Advertising Is Good For You

If you love flowers or simply enjoy looking at beautiful things, visit the blog of the new White House florist

 

Laura Dowling is the new White House florist. Her designs are breathtaking. Treat yourself and take a couple of minutes to look through Laura Dowling's blog. 

This week's most fascinating Tweet comes from porn star Jenna James

Source: smaknews

Things marketing people love

It's my new favorite blog.

Things Marketing People Love.

It's a riff on Stuff White People Like.

My favorite Thing Marketing People Love -- because I personally LOATHE it -- Data Visualization:

Blog designs to admire and inspire

Smashing Magazine has posted 50 Great Blog Designs. Here are some of my favorites from the collection.

None of the blogs with reverse type made my list. Reading type against a black background makes my eyes bleed.

This collection is the advertising equivalent of a severed head floating in a jar

I've just discovered a new blog: Your Logo Makes Me Barf.

It looks as though the blog has only been around for about a month. But it already includes an impressive collection of vomitous logos. Like these:

You want to look away. But you can't.

What kind of mind creates logos like these?

I know I'll be going back to see Your Logo Makes Me Barf again and again.

My other blog is making me famous

Marty Weil at ephemera was kind enough to interview me for his blog. CLICK HERE to read the interview.

If you haven't yet discovered ephemera, go take a look. It's full of wonderful images of vintage ephemera (not all of them advertising, which should make my nemesis K very happy). Marty also includes the back stories to all his images so his blog is not only entertaining but a legitimate chronicle of history.

My other blog is called Found in Mom's Basement and devoted to vintage advertising.

 

Today's Best Blog Post is also Today's Worst

Jalopnik has a post titled Ten Cars You Can Live In After Your Home Is Repossessed.

Some real estate brokers are using blogging as an edge in a tough market

According to a Washington Post article, almost 10% of real estate brokers are blogging. And consumers are starting to judge real estate brokers by their blogs.

CLICK HERE to read the article.

Image: I See Modern Britain at Flickr
Source: The Consumerist          

Today's* best blog headline is from [bb-blog]

[bb-blog] bills itself as, "A site of link-ity goodness." It's one of my favorites.

* Actually, the post was from yesterday, but I didn't see it until today.

This week's most irresistible blog headline:

Actors Arrested for Filming Porn at McDonald's

Read all about it at Tokyo Mango.

Blog you must visit

I just discovered TheDieline.com. It bills itself as "the leading package design blog" and I don't doubt it.

Scrolling through the site is a Zen-like experience, with post after post of exquisitely designed packaging. Go look.

 

Flog, a fake blog or one that purports to be organic but is in fact sponsored by a company.

For example, Working Families for Wal-Mart turned out to be a flog when it was disclosed that Wal-Mart had paid PR agency Edelman to create and maintain a pro-Wal-Mart blog under the guise that it was formed by a grassroots movement. Such a practice, while not illegal, is considered unethical; because of its role in the Wal-Mart blog deception, Edelman is currently on a 90-day probation with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

Source: MediaPost

If So Many People Are Reading Blogs, How Come So Few People Know What They Are?

My three college roommates and I had our own little reunion this week. One owns her own manufacturing company; another is a VP/Director of Investments at an insurance company and the third is a globe-trotting VP for a Fortune 10 (that's 10, not 100).

Suffice to say, these are intelligent, successful businesspeople.

Somewhere in between talk of husbands, kids, and jobs, the topic of blogs came up: two of my friends weren't sure what a blog was and the third only learned recently.

!!!!!

Also this week, I found this article. It says popular talk show host Ellen Degeneres announced on her show yesterday that she's starting a blog. As part of the announcement, she felt the need to tell the audience that she herself had only just learned what a blog actually is. Which is really interesting considering a blog article she wrote appeared on HuffingtonPost.com a year ago.

!!!!!

Whether one of Ellen Degeneres' staffers wrote last-year's Huffington article or the talk show host worried her audience members might be intimidated by blog talk so she dumbed herself down, it still says a lot about how few people know anything about blogs.

And yet, the media are constantly reporting how widespread blog use is. This breathless announcement from iMedia is a good example:

Record numbers of people are now visiting blogs, proving that blog visitation is now part of mainstream online behavior for many internet users.

Obviously, I believe in the power of the blogosphere. But I've always suspected that marketers and advertisers exaggerate the growth and proliferation of blogs in American culture. And this week, four successful women convinced me I'm right.