I found this advert for the new Dodge Viper in the latest edition of Wired magazine. Need I say more?



Update: The French auto blog, fittingly namned Le Blog Auto, discusses the ad further. Mon Dieu!

The Swedish Union of Journalists (SJF) today started a blog about a project in Ukraine. SJF is helping journalists to establish and manage unions in Ukraine. The first post was published just an hour and a half ago.

A few days ago Technorati suddenly said that the number of links to my blog are about 354, up from about 177 in no-time. Naturally I began to wonder why this figure is double the amount from the day before? It seems that Technorati has been doing some changes to the way they count incoming links and now displays links from blogs over the last six months. I'm unsure if this is the reason though.

Technorati tag: Technorati.

I noticed today that Spray just launched a beta version of a new and free blog service. By the looks of it, it seems to be working, although there still are some major bugs, like when you click on a post on Spray's site, it shows the wrong blog URL.

Arne Mårtensson steps down as Group CEO of Handelsbanken, one of Sweden's largest banks, to go sailing round the world for three years. He also declines renominations to the boards of Handelsbanken (where he is chairman), Ericsson (vice chairman), Sandvik, Skanska, Industrivärden, Holmen and Vin&Sprit. During his trip he will be writing a blog on http://www.yaghanvoyages.blogspot.com/.

A new chapter seems to be written each day in H&M's relation to Kate Moss. Today, H&M's CEO Rolf Eriksen tells Dagens Industri's online edition that they will not rule out the possibility to use Moss in future campaigns.

"You never know what might happen if she changes attitude. The important thing is that she is not a part of this campaign." [The launch of H&M's Stella McCartney collection]

"Kate Moss is one of the most talented models in the world and we hope that she will get help with her problems."

Back to a softer approach again? What about the potential law suit?

Kate Moss has been offered £5m to front the online poker site nine.com, according to Brand Republic (reg. required). The gambling site has offered Moss a five-year contract to be the face of its new campaign. The contract would come with restrictions, including time in rehab and monitoring to prove she is not taking drugs. Moss was also asked to participate in a nine.com-sponsored anti-drugs campaign aimed at students.

Jack Abrams, a nine.com spokesman, said: "We did a quick focus group with some customers to see if they would be offended in any way and the response was an overwhelming, 'No -- please get Kate Moss as your spokesperson'."

Sure, poker players would vote for Spongebob Squarepants as spokesperson, as long as it would lure more players into the game.

I read in Expressen that H&M are investigating the possibilities to sue super model Kate Moss for damages. H&M are looking at recovering some costs that came as a result of the recent cocaine scandal. From a PR perspective this seems like a very very bad idea. Here's why:

1. She's sorry. She made a stupid mistake and admitted it. She apologized to everyone that might have suffered from her behaviour. Going after someone who is truthfully apologetic does not give your company a sympathetic image, even if you technically are entitled to do it.

2. You forgave her. H&M's initial reaction to the story was to give Moss a second chance. By suing her, H&M make a 180 degree turn and does not come out as a company with a clear strategy on this matter.

3. Big vs small #1. H&M is a huge company, partially owned by one of Sweden's richest men. It has all the resources one can wish for, whilst Moss is an individual, a small woman, albeit wealthy and big enough to snort cocaine. Nevertheless, readers are more likely to side with David than Goliath.

4. Big vs small #2. Does it not look somewhat greedy for a company that last year made a net profit of SEK 7.2 billion to sue an individual for damages? Um, yes it does.

5. Addiction is a disease, even if self inflicted. Moss is obviously sick. She needs help, not law suits. Sure, she caused the situation herself, but then what? Do H&M want to destroy her?

6. Enough already. The more H&M talk about the incident, the longer it will continue and they run the risk of being associated with a drug addict. Just drop it and focus on your new campaign. Use the massive attention to do something positive.

7. The story broke on 15 Sept. First they forgave her, then H&M didn't communicate that they are dropping Moss until 20 Sept. I can understand that H&M feel they are in a business relation with Moss and that she broke the contract and cost H&M some serious money. But had the company had a clear strategy from the beginning it might even have gained credibility and brand recognition from the story. Now, it is more likely that the brand will suffer from whimsical public relations than from the cocaine scandal itself. (H&M now claim they decided to drop Moss on 17 Sept. Which is worst, having trouble deciding or not being able to communicate what they have decided?)

Marketing weekly Resumé claims that pop princess and Newlyweds star Jessica Simpson will replace Kate Moss in the advertising campaign for Swedish clothier H&M's new Stella McCartney collection.

H&M of course declined to comment on the speculations. Should this be true it is cause for a celebration with a plate of buffalo wings, unless you like Simpson "don't eat buffalo".

The first acquisition of a blog in Sweden will take place in the coming weeks according to an article in marketing weekly Resumé. A company in the Bonnier corporation is currently negotiating to purchase the fashion blog Manolo.se and sources say that it is Sydsvenskan, one of the larger dailies in Sweden that will make the investment.

- We are negotiating. The deal is in the final stages, we have come far enough to conclude that it will happen, says Tomas de Souza, one of the three founders, to Internetworld.

The information that was leaked in the comments at Erik's blog three days ago seems to be correct.

Manolo.se had 35,000 visitors in August.

Not only did H&M finally dump Cocaine-Kate (what took them so long?). Now Burberry and Chanel also call it quits. Don't worry Kate, you're just having a bad trip. Change the music, wash your face with cold water and take a stroll. You'll find yourself back on track in no-time. Not.

There is some truly great stuff being produced over at the Global PR Blog Week 2.0 event blog. Check out for example Tom Murphy's article about pragmatic PR and Dee Rambeau & Chris Bechtel's great piece about online media relations.

Here's an odd version of personal branding. "Peter K - former journalist" wants me to buy his books. Apparently you can build a career on having once been a journalist. File under "has-been positioning".

Making ice cream seems to be a walk on very thin ice these days. Not long ago we had the Nogger Black racist debate in Sweden and now an ice cream cone at Burger King has upset some Muslims because it resembles an Arabic inscription.

Via Adrants.

Sweden today started to convert to digital television in the terrestrial network by turning off the analogue signals on the island of Gotland. Information is provided in eight languages. As expected (change=bad), everybody's against it.

Swedish daily Norrbottens-Kuriren is doing something right. Today it launched a citizen journalism initiative called "Blog of the week". A different blogger is invited to blog on the paper's web site each week and the first blogger out is Lisen Ellard, dancer and radio journalist (how typical...).

Most previous blogging efforts from Swedish media so far has only been to add a blog to the arsenal of the paper's regular staff of opinion makers. Or far worse, they add some sort of lame diary page without any basic blog functions (read permalinks, RSS, etc) and call it a blog. The most recent example is Dagens Nyheter's editor in chief Jan Wifstrand's "blog" about handball (!). I don't want to be a blog fundamentalist, but dear Mr. Wifstrand, I hate to break this to you, but you don't have a blog. Similarly, correspondent Thomas Hall at DN "blogs" in the same non-blog format from Germany.

But back to the positive initiative at Norrbottens-Kuriren, which makes it to #4 on the Outing-scale, i.e. Steve Outing's 11 layers of citizen journalism. It is just one of a number of examples that show us that Swedish media are starting to grasp that citizen journalism can be more than just adding comments to online articles. For example:

- Aftonbladet is experimenting with blogs and apart from launching a series of own blogs, also interviewed a large number of bloggers during the summer, pointing to their blogs.
- SR (Swedish Radio) recently launched Bloggkrönikan, a blog review that comments on things written in the blogosphere, not by professional opinion makers but independent thinkers which make up the essence of the blogosphere.

Hopefully we will see even more advanced experiments with citizen journalism in the coming 12 months up to the next Swedish election.

Global PR Blog Week 2.0 started today and the fact that I declined to participate this year is absolutely not a reason not to tune in (I just couldn't find the time to write a longer piece this year). This is the event where the creme of the crop of PR bloggers share their knowledge and expertise about the intersection of public relations and new technology like blogs and wikis. A wide range of topics will be covered during the five day event. Tune in, read, learn and comment.

The UK football magazine FourFourTwo will launch a Norwegian edition called FireFireTo, reports Propaganda. Next country in line will probably be Sweden "if they qualify to the World Cup". Of course we will...

By the way, FireFireTo, wouldn't that be a great name for an NRA magazine?

Google has just launched a blog search tool and it seems very promising. After a few quick tries I found several interesting blogs I will start subscribing to. Like for example Swedish communications consultant Jan Sandred's blog Innovation Journalism (in English).

Update: Ego-searching seems to be the spinal reaction to a new tool like Blogsearch. Chadie and Olav searched for their own blogs, with different levels of success. And yes, I did it too.

Journalist Roland Poirier Martinsson has received a "sum of money" to do a report about Swedish media and its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. I'm sure he will do an excellent job, and not let his previous conclusions disturb the report. Nevertheless, I would very much like Martinsson to include these two recent articles because I reacted strongly to the way especially Dagens Nyheter portrayed a certain "fact" about Gov. Blanco.

First PM Nilsson of Expressen who writes that Blanco refused help from the White House because the state had everything under control:

"Och vi vet också att Louisianas guvernör Kathleen Blanco fem dagar efter Katrina avvisade hjälp från Vita huset eftersom hon ansåg att delstaten "hade allt under kontroll" (New York Times 8/9). Vi vet också att USA:s delstater svartsjukt bevakar sin suveränitet och att federationen USA är en ganska tunn stat inombords. Washington kan inte klampa in med trupp och nödhjälp om inte delstaten kräver det, och för en president är denna avvägning viktigare än hudfärgen på de drabbade."

Hans Bergström of Dagens Nyheter tags along in the same lines, noting that Blanco refused to let federal organizations lead the evacuation. The headline of the article is "Guvernören sa nej när Bush ville hjälpa", translated "The governor said no, when Bush wanted to help":

"Så snart omfånget av katastrofen började stå klart, vände sig Bushadministrationen till delstaten Louisianas demokratiske guvernör Kathleen Blanco och bad henne begära att den federala nivån tog över ansvaret för evakueringen (enligt Associated press och New York Times). Hon vägrade, troligen utifrån traditionell benägenhet i södern, att värja sig mot maktövertagande från Washington."

I suspect they both refer to this article from NY Times (I find it fascinating that they both make a reference to other media, for credibility, but do not provide a link so that we could check their sources for ourselves). What this article points to is that she didn't reject federal help per se, but one specific proposal regarding how to organize the disaster relief efforts.

"After huddling with her advisers late into the night last Friday and again Saturday morning, she rejected a White House proposal to consolidate the National Guard and active duty troops in the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone under a single commander appointed by the Bush administration."

"If I had seen a greater purpose, if I had felt it would make an immediate difference, it would have been a no-brainer, but by Friday, we had everything in control," she said in an interview in a trailer behind the state's emergency operations center.

NY Times continues:

"She said the proposal to unify the troops under federal command amounted to bureaucratic reshuffling, when what she really needed was more resources to save lives."

Her rejection of the proposal meant that: "...she is in control of the National Guard soldiers in Louisiana, while the president has authority over the active duty troops."

To quote NY Times, whether her decision was best for her state remains to be seen. At least I think that PM Nilsson's and Hans Bergström's articles give a completely different impression of Blanco's requests for and acceptance of federal help, especially considering, according to her own claims "she insisted that she asked for help early on in several conversations with President Bush."

Further reading. Talking Points Memo: "...the White House has been hitting her for weeks now claiming that in various ways she dropped the ball. And that seems quite simply to be false."

The Congressional Research Service reviewed the record to see whether Gov. Blanco took the necessary steps in a timely fashion to secure federal assistance in the face of hurricane Katrina. And she did. Full report.

"...she did take the necessary