The Rogue Marketer

Lifestreaming  is the newest phrase used to describe what happens when a person creates "an online record of a person's daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person's online content such as blog". 

It's what happens when you combine your minute by minute Twitter posts with your activity on the Advertising Club Meetup message boards,  Del.icio.us  posts, LinkedIn profile,  last.fm music listening and Mimeo.com posts on our blog that tracks developments in on demand printing.   And I forgot to mention Digg.com and of course Plaxo.

The next wave of companies are going to begin aggregate this collection of lifestreams.  New apps such as Friendfeed promise to simply all of this....I hope they do because lifestreaming is challenging enough without the added burden of tracking it all.

Interesting post in today's Chief Marketer by Chris Baggott on the impact of blogs on organic search ranking.  The net of the article is that while many of us spend time optimizing our web pages for high organic search rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, all that work can be undone by bloggers that are competing for the same terms. 

Chris makes a great point given that the search engines seem to favor blog posts.  Going forward we are going to start writing parallel blog entries on our website designed for customer dialoge ...The Mimeo Lounge.

Has anyone seen the new Wendy's campaign.  In a case of advertising schizophrenia, Wendy herself is back as the iconic illustrated leader with advertising  that recalls their "fresh never frozen" history.  For those keeping score the last Wendy's CMO launched an unusual campaign that was not supported by the corporation (tree kicking man in Wendy's wig).   Other advertising from Wendy's is for a burger whose name escapes me, but that has something to do with burgers, bacon and I believe has the ability to clog your arteries just by looking at it,

If I were the CMO of Wendy's I'd be looking to be a really good niche player while ending contradictions in my positioning.  Does "fresh" stand for healthy, taste or good food.  If it stands for all, then make it clear how.   It will be interesting to see how this campaign evolves.

Great post called "How to Save Money Running a Startup"  by Jason Calacanins, the CEO of Mahalo.com.  His suggestions are not only useful for startups, but also for those of us in the B to B world that are stretching budgets while trying to maximize the impact of marketing efforts.

I particularly like tips 16, 17 and 18:

1. Don't waste money on recruiters. Get inside of linkedin and Facebook and start looking for people--it works better anyway.
2. Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm. Perhaps you can get a PR consultant to work on 2-3 projects a year for $10-15k each and save 75%. More PR firms are wasted half the year while you build up your product anyway (once established I'd have someone in house that manages the "conversation" while the PR firm contacts the major media outlets).
3. Outsource to middle America: There are tons of brilliant people living between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York who don't live in a $4,000 one bedroom apartment and pay $8 to dry clean a shirt--hire them!  (I'd add that it doesn't matter where in the world someone lives, although preference to the US of course).
   

I love television.  Or said a better way, I love the television that employed real writers.  Now there is nothing wrong with a good dose of "Deal or No Deal".... but not every night (not to mention that no one won the million even when half the board was 1,000,000 amounts, so what is the point, but I digress). 

I want my TV back.  The TV filled with 24, The Unit, Big Love, Boston Legal, Brothers and Sisters and the countless other shows that keep me occupied while playing with the computer.  As mentioned in today's Email Insider by Melinda Krueger, the director of email marketing at OgilvyOne, it makes you once again appreciate the importance of good writing in all forms of content....even email.

There are more than 40,000 Chinese eateries in the United States.  That's more than McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Blimpie, Quiznos and several more combined.  Does that make Chinese food the official American cuisine?

Chinese food in China is healthy and full of vegetables.   General Tsao is not a chicken, but a war hero.   Chinese food in America is filled with fat, oil, fried things, sugar.   

All from the new book Fortune Cookie Chronicles courtesy of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central.