I was reading Garret French's post about Chris Anderson's talk at MPlanet tonight – most of it is a rehash of the Long Tail book.  However, I found one statement fascinating and I wanted to more about ….

Your brand is what Google says your brand is.

As soon as I searched on this phrase I came up with Jim Kukral's post in Marketing Profs that said "Your Brand Is NOT What Google Says It Is".  Boy..that was quick!

Jim Kukral thinks we give Google too much credit, one way or the other, on determining brand:

"…Yes, Google can help determine perception by dissemination of negative reviews and commentary about your brand. But you know what? If your product was as good as it could be, the risk for extreme exposure to negative reviews is limited, and you can hardly blame the messenger (Google) eh?"

And as soon as I read Jim Kurkal, I found another blog post from Steve Field that corrected both Chris Anderson and Jim Kurkal.

"…..For those who haven’t been involved in this discussion, let me start with a few things that your brand is not (but can be found via Google).

1. Your organization’s logo
2. Your organization’s slogan
3. Your organization’s theme
4. What you tell others your brand is

The common thread? All of these things are delivered from the company to the customer.

The problem here is that just because you say you are something doesn’t mean that you actually are. McDonald's can try and define themselves as a healthy option by pushing their salads and white-meat chicken, but the public will still perceive them primarily as a greasy fast food joint."

Finally, I came across a white paper called "Search is Brand" by Weboptimiser that lists several top brands that had detractors in the first page of Google Search Results – some of these pages were generated by bloggers.

"…Recently the research firm Delahaye produced some work looking at the proportion of negative commentary on the net. They found that in message boards 11% of comments are negative,in news coverage 13%, but in blogs 23% of all comments are negative."

And because blogs get a lot of links and get updated often, they do very well in Google – meaning a Blogger can, in theory, take down a brand.  The rules of marketing, engagement and branding have forever changed.

That's it for November 2006 posts.

In another sign of the internet's rise as the medium people prefer to consume entertainment, it's now rumored that Saturday Night Live" Rehearsals May Be Web-cast on Friday night LIVE.

"Sometimes it's a lot more interesting than the show,'' Kliavkoff joked, referring to the closed-circuit footage of ''SNL's'' Friday dry runs viewed at NBC headquarters. “It's something we watch on the cameras at 30 Rock.''

Opening the window to “SNL'' rehearsals might represent a case of art imitating art imitating art yet again at NBC, which already has mined behind-the-scenes happenings at the sketch comedy franchise as comic catnip for the Tina Fey half-hour series “30 Rock'' and dramatic grist for Aaron Sorkin's drama ''Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.''

The truth is rapidly becoming clear – the Internet is the new testing ground for talent.

"…Much of the panel's discussion centered on whether the emergence of user-generated content will become an art form unto itself or just a way for establishment media to skim the cream of the crop. “We see the Internet as our new A&R,'' Kliavkoff said, referring to the music industry term for talent scouting. “We're out there scouting. The good stuff bubbles up to the top.''

For me, I'd look at this possibility of broadcasting SNL rehearsals on Friday night as multi channel marketing AND community building – both of which are becoming much more important as we move further into the Digital Age (or whatever you want to call the time we live in now).

And certainly – you can learn a lot more about the audience who will watch SNL on Saturday night if you can get the demographics of the Online Streaming Video Downloads on Friday night (I imagine Comscore or HitWise can provide these statistics, each in their own way).

Webmetricsguru.com will receive it's 100,000th Visitor this year, in the next 24 – 30 hours; certainly by Saturday Morning, if not before.

Right this minute:

And this year – my traffic is continuing to build each month- without any special promotions – it's happening naturally.

Also told by Know More Media there are 300+ RSS Subscribers to this blog.  

I know Know More Media is looking for a Sponsor for WebMetricsGuru.com – I would think an Analytics company would actually be the prefect sponsor for this blog – if anyone is interested contact Easton Ellsworth at Know More Media (easton@knowmoremedia.com or easton.ellsworth@gmail.com).  It's actually a great advertising opportunity.

If I can figure out who the 100,000th visitor to Webmetricsguru.com is – I'll send them a Watercolor.  I tried to find out who the 50,000th visitor was – to no avail – was someone in Pakistan.