Posted by mikezillion at April 28th, 2007
I just realized that BearParty Magazine got a taste of what Seth Godin was talking about when he promoted the idea of the inverse funnel. Our BearParty Magazine release parties were all proposed by the venues that hosted them, based probably on the reputation of CyberBears and the common need for what we had to offer. Coolness.
Posted by mikezillion at April 19th, 2007
It’s always nice to get a little publicity. This week we discovered that our attendance at the GayVN Adult Summit in San Francisco had been recorded for posterity, when this picture of my partner Ken and me at the GayVN Awards after party showed up in GayVN Magazine. As usual, the photographer asked Ken to take his shirt off. In a room full of porn stars wearing little more than their imaginative poses, leave it to Ken to be the center of attention. And do I look like I mind?
Posted by mikezillion at April 18th, 2007
I consider it good news when major corporations decide to loosen their standards about selling pornographic material. Circle K, the convenience store chains which operate in many Shell Oil locations, has received tacit approval from Shell Oil to permit the sale of Playboy and Penthouse magazines as “adult sophisticates.” Shell-branded convenience stores will still not carry any adult products. Shell executive Otto Meyers explained that magazines such as Playboy and Hustler do not fit the definition of pornography held by the general public. Any specific issues of community standards violation will still not be tolerated, at the discretion of the retailers.
Posted by mikezillion at April 4th, 2007
I always thought there was something appealing about Anderson Cooper. Now the French gay magazine Tetu tells me that the American magazine OUT will be officially outing the popular journalist (along with longtime-passing movie star Jodie Foster) in their next issue. Personally, I agree with the old GLAAD-SF mantra that it is not at all negative to say that someone is gay. But I don’t think it makes sense to mention it without an appropriate context. OUT’s proposed context is that gay people with media influence have an obligation to make their orientation known, for the sake of visibility. I’m not so sure that I would publish a magazine cover specifically to make the point. But I am sure it will sell copies.
Posted by mikezillion at April 2nd, 2007
What can we learn from politics? Nothing useful, usually. But this article in the Washington Post about the psychological value of perceived competition has lessons for all of us, including the pornographers. Many businesses operate on a zero-sum assumption that any sale made to another company is a sale lost to your own company. That’s actually what they tried to teach me when I got my MBA. But I’ve always staunchly maintained that no company has any real competitors. Everyone in the marketplace, especially companies in the exact same niche, works as a colleague to draw consumer attention to all of our products just by advertising and promoting their own products. The better they look, the better we all do.