If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Yesterday I saw a few Tweets for a new book called Social Media is Bullshit (free chapter here).

And look what’s happening to Facebook’s share price.

If you want a consistent, well-written and perceptive analysis of why social media is a bit of a wet fart, just read Bob Hoffman’s Ad Contrarian blog.

But if I may, I’d just like to add the following observation:

I found a list of the top 20 social media experts in the UK.

Number one is a man called Chris Hambly. He has 6463 Twitter followers.

Number two on the list, Jamie Riddell, has 7100 followers.

Number three, Joanne Jacobs, has 4101 followers.

Ged Carroll, number 4, has 2385 followers.

Number five doesn’t seem to be on Twitter.

Number 6, Katy Howell, is ‘obsessive about social media and the challenges of making businesses more social and accountable’. She has 2648 followers. Her major clients are ‘Sony Europe, BT, Diageo, PSP, NSPCC etc.’

Number 7, Andrew Gerrard, has 2525 followers. He is ‘a social and digital media strategy consultant, helping organizations to understand and engage in the conversations that their users and customers are having’.

Number 8, Alan Steven, has 7740 followers.

Number 9 isn’t on Twitter.

Number 10, David Cushman, has 4334 followers. He is ‘regularly invited to speak around the world on the impact of social technologies’.

Now, I’m not saying that your number of twitter followers is or should be an absolute indication of your social media skillz, but… hang on… fuck it… I am. I am saying that if you are a social media expert you should have a lot of Twitter followers. How many? Well, more than some tit who tweets a few links, the odd joke and lots of opinions of John Terry that use the word ‘cunt’.

In short, me.

They should have more Twitter followers than me because I do it recreationally for my own amusement, am no kind of ‘expert’, certainly don’t sell my ‘knowledge’ to massive companies and don’t use Google Plus, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest or anything else to cross pollinate my number of followers (I do write a blog, but you already know that).

I have 2701 followers on Twitter. Not loads; not bad. But if you are a ‘social media expert’ and you have a smaller Twitter presence than me, you can’t be much of a social media expert.

And then there are people like Dave Trott and the aforementioned Bob Hoffman, who have 9670 and 7960 followers respectively, more than everyone on that list. I don’t think either of them would describe themselves as a social media expert (although, intentionally or otherwise, they both are), but they’ve done better than the people who do it for a living.

And if I wanted advice on how to build a brand online, I know who I’d ask first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbIEamupKLw

(Thanks, J.)

A couple of weeks back we had the great Steve Harrison in the agency to talk about the great Howard Gossage (Steve will happily pop round to your agency to do the same. Comment if you want me to put you in touch).

In the Q and A at the end I said that one of the many things Howard was remarkably prescient about was his desire to keep his agency small. He worked in an old fire station in San Francisco and never employed more than a few people because he couldn’t see the point in growing. He was the font of quality, aided by a few others; why dilute that by increasing in size?

These days that idea is ridiculous. Of course, if you are doing something well you do more of it and earn more money. Then you get more people to join in and do the work you can’t do and earn even more money (never mind the question of diluting the quality of the work). And on and on until you become Martin Sorrell.

It is taken for granted that what human beings want is ‘progress’, but that is defined as ‘moving onward or forward to a destination’. The problem here is that we have no destination. In general, people just want more than what they have. The idea that anyone should be satisfied with the way things are and just stop is a bit of an odd one to get your head round. You can’t just stop. That’d be crazy. What would you do? How would you be able to afford a bigger TV or go on more holidays or just be more ‘successful’?

But the problem is, as Steve said to me, capitalism is just one big Ponzi scheme and at some point we’re all going to realise that we can’t just keep taking to make more. Whether it’s the massive and obvious destruction of the environment (have you seen the weather lately?) or the terrible consequences of financial and political greed that millions of people continue to suffer, this love of progress doesn’t seem to be improving the world (see here for why the introduction of agriculture screwed the human race in so many ways). Of course, making progress in civilisation, learning and creativity are not bad things in themselves, but marching on to ever greater levels of consumption will have to end somewhere disastrous.

Like many things happening right now (any support for Mitt Romney, climate change, Rupert Murdoch not being in prison etc.), I don’t really understand why nothing is being done. Why aren’t we collectively demanding justice, or an improvement to the way we live on this planet?

My little effort is this blog, but beyond that I feel pretty powerless to stop what appears to be a great slow slide into oblivion.

If I’ve got it all wrong, please let me know in the comments. I would love to believe it’s not as bad as it seems.

I thought this campaign was dead, or at least coughing up blood, but this gives it an intravenous injection of crack-flavoured Red Bull.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GbHpqfv9is

Funny all the way through.

And of course there’s no idea: it’s a Carlton beer ad.

For several months now I have noticed that Campaign’s front page headline is essentially the same story: an account is up for pitch/being reviewed:

Here is a selection since June:

As I say in the video, that must be for one of the following reasons:

1. Nothing interesting is happening in advertising beyond these pitches. Possible, but surely someone has started up an agency in this time. When did 101 start?  What’s Beta doing now?  What about when Farah Ramzen left AMV? Wasn’t that a big enough story for the front page?

2. Campaign doesn’t consider anything but account moves to be significant enough for the front page. Maybe. I mean, it is a really awful, lazy, dull, unambitious, craven excuse for a magazine. It’s just possible that they can’t be bothered to do anything other than regurgitate press releases.

One of the two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-gCogCfGJw

It’s another forgettable manifesto type thing, but it makes me shudder like a dog with the runs.

Some all of the moments are dreadfully unimaginative, and even if they weren’t they’re portrayed with such anodyne, clichéd ‘talent’ that you just want to spray each scene with a hose filled with concentrated hydrochloric acid.

Look! They found a piano in the street! That happens to me ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!1!!1!

Look! He’s doing karaoke! How did they think up that one???/!!1!!

Look! they all clambered into a photo booth! Like pricks!

Look! They’re on a rooftop! Everything that happens on a rooftop IS SO FUCKING FUN!

Beyond all that I just don’t buy that that any one of these dildos drinks Budweiser, particularly the girls.

Maybe Bud will never again scale the heights of Waaassssssuuuupppp, but there’s no need to get it this wrong.

163 horror movies in 2 1/2 minutes (thanks, P):

The Bill Murray remix (thanks, C):

Art Attack: how to draw a cock (thanks, J):

Staying with the smut, it’s your Fifty Shades Lorem Ipsum generator (thanks, K).

Still not raising the level of things particularly high, it’s the wee-slide man (thanks, W):

Todd Akin is a fucking idiot (thanks, P).

The craziest jobs on Craigslist (thanks, J).

Ice cubes recipe (thanks, P).

Memes and singularity (thanks, P):

Replacement Hipsters (thanks, J).

If movies had shit fonts (thanks, J).

The Denzel Washington Venn diagram.

100 worst people on Twitter (thanks, P).

Supercut temper tantrums (thanks, P):

*sigh*

I love you, Berries and Cream ad.