Topics for the 9/27/09 Show

Here are the proposed topics for this week's episode of The BeanCast. Please feel free to send in your thoughts and questions.

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This week's panel will be Bill Green (Make The Logo Bigger), Steve Hall (AdRants), Angela Natividad (Live and Uncensored) and John Wall (Marketing Over Coffee).

TOPICS

Just Pay Seth: Big story of the week broke Monday morning when Seth Godin posted that his new Brands in Public was coming live. And immediately people exploded over the issue. I think that first day I received links from 10 listeners saying I should talk about it. And even talked to one unnamed insider who actually talked to Seth regarding the troubles with this. So anyone want to tackle explaining what was so wrong with this plan? Was it really brand-hijacking? Was this offer tantamount to extortion? What would any large brand want to participate? What value would you get by having your brand tracking efforts made public? How can this be competitive with the social measurement systems that are already out there? Despite his focus on big brands to gain attention, isn't this more of a small brand play -- a chance to get your smaller brand some notice by aggregating with other brands? How about the price -- to high? Did the blogger community over-react to this -- were comments like Lisa Barrone's purposely inflammatory or justified? What about Seth's eventual backtracking -- is it enough? Will this service ultimately fail now? What about Seth's own credibility -- has it been irreparably marred now?

Advertising Week: Other supposedly big story of the week was that the annual NY Advertising Week came and went. And really, besides a few random tweets and blog posts, no one seemed to care much. Is the festival becoming irrelevant or just under-covered? Is part of the trouble the name -- one trade pub can claim ownership by association? Was there any new thinking? What were the big stories of the event?

Mullen Wins Zappos: This almost surprised me. With the acquisition by Amazon the agency search faded into the background and then suddenly Mullen was announcing it won. Was this a good choice? Obviously there's great trophy value in the win for Mullen, but are they entering into a problematic situation with no real solution? Any calls on the ultimate fate of the account? And a note that Edward Boches is schedule to come on The BeanCast at the end of October, so look for more on this issue.

Facebook Shuts Down Beacon: The experiment is over. After touting Beacon as the future of advertising, Facebook is now shutting down the user tracking service and partnering with Nielsen. What was the problem with Beacon? Was part of the problem that they over-sold its capabilities? Should they have been quieter about it, to avoid user suspicion or was the real problem that it didn't work? Wouldn't they have continued offering it despite user objections if it was viable? What about the Nielsen partnership? Is this a good fit? Does Nielsen offer any competitive advantages here? Doesn't it just relegate Facebook to another web property?

Are Your "Freemium" Ads Being Used Against You: Michael Learmonth in Ad Age posed a really interesting questions this week. Are the ads running in the free or "Lite" version of applications and services, being used against the advertisers in order to sell product? Essential the pitch is "get rid of these ads by paying a fee" making the ad the scapegoat. Does this diminish effectiveness of the ad? Which is more lucrative to the developer in the end -- having the ad revenue or the subscription/fee? Should the developers be choosing one model or another?

Other stories that we could use are: UPS to deliver unsolicited direct program, FDA to hold hearings on use of social by drug companies, P&G and their "Store Back" program, Wii announces their pricecut in the middle of the Sony presser at TGS, push in France to disclose airbrushing in magazine ads.