{"id":11367,"date":"2010-02-23T09:28:58","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T16:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=11367"},"modified":"2010-02-23T09:28:58","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T16:28:58","slug":"uvex-missses-the-cluetrain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11367\/uvex-missses-the-cluetrain\/","title":{"rendered":"UVEX missses the Cluetrain"},"content":{"rendered":"

“…<\/em> learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”<\/em> — The Cluetrain Manifesto, Chapter 1<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Until I resigned yesterday, I was a Web marketing consultant for the US distributors of UVEX products for 7 years.<\/p>\n

Last week, after the IOC demanded that we remove anything Lindsey Vonn related from the US web site,\u00a0 I posted a limerick<\/a> to UVEXsports.com congratulating Lindsey for her downhill win without using her name while simultaneously exposing the IOC’s shameful tactics.<\/p>\n

(This is an organization that goes out of its way to menace local pizza joints<\/a> that use the word “Olympics” in their names. )<\/p>\n

By Friday, my rejoinder had been picked up by SlashDot<\/a> and from there, landed on BigPicture.com<\/a> (Barry Ritholtz’s blog), which was picked up by USA Today<\/a>, and just this morning the NY Post ran a blurb<\/a> (which noted that the post was now gone without explanation).<\/p>\n

This, of course, was exactly the reaction I was hoping for and the commercial justification for the post. Easily half of the comments were a variation on “Good for you. Screw the IOC. I never heard of UVEX before, now I will buy your stuff.”<\/p>\n

The IOC, apparently, was not pleased.<\/p>\n

The saddest part of the reaction from UVEX’s German management (knuckle under and kill the blog) is that it reinforces to the IOC that its strong-arm tactics work.<\/p>\n

At the same time, UVEX\u00a0 rejected an opportunity to\u00a0 grow their brand by empowering a human being to speak on their behalf in a human voice, which — as Doc Searls and company pointed out in the Cluetrain<\/em> over a decade ago —\u00a0 is a powerful way for brands to leverage the Web.<\/p>\n

People reacted to that post because we are sick and tired of big business using lawyers to get their way whether or not what they want is legally, morally, or ethically justified. We all know that it doesn’t matter who is right, what matters is who can pay Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“… learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.” — The Cluetrain Manifesto, Chapter 1 Until I resigned yesterday, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-marketing","9":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11362,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11362\/stupid-poem-lands-me-on-slashdot\/","url_meta":{"origin":11367,"position":0},"title":"Stupid poem lands me on SlashDot","author":"John Rowles","date":"February 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I occasionally blog on UVEXsports.com. Most of my posts were links to stories about Lindsey Vonn, who uses UVEX stuff. We hope famously. The IOC called and told UVEX to stop using any mention of Mrs Vonn on UVEXsports.com and that included my posts. Then she won the gold, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Casual Friday"","block_context":{"text":"Casual Friday","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/casual-friday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3358,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3358\/dead-dinosaurs-walking\/","url_meta":{"origin":11367,"position":1},"title":"Dead Dinosaurs Walking","author":"John Rowles","date":"July 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"As far as I can tell, the RE.net has been advocating for better broker Web sites for as long as there has been an RE.net. Many articles and posts focus on the twin pillars of eCommerce -- Search + Content -- but many brokers still have Web 1.0 sites or,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1948,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1948\/no-committee-will-ever-make-the-cluetrain-run-on-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":11367,"position":2},"title":"No committee will ever make the Cluetrain run on time","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Proposition 1: Groups, clubs, committees and professional associations would make better decisions if their smarter, more passionate members were to get involved. Proposition 2: Central banking would work if only Alan Greenspan had a smarter brother. Proposition 3: True Communism has never been tried.I don't consider these statements equivalent, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":213,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/213\/walking-the-rails-what-to-do-when-you-miss-the-cluetrain\/","url_meta":{"origin":11367,"position":3},"title":"Walking the rails: What to do when you miss the Cluetrain . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I would say that the Zillow.com's response to recent events has been pretty lame -- a vast silence punctuated by a gavotte with The Bubblette. But as clueless as they have been, I think the comment we got from one Brad Thompson takes the prize. Brad apparently works for realPING,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=gregswann-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0738204315","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1870,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1870\/burn-down-the-mission-elton-john-reads-the-tumbleweed-manifesto-to-the-national-association-of-realtors\/","url_meta":{"origin":11367,"position":4},"title":"Burn Down the Mission: Elton John reads the Tumbleweed Manifesto to the National Association of Realtors","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll have more later, but of all the many reasons the NAR deserves to be disintermediated, perhaps the simplest and most obvious is that these congenital retards cannot catch the frolickin' Cluetrain. \u00a0More viewpoints, pro and con, on supplanting the NAR: < ?php c2c_get_recent_posts(9999, \"%post_URL%\", '30'); ?> Technorati Tags: disintermediation,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2086,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2086\/when-all-you-have-is-a-hammer-disintermediate-the-bums\/","url_meta":{"origin":11367,"position":5},"title":"When all you have is a hammer — disintermediate the bums!","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I live in an amazing world, which is to say a world by which I am continuously amazed, without boundary or graduation. Here's an example: I cannot for the life of me understand why National Association of Realtors President Pat Combs has not called me personally to ask me to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11367"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11384,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11367\/revisions\/11384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}