Drew Carey has always struck me as the quintessential nice guy who made it big. Maybe I’m completely wrong, but I’m guessing that with Drew, what you see is who he is: a nice guy from Cleveland having the time of his life, as surprised and delighted by his own success as are all his friends (whose job is probably to not only share that success but to needle him plenty so that his head never gets too big).

So when I heard that Drew has a blog, I had to check it out. You should, too. Especially if you’ve ever worked with a well-known high-profile brand on any sort of online initiative, because this will undoubtedly strike a familiar chord:

I just need a spot to blog, that’s all. I could use the Price Is Right page at CBS.com, but then I’d get stuck writing about just The Price Is Right. Same for the available-just-a-few-short-months-from-now-we-promise-from-two-years-ago PriceIsRight.com. (Honestly. It was up for a while, now static, and… available soon! We’re announcing it during the show we’re taping Monday. Airs in September. So here’s hoping.)

Check out what Drew has to say about Second Life, too; it almost makes me want to go back there (though I can’t afford the time-suck right now). By the way, Drew is also on Twitter — in two incarnations: His own self and his Price Is Right self.

Drew’s blog is celebrity online presence done right.

(And when the Price Is Right blog officially goes live, Drew, I can’t wait to read about the process of how your posts get reviewed and revised by the various legal and PR and marketing departments involved in the show!)

The email from a fellow marketer arrived yesterday with the subject line “Just like a direct marketer” and revealed the news: “Celebrity passings always come in threes – Ed, Farrah and Michael. Now Billy Mays steps up to say ‘But wait there’s more!’ ”

There really was more in store for Billy: He was the subject of a new Discovery Channel series, Pitchmen, and the 50-year-old salesman’s career seemed poised to reach an entirely new level.

Is it possible that a U.S. Air rough landing caused his death? Check out this paragraph from his Wikipedia page:

On June 27, Mays had been aboard US Airways Flight 1241, which landed roughly when one of its front tires was blown out. The heavy impact of the landing caused objects from the overhead storage compartments to fall and strike some passengers. Mays told WTVT-TV, a local Tampa FOX news station, that some of the objects “hit me on the head, but I got a hard head.” His wife noted that he felt unwell when he went to bed that night early at 10 pm. The next morning he was pronounced dead at 7:45 am by a local fire rescue crew.

Here’s coverage from HuffoPo, but what you’ll really want to see is this page featuring his top 10 commercials. And be sure to click that embedded video up there for the “Billy Mays Gangsta Remix.”

Interesting.

What is jazz?

“Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know,” was Louis Armstrong’s classic response to the question, and anyone who has any sort of ear for the sounds of Ellington, Miles, Bird, ‘Trane, Basie, Monk and so many others can hardly find fault with his answer.

Now, consider this question: “How is social media going to help my business?”

Armstrong’s answer fits pretty well here, too. But even though you may have a pretty good feel for the ways of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Flickr, Digg and so many others, it’s a lousy response that won’t convince your boss to give you the budget to get the job done right.

Which is why this post over on MackCollier.com is must reading. Because your boss probably never heard of the Cluetrain Manifesto.

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”
—Winston Churchill