Hugh MacLeod, the man who sums up the world on the back of a business card, has enjoyed promoting his art with Blogads recently. “With blogads I’m getting about 50% of the customers as [name deleted].com delivers… for about 5-10% the cost. Plus it’s a better demographic. Buying a Blogad is a bit like getting this really cool person to tell everybody she knows about your work, for the price of a half-can of soda per day. Blogads are the next best thing to word-of-mouth.”

Joe Senft, a marketing executive in Europe, sent comments about my Vienna paper on hubness and passion.

1. I know that some clients, particularly those in high-involvement
(consumer electronics, financial services, automotive) or restricted categories
(alcohol, tobacco, firearms, pharmaceuticals) would ache to talk with you
afterwards, to understand better this spiffy “hubness” factor.

2. Personally, I like to find and use new terms as they appear in the industry,
particularly those which add incremental value such as “passion”
and “hubness”.

However, because the world of web marketing continues, frustratingly, to be
misunderstood and just plain-old ignored by major marketers, I wonder if it
would help your cause to describe passion and hubness using terms usually
applied to mainstream media. For example: “affinity”, “index”, and “loyalty”.
These big-media terms may not be sufficiently precise to describe what happens
on blogs. However, using them would help clients, marketers, and media
planners to be more receptive to your message.

Go ahead and use the terms “passion” and “hubness”, but make these subordinate
to vocabulary used by major advertisers and major media.

3. While we’re on the subject of media vocabulary, there’s one particular term
which is very often used to sell advertising campaigns in mainstream media…
but which is actually very seldom delivered! Word-of-mouth. Of course, I
don’t have to remind you that this is precisely what blogs do best.

Whilst showing belonging by referring to blogs using standard media terms,
reveal the distinction of blogs — not in terminology — but in results
delivered. Right now, I guarantee you, somebody in New York is selling a :30
spot or a billboard campaign by saying that “its unique creative execution will
generate word-of-mouth”. It certainly can. Just look at the Super Bowl spots
you referenced. But only a truely naive person would believe that a memorable
TV spot, alone, creates as indellible an impression as 100,000 people
discussing that TV spot on 100 web sites, on line.

I would move word-of-mouth — the Achille’s heel of big media — to the fore of
your argument and justify this with affinity, loyalty, passion, and hubness.
After a right-good bashing, I would then return to show that blogs extend the
value of mainstream media — both paid and unpaid (public relations).

4. I liked the way your speech takes a swipe at mainstream media when it says, “So
what if you can reach 80%… for free if every competitor” can too? This line
sounds great and I bet many heads nodded with empathy when you said it.

But the solution to clutter and fragmentation is not necessarily blogs; indeed,
special interest magazines and web sites are already referred to by some media
departments as “hubs” because they enjoy extremely high affinities, if not
large audiences (skate shop owners or expatriates or people who are especially
fond of cats).

What’s more, in many categories, particularly in retail, in FMCG and in
automotive, share of voice in mainstream media continues to be a key
determinant of sales volume and marketshare.

I wondered if some borish big-media type might not pick a fight with you over
this “So what?” statement. Why not pull the carpet out from under him by
refocusing the argument on the word-of-mouth that blogs deliver best?

Josh Marshall visits the scene of his mother’s death: “Coming back to California this time I realized that through all those years I’d never touched it. I’d driven by it countless times and very rarely I’d feel some rush of the impact of her death as my car swept past the point in space where hers stopped in its tracks. But I’d never gotten out of the car and walked up to the spot or touched the dent. There must have been grooves cut into the metal — perceptible only by touch. But I’d never stopped to feel the metal against my fingers or find its contours.” (Via LA Examiner.)

I’m catching up after a fascinating week in France. I’ll type up some of my notes later. For now, I wanted to highlight this nifty page that tracks top clickthrus for blog advertising. In theory, an advertiser could use this feature to hone his/her presentation and learn from the experience of others. Give us feedback.

Not far from Beaubourg in a steamy Internet cafe; saw great march; train journey this AM took 90 minutes, people do a good job of routing around striking line, since info is posted on Internet. People seem sympathetic to strikers; see this poll for example.

Spent the metroride talking with friend about innovation inside places like France Telecom; he does consulting there: like selling balloon rides to agorophobes. Wandered into a France Telcom boutique at lunch and waited in line ‘à mintes for service. Paid 30 Euros for phone number and 10 minutes of calling time; then paid 3 euro for 30 minutes of Internet. Same in UK would cost 30 Euro for 30 minutes and 1.5 euros for an hour.

Internet will bring deflation to Europe.

I just noticed that Messagefire lets me “refer a friend.” So go sign up for Messagefire and use DMBDDTS in the “coupon” field — you’ll get a free month and I’ll get a free month. See previous entry for why this is Good.

Slurppppppp 🙂 … F R E E ink for your printer!… Get the Credit You Deserve… Las Vegas Vacation Blowout!… Smokers and Tobacco Users: Get Great Rates on Term… Better than Search Engines Placement… Someone wants to Meet YOU!… Open Your Very Own Dollar Store Now!… Great Deals! eBay – Find what you want… Police Auction Ends In 30 Minutes…

These are the first 10 spams (of 128) I didn’t have to download and delete this morning, thanks to the Messagefire service I signed up for via a Blogad last week. I’ll be visiting Pressflex newspaper clients in France next week and, for the first time in what seems like decades, won’t spend 92% of every session online deleting spam from my webmail account. More time to eat steak pommes frites, drink coffee and muse.

How many remember that six months ago an editor at the NYTimes tried to convince blogger/columnist Mickey Kaus to write an article trashing “blogger triumphalism.” (I blogged Kaus saying this at the Yale blogger conference in November.)

So it is a not-so-poignant irony that today bloggers get some of the credit for bringing down NYTimes editor Howell Raines.

Of course, I could quote bleachers full of bloggers congratulating themselves for toppling the giant, but that wouldn’t be quite fair or objective… even for a blog. So instead, I’ll quote one of Raines’ print brethren, and let him pronounce an eulogy for the way news used to be manufactured.

“In the end, it was the new world of Web sites, blogs, online editions and e-mails ‘ not Raines ‘ that set the pace of his exit,” says the LATimes’ Tim Rutten.

Rutten’s commentary can really be read as an obituary for traditional media. “The new media’s vast echo chamber already has demonstrated something that cannot be ignored: Questions about the Times’ revival now will be posed and answered at speeds and in ways that defy the sober standards of conventional crisis management.”

Leak fed leak, e-mail chased e-mail, with bloggers posting it all. “And so it went, with each day’s instantly available disclosures triggering a fresh round of real-time commentaries, which in turn nudged those in possession of additional embarrassing information into virtually instantaneous rounds of fresh revelation. It was death by a thousand comments…”

How long before Raines gets a blog?

Here’s an interesting map of blogdom politics. (Via Jeff Jarvis.) We really need three or four dimensions to capture all the different axis of opinion, but this is a good start for now. And it is just a start.

Mark my words: blogs are going to drive the next presidential election. Bloggers will publish leaks the traditional news (or even Matt Drudge) won’t touch and will be knawing on particular factoids or angles long before and after traditional press. Smart insiders will secretly read, publish and/or stoke blogs. The press will quote blog pundits. Bush may mutter the b word. Blog readers, themselves articulate early adopters who are influential in their own communities, will be influenced by the blogs they read. Traffic will double (again!) for Instapundit, Talking Points Memo,Atrios, Andrew Sullivan, Daily Kos, Jane Galt, Matt Welch…

And mark these words too: mapping blog networks will transform marketing. Most people look to their peers for guidance before making most decisions. Blogging creates new peer groups, empowers or revives old ones. Blogs and their entwined links tendrils let marketers map peer groups. A new science of opinion is itching to be born. The coming election will make this explicit.

Wake up guys.

Moxie had an interesting Blogads moment. She had the first documented dream about a Blogad, actually.