Ryan Anderson dot ca

Marketing, public relations and advertising all have one thing in common: an unhealthy, psychotic obsession with buzzwords.  We’re so desparate to attach a new words and pseudo-words to things that most of the time, it’s meaningless.

The idea of Web 2.0 came around, and, at least to me, it made sense.  It outlined the dichotomy between a web created by technology and a web created by society.  Just as we started getting accustomed to the monicker, we’re already talking about Web 3.0.  Ugh.

The whole thing was apparently started by NYT reporter John Markoff, and talks mainly about a “smarter” web – one guided by common sense or, at least, artificial intelligence. 

The classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the “mash-up” — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of each rental listing.

In contrast, the Holy Grail for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.”

While I think that these ideas have a great deal of merit as to how we can create relevant searches for information, I am extremely opposed to calling these systems a new incarnation of the Web… at least not now.  The more we as an industry misuse meaningful words (engagement, viral, conversation come to mind) the less meaning those words are going to have. 

I anticipate that it’s only a matter of time before business start claiming to be Web 3.0, ignorant media outlets start throwing around the term to describe things that wouldn’t even qualify as 2.0, and people end up more confused and in the dark than they were before.

Of course, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  Web 3.0 is SO last Friday.  I’m coining Web 4.0.

[thanks to Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid for the use of the cartoon]

As I mentioned, I am traveling on business right now. As I also mentioned, I am stressed.

The cause of this stress is largely due to the fact that technology has not been my friend on this trip. I expected to get a good five hours of work in on the train, but the Via WiFi was so intermittent it made it impossible. I expected to do a lot of my non-meeting based work from my hotel room, but I couldn’t connect to our office VPN for no good reason.

I’m currently working out of a Starbucks, solely because I can access my email in a useable way. Thing is, I’m on my Mac, so I’m running Entourage. Even though we have an Exchange server, Entourage only syncs the main contact folder, i.e. not my “media list” folder. Thankfully, I have all my contact data backed up offsite for just such a situation. Sadly, that site is currently experiencing technical difficulties.

All this is to say… the technology that normally allows me to be very productive has failed me when I need it the most. Even with redundancy built in.

This is troubling to me. Mainly, because it tells me that we’re far too dependent on technology. Secondly… well, secondly because it just pisses me off.

I’m sure working out of a caffeine factory is not helping my stress levels any. Serenity now.

I should, given the nature of my industry. But, more and more, I realize that while we can understand types of people, consumer behaviour, crowd psychology, and the like, I will never understand some people.

I’m on the road all week, and frankly, I’ve got a little bit of work-related stress going on. So, yesterday, before dinner, I went to the gym in the hotel I’m staying at. It’s small and it sucks, so, in the interest of not hanging myself when I was stepping over the abdominal board to get to the dumbells, I took off my iPod. I finished my workout, did some time on the treadmill, wandered out in a bit of a haze of endorphins and went back to my room to shower.

At dinner, I realized that I had never picked up the iPod I put down. I immediately excused myself and called the hotel. The concierge went to the fitness room, and called me back five minutes later. It was not there, and it was not in lost and found.

Okay… I get it. My fault. I shouldn’t have left the thing there in the first place. Thing is, this is a private gym in a four-star hotel. Nobody that is staying here can’t afford an iPod. When my bike was stolen in the summer, I understood. To a crackhead, a bike equals more crack. But in this case, the first person to come across it had to make the conscious decision not to walk it 10 feet to the front desk and say “someone left this in the gym,” but to actually steal something that belongs to someone else – something which, presumably, they could easily afford.

Maybe I was just brought up differently than other people, but my parents were pretty clear on the whole “don’t steal” thing.

Oh well – possessions are fleeting, etc.

So, I woke up at 4:30 this morning, and hopped the 6am train to Toronto for the Movember media launch, a week full of meetings with Toronto media for my real job, and an awards ceremony on Thursday.

Currently, my microwaved train eggs are sitting heavy in my stomach, and I’m experiencing the joys of Via’s WiFi on-board service which they’ve gone to such lengths to promote. So far, it has taken me five minute to load the survey page for said WiFi where I rated the quality of the service as “utter shit.”

If you’re planning on taking the train because you can spend the trip catching up on your emails and RSS feeds, I would seriously advise against it. I will be spending the morning getting my $8.95 back for this piece of crap. Yes. I am that petty.

I’m not sure if there’s a lesson in all of this, but if there were, I would imagine it would be something along the lines of “don’t promote the hell out of a product that sucks.” Consider it microwaved train food for thought.

The first hit for “Ryan Anderson” is this site.

The second hit is my American namesake and guy who probably gets a lot of my email, Ryan Anderson.

The third hit tells me that one of the contestants on that insipid From the Ground Up show where Debbie Travis yells at jackass 20-year olds is named Ryan Anderson.  He got his girlfriend pregnant, and now he’s on a reality TV show.

The fourth is an article about a Ryan Anderson (a.k.a. Amir Tallah) who is a former US National Guardsman, and Al Qaeda sympathizer, now serving a life sentence for treason.  Perhaps this explains why I am constantly molested by customs when I travel to the US.

This seems to be where I disconnect from the blogger hive-mind.  I’ve been thinking about character blogging lately, and I instantly recognized that most bloggers would be against it.  A quick Google search confirmed this – character blogs are verbotten.

But why?

Granted, in some cases it’s incredibly lame, but I think it has a potential to be an interesting interactive work of fiction.  As long as it’s clear that it is a character blog, the content is interesting and it fits the campaign, why are we so against character blogs?

Then again, I still like LonelyGirl15.

Does anyone have any examples of character blogs that, in their opinion, worked?

About six months ago, I made the move from being a consultant at a PR agency a few blocks from Parliament Hill to heading public relations for an interactive agency in the same city.  I love everything about my job, but I must confess that there is one thing I miss – Canadian politics. 

I used to spend most of my day swimming in politics, keeping up to date with the political environment so that I could counsel my clients accordingly.  Now that I’m in the advertising industry, and a disproporationate number of my clients are now in New York and L.A., and have little to no interest in who will lead the next Liberal Party, I much admit that I am much less in touch with Canadian politics that I used to be.

A story on CBC radio this morning as I made my breakfast smoothie reminded me of why I love Canadian politics so much.  So, with apologies for veering off my usual course of posting, I present to you a recounting of a scene yesterday in the House of Commons.  (Nota bene: this helps if you picture a kindergarten classroom, and all of the characters as L’il Rascals.)

So, it seems as though the Conservatives, who are now in a minority leadership position, introduced a bill reducing greenhouse emissions by, oh, say, sometime mid-century.  During a debate on the effects of such a policy on the environment, Liberal MP David McGuinty asked Foreign Affairs minister and ladykiller Peter MacKay the rhetorical question, “what about your dog?”

In response, MacKay allegedly gestured toward ex-girlfriend and conservative-turned-liberal Belinda Stronach and replied “you already have her.”

The Speaker of the House subsequently raised his hands in a snapping motion and exclaimed, “OH NO YOU DID NOT!  You did NOT just go there!”

Then, in one of Canadian politics’ proudest moments, Liberal MP Mark Holland raised a point of order and ratted on MacKay for daring such Oscar-Wildesque wit in the House.

“It’s completely unacceptable to call a woman a dog and to point over to her is completely disgusting,” said Holland, addressing the house, and raising the question, “so… one or the other would have been fine, then?”

In turn, conservative hottie Rona Ambrose (pictured at right, wanting me) responded by finking on Liberal MP Denis Coderre for saying something to the effect of her being “a potted plant,” whatever the hell that means, and demanding an apology from him.  That THAT, Mr. Tattlepants.

At the time of publication, neither party were available for comment, as they were down for their napsy-doodle.

The original comment referred to a heartfelt staged media stunt held by MacKay after Belinda kicked him to tha curb.  Interviewed on his parent’s farm, petting a dog and explaining that “his heart was banged up a bit.”  He added, “dogs are loyal.”  The dog belonged to his neighbour.

The CBC news article on the site goes on to speculate that Peter MacKay is probably doin’ it with Condoleeza Rice.  There’s got to be a joke about softwood lumber in there somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I’m going digging for it.

So, I’m writing a document for a client about the culture of social media, and I realize that while I understand the trends and the ethos behind it, I don’t know much about the individuals.  I’m now very intrigued by the idea, and I’d love to hear if anyone has any research on the “types” of people who are adopting RSS, who are blogging, who are commenting, social bookmarking, etc.

My gut feeling, not based on anything in particular, is that the demographic skews male, university educated, working in an office environment, likely a “knowledge worker.”  Most are not executive or C-Level, but are likely management level.  A disproportionate amount are entrepreneurs or intrepreneurs.  Most are well-organized, and are very comfortable with technology and consider themselves more intelligent than average.  In general, most are competent writers, and consider themselves creative people in one way or another.

I think that applies to business bloggers, but there are also personal bloggers, profile bloggers (those who use MySpace or MSN Spaces).

I’m going to be doing some research over the next few weeks, which I’ll share here.  My goal will be to create an understanding of the dominant personality types who are heavy social media users.  If anyone wants to contribute to helping me build the social media personas, feel free to drop me a line – my first name at ryananderson.ca, or leave a comment here.

Looks like we’ve started to get some ink!  We got our first proper media hit this week in the Medical Post, a national medical journal.  I honestly expected that we’d get more traction from a pop culture angle than a straight health angle, but apparently, I was wrong.

You can read the article at the Medical Post website.  Be sure to pass it around!

We also have a story coming out in the University of Florida student newspaper next week.  The interesting thing is that they found us solely because of the blog.  This whole interweb thing never ceases to amaze me.

As many of you know, I work for an interactive agency called Fuel Industries. I don’t talk about it much on this blog for reasons of objectivity, but I will make an exception in this case.

Every year, Marketing Magazine, a canadian marketing trade publication, hosts the Digital Marketing Awards. This is our chance to really show off the kind of cutting-edge games and branded entertainment that is being created in the great white north. The awards ceremony is on November 2, but prior to that is the DMA Consumer’s Choice Award for best branded game of the year. Marketing Magazine and Canwest take the best advergame entries from that year, and publish them for the public to vote on their favourite. I’m happy to say that of the 16 projects featured, 7 of them are Fuel Industries projects.

If you’ve got a few minutes, check out the voting site (registration required) and vote for your favourites. Of course, I would never suggest that you vote for a Fuel Industries project simply because of who made it, but, if you want to show your nepotism, the following projects are ours:

- American Dad vs. Family Guy Kung Fu
- Hershey’s Take 5
- Teletoon’s B’s Stunt Track
- Oh Henry Snowboard Challenge
- FedEx TeeOff 2006
- Andy Roddick vs. Pong
- Pog Super Slammers

Also, while we’re on the subject, we’re in the midst up updating our entire website (cobbler’s children, etc.) and our corporate blog is going to be a big focus of the revamp. If any of you would like to check out what we have so far and make some suggestions on what you would like to see in terms of content, features, or what have you, feel free to drop me a line or a comment with your suggestions. I have a lot of ideas for how it is going to change, but I always appreciate input from my blogging cohorts.

The link is http://www.fuelgames.com/blog and my email is my first name at ryananderson.ca.