In his typical insightful way, master of the search universe Danny Sullivan provides a thorough breakdown of the Google ad that appeared on the Superbowl last night.

In his post, he also runs down several past examples of Google using “traditional advertising,” including a TV campaign to support the Chrome browser, outdoor and some local radio to support AdSense. (I would add that as part of its holiday airport free wifi campaign, many of the airports had lots of “place-based” signage associated with the effort.)

One thing Danny didn’t mention was Google’s aggressive use of good old fashioned direct mail. That’s right: Direct Mail sent via the U.S. Postal Service (snail mail) and printed on paper (dead trees).

To judge from the inbox of one small business owner — me — I’d guess that Google is spending lots of money targeting small business owners on an array of fronts, from promoting Adsense to encourage businesses to list their companies on Google Maps (Google Local) to promoting Google Docs as an enterprise alternative to Microsoft products.

Below are photos of just two of the direct marketing campaigns I’ve received in recent weeks.

The first promotes Google Maps and the second promotes Google “Apps” (a business-twist on the suite of software and services offers for free via Google Docs).

As a small business owner who spends lots of time (as in, a big part of every day) communicating with other small business owners (In addition to being its creator, I am “head-helper” at SmallBusiness.com), I’ll add this: Google’s direct marketing is smart. And if they just depended on search advertising to sell their services, they’d never penetrate this market fully.

Bottomline: Internet advertising does not do away with the need to reach customers in a myriad of ways. Many marketing channels are better than fewer marketing channels.

It’s just a game. The Superbowl.

The game is just a game — it’s between two teams of players, not the millions of us who sit in the stands and watch on TV.

We’re just fans and we’re just talk.

But every once in a while, the narrative — and the allegory — make the game more than just that battle out on the field.

This year, the game was all about the team carrying on their shoulders the hopes and dreams of the people of post-Katrina New Orleans.

And, well, in the process, for the rest of us who have known loss.

Those of us who have ever faced the long climb back up from getting drowned by our worst fears. We, too, knew this was our narrative, also.

We, too, wanted the Saints to win.

And they did.

It’s was just a game.

And Christmas is just another day of the year.

My “job” has changed radically over the past few years, so I understand why people have no idea what I do.

The company I started 20 years ago, now called Hammock Inc., is in the business of developing and managing different types of content and custom media for marketers who are trying to achieve specific objectives. (Objectives being a buzzword that means something you can actually measure, not something that’s important- and lofty-sounding but has no yardstick — those are called goals. We’re into yardstick stuff.)

So, yes, when publishing a magazine (what lots of people think is all we do) helps a client meet a specific objective, we do that.

But today, the objectives we work on are more like, “improving organic search results by X%,” lead generation and things having to do with stuff like “bounce-rates.”

I explain all that to say this:

If you have a great new way to help me assist clients reach customers by creating and deploying and distributing content that matters to their customers, I’m always eager to hear about it.

For example, a friend of mine asked if I would look at an iPad app he is developing. Sure, I said. One look at it and I thought of five different ways the idea could be a great early-stage iPad app a marketer would love to experiment with.

So that made me think: There must be several people out there working on ideas that would help inspire other ideas that do those things I believe are going to replace advertising in the coming years: Content (a very broad term) provided to customers in ways that customers find appealing and helpful and beneficial — and never intrusive.

So send them to me.

I promise this: I won’t blog about them until you’re ready for me to. I won’t “steal” your ideas — although I can assure you, lots of people are having “similar” ideas to yours — it’s not the idea but your execution that’s going to make it a success. (For example, any app that’s another version of reading an eBook is not exactly defensible, so it better be executed in a way that is unique to you and compelling to users.)

Don’t know where this will lead, but one never knows.

Wednesday after the market closed, Cisco announced earnings that “trounced” analyst estimates. CEO John Chambers said, “We saw very strong, balanced growth from a year-over-year perspective in almost all of the major geographies and market segment categories,” he said. According to Reuters, “He sounded a bullish note for the rest of the technology industry, predicting a good chance of ’solid, sustainable economic growth.’” He said too that the company expects to add 2,000 to 3,000 over the next few quarters.

I will remind you that Cisco serves as a economic bellwether as it sells technology and equipment to all sizes of businesses, from the world’s largest companies and governments to small businesses. (If you’re in doubt of the small business segment, here’s a reminder: It now owns Linksys and Webex.)

But wait. Why is Mr. Chambers so bullish? Hasn’t he read what the “Top 200 Economic Bloggers” think. According to a quarterly survey released yesterday by the Kauffman Foundation, 48 percent of economics bloggers said in the mid-January survey that the economy was “worse than official government statistics show.” Most respondents rate the overall condition of the economy as “mixed,” and 33 percent say it is still “facing recession” or “weak and recessing.”

So if the bellwether company Cisco is expecting “solid, sustainable economic growth,” where are the economist bloggers gaining their insight? From reading each other, I’d assume.

I’m sure a survey of the economics bloggers would suggest John Chambers is blinded by the reality of selling equipment to real customers and that he should go hang out in academia where he can get in touch with what’s going on with the theoretical economy.

NYT.com with flash blocked.

John Gruber writes a typically thought-provoking piece about Flash, the ubiquitous software platform that designers and marketers love because it enables animation and video that make a website act just like a TV or interactive game. Except, that is, when people do what I do and use things like the Firefox browser plugin Flashblock that keeps Flash from taking over my browser — unless I want it to.

Flash can be great. But more often than not, it just slows down a web page. I grew so frustrated with Flash that I installed Flashblock months ago and haven’t looked back. Developers — and excuse me, marketers, but we’re the worst — use Flash for reasons like: “Our boss likes it when the photo whisks across the window” or “The client wants the site to look more modern.”

So, for reasons of pleasing the boss and the desire to look “more modern,” a software platform that is buggy and sloppy and many times, at odds with the marketing objectives of clients (check out how I see those invisible Flash ads on the front of NYT.com), Flash is used — and it pleases bosses and clients who view their ads and websites on controlled platforms.

Gruber (echoing a post from Robert Scoble) suggests there’s a better way to accomplish video and animation and interactivity than using Flash: web standards that support video without a Flash plugin.

There are those who say that the iPad will fail because it doesn’t support Flash (however, that non-support doesn’t seem to have deterred the iPhone’s success). Perhaps, however, it will be the iPad that finally breaks the back of the Flash cartel. Developers, as Gruber suggests, must decide if they are “Flash” developers or animation/video developers.

Likewise, I’ll add, they will soon have to decide if they are iPad developers, or open apps developers.

What a great — and chaotic — time to be living.

Bonus: Dave Winer joins in the discussion.

Later: The NYT examines the Apple-Flash issue in an article in Monday’s paper.

I have read with interest and appreciation the thoughtful responses to the introduction of the iPad. If you ignore those who label individuals who disagree with them “idiots” etc., this product announcement has inspired some really smart and articulate people to explain bedrock concepts of media business models, marketplace dynamics and a wide range of conceptual, philosophical and political approaches to technology.

I won’t attempt to explain what each of these points of view are as I’m still sorting out the various shades of meaning individuals have when they use the phrases “opened” and “closed,” for example.

To people outside the bubble of technology development and content distribution, “open” is the opposite of “closed.” But for those who spend their days and nights pondering and pursuing entrepreneurial opportunity or those who have fought against the constant attempts by corporations to lock-in consumers to a proprietary channel, the words “opened” and “closed” can mean vastly different things.

As I’ve said before, I am glad the iPad is finally a reality because it gives all of us something that points to what comes next.

What comes next might be the first and second and future iterations of what the iPad will be.

Or what comes next might be the reactions to what is wrong with the iPad.

As a marketer and strategist and media experimenter — and for those marketers who choose me to help them figure out such things — I, like everyone else, have two choices.

1. I can immerse myself in the chaos of the new, trying to discover how (or if) these new devices will change the way customers (buyers, members, donors, readers, viewers, users, etc.) discover new products and create new types of markets — be they opened or closed.

2. Stand by and watch, while others slog and fight their ways through the next few years while figuring it out.

I’ve decided that for me, standing by and watching is no longer an option.

I’m not living at this incredible moment in time to spectate.

I woke up today to hear two NPR stories about the iPad.

Story 1 was a technology analyst blasting the device because it doesn’t have a camera and so, therefore, isn’t taking advantage of social media.

Story 2 was a publishing analyst describing the device as a savior of book publishing.

Of course, both of these analysts are right — and wrong.

The first analyst sees the iPad as a Swiss Army Knife that left off a cork screw and being a wine lover, he can’t understand why anyone would want a Swiss Army Knife without a cork screw.

The second analyst sees the iPad as a Kindle with color and video that will enable publishers to have an alternative to the pricing on Amazon — which publishers hate.

Like I said, both are right — and wrong.

Over the next 60 days, Apple will start bombarding the channels of traditional (old) media defining what one can do with the iPad. They will never mention features. Only what one can do.

The people who purchase the iPad will use it 90% of the time to do 4-5 things they’d rather do on the move than sitting at a computer.

The people who purchase the iPad will use it because they already own an iPhone and would like to watch movies or read books or tweak a presentation on a 9 1/2 inch screen rather than a micro-screen.

The people who purchase the iPad will use it because it will help them define themselves to those around them.

I could go on-and-on about the reasons people who purchase it will do so.

Watch. Learn.

It’s not about features something has or does not have.

And it’s not about what missing features prevent someone from doing.

It’s about what the existing features enable someone to do.

That’s all.

Bonus linkage: As I’ve said often, the only person worth reading on this topic is John Gruber. Again, his perspective is original and insightful.

Many people know I’m a fan of a web service called Glue (although it’s at the URL, “getglue.com”, not glue).

I allow the service to follow me around the web and it gives me the chance to thumbs up or thumbs down products, books, movies, music. I have a hard time explaining what it is, especially when I say something like, “It’s like Foursquare, but you check in when you hit a page on Wikipedia instead of when you go to a restaurant.”

There are many cool things about Glue (the way it demonstrates the concept of “the semantic web” is worthy of deep study, for example), but its primary benefit at this point is the way in which is allows you to see how your friends have reviewed products. Think about that. Typically, on the web, when you go to a book page on Amazon.com, you read reviews from strangers. Glue allows you to see reviews from your own network of contacts. Not only movies, but whatever categories of products and topics you select, from gadgets to wine.

This concept, which I’ve been fascinated with for a couple of years — since I first started using Glue — the ability to interact with a network of people throughout the web, rather than in a specific URL-fenced-in area — has influenced my perception of what the web can one day be. It points to a future in which we won’t go to Facebook or Linked-in or Twitter to interact with a network of connections: We will interact with them wherever we find ourselves throughout the web.

Today, Google took a step in this direction by announcing that someone who is logged into Google and who has associated their Google profile with corresponding identities on social networks and other social media, will have their search results interspersed with relevant reviews or comments from people in their networks of contacts on those services.

This is a rather big deal that, like most anything that involves “identity,” can be both beneficial and alarming. Beneficial, if you discover a bad review of a movie posted by someone you personally trust — say, a college film profession you friended on Facebook. Alarming if you ponder how many points of data about you that Google has to collect in order to pull this off.

I’ve been snowed under since “the announcement.”

Here are some quick thoughts before I read what others have written:

1. No where in the marketing materials or presentation (except for a slide with a quote from Walt Mossberg) are the words “slate” or “tablet” used. As I have predicted before, Apple created a new category of device that will be called “pad” media. This is not a tablet — not to be compared with a tablet, they’ll argue.

2. Why the iPad is the best name? It drafts off billions of dollars of brand investment in the iPod. And it describes the physical nature of the device.

3. As predicted, there is, among the geekiratti, the tendency to focus on what it “doesn’t” have. That’s great. Apple can hold the iPad up and say, “this is what the product is” and others can focus on what it doesn’t have. For example, I wanted a camera for video conferencing. I’ll have to wait for another year or so for that.

4. It’s pretty amazing to me how close the device is to the, frankly, made up stuff I used to envision the product to be.

5. Why did Jason Calicanus so blatantly lie on Twitter last night — and why did the Wall Street Journal pick up his tweets and treat them like fact.

6. Only losers will use the keyboard dock.

Yesterday, I blasted those in the world of print media who are holding out hope that today’s Apple announcement will somehow save print.

Read one way, it could appear that I believe the “slate” device will mean the end of print. But longtime readers of this blog — and everyone who knows me — know that is not what I believe.

I am a lover of magazines — but also of all things digital. I believe in a world where magazines and TVs and radios and books and slate devices all find their ways to co-exist in our lives.

New media forces old media to change — it forces what was yesterday’s mass medium, to evolve into something different.

TV didn’t destroy radio — it forced it to change. And slate devices will force books and newspapers and magazines to change.

No, they won’t be the same as they are today. Many types of magazines, books and newspapers will go away.

But the medium of magazines (the print medium I am most familiar with) will live on — and, frankly, will at one end of the long tail, continue to grow as the costs related to on-demand and digital printing falls.

I’ve always felt the web — especially blogs — and magazines are complementary media.

And I believe slate devices will allow organizations and entrepreneurs and anyone with a great idea who can find an audience to discover new ways to interact with them across all media platforms. One of things that will spring forth from those new relationships will be new magazines that appear solely as slate and smart phone “app” and some will find an audience who desire both digital and print expressions of the passion for the topic and brand that evolves from the passion “audience” and “creator” have for one-another.

One of the people I turn to when thinking about the future of magazines (long time readers of this blog will recognize the name) is Derek Pawazek. In post yesterday, he wrote, “Apple could release a device that makes consuming media fun, is able to show any PDF beautifully (just like the iPod would play any MP3), and offers new media for sale in the iTunes store. If they did it right, publishers like me might finally be able to sell something digital that people would actually buy.”

That’s how I feel about slate devices. I am hopeful that, finally, there will be a device that makes it compelling for people to buy something to “play” on it — like the way the Kindle has made it compelling again for me to buy first-novels or obscure books I hear about.

Today, I will start developing media for the new Apple device. (I actually started — conceptually — years ago.)

But I don’t believe the device will be the savior of magazines.

It won’t kill them, either.

In 2007, Hammock donated funds for some computers in the One Laptop Per Child program. We also participated in their “buy one, get one” campaign in order to have a computer to help us promote the effort. After using the device in some photo and video shoots, I placed the computer on a shelf in my office, intending to give it away, but never quite getting around to it. It’s always there, reminding me it would be better off being used by a child than gathering dust in my shelf.

And then, on Tuesday evening I received the following e-mail appeal from the founder of the One Laptop Per Child program.

So, Godspeed my little green XO computer — I now know why I hung onto you:

Dear G1G1er,

At the end of 2007 you participated in the Give One Get One program of One Laptop per Child (OLPC). Thanks to you and others like you, 75,000 laptops went to Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Cambodia, Oceania, the West Bank, and Haiti.

An additional 75,000 laptops came into the USA as part of the “get” side of the equation. In some cases those laptops have since been put into closets for one reason or another.

We are gathering additional used XO laptops to send to Haiti. If you or the child to whom you gave the laptop is no longer using it, we appeal again to your generosity and ask you to send it to the address below (even if it is broken).

OLPC FOR HAITI c/o Exel
615 Westport Parkway #500
Grapevine, TX 76051

75% of the schools in Port-au-Prince have been destroyed in the recent earthquake, but by good fortune, none of our Haitian team was hurt. They have spare parts and OLPC technical staff and teachers, and stand prepared to deploy these XOs.

Because of the XO’s unique features (sunlight readability, solar powered, water resistant, drop proof), it is also an ideal tool for relief work.

If your XO is in use, please ignore this email. We only want your broken or unused XOs.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Negroponte

Enough is enough, people.

I love stuff Steve Jobs makes. His Pixar movies are (were?) brilliant. The Mac is magical. The iTunes Store and iPod are the most innovative creation of a controlled media channel and eco-system since the invention of the TV. And the iPhone — couldn’t live without mine. Heck, I even use my Apple TV.

But savior of old media? Savior of the free and professional press?

Like flies being charmed by a spider, Steve Jobs has old media executives hypnotized with the promise of what he will reveal on iWednesday. The archtypical quote from the swarm of flies is in Tuesday’s New York Times:

“Steve believes in old media companies and wants them to do well, said a person who has seen the device and is familiar with Apple’s marketing plan for it, but who did not want to be named because talking about it might alienate him from the company. “He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press.”

So let’s get this straight: Steve Jobs believes in a free and professional press (I’m assuming by “professional,” the fly means “not bloggers”), but this “person familiar with Apple’s marketing plan” is so afraid of being alienated by Steve Jobs’s PR squad that he is afraid to talk openly to the press?

Listen: The kind of free press Steve likes is the “free” press that is showered on every thing the company does. Where was Steve’s championship in the “free press” when Apple’s lawyers were unleashed on bloggers who pierced his wall of secrecy around Apple?

Apple believes in a “handled press,” not free press.

Here’s the deal, old media companies: The iSlate is not going to be a “print reader,” so it is impossible that it will save print. It’s going to be a digital content “consuming” device that will allow individuals to, yes, read anything on the web AND listen to any song ever recorded, watch any movie ever filmed, access any photo ever taken and placed online. So, maybe when they get through with all of that content, they’ll get around to paying for downloaded replicas of printed media.

Here’s another deal, old media companies: Steve Jobs did not create the iWhatever because of his love of the free and professional press. He created it because everything lined up to make now the time to create a product that has been envisioned for 30 years.

Here’s yet one more deal, old media companies: You know those companies that used to purchase advertising in the context of your content? They now can create, commission and aggregate content of their own. (They can hire me to help.) And on the iSlate, their content is likely going to be as compelling as your’s in many cases.

So, yes, be glad there’s going to be another channel and platform in which you can continue to battle it out with all of the content competitors you now have online.

But if you think Steve Jobs gives a rip about saving old media because he believes in a “professional press,” remember the children’s poem by Mary Howitt:

Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, “Dear friend what can I do, 
To prove the warm affection I’ve always felt for you? 
I have within my pantry, good store of all that’s nice;
I’m sure you’re very welcome — will you please to take a slice?”
“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “kind Sir, that cannot be,
I’ve heard what’s in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!” 

Three years ago, on the day Steve Jobs announced the coming of the iPhone, I took this photo of people marveling at one encased like the Hope Diamond. All hail the iPhone. It was just three years ago — although it seems like so much longer. The anticipatory build-up of hype was every-bit as staggering as it is for Steve Jobs’ Wednesday unveiling of the miracle device that will deliver us all to the promised land.

And yes, if the device gets us only half-way to the promised land — or even Fantasy Land, for that matter, I’ll be lined up to get one the day they are released. Big surprise, as I’ve written many, many thousands of words about it dating back to before there was an iPhone — or even an iPod Touch.

So rather than writing — yet again — about what the device will be, I thought it would be more fun to predict what the response to the device will be by those who can’t wait to shift from rumoring to reviewing.

So, here are my predictions for what you’ll hear after the announcement on Wednesday:

Apple fan-boys: Fan boys (”fan-boy” is not a gender thing – “fan boys” can be both male or female) will gush over the device. That Steve Jobs walked through the valley of the shadow of death to live until this day is enough to make a certain sub-set of his followers start ritualistic reenactments of the announcement. They will gather weekly to recite his presentation.

Personal Technology Superstars: I’m basically talking about two people, here. David Pogue and Walt Mossberg will gush over the device, but will have major caveats about it. (Typical caveats: Battery life or lack of camera or its inability to tether with an iPhone’s 3G connection, for example — if, indeed, those are issues.) Pogue, of course, will have a couple of books published on how to use the device by the time it actually hits the shelves.

Tech-bloggers: Look for “Momma Bear” descriptions of the device: It’s too soft, it’s too cold, it’s too big. In other words, it’s not “just right.” “Just right” being a device running on Android that costs $200.

Media people: It will save magazines. It will save books. It will save newspapers. Of course, it won’t. It may save the jobs of people who produce “content” for all of those media, but (for reasons I’ve explained on this blog too often to repeat) new media accessed by a rectangular hunk of plastic is not the same as old media appearing in print or on TV — no matter what you call it or what the metaphors you use to describe it.

Me: I will love the device. I will be Goldilocks: It will be just right. But that will not be true — especially if it doesn’t have a video camera facing the user — I’m wanting a videoconferencing capable device. I will love it because, frankly, it is a part of why I’ve spent the past decade re-positioning Hammock Inc. from being a “magazine” business into being what is now called a content marketing or Internet marketing company (despite my problems with the word content). I am a believer in the principle that having more media options is a good thing. Having Google innovate on the Android platform and Apple on its apps/OSX platform, etc., are all good things. And, as I’ve said before, I’m a fan of Apple, but I don’t care if they win. I just want them to show the world what this device can be. And I don’t want to just use it — I want to work with clients in developing innovative ways to use it.

Last thing. If Steve Jobs wants to really impress me, at the end of the event, he’ll say something like, “Oh, and one more thing…”

And then he’ll present plans for the iFly:

In the past few moments, I’ve been reminded of how distorted my view can become when I limit my beliefs to the reality I find from the firehose of news and information that floods forth from the RSS/Twitter sources I have set up. In that world, people have already back-lashed against technology and techniques that most people in the real world have not yet even heard of. In that world, the nuance becomes the make-or-break. In that world, millions of people have already signed up for services you’ve never heard of — and hundreds of thousands, to services I’ve never heard of.

Here are two reality checks: An article in the New York times “revealing” that more than half of the “best selling” ebooks on the Kindle are available at no charge. I’ve posted links to free ebook resources for years and, as someone commented here the other day, someone linked to an old post by John Walkenbach regarding analysis that 44 of the top 50 Kindle titles being free.

So, reality check one: The whole “eBook” thing is not just about the price-point that publishers want to charge for books. In fact, it’s not about eBook readers. It’s about channels of distribution and new ways of offering all that stuff we call “content.” And, oh yeah, it’s not about saving any industry that wants to replicate its content onto a rectangular hunk of plastic and charge for it by calling itself something e- or i-.

Second item. Please, I beg you: Listen to this Weekend Edition, Saturday piece called “Not All Kids Are Computer Whizzes.” In this world I live in, bloggers and social medians and parents believe that if you are a child, you know everything there is to know about using computers — because, well, you are a member of some “digital native” culture where using technology was fused into your DNA. Yet, in reality, most kids are clueless when it comes to some of the most basic understanding of things like, get this, “using Google.”

Reality check two: Your children need help learning how to search the Internet (like they need help learning everything else in life) — according to research sponsored by, get this, Google. Bottomline: If a search takes more than one step, kids give up. In other words, they sound a lot like adults who are digital immigrants.

Bonus: Here are some basic search “helps” from Google. And here are the two most helpful search hints I can give you search giver-upers-after-the-first-page: “use quotation marks around a string of words” and use a minus sign “-” in front of words you want Google to ignore. (Someone may have suggested these before, but chances are you ignored them because they started saying things like “boolean.”)

• Amazon quietly lets publishers remove DRM from Kindle ebooks | Nieman Journalism Lab
  I don't know what the "quietly" means, but letting publishers do what they want to do seems to be a remarkably sane action.
  (tags: ebooks kindle)