Our Early Christmas Present: Technorati Ranking 5300 - How to write the best damn blog in the world XI

I worked particularly late last night and woke up to find that we had jumped 3000 positions in the Technorati blog ranking to become #5300 in the world. (We started at 1,500,000) And before you think I'm just bragging to make my own winky fat, think again. The reason I post our rankings and talk about them is that I am just positively amazed at the power of the Internet. In just three years, with absolutely no money and many times a really crappy computer, we have put WWED within shouting distance of some of the best blogs in the world. If Seth Godin has an Authority Ranking of 750 and we're 472 that is positively amazing. He's got over 10 published books and a subscriber base of tens of thousands and we have Vietnam, really good stories, a totally crazy trip to Europe and Africa, and more Vietnam.

One of my favorite books of all time was called "30 Lines a Day", written by a journalist who needed to rekindle his desire to write - and so he took an old college professor's instruction to write 30 lines a day no matter what the shite he had to write. In that way, there is no destination, only a trip, and the story unfolds while you are writing it. But it never happens if you don't do the work. Want to write The Best Damn Blog in the World? Write. Write again. And then write about what you wrote about. That's what I do. And that's what has made WWED grow. You can do it too. Thank you all.

Seth Godin just kicks my ass...

...every once in a while. Like this post. It's dead true. Think about it.

The world's worst boss

"That would be you.

Even if you're not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your responses. You manage how you sell your services and your education and the way you talk to yourself.

Odds are, you're doing it poorly."

Last week I made 4 new business proposals. The first got no response at all. The second was responded to in a lackluster way. The third was responded to enthusiastically, but I don't think that client has any money. And the fourth was successful. How successful remains to be seen.

Last week, I learned I had been deceived by someone - someone important. Last week I was worried I couldn't even pay some bills. Last week I was thanked for being honest and truthful and candid, yet I realized that someone else wasn't - and they were being paid to be that way. And that was okay, for her.

Makes you think. Makes you think a lot. So I looked around for someone to blame, and it turned out, that someone was me. So rather than sit around and give myself shit for things I could have done better, the key is to do them better going forward. To fuck up less. To have wider eyes in a lot of ways. To quite simply, be a better boss. Of me.

Today, I also had my ears cleaned, got a haircut, and ate really well. That works.

It's true. WWED hits the Technorati top 10,000

8379. That's the number out of all the blogs in the world that WWED ranks. And that makes us the #1 Technorati rated blog in Vietnam. Pretty good, considering that we started the week at 26,000, and were as high as 40,000 just a few months ago. I think it's time to keep going. In my recent post, 'A Good Start', I mentioned that this blog debuted at over 1,500,000 just two and a half years ago.








moved up 250 places

The Wild Wild East Dailies http://wildwildeastdailies.blogspot.com
The Wild Wild East Dailies is a cornucopia of news, marketing, global experience, political satire, personal reflection and future postivity. …

	Technorati Auth: 428

For a little reference, The Huffington Post is the #1 blog in the world at a Technorati Authority ranking of 922. Seth Godin's blog is #159 at an Authority of 721. Technorati is the world's premier blog ranking service and rankings and Authority levels are determined by frequency of posting, number of views and most importantly, the number of other blogs linking to us. Technorati does not rank blogs that are primarily selling vehicles - only blogs that truly engender discussions, which I have been told, WWED does. Thanks all.

Post 400

Welcome to post 400. No candles. No fireworks. No band. No nothing. It's just work. And joy. And dedication.

That's what people don't understand about the Internet and social marketing. It's called do the work, shut up and sit down. If I had a dime for everyone who asked me how I do what I do, I'd be a wealthy man - but all I can tell them, is if they only did 10% of what I do, they'd be in a whole lot better shape than they are now. (and yes, they bitch and moan about that). Babies.The Wild Wild East Dailies is now rated #29,626 in the world - and in a world of over 100 million blogs we feel good.

But not that good. Our Technorati ranking is at 125. Okay, let's give that some perspective. The Huffington post is #1 at a ranking of 935. Seth Godin, a certified marketing guru and ten times published author gets 757 and my friend, Hugh MacLeod, a one time published author, scores a 535. Do I feel bad? No. Most blogs don't bust above a five. We're on our way. Happy 400! Want to score? You do the work. And I'll work on getting that book published.

Hacking Education

"You teach kids how to succeed when they successfully foil the educational system."

- Arlo Guthrie



Reprinted graciously from Seth Godin's blog, Seth's Blog.

Joy, shit, art and inspiration: How much of one not to take to get the others.

After almost two weeks of work straight, say 12 hrs a day+ with just short breaks, I finally came up for air. I got to a point at the end of the stint where I wouldn't even have the TV on or listen to music because I was so concerned with getting everything I needed to get done for a publication that had a rotating deadline and a constantly shifting list of "things to do". In a world where change is the only constant, this work played true and the only thing that wasn't changing was my fee.

As an employee one can do little about this syndrome and when one's employer guarantees a certain level of security and hopefully fair pay it is really our responsibility to just suffer the work and get it done with as few complaints as possible. But as an independent contractor the rules change a bit. We do our best to estimate the time involved, the work to be done, our competence at said work and a reasonable rate of pay. And then the nose goes to the grindstone. If one has been briefed relatively well by the client, then one's estimate should be fairly close. But if not, one of two things will be true: Either you've estimated poorly, or the client has not been completely honest with you. In my case recently, it turned out to be the latter - and that doesn't necessarily mean the client was not honest - more logically it seemed as if the client was not particularly good at estimating himself. In any case, the job swung wildly out of control in a way that I hadn't seen since the very beginning of my career. Nothing at my company in Korea had ever become this far gone, nor at Leo Burnett or any of the major agencies I have ever worked for, so it fell back to my early career experience to figure out what to do.

Concern, issue, problem.

In order to let people know what level of severity a job might be it, the above diplomatic language was explained to me to describe just how deep the shit is in any crucial work situation. It works like this: When the boss says he has a 'concern', that's the first red flag - something has been brought up and it's your job to address it. But concerns, if not addressed becomes 'issues', the second red flag - And issues, if not resolved become 'problems', usually the third and final red flag, - and that usually means that something is now costing somebody money - maybe a lot of money.

When 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.

I used it for a week this last week and made sure that people were aware of a situation getting worse. It didn't effect their behavior much, they were still late and disorganized, but at least it made me feel better and put me in a position to say, "I told-ja-so", later. CYA. It reminded me how much I dislike a lot of the defense mechanisms I learned in a corporate culture

Having finished a bit of a 'a few weeks in hell', I set about understanding my home again - not the bunker I has established for my month-long+ writing war. The place with a full ashtray everyday, a grimy computer, tons of magazines and books and notes and rubbish all around. The place that looks like a war room. So I cleaned the fridge.

There's something so thrillingly liberating about remedial tasks. I remember having a job at Avis Rent-A-Car when I was paid to sweep a large garage every week on Saturday. It took four hours. And took all my cares away. In four hours, sweeping mostly in one direction, around antique cars under shrouds, with one rolling garage door up and the sunlight shafting through and casting a wide dusty widening stripe across the oil stained concrete floor, I was able to daydream and think and create and put my problems into the background for the afternoon. I loved it. And that's what cleaning the fridge, washing the dishes, cleaning nasty surfaces and making an actual meal did for me today. It helped me think. It helped me clear out my email. It helped me remember what is important in life - and that, I remembered, was balance. And I seem to have been out of balance for quite some time now. Out of understanding that the reason we work is not just to pay the bills, but to get to spend our money in a way that is enjoyable and meaningful to us every day. Isn't that why you work? Having music around makes me feel this way.

And so, in my shuffley, scroungy, no program cleaning day, I stumbled across this illustration by Seth Godin. (above) This illustration that juxtaposes graphs on joy, hassle (shit) and the inverse reaction one has on the other. Going through Seth Godin's stuff is sometimes difficult because he explains things too much. But this one is simple. The less shit you get, the happier you will be. And this, I needed to remember. The thing that told me that when the stress of the job outweighed the joy that job gave me, that maybe it was time to do another job. Or simplify the one I had and let the client know that things had become, a problem.And so I did, and tomorrow I will find out if that argument hit any paydirt with the client.

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.

When to give up.

Boy that's a tough one. You worked so hard. Your spirit and your heart were in it. You even threw away logic to make decisions that were emotional, and things didn't work out. What to do? As I often explain about computer problems, the only sane thing to do is quit. Quit trying to solve your problem. Because the way you're working at it, just isn't working. No shame. No remorse. You did your best. You really did. Sometimes the problem just doesn't want to be solved, not in your way anyway. So the only sane thing to do is give up. In an insane world, only the sane man/woman is insane. Realize that, and you're on a much better path already.

Last year, I did something that defied logic. Absolutely none of the business parameters made sense. But there was love involved, and a great deal of it. Smart? Not. But emotion is as rational decision as any when business metrics don't add up properly. And the love, just a little icing on the cake (Do make sure you get a lot of it though. The value of prositutes goes up exponentially when you figure the lack of excess pain they cause you. Only hurts the wallet, and makes everything else fairly happy - except your soul.)

Seth Godin did a wonderful post recently called, "Are you rational?" And it goes like this:

"A rational decision is based on testing and data and an understanding of the mechanics underneath the system you're working on. The more you know, the better you decide. An irrational decision is based on gut instincts, conviction and faith."

Not surprisingly, Seth comes out of the side of supporting ones gut feelings. On hope. And the trick there, is not to be afraid again, once it doesn't work out well. How do you get back on that horse, or that 3m diving board, as I learned it, once you've fucked up completely? I had a diving accident once that landed me in six weeks of physical therapy once because I attempted a 2 1/2 flip with a half twist and ended up seeing the sky instead of water out of the tuck and knew I was landing on hard water, flat on my back. Oops.

But I came back. And a bit better, and smarter after that. You might even get me to try that flip again. It's all about timing and not about age at all. But mostly it's about doing it. Once you stop trying, you stop giving yourself the chance to win. I know someone who has that problem right now. She didn't quit me. She quit the concept. The idea. The tactile expression of the idea. She'll sort that out eventually. Maybe not with me. And certainly not today.

And me? Sure, I'm giving up on one particular task, but not the concept in general. And why? Because I know the idea is not faulty. Maybe the execution, or the target was incorrect, but the basic idea is still sound. Millions upon millions guarantee it. It's called love.

So giving up is ok. If it's for a greater goal. If it's basically, for not giving up. That's when it's time to give up. When the circumstances around you, don't support the strength that one needs to not give up - to fly so much higher on another day.

Turn that computer off - but never the feeling. The feeling that the irrational is the exact correct thing to do when all rational means have exhausted themselves.

Trial and Error is 'The New Normal': Happy New Decade 2010

I was having lunch earlier in the week with a partner in a management consulting firm here in Munich. His firm specializes in consulting to media companies including broadcast, newspaper and magazines. Conspicuously absent from his client mix were digital media companies. In asking him what kind of work his firm did with these traditional media companies, he spoke of restructuring and cost cutting measures, mentioning specifically that when a media company looses revenue, the first thing they do is cut marketing. "But you can only cut so far", I responded, "how much from expenses saved is put into R&D"? He had no answer for that, meaning probably that the answer was none.

We discussed the digital revolution for awhile and how it was gutting the publishing business. I explained that the problem most companies had with interactive mediums was that the solution was a process as opposed to a fixed answer - and what worked yesterday, won't necessarily work today. "It's trial and error I guess?", he said, with an almost bemused wonder of how-the-hell-could-anybody-ever-make-any-money-off-that? If I cut $10 from your budget you've got $10. You can see it in your hand. But if I invest that $10 into coming up with new ideas to keep your particular Titanic from sinking, can you see that? Not today. And the things you need to see, instead of cold hard cash and an office full of empty cubicles, are opportunities - opportunities to turn that leaky barge into a seaworthy vessel one day again on new and un-chartered seas. And precious few management consultants have the ability to see things like that, let alone newspaper companies or magazines. Things like opportunity not immediately quantifiable. But opportunity cost is - what it costs you when you fail to take advantage of an opportunity. You can measure that in your competitor's new BMW around here. And that's where Infinite Wisdom takes its cue. To look at a business' future as a qualifiable process and a willingness to embrace opportunities instead of wasting time and money over a lost quantifiable past.


Seth Godin supposed today in his blog that if we are unhappy with what we have accomplished in the last ten years that maybe we should spend the next ten years at least doing something proactive, that we won't look back on and say we missed something. Something fun. Something motivating. Something qualifiable. His book, Survival Is Not Enough, sums it up for me and all those management consulting firms and traditional media companies who should be spending their time on creating a new future instead of trying to manage their fading past.

2009 saw my parting with a partner over this idea exactly. She made decisions based on survival alone, and that wasn't enough for me. And now we journey apart, - she survives, alright, but at what cost? Not one I was willing to pay. And so I write my future, everyday. With trial and error as my guide. Trying and failing and trying and failing until the law of averages eventually rules in my favour. If that's my price of success, I'll happily pay and at least have fun in the making.

Happy New Decade, all. Welcome to 'The New Normal'.

For my New Year's post from last year in Vietnam, click here.

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

"I'm gonna get medieval on ya!" - That means I'm gonna talk advertising for a bit here...

Remember the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction, where that line came up? Yes, there was a man in a more than compromising position with a black rubber ball in his mouth. That's how most people feel when you say you're going to talk advertising. Because as Hugh says in the cartoon here, when you talk advertising, people think you're going to talk like advertising, and they truly don't like that. With good reason. Advertising in the past has talked down to people, but now, slowly, with the advent of social networking and consumer conversations happening in a larger space than much advertising occupies, advertising companies are coming to realize that they need to be talking with people instead of talking at them. Thank god.

That said, and before people start to think that I don't like advertising, I'd like to say stop. I love advertising. In fact tomorrow morning I'm having a meeting with the head of possibly the largest agency in Munich. "I'm Lovin' It!" Advertising, that is. And every once in awhile I find something truly enlightening in that universe that just makes me sit up and smile. This week, I found three of those things.

I AM THE CLIENT! - The first thing I found is a blog called "I AM THE CLIENT". This was forwarded to me by a pal at DDB and is positively the funniest agency blog I have yet to read. Yup, there go my readers. But I don't want to be just an advertising blog anyway so who cares. On to the story. I AM THE CLIENT is written, ostensibly, by a guy named Dave Knockles, who claims to be quite possibly the word's greatest marketing director - and it is a positive hoot. Here's an entry from a recent post:

"I got out of bed feeling so perky, I could have hung a week's laundry off my stalk-on. GOOD DAY TO YOU, WORLD! - Why such expansive morning wood? - Because today was my first day with my new agency. And I was so excited about telling them what the first campaign is going to be, I almost dry-humped the postman! - So, I breezed into the agency at 11am, virtually bang on time for my 10am meeting."

Don't think that's funny? You must be a girl. Whatever the case I do recommend you check it out. It's racy for sure, but refreshing in a business that could use a whole lot more good humour these days.

MEDIABLIPS - My next find was MediaBlips, a site dedicated to highlighting advertising and marketing blogs. I found this curiously from my Statcounter stats, as someone had found me through this site. Upon further investigation I looked into MediaBlips and found out that they had already found me and had given WWED a score of 108 - without me having done a single thing. So that's not so bad. You can check the box below and see if I've gone up or down from this post. They track Seth Godin as well and he gets a score of 158, so I'm just 50 points away from a guy who's written 10 best-selling marketing books. Hmm, there's an idea. I should write a book!

CarlsonCreative - My final discovery of the week was one of an old friend who was the first and best designer at CarlsonCreative, Inc. in Seoul, the first 100% Foreign Invested agency in Korea. Nam Mee-Hyun came to work for us with just about a year's worth of not very impressive experience and went on to not only get our agency into the New York Art Directors Show, but to help us win significant business from British American Tobacco, Samsung, LG, The Korean Ministry of Finance and many other clients. She had written me last week looking for a letter of recommendation upon her graduation from the Pratt Institute in New York with a Masters degree in Communications Design. Imagine that, an employee who wins an award from one of the most prestigeous creative shows in the world before she gets her degree from one of the most prestigeous design schools in the world. I was more than happy to write the letter - in fact, I was delighted. The poster on the left, with the New York and Seoul subways combined, was designed by MeeHyun to promote our agency's sponsorship of the New York Art Directors Show in Seoul upon the inclusion of our work. We were the only agency in Korea to have enjoyed that particular distinction that year, 1999. Exactly ten years ago. Happy anniversary, MeeHyun!

And cheers Adfolks! That wasn't so bad, was it? I've had a very nice week so far.

Happy Turkey Day! Throw that blog a bone?

Ahh, it's Thankgiving Day in America and you're catching up on your blog reading. Good for you. And football? Nice. I'm hungry. And so maybe are thousands or maybe millions of bloggers around the world. And why not? This is the medium that's putting thousands of proper journalists out of work. 'Why the hell should anybody pay for this when millions of you wankers just throw it out there for free?', you say.

And an excellent question that would be. But it's not my question. It's a question that's been coming up a lot lately, all over the blogosphere. Jay Deragon and his blog, The Relationship Economy (highlighted below) gets the ball rolling this way:

"The Internet and social technology has turned the publishing industry upside down and inside out. We’ve seen 24 of the top 25 newspapers go out of business. Magazine subscription rates are down and the leaders within the industry are struggling to find a strategy to stay alive.

The Wall Street Journal is forging a war against the Internet. Rupert Murdoch wants to block its content from Google and has taken a stand with its readers by charging a subscription for the paper. No more free in the Murdoch world."

And so what's in all of that for me? Well, nothing basically. Murdoch was pretty adept when he bought MySpace, way before anybody really understood what social media was, but I think he may have bitten off a little bit more than even he can chew here. Even Seth Godin says he's gotten this move backwards. When I think of my own work here at WWED and ways in which I might make a buck off it someday, I like this quote from Clay Shirkey:

“ People will pay for content if it is necessary, irreplaceable, and unshareable. Businesses excited about the first five words of that sentence don’t understand how constraining the next seven are.”

Wow. Does that nail it. Can anything I do be 'necessary', 'irreplaceable' and 'unsharable'. Well, yes, except the unsharable part, because I want people to share things they find here, and give me credit, hopefully. The harder part is the first two constraints of 'necessary' and 'irreplaceable' . Can I create that, offer that, and then somehow, get paid for it? And my answer to that is yes. Just like the model for National Public Radio in America. People voluntarily subscribe. They don't have to. The content is already on the radio, and subsidized by the government for free - but listeners pay anyway, because they value the programming and know it doesn't have conventional advertising support behind it.

"Content is only as valuable as the audience who consumes it.", continues Shirky, "Some audiences, and they are getting smaller, will pay for what they consider as 'premium information from talented writers'. Then there is a larger audience that finds valuable content for free and the authors pull audiences to their content based on style and substance, whether professional journalist or not."

So can WWED be considered as 'premium information from a talented writer'? According to one reviewer of late - "You might be very talented but what you are doing with the blog does not make you unique. Neither content nor expression." - uhh, no. But according to the overall number of positive comments, nearly 200 regular subscribers as well as subscribers who actually sent a little cabbage my way, the answer is a pretty resounding Yes. And although you're probably tired of me going on about our Technorati ranking, as of today, Turkey Day, we're at an Authority of 125 and a global ranking of 36,355, up from around 55,000 just six weeks ago. Heck, we're ranked at number 60 in the 'Business' category. Note to aspiring business journalists: "Just write whatever falls out of your butt three times a week and YOU too can be number 60!"

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Hell, I can't wait till I'm sitting on the new Oprah show, hawking the book I made from a blog and that reviewer from above leans over on a sofa somewhere and says to her friend, "I knew that guy when he was just a bum trying to eek out a living in Munich. He sucks". And then I'll jump up and down on the couch. Won't that be sweet?

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But until then, I won't be embarrased at all about encouraging support from readers. I'm a damn fast writer, and a damn prolithic one, but this still takes a great deal of time and a few bucks thrown in the hat from time to time just plain makes me feel better. It also helps pay some rent. You'll notice that we've added a 'subscribe' button to the page from PayPal. The way this works is that some nice person clicks it, and I get $5 bucks a month until they get tired of paying. You can 'unsubscribe' at any time. Seven people have done this so far - really.

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So get another helping of that stuffing, some cranberry sauce and another beer. I'll take that wing if you're not going to eat it. And if you've just got too much time to kill, make sure to fill out our 2009 readers survey.

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Post Script: In a post following this post, RCNevada at 'My View of the World' gives a more thorough overview of Rupert Murdoch's quest for cash off the Internet, in particular his much hinted at deal with Microsoft and Bing. If he swings it, he will give Bing exclusive rights to News Corp. info and Google will be cut out of the deal - so of course you'll have to search Bing for his info - and of course he'll get some fraction of a penny from every click on that info through Bing and make bazillions.

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Many bloggers sell books, art or other products and use their blogs soley to promote whatever it is they're selling. For those of us without another product to sell, the idea that our content could someday be integrated into another site with larger traffic, and that we could get a tick for every click we generate is a good one. But until then, I'll stick with the voluntary subscription model, and keep my day job.

For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book>/a>
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

Take what you can get? Or get what you can take? I'll take the latter.

I'm going to do something I rarely do, and reprint nearly an entire post from Seth Godin, because this one really hit me where I was living at the time I read it. Now with Seth issuing a post to his blog every single day, the need for an editor comes seriously into question because 60% of what even the most talented writer can do is rubbish, but if you're willing to wade through that rubbish, many of his posts have real longstanding value. This is one of them.

Read Seth's post in the coloured print first, and then go back and see my own notations in the regular font. I think you'll see why it resonated with me.

Take what you can get (?)

When you're just starting out or when your organization is struggling or when the economy isn't hot, it's very tempting to take what you can get.

You just graduated from law school and you have a lot of debt and the best job you can get is doing collections work. Should you take it?

Your consulting firm is organized around providing high-value work for large corporations, but the only gigs you can get are small, struggling companies looking to spend a few hundred dollars a day. Should you take them?

The list goes on and on.

When I started my agency in Korea, CarlsonCreative, things were fairly bleak for the first six months. My staff told me that we were not getting pitches because we would not do them for free. I had also set a bar that clients needed to be of a blue-chip and pressworthy variety, ie: I wanted big logos so that when we finally won something, no matter how small, we could publicize it and get the street-cred of being an upstart David (no pun really) who had won against the Goliaths.

We scored our first pitch with the Armstrong flooring company from the US and followed that up with the Korean Broadcasting Corporation (KOBACO) and eventually, British American Tobacco - all paid presentations with the latter two turning into well paying clients and significant press generation vehicles. Within 18 months, we had become a 'hot' shop and the big agencies were truly scared of us.

There are two things worth remembering here:

1. Like bending a sapling a hundred years before the tree is fully grown and mature, the gigs you take early will almost certainly impact the way your career looks later on. If you want to build a law practice in the music industry, you'll need to take on musicians as clients, even if the early ones can't pay enough. If you want to do work for Fortune 500 companies, you'll need to do work for Fortune 500 companies, sooner better than later.

We took this to heart and I am still a believer in this today.

2. The definition of "can get" is essential. Maybe it seems like this gig or that gig is the best you can get because that's all you're exposing yourself to. Almost always, the best gig I could get is shorthand for the easiest gig I could get.

This has been redefined for me in the last few months with the pressure to get my feet planted in a new market representing the most basic of needs like eating and paying the rent. These things are of course primary, but certainly not the ultimate goal in the longer term. Why the hell, in a million years, would I want to teach business English in an already overcrowded market of teachers and schools who are busy undercutting each other on an almost daily basis, when I've got a quiver full of marketing and advertising arrows that have flown true for my entire career?

Because it's what I 'could' get initially, but it's not what I 'want' to get, eventually. What I'm after eventually is what I have been able to do my entire life - to balance business and creativity in a way which benefits my clients and provides me and my family a superior level of income and professional satisfaction.

Surviving is succeeding, no doubt about it. Doing the work is better than not doing the work. Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress. But, and it's a huge but, you define yourself by the work you do, and perhaps you need to redefine what you're willing to take and where you're looking for it. - Seth Godin

So I'm surviving. But that's not my definition of success. And I'm doing the work and not dying on the vine waiting for perfect in an imperfect world - but I'm spending more and more time defining what makes me unique in the market and striving to build a practice off that. This last week I renegotiated a contract which now pays me 30% more and broadens my responsibilities to consult on marketing with a client who had previously only needed language instruction.

Later in the week, I'm having coffee with a blue-chip sort of guy who works soley in the marketing business and in the evenings I busy myself with promoting this blog and writing copy for various businesses from software to arts and achitecture. All of this is still a far cry from having my own company in Korea, but at least I can remember what that was like, before we landed the big-fish client, and retrench my current life experience to more closely chase the dream of 'getting' what I can take, instead of just 'taking' what I can get.

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Many thanks to Seth Godin for helping me articulate this more clearly.

Big News! We're being Trakkd! - Nothing Much Happened in München Today III

And that's quite the big deal. Just this last week the Wild Wild East Dailies was selected for inclusion by Trakkrz.com. Trakkrz boasts being “the world’s largest hand-picked blog site on the web.” and when they say "hand-picked" that means that somebody actually reads it and evaluates your writing before you are approved. And considering the eclectic nature of WWED, I was more than pleased to be included in the "Life" category on Trakkrz. That category alone features fewer than 100 blogs so that puts us in some pretty exclusive company. Other blogs included on Trakkrz are Seth Godin's and my friend Hugh MacLeod's Gapingvoid.com.

In order to be selected, your blog must meet the following criteria: consistent, regular stream of articles * written primarily about the topic for which you are chosen for * write original, relevant articles that provide a unique view – you are not a news aggregator, not an automated blog scraping website – rather a live blogger with excellent content * you are an individual or a small group writing together.

And so I'm happy. This thing is going somewhere. And not knowing exactly just where is all part of the fun.

Additionally this week Technorati revised their blog rating system and we recieved a more than pleasant surprise. The Wild Wild East Dailies has risen in Authority ranking from 4 to 103 and our blog relativity to the Technorati Top 100 has grown to 78.000 from a previous high of 350,000. Most of this is due to Technorati's cleaning of the system and a more accurate verification of real blogs vs. scam blogs. Thanks Technorati and Trakkrz I'll just keep writing.

For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book>/a>
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

Is Publicis Groupe a dead brand? The Wild Wild East Goes West IX

As my parting note from Paris, please read the following post from Seth Godin here, and then my non-encounter with Publicis Groupe afterward. Seth Godin is a best selling author on marketing and regularly conducts seminars with Fortune 500 marketing staffs.

Brands that matter

In this era, there are two questions every marketer answers:

Do I want people to interact with me and my brand in unexpected ways (as opposed to just quietly consume it)? When they interact, do I overwhelm people with delight worth remarking about?

If you think about dead brands like Tide or United Airlines, the answer to both questions is clearly 'no'. On the other hand, vibrant growing brands manage to answer both questions with a resounding 'yes.' It's not an accident and it's not easy, but if you do it right, it may be worth it.

On our trip through Paris I had it clearly marked on my itinerary that I wanted to stop by Publicis and talk with one of their International directors about the concept of Infinite Wisdom and how we might work together in Asia and other markets. For those who may not be aware, Infinite Wisdom is our combination of a marketing partner with a traditional management consulting firm providing market research, in-depth brand analysis, brand design and marketing solutions to clients and agencies alike. It's a concept that neither traditional agencies nor management consulting firms have been able to bridge and I thought that certainly someone there would be interested in exploring at least the idea. It's a client-centric idea that pairs analysis and marketing execution together in a way that makes executions the direct result of the marketing plan.

In any case, we could be producing rubber stamps that you use to make cost effective Post-It note business cards and if nobody has ever done that before it seems that someone at the world's third largest communications holding company might be interested in that idea - if you could find them.

So off I went, on a personal visit to the groupe to see if I could find an international director, regional director or discipline specific director to speak with.

Cut to the offices of Publicis Groupe on Avenue des Champs Elysées in Paris, just a stone's throw away from the Arc de Triomphe . They're a fairly faded retail glitzy affair complete with a coffee shop and multiplex movie theatre that at street level, if you didn't know it, could pass as a rather non-enticing mall effort, anywhere in middle America. A museum like display of the founder, Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, tones things down a bit once in the lobby and one of the desk attendents finishes a cigarrette outside to come in and care for my request, which in English, befuddles the attractive female receptionist behind the actual counter. A baffling display of company owned logos including Leo Burnett, Saatchi and seemingly all their subsidiaries try's in vain to explain what the company actually does but it's plain to see that the founder's black and white photographic relationships with everyone from Charles De Gaulle, to Harry S. Truman carries the weight around there not to mention the more than toney address that more than undermines the cheesy facade that was certainly not designed by Frank Gehry, let alone the country's design L'enfant Terrible, Philippe Starck.

"Tell me again he says", as I try to explain the nature of my business and that I certainly do not have an appointment but am simply looking for the right person with which to have an appointment with. He then tells me in no uncertain terms that they are not able to give out the names of anyone who might be working in the building and then relays to me a telephone number that I should call on a yellow sticky note. I ask with whom should I speak and he says he doesn't know but just to call it. Later, I learn it is the general number listed in the phone book. Thank you.

The next morning I call the number and, unless I made a mistake in thinking they were an "international" firm was reasonably baffled by the succession of non-english speakers I was forwarded to in response to my request. And if you're wondering why I just didn't send an email, so am I. The parent company website succeeds in being a company brochure but seems to let interactivity and any shred of real information fall by the wayside. They even show the most cursory form of professional disrecpect to anyone interested in the firm by listing "webmaster" as the primary email contact for the firm. Embarrasing for a communications company? You tell me.

After the parade of operators who most certainly had decided that the best English speaker could do the best job, they settled on a Mr. Robert Fridovich, Director of Marketing Communication. With all due respect to Mr. Fridovich, because I really did feel he was a nice man, he seemed perplexed with the idea that anyone would call the company looking for anything. I asked for his email and said that I would send a detailed note of my request as well as my full background and contacts - and I did not forget to mention my previous association with Leo Burnett.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a bit of a detail geek and certainly a good salesman so I did feel confident that the note I sent would give him the information he needed to make a recommendation. But it didn't. So I sent yet another detailed note with some possible working scenarios in which his company and mine might benefit. And then, a two day wait.

In the end he came up with nothing.

The reason I was given was that there were no cross agency brand responsibilities assigned to any one person and that I might do better searching the individual agency websites for contacts - so basically, back to square one. In essence, despite a trip to Paris, and indeed a trip to the home office, I had failed in coming up with anyone I didn't already know in the organization.

Thinking of Jana O'Brien's (our Nintendo research head at Burnett in Chicago) encouragement that I, "Just keep on trying", I chided myself with the fact that I had failed to ask for a meeting with Mr. Fridovich himself, knowing that a face to face meeting is always the best way to make an impression and encourage a conversation between both parties - until I realized that that was his responsibility, or at least the brand's and not really mine. In terms of interactivity, the brand itself should have reached out to this consumer and made the experience easier. And both parties could have benefitted - and the brand would have been reading another blog post entirely, instead of this one.

Mr. Fridovich, if you're reading this, thanks for giving it a shot - because it seems that in this case, you didn't fail - but your brand did. Take a good clean, objective look at how your web presense, your front desk demeanor and your telephone response deals with interactivity - and ask yourself, and your superiors, if Publicis Groupe couldn't be doing a better job. Brands die daily in the face of Web 2.0 and beyond, because if interactivity and pleasant brand experiences don't start at the communications company, how are you ever going to instill those disciplines in the consumer brands, your agency brands represent?

Thanks to Seth Godin for the motivation here. I was just going to let this one pass but thought again after reading Seth's post.

For more in the WWE Goes West Series check here:

I) The Wild Wild East Goes West: Onward Ho!
II) Frankfurt
III) C'est Si Bon
IV) Bon Jour Paris!
V) Les Picassos en Paris
VI) Nothing Much Happened en Paree Today
VII) Paris Wallpaper: Sometimes The Best Prayers Have No Words
VIII) Au Revoir Paris
IX) Is Publicis Groupe a Dead Brand?