On Friday, two South African twitterers, Nash and GrahamRobert, were having a conversation about South African celebrities, which resulted in Nash basically saying that there is no such thing as a South African celeb, by way of tweeting this:

Now, my theory is that Nash included GrahamRobert in the tweet because he was part of the original conversation, but delivered it out of the conversation because it was a funny comment and he wanted all of his followers to read it, not just the ones who follow both of them. Makes sense. It was a nice gesture to include Graham. Nice, but not necessarily obligatory.

Then Cape Town’s favourite son, Shaun Oakes, saw Nash’s tweet, thought it was worthy of a retweet, and did so.

You may notice now, though, that Shaun removed Graham’s twitter handle from the tweet, as he felt Graham was included by association, but he really didn’t have any authority over it. It was Nash’s statement, so he should get the recognition. Only fair, right?

Well, Graham didn’t think so, and replied to Shaun with this tweet:

“meant” to be in the RT? Really? Did you have your name included in the credits when you watched Avatar as well? No. You were part of it. You enjoyed it. But you’re not owed anything for it.

Unfortunately for Shaun, the rapping on the knuckles made him feel bad, and he sent the tweet again, this time including Graham.

Now, if Shaun had included him in the first place, it would have again, just like Nash’s tweet, been a nice gesture to show that he was a part of the conversation. That’s fair, and no-one would have an issue with that.

What I think is very unfair, however, is Graham telling Shaun that he should be included in something that he really had no ownership of in the first place, just for one more mention on Twitter. To his credit, he did say thanks.

But in the end, dude, it’s Twitter, not the Academy Awards. If you have to ask people to include you in retweets, you’re not really doing well to begin with. But more importantly, no-one really cares.

The Bookmarks are an opportunity for agencies, publishers, teams and individuals, working in the digital space, to showcase their work and appreciate and recognise their peers for phenomenal work done in the industry. The organising team, particularly Nikki Cockcroft and Rob Stokes, asked me to MC the event. It was an honour to be asked to be included in the event and I immediately accepted. It was an astounding success overall, their hard work really paid off. Well done. And well done to all the winners.

So why so glum, Don? Well, I’m glad you asked.

I could not believe the lack of respect for each other in the industry. The crowd couldn’t keep quiet, so the rest, who were paying attention, were struggling to hear who won which award. It was pathetic.

When I walked on stage and started the gig, there was still a murmur through the crowd as they were completing drinks orders at the bar and finding their spots for the remainder of the awards ceremony. As a professional MC I understand this dynamic, so I made small talk until it quietened down. Or at least, until it should have quietened down. It didn’t.

Now, I’ve been doing this for years, so when people don’t want to pay attention to the host or MC, it more than likely means they’re really not in the mood for it (or they don’t like his/her style of humour), they want you to get on with the show. I have no issues with this at all, you’re there for the awards, not me, it’s very valid. I’m paid to keep you entertained, and entertain I will, so I introduced the awards. Thing is, though, the crowd still kept making a noise through the entire awards ceremony. I had to constantly reprimand the crowd and ask them to keep quiet, and have some manners and respect for the winners, but they still just didn’t give a fuck.

Long story short: A team of people, through their own time and capacity, spent at least 9 months working hard to make last night a reality, and the crowd couldn’t have cared less. They paid their R400 for their tickets, they drank their free (mostly) drinks, and felt an entitlement to do whatever they wanted to. Reality check: You can’t. It’s an event for everyone, not just for you. So why would you act so badly and not respect your peers in your own industry?

I’ll tell you why: ‘Cos you’re a rude fucktard.

Not even!

I think the title of this post should actually be “Why Cell C’s marketing team should consider a career in sales”. Now, I’d imagine Trevor Noah (tw) to be a pretty smart guy, but to be sold into becoming the face of a widely considered struggling brand, they must have sold him the world. Not just in payment, but in the overall strategy going forward. And well done to them.

I don’t recall Cell C (tw) getting as much exposure as they have over the past few weeks, ever. It started off with praise and applause, then the ‘it was all a scam‘ fiasco when everyone (particularly journos who felt like their little feelings were hurt for being betrayed) slated the campaign at every opportunity. Now the logo story. When will it end? It probably has. And all Cell C can do from here is improve, because they are, essentially, starting from the bottom. And I have a feeling that they will.

Why? Because what the’ve done is completely polarise themselves to the market. You get the people who love what they’ve done, and the people who absolutely hate it. Both sides have the same amount of interest in waiting for what they’ll do next, and both sides are so passionate about their standpoints that they will vehemently argue over any platform, live or online, to try and prove their point. The result: A conversation about the brand. Awesome. So now Cell C has the whole country focussing on their next move, and when you have that much pressure to perform, you work your ass off to make it happen.

On the other side though, what if they don’t? What if this all came too suddenly, they’re not prepared for it, and Cell C loses everything? What does this mean for their new CEO?

Trevor has become the face, the captain of this huge faceless ship. It’s a lot easier for us to blame individuals when things go wrong, because shouting at a large cold building never helped anydoby. It’s exactly what they wanted to achieve with the new campaign: Speak to an individual (Trevor) and he’ll sort you out. People buy in to that. But it has it’s disadvantages too.

Bottom line: If the brand you advocate goes down, you’re going down with them. It’s the captain’s duty. Let’s just hope the powers that be (unfortunately I don’t think Trevor is one of them) can steer this ship past the iceberg and sail it to greener pastures.

Text 1 (incorrect)

Text 2 (correct)

Oops! Someone fire someone (or at least give them a good spanking, then send us the video).

The services range from promising more Facebook fans to positively reviewing products to listening to your life story on Skype, the list goes on and on and they range from very normal to very, very bizarre. To date I’ve only used it for small translations for work, but then I found this guy: The young, Canadian Alex Buckingham. He said that he’d write and record a song all about YOU for a mere $5. So I thought “Fuck it, why not?”

With the brief “Have a look at my website and some of my vids to get a sense of what I’m like”, I paid the 5 bucks and this is the fun (auto-tuned) result I got the next day, too awesome. Thanks Al.

Now go and get yours done! Tell him Don sent you.

The idea and design of the shirt was a collaborative effort by Rich…! and myself for a (hopefully) ongoing project for Thunk!, but ideas without execution is nothing. Enter Trevor Mey.

Trev came up with the idea of how to package it, and he made it happen. We got some really rad exposure from guys like Mike Stopforth, Marc Forrest, Erik Vermeulen, Craig Rodney, Justin Spratt and mad props from some very influential people in the online space. Awesome. They thanked Rich…! and myself, but the real rockstar is Trev for the tough task of making it happen. He’s a legend, and you can’t have him, ‘cos he’s ours. Get your own.

Every person has a different theory as to why they participate in social media. Some to learn from others, some hoping to teach others, most to be the first person to share something before everybody else does, etc. The one thing is, though, that we don’t really understand each other’s ways of doing things, so we just go about treating everybody like they’re at the other end of our game, without realising that we’re also on the other end of theirs. And if you’re not acting appropriately on the other side of someone else’s game, the game isn’t really successful.

Another of these ‘ways to media socially’ are the people who feel that every single part of their lives should be shared with the world. It’s no secret that I want to famous, so when I’m out doing things like comedy or MC’ing or attending rad shit, I wanna tell people. Hell, I’ve even shared about my morning bowel movements once or twice. But when it comes to the serious stuff, the really personal business (yes, bowel movements are personal, but they’re a daily occurrence and they’re funny) then that sort of thing shouldn’t be shared online.

This kind of thing needs to be shared with friends, loved ones, people who take a keen interest in your life and would be there for you when you need it the most, not the 1000ish friends you have on Facebook or your hundreds of followers on Twitter. Yes, some of them may care, but do you really need to share it all?

These are two examples lifted off Lamebook, but I’ve seen these kinds of status updates in both my Facebook and Twitter feeds by people that I know personally. I understand that sometimes you need an outlet, a place to vent and share your frustrations, but before posting this stuff, always consider what you would have done before the boom of social media. Would you have taken out a newspaper front page headline? No. You would have picked up the phone, or met up with a mate and spoken about it, live, in person. Every ounce of me wants to reply saying it’s not cool, but every time I let it slide. I understand that I’m on the other end of your game and you expect me to just understand. Well no more.

If you want to post personal things online which clearly should be dealt with offline, I’ll let you know, for free, just ‘cos I’m a nice guy like that. You have to learn somehow. And if you think your mates are doing the same, let them know, it’ll make for a much better online social experience. Although, it may affect the gems that hit Lamebook. Ok, use your discretion. Awesome.

I started writing a recap of the event, but Paul Jacobson beat me to it, and probably did a better job of it anyway. Overall, I’m lank excited about the Nokia Maps Player, and the Nokia Booklet 3G, which is one sexy little piece of equipment.

Read Paul’s post here. Awesome.

Some people liked it, most thought it was a bad move. But…

The objective was to make a name for herself in the South African social media space. Whether it started out well, or not so well, today not many people are unfamiliar with the name Nadia van der Merwe. I can almost guarantee that going this particular route (the bad press) wasn’t her plan all along, but Nadia really did make a name for herself.

Did it play out how I would imagine she envisioned it? No. Did she fulfill the primary objective? Absolutely. How she capitalises on this now, however, remains to be seen.

The boys at Jo’blog were kinda jealous that we didn’t have any online social media resumé of sorts, and thought Nadia’s video was great fodder for a vid of our own too. We don’t look this good in lingerie, but we make out alright.