Happy Mothers’ Day, Mom
My mom is amazing.
She is a wonderful example of motherhood.
She taught me big lessons about love and friendship.
She encourages me to be my best in everything I do.
She keeps me laughing all the time.
She is beautiful.
She is there as a shoulder for me to cry on whenever I need her.
She reminds me that there are always other ways to look at a problem.
She continually teaches me what true generosity means.
She is absurdly proud of my successes.
She has always stood up for me.
She reminds me that smiling makes all the difference.
She has a silly, infectious laugh.
She made me noodle soup and tuna sandwiches all the time when I was a kid.
She took me to countless dance classes and sports practices and supported all my interests.
She cheered me on in every performance and game.
She is a legend among my friends.
She loves me despite all the billions of times I was (and am) a pain in the ass.
She is a woman I will always look up to and admire.
She’s my mom, and I love her.
Today’s Honey: May 8, 2008
As promised, Today’s Honey is the quilted leather edition. I can’t get enough of this, so I might just have to blog about handbags exclusively from now on. I honestly haven’t decided if that statement is serious or not yet.
Behold my favorite new purchase–the Burberry Montgomery bag in black:
Women dot Alltop dot Com
This isn’t really breaking news, but I wanted to do what I said I’d do: share that Social Honeycomb is part of the Alltop network. Guy Kawasaki is at it again, exciting people on the Web. If you haven’t checked out Alltop yet, you should take a look. There’s some really great content organized into a wide variety of topics (Get it? All topics? All the top stories?) on the site. For some unknown reason, Social Honeycomb made the cut and has a spot on the Women topic page.
So go, poke around, find something new… You know the deal. This is just another great way to find and join invigorating conversations.
Handbags, Brandbags: Louis Vuitton Gets Mugged, Doesn’t Support Darfur
I’ll take any chance I can get to blog about handbags. Sometimes I just make reasons up, but there’s actually an important conversation weaving through the Web right now about a famous French top-handle.
As it’s been discussed here, here, here and here, Louis Vuitton is suing 26 year-old Danish artist Nadia Plesner for using an image very similar to one of their monogram totes in an anti-genocide campaign to support Darfur. This is a tough one, buddies–there’s some cognitive dissonance going on here. I instinctively think first, “Eww, why is LV being so heartless and money-hungry about this? Darfur needs our help, and instead of freaking out, they could be finding a way to meaningfully contribute to the cause, even if they were dragged into it.” But at the same time, my instincts say, “I see where your head’s at, LV. Protect your brand–you go and take her down for clearly exploiting your image.” I admit, I love luxury handbags, but my gut ultimately goes with my first response.
The image on Nadia’s “Simple Living” t-shirt and poster (a jab at Paris Hilton’s reality show The Simple Life), pictured at the right, depicts a naked African child holding a Tinkerbell-like chihuahua and what is very obviously her take on a white/monogram multicolore Louis Vuitton handbag. Her description of the illustration reads (eloquently unedited):
My illustration Simple Living is an idea inspired by the medias constant cover of completely meaningless things. My thought was: Since doing nothing but wearing designerbags and small ugly dogs appearantly is enough to get you on a magasine cover, maybe it is worth a try for people who actually deserves and needs attention.
Without this glaringly negative comment, perhaps Louis Vuitton wouldn’t have gotten so bent out of shape over the image. But, I can see why they did. She’s essentially equating the LV brand (and chihuahuas?) with meaninglessness and media whoredom–not the prettiest epithets.
On Nadia’s site, there are plenty of supporters telling her to keep fighting the lawsuit and to continue standing up for herself because ultimately, her goal is a good one. And, it really is. One hundred percent of the money she makes from t-shirt sales goes to the Divest for Darfur fund.
So, does the end justify the means? Maybe.
I think Louis Vuitton, although perhaps within their rights, should have approached this differently. Yeah, at this point it looks like LV essentially got mugged and someone ran off with their handbag. However, with a different approach this could have been brand sharing instead of brand stealing. Like letting a friend borrow your bag because it went perfectly with her outfit. It’s still yours, but you’ll let her use it because in the end, everyone looks hot.
I wish Louis Vuitton had proactively done something to counter Nadia’s negative picture of the brand. Had they publicly shown where they’ve been a socially responsible company or, even better, struck a deal with her to donate a “meaningful” amount of money to her campaign, they may have avoided some of this media messiness. Given all the legal fees, taking that money and donating it to Darfur would probably have cost the company less and resulted in good press.
Louis Vuitton also could have created a place for people to talk about the situation to engage their various publics in a conversation about luxury brands, genocide, charity and anything in between. Just throwing out a lawsuit in this situation really wasn’t the sexiest choice. I think it’ll be hard for LV to rally support on this one. Either they’ll lose (which seems to be the more likely outcome) and be the brand that wanted to sue the girl trying to save Darfur, or they’ll win and be the brand that sued the girl trying to save Darfur. When the health and integrity of the brand is the important issue here, I think dropping the suit and redirecting their energy in a more helpful way would serve Louis Vuitton better in the long term.
I know this isn’t exactly breaking news, but what do you think? Is Louis Vuitton going overboard? Are they right on target? Should chihuahua breeders sue Nadia Plesner, too? If you have any takeaway thoughts, I’d love to see some reactions, ideas or new solutions in the comments section.
In other news, I got a new handbag today. And no, it’s not a Louis Vuitton. (It’s Burberry, *sigh, so pretty.*) Watch for a Today’s Honey post with a photo or two. You know you can’t wait. And don’t even think about mugging me. You think a lawsuit is bad? I’ll cut you.
Social Networking Wars
Sometimes I feel a bit like the guy in this video. If you haven’t seen it yet, I hope you enjoy some giggles.
If it were you, what social networks would be chasing after you?
A Tiny Taste of PodCamp NYC 2.0, Amandalana Style
I met Alana Taylor, of Twitter song fame, on Saturday at PodCamp NYC 2.0. She whipped out her Flip and we made a moment. Check it out:
If You Can Make It There… PodCamp NYC 2.0
Sup friends? I’ll be at PodCamp NYC 2.0 on Saturday at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. I will probably want to capture you in some way. No, not in a trap, silly! But I’m gonna get you in a photo, video or Utter while we’re having fun at camp. Deal?
I’m looking forward to seeing a bunch of good friends and to turning some pre-lationships into REALationships this weekend. If you see me around, please say hello. See you there!
Happiness
Everyone has bad days. Days when you question yourself and you feel like you just suck at life. I know I’ve been spending a lot of time blogging about communities on Twitter lately, but I have another example of this network coming together with kind words. I recently had an unhappy day and reached out to my community on Twitter, asking for inspiration and ideas about how to “happify” myself.
Susan Reynolds saw my happiness thread a couple weeks ago and requested that I write a post about the suggestions people had for me on how to feel happier each day. Here are my favorite responses:
@shonnoll says exercise
@thattalldude says listen to happy music
@mindchaotica and @linkedmn say to remember that things could always be worse
@cambeck says to become Joseph Jaffe
@iAlbert says to take a walk and be around nature
@geoffliving says happiness is an inside, spiritual job that external things can’t determine
@vanhoosear says learn to accept and let go
@podcastmama says to be kind to yourself, allow yourself to change your mind and get enough rest
@Paisano says to help people every day, engage in random acts of kindness and take naps
@jackvinson says to make a gratitude list
Building relationships and cultivating communities is central to our jobs as PR professionals and social media evangelists, and sometimes we get to see the strength of these social groups in ways that truly show how meaningful this stuff can be. Being a real person is SO important on the social Web. Asking, helping, advising, suggesting, being there for others. For me, I’m finding that being real and being happy go hand in hand.
If you have any suggestions of how to be happier, please post them in the comments section. Maybe we’ll all find some new ways to feel happier day-to-day.
Haagen-Dazs Helps the Honey Bees
Social Honeycomb cares about honey. Honey comes from bees. And apparently, the bees need our help.
I recently came across a campaign by Haagen Dazs called Help the Honey Bees. This didn’t sound like your typical awareness campaign so I poked around the site a little. Apparently there are a lot of forces working against honey bees, and this in turn affects many of the foods we eat, including, of course, my guilty pleasure of choice–ice cream.
A few interesting facts from the Help the Honey Bees press kit:
- Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of more than 100 crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, providing 80 percent of the country’s pollination services
- Honey bee pollination directly results in about $15 billion worth of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and agricultural seeds annually in the U.S. That does not include the role that honey bee pollination plays in providing the seeds that are planted for forage (alfalfa and clover, etc.) that are eaten by our livestock and end up on our plates as meat, or as dairy products
I never knew honey bees were so important! This Haagen Dazs micro-site represents an interesting cause marketing/PR campaign for an issue most people probably never think about. You can easily learn about the bee crisis, see what’s being done, find out how you can help and play around with some fun bee-themed features at the same time. This awareness-raising campaign seems genuine, and positions Haagen Dazs as environmentally-minded and responsible beyond the brand just wanting to sell more tubs of ice cream. …Mmm, ice cream…
Even if you hate ice cream and don’t care if the foods you enjoy are ruined by the plight affecting honey bees, you may enjoy the whimsical “Make a Bee” section of the site. It’s reminiscent of the Become an M&M campaign, where you can customize a honey bee and send it through “bee-mail” to a friend.
I think this is an interesting cause-related PR campaign. So get out there, buy some ice cream and save some honey bees. …Mmm, honey…
Facebook Chat is Here, Ridiculous
Facebook’s chat feature launched today. In my opinion, we all have PLENTY of chat and conversation options separate from Facebook and this new feature is just redundant. I already have AIM/iChat, GChat/GTalk, ooVoo, Skype, Twitter and SMS that enable me to have real-time conversations with my friends. Facebook was never about that for me. It’s a place to store and share information–including the contact information I choose to display for the conversation-enablers mentioned above. I won’t say that I’ll never use this new Facebook chat feature, but I maintain that it’s ridiculous and unnecessary.
Below is my reaction. What’s yours?
