m Associates reports: "It was just a matter of time before the kinds of people who vandalized brand symbols at world economic summits resorted to brand cyber-vandalism. The Wikileaks hacktivists have targeted and threatened global brands like Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, Amazon, Twitter and Shell. Because of their symbolic power, brands are regularly co-opted to attract attention and dramatize political issues. That is how The Gap has become a symbol for sweatshops, McDonald's for the obesity epidemic, Walmart for labor violations and on and on. Many brands are more powerful than sovereign nations. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations, not nations."
you're an employee this system needs to be understood from the top down - meaning that if your boss uses this graduating scale of severity to impress upon you, your responsibilities, you better hop to it. But if you're working as an independent contractor and the client requests become well outside the original agreement, this scale can be reversed, and used to let the client know that things are getting squirrely. 'Concern, issue, problem'. Don't use it at your own peril and you'll loose a ton of sleep and money.
In Seth's writings I also found the following quote, which I like very much. is says: "A is for Artist: An artist is someone who brings humanity to a problem, who changes someone else for the better, who does work that can't be written down in a manual. Art is not about oil painting, it's about bringing creativity and insight to work, instead of choosing to be a compliant cog." (from Linchpin). And I accompany this quote with a drawing from Hugh MacLeod. A drawing that exemplifies what we all should be working towards. Inspiration. - In my life I have gone above and beyond the call of duty for different reasons at different times but always in pursuit of something that was well above average. Yes, I have done it for money, and certainly I have done it for love but it's far more important to do it for art and inspiration. Stan Richards said to me once, "Do what you love, and the money will follow." I just keep believing that every day, and that way, I do something I love every day, and sometimes, get paid very well for it.
Recently, I have been accused of drinking and smoking, both true, and being a perfectionist, sometimes true, and dreaming, always true. And all by a person who has never had a dream come true or smoked. I find that sad. And I like this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod that explains it in more rational terms.
Many of you will have noticed that I've referenced Technorati and their blog ranking system in the last few posts. For those non-geeks, Technorati (Technorati is a portmanteau of the words technology and literati, which invokes the notion of technological intelligence or intellectualism.) is the arguable leader in blog search engines and provides a service that rates and ranks individual blogs based on influence in the blogosphere. "OMG! What does that mean?", the non-geeks wail! What that means is that Technorati tracks, not how many hits your blog gets, but rather how many other independent blogs have linked to your posts - and then they give you a ranking for that influence in the medium. Now over the years, Technorati has been widely criticized for how they calculated the rankings and it was, of course, people with crappy rankings who did most of the complaining. In 2006, someone pointed out that Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" postings, which then claimed to track 27.7 million blogs, did not take into account MySpace blogs, of which there were said to be 56 million. As a result, it was claimed said that the utility of Technorati as a gauge of blog popularity was questionable. However by March of that same year Technorati had started tracking MySpace blogs. Last year Technorati claimed to be tracking over 120 million blogs worldwide. 
And then it all hit a wall. With the popularity of blogs rising and magazines and newspapers shuttering by the thousands it became imperative that a clearer tracking and monitoring of the blogoshere was needed. So Technorati pulled the plug on their old rating system and started from scratch. They also redesigned their site and killed a few features that made bloggers less happy, but all-in-all the new ranking system seems to be a success by both tech professional and average user standards. Andy Beard of Internet Business Systems authors the previous two click-throughs. But enough of all this tecno-babble. I wanna know about me! 
And so we go. Just to give you an idea of where WWED stood in February of this year take a look at my 2009 Annual Report post, which is really a recap of 2008. At that point Technorati had us placed at 520,00 in a universe of 120 million or so blogs but with the new system, initiated in the fall, we debuted at 53,000 and have now climbed to 45,120 - but keep in mind they have cleaned out their definition of the blog universe pretty well and eliminated the scam/advertising blogs that weren't updated or written by real people - so we're not sure how many blogs are in their total universe now. All we know is that they only track the real ones. Technorati now rates blogs on a tally of monthly metrics that are confusing as hell to us mere mortals but based on post frequency, other blogs linking in and some other closely guarded hocus pocus - but what the hell, we're moving up. And that's got to be a good thing.
Inspi (red), or just ti (red)? I recently saw an entire campaign for a local marketing agency that takes this concept directly and uses the word admi (red) instead of inspi (red) to invoke the name of the company, which happens to be the last three letters of the word and a primary colour that is not blue or yellow. You do the math - and that will lead you to the following equation - did the company come up with this copy/graphic idea themselves, or take it from the more than famous campaign you see here? Go figure. The "Product Red" charity campaign has run globally for nearly a decade as an effort to brand red products with a certain percentage of the proceeds going to help eliminate Aids in Africa. Microsoft, The Gap, Starbucks, Apple iPod and the band U2 have participated and it has probably occupied more public service media space than any other campaign in the world over the last decade. But maybe not in Vietnam. So does that make it fair game for ripping? Or just a last little portion of a diminishing market for stealing stuff and not getting made, almost immediately? I'm betting on the latter.
Recently my friend, Hugh MacLeod, put up a post on his blog, Gapingvoid.com, that fit in perfectly with a concept I've been working on of late, the concept of "Detri-viral Marketing". Detri-viral marketing is what happens when the collectivity and social nature of Web 2.0 go against a brand or service to send a negative message about what the parent company is doing. It is, essentially, when brands get busted - maybe for stealing an idea, or telling a lie, or just being generally duplicitous in their messages or their message sending. Two-faced as it would be. But one person never makes it happen. A lot of people make it happen. It's a snowball effect. The concept of viral marketing has been well documented over the last decade or so but the concept of detri-viral marketing hasn't really been defined, because probably, in real life, companies would just like this shit to go away. McDonald's has certainly dealt with a ton of it, in Europe primarily, in a consumer effort to illuminate the contents of their food - the "Supersize This" effect, if you will - and McDonald's has been a client of mine - a damn good one I must say - so I must tell you that a lot of the flack they have received is complete and total bunk. If you weren't a fat, stoopid, slovenly, couch potato, looser, you'd know better than to eat what they serve more than a few times week. But hey, these days, even those bums have a computer... so look out brands. These people have a lot of extra fucking time on their hands. They're like the people who don't like smoking - they don't have the time, commitment or gonads to join a real protest group, so they just find errant time in their day to accost smokers on city street corners and be asses because it makes them feel as if they stand for something. (I smoke too.)Somebody oughta have their Marketing MBA revolked! Aren't we dealing in enough global shennanigans to have this still happening? Can I find a class in business ethics in Vietnam?
And I'm not introducing this to anyone. This thing had 1000 YouTube hits when I got it and it's well over 4000 today. Detri-viral marketing in action - a lot of people, aside from me, don't like it - and a few crafty editors created it - way inside the production I suppose.
The real Maguffin here (An Alfred Hitchcock term that refers to the element that draws viewers and characters into a drama) is when you go to the parent company's website and they wax on and on about their dedication to "intellectual ownership" - that means the ownership of an idea.
They're very proud of the intellectual capital they own in Vietnam, Singapore and Australia and act like they might be willing to spend the resources to sue anyone who might infringe upon that. But they have no compunction whatsoever about just copying artistic stuff from a Chinese manufacturer that I was told they felt was, "Best practice knowledge in the category". Rubbish. Geez. The problem, as I see it here, is not legal. It's ethical. And I can tell you that no creative person worth his/her salt would dare do this low-ball stuff. Why? Because if you ever want to engender a career in the business the last thing you want is to be accused of is copying another person's idea. Or much worse, copying a shitty idea - and that's what's happened here.
I've been having a discussion recently with a company who wants to mount a business idea based on a "model from San Francisco". What the hell does "Model" mean. It means a business plan. But these people seem to have missed the idea that you can't take models from just about anywhere you can find them and have them work in Vietnam without adding value and uniqueness particular to the reapplication. Will pine cones grow pine trees in Saigon just because they work well in Canada?
Artists, MBAs and others. Twitter didn't steal Twitter from anybody. Microsoft probably did steal the Graphical User Interface (GUI) from Apple, but that's history and we're finally seeing the comeuppance. If you want to have a big business success, try having a big idea. Simple? I don't think so. The world is full of small ideas and small thinkers of those ideas. But the world is well fewer with true visionaries who are well paid, well slept and well shagged. Keep that in mind. Detri-viral marketing is now a concept and I didn't invent it, I just coined the term. The world invented it. So let's get to work boys and girls. Let's create something honestly good today.
For more in the "How Not To Market In Asia" series, click below:
I) The Importance of Time, Money, Quality and Knowing How Much of Each You Need to Succeed
II) What's Wrong With the Vietnam Advertising Association?
A scan of articles on the state of the Vietnamese Advertising Market over the last few months reveals one thing: Somebody can't get the numbers right. And that somebody is the industry's guiding body, the Vietnam Advertising Association.
I) The Importance of Time, Money, Quality and Knowing How Much of Each You Need to Succeed
III) Detri-viral Marketing: When Web 2.0 works against your brand
