Sarah’s Faves is the blog I would be doing here on LOHAD if I were smarter. And had more free time. And were named Sarah.

Bookmark it now. You’ll thank me later.

(Hat tip to Barbara at BP Media Relations for this one.)

You may have seen the news about Google bypassing Apple’s Safari browser privacy settings. Here are reports from BBC News, the Wall Street Journal and ZDNet — for starters. There are hundreds of stories and thousands of comments on those stories, many of them expressing righteous outrage. For example, here are excerpts of some comments posted to this Wired article:

Google and Schmidt are starting to show their true face… as thieves who would do ANYTHING in business, just to make a buck! SHAME ON YOU GOOGLE!!!!!!!

Yup. I’m boycotting Google. That seals it.

I’ve just set my default search engine to Bing on my home and work Macs as well as my iPhone and iPad2. It will be a very long time before I am caught Googling again.

Well, you get the idea.

I wonder, though: How many people who are so outraged by what Google is up to here use loyalty cards at the supermarket, gas station, drug store and/or elsewhere.

You know those loyalty cards, the ones that track your every purchase (sorta like Google tracks your web browsing) and often deliver coupons at the register (sorta like Google delivers targeted web ads at the next site you visit). The companies that manage those card programs undoubtedly sell reams of customer data to each other.

I’m thinking that techies probably know about this stuff more than non-techies, and so perhaps a higher percentage of outraged-by-Google Apple fans are also non-users of loyalty cards. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are a lot of loyalty cards in the pockets of these angry people.

On the bright side: At least your browser lets you delete advertising cookies. Meanwhile, who can tell anymore exactly who knows that you’re buying too much cheese at the Acme and Preparation H at the CVS?

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
— Beverly Sills

I get all kinds of stuff in my email. Lots of it I just delete because it has no direct bearing on anything I do, did or want to do.

Like voice acting.

Nevertheless, when I received an email this morning from someone pitching a voice acting class, I did a double-take and paid some attention. Why? Well, it wasn’t because of the font (yecch) — it was the first line of the email.

“Sure,” I thought, “I have 50 seconds to spare.” Even though I have no interest in voice acting (though I’ve often been mocked for my tendency to sound like a radio announcer on my voicemail messages), I opened the email and took a look.

The brilliance of this tactic is that it works on a level that goes beyond whether or not I’m interested in voice coaching: It respects my time. Few email marketers do that, and certainly no one does that to this degree. Before Warren Garlin is trying to sell me anything, he’s effectively saying: “Look, I know you’re busy and you get a ton of email, but this one will take less than a minute to read, so hopefully you have those 50 seconds and you’re willing to share them with me. If not, I understand; no harm no foul.”

Of course, if everyone started doing this, the unique nature of the message would be lost and it would become just another aspect of our daily email annoyance. But it’s a great object lesson in how something so simple — like respecting your recipient’s inbox — can be so powerful.

Takeaway for marketers: When everyone’s zigging, a zag can stand out from the crowd. Oh, and remember to respect your recipient’s inbox … and schedule.

The only thing bad about this promo for Social Media Week is that it only lasts for 81 seconds. It’s 2062 and, as the description on YouTube notes, “a bunch of elderly hipsters are interviewed about the good old days of social media.” Brilliant.