With summer slowly approaching, I thought I’d get a head start and hit a tanning bed. If you’ve ever been to a tanning salon, you know the drill is that you go into the bed in your birthday suit, and you put lotion all over your body before you get in. While going through this ritual yesterday, I looked up and noticed that the walls don’t go right up to the ceiling. Which means, that anyone in the salon can enter the room next to me, get up on the chair that sits right next to the wall, and take a peak.

None of this would really bother me, as most tanning salon goers are female, and I can beat up just about any of them, however, this salon is right next to the local late-night “massage parlour” and there always seems to be a number of men waiting in the lobby…but usually I’m the only customer in there.

We’ve made a new hire at b5media. Joey deVilla started as our Technical Project Manager on March 6th. His first day was spent at US customs on his way down to Austin for SXSW. Since then, he has serenaded us with his accordion on several occasions, and cleaned the coffee pot once (which earned him the much coveted “Darcie’s Co-Worker of the Week” award).

Other things we’ve learned about him: He used to work at Tucows. Joey’s real name is Jose. He’s married. He likes to collect toys. He just got a Blackberry (and is therefore available 24/7). He comes in late everyday. He thinks the accordion will help Darcie pick up men. He likes margaritas.

We’re all looking forward to working with him, and hope that everyone gives him a huge welcome!

I was going to write this post about interrupting people while they are in the process of lifting heavy weights…and I thought I had my complaint nailed down. Then something completely bizarre happened. This guy was doing the hack squat machine (backwards). If you don’t know what that is, it’s when your standing at an incline, and your back is fully supported and you squat. Guys sometimes do it backwards, with their chest against the support. So this guy is pressing about 250 lbs this way, and some Amazon Woman comes up, and rests her chest on the top part of the machine. You have to picture a 6′4″ woman (not attractive), with DD’s hanging over the top, so when the guy comes up from his squat, his head is about an inch away from her breasts.

Interrupting someone while they are doing any sort of weight training is idiotic. This was just plain stupid.

The most embarrassing part for her, was that the guy shut his eyes once she did this. If it were my chest, he would’ve kept them open.

I see a lot of men wearing wife-beaters at the gym. I can understand where they’re coming from- I see the Calvin Klein ads (they’ve got a good one right now, whoa); I get that hot men are wearing them and pulling them off very well.

Did you read that?

I said HOT men.

Not skinny white dudes. Not fat bald men. Not men who think they should be models.

Hot men.

Men who act as body doubles for bloated actors. Men who pose in gay magazines. Men who pay more that $10 for a 3 pack of Fruit of the Loom.

If you don’t fit that description, then you look gross, and I have to turn my head when you talk to me because I’m uncomfortable. The thought of touching a weight machine after your white-trash body has sweated the whole thing up makes me want to vomit. You remind me of my grand-pa while he was shaving before he got dressed. Ew.

So why is it that the big blue chips just don’t get it when it comes to promoting their company via the latest social media? The main problem is that they don’t take the time to ‘learn’ the medium. You can’t just open a Stumble Upon account, give thumbs up to 100 random sites and then start requesting everyone to stumble your site or spam random bloggers, “hey, can you blog about my product? I’ve never read your blog, never commented, actually I don’t even know your name, but my company is a perfect fit for your audience.”

1) Learn the medium. The first step is not only to learn the medium, but use it. Become a power user of the medium before you attempt to exploit it for commercial use or self promotion.

2) Get an outside opinion. If you are OLD or un-connected to the trends, ask someone who is connected to review your ‘viral’ idea before you unleash it. (And before you flame me, I consider myself old. I don’t get why kids where their jeans half way down their ass, but maybe it is cool? But it also doesn’t mean you should!)

3) ‘In’ terms go ‘out’ Fast. If you think a term is ‘cool’ it is already too late and you can’t use it in your marketing pitch. (Example Gwen Stefani using the word ‘Mash-up’ in the HP commercial. Too late sounds corny)

4) Let others test it. If a new form of advertising shows up, don’t jump on the bandwagon to be cutting edge. Let others burn through cash to see if it works. (ie. Facebook advertising :)

5) Bribe with Caution. OK, everyone has a price, but most people have some level of morals, or at least think they do. So if you want to give something to someone in exchange for getting them to endorse your product - do it like the pros do. Sponsor them.

Other great articles:

Successful Social Marketing

2 things occurred during today’s gym visit that seemed so out of place.

1) While walking in, one of the juicers at my gym was pulling up with his window rolled down. He was blasting Mariah Carey’s “Emotions”. It was released in 1991. That’s 17 years ago. Wow. I’m pretty sure none of Mariah Carey’s songs are classics and none deserve to be listened to 3 months after release, let alone 17 years.

2) Then, I noticed a different juiced up guy (he’s actually relatively hot and has a deep manly voice), hand another guy a CD with what he described as ”slammin’ music to work out to”.Who uses CD’s anymore?? I wonder if Mariah Carey was on it. Maybe I should just be satisfied that he knows how to burn a CD. That might automatically make him the smartest guy at the gym.

Ironically, my first CD ever was Mariah Carey’s “Emotions” back in 1991. I pawned it in 1995 for $2.

I was at a great session at SXSW last week called “The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007″ and although I didn’t agree with all of their choices, (I thought the beer ad rocked :) I completely agreed with the overall message of the session; that you need to tread lightly when planning a ‘viral’ campaign as it can badly backfire and that you can’t force a conversation down someone’s throat if they are not listening to you.

The funniest one and the overall winner was a campaign gone wrong from HP where they had a women get her kids to take a actual hammer to the competitions camera and smash it. The kids were both toddlers which made the brainwashing even more horrifying.

The panel consisted of Henry Copland, Steve Hall, Jeff Jarvis, Rebecca Lieb, and Charlotte Selles.I think they did an excellent job on this panel. It was funny, insightful and interactive and it was also refreshing that they actually brought and showed all the examples that they references. There is nothing worse than have someone go, “you remember that viral video, the one from Dove”, or” the one where that chick cut off her hair” and half the audience going’ huh’?

So far, everyone has survived SXSW. Some of us just barely. Last night’s theme was “get Darcie drunk”, and it was a success. We hung out at the convention center all day, then went to the Google party. We met some really great and fun people. We ended up at the Apple bar (like the martini- not the iCompany). Great bar- Jared our server was very friendly and Kyle the skinny bouncer was great too. Then we came back to the ranch and kept the party going. Getting up was a hard process this morning.

Some memorable quotes from the team:

“It smells like man.” (Shea Sylvia)

“That’s a really long pee.” (Shea Sylvia)

“I get smarter the more I drink.” (Shea Sylvia)

What an eventful day! The airport lost my luggage, so it was a good thing Brian brought some extra clothes for me. He’s such a sweet guy. Chad cooked us all breakfast, bacon and eggs. He made us wait until after his run though…something is not quite right about coming back from an early morning run and frying up some bacon.

Mark and Aaron arrived today. Always nice to see Mark.

We set up the tents today, had a chance to check out the property. Just a few more people to arrive.

Tonight is BarCamp. Most of the team is downtown already, but Darcie and I are waiting for UPS to make a delivery here, so while our coworkers are out at the bar, we are enjoying the view of the ranch from the pool side.

Well, UPS is utterly lost, so Darcie and I are going to join the cohorts downtown. Yeehaw!

For anyone going to South by Southwest b5media will be holding a Blog Network Camp.  I’m heading down to Texas tomorrow for the festivities, and I hope to see some of you there!!

The Blog Camp will be Monday March 10th from 6pm to 9pm and is open to everyone. 

This event is sponsored by:

lijit:  Revolutionary search tools and stats for your blog.

Outbrain: blog and RSS ratings.

PicApp: the best content for the best publishers.

The event schedule is as follows:

6-6:15- networking

6:15-6:45- Jeremy’s Intro, State of Industry talk

6:45 to 7:00: Lijit demo

7:00 to 7:30: Making Money/Monetization

7:30- 7:45: Outbrain Demo

7:45: 8:15: Growing Traffic

7:15 to 8:30: Picapp Demo

8:30 to 9:00- Business Issues

Event location and details here: 

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/424913/