Attention. Good marketing has to catch attention. But up to what extent?
Read this article from Yahoo! and tell me what you think:

PETA to launch its own porn site: Does exploiting women promote animal rights?
by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Manage Your Life, on Tue Sep 20, 2011 3:05pm PDT

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal-rights group known for its controversial ads featuring nearly naked starlets, is taking their "I'd rather be naked than wear fur" idea to a new level by launching their own XXX porn site.

That's right: The same organization that fights to protect animals plans to do so via a medium that often exploits and denigrates women.

"We're hoping to reach a whole new audience of people, some of whom will be shocked by graphic images that maybe they didn't anticipate seeing when they went to the PETA triple-X site," Lindsay Rajt, PETA's associate director of campaigns, told Reuters

The X-rated site will show pornographic content and images from PETA's more risque ads, Rajt said. Those images will be interspersed with pictures and videos showing animals being mistreated—and (we're not making this up) links to vegan and vegetarian "starter kits" and recipes.

"When people first visit the site, it will be very enticing and once they go just a little bit deeper, that's when they'll be confronted with images that we hope will make them stop and think and get them talking and hopefully encourage them to make a lifestyle change to a plant-based diet," Rajt said.

Yes, they expect it to be "enticing." But to whom? People who like crush films, porn that shows women killing small animals by stomping them to death?

It seems unlikely that people who are drawn to both pornography and violent video about abused animals would be looking for a way to convert to vegetarianism. But that's PETA's plan.

Other animal rights activists are skeptical about the idea.

"It's like promoting robberies as an alternative to assaults," said Brian M. Messenheimer, an Army veteran who does animal rescue work in the Boston area.

Adult film stars Sahsa Grey, Ron Jeremy, and Jenna Jamison have all appeared in PETA's ads and have had very successful careers in porn, and PETA insists that the women they'll feature on their port site are willing participants as well, so exploitation doesn't enter into the equation.

"Our demonstrators, the models, all chose to participate in our campaigns," Rajt pointed out, before invoking the "F" word: "It's not a very feminist thing to do to turn to women and tell them whether or not they can use their voices, their bodies to express their voice."

But for countless other women who were forced into the porn industry or are stuck in sexually violent relationships, being a "willing participant" doesn't mean they aren't also victims of abuse. Messenheimer looks at it in terms of animals. "Does it lessen the fact that dogs trained to fight are willing participants?" he asks.

Pornography and feminism aside, PETA has also been criticized for its treatment of the animals it claims to have rescued. According to their own data, filed with the Department of Agriculture in Virginia, in 2010 PETA took in 2,345 homeless dogs and cats—and euthanized 2,301 of them.

What do you think? Is pornography a valid way to promote animal rights?

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Homer Nievera
Business Development. Digital Marketing. Social Media.
http://homernievera.net

Social Media Case Study: ArtBabble Shows How Video is Done

By Richard MacManus

This week we're looking at how social media is being deployed in museums. The idea with our Social Media Case Studies series is to analyze how social media is actually being used by organizations, which we hope will provide inspiration or assistance to others. We started with Brooklyn Museum yesterday. Despite being impressed by the presence of Brooklyn Museum on many social media platforms, I concluded that the museum is spreading itself too thin. I think it would be better off focusing on deeper engagement on fewer channels. Some of the feedback suggested that I was overly critical. That wasn't the intention, however I do think constructive criticism motivates us all to find more creative ways to use social media.


Today we're going to review a service that creatively uses video. Called ArtBabble, it's an art video service run by the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). Want to know some best practices for integrating video into your social media plans? Look no further...

With a tagline of "Play Art Loud," ArtBabble is kind of a portal for video art content. Although it was created by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, many of the America's top museums and (some from overseas) are listed as partners. ArtBabble was launched in April 2009.
There are three main sections: Series, Channels, Artists.




The Series section features series on a certain theme, such as a series called Making Art from the J. Paul Getty Museum. That one features 7 instructive videos, on topics ranging from Gem Carving to Making a Spanish Polychrome Sculpture. Personally, I'm planning to check out the series entitled Abstract Expressionist New York.

The Channels are topic-focused sections. For example Asian Art features over 100 videos.
Finally, the Artist section lists out individual artists. For example I discovered an excellent video about the late San Francisco artist Margaret Kilgallen.



One of the best features in ArtBabble is that each section (Series, Channel, Artist) has its own RSS feed, so you can subscribe to video content in a very granular way. It also features all of the usual social touches, such as ratings, comments and tag clouds.

ArtBabble is an elegantly designed site with a lot of compelling content in it. Perhaps the biggest lesson here for other organizations is that the video content on ArtBabble comes from dozens of art museums, so it is varied and regularly updated. It's not always possible to collaborate with others on content, but for a social site it's always a plus.

Let us know what you think of ArtBabble in the comments, also any other site that you'd like to give a shout-out to for its usage of video.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

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Homer Nievera
Business Development. Digital Marketing. Social Media.
http://homernievera.net

And Now Yahoo Has Put Itself Up For Sale...

(Source: Business Insider)

In addition to firing CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo's board has now put the company up for sale.

The person who briefed the Wall Street Journal on the Bartz firing also told the paper that "Yahoo is open to selling itself to the right bidder."

That's the equivalent of sticking a FOR SALE sign on the lawn.

The board canned Bartz, the WSJ's sources say, after studying the company's assets for two weeks and concluding that Bartz was doing a lousy job. If this is really true, one wonders what on earth the board has been doing for the past two years, while pretty much everyone else concluded the same thing.

There's no quick fix for Yahoo. The company needs to embrace the fact that it's now a media, content, and communications company--and make heavy investments in those areas. It needs to radically streamline itself. And it needs a leader with a clear product vision and the ability to execute on it.
The trouble with the above prescription is that, if the board is equally happy to just sell Yahoo, this leader will be even harder to find. And, in the meantime, the company will be even more firmly entrenched in the purgatory that has frozen it for the last couple of years.

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Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/and-now-yahoo-has-put-itself-up-for-sale-2011-9#ixzz1XK1l6ydk


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Homer Nievera
Business Development. Digital Marketing. Social Media.
http://homernievera.net