Catch Up Lady

Happy Mother's Day Catch Up Mom!

Since I've sent my mom two cards in the last four weeks, I thought I'd do something a little different for Mother's Day and make a public declaration of her awesomeness right here.  (Lest you think I'm a bad daughter who didn't mail a card in time, I assure you I've been planning this for well over the 2 - 3 business days it takes to get a card from DC to Michigan.) 

Here are some of the cool things about my mom you may not know:

* The Travel Agency of Val: This woman can find deals, change seats, coax information out of airlines and book flights like nobody's business. 

* Highway to the Danger Zone: She drives really fast sometimes, which I think is hilarious. 

* Stuff This: She is a great cook.  The Atkin family stuffing recipe, peanut chicken, and meatloaf are just some of the highlights.  (Everything except that casserole with the potato chips on top, which I hate but everyone else likes.  And that soup we fed to deer when I was 6.)

* She's Always Right: Even when she's wrong, she's right.  This used to annoy me when I was a teenager, but now I just hope I'm that smart when I grow up.  (Which apparently has still not happened...)

* iMom: She got an iPhone (Edit: Before me!)  She's on Facebook (where my friends Friend her, which kind of says it all.)  LinkedIn, and once said, "We have GOT to get your father on Dopplr."

I could go on, and on, and on, and on like about that time she went out and bought me Excedrin when I was  quite literally dying of hangover, or when she drives me the airport at 4:45am, or how she cooked me seperate meals as a kid because I was such a "god damn picky eater," or when she sends me fun things in the mail out of the blue.  But I'll end it here - Happy Mother's Day Mom!  I love you - thanks for all that you do and raising us right.   

Empty Seats At The Joe - As Goes The Economy, So Goes Playoff Attendance

My beloved Red Wings are in the Western Conference finals, battling it out with the Dallas Stars for a berth in the Stanley Cup Finals.  This is pretty familiar territory for Hockeytown (Detroit) with the Wings having won 14 division championships in 19 seasons, and three Stanley Cups in the last 11 years. 

However, Wings fans have been getting tons of shit from the sporting world for their inability to fill seats at The Joe.  If you watch the televised games there are pockets of empty seats at every level.  As the Red Wings have become something like the Yankees of hockey everyone's first instinct is to rip the fans for not being "into the playoffs" until later rounds, for taking the team's accomplishments for granted because of past successes, for not following as closely because our Canadian all-stars have been replaced with foreign athletes, for not appreciating a team that's more finesse than brawn, for losing faith because of a few seasons of bombing out in early playoff rounds, etc.  Even Mitch Albom, the favorite son of South Eastern Michigan got into the fray with his column, "Wings come out big, so why don't all the fans?"  One only need look at the hundreds of comments the column generated to figure out why those seats are empty.

"'Why can't we fill empty seats' indeed. $200 for tickets is prohibitive. Gas is expensive. Parking alone was $15 in the first round, and if it's anything like ticket prices, it goes up each round and becomes exorbitant. We won't even talk about concessions or souvenirs. Have you not noticed we're in our own personal little mini-depression here in Michigan, you blind, self-congratulatory son-of-a-(rhymes-with-Mitch)?? We are trying to feed ourselves and our family and put braces on teeth and get back and forth to work. We don't have the $800 it would take to take a family of four to see a game."

"No dough to blow at the Joe.  Times ARE tough, my family has cut back to not go under, and I have to carry my clients. CABLE is a luxury we've got rid of. Like it or not, the WINGS are a luxury product, and while I love them to pieces I can't pay for them."

Check out more comments here.  Michigan's unemployment rate is still above 7% - nearly 3% higher than the national average of 4.9% - and that doesn't count workers that have left the state in search of new jobs.  Michigan has lost 596,000 of the 900,000 manufacturing jobs that existed 10 years ago.  While a few commenters cite the call for a boycott "against Detroit" in protest of the cities arguably corrupt Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the vast majority are just ordinary Michigan folk who have hit hard times and simply don't have the money to take the family to the game.

So, I'll add my voice to the legions of Hockeytown faithful who are following the Red Wings at home or from afar when I say, "Back the fuck up."

I'm Just Not That Into You (Virtually)

Recently I've been getting an influx of "friend" invites from people that I don't actually know on Facebook.  Some of these people are industry folks who are connected to one or more of my colleagues.  Others are individuals that, I imagine, found me through Twitter or read this blog.  However, I've decided to draw a line in the sands of social media and not be friends with anyone on Facebook that I don't know in real life. 

As a college student in the Boston area in the early 2000's I had access to Facebook early, and have been a member since 2004 (if my memory serves me correctly.)  As such, I've never used Facebook as a "promotional" platform for my career or my blog.  I've used it strictly as a way to keep up with friends, and as such it contains information and photos about me that are intended for that audience.  That's not to say we need to have been besties since 1996 for you to get an add - but it does mean that I need to have met, and liked you, in real life for us to be Facebook friends.  I love this blog and my readers, but there is a limit to how much of myself I want to share with the public at large.

To be my virtual friend, you have to be my real friend first.  Do you agree with this approach?  Disagree?  Does this turn you off as a Catch Up Lady reader?  I'm not above making exceptions to this rule, and am curious what you all think.

When Social Media and Dicks Collide

My good friend Laura hasn't given me a good blog tip since HatsOfMeat.com , so I kind of thought she'd forgotten about me.  But then she went and dropped the Dikipedia bomb on me.  Dikipedia.org, "a wiki of dicks," is a user generated Wikipedia take-off that seeks to provide the public with an in-depth look at the best known dicks in the public eye.  Some highlights:

• David Blaine: Blaine began his career by bringing street magic to the public, performing card tricks and growing a goatee, a facial hair configuration popular among dicks. Using common props like coins, cards and cigarettes, Blaine entertained unsuspecting pedestrians in television specials like “David Blaine: Street Magic,” “David Blaine: Magic Man,” and “David Blaine: Listen, Asshole, I’m Late For Work So Get Those Coins Out Of My Face.”
• Sean Penn: Though Irish Catholic on his mother’s side, and descended from Lithuanian rabbis on his father’s, Penn was raised in a secular home, an upbringing typically described as 'agnosdick.'
• Mark Zuckerberg: In 2004, he created the social networking website Facebook, becoming a celebrity to college students nationwide. Since that time, Zuckerberg has been on the fast track toward dickhood, culminating in his achieving full-fledged dick status in late 2007, though many argue that he has actually been a dick the entire time.
• Mitt Romney: Mitt has been married for 38 years to Ann Romney, who is a convert to her husband’s religion. They have five sons, one of whom is named “Tagg.” According to Mitt, the sons, who are all eligible to fight in Iraq, are serving their country by "helping me get elected.” The Army’s loss is the Internet’s gain, because the brothers host a blog, creatively called Five Brothers, which features such America-serving stories as, “Soup Recipes Submitted To AnnRomney.com,” and “An Easy Halloween Costume.” Five Brothers is a political must-read, right after the Daily Kos. Also, once again, one of Romney’s sons is named “Tagg.”

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  There is lots of good stuff here.  I love it when people use social media to highlight the staggering dickitry that plagues this earth. 

Ketchup: A Los Angeles Restaurant Review

This past weekend I had occasion to frequent Ketchup in Los Angeles.  Sounds like heaven?  Well it WAS.  (Mostly.)

After downing many drinks involving tequila at The Abbey, my party and I made our way to Ketchup for our 9:45 reservation.  Only Ketchup was not really that interested in seating us.  In fact, it wasn't until an hour later, after someone in our party put on award winning performance as the brow beaten L.A. PR guy to my "off the clock" Los Angeles Magazine food critic that we were seated with all the graciousness in the world.  (I guess the Abe Froman line only works in ChiTown.)

The food was really quite good.  I got a Kobe beef sloppy joes, which is the only one I've ever had that rivals my father's (who has mastered the surface area to sloppy joe sauce ratio after years of experimentation.)  It was decided that we could have all lived without the meatloaf, but all the other items sampled made the cut.  There were, of course, six different varieties of ketchup (though I stuck to the Heinz 57.)

The ambiance was very LA, lots of beautiful people mixed in with lots of ugly ones who thought they were beautiful because they weigh 90 pounds.  However, the red hued lighting did get to you after awhile.  At worst it triggers early onset cataracts, and best you feel like Kramer and his neon Kenny Rogers Roasters sign. 

Bottom line: Leave your ketchup packets at home, get there early and don't forget to bring your attitude because you'll need it to get your table.

No Soup for Shady Viral Marketers In the UK

Gawker reports that the UK is about to make it illegal for a company to misrepresent itself to consumers online using viral marketing tactics.  This includes setting up fake blogs, paying bloggers to hype up products without disclosing their arrangement and otherwise utilizing viral tactics "without making the origin of the message clear." 

Sounds severe, but I think this is actually a great move for the industry.  With trust in traditional advertising declining and trust in word of mouth (WOM) continuing to increase - especially in the dynamic digital space - I think that establishing a benchmark for authenticity and credibility is essential.  At Ogilvy we created the Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics which dictates how we will research, approach and build relationships with online influencers on behalf of our clients.   This entire Code is built around respect for the influencer and transparency.   

By and large, everyone should  already be adhering to similar guidelines because it's just good business.  But, hey, if the UK wants to throw people in the clink for doing otherwise than more power to em.

Oh No They DIDN'T

Umm, they totally did.  Spotted at a church, via Passive Aggressive Notes, "He Died For Your Clip Art."

Fez Me!

"Catch Up Lady In Fez - 2008"
By Graham Gunn

"Show Me a Viral Video, And I'll Show You 5 Superior Spoofs"

A wise man once told me that.  Ok, total lie.  Either way there is no denying the rise of spoof videos created in homage to viral sensations.  The question now becomes, are these spoofs superseding the originals?  In many cases the spoof videos require more intelligence, humor and talent to pull off as they must cleverly mock an original that was often times an accident or blooper caught on camera. 

Much like the internets itself, examples of the original - parody relationship are vast and infinite. Here is the most recently hilarious example I could dig up:

ORIGINAL: Zombie Kid Likes Turtles (4.4 million views)

SPOOF 1: Yes We Can Take Off

SPOOF 2: I Like Turtles - The After Years

There are literally over a dozen spoofs of this video - some, like the Bill O'Reilly Interviews I Like Turtles Kid, have hundreds of thousands of views.  (The O'Reilly Interview is the most popular spoof with over 1.1 million views.)

It was only a matter of time before some smart brand harnessed this consumer generated genius (I'm using the word "genius" really loosely here, fyi.)  This week, Cadbury launched a site featuring consumer created spoof videos of their Gorilla Playing Phil Collins on Drums spot, which went viral last year.  Bill from Make the Logo Bigger said it best in his post Brand Paying Attention? Say It Ain't So, "They may be the first major brand I can think of that didn’t just watch YouTube nation take control of where their spot went. Instead, they gathered all the best clips into one location: brand releases video, fans mash it up, brand says thanks."  Pretty cool.

Of course, brands need a truly viral video to leverage if they're going to take advantage of spoofs. And that my friends, remains an enigma for most.   

Twitter Ate My Blog

Ok friends - I need to hold myself to some sort of higher blogging standard here.  Since Twitter became the new Scrabulous in my life, I have really slacked on the blogging front.  In my defense, I know I'm not the only one this is happening to - I see a few tweets a week from respected marketing bloggers I follow saying that they are not only blogging less, but also reading their RSS feeds more infrequently.

(For you non losers out there, Twitter is a microblogging service, where you post updates of 140 characters or less.  As I described in a previous post, the real value in this comes when you have a Twitter community of colleagues, industry peers or friends that you can follow. Still confused? For an even simpler overview, involving paper dolls, check this out.)

So why the slackage?  For me, the value of reading blogs comes from getting into people's heads and understanding their thoughts on a certain subject.  Twitter not only provides that, but does so in real time.  Instead of reading a blog post by someone I respect on a topic that is potentially a day or two old I can log on to Twitter and see what they're thinking and doing NOW - and even interact with them around the thought, link or comment shared. 

Twitter is like blogging, only more addictive.  It's like blogging on crack.  The social media junkie in me is SO into it.  But, I'm not going to forget my gateway drug - The Catch Up Lady - so I'm renewing my commitment here today.