Jaffe Juice

(all one of us)

It's that time of the year where I get to tell you how much I appreciate, value and love you - each and every one - the fans, the haters, the lurkers, the Frapprs, the contrarians, the evangelists etc.

Thank you one and all!

I'm taking a little bit of a break (in order to get my book a little more fleshed out), so posts will be light to non-existent until the New Year. Already received my first book cover submission. Can't wait to see more submissions (Armano!), as well as how the community-generated Chapter 10 pans out...

Last night we had a pretty cool holiday party in crayonville. At one point, we had 30+ people on our SkypeCast, including one surprised Bulgarian who found out that he had been named Time's Person of the Year. Here are some of the pics. Also got to meet Jersey Todd, which was cool.

Happy Holidays to one and all. May 2007 brings much joy through experimentation, happiness from risk-taking and prosperity by embracing new marketing!

From Contagious Magazine (we love), this year's most contagious. Always worth a look!

Download mostcontagious2006.pdf

In this day and age of crisis management, no control P.R., blah blah blah, how the hell is The Donald going to be able to get away with such egregious sexism, chauvism, anti-gay remarks etc.

I saw him on Larry King Live and I'm a little surprised by such alleged respected journalists (not such if that's being fair to journalists) lack of backbone in terms of calling him out for his ridiculous remarks.

This is Michael Richards territory.

Think a book is an old fashioned way to talk about conversational marketing? Perhaps I can change that...

Here are 2 ways you can Join the Conversation - quite literally.

1) Design the actual cover of my book. There's a Creative Brief waiting for you on the JTC Wiki (http://www.jointheconversationwiki.com/) which outlines the process, deadlines and type size of your name on the eventual cover.

2) Contribute i.e. co-co-author Chapter 10, "Why are you so afraid of conversation?" via the JTC Wiki (http://www.jointheconversationwiki.com/) You'll need a password, which you can get by e-mailing jtc at crayonville dot com. Subject "password"

I'll fill you in with more information and answer any questions/comments in the New Year, but in the interim I wanted to give you a head start should you have any pressing need to get your design and copy juices flowing...

Good Luck and welcome aboard :)

Hope to see you all tonight at 8pm EST for our very informal Holiday Party and social on crayonville Island. I've set up a SkypeCast for 8pm so we can chat with one another in addition to the music, which will be streaming via a DJ who'll be mixing live.

One less independent interactive specialist agency out there (and in this size/capability range, that leaves 1 by my count)

It's a pretty solid move in terms of shoring up Publicis' digital clout and expertise that's gotta leave the other bigwigs scratching their heads and wondering what happened...

On a completely unrelated note, I've decided to increase crayon's valuation from a box of crayons, 10% takings from any Divo Dapto's Karaoke ticket sales, and last year's uneaten Channukah Gelt to include a complimentary day-pass to the Admiral's Club, all royalties to my 10th book and any advertising revenue - past, present or future - from Sony's fake blog.

P.S. Apples to Apples, we're talking about Goo Tube less $300K for pocket money. Funky.

According to paidContent.org, Me Too Tube (the Orbitz of the Video CopyCat business) might have just lost one of its founding honchos in the form of Viacom. It's all conjecture right now, but come on, do you really think a bunch of metaphorical old white guys are going to get over themselves, get out of their - and each other's - own way, park their egos at the door in the process of getting this "You Tube Killer" Hail Mary off the ground?

I think not.

Paul McEnany interviewed me recently at the Chaos Conference in Austin for a podcast. He's now gone and transcribed the interview and illustrated it with some terrific images.

You can find the entire interview here. It's called, "Joseph Jaffe, The Evangelist," but I'm wondering if I should hand over that title to Paul now!

Michael Donnelly was the inspiration behind this thought..

We're all familiar with the notion of "Command and Control" with respect to the traditional or mainstream way of doing business. Here's another way of thinking about it from a new marketing positioning point: Drag and Drop.

That's exactly what marketers do. They disrupt consumers and take them away from what they were doing. Conceptually, this is exactly what is being expected of viewers of television commercials. Practically, in the case of web banners, expecting them to click (through) and do something completely different from what their original intentions were.

And then comes the "drop" part. Use and Abuse...and move on. Isn't that exactly what happens with all these brands looking to establish lifetime relationships with us, but instead treats us as a series of dsyfunctional one-night stands (the ones where they only call with they're drunk!)

Not sure what the New Marketing antedote would be to D+D. Perhaps you can come up with it...

A full 1 1/2 years ago, I posted this piece about a Cingular CGC campaign which asked consumers to submit photos via their camera phones which spoke to Cingular's advertising theme i.e. the whole notin of raising the bar etc.

This morning, I received this from Jessica who snapped this picture (ironically) in a region where there was no service (but if there were...she would choose Cingular!)

Folks over at Cingular...if you'd like to contact Jessica, just pop me an e-mail.

For those of you that have yet to register in Second Life and come to visit us on crayonville Island (I'm told that on last count, it's 6.564 billion less the 2 million current residents of SL), here is a snapshot of the crayon experience. Enjoy!

It's like this every day and every night (except when it isn't)

SL Neighbors, Leo Burnett, put this Machinima greeting card together. Very cool. But why was I left off their list? Guess, I've been naughty...

One of the most important and fundamental shifts in the marketing "communications" space is exactly that...the shift from communication to that of conversation.

Back in the day, 2000/1 to be exact, when I was Director of Interactive Media at TBWA\Chiat\Day in New York, we were (like all other interactive folk) talking about the shift from one-way monologue to two-way dialogue. In fact, with an innovative client like ABSOLUT, we pioneered what we called involvement advertising i.e. an evolution or progression from interactive advertising, which not only used consumer involvement, but indeed was predicated/contingent on the consumer participating in order to resolve/play out.

Put differently...expanding banners does not a conversation make.

So here we are, at the dawn of 2007. In some respects, we've come a long way and in others we have even left the starting blocks.

When I thought about my next book, I weighed up the options of LA30 Part Deux - The Sequal versus a completely different path. I think I found a happy medium and today, I'm proud to announce the title of the book:

Join the Conversation

How to engage marketing-weary consumers through the power of community, dialogue and partnership

Thank you for all your suggestions/comments thus far. I will be integrating much of your feedback throughout the writing process. There will be a few interesting twists along the way and I hope to announce a few of them later this week...

Time to go and write!

Via Bob Liodice on the ANA blog:

1. Consumer in Control: Marketers will abandon their historic ‘command and control’ model of brand building in favor of a truly interactive dialogue with consumers
2. New Agenda for Agencies: Agencies will be turned on their heads, with their efforts increasingly tied to client brand performance.
3. Hail to the Chief: The chief marketing officer will rise in stature as a C-suite player...
4. Unconventional Outreach: Marketing will become increasingly unconventional – tapping into social networking, word-of-mouth, local events and more...
5. Media Buying Metamorphosis: Media buying and selling will be transformed.
6. Let the Fighting End: Government policymakers, consumer advocacy groups and brand marketers will begin to find common ground, aligning business goals with public policy needs.
7. Organizational Overhaul: The marketing organization will undergo a top-to-bottom reinvention, providing better professional education and skill-building...
8. Research Renewal: Research will become the next frontier in the accountability equation.
9. Blow up the Back Room: Archaic business systems and back office operations will be overhauled to lower costs...
10. Continuous Marketing Reinvention: Continuous marketing reinvention will become the mantra of marketing executives and the cornerstone philosophy for successful brand building, integrated marketing communications, marketing accountability and the marketing organization.

Bob's 10-step program of progress truly validates the new and pretty scary path we've set out on with the formation and launch of crayon. It also underscores the mountain that still has to be climbed.

There is a still a massive disconnect between "what we say" as an industry and "what we do." The rhetoric is deafening and there is an abundance of "change is good, but not on my watch" which makes for a sobering inhibitor of innovation and progress.

Take point number 3: the rise of the CMO for example. It's going to take a lot more than a title or keynote speech at a AAAA's or ANA event to demonstrate that the CMO title is nothing more than a glorified or token figurehead. Along with this leadership position has got to be a degree of empowerment and budget autonomy. Put differently, in order to leverage the full power and potential of the C-level marketing position (which I think is beyond critical), point 7 - i.e. organizational overhaul - is going to need to be simultaneously and comprehensively implemented.

My hope is that at this time next year, we'll be looking at a self-reported progress card which glows with achievement and accomplishment.

Perhaps next year will be different...

This Thursday (December 21st), we'll be having our crayon holiday party in crayonville at 8pm EST (5pm LST) and you're all invited.

If you're available, do swing by for some good conversation, music and fun.

In Ad Age's Book of 10's, we have the "10 words or phrases that are so 2006"

1. Consumer Generated Media
2. Touch point
3. Organic
4. Connective Tissue
5. Web 2.0
6. The idea is King
7. Customer-centric
8. Open the kimono
9. Join the conversation
10. "My avatar..."

Here's how I scored:

1. 1/2 point - I use the phrase consumer generated content which is somewhat redeeming, I think. Note to selves: consumers should stick to consuming.
2. 0 points -probably goes well with the kimono thing (see point 8)
3. 1 point - organic, authentic, non-linear, transparent - who needs 'em! Let's return to the days of controlled, manipulative, misrepresentative, exaggerated advertising...oh wait, we're already there
4. 1/4 point - I talk about connecting the dots, so I need to take some responsibility for my actions.
5. Tough call. I hate this term although I love what it stands for when done right. 1/2 point
6. When wasn't it? 0 points.
7. Customer-centric. 1 point. I should be embarrassed of myself. How could I ever think of the consumer before my Cannes acceptance speech. My avatar slaps himself across the face (looped animation to rub it in)
8. 0 points. Not sure what that even means but I'm pretty certain you can end up in jail for doing it
9. 100 points. Bad bad blogger. Say it with me 1000 times: conversation bad. Communication good
10. My Avatar has a first name, it's H-O-M-E-R. My avatar has a second name, it's H-O-M-E-R. 1 point

Total: 104 1/4 points

So how did you score?

Thanks to David at Learfield Interaction Blog for this priceless way to sum up not just this year, but indeed the State of the Marketing Union in a nutshell.

So as the perfect example of bad planning, the failure of sanctimonious church v state thinking and essentially the difference between mainstream marketing worst practices versus the actual reality we're living in...we have Chrysler's 30-second pre-roll on Time.com which starts with the copy, "You might not be Time person of the year. But you can drive like you are" which immediately makes way for Time's person of the Year: YOU!

David puts it best on his blog....D'oh!

I never thought that my response of ZERO to the question as to how long an optimal pre-roll commercial should be would have resonated as it did.

Ian Schafer offers thoughtful commentary here and what I find interesting (but not surprising) is that his guidelines are 100% applicable to all of video advertising, including - but not limited to - television and the 30-second spot:

• Make ads better
• Make ads shorter
• Make ads more relevant
• Make ads less frequent

Reducing clutter is a no-brainer. Better targeting is critical. Improved creative is a necessity.

The only thing I'd tweak is that the length of the ads should be determined by the consumer - make ads shorter OR longer and let the consumer ultimately decide.

So it's official, GSD&M have decided not to play a part in the round 2.0.1.4 of the Wal-mart merry-go-round.

Here's the official word from the Sheriff (as I call him), Roy Spence, Co-Founder and President of GSD&M.

"I want to thank Wal-Mart for inviting us to re-pitch the business. I have decided to decline. We helped build Wal-Mart from $11 billion in sales to $312 billion. We declare victory. We will do everything to make the transition perfect. We wish our great friends well. And we are moving on."

Part of the reason why I've kept so quiet is because I participated in the review, working with the folks over at GSD&M. It was the first pitch I've participated in for over 5+ years and I was proud to have played a part in it. GSD&M tried something different with this review - an experiment - by enlisting the help of outside experts like myself. I hope they learned a lot in the process and are better off for it...I suspect they are.

We worked damn hard. I'm sure the other agencies did equally good jobs as well, but when you put a bunch of "suspects" into a line-up, any originality becomes marginalized in what is essentially a meat market.

The other (larger) part is because the coverage by the dailies, trades and blogs have been disgraceful.

It's times like these that I am beyond disgusted and embarrassed to have ever been associated with this industry. It's part of the reason why crayon is an unAgency and intensely focused on pioneering Life after Advertising (forget the 30-second spot...this is much bigger)

As I wrote about in Chapter 10 of my book, which you can download here for free): THE WHOLE PITCH PROCESS is a circus at best and a sham at worst. Search consultants are an unncessary layer that impede the process; purchasing is clueless and out of their depths and ultimately the whole song-and-dance is contrived, unnecessary and counter-productive.

ABOLISH IT NOW and figure out a better solution (perhaps that means agencies need to do a better job differentiating themselves)

Anyway, bottom line...let Julie and Sean get on with their lives. Let Wal-mart clean up the mess they created. Let the television writers do their jobs writing schlocky soap-operas for daytime TV. Let us work on improving the image of this bastardized business, where our reputation is only ahead of used-car salesmen and behind lawyers and politicians.

Uggggh.

Another Fake Flog. Another Mea Culpa. This time even more sickening that not fessing up:

"Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our
speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn’t a real hip-hop
maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were
trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will
just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you
nothing but the facts on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment America"

The frog in question was created by Zipatoni for Sony and begs the questions:

• Why did this need to be a blog...and a fake one at that?
• Surely, there were other approaches that would have done the job equally well, if not better?
• And if not, why couldn't you go about this in a considered and authentic way?

It boggles my mind how many mainstream marketers/agencies look at new marketing from the same one-dimensional, traditional, advertising based- and biased lens. When you think about it, it's no wonder that the inevitable outcome every time is fakeness instead of authenticity.

I agree with the folks over at Beyond Madison Avenue...this apology, albeit quick on the draw ('er that's only because you were found out!) is way too snide and snarky (note to marketers and their agencies: you don't do snarky well) and comes across only as arrogant and patronizing.

Big Brother rolls on in Second Life, but sadly Gideon Television (my reason for visiting the virtual house every night for a week or so) has been evicted.

He went out in style though, with a sequence so daring; so invigoratingly shocking that no doubt no one will be talking about it for seconds:

Instructions for the final rites were given - if our names were called, we were to descend the tube to a place where the survivors could pick carrion from the corpses.

A dramatic pause, and then Big Brother, his virtual breath reeking with a stench of pity, announced that "THE FIRST PERSON IN HISTORY EVER TO BE EVICTED FROM THE VIRTUAL BIG BROTHER IS...."

Beat.

"GIDEON TELEVISION".

As the mob went crazy, I bellowed "NOOOOOO", less out of anguish than to allow TheDiva to swoon on cue, as per our arrangement.

And here is where Big Brother came to realize that while reality may come to Second Life, some Television will always remain unscripted. Pulling my beloved Desert Eagle from it's holster (Razen was right, they SHOULD have strip searched me), I gave one final wink to Phaylen, put the barrel to my temple, and pulled the trigger. A fountain of blood exploded across the walls of my glass prison, a bloody finale that'll take days to wipe clean. I fell to the ground, and only those in the box with me heard my final whispered message. Maybe they'll share it with the housemates, maybe they won't.

And then, fade to black.

Brilliant. If only Reality TV was as good as unReality TV

Gideon's very thorough and insightful post-mortem on BBSL here, including how Endemol dropped the ball and 5 pointers to the future.

Gideon, you rock. You are my hero.

I was alerted to a website called Fake Your Space, which on first glance is a pretty whacked way to essentially buy popularity and in doing so, both support and destroy the B2C social networking business model of MySpace and the like.

It's a mash-up of pay-per-post meets MySpace where people can selectively purchase friends who periodically leave comments behind.

It's a bizarre thought, but not really when you think about the price of popularity.

On second glance, when you click on the "purchase or invest in" link ('er if I buy 3 do I get 1 free?), it seems like a pretty transparent (the bad kind) attempt at milking a domain name sale.

This alone is interesting i.e. building up an otherwise shill of a business in order to maximize the value of a domain name? Now we know what's in a name....

Surreal. What will they think of next...virtual worlds?

Yesterday, I flew NorthWest to Detroit (I spoke at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business in a speaker's series associated with The Yaffe - no relation - Center for Persuasive Communication)

I had the pleasure of meeting long time listeners/readers in the form of Derek Mehraban and Catherin Juon.

En route to the plane, I spent some time in the NorthWestern Lounge at La Guardia Airport (including some good surreal time in crayonville) and noticed a rather interesting promotion on the front desks of the lounge.

The promotion was for Zicam, a "homeopathic" cold remedy tablet (I've seen similar ones for Airborne offered at Admiral's Clubs), which you would think was perfect for the cold/flu season. That said, what does it say about flying, especially when one factors in the infamous "sick air" that gets circulated continuously en route.

I guess it would be the equivalent of a pop-up retail booth at departure gates selling life insurance...

I buy the Airborne promotion because of its "preventative" qualities/positioning, however the Zicam one left me....well....a little.....cold.

Zero.

That's the answer I gave to Executive Editor of iMediaConnection.com, Brad Berens, when he recently quizzed a bunch of interactive industry execs.

I told him that as long as I had any say in it, I would never purchase or advise a client of mine to purchase a pre-roll commercial on the Web.

It's a cheap imitation of a failing business model - it is intrusive, disruptive, one-size-fits-all, linear....you get the picture.

SMG's Digital Chief at GM Planworks, Curt Hecht, weighs in with a similar view reported in MediaPost.

David Hachez shares some really interesting information in his post, "the power of Jaffe Juice as a traffic driver."

According to David, one link from my blog led to 45% of his daily traffic. On the same day, 93% of his visitors were new versus returning visitors.

David, it was my pleasure. Your content is great and so is your contribution.

The Citi commercials with Victor and Roman are really great...when fast forwarding through commercials, I'll often TiVo and go back to watch them multiple times. So what's the problem? It's the contradiction perhaps between creative and effective. Look, I have no clue if I'm 100% wrong about this, but I just get the feeling that this campaign (like many others) is too creative for its own good...OTT: over the top of the consumer, average average average consumer. It's the parodox of breaking through the clutter and ROI. (more at American Copywriter)

Digg this if you will...

As a context setter for this post, I suggest you read this Ad Age article which reflects Yahoo's Chief Sales Officer, Wenda Harris-Millard's self-serving bearish comments on "user" generated content, as well as the del.icio.us Peanut Butter memo, calling for reduced headcount at Y! by 15-20% amidst a "radical reorganization"

I'll come back to Yahoo! shortly.

I've been mulling over this idea for a while now and thought it would be an opportune time (as all the pundits begin making their predictions for the New Year) to offer up a thought of my own: I don't think anyone doubts that there is a massive realignment of the media powers that be in the overall integrated space. Within interactive however, this couldn't be more true when you look at the rise of the "new" portals such as MySpace, YouTube and/or Google and the subsequent demise - or metamorphosis - of the "traditional" portals.

My belief is that the days of the "portal" as we knew it are coming to an end. Yahoo!'s dominance is over. AOL's opportunity is over. Perhaps only MSN has a shot left.

Let me explain...

Take a look at the 3 portals in terms of their roots/heritage:

• AOL - for all intent and purposes, a dial-up ISP for newbies
• MSN - an ISP struggling to shake the shadow and stigma of being a technology company's bastard stepchild
• Yahoo! - the one true media company

To survie...one must change; to change...one must transform; to transform...one must evolve.

• AOL today is not an ISP, but a broadband-focused media network/company, but is it too little, too late? I've always believed that AOL has the opportunity to leverage an unprecedented treasure-chest of coveted content through its Time/Warner relationship, but to date we've never seen this capitalized on. In addition, AOL continues to spew out TV-biased advertising drivel (which goes completely against everything it should be standing for) without giving its consumers an iota of a reason to care; switch; find out more; convert. AOL's post Jon Miller response has been a "frying pan into the fire" AKA The reincarnation of Lloyd Braun in the form of Randy Falco from NBC. We wish you luck in preventing history from repeating itself.
• Yahoo! is a still a media company, but is it enough anymore? The company is beyond arrogant; it has relinquished its leadership role and fallen prey to the same greed and complacency from the dot com boom/bust. As Yogi would say, it's Deja Vu all over again. Of course Wenda is going to say what she said about the powerful and authentic consumer generated content space - her comments should be discounted 100% based on her own self-serving agenda:

"The question from a business standpoint is: How do you make money at this? It's fun, it's a blast, trying to figure this out, but I don't think anyone is doing it particularly well," she said.

Actually, consumers are doing it particularly well and brands are figuring out how to work with this without having to go through you.

The peanut butter memo is accurate in many of its assertions about Yahoo!'s situation analysis. One of the most telling focuses is the division between Yahoo, the traditional wannabee media company and the (in my opinion, most promising path forward) new marketing/social media/yes-Web 2.0 path forward. The two divergent/siloed camps are clearly at odds with one another.

We end up with competing (or redundant) initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different silos of our company.
• YME vs. Musicmatch
• Flickr vs. Photos
• YMG video vs. Search video
• Deli.cio.us vs. myweb
• Messenger and plug-ins vs. Sidebar and widgets
• Social media vs. 360 and Groups
• Front page vs. YMG
• Global strategy from BU'vs. Global strategy from Int'l

• MSN is now the go-to role model for the entire Microsoft company, coupled with its "Live" strategy connecting the dots between every asset - from desktop software (Office etc) to gaming (Xbox!) to online (MSN) to search. Ultimately this is just a leaf out of the "Web 2.0" (Google) distributed content (RSS) strategy...

Where does this leave us?

"If you build it, will they come" is now being replaced with "if you distribute it, will they read" or perhaps this should be restated as, "If they distribute it, they will embrace it"

So back to the dissertation: What is a portal really? It's a homepage. That's it. A homepage that has "high reach" properties which decrease DRAMATICALLY with every single click beyond.

• Today's portal home page is nothing more than a clunky mash-up of other people's content.  'Er, isn't that the same as an RSS Reader/Aggregator?
• Today's portal is just a shill to flood with 30-second spots that are not welcome on television anymore
• Today's portal is not scaleable (Sold Out of linear inventory) 
• Today's portal is redundant

Witness the inevitable extinction of an endangered species.

The portal as we know it today is on its way out of town. It begins with the gradual migration from My Yahoo or My AOL or My MSN to bloglines, google, vertical/targeted narrowcast mini-portals like MyAdFeed (that's what I'm using, in conjunction with bloglines) and the like.

It continues with a communal flash-mob embracing the best-in-class offering of the hour, at the expense of virtually all other substitutes. In CGC, it is YouTube. Who is number 2? Revver, Sharkle, Farkle, Barfle, who cares? Making this even worse is the fact, that we are dealing with - perhaps not fickle as Harris puts it - fluid and non-linear consumers. There are so few true barriers to entry and exit anymore, and even fewer reasons to believe and to care. As a result, consumers are "loyalless" and this does not just apply to portals, but indeed to most brands nowadays.

It ends with a democratization of content and a complete realignment and redistribution of power from the content creator (50 years ago) to the content distributor (10 years ago) to the content aggregator (today) to the content reaggregator (tomorrow - short term) and ultimately, content experiencer (tomorrow - medium term)

Short term, this will take the form of "network 2.0" (think one part Tacoda; one part Revenue Science; one part Podshow...but on a much larger and open scale) Any company that can figure out a way to eradicate the tyanny of "exclusivity", proprietary or closed-access will win.

Longer term, I feel it will contain a healthy and balanced mixture of conversation, slivercasting/long tail something and "3.d" (virtual worlds like SL) open-face access.

This is the direct-to-consumer path and its one where all the "UGC" takes over, without a care or concern about "monetization" and marketers.

Update: The peanut butter just hit the fan. Via Defamer today, "Former ABC Exec Lloyd Braun fails to make Yahoo! more like the network that previously fired him". COO Dan Rosensweig joins him.

Actually, you are watching Big Brother(s). The Second Life BB experience has begun and my voting loyalty has already been assigned to one Gideon Television, although I was bribed with a Corona and a joint along the way by another faction.

Like I posted back in November, it's a very cool extension of the BB brand/franchise and I'm intrigued to see how the various contestants do with their first challenge: building a Christmas Tree.

Also, the island is teaming with activity and presence (unlike most brand shrines right now)

Go Gideon...my money's on you to become the official Richard Hatch of BBSL.

A pretty cool mash-up poster of the new marketing world in true Waldo style. Hmmm, where is crayon in the mix?

Thanks to David H for the discovery

Charlie O'Donnel, Director of Consumer Products at Oddcast, an Avatar company, had this to say about Second Life in a post titled, "10 reasons to go short on Second Life".

Chris Carella from Electric Sheep responds with a post appropriately titled, "10 reasons to go long on Second Life"

Self-serving motivations aside (from the oddcast dude), it's great dialogue/conversation on the following subjects:

1. Second Life is not, and probably will never be, mobile.   
2. There are no microchunks of a virtual world. 
3. Second Life is a benevolant dictatorship.   
4. Second Life is a business. 
5. Diminishing returns for brand participation.   
6. Requires 100% attention.   
7. Lack of context.
8. Digital world with an analog business model.   
9. Reach.   
10. Escapism vs. Reality.

Update: David Churbuck, VP of Global Web Marketing at Lenovo joins the fray with his marketer-side perspective on why Second Life is Get-A-Life, including:

10. Second Life’s creation tools are very arcane and difficult to use. Development firms like Electric Sheep and Crayon are making a mint off of brands needing development help.

Thanks David. Can I put that in our sales material and/or convert it into some kind of bankable equity? I'd certainly like the opportunity to respond to your comprehensive post. Perhaps you'd come on Across the Sound - The New Marketing Podcast to discuss/debate further? Drop me an e-mail at acrossthesound@gmail.com

btw...it's crayon with a lower-case "c" and we're not a development firm per se...although sometimes I wish we were :)

I might as well as I've had the pleasure of being invited to Belgium 4 times in the past 12 months - for MSN, These Days/Pioneer, Belgian DMA and this weekend, Keynoting at Stichting Marketing's Congress.

Belgium loves Jaffe and Jaffe loves Belgium.

Here's the BELATED account of my very rewarding trip:

• I arrived in Ghent/Gent to the locals on Thursday morning. Had coffee with Raphael Nolens from Pioneer and David Hachez (who has been terrific in terms of helping out with ATS - check out ATS Revisited)
• Had a beer with self-professed Jaffe Groupie :) Bert Van Wassenhove at a local beer house that serves over 200 brands of beer - most of them local!
• We then went to the launch party of ONE (one of the founders is Jo Caudron, who I met last time I was in Belgium. Jo is an "old timer" and one of the Web pioneers in his country). It was quite surreal...I thought I'd know nobody, but turns out I knew everybody. This my friends is social media in action. Amongst the people I bonded with was long time reader/listener, Robin Wauters, who took some great pics of the event. I left around midnight!
• On Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a high-level marketer lunch which was organized through Stichting. I had a terrific 2+ hour conversation with execs from Henkel, Masterfoods, Beiersdorf, Unilever, KBC, Wegener DM and House of Marketing
• After just 3 hours sleep (man, I need to figure out this jet lag thing), I delivered my keynote to 1000+ delegates on Saturday morning. I think it was the largest group I've ever spoken in front of. The presentation seems to have been well received and you can listen to the MP3/podcast here.
• On the car back from Ghent to Brussels, I recorded a big chunk of Across the Sound - Episode 65. It was my first CarCast and you can listen here.
• Spent part of the trip back home educating the American Airlines flight attendants (as well as Mindy who was returning home to Connecticut) on blogging, podcasting, Social Networking and Second Life

It's now Sunday morning and I'm going to enjoy a peaceful day in the burbs with my family!