S60 Open to new features

Very cool song and a very cool video. If you are the maker of the video and would like to talk more about how to get your stuff seen internally in Nokia, give me an e-mail or post a comment.

Of course I'd also like to sign you up as an Ambassador.

Enjoy!

I mentioned in my last post that I'm in the process of reading "The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR". The book is well-written and makes several arguments that ring true for me. But a have a bone to pick:

In Chapter 6, "Advertising and Sales", after generally berating Coca Cola for creating poor advertising campaigns, the authors assert that even after five years and billions of dollars in advertising, consumers don't care for Coke over Pepsi. They claim, "If they run out of Coca-Cola, 99% percent of all cola drinkers would be happy to accept a Pepsi." This seemed strange to me.

Though not a cola purist myself, I've run into many people over the years who have been die-hard Coke fans and have insisted that Coke tasted better than Pepsi, and many others who take the opposite view. But hey, who am I to say? I checked for the source of the data. There was no footnote. Looked at the end of the chapter -- no endnotes. Looked at the back of the book. No bibliography even.

Now this seems strange to me. In a book laden with data about ad expenditures and financial figures and purporting to make a case for the relatively better Return on Investment of PR vs. Advertising, not a single study, 10K, or article is cited. I looked through some of the other books on my shelf. "Permission Marketing?" Nothing. "Grapevine"? None. Only "The Innovator's Dilemma", by Clayton M. Christensen, features endnotes.

Don't get me wrong. I still enjoy reading these books. Seth Godin, Al Ries, and others have great writing styles, and the things they say intuitively make sense. But no data? No wonder those of us in marketing get a bad rap...

I recently completed a business plan on a Word of Mouth marketing firm for class, so I have traditional, broadcast advertising on the brain. Everyone from Seth Godin to Guy Kawasaki has ripped broadcast, "interruption" based advertising in the last few years, and I'm with them 100%.

Last night I got my latest fix from a book called The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. The book does a great job of pointing out how many of the "great" ad campaigns of the past 10 years have actually been for products that have *fallen* in market and value share in during the promotion period. The examples given include Budweiser during the "Wassup" campaign, and Nissan during the "Barbie and Ken Doll in a car" campaign. Both were award winning campaigns, and both saw market and value share drop significantly during and after the ads ran.

This morning, at the breakfast table, I could help but feel a mirthful when I read NBC Gives Back Money to Advertisers.

I guess that media buyers typically get reimbursed if TV shows have ratings below what the networks promise at the beginning of the season. Reimbursement usually come in the form of extra ad time in the *next* season. In this
case NBC does not have confidence in next season's ratings (they fear the ratings will be too low again) so they are just opting to give media buyers their money back.

For some reason I see poetic justice in this.

The reports are in, the points have been tallied, and I'm please to announce we have 18 winners!

The following Ambassadors earned First Place prizes:
Alex Huf
James Robillos
Eric Brodeur
Jivan Kulkarni
Pat Perez
Jon Chua
H.A. Geisendorf
P Rivera Jimenez
Amir All Atabakhsh
Al Pavangkanan

And the following Ambassadors earned Second Place prizes!
Tony Stray
Steve Silver
Mike Macias
Jeb Brilliant
Jarrod Plevel
D Tuazon
Bryon Sommers
Sunil Goklani

More info on the what and when before the end of the week...Thanks to all who participated. Reading all those reports was both fun and enlightening.

Also coming to this space: We have approval for a national campaign starting in April (hopefully, the timing is TBD). We'll be a little more formal going forward (not just me handling the logistics) I'd like to get your feedback on what specifics will work, so stay tuned!