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Ann Handley

Writer. Speaker. Marketer.

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Pop Culture

When Facebook Launched: Marketing In 2004

Happy 2004!

Facebook celebrates its 10th birthday this week, which made me wonder: What did marketing in 2004 look like? I was there, of course. Maybe you were, too. But time has a funny way of recasting memories. (Which explains how my siblings and I sometimes have annoyingly different takes on our childhood.) In marketing and perhaps […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Business, Politics & Society, Pop Culture, Social Media Tagged With: Facebook

Joint Effort: Why Ben & Jerry’s Won Social Media Last Week

Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia

Last week, Colorado legalized recreational marijuana. And Ben & Jerry‘s brilliantly tweeted this on Thursday, January 2: BREAKING NEWS: We're hearing reports of stores selling out of Ben & Jerry's in Colorado. What's up with that? pic.twitter.com/zBs8nyxZWn — Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) January 2, 2014 The tweet has been retweeted 9,584 times and favorited 5,750 […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Annecdote, Business, Content, Media, Politics & Society, Pop Culture, Social Media

The Best Worst Words of 2013

Scrabble Tiles

The school that comes on my radar exactly once a year, Lake Superior State University, today released its 39th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. Or, as I’ve renamed it, the Best Worst Words of 2013. LSSU releases on New Year’s Eve a list […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Politics & Society, Pop Culture, Writing

Justine Sacco: When Bad Gets Ugly

pitchfork

So now the news of Justine Sacco’s moronic tweet heard round the world is well-documented: The top PR person for InterActive Corp. (but otherwise unknown) Sacco stupidly tweets an offensive update (now deleted): “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white! —Justine Sacco (@JustineSacco) December 20, 2013” Her employer, IAC—a New […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Business, Media, Politics & Society, Pop Culture, Social Media

Tell True Stories Well: Hire an Artist

birdhouses

The best content isn’t storytelling. The best content is telling a true story well. It’s a subtle difference. But the creators of the best content of 2013 contemplated not just what story was worth telling, but how to tell it. And one way to do that is to hire an artist. I’m tempted to insert […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Art, Business, Content, Pop Culture, Video

Ann Handley is not impressed. (The back story.)

Impressed

Dani Hagen had the idea late last week to create a MarketingProfs version of the Olympic-inspired meme, “McKayla is not impressed.” Because I live under a rock, apparently, I had only a vague notion of what Dani was referring to. It turns out that she was referring to US gymnist McKayla Maroney’s sour expression after […]

Filed Under: Annecdote, Business, Media, Pop Culture, Social Media

Toy Story 3: ‘Contains Mild Thematic Elements Not Appropriate for Older Viewers’

Toy Story 3 trailer

Dear Motion Picture Association of America: I’m freshly back from the theater after seeing Toy Story 3. One question: A G-rating? What were you thinking? I haven’t been this disturbed since the Turkish prison scenes in Midnight Express. The first two Toy Story movies centered on the happy relationship between a young boy named Andy […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Humor, Media, Pop Culture Tagged With: movie rating, movies, Pixar, Toy Story, Toy Story 3

Today’s Guessing Game: What Is It?

Remember AOL disks? If you owned a mailbox in the late 1990s or early-2000s, you know what I mean, because America Online‘s aggressive direct mail strategy probably distributed CD-ROMs and diskettes into it with irritating frequency. More than a billion disks were mailed between the late 1990s and 2006, when AOL stopped the mass mailing. […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Pop Culture, Technology Tagged With: AOL, AOL marketing, CD ROMS, ink cartridge, Technology, typewriter

Scavenged

We set off on foot, the six of us, under an azure sky as big as the ocean. The breeze off the water smelled of salt and September, and the dune grasses bent toward each other, whispering the news that fall was coming. It was a picture-perfect, precious August day, the kind of day that […]

Filed Under: Family History, Pop Culture, Travel Tagged With: Maine, Ocean Park, scavenge, scavenger hunt, social networks, summer, summer games

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