Snakes on a plane tote bags and t-shirts

Cafepress have "Snakes on a Plane" t-shirts, tote bags and mouse pads.

A great web meme -- an even greater example of customer co-creation.

I'll be there opening weekend.

The buzz saw cuts both ways

In his new column for Fast Company, Tim Manners from Reveries points out that even companies who've earned a ton of love and goodwill from customers aren't immune to bad buzz when they start mistreating their best customers.

He uses Apple and Netflix as examples. Both are renowned for their ability to create happy, evangelical customers. But both recently faced class action suits from unhappy customers as a result of some strategic decisions that left customer out of the equation.

At the very least, both Apple and Netflix are undermining their own "word-of-mouth" marketing strategies. It is downright weird that these companies, both of which are built on the kind of "evangelism" that most marketers would kill to have, seem oblivious to the fact that buzz can cut both ways. It feels like arrogance, which is not exactly a fundamental principle of good marketing.

Link

NO CONTROL

The name �Obviousness� comes from a personal belief that many powerful ideas, even ones that seem revolutionary, are really grounded in simple common sense. If we could let go of our preconceptions and stop trying to overcomplicate things, we would see this. We would wake up and smell the obviousness.

The perfect example is the Cluetrain Manifesto. It�s extremely powerful stuff, but some of the most powerful statements are also the most obvious when you look at it objectively:

Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors.

Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

So far so good. But lately I�ve been repeatedly running up against an idea that blows my cosy little theme to bits.

NO CONTROL

Another central Cluetrain theme is the downside of the impulse to command and control. In a corporate context, this is something I can totally get behind, but actually walking this particular walk in my everyday working life has proven a lot trickier.

In other words, winning by letting go is a powerful concept . . . but it is NOT very obvious. And it�s not very easy either.

I learned this recently when a colleague shamed me out of an impulse to control by quoting something back at me that I had just written for my company�s newsletter:

Snap quiz: who recently gave the advice that "you don't have to control something to profit from it. Let go of that need for control and you may discover some powerful new sources of innovation and growth."?

Ouch.

The good news, though, is that I�m not alone in my struggle. Here�s how Tara Hunt tackles it in her post-Cluetrain mash-up, the Pinko Manifesto:

Put down the marketing plan and walk away slowly. It'll be alright. I know. You have a tough job ahead of you. It's called killing your inner control freak. I have the same issue.

I hear you, Tara. I hear you.

Worlds Collide at the Consumerist

Great post at The Consumerist about the perils of automated customer emails. One of their readers received a very special offer on the new Nine Inch Nails album:

For the next few days, you can pre-order your copy at a savings of 0%

Wow! Thanks for the thoughtful reminder, mister automated email server!

The best part, though, is the comments. Thanks to wonders of blog search engines, it seems that a few NIN fans found there way to the post and decided to ignore the whole 0% thing and weigh in with early reviews of the album.

.....Ol' Trent mellowed out too much for me after "Broken." That was the last decent NIN record, to me.

I'll still listen to him, although the last album was a little weak...

Worlds collide. I love it.

I feel like I know these two

I think of them as "young Dusting Hoffman in drag" and "the lost Baldwin brother". I've been seeing them for years and years and years on those ubiquitous Classmates.com banner ads that never seem to change.

Who are they? Where are they now? And how do they feel about being permanently etched in my brain?

Just asking.

I'm Back, Baby I'm Back (Thank You Will Pate)

I started this blog just over a year ago and soon I let it slide. Lots of reasons/excuses. Not important.

But that was then and this is now.

My reason for starting up again is simple. His name is Will Pate.

Will is a very smart young guy who just landed himself a great job over at Flock. He came by my office at the behest of a my semi-colleague (long story) Michael Fergusson to give a talk about "Buzz Management in a Web 2.0 World."

The talk was great, but ridiculously poorly attended considering this is stuff my company NEEDS to know -- but that's another issue for another post.

Listening to Will speak, I was struck by few things. First, I realized that I totally know where he's coming from. I read a lot of the same blogs. I'm interested in a lot of the same issues. The main theme of his talk was an idea that I am fascinated by -- the emergence of this online culture of participation and its effect on marketing.

But here's the kicker: I'm fascinated and yet . . . I'm not participating.

I mention a great post that I loved and Will knows the blogger. I beat my brains out trying to drag my company into the post-cluetrain era, step by painful step, and meanwhile Will turns his blog and his ideas into what looks like an incredibly opportunity at a fantastic company that doesn't need to be convinced that the sky is falling.

So . . . clearly it's time to get up off this deck chair and jump into the pool. Thanks, Will, for helping me see this. We barely met, but thank you.