Further more, I took a few days off from blogging, twittering, txt’ing to spend some time with family that was in town. I feel all of us who embrace the social media world need to be reminded from time to time that spending time with our real family is more important that spending time with our virtual families.

Now that my disclaimer is out there, I have a few hours here before I leave to go see the Arizona Cardinals take on the Atlanta Falcons and it gives me time to reflect on 2008. What a year it was for my life. Here is a Harper’s Weekly style summary for everyone.

January – Diane and I Celebrated New Years, by accidentally being allowed into a $200 per person private party at a fine Italian restaurant here in Vegas. (no names, don’t want them to find out).

February – Turned 29, went to see Artie Lang at Mandalay Bay and Diane got to meet him after the show, super cool.

March – Diane and I purchase a house and construction begins.

April – House construction was in full swing, started choosing options for the house.

May – The house started looking like a house and Diane and I already sold almost everything we owned.

June – Selling Source / PartnerWeekly eliminated my position to change their corporate structure.

July – Go to work for Black Diamond Digital Imaging.

August – Closed on the house and hours later on our way to Idaho with VegasGeek for a two day concert. This was one of the most fun trips I have ever taken. Can’t wait to do it again in 2009. Any excuse to wear a cowboy hat.

September – Economy really started to fall apart, but was able to get away and visit my parents in Wyoming. That is always a party.

October – New theme for JakeLudens.com and Diane and I went to a record number of Halloween Parties. Normally I am not one to dress up a lot.

November – Diane and I got engaged! Yeah how crazy is that? I am excited, should probably set a date for the wedding, 2010, 2011?

December – 30 day blog challenge. My parents came to Vegas to see the new house and stay with us for a week. It was great, our first Christmas in the new house and we had all of the family here.

2009 is starting out great, I spent yesterday spending gift cards from Christmas and watching football. Now I am off to see an NFL playoff game in Arizona. I can’t wait to see what 2009 has in store for the bloggers, tweetfreaks, and this crazy life of mine.

Yet one thing that always bothered me about the 30 Day Challenge was that while it is a great introduction to many of the tools available to online marketers, it created an army of “re-posters” and traffic exchanges. It created a lot of what I see as false traffic that really didn’t go to any product or service. Sure some people made few dollars selling e-books, or selling ad space on a site that had generated a lot of hits. The fact was that there was no substantial customer audience because no one was creating anything, most of the traffic was other 30 Day Challenge participants checking out each others sites, blogs, and now twitter posts. Sorry, I have great friends, but none of them want to buy anything from me.

This is why when I got an email from Ed this morning, bringing this very point to life, I was relieved. Thanks Ed. Here is a excerpt from the email.

And like the first point, I may have had a bit to do with creating
a problem!

I love leverage. “What’s new!”, I hear you say.

The ability to be a gatherer of information and then distribute to
your target market is a powerful weapon indeed. Like all weapons,
pointing it directly at your head is a health hazard.

If all you do in life (or perhaps more importantly from my
perspective, in your market), is be a “re-tweeter” or a
transmitter of other’s information. How do I say this… I believe
the technical term is…

“You’re stuffed”

I’m afraid you’re not going to get anywhere. It is only the people
who create content (or of course, products) that get ahead! Think
about it. It’s all very well being the neighborhood gossip and
passing on information to all and sundry (let’s face it, the
neighborhood gossip has their place) but they are only ever going
to be the gossip and eventually that gets tired and old.

From a financial perspective, “you’re stuffed”.

This should not discourage anyone from checking out the 30 Day Challenge and signing up, but keep in mind if you truly want to make money or simply to get a message out there, don’t get caught up.

I repeat, don’t get caught up in the “socialness” of social networks and social tools. Take a step back and realize that while it is great to have your buddies follow you on twitter, if you are just swapping each other links all day, who is the customer? where is your customer?

This past weekend I helped my brother clean out his garage that had been filled with old toys that my parents brought out to us from Wyoming. Now, ironically my garage is filled with these toys, but I had a chance tonight to start going through them and cleaning them up to donate or sell. While I was unloading some of the boxes, besides being nostalgic, the thought came to me about how companies create flash in the pan buzz about toys simply for the holiday season. I wonder how many children beg for toys during the holiday season that only months before they had never heard of? I’ll be honest I know I did that as a kid and I am sure my parents were not too pleased that I lost interest only weeks after the holidays were over.

I feel this is exactly how the Internet has come to operate on a constant level, not just for holidays or special events. We are all glued to email, Blackberry, Iphones, laptops and desktops, waiting for the next buzz to come our way. It could be an email from your boss or the top story to break on Yahoo. It could be any number of internet guilty pleasures we have all come to embrace. Yet just like the toy that we begged our parents for each Christmas, we lose interest after a short time and are off to see what is new on YouTube.

The thing is, very few people recognize that this is how they are living their lives. Advertising people especially need to make sure they take a step back from the BUZZ in order to keep a window open so that they might be able to grab some of their customer’s very short interest span. (I would use attention span, but I don’t think any of us really pay attention) I think about how much time I spend, after I hear about a new innovation or marketing tool, waiting to see the practical use for it. Rather, I should be looking at what need it fulfills and why there is even a need in the first place.

Think about it, what need did the Hampster Dance really fulfill for anyone ? All these things did was kill thousands of hours of time and unimaginable amounts of brain cells. But wait… think about all the traffic that that webmaster got simple because of a flash in the pan?

Here was their list and if the stunt resulted positively or negatively:
1. Aqua Teen Hunger Force – The Boston Bomb Scare – Negative
2. Nathan’s Doc-Approved Dogs – Positive
3. Last Days of Disco – Chicago White Sox “Disco Demolition Night” – Negative
4. Oprah’s Free Cars – Negative not for Oprah, for Pontiac
5. Taco’s New Bell – Fake purchase of The Liberty Bell – Positive
6. Steal This Identity – LifeLock – Negative (Lesson here, don’t challenge hackers.)
7. Guinness’s Bar Book – Positive
8. Snapple’s Giant Meltdown – Negative (honestly, I have never heard of this one.)
9. By Land, Sea and Air – British billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson – Positive
10. Name That Town – Hey for a 1950′s radio show this was ground breaking – Positive

So it is Friday and I am in a marketing and advertising critique mood, so here are my picks for my favorite and least favorite marketing stunts and advertising endeavors. (mine are in no particular order)

1. Kleenex Napkin commercial – “They don’t fall off your lap!” – I wrote a post about this commercial back in September.

2. Zoo York Roaches – Having been a skateboard kid growing up, this is one of my favorite Shock and Awe campaigns.

3. VW’s Tribute to Jerry Garcia Ad – I have the issue of Rolling Stone that has this ad in it. I think it is the definition of knowing your customers.

4. Budlight’s “Real Men of Genius” – Anyone who still enjoys or is forced to, listen to sports on AM radio is with me on this. Great way of using an inexpensive advertising medium.

5. Save By Zero! – I personally hate this commercial – Not only does it not make sense – this YouTuber says everything in his title for this clip, “Toyota Saved By Zero Loop From Hell Campaign” – Oh and don’t forget The FIXX sang that song.

6. Apple’s “1984″ – I am a huge Orwell Fan, and yes this commercial was genius, but anyone in advertising knows this. (awww remember books?)

7. Affiliate Marketing. – Hey some one buy this or buy this Please, Please, Please buy this.

8. Golden Palace.com - Jesus Toast, forehead ads, pregnant ads, oh and you can gamble there too. It was fun while it lasted.

9. Cap’n Crunch – I feel this was the beginning of the demise of literacy. Do kids even know how to spell Captain? When did MTV become a word? I would love to just LOL about all of this, but it really concerns me how the intelligence level is going down and the apathy level is going up in our society.

10. Viral Marketing – The reply all button started it all and now if you make a fool out of yourself or do something creative and it is digital, everyone knows about it.

Myspace has had its ups and downs, but now with Facebook and other so called “professional” social networks, I really think that Myspace is a waste of time for most affiliate marketers. I think Myspace has its place for celebrities and musicians to promote their brands or their music, but just take a look at the ads that affiliate marketers are purchasing on Myspace. I remember a while back I was asked to read through the advertising contract for placing ads on Myspace. It was a very in-depth document and I think for the price there are many other avenues affiliate marketers can go down. In fact, I recall reviewing the stats from the one ad campaign that we did do, we had thousands and thousands of hits, and never did make a conversion on the offers.

So is my space an out-of-date affiliate revenue source? Lets go there right now and see what ads come up…Singlesnet.com, Taylor Swifts new album promotion, (with video, nice touch), Websinglez.net for Emo Singles – hey wait a minute this looks familiar, have you ever read the Classified section of your neighborhood “Weekly”, “Citylife”, “Thrifty Nickel” newspapers? Thats right, Myspace has turned in to an interactive cheap classified section, promoting singles, music, hooking up with a sexy someone tonight, Man seeking Woman, Woman seeking Man, etc. I wonder if Rolling Stone still has their classified section with their new layout? I hope not, they should save the trees and just use Myspace.

Myspace is a great marketing outlet for large companies that have no problem throwing away millions of dollars just for the sake of saying they have ads on Myspace.

Fast forward 7 years and I have advanced my affiliate marketing to an expert level. So when we got a piece of mail today from ADT offering $600 worth of free equipment for former customers and customers who have moved, we instantly paid attention. Why? Well because only a few weeks ago one of the first things we set up in the house is our ADT system. However, we had only had it for a little over a year at our old residence and didn’t qualify for a free set up when we moved. Cost us a little over $200 to set up the new house.

The piece of mail we got today says even in the fine print if you have ADT for 6 months or more you qualify for a free set up when you move, or if you have turned off your system after at least 6 month you qualify. So of course we call, and the response we got displayed a great flaw in affiliate systems that are not control by the source of the product.

While ADT is responsible for the support and making sure a guard comes to your house if the alarm sounds, what they are not in control of are affiliate who depending on their level of advertising and what I guess would be their sales level can offer customers different packages.  When we called to enquire about getting our money back for being a loyal customer and simply moving, they said they couldn’t help us and although we qualify under the mail piece, since we went through a different affiliate they would need to call them and speak with them. They politely offered to do this for us, however not to speak about refunding our installation fees, but rather it see why some of our equipment from our first install was not included in our new install.

I will keep you posted on how much they are going to charge us to come set up our system with all the features included, or should I say what deal they can offer us.

Suggestion ADT, you have a great service with excellent response time, how about offering all your customers they same product and services? Don’t rob the people who pay for you to protect them and their families.