How do you market a porno film?

Not a real porno film, but Kevin Smith's new raunchy romcom the title of which, 'Zack and Miri Make a Porno', which is causing a marketing nightmare for the Weinstein Company with newspapers, cable and TV channels refusing to run ads.

'Zack and Miri Make a Porno', which tells the sweet story of how some broke friends get together and try to make a buck or two out of making a porn movie, has been having a tough time of it. It has been rated R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian) having first been given a NC-17 rating (no one under 17), which is pretty much movie death but was over turned on appeal by Kevin Smith.

The Motion Picture Association of America then banned the US poster featuring stars Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen. It had the pair standing side-by-side with their opposing heads pasted over their crotches.

Hardly offensive and the Canadians let it run. So go Canada. This all led Smith to despair on his My Boring-Ass Life blog:

"Our frustration in getting an MPAA approval on the American poster led to last-resort ideas about showcasing dopey, simple images instead of risque pics of our leads - which, in turn, led to what’s now the official American poster for the flick…"

The film's posters have faced protests in Boston where their placement on bus shelters and city buses was called "totally inappropriate". The posters were banned in Philadelphia before they could even appear. With the city's deputy mayor saying: "Zack and Miri can make a porno, but not on my bus shelter."

The Wall Street Journal says that after receiving viewer complaints about an ad that aired during a LA Dodgers' baseball game in September, News Corp.'s FSN Prime Ticket cable channel refused to run more ads. Fox television network has also refused to run the 30-second spots as have more than 15 newspapers and a number of other TV and cable channels and those that have taken the cash have opted to abbreviate the title to 'Zack and Miri.

It is not the first time Smith's films have caused a stink. 'Dogma' his all star (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, Alan Rickman, Linda Fiorentino) cast film took a pop at the Catholic church that caused a mini storm in America and hit the movie with Christians demonstrating against it. It annoyed the Catholic League (due to a reference about the Virgin Mary having post-Jesus sex with Joseph) and Smith received over ten thousand pieces of protest/hate mail and three death threats.

After the controversy surrounding Dogma, Smith said he wanted to make a movie that couldn't be attacked for its content, well he did that three times (none of which have been a touch on his best film 'Chasing Amy') with mixed results (remember the post-Gigli Bennifer movie 'Jersey Girl' – ouch).

Smith, who loves a smutty *** joke or ten, had to know when he started his new film that the title would cause a stink bomb size smell. After not great performances at the box office with 'Jersey Girl' or 'Clerks II' he is hoping the hullabaloo helps.

"If anything, the controversy might help us pick up a wider audience, simply by virtue of the fact that people have been talking about it so much"

What is so interesting is that despite the economic downturn so many people are refusing to take the advertising.

The film looks very funny and I don't expect that when its UK release rolls around that there will be any furore in the UK, but I could be wrong.

What do you think?

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Future of Social media - (3) BA does social media

Final bit from the Future of Social Media Conference, Chris Davies, digital marketing manager from BA, was good on the challenges that new media marketers can face internally and he did with the world's (sometime) favourite airline. Bit of an update also on its new social media site (MetroTwin.com).

He kicked off by talking about the BA Pam Ann viral, which was a big hit and a challenging project for BA.

I'd seen this and thought at the time it was a smart move. It is funny, a little edgy, and not the kind of thing you expect BA to do. Davies said he had a difficult time getting these through senior management who were clearly nervous about the implications for the brand.

You can see why, but it was a big hit. He says the first, second and third efforts were largely rejected and it was not until the fourth pass that this viral bit of content reached the web.



The results speak for themselves. It attracted millions of views and 5,000 referrals to the BA jobsite for cabin crew, which was one of the main goals of the viral along with showing the professionalism of its onboard staff.

He estimates it probably achieved £700k worth of media spend and it is still going. Davies also revealed that comedienne Pam Ann could be set to make a return in a new set of BA virals.

The next project he highlighted was BA's Caribbean Challenge, which the airline launched to educate consumers about its routes and to capture data. Nothing really inspiring here, an online game with entrants going through to a prize draw, but that said the seeding work that BA did here was what was most valuable.

The airline working with Agency.com seeded the game to blogs, communities and discussion forums and it is building those links that helps marketers succeed in social media.

Finally he gave a little news on its latest venture, which is truly social media: MetroTwin.com BA's new London and New York social networking site, which builds on all things NYLON. If you've not seen it take a look. There's lot to admire.

The idea is to partner with various sites, Beauty & The Dirt, Xfm, VisitLondon, Not for Tourists and Dandy & Witt among others, to bring the best of London to New Yorkers (and visa versa) in terms of food, drink, culture et cetera.

The idea is to offer the best and cut through the clutter. Time will tell. I think personally it is a smart idea. It was interesting to hear him talk about how BA weighed up the pros and cons of "should we launch our own social media site or partner with an existing one" before launching. In the end BA clearly voted to go it alone and create a new social media property because it was so strongly associated with the London/NT route (it’s the airlines bread and butter) and because it has a large database via its executive club.

The site has only been up for a month and so far has racked up 3,000 registered users in three weeks.

The site's USP is its twinning of venues/places in London and New York and allowing people to vote and rate them. For instance the Peculier Pub in New York (rated 48 by users on the site) is twinned in London with Ain't Nothin' But...(rated 61).

This brought him on to the potential perils of user generated content and the legal implications, which he said was another tough sell inside the organisation. It is amazing sometimes to hear the resistance that brands have to opening up and allowing the consumers in. Do they not now realise that if they don't let them in they will stand outside and make a bloody (social media) racket?

He was spot on though when he said that the key to UGC is an excellent moderation policy. He also reiterated his views on seeding. So repeat after me: seeding, seeding and more seeding.

I could be wrong, but I don't think he mentioned Twitter. First one of the day I think.

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Future of social media (2)

More bullets from today's Future of Social Media Conference. Got to say one thing though everyone is talking about Twitter.

All the speakers have brought Twitter up.

Martin Verdon-Roe, sales director TripAdvisor. He had one piece of very good advice that is worth repeating: participate.

If people take away nothing else from the conference that's the word that is well worth walking away with as if you don't experiment with social media you are never really going to understand it.

Jia Shen RockYou

RockYou are an application developer that focuses on all the big social media sites, but he talks mostly about Facebook and applications they have developed.

To be honest not the greatest of presentations. He spoke very quickly and sped the audience through some apps they had developed (for the movie Sweeney Todd and Gap) stressing all the way that apps are as powerful as websites.

Some stats: 95% of Facebook users have apps installed and 65% use them on a monthly basis.

Fair enough, but their business is something that thrives in part on what someone else has created and the longevity of many of these apps is questionable.

One of the most interesting things that he came out with was how the redesign of Facebook had hit app developers. App installs have fallen as have page views of apps by 10-15%. On the upside news feed notification is up.

Jane Copeland, search marketer from SEOmoz in the US

Good in someways to see someone quite junior. Bit of a jumbled presentation, but she had good knowledge. A couple of snipits:

1. Social media doesn't have to have links to be useful. That really is worth remembering. A good example is that if you have a piece of video that is going to get good traffic do put it on YouTube and elsewhere and allow people to take it and put it on blogs et cet. You might not get links, but you will get people talking about you and thus score on the word of mouth front. Useful tip.

She cited the COI bike safety campaign – dothetest.co.uk, it got huge traffic and was very good. It's the one where you have to count the number of passes that basketball players make, but you don't notice the dancing bear. Cool.



2. Stumbleupon. I rarely use this, but she says SEOmoz have had great success with it. Now I feel I should be checkinng this out more.

Like everyone else today she talked Twitter. Reminded people that Twitter search is very useful for buzz monitoring among other tools.

Read my third and final post on British Airways and its use of social media.

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Updated: Future of Social Media Conference - (parts 1, 2, 3)

Rohit  Bhargava – senior vp, marketing at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence is the first main speaker today, great speaker and some very good advice for marketers who want to understand social media.

He kicks off his presentation by talking about "Why today is different from yesterday".

Picture of a baby. That's yesterday as feeding the baby is like the old scatter gun approach to marketing. You know, it's a bit of TV, press and radio and you hope that some of it might hit home. Just like the food most of which of course ends up around the baby's mouth.

Today Word of Mouth has arrived and there are ways of focusing on that Rohit says that simply did not exist before: you want people to buy your stuff and tell other people about you. Everyone says they know that but clearly that isn't the case.

His Eight Counterintuitive new truths of marketing.

1. Virtual trust trumps all. He points to the rise of eBay and how we are now more likely to trust the opinions of 20 strangers than anyone else. We look at product stars online, like ebay and "think okay four stars and ten reviews probably worth buying".

2. Spokes people are accidental

Great point, obvious and really quite true: brands can not choose their advocates.

He cites a Playboy model, Kendra Wilkinson, who started a ground swell about an American Italian restaurant called the Olive Garden. She would speak about tell people about why the food was so good, but the brand didn't thinks she was the "right kind of people" they wanted talking about their brand. It tired to stop her. Dong. Wrong move. It became a negative media story and Playboy shot back by doing a spread of the restaurant's staff.

He says the right move here is to embrace it as it is much easier to say something negative and create a ground swell of social media.

The question is he says are you doing enough to find your advocates out there? Picking one person (like a celeb spokes person is old)

3. People don't ignore marketing

His point is they ignore bad marketing. That viral you created didn't get any attention not because it was marketing, but because it was bad. You can be open about your marketing - just do it right.

Recent Diesel viral is a great example and people certainly did not ignore that.

4. Transparency doesn't matter

What matters he says is "authenticity". He cites James Dyson as a true authentic. Dyson is an inventor who has a track record and whose company has tips and hints to help other inventors. The brand lives and breathes authenticity.

5. Engagement is replacing impressions.

This is why we love unique users rather than impressions.

He talks about Nintendo Wii parties and how the games company has picked up on these and embraced them by creating Wii party packs and is actively helping them engage with the brand.

He has an interesting statistic here. While many of us have previously thought that the longer people spend on your website the better, he says this is not always true.

Cites some internal research that says 40 seconds on your homepage is about what you want to be seeing.

In that time they have looked and found what they wanted and gone off to get it. More than that then your navigation sucks. Less than that then they didn't find what they wanted and moved on.

6. Marketing is customer service

Brings up a really good Twitter example here. He talks about US cable firm Comcast and its Twitter use via Comcastcares.

He says this shows/demonstrates to people that the firm does care as it is listening and responding to their problems and that is what people want.

Says social media at its core is all about listening and responding: look at their YouTube videos and Flickr pics that rant about your brand and respond (underlines the need to buzz monitor),

7. Failure is an opportunity

Contrary to popular business belief he says. Cites good example of Digg and what it does when it occasionally goes down. It doesn't have a 404 not found page it has a message from all its developers with recommendations of websites they like. That is kind of cool (I think, love Digg).

8. Circular media is the future

Everyone is in media these days – well more of less. This is user generated content (although he didn't use that term – too 2007?).

This phenomenon has rocketed as content creation has become so easy. Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter. Talks about natural disasters where the consumer are now "first on the scene" and not the media.

He says part of what marketers need to do here is capture those opinions and use them. Do people post good YouTube about your brand? Cool, lucky you – embrace it.

My second post - read it here.

My Third and final post on BA's social media efforts is here

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Tottenham Hotspur the Daily Express of the Premiership

Martin Samuel in The Times today on Tottenham Hotspur and why the club is like the Daily Express. Made me laugh, well they are both total crap.

Samuel says that anyone who has ever worked at the Daily Express would know why Spurs are in the proverbial latrine. His reasons are pretty straight forward and make perfect sense – it's the endless change, upheaval and inconsistency where no idea is given the time to work (or fail) and where muddled thinking rules.

The same applies to the Daily Express where such high concepts help produce a paper that is so shockingly bad that I can not believe people part with their cash for it unless the readers are all involved in some secret mass experiment judging the affects of long term exposure to doom about house prices, foreigners and the bloody weather. Where would it be without the weather.

Spurs are the same, and while it would be great to see Harry Redknapp succeed at White Hart Lane I not so secretly hope he fails. Miserably. They deserve to be a Championship side. If the Spurs brand should be anywhere that's where it should be. I mean where else would you expect to find a club that calls a grotty part of North London its home. They should knock it down and move out of London. Most of the fans live in Hertfordshire anyway.

It isn't just traits of inconsistency that the two share. Samuel points to the bizarre approach the two have to staffing levels. The Express has of course shed staff by the bucket load (who needs journalists? pah), which is an approach that Daniel Levy at Spurs has also taken (who needs strikers? pah).

The Express has it little chance of regaining past glories. It needs a radical rethink and relaunch, but that will never happen? Not while as Samuel says it is owned by a former porn baron. Where would it go anyway? What would you do with it?

Spurs have at least grasped the nettle and might yet be saved from their true home. Stranger things have happened.

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Blogo wars: King Kong versus Godzilla

Piece in the New York Times looking at Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown's competing blog/web ventures, which compares the two women to King Kong and Godzilla of the blogosphere. Compliment? I guess.

Few snippets worth repeating: it values the three and a half year old Huffington Post or the HuffPo as it gets called at $200m. That is might impressive easily making one of the most successful and long running blogs out there. With 4.5m uniques a month there is no doubting its huge pulling power.

It's far too early to say if Brown's new arrival, The Daily Beast, which is backed by Barry Diller's IAC will go the distance, but it looks like it will. The Times says that Brown has spent millions on the set up of the site, which is nice when you have a rich media tycoon willing to invest in you.

The paper mentions a figure of $18m, which is denied by Brown, but clearly the millions is in the right ball park. Whereas the Huffington Post has been run on more of a shoestring (but still attracted $11m in funding over the last three years). Amusingly on the About Us page there's this from Brown :

You burned through millions at Talk. Are you going to bankrupt Diller? Even I don't know how to spend money that fast.

With a team of 20 is the Beast really a blog? Well the commenters seem to think so with one posting: "Best wishes to The Beast. I loathe the Huffington Post and Arianna Huffington. Please, Tina, give the Huffer a run for their money and their lives! This is sure to be a heady, fun daily blog. I look forward to reading the articles."

Then Brown describes The Daily Beast as a site that doesn't aggregate, but sifts, sorts, and curates, but when saying why you should visit the site she mentions Slate/Drudge/Huffington Post.

"We're hoping that if you like the sensibility The Daily Beast brings to choosing news and opinion then you'll trust us to be the lens you view it through," Brown says.

The piece also picks up on the differing strategies the two women and friends are taking to their web publishing businesses.

While the TDB has a staff of 20, the Huffington Post is far more blog like in that it has many unpaid contributors and only the handful of editors get paid.

The NY Times has one as "aristocratic" and "populist". The Huffington Post is definitely a much more noisy place compared to the "genteel and cultivated Daily Beast", which nods to Browns past at the New Yorker.

"The crucial distinction is that Tina Brown is holding on to this idea that a particular filter matters more than another filter," said Michael Hirschorn, a former top executive at VH1 who is now a partner in Ish Entertainment, a production company, and a media columnist at The Atlantic. As for Ms. Huffington, he said: "The key thing she did was come up with an alternative to Drudge."

"They are both extraordinary forces of nature," said the author Kurt Andersen, who knows both women. "Probably this world has room for King Kong and Godzilla."

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Why blogging isn't dead (2) - ask Jennifer Aniston

Following yesterday's post about blogging being dead, I've got absolute confirmation that it is alive and kicking. Okay well kind of, but Jennifer Aniston is definitely concerned about it

Jennifer Aniston has recognised the importance of blogging in relation to the future health of her love life.

I know it sounds unlikely, but it is being reported on Ok!'s website today that Jennifer Aniston has laid down the law to on-off-on rockstar boyfriend John Mayer and that law definitely includes the tenet that he keep his mouth shut about their relationship and "stop blogging about your personal life!".

“Jen is fanatical about keeping her relationships private,” an insider told OK!, adding that the former Friends star was “horrified" when John spoke publicly to OK! on a New York City street about their August breakup.

Mayber loves to talk and he loves to blog and if you  are blogging about Aniston then you are going to get some pubicity. The insider goes on to tell OK!: “She told him she wanted to get back together, too, but no more street-corner press conferences and blogging about her”.

 
People might not like it, but celebrities and blogging and big business online. And what's wrong with that?

Oh just thought - does John Mayer Twitter? That could cause all kinds of problems.

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Why blogging is far from dead

You had better stop reading this as blogging is dead. Seriously, I just read it. Some wag at Wired says there is too much social media, and blogging is, like, so 2004. What rubbish.

According to Paul Boutin, who writes for Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag, writing a blog today isn't the bright idea it was four years ago as the blogosphere, "once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge".

Tsunami of paid-for bilge? It was worth reading the piece for that alone. I laughed out loud, as this rant was clearly marked "paid bilge" as someone hit the publish button. 

He goes on to say that "cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths" and it is almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers.

His line is why bother? – you are better off expressing yourself on Facebook, Flickr or Twitter.

His argument seems to be those folksy blogs where people wrote about their humdrum day to day lives or, ahem, subjects such as politics or dating have been replaced by impersonal professional sites.

You mean like Valleyway? The site he writes for that is part of Nick Denton's media blog empire Gawker. Do you think he is talking at all about himself when he writes about "cut-rate journalists"? I'm emailing him right now. I'm just going to say this: does the phrase "pot kettle, kettle black" mean nothing to you? Try it out and take it for a spin. I think you might like it.

Swipes aside, on one level he has a point. The world is full of professional blogs in 2008 and marketers have entered the fray. The medium has grown and matured. New players and types of blog have entered the market. In places it has got professional, there are powerful blogs out there like the Huffington Post, and that is to be applauded for what it has brought us.

Newspapers like the Guardian have also thrived with sites like Comment is Free. All good news I say. Who wants to see the blogging wither and die? Not me for one. I enjoy this too much.

A lot of those early bloggers got bored and moved on as the novelty of writing an online came and went. My first blog ran for a few years and virtually all of the links that I had on my blogroll have died, but not all.

Yes social media, micro blogging and multi media sites are all the rage, but there is a place for all here. I use Facebook, Twitter and have flirted with a bunch of other social media sites but not, errr, committed. Blogging offered, and still does, a space to put down a sentence and a link or 500 words. Whatever caught your fancy that day. He complains in the piece that text-based sites aren't where the buzz is anymore, which is true but the buzz moves on and what it leaves behind is the substance.

For B2B sites like Brand Republic, blogging is very important. We've built up, and continue to do so, a network of bloggers with a variety of things to say. Some might post a picture, a piece of video or like me they might type for a good while before stopping.

Blogging is alive and kicking. Okay, I need to let me fellow Twitters know what I've been doing in the long form.


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Twitter whore

I love Twitter but not as much as the helium pitched Lisa Nova who has produced these Twitter Whore videos, which have become some of the most watched content on YouTube You mean you don't want to know what I've had for breakfast? Thought not. Take a look.

Nova, of course isn't real, she's the alter ego of an American actress and writer called Lisa Donovan. According to her Wikipedia entry she was a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder before moving to LA to become an actress. Looks like she is taking the viral route to fame. Since her first video in 2006 she has parodied a bunch of celebrities including Keira Knightley, Sarah Palin and Lindsay Lohan.

And without irony, I say: Follow me on Twitter

Tweet me baby, one more time

Are you Twittering yet? The social media micro blogging service is reaching new heights and now comeback queen Britney Spears has joined Twitter as well.

That's right you can follow Britney. What more encouragement or incentive do you need to join the Twitter bandwagon? That's right its a case of Tweet me baby one more time...okay maybe not. According to a report on Techcrunch, Britney (okay so its more team Britney) have launched a Twitter account and a blog site as her latest track 'Womanizer' goes to no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. She's definitely back as our Jack Wallington on Brand Republic's IAB blog raves today:

"Britney has been in the headlines every week for the past year for negative reasons and her 'come back' song, Womanizer, has been one of the biggest events in music for the past 12 months. Websites like PopJustice, PerezHilton, YouTube and the newsletter PopBitch had a combined audience of millions hanging on the edge of their seats waiting to see Britney wowing the pants off them."

On Twitter we're promised in the early updates the chance to go where "no paparazzi lens ever could with pics, vids and news from Britney herself and the latest Twitter is a shout out direct to the snappers: "Hey paparazzi... Rolling Stone cover rumors? Too bad you weren't inside the shoot. Brit had a great time and was dancing around the set".

Techcrunch is spot on when it says "this is solid gold for Twitter". It really is, it is another sign that Twitter is going mainstream. With Obama already on board and now Britney Twitter will certainly go from strength to strength.

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Obama is marketer of the year

The Barack Obama campaign is an unprecedented advertising and marketing machine that is now running four times as many ads as John McCain. It has also been the most diverse and smart marketing campaign we've ever seen in politics, or elsewhere for that matter, and no surprise that he has been named marketer of the year for 2008 by a US magazine.

He is days away from breaking the $188m advertising spending record set by President George W. Bush in his re-election campaign in 2004 and unless something truly extraordinary happens (he converts is Islam or actually befriends a "real terrorist") he will be the next president of the United States.

The huge gap, of course, comes from Obama's decision to opt out of the federal campaign finance system, which while it gives candidates a dollar for every dollar they raise it limits this to $84m. McCain stayed in the system and is just looking out at his cash pile looks puny in comparison to Obama's.

"What Obama is doing is being his own good cop and bad cop," said Evan Tracey, the chief operating officer of CMAG, who has described the ad war "a blowout" in Obama's favour. The implication being he is playing both candidates in some markets as McCain in a marketing sense is not present.

His advertising fund has also proved vital to US networks, and other media outlets, where it has proved a massive fillip in this downturn as other avenues of revenue dry up. Whether it has been TV, radio, the internet, social networking or online gaming, the Obama campaign has been there, which is why he rightly won the Advertising Age plaudit.



He is like the Apple of politics (no surprise that Apple came second). It's all a little bit cooler, more interesting, than your average campaign. Whether it turns out to have any more substance is another issue entirely.

Obama won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads and marketing-services folks at the Association of National Advertisers' annual conference beating, Apple, Nike, Coors and John McCain.

Poor old John McCain, I read some comment the other week when we wrote about Obama advertising in Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360 Live that the Republican probably didn't know what the internet was, which was maybe why he lost his battle with YouTube. That's clearly harsh, but Obama's campaign has embraced the online world like no other campaign. Clearly it has been a massive bonus that his presidential run has coincided with the burgeoning world of social media and that he has youth on his side.

It all helped him come from nowhere to surpass the front runners to become a household name around the world. I imagine as a case study there is a lot in there for everyone to learn from. From the tools he has created allowing people to connect with him and feel apart of brand Obama turning him into a tidal wave of a political force.

Connecting with consumers is what all brands want to achieve and this is something that the Obama campaign team has made that very easy to do, from MySpace, to Faceboo, blogging, YouTube and widgets. It has all been about community.

Ad Age quoted Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, who sums it up "It's the fuckin' Web 2.0 thing," he said.

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Mark Damazer celebrity Sox fan

Full page ad in the Financial Times today plugging a piece in tomorrow's paper about BBC Radio 4 controller, Mark Damazer, and his love for Baseball, the Boston Red Sox and the World Series.

You don't get nearly enough baseball in the UK press so nice to stumble across a full page picture of Sox starting pitcher Justin Masterson in action.

No surprise that the R4 boss is a fan of the Red Sox they attract all kinds of celebrity fans. It's like supporting Arsenal or Manchester United.

Although to be fair Damazer went to Harvard after Cambridge so lived in Boston and watches the Red Sox online for $80 a season and after watching Bruce Springsteen at the Emirates Stadium earlier this year he hurried home to watch Manny Ramirez attempt to hit his 500th home run, but fell asleep at 2.15am. Really Mark you should be subscribing to NASN on Sky and you could Sky+ it, which avoids keyboard sleep related dribble.

Still Ramirez has now gone and the Red Sox are in still hanging in there as they battle against this year's big surprise, the Tampa Bay Rays, to win the American League Championship Series.

Being something of a New Yankees fan and seeing them crash and burn after a string of injury problems I was really hoping that the LA Dodgers would make (under former Yankees manager Joe Torre), but they went out as well after some disappointing play.

I'm hoping the Red Sox lose, they won it last year after all (two years running would be greedy), and it would be kind of cool to see a team come from absolutely nowhere this season as the Rays have done and go all the way to the World Series. We already know they will face the Philadelphia Phillies who made it after taking down the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series without too much difficulty.

The Rays just need to hang in their and could do without anymore games like last night where they allowed the resilient Red Sox back into the game and to win  8-7, in Game 5 forcing a game six.

If you don't watch it online like Damazer or subscribe to NASN, Five have it all on their excellent Five Baseball show presented Jonny Gould whose passion for the game always makes it watching.

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The disgrace of the Daily Star

The Daily Star is a poor excuse for a newspaper, maybe even proprietor Richard Desmond is thinking this today as his papers pay out again (to the tapas seven), but he should be ashamed as should the editor of the front page of today's paper with its headline "BBC put Muslims before you!".

Accompanied by a picture of Muslim woman giving two fingers it panders to racism.

The front page refers to a decision by BBC director-general Mark Thompson who has apparently announced a ban on Muslim jokes because they are more sensitive than Christians.

It sounds a ridiculous sweeping decision, which is if true is quite wrong. All groups should be open to having jokes made about them. That's all part of a healthy democracy as is a free press, which comes with an inherent responsibility that the Daily Star sorely lacks.

No surprise is that this year the paper (along with sister title the Daily Express) has paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds to Kate and Gerry McCann and now today their friends the tapas seven.

It tops that, with today's apology, by insulting a whole group of the British population. Nice work.

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How can newspapers make money on the web?

Ex-Washington post digital chief, Caroline Little, has been talking in Amsterdam having a stab at answering the question about how newspapers can make money online. It is a tough question with no easy answers, but her advice is quite right when she says the winners are going to be those people trying new stuff.

Speaking at the World Digital Publishing Conference in Amsterdam, Little, who advises The Guardian in the US, started by saying that despite impressive gains in audience and advertisers, newspaper websites do not produce revenue comparable to that of print newspapers despite their enviable reach.

Sad truth all those quite excellent websites, with video, and community do not pull in the cash. It makes an unhappy coupling as in this climate print circulations are shrinking and investment rising in digital – but without the rewards.

Little, who spoke at the AOP 2007 conference, cited the New York Times and The Washington Post, which  are at the top of the heap in terms of their percentage of online revenue as part of overall revenue but it is still not enough and there is no ready-made solution.

That said Little has tips that are worth remembering and apply not only to newspapers, but to any online publishing business and chief among those is that while news websites share the same journalistic values as the newspapers the web is a different medium with different rules and that means trying new things. Here she adds a great piece of advice – not everything will work so do not be afraid to fail because as she puts it "fear of failure can be debilitating".

Little's four areas digital growth:

Multimedia storytelling

For a newspaper, storytelling options have long been limited to text, photography and graphics. The rise of the Web has added a number of new tools to this equation: video, audio, photo galleries, panoramic photos, blogs, etc. Now, we can approach a story with a different mindset, one that says, "what's the best way to tell this story?"

Database journalism

One often hears about the web's endless news hole. The endless news hole, of course, is largely a myth. You can only publish as much good journalism as you can produce, and that takes skilled reporters and editors. And most papers have fewer reporters and editors than it did a few years ago. But what that endless storage space is perfect for is databases that can useful to your readers. Washingtonpost.com has been very active in this area. For example, congressional voting database going back to 1991 and a searchable list of U.S. war dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reader engagement.

Here are a few things you need to know about your readers: some of them act like jerks, many of them won¹t like the journalism you produce, and the angrier ones tend to be more active. But the upside is huge. When given a chance to participate in the conversation, readers come back. A lot.

Distribution (as key as content)

In this new world of media fragmentation, media companies cannot control the format in which readers consume our journalism. That's scary, but also a huge opportunity. We now have the chance to get our journalism in front of readers while they're driving via audio podcast or radio, while they¹re watching their televisions via set-top boxes or video podcasts, or while they¹re standing on a street corner looking for a restaurant via cell phone or iPod. And we can push journalism to them via RSS, email newsletters and widgets.

Stop thinking outside the box

I'm only saying this as if you didn't already know it "thinking outside the box" is officially the most annoying buzzword and marketing departments are the number one buzzword offenders.

Research from MWB Business Exchange shows that not only is it the most annoying of buzzwords, which are annoying generally, by sales and marketing departments are ranked as the worst offenders when it comes to using such phrases.

According to the survey 72% of Britons believe that using business buzz words hinders productivity in the office. I'm not sure how they worked that out. I need to brain storm that one and get back to you.

I used to avoid all buzz words like the plague, but I find them slipping seamlessly into my everyday language like a virus. At a meeting this morning I said something like "granular level". Just punch me (metaphorically) It doesn't mean anything, but it popped out. In my defence, people in suits who use buzz words seem to bring it out in me. I also suffer from saying things like ballpark a lot although to be fair I do play a lot of softball, so am, you know, always trying to (unsuccessfully) "knock it out of the park".

Although I did get cited online for using some buzz word years ago ( for using batmobiling) in a column, but that was less of a business buzz word and more of a piece of geekery. The web has certainly exacerbated the problem with a whole sub genre devoted to things online with eyeballs and bricks and clicks.

I'm not the only one the survey says that more than half of all Briton's admit to using business jargon every other day.

One in five rate "thinking outside the box" as the most annoying phrase they hear in the office, while "blue sky thinking" is the most irritating.

It seems to be getting worse. As people look around in these dire financial times for something to say (we need to find some ROI and get back on that path to profitability stat before we all get downsized) and realise they have nothing much to offer they fall back on jargon.

Senior managers are the worst offenders. Only 38% of under 24 year olds use buzz words compared to a whopping 63% of those aged over 55. This no doubt means the problem will get worse as it filters down to the people who report to those senior managers as it is internal meetings where the problem is at its height. I think we're seeing a "snowballing affect".

The study recommends senior managers start banning certain buzz words from meetings to try to reverse the trend.

If you work in a large company then you are even more likely to be afflicted. These are the worst offenders with 98% of employees admitting to using jargon every day, compared to only 25% at smaller businesses.

When asked who are the worst at overusing business jargon within organisations , sales and marketing staff take the dubious honour, with over a third of agreeing.

Interestingly, women are more likely to use business jargon than men, with only a quarter of men admitting to using it compared to over a third of women.

Do you use many buzzwords and what are the worst offenders? I'm racking my brains these are I think the worst offenders (and the worst generally).

Run that up the flagpole,
Brainstorm,
Pushing the envelope
Let's do lunch,
Leverage
Synergy
Paradigm shift
Empowerment
Enterprise
Leverage
Long Tail/Long form
ROI
Proactive (we need to be)
Synergy
Web 2.0

I need to go off and check that I'm buzzword compliant, you can never be too careful.

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