Rageboy's Rubber Soul and his Tungsten Heart

Rageboy is naked and he burns brightly

A little older, I saw the same surprise in your eyes. In their depths,

a hidden universe unfolding. A hidden door. Alive. Life looking back

at me. And I realized than that I have in myself the capacity for awe,

for worship, for wonder. For love. Not a fantasy. Not a dream. Real.

Living breathing here and now. But knowing this is more than common

knowledge. Much more than pedestrian everyday fact. It is magic to say

to a real person: I see the world in you.

I am a son of an electrician. I grew up with talks of light, electric light but light nevetherless. The electrical light is possible only when there is a light-bulb, a container, a see-through container that hold a piece of metal, its heart, which burns brightly when plugged into the source.

Tugsten is used for the heart, it has the highest melting point of all metals, but it easily oxidises in the presence of air. The heart can only burn when immersed in the vacuum, it has to be in the presence of no air to give off light. The light-bulb burns out when air surrounds it

The container has to have a see-through quality, the most possible nakedness desired, or no one will be able to see the light of the heart. Glass, resistant to corrosion of somethingness on the outside of the lightbulb and the nothingness on the inside, is used for that purpose.

Light-bulb was desinged to imitate human beings when their soul is totally naked and their heart burns brightly. Don't give Rageboy any air, the fucker will burn out. No air I said!

I am being fair . . . . aren't I?

I acknowledge(d) the contribution that experienced, intelligent marketing makes to any business.

But do you really think you need to do the "big dig" to find out that people entering a food business want it to be clean?

Really?

And actually keeping it clean, being nice to customers, etc, is all part of properly managing *any* such business. It has little, if anything, to do with marketing per se, afaics.

Be fair, Denver

In the article, this is what he said about marketing Starbucks without TV advertising:

...when I first started doing my research about how consumers perceived Starbucks, I was amazed at how few retailers actually paid attention to the in-store experience. Things like cleanliness and ways to be unique among competitors were totally ignored. I realized that we had an opportunity to influence everything that happened once the consumer walked in [to a store]. I thought redesigning the stores, and focusing as much as possible on making Starbucks a unique and pleasant experience, was going to be more effective than a big ad campaign.


So if Jordon's local Starbucks is a pleasant looking place with calming music and decent coffee, that is how it was designed...
(On a personal note, my employer completely transformed the in-house catering a few years back by hiring a top restaurant manager and giving him carte blanche to hire others, as long as the food side was self-supporting. The food is excellent now, and they roast and blend their own coffee beans, making it delicious, and half the price of Starbucks. In fact I think I'll go down and get one now).

Bad coffee and marketing

I see what you are saying. The attachment I have with Starbucks is with the product and the store (which is staffed by people and visited by people who I also connect with) not a logo. You are right about advertising. Point well taken.

Worth Repeating

Dan Gillmor, technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, says he has been inundated with e-mail since launching a Weblog in 1999, sparking online discussions that have helped change his approach to journalism.
“My readers know more than I do, and that’s a liberating notion, not a scary one,” he says. “Every journalist ought to realize it’s true. No matter what you cover, your readers know more collectively than you do. If we can capture that, we all come out ahead.”
If you think of traditional journalism as a lecture, Gillmor said, Weblogs include elements of a seminar and conversation. “The division that has existed between the journalist and the audience is blurring, and that’s a good thing,” he says.


See the whole article Here.

Jordon,

You're not wrong.

Usually, that is my function.

But ask yourself this question: Was it the marketing department that performed (and continues to perform) its job to the point that you were attracted into this emotional attachment?

Or put it another way: If the marketing department had done its job exactly the same as it has, but this particular Starbucks was a grubby little shit-hole with burnt coffee, surly staff, and correspondingly poor service, would the attachment still exist?

I'm not saying that marketing doesn't have a valid role in a corporation, but I'm suspicious of professional marketers attempts to pretend that they are the (major) reason for a company's success in the marketplace, which is at least a little bit how this article reads.

"co-contributors to success" - that I can buy.

Note to self

learn french.

Arafat Emerges from his Compound

This blog and the land of gonzo in general have been suffering from the captivity of RageBoy lately. Quietly, behind the scenes, RB's boy wonder, Chris Locke, has been chain smoking in his compound, communicating only with a few unshowered associates, as he writes to make sense of life, inhumanity, abuse, love, love lost, love that maybe never was, fucking faeries, and other things that only people who have been pulling for him lately would understand--that means you guys. Read it if you haven't. Caution: Golby-sized download.

j.

Gonzo engaged in France ? some news.

French elections... Nothing to say. Humiliation.
We lunched yesterday with Remi and Eric. We want to build !
French people have some difficulties to understand the weblogging spirit.
Our first french partyblog should be online soon !

The first french article to adapt your team spirit is available here in a Sand Box....
If you want to translate it in english, we would be happy. You can steal it !
Remi is telling a story à propos d'un "consumer qui veut acheter une voiture" : La TurboTraction ! It's a conversation between an Expert Emarketing and a consumer.

La marque d’automobiles Turbotraction est très présente sur le Web. Un Expert E-Marketing nous explique sommairement comment créer un dispositif E-CRM (customiser relations hip management) pour recruter (vendre un produit), puis fidéliser (en vendre un deuxième), l’immense majorité des internautes qui -d’une manière ou d’une autre- se retrouvent un jour sur la page d’accueil du site turbotraction.fr. Monsieur Martin est l’un de ces internautes et nous donne son point de vue. Ce n’est que celui d’un internaute lambda (mais il peut éventuellement être considéré dans la mesure ou c’est celui d’un individu susceptible de débourser 15 000 euros pour s’offrir l’un des fleurons de la gamme).



We're thinking on a brand which could be XXXXX ;-) It could become a small webzine. We'll let you know. Xtof (Ile de France)

I can read people's thoughts.

Using an ancient technology, handed down over millennia, improved and refined along the way, I am able to read people's thoughts.

Starbucks is selling a legal addictive substance, nicely packaged. Of course you like it. But look around. Most likely there is a smaller, more personal source for good coffee there. I like Peets myself, mostly becaue they sell good leaf tea too.

Denver, people can form emotional connections to companies and products (try abusing Apple computers online and see how many emotional responses you get). Televisual advertising is always trying to provoke an emotional response. It often is successful, but it is nto always convincing.

The Gonzo point is that companies can't feel emotions. They don't fall in love.

Denver, I want to agree with what you are saying but I keep finding myself to the rather unhealthy connection I have with Starbucks. I enjoy their coffee and even the Starbucks branded coffee cup I payed too much for. To even get to a Starbucks in Saskatoon one has to venture onto the campus of the University of Saskatchewan and fight for a parking spot yet I find myself doing that daily, just so I can grab a cup of Starbucks. That doesn't seem rationalle and it happens at Starbucks locations all over the continent. Maybe you can build a connection...

" Product differentiation within any consumer category is important to develop. But consumers may not perceive your product, taken on its own, as truly different. So the problem, and the opportunity, is to really build some kind of emotional connection between the brand and the consumer. "

(my emphasis added)

My problem with this notion is that:

1. It promulgates the idea that a company *can* build an emotional connection with a human being. I question this notion very strongly.

2. It further assumes that such a connection can be built by the unilateral action of one entity, without any particular prior interest or commitment on behalf of the other. I'm even more skeptical about this idea.

Now it may be that this is simply sloppy language, and that he means to say that the company can create an attractive brand, which in turn may induce customers to invest some emotion in their purchasing decisions, but even that seems a bit shonky to me.

For me, this sort of marketing boils down to promising people what they've just told you they want. Isn't that what all the "big dig" is about?

Whether or not your company actually delivers as promised will be the real test of your brand, the only one that really matters, in my opinion, as a customer.

linking

how do I get this blog to link to specific posts? I mean, when others link to a post, it goes to the top of that day or all days. I tweeked something a while back that seemed to work for a minute, but not anymore. technical advice--pretty please?

Just Do It. Then Do It Differently.

Advice from marketing master Scott Bedbury -- the man who built Nike and Starbucks into power brands.

Interesting article on the marketing of Nike and Starbucks. I don't agree with all of it but it makes for an interesting read.

You must live at my house

It's destructo land here. There's nowhere to put anything. Toys and crap litter my life. And I'd like the idea of not wasting Toy packaging, but instead having the manufacturer actually INCLUDE a storage device, like a simple ziplock bag. I've never bought from Klutz, but I'm going to check them out. I opened a present for my daughter last night, and it had 22 of those twist ties, attaching every little piece and bit to the cardboard backing. My fingers were raw before I had all the pieces undone. What the hell is up with that? Be glad you have a boy--the Barbie paraphanalia is the worst!

On a side note, it looks like RageBoy's back from London. Possible download coming soon!

j.

Help me market this meme

While tidying up my son's birthday presents from yesterday, I had a great idea to improve the marketing of toys to parents. Instead of shrink-wrapping the little bits and bobs inside the packet, put them in ziplock bags, so when it is time to tidy them up you have somewhere robust to keep them. The only toy manufacturer I have seen do this is Klutz books, whom I can recommend unreservedly. Their Lego crazy action contraptions book comes with the Lego you need in a Ziplock bag stuck to the front.

Why can't Playmobil and Lego and K-nex do this too? I put the away in Ziplock's I buy myself, of course, but the experience would be better if they came in them.

Deconstructing the Troll

By  John C. Mahler

Writing ignorant abuse to garner links, or trolling, looks to be the fastest-growing hobby on the Internet, and I've been studying the phenomenon to death. I intend to do my own troll, but I wanted to have a better understanding of what constitutes a really great troll.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of troll. Faux trolls can be set up by authors promoting books or newsletters, or they can be periodicals posing as trolls to get attention from bloggers. To me, the true troll is an ignorant recitation of prejudices, designed to undermine debate. I've deconstructed over 100 such trolls. This analysis led me to produce some formulae for a successful troll. Here are my Eight Rules for the Perfect Troll.

1. The right attitude. Make it clear that you spend the day, week, or month sitting on your rump reciting your prejudices instead of reading others' thoughts and perspectives. Or if you actually work, make it clear that you are writing the troll at work, because you hate thinking.

2. Community. Prove that you're a dedicated troller by citing at least five stereotypes. Repeat them ad hominem. Don't ever include examples or links, or anything at all to justify your absurd prejudices. If you're trying to jazz up your troll, number the points. Sentence teasers work well too. "The right attitude" or "Community" or "Rich language"

3. Humility. Troll weekly. If you miss a week, use the next weeksentire column to abuse profusely. Avoid explanation in detail or fascinating adventures. Make sure to rant about how dumb blogging is and why everyone should avoid it. Try not to show your fear though.

4. Rich language. Show that you're an insensate chained spirit by adding a lot of banality to your text. Cliched headlines and general abuse show people that you are an derivative writer not bound by the silly conventions of logic—those lousy rules that make you have to write something inspiring when you should be getting a check from PC Magazine just for joining cliches end to end!

5. Jargon. Pepper your text with big ugly ads from Intel, Dell, Micron, and other opportunites for getting spam. Make sure the only links on the page are paid for, and never give useful or relevant information, just contain buzzwords.

6. Controversy. Make sure your troll page has a clunky, registration-required comment system, and hound those you attack to use it. If they say anything cogent, censor their posts, make a public outcry and demand to be returned to the place of honor, or threaten to take their posts off your list. Go through this routine weekly with someone. Send them spam after they register

7. Humor. Give your troll a high tone name, perhaps even using a word you don't understand. "Deconstructing the Blog."

8. Specialize. If you want to trumpet the fact that you're a clueless fossil, include a photo of yourself in brown shirt with wire rimmed spectacles. No-one thinks of these as with connotaions of lying propogandists any more.

Finally, for all trollers, consider using a Romantic Composer's name as your own.

A couple of reasons

Well, I was away at NAB this week, hence my relative silence. Also, it is Tax deadline day on Monday for those of us privileged to work in the USA (or to work overseas and pay US taxes).
As a tea-drinking Englishman in the US who can't vote, the cry of 'no taxation without representation' comes to mind at this time of year...

Great Gonzo reading in an article that shows how you can model human behaviour with the right assumptions (people are different; they have disparate friendship groups).

Gonzo Comment

I sure hope this blog is getting read, because while Gonzo Marketing surely struck a chord with most here, it still needs explication in the world beyond. To wit - I don't seem to have gotten the whole church-and-state, renaissance guild, "Slate" concept across to TCS columnist James Miller with this post (the earliest on 4/10; see his comment). Anyone who feels like chiming in is most welcome. (And, anyone who feels like giving me a clue as to why my permalinks still point to several posts at at time, instead of just one - even though I've applied Phil Ringnalda's fix - gets a virtual hug.)

I'm no fan

Hey Tom--good post. I've found that talk is thin everywhere this week. It's spring break here in GA--maybe other places too? We gotta come up with a gonzo publicity stunt or something.

As for Office Depot, I hate them for another reason. I once ordered two printer cartridges from their online store (is that still in biz?) that they never delivered, that showed a deliver status on their site of "On the Truck" for more than four months, and that they NEVER credited me for. So I can't take my business anywhere else because I already have. See ya at Staples!

jeneane

Bye Bye Office Depot

Is anybody reading this blog anymore?

I wanted to broadcast my bitch against the office supply giant to a wider audience than that of my personal blog, but judging from the paucity of posts here lately, I'm wondering if this an exercise in futility. My initial thought was that maybe everyone had defected to blogtank, but the discussion's been almost as thin over there. Maybe everybody's on spring break, or recovering therefrom?

Anyway, to anyone who might still be out there, here is my Office Depot rant:

If you enjoy the new, highly intelligent, quality cop show--The Shield--on FX, you might want to join me in withdrawing your patronage of Office Depot--in the event you're a customer. I've been buying from them for years and it pains me to change my habits. But I feel that I have no choice when they've been so stupid and prudish as to have withdrawn their advertising from such an outstanding show.


If young children were their target, I could accept it. But what's more adult than office supplies? Bye, Bye. See you at Staples

if you'd like to express your displeasure at their stupid move, you can write to the following:

Jocelyn Carter-Miller
Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

Bruce Nelson
CEO


Office Depot Corporate Support Center
2200 Old Germantown Road
Delray Beach, FL 33445

We create the possibility of community simply by calling it thus.

It is an act of assertion, as much as the assertion of equal rights (of equality under God or the Law) is an act of assertion. To declare oneself a sovereign individual is an act of assertion.

Whenever we say "we" then we create the possibility of community.

Paradoxically, only an *I* can say "we" - but this I won't let that stop us. For in the agreement, in the answering "oui", the "we" is made real. And only two are required to form an agreement.

All of language is about agreement, the symbols must have common meaning to be honestly useful.

One can declare oneself responsible but only in agreement with others can one be made accountable. Only in agreement with others on fundamental symbols can the declaration of responsibility have any meaning beyond the individual, i.e. have communal meaning. This is a necessary antecedent.

Perhaps the most visceral objection to much of what passes for marketing is the abuse of established symbols to convey errant (and often enough deliberately so) meanings:

"Buy our minty fresh toothpaste and you'll get screwed!"

This is of course the formula for most advertising: "Buy product-X" and "You'll get screwed!" are conveyed as Cause and Effect.

This is why BMW sponsors James Bond movies.

The unintended honesty of the formula (the secondary meaning of "getting screwed") is simply one of lifes little ironies.

"Voice" as I see it used here is a synonym for honest communication, speech without hidden agenda or antagonistic interest in a particular outcome. It is communication that one trusts to use agreed symbols honestly, and thus it is speech that reveals our commonality, which is our humanity and all that this entails. It must do, since we are human and if we communicate honestly this will be revealed in our voices.

It is a glaring contrast to the attempts of artifical legal constructs through marketing to presume to human qualities which they not only do not and can not possess but to which they are often in direct opposition.

It stands in similar contrast against individuals who make pretense (deliberate deceit, again) of having inhuman qualities of inerrancy, of goodness, of infallibility, or perfection. Some of our current crop of politicians spring to mind. (Why should that be so? Could it be that marketing and politics are becoming the same cynical practice of deliberate deceit?)

Although Gonzo Marketing may be completely wrong about communities and their effects on marketing as an art and a science, it is equally possible that the practitioners of traditional marketing methods and measures may also be completely wrong about the longevity and significance of communities.

I could care less about their simplifying assumptions; I value the communities I've become part of on the 'net, and I know what I spend on them in terms of time, effort, intelligence, emotion, and yes, money, and whatever else you want to mention or measure.


President Gas is up for President - The Psychedelic Furs in prophetic mode, 80's style.
(I've been taking the advice of my memetic cleansing advisor.)

Tom does it again

Tom, this is a beautiful look at a well-thought-out piece by Shirky. I never made it a secret that I think Clay and the gonzo believers approach things from different points in the universe--him from the outside in and us from the inside out. That analysis doesn't lend answers to all of the questions and unknown potential of the net drives Clay into deeper analysis, where he seeks answers to unfathomable quandries, while we, on the other hand, tumble within the vastness and connectedness of the net, open to and welcoming to a reality skewed.

So, Tom, in addition to saying you offer an amazing take on this topic, I also say to you, thank you for finally giving some meaning to the allied title of my blog:

"There are souls in the world whom one will never meet or know, but to whom one - we - are allied by something far more binding than overt modes of human interaction, or possibly even common ties of language, country, or religion."

Yah, that's what I meant when I named it.

coup de des

Dave Rogers points to a new piece by Clay Shirky that addresses some of the issues bandied about a while ago on this blog when Clay was still in evidence. But he takes a somewhat different tack, beginning from some math models to distinguish his notion of community from passive, anonymous large audences.

Shirky is pretty adamantly convinced that there is a numerical death sentence upon the life of a community - which he defines as groups whose members actively communicate with one another. He also appears to think that viral communication occurs not within or between communities themselves, but flow from communities to mass media back to communities. He therefore does not see the phenomenon of blogging as a means of overcoming the "great divide" between communities and audience.

I think any effort to understand changes to mass media resulting from technology needs to get past Clay, who stands like Cerberus at hell's door, wagging his three heads, two of them filled with math and frightfully excellent logic. The third head might be his heel of Achilles, as it were. It's where he seems immune to the possibility that something other than active connectedness is necessary for full-fledged community. There are souls in the world whom one will never meet or know, but to whom one - we - are allied by something far more binding than overt modes of human interaction, or possibly even common ties of language, country, or religion. The wild-ass wager of gonzo might just be that "we" create communities through "voice" and that these ties do create possibilities of large-scale social networks that defy the very high odds he lays out for us so well.

Comment trouvez-vous assez temps de les entendre?

Vous avez assez CD's d'empleinir quatre iPods la.

Small pieces.com & Bombast crossed the channel.together.
Smallpieces for kids en V.F.
Would need some french links to finish a translation ;-)

French Tracklist - Vous n'aurez pas les moyens de vous l'offrir ;-)

Fuck Celine Dion !

Colette N°3  
Portrait d'un styliste sonore . 
Signe la compile la plus snob du moment. Inabordable (28 €). 
Le coffret 1,2,3 figure en série limitée et numérotée. 
Un créatif culturel ou un mondain ?
Michel est un chercheur de pépites... :
Tracklist et vente sur le site de Colette. 
Michel, je crois qu'aux USA certains pourraient bien t'entendre bloguer sur les circuits de distribution du gonzo.  ;-)

coucou ! désolé de revenir si tard...
Bonjour Denise. "Joke" = farce, plaisanterie, rigolade".

Pour la définition du blog en français, je vous recommande trois liens récents en français :
douzelunes "Un carnet de notes virtuel et partagé".
Le coup de langue de la grande rousse : "Weblog, joueb, blogue, alouette !
et le dernier très sérieux ;-) : Matthieu Pommier : "Vie, coutumes et usages du weblog au début du XXI° siècle"

Avant de filer, avez-vous lu l'article tout neuf d'Henry Copeland ? Article écrit hier de Paris et pas con du tout...
"Talk is cheap and so is blogging"
Obligé de vous laisser. Henry insiste sur le terme "useless".
J'ai du boulot. La poste française vient juste de me déposer "Smallpieces". Repos au soleil ! A + tard. xtof.

That is the answer

What they should be doing is making the CDs more attractive to computer users by using the Enhanced CD stuff, so when you put it in the computer you get lyrics, photos, extra personal bits like you suggest. I hadn't thought of them varying this component to create collectibles, but that makes even more sense.

Almost all CDs published in the UK have these on, and production houses have got the cost down to a few thousand a CD to do it. (It's even cheaper if you do it yourself).

Add value instead of subtracting it.

The Golden State (hear that?)

Only a handful of cases have been decided under California's Penal Code Section 502. Lacking judicial guidance on how the statute should work when applied to the Celine scenario, a court would likely look to the legislative history and intent, part of which is spelled out in the statute: "It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this section to expand the degree of protection afforded to individuals, businesses, and governmental agencies from tampering, interference, damage, and unauthorized access to lawfully created computer data and computer systems. The Legislature finds and declares that the proliferation of computer technology has resulted in a concomitant proliferation of computer crime and other forms of unauthorized access to computers, computer systems, and computer data. The Legislature further finds and declares that protection of the integrity of all types and forms of lawfully created computers, computer systems, and computer data is vital to the protection of the privacy of individuals as well as to the well-being of financial institutions, business concerns, governmental agencies, and others within this state that lawfully utilize those computers, computer systems, and data." (Emphasis added.) In other words, "each" may be an option. A prosecutor could gauge that better than I.

But why limit it to criminal penalties (which require a D.A. or the Attorney General to get involved), when civil actions for compensatory damages - including "any expenditure reasonably and necessarily incurred by the owner or lessee to verify that a computer system, computer network, computer program, or data was or was not altered, damaged, or deleted by the access" - and injunctive or other equitable relief also are authorized for each computer owner who suffers damage or loss from activities barred by the statute? [Subd.(e)(1).] A court hearing such a case also has the discretion to award attorneys' fees to the injured party. [Subd. (e)(2).] If you listen closely, you can almost hear the "tap tap" of legal keyboards, cruising the Celine fan sites, seeking out the plaintiff class.

-Later: Better move to CA first, Jeneane, then give it a go.