Three Minute Happiness

James Cooper

I had two thoughts - yes just the two - today about the state of the industry. One shows how far behind the states we are, the other how quickly things are getting out of control.

First up, I just read a post from Seth Godin whilst having my lunch. He talks about his new book 'Meatball Sundae'. Here's a clip:

"What’s a meatball sundae?

Maybe this is familiar. It is to me, anyway:

You go to a marketing meeting. There’s a presentation from the new Internet marketing guy. He’s brought a fancy (and expensive) blogging consultant with him. She starts talking about how blogs and the “Web 2.0 social media infrastructure” are just waiting for your company to dive in. “Try this stuff,” she seems to be saying, “and the rest of your competitive/structural/profit issues will disappear.” "

Of course he's right, no amount of fancy marketing will flog your products if your products or organisation stinks but what really caught my eye was the assumption that the client would bring a blogging consultant. And that that was such a cliche that it was worth making a point about. I don't know a single UK client that has a 'blogging consultant' - do you?

Will blogging catch on like it has in the US to such an extent that this will change or is just that clients are not going to change full stop? Let's see this time next year.

The other thing that got my attention this morning was that facebook is now worth £5bn. These figures always seem a little pointless becuase who really has any f**king clue what having £5bn is like, or even looks like?

Well, consider this. Arsenal Football club yesterday anounced their annual profits. We (for I am a gooner) are now the richest club in England due to some very shrewd financial planning and savvy transfer dealings. We are worth £1bn. Now Arsenal has been around for nearly 100 years, we have consisently been at the top of the UK game, have had a fair amount of superstars, in Thierry Henry had one of the games most bankable players (and have the next global star in Fabregas). We have tremendous assets, loads of smart people on the board, investors and great sponsorship deals. We are a big deal. We are internationally famous. And Facebook is worth five of us.

That's five Emirates stadiums, five Nike shirt deals, five Arsene Wengers...etc etc. This is a company that, admit it, most of you had not heard of even a year ago.

That, my friends, is mental. But just goes to show you why people get so excited by this whole internet thingy.