“We see things as we are, not as they are…” Isaac Asmiov
My 7 year old has an ‘ahh moment’ watching a Johnson’s baby wipes advert:
I know what these are for! They’re to try and make other people buy the things they’re selling. But they don’t have to show them to us ‘cos we buy them already…
Now if only advertisers knew that…
Well, I see Hugh is ramping up the Stormhoek buzz and even quotes me verbatim…
The moment of truth is upon us though, how was it for us (I let my wife have some too. Generous I thought!) - Jane described it thus:
It was very fresh and sharp flavour. Very drinkable, and I think I need another glass to check my appreciation.
[Said while insisting I get her another glass]
For myself I would tend to agree, very dry, fresh and crisp. Lovely.
I am oft to pour another glass and see whether I can order some more…
Thanks Hugh and if you want to do the sample thing again, I live in Europe and North America.
And this is my fave cartoon from the brochure.
Update: Sad but true - I finally found somewhere that would sellme some Stormhoek, looking forward to drinking some more this weekend 
- (South African wines online BTW)
And following Hugh’s promise of samples I can confirm today that I have a very exciting looking bottle sat besides me. I got bottle 24 of 75 - unfortunately not really a collectors item as the Stormhoek promise is about freshness and drinking the wine at the peak of its freshness (i.e. relatively soon!) The inserted leaflet from Hugh entitled “Wine Blogging as Marketing Disruption” however could well enter that category
Anyway thanks to Hugh, Orbital Wines and Stormhoek - will report back on how I found the wine, because I am of course a person whose wine recommendations you trust… aren’t I? What do you mean, ‘No!’?
This just arrived in my Inbox:
Dear Hugh,We have an office-full of pre-release Stormhoek samples, so we hope to
finally send out the Bloggers’ freebie samples at the beginning of next week.Could you possibly forward me the names and addresses of the recipients?
I need to produce labels for said samples, is there any mileage do you think in making each one a personalised label?
Hope all is well at your end.
Andrew
Hopefully Geoff will let me supply free wine at the Our Social World conference in September.
I think marketing to bloggers is a no-brainer, although granted, it’s still early days.
Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: The Business Experiment
Business Experiment is a great idea to explore the possibilities of new ideas in a business context - thanks as usual to Johnnie for pointing it out…
I am pleased to say that I shall be running an event on social software in Sunderland in September, in association with the Woodholmes Group and the Big Ideas Centre.
There are a few details to be confirmed however the agenda will be broadly looking at social software, including blogging, folksonomies, podcasting, vidcasting, wikis, social bookmarks and networking sites. The main focus will be on how these are affecting business from an external and internal perspective, together with some practical tips on how to get started making use of the technologies.
If you are interested or want further information please drop me an email. There will be further annoucnments nearer to the event.
Have to say I am looking forward to it immensely
So being geeky I generated this:
I’ve been drinking a lot of tea today - as Johnnie notes, its the British (English) thing to do in a crisis.
What I sincerely hope is that the bombing has the opposite effect as intended. People are united against the terrorism, the G8 ensure hope for Africa and the planet with accords on the environment. Let’s hope we all can stand up against injustice, ignorance and misunderstanding wherever we come across it. And…
…lets drink more tea; it helps.
And to add to being British, its raining in mid summer - it all adds to the stoicism. Interestingly just read the entry at wikipedia, particularly the section on brotherhood
All people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily help one another. They held that external differences such as rank and wealth are of no importance in social relationships. Thus, before the rise of Christianity, Stoics recognized and advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural equality of all human beings
From Ken Livingstone (via BBC):
This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners.Black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindus and Jews, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, class, religion whatever.
Blair - ‘people reacting with British Stoicism’
How on earth did they think they would influence the British public positively? Years of island mentality, two world wars, terrorism and sheer bloodymindedness. Truely mad.
I can’t believe we are seeing terrorism in London again.
Co-ordinated explosions at rush hour is despicable.
My condolances go out to those people who are effected.
My thoughts are with those people who are in London.
Evelyn Rodriguez posts on a US dot com venture buying bloggers to praise their service. As she notes, a lack of imagination in play all around. At the recent BARC conference a lot was made of authenticity (not surprising given that was the conference theme, and also models for advertising / making money via blogs. One of the key points is that you can attempt to foll people some of the time but in the blogosphere you will get found out, as seems to have happened in this story.
So the opportunity to create a long lasting positive relationship with many people has ended up being a short term boost to sales, followed by negative publicity. In effect an interruption model plus negative PR. Not what blogging is about at all. Sabrina Dent was very frustrated with traitional marketing / promotion being applied to blogging and I can sympathise. I for one right now could really do with a few companies to come dump some money but then I know it would be a waste of time for the firm and wouldn’t make me a sustainable income either, in fact for both of us it would leave a nasty taste. Instead it would be much more intersting to approach this from the whole PR perspective as identified in yesterday’s post.
Most of all though, authenticity is about bias + transparency = credibility as Adriana so beautifully put it.
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