Gregorylent sounds a lot like Eckhard Tolle... bravo! "Complexity drives anxiety." And we are eager to believe that social media, social networking are complex ideas when, in fact, they are ancient. Indeed, Rachel, we seek out (prefer) simple lies over slightly complicated truths.

Well stated, Indy. Jonathan, more violent agreement from: Adam Needles, Left Brain Marketing Joe Chernov, Eloqua Stephanie Tilton, Top Ten Marketing Doug Kessler, Velocity Partners http://bit.ly/i5Xejw (note: PDF)

Hi, Katie... No insult intended. And thank you for the schooling (links). This is actually what I'm after :) Beyond that... Causality. This is why you get the strong reaction from me. Because direct response is all about causality -- and actually being able to *prove* that your campaign actually did generate the response. Of course, I'm setting aside the whole environmental question here -- for the sake of my point, please. And you are certainly entitled to your opinion... which I agree with. I'm at least recycling my junk mail! I appreciate your scientific, data-driven approach to dissecting the IBM Lotus campaign, etc. etc. But in the end PR's key metrics (ie. "mentions"/outtakes) have yet to be truly, honestly causal in generating qualitative outcomes (sales and leads) in most cases (I'd love to hear of one where I'm dead wrong). Rather, they're "less able to be proven causal" I suppose -- as compared to direct response. Again, thank you for sharing your research links with me.

Clever, yes. But only from a broadcasting standpoint. The Web can do more for Wynn. What if Wynn had quickly developed a downloadable video or PDF explaining the STORY behind how and why Paris was banned? Wynn could have placed a call-to-action on its front page and taken all the Web traffic this story undoubtedly drove to its site and turned them into leads. Wynn could have asked for an email address and 1-2 questions about the story-seeker's weekend-get-away plans this year. Providing this to Wynn provides access to the real, juicy behind-the-scenes story. This would have given Wynn a database of qualified leads to run promotions to. And it would have taken very little time to produce, set up and run.