Small Birthday celebration
In March adliterate turned six making it slightly younger than my oldest son and slightly older than my youngest. In fact I bought the domain name on the 4th March 2005 at the height of the excitement about Web 2.0 and in the early days of the plannersphere but before we had even heard of social media - Facebook existed but Twitter didn't. As part of a small celebration the lovely people at Imperica came in to do an interview about my middle child and about how the advertising business has changed over the past six years. I'm quite chuffed with it but for the profusion of expletives, which is how I fucking speak but looks fucking weird in print.
How postmodern is this?
So this is the link to the electronic flip book version of the newspaper version of the best of this blog. Talk about milking a bit of content some of which is six years old! But hell why not. Big thanks to newspaper club for making the review possible and Saatchi & Saatchi for creating the flipbook and putting it online.Adliterate in the flesh
A few years ago Paul Colman tried to sell a print out of this blog on Ebay. As far as I am aware no one was remotely interested. undaunted by this I have collected together the 'best' posts from adliterate over the past six years and had those lovely people at Newspaper Club print it. It's called adliterate review and there are 20 copies for anyone that wants one or needs to replace their cat litter. An email to me gets one until I run out. Be warned it's as turgid visually and verbally as the online version.
Now thats what I call co-creation 2
After the huge success of the co-authored Age of Conversation last year, it is back but bigger and better.
This year 237 authors from 15 countries have put their minds to the subject of 'why don't they get it', with each author contributing a chapter.
I have written a manifesto which highlights the real distinction for me between people that understand how things work in the Age of Conversation and those that don't. Lets say its all about control versus influence.
You can order your copy here. Remembering that just as last year all the profits from sales (thats $10 for every $12.50 e-book) go to the children's charity Variety. Last year AOC raised $15K for Variety so the aim is to beat that.
Here is the AOC2 author list in full.
Adrian Ho,
Aki Spicer,
Alex Henault,
Amy Jussel,
Andrew Odom,
Andy Nulman,
Andy Sernovitz,
Andy Whitlock,
Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Chris Brown, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Schawbel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Dave Davison, David Armano, David Berkowitz, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham,
Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, Gareth Kay,
Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins,
G. Kofi Annan,
G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne & Todd Cabral, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, John Herrington, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kristin Gorski, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman, Rachel Steiner, Sreeraj Menon, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen, Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw and James G. Lindberg, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood, Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tim Brunelle, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman, Uwe Hook, Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau, Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff, Yves Van Landeghem
Orwell - the father of blogging
I have long maintained that the father of blogging was George Orwell. As a prolific diarist and essayist he mastered the blog post form over half a century before the rest of us and before technology caught up with his output.
And now he has one courtesy of academics at the University of Westmister and Wordpress. Everyday they are posting his diary entries exactly 70 years after he penned them to Orwell Diaries.
At the moment he is rather obsessed with the weather and the blackberry season but aren't we all? The comments are worth a read as well.
For a more pokey Orwell get yourself a copy of the columns he wrote for Tribune during the Second World War here"
Three years young
Image courtesy of Below Zero.
Forgive this self indulgent post but I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that has helped adliterate stay the course for three years this month, whether commenting, linking or reading. Self evidently I couldn't do it without you.
In particular your comments that offer a thoughtfulness and intelligence often lacking in the original post! And at best they not only get the debate going but take us somewhere new and far more interesting.
Incidentally looking at the 2420 comments so far, the first was from Rob Mortimer as was virtually the last. That deserves the blogging equivalent of a carriage clock.
The adliterate address 2008
Greetings adliterate readers everywhere and a belated happy New Year.
I'm not in the habit of writing self referential posts but a little bit of an agenda for the year never goes amiss.
2008 marks the third year in the life of this website, starting as it did in March 2005. And my sincere hope is that I can continue to deliver a relatively frequent diet of new ideas, contrary thinking and unpalatable opinions.
It also sees me take up gainful employment once more as I am now Director of Strategy for Saatchi & Saatchi in the UK, so can once again trouble the ad industry from the inside.
Now conventional wisdom suggests this will see a decline in blogging activity. I really hope not. In fact, having had nine months outside the ad industry doing brand consultancy, I found it more difficult to generate content with all that free blogging time that when I was working in an agency.
I guess the easy bit about blogging is finding the time, the difficult bit is finding the ideas - because if you have an idea then the time finds itself.
And being surrounded by the world of brands and everyday brand problems is always more conducive to having ideas than being at home with the mac.
So fear not readers - the online journey goes onward.
And, of course, if there is anything that you'd like to see more or less of this year drop me a line.
Blogging goes mainstream
For a while now Todd Andrlick has been compiling a weekly ranking of Marketing blogs called the Power 150. Earlier this year he expanded it outside the US to create a Global Power 150, and for the first time blogs like Russell's, John's, Gavin's,James' and mine got included.
So authoritative is this ranking that Advertising Age has decided to adopt it as it's official benchmark for marketing blogs and bloggers (in part as a way of communicating how influential or not a bloggers voice is, when quoted editorially) and will host and run the Global Power 150.
What is exciting is that the industry is starting to take the blogosphere seriously and has, in return, given it a univeral standard to judge the potency of its individual voices.
One wonders whether the UK marketing and advertising press will start to support its indigenous maketing blogs in a similar fashion, rather than seeing them as a quirky and colourful fringe activity.
There are many rankings of marketing and ad blogs however the vast majority use one metric - usually linbound links (from Technorati) or traffic (from Alexa).
The authority of the Global Power 150 comes from the way it pulls together 4 different metrics - page rank (from Google), subscriptions (from Bloglines), links in (from Technorati) and a qualitative measure of frequent, relevant and quality content policed by Todd and in the future, one assumes, Ad Age.
Adliterate is back
That bridge shot from the Marin Headlands as the fog rushes into the bay. Image courtesy of John Curley
Been on my hols in the extraordinary and beautiful San Francisco. Clearly unable to post while in a California state of mind on account of feeling too damn nice to my fellow man. Now back in London and as cranky as hell so normal service will be resumed shortly.The curious case of the mushroom cloud
Peter Sellers in Kubrick's 1965 film, Dr Strangelove. Image from dvdbeaver.com.
A light little post for you after the death of planning ding dong.
Ever since I had my statcounter installed I have been able to tell the proportion of people coming from different countries. On the average day about 40% of my visitors are from the UK, 40% the US and 20% from the rest of the world.
But one of the other advantages of Stat Counter is you can tell whether a visitor has come directly to you or via another site. Every day around 10% of these US visitors come from Google Images and, rather worryingly, they are searching for one thing.... mushroom clouds.
A while ago I wrote a post about the ethics of sales promotions aimed at children.
To illustrate it I used a picture of a mushroon cloud because it summed up perfectly the meltdown my three year old had over a Cars movie promotion on packs of Shreddies.
It's a rather good image as it happens - high res' and with a cheeky signature from an airman who presumably felt quite chipper about destroying Nagasaki and the decades of ill health and birth defects to come for those who survived the blast.
But the weird thing is that 'my' mushroom cloud now comes up forth on google images - with no reference to the original source. Hence the bus loads of American school kids trucking up to adliterate to bring their Weapons of Mass Destruction end-of-semester project to life.
What they make of adliterate and whether it is converting a generation of American youngsters into wannabe planners we will only know when Miami Ad School looks at its 2012 entry applications.
But a final twist was provided by someone who emailed me recently wishing to use the image on a DVD cover and asking if I knew who owned the rights. Because I was the square root of no use at all he then contacted the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque.
Turns out that Nagasaki is open source - so download away children of America.