Alex Reid

On Wednesday, LOFT — a brand owned by Ann Taylor Inc. — posted pictures of a typical catalog model in the brand’s new silk cargo pants on its Facebook page. Soon after, several fans began complaining that they wished the fashion company had posted photos of “real women” to display their goods.

In response, the very next day, LOFT posted several photos of their employees wearing the same clothes. The female employees were picked from the company’s design, styling and marketing staff and their body types ranged from size 2 to 12, and heights from 5?3? to 5?10?.

Fans were instantly pleased that they were being listened to, even if some ironically didn’t think the clothes were flattering on the “real women”.

This is a great example of how companies should be utilizing the Internet, not just using the web to distribute information, but remembering that communication is a two-sided street – you have to listen, not just talk, to have an effective conversation.

We are losing our privacy slowly every day and not because of the government or big business. We are losing our privacy because we, as individuals, are the ones eroding it.

I call it ‘Little Brother’ and this New York Times article sums it up very well. It’s one of the leading reasons I started doing reputation management for artists.

“… the truth is that for a great many people, the permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no second chances — no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your digital past. Now the worst thing you’ve done is often the first thing everyone knows about you.”

“You can’t make 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

That’s the tag line to the movie The Social Network, written by West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin and directed by Fight Club director David Fincher, which releases October 2010.

The movie is about the founding of Facebook, starring Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. But the movie does not have the blessing of anyone from Facebook and in fact Zuckerberg has publicly expressed distaste of the movie citing inaccuracies in the book which the movie is based on.

“I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive,” Zuckerberg said.

But don’t expect to see promos for Facebook on Facebook, not because Zuckerberg doesn’t like it, but because of Facebook’s own advertising guidelines.

“Facebook’s advertising guidelines don’t allow ads to reference the company unless Facebook has cooperated with the object of the ad,” said Steve Elzer, SVP of Media Relations for Sony (SNE) movie unit, Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group. (source)

Here’s a Hollywood agency movie spoof made by the guys who should know how it all works; talent agency WME. Apparently the video was only intended to be internal, a joke amongst agents, but it made its way online.

Organizers of the Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC) pulled off a stunt this morning in Vancouver, strangling sculptures of fish and birds with gigantic plastic six pack rings to highlight pollution from plastics.

The PPC want to eliminate single use plastics and its impact on marine and wild life, pointing to the horrendous Great Pacific Garbage Patch as an example.

Special kudos go to award-winning Vancouver ad agency Rethink (they went national with a Toronto office just recently) which worked up the smart idea with the PPC.