As I approached Mount Shasta on I-5 on route to Oregon, I hit some rain.

Not heavy rain but a constant spritz mixed with the spray up from trucks and tractor trailers and semis.

I pulled over for gas and then grabbed the little bottle of Rain-X I bought a Wal-Mart in LA and applied it using a paper towel from the dispenser.

From then on, even using the wipers became optional.  The water just beaded up, and sizzled off the wind screen, allowing me to even forgo the intermittent wipers, just allowing the beading to keep the glass clear.

And when the rain picked up, there was no point at which I was swamped and felt like I needed to pull over.

Amazing!

I try to read the New York Times every day on my Kindle.  Today I caught Squinkies Maker Savors Demand for Holiday’s Hot Toy in today’s paper.

What caught my attention was that the article suggested that a massive outreach to over 300 mommy blogs was what tipped Squinkies into the super-hot toy category for Christmas 2010:

The retailers liked the Squinkies well enough. “The orders were good, but nothing like what we anticipated this could be,” Mr. Nichols said.

He knew the retailers would test it in August. To pique interest before Squinkies were even on sale anywhere, he reached out to more than 300 bloggers, sending them products for review and giveaways.Anne McGowan, who runs the blog DealWiseMommy.net, said her son and her nieces understood what the toy was right away, from playing with vending machines in restaurants. And she was relieved at the low price. “That’s one of the best things about the toy: they’re not very expensive,” Ms. McGowan said.

In Waterloo, Ont., Erica Kloetstra, who runs BassGiraffe.com, said the collectible angle pulled in her 4-year-old daughter. “She’s like ‘Now we have to get this, and this, and that.’ That’s why we have so many,” she said.

While tiny toys can be choking hazards, the retailers and Blip emphasize that the toys are for children age 4 and up. And bloggers noted the same. “Due to the small size, my son (which is 2) has placed them in his mouth,” Amanda Blake, who runs FairyGoodMommy.com, wrote, saying that her older daughter now plays with them in her own room. “I do not recommend anyone under the age listed on the package to play with them or have them lying around.”

“Mommy bloggers are incredibly powerful,” said Ms. Phillips of Wal-Mart, in part because they explain to their readers what a toy does or what age it’s appropriate for. “Just getting customers aware of what they are, how do they work, what do I do with them” is quite helpful, Ms. Phillips said.

When the toy hit shelves in August, “the read was fantastic,” she said.

This especially excites me because most blogger outreach and blogger engagement campaigns limit their outreach to only 25-50 very popular blogs, over time. Other campaigns aren’t generous enough with their “give” and limit the number of review and test products they’re willing to drop-ship to each blogger.

Abraham Harrison LLC, my agency, has been doing massive long-tail blogger outreaches for our entire life, since March 2007. We routinely identify and reach out to thousands of bloggers — all of the bloggers in any particular demographic or topic — and commonly receive hundreds of requests by bloggers for more information and for review copies and test products.  That’s the key.  That impact. That impact is powerful and important, especially with seasonal products such as toys, for example.

When it comes to blogger outreach, it is important to get as much volume and penetration as possible.  The only tried and true way we have found to do that is to locate every relevant blogger and reach out to them all, engaging them all in a friendly and responsive way, and then send anyone and everyone who requests one, a review copy — of a book, of a toy, of anything — never saying no to the tune of hundreds, even. In other words, the more successful the outreach campaign, the more expensive it could become and the more gratis product you’ll have to deliver.

But too many clients shy away from this and say things like, “we’ll only honor the first 30,” or “we have only budgeted for 70″ and this is actually the wrong tactic.  Do what Mr. Nichols of the Squinkies did: he sent Squinkies to every blogger who wanted one. Sure, Squinkies are inexpensive, but even in the case of more expensive products, considering the amount of general overhead surrounding books and other products, the cost of not becoming hot and getting the kind of coverage and excitement generated can be failure and defines the saying Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish.

When it comes to limited blogger outreach that only focuses on the “top-25 most influential blogs,” whatever that means, it is hard to push or goose the tipping point. The only way you can move the needle is to stop playing favorites, stop limiting the number of review copies and products, and reach out to any and all bloggers, regardless of their Klout and compete.com score, who are germane to the product, service, outreach, brand, and campaign.

I hate to be salesy but what the hell — come check out my company’s testimonials, case studies, and client list.

On Tuesday between 7pm and 10PM I will be talking to the kind folks and members of E.Factor at 37 W. 26th St.  NY, NY 10010.  Sorry for the late notice but I have the time now!  If you’re in NYC and want to learn how to do all of your own new media and digital ONLINE PR — The E.Factor Presents – Do It Yourself PR.

Miss Stephanie Frasco has been kind enough to invite me to speak to discuss on how to “learn from the masters (does she mean me?) on how to take publicity and press into your own hands.” If we have not met yet, I would love to meet you on Tuesday. I am even going to try to get to the city early so that I can say “hello.” After the meeting, though, I am going to be pulling a Cinderella by getting back to the train to head back down to Washington!

The E.Factor Presents – Do It Yourself PR

Being an Entrepreneur is only half the battle.  Getting the exposure and press is crucial to your success.  Learn from the masters on how to take publicity and press into your own hands.

Date:  Tuesday, July 21st
Time: 7:00PM – 10:00PM
Venue: 37 W. 26th St.
NY, NY 10010
Fee:  Free for Premium Members; $10 for Basic Members

Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison
Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison, is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in web2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Prior to starting Abraham Harrison, Chris was a member of the Interactive Team at Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC, consulting clients such as Wal-Mart, Shell, and GE on blogger and social media strategy. Before Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer in online brand promotion and protection with clients including Sci-Fi Channel, Buena Vista, TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA, RCA, and NBC.

FEE:  FREE for Premium Members, $10 for Basic Members

Back on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 09:08, I wrote an article an article about Julie Roehm after I spotted her when I spent a week in Wal-Mart’s Bentonville Home Office in “Action Alley”, Edelman and Wal-Mart’s Bentonville side of the tin can phone to the Washington “Wal Room.” I spent that week in Bentonville, Arkansas, living in Edelman’s corporate apartments as an employee of Edelman and a guest of Wal-Mart and was pretty darn wowed by the only person in Bentonville with any star-quality or showmanship, Julie Roehm:

To be honest, in a world of cheap putty-colored cubes and battleship gray halls, Julie Roehm was the only heat in the entire marketing, creative and communications office. She was blond, brassy, hot, and always on the phone. She smiled and gesticulated. She closed the door to her green office whenever she pleased. I wonder if she took out her own trash.

Everything else at the Wal-Mart home office in Bentonville, Arkansas, was cheap, frugal, putty-colored, and practical.

Julie Roehm turned heads when she painted her windows-free office chartreuse in an attempt to breathe any energy of excitement at all into a company that is so frugal that it demands its executive employee to collect and put out its own trash every night.

Did I mention that she is striking, slender, fit, and charismatic? Antithetical to Wal-Mart, antithetical to Bentonville.

Well, I recently stumbled upon Julie Roehm’s new website and I really want to share with you all that is Miss Julie A Roehm from a profile interview on her website:

She’s been called Fearless.  Resilient.  Dynamic.  Even… “Unruly”.

Julie Roehm is all that and more.

Bold and brilliant, Julie is a powerful, charismatic marketing visionary.  Her keen ability is the result of calculated daring, deep experience and wide range.  She is a catalyst for change— the best at what she does.  Her penchant for taking on the greatest challenges and come out ahead, on top and up high is legendary.

Julie, who finds inspiration in smart quotes by an eclectic group of thinkers, sprinkles her conversation with words that shape her own philosophy and experience.

You immediately know she is courageous, brave, in command.  When I tell her this, she smiles that trademark Roehm smile, mix of fine intuition, confidence, fierce focus and remarkable intelligence.  “Fearlessness is like a muscle.  The more you exercise it, the more natural it becomes to not let fears run you…that’s a favorite from Arianna Huffington.”

Clients seek her because she’s a warrior with a guru-like ability to feel and predict what makes consumers need, not want.  Believe, never doubt.  Buy, not browse.  Rev up, not idle.

Notoriously unafraid of controversy and a good, clean fight for the right, Julie is an intrepid, yet infinitely calculating innovator.

She is famous for her tactical savvy, known for looking an obstacle in the eye and pushing it aside, and highly respected for her ability to win the challenge that has yet to show itself.

Julie pours her soul and her passion for results into everything she does.  And like Edith Sitwell, she is patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.

Today, Julie Roehm soars as one of the most successful, in demand global marketing, new media, advertising and innovative brand building consultants in the country for one simple reason: she’s right on target more often than most.  She is never afraid to call it as she sees it…popular or not.

Julie’s strength is rooted in her education, experience and personal devotion to excellence. She’s a Purdue University civil engineer with a University of Chicago MBA.

Julie wins for her clients because she leverages emotional intelligence and a gift to ideate, strategize and maximize— rare breed.

Nothing Julie does, from evaluating the subtleties of research insight and advertising, to scrutinizing measurable returns on investment, is gratuitous.

She is always ten moves ahead of the game, the competition, the obtuse.

Julie is a marketing and new media chess master, the equivalent of Bobbie Fischer in an international consumer arena.  Her client roster swells with high-tech players, international firms and European conglomerates.  Why?  Because avant garde thinking matters, and Julie’s compelling need to succeed produces tangible measures and results.  Bottom line, she delivers the goods— always.

Julie possesses an alchemist’s touch for identifying and strategically targeting the needs of the consumer.  She gathers, balances, analyzes, refines and divines.  When she bottles the final result, consumers buy it because it’s…just right.

Take for instance her footprint in the automotive industry, where she landed after successful stints at Bristol Myers and American Airlines.

First, Ford.

Julie did what very few have been able to do in modern automotive history: shoot to the top in a dizzying ascent propelled by slam dunk win after outta-the-park hit.  Always ahead of trend, predicting, feeling and shaping desire, she was responsible for the astounding success of the Ford Focus launch and virtually redefined viral, multimedia, multiplatform marketing, advertising and promotions.

Accountable to the last penny, Julie over delivered on sky high goals:  she sold 300,000 Focus units in its first model year with 50% of the sales contributed to consumers under 35 years old, and Launched two Special Edition Focus’ in partnership with Sony and Kona bikes, providing incremental sales of 12,500 vehicles, profit of more than $20 million as well as improving residual unit value.

Before leaving Ford, Julie was responsible for a half-billion dollar marketing budget for Ford Division cars and minivans, she brilliantly negotiated and executed a partnership between Nickelodeon’s Blues Clues and the Windstar as part of an integrated marketing program including Blues Clues TV, Blues Clues magazine, website, and Blues Clues Live tour, led communication strategies for Ford Thunderbird launch, as well as Ford Focus episodic launch.

Fast Forward to DaimlerChrysler.

She rocked the truck market with Aerosmith and Dodge Ram.  She sponsored the provocative, controversial and unforgettable Half-Time Lingerie Bowl, gave birth to the Mayor of Truckville campaign, and created one of the most valuable, equitable ad tags ever: Dodge. Grab Life by the Horns.

When I asked Julie why she was so passionate about potentially controversial tactics, she responded with a remarkable quote from Beaton,  “My personal ethos is to be daring.  To be different, to be impractical, to be anything that will reassure integrity of purpose and vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace and the slaves of the ordinary.”

She then added, “That depth of daring and innovation “sears” a brand in the soul of the consumer. If they truly believe we’re as authentic, bold and original as they feel, our brand will become a projection of their personality, a necessary and essential part of who they want to be.  And make no mistake, it’s always about who they wish to be, and become.”

Julie also directed the launch of the groundbreaking “That thing gotta Hemi” campaign, touted as the most successful automotive advertising campaign of  recent times, contributed $15 million to turnaround plan, achieved a 20% production improvement, reduced advertising development by 65%, and propelled the website development of dodge.com resulting in over 300% increase in unique hits, and multiple awards including Ad Ages Top Automotive Sites.

In her last position at DC as Director of Marketing Communications, Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge, Julie made magic with a $2.1 billion marketing budget, led domestic and global marketing communications strategic plans, directed worldwide development and integration for advertising, merchandising, licensing, events, auto shows, motorsports, CRM, Internet, games, promotions and media across the brands.

Showing her touch once again, Julie invested in hugely profitable latent markets before they became mantra for most Fortune 500 Companies.  She was a powerful advocate and supporter for the strategic development, communication and execution of Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep dealer advertising and marketing tactics targeting urban, African American, Hispanic, Asian and GLBT markets.

Julie also launched the Chrysler “Inspiration Comes Standard” campaign,  ideated and directed the launch of the all-new Chrysler 300, leading to over 100,000 handraisers in the pre-launch phase as well as a sold-out vehicle position.

And because she’s got the stamina of Secretariat and Man O’ War, she oversaw 11 product launches in a calendar year, led a gaming strategy touted as one of the most progressive in the industry, and achieved more in her tenure than most top-suite, corner-office execs do in a decade.
Above all, Julie is the indomitable innovator companies need to thrive today and tomorrow.  “It’s a simple choice,” she says.  “My work is a revolution, not just an evolution.  That’s what my clients deserve. That’s what they need to win in a flat world: SMART REVOLUTION.”
Julie’s smarts and bravura strategically lead the pack to war and victory no matter what the challenge brings.

Example? She single handedly spun the media selling industry into frenzy with her courageous and brilliant proposal for a new, market driven media buying process based upon the NASDAQ system.

The Rainmaker also predicted a future where media would mean broadband and two-way devices. Results? Unending buzz in Ad Age, Automotive News, NY Times, Jack Myers Report and other notable publications.  Julie also created a marketing and agency executives forum that in turn formed a partnership with eBay to build an online Media Exchange.  In August of 2007, the forum’s goals came to life and the Oxygen network became the first to sell its media via the exchange to Intel.

Here Comes Wal-Mart So, what did Julie Roehm do at Wal Mart? Rethink, reshape, challenge and innovate. The rest is fodder for the water cooler, or as Julie herself quotes from Brinkley, “I am successful because I’ve learned to lay the strongest foundation with the bricks that others have throw at me.”  In a year, Julie took massive steps to empower, transform and increase brand image and profitability with Wal Mart’s $800 million marketing budget.  She completely redirected and refined Wal- Mart’s marketing approach to project and reflect new corporate direction.

Almost single handedly Julie ideated, developed and implemented a world-class, global marketing communications strategy and the structure needed to successfully execute. In order to maximize results in record time, she also revolutionized marketing direction for Wal-Mart stores in the US, directed overall development and integration for advertising, merchandising, signage, events, interactive communications, promotions, media and TDMs, captained a comprehensive advertising agency review for advertising, media, interactive marketing, direct marketing, in-store marketing, new media, Hispanic, Asian and African American marketing communications, and led several, highly successful campaigns such as the HDTV campaign, Holiday campaign, Back to School online campaign, and the development of a toy youth project led by two animated characters named Wally and Marty.

Her Wal-Mart Toyland micro site with Internet based wish list for kids resulted in 175,000+ unique visitors a week spending 10 minutes +, and browsing 35+ toys.  Julie also expanded Wal-Mart’s Latin Grammy Sponsorship to better reach a younger demographic, led the “Everyday Green” partnership with MTV to engage 18-30 year olds, launching with a pop-up store in Times Square, managed the $40 million marketing production budget and realized savings of over $2 million through more efficient production.

The Rainmaker, Today.

Julie was most recently sought and cast as a judge on JINGLES, a show from executive producer Mark Burnett, currently in production and slated to premiere later this year on the CBS Television Network.  She was chosen for the show for three simple reasons: marketing acumen, courage and charisma.

As co-founder of Backslash Meta, LLC, Julie jets around the globe advising and building new models for clients like Credit Suisse, Sports Illustrated, BIAP, GLG, MCC, MediaLink, OTX, SpeakWithMe, Hispanic Market Weekly, Blue Diamond Ventures, Clear Story Systems and many more.

Along the way, Julie has earned numerous awards.  She has been named, quoted, touted, praised and inducted.  She has also been criticized, accused and attacked. But when I ask Julie about that she laughs and waves a graceful hand.  “I’d be worried if people didn’t talk about me, because it would mean I stopped doing the bold and visionary thing that needs to be done, that no one else has the courage to do.”

She sits back, tall and regal, smiles and quotes Alex Bogusky, “Life conspires to beat the rebel out of us all.” Then she leans forward, hands intertwined, elbows on knees, full court presence.

I’m expecting heavy words, Tolstoy or Joyce.  But no— always a delightful and surprising thinker, Julie gives her closing statement with gravitas, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

When I ask her if that’s Whitman, she explodes with elegant laughter and shakes my hand. “Nope.  Doctor Seuss.  And don’t you forget it.”

Julie Roehm is indeed, unforgettable.

My clients and I have found that building apps, widgets, and online communities is not nearly enough — it is really and truly about the network, the promotion, the publicity, the advertising, the marketing, the salesmanship, and the public relations outreach. Well, Robin Grant from We Are Social makes a smashing argument that there is a huge gap between being a toymaker and getting your toys into the hands of children,  Build it and they won’t necessarily come:

There’s a phenomenon whereby normally intelligent people at both digital and traditional agencies decide that people will embrace their new widget or app simply because they’ve built it. It’s as if the Internet were a giant cornfield in Iowa and the mere presence of yet another branded widget or app is enough to get thousands of people clicking.

My buddy Mike Obraitis of Telecom Management used to be a toymaker and he and his partner made toys.  Thing is, there’s an infinity between designing a toy and having it played with, including getting your toys sold in Wal-Mart and making sure kids know about your toy and that their parents buy it for them. All of this requires mad brand promotional skillz.

Long story short, if you brand it they will come!

The reason why Wal-Mart has taken over America and most of the world is because most Americans are a lot lower on the class totem pole than they think (middle class my ass), thanks to Wal-Mart and the dollar menu (read I Love What Wal-Mart Means to the US).

 Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, beat expectations after its US discount stores accounted for about 50 per cent of all US retail growth during 2008 – while its full-year global sales passed $400bn for the first time, and profits hit $13.4bn.

But, in the past, Wal-Mart was other people’s store. Welcome to Wal-Mark 3.0, the store for the rest of us who don’t want to feel as low on the socio-economic ladder as we are — and Wal-Mart’s share holders and bottom line will laugh giddily as a direct restult (via Financial Times & Business Pundit)

My buddy David Gelles writes for the Tech section of the FT, my favorite paper. Check out his latest article, New corporate firefighters. Sadly for me, he can’t shamelessly promote my company, Abraham Harrison LLC, because he has ‘journalistic integrity;’ however, it is awesome he works there because he writes awesomely-accessible articles about my space, including social media marketing, social media PR, blogger engagement, Twitter, and also the world of online and social media crisis-response.  It is amazing!  I beat up Pepsi Max over on AdAge and a couple weeks later, Gelles writes an article about the space.  I am both amazingly proud and a little paranoid!

New corporate firefighters By David Gelles

When advertisers launched a campaign last September for the pain reliever Motrin, they hoped to attract the attention of mothers whose backs might be sore from wearing baby-carriers. The advertisements implied that while baby-carriers might be fashionable, hauling a child around could be painful.

Mothers were not amused. Soon after the ads were released, anti-Motrin campaigns appeared on Facebook and blogs. Outraged mums, furious at the suggestion that their babies were a hassle, posted rebuttal videos on YouTube. Through Twitter, the micro-blogging service, thousands of people attacked the company.

Motrin was caught off-guard. For days, no company representative replied. Critics accused the company of being not only insensitive but also unresponsive.

Eventually a marketing executive at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that markets Motrin, e-mailed individual bloggers to apologise for the campaign. But the damage was done.

Jeanette Gibson of CiscoThe “Motrin moms” episode illustrates the power of social media — the expanding network of websites that allow users to interact with each other and, increasingly, with companies. It also demonstrates the perils for enterprises that are unprepared to interact with social media.

But now a growing number of companies, including Ford Motor, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo and Dell, are creating new high-level jobs to ready themselves for engagement with social media, with titles such as director of social media, head of communities and conversation, vice-president of experiential marketing and digital communications manager. The role of these new executives is to monitor and influence what is being said about their companies on the internet.

Johnson & Johnson made its own appointment in the wake of the Motrin debacle. Having already dabbled in social media, in December the company promoted Marc Monseau, a 10-year company veteran and former director of media relations, to director of social media. “My responsibility is to work with the corporate office and the individual companies to better interact online,” Mr Monseau says. “It underscores the fact that we realise this is an important audience and one that we need to develop relationships with.”

These new jobs represent a broad shift in media relations strategy at large companies. “Corporate communications has radically changed,” says Andy Sernovitz, chief executive of the Blog Council, an organisation for heads of social media at big companies. “It’s no longer just companies talking to the press, and customer service talking to customers. All these other people showed up in the ­middle. They may not be press and they may not be customers, but suddenly their collective voice is bigger than the traditional channels.”

The essence of social media is conversation. Rather than a one-way stream of information, where companies make announcements to the press and customers, social media enables a great deal of interaction, where companies are in constant dialogue with the public. “We’ve seen a shift from doing things the old way to now having conversations with our customers,” says Jeanette Gibson, director of new media for Cisco Systems (pictured).

Ms Gibson, who began her job in 2007, says there is now a mandate at Cisco that all staff be attuned to what is being said about Cisco online. “It has definitely shifted how we’ve done communications,” she says. “Our executives are video blogging every day. Everybody’s job is now social media.”

Dell, the computer maker, has one of the most robust corporate social media programmes. Bob Pearson, former senior vice-president of corporate communications, became vice-president of communities and conversation for Dell in 2007.

He now has 45 people working for him. The core team works on “blog resolution” — trawling the web for dissatisfied customers, then attempting to contact them to make amends. Others on Dell’s social media team manage the company’s 80 Twitter accounts and 20 Facebook pages. Still others manage IdeaStorm, Dell’s forum for customer feedback.

Dell is taking its customer feedback seriously. When the company launched the Latitude laptop last summer, six of the features, including backlit keyboard and fingerprint reader, were ideas that came from IdeaStorm. “It’s always worth talking directly with your customers. It’s always worth listening to them,” says Mr Pearson. “It’s the wisdom of crowds.”

Peter Shankman, a social media expert and founder of Help a Reporter Out, a service that broadcasts reporters’ requests to a network of experts, says many companies are still reluctant to get involved: “Companies are slow to adapt because they’re still not 100 per cent sure they can make money with social media,” he says.

Yet Dell, for one, has made a business of it. By broadcasting discount alerts on Twitter, it says, it has generated more than $1m in sales. And in the US, 59 of the 100 leading retailers, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart, now have a fan page on Facebook, according to Rosetta, an interactive marketing agency.

Other savings can be realised through the Web’s ability to reach many people at once. “If you solve someone’s problem on the phone, nobody knows,” says Mr Sernovitz. “If you solve that same problem in writing on a blog, it costs you no more, but thousands of people are satisfied. And then, if 100 people never call because they found the answer, you very, very quickly get to multimillion-dollar savings.”

Other companies are using Twitter to douse public relations fires before they erupt. Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors, used Twitter to appease users who were angry after the carmaker sued an enthusiast website that was selling unauthorised Ford merchandise. When fans of the enthusiast site posted angry messages, Mr Monty “tweeted back” to explain the company’s position.

Bonin Bough, who was appointed director of social media for PepsiCo last year, also used Twitter to defuse a brewing crisis after the company released a series of advertisements depicting a cartoon calorie character committing suicide.

“Social media is much more than getting out there and having conversations,” says Mr Pearson of Dell. “It transforms a business if you use it correctly.”

Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison, is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in web2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Prior to starting Abraham Harrison, Chris was a member of the Interactive Team at Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC, consulting clients such as Wal-Mart, Shell, and GE on blogger and social media strategy. Before Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer in online brand promotion and protection with clients including Sci-Fi Channel, Buena Vista, TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA, RCA, and NBC.

In the early nineties, Chris joined The Meta Network, a seminal online virtual community based in Washington, and so began his career as an expert in online community development, social media, social networking, and online collaboration. Chris has had a web presence since 1993 and started blogging in 1999, focusing on community, connection, innovation, and brand extension. As a technologist, Chris has consulted T. Rowe Price, the US Department of Treasury CIO, Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and others.

Chris has taught blogging courses for the Writer’s Center of Bethesda, has been a guest lecturer on public affairs blogging at Columbia University’s SIPA school and the American University in Washington, DC, and is the Emergent Technologies Advisor to the Urban Institute’s Communications Advisory Board. Additionally, he is the go-to expert on social media, citizen journalism, technology, and the Internet for BBC World Service, CNN Radio, and CNet’s BNet.

Chris received his BA in American Literature from The George Washington University, studied American Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and studied French at the University of Hawaii. He splits his time between Berlin, Germany, and Washington, DC.

I would have never guessed that Camille Paglia would be in awe of Sara Palin or perceive her as follows, “Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.” Whoa. (Via Salon.com)

Fresh blood for the vampire

Rip tide! Is the Obama campaign shooting out to sea like a paper boat?

It’s heavy weather for Obama fans, as momentum has suddenly shifted to John McCain — that hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub that many Democrats like me had thought was full of holes and swirling to its doom in the inky depths of Republican incoherence and fratricide. Gee whilikers, the McCain vampire just won’t die! Hit him with a hammer, and he explodes like a jellyfish into a hundred hungry pieces.

Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain’s imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain’s credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain’s sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let’s turn the damned page.We need a new generation of leadership with fresh ideas and an expansive, cosmopolitan vision — which is why I support Barack Obama and have contributed to his campaign. My baby-boom generation — typified by the narcissistic Clintons — peaked in the 1960s and is seriously past it. But McCain, born before Pearl Harbor, is even older than we are! Why would anyone believe that he holds the key to the future? And why would anyone swallow that preening passel of high-flown rhetoric about “country above all” coming from a seething, short-fused character whose rampant egotism, zigzagging principles, and currying of the gullible press were the distinguishing marks of his senatorial career?

Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama’s lunch. McCain’s weirdly disconnected persona (beady glowers flashing to frozen grins and back again) has started to look more testosterone-rich than Obama’s easy, lanky, reflective candor. What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren’s public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance — where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness — began his alarming slide.

As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama’s efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin’ his g’s like there’s no tomorrow. It’s analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not. Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes — be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.

The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick — there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly — though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into “Star Wars” — a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.

After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.

Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars.” (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in “The Phantom Menace.”) This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation — a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.

As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women’s studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me — and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).

Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America’s pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did — which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.

Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics — which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama’s campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don’t see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones — nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they’re sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along — poor dears!

It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin’s boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.

Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was an all-American version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother’s generation — agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.

Here’s one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, “Stop her!” as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, “Men!”

Now that’s the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism — a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.

Here’s another example of the physical fortitude and indomitable spirit that Palin as an Alaskan sportswoman seems to represent right now. Last year, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reprinted this remarkable obituary from 1905:

Abigail Becker Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830

A tall, handsome woman “who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all,” she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper’s cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.

Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today’s pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.

But what of Palin’s pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God’s plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We’ll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don’t believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women’s movement — leading to feminists’ McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women — an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, “Sexual Personae,”) has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.

If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society’s acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life. If McCain wins the White House and then drops dead, a President Palin would have the power to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, but she could not control their rulings.

It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism — one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.

But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

Camille Paglia’s column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

I try to follow Anthony Citrano‘s blog, Cosmic Tap, but had fallen behind. I have to reblog his article, Reminder: People Are Stupid. I have always considered this to be true (see Wisdumb of Crowds: SAVE THE WHALES), but always need as much affirmation as possible, and Mr. Citrano give me all the ammo I need — but we do agree on one thing:

“I don’t think everyone is stupid – I just think the average American is too distracted or preoccupied or apathetic to pay attention to the stuff that some of us feel is important.”

Here’s the whole article, Reminder: People Are Stupid:

Whenever I hear about a poll telling me what a group of Americans think, I generally write it off. Now, folks, I don’t think everyone is stupid – I just think the average American is too distracted or preoccupied or apathetic to pay attention to the stuff that some of us feel is important.

Today, the press is all over the CBS/NYT poll that shows 81% of Americans feel the nation is “on the wrong track.” I agree with those Americans, but probably wouldn’t share their reasoning. What didn’t get as much attention was the recent “News IQ” poll by Pew Internet Life that drilled down a bit to explore what we know about things like our society, our government, and the war being fought with our dollars and our permission. I was pleasantly surprised at how relatively well people did.

Some highlights:

• Only 28% of respondents know approximately how many Americans have died in Iraq (and Pew notes that this is an all-time low and “awareness is dropping”).
• 70% knew Condi Rice is Secretary of State
• 62% could identify “Sunni” as the branch of Islam fighting the Shia in Iraq
• 56% knew McCain was from Arizona
• 40% knew Howard Dean chairs the DNC
• 35% knew Ben Bernanke chairs the Federal Reserve

Of course, these were phone interviews of 1000 people who were willing to sit through a phone trivia test, and who were given four multiple choice answers from which to choose. I frankly find the results impressive, but I’ll bet if they had conducted the same survey outside a Wal-Mart in middle America without the benefit of “multiple choice”, the numbers would have been much, much worse.