No Guarantees
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No Guarantees

September 12th, 2012 [ Tags: , , ]

I’m always wary of so-called social media consultants who guarantee positive results to clients. How can you guarantee anything in the social network? Who the hell knew that “Gangnam Style” would catch on and bring PSY to a western audience? Who the hell knew “Call be Maybe” would win the summer far and above any of the commercial crap produced by studios? I mean, certainly there are some best practices you should probably follow. Never invoke “Hitler” when attempting to argue a point. Don’t CAPS LOCK anything unless you want to sound like a shouty idiot. But in general, I have found that there’s way to really predict how random people will react to things you post on your social network.

It’s possible that there’s science involved that I’m not aware of. If there is science behind these consulting gurus, awesome for that. But I’ve seen the net destroy people for horrible things they’ve said or done either on purpose or by accident. How do you really rebrand your social image after something so damaging?

Anyway, this weekend is the Small Press Sexpo! I will be at table F14 which should be easy to find since it’s right near the front entrance! How exciting! I will be hanging out with some cartoon wanderers sharing their table and trying my best not to draw horrible things all over the place. And don’t forget, Saturday night after the Ignatz Award ceremony, we will be Art Fighting for a spell. It should be loads of fun!

7Comment



  • HardWearJunkie

    Isn’t it Small Press EXPO?

  • HardWearJunkie

    Although, that could just be a Freudian slip for you…

  • http://ypcomic.com Jamie Noguchi

    I put the S in SEXPO!!!

  • Wallfairy

    One thing they could argue, to themselves or to the world (I have less of an idea of how social media controlling works than you), is that accepting Steve sets a precedent for encouraging people to reform. There are bigoted idiots out there; in general most people are some kind of idiot. But they can best get over that idiocy by not feeling like they’re being shamed for inconsistency…

    It’s the same idea as not getting grossed out when you see a fat person exercising at the gym. They’re taking steps to make themselves healthier, and they have to know that they don’t have to identify with their past before they can leave it behind them.

    Hopefully that was coherent.

  • SmilingAhab

    “How do you really rebrand your social image after something so damaging?”

    Tell a simple idea, tell it often, and never stray from its simplicity. The irrational human mind will inevitably pick the comfort of simple ideas over anything made complex by its simplicity. The science behind image preconception shaping and management, of which both marketing and PR are a part, goes back to about 1912, when the first psychologists were hired by an advertising firm. The resulting wealth of the union of the two disciplines inspired both the mass communication strategies of the largest three American corporations, and later on a young disillusioned Benito Mussolini. It was later improved upon during IBM’s, Shell’s and more importantly the Union Banking Corporation’s (set up by Prescott Bush to allow Fritz Thyssen, one of the Nazi’s main industrial tyrants, to move investment money from the USA to Germany) and the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company’s (whose main architect in selling American-owned steel stock to the Nazis was Prescott Bush) collaborations with the Nazi Party, specialized for each of the four represented industries in commercial and lobbying use, and re-instituted in the early 70s as standard operating procedure at large companies, following the first Powell Memo meeting.

    Today, most companies are headed by money worshippers with the needle so far in their arm they’ve forgotten how guile and dialogue-line framing work. Apple’s one of the few companies that still knows how to do it right.

  • reynard61

    “Steve said he’d nullify the non-compete clause.”

    Is it his to nullify? Wouldn’t he have to go through Pedanticorp’s Legal dept. in order to do that? Who says that they’d be on board with his image rehab efforts? They might tell him to find a third party that *doesn’t* have a non-compete agreement. (From what I know about them, corporate lawyers tend to be a lazy, paranoid and, above all, sycophantic to the party line and not necessarily loyal to any individual within said party.) I’m just wondering how much *real* power he still has within the company now that he’s in so much trouble.

  • John Richards

    They should make sure that he can nullify the clause first. Then they should get him to nullify the clause. Then they should work really hard to try to clear Steve’s name, and if it doesn’t work, oh, well, they’ve already got what they want out of the deal.