I'm Going to Blog Again...Again

I kinda don't care if anyone notices. I don't need the attention.

But I need to write.

I write for a living, but what I write is often watered down by the time it makes it out into the world, diluted by people who think they know what the market will respond to. So I spend a lot of time copying and pasting things that have already been watered down.

That's fine. Sometimes, it's not art.

I may migrate this blog over to Random Scratch, once the Google Blogger team fixes whatever is ailing my new template.

In the past, this place was advertising-industry-focused. There will probably be a lot of that again, as I both work in advertising and am a student of the....I can't say "craft," can I? In the sense that it is a dark art, maybe I can say "craft." After all, we're all about tricking, deception, sleight of hand, misdirection, and often lying with the help of an asterisk. Fine...craft.

I'm off to practice my craft.

 

Transatlantic Supergroup Forms

Bill, Angela and Darryl (BAD) have been friends of this blog from its beginnings back in 2006. Now they have merged their unique talents to form AdVerve, which already existed, but now includes Darryl, who just left the agency he founded, Humongo, to join Carrot. Bill and Angela have shelved their old blogs while the one Darryl started will be carried on by the good folks of Humongo, whom I get to work with from time to time on various projects. It's all slightly confusing. The ad blog world is a little shaken, bewildered, confused and nervous right now. What does it all mean? It's like if your brother married your sister or something, but not gross like that. Bad example.

All I know is that these three bloggers are truly decent people who have been very kind to me in the five years I've known them. I trust that whatever comes of this, it'll be good. 

OK, I Don't Hate New York Anymore

Having just returned, I had many of my prejudged notions confirmed (Yankees fans are everywhere and obnoxious as hell) and dispelled (New Yorkers are actually a very friendly lot). Purpose of the trip is explained over at my other blog.

And you know how when Beatles fans go to London, they can't resist taking a picture of themselves in that famous crosswalk, mimicking the Abbey Road album cover? I did the same on St. Mark's Place in homage to a far better album. (Get over it, Beatles freaks. I'm right and you know it.)

Post #1500. Now What?

I started this blog in July, 2006. I was a partner at a "new media agency" at the time and our company blog was fast becoming nothing more than a series of links and shout-outs to conferences or inane, mundane industry news. I always tried to make my posts on that blog interesting, but they'd quickly be buried by a colleague whose psychotic desire to get our blog a better Technorati ranking consumed his every waking moment, to the point that he was posting 20 times a day. In frustration, I created this one.

That agency, much like Technorati, is a relic of a bygone era, when blogs mattered and people who "surfed the net" were fond of something they used to call "bookmarks." SEO was still 50% legit and the MySpace Exodus was yet to come. Then RSS feeds got popular. Then Twitter took off. Technorati is about as accurate a barometer of a blog's popularity anymore as Dane Cook is capable of making me laugh; which is to say, not very. But at least Technorati is still in business. That defunct agency suffered a Biblical meltdown at the very hands of the above-mentioned colleague, who now goes about to small-circuit meet-ups and clubs, touting his amazing Social Media Ninja skills. "You need to blog with regularity. Set up a Twitter account. Monitor talk of your brand or company. Become the expert in your field. Blah blah zzzzz" (You thought I arrived at my social media disdain by being a skeptical observer? No, I have seen the dark side.) Did that sound bitter? I know. I'm working on it. I'll credit the gurus their tenacity and inventiveness, having built personal brands based on pure bullshit.

I believe in social media, but I don't think it requires a big bucks consultant to tell you what to do. It might require an intern to maintain a Facebook page, update your Twitter feed and have the authority to respond to talk of your brand. Keep in mind that when you use social media to spam or intrude, (otherwise known as "sales") you fail. That's why the kids left MySpace and will keep creating new and hidden ways of communing away from the marketers. It's a customer service tool and a buzz generator...and little more. Don't count on big ROI, none that you can accurately measure, anyway. That's why you put an intern on it. There is very little investment. Any return will be positive talk of your brand that outweighs the negative talk. You go on and figure out how that translates into "conversions." I'm not interested. It comes down to taking care of the small stuff, which anyone in business since the moneychangers in the Temple will tell you is often rewarded by the Holy Grail of Sales - repeat business. Now you know all you need to know about using social media for your business. Be careful out there.

Anyway (damn, wasn't expecting to go off on social media), this arbitrary milestone of 1,500 posts in a little over three years (about 1.5 per day) has me pondering "the next step." (You know, like Bowie or Madonna, always reinventing.) I sometimes see this blog as a burden, as have the authors of many of my favorite reads in recent years, disappearing without a word or sometimes announcing the end with finality. Wordpress and Blogger (and Posterous and Tumblr and Facebook and MySpace and LiveJournal and Friendster) are littered with the skeletons of long-dead blogs. "It's one more thing to keep up with when we have plenty to do already," they've noted. I know the feeling.

But whenever I entertain the notion of quitting this thing, I end up going back to why I started blogging to begin with. I need to create, maybe bounce stuff off of others. (The whole "conversation" thing.) Its likely because my job, like many of yours, is a maddening exercise in kissing ass and shutting up, keeping a sharp eye peeled for the next bus someone wants to throw us under. We blog to vent, to entertain ourselves and maybe a few others, and to do the things we want to do that advertising and marketing won't ever allow. Nobody promised us a work-life that satisfied. That's why they call it work. We get a paycheck. We try to do our best. We can't forget that while we may have entered the "creative" side for loftier reasons, we aren't here to make art, but to make a living. Could my blogging time be used in a more productively creative way, like maybe woodworking or learning a new language? Absolutely. And I might just start building Spanish Adirondack chairs someday.

And like most of you, I've got bigger plans for a vast media empire with a hidden agenda that I hope to control someday from a huge tower, where I will issue edicts and proclamations across my vast realm as I recline in grotesque luxury, eating the hearts and brains of interns and washing them down with the blood of my rivals. (I probably won't be that big of a dick, having spent way too much time in the dirt of the trenches, eating shit.) Maybe for the time being, this blog just serves as the cornerstone of that empire. Or maybe it will only ever be the place where I dump the random stuff and one-off junk I feel like saying or doing. That'd be fine, too. It serves a purpose either way.

So, I think I just talked myself out of retiring this blog. Sorry.

Bye Bye Bloggers

Two creative bloggers I enjoy have called it quits this week, and it's only Tuesday. First, Scamp threw in the towel, endeavoring to write a novel. Good luck with that. I'm still waiting on an agent to take the chance with my first.

Now Catcher in the Rye has left the ad blog world as well.

On the subject of dying blogs, The New York Times had an interesting piece last Sunday, in which they liberally quoted some guy from Technorati, who seemed to be speaking from a temporal rift in the space-time continuum. On the subject of where authors of blogs disappear to, the leader of the always-down and never-accurate Technorati said, “Some of that activity has gone to Facebook and MySpace, and obviously Twitter is a new phenomenon.” Ya think? MySpace? Really? And bloggers don't quit blogging to go to Twitter, this thing you call a new phenomenon. Bloggers just get tired of the ball and chain a blog can be. The article mentions that some people hoped to get rich from their blogs. If you got into blogging to make money, well - I'm sorry you believed that was possible.

It gets old, I guess, this blogging thing. But I'll keep doing it for now. It's a creative outlet for me. I've always been the guy who draws cartoons about co-workers or creates ads clients will never see, much less run. I'm the guy that always gets called "blunt" and then gets called on the carpet for embarrassing superiors in front of their bosses. I'm wiser now (I hope) and I think I've learned to draw that back a bit in the office, the better to keep my job, so I need this blog to shout and spout my nonsense. Or maybe I just need to stop looking for shit to make fun of. Haven't figured it out yet.

Best to you, Scamp and Catcher. Enjoyed your insights. Tell me how it feels in a few months. If you say, "Quitting that blog was so liberating," I may consider joining you.

Dana + Real Estate Advertising = Funny

I've done my share of bashing real estate advertising, but Dana Severson, a freelance copywriter from Minneapolis, (also soon to be home of the guy who can't say no and will go down remembered as a total douche instead of a Super Bowl winner. Yes, I'm talking about Deanna Favre's husband, the Wrangler wearing douche.) What was I saying? Oh, yeah - Dana has taken bashing real estate advertising to a new place with his site The Real "Ad" Tor Awards. That's a mouthful of a name, but it's a niche that Dana clearly owns.

I see a coffee table book in Dana's future. And lawsuits from those featured in it.

UPDATE: This just in from Dana Severson:

I'm not the freelance copywriter Dana Severson from Minnesota. I do know him though. I'm the advertising director Dana Severson from Minnesota. He and I compete for Google rankings. Regardless, I appreciate the plug.

So, now I see how things work up there in Minnesota. And we make fun of Arkansas and West Virginia for being inbred.

Where's My Creativity Magazine?

Brian, aka @askacopywriter, sent me this image of the latest issue of Creativity. I will assume that's Brian's thumb in the corner.

Brian claims to be a copywriter, but from what I've seen at his blog, he can't possibly spend more than 10 minutes a day writing copy. He's too busy wandering the streets and subways of NYC, documenting ads and uploading them.

Seven (Future) Things About Me

During the last round of "Seven Things About Me," the blogger meme where you tell....yes... seven (likely unknown) things about yourself...I opted out when a few of my virtual friends asked me to play along, citing my previous involvement in the game.

I've rethought it and decided to play, but with a twist.

I will reveal seven things about my future self, and then call out a few bloggers to do the same.

1. After the publication of my epic saga and the subsequent sale of the movie rights to Spike Lee (who was in a bitter bidding war with Ron Howard), I was able to move to Adelaide, SA and became a citizen of Australia. I think it was the appointment of Sean Hannity as Secretary of Patriotism by President Limbaugh that finally tipped the scales.
2. I finally learned to surf, but finding surf in SA without great white sharks isn’t easy.
3. We have a vineyard and farm in the Barossa Valley. We make some wine, but we always end up drinking it all or giving it away as gifts. The farm is mostly an excuse for our dog to practice sheep herding, which he sucks at.
4. Whenever we visit the States (maybe once a year, lately) we like to mess with people by acting like we can’t understand them through their thick accents.
5. Our daily 30-minute show (Monday-Friday, live online) Radio Free Babylon, was banned in Saudi Arabia. Again. After that, Pepsi stopped sponsoring us, leaving the door open for Coke. The contract says we have to drink it on-camera, but I usually spike mine.
6. During the Canadian-American War, I started stockpiling weapons, water and food. Don’t come looking for them.
7. I can finally speak Spanish fluently, which is useless down here.

And now, your turn:

Bill
Kym
Kaitlyn
Chimp
Lori
MMM
Stan
Broad
Corey

They Do Advertising in South Dakota?

The Dakotas don't get much respect. For that matter, most of the Midwest, Upper Midwest, South and North don't get much respect. (Friend of the blog Alan Wolk has a great piece on the ad world's neglect of a huge segment of the country over at Ad Age.)

Some coastal dwellers (probably of the NYC and LA variety) long ago deemed the interior of the nation "flyover country." But until you've lived there, you don't know what you're talking about. The cost of living is waaaay cheaper and they get the same channels on their cable boxes that you get. The sushi is a little suspect, but that's offset by the ability to leave your front door unlocked.

So I was checking out my tanking ranking at Technorati to see who links here when I found that rare thing: an agency blog that doesn't suck. (There are a few over in the sidebar that fit that description.) It's from agency Henkin-Schultz of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

And since we're now living in the future, I can look up the agency's address and zoom in to their building in a creepy, stalker way. Looks like a cool building. Whaddayaknow? The cool ad agency building trend is happening in South Dakota. Something tells me their work would stand up to any created in Manhattan or Malibu.

Why So Serious?

The very prolific Joker, of Why Advertising Sucks, has included me in his "20 on 20 series," in which he asks 20 bloggers 20 questions.

Thanks, Joker.

It is notable that throughout my email exchange with Joker, not a single "That's what she said" joke was written by either party.

Here's Joker on blogging:
"You're only as good as your last post."

So true. "Ephemera," as they say at PSI.

Early Birds Getting Worms and Religion

Darryl over at Brand Flakes for Breakfast is always the first ad blogger in my reader in the AM. (I can't count Stan of Brand DNA as he's got a 14-hour jump on US bloggers from down in Melbourne.)

Darryl points out a new Bible from Sweden which seems pretty cool. Darryl found the info at ANIMAL, which is where you can find Copyranter lately.

Speaking of Copyranter and religion, he's got a good piece this morning on Jehovah's Witness marketing.

Not Another Dead Ad Blog!

One of my favorite (in this case: favourite) ad bloggers, Fish & Chimps, has apparently called it quits. I'm hoping he goes the Copyranter route and rises from the grave.

Said the author behind UK-based Chimp Media Monitoring,

Advertising's not funny any more. Or I've had a cooliostomy and lost my sense of humour. My mojo has gone. Don't get upset. It's only a fucking blog. Out.

Not so fast, Chimp. You need this space. It needs you. Cooliostomy? C'mon! Who comes up with that kinda stuff?

Image stolen from Dead Monkey Theatre.

I'm a Bad Blogger

Apologies to my blogging buds, whom I've neglected by not commenting on their blogs regularly as I used to. Reason is the Evil Corporate Masters, who prevent me from seeing anything with the suffix of .blogspot, .typepad or .wordpress. I can see you in my reader and always read your stuff, but that's it. Unless I get to you at home after work or on the weekends, I'm a negligent blogger.

Apologies to AdRants, AdScam, Agency Tart, American Copywriter, Catch Up Lady, Brand DNA, Chimp Media Monitoring, Copyranter, Every Sandwich, Hespos, Heybeus, Life in the Garden, Married to the Sea, Make The Logo Bigger, Mental Hygiene, MultiCult Classics, New York Punk, RayTube, Renegade Agency Confessional, Scamp, Texan in Hippieland, The AdHole, The Daily (Ad) Biz, The Assimilated Negro, Thinking in Vain, Toadstool, Why Advertising Sucks, Yes But No But Yes, Yonder Ponder.

Some of you have also been very negligent, not posting to your own blogs in months. Blogging is tough work, I know, but if you remain dormant, I've got to pull you from the "Linkers and Lurkers" list and replace you with something new. No offense, but if you've quit, I'm not keeping you around out of respect for your blog's memory. Not that I don't respect your blog's memory...but you know what I mean.

On the plus side, Evil Corporate Masters today announced a permanent switch from Business Casual to Totally Casual all the time, not just on Fridays. So maybe not so Evil after all.

I Blog, Therefore, I Am

I tend to think of this blog as an online magazine of stupid and sometimes interesting stuff. That's one of the reasons I never do a post without an image in it. (This ain't The New Yorker. It's more like Highlights for Children or Mad.) That's also the reason I will go back and edit a post if I later find misspellings or half-baked thoughts not fully fleshed out. Or if I find some twisted language that makes no sense, such as using "half-baked" and "fleshed out" in a sentence together. Baked flesh.

Traffic to this little corner of the World Wide Waste of Time has crept up slowly, but there is no way to "monetize" that light trickle and you will never see contextual ads in the sidebar. Maybe someday when I reach 100,000 hits a day I can start selling t-shirts and plastic awareness bracelets. Until then, it's just a place to create, because oftentimes my job doesn't allow me to do that.

Here are some of the things being said around the world about Where's My Jetpack?

"Brilliantly subversive."
Advance, a Danish agency

"I'm quite fond of Mr. Jetpacks."
Stan Lee, Melbourne, Australia

"It must be nice typing rants to yourself."
Some anonymous commenter

Copyranter Rises From The [Blogging] Grave

It appears I've preached a premature eulogy. But it took him five days instead of the customary three. Still, let the enemies of truth and all who defend the black art of advertising tremble. No shop is safe from his sword and few are the ads that escape his wrath.

Welcome back. May you make some cash.

Do You Remember Where You Were When...?

We've all heard the tales of people who were alive when JFK was shot. They all have a similar story wherein everyone remembers "exactly where they were when they heard the news."

My generation will have similar stories to tell our children when they ask, "Where were you when you found out Copyranter had quit blogging?" I will answer them thusly: "It was a Saturday morning about 8 AM. I was at home drinking coffee and checking things on the bedroom computer when I read it on my Google reader from Bill Green of Make The Logo Bigger. I remember it like it was yesterday."

The greatest ad blogger to ever ad blog has quit at the top of his game. That's how the good ones should go out. No Joe Montana exit for this guy. No switching uniforms to play for a lesser team and then falling to the turf with repeated concussions, a shell of his former self. And we trust there will be no Michael Jordan-styled attempts to return to the game, unless it is as a paid columnist at a respected publication. But respected publications would want to water him down. If there's one thing we who read Copyranter figured out, it's that the guy is true to his word. He says what he means and means what he says. 110% and all the other sports cliches you can come up with. And he quit with style - after a trip to LA with his girlfriend*.

His retirement from the world of snarky ad critique will affect this blog to a degree. I had the honor of being a regular Friday beneficiary of his weekly Link Haze for a few months running and enjoyed the traffic spikes.

He offered no tags or labels and never stooped to contextual ads in his sidebar. He offered no blogroll, yet his authority rating on Technorati dwarfed most others. He was a giant. A giant asshole, but a giant nonetheless. And while I have removed retired bloggers from the Linkers and Lurkers list to the right, Copyranter will remain. He didn't just rip ads; he ripped agencies, society, culture, players, pawns and the hell that is New York City. His archives will stand the test of time and his name will forever be uttered with awe and reverence.

Best to you, Mark. Now go get a gig that pays you to do what you did so well for free.

*Perhaps Copyranter "went Hollywood" and cashed in? Perhaps American Apparel Chief Charney bought his silence?

The Day the Blog World Stood Still

¹And it shall come to pass in those days that the scribes who favor the Search Beast will not find the Beast’s servers, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ²There will be no scrolls of wit and disdain penned during these days by the scribes who esteemed the Spot of Blog.

³And those who dwell in the gray and dreary cubicles, who seek to shun their tasks in favor of the mockery of the scribes, shall not find them, for the Beast’s servers will be laid low. ⁴They will seek William of Logo, and he shall not be found. They will seek James the Ponderer, and he shall not be found. They will seek the Ranter of Copy from the Great City, and even he shall not be found. And all their thoughts will be vanity.

⁵And the scribes who hold favor with the Pad of Type, and they who make their beds with the Press of Word, shall laugh and scorn the Beast’s followers to derision, calling out with a loud voice, crying, ⁶“Woe unto you, fools and charlatans! For your words are as dust, floating in the clouds, where none can hear them and no one shall heed them! ⁷For you have followed the Beast unto ruin, and your scrolls no one shall read!”

II Blogmentations 4:1-7

One Year, 365 Posts

One year ago today I started this blog. This post is #365. Where's My Jetpack? has almost become a part time job volunteer position. It was started out of frustration with not being able to write anything fun at my job. (Go ahead, write 40 pages about predictive and statistical analytics software and tell me you had fun doing it.) I suppose I'll keep it going, unless someone out there has an actual paying job that let's me write like this.















On this anniversary, I will add a new feature to the sidebar called "Open Mic Night" in which I will open myself up to ridicule, scorn and derision by posting homemade recordings every so often. At worst, I make you cringe, requiring an aural palate cleansing using your favorite music. At best, I quit my day job and go on tour with the White Stripes.

Fred is Dead

Not literally, but he laid his blog to rest yesterday. It was a sad day for ad blogging, as Fred often posted amusing insights about more than just ads and the ad world. The author will live on at Hands Across the Porch and No Joe Girls, among other places.

I found Freelance Fred through George Parker, which is basically how the incestuous blog world works. You hit a link on one blog's comments or sidebar and find another blogger who posts stuff you like to read. Fred went out in style, buying a 20 oz steak at an Atlanta area strip club and reviewing it for his readers.

I Think the Name is Luddite

I'm the kind of guy who goes dragging his feet into the next technological advance. I'd jump on the jetpack before anyone, but when it comes to software upgrades, I'm pretty averse to change. I have Photoshop CS2, but I never use it, preferring instead to use version 7 simply because I know it and I don't want to learn a new version. I was forced to upgrade my Dreamweaver and it's still pissing me off when I try to do things the way I learned to do them. I don't need Vista; XP works just fine. I'm not joining Twitter, or MyBlogLog, or adding a thousand trendy widgets to this site. I caved to Technorati, but that's it for now.

Which brings me to RSS readers. I'm afraid it's time for me to get one. As my blog favorites list grows, I need to be more systematic about what I'm following. Any of you bloggers who see a lot of traffic from one IP address in Central Florida can thank me, since I check up on you through bookmarks usually, sometimes getting to you through links on other sites. I call it my "Daily Reads" folder (pictured below - it grows and shrinks all the time as I find new ones I like or as old links go dormant) and I just jump to one of them when the mood strikes me and time permits, not necessarily when you update your blog. So, if you're watching website stats and analytics and you're wondering if you've got a stalker on your hands, it's just me...and I know where you live!

And speaking of stats, the guy who wrote the book "Where's My Jetpack?" (or his publicist/publisher) has been searching the term "where's my jetpack?" every day from Portland, in every possible way. Quoted, no apostrophe, capital letters, no question mark. He's hoping that he can eventually beat me for top spot on Google for the term. Please help me crush his dreams by linking to this blog. I'm inclinced to agree with this review of his book.