Jaffe Juice

It already has.

Last year, the overall number of entries at Cannes were up 18%, however the total film entries (read: TV) were down 2%.

This year, overall entries are up another 12.5%, with Cyber entries up 32% and film down 2.7%

Any questions?

Dear John,

Sorry to have to do this via voice mail, but I'm leaving you for another woman. And no, you can't watch.

But don't feel bad, 'cos this call is being sponsored by Zoloft.

Your soon to be ex-wife....

PS Virgin Mobile USA is introducing an ad supported cellphone service, aimed at predominently younger consumers. And get this:

...can get up to 75 minutes of free calls per month if they spend an equal amount of time looking at ads and replying to these ads via text messages.

Good luck with that one, Richie Rich.

Poor Guy Goma. He goes to the BBC for a data support cleanser job interview and the next thing he knows, he's live on the air as an expert weighing in on a recent verdict on the Apple v Apple court case.

Gotta love MSM, especially the fact that a perfect stranger is almost able to answer the superficial questions with a degree of credibility.

Here's the interview:

...the only remaining question is whether he got the job (either the one he was applying for, or the producer who goofed)

A new ANA/Booz Allen study reveals the following:

Marketing organizations that take advanced roles in their companies and lead such non-traditional activities as innovation and strategy contribute to superior corporate performance. The study found that marketing organizations can be classified into six basic categories - but only one category correlates with better performance: "Growth Champions." Marketing departments in this category are 20% more likely to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability than those in the other five categories. However, only 9% of marketers fell under the Growth Champion category.

What's wrong with Marketing?

First of all, why is innovation and strategy classified as non-traditional?

Secondly, follow the logic...if marketing departments that fall into the "Growth Champion" category are 20% more likely to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability, why the hell do only 9% of marketers fall into this category?

For your information, here is the breakdown:

• Growth Champions (9%): The Influentials...
• Marketing Masters (38%): Bubbling under...close second; arguably less accountable?
• Senior Counselors (17%): Academics/Good at talking and coming up with charts
• Best Practices Advisors (9%): Me-toos/sheep
• Brand Builders (12%): The Ad Guys/Love going to the Super Bowl
• Service Providers (15%): Lackeys.

  So I applied a tad of Jaffe Juice irreverence, but there are some common threads or trends. One continuum is ideation to execution; another is innovation; a third is the coverage - and influence - throughout the organization (the opposite of a silo approach); a final one is the ability to try out new approaches (versus status quo/best practices)

The Internet is not a baby anymore. The Web is not a child anymore. Online is in fact a teenager and if it commits a crime, it can go to juve detention...or worse still, tried as an adult.

Enough with the metaphors.

Tac Anderson had a bit of a rant on this week's episode of Across the Sound (ATS #34) and he was venting (big time) on the lack of support/committment/follow-through regarding new marketing (and specifically social media)

Segue to the newly released Forrester report, which basically revealed that interactive marketers have been and are reluctant to shift dollars away from traditional online channels like e-mail or search to some of the new opportunities such as gaming, mobile or blogs.

Just 13% reported using blogs or social networks in marketing, and 49% said they had no plans to do so in the next year.

So it would seem that the creme de la creme of interactive marketers are acting rather "traditional" in terms of defending their own status quo

How ironic and how utterly not surprising.

This week's episode of Across the Sound - the New Marketing Podcast is a solo edition, with a bunch of surprises and audio mash-ups, jingles and vignettes.

Full show notes below for Episode 34:

AdPulp draws a clear distinction between CGC (Consumer Generated Content) and Expert Generated Content i.e. content created by people who know what the hell they're doing.

The example given is the recent Firefox effort, in which roughly 1% of the users submitted entries and the two winning submissions were created by an aspiring director and art and design junior.

AdPulp asks whether co-creation is in fact co-promotion. Point taken, although in the consumer's eyes, it's all the same, isn't it?

Steve Hall is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore. Actually, Todd Copelvitz is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.

Take what? The posturing, postulating, procrastinating and procreating about the demise of the 30-second spot and the importance of things like addressable advertising and relevance.

Todd says that's there's only talk and not much walk, and puts it down to good old fashioned laziness.

His call to arms is to write a book about it (kidding) and...

,,,those of us who are willing to rethink how the pieces work owe it to ourselves to answer the call. Remake the face of the agencies you're at, if you can. If not, step out and start your own. Seize the moment. I'm more than willing to help.

Anyone interested? Seriously, anyone?

On one hand, one could argue that that's exactly what is happening with respect to the mushrooming of creative, strategic, media and marketing "boutiques" - including, but certainly not limited to - the likes of Strawberry Frog, Naked, Anomaly and Denuo.

On the other hand, Todd doesn't seem convinced that it's enough. He doesn't appear to be as focused on the "cause" (people not doing anything about it), as the "effect" (kicking the lethargic agencies' collective asses)

Take that!

Gregory Galant, CEO of RadioTail (I'm beta testing their ripple product for my podcast) wrote this article on successful podcast advertising.

His 5 succinct tips are as follows:

1. Keep your message brief. Word
2. Vary your creative. Earthlink?
3. Don't underestimate your audience. Halleluyah
4. Place your ads interstitially (don't use pre- or post-roll) How about Point-roll?
5. Don't imitate broadcast radio. W-NNNNNN-BC

Here's a brief and very meaty excerpt:

Ads placed before a podcast make it difficult for potential listeners to sample and get excited about the podcast. Many podcast producers reject them for that reason. It's even bad for the advertiser because that's when podcast listeners are most likely to fast-forward-- when they have their hands on the control just after they've selected a podcast.

Good stuff!

Media Orchard calculated the readibility of various blogs, thanks to the Gunning-Fog test, which is an objective test of readibility, as opposed to a subjective assessment of content.

The Gunning-Fog test is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content ... It's all based on the number of words per sentence, number of syllables per word and the percentage of words with three or more syllables, among other things.

Here are your benchmarks of comparison:

Here are a few blog results courtesy of Media Orchard and also the results for Jaffe Juice:

iPod has a competitor?????? Could it be true? Someone dares threaten the monopoly of Jobs? AND does it in an irreverent way.

What is the world coming to? I'm going to preserve my Nano in resin immediately so that it retains its value and fetches a high price as an old relic 5 years from today.

It's all for the new Sansa e200 from SanDisk. Although I'm sure Jobs will crush 'em like a paper cup, my only question is whether it works on iTunes.

Hat tip to Maarten.

From one Kelly to another (a real one). I met Kelly on a flight from Chicago to Jacksonville. She's opening up a cafe in St Augustine and I wish her the best of luck and will link to her when she's up and running.

She told me about these Adicolor long form content vignettes and sent me a link to them. They're damn fine, so check 'em oot.

I'd be curious to find out who created them, where they ran etc.

Mitch (AKA Kelly) did a quick "5-questions with..." me for One Degree.

Here are his questions and my answers.

Congratulations to Taylor Hicks - your new American Idol. I gotta say, kudos to Fox et al for an unbelievable 2 hour spectacular production. Highlights included Katharine McPhee and Meatloaf in an unforgettable rendition of It's all coming back to me now, as well as The Hoff in tears when Taylor won!

I almost felt bad that I skipped through every single one of the ads. I almost felt that I should have watched at least one in appreciation of the incredible entertainment.

Naaaaaaaaaah.

Answer: When they're in the toilet.

A new Starch study has seemingly deflated quite a bit of wind (hot air) from the sails of the ailing magazine industry. The study concluded that ads in high-engagement magazines performed no better than ads in low-engagement ones.

The double-barrelled hypothesis was simple (paraphrased): if readers spent more time/effort/energy reading magazines, then ceteris paribus they should spent more time reading and remembering the ads in it (and thus, high engagement magazines should outperform low engagement ones in the ad stakes - all a little too incestuous for me)

Starch divided 25 magazines into high-engagement, low-engagement and middling camps, defining engagement by the frequency with which they are read, time spent with each issue and how much of each issue gets finished. When it examined the percentages of readers who remembered ads across the magazines, it found no link between those scores and levels of engagement.

Why is anyone surprised? On one hand, all it means is that all magazines are in the same boat with respect to ad recall/memorability etc....which could be good and it could be bad. On the other hand, this clearly reminds us that content (edit) and commercials (ads) are as similar as chalk and cheese (I forget which is which)

Via Ad Age

CBS announced a very interesting tie-in with the upcoming Burnett-produced reality show, Gold Rush. The premise is very simple: 12 trucks containing $100K and 1 containing 1 million smackers will be hidden around the US and viewers will attempt to uncover clues in order to solve the riddle and win the money.

Here's where it gets interesting...the clues will be dropped in CBS programming, AOL.com and commercials. In this regard, CBS will allow its advertisers to participate in the program/promotion/experience by teeing up their ads as antes.

I think this is awesome. Yes, there are some issues (such as scaleability beyond a once-off gimick, mindset with respect to expecting consumers to lean forward when they might prefer to lean back, as well as a question on whether consumers scouring ads for clues will distract them from the selling message; there's also the rather large Elephant in the room as to why AOL.com is stealing CBS Digital's lunch in this regard), BUT overall, this is one of the best demonstrations of engagement potentially done right, as well as best use of an Upfront methodology that I have seen to date...

I also wonder if consumers will "beat the system" by sharing clues as opposed to hoarding them. On such a mass scale, there really isn't first mover advantage (it's a bit of catch-22), but then again....greed is good.

I think I might play along as well...gosh, does that mean I'll actually consciously watch an ad? How 1999 of me.

Via Ad Age

Check out Bob Garfield's Ad Age critique on the CGC "Transformation" spot for Sony. It appeared on Current TV and was created by a 19-year old (Tyson Ibele) Garfield gives it ** out of ****.

His heading reads as follows: Sony's Transformation Spot isn't very Transformational and the subhead reads: Latest Consumer-Produced Work Gives Ad Agencies Reasons to Rejoice.

I wonder if he's really talking about CGC in general or specifically the Sony spot. Inarguably this is one of the better CGC efforts, so by definition if this one isn't very good (by his standards), what does that say about the entire category?

I got to catch a plane, so more commentary later...and possibly on ATS. In the interim, what do you think? Is Garfield on the money or off the mark?

In just one week, I bumped into marketers from both American Express (Montreal, CMA) and today, Fedex (at an AMA conference in Chicago)

In both cases I have examples in my presentations - for American Express, a disconnected and siloed form of how not to do integration and for American Express, the now infamous Fedex Furniture case.

Both times, the marketers approached me after the fact and we had great conversations.

Hopefully the dialogue will continue.

I was quoted in the annual Brandweek report of the Brand keys Customer Loyalty Index. It's a pretty neat and extensive survey which essentially measures how well (or not) the brand(s) in question delivers on the expectations of its most loyal consumers.

You can download a copy here: Download LoyaltyIndex06.pdf

Take home quote: "They way they (Apple) treat customers is disgraceful," observed Jaffe. "Batteries, memory - in a way they've made a conscious decision to be arrogant and aloof...That is a very risky strategy."

COTC writes this post about the 1% rule i.e. about 1% of constituents are typically responsible for the majority/bulk of content/contributions. The prime example given is WikiPedia: (as per WikiPedia founder, Jimmy Wales)

• 50% of all Wikipedia edits are done by 0.7% of users
• 1.8% of users have written more than 72% of all articles

I've been talking (up until now, anecdotally) to marketers about a version of this i.e. do you know the 1% of people responsible for 99% of your buzz? Now it seems this 1% rule is being supported on multiple levels - and in particular, from a content creation standpoint.

The post continues to make a very simple, yet important point: marketers focus on the mass - the 99%. Now of course it's critical for them to achieve varieties of scale in order to make their numbers, BUT perhaps it's worth thinking about the 1% as a means to reach, connect and effect with the 99%, as opposed to all that good money thrown after bad.

I absolutely love this (hat tip to C.C. Chapman) for many reasons:

For starters, it's a great mash-up trailer and another fantastic example of CGC. It also brilliants mocks the ridiculously contrived cookie-cutter approach to hyped up movie trailers that we love to hate.

At the end is the obligatory e-mail address which has become the motive du jour of CGC i.e. love me, hire me!

This is the music edition with Accident Hash, The U-Turn Cafe, and Managing the Gray’s C.C. Chapman.

You can download the episode ala carte here.

You can subscribe directly to Across the Sound on iTunes here.

Full show notes, company/people/brand mentions, themes/memes:

Seth Godin is a great marketer. That's not always a compliment if one considers that All Marketers are Liars :)

Seth talks a great game. Question is whether he walks as good a game.

Take his new venture, Squidoo, which got Squashed on TechCrunch in a May 9 review. The article posits the following:

Now here’s the problem. If Squidoo doesn’t work out as planned, and I don’t think it will, Seth loses more than his time and whatever capital he’s put into Squidoo. He also loses credibility as an expert in product marketing. To borrow the metaphor, Squidoo could become an albatross around Seth’s neck.

...and then proceeds to tear the Squid from tentacle to tentacle.

Seth's credibility aside for a moment, Squidoo is looking more like a black sheep than a purple cow. In fairness, it is young and so to call it a dog, as opposed to a puppy might be somewhat premature.

...but what about Seth? I was a little troubled that he has remained conspiciously silent throughout this conversation. This is nary a Seth comment amongst the 118. Hell, even Sam Donaldson weighed in on the debate (a doppleganger perhaps?)

I discuss this further in next week's Across the Sound (ATS #33) and also answer a listener's comparison between Seth and Squidoo, and myself and the sponsor of ATS, [x + 1]

For now, let me plant this seed. Perhaps it's ok for a talker not to be a walker. Me personally, I try and walk my talk whenever I can, for example: UNM2PNM, my Nike Ad, Across the Sound, Jaffe Juice, etc. I don't always hit the ball out of the park, but that's ok. Academics are often lousy practitioners in the "real world" - you know that saying, those who can, do and those who can't, teach. But then again, that doesn't mean that people can't and don't learn from them. Perhaps the same is true for Seth et al

Or perhaps talkers should be judged according to self-proclaimed higher standards. Worse case scenario, they can always talk their way out of it, right?

Brian Morrissey at Adweek wrote this article (subscription required) on the growth of Virtual worlds or metaverses.

Included in his piece was this paragraph:

For now, new-marketing consultant Joseph Jaffe, whose Second Life avatar goes by the name Divo Dapto, believes marketers should do more observing than advertising in virtual worlds to see how people behave. "Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor," he said. 

Yup, a second life character has been officially featured in a trade publication. Props to Brian for being such a good sport about it. We even considered conducting the interview in Second Life.

Now if only Divo could find the time to realize his second life aspirations of forming a rock band and touring the metaverse. Party on Wayne.

Oh yummy....I'm eating this one for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In my book,  I make one of the four cases against the 30-second spot from a consumer centric perspective i.e. consumers aren't as stupid as they used to be i.e. they're a lot smarter than we often give them credit for i.e. they're not buying what we're selling.

One of the last bastions of rationale behind advertising as we know it is the weak argument for emotion or the delusional belief that brands are human beings and our ability to transfer human personality traits on top of these products and services will somehow bestow magical and mystical powers on our ability to move product.

Hat tip to Being Reasonable and MIT Ad Lab for the Seed Magazine article which reflects on a study that essentially concludes that consumers aren't responding to all the fluff and warm fuzzy hype that is usually crammed into traditional advertising.

During the study—the first ever to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),to examine how different regions of the brain are affected when thinking about certain qualities of brands—20 subjects were asked if 450 adjectives, like "down-to-earth," "sophisticated" or "warm-hearted," were applicable to themselves and other people. Then they were asked if those same human-like qualities could be judgments about brands they know and use.

The research team found that while the same words were being used to describe people and products, different regions of the brain were activated when subjects were talking about one or the other. The fMRI scans detected that there was a greater neural response in the medial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain when applying the adjectives to people. But when focusing on brands, like Wal-Mart, Starbucks or Ben & Jerry's, the left inferior prefrontal cortex was activated, an area of the brain known to be involved in object processing.

Bottom line: The finding indicates that the anthropomorphizing of brands often used in commercials isn't humanizing a product, and thus, the ad is falling on deaf ears.

It's time to make advertising relevant again...or risk the realization of a new reality: a world without advertising.

Marc Babej and Tim Pollak just wrote an interesting column on Forbes.com (hey Marc - have you given up the blog in favor of an MSM column, how very retro of you! :) )

The provocative title is, "Who needs a CMO anyway?" and in a nutshell questions the validity, relevance and more importantly, power/empowerment associated with a token position in today's times.

Before you dismiss this assertion, you should consider several factors, including the tenure of the average CMO, whether they directly control budget or not, Regis McKenna's contention that everything has been stripped away from marketing except for mass media and even the extent to which they have embraced change, innovation, transformation and yes, "new marketing"

For value/relevance to be shown the article lists the following responsibilities and attributes which the function should uphold (as opposed to the superficial ambassadorial hand wave and occasional industry keynote) including:

• Ensuring the company's products and services are in tune with consumer demand.
• Directing new product development and ensuring the continuing appeal of existing offerings.
• Marketing communications.
• Hold CMOs accountable for achieving top-line growth objectives.
• Hold CMOs accountable for meeting corporate margin goals.

I'm sure many current CMO's would push back and contend that they are already meeting (and expected to meet) the above criteria.

Personally, I am a big believer in the validity and need for a CMO title. I would even go so far as to say that it is imperative for this title to expand and evolve quickly to include a broader range of responsibilities - many of whom have been stripped away from them in past years. In addition, I would also make the case for new line items like overseeing "conversation" (although on current form, this critical responsibility should currently be bypassing marketing and reporting directly into the CEO), corporate experimentation, as well as elements of R&D/innovation.

It's episode 32 of Across the Sound - the New Marketing Podcast. It's a solo edition, but jam-packed with a variety of multimedia including my visit to Singapore (and meeting 2 listeners of ATS), my Q&A in Antwerp last week, DJ Spos and a spontaneous interview with a well known advertising executive which took place at the departure gate at JFK!

Full show notes:

A LA Times story which broke on Monday has certainly caused a stir...never mind in the blogosphere, but with the actual subjects concerned.

The story documents the fact Disney and McDonalds have ended their working relationship with respect to Disney movie tie-ins to McDonalds Happy meals. The reason given is simple enough: Disney is essentially walking away from $100 million+ in royalties for the trinkets and collectables which come bundled in Happy Meals in order to "distance themselves from the epidemic of childhood obesity"

McDonalds angrily and immediately fired back to the article emphasizing that this was a mutual decision/agreement.

3 implications from my corner of the sandbox:

1) Guns don't kill people; PowerPoint doesn't Suck; McDonalds doesn't make you obese...with the exception of Charlton Heston, it comes down to parenting, common sense and the individual. Now that said, I do have particular views about the manipulative effect of misleading and false advertising, but that's another story for another day...

2) Interesting how quickly McD's responded. Companies typically respond too slowly or not at all...could this be a side-effect of the blogosphere's trickle-down impact on corporate communications (Shel, Neville?)

3) The third reason is somewhat personal and linked to the first...I take my kids to McDonalds on Sunday nights (not every Sunday night, but some) and they love the gifts they receive. This isn't about the children, it's about corporate greed, self-interest and spin. I feel confident in my ability to make smart and responsible decisions on behalf of my children, and whilst I can not and will not speak for others, there's still something about the announcement and the story that just doesn't ring true for me.

How about you?

Current guest co-host of ATS, Mitch Joel, had this to say about podcasting in general - following his experience of being on the show.

In his post he asks the all important question to marketers, "Is Podcasting right for you?" and makes a point that this is a committment...but then again, isn't that the game we're in from a brand/branding/relationship/communication perspective(s)?

Blogging is hard enough. You have to have the right voice, a vision for where your Blog is going and the flow of material to keep the conversation fresh. When you migrate to Podcasting, so many of the variables decrease your chances for success.

With Podcasting, you have to also have a great radio voice. You have to be able to deliver a high-quality performance and, for the most part, it’s live. You’re recording as you go and you better be topical. How many times do you change the dial when you’re listening to talk radio and there’s a lull?

Sean sent me some interesting thoughts about the latest Hasbro debacle with their Oozinator.

As you'll see from the commercial, it doesn't take much imagination at all to make the link between the soaky gooey liquid being ejaculated by the Oozinator and another soaky gooey liquid of coincidentally the same look, feel, color, texture (too much information I know)

Adrants had this to say and Words+Pictures put it into words and pictures.

Sean wonders if there's been a complete brand disconnect between client and agency side? How could the client have let this happen? Did the agency pull a fast one (premature creation?) on their client "as some sick joke"? Does this warrent/call for "business prevention units" to catch these types of glaringly embarrassing stains (sorry, couldn't resist) on the brand and company images?

I'll discuss this on next week's Across the Sound...for now I'll say that there are multiple culprits and therefore multiple parties who will need to be held accountable. That said, to play devil's advocate....are the sick old folk (that would be you and me) reading too much into a kid's toy? How about we ask the pervs on MySpace...

P&G in the form of PUR is blogging...or at least Dr Greg Allgood (with a name like that, how can he be anything but Pur?) is blogging in the form of "Notes from the Front Line" - a live journal if you will on his progress and efforts on the Children's Safe Drinking Water Project.

So BK i.e. CP+B have come out with a new commercial which is making its rounds around the Web and credit where credit is due, it's getting people talking - especially the men and in particular the men that obviously have some kind of inferiority complex about being manly and all.

Personally, I'm not buying this...and I'm not buying the Whopper either. As Decrepit Old Fool put it:

Not that it makes me any more likely to eat one of those thousand-calorie GreaseWhoppers, but at least it’s funny and not creepy like those ‘Wake up with the King’ commercials…

SNAP. I mean....d'oh. Er, isn't the point of a commercial to sell product?

I can't help but feel that BK are trapped in a vicious cycle of their own hubris right now. I totally get the fact this zigs when others zag i.e. the blatent political incorrectly in the face of a world that arguably has become too politically correct.

Perhaps I'm too jaded and perhaps I'm too cynical, but I just see through this as an attempt to maximize dollars to create the prototypical production ala BK's Super Bowl spot. It's just another TV spot at the end of the day and although people are talking about it (this YouTube spot has been viewed over 13,000 times, but then again which spot doesn't these days?), I can't help but wonder:

a) How are BK/CP+B activating/extending this - is there more to this than meets the eye? Is there a petition for example that men can sign? Is there a CGC component?

b) Is all of this working for BK? Arguably it is....and one just has to go back to the Subservient Chicken days to witness a sea change in terms of perception towards the brand. As BK mulls it's IPO, engaging its franchisees for example will be paramount.

c) Yes, I'll ask the obvious question. For every rabid man this attracts, how many pissed females will this repel

In the interim, I'm going out to buy a salad. How un-manly of me I know.

Got to be excited about this one...congrats Geoff!

TiVo is in the process of rolling out "Product Watch", which is as close as I've seen to the promise of "Advertising on Demand" (AOD), which I penned in "Life after the 30-second spot"

The premise is simple...self-select a category such as automotive (as in I'm looking to buy a car) and TiVo finds and files all related/relevant content and commercials on the subject matter.

It's a sublime mash-up of permission meets tagging meets new marketing. Love it.

Rolf from Maconomy sent me this "educational" yet addictive little Advergame designed to help educate agencies and consultancies on the virtues of submitting time sheets...on time.

Personally, I was hoping for the part where I got to fudge my time sheets and then try and escape the judge...or maybe I've just been playing too much Grand Theft Auto.

Enter ViTrue, a company that has just acquired online video sharing site, Sharkle, and about to drive a couple more tails into the coffin of the traditional ad agency.

Their proposition? Innocuous enough: (from their website)

• ViTrue connects Brands with Consumers through our Video Infrastructure Tools and User Generated Content.
• ViTrue enables Brands and Consumers to engage in meaningful interactions through our world-class technology solutions.
• ViTrue defines the next generation of Brand and Consumer interaction from over 20 years of combined industry experience from our management team.

Minus 1 point for both MediaPost and ViTrue referring to USER generated content

Minus 1 point for the lame name...ViTrue?

Minus 1 point for the lame website...www.vitrue.com?

Now for the pluses...

+3 for already having one advertiser under their belts....Sony Pictures for "The Benchwarmers"

+2 for having acquired Sharkle (not exactly YouTube but in the game nonetheless)

So according to my ridiculous math, that's +2 for anyone keeping count.

But what's really happening here? ViTrue claims to be offering a formalized and scaled solution - that ala Current TV with the VC-squared - allows marketers to "control" (slippery slope) in terms of briefing, approving etc creative into and out of the system. In many respects, it's another AdCandy, except perhaps this time their timing is a lot better and I believe the business model is a little less "gimicky"

If I'm being honest, I feel this stinks of opportunistic money making (return of the other VC), but maybe it's just the jealousy talking. Rupert? Oh Rupert? Your checkbook awaits.

Seriously though, I'm beyond concerned with the need to formalize an organic and natural process - in any way. My concerns for ViTrue are the same I expressed with AdCandy. Ultimately consumers will get fed up with being used and manipulated and cast their attention elsewhere.

On the flipside, any mechanism that does find a happy middle ground between frothing marketers and playful consumers (or is it the other way around?) can only be a good thing, right?

As reported by MediaPost

A. When there's an actual Clutter Watch Survey. Mindshare's 2005 report synopsis via Ad Age.

It's all rather pedantic really. I mean who cares that Fox had 11 seconds more than ABC when it comes to commercial time.

At the end of the day, this industry has been splitting hairs between lesser evils for way too long; turning blind eyes; accepting flawed methodologies "because that's the best solution we have" or "because everyone is using the same flawed standards"

Here's an idea...why not get rid of the clutter and along with it the Clutter Watch survey?

Episode 31 of Across the Sound - the New Marketing Podcast is up. This week's guest is Twist Image's Mitch Joel.

Subscribe directly at iTunes here and link to ala carte download here.