Digital ravings of an analog girl






         Shoes and the meaning of life.

July 14, 2009

The beginners guide to sex simulation

 

Not me...

Not me...

Owwwww.  I hurt.  My shoulders hurt, my wrists hurt, the joints of my fingers hurt.  My sides hurt – but thank goodness, only when I breathe.  I have a wide blue bruise flourishing on the outside of my right thigh.

Was I beaten up this weekend?  Nope.  These injuries were sustained while pole dancing.  Yes, pole dancing.  The pole dancing was in aid of my friend Gillian’s impending nuptuals.  I guess dry-humping a pole is on a list of must-dos for the single girl.  Crossed off mine now.  Thank God!  Now I can get married!

Not Nearly Drunk Enough

I agreed to try pole dancing, under the inducement that it was ‘great exercise’ (see what I think of exercise here) and ‘fun’ (see what I think of fun below).  A large group of us rocked up to the studio about 6pm, not nearly drunk enough.  Only six of us then had the bottle to try out our stripper chops, including the hen, Gillian.  The other five were dressed for exercise.  I had chosen (unwisely and age-inappropriately) to dress for the pole.  So there I was in short shorts, fishnet tights and fuck-me boots.  It was not pretty.

The instuctor took her place at the front of the class.  She wasn’t exactly what I expected.  Rather portly, with the officious bossy manner of a Victorian schoolmarm – we’ll call her Miss Campbell after my high school headmistress.  “Right ladies!” she bossed “Remember to face your audience, make eye contact, try to seduce them.”  As my ‘audience’ consisted largely of middle aged ladies, I wondered whether I might not better seduce them with a box of Continental Roses and a glass of Sherry.

Miss Campbell then hooked her ample calf around her pole and swung around it a couple of times, coming to a stop in a demure crouch facing her audience.  We all followed suit, with varying levels of success, and ended up more or less crouching by our poles.  “OK, now place your hand on the inside of your knee and push your legs apart, then bring them back together quickly” Miss Campbell demonstrated, ending the manoever fluttering her eyelashes with her hand over her mouth in an ‘Ooops, I slipped’ gesture.  What bit was I exercising here I wondered?  Certainly not my good judgement or self respect.  As I said… not nearly drunk enough.

What followed was an hour of various methods of swinging around the pole interspersed with getting up off the floor with maximum fanny flashing to the audience.  We also learned how to pretend-hump the floor, ride the invisible man backward-cowboy-style (although I have a feeling some of us already knew that one), flick back our hair a-la the wet Flashdance and slap our own arses.

Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask

My pole dancing experience has left me with more questions than answers frankly, but here are the answers I do know, for anyone who wants to know, but is afraid to ask…: 

  • Is pole dancing good exercise?  If you measure ‘good’ by how much pain you’re in a few days after the event, then yes, it is.
  • Is it fun? Well, if you can avoid catching your reflection in the mirror, or in the eyes of your audience, then yeah, I suppose so.
  • Will I be able to use these moves to seduce my husband, boyfriend, potential boyfriend, best friend’s husband?  Well, it depends; is he a neanderthal, sexist, internet porn-watching, wanker?  Ah, who am I kidding!?  Probably…  
  • Do I need to prepare before I try it?  The ‘school’ will make you fill out an extensive form about your health and sign a waiver absolving them of any responsibility for your idiocy.  In terms of preparation… I have just one word for you.  Brazilian.
  •  But wait… Isn’t pole dancing exploitative and demeaning?  Yeah, in the professional pole dancing arena those dufuses shoving $10 bills in the gyrating g-string of the pole dancer are exploited and demeaned.  In the girls-night-out scenario, it fits right in with the other exploitative and demeaning activities we undertake to farewell a girl’s freedom.

Yup, that’s all I’ve got to say about it.  If you have any questions, just ask.  I’ll be forthcoming as always.  If you want to see a video of me pole dancing click here.

July 6, 2009

It’s a Pandemic folks

Hon John Carter

Last week at a briefing, the Minister of Civil Defence, The Hon. John Carter, was heard speaking about the ‘Influential Pandemic’.  I’m not making this up – I couldn’t make something this good up! 

What I want to know, is how do I catch Influentia?  I don’t need a serious dose of it – just a mild case would do, so that I can get my pub quiz team to listen to me and convince my boss to change my title to ‘Grand Poobah of Everything’ (g-Poe for short).  Maybe I just need an Influentia vaccination shot?

But I am worried about possible side effects of Influentia.  Such as National Party membership, mispronounciation and an increase in general wankiness (that’s the adjective, not General Wankiness who heads up the Civil Defence Force :) ).

P.S. What the heck is Sarah Palin on? Do they put something in the water there in Wasilla?

Good grief!…

This just in courtesy of Stuff and The University of Buffalo Psychology Department…

“People who are sensitive about their looks and concerned about being rejected because of them are more likely to be interested in cosmetic surgery than those who are less sensitive.”

…errr…  Am I missing something here?  Do we really need to conduct studies to figure out that insecure people are more likely to go under the knife for cosmetic surgery?  Glad it’s not my tax dollars…

Also from the same section of Stuff

pie thumb

“New Zealand’s national food, a piping hot meat pie with tomato sauce, contains worrying levels of trans fats, research by consumer group Choice shows.”

Getting closer to my tax dollars – that one uses Australian tax dollars and Australian subscriptions.

…and finally, my personal favourite, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, New York…

“An international research consortium involving 34 institutions has found that people who inherited gene variant NRXN3, active in the central nervous system, have a 10-15 per cent greater chance of being obese.”

…So let me get this straight… if your folks are fat, you’re more likely to be fat?  Albert Einstein would be so proud that the college named for him is doing such ground-breaking research!

I’m putting out a grant request for a million-dollar study to investigate whether skintight white pants make you look like a slapper.  Invest now.  It will be ground-breaking…

July 2, 2009

Adapt or die…

Filed under: Uncategorized @ 7:25 pm
Tags: , , ,

Vikings

There are many tragedies going on in the world today, and for the most part, I find I am momentarily sad about them when I hear, and then real life distracts me and I get over it and move on.  But today, I have been sad all day.  ‘What could have saddenned you, oh perenially cheerful Ritsa?’ I hear you ask (yes, the voices in my head speak like the Children of the Corn)… Well, it’s the chronic, soon-to-be-fatal illness of my longtome companion, mentor and past employer, the print magazine. 

In a tweet (via @bernardhickey) I caught up on the latest Roy Morgan Readership estimates for New Zealand.  This has saddened me for a more prolonged period than usual.  The same day another tweet announced the demise of Vibe magazine.

OK, I have to declare my interest here.  Much of my working life (and certainly the most fun part of it) has been spent in publishing offices and printing plants.  In addition, I fully disclose that I am a magazine floozy.  I spend more money and time on mags than I do on shoes.  And I’m not very particular – I pretty much pick up and read any periodical.  My house is littered with trashy gossip mags (of course), weekly news mags (I like Newsweek and Time), intellectual wank mags (The Economist, The New Yorker, Private Eye), business mags (HBR, Businessweek), in-flight mags, glossy fashion mags (I like In Style, Elle and Vogue), special interest mags (NZ Quilter or Pig Farmer anyone?) even status wank mags (Tattler and the deliciously wanky Prestige from Hong Kong).  You get the picture right?  I’m not fussy…

So I’m deeply upset that the universe of disposable reading material is curling up and dying.  And it’s all their own fault.  I point the finger of blame firmly at print publishers.  And they point the finger of blame at anyone they can think of (including me as a blogger).

From fat to extinct

For years, successful magazine publishing has been a fine balancing act between satisfying readers with useful, insightful, entertaining and ‘exclusive’ content and satisfying the advertiser with engaged and numerous readers (except in subscription only oddities like Consumer magazine).  Any publisher who says only one of those matters is lying, or delusional.  And for years, magazine publishing, when it succeeded, has been a bit of a goldmine.

Enter the internet and digital publishing.  Gosh, then we added self publishing!  Suddenly anyone who wanted to could publish content for all the world to see.  And then the unthinkable happened – the world saw, and read, and followed, and subscribed.

In the meantime, the print publishers thought they would jump on this bandwagon too.  They began to publish their magazine editorial online and their magazine advertising too.  They struggled to make this pay, while watching their print circulation head south (and consequently their ad revenue too). 

Why there’s a picture of Vikings at the top

Print publishers have tried to adopt the online environment, but in much the same way as Vikings tried to adopt Greenland.*  It seemed like a good idea to Great Chief Timeandahaf when they first arrived in Greenland.  They set about their usual raping, pillaging and plundering and all was well for a time.  Then the weather  turned a bit cold and Timeandahaf and his Viking warriors found that a horned helmet and a long moustache didn’t really keep you that warm (although it worked a treat at scaring rape, pillage and plunder victims).  So did they put on the seal skins and build warm snow houses like their neighbours the Innuit?  Nope, they just kept doing what they’d always done and consequently sealed their own fate.  The Viking were the stronger, more dominant force for sure.  They had the power and the money.  But they didn’t survive.  The mild-mannered and adaptable Innuit did. 

Please don’t go toward the light! 

So magazine publishers, I challenge you to adapt.  I am a voracious reader of the print form and I want the print magazine to survive.  But even such dinosaurs as I no longer go to a print magazine to find out which car to buy, or what Ashton Kutcher had for lunch.  In both those cases, I ask Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. 

I want my print magazine to provide me with in-depth analysis, editorial, and entertainment I can’t get anywhere else.  Don’t just focus on information – I can get that virtually anywhere.  Get some real thinkers to to write some engaging stuff that I have to pause and think about every couple of sentences.  Delight me with fantastic writing styles.  Don’t bother with short-from, abbreviated dross (except for you NW.  You should keep up the short-form snipey dross – I love it!).  Dazzle me with fantastic high-quality photographs and illustrations that I’ll want to rip out and keep.

And then give me all the information I need online.  I’ll even engage with your advertisers, as long as I’m not expected to sit back and look at a banner ad.  It’s an interactive medium.  Interact!

Just give it a shot.  Please.  And I will be faithful.

 

*The Viking history used to illustrate this point, may in fact, not be based on any historic research at all.  And may in fact be based on Asterix comics and something I made up.  Just a bit…

June 24, 2009

Karma and the Greek girl

Karma.  Not a word I use often. Frankly, it doesn’t suit my image.  People think of me as analytical, lucid, practical and considered.  (OK, maybe ‘considered’ is stretching it a bit)  I’m much more likely to use words like ‘consequences’, ‘payback’ and ‘return on investment’ than ‘Karma’.  But dammit, those words are limited by time, space and area of reference.  They don’t encapsulate the concept of the universe slapping/kissing you on the mouth the way that ‘Karma’ does.

So here’s where I fuck up my image.  I believe in Karma.  There I’ve said it.

Karma has slapped/kissed me so many times that I can no longer be a karma agnostic.  Not only is the world a small place, but time is compressed by karma too. Just look at today’s Dom Post and tell me Karma is not alive and well.

The back-story

So here’s a real-life Karma story from me.  In 1993, I was a circulation manager for a Hong Kong based publisher.  I would spend every third month in Bangkok, because that’s where the magazines were printed, and because I had a thing going with a Bangkok-based writer for one of the mags.  It was because of my romantic connection, rather than my work connection that I found myself visiting a Cambodian refugee camp on the outskirts of Bangkok where my writer-boyfriend was to interview several detainees and the camp manager for a story. 

While he went off to the Manager’s office, I wandered aimlessly through the dilapidated, dusty, smelly camp, and in the process collected a band of small followers – children from the camp.

Now here’s where I make my second confession.  I really don’t know what to do about children.  I don’t like children in general.  I like particular children, just like I like particular adults.  However, children in general do seem to like me.  On this day, I was a curiosity – big, tall white girl in (unwisely chosen) mini skirt and stiletto heels (give me a break – I was young, I had great legs and it was really freaking hot!).

The Karmic decision

I ended up in what must have been the kids dorm, and not really knowing what else to do with my band of small followers, I picked up one of the donated books in the dorm – Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, and proceeded to have story-time in the little dorm.  One little girl sat on my lap, and all the rest of the kids sat on the floor around me, all rapt attention.  This is not quite as cute as it sounds, because those kids had not washed for some time and they smelled!  Also, I’m not sure why these kids were so attentive.  Not one spoke a word of English, and I’m not well known for my melodious tinkling voice… Ours is not to reason why…

Now, the second choice that day (close second I might add) was to head back to my air-conditioned car and listen to Billy Joel on my Discman (emember the Discman?).  But I didn’t choose to do that on this particular day.  I don’t know why.  An hour and several iterations of the story-book passed, and my writer-boyfriend showed up and I drove us back to Bangkok.  I have to admit, I didn’t really reflect further on this day in my life.

The Karma! The Karma!

Fast forward 15 years.  I have moved back to NZ and I’m busy struggling with renovations to my house.  My struggle is not made easier by the fact that my friendly electrician has been arrested for drunk driving and is unable to work due a a head injury he doesn’t remember getting.  There are live wires hanging from the ceiling in the hallway (guess he forgot to tidy up before he left for a drink with his mates).  Not good.

So I look in the Yellow Pages and call the local electrician from up the road to come rescue me before I give myself a live-wire perm.  He says he can send his apprentice at once.  A few minutes later, a knock on the door announces his arrival.  As soon as I open the door, the electrician’s apprentice says ‘Ritsa?’.  He seems dazzled by my beauty (happens all the time…NOT!) ‘Yup, that’s me.’  He fixes up all my wiring, working quickly and tidies up after himself.  As he’s leaving, he says ‘Are you Khun Dong from Bangkok?’ It’s my Thai nickname – it means Miss Big Nose (but in a loving way :) and it was kind of an honour to acquire a nickname from my Thai colleagues).  My new electrician’s apprentice was one of the children in that refugee camp, that I haven’t thought about in 15 years. 

He tells me he was orphaned in 1990, aged 7, and spent 9 years in that sad, smelly refugee camp before being allowed to come to New Zealand as part of our refeugee programme.  He tells me that he and his fellow inmates talked about me often for years after that day, and that he decided to come to New Zealand because of the strange, tall white woman who read him a story one day.

He tells me that the first thing he bought for himself after arriving in New Zealand was ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak, even though he couldn’t read it. He recognised the pictures. 

This one small incident, that I barely remember, changed this man’s life.  I was moved and I cried.  I still cry about it.  Not because I had such a profound influence on this man’s life, but because I know how close I came to going to my car to listen to Billy Joel.  What would Karma have sent me if I had?

June 22, 2009

The Rainbow Gods Have Spoken

This weekend while driving home from town I spotted the most gorgeous rainbow (tried to take a pic with my phone, messed it up, and also almost messed up a cyclist in the process – so sorry, no photo).  One end of it was planted firmly on the big yellow mansion in Mapuia which used to be the home of Jonah Lomu.  The other end terminated somewhere in Roseneath.

This strikes me as a little unfair.  What do mansion dwellers and Roseneath residents need with a pot of gold?  Would they even notice it amongst their other pots of gold?  How about a rainbow that starts in Poririua East and terminates in …say… the Newtown Flats?  There’s some folks that could use a pot of gold!

Clearly the rainbow gods aren’t socialists…

June 11, 2009

Digital media and the Obama campaign

This morning’s keynote session at ad-Tech Asia was given by Scott Goodstein, External Online Director on the Obama presidential campaign.  Scott and his team looked after all the online channels that were outside of www.barackobama.com.

With perfect hindsight, of course we know that this campaign was a huge success.  However, when the campaign began, before most people had ever heard of Barack Obama, there was some risk involved in using digital and social media for a political campaign. If you consider that Campaign Managers (and Marketing Managers) spend all their time trying to control the messages out there, the use of digital/social media requires a bit of a leap of faith.

Scott Goodstein’s first point addressed this.  The most essential element of any campaign is to have a strong message and a good product.  He fervently believes that they had both in Barack Obama. 

This does not mean that you should shy away from social media if there is a chance there will be negative content posted about you/your product/your brand.  But, you should be prepared to hear negative comments and respond to them and act on them. 

This was Scott’s second point about why the Obama digital campaign succeeded.  The online campaign team made an effort to respond to every question or comment posed to the campaign (and there were a lot!).  This took huge drive, organisation and human resource, but not necessarily a great technology investment.  Outside of www.barackobama.com, all the online communication took place using free online tools such as facebook, myspace, twitter, youtube and eventful.

The purpose of using digital media for the Obama campaign was to engage the ‘long tail’ of voters and supporters who did not access traditional media.  While the majority of target voters did watch television and read the papers, there was a significat minority who engaged only via a wide range of digital tools.  The Obama campiagn started on just one or two platforms, and focused on small targeted segments. 

In the South, one campaign targeted barbers.  Why?  Because barbers spend all their day talking to their customers.  If you can make barbers talk about you, your message will spread rapidly.  My cousin Phil the Barber of Westborough MA is fairly typical here.  He spends all his day chatting to his customers, and every spare moment in between appointments interacting on Facebook (Go the Bruins! Right Phil?). 

The Artists for Obama campaign, allowed artists to make and post images to support the campaign.  The now iconic image at the top of this post was one of these.  It gave the artists a way to help the campaign (imagine how much an ad agency would have charged!), gave exposure and encouraged interaction. 

The Obama campaign really did leverage their advocates.  If you visit the site even now that the Presidential race is over, what remains is the supporter rallying and organising functionality.  The idea here is that supporters can find a interest group or event in their area, and if they’re really keen, can sign up to organise a group themselves.  The site offers a lot of tools and support to anyone who want to organise events.  Now it’s about pushing the Obama agenda for change.  During the election campaign, this was used for raising funds for the campaign and encouraging people to get out and vote.

Scott also emphasised that the technology available changed during the campaign.  The online Obama shop was partly a success because there was a shift in attitude to making online purchases.  More people began to believe it was safe.  Social media and mobile phone technology exploded.  Obama’s team were willing to experiment, and to commit resource even to smaller segments.  I should mention here, that Scott’s idea of a smaller segment was the one million subscribers to their mobile messaging service…

The Obama team were not afraid to direct traffic away from their own ‘controlled media’ (their website and emails) to the more open terrain of social media like Facebook and Youtube.  They used video very cleverly for everything from encouraging supporters to get out and vote to upselling contributors to make a larger contribution.  Barack Obama even recorded a ringtone for mobile phones.  You too can have your ringtone saying ‘it’s Barack Obama.  Pick up!’.

And finally, during the Q & A, Scott mentioned the pre-emptive use of search.  He cited an incident where a political candidate knew a scandal was about to break.  The candidates team posted their side of the story, linking up to all the relevant keywords, so that once the scandal broke, their content also appeared on the first page of search results also.  There’s some smart and adventurous thinking…

The social media analogy

A useful analogy from the ‘Leveraging Social Media’ session at ad-Tech Asia.  Compares social media channels to areas of interaction in the real world:

Your Living Room – Facebook

Your Bedroom – Friendster

The Nightclub/Bar – Myspace

The Boardroom – Linkdn

June 10, 2009

Engaging with Youth

Filed under: Ad-Tech Asia @ 4:26 am
Tags: , , , ,

I’ve just attended the ‘Engaging with Youth’ panel discussion at ad-Tech Singapore.  Five bright young things (BYTs), aged between 19 and 21 sat at a raised table and addressed an audience of 300 about how they communicate, socialise, shop, live – all online using social media.  None of them were fazed by the large crowd – after all, they consider themselves experts in this area.  They’re here to share their wealth of knowledge with the old folks…  Their confidence was palpable.  They are the future consumers we will/are marketing to.

So, what are the BYTs like?:

Of the five BYTs, only one regularly reads a newspaper – but only on the weekend.  They prefer to seek out the news they’d like to hear about – but not necessarily from the online versions of print media.  One BYT said he gets all his news from Digg.  The news he reads is only the top-rated stories, and of course mainly American slanted news (so much like a local US paper then).  None of the BYTs watch television via the box.  All of them download and watch TV programs online.  All of them consume TV advertisements on Youtube (but only if they’re entertaining and informative and recommended by their friends). 

However, the BYTs all agreed that they still interact mostly in the real world.  They commute to school/work, they regularly see their friends in the flesh (and discuss the things they’ve seen in their online interactions),  They all still browse in real world stores, eat at restaurants, travel to real places, for real experiences.  But, the BYTs do their pre-purchase research online.  They don’t accept the first price offered.  They make purchase decisions based on the recommendations from their ‘friends’.  The reason that friends is in inverted commas, is that in this case, ‘friends’ might include members of their wider online circle – user groups, fan clubs, twitter friends, bloggers, users of Digg, De.li.cious, FriendFeed.

The BYTs agreed that they don’t like to see banner ads, and they don’t like being followed on Twitter so that if they follow you back, you can send them commercial messages.  This type of behaviour is likely to give them a negative impression of your brand or product, which they will share with all their ‘friends’.  You can see how the wrong behaviour in this world can materially and instantly damage your brand.

The BYTs do not check their junk email folder and they have no problem with hitting the SPAM button if perchance your un-requested message makes it to their inbox.  They block or ignore all unsolicited messages of a commercial nature, yet are quite happy to receive personal, non-commercial messages from people they don’t know.  When the BYTs want a commercial message, they will find you and ask you for it.  They are very sure of what they want, and when they want it.

Four out of five BYTs had shopped online recently.  Two had bought clothes, one had bought music downloads. None had bought books.  The moderator jokingly asked if they know what books are…  There was marked and prolonged silence, accompanied by five icy stares.  Clearly the moderator was one of those old traditional media dinosaurs…

Interestingly, even though all five of the BYTs have iPhones (even the one who claimed not to like Apple), they all agreed that the mobile device was still really for snacking-type consumption.  Text messages, brief tweets and the like.  For more involved messaging or surfing, all preferred to use their computer.

If they don’t read the papers, watch TV or view banner ads, how do I get their attention?

This tough question was posed to the BYTs by one of the traditional dinosaurs in the audience.  We know this audience member is a dinosaur, because she asked her question using the microphone.  All the relevant, intelligent questions were posed via twitter using #adtechasiayouth.  They responded that brands should interact with them in their forums, but not try overtly to sell them anything until they’re ready to buy.  When they want to buy, they’ll find you, and ask you for the sale. 

…erm, so how do I tell them about something they don’t know they want yet?

In short, unless you are in the BYTs circle of friends, you don’t.  You can try to seed a discussion in a forum about your product or brand, but if you then try to lead the discussion in a certain direction you risk turning the BYTs off.  And of course, the discussion could flame you and your brand, or even worse, fizzle.

So what does all this mean?

We’ve come full circle in marketing.  Back in the good old days before mass media, if you wanted, say, shoes, you’d ask your mum/granny/friend where to get shoes.  Chances are your mum/granny/friend would send you to buy shoes from your local cobbler, who would rely on you to tell your friends, and to come back when you needed more shoes.  With the advent of mass media, you no longer had to ask where to get shoes, because the shoe makers were telling us, even before you knew we wanted the shoes.

We, the mass media generation, came to trust what was told to us by the sellers of products and services.  In fact, we seemed to think that if it was on TV/radio/print, then it must be the truth, despite the fact that we knew these messages were paid for content.

The BYTs have an inherent mistrust of brands, mass media and the selling process.  They’ll listen to what you have to say about your product, but will not believe it until it is confirmed by one or many of their ‘friends’.  We are back to the friends and family advocacy model, but on a much larger scale, because now you don’t need to buy from your local cobbler any more.

Is this the end of marketing as we know it?

Well, not completely, not yet.  The BYTs still interact in the real world, and consume marketing from multiple sources  – conciously or otherwise.  But, we as marketers do need to adapt.  We need a mindshift about how we communicate.  Our brands and products need to make it back into the circle of trust for the BYTs.  We need to leverage the friends and family advocacy model.
  

The panel of bright young things consisted of:

Ajeeja Limbu: Nepalese by birth, brought up and educated in Singapore.  Ajeeja confessed that he likes quiet – to go into his bedroom and shut the door, read and surf the net (shame that he was placed next to the very un-quiet moderator…).  He is currently studying online journalism at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

Devin Gustafson: A 3rd year advertising student at University of Texas at Austin.  Devin is the opposite of ‘quiet’.  Everything about him, from his hot pink shades to his strident remarks, yells at you.  He’ll do well in advertising.  He came with his own large entourage from the University of Texas.

Dorothy Poon: Recent graduate of Singapore Management University.  Dorothy was hired for her first job via Facebook.  The employer did a search on keywords/tags and invited Dorothy to apply for a job as their social media executive.  Dorothy is already well connected.  She blogs, she tweets, she has her own site, she has her own opinion and she’s not afraid to share it. www.dorothypoon.com, www.doryandfillet.wordpress.com, @summerisque

Daryl Tay: Recent graduate of Singapore Management University.  Co-founder of Social Media Breakfast | Singapore, and blogger http://uniquefrequency.com.  Claims he does not read newspapers.  Ever.  Already bears a striking resemblance to every cantankerous, opinionated newspaper editor I know.

Vickland Malik: About to graduate from Singapore Management University.  A youth with a social conscience and a soft-spoken but firm manner.

June 9, 2009

Shoe Month – the stats

Filed under: Shoe Month @ 1:07 am
Tags: , , ,

Well, shoe month is over and it was a HUGE SUCCESS!!!!  Nah… not really.  That’s just marketing hyperbole (i.e. lying).  The month was sporadically interesting.  I connected with some great people, and a much larger number of fuckwits.  I wore all my shoes.  Did not acquire any new footwear.  I got 3 pedicures to keep up appearances.

Because I was wearing all my shoes, the tall, shiny Italian thigh-boots that started it all have had just one outing.  I have actually dragged them all the way to Singapore and Hong Kong with me to show my friends.  Much too hot to even contemplate trying them on here, but they look beautiful even lying on the top of my suitcase.  I do not look beautiful however – I sacrificed my make-up bag and hair straighteners to bring the boots, and consequently I look like Ronald McDonald – but without the make-up.

So, to the final tally for shoe month:

  • Shoes worn – 62 (31 pairs)
  • Shoe blogs written – 26 (I just ran out of steam and frankly, even I’m bored with my shoes)
  • Hits on my blog – 2,864
  • Which means how many actual people read it? – 452
  • Feeds to my blog – 112
  • Facebook pic and status updates – 24
  • Facebook friends lost to shoe month – 0 (but I’m pretty sure they’re just waiting around in case I do something interesting like make pedal porn)
  • Twitter followers gained – 862
  • Twitter followers lost – 670
  • Twitter followers who tried to sell me ‘Twitter Consultancy Services’ – 423
  • Twitter followers who tried to get me to lose weight – 98
  • Twitter followers who actually have a thing for shoes or feet – 14 (But I admit I followed 3 of them first)
  • Twitter followers who are a bit creepy and/or deviant – 3 (I’m dating them all now :) )
  • Free pairs of shoes from Manolo, Jimmy or Christian – 0 (despite quite open begging)
  • Blisters – 2
  • Frostbitten toes – 3
  • Pedicures – 3

That’s it really.  Not an unmitigated success is it?  The foot fetishist who bought my first six paintings has not made contact.  I’ve had dates with three slightly disturbing shoe enthsiasts.  Two of them were definately men.  I’m not sure about the third (I’m sooo not joking about this)…

I am not an internationally famous shoe blogger, although Dave the Shoe Guy in Chicago might re-publish some of my blogs (check him out – I like him).

That’s it for shoe month folks.  Over and out.

Next blog will be about the mating calls of geckos*

*That might be marketing hyperbole also…

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