5 Blogs Before Lunch

Please Welcome "BrandFreak" To The Neighborhood

We recently noticed a new blog in the neighborhood. Brandweek Magazine has launched a new blog called BrandFreak.

Like the association between Adweek and Brandweek, BrandFreak is a close cousin to Adweek's blog AdFreak. As Brandweek Editor-in-Chief Todd Wasserman puts it: “This was started as a naked grab at Web traffic. We noticed AdFreak has been pulling in a lot of readers and thought there might be an audience out there for a BrandFreak.”

BrandFreak takes an irreverent look at the world of marketing with "an eye for the interesting, the absurd and the appalling."

While AdFreak's content focuses on advertising, BrandFreak will have a broader conversational base--with topics ranging from guerrilla marketing, shopper marketing, new product launches, marketing trends—basically whatever Brandweeek writes about. Wasserman says there will be no duplication of content. If an item appears on BrandFreak, it won’t run on AdFreak.

The site has a team of Brandweek journalists and editors managaing content, and will be updated daily.

OutrageousDames: A New Blogger on The Block

I'd like to introduce you to Outrageous Dames, a new blog recently launched by Christie Dames. Christie is CEO, TechTalk Studio and Co-founder, Extreme Healing. I think you may just like her style.

Like most good bloggers, she's opened up her blogging shop with a good old fashion rant. Her target: Macy's --The Ungreen. Dames' shares an exchange she had with a Macy's buyer on a recent airplane trip:

I asked her about their green policy and if things were changing for them with all of this push around green and sustainability. Her response: Well, this Spring we’re going to feature lots of “green” things in the store. Green plates, towels, etc. She indicated they really haven’t done anything other than have green stuff available for purchase.

Well let’s just say that made me fightin’ mad. I couldn’t even believe it. She was a nice enough person, but really, come on, don’t you get it. No, she didn’t. And apparently neither does Macy’s.

Brew Blog Aims At A Rival

Brew Blog is a free Web site dedicated to breaking news about beer -- especially Budweiser beer.

It is run by a former reporter for Advertising Age and Miller employee. Yes I said Miller--Bud's biggest rival.

It is a bit of a twist on the traditional corporate blog where the aim is to promote good things about an organization and to have more influence over what's covered in the industry. This one is designed to taut a rival. Miller isn't sneaky about Brew Blog. Its home page prominently states that the blog is "brought to you by the Miller Brewing Co." The Wall Street Journal says the blog is the latest and perhaps most unlikely front in the company's quest to rattle rival Anheuser-Busch.

From The WSJ:

The corporate marketing battlefield has long been strewn with pithy digs in ads and selective news leaks about others' business woes. But it's unusual for a company to go to the trouble of creating its own media arm to grind out news on the competition. While the site lets Miller tweak its famously tight-lipped rival, it also gives the company a platform to take a first crack at spinning industry news.

"They are trying to aggressively go around the gatekeepers" in newsrooms and the trade press, says Stephen Quigley, an associate professor of public relations at Boston University. "It's something you couldn't do five years ago," before the proliferation of blogs.

It should be pointed out that Brew Blog doesn't exclusively talk about Bud. A recent article asked the question "Why is Heineken Doing Better Than Corona?"

HP SMB Community Wiki and Blog Contest

I'd like to welcome the newest advertiser to 5 Blogs Before Lunch, the HP SMB Community Wiki--Hewlett Packard's effort targeting small to medium size businesses (SMB). The wiki includes "the best from leading bloggers on management, productivity, entrepreneurship, innovation and marketing.

Check out the site by clicking on the banner to the left of this post, or by clicking here. And, if you feel so inclined, vote for 5 Blogs Before Lunch as one of your favorite blog postings. The winning blogs—in this and the other categories—will be featured in a customized HP E-Book Template you can download and use for your business.

5 Blogs Before Lunch on Openroad.tv: "Life Outside The Box"

Last week I had the privilege of being interviewed by Doug McConnell--well known in Northern California for his "Bay Area Backgrouds" television series. He's running a series called "Life Outside The Box" on his new travel website called Openroad.tv. This morning he and partner Carl Bidleman posted the interview on their site.

Take a look at what 5 Blogs does after lunch...

David Allen Ibsen is a San Francisco-based marketing guru and author of 5 Blogs Before Lunch. When he’s not online, David loves to spend time in the coastal community of Cambria, California. The beauty of the town and it’s surrounding environment has inspired David to self-publish several books of his photographs of the area through a company he advises, blurb. In this episode, David talks with Doug about Cambria, photography and his dog Gracie.

Fake Steve Jobs Book Signing in SF

As you may know, I'm a big fan of the fake Steve Jobs blog, "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." Forbes reporter Dan Lyons has captured a perfect balance between parody and reality while lampooning one of the technology industry's grand leaders.

If you are in San Francisco this Friday (Nov 2 at 7pm), you may want to stop by Books Inc. in the Castro, 2275 Market Street, 415-864-6777 to meet Lyons at a book signing where he'll "...discuss the anonymous blog (http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/) that lampooned the real Steve Jobs, as well as Silicon Valley’s characteristic excess and his new novel, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody."

INFO: http://www.booksinc.net/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=storeevents&eventId=357862

And, thanks to 5 Blogs' "Ever Loyal Reader" for the tip.

Welcome 'Racked' To The Blogosphere

You may have heard of the Curbed Network of blog sites; Cubed, Eater and The Beach. Now the folks that brought you these great sites (5 Blogs is a loyal reader of all three) bring you "Racked," a new blog site about shopping, stores and the retail scene of New York City.

Welcome, Racked, to the Blogosphere.

Darlings, Make Blogs, Not War.

The Huffington Post has fired one of its bloggers after accusing a site staff member of posting negative comments on his blog entries.

Peter Rost, a former Pfizer executive and corporate whistle-blower recently noticed that some prominently placed negative comments on his blog entries had been written by a user named "yacomink." according to The New York Times. The paper reports that in a June 20 post, Dr. Rost revealed that the person making sarcastic comments was Andy Yaco-Mink, the Huffington Post's technology manager.

Dr. Rost's "don't mess with me" response was to include Mr. Yaco-Mink's Internet protocol address and photos in his entry.

Two days later, the site's namesake and editor (and fellow Webby winner), Arianna Huffington announced that she was "withdrawing Dr. Rost's password"...blogging lingo for "your fired"

The Times reports that Mr. Yaco-Mink kept his job because the site had not had a policy forbidding employees from posting, although that policy has now been instituted.

"It seemed like his blog was becoming about personal grudges," Ms. Huffington said. "That would have been no problem if the posts were interesting."

Dr. Rost responded on his personal blog (peterrost.blogspot.com). "I thought that if anyone could accept being challenged, it would be The Huffington Post," he said in an interview. "But the first time anyone even hints, the censors go into overdrive and this liberal bastion becomes something similar to the Kremlin."

But Arianna, I thought you announced "Darlings, make blogs not war" at the Webby's. Seems like you have sparked your own little insurgent battle yourself.

NBC and CBS Blogging To Keep It Real With Their Peeps

I've been reading NBC News anchor Brian Williams' weblog postings on "The Daily Nightly" on MSNBC.com. His writings from the frontlines of the Hurricane Katrina disaster have been moving and informative. It is nice to see an anchor write with a little more candor and emotion than what is usually displayed during a 22 minute nightly news broadcast.

An excerpt:

In a strange way, the most outrageous news pictures of this day may be those of progress: The palettes of food and water that have just been dropped at selected landing zones in the downtown area of New Orleans. It's an outrage because all of those elements existed before people died for lack of them: There was water, there was food, and there were choppers to drop both. Why no one was able to combine them in an air drop is a cruel and criminal mystery of this dark chapter in our recent history. The words "failure of imagination" come to mind.

And Williams' blogging on governmental attempts at media repression:

"While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States..."

Now, CBS News has announced that they will launch a blog called "Public Eye" in order to create greater interaction between the public and their journalists.

It is nice to see CBS working to put a more human face (post Dan Rather) on the news. Undoubtedly their intent is to find younger viewers and to rely less on a single network anchor to be the face (or the eyes) of CBS News.

If you want to check out one of these blogs yourself, go to NBC's "The Daily Nightly" to read Brian Williams' bloggings.

For information about CBS' News blog "The Pubilc Eye" go to About Public Eye

"Blogging" the new "email marketing"? Mary Kate the new Kate Moss?

A couple of weeks ago, I "blogged" about how businesses are hiring professional bloggers to enhance customer dialog. And in another post, how businesses are learning that you can't igonore bloggers. Better to have them join your conversation than to let them "blog freely."

From USA Today, a relevant article on the topic of business blogging. In this case, it is online retailer BlueFly, a major website for discounted designer clothes. They use a business blog to update customers on fashion-related news and to create an interactive dialog through "Flypaper" (flypaper.bluefly.com). I guess blogging truly is the new "email marketing"

Checking out the blog, I found this headline on Flypaper on Aug 26: Mary Kate, the next Kate Moss? Then goes on to ask: " Has the fashion world lost its mind? To be the next Kate Moss, you need a lot more than rumored drug addictions and eating disorders. 

I'll refrain from reviewing the article and let you do that yourself. I will say that I must not be the target market.

I'm just here to report on marketing trends.

Here is  USA Today's take:

Flypaper's customers typically have relied for fashion news on magazines such as Vogue. Now, they also have the blog as an information source, and the company has an opportunity for an interactive relationship.

It is potentially a lucrative one. A recent study by online market research firm ComScore Networks found that shoppers who visit blogs spend about 6% more than the average online shopper.

For the full article:

Retailers hope shoppers buy blogs as the way to go

Related on 5 Blogs Before Lunch:

Business Blogging