because it’s all in Dutch. I don’t speak Dutch. However, I think the animation on this site is absolutely gorgeous. Click on the site and just wait and watch. The animation will start in a second. Really fantastic, I promise. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

http://producten.hema.nl/

Oh my God, did you click? Did you watch? It’s amazing, RIGHT? I have no idea exactly what the little pop-up at the end is advertising, but I just LOVE this concept. It’s like an online Rube Goldberg project. It’s fun, engaging, and visually beautiful. It doesn’t hurt that it shows off the technical expertise of the site builders, as well as the fun aesthetic of the people who own it. I think business would be a LOT more fun if everybody incorporated this kind of sense of humor and attention to detail.

On an only-vaguely-related note, anybody who speaks Dutch want to tell me what the site is ABOUT?

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT want to get involved in a political debate and I am making NO statement about any of these candidates. I just want to know what people think of this ad by Carly Fiorina for Senate. Is this the most bizarre campaign ad you’ve ever seen or did I eat some bad shellfish?

Zombie Wolf in Sheep\’s Clothing

I think I’m going to do a series on blogs I like. Some of them might not seem like they have much to do with media or advertising at first glance, but stick with me. I promise they’ll be relevant.

For Part I in this series of Blogs I Like, I’m going to start with Put This On. Their tagline, “How to dress like a grownup,” pretty well says it all. This is a style blog aimed at men, and probably most resonant with guys in the business world who want to look professional, polished, and modern, without looking like a) their dads, b) Steve Urkel, or c) douchebags. It’s a fine line.

Not Good

Good

Obviously it’s a good idea to dress well if you are attempting to make a business deal or get a job or impress people in any way. But it is also a good idea to keep things simple and classy, which is where Put This On comes in. In addition to giving sound style advice (and trust me, gentlemen, I am a GIRL and, as such, I am fully qualified to expound on what looks good on guys), the blog promotes smaller clothiers, vintage shops, and other style blogs. They are also working on videos about specific style subjects, though to date they have only completed one (with excellent production values–Denim).  The thing I really like about this blog is that they practice what they preach–they keep the aesthetics of their site clean, polished, and classy, while providing exceptional content.

And NOW we get to my point about this site. Quality content, sound advice, beautiful aesthetics, and generous cross-promotion. This is the model all websites should adopt. Take heed, media folk. Take heed, and Put This On.

CBS is beginning to head down an interesting path in its ad placement for the SuperBowl. They have turned down two “gay-themed” ads so far: one is from male-male oriented dating site ManCrunch.com and the other is from web-hosting service GoDaddy.com. The ManCrunch ad shows two men watching a football game (presumably the SuperBowl) and munching chips. Their hands touch as they both reach for a crisp, and suddenly they can’t hold back any longer–they smooch! The GoDaddy ad is more surprising…it does feature a flamboyant ex-football star, but it also features women in lingerie. Doesn’t that usually get any and all content a free pass? (It does for American Apparel)

In any case, both ads were rejected on the grounds that they don’t meet CBS’s content standards for the SuperBowl and they might offend people. For ManCrunch, the broadcasting company went one further and claimed that they couldn’t verify the firm’s credit (the rejection letter is up on Scribd as well as being reproduced on the Mashable article). However, it DOES look like they’re going to air the Tim Tebow pro-life ad, which is guaranteed to offend at least some people…which people is it okay to offend, and which have to be kept happy? CBS is sending a pretty clear message about what audience bracket they value, which is fine–First Amendment and all that. But still, what about all the gay-friendly sports fans? Seems like a bit of a business mistake to alienate such a vocal consumer group…

Thoughts?

Sounds easy enough, right? We’re all used to hearing the saying “the customer is always right.” It’s common sense, isn’t it?

Apparently not.

It’s old hat at this point to toss around Zappos as an example of a good business model. If you’ve read even one marketing or business magazine in the last few years, you’ve probably heard all about their willingness to embrace social media and their fun, kooky office culture. Which is great. That explains why their employees love it, and therefore why the company reposes such trust in its employees.

But why do the customers love it? Well, because of the fact that the business trusts its employees and encourages its call center workers to do things like spend hours on the phone with a customer to make sure his or her question gets answered, or send a thank you note and flowers, or even direct a customer to a rival site if Zappos.com is out of stock on a particular item. The employees are truly invested in helping the client get what he or she needs and wants, without the usual customer service nastiness and disinterest. A positive experience generates positive buzz. Pure and simple. Any press may be good press because it gets you air time, but positive buzz is the thing that translates into respect and loyalty from both employees and consumers. In the current downward-trending climate, every company should be doing whatever it can to hold on to both.

In other words, trust your employees. Respect your consumers. Both will reward you for it.

For more details on Zappos’s business model, check out this Business Week article.

Alright, I’ve had my winter vacation, I’ve seen the movie, and I’ve finished the game. I liked the movie a whole bunch. A WHOLE BUNCH. Lots of fun, witty banter, and all the things one would hope for in a collaboration between Robert Downey Jr. and, well, anybody. Mark Strong was also enjoyably lugubrious and Rachel McAdams was cute.

The ending of the game? Not so much. The answer to the last code was guessable from the trailers and the reward was a video response from Inspector Lestrade hinting that Scotland Yard would be calling on Holmes and Watson in the future for help with the mysterious Prof. Moriarty. Rumor has it that Brad Pitt might be taking on the chalk-dusted jacket, but I would rather see Colin Farrell.

So, to sum up: fun game, great movie, slightly lame ending. All with impeccable production values.

And not one deerstalker in sight (thankfully).

***DISCLAIMER: Let me just say, before I get into the actual post, that I love Sherlock Holmes. And mysteries requiring deductive reasoning. And witty banter. And steampunk. But most of all, I LUURRRVE Robert Downey Jr. So beware of fangirlishness popping up in this post.***

We at Nostrum have been fiddling around with augmented reality stuff for a while now, and as part of that, I’ve been researching film promotions. Now, as I warned above, I was already excited for Guy Ritchie’s upcoming reboot of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, and the delightfully lugubrious Mark Strong. So when Robert (Nostrum’s Robert, not Iron Man Robert) asked me to check out a promotional game for the film, I was happy to oblige and immediately hopped over to 221b.sh. I landed on a nicely designed page depicting a nice darkly luminous Dickensian-looking London…and a ridiculously long load time. The long load time, combined with the huge “Facebook Connect” button, led me to believe that the game was going to be some lame Facebook game where you get two choices: 1. run away or 2. “fight.” And by fight, they mean hit a button and get a message that says “you just fought and won 20 gold coins!”

I was therefore quite pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a real, participatory game. It’s kind of like the scavenger hunt games that were set up leading up to The Dark Knight, and apparently, for Iron Man 2 (why didn’t I hear about that one??), except the evidence is all in one place. You get assigned a case by Scotland Yard and then put together the evidence to solve it. And here’s the kicker–you need two people to play (ideally). One plays as Holmes and the other plays as Watson, and they each get different evidence and have to consult in order to solve the mystery. Of course, you can play both ends yourself if you’re like me and don’t feel like waiting for somebody else to figure it out. It has all the usual stuff, like automatic status updates and so forth to spread the word, but it’s not a Facebook game.

The mechanics of the game itself are well-done, except that they load too slowly. You watch a video from Scotland Yard or a victim setting up the mystery, and then you read police reports, newspaper clippings, mysterious letters, and so forth, to piece together what’s going on. Then you do some more creative things like chasing down burglars, breaking into buildings, exploring hideouts, and interrogating witnesses. It incorporates strategy games, timed games, hidden object games, and logic games all in one, which is what makes it more fun (and way more participatory) than your average Facebook game. Plus it hints at the premise underlying the plot of the film without giving anything away or relying on teasers like Sherlock Holmes wallpaper or AIM icons (which nobody cares about). In short, it’s fun, it’s intriguing, and it’s well-done.

And it’s ongoing until the film comes out on Christmas Day. There’s a new chapter every Monday. Ok, Holmes, now go find your Watson and get sleuthing.

Alright, I think I managed to avoid too much fangirl blather. What do you say?

The next film in the Twilight series came out at midnight. And it’s already grossing off the charts.
The thing that eludes me is that there’s been little to no branding for the film (that I’ve seen) and it’s still the most popular thing EVARRRRR (according to my 16-year-old sister). At this point I can only chalk it up to the unholy power of teenage girls. Someone please enlighten me.

All I know is that I will be avoiding the movie theater like The Plague, and hiding under my bed, with a stake in one hand and a big plate of garlic bread in the other.

We’ve all heard the case studies (mostly done in-house) touting @comcastcares as the future of customer service. How it would change the negative image of cable companies…how Comcast customers wouldn’t be so cranky.

It hasn’t worked so far. A few individuals got good service, but were still annoyed. Not ever having been a Comcast customer, I can’t judge too much.

But other cable companies have jumped on the bandwagon as well. And that’s what I do have experience with–I recently canceled my account with Charter Cable. And they didn’t like it, not one little bit.

Here’s the back story–I was moving out of my apartment and didn’t want to transfer my account to my new place. I called May 17th and arranged to have my account stopped on June 10th. All good. I moved out of my apartment at the very end of June, all paid up and good to go. I returned my equipment. Good. I thought I was all done with Charter. Peachy.

So imagine my surprise when I got a call in November. From a collection agency. Saying I owed Charter $130. BIG SURPRISE. So I called Charter customer service and got no help. They were very polite and looked up my account. And they saw that I had paid out and closed the account (I had actually overpaid) but they couldn’t do anything. I was going to have to drive forty miles to the local office and beg them to call off the credit agency and fix my credit score. I was NOT HAPPY.

Naturally, in order to relieve my feelings, I took to the web and made some very angry Tweets and went off to bed. After which, cue Surprise Number Two: when I woke up, I found an @reply from @Umatter2ChrtrG asking if he could help. I explained my situation to him in both tweet and email form, and he connected me with @Umatter2Chtr2. A couple hours later, I got a phone call from @Umatter2Chtr2 (aka Josh). He listened, asked me to wait while he called the billing department, and called me back shortly with the news that the bill had been reversed, the money I overpaid was on its way, and the problem hadn’t even been put on my credit record.

Score. The problem got fixed. After a lot of freaking out on my part.
So, many thanks to Josh at Charter for his help. But that doesn’t negate the months of screw-ups while I was a Charter customer. If all the customer service I received had been that good, I’d still be one.

Conclusion: having a social media VIP line won’t keep your customers from hating you if all the rest of your customer service is terrible. Customer service and product quality should be the priorities, not afterthoughts and Band-Aids.

This is just a short post to say:

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!! You can now report spammers on Twitter with just a click–in the actions tab on any profile you can report the profile as spam! YAAAAAY!!

The details are available on the official Twitter blog. On the one hand, ABOUT FREAKING TIME! On the other hand,

YAAAAAAAAAAY!!

Now Graham Spam Spam Spam Chapman can finally have his breakfast without spam.

This Mashable compilation of hilarious Twitter spoofs brought me back all the way to my very first blog post with Nostrum, way back in March.

The Jon Stewart one is still my favorite…and I still like Twitter.

Major League sports have failed again.

The NBA has followed in the footsteps of the NFL and the SEC and banned athletes from using social media during events. From 45 minutes before the event until they’ve finished their team responsibilities, team-related personnel are not allowed to use ANY KIND OF SOCIAL MEDIA.

I’ve been harping on what a bad idea this is for AGES, so I won’t rant about it again today…all I have to say is:

SHAQ AIN’T GONNA LIKE THIS.

When all else fails, go back to your roots.

There’s been a lot of talk about what Facebook is intending to do with Facebook Lite. Is it intended to allow users in countries with sporadic internet connectivity to access Facebook? Is it intended to compete with Twitter? Probably yes to both. But that’s not why I like it.

*I* like Facebook Lite because it removes distractions like apps, notifications, and “Highlights” (which I always found particularly obnoxious) and scales Facebook back to the way it looked five years ago, when I was a freshman in college. Ah, it was a simpler time. Maybe not so flashy-looking, not so completely-involved-in-every-moment-of-your-life…but nice. Easy to navigate. Clean. If only it were still open to users with a valid .edu email address, it’d be just like the good ol’ days.

Yes, that’s right. The reason I like Facebook Lite is nostalgia. Pure and simple. Incidentally, Tanya, I always liked Keropi.
Anyway, tangled, incoherent, 5pm on Friday waffle aside, the point is that I think it’s a great idea for a company that has overexposed itself to go back to its roots, its one core product, and start fresh.

I came across this post on Slashdot and it just really pissed me off. Reverb Communications’ idea of good social media practice is to hire a team of interns to spam the iTunes store with fake positive reviews of its clients’ apps. Be prepared, because I’m going to rant a little…

THIS is EXACTLY why people get suspicious of marketers using social media! Consumers are afraid of companies co-opting what was meant to be an authentic, altruistic community for mercenary ends. By contrast, they don’t mind if companies (like Threadless and Zappos) use social space to have real conversations and provide real, useful content…so why is it so hard for companies to understand that, to make the best of the social space, you need to participate in good faith?

/rant.

Seriously, when you (the reader) find out a company employs tactics like that, does it make you reluctant to purchase from them, or is it just me?