It's a busy time here at the ole' CM, but I carved out a speck of time to jam with our illustrious Associate Creative Director, Dennis Bonifer. I don't have space to demonstrate all of his sweet peculiarities, but you should know that he's our resident SEC/UK sports expert, a SuperFan 99 of the NCAA basketball tournament (goes every year and gets his picture taken with a rubber ducky and any celebrity he can locate) and the proud father of a bouncing 8-month old shorty.

CM: What are you doing?
DB: Working on a Save the Date card for our Halloween party (interviewer's note: this party is only the most zany affair this side of the big pond).

CM: What's your favorite website?
DB: (After long period of contemplation) Kentucky Sports Radio. It's full of good UK information on recruiting and player insight. It's also pretty tongue-in-cheek and they do a great job of updating the site a few times a day.
(Dennis gets a little giggly at this point; he's a pretty giggly kind of guy).
My secret addiction is also Quicktime movie trailers. I will sometimes watch trailers all morning.

CM: Where is your dock located?
DB: At the bottom, where God intended it.

CM: What dock icon do you click most?
DB: The most? All things CS3.

CM: What dock icon is the prettiest?
DB: My "Clients" folder - it's a sweet Fat Elvis.

At this stage in the interview, the discussion digresses into a lengthy discourse about SEC football, traveling to Gainesville, Auburn and Athens and general jocularity. That dirty Dennis, he's so funny.

Anywho, back to the lecture at hand.

CM: MySpace? Facebook? Plaxo?
DB: Facebook and LinkedIn.
On Facebook, I have reconnected with a couple of friends I haven't talked to in 10 years. Other than that, I'm not sure I really get Facebook.
On LinkedIn, I have reconnected with a couple of friends I haven't talked to in 10 years. Other than that, I'm not sure I really get LinkedIn.
(Yeah, that's right, he said the same thing for both.)

CM: And, finally, what's your problem?
DB: My Mac at home. It's not f****** working. The Mac geniuses are not so genius-like.

Of course, everyone knows WAVE has the opening ceremonies of the Olympics tonight. So, I thought I'd check out what the other stations are offering in opposition.

WLKY is running "Ghost Whisperer" - the typical Friday night program, so nothing too crazy there.

WDRB is showing "Hellboy." Okay, I can see that too. They are shooting for a totally different audience than the Olympics Opening Ceremony.

But "War of the Worlds" on WHAS?!? WOW! Isn't the Olympics a time of international brotherhood/sisterhood (would that be "humanhood?")...a spectacle of global comradery...a beacon of light in the darkness that is the current state of the world? And the programming choice against that is a film about the destruction of the earth? Well, I guess that kind of makes sense.

Since my maternity leave is officially over, I thought I'd reprise my role of the Roger Ebert of As Seen On TV (and other similar) products. Today, I've chosen a selection of 11 items, all of which I'm sure have been on Price is Right in some way, shape or form at some time in history.

1. Cash for Gold
I need to make sure I understand what's going on with this. All I have to do is gather all that gold I have laying around and send it to some dudes...and they'll send me money?!? Scout's honor? Surely there is more to this than that. Then again, if you are stupid enough to put all of your gold in an envelope and rely on the mail to get it to these grifters and then them to send back a fat check, perhaps you deserve the simplicity of this ripoff.
Oh, and the URL has a 4 in it. Stay classy, Cash 4 Gold.

2. Roll 'n Grow
If only this product were Grow n' Roll - much more interesting, don't you think?

3. Weed Claw
I saw the name of this product and thought it was something much different than what it is. Being an avid gardener and having pulled millions of weeds in my time, I don't know why a Claw is necessary when I have a naturally-occurring (aka "free") claw on the end of each of my arms.

4. Push Up Pro
Is the push up really that complicated that you need a "professional" (at least that's what I think Pro is short for) product to help you? It's pretty much up, down, up, down. Okay, I guess there is some variation on the direction of your hands, the speed at which you move up and down, etc. But, if most 7th grade gym class students can figure this one out, I'm guessing Push Up Pro is superfluous.
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Having been on maternity leave for five weeks, I've had a lot of time (while my wee one sleeps) to watch some solid daytime TV. I could go on and on about daytime TV in and of itself, but that wouldn't really advance the cause of this blog, which is supposed to address issues of marketing and advertising ilk. So, I'll instead focus on the advertising I've seen during all of this TV watching.

First, the PedEgg. It's basically a plastic egg with a metal emery board that helps with home pedicures -- $10 for two of these things! One issue I have with this ad, other than it's thoroughly cheesy, is that I'm not sure why I would need two when there is a lifetime guarantee on one? Oh, wait, the spot answers the question -- one is for the household female and one is for the household male. No non-traditional households need bother with ordering the PedEgg, according to the spot.

Second, Free Credit Report.com. These spots are total garbage. That's the best I can say. I've seen three in the series -- all are based on this poor dunce who apparently has made a series of errant decisions he could have avoided if he'd known about and/or used freecreditreport.com. Sounds okay, right? Try again. They are all staged as if he is part of a three-man band and he sings a dreadful jingle while delivering each narrative. Bad enough, but then couple that with the fact that it's totally obvious this guy is lip synching... badly. This guy certainly is no champ at "Puttin' on the Hits."

Next, the ShamWOW!  This product is pretty neat -- my issue with the spot is that the production company couldn't bring it together enough to afford a boom mic. The talent has on a headset! I think the production company cut a few corners and just recorded this guy's performance at his booth at the state fair. And, just like the PedEgg, why does my order have to include 8 ShamWOWs? If one is so great, why do I need 8?!?

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I think Facebook, Amazon and TiVo are triplets separated at birth. Okay, so they're fraternal... but they're multiples of the same genes. Let me explain.

All three tools have been taught and molded into useful and gratifying weapons in our every day arsenals. But, they have the same personality flaw -- they presume a lot of things about us based on our previous behavior. Facebook, for example, looks at my current friends and provides me with a list of people they think I'd be interested in "friending" (love that new gerund in our lexicon, by the way). Facebook assumes that, because I went to college at Transylvania, I must know everyone else who went to Transy at any time in the past 20 years. Facebook is bigoted, essentially. I live in Louisville, therefore I must know everyone else who lives in Louisville. I have blond hair, thus I must know everyone else who has blond hair. Stop with the assumptions, Facebook!

Amazon has the same problem. Based on what I have bought in the past, it makes recommendations on what I should buy in the future. For the most part, this is actually pretty cool. I have stumbled upon quite a few little gems I'd not have otherwise discovered. But, it's the strange connections Amazon makes that cause me to lump it with its evil birth brothers. I recently purchased a CD by the band Fleet Foxes. Now, Amazon assumes I want to read a bunch of National Geographic nature books about foxes and buy the DVD of some Jodie Foster movie made in 1980. Stop, Amazon!

And the last of the demonic triplets: TiVo. Patton Oswalt does a great comedic bit about TiVo and its learning habits. I can't really do better than the bit, so I won't try... but the basic idea is that he programmed his TiVo to record a particular Western ("The Man From Laramie," I believe) and came home a few days later to find his hard drive full of everything on television that had anything to do with horses, featured horses, discussed or addressed horses or had horses anywhere in any image in the program. TiVo got a little too aggressive with its assumption that it knew what he wanted to see.

In short, all of this artificial intelligence has its advantages... and its disadvantages. Oh well, I'll take the bad with the good, I suppose!

MSN recently published an article entitled "The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances," a few at which I laughed out loud because I experience them every day. "LinkedIn is uptight" - totally!

While this article is a great one, I thought it was missing just a few:

- Friendfeed feeds too many friends
Aggregators are now so complex that I need an aggregator to aggregate all of the information that is being aggregated in my subscribed aggregators. Jiminy Crickets.

- I may soon be a Twitter Quitter
I do love Twitter, I must say. I can't explain what makes it so fun and addictive -- it's, well...fun and addictive.
But, it's so buggy. There have been numerous excuses for this unexplained phenomenon (too many people following Robert Scoble or the technology was never built to handle so many followers, blah, blah, blah). The bottom line is that there are too many competitors popping up and if Twitter can't take the heat, it needs to get out of the kitchen. Our CTO suggested that Twitter limit the number of people you can follow. Not the number of people who follow you, just the number of people you can follow. So, 2,000 people might follow me, but I am only allowed to follow 20. It would certainly make us all a bit more selective about who we follow and thus unburden the Twitter bandwidth.
A second annoyance about Twitter is that I have a saddened sense of humanity every time I read the Tweets of certain people I am following. I know, I should just stop following them. But, it's like a soap opera! One gentleman lamented the fact that he was forced to get off Twitter to take his kids out to dinner. Oh my.

- Facebook should just tell me what Gem I am
I know this is the way Facebook stays in business...but, I vehemently dislike (I am trying to eliminate "hate" from my vocabulary) that I have to force 10 of my friends to take the "Which Gem are you?" quiz in order to find out my own results. Yes, that's right, I do want to know which Gem I am. I will certainly use this valuable information at some point...like on my wedding anniversary or in my annual performance review. "Did you know I am a diamond? That means I deserve a huge raise!" It could work.

- ncludr has not caught on
Despite my previous blog entry, includr has really not caught on like I thought it would. That's an annoyance. If more people used includr, we wouldn't need bumper stickers with sayings like "Visualize Whirled Peas."

Yesterday, I was catching up on some cable TV viewing and noticed a confusing spot on Food Network. It addressed the broadcast switch to digital in February of 2009 and encouraged viewers who are still watching television through rabbit ears to contact Insight Communications for more information on getting all of the channels after the complete switch to digital next year.

Here's what's confusing to me - the spot ran on cable. So, if you are watching using rabbit ears, you would never see the spot. Why is that spot running on cable? Did someone PAY to run that spot on cable? Or did it run as a PSA? Either way, why is that air time being wasted? I feel sure there are plenty of other deserving and more appropriate PSAs that could be run in this time.

I recently took part in two Webex sessions for some potential new media products. These two lead me to analyze the Webex sales process in general.

The first session lasted over an hour. I will never get that hour of my life back (not to mention the billable time). The initial description of the product sounded really great, like something we could actually use. The webex ruined that potential. The rep on the other end of the phone must have surely had the most boring voice and presentation style anyone has ever encountered. I felt trapped - I couldn't hang up or do anything else on my computer while this drip was droning on and on and controlling my mouse. The webex ended in me telling the rep I would call him if our company had interest in his product. I'd be willing to bet my first born that's a call I never make. And, my first born is due in about 4 weeks, so that's a heavy (and potentially imminent) ante.

The second webex also lasted over an hour. But, I didn't feel like this time was wasted. The product again sounded excellent from the sales literature. The webex only bolstered that notion for me. The rep listened to my questions, answered them and responded to the tone of my voice to move the webex at the speed at which I clearly wanted to proceed. He could tell I understood the product's features and he could move a quickly through without losing me. This call ended in my request for pricing and a follow up call from the rep a week later, after I could discuss the product with other decision-makers in the company.

The point I want to make is that even though the products are online applications, it was the human connection (or lack thereof) that sold them/didn't sell them to me. Personal connection is still the best elixir for an otherwise onerous sales process.

The annual Run for the Roses came and went last weekend and with it went the Kentucky Derby Festival chaos that we always welcome in our shop. I'm sure we'd all like to say we are cooling down after the Race, but no such luck! We are in full gallop on a ton of new business and current client organic growth...and it ROCKS!

This is what we live for in the agency world, right?!? The thrill of the chase, the exhilaration of the gate opening, and then laying down $1,000 across the board on your creative idea - YEAH! But, sometimes you gotta relax the reins a bit and have some fun in the paddock, which is what we did at the Run for the Rose last week!

In case you were stalled in the stable last week, the Run for the Rose has a corporate division in which company teams compete against each other through an obstacle course with a tray of plastic glasses full of wine. The team with the most wine in their glasses and the shortest time through the course wins. We put up three teams for the race and kicked some major hind end, as you can see from the photos below.

AdAge released its annual BrandZ ranking and atop once again is Google. Shocker. Google is like an oil tycoon, except it doesn't gouge us with exorbitant search prices and then report record earnings. Not that I don't love Google because it is all things to all people. It's every bit as important to me as gas is to my car.

Apple is ranked 7th, but the real kicker is that their brand value changed 123% since the 2007 survey - in just one year. As an Apple devotee, I can imagine that this is attributable to myriad developments. But, realistically, it's probably all about the iPhone, right?

BlackBerry's brand value also grew by a whopping 390%. I wonder if this had more to do with the iPhone's popularity contributing to the overall appeal for smart phones or the Pearl with its anti-gadget sensibility or the emergence of BlackBerry from the patent infringement stain that has plagued them for a few years now.

One of the most interesting things about this list is that the vast majority of brands on the list still produce tangible products (GE, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, China Mobile, IBM, McDonalds)...but, I bet if we uncovered the methodology behind the rankings, we would see that a strong influence on each brand's score is a rapidly growing interactive marketing component.