Today is Jean Shepherd’s birthday. He would have been 84.

If you’ve never heard of (or heard) Shep — or if you have, but all you know is that he’s the writer and narrator of A Christmas Story — then do yourself a favor: Read Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories (And Other Disasters) or In God We Trust (All Others Pay Cash). And while you do, check out the Jean Shepherd Podcast (it’s available on iTunes, too) and get an earful of one of America’s greatest humorists and one of the all-time giants of radio.

Excelsior, you fathead!

Here’s an interesting interview with venture capitalist John Doerr about Zazzle, which just picked up $16 million to redesign their site and kick their marketing in the butt.

Any company that lets you make your own postage stamps and offers customized Family Guy shirts is all right by me. Hopefully that $16 million will enable them to offer the best of both worlds: Family Guy postage stamps.

Watch out, CafePress.

Chris Baggott’s Email Best Practices blog raises this interesting question.

Is there a line between online and offline? Well, if there is, if your online efforts aren’t integrated with your offline efforts, then something is seriously wrong with your overall efforts.

Is there a difference between online and traditional? Yes, one huge difference, assuming “traditional marketing” is taken to mean print and broadcast.

Newspapers, television, and radio are one-way mediums. The advertiser places a message, the potential customer sees it and either buys or doesn’t buy. Pretty much end of story.

Online is a two-way medium. The advertiser places a message, the potential customer can comment on it, forward it to 10 friends, mock it, improve on it, blog it, and on and on and on. The story is just beginning.

Takeaway for marketers: Online marketing is not just posting your television or print campaign online.

I’m not sure if there are more of these sorts of things than there used to be, but jeez, don’t you just hate seeing something like this at the bottom of an email?

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

Thank you for your cooperation.

Gotta love a world where legal boilerplate like that is attached to innumerable emails that pretty much consist of “Thanks!” or “Will do!” or “Sorry, 2:00 is no good, how about 3:30?”

Blecch.

“You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.”
—Jimmy Carter