Online consumer conversation measurement companies BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek, along with its BlogPulse blog prtal, have combined to form one mega-metrics analysis company called Nielsen BuzzMetrics. BuzzMetrics parent company VNU has been on a buying spree lately scooping up linguistics analysis company Trendum, BuzzMetrics and now Intelliseek. With the acquisition, VNU hopes to create "the new global standard for measuring and understanding word-of-mouth behavior and influence."
For those who don't know what these companies do or why you should care, the press release puts it quite succinctly explaining the companies "mine publicly archived online sources including blogs and discussion forums to collect and transform large volumes of unaided conversations into actionable consumer insights." In other words, they find out what people are saying about your brand and they package it up with a nice bow on top for your review.
Adrants is a blog. Do you care? I didn't think so. I bet you come here because there's content you like which is all that really matters. In today's Ad Age, Simon Dumenco wrote a piece entitled A Blogger is Just A Writer With A Cooler Name in which he breaks down the facade that blogging is something other than what it is: just a really easy way to publish a website. We read Dumenco's piece with appreciative glee that someone finally agreed with our position on the topic.
While lots of bloggers (writers as Dumenco defines) seem to get a kick out of sticking it to the man or mainstream media as "the man" is currently defined, all bloggers do when blogging is efficiently publish content and offer commentary on news or another person's opinion and the framework through which they publish that opinion. For some reason, the blog publishing platform has been equated to snarky opinion making which, to some degree, is fair as most blogs don't have editors are are written purposefully to ruffle feathers. But plenty of feathers are ruffled through mainstream media as well.
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Plageristic kleptomania is alive and well, as it always has been, in the ad industry indicated by this AdPulp find comparing an Art Directors Club Italiano 2005 ad to a One Show 2006 ad. While the stick and carrot thing is nothing new, seeing the concept used in very similar ways in the same industry just a year apart is depressing.
There's conceptual speed thing in the Art Directors Club Italiano ad and an almost "who gives a shit" thing in the One Show version so they each create a different feeling but there's no denying the similarities. Perhaps, that was the intent with the One Show ad in that there are so many pointless award shows, why should one care a this donkey clearly doesn't. Certainly, it's possible each ad was created in a vacuum but in our incestuous little industry, that's highly unlikely. We're just going to assume the One Show is simply riffing off the Art Directors Club in a wink-wink, nod-nod sort of way, adding its own snarky commentary on award shows.
