We hear so much in our culture today about how you have to work hard to be successful. Which is true. However, what usually goes unsaid is the implication that you must succeed at all costs. The end justifies the means. If you need to step on people to get ahead, then that’s just part of the game.

Conan is the first person in the spotlight I have heard in a long time defy that idea. Not only should you work hard, but you also need to treat people with dignity and respect. It sounds simple, but so many people in positions of power don’t hold this belief.

The means matter. How we live and how we treat people matters. Our fortunes will vary and we all will go through good times and tough times. The important thing is to stay true to our beliefs no matter what and to continually treat others with the dignity and respect they deserve.

I am extremely excited about embarking on this adventure. Blueliner is a great agency made up of a lot of smart and interesting people and I know we will do big things in the coming months and years. I’m also really looking forward to living and working in New York. Having spent a good amount of time there in the past year, I know that it is going to be a really amazing life experience.

As I’m sure anyone reading this knows, my girlfriend Lauren and I have been dating long-distance for the past year and a half. We have done amazingly well dealing with long Megabus rides, weeks of not seeing each other, and all of the issues that go along with a long-distance relationship. With that said, I cannot wait to actually live in the same city as her.

But with the excitement and anticipation of a new experience undoubtedly comes the downside of leaving the people and places that you know so well. My family and lifelong friends live in Baltimore and I know it’s going to be hard, at times, not being able to drive over to their houses or grab dinner together on a weeknight. Baltimore has always been my home and a city that I love. There is something about Baltimore that cannot be replicated in any other city.

I am also truly going to miss all of the people at Media Works and our amazing clients. I have gained an incredible amount of knowledge over the past 3 years and have developed some really great relationships that I am sure will continue through the years. I owe a special thank you to Jody Berg for giving me the opportunity to be a part of Media Works and for much guidance and support during my time there.

The more I think and talk about the move, though, the more excited I get. Thanks to all of my friends, family, and maybe some strangers who read this blog. I hope you will keep reading and stick with me throughout this next stage of my life. And next time you’re in New York, give me a call.

So, here’s to new challenges and experiences. Stay tuned.

Today I placed my second order with Dogfunk.com. I had already received free 7-14 day shipping , but when I received the confirmation email I noticed the line,

“We know this isn’t your first time. By now you’re practically family, so we bumped your order to the front of the line. Your order will ship free UPS Ground. Most items ship within 24 hours.”

Wow. Talk about an amazing way to engender customer loyalty and surprise your frequent customers with great service.

Well done, Dogfunk.

What is premium content anyway?

Let’s look at an offline example first.

This past Saturday during the blizzard, I watched nearly all of season 3 of The Wire. This is some of the most inspired, well-written, intelligent television ever created. The Wire is premium content at it’s finest. What The Wire was not, however, was quick, easy, or cheap to produce. Additionally, while the show has developed a sizable cult following in recent years, it was not instantly popular or loved by a mass audience. In the same way that The Wire was not easy or quick to produce, it also wasn’t always easy to watch or digest for some people. Watching this show took a desire to pay attention and a certain commitment to be emotionally involved in each episode for a full 60 minutes. It also required a subscription to a premium TV channel.

On the other end of the television content spectrum, are countless garbage shows that millions of people watch every week. But why? Why do we watch these shows? Just like they are cheap and easy to produce and have mass appeal, these shows offer a simple, cheap viewing experience. We don’t become invested in the characters and when the show ends we don’t care what happens to these people. Cheap television gives us a quick laugh, an escape from real life and doesn’t ask anything more from us.

So what does any of this have to do with the web? Well, just like HBO struggled to keep The Wire on air as long as it did, content producers on the web are struggling to monetize their work and keep their sites alive and profitable. Right now there is a chasm developing between sites like WSJ and Reuters who want to charge for premium content and producers like AOL and Demand Media who are focused on churning out cheap content, ad nauseum. And somewhere in the middle are news sites, entertainment sites, and bloggers who are trying to eek out a living based on the ever-eroding CPM.

What do the people want?

As I often tell clients, you can learn a lot about what people are interested in online by their search patterns.

Google Zeitgeist also offers some very interesting insights into the fastest rising and fastest falling searches of the year. Most of the keywords people were searching in 2009 were related to entertainment and gossip, not things that usually lend themselves to premium content.

Does this mean people don’t want premium content online?

No, I don’t believe that is the case. As with any form of media, the mass audience will always gravitate towards simple, cheap, fleeting entertainment. In 2010 and the years to come, however, I believe there will be more niche audiences that will embrace premium content on the web. This won’t just happen on subscription sites like WSJ, but will happen anywhere that great content exists.

Premium content has a future on the web, but it lies in direct opposition to junk content. As more niche sites continue to deliver amazing content, they will win new audiences that have grown tired of the cheap grasping at pageviews by the previous purveyors of premium content.

If you are producing great content, keep doing it. Don’t take the easy, cheap way out. Premium content will be rewarded even if it isn’t beloved by the masses.

My favorite albums of 2009:

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

Wye Oak - The Knot

Husband & Wife - Dark Dark Woods

Built to Spill - There is No Enemy

Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything To Nothing

Dan Deacon - Bromst

M. Ward - Hold Time

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

So, there you have it. My favorite albums of 2009. Agree with some? Disagree with others? Leave a comment and let me know what albums I missed.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is that Google real-time search will differ from Twitter’s own search in that it will apply Google’s technology to deliver relevant results. This is key. It’s not just about delivering the latest updates, but about delivering the most relevant results to users. Google’s success has always and will always hinge on delivering the most relevant information possible.

I want to spend some time using real-time search before offering my full thoughts on it. In the meantime, Wired gives more details and insights on real-time search as well as some of the other products Google has announced recently. You can also read Google’s official statements about the need for real-time search coupled with Google technology.

Google’s example of how Real-Time Search functions:

So, in that vain, I want to add to what I do here. The main focus of ChrisWalbert.com will always be for this to be a place to explore ideas and get feedback from others who are interested in the same things. Sometimes, however, another writer has already covered a topic in great detail and this blog will simply be used to share those posts.

Whether it is a post written by me or a link to another post, my goal will still be to provide content that is interesting today, but could also be interesting six months later.

Don’t worry. I will not be posting any Tiger Woods stories.

Here’s an example of the type of content I hope to share.

I heard something this past weekend that really made me stop and think. It was something to the effect of, Are we spending more time complaining about the things we don’t have and what’s not going as planned, or being grateful and thankful for all of the blessings we do have?

If you really think about it, are you actively being thankful for things throughout the day or spending your time and energy complaining? Obviously there are times when it’s hard to feel thankful and times when you need to address the things that are not going well. But for most of us, most of the time, life is pretty good.

There are so many things to be thankful for, but as of late I have been thinking about one thing more than the rest. I am surrounded by amazing and supportive people. My family, friends, and girlfriend have been there for me so many times in so many ways and I am eternally grateful to them. I only hope that they receive the same type of support from me. To all of you, thank you.

My challenge to all of us this week is to intentionally spend some time being thankful. Especially when things aren’t going well, step back and think of something that you’re thankful for. It really does help put things back in perspective. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you enjoy it as much as I will.

Testimonial Advertisers:
From the FTC , “Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.”

This change will have a significant and immediate impact on diet/exercise/weight loss advertisers. Where as before they could include the simple disclaimer of “results not typical”, they now have to tell you the average results that you can expect.

The headline will go from, “Becky lost 40 pounds in 2 months!” (Results not typical); to “Becky lost 40 pounds in 2 months!” (You can expect to lose 5-10 pounds in 2 months based on average user results). As you can see, this is a change that could have a serious impact on businesses in this industry.

Bloggers:
From the FTC, “Material connections (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other ‘word-of-mouth’ marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.”

Reputable bloggers have been self-regulating and employing this form of disclosure for some time. These guidelines, however, firmly reinforce the necessity for full disclosure and now associate a penalty of up to $11,000 if a blogger fails to comply. It is hard to say exactly what affect this will have on bloggers and the marketers employing word-of-mouth strategies. I am sure the FTC will seek out a well-known blogger who is out of compliance and make an example out of them. Beyond that, due to the sheer number of bloggers, this seems like a piece of the guidelines that could be difficult to enforce.

Celebrity Endorsements:
From the FTC, “Celebrity endorsers also are addressed in the revised Guides. While the 1980 Guides did not explicitly state that endorsers as well as advertisers could be liable under the FTC Act for statements they make in an endorsement, the revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement – or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.”

The biggest points made regarding celebrity endorsements are that celebrities can also be held liable if claims made about them and a product are false and that these rules do not pertain just to traditional ads but to any mention of the celebrity and product, no matter where it happens. These rules are pretty straight forward when it comes to traditional ads. Companies can easily include a disclaimer stating that the celebrity is a paid endorser. Where it gets complicated is when these celebrity endorsements or product uses happen in the real world. Choire Sicha had a really interesting quote in his New York Times Op-Ed piece about this. He says,

“Unfortunately, whole careers, both online and off, are built upon stealth endorsement. Consider the very successful career of a celebrity dresser, whose business is obtaining free clothing — which quite often displays a large designer logo — and placing it on and around famous people for the purpose of red-carpet photography. What is that if not a complex, triaged endorsement relationship? Indeed, these disclosure rules will go into effect just as Hollywood’s award-show attendees will begin planning outfits — what will the F.T.C. do? Come the Golden Globes, will our nation’s most important celebrities be forced to wear disclaiming signage?”

It will be very interesting to see how these guideline changes affect each of the above groups as well as marketers. The FTC will have their hands full and a tough time monitoring all of this activity. My favorite quote from the Sicha piece is when he compares the FTC in this situation to “a Pomeranian racing for a bullet train”. It remains to be seen if this Pomeranian will be able to catch up.

Full disclosure: I did not receive any compensation or in-kind payment from the FTC for writing this post. Don’t fine me.

If you want to vote for me, you can do so here. You can vote once a day until the contest ends.

I wrote a post a little more than a year ago about what newspapers, and The Sun more specifically, should be doing to build their web businesses. One of my main points was that The Sun needed to continue focusing on producing excellent content, while reaching out to new readers using social media. The Mobbies is just one example of how The Sun is working to engage people and get them excited about their product, again.

The newspaper industry is still having an extremely tough time and, of course, one blogger contest will not change that. What I think has changed, however, is The Sun’s desire to build a community of local citizens that are actively involved in writing about Baltimore. Hats off to The Baltimore Sun for trying something new and getting us involved.