I’m on my way to New York for State of Play. Arriving around midday New York time, leaving again on Sunday evening. Running enormously behind though. Barely got to check-in in time, they were calling out last something-or-other. Very alarming. Now stuffing face with bagel while trying to work out who I’m staying with when I get to the other end. Don’t know how much time I’m likely to have to hang out with people, but e-mail me anyway and we’ll work something out. Assuming you’re all not at Web 2.0 without me. Laughing.
So after accepting their apology late last night I should probably really let this one lie, but I just thought people might be interested in a couple of updates. I’m going to have a phone conversation with the people from Cohn Wolfe later in the week or next week (quick point of order – nasty website with a horrible flash intro – easily fixable too), and I’ll be asking them a little bit about how this happened and probably trying to give them some suggestions on how they can avoid this kind of thing in future.
In the meantime, for those few of you who were interested in piecing together some of the other final details about how it all fits together – I got a really interesting e-mail from a couple of people on other sites about comments they’d received from the same e-mail address as my Barry Scott in which the guy concerned specifically talked about the fake weblog, so there’s another connection there (thanks particularly to the b3tans). But more importantly after a really interesting suggestion from a commenter called “Lou” over on the apology thread, I had a dig around in the ‘long headers’ of the e-mails I got from the people at Cohn Wolfe for IP addresses and the like – and what did I find:
Received: from lon30ex01.yr.com (HELO lon30ex01.emea.corp.yr.com) (213.86.119.211)
If you remember from this post the IP address of the original Barry Scott commenter on the site was 213.86.119.210, and Sam Spade correlated that with lon30ex01.yr.com. So I guess, my friends, that we have a winner!
All this detective work is really quite good fun. I should run a little masterclass or something in the kinds of things you can find out online. Anyway, that’s pretty much it for the moment. My acceptance of the apology still stands but I just thought people might find those particular connections interesting.
And the final thing is that I saw the bloody Cillit Bang advert for the first time this evening! God it’s appalling! Why did no one tell me!?
So this afternoon, I got an e-mail which I’m pretty sure is from the team who handle Cillit Bang. I can’t tell for certain because I it’s from someone at cohnwolfe.com, and I don’t know enough about the relationships between these various organisations to be able to say that it’s totally reliable. Anyway, the e-mail contains what appears to be a fairly honourable and sincere apology for the whole Barry Scott comments-as-marketing fiasco that I wrote about on Friday. And although I still have significant reservations about the idea of fictional marketing characters leaving messages and commenting on other people’s sites, I’ve decided to take them at their word, accept the apology and leave it at that. The e-mail that they sent is below:
We are writing to you in response to the Barry Scott posting on 30th September 2005. We’re all aware that Barry Scott, the advertising character is a marketing creation and we have been responsible for raising his awareness. The posting on 30th September was unplanned and an error of judgement and we unequivocally apologise for this. We recognise that it was inappropriate in context.
The Barry Scott character has appeared in a number of spoof websites and weblogs, created by people unconnected to the Reckitt Benckiser brand. The weblog posting on your site was not endorsed by Reckitt Benckiser or any of the advertising agencies that are mentioned and was a one off error from which lessons have been learnt. We are sorry for any offence it has unwittingly caused.
We would like to have an opportunity to apologise personally, if you would like to speak to us please do let us know the best way to reach you.
Yours sincerely,
The Cillit Bang team
Addendum: I wrote one more follow-up on this subject called: A few odd bits of detective work in which I tried to tie up some of the loose ends of the story.
This is more of a query than a post, and it’s about those most glamourous of things – linklogs on weblogs. I’m really interested in how people treat them. Linklogs as a semi-automated component of weblog systems ‘distinct’ from the ‘main’ content of the weblog really started to get going with kottke.org and Anil Dash. As usual, I wasn’t terribly keen for a long time and then found my own clumsy idiosyncratic way of handling them via del.icio.us‘ automated posting system and a clumsy bit of Apple Script.
Since then they’ve kind of got everywhere. What interests me is that most people don’t really seem to provide much context to their linking. Have they read and approved of the things they link to, or is it really just a linkdump full of ‘toread’s? How seriously can I take someone’s linklog? Is it a personal guide to quality stuff that they find interesting or wish they could comment on, or do people treat it like oneupmanship – wanting to be first on the next meme?
My personal stance is that I never link to a resource on the web unless I’ve read the article or spent some time looking at the resource in question to work out whether it would be interesting and/or useful to myself (or others). And I always try and make sure to post some comment about what I’m pointing people to – for my own benefit as much as for the rest of you. Is that a normal level of rigour? Are people horrified at how slack I’m being, or stunned by that particular revelation? What is the current consensus on what a linklog constitutes and how you maintain one responsibly?
Since it’s out in the States now, can I just remind all my American friends to go and see Serenity as soon as possible, and can I just add that if you don’t enjoy it, it’s your own fault for not watching Firefly first. I have no sympathy whatsoever. You’ve only brought it on yourselves. Brits, you’ve got another week left to wait, I’m afraid. And that’s just enough time to catch up on the DVD, which coincidentally I believe is on sale at HMV at the moment.
Addendum: (added October 1st 2005) I’ve just been looking at the ratings page for Serenity and it’s really surprised me. Remember, this is a science fiction action adventure – the kind of film that everyone associates with teenage boys and computer nerds like me. But in Serenity’s case, the average rating for men is only 8.2 to the massive approval rating of 9.0 for women. And in every age range (except the under 18s), women enjoyed this film more than men. Men between eighteen and twenty-nine gave it 8.2 compared to 9.2 for women. Men between thirty and forty-four gave it 8.6, compared to a mighty 9.3 for women. And even women aged over forty-five are rating the film as an 8.1, as the male approval rating drops to 7.1.
Just to give you a sense of how weird that is, I had a look at the ratings for The Empire Strikes Back, which felt like the closest analogue I could find (romance, adventure, space) and there it is pretty much men enjoying it all along the line. So if you are a woman and aren’t thinking of going to see Serenity because it’s a boy kind of movie or you just don’t like sci-fi – give it a chance. I don’t think you’ll regret it…