REVIEW: The New Positioning by Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin

If you’re lucky enough to locate a copy of their first book, Positioning the Battle for Your Mind, by Jack Trout and Al Ries, then pick it up, pay for it, take it home and guard it with your life.

I’ve never read a PR or marketing book quite like that one. By the time you have finished reading it, the book has positioned itself in your mind and you will never, ever forget it. The book wins that battle. I’ll buy anything by Al Ries or Jack Trout, that’s how solid their information is. Read more

Writing and Editing Craft: 20 Highly Recommended Books for People Who Want Their Words to Work

Following is a list of books I own, read and have studied at length and which I consistently refer to. I consider them an essential part of a writer’s library. Each of them has value to offer, often in surprising ways and not always as you may at first think.

Over the next few weeks you can expect more detailed reviews of each of these books to be linked from this page. Read more

Celebrity Culture - BS Observations - Celebrity Cash-and-Burn

It’s ironic to me that the Free Articulator’s first front page, launched in 2006 made mention of Britney Spears in the most derisive tones, portending her crash long before the MSM made mention of it with regard to her folding marriage and desperate, but failed attempts to cling to the shreds of her career.

Since then, I’ve been fond of making fun of Britney Spears by saying “The initials say it all.” Meaning that they comment on the music, the woman, her character, and her career. The news that she has lost custody of her children is now exploding into the mainstream media (MSM) and dominating headlines and soundbytes internationally. It gives me pause.

The former Disney Mouseketeer has lost the plot completely. Whatever talent she has, or retains, is obscured, and all the money showbiz has offered, ($50,000,000 a year) for a twenty-something would seem insufficient to help her, though she does a credible (if soul-destroying) job of remaining in the media spotlight; a celebrity’s major job description and most precious social capital these days.

It seems to me that the attention we pay her as she shatters her career, ruins her life and that of those around her is more of a commentary on who we are as a society and civilization, than who Britney is as a falling star of pop culture.

I think the MSM today is feeding and fueling her plunge into obscurity as visibly as possible and that we are helping her along. I find that rather shameful. If we’re to believe the media attitude on this it comes across as “Nobody seems to care,” except the media who rush to publish so they can exploit this event to make money from corporations who’ll purchase more adspace this week to capitalize upon the circumstance of celebrity cash-and-burn (sic). “The meida maketh and the media burneth.” All we are supposed to do is stir the ash; fertile ground for the next media sensation to rise as phoenix and inflame our desire to consume.

As has been mentioned earlier, the Free Articulator will be taking a look at the cult of celebrity in a consumer soceity at a later date.

In the meantime consider what it means as society loses the values it once placed in glamorous graceful and cultured celebrities (holding to the illusion we considered reality at the time), and ponder for a few moments, if you will, who may gain what by destroying the value and inspiration celebrity once gave us.

Celebrity is a commodity traded by the value others place in the attention we freely give.

On who, or what, do you spend your attention today?

There is where the dollars flow.