I don’t mind shameless promos of things I really love. And, I love Meetup. I’ve been using them for about six months now and have been really happy with how they continue to improve the service, the site and the offerings to meet the needs of their users.

Those cats know who they are, how to promote and when to communicate. Today I received an email with this copy that proves to me that they are growing up quite nicely:

Here at Meetup HQ we always want to help people get offline and attending your Meetups. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone realized that when you meet real people face-to-face, amazing things can happen? We think so! So we made a video.

With so many people these days plugged into their cell phones, email, and online social networks, it seems like only an intervention will help get them offline! We all probably know someone like this.

Check out unplugyourfriends.com and send an intervention to anyone you know who may need an “unplugging” of their own!

-The team at Meetup HQ

Watch the video. It’s really well done. And it only takes a few secs to fill out the funny form and send it along to someone you know. With this one little promo, Meetup has:

1) Gotten my attention by tapping into a cultural pain point: we all know someone who could use a breather from updating their status on Facebook or Twitter (okay, that someone is usually me but, whatever!).

2) Created something fun and interactive that is directly in line with their positioning: Meetup is your online answer to connecting with like-minded people in offline ways.

It’s so refreshing when an ecomm company uses common sense marketing to create something clever and effective! Go Meetup, go.

Seth Godin, once again, takes a pebble of an idea and makes me stop and think about all the boulders coming down the mountain.

In his Destroying Happiness post, he suggests that marketing is about making people unhappy. Because, what happens when people are unhappy? They want to get happy. And that’s when marketers swoop in to make all our dreams come true.

Sounds like a simple concept but it’s a great way to think about marketing. It’s taking the “create a need” mantra to the next level. It’s as if marketers are Horton’s evil twin (if he had an evil twin) or whacky Christof from The Truman Show. We really are puppets on a string.

I replied to Seth’s post with a lot of spouting out about how our society has transformed from survival society to leisure playground. There’s a lot of room for marketers to create desire because we spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing except think about ourselves, talk about ourselves, think about other people and talk about other people.

There are pockets of savvy that are developing. We’re not all sponges and, I believe, that a lot of old tried-and-true messaging that worked in the ’50s/’60s/’70s and beyond is now invisible to most consumers. Just the other day I was watching some ad for deli meat where they were singing and dancing and I thought, is this really necessary? I don’t want your meat because you’re giving me a song and dance (literally). Just tell me why it tastes good.

I’ll tell you what makes me happy: marketing that does good. Get your product out there and show me that you’re a respectable company. Tell me why I would be associated with you other than the promises of making me look or feel good. Give me substance or give me nothing.

My pals Sonny and Kara Parlin have launched Sparrow Lounge, a site to showcase their amazing photography. The below pic of yours truly was taken in Hartford by Sonny.

Along with a sharp eye for perspective and in-the-moment portraits, Sonny and Kara are doing some amazing post-processing work. The work showcased on Sparrow Lounge is phenomenal.

Equally as awesome as their work is the lightening speed awareness Sonny and Kara are receiving via flickr. Within one day of posting the “Dreaming of Infinity” pic, Sonny received a two-page list of comments. Some spammers were among them but quite a few were either “love it” comments or “can I post this on my site?” questions. Sonny also joined the CT Meetup for flickr so he could hang with other photophiles.

This is a great example of social media turning the corner. flickr is a soc media granddaddy, for sure, but for many it’s still an online photo album. But, while kids and moms are posting photos for the heck of it, photographers are getting discovered and connections are being made.

If you have been one of those folks wondering what usefulness social media would ever have beyond a water cooler chat, get yourself on flickr. For the mainstream, flickr and other soc media giants are finally beyond the honeymoon stage. One of the biggest reasons for this is volume. With typically 5,000+ uploads per minute, flickr’s flurry of activity is more than just photos and comments. It’s art, laughter, friendship, innovation, intensity, transparency, discovery, and, for some, opportunity.

I listen to Howard Stern. As a successful 30-something-something entrepreneurial female, I’m not the typical Stern target fan (although there are many white collar white chicks out there who are big fans). I have been fascinated by Howard over many milestones. When he got drunk on the air and called up and berated then-wife Alison (or at least that’s how I remembered it as a kid, before my mom shut the radio off), when Howard left WCCC in Hartford, when Howard went national and I got to hear him again in CT, when I finally got to see the show’s ridiculously mutly crew on ET and, finally, now at Sirius.

Each morning when I can catch the show in my car, I flip around from NPR to BBC to music to whatever but I always go back to Howard. I could never really explain why I liked Howard, except for basic entertainment value, until today.

Today, Howard proved to me why he is the King of All Media. His guests were the Counting Crows. Lead Singer Adam Duritz did most of the Crows’ interview and, when he first started talking, I thought the whole interview was going to be one big headache. The guy couldn’t answer a straight question. He was dressed in a bunny suit and was more intent on giving Howard flip answers and jokey comments that went nowhere. I was happy to only visualize his pink ridiculousness versus really seeing it. I thought, “Give me a break Adam. Don’t try so hard. Just shut up and sing.”

And then, it changed. Howard isn’t a practical, tidy interviewer like Ed Bradley or Terry Gross but he is incredibly astute to chemistry. Adam wasn’t giving Howard what he wanted. He was dodging, skimming and sliding. I was expecting Howard to give up at any minute. Well, I was hoping he would give up. Nope. Howard persevered and I suddenly started paying more attention to Howard’s strategy instead of Adam.

I think there’s a lot we can learn from Howard when it comes to having an intriguing conversation. How many times have you talked with a client or colleague and walked away thinking it was a total waste of time? Or, maybe it felt like you got the basics covered but something was missing. It was good but not great. Howard knows how to get great - it’s his thing.

I never thought I’d say this but here’s how I will apply Howard’s interview tactics in my biz:

1) Get out of the ditch. As soon as Howard could tell that Adam was going to be a tricky interview, he started treating the discussion like a 2-wheel drive sedan stuck in a ditch. He gave it just enough gas to inch it forward but not too much to dig a bigger ditch. There are delicate ways to get information out of people. People want to tell you things - good, bad and ugly. It’s all in how you shimmy the rear end.

2) Move on. If your interviewee or counterpart is stubborn, ask them something else. When Howard could’ve gotten frustrated with Adam’s avoidance of questions, he threw a different zinger at him. The result was Howard slowly picking at Adam, wearing him down from all angles until Adam finally started having a real conversation. This is because Adam finally caught on that he was beginning to sound like a jackass. But, and here is the genius of Howard, it wasn’t Howard making him look like a jackass. Adam was doing the work all himself. To correct it, he intuitively began to open up to Howard. When he did, he showed his intelligence and genuine nature. Suddenly, he was connecting with Howard which meant he was now connecting with Howard’s fans.

3) Start with the finish line. Howard’s goal with interviewing Adam and the Counting Crows (well, mostly Adam) was to entertain his fans. Nothing new, of course. That’s his goal every day. But, the important thing to remember is that he never lost sight of the goal throughout the interview. The session transformed from bunny-suited rock guy spouting glib weirdness to a bunch of guys hanging out. The whole interview actually flipped: it went from stiff and forced to an unexpected good time. You can’t structure that. Howard worked hard at making sure the interview ended in its best form and he did it by reading the interactions of his interviewee, not by just jamming questions down his throat and hoping for good responses.

By the time the Crows started to play, I wanted them to hang in the studio all day. And then it just got better. They played two songs - Round Here and a new one, Washington Square. Then, Howard asked the band if they ever just messed around in the studio and played whatever when they hung out. Adam mentioned that they did a good version of the Grateful Dead’s “A Friend of the Devil.” So, they played it. I, like Howard, can’t stand the Grateful Dead but we both had to give them props for an awesome version. The conversation continued and, before I knew it, they were playing Springsteen’s Thunder Road. Where else could you get this out of a band? It just doesn’t exist.

I feel like Howard is at his best right now because he’s on Sirius and he doesn’t even realize why. I’ll tell him: he has brought community to entertainment. Everything that’s burgeoning in the realm of techie community, from sharing vids to me writing this post for anyone to stumble on, wants what Howard delivers. Once again, Howard’s ahead. Love or hate the King of All Media, we can all learn from him.

As a side note, if big business continues to block the Sirius-XM merger, they are not just sticking it to Howard and satellite radio. They are sticking it to all of us - at least for now. Communities that build online and in new formats like satellite radio are inevitable. The big pockets can’t hold it back forever.

7) Create Auto-responders. For most of us, email activity takes precedence over web surfing. If your clients order from you online or interact with your website, keep them engaged by delivering an automatic (but personalized) email two days later and then maybe a different message five days later. Content could be a quick “you might also like” tip or recommendation that showcases your expertise.

6) Bring Community to the Community. If you’re going to have an active blog with news and updates, invest in the programming required to alert visitors by email of new posts or add RSS for feed aggregation. Your visitors will be the first to drop conversation by not returning to your blog. It’s up to you to ensure the dialog continues.

5) Tap Into Timing. What is happening with your customers? If you are B2B, send a product or service update that relates to easing their current woes such as cutting costs or getting through the busy season with sanity. If you are B2C, pay close attention to the trends, reports and studies released that reflect your customer’s demographics. Use the information to spark conversations by sending short-paragraph emails that connect your business to trends. Be sure measurements are in place to track results.

4) Understand New Media Before You Implement It. Pay-per-click ad campaigns (i.e. Google Adwords) is not at all like a static print ad that is bought, created and left alone to do its job. PPC, text message ad campaigns or even investing in the creation of Podcasts or a video series require continual testing and measuring to ensure true effectiveness. Just like your website, hire technical and marketing experts to create, implement and measure campaigns.

3) Use Face-to-face to Jump Start Your E-teraction. If you’re attending a trade show or networking event, use that business card as a temporary pocket database. Take notes on your conversation that include trends discussed, publications mentioned, competitors or anything that will continue your conversation when you’re back at your desk. Always transfer those notes to your electronic CRM or Excel file or wherever you keep tabs on your clients.

2) Understand the Dynamics of Online and Offline. If you’re going to use direct mail (letter, postcard or other) to promote an online special, don’t dump visitors to your home page. Use a very short dedicated URL that allows customers to input a coupon code or information into a form that takes less than 30 seconds. Long URLs will be ignored and if customers have to dig for a promotion, they’ll go somewhere else.

1) Fix Bad Usability. If your analytics tool tell you that 13% of online visitors are dropping off at Step 4 of your sign-up process, find out why and fix it. That number may seem small now but will continue to climb. Set up an automatically generated email that is initiated when a drop occurs. Make sure the email is personalized with the visitor’s name, lists the correct contact in the signature and can be easily replied to. Customers that walk into a store and have a bad experience that is not resolved don’t go back. The online experience is no different.

When emailing, always adhere to legitimate practices. Require confirmation at sign-up, don’t spam, write relevant subject lines and always provide your business address. Those big brother search engines are watching your every move.

If you have other ideas for improving the e-experience, we’d love to hear them.

Writers and business analysts are keen builders of community. They share their work online before taking the traditional print path and eagerly engage audiences in discussion.

Two clever Wired guys are taking that anti-vacuum approach with books scheduled for print in 2008 and 2009:

FREE: Why $0.00 Is The Future of Business: Remember when The New York Times tried to charge us for online content? Those were the days when business tried to reshape a traditional product model into ecommerce revenue. Not anymore. As Chris Anderson (of The Longtail fame) argues in FREE, giving it away is getting business. Anderson hopes to, you guessed it, give away the book for free or practically free. How?: hungry sponsors.

Crowd Sourcing: Another Wired guy, Jeff P. Howe, is peddling his own book (publishing in July 2008) about the online phenomenon of crowds. The theory gives form to an underbelly, grassroots movement that has been successful in open source programming for years: the power of the masses trump the efforts of one. This, according to Howe, can be a powerful force in innovation, business and funding.

Both Anderson and Howe are tapping into more than just collaboration for the sake of collaboration or making the community feel warm and fuzzy. They are creating the ultimate marketing utopia of building a market with the product. How do you say no to purchasing or obtaining something you’ve participated in or donated to? It’s like bringing beef stew to the potluck but not having any. It’s not done.

You don’t have to be a book author to build a market with your product or service. Consider creating a Wiki to discuss your next business venture, marketing project or your take on industry trends. Too scary to open it up to the masses? Then don’t. Create a private Wiki for invite-only access to select clients and colleagues. Good or bad, we’d love to hear about your experiences or ideas so please post away.

According to singer Jill Sobule, there is no end to the superness of this week. Catching the Bryant Park Project today on Sirius, I had a good chuckle listening to Jill and her co-singer pal belt out a little diddy for Super Tuesday.

Even better than the diddy was the conversation that followed. Jill is currently raising money to produce her next album through this site: Jill’s Next Record. She’s not just asking for flat out cash. Givers receive too. Sponsorship levels range from $25 in exchange for a comp copy of the CD to $10,000 to join her on the record (cowbell provided).

This has to be the best idea I’ve come across all year, and that’s not just because it’s only February. We can all take some cues from Jill. Whether she knows it or not, she’s maxing out the convergence of ecomm, grassroots marketing and social networking.

In 2007, Radiohead channeled publicity for their latest album, In Rainbows, to a website where fans downloaded tracks at a self-chosen price. A statement against old school industriasts? Publicity stunt? Either way the tracks are no longer available as freebies. There’s no failure here. Radiohead’s approach got everyone talking and gobs of site-clogging traffic. The chatter was mostly aimed at the stunt versus the album itself which is a bit of a shame but either way we all should applaud Radiohead for connecting with their fans in a new way.

Jill’s path takes the fan connection and blows it up. She reverses the path by getting her fans to pay her. How great is that? Everyone talks about building a community online but Jill is really, actively, one-by-one, person-to-person, musician-to-fan drawing the circle. If I threw Jill some cash, which I am contemplating, you’ll bet I’ll be checking back at the site in a few weeks to see if she’s raised any more money. I’ll also tell my friends about it, maybe even blog about it again, and I might buy a few of her older tracks too. All of my actions along the way will contribute to Jill’s success and this is the key value of Jill’s idea: I’m giving just as much as I’m receiving. That is a true community experience.

If more people can Jillify the web, we can really advance this thing. Let’s get active. Connect with people online in ways that mimic real connections. Jill has me thinking about my own web presence. Since my talents are limited to playing the spoons and writing about other people’s talents, it will require some thought. I’ll get back to you on that. Until then, give Jill a visit.

Have you heard of any other weboneers paving the next wave of online experience? Chat us up and link away.

Predicting what 2008 will bring is tricky business. It’s an election year, housing is moving on from sellers-market denial, credit card debt continues to eat away at our economic stability, the U.S. dollar has seen better days, old media continues to fight the once-good fight while new media prepares for all-out infiltration and conglomerate air time is continually consumed by the Writer’s Guild strike and Britney Smears instead of our troops.

Armageddon? Not yet. As far as I can tell, turmoil breeds panic for the timid and intrigue for everyone else. The business climate, depending on the business, is at once volatile and filled with opportunity. I see the upcoming two years as less of an end to a decade than a precursor to the incredible shifts that will take place beginning in 2010. Virtual living and working will cause person-to-person business to make room for better online practices and philosophies. To be truly successful in the Web 2.whatever, businesses must synergize online and offline activities. Your business’ relationships, revenue and mojo depend on it. Enough about the decade, let’s just focus on 2008 for now.

Below are WallFly’s top three predictions for the upcoming year. I have to admit they are a mix of prediction and hope. Maybe I should have called them “Business-Fulfilling Prophecies” instead?

Recession Schmession

Smart companies will improve relationships, not business plans.

I’m not suggesting you avoid streamlining. We’re all making measured decisions with our cash flow. Just last week I considered not sending out a business mailer for the holiday season. Instead I opted to spend less money at Panera and wait until the new year to hit Staples.

Move your numbers around all you want but if you’re not taking time out to do the following, you are losing ground with clients: a) connecting with your clients on a regular basis (phone, mail, email or events) to increase opportunity for more interaction b) learning when, why and how your current clients interact with you, and applying that knowledge to improving your value and c) feeding your positioning with a menu of competitive activity, impending growth and your customer’s changing climate.

We all know that getting a client takes double the effort versus convincing a happy client to stay, so why do companies continue to neglect clients in the off-season of interaction? Think about your best personal relationships and what makes them tick. Making someone happy in a relationship 90% of the time requires improving their life every day (i.e., taking out the garbage) versus buying an expensive gift one day out of the year (i.e., buying an iPhone). Next time you consider dumping all of your marketing dollars into a big trade show, think about the low-budget things you can do to reach out to clients throughout the year: start a monthly newsletter, make quality control phone calls, talk about how other clients benefit from you, make in-person annual visits or even send out a short quarterly email that shares info on upcoming developments.

Ecomm Grows Up

Utility will emerge from 80 gazillion social media apps.

I’ve seen some pretty useless Facebook applications - from starting a virtual snowball fight to getting hugged by a zombie. How do these strides in web development improve your business? They won’t. But they will change the way users interact with the web and that’s what you need notice. Once users start expecting things from the online world, they want it from everyone - a streamlined user experience, content that takes into account context and a site that understands the concept of easy.

The massive amount of activity taking place among developers for Facebook and now Google’s universal app platform will both increase the size of our kids’ behinds as they play less soccer (or play more virtual soccer) and generate technologies that users will want to see everywhere. If you have a website, start paying attention to the activities happening online. You don’t have to apply them all but you have to understand how it will affect your clients. I’ve advised some clients to skip blogging because it didn’t make sense for them. It’s not about jumping on the latest, new technology - it’s about understanding how all new technology is driving the way we do business.

Marketing Gets Stuck

New media will drive marketing. The stories that stick, win.

I was wondering when some smart marketing guy would take Chris Anderson’s Long Tail and extend it by applying it to branding. The smart marketing guy is Mohammed Iqbal and the essay is The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication, as found on ChangeThis.

One-hit wonders are not only increasingly rare in this climate of targeted success, aiming for them is the same as denying the tastes of various music fans. We are a culture of choice and highly personal demand. One size does not fit all and this philosophy applies to both your products or service and your brand position.

I recently discovered this in my research for finding a market for a Connecticut coworking space, Group88, that I will help manage in 2008. Some of the area professionals liked the idea of getting out of their home-based office to meet with other folks while others had no need for networking at all (I think there’s always a need for networking but I’m partial to the practice). You can’t be all things to all people so don’t even try. You can, however, choose the primary values of your positioning that appeals to your variety of customers. Using new media channels to test an idea and then kill it or expand it will yield higher results than picking one thing and crossing your fingers that it will stick. Don’t egg your basket - add crates and buckets and other things to put all your eggs into.

Yesterday I attended a Hasbro vendor fair at their Pawtucket, Rhode Island headquarters. If you think hanging out all day at the birthplace of Mr. Potato Head is all candy canes, pumpkin pie and green apple licorice . . . Yahtzee! You’re right.

The purpose of the fair is to connect freelancers (writers like me, product and package designers, molders, illustrators, photographers, etc.) with in-house Hasbroites. I have been doing some work with excellent copywriter Kara Parlin at the East Longmeadow, Mass. location and was really psyched to attend this one-day only event. I invited my graphic design co-hort, Amanda Bedard of Spielman Design. Amanda does incredible work and she’s a networking hound like me so it was a perfect fit.

First things first, I need to give some major props to our organizer, Susan Algeo. Susan has more energy than Spiderman on speed and could give lessons on how to keep an event ticking while dealing with 800 interruptions, competition with the buzz of daily life at headquarters and a four-hour window to ensure a productive day for 50+ folks who have traveled as far as Portland, Oregon. At one point, I caught Susan attempting to fill up a plate for lunch and told her that I had a question for her when she was done. Nonsense! We chatted while she tried to eat and then, of course, also took care of a few more interruptions along the way. Along with a catalog of all vendors, a fab hot lunch, an afternoon snack of kettle corn, access to the discounted Hasbro boutique (Christmas for my nephew is done!), we also received either Scrabble or Yahtzee! as a parting gift. It was better than spending the day in Candy Land.

Talking with the Hasbroites was really refreshing. These people love what they do. I talked with copywriter Danielle Slawsby who has great war stories from the dotcom days and is working on some cool web stuff for Hasbro, Joanna Kalafarski who manages packaging and product copy and was kind enough to let me bend her ear while I could tell she was swamped with work, Art Director Kathleen Murray who apparently loves pop culture more than me (although I think it might be a tie) and Design Director Melissa Mips who began with Hasbro at the East Longmeadow branch and seems to know just about everyone in Hasbro’s extensive network of past and current employees. I also met tons of designers like a kid (I think he was older than 12 but I’ll still call him a kid) who designs GI Joe and a guy who’s worked on Play-Doh for ions.

Equally cool was hanging with the other vendors. Here’s a list of my favs:

Fuszion - Killer design company located in Virginia. Rick and Jeff let me babble on about branding and marketing so I loved them even more. How can you go wrong with a name like Fuszion? These guys have awesome years ahead of them.

Smith Design - Mr. and Mrs. Smith are green-concerned packaging and product designers out of New Jersey. Their daughter Jenna, an ex-Silicon Valley girl, represented the fam and did a great job of showcasing their excellent work.

Gary Leveille, Berkshire Creative - Gary is a fellow writer who has quite an extensive list of experience in the biz. He had some great writer-to-writer advice for me which I will keep to myself.

Smartshape Design - Did you know Cleveland is really just an old ‘burb of Connecticut? These guys did - they know everything! Smartshape are innovative engineers who can also hook clients up with tooling and manufacturing. Smart.

Gary & Maggie Houston, A Printer’s Film Service, inc. - Gary and Maggie are a husband and wife duo who met in Providence, RI and worked for Hasbro “back in the day” and now live in North Carolina. Spunk doesn’t begin to describe them.

Philip Hatter, Thistledown Puppets - You have not seen puppets until you’ve met Philip and his puppet posse. His work is incredible and his love for puppet theater really shows in his designs. I kept meaning to ask him why he went with the name Thistledown versus a play on Mad Hatter. For another day.

Pumpkin Pie - Jennifer and Sheridan specialize in branding, logos and package design. They practice what they preach and have done some of the best branding for their own company that I’ve seen in a long time.

Adam Gillespie, Night Light Graphics - Adam is an extremely talented illustrator and graphic designer of cool other worlds. He has a very bright future ahead of him.

Floating Pear Productions - Digital animation experts, Floating Pear were our neighbors and Hasbro’s too since they are based out of Providence, RI. Co-founder Dee Boyd’s bubbly personality and their cool mug give-aways kept the traffic flowing our way. Thanks Dee!

And last but absolutely not least . . .

The Linnett Sisters - A long-forgotten ’50s pop band? Nope. Two creative New Hampshire gals, Katie and Patti, daughters of illustrator Charles Linnett (also an ex-Hasbroite) and owners of Linnett Studios. The Linnett Sisters are talented illustrators and innovative package and product designers.

All in all a great networking event. I’m sure Susan will be looking for feedback on how to make the day better and I really only have one suggestion:

The Catalog - The catalog of vendors was not distributed to Hasbroites unless they strolled down to the event. I would flip this entirely. Why not offer up an electronic catalog teaser to those groups (Design, Creative, etc.) one week ahead of time? In the teaser, I would allow the vendors a quick promo paragraph and also a chance for them to say which Hasbro projects (or types of projects) they’d like to work on.

Life gets in the way - meetings, sick days, unexpected work issues - if someone isn’t able to meet with the vendors on the day we’re there or from the 10-2 time frame, it’s possible that Hasbro staff might want to meet with vendors before or after the event. I say promote the folks who are traveling to Pawtucket, RI as much as possible. There was a lot of talent hanging out in that Hasbro hallway. Keeping us a secret is like telling kids about this great movie where funky fighting, car-morphing machines attempt to destroy the world versus showing them this.

Either way, I’ll be back again next year. To those vendors who declined to attend because they considered it a Trivial Pursuit: you’ll be Sorry! next year if you Boggle an opportunity to Connect Four hours with folks that could move you along in The Game of Life. And let’s not forget the kettle corn. That’s worth the trip to Pawtucket alone.

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ latest mega-documentary, The War, with great interest. I encourage those of you who did not live through World War II (i.e., a heck of a lot of us) to NetFlix it when available or catch it on PBS while it’s still rerunning this month.

Burns is getting a lot of flack for his very personal and Americana approach with The War. While he relays great chronological detail of the War’s events from conflicts in Asia to Europe, the backbone storyline is told through the eyes of soldiers and communities in four U.S. towns: Mobile, Sacramento, Waterbury and Luverne. Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times doesn’t hold back, calling his approach “disconcerting.”

I have to agree with American Thinker blogger Ed Laskey that Stanley inserts her own political views in her review, making references to the Bush administration, the current war in Iraq and even the debate on standardized tests in U.S. schools. Her review cuts Burns for not bringing in viewpoints from other countries, citing The World at War, a 26-episode Brit production that apparently satisfies Stanley’s requirement for what should be contained in a WW II film.

Whether you agree with Stanley or Laskey, I think we can all agree that we wouldn’t be having this discussion if Burns had properly marketed his film. The title is “The War.” Direct? Yes. Impactful? Yes. Misleading? A little bit.

With all of Burns’ films, his approach is personal and granular. Anyone can get interviews with different viewpoints and map out a chronology of events. Only Burns can connect you with the people and communities who lived it, touched it, breathed it, walked it and agonized it. This film was produced as a tribute to our brave nation, not a political platform.

As a tribute, I believe that Burns missed the opportunity to really showcase his talent by branding his masterpiece with a very nondescript title. While clean, definitive naming is his trademark (i.e., Baseball, Jazz and The Civil War), this film seems to be especially personal and intense and calls for at least a subtitle or tagline that immediately evokes Burns’ unique approach. If Burns would be repelled by a longer title such as “Our Nation At War,” I do think he needs three or four words to accompany The War that lets viewers in on the real flavor of this film: how this most tragic war damaged and altered the U.S. as a nation - from the teen-age soldiers on the frontlines to the neighborhoods back home.

Naming is tricky business. Whether it’s a film, business, book title or a blog, the name you choose evokes immediate personal perceptions. With a different, more focused name for The War, Stanley’s argument doesn’t have many legs and the review would have had to have taken a completely different turn. And now, for those who just read her article but do not personally view the film, a perception of Burns’ work has been generated. But, unfortunately, not by Burns.