Archive for August, 2006
August 16, 2006
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The “A-List Gatekeeper” debate ignites again, right on schedule [it happens every 5 months or so, by my reckoning].
Nick Carr gets it going this time, followed by Michael Arrington, and Seth Finklestein piping in.
From Nick’s opening salvo:
One day, a blog-peasant boy found buried in the dust beside his shack a sphere of flawless crystal. When he looked into the ball he was astounded see a moving picture. It was an image of a fleet of merchant ships sailing into the harbor of the island of Blogosphere. The ships bore names that had long been hated throughout the island, names like Time-Warner and News Corp and Pearson and New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast and McGraw-Hill. The blog-peasants gathered along the shore, jeering at the ships and telling the invaders that they would soon be vanquished by the brave royals in the great castle. But when the captains of the merchant ships made their way to the gates of the castle, bearing crates of gold, they were not repelled by the royals with cannons but rather welcomed with fanfares. And all through the night the blog-peasants could hear the sounds of a great feast inside the castle walls.
In Nick’s post I left the following comment:
There are basically two rules of blogging:
1. Nobody is going to read your blog unless there’s something in it for them.
2. Nobody is going to link to your blog unless there’s something in it for them.
These two rules apply to us all, A-List and Z-List alike. If you don’t like these rules, you’re better off finding an ecology whose rules you like better. Life is short.
In Seth’s blog I left the following comment:
I’m curious about the way you seperate bloggers into two distinct groups: “Gatekeepers” and “Non-Gatekeepers”.
I believe this is a false distinction. Every time you create a link to another blog, you are creating a doorway of sorts, between your blog and another blog. ie. you too are creating a gate.
Every blogger is a gatekeeper, whether he wants to admit it or not.
Or am I missing something?
What I always find most interesting every time this issue pops up is, there’s rarely any mention by the gatekeeper-conspiracy-theorists that maybe, just maybe the quality of the content is a factor in all this. Both Nick and Seth, for example, fail to mention this. Am I surprised? Not really. I’ve seen it all before, many times.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping you, or Nick, or Seth from believing that if your blog isn’t being read enough for your liking, it has nothing to do with its most excellent musings, and everything to do with some A-List Gatekeeper conspiracy to keep The Little Guy down. But that’s not an idea I’d be willing to bet my career on.
[Bonus Link:] Nice perspective on all this nonsense from Pamela Slim, whose blog, “Escape From Cubicle Nation”, I’ve only just discovered, and like a lot.
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
August 15, 2006
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Digitas’ David Armano’s most popular link on his blog, “Logic + Emotion” has been his write-up on the “evolution” of creativity. Basically he advocates for creatives to become more generalized, and for “non creatives” to become a part of the process etc.
With consumer behavior evolving toward a more empowered status — the definition of creativity has shifted from one-dimensional skills to a four-dimensional type of creativity that blends logical thinking with creative problem solving. Individuals possessing this “New Creative Mindset” blend Analytical, Expressive, Curious and Sensual qualities into their thinking process. The result is a holistic approach to creativity that is effective across multiple touch points and experiences.
Can an Information Architect embody this kind of mindset? What about an Account Director? I think as human beings we are all capable of thinking like this. But as designers, communicators, marketers and creators of experiences — for us, it’s even more critical to become multi-dimensional creative thinkers and problem solvers.
One of the troubles we “creatives” seem to suffer too much from, is over-specialisation. We get really good at something– making TV commercials, writing comedy etc– that we forget the big picture. We like doing “Creative Stuff” for our client, but we have genuine zero interest in their actual core business. We’re too busy flying off to LA on filmshoots etc etc.
Those days seem to be quickly coming to an end…
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It isn’t just about the marketing:
Virtually unknown South African winery, Stormhoek, co-owned by Orbital Wines in the UK and South African wine marketer Graham Knox, has won the top international prize for Pinotage in its first major competition.
The Stormhoek Pinotage 2005 has won The KWV International Trophy for Pinotage for the best Pinotage at the 2006 International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC), held recently in London.
Now in its 37th year, the London-based IWSC is one of the best-supported competitions internationally and is regarded as the premium show of its type in the world. Nearly 6 000 entries were received from 73 countries, up from 5 000 and 57 respectively from the 2005 competition. Opposition for the trophy this year included heavyweight SA Pinotage producers such as Ashbourne, Fairview, Kaapzicht and Simonsig, with Kanonkop and L’Avenir having won the award in the past. The Stormhoek Pinotage retails at £5.99 in the UK whereas all the other Pinotage finalists in the competition are priced in the £10 – 25 range. The champion Stormhoek Pinotage, made from Wellington-grown fruit, is on sale throughout the UK, USA and South Africa.
I especially like the “Virtually unknown” and the “Retails at £5.99″ bits. Rock on.
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
August 14, 2006
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From Laughing Squid:
Wow this is amazing, alcoholic beverage maker Bacardi, along with the ad agency RKCR/Y&R (the UK office of Young & Rubicam) totally ripped-off San Francisco’s infamous underground prankster group The Cacophony Society with their recent “Bacardi Salmon” television commerial.
Since 1994, The Cacophony Society has had their salmon running in the opposite direction during the annual Bay to Breakers 12K race through San Francisco. The salmon would enter at the mid point of the course and then spawn their way upstream. The salmon are mini-celebrities at the race and always get a huge cheer as they go by. The event is known as Breakers to Bay and more on salmon info can be found on Tribe.net, as well as a bunch of salmon photos on Flickr.
[…] Well I guess if you can’t come up with something orginal, you can just follow Bacardi’s lead by co-opting someone else’s idea and “run upstream” with it. Oh yeah, be sure to drink a bunch of rum first.
So did the agency hire some actors to dress up as salmon and interrupt a real, live marathon, a-la the Cachophonites? Of course not. That would require real originality. So they used Computer Graphics instead [Update: They also used 400 extras.]. Also, like Laughing Squid says, “They make no attempt to give any credit to the event’s origins or the person who came up with the idea for the event.“
Oh, and they shot it in New York. Manhattan skyline and all that. How original.
I’ve seen SO MANY original ideas “appropriated” by agencies over the years [especially by UK agencies], this recent episode hardly surprises me. Nothing new here. As one very talented copywriter once told me, “Basically, we’re scavengers”.
I can already see the creative team who came up with this “viral” [Ooh! Buzzword! Hurrah!], sipping cocktails at one of Soho’s trendier bars, impressing the girls with their stories of guts, vision and creativity. Not to mention, the awards and the pay raises. Rock on.
[Thanks to Tara Hunt for the link. I really liked your rant that came with the e-mail, Tara. Almost as much as I enjoyed your recent rant here. Good stuff.]
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The groovy cats at Nokia just sent me a free Nokia 770 to keep. All they asked in return was for my honest feedback. I assume they would prefer me to blog about it as well, but they didn’t make that a precondition [a very smart move on their part, if you ask me]. No matter, I’m blogging it anyway. I have a few buddies who work at Nokia, so I’m happy to aid their cause etc.
Basically, the Nokia 770 is a palm-sized internet browser, which connects via both wi-fi and my cellphone [I naturally prefer the former, because unlike the cellphone, it’s free]. It has no keyboard, instead it relies on a stylus [Om Malik says it works great with a Bluetooth keyboard, and says the browser is great as well]. It also comes with a set of headphones and a mike, which allows you to do VOIP and internet radio.
I don’t expect somethig the size of a pocket calculator to have the same functionality and ease-of-use as say, a Tablet PC. So yeah, it takes a wee while to get used to, but it’s not a big deal. Generally I’d say it works very well, and not too frustrating compared to a lot of palm-sized gizmoes out there.
Also, I’ve been travelling a lot these last few months, and schlepping a Tablet PC around town all the time gets very tiresome. So for someone who is on the move all the time, this little baby is a very welcome travelling companion. It’s a great litte thing to have while waiting in an airport lounge, or sitting in a Starbuck’s. It also sends and receives e-mail via POP e-mail, so all in all, Rock on.
Four things that do concern me:
1. There’s no way to import my bookmarks from my PC. I like my booksmarks. Having to rebuild my list from scratch is a real schelepp.
2. For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem to want to open my Gmail page. That’s a SERIOUS flaw, because Gmail is what I use. Not being able to check my e-mail is a bit of a dealbreaker. That being said, it might be something I’m doing wrong. Perhaps there are some kind Nokia folk reading this, who might be able to help me solve this problem? [UPDATE: I got the Gmail to work, thanks to tip from Alan Bradburne. Thanks, Alan!]
3. It has a little RSS reader built in, but to add the URLs you have to cut & paste, which is a real schlepp. Their cause would be better served if they added a little orange RSS button [a single-button-press solution] in their interface. This to me is the biggest weakness in the offering… but I suppose it’s easy enough for them to fix down the line.
4. I wish it had Skype, but it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t. It does have Google chat, though.
So besides these four little nits, I’m delighted with it.
It retails in the UK for £245.00. Thanks to Nokia for letting me try it out. Rock on.
[Bonus Link:] Tom Coates, unlike me, is not “for sale”. Here he talks about his take on the ethics of weblogging. Good stuff.
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British Telecom, one of the biggest telcos in the world, now has a blog.
I like it. It looks like they get it. They’re actually talking about real stuff, like Google and the recent terrorist scare, not just pimping BT products.
Blurb:
We’ll write about what you can do through your BT internet connection to benefit your business. We’ll mention our products only when they’re relevant and show you how to make the most of those you’ve already bought, but it’s not going to be one big sales pitch — we’ll also write about things completely unrelated to BT that we think will be useful to your business.
This is one of the more promising new corporate blogs I’ve seen for a while. Good stuff. Hope they keep it up.
August 13, 2006
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[Another one of my new Stormhoek wine label designs.]
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The very smart and talented Tara Hunt, auteur of the successful post-Cluetrain “movement”, “Pinko Marketing”, takes me to task in the comments for writing about “Virals”:
Anyone who even uses the word ‘viral’ should be dragged out onto the streets and shot brutally within the idea of a ‘post-cluetrain’ doctrine.
Seriously. Have you seen the try-hard video? It was so lame I didn’t even want to post about it.
Hugh, you are better than this.
So I reply:
Tara, not sure if I agree. You could interpret “Viral” as just another term for what Doc Searls calls a “snowball”.
You could also argue a viral is just another word for what Juri Engstrom calls an “Object of Sociability”.
You could also argue that one of my Stormhoek prints is a viral.
A viral is a form of social gesture, no more, no less. A viral is only as good as the person sending it.
Sure, thanks to certain top-down meatheads in the ad biz, the word “viral” has a bad name. But creating a viral and creating a blog post isn’t that much different, as the creator has no control on what happens to it. You make it, put it out there, and see what happens. Neither the ad agency or the blogger has much control over the final outcome. But that’s what makes post-Cluetrain marketing so damn interesting.
I think where traditional marketers and ad agencies screw up in this space is, they fail to understand that a viral [or a “snowball”, call it what you will] is not a message, but in fact a social gesture.
Ooze, Baby. It’s all about the Ooze.
[UPDATE:] John Dodds pipes in:
For me, a major problem is that just as it was wrong to turn the word brand into a verb, it’s been wrong to turn viral into a noun (and the same established parties are guilty in both cases). To do so suggests that creating a viral is the goal when the goal is actually the spreading not the creation.
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One of the crazier PR stunts I’ve seen for a while: Cambrian House, an open-source software company, turn up at Google unannounced and feed them 1000 complimentary pizzas .
I thought the tone of the YouTube video was a wee bit too “Dotcom-MTV” for my tastes, but hey, I’m probably not the target market.
That being said, kudos to them for having a go. This is classic “Ooze” in action [“Ooze” i.e. OoS, short for “Objects of Sociability], which as I’ve said before, I believe is the future of marketing.
[Future of marketing:] Where “the message” is replaced by “the social gesture” etc.
[PS: I’m actively looking for “Marketing 2.0″ stories at the moment, so please feel free to send me a link.]
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Karl Long’s “3 Rules For Viral Marketing”:
* Success bares no relation to investment - Traditional marketing there was generally a relationship between how much you spent and how many people saw your message, there is no such relationship in Viral Marketing
* Viral Marketing does not have a timeline — Traditional marketing calendars, and even the traditional marketing plan is irrelevant when executing and responding to viral marketing efforts. Viral marketing is just not that predictable, which calls for a different kind of planning
* Number of views bare little relation to reach or impact of Viral Marketing - As viral is something that is shared from person to person, you can be sure that many more people hear about it than view it (a little esoteric I know, but I talk about subserviantChicken constantly, and yet have only been to the site once)
Bonus Link from Karl: “Five Implications for The Social Media Agency — Inspired From Agency.com Youtube Pitch.“
1. Interactive Agency business models are subverted by social media.
2. Failure is not just acceptable, it should be encouraged.
3. In Social Media Everyone is a Critic.
4. Experimenting Meaningless Without Measurement.
5. Viral Stewardship — Virals Are Unpredictable So Pay Attention.
All good stuff, so go have a read.
[PS: I’m actively looking for “Marketing 2.0″ stories at the moment, so please feel free to send me a link.]
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The PC turns 25 years old today. Microsoft’s Steve Clayton blogs about it here. Besides that, he sent me this cartoon above, drawn by his girlfriend, to commemorate the date. From what I can tell, it looks like it was drawn on a Tablet PC, which is now what I use most of the time.
Happy Birthday, PC. Congrats to Microsoft for being able to stay in the loop for a quarter century. Rock on.
August 11, 2006
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Checking out the website of my old Kung Fu school in New York, The USA Shaolin Temple, I happily came across “The Love Edit”, a 10-minute film about my sifu, Shi Yan Ming.
[Hint:] My favorite part of the film wasn’t his Kung Fu [which is quite incredible to watch, especially live], but the Tai Chi demo he did at the very end of the film. AMAZING stuff.
I was talking to Wolf on the phone the other day, who runs the Vienna chapter of the school. Wolf told me that Sifu has a new book out, “The Shaolin Workout”, which I’ve now just ordered on Amazon. I can’t wait to read it.
If you live in New York, and are looking to get in shape, I’d seriously recommend paying the school a visit. It’s at 678 Broadway, about a block north of Bleeker Street. It certainly worked for me.
My friend, Dave MacKenzie and I are seriously considering paying the Austrian school a visit for a couple of weeks this winter, just to lose some pounds and clear the mind a wee bit– the last few years have been pretty eventful for us both, and a physical reboot is needed. Watch this space.
Amitabhah!
[Bonus Link:] Some old video clips of Sifu in the media.
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My favorite marketing writer, Seth Godin kindly just sent me an advance copy of his new book, “Small Is The New Big”.
I’m reading it now, and having a thoroughly good time doing so. It’s a great read.
It’s mostly a collection of his favorite writings from his blog, so yes, avid Godin blog readers won’t find anything new here. That being said, not everybody is into reading blogs, so hopefully this will bring his blog thoughts to a wider audience.
Guy Kawasaki has also read it, and has posted a great Q&A review with Seth here.
Question: I am not worthy: How did you get your publisher to give you a contract for a book of stuff that you had already written and published?
Answer: Books are the new t-shirts. We used to buy t-shirts as a way of covering our hard abs. Now, though, the purpose of the t-shirt is to be a souvenir, to give us a concrete way to remember something that mattered to us — and to give us an easy way to spread that idea to others.
Congrats to Seth on his new book, and hopefully I’ll post a more lengthy report on it soon. Rock on.
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calacarrington.com
Hot new website. That’s right.
With a nod & wink to Calacanis and Arrington.
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[Click here to put the gapingvoid widget on your blog.]
I am interested in new ways of marketing: Marketing 2.0, Web 2.0 marketing, post-Cluetrain marketing, idea-virus marketing, open-source marketing, “Global Microbranding” etc etc.
If you have a link that fits this criteria, I’d seriously love to hear from you. Please e-mail me at gapingvoid@gmail.com, and I’ll gladly check it out. Thanks.
August 10, 2006
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Today I’m down in London, signing 800 limited-edition lithographs for Michael Arrington’s Techcrunch party on August 18th. We’re FedEx-ing them over to Menlo Park tonight.
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
The lithographs were sponsored by Stormhoek, of course, who will also be supplying wine for the event.
It should be an amazing party. I’ll can’t wait to attend one of these things myself. Maybe next time. Rock on.
August 8, 2006
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There was a story on Slashdot a while back that if you put a few Mentos [a peppermint candy] into a bottle of Diet Coke, the bottle would explode.
So Lloyd went and tried the same thing with a bottle of Stormhoek wine. You ever see non-fizzy wine explode? Oops. Go here to see the damage.
I guess this is another example of “Surreal Marketing”. Actually, all marketing is surreal, it just takes a while to figure that one out.
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From BL Ochman:
When I was in London last month I had dinner with Hugh Macleod and then drinks with Hugh and Jason Korman, president of Stormhoek Wines.
Jason asked if I’d like to host one of the Stormhoek 100 Geek Dinners in 100 Nights, and I said “I don’t drink.” He said, “hey, host it anyway.” And so, amigos and amigas, I will do just that.
Jason pipes in:
So, for our friends in the trade who are afraid that we will offend the
non-drinkers of the world, we ask, why can’t Stormhoek be the wine
non-drinkers would drink, if they did?
A sponsored wine dinner exclusively for people who don’t drink. “Surreal Marketing”. Exactly.
August 7, 2006
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[Another one of my new Stormhoek label designs.]
Love begets love, love knows no rules, this is the same for all.
- Virgil
Like this? You can now buy this print in our gallery.
August 6, 2006
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[Another one of my new Stormhoek label designs.]
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
Interesting post from Jason at Stormhoek, re. the utter mess that is Bordeaux:
The Bordeaux market has been in a severe (and worsening) depression for at least four years. The situation is due to a complex combination of things: Reduced demand (market doesn’t like most of their products and French consumption is declining), overvaluation of assets (returns cannot service absurdly high real estate prices), arbitrary price controls (it is illegal to sell below certain set prices), subsidies (have eroded competitiveness) and over regulation (limiting the creativity of the producers).Needless to say, the result is absolute turmoil.
I’ve been in the wine business for over a year now, and I’m beginning to think that pretty much most of it is in complete turmoil, one way or another. But therein lies the opportunity.
[Afterthought: Title for future blog post:] “Too many grapes, not enough alcoholics.“
[Bonus Link:] My favorite food blog: Noodlepie.
August 5, 2006
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
[UPDATE:] According to Valleywag, this cartoon was me taking a pop at Dave Winer. Huh? Weird. Apologies to Dave or whatever, but nothing to do with me etc.
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I’ve started designing the new Stormhoek wine labels, which like I said earlier, should be hitting the shelves by Christmas. This is one of my first efforts, an updated version of a cartoon I drew back in 1998.
To me, wine and the human condition go together like two peas in a pod. So I want the designs to explore that relationship.
Could you imagine something like this on a wine bottle? More specifically, a wine bottle you’d actually take off the supermarket shelf and place into your shopping basket? Yes? No? Maybe?
N.B. This project is still very new. Virgin territory. In terms of label design, I don’t claim to have all the answers. Heck, I don’t even claim to have a tenth of them. But this is one steep learning curve that I am thrilled to be on. Watch this space.
[UPDATE: To see the new lable designs as they’re being rolled out, go here. Thanks.]
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[The story behind this cartoon is here.]
A very important article by JP Rangaswami:
Pretty much every serious argument we’re having, every conversation we need to continue, is about some form of Big versus some form of Small. Blefuscu versus Lilliput. And we use concepts like expertise and authenticity and reliability and affordability and freedom and choice to try and win the arguments. And the concepts we use land up polarising the debates. Which made me think….
…..It’s all about trust.
[…]
Trust used to be something that bound small groups together. Over time we tried to scale trust. It didn’t scale. And what happened instead was Big Everything. In an Assembly-Line meets Broadcast world.
Big Everything broke trust. Big Media lied. Big Content Producer reduced our choices. Big Pipe and Big Device reduced it further. Big Firm wrongsized away. And Big Government did what it liked.
[JP is very much on my “must read” list these days.]
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
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August 3, 2006
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I just loaded a Filmloop of all my July, 2006 cartoons. Click on the looplet and enjoy. Thanks.
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
[Cartoon inspired by the annual BlogHer non-debate: Shelley, Kathy, Tara, Winer… Oh, but I LOVED this. Thanks to Stowe for the pointer..]
August 2, 2006
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I get asked a lot about how many people read my blog.
I have no idea. Because the answer, of course, depends on what metric you use. What stat counter you use. Anything between x-thousand and x-thousand-times-ten visitors per day, depending on which robot you wish to believe.
I tend to believe the lower figures more than the higher ones, but hey, that’s just me.
But “How many people read your blog per day” is not the same thing as “How big is your audience.“
Let me explain.
The number of blogs I read on a daily basis numbers about a dozen. The number of blogs I read every couple of days numbers about ten times that figure.
But the number of blogs I read regularly, just not that often, is way, way, way higher than that. Many thousands of them.
Dave Weinberger is a good example. I like his blog, I like him, I value what he has to say, however for one reason or another I don’t read his blog that often. Maybe a couple of times a month. Maybe only once a month. It’s nothing personal, it’s like he said in a very entertaining post last year:
No, I’m not keeping up with your blog.
I would like to. I really would. I like it and I like you.
But we’re now well past the point where any of us can keep up with all the blogs worth reading from the people worth keeping up with. Even with an aggregator.
I just can’t do it any more.
So, although I don’t read his blog that often, he is on my radar, and I consider him somebody who continues to inform and influence my worldview. As a result, I consider myself very much part of his audience.
Another way to think about this is akin to a favorite rock band. You may not listen to their recordings every day, but pull out their music every so often, when your life needs a dose of their particular brand of inspiration. They might not be a daily fix, but they’re nonetheless a regular and important part of your life.
So following this logic, I’m guessing there are a lot of people who read me in the same manner that I read Weinberger. I may not be part of their daily fix, but they are part of my audience nonetheless.
If you accept this logic, then suddenly my audience starts looking much larger. And so do the audiences of many other bloggers.
It’s just a pity this metric isn’t one that advertisers find particularly useful, or else a lot more bloggers would be making money.
[Note To Self: I would be realy interested to hear Stowe Boyd’s take on this.]
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I cam across this aerial photograph of Port Vauban in Antibes, via this post on the Fenderkicker blog.
If you click on the image it’ll enlarge. Note the jetty on the right with all the “Superyachts” on it [this is the permanent home of the International Yacht Club, where many of the world’s biggest yachts are moored.]. The boat in the left-hand corner of the jetty with the big sailing masts is The Maltese Falcon, which has her own website here.
I’m having frequent conversations these days about spending more time down there. I find the place extremely agreeable. And besides my professional interest in the Fenderkicker blog, Sigurd and Thingamy are based down there as well. Thomas also likes it there– every summer he rents an apartment in nearby Nice for a week or two. So I don’t feel a stranger there.
And yes, Stormhoek fits into all this. I reckon I’ll spend a lot of money on air fares, flying from Nice to London, where the main European Stormhoek offices are based. That’s actually not that big a deal– the flight costs about the same from Nice as a train fare from Cumbria, an expense I’m already well used to.
So I guess that’s how I could possibly see life mutating before me. Less of the big-city action, more quiet, small-town Southern French stuff, hopefully. Lots of cheese and wine. Lots of writing marketing stuff, and drawing cartons.
This is not the only idea I have for the future. But it’s one I’m currently very fond of. It certainly would require some extreme business modelling. Wish me luck.
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Thomas replies to Giorgio Armani’s attacking Savile Row. Both the deisgner and The Times newpaper get both barrels, from somebody who actually is a world authority on the subject, as opposed somebody who pretrends to be:
I think the main reason why I’m disappointed by this article is not Mr. Armani’s silly ramblings, but more the fact that a journalist of such a respected newspaper would take this story seriously. Then again, the writer is a journalist, and Mr. Armani is a couturist. They are both two individuals who know nothing about [A] true bespoke tailoring and [B] how business is done on Savile Row. For Mr. Armani to set himself up as an authority on this subject is ludicrous, and equally ludicrous is the journalist’s inability to separate reality from PR drivel. Had it appeared in some frothy fashion magazine I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but for it to appear in one of our nation’s great broadsheets greatly concerns me.
[…]
But yes, to answer some of my readers, Savile Rows has heard all this sort of nonsense before. And it sounded tedious and vacuous back then, too.
And yes, of course, Thomas’ offer to Armani still stands.
[UPDATE:] The Head Lemur pipes in: “Giorgio Armani is an idiot!
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
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[Related:] From Tara Hunt:
When my son was little (look at me being a mommy blogger 
), he would do really cute stuff and all of us fawning over him would laugh and giggle with delight. Of course, being a bright boy, he would observe our delight and repeat the cute stuff. He was becoming aware of what got him attention.
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
