Category Archives: world news

sweet canadian dreams smilin’ jack…

I don’t care what colours your preferred political party are—Jack Layton was a great Canadian leader.  He was, and continues to be, an inspirational force.  Canadian pride is limitless.  It forms lumps in even the most temperate of Canadian throats.  Jack Layton knew this.  He felt this.

In the days before his death, he penned a letter to his beloved compatriots, showing his grit for life and his passion for his country.

For those of us that live in the shadow of cancer daily, every death from a cancer recurrence is a direct attack against our own survival odds.  Jack’s humble and selfless personalization and reflection to this fear in his letter moved me to tears.  He has known my fear.

“Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped.  So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.  To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.”

In his closing, Jack shared a truth.  A truth that underlines the basis of his personal victories—and can no longer be considered political agenda hoopla.

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.  All my very best, Jack Layton”

Good night smilin’ Jack.  Sweet dreams.

~uberscribbler

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press it, +1 it, share it, digg it, email it, post it, reddit, stumbleupon it, technorati it, tweet it, live it, kick it, punch it… exhausted yet?

Are you suffering from tech overload?

Stephanie Rosenbloom, of the New York Times writes, “One in every 4 1/2 minutes spent on the Web is spent on a social-networking site or blog. And last year the average visitor spent 66 percent more time on such sites than in 2009, when early adopters were already feeling digitally fatigued.

But any attempt by weary networkers to scale back is complicated by the proliferation of websites such as Klout and PeerIndex that are busily computing users’ influence scores to rank them in an online hierarchy.  (On Klout, each user is assigned a score from 1 to 100.  If you’re in the high teens, you’re average; if you’re in the 40s you have a healthy following; if you score 100—you’re Justin Bieber.)

Depending on the person you ask, this is either awesome or terrifying. In the future, brands and even potential employers could conceivably make decisions about you based on your score.”

Grab your second wind… we’re going in!

~uberscribbler

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Filed under Social Media, social strategist

there’s a word for marketing in social communities… it’s called SPAM

Nobody wants to be spammed when they’re kicking back enjoying some social time.  And really, it’s all about the social time, isn’t it?

The term “marketing” developed from an original meaning, which referred literally to going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.  The vast majority of people still have this definition attached to the word.  It’s dirty.  It’s obsolete.  If you’re marketing to me—you’re trying to sell me something—even if you try to disguise it by giving it a fancy name like, “conversation.”  It’s spam-eting.  Only the marketers, themselves, will try to convince you that marketing has evolved into something new—something grandiose and powerfully necessary in the social arena.  And hey, I’m all for evolution and re-inventing yourself, but let’s call a spade a spade.  The truth is, if these marketers can hang on to the word, then they get to woo and wow you with a lifetime of experience in the field—even if the majority of it was spent “going to market to buy or sell some goods or services,” and it all happened long before Mark Zuckerberg was wiping his own backside.  Don’t fall for it.

Being authentic is the complete underlying message in a successful social strategy.  Stop listening to marketers telling you to market your brand.  Stop marketing.

Start engaging.

Be your authentic awesome self/brand.  Become educated in the ways of social communities and their various channels and platforms.  Respectfully seduce the distinct and recognizable personality of all things social media.  Speak the language.  Show your awesomeness.  Shout your awesomeness from the mountaintops—without actually having to shout your awesomeness at all.  Engagement offers your brand organic growth—grassroots style.

“When you do awesome things, it makes people want to share the awesome.”  That’s what un-marketing guru, Scott Stratten says.  And, he’s right.  Awesome is catchy.

It’s a completely new concept—well, within the age of social media—and actually, it’s really just a new spin on old-school word-of-mouth advertising.  Don’t fall victim to marketers pitching a blind social media campaign based on tired and dried-out analytics from some other brand/industry—on over-written PowerPoint slides to boot.  Find the influencers, the strategists, the ENGAGERS.  These are the people to help you position your platform.  THEY are the ones that will draw out your awesomeness and bridge you to your audience—to your untapped social community potential.

Do you want to know how it works?  Below is the link to the awesomeness example of a brand (Magnum Ice Cream) who went with an influencer (blogger, Scott Stratten) for the Canadian launch of their product.  Through a relationship built without expectations—the brand showed their awesome, allowing Scott’s excitement to leak from his fingertips to his hungry and unsuspecting audience.  The subtleties of authentic promotion in social media are far more reaching then some questionable sponsored post—especially when coupled with the awesomeness of the relations of the brand.  How do I know?

Last week I’d never even heard of Magnum Ice Cream.  And today, well, today, I put them in your pocket.  That’s organic reach for you.   Scott was right.  Well played Magnum, well played indeed.

Check out Scott’s story here.

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Filed under Social Media, social strategist

Sketchy lines for the professionally social

Once upon a time, professional networking happened after hours while sipping an aperitif or while swinging your golf clubs at a charity event.  Putting together your professional image in the privacy of your personal space before shaking hands with prospects or clients will soon be a thing of the past.  Image used to be everything.  But now, with the explosion of Facebook, they’ve all seen you in a messy tube top holding both ends of a beer bong.

Facebook and other social media sites have blurred the lines between personal and professional.  It’s a strange tangle of ‘friends’ that you retain and it can be impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends.  Times have definitely changed—and the shift continues at a monumental rate.  For the new generations it will be all they know.  The idea of an archaic professional image (that some of us continue to cling to) will be as important to them as an eight-track cassette of The Bay City Rollers—or as necessary as a pen.

The surest way to maintain your individual professional image is to show it to everyone.  While that may take care of you as an individual, what does that mean for your business?  As you move your company out into the social stream, the course of your professional actions are now muddied in a personal dance with your consumers—while the whole world watches.  Gone are the days where you could interact one-to-one and if you gave a less than stellar customer service performance to one individual, then you had the opportunity to make amends before it snowballed out of control.  Negative publicity was word of mouth.  Now, your lurking prospects , customers, and stakeholders can see it with their own eyes.  You start with the out-of-control snowball—and you must work backward and quickly melt it back down to nothing.  You must make amends to the whole world—not just one unhappy customer.

The positive in this—and yes, there is one there—is that this new age of social networking will keep you honest.  It will tighten and hone your professional customer service techniques so that each customer or prospect you deal with will be given the same courtesy and attention to detail as the next.  It’s a win—win.  To help you bridge this gap will be a great social strategist (hi, nice to meet you) that will coach and navigate for you, gently pushing you forward, building your brand up in front of the social eyes of your consumers, and helping you to organize yourself in front of your waiting audience.  Make no mistake—it is important that you be there.  Everyone is there.  You’re already conspicuous with your absence.  If you don’t steer your social reputation, your unhappy customers, disgruntled employees and crazy ex-wife will.

Now, as an individual, you’re completely on your own.  It’s possible that nobody will be watching you.  Maybe the only interaction you will have is on your birthday when your mom posts the obligatory “happy birthday” on your Facebook wall.  I can’t help you with that.

~uberscribbler

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creative crowdsourcing for IT? …that’s what she said

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@newsdirector you made coffee come out of my nose. #ouch #facepalm #fail

On paper, having a billboard dynamically updated via twitter seems like a good idea.  In practice, you can accidentally make your news anchors look like rapists. #socialstrategyfail

Measure twice… cut once.

~uberscribbler

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Filed under Awesome, Social Media, world news

I hate when people steal my ideas before I think of them.

How Tom Sawyer invented Web 2.0

[posted by Knowlton Thomas on July 6, 2011, courtesy of techvibes.com—who, incidentally, likely felt the same way as me when he read this post by Tom Kuntz in the NY Times from 2007.]

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The Uber-friend Buzz: Ross Priddle

I spent a long time this morning on the FB profile of Ross Priddle—a long, LONG time.

You know when you see a train wreck and you just can’t look away?  It was something like that.  At first glance, I was experiencing a sort of mental hysteria at the rate of about 10 WTF’s per minute.  To the outside eye, Ross is an exhausting blur of abstract bits and bobs.  He’s the impossible and illegitimate love child of John Lennon and Walter Bishop. 

Dig a little deeper and you find that he is, in fact, the Mad Hatter of the visual art world.  He is an enigma of visual creativity.  The kind of enigma that starts an international movement—there are people studying the religion of Priddlism all over the world—right as I type. 

While I can’t confirm that he isn’t perpetually high, I can assure you that his mind runs off the beaten path with a sort of ping-pong precision.  His thoughts are usually unpredictably fun-loving and they come wrapped up in a tight little crusty contradiction.  I know, right?  I hope Mr. Spock never has to mind meld with Mr. Priddle.  It would spell certain d-o-o-m for the Vulcan mind.

Ross is one of those people who you would pay good money to spend 5 minutes in a room with—and he’s easy to find.  Go see his creative genius here, or just follow the Bob Dylan music to Alberta, look for the house that small children run past, and then loiter around outside.  Sooner or later, he’ll come out to lure you in with chocolate covered LSD and Jasmine Tea.

As it turns out, Ross Priddle fascinates me.  Not only does he maintain some 40+ blogs, he also single-handedly keeps the postal service in business with mail art and visual poetry—and pretties the entire industry up while he’s at it.  Before today, I had no idea that such an art existed.  There’s nothing like a little old-fashioned schoolin’ for a Friday morning. 

I’m on the path of Priddlism—my robe is in the mail. 

~uberscribbler

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The Uber-friend Buzz: Liane Carruthers

You might think that the Irish Leprechaun of lore is a withered old man who chases rainbows in gnarly buckled shoes—and you might be right.  But, let me tell you a little something about the Advertising Leprechaun—she has GREAT shoes and a healthy amount of Bieber-fever.

Liane Carruthers is no solitary creature.  And, might I add, there is nothing gnarly or withered about her.  As a matter of fact, Liane takes the GOLD in the Olympic events of smiling and plain ol’ gosh-dang cuteness—every year.  She is an energetic, infectious, and powerfully contagious woman who uses her powers for good.  Rarely seen angry, this sweet sprite-like Polkaroo chooses words like “miffed” to express her extreme displeasure and has the magical ability to spring-up from the shadows just when you need her the most—she can leap small buildings and balance herself endlessly on the points of her Jimmy Choos.    

This supermom and bargain-sniffing sleuth is everyone’s ideal BFF.  Sweet-tempered and sensitive with a generous trusting nature, she exploits the best of you.  Her doe-eyed innocence can camouflage her Leprechaun trickery—so tread cautiously.  She’s been known to be a fireball of mischief from time-to-time. (It’s always those smiley ones you have to watch out for.)  If it’s simply a vacation pal you’re after, Liane is always game for travelling to sunny destinations to get those “must have” beach-sand pedicures.  Special note to Mr. Clooney—it is purely coincidental that she happens to vacation in the same places as you.  Leprechauns don’t stalk.  It’s Irish law.

In her career, Liane is something of a media genius and has miles of experience in advertising and publishing to prove it.  She’s the ideal candidate for any media task you might have—big or small—and she’s also great at parties.  If you should have the opportunity to work with Liane in real life one day—as I have—take it. 

Just don’t rub her for luck.  She doesn’t always like that.

~uberscribbler

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The Uber-friend Buzz: Christopher Reilley

Did you know that poets don’t actually write with feathery quills anymore?  There goes the prose neighbourhood, right?  Truthfully, I don’t know much about poetry, nor do I appreciate it for the genuine and imaginative self-expression of the senses that it is.  Generally, I’m either in awe of poets or I mock them.

Christopher Reilley has grabbed my full attention of awe—mostly because he graduated from the Ringling Brothers Clown College in 1984—but also because he has a vividly wide repertoire of writing that is boundless, and also because he reads the encyclopaedia for fun.  In his writing, Reilley has something for everyone.  He’s eclectic, entertaining, family-oriented and refreshingly honest.  He doesn’t give “a big fat hairy damn about an awful lot of things,” especially your Facebook farm, fish, park or mafia.  Refreshing, right?

His poetry grabs you.  It punches you in the face—but only if he wants it to.  He is the Chuck Norris of the poetry world.  His words are woven with homage to a man who is a visionary of thought and who is rich in gifted expression.  His dedication as an author keeps him travelling a 300 mile radius around Boston for speaking engagements and readings—and of course he’s in demand.  Why wouldn’t he be?  He’s the author of “Grief Tattoos,” poems of rage and redemption, and also the up-coming e-book, “Slippery Friction,” a collection of erotic and love poems.  Join his FB fan page here and see what I’m talking about—or check out his blog here.

Not only is Reilley a talented writer, he’s also an illustrator, digital artist, print expert, gaming-geek, father, husband, and self-proclaimed BAD saxophone player—although I couldn’t find a YouTube channel with recordings to verify just how BAD he might be. 

After spending some time immersed in this poetry world of his, I was officially inspired to dabble anew.  Reilley, this one’s for you.

The Christopher Reilley Lim’rick

There once was a poet name Reilley,
Who embroiders his feelings not shyly.
He’s a goofball at heart,
An aficionado of art,
And his poems will make you all smiley.

 

Now you understand the whole mock-and-awe philosophy I have.  I’m mock—Reilley’s all awe.

~uberscribbler

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