In talking to companies about Conversational Marketing these past few months, a nagging question keeps coming up, and it represents a significant obstacle in the path of companies that want to speak directly to their customers online. That question concerns what to do about those folks who are so mad at your company that they can't be reasoned with.

Ever walk by someone and see FCUK on their shirt? Did you do a double-take? I know at first I did. Prior to that, I thought French Connection UK seemed like a cool brand. Ever since, I thought it was campy--so campy I'd throw it in the same category as the, "I'm with him" T-shirt.

In the column preceding last week's, I wrote about the lack of meaningful innovation that I saw at Ad: Tech. In that column, I had mentioned that there were some companies that demonstrated very cool ideas within proven models. Within the idiom of transparency therefore, let's talk about the ad network.

To kick things off, I'd like to address the self-inflicted blow of Warren Kremer Paino Advertising. I've been more captivated by this drama than my wife has been glued to gossip about Tom Cruise's increasingly strange behavior.

Pearl Jam has recognized the concept of user-generated content better than any other band. Now that they've partnered with a label called J Records, the home of Clive Davis and one of the most well-respected names in music, they are reaping the benefits....

When corporations eventually wake up and allow their people to communicate meaningfully with their customers, business will take an immense leap forward. Until then, one of the barriers standing in the way of such communication is the notion of scale. Put simply, how does a business that employs perhaps thousands of people communicate meaningfully, in a one-to-one manner, with perhaps millions of potential customers?

Hello, dear readers. As of day's end today, I'll be a free agent. Simply put, I quit my job (day job--not MediaPost writing) and I'm looking for a new one. So I am now seeing things through the eyes of the online consumer.

Listening to very serious pitches from media people telling my clients that they need to "engage" consumers gives me the giggles. I always want to ask, "you mean 'engaged' as opposed to being bored out of their minds by the ad campaign, right?"

I spent the week at Ad:Tech, chatting with lots of people about lots of great ideas. While I came away in shock concerning the growth our industry has seen over the last few years, I also came away wondering if everyone was paying attention to the details. I was wondering if everyone saw the forest for the trees.

Social tagging represents an efficient and accurate way to categorize content as it is created, or as it is linked. According to Technorati, nearly half of all blog posts are associated with one or more author-generated tags. This categorization forms the basis for a system that can determine content's relevance to a given subject. In other words, this could be the next wave in search, but it's also much more than that.