Perry Marshall starts off his article, “Old-Fashioned Discernment in the Age of the Internet,” with the following:

You know what’s wrong with the Internet? Smart people and stupid people get equal airtime. And since stupid people tend to shout longer and louder than people who have acquired wisdom and judgment, ignorance generally prevails.

He goes on to say that stupidity is cheap and plentiful:

. . . with stupidity, your options appear to be endlessly open, whereas wisdom is scarce and expensive and usually involves up-front commitments.

More surprisingly, he claims that you—and your customers—decide between the two every day. This seems to be contradicted by his later claim that “in the 21st century the #1 success skill—a skill that NOBODY ever seems to talk about—is discernment” (defined as keenness of insight and judgment).

I’m perhaps wrong to conflate “wisdom” and “discernment” here; perhaps he sees them as different. But assuming they are the same or at least related, do you decide to be wise/discerning, or is it a skill you learn? Maybe you must decide to learn discernment.

Regardless, I think he’s got a point about the importance of the skill. In a world where we have exponentially more information competing for our attention than a generation ago, discerning what is important enough to pay attention to will be ever more important. Advertisers become more adept at manipulating us, so if we don’t want to lose our shirts, we’d better become more discerning.

However, Marshall’s bread and butter is Internet marketing and publicity. He lists some observations of wise men vs. fools, including this one:

Wise people research online and offline. Wise people take a trip to the library and search collections of used books. Fools suppose that if it can’t be found on the first page of search engine results, it surely must not exist.

Sound observation, but if stupidity really is cheap and plentiful, we marketers are going to have to keep working on making that first page.

QA gone wrong, horribly wrong . . .

ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) - Everyone’s a winner after a direct-mail marketing company hired by a local car dealership mistakenly sent out 50,000 scratch-off tickets to residents - all of them declaring the ticket-holder the $1,000 grand prize winner. Just one of the tickets was supposed to be the grand prize winner.

Jeff Kohn, Roswell Honda general manager said a typographical error by Atlanta-based Force Events Direct Marketing, which printed the advertisment, had given all 50,000 scratch-off tickets grand prizes.

SPOILER WARNING: None of the links below reveal the plot of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, however, if you go on a clicking frenzy, you might stumble on some shocking revelations.

As an ardent Harry Potter fan, I am looking forward with bated breath to July 21st. I cannot wait to hold a copy of book seven, and am prepared to drink my first cup of kopi luwak so I can stay awake and finish it.

Unfortunately, there are some out there who don’t share my appreciation of anticipation — and they’re using Web 2.0 technologies to try and spoil the fun for the rest of us. Indulging in some truly dark mischief, someone has taken pictures of the book and has published them on photobucket and on the BitTorrent (peer-to-peer file sharing) site the pirate bay.

Salon’s Machinist tech blog spells it out.

Of course, Scholastic has already moved ahead to take legal action, but dare I say that the mischief has been managed already? JK Rowling herself appears unphased:

“Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity,” she said. “However, spoilers won’t stop people buying the book, they never have — all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book.”

The good news is that these spoil sports are learning that their efforts can backfire in a big way. Digg users are already on the case — testament to the power of social networks!

I was completely reeled in by this video, forgetting that hotel lobby security cams usually don’t have such excellent resolution; nor are hotel lobbies equipped with such excellent acoustics.

All that aside, the video does what a viral video is supposed to do . . . entertain the hell out of me. Of course I followed the link at the end, and while I’m not a big fan of interactive image-based navigation (I spend too much time clicking on flower arrangements and ashtrays hoping they do something) I hung in long enough to pick up the push about the Cisco Mobile Unified Communicator.

Hunting to get that pitch seemed more than a bit antithetical to the campaign’s overarching message. But they eventually get their point across — and that is still one funny clip.

Spam subject lines mutate like viruses. What was Viagra last week is vIaGrA yesterday, and will become V!@6Ra tomorrow. A little blue pill by any other name . . .

Fortunately, online communities are finding ways to protect themselves — a great example of grass-roots Internet inoculation.

Brian Hayes of The American Scientist explains:

The spam we see today is shaped in many ways by our own efforts to combat it . . . the contest is between a host organism and pathogens or parasites, and where both sides have to adapt and evolve in order to survive. In the case of bacteria and viruses, the vast majority never make it, but nature is profligate and can afford such high attrition; likewise spammers find it worth their while to send a million e-mails for a handful of responses.

Perhaps this heralds the end of annoying new media mass marketing.

So I’m a creative. So what. That’s one of those broadstroke, high-altitude descriptors that boarders on the pejorative. Use creative as a noun, and you’ve conjured up the image of some ratty-jeaned dilettante who spends all his discretionary income on Red Bull and salon haircuts. (Hey, I just described myself).

Sure, we get to write/film/design for a living, but I’ve always maintained that, professionally, what we do is more craft than art. We’re tradespeople, like carpenters or electricians or steamfitters. Yeah, the ideas we have and the solutions we recommend can have beautifully artistic components, but form always follows function.

So, if some black-turtlenecked type with lozenge-shaped glasses tells you your communications strategy should “emote a genuine resonance” or “bespeak the segment-centric zeitgeist” or some such malarky, run screaming in the opposite direction.

Creative we may be, but there are ways to keep us in line (and ways we keep ourselves in line while we’re at it). Tug McTighe over at American Copywriter offers up a smattering of suggestions that do just that. The lesson is that when creatives (cough, cough) and clients work together, the results are bee-yoo-ti-ful.

Example thus:

Too often, we create concepts out of thin air based on poorly written briefs or for ill-conceived projects. So start with research, do benefit testing, interview consumers of the product, watch them at home, whatever . . . Respect each other enough to try to do it right the first time versus wasting two weeks concepting a project without the proper insights or account planning.

I never saw that famously viral “Lazy Sunday” bit from Saturday Night Live on an actual television. I saw it about a million times on YouTube or when friends emailed it to me. In a way, I cheated the system. I got the entertainment without having to endure any commercial or network promotion. Somewhere, a sponsor is weeping.

In the editor’s note of the April/May issue of Streaming Media magazine, Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen covers the ongoing debate about protecting intellectual property in the days of user-uploaded video sites like YouTube and Joost.

I’m down with the point he argues, but he cops out before tackling the biggest piece: monetization. He writes:

Heaven knows that the ability to catch clips from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report only helped boost the overall market awareness of those Viacom properties. And “Lazy Sunday,” the Saturday Night Live clip that made YouTube a household name in late 2005, brought more publicity to that show than NBC could have ever dreamed of.

True points, both. Then he wraps up with:

But while up-and-coming filmmakers and musicians have seized the web as a means of promoting their art, er, intellectual property, so should the major entertainment players recognize that, like terrestrial radio, the web serves as a way for fans to find new favorites they’ll then invest in either directly with their wallets or indirectly by turning to the “official” as-supported sources.

I think he stumbles here:

1. There’s a huge difference between up-and-comers and major players. Up-and-comers need exposure, and lots of it, so they give away their content on purpose. It’s like handing out demo CDs. So that comparison is off base.

2. The issue with user-upload sites goes directly against Schumacher-Rasmussen’s suggestion. If the major players could control where their content went and how folks access it (like streaming a terrestrial radio station via a radio station website), then they wouldn’t be crying. Control of the content means you can get a viewer to either pay money or watch an ad, something that earns money. The way in which the major players make money may have to change, but they do still need to make money in order to continue making programs.

User-upload sites take away control of the content, and as a result take away the ability to make money, in either the advertising or pay-per-view models. You may be a big fan of free access to content, but I look at it by comparing programs on HBO to the cable access programs produced by high school kids. You pay for one, you don’t for the other.

At the end of the day, which would you prefer to watch?

Just four years ago, Howard Dean rattled campaigning cages with his Web-fueled presidential push. Yes, his run faded like a late 90s startup, but it had indelible influence. Candidates of every stripe are now taking their outreach online—and it’s a necessity, not a novelty. Today’s Washington Post spells it out. Money quote:

…the Internet isn’t just a tool. It’s a strategy, a whole new way of campaigning, a form of communication, from blogs to MySpace to YouTube, with far more potential than the old media of print and television.

The handshake sessions are losing their significance. If you want to reach voters (like any audience), you have to meet them on their turf. Increasingly, that turf is virtual.

A couple months back, we had an informal office gathering. Everyone was asked to bring some nosh or libation. Two doors down from our Alexandria office, Planet Wine & Gourmet keeps an excellent selection of American microbrews; some upscale suds would be my contribution.

Surveying the cooler, a distinctive six-pack of Acme California Pale Ale caught my eye. In vintage poster-art style, it featured a red-haired female acrobat flying through the air, a glass of beer in hand.

It was worth the gamble to see if the beer lived up to the energetic image.

Long story short: The beer was so good (I hid one of the sixers in the back of the fridge for myself) that I had to email the company the next day and let them know how impressed I was.

Days later, I received an email from Tom Allen, executive VP of North Coast Brewing. Tom thanked me for my compliment and asked if he could use a quote from my email on the company website. Of course I said yes, and by way of thanks, I received a great Acme “care package” just this morning.

What’s worth learning? It’s incredibly easy for consumers to provide feedback, but it’s just as easy for companies to acknowledge that feedback, and even involve consumers in their marketing efforts. Sure, customer testimonials have been around forever, but that’s traditionally been the realm of mega-brands. Now, artisan brands are getting into the act, and they only have loyalty to look forward to.

Cheers, Tom. Guess what’s in the cooler this weekend.

Who doesn’t love Google? For many people (hi, Mom!) that ultra-understated interface is their number one Web conduit. Scores of surfers don’t even know how to put an address in a browser bar. They click the blue “G” shortcut, type in whatever they’re looking for—their bank, their email provider, whatever—and go from there.

But if you count on search engine traffic to keep your business conspicuous, you better stay on the right side of that 900-pound gorilla. Witness the case of online jewelry merchants who were cast down into Google’s nether regions.

…[sites have] been condemned to the supplemental index, a dreaded backwater region of Google search results that goes by another name in online marketing circles: Google Hell. (emphasis added)

It’s nobody’s fault, really. You’re at the whim of an algorithm—nerve-wracking news if your visibility depends on searchability.