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Recently I was chatting with a client about the concepts described in the recent “Think Like A Cannon” post, and in the course of my 2.0 bloviation about engagement, transparency, interaction, community, etc., I also touched on how “it’s okay to lose some control of the brand; to put some faith into consumers to re-mix some of the brand’s elements.” 

That caught him short.  “What do you mean by ‘re-mixing the brand?’” he asked.  “Sounds weird.”

Luckily, I’ve got a ready answer for this one.  I wear it under my street clothes.  It’s the tee-shirt pictured with this blog post (and you can order it yourself).

Look closely: it’s an Ikea-style diagram that describes how-to build a Viking longboat.  Note the “logo” of the manufacturer, a.k.a., “Vikea.”

Yes, this is a blatant rip-off of Ikea.  Yes, I am sure Ikea would be well within its rights to issue a Cease & Desist Order.  But, why would they? 

The iconic furniture-maker would be better served if this tee became a monster hit; it’s a whimsical play on their brand that, a) does no harm, b) serves as a hip, mobile commercial to pedestrians who see it on the street, and c) reminds the folks who see it that Ikea makes complex stuff simple.

Ikeas should not only embrace such brand remixing, it really ought to sponsor a contest at Threadless to solicit more of the same.  This brilliant “In Case Of Zombies” tee could have easily been branded in an Ikea-ish way.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing my “Vikea” tee-shirt at the time of the conversation with my client … how cool would it have been to rip open my dress shirt, Superman-style?!

Posted by Todd Defren at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was recently interviewed over at the Buzz Bin, and one of their questions got me thinking a bit more.  The question was, “What are your thoughts of the concept ‘participation is marketing?’”   My answer: “I totally agree. Speaking as a consumer, when I notice that a company takes an active, helpful role in community interactions, I am impressed and more favorably inclined to their brand.”

I decided to do a quick spot check on one major brand.  If I could identify a situation in which it was obvious that they benefit by participating with engaged consumers, would they already be doing so?

I chose BMW at random.  Here was the process…

Google search on “BMW” brought up organic search result #8: AutoBlog.  Specifically, “Posts from the BMW Category at AutoBlog.” 

(Please note how wondrous, surprising & cool it is that a blog pops up in the first 10 Google search results for a major brand.)

Next: regardless of its impressive organic search ranking, is AutoBlog worth paying attention to?  Let’s check Technorati.  “There are 246,930 links to this URL.”  (Authority 4,154, rank 146).  Pretty darn good.

What’s the most recent post in the BMW category at AutoBlog?  A May 24 “spy shot” (and article) regarding the BMW 1–Series Coupe.  The article has 11 comments, and (as of this writing), 14 inbound blog links.  Not a vast wave of consumer interaction, but – given AutoBlog’s overall site traffic and also the fact that the post is just a day old – it’s not trivial volume, either.  (A quick scan of some of the other BMW postings at AutoBlog showed a fairly consistent amount of user interaction.) 

Clearly there is an active community congregating at AutoBlog’s BMW site, and while at first glance the number of active users is relatively small, we can extrapolate from the site’s outsized Google & T’rati rankings that anyone searching for “BMW” on the web is going to quickly find this site.

Thus the opportunity.  I read through several posts and comments, and did not note anyone from BMW participating in this community.  How cool would it be for these brand enthusiasts to interface directly with a BMW representative on a regular basis?  Pretty cool.  And more importantly, it would show visitors to the highly-trafficked blog that BMW truly cared about its customers and prospective buyers.

I recognize that there are challenges for any company to scale and train and monitor a group of “community managers” that could serve as adjuncts to the marketing group.  But what’s worth doing that isn’t going to be a challenge?

I also acknowledge that this was an unscientific approach.  For all I know, BMW is engaging “big-time” in other parts of the blogosphere.  They might even be represented in deeper sections of the AutoBlog. 

The “failure,” in my opinion, is that BMW is not taking advantage of this easily-recognized opportunity to engage, consistently, in a place that is so prominently impacting their brand, via AutoBlog’s high placement in a quickie Google search on the term “BMW.” 

If you’re not paying attention to what’s being said about your brand within the Top 10 search results, how “engaged” can you claim to be?

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Jeneane Sessum recently published a cheeky quiz for evaluating a prospective “Social Media Partner.”  Mike Manuel also recently tackled this subject, at a high level, as has Tom Foremski.

I’ll take the middle road (if for no other reason than that Jeneane is funnier than me, Mike is smarter, and Tom’s far more hip – but don’t tell them I said so).

Borrowing liberally from the concepts Jeneane raised, I think it’s worthwhile to consider what’s truly important when a client wants to ensure that their prospective PR agency “gets it.” 

Here’s my version of Jeneane’s Social Media Partner Quiz…  Feel free to add it to your Agency RFP…

1. Please provide the links to any and all blogs maintained by agency staff.  How old is your oldest agency-affiliated blog?
2. Please provide links to any posts that your staff bloggers feel best represent their style and content.
3. What are the top 3 blogs in our industry?  Does anyone who works at your agency regularly monitor or (better yet) participate in these blogs?  Would that staffer work on our account?  What would these “top 3 bloggers” say about your staff member(s), if asked?
4. Are any of the blogs written by your staff among the Technorati Top 10,000?  (Alternately, “How would you rate your staff-written blogs within the PR blogosphere: are they respected?  How would you quantify this?”)
5. What tools are you using to monitor conversations in the blogosphere?  How often are you monitoring (e.g., as often as you monitor the mainstream media)?
6. What percentage of your staff use RSS?  (What is RSS?)
7. How has your agency used social media tools in campaigns for clients?  What tools were used?  What was the result?  In retrospect, how might you have handled it differently?  Please include links.
8. What social media tools/sites do you use in your everyday life?  Can you also name a few that you’re interested in (why are you interested?), but not currently using or viewing?
9. What mistakes have you made in the Social Media arena?
10. What are some of your favorite books about Social Media concepts? 

Please note that since there can be no self-respecting, self-described experts in a sphere as young as Social Media, there are no “right” answers to a quiz like this one.  Ultimately you want someone who can answer such questions lucidly and confidently – but not too confidently.  (If they shrug their shoulders a fair amount, that’s not such a bad thing.) 

You don’t need to be a “T’rati Top 5,000” blogger to understand how to connect with people (after all, there are precious few PR bloggers in this lofty zone).  You don’t need 100% of agency staffers to be hardcore RSS users to entrust blog monitoring to your PR team.  Mostly you need to hire somone who respects the medium; someone who already participates in a full-blooded way.  You want someone who is in awe of it but also embraces it; someone who is scared witless and yet is totally energized by Social Media’s possibilities and pitfalls.

Posted by Todd Defren at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

An interesting conversation is slowly starting from the WSJ article this week that discussed “blogola” – that’s the funky new term for the emerging practice of giving free stuff (from tote bags to travel junkets) to bloggers, in return for a sympathetic review.

It was bound to happen.  It happens with every emerging media channel.  Radio DJs were bribed to play new records on heavy rotations.  Journalists have always been wooed with whispered promises of “access” to newsmakers & celebrities. 

Inevitably, ethics guidelines spring up to dash such behaviors.  But it will be harder to police such activities in the blogosphere.

The difference is the complete lack of organization. 

It makes perfect sense for Gawker Media to have “some sort of policy” about blogola: Gawker maintains a network of “professional” blogs; it is centrally owned and controlled.  The Gawker writers are basically journalists – cheekier-than-thou, sure, but still bound to ethical guidelines.

But 99% of today’s bloggers are essentially hobbyists.  Passionate, evangelical, funny, and maybe even making some decent money at it – but they are still freelancing.  No one owns them.  No one tells them what to do.  The only ethical guidelines they need to adhere to are the ones that their own mommies taught them.

This is a particularly complex issue.  As the WSJ stated, “blogs are important because they often serve as idea farms for professional reporters.” 

Marketers thus have an opportunity to “influence the influencers of the influencers” … and, in this nascent period, such bloggers are probably going to be pretty easy to impress.  Who wouldn’t love to get a free camera, or an all-expenses-paid trip to meet a Hollywood star, or to make some extra cash??

By the way, is it so bad?  It’s hard for me to begrudge a workaday blogger who’s been willing and able to turn their private passion into an influential public forum, while holding down a real-life job. 

Similarly, what’s cool about bloggers is that they can be loose cannons: you could give a blogger a million bucks and they still might flip the bird at your product or brand … Blogger Relations, and blogola in particular, is risky.

So, is “blogola” good or bad?  Neither.  It all boils down to transparency. 

As long as the blogger is clear about what they’ve received (in any and all subsequent posts about the topic), it is up to the informed reader to decide whether their opinion has been swayed. 

If the product in question sucks, no number of happy-face blog postings will convince anyone otherwise. 

If the bloggers’ audience reacts disdainfully to their happy-face posts; call the blogger a “sell-out;” delete the RSS feed – then the respectable blogger will soon form their own ethics policy.

Everybody loves free stuff.

But nobody wants to be called a sucker.

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Next month, PR-Squared will celebrate its 3^rd anniversary.  Since June 2004, this blog has served as both a personal forum and a place that SHIFT could point to as its “official” blog.  I am glad that we got started early in the blogging game, and incredibly gratified by the positive response.

But I’m not sure that PR-Squared can still be considered our official blog.

Last week, we created a blog that’s being written and run by our employees; specifically, by our junior staff.  It’s called UnSpun, and it’s linked to the Careers Page of our website: anyone who’s considering a career at SHIFT (p.s. – We’re Hiring!) ought to use the UnSpun blog as a place to learn more about our people and culture.

For the record, we put in place a fairly generic “Blogging Policy” to guide the newly-minted bloggers’ efforts, but I do not see the posts before they go up (unless asked to do so by the individual bloggers).

There are already a few entries, and I am truly gratified in these early days by the quality of writing, humor and thoughtfulness that our “newbies” are offering to the blogosphere, both in terms of the posts and the comments.  We’ve attracted some really smart, really nice people to this joint.

Moving forward, I’ll be watching to see how the blog evolves, sure, but more interesting will be gauging how the bloggers themselves evolve their thinking about Social Media.  Will it change the way they handle Blogger Relations?  Will the folks who post more consistently become the “go-to” staffers on all-things-2.0?  Will it enhance their careers?

Have a look, and please feel free to participate with my friends at the UnSpun Blog.  I know they’d be thrilled to hear from you.

Posted by Todd Defren at 03:20 PM | Permalink

I received a “pitch” – if you can call it that – via LinkedIn this morning.  (If you want to see exactly what I saw, click the screen-cap pictured here at the blog.)

This is a perfect example of how PR pros get a reputation for being “spammers.”

The pitch is about a contest sponsored by Malibu Rum, asking contestants to film a music video of an updated version of that Carribean classic tune, “Day-O.”  Malibu is hosting a YouTube channel for the submissions.  Pretty fun, clever idea.

But the outreach approach, at least in my case, is way off. 

• I received an “OpenLink” message from a stranger.  I allow “all comers” to contact me via LinkedIn, but this is the first time someone’s abused the privilege.
• This message came from someone with ZERO LinkedIn connections.  (Not just zero connections in-common with me; they have zero connections – period.)
• All they sent me was a press release.  No pitch.  No, “Hi, thought you might be interested in this because I see that you sometimes cover subjects such as viral videos’ role in marketing campaigns.”
• The subject line says that the message is for “PRsquared.”  If you read my blog, you know that I tend to say “PR-Squared.”  (You also know that I hate it when folks use “Shift” instead of “SHIFT,” but I’ve pretty much given up on that one.)  It’s a small point, but speaks to the lack of preparation and personalization that is ever-more-important in today’s environment.

LinkedIn can be an incredibly valuable resource.  Just as email is a fanatastic tool.  And the Web.  And IM.  And the phone.  But each and every “bad pitch” like this one sends a message to our targeted influencers that we don’t care about their time, their opinion, their assistance.  Every bad pitch like this one gives our friends in the mediasphere one less reason to open that email, to pick up that ringing phone. 

The fact that this PR person was able to reach out to me via a “new” channel doesn’t make this a Social Media savvy campaign.  It is just another stinky pitch.

As I noted recently, the transparency coming to bear on the PR industry will inexorably eradicate such silliness.  Let’s hope so.

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I try to make this blog about PR & Social Media in general, with minimal attempts at aggrandizement, but every now and then I gotta shout from the rooftops.

Today I can announce at least one of our recent victories here at SHIFT.  We were recently tapped as agency-of-record for Travelocity’s two emerging brands, IgoUgo and LastMinute.com.

• IgoUgo is a leading online travel community. Its members offer “thousands of opinions on destinations across the globe, plus suggestions and photos for everything from cheap eats and luxury accommodations to must-see attractions and worthwhile day trips.”  (Note to shutterbugs: check out IgoUgo’s new “photo feud” contest for a chance to win some cool stuff.)

• “lastminute.com U.S. is a leading online travel and leisure player specializing in last second deals. Users can locate unsold airline seats, hotel rooms, rental cars and other travel products and services available for online purchase up to hours before departure. lastminute.com also offers … unique lifestyle options, such as tickets to events, DVD rentals, restaurant reservations and gifts.”  (This is a cool place to go if your weekend plans for flag-football fall through and you refuse to stay in the house.  You can even book yourself a genuine adventure!)

For our release today, Travelocity’s spokesman was kind enough to say…

"We looked for a highly creative agency that could handle traditional media relations, and also had a compelling set of experiences in the social media space," said Dan Toporek of Travelocity. "SHIFT showed deep knowledge in both areas, and we're eager to work with them to help lastminute.com U.S. and IgoUgo take flight."

This one’s gonna be fun.

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Marketing maven and common-sense guru Seth Godin has a new book out, called The Dip.  You can read its accompanying manifesto here (PDF). 

It’s about “when to quit and when to stick” … According to Godin, “What really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.”

One fun way that Godin is promoting his book is via an interactive poster (pictured) of UPSIDE Magazine’s Year-2000 Bubble Party Players.  You get to help identify those former stars, and to suggest how/why their fortunes dipped.  Some of these folks are still around, and thriving, today.  But plenty more have faded away… into obscurity (many of the featured faces are literally not even identified!), jail, the grave. 

It’s an eery look back for folks (like me) who are currently optimistic … yet can’t help but shudder with reflexive dread when they see headlines like, “How This Kid Made $60M in 18 Months” and, “The Kid Who Turned Down $1 Billion.” 

One particularly interesting aspect of Godin’s interactive poster is that he is not only autopsying the Bubble but is also asking readers to predict current leaders’ “future” dips.  Here was my entry for Google:

One challenge for a company that will index all the world’s content will be a rising need for consumers to exert some minuscule amount of control over search results that impact them personally.

For example, if someone posts a (labeled) picture of you partying half-nekkid on their MySpace profile, and that content is indexed forever via Google, an otherwise promising career trajectory could be unnecessarily derailed.

I foresee a day when users who can validate their identity insist on a system in which they can “challenge” search results that could incriminate them. All it would take is one bone-headed lawsuit in front of a sympathetic jury and the hellhounds would be loosed in the Googleplex.

Multiply that one instance by a couple of billion potential cases, and you can see a Dip. Not insurmountable, but probably inescapable.

What do you think is Google’s Next Big Challenge?

If you were working in and around the Tech Sector in the year 2000, have a look at Godin’s poster. 

(And pat yourself on the back for making it through your own post-Bubble Dip.)

Posted by Todd Defren at 02:21 PM | Permalink

Today, PRWeek is hosting the “Target Green” Conference in San Francisco (supported by a blog written by PRWeek’s prolific Keith O’Brien). 

I hear it’s booked solid.  That’s cool.  Honestly, we ought to save the planet.  I am all for that.  We have a “green” client here at SHIFT that we are really excited about.  We hope to gain more traction in this arena.

And so does everybody else.  Which has me worried.

The hubbub amongst my PR peers re: “green opportunities” (i.e., this is a hot new sector: there are sure to be opportunities to “do well while doing good!”) is, I fear, a li’l misplaced.

The Green Industry will likely not be a wellspring of lucrative opportunities for the PR industry. 

I hope I am wrong – both because I like to see the PR industry do well, and because it benefits us all if the Green Movement is hardy, viable, thriving.  Meanwhile, tech-oriented agencies are well qualified to handle this sort of work, given our penchant for translating tech-talk into layman terms & for our embrace of grassroots tactics. 

But, these types of firms are accustomed to clients who typically want to influence either GLOBAL 2000 buyers or broad swaths of consumers – both of which can be reached via “known” channels (InformationWeek, USA TODAY, broadcast outlets, select blogs), and both of which tend to decide quickly on winners/losers.  It is relatively easy to gain traction, if your product & story are really good.

Contrariwise, in the Green field, the products tend to be highly expensive, experimental, and subject to a lot of regulation.  Also, the buyers are more often metropolitan districts (read: slow-to-move), vs. corporations/consumers.

As turned out to be the case in Biotech and Nanotech (boomlets in their own right, during the late ‘90s and early 00’s) – which faced similar hurdles – I think we’ll ultimately see a handful of big winners, but also find that most PR pros are catering to a host of niche players.

The good news is that whatever contribution PR can make will truly help make this a better, safer, cleaner, sustainable world.  I am sure that many PR folks would rather do the virtual spadework now – even with little hope for a rising financial tide – if we can help the planet avoid the kind of real-world spadework that would come with the rising tides of climate change. 

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I love getting your comments, but I also deal with a ton of spam and off-topic comments that require a fair amount of time & manual labor. 

I think that maybe an official Comment Policy would help.

This comment policy, which I cobbled together from some of the best examples I’ve found across the blogosphere, is being instituted as-of this post.  A link to this post will be added to the “Best Of” section at a date in the near future.  Here goes…

The PR-Squared Comment Policy:

PR-Squared is a private website, and I reserve the right to delete any comments I find offensive.

PR-Squared strives to maintain an atmosphere of free and open conversation.  “Constructive criticism” is okay, but personal attacks or harsh language directed toward the author or other commenters (or other people engaged in the extended conversation) will not be tolerated: any comment containing such language will not be published.

By commenting at PR-Squared, you are granting its owner license to the content of your comment, and acknowledge that the author does not have a duty to modify or withdraw posts, but that I may do so if I choose.

If a commenter repeatedly abuses PR-Squared’s comment policy, then none of their comments will be published in the future (even if those subsequent comments are “good”).

Anonymous comments or comments made under an assumed name will not be posted.

Comments that smack of “spam” will not be posted.

Thanks for your cooperation!  Also, special thanks to Ed Lee who pointed me to this fascinating and important post about “blogs and the law.”

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Shel Holtz has a funny way of blogging about stuff that I’ve been thinking about, but haven’t yet written down.  This week he posted about “edge content,” which he sums up in his advice to corporate marketers:

“(Organizations) are going to have to give in to the notion of edge content, which lets people experience your content wherever they happen to find it; consumers will be increasingly unlikely to want to make a special visit to your website…”

This sentiment echoes advice that we’ve been giving to our clients.  We suggest that it may be time to “think like a cannon.”  We say:

“You want to blow your content to smithereens.  Let shards of content scatter across the web; the trails of shrapnel created by this process will lead back to you and strengthen your brand.” 

What this means, tactically, is that some content (video, audio, graphic files, etc.) that starts with the Marketing Dept. ought to find its way into the hands of users, to do with as they please.  And “finding its way into the hands of users” will often mean that that content slips the boundaries of the corporate website all together.

Who knows what users will do with that content, once it’s in their hot little hands!?  That’s half the fun.  It could be as simple as embedding a well-produced video directly to their own MySpace page – or as scary as a wholesale revamp of the content elements.  Maybe the logo sprouts devil horns; maybe the CEO’s official headshot sprouts a bristlebrush mustache.  But maybe someone drops a Mento into a Coke bottle – and that’s not such a bad thing.  (I know my kids made me buy at least a dozen of those 2–liter bottles for some courtyard rocketworks!)

This is tough for some folks.  Rather than “think like a cannon,” many marketers still think in terms of “portals;” they obsess about driving traffic to their site.  This makes sense, of course!  For 10 years we’ve all seen “website traffic increases” as a big goal; whole industries have sprung up around it; SEO/SEM results have been codified as success metrics for number-crunching “quant” marketers.

But as Tim O’Reilly noted, paraphrasing Google CEO Eric Schmidt to define the Web 2.0 movement: “Don’t Fight The Internet.”  It seems to me that the 2.0 era is about empowering people; about making things easier for them.  If you force people to go out of their way to access your content, you may be asking for 1 click more than they are willing to give you. 

Let people find your content on the edge, where they are hangin’ out already.  I daresay that this approach may be harder to measure, but I’d also wager that the marketers who embrace an “edge content comfort-level” will reap the greatest rewards.

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Today I want to give props to my friend Kami Huyse, of My PR Pro.  If you read this blog, chances are pretty good that you read Kami’s (much better) blog, too – we seem to share many common readers.  If so, did you catch this post about the Social Media launch of Journey to Atlantis, the new roller coaster at SeaWorld – San Antonio?  Fantastic stuff…

The Social Media-savvy program included:

• A dedicated website (designed by Josh Hallett & Co.).
• A Flickr group, full of cool pix at launch.
• Not one but TWO video channels, at YouTube and Veoh (sidenote: I was impressed by the quality of the Veoh vids & website; guess we should expect as much from a former media mogul like Veoh investor Michael Eisner)!
• A dedicated site where user-generated content can be uploaded and/or tagged (i.e., Flickr photos or YouTube videos tagged “JTA” for Journey-to-Atlantis or “SWSA” for SeaWorld-San Antonio will be found, reviewed and uploaded to this site by SeaWorld’s marketing staff).
• A blog, complete with a blogroll that includes each and every “coaster enthusiast” blogger to whom Kami reached out to in advance of the launch-date of May 11.  Linklove never hurts, when it is appropriate linklove (as this campaign demonstrates).
• A del.icio.us page with tons of links, and, importantly, Kami’s personal notes about why each link might be of-interest.

I am really excited for Kami, and look forward to reading her Communications Overtones (RSS) blog for updates on the response to this “all-bases-covered” Social Media campaign.  Kudos!

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I was struck this morning by the juxtaposition of two very important stories having to do with the Internet’s role in the world.  Specifically, its role in promoting transparency and freedom of information.

The first story came out in the NYTIMES this morning.  In an article entitled, “In Web Uproar, Antipiracy Code Spreads Wildly,” reporter Brad Stone writes:

“Sophisticated Internet users have banded together … to publish and widely distribute a secret code used by the technology and movie industries to prevent piracy of high-definition movies.

“…its relentless spread has already become a lesson in mob power on the Internet and the futility of censorship in the digital world.”

The code, by the way, is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.  Lookit me, I’m a revolutionary!  (Need a mnemonic?  Stone pointed to this song, posted to YouTube.  Not exactly Edwin Starr’s “War,” but still a modern-day classic song of resistance.)

Now compare this “let freedom ring” story to this one, in WIRED:  “Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death.”  The article points to Army Regulation 530--1: Operations Security (OPSEC), which puts strict rules in place for all electronic communications – it could even extend to private email.  Still, it’s blogging that is already getting hit hard:

“…with the regulations drawn so tightly, ‘many commanders will feel like they have no choice but to forbid their soldiers from blogging -- or even using e-mail,’ said Jeff Nuding, who won the bronze star for his service in Iraq. ‘If I'm a commander, and think that any slip-up gets me screwed, I'm making it easy: No blogs,’ added Nuding, writer of the ‘pro-victory’ Dadmanly site. ‘I think this means the end of my blogging.’

“Active-duty troops aren't the only ones affected by the new guidelines. Civilians working for the military, Army contractors -- even soldiers' families -- are all subject to the directive as well.”

There is a historical precedent for this (as WIRED also notes): “Troops’ mail was read and censored throughout World War II.”  Still, in this age of rampant electronic communications, amplified by umpteen upload options and anonymizer protocols, I’d like to think that the soldiers’ true, unvarnished voices can find a way through the meshwork of harsh new regulations. 

It’s a lot more important to us – as a country, as global citizens – to hear the voices of our warriors on the frontlines than it is to burn an advance copy of a warrior movie like 300. 

I wonder if the code wizards who unlocked the 32–characters of the piracy code could band together again, this time to find a way to guarantee the anonymity of our soldier bloggers?

Let freedom ring.

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past week, I’ve surprised myself by morphing into a living case study for the marketing books, an unpaid Word-of-Mouth agent, a Gladwell-style “salesman.” 

I have gone out of my way to tell the world about a product I’m in love with: I subscribed to a premiere product review website, just so I could write a glowing review; I’ve posted comments about the product in various blogs (at least 3 that I can remember, in the past couple of days); I’ve even Twittered it. 

I’ve evangelized to soccer moms & dads, parents at regattas, etc.  I’ve lost maybe 1 productive hour of work, and many more in my personal life, tooling around with this product; learning its ins-and-outs.  (And yes, I’ve annoyed my family and co-workers by taking too many pictures of them.)

And now I’m blogging about it.

This is not like me.  At all. 

But I just love my Nikon D40.  If you’re looking for an ergonomic, easy-to-use upgrade from point-and-shoot digicams to a Digital SLR, go buy one. 

(In the meantime, meet Marco, our new kitten, in the photo accompanying this post.  This photo was among the first 5 that I took with the new camera.  Check out the detail on that li’l paw.  Out of the box.  No fiddling around with f-stops, etc. Click the picture for a full-size look, via Flickr.)

Meanwhile, I am almost as fascinated by my own transformation.  Not the switch from “clueless” to “shutterbug,” but by the transformation to “product evangelist.”  Why am I willing to go out of my way to help out Nikon?  How long will this heady delight over a simply-great product last?

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)