Andrew Lark

This will bring a smile to your face...

50 Funniest Homer Simpson quotes.... My faves...

• Lisa, Vampires are make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and eskimos.
• I want to share something with you: The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.
• Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.
• I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman.
• Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers.

Kudos To Read/Write Web...

GMSV shoots some kudos the way of Read/Write Web - Richard is based in Wellington, NZ.

Freeze-frame from the video stream: Just as Robert Scoble is wondering how we will ever keep up with the flow of news on new companies, Emre Sokullu and Richard MacManus at Read/WriteWeb perform the kind of public service that deserves a salute. They've assembled a current snapshot synopsis of the many players working various niches in the online video industry: sharing, intermediaries, search, e-commerce, editing and creation, rich media advertising, P2P, streaming and V-logging. Even those most plugged in to the business must have moments when they can't quite recall what distinguishes Pixsy from blinkx or whether Vongo is available internationally (it's not), so this serves not just as a quick catch-up but as a good reference that will grow with reader contributions. It'll also work as a nice milepost, one of those lists you come back to five years or 10 years down the road for a reminder of how things evolved. Nicely done, folks.

Passengers Want a Bill of Rights Uses Blog to Draw Support

I fly lots. And I mean lots. Hundreds of thousands of miles a year. I'm constantly astounded by how appallingly airlines treat their customers. A group of passengers is now moving - using a blog -- to rally support for a Passengers Bill of Rights. This has been needed for sometime - the big Airlines are a law unto themselves.

You can read the full story in the Merc. There is a group of customer-centric carriers that get it (Southwest, Virgin, Air New Zealand). There is another group that don't - American, United, British Airways...). Those that do get it should get behind the Bill of Rights. Those that don't are likely to dismiss poor service as "anomalies"  and that is the very reason we need a Bill of Rights.

Disclosure: Southwest Airlines is a client of Group Lark.

Cisco Acquires Five Across

While I'm not sure there is a great deal of synergy with Cisco's core business, the Five Across acquisition gives Cisco some street cred on the business side of Participatory Platforms. Will be interesting to see how they integrate it.

Cisco delivered the usual corporate patter in explaining the acquisition:

“Cisco believes the network is the platform for organizations to connect with their constituents and for individuals to connect with each other,” said Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Media Solutions Group (CMSG). “With the acquisition of Five Across, Cisco is taking an important step towards helping its customers evolve their website experience into something more relevant and valuable to the end-user.”

I've always been impressed with what Five Across have been doing in creating communities for big brands. They have a platform that scales. Does this mean Cisco is getting into the Participatory Platforms business though? We'll have to wait and see.

MySpace @ $25 Million A Month...

If you thought social networking was big before, wait till you get a load of this. Rupert Murdoch last week said MySpace makes roughly $25 million a month in online advertising revenue, and that it's growing every month at an approximate rate of 30 percent per quarter.

And that's not all. Murdoch added, ""Next year we'll be kicking in with search revenue from Google so together with IGN, we'll be getting close to a billion dollars of revenue."

And an interesting comment on YouTube:

He added that, after Google bought YouTube, it
prevented MySpace access to its content from the video-sharing site.
Murdoch said MySpace then ramped up its video element and now had
roughly 60 or 70 per cent of the number of uploads that YouTube gets.

"If
you look at it [YouTube] carefully it's not a community site. It's an
experience and it can be quite hypnotic. But how do you monetise it? If
you interrupt the flow of videos with commercials the users will be
over to us or somewhere else pretty quickly," he added.

The GOOG threat to Traditional PR

Tom pick-up on some comments I made to him at a recent event on the impact Online Advertising and SEO is having on PR.

I ran into Andy Lark, earlier this week. Andy used to be corporate comms chief at Sun Microsystems. He now spends most of his time as Chief Marketing Officer at LogLogic, a fast growing enterprise software company. LogLogic, like many other startups, uses a PR agency to help get its message out to potential customers. Andy told me that he recently noticed that he was starting to spend more money on buying Google adwords than on PR.

And when push comes to shove, I know where most cmpanies will put their money. You can pin a ROI on GOOG adwords that you can't with PR This is a very significant crossover point. It represents one of the many threats to traditional PR. And there are many PR agencies that only understand the old approach, no matter what they say about new/social media. There is a disconnect in the PR world that is going to hit that industry hard. .... Additional info: Andy Lark's Blog. SVW: Andy Lark agrees...blogging is disrupting PR.

I sat with some other start-up CMOs recently and we did some math together. Sometime late last year our SEO and Google budgets started exceeding our PR budgets by significant amounts. What does this mean for PR?

First, total marketing budgets aren't increasing to accomodate this. So, the money has to come from somewhere.

Like the other CMOs I'm being forced to reallocate budgets. First thing cut - any tradeshows without clear ROI. Then it gets tight. PR, more than ever, is going to have to work harder to show ROI but that isn't where the change stops. PR needs to be engaged in driving content into the middle of this revolution. A focus on awareness needs to be paired with a focus on appearance (a client's presence across the web).

This is bottom-up change. It will be a while before the big companies and big agencies feel it. But start-ups and the agencies that serve them are in the middle of this revolution right now.

More than anything, this is an opportunity for PR professionals (internal and external) to become part of a sea change in marketing.

Back From Japan... Vista Up & Running...

Spent a week on the road in Japan and out of the blogosphere. Frantic pace as I met with customers and partners. This week RSA has been in full swing in San Francisco - enjoyed a blogger meet-up last night.

Spent the weekend upgrading to Vista and MS Office. Was interesting. Here is what I learnt:

• Delete all unnecessary applications before attempting to install Vista. Especially the programs loading at Start-up.
• From there-in the install was easy and painless.
• My sound driver didn't work (Sony Viao) - trick was to delete the existing drivers and reinstall. This worked great.
• Office installed painlessly.
• Skype needed to be completely deleted and reinstalled.
• MS firewall is a bit of a nightmare. Defender and OneCare seem to have different firewalls in place and neither allow me to access the web at all. Until I figure this out I have turned them off.
• Downloaded the most recent Cisco VPN software from some University site. Crazy that I couldn't get this from Cisco.

Vista conclusions:

• Sony Vaio runs faster.
• Vista interface is great.
• Easier and faster to access folders and files.
• Office runs faster and better.
• Outlook hangs on occasions but doesn't crash and hangs for a bit before getting back underway.
• Overall, a bloody expensive upgrade. While you probably are better off waiting to buy Vista on a new system and Office at a lower price, if you can't wait, it is worth it.

A general comment - I am amazed at how little support there is for Vista amongst the people I depend on. Microsoft has made no case for my IT team to do upgrades. Our outsourced email and phone provider doesn't support Vista or Office. Cisco isn't making its VPN client widely available. The only good guide to installing Vista I found in the blogosphere. In fact, without bloggers, I wouldn't have been able to find answers to many of my questions.

Rod Drury > Marketing is broken

Rod points to a quote made during a debate in NZ about how TradeMe (NZs eBay) got marketing right.

As a marketing guy I'd say that Sam's genuis was taking an idea that was working stunningly well offshore and being first to market in NZ with a very good replica with some better features and racing stripes.

As far as eschewing conventional marketing, that was smart and reflected exactly what others did also.

As both a user and marketer I'd say what is really broken is product development and management in most Web2.0 companies and start-ups. Some get it right, most don't even have a crew focused on the user. The full extent of their marketing effort - if they have one at all - is a couple of marcomm specialists or a PR agency. So, before blaming marketing - get a marketing function or leader.

It's sheer nonsense to draw a correlation between insight into marketing being broken, then, marketing communications, then building a better product.

I could equally pepper the world with ludicrous notions like:

"Most software and web developers are brainless idiots who while great at code writing have no real understanding or care for how real people use products. Most have never met or spent time with a customer. Sam's genuis was not putting-up with this and forcing developers to build a product that users would not just want to use but love to use. And, to infuse software/web development with some marketing nouse."

In short, what Sam really did right was make the User and customer a priority for every function in the company. Me thinks the engineers and developers protest too much!