Dang. It’s time to chose a Top Five contest winner. And I don’t know what to do. There are SO MANY great ideas…and some that won’t work, but really made me laugh. In retrospect, we should have narrowed it down and let you guys choose your favorite. But we promised to choose, and announce, today so that ship has sailed.

We really love Gin and Topics from Barry Silver, Pure Ginious from Brandon Emkes, Thank Blog It’s Friday from Vince Roberts, SpinCycle from Jennifer DeVitt, Gini’s Mind Mined from Paul McConaughy, Spin Sucks, But Friday Rocks from Ken Mueller, The Friday Afternoon Wine Flight from Lisa Gerber (though she can’t compete!), and We Did All the Hard Work for You, You Just Have to Read from J.D. Kimple. And so totally inappropriate ones (but VERY funny) such as: Abbie Fink’s Nooner and Danny Brown’s Premature Factulation

And then, Barry’s and Lisa’s ideas made me consider our own wine:thirty, which is every Friday at 4:30 in our offices. So you see, we have a dilemma.

We really love Gin and Topics. But what if someone from my team eventually takes over the top five post? Then that name won’t work. So Thank Blog It’s Friday and Spin Sucks, But Fridays Rock work for more strategic reasons. And, after the first few, you can begin to abbreviate Thank Blog It’s Friday to TBIF and include a subhead for the week. But Gin and Topics is really good.  Crap.

I think we have a winner (that took you seconds to read but about an hour for me to write)! Barry, it’s yours! Even though it may not fit strategically, we’ll cross the bridge when (if?) we come to it. We’ll send you a copy of Branding Yourself by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. Gin and Topics it is.

And with that…the top five stories of the week. Continue Reading »

Back to our regularly scheduled programming, albeit a week late. I’ve been thinking about this series and I know it’s being received well because of the traffic numbers, but I hate “Top Five Stories for Week Ending XXX.”

We need a new name. Danny Brown has Sunday Brunch. Beth Harte has Saturday Morning Reads. Lisa Barone has Weekend Coffee Links. Ingrid Abboud has SuperPost Sunday. And Mitch Joel has Six Links Worthy of Your Attention.

When we began this series, we named it Top Five Stories for SEO reasons (and because Danny hadn’t come up with something I could steal). But I hate it.

So…what’s more Gini like? What’s more Spin Sucks like? What’s more Gini + Spin Sucks + Weekly Stories = …. ??

I could just name it Monkeys, Ice Cream, and Everything In Between (because, let’s be real, monkeys and ice cream are awesome, but monkeys eating ice cream is even better), but that doesn’t really tell me what I’m about to read if I’m new here.

You tell me. What would you name the series? It runs every Friday at noon (except this week because of the Kenneth Cole fiasco) and it’s always the top five stories we think you should read. Continue Reading »

Are you ready?

@PatrickReyes Patrick works at GM and is the furthest thing you would think when you think marketing and automaker. If he gets his way, he’ll change the way the auto industry communicates…for the better. On top of his demanding job, he blogs at Salt and Light, and quite consistently. AND, his New Year’s resolution was to commit to exercise. He’s on day 31 of P90X and loving it. He talks about his progress and it’s fun to watch. His only negative? He’s a Lions fan.

@dietcokeluvah You know how you meet people who are not scared ONE BIT to jump into a conversation, engage, and endear themselves to you? That’s my Diet Coke friend, who (for some reason), has an avatar of My Little Pony today. She has just started her blog, but I’m already intrigued. Note the Web sites/blogs she has listed…see a common theme? Continue Reading »