This just makes me laugh every time I see it.

“Yeah, I’m flying into SUX today, I’ll be home about five…”

Nothing like taking a less-than-stellar situation and turning it into a positive, right? Until I read this, I didn’t know Sioux City, Iowa even *had* and airport. Now I’ll never forget.

In a letter to “Jericho” fans that opened simply with “Wow!,” the president of CBS Entertainment, Nina Tassler, praised the “impressive and probably unprecedented display of passion” evident in the effort to save the series. She added that the series could be extended further if fans help recruit more viewers. The letter is posted on the message board at CBS’s Jericho Web site.

The reversal and Ms. Tassler’s reaction were in response to a campaign that led to thousands of pounds of roasted nuts being delivered to CBS executives by viewers of the show. The nuts were a reference to the first-season finale, in which Jake Green, the character played by Skeet Ulrich, uses the somewhat outdated expression to refuse his enemy’s suggestion that he surrender.

I was actually motivated to pick up the first (and only) season of Firefly simply due to how hardcore the series fans were. I’ll probably do the same with Jericho, because if the fans are this insane the show must be doing something right. Never underestimate the power of the Internet to organize an angry mob, eh?

The company has turned to Pope Benedict XVI, beseeching him to bestow his Papal blessing for this innovative new menu item. Vatican officials confirmed they received KFC’s request, and the company is hopeful to get the Pope’s blessing this Lenten season.

I actually like this idea; It’s getting a lot of coverage, and all KFC had to do was ask the Vatican a question. If the Pope were to actually approve it, they’d have another big story on their hands. Simple, but brilliant.

The best part of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force “bomb” scare? All of the media outlets photoshopping out, blurring out or outright removing the Mooninite’s crude middle finger. Fortunately the Mooninite threat has been quelled, as arrests have been made.

These little LED objects were placed in ten cities around the United States. Why was Boston the only one to go on high alert?

UPDATE: The men responsible for planting the devices in Boston gave the most bizarre press conference I’ve ever seen. A must-see.

UPDATE 2: The Turner CEO apologizes.

My question is: Doesn’t the ethical burden fall upon bloggers to disclose they’ve received the machines for free and what they plan to do with them after the review? Unless I’m missing something, I fail to see how Microsoft and Edelman are in the wrong. Josh Morgan puts it very well:

This is a review program. Many, many hardware and software
companies send products for review trade, consumer and business
publications all the time. For something as big as an OS it’s
practically required because most reporters don’t want to install a new
one.

If people keep the laptops, then they have the ethical problem, not Edelman. Not Microsoft, and not Acer.

Transparency should be the name of the game, right? Robert Scoble gets it right when he says he would have "forced disclosure by those who get the laptops." That detail would have saved a lot of trouble.

While I have no idea who received a machine for review, it looks like plenty of recipients have disclosed their receipt of the machines or intend(ed) to at the time of review. A few even intend to auction the laptops for charity, which might be the way to go in this situation.

Ultimately I think Microsoft and Edelman (and anyone in PR, for that matter) can chalk this up to a learning opportunity. If companies seeking blogger reviews insist on full disclosure and more clearly state the terms of the review up front, ethical dilemmas such as this one can be avoided.

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our
speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn’t a real hip-hop
maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were
trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will
just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you
nothing but the facts on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment America

If the campaign had actually been, you know, "clever" (and transparent) to begin with, I doubt people would have called them out as hard as they did.

The Federal Trade Commission
yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in
which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must
disclose those relationships.

In a staff opinion issued
yesterday, the consumer protection agency weighed in for the first time
on the practice. Though no accurate figures exist on how much money
advertisers spend on such marketing, it is quickly becoming a preferred
method for reaching consumers who are skeptical of other forms of
advertising.

Word-of-mouth marketing can take any form of peer-to-peer
communication, such as a post on a Web blog, a MySpace.com page for a
movie character, or the comments of a stranger on a bus.

This would seem to have some ramifications for the aforementioned paid Diggers and pseudo-"fan" PSP Web site marketers.

    i (charlie) have a psp. my friend jeremy does not. but he wants one this year for xmas.

so we started clowning with sum not-so-subtle hints to j’s parents that
a psp would be teh perfect gift. we created this site to spread the luv
to those like j who want a psp!

consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a
holiday assault on ur parents, girl, granny, boss – whoever – so they
know what you really want.

    we’ll let you know how it works for us. pls return the favor.

    more to come,
    c&j.

Of course the site features plenty of PSP news and "viral" videos and advertisements promoting the device. It’s suspicious, yes, since the graphics on the site look like they were produced by top-notch designers and yet the writing smacks of faux-"teen speak" with "teh" and "pls" interspersed throughout the copy.

The smoking gun, however, came when it was discovered the site is registered to Zipatoni, a marketing company. (Hat tip: Kotaku) I’m not surprised that one of their services includes "Buzz Marketing," which they describe like so:

At Zipatoni, buzz marketing means getting into customers’ conversations. We know we can’t control the dialogue. But we tap into the right insight to deliver an idea that will get opinion leaders and even entire communities talking about it on their own. Just like that, we’ve converted the consumer into a passionate and credible message-bearer. Now that’s good news.

I’m not against good viral marketing – I’ve sung the praises of Burger
King’s efforts, for example, which were tremendously successful and
remained honest. Unfortunately, setting up a fake evangelist Web site and pretending to be consumers smells like Astroturf to me, and that’s BAD news.

"Bluetooth phone-toting passersby will
receive a message from the billboard on their phone’s screen that asks,
“Would you like to know more from CBS?” Pressing the corresponding
"Accept" button will begin the download of a 30-second video clip from
the billboard to the phone, where it can be viewed and then deleted or
saved. The download should take about 20 seconds. But the cellphone
must be within a radius of 30 to 35 feet away from the billboard and
must be set to “discoverable to all” mode, explains Patrick Nagle,
chief marketing officer of Kameleon Technologies, the Paris-based
company whose MobiZone FREE technology is powering the CBS billboards."

I’m not sure this is a step in the right direction. Having a series of strange billboards constantly spam my cellphone with requests to send large video clips doesn’t exactly sound like something I’m interested in.

On the other hand, I have taken part in marketing events that required me to send a text message to a designated number, and then receive information in turn. I wouldn’t mind the Bluetooth billboards so much if they allowed me to contact them. That way, if I were bored waiting for a train and saw an interesting billboard, I would have the option to receive more information on the advertised product. I just wish they would allow the users to initiate contact rather than the other way around.

I’d love to see footage of people trying to smash the glass, possibly compiled into a short clip, and broadcast as a commercial on 3M’s Web site or distributed virally.

(Via BoingBoing)

(EDIT: Fixed punctuation)