For anyone wondering, yes he is back, in fact never left, and Gary, he says, "Hey." Marek, he says, "Hey Hey." He also promises to make note of Denise's new blog design very soon, as soon as everyone else has already commented, much as with my testimonials page.
And now, please join me in basking in this Clockean praise...
I recently bought a Hallmark greeting card that asks,"Weren't robots supposed to be doing all the crap jobs by now?" And in smaller type at the bottom: "What happened?"
Whaddya mean "what happened?"? Take a look at the hackneyed, cliche ridden prose in today's so-called corporate communications. If that stuff isn't written by robots, it might as well be, for all the warmth and intelligence it conveys. NOT. It remains a mystery why so many companies still tend to think of communicating with their markets as a "crap job." It's not. Though approaching this core function with such an attitude assures that the results will constitute a very expensive crap shot.
Gregory Bateson once described information as any difference that makes a difference. There are plenty of people -- even some robots -- that can string words together into sentences. Jeaneane Sessum, on the other hand, can write. And yes, Virginia, there is a difference. Jeneane can write Eskimos into iceboxes, then write them out again. She may be the only person I know who can tell a stranger about rock and roll -- as she demonstrates nearly every day on her weblog. If you're not quite sure what all this means, she'll even 'splain it to you, Stranger. You'll be dancing your ass off in no time!
If your aim is to genuinely inform your markets about what you're up to and why anyone should give a damn, hire Jeneane. You can't go wrong. That's assuming, of course, that you are up to something worth giving a damn about. If not, hire robots. They're cheaper and they don't seem to mind writing crap. Jeneane does mind. Although she has many laudable communication skills, suffering fools gladly is not high among them.
Aside from that, she's a very nice person and doesn't (usually) bite.
Okay--I gotta run. I will attempt to write some eskimos into and out of iceboxes later today. (No offense intended to Eskimos or Intuits, but some offense intended for Frigidaire for poor page design and really high prises. Okay, maybe not offense. Envy maybe.)
....LATER THAT SAME DAY... I was thinking, since I haven't had a chance to add this jewel to my actual testimonials page yet, I should add the proper credits for C-Lo, just as I have for other contributors. Most bloggers know who he is, but for those hard of surfing, the official blurb says this...
Named in the 2001 Financial Times Group survey as one of the "top 50 business thinkers in the world," Chris Locke is author of Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices and The Bombast Transcripts, and co-author of the best selling Cluetrain Manifesto. He is president of Entropy Web Consulting, and editor/publisher of the widely acclaimed and justly infamous webzine Entropy Gradient Reversals.
Chris is a noted industry speaker, having keynoted for organizations such as Accenture (nee Anderson Consulting), the Direct Marketing Association, e- Business Expo, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, First Union Bank, Gartner Group, Key3Media, Peoplesoft, The Public Relations Society of America, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Devine Interventures, and Swiss Re. (See details at Washington Speakers Bureau)
Now based in Boulder, Colorado, Locke has worked for Fujitsu, Ricoh, the Japanese government's "Fifth Generation" artificial intelligence project, Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, CMP Publications, Mecklermedia, MCI, and IBM. He has written extensively for publications such as Forbes, The Industry Standard, Information Week, Harvard Business Review, Publish, Wired, and Release 1.0. His professional work has been covered by Advertising Age, Business Week, The Economist, Fast Company, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and many others.
He has never recanted anything.
I'm thinking if we put our heads together, we could come up with a pretty good unofficial bio too....
