I felt a great disturbance in the working force, as if millions of marketing voices cried out in terror over what their new year’s resolutions should be. After all, none of us is really gonna lose that weight or write that novel, so we might as well focus on what we do best: make promises about marketing. So without further ado (or adon’ts), here are some suggested marketing new year’s resolutions in a format we business geeks understand – a slideshow…

I usually use this space to dissect other people’s projects, so for a change, I decided to eviscerate one of my own. Ladies and gentlemen: introducing the idea that went nowhere, “The Horror Ghetto”…

A few years ago I noticed that horror movies were scoring big at the box office, but unless they featured a celebrity or A-list director, many weren’t getting reviews — even if they opened at #1. In other words, when it came to horror flicks, “At the Movies” was out to lunch.

And that wasn’t fair to the millions of horror fans, or to twisted talent like my friend Jed Rowen, who has appeared in over 70 films, in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, and on panels at horror and sci-fi conventions. Time to give Jed and other horror aficionados more spotlight. Or moonlight. Or something like that.

Rather than moan and groan like some dyspeptic ghoul, I decided, “Where there’s a void, there’s an opportunity.” After all, isn’t that what every marketing book from “Blue Ocean Strategy” to “Zag” tells us?

Hence, the idea of a TV show that reviews horror movies was spawned.

I pitched the idea to one of my filmmaker buddies, Dane Boedigheimer, who also loves horror flicks and occasionally produces a monster-infested YouTube vid. Since he specializes in humor and sight gags, we decided to throw in comedic skits and raw silliness. After all, others like Fangoria magazine have produced horror review shows, but they’re lethally serious. So like Dr. Frankenstein, we combined horror and humor into one stitched-up beast and yelled, “IT’S ALIIIIIIIIIVE!!!”

We called it “The Horror Ghetto,” which refers to that part of the industry where actors and directors go and are never heard from again.

Ghoulfriends (from left): Alisha Nichols, Juliette Angeli and Meghan McCabe play the Harpettes in The Horror Ghetto.

To accompany Jed — and add a dose of hex appeal — we cast a Greek chorus of femme fatales called the Harpettes, played by Juliette Angeli, Meghan McCabe and Alisha Nichols. We then spent a few hours filming — hours that flew by because we were having too much fun — and Dane worked his editorial magic into a 2-minute trailer (also known as a “sizzle reel”).

Since we feared that others might steal our idea (we were that sold on the show’s genius), we didn’t share it on YouTube, Facebook or any other online medium. We decided to go straight for the prize.

So we set out to feed our baby to Hollywood…

…which didn’t bother tasting it much before spitting it out.

The first meeting was with a television production company famous for its live comedy series featuring video clips. Sounded perfect — yet the meeting lasted a little longer than our video

While friends who had seen our “Horror Ghetto” video had laughed or at least smiled, the production company guy did his best Bela Lugosi impersonation. He just stared, eyes showing not even a flicker of life. The ensuing conversation went something like this:

Him: “Who’s the audience for this?”
Me: “Millions of horror fans, particularly young males, ages 13-29.”
Him: “Hollywood’s not interested in young males.”

Yes, he really said that. I guess we should tell the makers of The Transformers series to stop filming. I responded that even if Hollywood isn’t interested, advertisers of everything from Axe body spray to Mountain Dew and horror films would be. His blank stare gave me the chills.

I handed him a marketing plan I had written to promote “The Horror Ghetto” using social media, a sponsor-friendly website, cross-promotions with potential commercial sponsors (Monster energy drink among them) and live events centered on fanboy conventions. The appendix included Jed’s Atlantic Monthly profile and an article from the L.A. Times about the popularity of horror films. He took a glance at the report cover and handed it back to me.

Him: “If this is such a good idea, why hasn’t anyone else done it yet?”
What I wanted to say: “Because most Hollywood television producers haven’t had an original idea since the doctor held them upside down by the ankles and spanked them to get the amniotic fluid out of their lungs.”
What I did say: “Actually, it’s similar to ‘Talk Soup’ and ‘Elvira’ and ‘SNL’ combined.”
Him: (ignoring me) “What we’re looking for is proven properties. We’re currently developing American versions of several hit Japanese gameshows. If you have anything like that, call us.”

Ah, the notorious Hollywood cryptkee— I mean, gatekeepers. Since it had been years since I worked in television, I had forgotten about them. Like other gatekeepers worldwide (HR managers, admissions officers, script readers and loan officers), their primary job is to say “no.” It’s usually foolhardy to deal with them without arming yourself first with a killer track record or a high-powered connection. Indeed, as I usually advise job applicants concerning HR managers, the best bet is to avoid them altogether, and to go directly to a higher-up.

So after that meeting from the black lagoon, I decided to contact my industry connections: agents, producers, studio executives.

They were far friendlier and encouraging than dead-stare guy, but they also didn’t think the project “had legs.” So I realized I couldn’t blame him for not falling madly in lust with “The Horror Ghetto” and throwing suitcases filled with unmarked bills at our feet.

Some of my friends provided suggestions, like using better music (a great idea) or replacing Jed with a celebrity, which I absolutely refused to do — friendship matters to me, and the whole point was to bring light to the ghetto, not to mimic it with outsiders.

Clearly, even though television regularly spews such toxic dreck as “Bridalplasty” and “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” it would take a lot more to sell a show than simply cooking up a 2-minute reel with hot girls and horror clips. And I should have known that. I’ve worked in L.A. for over 20 years, and I know that each of the hundreds of staff writers, actors and crew-members currently working on TV has three or four ideas in their back pocket — and they’re the ones already inside the gates.

So where do guys like me and Dane go with our mad creations? Where else, but that great democratizer on the Web: YouTube.

And that’s when Dane struck gold.

Dane Boedigheimer: from Horror Ghetto to bane of all unsuspecting fruit...

No, it wasn’t with “The Horror Ghetto.” As we discussed launching Ghetto into a web series, Dane’s video “The Annoying Orange” took off, scoring nearly 60 million views. Indeed, his entire “Annoying Orange” channel has attracted over half-a-billion views in just over a year.

So guess what’s happening next? That’s right: a TV deal. (Go, Daneboe!)

Now imagine if Dane had tried to pitch “The Annoying Orange” before it became a YouTube sensation: “So I got this idea for a talking orange whose friends get killed by a mysterious knife…”

Rather, he let his talent do the talking, and let the actual viewers decide.

Now, before you go rushing off with your camcorder and a piece of fruit, the odds of getting even a hit video on YouTube, not to mention a TV series based on one, are somewhere between slim and none.

And yet, in this age of hyper-competition, where we’re all competing with professionals across the ocean as well as amateurs across the street, those of us with creative ideas and ambitions need to lay the groundwork first — and I’m talking acres of nice, lush groundwork, redolent with the scent of money — before traipsing off to the gatekeepers. Whether your chosen venue is YouTube or Twitter or Japanese gameshows, gatekeepers want proven concepts first.

And that takes time.

With Dane fully caught up in the demands of producing “Annoying Orange,” and me getting more teaching and client work (i.e., stuff that actually pays), “The Horror Ghetto” was laid to rest. And there it lay interred in the dark forbidding depths of my backup drive for over a year, when it occurred to me the other day to go ahead and upload it to YouTube as an Atomic Tango production sample. You know, just for kicks… and the off chance that it could rise from the dead…

Social media isn’t “free.” As I tell my students and clients, there are several costs involved:

1. The cost of hiring someone to do it for you.
2. The value of your time if you do it yourself.
3. The opportunity costs — what you could be missing while Tweeting, posting, sharing, liking, friending, following and LOLing.

That last one is critical. For all its possibilities, social media does not offer the tangible benefits of the original social medium: actually meeting people in person. That’s one reason I teach: it gets me out from behind this computer and into the company of aspiring and inquisitive professionals. It’s also why I accept every invitation to speak at business functions.

Today I had the opportunity to speak to the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce at their March Business Luncheon here in L.A. I got to present my thoughts on community-based social media to people who actually know what it takes to run a business. (Below is my presentation, which won’t make a lot of sense unless you were there, but I thought I’d share it anyway.)

Download the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce Slideshow Here

These small-to-midsize-business owners and managers aren’t slapping plans together and praying for an angel or VC to make them Wired magazine cover models; they’re actually selling to customers, meeting payrolls, and paying taxes. I was honored to speak to them.

I also had the opportunity to meet some great people, from a freelance journalist to a man who runs three small businesses (a tire shop, a photo studio, and a travel agency). Will it lead to new accounts for Atomic Tango? Perhaps. More importantly, it gave me an opportunity to clear my head of the nonsense issuing from SXSWi by “experts” who’ve never run a business — and get back in touch with what’s real.

So big thanks to SOC — let’s do lunch again soon!

P.S. The Social Media Seminar I’m teaching is located here. Ignore the outdated description — I’m teaching the latest platforms, from Twitter to Groupon.

First, we had to do something with all this talent.

One of the places I teach is Antioch University L.A.’s Master’s in Organizational Management program, which isn’t like other business programs filled with spreadsheet jockeys yearning for careers in corporate management. Rather, MAOM attracts free-spirited iconoclasts and romantics who travel the world, devour the arts, and write poetically about any topic that stirs their bountiful fancies.

And that’s just the faculty.

My students include filmmakers and health fanatics, education consultants and ballroom dancers. I couldn’t just let them roam the halls and earn their degrees without at least once tapping their talent and enthusiasm, right?

At the same time, MAOM needed to make some noise. Here’s this intimate, inspiring and innovative management program unlike anything else in L.A., yet most of the spotlight is taken by the usual profit-worshiping MBA programs. Let’s just say that MAOM could use a wee bit more public awareness.

Just so happens, awareness is what I do for a living, and my favorite awareness tool is blogging. Blogs are cheap and easy to create. They give their creators an opportunity to flaunt all their talents and expertise, while making organizations more personal. Search engines love blogs, and blog posts are ideal for feeding into the ravenous maw of social media. Blogging is the way I market my business — so why not do the same for MAOM?

Plus, the publications of other business schools can be so disappointing — and where I see disappointments, I see opportunity. For example, one prominent business school shovels out profundities like “awesomeness is the new innovation” and “when times are flat or in a downturn, look for new ideas” and “when each consumer is interested in purchasing an exogenously given number (n) of varieties, we show that there is no pure strategy symmetric price equilibrium in general (for n > 2 with linear transportation costs).”

Business writing like that will drive a man to drink…. strychnine. Or…

An Antidote.

MAOM Chair Susan Nero, Professor Bob Lazzarini and I (the Managing Editor) created “The Antidote” consisting of musings and memos on management from the entire AULA community, not just MAOM and not just faculty. We didn’t want our department to be an island, and we wanted to give everyone from students to alumni an opportunity to express themselves and be published.

I mentioned we’re different, right? Hence, we dubbed The Antidote “AULA’s Cure for the Common Business Blog.”

Since launching in early July, The Antidote has published management tips from professors, videos and essays by students, and real-world insights from alumni. So while the blog is a work in progress – appropriate for education, yes? – it’s successfully giving talent a voice, one post at a time.

This article was adapted from a piece I originally wrote for AULA Connection.

Funny to see all the young ones chattin’ away on the Twitter ’bout this year’s South-by-Southwest festival, aka SXSW.

What used to be just a good ol’ fashioned music fest in the unvarnished heart of Austin is now this slicked-up multimedia shindig known as much — or even more — for its interactive media than its music. Seems to me that the latte-sippers are now outnumbering the Shiner Bock drinkers. The times they sure have a’changed…

Back in ’95, when I was but a pup in the music industry, I got me an assignment to write an ad for MCA Records’ big concert in the middle of the street where no one could miss it. (Helps to have that big corporate concert budget, you know.) Now this ad was gonna run in the Austin Statesman, which would be filled with other ads from other record companies for other concerts all pretty much lookin’ the same, like the opposite sex in a bar after you’ve had one too many.

So I decided to be a little different by making my ad a Texas legend. Hell, I had the space to write all I wanted. And just like many legends and textbooks in Texas, this one was just made up. But I enjoyed writin’ it. And from what I hear, people enjoyed readin’ it.

And you’ll notice way at the bottom a plug for MCA Records’ website, which in 1995 was a new-fangled thing I also wrote. So I kinda like to think that we at MCA (R.I.P.) helped to sow all this multimedia business at SXSW that today’s kids are now reapin’.

So if you got the time and the inkling, give this piece o’ history a click and a read, and pour me another Shiner. I get enough lattes here in L.A.

The good ol' days - click to enlarge...

Full Disclosure: The following post is about one of my clients at Atomic Tango…

Imagine waking up and finding yourself strapped to a chair. Standing over you is a strange man swinging a large golf club. He keeps asking you menacing questions, but you have no idea what he’s talking about. Frustrated by your lack of answers, he decides to take a massive swing at a spot right between your eyes… How do you escape?

Well, there’s an App for that…

More exactly, there’s an iPhone App and an interactive movie. “Bank Run” is an Apple iPhone game with actual video footage — not CGI characters, but real humans in real locations. In addition, it’s integrated with a free interactive movie at BankRunGame.com.

In “Bank Run,” you play Evan, an office drone caught up in a conspiracy involving hot secret agents, crooked bankers and an army of armed thugs. You have to dodge cars and bullets while deciding whom to trust and whom to kill. Make the wrong choice or the wrong move and Evan eats it — but you can hone your skills and try again.

“Bank Run” is the creation of my client SilkTricky, a Portland, Oregon-based digital agency that launched its first live-action interactive film, “The Outbreak,” in September 2008. (Which I also helped promote.) “The Outbreak” featured rampaging zombies, bloodied characters and viewers in charge. Fueled by reviews on blogs and social media, “The Outbreak” attracted over one million views during its eight-month run online.

“The reaction to ‘The Outbreak’ inspired us to go even further,” said Chris Lund, SilkTricky’s founder and writer/editor/director/effects artist. “Bank Run” was filmed in Portland with local actors. Lund won’t reveal the budget, but noted that “it cost a little less than ‘Avatar.’” He added, “Our goal wasn’t to make a cinematic classic, but to create a fun fantasy experience. There are some cheesy one-liners and over-the-top scenarios, but who wants to play a boring movie?”

Just another day at the evil multinational bank...

SilkTricky is hosting the first part of “Bank Run” online where it can be sampled freely. The experience continues on the iPhone with a $1.99 App that includes the second half of the movie and a couple of arcade-style shooter games. Both the movie and the game contain graphic violence and adult language — or approximately what you’d find at your typical evil multinational bank. And like any bank loan officer, Lund hopes that interest runs high…

Update 3/15/10: “Bank Run” scores Site of the Day honors at the FWA.

Related Article: “The Outbreak”: New Zombie Flick Brings Interactive Films Back From The Dead

No, not me on the cover. Really.

Somebody my size with my athletic ability doesn’t play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Picture an over-caffeinated chicken on a greased trampoline. It’s just not in my genetic cards.

So I did the next best thing: I wrote a bad-ass essay about the team. Actually a few essays…

In  2000, my buddy Hiroshi and I launched TURFgeeks, a primitive football blog with approximately 2.5 readers: me, Hiroshi, and an occasional stray surfer. It was a lot harder to hype a blog in those pre-Web 2.0 days — particularly since the word blog didn’t exist — but it didn’t matter. For Hiroshi, it was a refreshing break from his brutally dry gig as an agriculture industry PR guy. For me, it was a way to keep my writing skills honed in the wake of the first dotcom crash. For both of us, it was an opportunity to pretend we were sports writers.

Ancient artifact and proof of early bloggers unveiled. Note: We let our domain registration lapse, and now turfgeeks.com is owned by a lawn maintenance service. Sacrilege!

Being a sports writer was something I had fantasized about for years. In college, I was a photographer for the student paper and shot an occasional sporting event, but I envied the writers and the verbal gymnastics they executed to capture the essence of a game. I then looked into sports writing as a career and learned how much most journalists actually get paid.

Obviously, they do it for the love of sports.

I also learned that most rookie sports writers cover bowling, bass fishing and minor league baseball in some backwoods burg in hopes of making it to the big leagues. My interest was strictly football — indeed, I consider baseball to be slow torture.

So I went into the music industry instead, followed by advertising and the dotcom rollercoaster.

Enter “Sports Night”

Porn for Wannabe Sports Writers

Then, in 1998, the TV series “Sports Night” premiered and aired for two brilliant seasons. Created by Aaron Sorkin (who later produced “The West Wing”), “Sports Night” won three Emmy Awards and approximately 2.5 viewers. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best idea to do a show called “Sports Night” when women dominate primetime viewership. But, wow, this series about life in sports broadcasting had it all: killer writing, high-energy work environments, and sexy creative colleagues who regularly high-fived each other. It was the complete antithesis of my dotcom experience, which was more like “Office Space” without the action sequences. Indeed, “Sports Night” was so idealized and artificially enhanced it was practically pornographic.

So I tried to make it happen. Hiroshi and I wrote TURFgeeks for one glorious season. He went on to become a cop, and I got a job as an assistant on a TV series about a young guy who sees his entire life as a sporting event: “Inside Schwartz.” It sounded perfect — but let’s just say it was no “Sports Night.” We got canceled after nine or ten episodes. I’ve blocked most of it out of my memory, though I remember once finding the producer in his office obsessively tweaking the show’s laugh track.

That’s when I decided to get an MBA so I could produce my own work, but the love of sports writing persevered.

The Blog Age Dawns

A few years ago, Geek-kind entered the Blog Age. I snooped around a few sports sites, commenting here and there, but nothing grabbed me. I usually found myself debating 13-year-old sports runts who had discovered the joy of cursing anonymously at adults.

Paradise for Steelers Fans

Then, last year, I discovered a site that spoke my language: Behind The Steel Curtain. I’m a lifelong, diehard Steelers fan, and here was a thriving site devoted solely to my team, with actual intelligent discussion, not just the usual cheerleading and trash talking. Indeed, Steelers president and co-owner Art Rooney Jr. described BTSC as “Thoughtful discussion with a sense of history.”

The credit goes to Michael “Blitzburgh” Bean, BTSC’s founder and editor, who’s also a grad student in Digital Media at the University of Washington. He runs a tight ship at BTSC, and is also a great writer. He and I started chatting, and he asked if I’d like to write about the Steelers. I said of course, I was happy contributing to his site. He interrupted and asked if I would write for a print publication he was editing — and get paid to do it.

I said I’d think about it.

Yeah, right. I had the article written and on his desk before he even got off the phone — I was that pumped about the opportunity.

Game Time

The article I wrote for Michael is, of course, a marketer’s eye-view of the Steelers. Entitled “Now That’s Steelers Football!: How a Small Market Team Created a Nation,” it breaks down the elements of a “cult brand” and how the Steelers have implemented each element to perfection. Yes, it’s thoroughly TURFgeeky, but it combines Steelers and marketing. What could be better? I won’t say anymore — you’ll have to read it in your own copy of Steelers Annual 2009 just published by Maple Street Press.

By the way, one of my fellow contributing writers on this book is Howard Fineman of MSNBC and Newsweek. Yes, count me psyched.

Now, I didn’t get to cover a game in person for that article. I wrote it mostly at my local Starbucks in West L.A. But it’s a start, right? After all, if ancient Brett Favre (who’s younger than I am) can continue to pursue his football fantasies, so can this armchair QB. I just gotta take it easy on the high-fives — this typing arm ain’t what it used to be.

Shameless plug: Will write for football — or most any other topic: contact Atomic Tango…

Click to enlarge.

Written by Freddy, illustrated by Barzak

Ever watch a horror film and yell at the characters, “What the hell are you doing?!” Well, smarty, now you can put yourself in the characters’ bloody shoes with the online zombie flick The Outbreak…

The interactive horror short lets you make key decisions for the characters and see the results. For example, in one scene an annoying character breaks her leg while zombies are attacking. If this were a normal film, you might be cheering loudly for the zombies. In “The Outbreak,” the action freezes and you’re presented a choice: “save her” or “leave her.” Make the right choice, and the film continues with more critical choices. Make the wrong choice, and you get one final scene before the words “YOU DIE” appear on screen. But just like the zombies, you aren’t dead forever. You can start the film over or click on a chapter menu to see your film path to that point. You can then re-view a scene and change your mind. Here’s the trailer…

My friend Lynn Lund and her husband, Chris, created both “The Outbreak” and the site. I wrote the press release and low-budget marketing plan. I’m also now encouraging Lynn and Chris to make their next interactive flick a romantic comedy, since I’m more likely to yell at a nonsensical film like “Knocked Up” than at a horror film. But that might just be me.

Other Interactive Films…

I’m also a sucker for interactive stories. At Expo ’74 (The World’s Fair in Spokane, Washington), I remember seeing “Kinoautomat” (aka “One Man And His World”) a full-screen interactive movie from Czechoslovakia. Each seat in the theater was equipped with a red button and a green button. A live actor hosted the film, and she interrupted it at several points to ask us to vote on what the character should do next. We would vote by pressing the button corresponding to a choice, and the film would follow that path. Unfortunately, Czechoslovakia’s then Communist government put the kibosh on both the film and the technology, but it’s recently enjoyed a bit of a revival.

So other than films at world fairs, we interactive junkies of the ’70s had only dead-tree media to play with. I’m talking, of course, about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories of Edward Packard, including “Sugarcane Island.”

On the Internet, most cinematic entertainment to date has ignored the capabilities of the medium and been old-school linear. Instead of interactivity, we have YouTube shorts and soap operas made for MySpace. Yes, a lot of it is really good — like Dr. Horrible — but none of it has taken advantage of the technology to really engage the audience. (And just the word “engagement” gets corporate sponsors all hot and bothered.) Now comes “The Outbreak.” Here’s hoping this little zombie flick helps interactive films rise again.

Update 9/24/8: The zombies are a hit. My friend/client Lynn emails me, “Freddy, our stats are blowing up. We have to switch over to another server by the end of this week b/c we will go over our monthly bandwidth allotment of 1 TB in the next few days (we’ve only been on this server since Sunday!).”

Update 5/20/9: The zombies have been put to sleep, as “The Outbreak” has been retired. You can still find a low-quality version of “The Outbreak” on YouTube.

Related Article: Better Off Undead? The Mysterious Popularity of Zombie Movies

If you have a film or other product that you want promoted with a low-cost marketing plan, contact Atomic Tango…

Well, I’m about to do something that should have you ROFLYAO. I just launched this blog in December of ’007, and now I’m going to perpetrate a greatest posts retrospective. Yes, call it premature exaltation. Or just a lark…

But I’m in the midst of grading MBA marketing finals, and grading is to teaching what scrubbing dishes is to eating. (So time consuming. So dirty feeling.) In addition, I have to tend to my clients, attend business development meetings, feed the cats, work on two books (one fiction, one non), read up on USC Trojans football, and develop three different ideas for video series. Blogging? Who’s got time for blogging?

So I do what all other creative people do when they’re pressed for time, short on ideas, and overdue on their next scheduled release: I put out a greatest hits compilation. Here, then, are my Top 20 blog posts to date in terms of views. And I promise not to release a greatest hits volume two anytime soon. At least, not until the holiday shopping season…

1. Are You For Real, Monica Rockle? A Facebook Marketing Case Study — By far my most popular post, accounting for nearly half of all the views to Cool Rules Pronto. This one exposed a wildly successful marketing scheme perpetrated on Facebook. It even led the perpetrator to contact me in the guise of his faux femme fatale. I posted links to the article directly at the scene of the slime, and it resulted in a lot of traffic and comments — some of them surprisingly hostile.

2. Are You For Real, Monica Rockle II: The Updates, the Photo, and… the Haunting? — The silly sequel to the hit post also drew a few readers.

3. Use Your Illusion: The Viral Spinning Girl — Optical illusions are popular on the Web. I wrote about why this illusion had viral potential, and — to my relief — it lived up to that potential.

4. That Great Big Sexy Mistake: 5 Reasons Not to Use Flash — I was happy to see this one take off, particularly since 100%-Flash sites are an unfortunately common mistake. Though, honestly, much of the traffic probably came because of the word “sexy” and the photo of a hot model.

5. American Apparel Sports a Woody: Madness is the Method — I posted a link to this one on the American Apparel page at Facebook, and the double entendre no doubt lured over some of the fashion brand’s fans. A lot of people researching American Apparel’s controversial CEO Dov Charney also found it.

6. “Your Skin Color is not a Stain!”: L.A. Teen Takes On Unilever’s Bigotry — This post testifies to the power of Digg. I fully credit teenage blogger Delia Rose for first raising the issue, but it required some enthusiastic Diggers to give the story life. The best part? The traffic from Unilever websites.

7. Marketing During a Recession, Part 1: Pricing — Note to business bloggers: write about what to do during a recession. People are worried out there, as they should be. They need advice — make that free advice.

8. Public Relations 101: How (Not) to Write a Press Release — A ridiculous phenomenon (corporate press releases) calls for a ridiculous response, and I can be ridiculous on demand. I had publicists sending this to their friends. It’s great to see people willing to laugh at the themselves. If only more of the world would take itself less seriously…

9. What What? South Park Spoofs the WGA, YouTube, Canada… — Speaking of which, YouTubers and Hollywood writers loved being skewered by South Park. Indeed, I think some people were offended at being left out.

10. Full of Holes: The Extremist Attack on Dunkin Donuts — Want a hot blog post? Touch a heated topic. Critics dismissed the “kaffiyeh kerfluffle” as much ado about nothing. But it was an annoying moment in modern U.S. media that offended a lot of people. It deserved a little rant. Plus, I’ll take any opportunity to jab the wingnuts.

11. Totally Lushalicious: The Making of a New Word — Apparently, a lot of people are interested in new words. Who says the Web is making its users illiterate? (Note: “illiterate” means “can not read.”)

12. Breaking into the Media Biz: 10 Tips for Aspiring Media Moguls — I wrote this after hearing some really prehistoric career advice spouted by some dinosaurs at a career conference. The media world is being shattered into millions of little pieces, and the corporations no longer have a lock on it — nor are they hiring much anymore. So I went straight home and wrote this post, which I see as a work in progress.

13. Cute, Clever and Contagious: The HEMA Website — Cute viral site. Made my job easy.

14. Bankruptcy is the Fashion? Mervyns Fails to Declare Its Style — I didn’t think anyone cared about Mervyns, but this one took off after I posted it to Stumbleupon. I think there’s a fascination with bankruptcies out there. Is it out of a general fear, or are people excited about bad operations finally falling? Schadenfreude, anyone?

15. Say Vhat?! Do the People Want a VW with a German Accent? — This one drew VW fans, advertising professionals and … people interested in German accents? Say vhat?

16. Cows and Dogs in a Bear Market: Applying the BCG Matrix to Marketing — The BCG Matrix is an old framework that’s kind of cheesy, but it still generates a lot of interest. I think the photo of head cheese (shudder) also drew in a few clicks. In fact, there should be a horror movie called, “The Head Cheese That Ate New York.” It would be scarier than “Cloverfield.” Hell, John McCain’s campaign is scarier than “Cloverfield.”

17. Hail Mary: Does the All American Football League Have a Prayer? — People want more football. I second that emotion.

18. “Wait, That’s My Face!”: Identity Theft, Social Networking Style — The young woman whose photo was heisted by “Monica Rockle” contacted me. (I love how small the Web can be.) This article got the attention of a lot of people nervous about privacy on social networks.

19. Here We Go Again: Dotcom Bust 2.0 — This was a shout out to my peeps in Web 2.0 land. The sensationalist headline drew ‘em in, but my intention was to get all of us to start thinking seriously about marketing and making money. I love Web 2.0 sites and services and don’t want to see any more going under. Note to 2.0 entrepreneurs: you can’t all survive on advertising revenue — but hey, thanks for redistributing all that VC wealth.

20. (tie) Not So Artfully Crafted: Blue Moon’s Un-Wired Ad — Not sure what the fascination with Blue Moon is. It’s Coors, people!

20. (tie) Marketing During a Recession, Part 2: Honor the Fallen — More recession advice. The world wants it!

In addition to my Top 20, what also interests me (and, likely, only me) about my rankings is which posts full-on tanked. Basically, anything I wrote about the presidential election face-planted harder than Fred Thompson at a breakdancing competition. Each post garnered fewer than 20 views each. My guess is that there are enough blogs out there covering politics that no one really needs the political views of a raging leftist L.A. marketer. Damn.

Same thing with my posts about Hollywood: complete flops at the box office. I should have known better: the world doesn’t need another entertainment writer.

And articles about myself? Not so hot. In fact, I effusively thank all two of you who have read this far into this post.

So I’ll stick to writing about marketing in my highly critical and irreverent way, delving into controversy when I see it, and dishing out specific advice on how to survive in a brutal economy.

In the meantime, I’ve got papers to grade. And a couple of really hungry cats.