Social networking is the greatest, best new idea since ice cream! NOT! My slight here is exactly why I anticipate being in trouble because all my clients who read these missives are going to think I’m not “with it.” Well two points…I don’t have to be because I have “peeps” that are “with it.” Secondly, I have an 18-year old who is my secret weapon. What the staff does not tell me, she does.

With that said, I still have to protest the social networking phenomena. If I get one more request from Linkedln or some old classmate at Classmate.com to join the network I’m going to be even crankier than I can get after three-putting a green. I mean think about it. How many former classmates do you want to hang out with 40 years after-the-fact? Next, there will be an ex-wife networking site.

Really. We now have Facebook, MySpace, BEBO, LinkedIn and numerous others. Personally, I want to choose my networking friends. I want to talk to them, have lunch, share a round of golf, use the phone or write a letter. I know this is all a little old-fashioned for most of my “peeps” but human contact is okay. We’re human, not digital!

I know I have been a little tongue-in-cheek here, but really, I beg you: don’t ask me to join your Linkedln group…I’m begging you.

You know, back in the day it was the big, old, bad Republicans who raised all the money and were accused of buying all the elections they entered.

Well, this is not your Daddy’s Presidential Campaign. Republican John McCain is accepting public financing of $84 million to run his Presidential Campaign, while Democrat Barack Obama has declined public financing (after previously saying he would accept it). He has raised over $345 million dollars so far in his quest for the Presidency. The Obama campaign raised $52 million in June while the McCain camp raised “only” $22 million.

Let me think for a minute: Wasn’t the McCain-Feingold Campaign Financing Act (yes THAT McCain) supposed to slow down the power of money in political campaigns? Gee, how’s that working so far? The money raised this year will draft anything ever done in a Presidential race. In fact Senator Obama stands to raise and spend twice as much as the $250 million President Bush raised in the 2004 campaign.

I do not agree with public financing at all. I do believe that if you can convince people to part with their money in support of your candidacy than you should be permitted to raise whatever you want. What bothers me is the hypocrisy of how the Democrats have, for years, blamed the power of money in politics. I guess it’s what we call situational ethics?

I know that and you know that but it still does not mean we should all roll up the carpet and shut out the lights. One of the toughest things to not do in a down economy is be too careful or too scared. Right now I see too much of both.

I talk to others in our business and they say the same thing: our clients complain that nothing works but they won’t change what they’re doing either! What is wrong with this picture? This is the time that agencies and clients should be trying new things not spending time being afraid to be different.

The old adage is that you cannot spend yourself out of a down economy. Okay I get that. But who says we should be afraid of changing our marketing approach? Who says we can’t look at some new ideas? What’s the worst that could happen? It might work!

Those of us on the agency side have to do the same thing. We have to retire our fears and suggest new ideas. If the old stuff we suggested is not working, why keep doing it? This industry is not an exact science, nor do I walk on water. (I got wet the last time I tried.)

If we agencies want to keep our clients we must be unafraid. We must tell them it’s time to change what they have been doing. Look at it this way…more of the same isn’t going to get there anywhere. They don’t need us to keep doing what they were doing before us!

Change or perish–that is my new mantra…now, if I can get all my staff and clients to see the light, then maybe I’ll try that walking on water thing again.