this just in...

We are very excited about this new business development development! We've been working on the deal for nearly a year now. Jeremy deserves much of the credit for this one, which is why I'm promoting him to Vice President of Customer Venery. Way to go, Jer!

In a surprise move that caught many analysts entirely by surprise, Kat Harding Media landed one of the most coveted contracts currently available. Despite intense pressure to go with Ogilvy & Mather, Ron Popeil has given his lucrative "Pocket Fisherman" contract to the upstart agency.

via Media Python

Generation Whoring Sea Donkey

From a year of totally unscientific postscripting, I have determined that there's only one thing on Salon worth reading: Heather Havrilesky's "I Like to Watch" television column. Here's a clip from today's installment...

Sure, we could point to the early precursors of this movement, the dadaist forefathers to their surreal rise to power: Madonna, wet T-shirt contests, "Dirty Dancing," "Baywatch," the neo-feminist insistence that dressing like a slut was a form of empowerment, the Spice Girls, Victoria's Secret, Maxim, the rise of high-end strip clubs, Hugh Hefner's kitschy but effective "Meet my five hot-slut girlfriends" publicity campaign, "Girls Gone Wild," Christina Aguilera's insistence on describing just how nasty she could be, Hooters, Britney Spears' transformation from winsome Lolita to "Slave 4 U"... The cultural precedents are countless, so countless that most of us can take at least part of the blame for the ass-shaking revolutionaries we created. Whether we purchased a Wonder Bra or proclaimed our right to wear short shorts to high school or hummed a few strains of Prince's "Dirty Mind" way back when, we were inadvertently sewing the seeds of a whole new generation of filthy 'ho flowers, little ladies who dress like Godless whores and talk like drunken sailors and swing their hips like wanton harlots, honeys who are not only dirty and shallow, but who proclaim their right to be dirty and shallow like they're engaged in a vital and important grass-roots struggle to safeguard the enduring freedoms of womankind henceforth.

And when you've had enough of that, go read Sarah Corbett's cover story in today's New York Times Magazine: The Women's War. Equal-opportunity PTSD. There is no pain you are receding...

memo: to all staff

Look, folks, I don't mind you having your little after-hours parties. We run a relaxed shop, right? But if you feel you absolutely must use my office for your Bacchanalian romps, I'd sure appreciate it if you'd clean the Mazola off my windows before you leave -- particularly on a morning when I need it for a client shoot.

Thanks.
Kat

metabuzz: what comes around goes around

Jeff Jarvis today posted a thing called Viacom cuts off nose to spite face. It begins, "Viacom just demanded the [sic] YouTube take down clips from its networks, including Comedy Central and MTV. Wave bye-bye to John Stewart and John Stewart should wave bye-bye to audience." The post continues, and this is verbatim as lifted straight off the page...

Of course, being delivery experts, we concur wholeheartedly.

Kat Herding Brazil now open for business

Well we finally got the Rio office up and running. Good work, team! And we're slowly but surely gaining on Omnicom.

we may have to rethink this

uh, Jeremy? What's up with that new intern you hired? He seems to have turned the break room into some sort of laboratory.

Let's talk.

a ship with eight sails

sometimes I worry that if I write my special kind of poetry here this will look like a splog. that's so sad. I mean, how would you know?

suit my mood

I been scoping you out, and it sure looks like something's going on in there. Best I can tell you're very cultured. Gram positive probably, but I'm just guessing. Poor baby got the methylene blues? Gonna incubate your incubus. Foil your diversion with oil immersion. Give me your heart. Not striated, honey. Smooth. A moveable feast, not your optional companionship, not your bad dream of b-sides and bootlegs. Displaced, abnormal, exaggerated. Misdiagnosis: that's what I'm talking about. Homeopathic, ecstatic, backed up and back at it. The onset of symptoms: Lorazepam amnesia. Spontaneous reports. A certain disinclination to consider consequences, to reload properly, to fold under pressure. I'm a cupcake. I'm a cutup. Not much choice. Make it real or else forget about it.

New York is so much fun!

Clubbing is used to refer to the activity of gathering socially at nightclubs. Clubbing can also refer to an act of violence in which the primary weapon of attack is a blunt object. Wikipedia is so funny sometimes. Do you think they realize? Anyway, we're having a great time, no blunt instruments involved. Though somebody could get hurt if he doesn't watch out. There is no pain, you are receding. Nobody really reads this stuff anyway, so I don't try too hard to make sense any more. Just throw things in at random. Lyrics, pictures, what the hell. Getting a little dark in here. You like my legs?

I fake my life like I've lived

When I'm not fucking around here as Kat Herding, I am RageBoy, a.k.a. Chris Locke, and I write a blog called Mystic Bourgeoisie. If you thought I was a hot chick, you've been had. But you watch. This post will roll down the page, you'll forget, and I'll keep having you. Why? Because I'm on a mission to mess with your head. Don't think because I understand, I care. Don't think because I'm talking, we're friends.

my new favorite artist

Oh my god, I love this man's work. It's just so... amazing, astounding, incredible! I don't know much about art, but I know what I like. This is his website. The following is from the show notes of a summer 2004 exhibit at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.

LACDA is excited to introduce Brazilian artist Lucio Carvalho in his premiere exhibition in the United States. As a child Lucio's father objected to his obsession with art making and consequently he did all of his drawing beneath the dining table. The series is a return to his childhood practice featuring twelve masterfully rendered portraits of the artist's relatives seated at the table surrounded by all of their important objects of life.

art for art's sake

Our good friend Telpo writes: A photo of a second, previously unknown version of a well-known family portrait painting by Flemish Renaissance Painter Michel Sittow was released today by ThirdStone Associate International Curator, Telpo Lendolotoproj. Mr. Lendolotoproj's speculation is that it was made by the artist as a lampoon of what might be assumed to have been "difficult' clients."

digital identity: what's the big deal?

So here's another thing I just don't get. I mean, is there some sort of crisis going on here? I don't know about you, but I certainly know who I am. This is from an article ZDnet News ran on Monday, called Liberty Alliance courts open-source projects. Just listen to these people!

"The idea behind OpenLiberty is to provide a community for open-source developers to communicate and collaborate on open identity standards," Jason Roualt, vice president of Liberty Alliance, said in an interview. "There are a few open-source efforts around identity, but the main thing that they are missing is the ability to support identity-based Web services, getting beyond single sign-on to sharing identity attributes."

I can't for the life of me understand what they're getting so worked up about. Can you? Why, here at Kat Herding Media, we all share identities! I'm going to have a smoke and think about this.

you like me. you really do.

Hugh McLeod does these really funny drawings on the backs of business cards. I mean funny as in odd, strange. I mean funny as in... huh? I have a hard time understanding most of them. Maybe it's because I'm a girl. For instance, yesterday he wrote a thing called why so many companies find the whole web 2.0, post-cluetrain world so painful. Here's the second half...

...I started thinking to myself, if this is something that any healthy 22-year-old can work through without too much fuss, then how come so many large companies, with all those smart, experienced, talented people making the big money and the big decisions, find it so difficult?

"Hi, I'm a large company, and I'm going to blow $100 million telling you how great I am. I'm so great. I rock. That's right. And you like me, too. You really do. You like hanging onto my every word. Group Hug!"

Maybe this is why so many companies find the whole Web 2.0, post-Cluetrain world so painful. Growing up always is, he said, rolling his eyeballs.

Now, can someone please explain to me a) what that picture has to do with what he wrote, b) what's wrong with group hugs, and c) what a "Cluetrain" is?

[Bonus back-link:] "This could apply to SO MANY industries. Heh."

digital whiplash

First, strap on your seat-belt. Then click the image below...

Then click on the one that says "recursion." Heh heh.

(And hey look! We got written up in a magazine!)

got the rockin' pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu

Well, the new edition of Viral Marketing is finally out. Whew! Every time we do one, I swear never again. It's such a huge amount of work to track all the new techniques coming into use. I have to thank Jeremy and the whole team for the monster effort it took to get this one between covers. At $129, I know it's expensive (it's also 960 pages), but if you're engaged in online marketing of any sort, this is a must-have reference.

poser-generated content

I am so proud of my profession! We've been at this for a very long time, you know. Sometime when you have an extra day to spare, you can try finding all of these on Amazon. Or even better, go to the Taschen site. Thanks to JP for (inadvertently) suggesting the title of this post.

Don't tell

More than meets the eye

Why do I just know Jeremy is going to say something about that last post? Yes, it's true we were at the beach together that time.

But there's more to the story...

And that all looks pretty innocent, until...

Our little secret, OK?

New Business Development

People are always asking me: "Kat, how do you manage to attract so many high-end clients?" I never know what to tell them. Just raw talent, I guess.