On June 24, 2009, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford held a press conference where he admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The problem is that he hasn’t stopped talking about it since. Seriously, the dude has brought the term TMI (too much information) to a whole new level. When I see the clips from his interviews, I find myself squirming in the same way people squirm at the thought of their parents having sex. Yesterday, the Today Show ran a segment of a Sanford interview that was so awkward and uncomfortable that the only thing that I could think was “shut your trap dude!”

The guy had an affair. It’s unfortunate, but it happens. I don’t condone it because many people get hurt from affairs. However, Sanford isn’t the first politician to find himself in this situation. I think the right thing for a political figure to do when holding a press conference in this type of crisis pr situation is to confess, take responsibility, apologize to the people who have been hurt and stop talking. We should have known Sanford wasn’t going to stick to this playbook when it took him six minutes and four seconds to actually utter the words “I have been unfaithful to my wife.” From there and for the past seven days, the Sanford shitshow has gone on and on and on and on and on.

The following are a few of the over-sharing quotes that have come out of Sanford’s mouth in the past week:

• “I was frightened and I was scared, and I knew the consequences. This was a whole lot more than a simple affair. This was a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

• “I will be able to die knowing that I had met my soul mate. But it was one of those things, I knew the cost.”

• “I don’t want to blow up my time in politics. I don’t want to blow up future earning power, I don’t want to blow up the kids’ lives. I don’t want to blow up 20 years that we’ve invested. But if I’m completely honest, there are still feelings in the way. If we keep pushing it this way, we get those to die off, but they’re still there and they’re still real.”

• “It’s about incredibly deep conflicts, between one’s heart and one’s value system, and an 8 1/2 year wrestling match on that front.”

• “I remember there was an older couple sitting to our right, and I remember them watching us, in the way that we interacted. They could see a spark, or, I don’t know what you’d call it, but there was something there.”

• “No, she knew I was coming. Didn’t believe I was coming, but I got down on one knee and said I am here in the hope that we can prove this whole thing to be a mirage.”

• “…well what’s different between left brain and right brain, is what it is. One was about these different concrete things I’ve been working on. And the other, the other is tied to (long pause) the pursuit of happiness. Whatever that is.”

• “Everyone of us is going to be at that death bed one day and we’re going to look back over the whole of our lives and we’re going to ask, you know, was or what we’re willing to risk certain things that may be viewed as a stupid trade-off by the rest of the world but that’s for each person to determine. And so if you end up 50 years here on earth and you know, alright, maybe I get another 30 and if you come into connection with a soul that touches yours in a way that no one’s ever has, even if it’s a place you can’t go, this notion of knowing that you know, for me, became very important.”

• “What I would say is that I’ve never had sex with another woman. Have I done stupid? I have. You know you meet someone. You dance with them. You go to a place where you probably shouldn’t have gone … If you’re a married guy at the end of the day you shouldn’t be dancing with somebody else. So anyway without wandering into that field we’ll just say that I let my guard down in all senses of the word without ever crossing the line that I crossed with this situation.”

Dude! Please spare us all the drippy details. Ick. Those are best left for a book after your wife kicks your sorry ass from here to Argentina. When Michael Jackson passed away a day after you admitted the affair, the Universe gave you the biggest gift. Everyone was going to be consumed with that news. All you had to do was shut your mouth and keep it shut and the story would fade. Remember US Representative Gary Condit? That guy had the media up his butt over the disappearance of Chandra Levy. It was a media firestorm for six painfully long months and Condit couldn’t escape it. Then September 11th happened and the story instantly died because the media became consumed with 911. A combination of Michael Jackson’s death and a shut trap would have had similar results with you, but nooooooooo….you had to make sure everyone knew that you had a soul-mate and that old people saw a spark. Dude!

Human beings have an amazing capacity to forgive. Think Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, and Bill Clinton. However, forgiveness will never happen if you keep the story alive through your own spoken words. It’s time to zip it…and I’m not just talking about your fly.

What are your thoughts on Sanford’s ramblings?

Recently I had the opp to speak on a panel at an MITX-hosted gig called: To Tweet or Not To Tweet. I usually pass on speaking opps. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, it’s just that I like to do my own thing and fly below the self-promotion radar. However, I think MITX is one of BoTech’s (Boston Technology…yup, I just made that up) biggest assets. In a recent blog post I talked about how Boston’s tech brand image sucks eggs. In this case, it is the perception that trumps reality because there is actually a lot of hot shizz going on here. Like anyone playing in BoTech I think we all have a responsibility to improve the perception, so I agreed to participate. Moreover, there isn’t much I wouldn’t do to help Kiki Mills, MITX’s straight shooting Executive Director. We need more people like Kiki who leave the bullshit behind and tell it like it is.

The panel included a lineup of hot shits who didn’t have a drop of ego juice flowing through their body: CC Chapman, Co-Founder/Managing Partner of The Advance Guard, Phil Johnson, CEO, PJA Advertising & Marketing, and David Puner (aka Dunkin Dave), Media Relations Manager, Dunkin Brands. These guys kept it real and weren’t there to promote their own personal brand like so many of today’s social media icons and their subsequent nonversations. I’m pretty sure all the panelists could make a living doing stand up and this translated into an insight-rich, comedic-infused 90-minute thread of discussion.

Many peeps in the audience were interested in how you measure Twitter’s ROI. There was a honkin’ live discussion with the panel and I received a ton of follow up inquiries, emails, and tweets on the subject after the session. My perspective is quite simple: Twitter is free, therefore if one positive thing happens you have a positive ROI. Seriously dudes. If a single tweet from Dunkin Dave acts as the catalyst for the sale of one donut, the ROI has just leapfrogged the ROI of all other marketing initiatives combined because it didn’t cost a penny.

I totally empathize with the marketing and PR peeps in the audience who have some MBA-crowned CFO up their butt pushing them to prove the ROI. Earth to Finance dipshit, show me some other communications initiative that is free and positively impacts sales and brand perception while allowing for an ongoing dialogue with your customers. I suggest the CFO step out of his or her comfort zone that hasn’t changed since he/she first started making love to spreadsheets. What cracks me up most is that the marketing and PR peeps — who are viewed by some Finance heads as gum on their shoe — have actually produced a marketing initiative that is free yet they are being interrogated like a prisoner of war regarding ROI. What’s up with that? Here’s an idea, once you have launched Twitter, take all the money out of the research line item in the budget. Don’t reallocate the money to any other marketing program, just let it go to the bottom line. In addition to the gajillion other things Twitter can do, it can replace all the expensive, highly-limited perspective a company gets from traditional research initiatives like focus groups.

What are your thoughts on Twitter’s ROI?

Disclaimer: In this post I am poking fun at the stereotypical Finance head. Not all Finance peeps have this perspective…in the same way all PR people are not flaks looking to pitch lies to the media, all Sales peeps are not self-centered, money-driven slobs and all lawyers are not ambulance chasers. Just havin’ some fun while hopefully imparting insight.

Before you read this post, you need to view the YouTube video The Vendor Client Relationship In Real World Situations. I laughed my tail off when I watched it because the execution amplifies the delusional approaches some companies attempt when it comes to paying for work/services from agencies. I can’t imagine there is anyone who has worked at a creative agency that has not had a company try to use any of the following arguments for not paying and/or reducing fees:

We don’t have it in our budget: Oh really…then what the eff are you doing standing in front of me and asking me to to do work for you? Last time I checked we didn’t have a sign outside our office that said “Free Marketing Services.”

We want everything but can only pay for a portion: Didn’t your mother teach you that you can’t always get what you want…and if she didn’t, The Rolling Stones should have. Here’s an idea, use your brain and put together a plan within your budget. I’m pretty sure that’s what you were hired to do…or did the employment ad say “Looking for someone to take our marketing budget and build a marketing plan that costs four times that amount.” I’m gonna let you in on a secret — agencies were not put on this earth to make up for client budget shortfalls.

I can get it cheaper from <insert name>: You get what you pay for homey. This week I actually had someone tell us she could get a logo done by her friend who is an “artist” for less money. Good luck on that one sista’. If you want to have someone who is good at pottery design the iconic image for your brand then you go for it!

I can pay more next time: Ummm…no you can’t and you won’t. There is not a company on the planet that will go from having a laughable marketing budget to a well funded one. Why? Because some schmo — usually the CFO that allocated the budget — thinks spending on marketing is wasteful and that’s why you were given an inadequate budget to begin with. That person’s perception will never evolve. Remember these people wouldn’t know a kick-ass marketing campaign if it kicked them in the ass.

Let’s use this project as a test: In other words, “if you do well with this project that we are paying jack shit for, we will give you more work and pay fairly for it.” Honestly, do they expect that person from the agency to jump up and down while clicking their heals and clapping their hands to squeal, “That sounds great! I love tests! When can we get started!”

This is an opportunity: No, it’s not. Spending a month in Darfur is an opportunity. This is a screw job. It won’t be long before you question why you bent over to pick up the soap.

I ordered three but only used one: This one always makes me wonder how much crack is actually smoked on the job. The agency is retained to do three separate projects which they complete. Something happens inside the company — usually a budget reduction — that only allows them to execute one. As a result, they now don’t want to pay the agency for the other two that they now won’t be able to use. And really…why should they…I’m pretty sure agencies exist for the sole purpose of absorbing every budget reduction that hits a company. Pass the crack pipe dude.

Show us how to do it so we can do it in-house next time: No problem. I’m happy to take my intellectual property that was developed over many years and give it to you so you don’t hire us again. <visualize two thumbs up with a big grinning face>

Wikipedia defines slavery as a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others. I’m sure every employee working at an agency reading this post just shit a Twinkie at how accurately that definition describes their world when it comes to some clients.

What’s an agency to do? It’s quite simple:

Make sure your pricing is fair: Always fair. Don’t raise it if you think the client can pay more. I believe you get what you give. By giving fair pricing you will receive it from the vendors you deal with.

Walk away from every situation described above: Seriously. Without exception. Don’t compromise your integrity or the value you deliver. Yes, it’s a tough economy but acquiescing to any of the above scenarios is unhealthy because you are being used and because you then become an enabler to this dysfunctional behavior.

If they are rude or bullying, laugh in their face: Sometimes the person at the company seeking your services is just the messenger in the above scenarios. Often times they are being told to say those things by someone else. In those cases it’s important to be empathetic and respectfully explain why the situation will not work for your agency. How-effing-ever, if the person communicating the message is rude and/or tries to bully you, laugh in their face at their suggestion. Trust me when I tell you that you will probably be the first to have done it. I hate bullies. The thought of someone using intimidation to take advantage of someone sends me through the ceiling. If you can’t do it, tell them you heard Kel Kelly may be able to help them and send them my way. Haha!

Disclaimer: The good news is that the peeps who try pimping the above scenarios are the exceptions. The vast majority of marketing people seeking agency services are honest and hardworking. Quite frankly, having the opportunity to help these people is one of the many reason I and others like me do what we do.

Chicken Little was a hysterical, paranoid bird with some really effed up emotional issues. An acorn fell on her head and she ran around telling people “the sky is falling,” and as often happens with hysteria, others started to repeat the story. Swine flu anyone?

I feel like the same thing is going on in the tech sector. Seriously, I swear the proverbial Chicken Little now has a Twitter account and is tweeting up a storm over the mistaken belief that disaster is imminent in the tech sector. This bird sure has a lot of evidence to tweet about to prove her theory correct. Tech unemployment is soaring. Venture capital is tighter than a…’er well I’ll let you fill in the blank here. Tech startups are going under left, right and center. Even for many tech startups still alive, monetization remains as elusive as a fat-free, low cal, low carb food that doesn’t taste like ass.

I often think of tech waves in the context of wildfires. Wildfires usually occur in cycles just like technology. Certain regions become known for their wildfires just as Silicon Valley and the Bay Area have become known for their technology. And in spite of much chaos, wildfires serve a purpose as much next generation growth is dependent on them, just like in tech. How quickly we forget.

Remember the day when Wang Laboratories, Prime Computer and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) ruled the tech landscape? With the demise of those companies came tons of job loss, financial collapse and uncertainty. However, the next wave of technology that emerged — the PC — spread like wildfire, positively impacting lives and creating great economic opportunity around the globe. How quickly we forget.

Remember the DotCom bubble (Web 1.0) when it popped? Tech startups went under in epidemic proportions, unemployment soared, and venture capital dried up. Sound familiar? But then came the post wildfire growth — Web 2.0. Soon Web 2.0 was its own wildfire with companies like Facebook burning up the tech horizon. Venture capital investment was flowing, job creation was abundant and user adoption had a hysteria of its own. Anyone else’s Dad on Facebook too? How quickly we forget.

Today we’re being hit by acorns. The future opportunities in tech are there, we just need to separate the healthy trees from the burning forest. Need help seeing through the smoke to find the next wave of tech? Keep an eye on TechCrunch to see which startups are successfully raising capital these days. You can bet your last buck any VC coughing up dough right now has done some pretty bad-ass due diligence. Last week’s announcement that FUHU, a startup that produces virtual avatars, secured $6.25 million certainly has some great insight regarding the future of tech. What I love most about TechCrunch is that it helps you keep your pulse on hot tech startups and it doesn’t cost a penny. Good times. Good times.

Looking for something more real world? Attend upcoming gig: What’s Next in Tech: Exploring the Growth Opportunities of 2009 and Beyond. It’s on June 25th in Boston. The $40 registration fee ensures it’s affordable to all. Direct round trip flights from San Francisco to Boston are only $250 and hotels are a steal these days. This bomb diggity night looks like it’s going to be jacked with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other techlebrities discussing the future of tech including sizzlin’ hot sectors like cloud computing, robotics and clean tech. Also, there are lots of stealth-mode startups on the speaker list — a great way to see where the tech puck is headed.

It’s your choice. You can run around jumping on Chicken Little’s bandwagon and hang with her mentally off-balance friends Henny Penny, Cocky Lockey and Goosey Loosey. Or you can bitch-slap that bird and look to the future of tech as an exciting wildfire waiting to be ignited.

What do you see as the future of tech?

I just don’t get LinkedIn. I must be missing a link or something. For the record, I know it’s me because there are over 39 million people on LinkedIn, so the company must be doing something people value. I think maybe it has to do with how I’m wired. In a million years, I would never use someone to get to someone else. It goes against who I am. I am happy to make an introduction for someone I respect and/or care about, but I would never leverage an impersonal third party, like LinkedIn, to do so.

I don’t value people based on their title, where they have worked or where they have gone to school…and let me be unequivocally clear, I’m not saying people who use LinkedIn do. I’m just trying to wrap my arms around the attraction people have for it. I value people for who they are as human beings. Maybe that’s why I like Facebook. I am much more interested in hearing that someone joined a group to feed hungry children than to hear that they joined some professional group. I am much more excited to be on the receiving end of a tweet about something funny that happened to someone on vacation than I am to see a LinkedIn status update about a business trip. I get jacked spending time on Facebook and Twitter and I would feel anything LinkedIn-related would be obligatory and a little dull.  Don’t get me wrong, Facebook can still be a powerful business tool to connect you to other professionals — the thing about Facebook is that it’s multi-dimensional and you can get to know someone beyond their business world.

Like most peeps, I barely have time to scratch my ass these days, so I choose my activities carefully. Honestly, I don’t do much outside my work window that is work-related. I have never attended on social networking event here in Boston. I just don’t have the time and quite frankly, I’m just not interested. I would rather be home having dinner (take-out) with my kids.

What am I missing?

Today’s brand association for Wall Street is best represented by the word “greed,” even though the vast majority of employees on Wall Street are honest, hard working human beings. The brand association for McDonalds is aligned with “unhealthy,” even though the restaurant sells salads. For many, the brand association for the Catholic Church includes “homophobia” even though every Catholic I know disagrees with the church’s position on gays. Unfortunately, the brand association for Iraq includes “terrorism” even though the majority of Iraqis are peaceful people who do not condone violence. And the brand association for Fox News is “conservative” even though….ummm….well….that one won’t work.

Why am I droning on with all these brand association examples? Because when it comes to branding, perception trumps reality. In my last post I discussed how the image of the “Boston’s Tech Brand,” ‘er…well I believe I said, “sucks eggs.” I had a couple of people who were offended by my premise. One in particular, posted links and went on a diatribe about a bunch of hot, Boston-based social media companies and icons. Unfortunately, if you were to play tech brand word association with people and said Boston, 99% of them would not say “social media.” That means even though we have pockets of hot companies in social media…and clean tech and robotics and whatever, our brand perception is not aligned with those sectors. Remember, it’s all about perception and often times the perception does not mirror reality. In other words, Boston doesn’t own mindshare for those categories of technology. Unlike the Bay Area who totally owns the perception of kick-ass internet companies, I believe Boston does not have an undeniable brand perception for any new, cool, or hip technology sector. Given that someone from Governor Deval Patrick’s administration called me after reading the post, it’s clear I am not alone in having this perception.

I also said in my post that we own that perception. As a region, we need to shift the focus from the stale, reheated regional tech icons who haven’t done anything in decades to people, companies, and organizations whose personalities mirror the image the Boston tech brand wants to reflect. Here are a few random examples:

1. Tom Gerace : Tom is a repeat successful entrepreneur. Back in the dot-com day, Tom and his brother borrowed money from their parents and started Be Free, a pioneer in affiliate marketing. Tom took the company public and then sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, Tom is the founder & CEO of Gather.com, a hot Web 2.0-based user-generated community for a niche demographic. Tom is wildly successful, approachable, real, cool, hip and doesn’t have a drip of Boston elitism in his body.
2. Chris Hughes : Chris is one of the co-founders of Facebook who was also credited with single handily developing and executing the social media strategy that put Obama in the Whitehouse. Chris recently joined Boston-based venture capital firm General Catalyst as an Entrepreneur in Residence. Although he may be a recent transplant, he is ours now and we should be pimpin’ him as the personification of the brand image/perception we want to own. He is a young, hip, fresh face that represents the antithesis of the existing good-old-boy face of Boston’s tired tech brand.
3. Josh Bernoff: When it comes to well respected voices in the tech world, Josh is at the top of the list. He is an VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester and co-author of Groundswell — Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Josh is as respected on the West Coast as he is on the East Coast and believe it or not that is a big, big deal. And unlike other East Coast authors of social media books, Josh Twitters, blogs, uses Facebook and truly immerses himself in that world.
4. Scott Kirsner: Scott is an author, writer and blogger. His new book, Fans, Friends & Followers , deals with one of the central challenges that creative folks face in these digital times: how do you cultivate an audience and a business model that will support your work? What I love about Scott is he doesn’t allow the bullshit to flow. He is known to call out peeps who misrepresent and inflate their position of importance in the Boston tech world.
5. Helium: Helium is one of Boston’s greatest success stories when it comes to today’s hot technology start-ups. While traditional media hits a wall at 100 miles per hour this citizen journalism hub has thrived. Big-ass publishers like Hearst have flocked to Helium to grab a lifeline in the tsunami social media has unleashed on the traditional publishing world. And unlike many Web 2.0 early stage companies, CEO Mark Ranalli has successfully monetized their business, something even companies like Facebook are still trying to figure out. <Disclaimer: Helium is a Kel & Partners client>
6. MIT: MIT has it all going on: smahts, hot geeks, edginess, sex, sizzle, and a laid-back attitude — something the Boston tech scene needs to master. When it comes to tech innovation, I believe Stanford gets more pimpin’ than MIT due to the lift from the West Coast tech buzz. We gotta change that!
7. Kiki Mills & MITX: Finally a tech organization that isn’t about wearing suits, bad hotel chicken and stuffy awards. Kiki Mills and the gang have done a fan-effing-tastic job transforming MITX into Boston tech’s version of MTV awards. However, it’s time to lose the “M’s” association to Massachusetts. This org should be national, yet Boston-based.

There are tons of other people, companies and organizations that would be a great representation of the hip, edgy, cool, fresh, new tech brand Boston needs to build. Who do you think they are?

Note: There has been quite a bit of rumbling about elitism emerging in Boston’s social media scene. I highly discourage this elitst approach. “Elitist attitude” is something we need to shed from our Boston tech brand image. The beauty of Web 2.0 is it brings the power to the people and the diversity of opinion is the essence of what makes the user-generated-content world great. Some people choose not to compete on number of Twitter followers and I find their insight to be slamadamadingdong.

When it comes to being a hot technology brand, Boston sucks eggs. Unfortunately, the problem is bigger than a simple rebranding strategy and it’s not something a new logo or tagline is going to fix. Why? Because the personality of a brand can only represent the personalities of the people behind it. Here in Boston, our technology brand image continues to be driven by the same good old boy network of faces, many of whom haven’t changed in over a decade. Like the polyester suit that lets the world know you are out of touch with today’s trends, Boston continues to pimp “leaders” who had their glory days over a dozen years ago and haven’t done anything hot since. For the record, this isn’t about sexism. There are many fantastic, edgy new male personalities here in the Boston area who aren’t part of the “club.” The problem is that many don’t get the visibility or platform to emerge and help put a new face on Boston’s technology brand.

There is no judgment here, only a feeling that we are responsible for our own image. Compared to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, the Boston area looks like a bunch of uptight peeps. When you go to a Web 2.0 Expo and Tim O’Reilly gets up in jeans and sandals, it screams the personality of the West Coast brand — hip, innovative, fresh, risk-taking, and relaxed. You can feel it the second you walk into an event. From newly minted Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) to repeat icons like Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Ning and Netscape) to three-peat icons like Max Levchin (co-founder PayPal, Yelp and Slide) their personalities really are the West Coast brand image — they are successful, casual, laid back and approachable. They live, eat, breathe and get totally cocked on the Internet-driven world we live in. Unlike our Boston area reheated icons, in a million years, they would never write a book on social media without being an insatiable blogger who smokes Facebook like crack and twitters to the point where their significant other is ready to kill them…or even better, their significant other twitters too.

What’s a Boston area peep to do? Own the brand. Change your ways. Vote suits off the island and for God’s sake people, lighten up. Better yet, shake it up. Have some fun. Throw away the PowerPoint and jump on Mac’s Keynote. We have all the ingredients to be a hip, cool, iconic beacon on the hot technology horizon. From being a kick-ass city to “wicked smaht” peeps from MIT to cool Web 2.0 start-ups like Helium to social media mavens like Laura Fitton (aka Pistachio), we got it all goin’ on. It’s time to start struttin’ some new stuff and usher in a fresh lineup of companies and peeps to represent the Boston area tech world. Obama hopes to put a new face on the United States brand. Isn’t it time we put one on Boston’s technology brand?

Are ya’ with me?

Note: I understand much of the tech world in Mass is outside of Boston. However, the rest of the world thinks “Boston” whether the actual physical location is Waltham, Woburn, Burlington or beyond.

I think Silicon Alley Insider (SAI) is crackadelic. It is my #1 source for keeping my pulse on everything and anything going on with businesses in today’s digital-dog-fight world. Their style is bullshit-free rapid fire reporting — just how I like it. It’s like an all-you-can-eat fast food restaurant but the quality of what you consume is hot, fresh and energizing.

Last week SAI had an edgy piece called Magna Cum Lousy — Where Today’s Bad CEOs Went To School. The story is brought to life via a slideshow. There is a slide for each school including the University of Chicago, NYU, Columbia, U Penn (Wharton), Princeton, Dartmouth, MIT, Yale, and Harvard. Each slide highlights a list of the fat cat graduates who are responsible for the current economic shitshow the world is facing. The lists includes prominent bankers, politicians and regulators, all of whom had their hands on the wheel when the USS Titanic hit an iceberg the size of Mars. Notable titans include MIT graduate and Former Merrill CEO, John Thain, NYU graduate and Former Lehman CEO, Dick Fuld and the “Decider” himself, Harvard’s George W Bush.

I can’t help but chuckle when I see something like this. For the record, I went to a less than notable state school. Back in the day, it was called Southeastern Massachusetts University and has since been renamed the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. I grew up in a single working mother household long before single working mothers were a common thing. My Mom worked like a dog to raise three kids on a secretary’s salary. She would take the bus into Boston five days a week from the suburb we lived in, work her tail off, and then ride the bus home at night. By the time she got home she was exhausted. She didn’t have the education or energy to keep tabs on my school work. As such, school just wasn’t a priority for me. At the time, I didn’t know it needed to be. I’m not even sure my Mom saw all my report cards because I used to make my sister stand by the mailbox and grab them before my Mom got home from work. I think the only reason I even got into college was because I could play basketball.

My Mom may not have taught me that education mattered, but what she did teach me I have found to be far more valuable than the imparted wisdom of an Ivy League school. She taught me that everyone matters, particularly those who are less fortunate than me. She taught me to always stand up for the underdog…probably because she was one herself. She taught me resiliency and as Churchill said, “Never, never, never give up.” She taught me — unknowingly and through her own actions — my work ethic will always say more about me than I can ever say about myself. And she taught me that everyone in life needs a break and to give opportunities to those who have had to push a boulder up a hill for most of their life, something she knew how to do all too well.

Why the eff am I telling you this? Because I never seek out the best educated person when I am looking to hire. As a matter of fact, I usually look for the person who went to a state school — someone who never had anything handed to him or her. Someone who has student loans up the ying yang. Someone who doesn’t have an endless list of prominent alumni to call to help get a plum job. Someone who just needs a chance and will deliver beyond my wildest dreams because the opportunity I just gave him or her is something they have dreamt about for a long time.

Every time I hear the line from nineteenth-century American poet Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus” I can’t help but think it’s how I approach hiring and how I live my life. As she so eloquently wrote, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” It’s ironic that these words appear on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, a stone throw away from where so many of these greedy CEOs sought “the best of the best” in their hiring and then brought them and their families to the bowels of hell.

Disclaimer: I realize the majority of graduates from the prominent schools cited above are nothing like the fat cats listed in the SAI slideshow and many come from modest or challenging backgrounds themselves. This is yet another example that we should never judge an entire category of people based on the extreme actions of a few.

I remember driving in the early 1970s, rolling down the window and tossing out an empty bag of McDonald’s. As disgusting as it is to think about, everyone littered and nobody knew any better. A common afternoon in the seventies included eating a baked potato saturated with a stick of butter for lunch, having a few drinks before getting behind the wheel of a car to drive to the beach, and smoking cigarettes while holding up a silver reflector to get a tan on skin that was soaked in baby oil. Seriously. WTF were we thinking?

What happened to not only change my perspective, but the perspective of a nation when it came to littering, drinking and driving, smoking and skin cancer? The answer is social marketing. Wikipedia defines social marketing as “the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good.” In 1974, the anti-litter Public Service Announcement (PSA) “The Crying Indian” launched. The spot featured a native American canoeing through polluted water, landing on a beach littered with trash and turning to show a tear rolling down his cheek. Sounds corny to today’s oh-so-cool and jaded consumer but back then it acted as the catalyst to ignite a change in behavior that still lives today. The PSA won two Clio awards and AdAge picked it as being one of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the 20th Century.

Back in the day when McDonalds chicken included knee caps, elbows and ear lobes, social marketing was primarily executed through TV and print. There was really no viral spread beyond word-of-mouth limited by traditional communication channels: face-to-face, phone and letters. Today’s Web 2.0-driven world has acted like a steroid injection to social marketing. A campaign that used to take months, if not years, to have an impact now sees action in a matter of days or sometimes even prior to the campaign launch.

As an example, look at the campaign “Spread the Word to End the Word.” The campaign’s thrust is to get people to recognize and rethink (and hopefully stop) their use of the “R-word” as it is offensive to the friends and families of the millions of people with intellectual disabilities. The “national awareness day” and official launch of the campaign isn’t until 03.31.09, yet social media has already given the message a platform, voice and following. The Facebook group alone has close to 1,000 members. Yes, the membership number may be modest, but remember the campaign has not even launched yet. Given time, hopefully it will rise to the level of the Feed A Child With Just One Click Facebook group and its 4.1+ million members.

Think about it. A marketing campaign having impact and getting traction before it’s official launch and before any money has been spent. Chicka chicka yea! For us marketeers, life doesn’t get any better. For those who the campaign is intended to benefit, one can only hope that their life does in fact get better. Thanks to Web 2.0, it certainly has a better chance of making that happen.

What social causes have you supported through your social media activity?

I saw a print ad this week that made my jaw drop. The advertisement was for Frontgate. For those of you not familiar with Frontgate, their tagline says it all — Outfitting America’s Finest Homes. Frontgate sells products for the home that are so high-end that the prices are almost laughable. From a $7,778 stainless steel outdoor grill to a $7,999 eSommelier Wine Inventory System to the $1,650 Hammerhead Resort Pool Cleaner, Frontgate has been supplying the best of the best to the peeps who never had to think about price…until now.

The reason the ad has such a shock and awe effect is because its key message is all about “value” — an attribute that has never been within earshot of Frontgate’s brand and up until now would have made its customers’ noses turn up. The Frontgate brand has always stood for “unprecedented quality.” This particular ad is for World Class Resort Cotton Towels, something you can hear Thurston Howell, III asking Gilligan to get him in a tone dripping in elitism. In its execution, Frontgate highlights the $19.99 price as a representation of the value. The funny thing about Frontgate calling attention to the price is that in previous communications, price has only been used to show a products high-end quality. Also interesting is that these resort towels are the only thing on the site that I could find whose price ended in 99 cents, a tactic places like Walmart choose to employ.

Deliberately or not, Frontgate has just taken its brand to a place were Sonic , America’s drive-in restaurant, sells jr. deluxe burger, chicken strip sandwich, and jr. breakfast burrito for $1 on its Everyday Value Menu. For shizz dudes. For most of us, value used to be what we got when we bought a big-ass bottle of shampoo that gave us 25% more for free. And now, value is something Frontage want to bring us too.

The economy has changed everything and value is the new black. Value is white hot and consumers across all income demographics are looking for it in everything they buy. I recently read an article on how the Palm Beach crowd torched by Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme are all now shopping the sale racks at retailers like Neiman Marcus and Saks. It’s a world gone mad! Thank God for private sale sites like Gilt. They have been a lifeline for those who summer in the Hamptons or on Nantucket by giving them their hoity toity brands at value pricing. Value says, “low cost, cheap & inexpensive” in a vernacular that is still palatable to the Lily Pulitzer crowd.

I totally respect and understand why Frontgate is beginning to reposition their brand around value. They are doing it for pure survival. There isn’t a single item on its site or in its catalog that isn’t considered “discretionary spending”…although given the economy, the $349 Premium Margaritaville Frozen Drink Machine might get put on the must-have list with electricity and prescription drugs.

Have you seen any interesting value plays in the brands you come across?

Recently, I was logged into my fifteen-year-old son’s Facebook account. Simma’ down now…I wasn’t spying on him. He asked me to login to upload a wrestling video from his Flip. As most of you know, Facebook serves its ads based on all the granular demographic and psychographic data it pulls from your profile. Many of you will recall my previous post called Facebook Reality Slap where it became clear through the ads it served me that Facebook thought I was a fat, wrinkly, hairy woman on a surfboard. Nice. Anyhoot, it was a complete trip seeing what gets pimped to teenagers.

There was one ad that literally made me spit on my Mac when I saw it. For Shizz. The headline was “Get Cash For Your Calculator.” The body of the ad went on to say something like, “Sell us your TI-83 now for cash…You know your Mom will buy you a new one.” No shit. Forget all the subliminal messaging most brands use to pimp products to kids, these guys put it right out there and told the kids specifically what they wanted them to do.

Just a year ago, I had to buy three of these effin’ calculators for my three teenagers in high school. At $100 a pop, that total cost was the exact same price I paid for my first car — a 1969 VW bug with psychedelic seat covers and a roach clip hanging off a bandanna from the rear view mirror (everything I needed at the time). Every year I would ask what happened to the calculators I bought the previous year and I always got some lame excuse about it getting lost or being broken or having been loaned to a friend. Now I can’t help but wonder if they sold them for cash. Remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you!

I clicked on the Calculator ad and really marvelled at its succinct and incredibly powerful messaging. I laughed at the “Mom will buy you a new one” message because in most cases this is true. And then I went around the track a few times to figure out whether I appreciated the savviness of the ad or whether I should be upset. In the end, I give props to the peeps who created the ad. Social media text ads give a minuscule footprint for a company to get its message across. These guys did it in a way that had great stopping power and in a way that I would imagine ignited the desired action. And for me, what the Calculator peeps did was no different than what Nike or PlayStation or any other big brand does when they advertise to tweens and teens. In the vast majority of these cases, any product being pimped is going to have to be purchased by the parents ’cause the rat-fink kids don’t have the money for things like a $125 pair of sneakers. I chuckled again when I thought of the control-freak Moms who push legislation and speak to Congress about the bad language in music. These Chicks would shit a Twinkie if they saw an ad like this. The good news is they are probably not on Facebook and have never seen this type of ad. The bad news is they probably don’t allow their kids on Facebook because in their bubble of delusion they think the only adults on it are pedophiles trolling for children.

What do you think of the Calculator ad? Smart or just plain wrong?

I love entrepreneurs. It’s like lovin’ the bad-boy in high school. I know you know the type. They are self-absorbed and only want to talk about themselves. Their financial situation sucks and they never have any money. They are scattered and often cancel plans at the last minute. They are dreamers with “big plans” and lots of promises of future commitments. They are notorious for having a wandering eye to see if they can do better, but they always stay because they know few understand them like I do. And, I will never try to change them. I know loving them is wrong, but it’s like a drug. I want to be with them all the time. I love the way I feel when I am with the bad-boy entrepreneur. People tell me that I can do better and I should be with someone more stable. I know being with them puts me at risk and it’s a little dangerous, yet the rush is exhilarating. I know they may disappear someday and leave me high and dry.  I don’t care. They make me crazy, but I love them. I’ll always love them.

What about you?

As a PR professional, it absolutely blows my mind every time a bailed-out bank steps in another pile of shit. Last night I turned on NBC Nightly News to see yet another story of a bailed-out bank spending money on an event in Vegas. Doh! Have they not seen that movie before?! The ending sucks and everyone looks like a bunch of self-centered, greedy fools.

I offer the following low to no cost, Web 2.0-based crisis PR advice to these deaf, dumb and blind bankers:

1. Assess: The first step in any crisis PR situation is to assess the issue and identify whether you are in fact responsible. That should take a freakin’ nanosecond. Spending taxpayer money on Vegas boondoggles is a big, fat, hairy no-no. And I’m sure nobody was goaled with driving their bank into the ground and pushing the world economy to the brink of a depression. So if those were not the targeted goals in your bonus plan, then why are you nutbags being paid bonuses?
2. Take Responsibility: Now that we have established that you bailed-out banks are at fault, the next thing you should do is take responsibility. I’m all about leveraging Web 2.0 and its low to no cost opportunities, so here’s what I suggest. Go buy a Flip for $100 bucks and pay for it out of your own pocket. Have your CEO record a raw, unscripted apology to the American people. Vote script writing off the island and just open up and genuinely fall on your sword. Use a vernacular that all blue collared Americans would use. Say that you effed up. Say it was one of the dumbest things you have done in your life and you are embarrassed to look at yourself in the mirror. Say that you can’t sleep at night in knowing you let your employees spend hard-working Americans’ money on slot machines. Say that you now regret tipping a stripper $100 when you know that a single working mother facing bankruptcy could have used it towards the cost of a loan modification. Say whatever you have to say to raise the American people’s eyebrows so they say, “Holy shit! I can’t believe he just said that!” Anything short of that will be viewed as lip service.
3. Identify Changes & Open Channels of Communication: The next step is to identify a list of things you will do to ensure it never happens again. Start with making a list of all the marketing events you canceled and the savings associated with those cancellations.Go a million steps further and tell Americans you plan to push for a bill that would make misusing taxpayers’ bail-out money a felony. Put all this info on a Web 2.0-driven platform that will allow the American people to post comments. You owe them this because you really blew it. Encourage Americans’ feedback through this user-generated platform. Let the American peeps have their voices heard. Listen like you have never listened before. Respond to comments. I also suggest you set up a Twitter account called “Bailed-Out Boneheads” and tweet about each despicable thing you hear an employee has done and include their name and termination date. For shizz dudes. This is the type of thing you need to do if you ever want to restore faith to the American people and bring integrity back to your bank.
4. Tell Top-Talent To Screw: Seriously…when I hear bankers say they need to pay millions in compensation to retain top talent I can’t help but laugh. Where is this so-called top-talent going to go? There isn’t a healthy bank on the planet these days so relocation is not an option. And oh by the way, what makes them “top talent?” They were the ones with their hands on the wheel when their Titanic-like bank hit an iceberg and began to sink pulling down an entire country of passengers down with it. When you tell this self-anointed top-talent moron to screw, record the communication on a Flip. Post the video on your Web 2.0 platform and let all Americans enjoy the encounter.
5. Pray: I’m agnostic. I respect all religions, so I don’t care who you pray to, but I suggest you get down on your dirty little hands and knees and pray like you have never prayed before.What should you pray for? I suggest forgiveness and a miracle. You need the former and the American people need the latter.

Do you have any crisis PR advice for these bailed-out boneheads?

Disclaimer: There were/are a lot of innocent, well intentioned employees at these bailed-out banks, many of whom have suffered immensely. They are not the target of this post.

Losing My Video Virginity 

This morning Michael Arrington, the iconic figure for TechCrunch, announced he was taking a leave of absence. The straw that broke this blogger-camel’s back was being spat on yesterday at a conference in Europe. Michael also revealed that he and his family had recently received death threats and were forced into hiding while paying $2,000/day for private security. WTF? What is wrong with some people?

I have written many posts illuminating my stark contrast of opinion when it comes to Arrington’s perspective regarding PR people and the PR industry as a whole. At times I find his opinion slanderous and highly discriminatory and his tone usually wreaks of disrespect. I think judging an entire group of people based on the actions of a few to be unacceptable and never leads to anything positive. However, Arrington is entitled to his opinion without having his life threatened. Despite our differences, my heart goes out to Michael, his family and his employees. The only people who deserve to be on the receiving end of a death threat are the ones who have molested children or done something as repulsive.

While I love Web 2.0 and all the power it brings to individuals’ voices, there is a dark side that often overshadows its greatness. In the physical world, you often learn of a nutbag’s level of craziness after he/she has committed some type of violent crime. The very “after-the-fact” nature of traditional media limits the visibility into this underbelly of society. However, the blogosphere brings it out for all to see. The hatred and outright rage spewed in many people’s responses to blog posts can be incredibly alarming. I often think “WTF is wrong with these people?” Their comments are not in response to posts on rape, murder or other violent crimes where one could understand such venom. We’re talking about comments in response to a post about an internet start-up. Even more frightening than the hostile response is that it is not one fruit loop with one response, it is an army of imbalanced people terrorizing the world through their keyboards.

The harsh reality is that this situation is not going to get better. What can we do? I think it is important to do less lurking in the blogosphere. It’s important for people to comment on posts and share their thoughtful, non-threatening perspectives. Nothing could be safer because the blogosphere allows for anonymity if one so desires. More posts from reasonable people would dilute the vitriol that often dominates a thread.

What do you think?

There has been a firestorm of blogosphere/media chatter around the January 20th announcement of Steve Jobs’ leave of absence. The net/net of the fury is linked to Jobs’ ongoing denial that he had any health problems, followed by what appeared to be an abrupt leave of absence. In the 10 days since the announcement, there has been a tsunami of coverage, most of which is centered on outrage and rumors of a cover up. From Dan Lyons unleashing a wrath on punk’d CNBC reporter (which I believed was well deserved) to Fred Wilson’s announcement that he dumped his Apple shares, almost without exception, Apple (AAPL) PR peeps are being blamed (along with Jobs himself) for keeping Jobs’ health issues a secret.

I’m here with a big pin in my hand charged with popping a bubble of delusion. So here I go…the army of Apple PR managers making $60,000 +/- a year had no freaky deaky idea of the truth regarding Jobs’ health. Does anyone actually believe that Steve Jobs really confided about the true nature of his health challenges to a bunch of PR employees 5+ layers deep in his company?  Do people think there was a meeting at Apple led by Jobs with the entire Apple PR staff in attendance where he said something like, “Hey guys, I’m really sick but I don’t want anyone to know, so I would like you to lie on my behalf. Are ya with me?!” Seriously, it’s time to take the PR gum off everyone’s shoes and get a grip. It is rumored that Jobs’ inner circle of friends had no idea of his dire health situation. It’s laughable to think the PR people were privy to this info, yet they are repeatedly being thrown under the bus.

What I don’t know is if Apple’s top PR dog knew the truth and then knowingly instructed his team to lie. Lyons indicated something to that effect in his CNBC interview. If true then that would be a tragedy for the entire PR industry. For it is the action of one or a few that often drives the perception for an entire group. For example, it is this “guilty by association” perspective that has unfairly positioned good-hearted Muslims in a negative light. It’s just unfair and quite frankly sad.

For the record, I think Dan Lyons is a God. He tells it like it is and thrives on weeding out the bullshit. He has also been an outspoken supporter of PR people, as illustrated in his contribution to my Put The Turd On The Table Interview in March of 2008. Fred Wilson is also someone I admire immensely. I remember trying to raise a round of funding through his firm Flatiron — right before the internet bubble burst — when I was at Toysmart.com. Wilson was the consummate professional always communicating in a respectful manner. If anything, Wilson should know the guilty by association challenge all too well as VCs often get run over by the same bus as the PR industry. In both cases, I don’t think Lyons or Wilson were trying to harm innocent PR professionals, but I think general comments only adds to the pigpile that already exists. To be clear, I am as guilty of making general statements about a professional group as anyone. I have accused VCs as “eating their young” and I need to think about this as I move forward.

What’s the lesson here? Don’t judge an entire group of people by the actions of a handful of idiots. The world would be a better place.

Have you ever been thrown under the bus for the actions of one reckless dope?

Although moving at glacial speed, the fog is slowly lifting from many Web 2.0 naysayers and they are finally acquiescing that this “blogosphere thing” is not going away. These people were like smokers who insisted smoking was fine as they hacked up a lung leaving a spray of spit in your face. My experience is that many of these people had achieved business success in a day when there was no such thing as the blogosphere, memos were sent around in yellow envelopes and dinosaurs roamed the earth. Their previous success is their biggest liability in today’s Web 2.0 world, because their over-inflated egos have blinded their ability to recognize that what worked yesterday won’t necessarily work today because the world has changed.

Up until recently, if my agency suggested this Web 2.0 naysayer write a blog as part of his or her company’s overall PR strategy, we would usually hear an arrogant chuckle followed by something like “over my dead body.” More recently, however, we have seen a shift. We now hear “ok, but someone else can write it” or even worse “ok, but you guys can write it.” Ummmm…homey don’t think so. Having someone else write your blog is called ghost blogging and as far as I’m concerned it’s as wrong as faking you have cancer so people will send you money. Why? Because it is deceitful and at it’s very core sits a big, fat, hairy lie.

“Ghost writing” is something that has been going on in the traditional publishing world since the day those naysayers were able to smoke in their offices. Nobody really cared. Ghost blogging is a completely different thing. In a Web 2.0 world the single most important attribute is authenticity. Through a blog, a blogger’s perspective, personality, tone and voice needs needs to emerge. This cannot happen through a ghost blogger. And having someone else blog for you is like having someone dress up like you to go work in an orphanage for a photo opp while you vacation in the Amalfi coast. It just wreaks of artificial scum and is a scam waiting to be exposed….and exposed it will be. If the blogosphere smells a rat, they will shoot is for all the world to read. Even traditional media know better. Two years ago, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann mocked Congressman Tom Delay for ghost blogging and the blogosphere spread the story like wildfire.

As PR and marketing peeps, we need to stand united as Web 2.0 Ghostbusters and never support a ghost blogging strategy. I can tell in a nanosecond if a prospect is someone I want to work with based on how they respond to push back on ghost blogging. I believe my personal reputation, my agency’s reputation, and the PR industry’s reputation would be at risk if I were to ever knowingly promote a ghost blog.

What are your thoughts on ghosts in the blogosphere?

Well, it finally happened. I lost my Mac virginity. Sure I had fooled around before, but I never went all the way. It started with innocent encounters with friends with benefits (Macs). Sometimes it was a bit awkward, as I fumbled my way through unfamiliar territory. I touched the wrong things and was embarrassed at how little I knew. Although I found it playful and gratifying, let’s face it, I was just using them for my own self-gratification and always went home to my current relationship, PC. I wasn’t ready to commit and always looked for an excuse. I had been with PC for decades, although being on the receiving end of many viruses made me feel like something was going on behind my back. Even though for years friends told me PC wasn’t right for me, I ignored them.

And then it finally happened. I had an epiphany and in a Freudian move dropped PC (literally) at the Dallas airport and never looked back. I hooked up with Mac as soon as I got back to Boston and now I wonder why I waited so long. Mac and I do it multiple times a day and truth be told, Mac satisfies me in ways PC never did. I’m doing things now I would have been uncomfortable to even think about doing with PC. Yup, one of them involves the use of video.

It’s like I never knew love before now. I walk around all day thinking about doing it. And let me tell you, I have done it all over my house — kitchen table, desk, floor, outside – not just the bedroom. Mac has no problem keeping up with my insatiable appetite. Sometimes I like to be doing lots of things at once and Mac just goes with it, never stopping to ask for approval like PC always did.

I had always heard “once you go Mac, you never go back.” And now I know why.

When did you lose your Mac virginity?

Do you only speak to people who drive a certain class/brand of car? Do you only listen to people who vacation in places like Nantucket and/or Capri? Would you never be caught dead communicating with someone who shops at a discount outlet? Do you think executive cafeterias in the auto industry are a good idea? If so, I would like to introduce you to Seesmic Founder and CEO, Loic Le Meur. You guys are going to love each other.  

In a recent blog post, Le Meur asks Twitter to add a feature that allows him to filter tweets based on authority. In other words, if you are a lowly worm because you don’t have tens of thousands of followers, Le Meur would like to have you filtered out. He prefer to only hear from and then respond to the loud, big birds in the Twittersphere.   

Are you shitting me? If there is one thing I can’t tolerate, it is elitism. Le Meur is a screaming elitist wearing a While H. Huntsman suit, standing next to his Bugatti Veyron car, drinking his $1,000+ bottle of Pétrus French wine with a silicon-dripping bimbo on his arm right next to his Zadora watch. I didn’t realize France had its own version of Shallow Hal.  

This self-anointed Napoleon of the Web 2.0 Revolution needs to get a grip. If Le Meur doesn’t want to be bothered by Twitter gnats as he sees them, then he shouldn’t follow 15,382 of them to begin with. Clearly much of his self-esteem is being driven by his Twitter numbers. What Napoleon (Dynamite) doesn’t realize is that tweeps with few followers can be just as interesting — and, in many cases — even more interesting than the Twitter elite. I find the less people have in life, the more interesting they are. I suggest Le Meur find an old person working minimum wage and sit down to talk to them. Although he would find this conversation a waste of time, the rest of us would find their perspective riveting. While at it, Le Meur should take a play out of Pistachio’s playbook. She maintains an active and engaging Twitter dialogue with anyone, and remains one of the most followed, real people in the Twittersphere. It’s good to see the dink appears to stand alone as the bulk of the blogosphere elite appears to disagree with Le Meur.  

Acquiescing to the “size doesn’t matter” philosophy would do wonders for Le Meur. I suggest he stop running around searching for big dicks like himself and enjoy a little anonymous tweet. It would be liberating.  

I think we gnats should start a boycott of Le Meur and stop following him? It could end up being the biggest coup d’état the Twittersphere has ever seen. I just unfollowed him. Are you with me?

I think Arianna Huffington is the bomb diggity. The girl has it all going on and her accomplishments are endless. For me personally, I worship the Arianna alter at The Huffington Post, a news and blog site she co-founded in 2005 and remains its editor-in-chief. As of 11.25.08, Technorati ranked huffingtonpost.com the #1 blog on the planet. Can a sister get a table dance? Chicka chicka yea!    

The amazing thing about Arianna is she brings an edginess to her content by pushing the envelope, but yet she never loses credibility. A great example of this edginess was her decision to title a recent post ”Clint and Cheney: a Tale of Two Dicks.” There are few people on earth who don’t think Dick Cheney is a dick. However, there are even fewer credible journalists/bloggers who would call him one for all the world to hear/read. How does she get away with this edgy approach yet still remain one of the most respected and influential people in media? It’s Arianna’s intelligence and poise that allow her content to always remain rooted in credibility and not fall into the abyss of something that looks or sounds like a rant.  

Arianna would have been entitled to lose her cool and take a high dive into the abyss of rant when FOX’s Bill O’Reilly attacked her on his show, but she didn’t. Instead she let him swim solo while she stayed on message allowing her content to be heard. Quite the opposite, O’Reilly’s message was completely overshadowed by his theatrics. While Arianna always delivers her point in a graceful soothing tone, O’Reilly always looks like he is one second away from taking a bowl of porridge from an orphan while kicking a dog.  

Now I’m sure many of the peeps reading this post are calling me a bleeding heart liberal and turning this into something political. I accept your label and promise to wear it for a lifetime. However, the point here is that “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” Calling Cheney a dick and then grounding the point in fact-based content right from the dick’s mouth (see paragraph 8) is completely different than calling someone a dick and then attempting to back it up with points driven by emotional opinion not fact.  

What are your thoughts on Arianna’s approach?

I think I am suffering from Twitter fatigue. Although it is self-diagnosed, the symptoms are obvious –I feel a weariness, exhaustion and lethargy about Twitter. The frequency of my tweets has dropped like Sarah Palin’s popularity after she opened her mouth during her interview with Katie Couric. How could that be possible? I was a Twitter addict. Twitter was as much a part of my day as using my laptop. I probably tweeted on the same frequency as I spoke. What happened?  

I have a few theories:  

Theory #1: I Burned Out: I was like an alcoholic in a bar when it came to Twitter and the Presidential Election. I couldn’t help myself. Reading an article on CNN or the Huffington Post could trigger a binge of tweets that lasted for days. It was a blur. I started to lose friends who found it too painful to read to my rants. No matter who tried to intervene and delicately raise concern around the volume of my tweets, I didn’t listen and just chalked it up to them being one of the many Web 2.0 oblivious.  

Theory #2: I’m Too Busy: The holidays are a crazy time of year for everyone. I often articulate this by saying “I barely have time to scratch my ass.” (Sorry for the visual.) I’m not 100% convinced this is the reason because this moment in time is like the Super Bowl of content for tweets. From holiday party antics to Governor Blagojevich’s dumb ass move, it’s like an all you can tweet buffet.  

Theory #3: “It’s The Economy Stupid!”: I wonder if the down economy has subconsciously affected my tweets? Is it right to tweet when layoffs across the country have surged? Is it like eating a doughnut in the front row at a funeral service? Again, I’m not sure that’s true either. The whole proposed auto industry bailout is a Twitterpalooza waiting to happen.      

Theory #4: The Novelty Has Worn Off: Is Twitter just another pop culture fad that is going to end up on VH1’s “I Love the 00s” show? Let’s face it, at one point in time we were all gaga over Strawberry Shortcake, Atari, Rubik’s Cube, Members Only, Bartles & Jaymes, Swatch and breakdancing. I’m sure many of you are thinking–in a Valley Girls tone– “uh, I was never into that!” I think Facebook photos from back in the day would prove you to be a big, fat liar.  

It appears I am not alone in my Twitter fatigue. After unprecedented spikeadelic traffic, Twitter saw a slowdown in activity in November. comScore reports Twitter.com’s U.S. pageviews declined dramatically to 19.7 million in November down from 37.2 million in October. That’s a 47 percent drop. Holy twit Batman, something is wrong in the Twittersphere!   

The root of my Twitter fatigue could be caused by any or all of the above theories or something else. However, I do find it interesting that I am not suffering Facebook fatigue. Why? What’s the difference.  

Have you experienced any Twitter fatigue?

Last week recruiting Goddess, Lindsay Olson, tagged me for this blog meme.  

Although I don’t like the idea of having myself as the focus of a blog post, I don’t want to be the victim of some Web 2.0 curse for breaking the meme. Like it or not, here are seven random and weird things about me:  

1. I was a vegetarian and didn’t drink alcohol for twelve years. In 2002, I turned forty and wanted a burger and beer, so I had them. So much for clean living.
2. I can spin a basketball on my finger. I played on the Westwood High girls varsity basketball team. The team is known nationally for being a dynasty for its record of a decade of consecutive wins. I can actually spin almost anything on my finger. Much to my kids’ horror I am often found spinning a waitress’ tray while we are out to dinner. 
3. I had an afro (and pick) in high school. It was not pretty. Think Tito from The Jackson 5. The invention of hair gel in the early 80s changed my life. I thought the past was behind me until my daughter uploaded a bunch of photos on Facebook of me back in the 70s. 
4. I started my career as a security guard, complete with hat and tie. Don’t worry, I wasn’t packing any heat. I wanted to go to graduate school to get an MBA. I couldn’t afford to pay for grad school, so I took a job as a security job at Prime Computer to help pay for school. Kevin Lento, the manager of the second shift logistics operations told me I looked ridiculous in the uniform and offered me a second shift job picking and packing orders in his warehouse. He told me Prime would pay for my MBA. From there I received a slew of promotions and eventually made it into Prime’s marketing department.
5. I cry very easily when seeing or hearing a sad story/situation about people or animals — and most of the time I don’t know them. While I’m known for being a warrior in business situations and would never cry, I have an empathy gene the size of a drag queen’s shoe. My Mom had an enormous heart and I’m convinced I got it from her. I will always choose the underdog in any situation — one of the big reasons I choose to have so many entrepreneurs as clients.
6. My mother made me take piano lessons when I was in elementary school and I hated it. She used to drop me off at the piano teacher’s house and then pick me up an hour later. One day I cooked up a big, fat lie and told my teacher that I couldn’t come any more because my Mom couldn’t afford it. For the next month or so, my Mom would drop me off at his house, I would wave goodbye as she pulled out of his driveway and then I would run down to my friend’s house and hang out for an hour. When it was time to be picked up I would go back to his house and jump in the car when my Mom showed up. One day my Mom called the teacher to ask why he hadn’t been cashing her checks. Doh! The gig was up at that point and my Mom busted me.
7. When I was in high school, I convinced my Mom that it was OK for my friends to drive her car alone as long as they had had a learner’s permit. My Mom was a single working mother long before there was such a thing as a single working mother. She had a lot going on in trying to juggle all the plates that came with that role — she just didn’t have time to check whether what I was telling her was true and why should she…it’s not like her daughter would ever lie to her. Every weekend, my unlicensed friend Kippy Kelley would drive away with a carload filled with me and my friends, my Mom again waving in a cloud of innocence. To this day I feel terrible about what I put my Mom through. I have a feeling she is in heaven laughing as my teenage daughter Julia does things like host a party at our main residence while we are innocently ringing in the New Year at our summer home on the Cape. 

Here are the seven peeps I’m tagging to keep the meme alive:  

Laura Fitton

Tony Hsieh

Jeff Pulver

Suzanne Aaronson

Tom Gerace

Jonathan Trenn

Jennifer Pahlka    

Here are the meme rules for my fellow bloggers:  

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

To readers of this post, please share a random and/or weird thing about yourself by posting a comment.

The dirty little, not-so-hidden secret in the Web 2.0 world is that most companies still haven’t figured out a way to successfully monetize their biz. Even Facebook and its multi-gajillion dollar valuation has not defined a sustainable revenue plan. The rumors that Facebook needs to raise more capital are all over the place like a ‘ho in Vegas. This need for a capital infusion allegedly exists in spite of the fact that Facebook raised a whopping $235 million last year. Yowzer.  

Monetization through social media advertising appears to be more difficult than getting Amy Winehouse to put down the crack pipe. According to a recent IDC report, while 79% of consumers clicked on an online ad, only about 57% of consumers clicked on social network ads. Even worse, social network peeps make about half as many purchases. So much for Beacon. It’s time for Plan B. Nobody wants to keep going back to a Big Daddy for more money. It’s time to grow up and stand on your own two financial feet.  

Listen, I wasn’t smart enough to get into an Ivy league school like Mr. Zuckerberg. I went to a less that notable state school (UMASS Dartmouth) and wear that fact as a badge of honor. I don’t pretend for a nanosecond to be smarter than Zuckerberg, his executive team or his investors. But I feel like there is an obvious and completely acceptable solution to the Facebook monetization problem: charge members a ridiculously modest monthly fee. Facebook now has 120 million members. If they charged everyone $1/mo, the company would have an instant annual revenue stream of close to $1.5 billion. Do the math on what happens to that revenue stream if the fee is $2/mo or even $5/mo. There are lots of other revenue generating options like the possibility of charging for a premium service or an ad-free experience, but let’s not try to solve world hunger the first time we pick up the fork. Facebook needs to earn some cabbage in the short-term to buy time while they figure out how Beacon and/or Connect can augment any user-generated monetization program.  

Am I missing something? It sounds too easy. Again, by no means do I think I got anything going on over the Facebook gang. However, as a non-venture backed entrepreneur, I had to figure out and deliver a profitable business model pretty damn quickly.  

I can’t imagine my life without Facebook in it. I’m a freakin’ Facebook addict. I’m not alone. Sure some small percentage of members would refuse to pay, but that ends up being a rounding error when calculated on 120 million peeps. Once you try Facebook, there is no going back. It’s crackalackin’ and I think people will pay for it.  

Would you be willing to pay a modest monthly fee for Facebook?

If I had a dime every time I’ve heard a client say, “I think we should put out a press release,” I could bailout all three automakers and still have money left over to do the same for the airlines. In today’s Web 2.0-driven world, the press release is about as useful as the wooden wheel. Calling anyone in the media to tell them you want to talk to them about a certain press release is the quickest way to end up in someone like Brian Morrissey’s tweets. And if you know Brian, the tweet will be riddled with sarcasm and you’ll be in the middle of it…and rightfully so.  

The press release is like crack for most clients. Once they have done it once they want to keep going back to it. The client constantly thinks of reasons to use it even though the high is short-lived. And the end result usually makes them crash because it rarely results in any media coverage.   

As PR agencies it’s our job to conduct a press release intervention. It is long overdue. The abuse of press releases has caused our industry to suffer immensely. Why? Because we are usually the ones trying to pimp a release with zero news value to the media. And ultimately, this means that the agency is viewed as the annoying one, not the client.  

So what’s an agency to do? Just say no. I’m not kidding. If you are an agency worth the retainer you are being paid, you will be able to demonstrate that the bulk of the coverage — hopefully 90+% — you have secured on behalf of your clients had nothing to do with a press release. If you’re good, the coverage had to do with pitching an original story that was of great interest to the readership or viewership of that particular media outlet/blog.  

Like most addictions, some people cannot quit cold turkey. For the incredibly dependent client who has been toking on the press release crack-pipe for years, and in some cases decades, I have a technique that I have seen work well. Tell them you will write a release, but suggest they not put it over the wire. Tell them they can post it on their website. This usually gives them comfort and takes the edge off. No matter how much they beg, don’t put the release over the wire. I believe it is the act of putting the release over the wire that ignites the adrenaline rush that keeps the addiction alive.  

What is your experience with press release interventions?

All of a sudden, the term Web 2.0 is getting thrown under the bus like a certain governor from Alaska who is being blamed for the entire GOP meltdown. Michael Arrington’s post, An Ignoble But Much Needed End To Web 2.0, started the pigpile a couple of weeks ago. Since then, many Web 2.0 start-ups have had layoffs and this has fueled the fury over Web 2.0’s imminent death.  

Here’s the problem, Web 2.0 as defined by Tim O’Reilly, the man who coined the phrase, is not going any place and will be around for a long, long time. Let’s look at the defining attributes that O’Reilly identifies in his September 2, 2005 post, What Is Web 2.0:  

• The Web as a platform
• User-generated content
• Technologies empowering users, enabling participation & aggregating wisdom
• Services, not packaged software
• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data that gets richer the more people use it
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Software above the level of a single device
• Lightweight user interfaces, development & business models

To say Web 2.0 is going away is to say that all the above bullets are going away. Homey don’t think so! I highly doubt we are going back to a world of installing software on a PC and having that PC be the only device where we can run anything. That would be one bad acid trip. The Web 2.0 genie as defined by O’Reilly is out of the bottle and there is no putting her back in. 

The problem is Web 2.0 is suffering an identity crisis. The term Web 2.0 morphed away from O’Reilly’s original definition and is now solely and iconically defined and associated with the start-up companies that play in the Web 2.0 space. As such, people who see these companies as going away are making the incorrect assumption that “Web 2.0″ is going away. Nothing could be further from the truth. Last I checked, Facebook and its 100+ million membership isn’t going anywhere except up. And oh by the way, TechCrunch is a Web 2.0 company. I don’t think they are going away either.  

So where does it go from here? I think what is going to happen is a new term will be created to better label the bullets/attributes cited above and probably include a few new attributes. This will allow for ”Today’s Web” to dissociate itself from the struggling Web 2.0 startups. It’s a classic branding problem. What will that term be? Who the eff knows. I am very interested to see if O’Reilly renames his conferences from Web 2.0 Expo and Web 2.0 Summit to something else. That will be very telling.  

How do you define Web 2.0?

My agency probably walks away from more potential new client opportunities than we actually consider taking on. Why? Because of what I like to call The Dog That Won’t Hunt. The Dog That Won’t Hunt is the client who is absolutely impossible to get media coverage for. Yeah, they might be doing something that nobody else is doing, but from a “newsworthy” perspective, it’s just a dog. Just because a company has raised a lot of venture capital, doesn’t mean it’s newsworthy. Newsworthy means a blogger, broadcast segment producer and/or print editor thinks it’s of great interest to his or her readers and/or viewers and is worth covering.   

For those of you on the client-side reading this and saying, “that’s what we pay you to do,” I suggest you take a deep breath and hear me out. Don’t get me wrong, I believe it’s the responsibility of the PR agency to create news where there is no news. And believe me, we do this day after day as do many other PR agencies. However, in spite of all the strategic creativity and pitching on the part of the agency, there are still hundreds, if not thousands of kennels full of barking, biting and whining Dogs…That Won’t Hunt.  

Here’s a good example. K&P received a call just last week from a B2B Web 2.0 company about doing its PR. This was a very well-funded, venture-backed company. The woman who called us, started the conversation by saying the executive team wanted a lot more business coverage and that they were dissatisfied with their existing agency because they weren’t able to get them in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BusinessWeek, et. al. I know their current PR agency. They are terrific and go totally balls to the wall for their clients. I told my head of Biz Dev the company was the poster child for The Dog That Won’t Hunt fraternity, and I didn’t want to take them on as a client because we would be doing more harm than good.  

I think other PR agencies need to consider taking the approach of walking away from new business opportunities if the client is a dog. Whoring yourself out to any client that is willing to pay cheapens the perception of our entire industry. The subsequent scenario is as predictable as Sarah Palin using the terms “Joe Six Pack,” “Hockey Mom” and “You betcha!” in a single sentence: The client will pay the agency six months of retainer, the agency will fail to garner the level of coverage the client expects and the client will fire the agency’s ass. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. The client then walks the earth preaching hate around all PR agencies because of the bad experience they had. I would argue this is the biggest factor that contributes to the client-side’s negative perception of the PR industry.  

PR agencies enable the dysfunctional behavior of the dog clients when they sit across the table in a new biz meeting and nod in agreement at the client’s unrealistic expectations. We need to stop the madness, don’t go ugly early and just say no. Be a dog yourself. Take the time to sniff the dog’s ass and really determine if The Dog Can Hunt. You will be doing everyone a favor in the process. The media will start to love PR agencies because there will be less annoying, non-newsworthy stories being pitched. The clients will love us because we won’t be making false promises and they can look to leverage other higher ROI marketing tactics to raise their awareness. The employees at the PR agencies will love us because we are not asking them to pitch some ridiculously non-newsworthy client that causes them to get repeatedly bitch-slapped by the media and the client.  

Is your tail wagging after reading this or do you want to bite me?

I don’t go through life with eyes that see actuality. Everything I see is instinctively filtered through a marketing and public relations lens because those two things are part of my DNA. As an example, when I see the Aflac duck, I can’t help but think about a bunch of stiff insurance execs in a conference room listening to a bunch of creatives from an ad agency explain why they should build the Aflac brand around a hapless duck. Two snaps and a circle to the insurance execs who actually took the risk and went with the concept. It is brilliant and remains one of the most effective evergreen campaigns of all time. Or, when I see a story in the media, I can’t stop myself from wondering what the PR pitch was behind the story and whether it played out in favor of the PR person or became a train wreck completely derailing the pitch’s intentions. Some may view my lens as a curse, but I actually enjoy it. I feel like I always have an additional dimension to the world around me.  

Yesterday, I was driving on the highway and a Christmas Tree Shop truck went barreling past me. OK, chances are I went barreling past it, but the details aren’t germane to the story. Christmas Tree Shops are an east coast phenomenon today, but I expect a national expansion is in the plans. They position themselves as  “your favorite, fun place to shop that has the stuff you need and use everyday at the low prices you expect.” For those of you that have never been to a Christmas Tree Shop it is a place to get all the everyday crap you need at ridiculously cheap prices. People swarm to the stores, however, please note: Do not go to a Christmas Tree Shop if you are claustrophobic or looking for feng shui. Contrary to what the name may invoke, these stores are open all year round. The brand jingle “Don’t you just love a bargain” can probably be identified by more east coasters than those who can correctly identify the capital of Oregon. I am not kidding.  

When I saw the Christmas Tree Shop truck, my visceral response was holy shit, they violated every major best practice associated with naming and branding. Think about it. If someone came to me and said they wanted to build their brand around a religion, a holiday AND a short seasonal window, I would have told them to take their lips off the crack pipe and step away. Imagine if someone started a company called Rosh Hashanah Fourth of July Stores. Something tells me that just wouldn’t fly. However, what I love is that often times we are wrong. I would have been 100% wrong if I told them Christmas Tree Shop was a bad idea for a brand name. As it turns out it is a fantastic idea for a brand name. It’s almost as unbelievable as a guy named Barack Obama being the Democratic nominee for President.  

I love the fact that everyone is wrong and makes mistakes at some point. For some reason Marketing people are often the whipping post for mistakes whether they were responsible or not. If the product doesn’t sell, it’s marketing’s fault. Nobody ever thinks the product is a piece of crap and is probably something nobody wanted to begin with. You can almost hear the tone when someone says, “it is Marketing’s fault.” Think of a whining five year old with a runny nose. Here is the dirty little secret — Marketing peeps don’t make any more mistakes than anyone else. When software developers make a mistake, they call it a “bug.” When  accountants make a mistake, they call it something that needs “reconciliation.” When the VP candidates’ daughter makes a mistake they call it “a family matter.” We’re all human. Do people really believe that people who are genetically predisposed to making the absolute highest level of mistakes end up in Marketing? Homey don’t think so. To those who disagree, get over your big, bad self. Nobody is perfect and if you think you’re more perfect than anyone else, particularly people in Marketing, then on behalf of Marketing people around the world I want to tell you to f**k off. Hehe. I love blogging. You can say anything.   

What do you think?

You’ve heard the old expression, “Couples that pray together stay together.” Kinda meaningless to an agnostic like me, but I agree with it’s core tenent: couples who have shared interests have better relationships. That’s not to say you can’t do things outside of a relationship and maintain your individuality — so simmer down if that’s what you thought I was saying. I have just seen way too many relationships deteriorate because of unshared interests. Think golf widow.  

So, what about the Twitter widow? I can’t help but wonder how “significant others” who don’t twitter, feel about his or her spouse who twitters all day long. Twitter is impossible to explain verbally with any real level of understanding. You might as well be trying to explain the Big Bang Theory to a bunch of five year olds…or to me for that matter. Usually the big “WTF are you talking about?” balloon inflates over a person’s head as you try to explain it. You can really only “get” twitter once you actually try twitter. The non-twittering spouse must get so annoyed by the spouse who is genetically attached to his or her PDA twittering throughout the day and laughing as he or she posts a funny tweet and/or reads something funny by someone he or she is following. I can’t imagine the non-twittering spouse is standing there saying, “It makes him so happy and I am here to support him by giving him his space to do whatever he wants.” Think Stepford wife. What I visualize is more like, “What the f**k are you doing? If you don’t stop flittering or pittering or whatever, I am so oughtta here!” Think VH1’s reality show star New York. I’m sure we are not too far away from the first divorce filing where Twitter is cited as an irreconcilable difference. Remember, you heard it here first.  

My significant other, Ginny Pitcher, and I tweet together all day long. It is such a huge part of our daily routine. We often have “tweet offs,” by trying to tweet something before the other does. We tweet something funny about each other without telling the other and wait for each other’s reaction once she or I sees the tweet. We verbally share out loud a funny tweet to make sure the other has seen it. Our four kids think we’re freaks, but it’s a great shared interest and we love it. When BusinessWeek cited me in an article of CEO’s Who Twitter, Ginny was thrilled unlike the non-twittering spouse who would have viewed the recognition as something dysfuntional and vile like “CEOs Who Use Crack.” Our daily lives are very intertwined anyhoot. We started Kel & Partners together seven years ago and run the company together. Twitter has given us another medium to communicate and share what goes on in our world — and almost always by using humor. As I type this I can see the big “WTF?” balloon inflating over the heads of readers of my blog who don’t twitter.   

What about you? What does your spouse think of twitter? Feel free to let it all hang out. If they’re not twittering they are probably not reading a blog. This may be a great therapy platform for you.

I am watching CNN. In the last fifteen minutes, Nortel’s commercial, The Cisco Energy Tax, has played four times. I’ve seen the commercial before, but I didn’t really understand it so I initially zoned out. However, seeing a media flight that includes the same spot four times in fifteen minutes is somewhat unusual, so it grabbed my attention.  

I did a quick Google search on ”The Cisco Energy Tax” and pulled up a Marketwire press release on the subject. The headline was somewhat scandalous and exclaimed “Cisco Energy Tax” Costs Companies an Estimated $6.1 Billion Over Five Years. I quickly scanned the release and noticed a lot of exclamation marks, as if someone was yelling to make the point. Exclamation marks are not something used in a typical press release. Most media would not take an exclamation ridden release seriously. Then I noticed there were two YouTube videos embedded in the release. While I thought this was totally cool, I couldn’t imagine that a publicly traded company like Nortel [NYSE/TSX: NT] would issue such a controversial, in-your-face (Cisco) release. I thought it must have been a joke or something. I was wrong. When I went to News section of Nortel’s website and there is was for all to see. Holy crap, Nortel actually issued this release. Wow!  

Just to make sure the release screams Web 2.0’s power to the people like no other publicly traded company has screamed before, Nortel encourages people to visit the Nortel blog Buzzboard to vote for the video they like best and the winning video will be featured in an online advertisement in October. Shazaam!  A press release with two YouTube videos and a contest based on user-generated voting that’s hosted on a blog is a Web 2.0 trifecta. Yeah baby, yeah!  

While Nortel wraps the premise of the release around announcing the expansion of the ad campaign, make no mistake, this is an in-your-face bitch slap on Cisco. I kinda love it.  

What do you think of the release?

I have Facebook set as my browser home page, so it’s almost always launched on my desktop. With rare exception, I’m generally on Facebook at a minimum of a dozen time a day. Like most internet users, I have been able to mentally block out the vast majority of advertising to the point where it becomes white noise and I don’t even notice it. My ability to do this is amplified by the fact that I am allergic to details and can successfully ignore this kind of minutia as easily as I breathe air.  

Yesterday, in a moment of weakness, an advertisement actually stopped me in my tracks. It was an ad for surfing, something I love to do. I was thinking about how powerful it is that based on profile information and other content, Facebook can serve its ads with such relevance. They have truly raised the bar when it comes to reaching a highly-defined target audience based on granular, real-time demographic and psychographic data. For a fleeting moment I was feeling very young and contemporary because mostly young people surf…right?  

Thwack! Yeah…not so much. I decided to hit the refresh button a few times to see what other targeted advertising they would serve up to this obviously hip, way cool, 45-year-old woman. Bad idea. According to Facebook, here is a list of things that I could use:  

• Rachel Ray’s Diet. How do they know I need to diet? Do they monitor my status bar and see all the stuff I eat? Remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you. It couldn’t possibly have to do with the fact that a woman’s metabolism slows down when they they turn 40, and disappears all together at 45.
• 4 Different Oprah Diets. Ummmm….that’s like offering me Artie Lange’s favorite diet. The point is that she’s not that thin and the fact that she has had to try four different diets mean that they are not working.
• Epila Personal Laser Hair Removal. Apparently I will never have to shave again. Amazingly enough, this product allows me to permanently remove unwanted hair at home. The problem is it cites body locations that I don’t currently shave and I didn’t even know had hair. OK…ick!
• Exfoliating Skin Product. Will make me feel sexy and “will have you feeling like 20 again”. Notice they don’t say “look 20 again.” Wouldn’t want to over-promise because at 45 the fact of the matter is nothing short of surgery will help get rid of wrinkles.

So basically Facebook thinks I am a fat, wrinkly, hairy woman on a surfboard. Maybe they should have served me an ad for razorblades, so I can put myself out of my misery.  

Have you been served any reality slapping ads from Facebook?