Steve Rubel over at Micropersuasion writes about Disney’s new website.  I can’t believe that I have been ranting and raving about Disney’s choices here and here cause, well, you know, I have kids and they have loved Disney everything but here I go again…I can’t help myself.

Disney’s site has no Web 2.0, states Steve, no way of reaching out to their loyal fans or hearing back from them and no way for site supporters to grab a widget to put on their site (a disney element that can spiffy up a site both on the front and back end).

Well, all I can say is that this seems very much in line with Disney.  They don’t get a lot of things and in my mind have become not only dated but dangerous because they are big and powerful and yet ignorant at the same time…not a good combination!

I have read the latest news about BED NY and Granville Adams.  Granville, a manager at BED, has been accused of criminally negligant homicide.  The story, at least the version in the New York Daily News and Reuters, is that Granville made a comment to a girl in the coat check line…her “man,” Orlando Valle, who was there with her having come off celebrating his 35th birthday (at 4 am), got outraged and a fight ensued.  Supposedly Granville pushed Orlando against the elevator and the doors opened and Orlando fell down the shaft and died.

While I personally wasn’t at BED during this occassion, Creative Concepts was a sponsor and actively involved in the event planning of the TechCrunch NYC party last November which took place at this hot nightclub/restaurant. 

While trying to get all of the details in line for this particular event, we were dealing with the typical shady NYC nightclub characters.  The event manager who didn’t have a lot of experience but came with a fair amount of attitude and the very elusive upper management/owners who were never referred to by name.  When I finally met Granville on the night of the party, I felt great relief.  He was the floor manager and my go to man and appeared to be the only one truly in charge (ever). 

As the night wore on, my gut about Granville was right.  He helped us through every detail of the event.  He was polished, calm and very much on top of the “floor” and very effective at solving any issue that came our way!  Did I say he was calm?  That is what made him so effective…plus he did a lot of hustling to get things done for us.  You could not have asked for better!

That is all I can say about Granville.  There is more to say about the elevator.  While coming to BED to check out the space (this was midday with no club traffic), the elevator was broken down.  Also on the night of the event, the elevator had been worked on most of the day and got up and running just in the nick of time for the party.  The staff said this was a regular occurence.  The air conditioning was also broken that night (this was November…I am sure the system wasn’t overused because of the weather!)…you see a theme of broken down equipment here?  It was easier for BED management to make a quick fix than invest their dollars in making the nightclub safe and comfortable for their patrons.

I wish Granville luck.  For the short time I knew him, I considered him a true professional in a sea of murky waters called BED NY!

 

 

Hate to harp on Disney again…I have watched and enjoyed my share of Disney movies…but I just read this story in Business 2.0 (one of my favorite magazines) about a British family who wanted to put an image of Pooh on their child’s gravstone.  Disney said NO!  Stonemason Aaron Clark was outraged because Disney told him that carving an image of Pooh would amount to breach of copyright.  Mr. Clark went to the press and behold a kinder and gentler Disney, they finally relented.

Does this sound familiar?  Disney has a heart and moral standards only once the press is invovled

One of the predictions of this whole Spocko/Disney debacle is that Disney will encounter its worst nightmare: mainstream media will get wind of the story.  The ball is rolling.  Melissa McNamara from CBS News reports the story.

Just to finish up on the Disney story, Spocko, the guy who reported that Disney’s super right wing radio affiliate KSFO condoned torture and murder, was supported and given a big hurrah from the blogging world. 

Once the blogoshpere learned about Spocko’s site being taken down because of uploading audio files from the radio station, other bloggers (both national and international)  posted the audio files on their sites and different hosts offered their services to bring Spocko back up.

What are Disney’s lawyers going to do now?  It’s only a short time before mainstream media picks up the story.

This is what I love about blogging, the internet, and consumer generated content: the truth has an easier and faster way of bubbling up to the surface.  The big guns like Disney can’t beat the small guys into submission any longer because there is no controlling the messaging.  This scares some (and many Public Relations people fall into this category of fearing the uncontrollable) but to me it brings total satisfaction.  The blogosphere can bring down the bad but at the same time it can boost up the good ones (and the bold ones)  :)

Disney, as reported by Tom Siebert of Online Media Daily, has actually succeeded in bringing down a blog that posted audio files from the super right wing Bay area ABC affiliate radio show KSFO.  The blogger and media critic “Spocko” of the blog “Spocko’s Brain” reported on comments made from guests who support torture,  reported that the station sent out a call to hang New York Times editor Bill Keller and other journalists and a recommendation that Sears’ Diehard battery be attached to an African-American’s testicles.

Disney’s claim is that there were copyright issues in posting the audio files and so they got a court order to either take the files off the site or bring down the site all together which happened; Spocko claims “fair use” of the copyrighted material which is a battle that is just beginning the courts.

 

I am proud to say that Creative Concepts has successfully gotten the Bigelow Tea Blog off the ground.

Why is the blog successful? Cause many players from the ground up to the top have a hand in the blog. The blog is honest (and so is Creative Concepts with full disclosure on the about page) and insightful from bringing health tips and info about tea to the co-presidents message about her life as a Bigelow family member, as a female running a business, as a person loving her job and career.

And please let’s not forget about Bob, VP Sales and Marketing…he has brought on some of his heros to help support Bigelow Green tea in the marketplace…sports greats like Joe Torre and Phil and Chris Simms not only talk about Bigeow on Imus in the Morning and do photo shoots for ads but they choose green tea for health reasons and choose Bigelow tea cause the company makes a high quality tea that people can count on (check out the pictures where Joe and Phil recently visited Fairfield, Conn. headquarters of Bigelow).

There are many more stories to come from Bigelow…this blog shows that within any company there are many personalities and many interests and all can successfully fit under one roof…all can come together to produce a product they are proud of…all can blog about it in a way where we can learn, share and enjoy all that this company offers.

Take a look and enjoy!

Take a look at this report from Technorati about the State of the Blogosphere as of October 2006.  They are tracking 57 million blogs where the age and post frequency of the blog matters plus they have made global notations of the bloggers.  Check it out.

Just returned from the Techcrunch Meetup. Jeanne, the event organizer, and Jennifer, the Techcrunch business manager, were awesome to work with! The event was a hit, the sponsors happy (especially HitTail), and the party smooth. Mike Arrington wasn’t used to a loud New York crowd and didn’t want to take the elevator but he made his way just fine anyway.

In case people don’t know who Creative Concepts is, we are an East Coast based PR and Marketing firm working with the  social media tools (check out the Bigelow Tea blog in its infancy), so if you are a tech startup anywhere and you want to reach out to our coast, we can help you. If you want to reach out to the corporate sector, we can help you do it with the Business Smart Tools Conference.

Sorry Mike Dunn that you missed it, but Greg Verdino, John Boehmer and Elizabeth Tarbell, it was great to see you and thanks Erin and Michelle for a job well done!

Pictures tomorrow.

This is a day that is truly exciting in the PR and Marketing arena!

Heading down to Greenwich shortly to the Greenwich Chamber’s Redman Hall to hear Jim Zebora speak. He is the Business Editor for The Advocate/Greenwich Time newspapers. I have pitched everything from blogging to a new business featuring a Greenwich resident who provides a community calendar for the area, Vivapop.com, and he seemed interested but the stories never took off. I was grateful though when he sent a reporter to our Business Smart Tools Conference in Stamford. In person “meetups” are always good and so I am heading in his direction to shake his hand.

Speaking of “meetups”…after Greenwich I am then heading into NYC to BEDNY for the Techcrunch Meetup where we are one of the sponsors and event managers. This party is the first of its kind in New York! It is a wild scene with people scratching and clawing to get in any which way they can…one AOL employee had to complain on Vallyewag in order to get attention from the infamous Mike Arrington.

For those who will make it up the elevator and past the check in desk, they will encounter very cool sponsors, live demos, food and drink, videos and music, a speech or two, and lots of networking…see you all there and look for the scoop tomorrow!