Trust advertisers to come up with a ‘genteel’ way of describing a product that may offend the prude but grab the gullible. Some things never change.

Or as Boing Boing puts it:

… "double your breathing capacity" as a
euphemism for "get giant knockers now!"

And there was me thinking that 1920s was all about flat-chested flappers…
 

I am listening to a podcast on Instapundit about online (and offline) advertising. It is an interview with David Verklin, CEO of Carat Americas. The line that made me jump and start typing this blog is:

I am in business of commercial persuasion not advertising

…as in delivering commercial persuasion in 30 seconds. Actually, he talks about 3 minutes ‘commercial persuasion brochures’ on your mobile. Grrr.

The assumption that we are interested in advertising and messages that these people feed us "across all platforms" is still alive and writhing. Targeting is discussed at length.

Patronising, clueless and commercially (and otherwise) unpersuasive…

Rob Scoble on FOG – Fear of Google. I note his third point, about advertising:

Google is changing expectations of advertisers. One advertising agency
exec told me she’s seeing that more and more advertisers are only
willing to pay for “the last click” — she works for an airline, for
instance, who wants to see ROI reports on all ads now, so it’s getting
harder and harder to do creative advertising (which is where
advertising agencies add their value and get their fees) in exchange
for “boring” text ads. Online “pay per action” ads are training
advertisers that they should be able to track everything about
advertising and how well it’s working for them. Of course, as we were
talking about this on the bus we rolled by a Coca Cola umbrella. I
wonder how well THAT is converting!

As I have been saying to anyone willing to listen – advertising will stampede online (after the time it has taken to build the momentum). This is not evidence of online advertising working but evidence of eyeballs fleeing into space where they turn back into people – the internet. First, there was much rejoicing – we can measure the impact of ads, hurray! We can track all eyeballs and target them – note the military language. But the sword with which the advertisers have hoped to cut through the knot of ROI is double-edged. [/classical allusion]. Now they can see just how little attention people pay to online advertising. So here comes the second stage – the cost of advertising should decline at some point as companies using ads to reach ‘consumers’ will realise that a) they are not getting value for their money and b) there are much better ways to communicate with people out there.

Oh, and advertisers want to track everything about you on the Internet.
They want to know if you saw a blog about something, and a banner about
that, and other stuff about that — how does that all mix into your
purchasing behavior. They are looking to Google to give them more
answers. I heard more than one brand manager decry that he couldn’t see
anything about you other than you clicked on an ad on Google to find
his company’s stuff.

Why should brand managers know where and why I click? I have no connection with them. I might want to have one with people who work for the company, those who design and make their products, deliver their services…etc, if only they talked to the world directly.

Tracking is like spying, especially as all it seems to be is a prelude to targeting. And who wants to be a target? Marketers and advertisers are tracking eyeballs in spaces that are not their own and do so surreptitiously. They want to do this in places that have nothing to do with them, on their own terms, fitting the results into their own packaging. This is what I imagine Chris Locke means by slicing and dicing, counting the legs and dividing by four, bringing in the sheep.

True, I can track those who read my blog (although I rarely do), I monitor who links to it (so I can respond and occasionally find new blogs). Others can see what I read (my furls) and what I think. Note, it’s a two-way thing and everybody knows where they stand. But when it comes to advertisers, I need to sweep my computer now and then of tracking cookies and other adware. Different world, different manners.

Last night I went to see Paris, Je T’aime at the Charlotte Street hotel, which has a lovely screening room – comfortable orange leather seats, plenty of leg room, drinks allowed. Jackie organised a very cool event about MySpace there and I have been to a private screening there before. Btw, I wonder if it would make sense to self-organise screenings of films as they come out – gather enough people (via social networks), pay a manageable extra compared to a normal cinema ticket to hire a screening room. In return, you have a special occasion with friends, no disruptive strangers, queues etc etc. Might be an entertainment/distribution model in this. But I digress.

The film was tres French, oh so French. Probably because of a fair number of Americans involved who injected it with theatrical OTT Frenchness. If I wanted to be cynical, I’d say that the French need to get American tourists back to Paris. But let’s not be beastly. None of this detracted from my enjoyment of film. Here is the blurb:

In Paris, Je T’aime, celebrated directors from around the world, including the Coen Brothers, Gus Van Sant, Gurinder Chadha, Wes Craven, Walter Salles, Alexander Payne and Olivier Assayas, have come together to portray Paris in a way never before imagined. .. With each director telling the story of an unusual encounter in one of the city’s neighborhoods, the vignettes go beyond the ‘postcard’ view of Paris to portray aspects of the city rarely seen on the big screen.

Whether it is as never before imagined, I am not sure. But the film does look at the varied aspects of love, placing them in Paris, the city of love. This is a cliché but fortunately those behind the film realise that love is not and manage to create a memorable mosaic of it. The shortness of the ‘vignettes’  – 18 in total – can be an advantage. Brevity and compactness add poignancy and punch. The kind of simplicity that let’s in complexity via back door. But I am coming out all French and philosophical here.

Here’s my take on the stories whilst avoiding too many plot-spoilers, which is not as important as you might think.

Montmartre – probably most French of them all, a man anxious about not finding someone, expressing the loneliness with trivial concerns finds a soul mate by a freak coincidence.

Quais De Seine – love across religious divide. Sweet despite skirting the edges of political correctness.

Le Marais – love at first sight, intuition without many words, at least from the wooed one. Although this is about love that dared not to speak its name in the past, there is no political or PC charge here. Rather charming, if teenage. Marianne Faithfull is in this one, but I completely missed to notice.

Tuileries – the most surreal of them all. In French without subtitles (unlike the rest of the film). Dead give away that the film is for an American audience. A really strange guidebook crucial to the plot.

Loin du 16eme – a moving tale of maternal love, not from the usual or obvious perspective. Good acting.

Porte de Choisy – burlesque-like, odd and mildly disconcerting. But only very mildly. Must be the Asian angle.

Bastille – an old story retold with a twist. Won’t mention the ending, just quote one line: A man acting in love with his wife, finds himself in love again.

Place des Victories – Juliette Binoche is an amazing actress, which comes across in this story about a mother mourning her son.

Tour Eiffel - mime-bashing with a twist. Meant to be touching, but ends up mostly farcical.

Parc Monceu – most confusing of them all. At least for me. Nick Nolte’s the known face.

Quartier Des Enfants Rouges – also rather alien one for my tastes. Acting profession and drug dealers involved, not familiar with the vibes. Maggie Gyllenhaal in this one.

Place Des Fetes – one of the most moving ones. Love, death and depth for those without glamorous existence. Lagos is mentioned.

Pigalle – fading love being rekindled by some unorthodox means, well, for respectable people. Humorous and sweet in its own way. Bob Hoskins and Fanny Ardant do add spice.

Quartier De La Madeleine – Elijah Wood is no Frodo in this one. Most fairly-tale like, presents the dark side of Paris, as I like it. Blood plays an important role.

Pere-Lachaise – one of my favourite I think. Resonates probably as it has Oscar Wilde in it. Guys remember, sense of humour is very important for a girl. At least to this one.

Faubourg Saint-Denis – love without sight but powerful visual kaleidoscope of memories. Brilliantly shot and powerful. One of the best in the collection.

Quartier Latin – deep connection can endure everything. Even divorce and old wounds. Gerard Depardieu makes a fine restaurant owner.

14em Arrondissement – the ridiculous, the clumsy and the lonely can have their share in deep understanding too. Love of life transcends mediocrity.

Final verdict – definitely worth seeing. UK release is 29th June. Here is a trailer although I must warn that it doesn’t convey the flavour of the film at all. But what trailer does?

…the atomic unit of media is no longer the publication or the section or the page or even the article but the post: the nugget of information, the thought, the notion. That is what is really being disaggregated: the old unit of media itself.
- Jeff Jarvis, More Sand

via Tim O’Reilly

The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike
existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and
companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the
corner. What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is
representable and, increasingly, represented on the Web.
- Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web 

via Johnnie Moore

Create documents which are machine-readable, and only a machine will want to read them.
- Alec Muffett in his rant on why the semantic web will never happen

Note: I actually like tagging and think semantic web is a good idea. I just don’t think it’s going to happen the way people imagine it will. But then, I am not an ubergeek.

TechCrunch on yet another services that will monitor what blogs are saying about a brand/product/company. This time PR Newswire partners with Umbria, in creating a product called “MediaSense
Blog Measurement”.

Why do PR Professionals need a service to find out what bloggers are saying about their clients by a third party?

Media monitoring services still play an
important role in supporting PR, but this old school model comes from a
day before the Internet where national media monitoring via a third
party was essential, simply because there wasn’t an alternative, and in
many cases, for print, radio and TV there isn’t an all inclusive
alternative today. And yet blogs and consumer generated media are the
children of a new age, an online age where information is accessible
online anywhere in the world at the touch of a button.

This is what  I think whenever I see an announcement for such a service. I guess it is low hanging fruit for those who know how to use live web search. It’s not difficult to set up feeds of selected words searches and configure RSS reader so it’s easy to monitor them.

Occasionally I come across proposals from such agencies to my clients. I always show them how to do it themselves. That’s the whole point – disintermediation can work for companies too, not just individuals. Go figure.

The whole IT security industry is an accident — an artifact
of how the computer industry developed. As IT fades into the background
and becomes just another utility, users will simply expect it to work
– and the details of how it works won’t matter.
- Bruce Schneier in Do We Really Need a Security Industry?

Whatever the “right” decision was for Digg regarding whether or not
to delete the offending post, Digg knows it is nothing without its
passionate and participating members. The enlightened path should have
been obvious to them: be completely transparent with users from the beginning.
Before it took any action that stripped power from users, Digg should
have shared its dilemma with the community, explained the conundrum and
the legal advice it had been given, and then solicited candid feedback
via its forum. Debate would have ensued, but everyone would have felt
like they were part of Digg’s ultimate decision, even if that was
deletion of the code. More than anything, passionate users want to be
heard.

These are simple steps that would have turned “us vs. them” into “us and only us”…without having to relinquish control to a “tyranny of the majority.”

This is what ‘user-centric’ means, I guess. However, if you have to use the term, you probably don’t have the user in the centre.

Also, there are differences between majority, community and network. Understanding of those distinctions can provide some insight into how to behave and treat others online.

BBC reports:

Mr Ayers a senior executive at the AACS] said that while he could not reveal the specific steps the group would be taking, it would be using both "legal
and technical" steps to prevent the circumvention of copy protection.

We will take whatever action is appropriate," he said.
"We hope the public respects our position and complies with applicable
laws."

The 700,000 802,000+ pages you see in Google results – that’s your public. An industry turning on its own markets is doomed.

This is a clash of cultures:

The hacker, known as muslix64, has been able to access the encryption keys which pass between certain discs and the player.

The hacker said he had grown angry when a HD-DVD movie
he had bought would not play on his monitor because it did not have the
compliant connector demanded by the movie industry.

Note that the hacker bought the HD-DVD, he paid for the movie. The industry got its pound of flesh but it just wasn’t going to get any blood. Only when he discovered that it will not play on his monitor (I mostly watch DVDs on my computer), he tried to access the key. Online you make things work, if you can. He could, so he did. Companies can protect their content if they wish. But if they impose arbitrary limitations on our hardware, we are not going to play along. This is a culture of control vs. the culture of your-broken-business-model-is-not-our-problem…

Update: Cory Doctorow has more on the same article. Love this bit:

The companies that made AACS spent millions and years at it. The
hackers who broke it did so in days, for laughs, for free. More people
now know how to crack HD-DVD than own an HD-DVD player.