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May 22, 2009 No comments

Democracy and Social Media

I’m trying to connect the dots on a couple of stories that appeared today in the Washington Post.

The first was about the wolf shirt phenomenon on Amazon. Mike Musgrove writes about how CollegeHumor.com and bloggers gamed the system to make an otherwise hideous t-shirt one of the top purchases on Amazon.

This type of online rabble-rousing appears to be catching on more than ever over the past year, said Tim Hwang, the organizer of ROFLCon, a convention dedicated to celebrating Internet memes. After all, another Web-based prank crossed over into the real world just last month when a 21-year-old college student, known by the online moniker “m00t,” sailed to the top of Time’s “most influential person” list in an online poll, beating out the likes of President Obama and Oprah Winfrey. Gathering nearly 17 million votes, the world’s “most influential” person is the founder of another jokey Web culture site, 4chan.org, whose proprietor is known offline by the name Christopher Poole.

So we know that the social media stuff can be gamed. No big deal. Just like in the old days! Back then it was Hearst and yellow journalism. Now it is some folks getting a good laugh.

Parenthetically, I’ll take the latter over the former.

Then – later in the A section – which is pretty much the entire serious news part of the Washington Post these days — there’s a story about how the Obama Administration is remaking the U.S. government’s online presence.

US.gov meet Amazon.com.

Don’t tell the CollegeHumor.com folks. We all might be trading tax dollars for wolf t-shirts.

Government meets social media. This is a good thing, right?

May 18, 2009 2 Comments

Buddy can you spare a Viagra?

First we had the Hyundai ads.

Buy the car and if you lose your job they’ll take the car back.

They used to call that “reposession”. I guess they now call that marketing.

Then Ford followed suit. They did one better. Buy the truck and they’ll let you hold off on payments for awhile (then they’ll take the truck back!).

Mortgage companies, banks, and insurance companies have also gotten into the act. “If you’re in trouble, call us,” they say and we’ll work out a deal. The not-so-subtle marketing message is one of empathy. We feel your pain.

viagra Now comes Pfizer.

According to reports, if you’re a guy and you lose your job they’ll float you a year’s worth of Viagra. Yup. Sound both salacious and stupid? I thought so.

Wait! It gets worse. For the cars, trucks, banks, etc., this recession marketing effort was all about getting people to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do.

Warren Holstein notes that part of the strategy appears to be an effort to keep folks from switching brands or going to god-forsaken generics. Better to give something away for a little while to maintain brand loyalty in tough times than risk people wandering off and looking for some alternative.

Because hard times shouldn’t mean the end to hard times.

At least there’s no chance of repossession.

May 15, 2009 No comments

Happy (Belated) Mother’s Day

I spent Mother’s Day day with my mother in Arkansas.

She is 86-years-young and lives there just five minutes from my brother’s house.

ggparoushmomdale My brother and I spent the day with her rummaging through boxes of pictures. The bulk were on modern Kodak paper.

But there was a box or two of thick, hard and very brownish ones. Then there were these clear and shiny black and white ones about the size of a postage stamp.

We made it a project. My bother manned the computer. I sorted through the photos and cycled them through the scanner. And while they were being moved from decades old sepia and paper to digits and pixels we’d have them up on a big plasma screen while Mom would look and explain the story behind each.

[The one here was one of her favorites. That’s her in the middle with her brother. Grandpa Rousch just got finished reading her “Peter Rabbit.”]

All mothers are saints.

Not!

The “all mothers are saints” thing is a myth. I have heard enough stories from my social worker wife to know that is not true. Some people are lucky and have mothers that teach them how to encourage, nurture, support, cherish, and love. Others do not.

I am one of the lucky ones.

Born of humble mid-western farming stock, my mother combines a rock-hard work ethic with purity of love and caring that is all to hard to find in a modern life. She is a reminder that old-fashioned is a compliment. That simplicity and virtue is not only attainable, but something that can and should guide your life. Most of all, she reminds me of what it means to be a parent and care for family.

And funny thing is. She never told me any of this. She just did it.

Thanks, Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day.

April 20, 2009 1 Comment

What Letter is Your Recovery?

Just when you thought you were out of the worst of it … Bam! Another 200+ point drop.

I’m telling you this economic stuff is driving folks crazy.

One of my favorite subjects of discussion is what “letter” the economy will resemble over the coming months. This has been the focus of discussion of everyone from AARP to SeekingAlpha to Blogs.com to MutualFundSmarts.

Letters First, there is the “V” shaped recovery. The one we all want. Straight down and straight up.

Then there is the “U” shaped recovery. The one more likely. Straight down, suffer for awhile, and then go back up.

Now comes the really bad letters of the alphabet.

The “W” shaped recovery. As if we haven’t had enough of Ws already. Sort of a bipolar recovery. You go broke. Make money. Go broke again. Make money. Suffer. Enjoy. Suffer. Enjoy.

Finally there is the dreaded “L” shaped recovery. You decend into hell and stay there. Hopefully over time you’ll learn to enjoy it.

We need a new monogram.

April 1, 2009 No comments

Toxic Assets and Economic Schizophrenia

Anybody else find the phrase “toxic assets” strange?

Asset is a good thing. Right? You’re supposed to accumulate them. They are a point of pride. You show them off. You can take them to the bank. People require them for loans — ok, for a while they didn’t — which leads us to the “toxic” part.

Toxic. Not good. Don’t drink. Stay away. Will kill. Or if not kill, at least send to the emergency room. And you’ll have some disease that only Dr. House can cure.

So how can there be toxic assets?

This, I believe, is the topic of the iceberg of economic schizophrenia that has begun to bleed its way through American society.

Things are awful. But they’re also ok. You need to conserve, scrimp and save. But not too much. This is all terrible. But it is all good. We’re going broke. But we’re going back to old fashioned values.

We’re losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every month, home values continue to drop with no end in site. Meanwhile the President’s approval rating is high and there’s been a sharp increase in consumer confidence.

I remember a quote that a cultural anthropologist friend of mine used to cite from an interview he did with a housewife during the recession of the early 1980s …

“Things are getting better … sometimes for the worse!”

Now people are saying the same thing in reverse.

“Things are getting worse … sometimes for the better!”

March 15, 2009 No comments

Vortexes, Email and Remembering the Sabbath Day

It is Sunday. So before going any further, grab the nearest Bible and check out Exodus 20 (or simply click it). Check out verse eight.

Now hold that thought.

About two hours ago my plane touched down, returning from several days visiting beautiful Sedona, Arizona.

Knowing that I was there, my boss asked be about the famous Sedona “vortexes”. Don’t know what a vortex is? Well, other than it being what happens to your toilet water when you flush, neither did I.

So here’s the official definition according to the reliable Sedona-based Center for New Age (that stuff is big out there …)

A vortex is the funnel shape created by the motion of spiraling energy. The vortexes in Sedona are swirling centers of subtle energy coming out from the surface of the earth. They characterize Sedona as a spiritual power center. (Although the plural form of vortex” is generally “vortices,” in Sedona, “vortexes” is used.) The energy is not exactly electricity or magnetism, although it does leave a slight measurable residual magnetism in the places where it is strongest.

So there you go. A motion of spiraling energy. That was me this weekend.

And we (my wife and I) managed to wallow in several vortexes.

I wasn’t planning to write about this on the JuiceBar until I got home and cranked up my laptop. As usual, during the flight home — a hefty 4.5 hours — I pulled up Outlook and slogged through screen after screen of emails. In so doing I must have sent emails to dozens of colleagues which accumulated in my “outbox” folder. So when I got home around 4 pm, powered up the laptop, hooked up the wireless, and launched Outlook … a spew of thirtysome emails when spinning out through email clients all over the planet.

Now here’s the sad part. Within five minutes I had a dozen responses.

A dozen in five minutes — not so special. A dozen in five minutes at 4:15 on a Sunday afternoon — a sad thing indeed.

So keeping Exodus 20:8 in mind, here’s what I wrote to my boss about my vortex experiences in Arizona.

On the vortex front, we (my wife and I) went to several. We climbed all over the Bell Rock vortex. Then circled it and the Courthouse Butte. We interacted with the airport vortex. I’m told it is a male vortex so I was particularly interested in that one. We saw twisted juniper trees. We saw wonderful vistas. We saw a lot of other people “our age” checking out vortexes as well.

I can’t say that I felt anything much … save a slight case of vertigo as we scrambled three quarters up the top of Bell Rock. I suspect there’s something to that. People mistaking an earthly energy field for a well reasoned and genetically sound survival instinct that recognizes that the human species neither has wings nor lizards feet. This is particularly important when you are looking down a thousand foot precipice from a eighteen inch footpath.

All in all, I am glad that people believe in vortexes. It suggests a recognition that there is something outside of ourselves that is bigger (and better!) than we are.

I believe that to be true. My Sunday sermon from Phoenix airport.

Next post — the metaphor of the month.

Stay tuned.

January 19, 2009 No comments

He Had A Dream … What is Yours?

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And what a day it is. Hundreds of thousands decended on The Mall in my fair city — Washington DC — yesterday to celebrate in song the upcoming inauguration of this country’s first African American president.

What a dream.

So I ask all JuiceBar readers to do two simple things. It requires no more than 30 minutes.

First, take 15 minutes out of your day and go to MLKOnline. Watch the video of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” If you’re a fan of radio (like me) or short on bandwidth simply close your eyes and click on the audio of his speech.

Imagine a world of the 1950s … of fire hoses, attack dogs, lynchings. Of beatings. Of hatred and bigotry.

Now think of today. 2009. Today as the generation of Americans that came after the 1950s usher in a new era led by a black president.

All due in part because one man shared a dream with millions and millions of others, and together they were able to pass that dream on to a new generation.

Now take another 15 minutes. Write down your dream. Think of the wrongs that need to be righted. Dream of what that world will be like.

And spend the rest of your life keeping that dream alive and passing it along to the next generation.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

November 29, 2008 No comments

Redefining Consumption

In the aftermath of the trauma of 9-11, President Bush gave us this advice:

“Go shop.”

In so doing our President told us to go out and feed our nation’s greatest addiction and increasingly what many consider to be one of our last remaining economic assets: consumption.

The ability to consume. That is our heritage. Damn the economy. To heck with the environment, education, and the sinking stock market.

Our ability to — no, our NEED to consume seems to know no bounds.

Note that this is not the consumption that our forefathers celebrated the first Thanksgiving. Back then they called consumption a disease. Among other things, consumption was more likely known as a “progressive wasting of the body” … not picking up something at the country store.

Based on what I read in this morning’s papers, we should go back to the old meaning of “consumption” — that of a deadly disease.

It is bad enough that two people pulled out their guns and died in a shoot-out at Toys R Us after their respective female companions got engaged in a bloody brawl.

But that a crowd of shoppers would actually trample to death the poor WalMart employee who has the unfortunate job of opening the door in the morning?

This, my friends, is sick. Shopping meets greed meets madness meets total lack of disregard for any one meets violence.

Welcome to the new Kris Kringle.

Here’s my advice. Don’t shop. Take a day off. Go check out the folks at “Buy Nothing Day.” Or at least shop online. Apparently a lot of people of are.

I am thankful for a lot of things.

Not shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving is one of many.

Happy Holidaze.

October 28, 2008 No comments

Video Nation and the (Large) Advertising Dwarf

If it isn’t on video, then perhaps it didn’t happen. And if it happened … which of course it didn’t because it wasn’t videotaped … and you can’t replay it … then it surely couldn’t be important.

Put another way … if it is not on YouTube then forgetaboutit.

That could be one of many lessons from this political season.

Yes, there was traditional media. And thanks to the generosity of millions of Americans who, despite the economy tanking, their houses being foreclosed, and their retirement funds evaporating … these same Americans seemed to have aninsatiable desire, to sign up and happily send their hard earned money (unless, of course, they worked on Wall Street) to the Obama campaign — there was plenty of advertising.

According to David Carr at the New York Times:

By some estimates, Senator Obama will have spent $250 million on local, cable and network television in just five months, a rate of advertising that outstrips Burger King, Apple and Gap on an annualized basis. And it dwarfs the $188 million that President Bush spent in 2004.

But Ellen McGirt of Fast Company goes on to say that while the Obama ad spend dwarfed brands and Bush I, the Obama YouTube production dwarfed their dwarfing of … whatever … you get the idea.

So I went on YouTube. The Barak Obama channel has 1,678 videos and 107,595 subscribers. McGirt estimages that all total the campaign’s videos have had nearly 90 million views.

90 million views. At likely a fraction of the $250 million in advertising. And — thanks to YouTube — will stay up and available far longer than the 30-second lead-in spot to CSI.

So get out your flip video cameras, ladies and gentlemen. Start taping. Start uploading. Go crazy.

And just in case … if you have a quarter of a billion lying around … buy some advertising too.

Just in case.

October 24, 2008 No comments

Its Not Easy Being “Green” … or “Green” by Any Other Name

Green.

It used to be a color that you related to illness.

Gang”green”. Even mental illness. “Green” with envy. Or things a bit slimy. Like pond scum. Frogs.

Now, everyone wants to be green. We’re going through green-o-mania. And folks are tripping over themselves on how to describe, articulate, and label their “greeness.”

Green by any other name? Well, some don’t smell as sweet.

Want to have some fun? Take the Consumer Reports “Weed Out the Green Groups ” quiz.

Seems like there are many shades of green. And not all green names wear the same.

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