December 18, 2005
gapingvoid highlights 2005
I’m downsizing my workload for the next few weeks, as the Christmas thing starts kicking in. Looking back, the last 12 months have not been dull.
gapingvoid 2005 Highlights:
January 19th. “My friend Thomas Mahon, one of the most qualified English Bespoke Tailors on the planet (Top 20, anyway) has started a blog.“
February 8th. “Meaning Scales.“
As Buddha says, there is no one road to Nirvana. Enlightenment is a house with 6 billion doors. While we’re alive, we intend not to find THE DOOR, not A DOOR, but to find OUR OWN, UNIQUE DOOR.
And we’re willing to pay for the privelege. We’re willing to give up money and time and power and sex and status and certainty and comfort in order to find it.
And guess what? It’ll be a great door. It’ll add to this life. It’ll resonate. Not just with us, but with everybody it comes in contact with. The door will useful and productive. Alive and kicking. It’ll create wealth and laughter and joy. It’ll pull its own weight, it’ll give back to others. It’ll be centered on compassion, but will be intolerant of dullards, parasites and cynics.
It may be modest, it may not. It could be a little candle shop; it could be a software company with the GNP of Sweden. It could involve politics or working with the elderly. It could be starting a design studio or opening a bar with Cousin Mike. It could be a screenplay, oil paints, or discovering the violin. It doesn’t matter. Meaning Scales.
March 26th. Getting Dave Parmet on the English Cut team.
So after that we bounced a few e-mails back and forth, till this one time I just asked him out of the blue if he would fancy trying his hand at generating PR for English Cut.
He e-mailed me back, saying, hhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmm.… he was very tempted, as he had always had a thing for Savile Row suits, ever since he first saw Brian Ferry wearing them on the MTV videos of his yourh.
So I e-mailed him back, saying, “Funny you should say that. Thomas [the tailor behind English Cut] used to cut for Brian Ferry.”
April 23. In Paris for the Les Blogs 1.0 conference. Met Doc Searls in person for the first time, among many others.
May 3rd. The gapingvoid t-shirts are launched. May 9th. “The Porous Membrane: Why Corporate Blogging Works.” May 27th. The Stormhoek Blogger’s Wine Freebie. Sending out bottles of free wine to bloggers for no other reason than to see what would happen if we did.
June 7th. My first London Geek Dinner with Robert Scoble. June 10. The amazingly wonderful/groovy Reboot 7.0 in Copenhagen.
July 13. A crazy-ass week where I found myself doing the London Marketing Geek Dinner with Seth Godin, dealing with a terrorist attack in London and on the same day ending up on a VERY large yacht in the Mediterranean.
August 8. “This is what Madison Avenue’s main job is, from now on. Handling the multi-billion dollar suicide pact between clients and television.“
September 18. English Cut makes the New York Times. Sales remain basically unaffected, re-confirming to me the utter uselessness of big media for marekting etc.
October 11th. The Global Microbrand Rant. October 23. “Bernbach Was Wrong.” [ALSO:] October 24th. Big blogvertising campaign for Budget Rent-A-Car. [ALSO:] October 27. “The future of marketing is being able to create stories other people will want to tell.“
Which brings me to the major point of this post. Reduced to the most basic level, the main reason English Cut is currently growing as a busines is simply because people like telling the story to other people. Because they like telling it, that’s what they do. Ergo, the story spreads.
So ask yourself this question: Do people like telling your story? Seriously, when people talk about what you do for a living, do their eyes light up?
If not, you’ve got a bit of a marketing problem.
November 29. Business Porn.
Does your blog suffer from low traffic? It’s probably because there’s not enough porn on it. Sex Porn, Real Estate Porn, Wine Porn, Biz Porn, Emotional Porn, it doesn’t matter.
Porn = Traffic.
Porn = Marketing.
Porn = Sales.With Porn, all things are possible.
December 7. Les Blogs 2.0 rocked. December 10. London Geek Dinner with Robert Scoble 2.0. December 14th. Getting my readers to help redesign the Stormhoek bottle. December 17. English Cut moves into the $300 shirt business.
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A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
What about the t-shirts? No highlight?
If I remember correctly this was 2005 as well.
Just put it in, Markus
It was, and continues to be, a pleasure.
Looking forward to an even bigger and better 2006!
Bilan de l’année 2005
J’aime bien l’idée de Hugh de faire un petit bilan 2005, il faudra que j’y pense, tiens.
Why do you blog again ?
How many times has this question been asked to you, most often with genuine interest and sometimes with a hidden notion of “Don’t you have anything better to do” ? Here is Hugh Mc Leod’s answer, which sums it all up. [via Loic]
Aren’t you gonna have to do another one of these if anything interesting happens in the next two weeks?
how about Creation Porn?
http://slenderthunder.com/breakingsod/?p=69