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Posted via email from Mike Likes…

I’m a victim of prejudice. I am sure we all have been at some point. Some more than others, due to appearance, gender, race, disabilities, and many other completely unfounded reasons. Prejudice is what builds walls between us, and prevents individuals who practice it from experiencing everything life has to offer.

I’m guilty of prejudice too. I’ve made judgments based on the strangest of criteria when it comes to evaluating people. However, just recently I came to the realization that I am being judged in the social media space based on perhaps the strangest criteria of all.

I have an odd name.

In the social media world, you are two things on the surface from which people make judgements: a screen name, and an avatar. If you’re lazy like a lot of folks, your avatar is generic, so you’re just a screen name. I like to be 100% transparent about who I am online, so whenever possible, I use “mikehollywood” as my screen name.

So here’s the rub - I’ve been asking people I’ve met lately (at SXSW notably) what their initial take is on my screen name, and if they would even click through to see what I am about if they noticed I followed them. The answers:

“Selling something.”

“Self absorbed.”

“Not real.”

“Dickhead.”

“Bot.”

“Spam account.”

“Arrogant.”

“Porn Star.” (this actually may be the most frequent…)

For those that know me, I do my best to avoid all of the descriptions above. For the most part, I am a quiet guy. I don’t chest-thump. I’m a bit socially awkward at times. I’m decidedly not in the shape I would need to be for any chance at the porn star thing.

I actually was just visiting a big ad agency in NYC, and happened to catch a glance at an email that happened to be on the screen when we arrived. Evidently, the account team we were working with thought it would be fun to speculate if my name was real (it is) and if it was a stage name (it’s Irish.) Judging by the reactions I get when introduced in new circles, I can only assume that this conversation has played out numerous times, no doubt with someone taking random pot-shots at the defenseless.

Even some of my best friends from college have admitted to me that they were initially put off by the air of arrogance that assuming the Hollywood name comes with. My best friends initially thought I was an asshole… man, that’s some ditch to have to climb out of!

So what’s a guy to do? On the one hand, I have this tremendous asset - a memorable name that some folks would die for. (I’ve had marriage proposals tendered on the spot before.) On the other, it creates boundaries between me and many other people that make a judgement based on something as silly as the last 9 letters of my twitter handle. I’ve thought about changing it… but momentum is a powerful force. That’d just be too hard, given the number of platforms on which I’ve established myself. Plus, adopting a “stage name” to avoid people thinking I have a “stage name” is strangely ironic.

For now, it stays. But if you meet me, or if this blog post is your first exposure to me, please… don’t judge.

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Posted via email from Mike Likes…

Hopefully, after four years, people can remember it’s Office Max that puts this on, and not Staples.

Cute video. Though I think there is something that agencies and brands of all kinds could learn about capturing an event like this - over-production kills the vibe. This effort, with the slick audio mix and the dramatic pull-backs to demonstrate scale make it feel corrupted. A flash mob that happens without the hours of account-team and creative planning, that truly is about a bunch of “performance artists” getting together and entertaining on the spur of the moment, conveys a raw, captured with a handycam-type vibe.

Happy Holidays. May we all have smarter marketing under our trees this year.

Admittedly, the set up is a bit more of a mess than usual at this moment, as I’ve been experimenting with a Mac Mini as a home media server, and also had to deal with a replacement DirecTV box recently. Here’s the way things looked when I decided to start documenting my progress.

I had already started to unplug stuff, but you get the picture. It was a mess. You can understand why the kid wanted to crawl over there so badly.

So, first step was to undo everything I had set up previously. I’ve already set up the basic wires to go up through the wall, so I did not have to worry about that. Had to take the display off the wall - thanks to Jenn for helping of course.

Now, I’m a complete idiot… so I made sure to label all of the wires so I would not have to go on a scavenger hunt later on in the day to plug things back in the way they were. Scotch tape served me just fine, but later in the day I found my inner-geek and broke out the label maker. More on that later.

So once I had everything disconnected, I had to determine what I was going to do with the stand we’ve been using. If you look at the first picture, you’ll see a Wii set up on the left hand side of the picture, and an XBOX (plain old XBOX - not a 360) in the cabinet. I had two goals with respect to these items: first was to find a place for the Wii that made sense and was out of the way, the second was to actually hook up the XBOX, as it has been sitting unused since the arrival of the HDTV a couple years ago. Until recently, I have not missed it really, but now with Finn around, I find myself spending more time at home at night and on the weekends, and get an urge for some Halo here and there.

Now it was time for some light modding. Granted, not modding of the A/V gear - I told you, I am an idiot - only the stand on which everything goes. I decided that the gaming consoles would be best inside the cabinet, since they get relatively less use than the DirecTV box, the DVD player and the Mac Mini. I broke out the drill and cut a circular hole in the back of the cabinet, through which I could feed the bulky XBOX video connection.

Next up, after vacuuming the dust out of the cabinet, was placing the surge supressor/power strip on the back of the cabinet. We wanted absolutely NO WIRES on the floor for Finn to wrestle with, which meant that everything had to be would up, zip-tied and strategically hidden behind this little red cabinet. I took a few measurements, put some screws into the back of the cabinet, and hung the power strip vertically. Remember the label maker I mentioned? Yeah. Broke it out and giggled like a schoolgirl at how organized I was making things by labeling which cord went to which device. I realized I was taking things a bit far, but I was enjoying it, and no one else was hurt in the process (to my knowledge.)

This is where I got on a bit of a roll, and stopped taking pictures as I was going. That and the fact that the process of pulling the cables through the wall took about three times as long as it should have, as “someone” needed to eat and be put down for a nap. At this time, I was thinking, “That sounds wonderful.” However, I was determined to finish the project as soon as possible so Finn could get his space back and resume banging small colored plastic cups together and chewing on the corners of cardboard-paged pamphlets. (I’d call them “books,” but really, if it can be read during a 30-second spot, does it deserve such a grandiose moniker?)

Now began the process of plugging stuff back in, and hoping I had my labels right. Every thing was looped and zip-tied, so nothing was going to dangle down from behind the cabinet. Finn approaches things from a pretty low angle most of the time - if anyone is going to find a dangling cord, it’s likely to be him. Once everything was looped up (myself included) I grabbed a couple of electrical wire clips and secured the Apple power brick for the Mac Mini to the back of the cabinet. Once again I enlisted Jenn’s help to move the TV back into place, while I re-connected all of the smartly labeled cables, and said a little prayer. With a bit of a heave-ho, we placed the TV back safely on the bracket and I finished hooking up the Mac Mini.

Of course, I buzzed through all of the inputs to make sure everything was working correctly, and shockingly, it was all good. Plus, no dangling wires (except for the coaxial cable and the ethernet line - no controlling where those pop out of the wall) and in the end, what I was call a darn-nice looking set up. All it took was a bit of patience, time and some zip ties. I probably spent about 3 hours from start to finish on the project, but that was largely due to interruptions of the infant variety.

Needs some 172.5 crankarms. I think these red ones came off of a huffy with training wheels.

Posted via web from Mike Likes…

launched which is trying to standardize the disclosure copy that bloggers, tweeters and other online content creators can use to disclose their association with a product or brand.

You’ll notice there are several “flavors” of disclosure – this is probably not the be-all-end-all solution, but if you are looking for ways to ensure your online contacts are being transparent, you may want to use this copy as a suggested starting point for the disclosure statement.

Certainly this is going to be an interesting aspect of the communications world to follow in the coming weeks and months. With the FTC more likely to slap a fine on the associated brand than the offending blogger, we can likely look forward to at least a few large brands serving as the unfortunate examples for the larger community of what might happen if the new guidelines are not followed. For many, disclosure has always been a part of how we as communications professionals do business – but these new guidelines certainly underscore the importance.

(This blog post is reprinted from the Cone Brand Channeler Blog)

brilliance.

Posted via web from Mike Likes…

Posted via web from Mike Likes…

Or is this just a horribly disturbing ad?

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Posted via email from Mike Likes…