Malcolm Gladwell may have it wrong: That first impression he writes about in Blink may be too lingering. According to this report at Reuters, your Web site is judged in about 1/20th of a second.

Yikes.

Takeaway for marketers: That feeling in your gut? Trust it.

“All I would tell people is to hold on to what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You’ve got to find it on your own terms.”
—Harrison Ford

Have you heard about Dead Body Guy? If not, you must read this story from Tuesday’s New York Times. What a hoot. My favorite part:

“… he has been invited to the Los Angeles Film Festival in June, where he will be presented with the Special Achievement Award for Self-Promotion. He also will play dead on the red carpet as film actors step over his body. ‘Do you know how many thousands of actors in L.A. would kill for the publicity he’s getting right now?’ said Al Bowman, a festival organizer.”

Marketing Sherpa’s annual freebee of real-life tips and wisdom from marketers is now available here. It’s a 48-page PDF packed with information and advice re: general marketing and advertising, search marketing, email marketing, business-to-business marketing, Web sites, issues on the job, and managing agency-client relationships.

Takeaway for marketers: Print it (my version of Acrobat Reader wouldn’t print page two, an ad for Omniture) and read it.

In its January 16 issue, DM News reports the results of a Harris Interactive poll that found 76% of the U.S. adult population has added their phone numbers to the national do not call registry. That’s up from 57% in 2004, and 32% in 2003. At this rate, about 101% should be registered by the end of 2006.

If anyone’s surprised by this statistic, please step to the left, where doses of common sense will be followed by a whack to the head with a clue-by-four.