the happiest happy hours south of ground zero???
is it a new address?
do you plan to have a tube station, too?

on the latest issue of a weekly female supplement to one of a major daily, i saw an ad featuring kate moss.
well, i'm happy for her if she recover from her nightmare.
few pages on there was another ad featuring kate. and then another one. and a fourth one and i wasn't ever at half of the mag. ehi, but wait a minute. i do remember of kate, what about the brands? does it make sense to pay a model thousands of dollars and get mixed up with several other brands loosing any distinctiveness?

you may, or may not, have heard about the wall mart and edelmann story.
blogs have been debating about it since weeks now.
eventually, edelmann took the whole responsibility and apologize.
to believe them or not, it's a personal problem.
but the issue of the flogs is much more than a personal problem or an edelmann problem.
it's about the bad guys and the good guys that are around in the blogs world.
we are all aware that any business environment is infested by people lying and looking for easy money or big money.
but in the internet world, it's definitely harder to detect them as it is definitely harder for them to recover when they are detected.

i found this catchy comment from sean carton:

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623787

what happen when you set up a project, build a community and then, all of a sudden, you turn to be too much hungry for money and let the big companies to get in and disrupt the balance?
this is the story of second life, an interesting project of virtual reality, where people built their own virtual business and life. they all lived in a "beautiful" world made of small business. and then the big companies got in claiming they are changing the world.
now the native second-lifers are on revolt.
this may turn to be an alarm to all the guys thinking they can get into any business disregarding the people already in.
and this is, again, the old story of the customer care: you do not care about your first customers, the ones who get into when you were a small site, gave you trust and money. and now you pay.

media agency: the next endangered species?

i used to work in media department earlier and media agency later for the last 16 years.
big agencies, big names, big money. fair enough.
but since i left the agency, 6 month ago, i begin to look at them in a more disenchanted way.
results (with some exception, indeed)?

- no big changes in all these years
- money comes mostly from buying and not from strategy or planning
- in some countries, money comes part from client and part from media owners
- no real standing to say to a client don't go on tv (e.g.) or challenge him/her on strategic approach
- no real standing to tell to a client that the agency job is worth more than the miserable commission paid on average

media agencies had the great chance, around mid 90s, to become the real comunication center and this because they had in their hands the research on target definition. but the focus went on the commission to be paid for planning and buying. so they became a commodity and commodities are choosen by their price.

now with a media scenario more and more fragmented, new media already on stage and other probably to come shortly, again there is a chance for media agency to evolve from this commodity position.

the future of media agency may be in shift the buying into separated entity and keep in house the strategic process. becoming think tank they can leave the commodity area and negotiate a fee for buying and a remuneration for the strategy and planning.

will they grab it or will they be the next outsourcing service?

have you ever thought at the car retailer as someone who just chase you until the car is out of the store?
have you ever thought that you would like someone to remind you that you need to make periodic maintenance, change oil or whatever your car need?

just think about receiving an email or an sms telling you that you have to get back to perform some maintenance. helpful, isn't it?

currently i'm not aware of any customer program to follow you since you left the store and until you come back to buy a new one.
expensive? maybe but....
complicated to implement? yes but...

well, too many questions for a post, but i really like to have some answers.
cars are expensive and customer care should go further to add value for your money, even if you do not buy a porsche or a ferrari.

yesterday on the marketing profs blog section, ck (christina kerley, a new york based professional) posted some meaningfull thoughts about beauty and marketers responsability.
briefly, we are all in charge whenever false or misleading message get to teens and tweens and drive them to eating disorders. what is really impressing is the thread that followed: 30 comments were posted and some unique point of view.

- beauty is in the hand of marketers
- the message is that you MUST be thinner and thinner
- meanwhile the fastfood deliver to you thousands of calories and fat
- eating disorders hit kids younger and younger
- we are all into it because of being parents or relatives of teens and tweens
- we all knew someone with eating disorder and know about the consequence

get there and give a look at http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2006/10/face_it_marketers_beauty_is_ou_1.html

this is the picture in the usa but what about europe? and italy? are we really different?

in the last five years, in italy obese people index grew of 25%.
36% of the kids aged 9 yo is obese
3 millions people suffer of eating disorder.
10% of the girls suffer as well.
in europe obese people index grew between 10% and 40% with higher index in eastern countries.

we are all in business to make our clients more profitable but the ethic side of marketing and communication should not kept apart.
what about you?

this morning, as i was creating my profile, i begin to think that most of my passion, wine, mtb, contemporary art, are not advertised at all outside their inner circle. you find ads on related mags or dedicated tv channels, you must do some cherry picking to find some ads in major mags. and word of mouth, let's call so the expert voice, is the engine moving the business. the result is that if you are not an expert or you do not have a friend into it, price is what make the difference: an expensive wine must be tastier than the less expensive, a bike frame at 3.000 euro (or dollars) must be better than one at 2.500. weird, isn't it?

Hi, everybody. This is my first blog and my first post into. So let me talk about me briefly. I'm a long time practitioner in media and advertising. On mid May this year, I left the company to explore new life and career opportunity.
My interests span from cooking and wine (setting up a respectable cellar), contemporary art (attended a course at Sotheby's London), freeride mountain biking and my two dogs. I do have a girlfriend, too (forgive me about the listing, darling).
The next post will be about a real bizandbuzz matter, so stay tuned.
ciao,g.