"Felicity shows the ground where industry builds a fortune." Sir Henry Wotton

"You learn most when you play against an opponent who can beat you." Richard Bach

"Dispatch is the soul of business." Philip Stanhope

Today's image: Guiding You To The Light by imagonovus. Amazing. Thanks for sharing.

An important post from David Weinberger...

"Almost from the day the Cluetrain site went up, I regretted point #74: “We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.” We are so not immune. Branding works. We think of Volvos as safe and the Ford Fiesta as a car for young folks. We think of Coke as the original and Pepsi as the copy. We can characterize someone as a “wearer of Birkenstocks.” Branding and advertising in some important sense work.

Now, we certainly can undo some of the cognitive damage advertising and branding do. Market conversations in fact often are about the ways in which a product’s promises and sloganeering don’t live up to its reality. But that’s a lot different than saying we’re immune to advertising. We’re not.

I’d still urge companies to move their marketing away from messaging, however. Assuming the studies Francois cites are correct, our reactions to products do seem shaped by what we’re told about them. No surprise there, although it’s always depressing to find out what big dopes we humans are through no fault of our own. But, customers (= all of us) are going to increasingly resist and resent marketing that focuses narrowly on messaging — that is, on finding the simple idea they can pound into our heads over and over. Telling us your drink will make us refreshed or more alert may indeed make us more refreshed or alert, but treating us like freaking morons by droning the same words at us over and over will make your product less interesting to us. The real challenge marketers face in a world of online conversations is how to help us find what’s interesting about their products." My thanks to the good doctor for sharing. David's original post w/comments here.

Bonus: Thomas Hawk issues the challenge But Which One is Fine Art?. Bravos to Thomas!

Congrats & cheers: FriendFeed gets Business Week coverage. BW's Heather Green writes One Place for Your Many Online Lives here. Kudos to Heather! (FD: I'm totally addicted to FF)