While heading back to the train from a new client meeting yesterday, I snapped the photo you see here in Times Square.

Okay, I get it: It’s Advertising Week, and the Barnum gene in me applauds the idea of an ice cream truck in Times Square serving up a menu of “Digital Interactive Services” that include “Marketing Kitchen” and “Digital Foundry” and more.

Then the Cluetrain gene in me makes my teeth grind when I visit the Zemoga site and learn that their “service offerings provide innovative solutions for our Client Partners.”

Then the client gene in me makes me wonder: How much does it cost to have an ice cream truck in Times Square, and do I really want the fees I’m paying to my agency to go to something like this, or would I rather they be spending my dollars on my business?

(All due respect to the folks at Zemoga, by the way. Hey, their CMO started at Marvel, and I’m an old-school comic book guy; rest assured I have nothing against them and no axe to grind. Snapping this photo was the first I heard of them, so I guess from an awareness perspective their tactic was successful with this focus group of one.)

Takeaway for marketers: In this every-penny-matters economy, we have to ask ourselves: Do these sorts of high-profile (and undoubtedly high-cost) tactics really make sense?

Google Instant debuted yesterday. You’ve probably heard all about it — after all, it made the national news broadcasts yesterday evening, was a trending topic on Twitter, and so on and so on. You can learn more about what Google says about it over here.

The New York Times has an article on it, of course, and here’s the salient portion you ought to know:

Analysts said that it was too early to tell how Google Instant would affect search engine marketing and optimization businesses. But because Web pages and ads show up before people finish typing queries, it could be more challenging and expensive for them to pick keywords that catapult their sites to the top results, analysts said.

For example, it has been less expensive for a small hotel in Paris to buy ads that show up when someone searches “Paris boutique hotels in the Marais” than when someone searches “Paris hotels.” But now that Google immediately starts showing results, people may type long queries less often. As a result, advertisers would have to bid for more common terms.

Of course, just because it’s too early to tell doesn’t mean other analysts aren’t assessing the impact of a product that’s been in the marketplace for only a few hours. Here are a few of the more interesting ones I’ve seen so far: ReadWriteWeb, Latitude Blog, Web Seo Analytics, Affiliate Marketing Blog and ITProPortal.

I think it makes sense to give Google Instant a few months in the marketplace and see how the public at large interacts with it before making any definite assessments. A significant number of users may turn it off entirely; Google provides that function. The impact on SEO and PPC may be huge or it may be negligible.

As Yogi Berra might say: We won’t know till we know.

It’s not often that one gets to participate in creating a genuine piece of timeless American cultural history … but that’s exactly what I did yesterday.

Because yesterday was P.T. Barnum’s 200th birthday, and members of the press joined P.T. Barnum experts and representatives of The Greatest Show On Earth as a psychic medium contacted the great man himself.

I’ve wanted to arrange something like this for years, ever since I helped bring the first version of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Web site online nearly 15 years ago. That site featured Barnum’s voice, which was recorded by Thomas Edison, and in which he welcomed listeners to “this new technology.” Barnum was, appropriately, welcoming site visitors to “this new technology” of the Internet.

Barnum would have loved the Internet. He was many things, but perhaps above all he was a great communicator, and the Web is the most profound advance in human communications since the invention of paper. The mind boggles at the ways he might be using social media today.

As you may know, there are three units of Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey traveling the country. As you probably didn’t realize, only one of them — The Coney Island Illuscination — was performing on his 200th birthday.

Where else would the spirit of P.T. Barnum be on his very special day?

So yesterday, we saluted Barnum on his 200th birthday and held a press conference. It was, appropriately, chronicled live on Twitter: We used hashtag #ptconey and you can see the full account of the press conference over here.

(By the way, Barnum would undoubtedly love the fact that the Library of Congress is archiving tweets — so Barnum’s 200th birthday press conference will appropriately be forever part of the Library of Congress official archives!)

Our psychic medium for the day was Gemma Deller. Check out her Web site; she’s completely for real and serious about what she does, and I wouldn’t have wanted to be involved in this event if the medium in question were anything else.

Which is why it was annoying that a member of the press (who shall remain unnamed) from a local teevee station was so insistent on breaking Gemma’s concentration prior to the start of the mediumship session. She (the reporter) wanted to ask Gemma how long the heat wave was going to last. Oy and vey.

(Memo to said reporter: First of all, Gemma is a psychic medium, not a fortune teller; you ought to know the difference. Second, interrupting someone’s obviously intense concentration to ask an irrelevant question is profoundly disrespectful to the person and the occasion. Then again, what more does one expect from local news? But that’s a different blog post entirely…)

Gemma was initially concerned about being able to contact Barnum, as it’s been so many years since he crossed over to the other side. That’s why we gathered some remarkable Barnum artifacts, so that connection with the other side could be facilitated.

Those artifacts, as you can see in the photo above, included the original Feejee Mermaid and a letter hand-written by Barnum himself, as well as postcards that were on Barnum’s desk the day he died.

Some of the artifacts were on loan from Coney Island USA, courtesy of Dick Zigun. That’s Dick in the photo up there (my thanks to Norman Blake of Coney Island USA for the pic). In the absence of a close family member, a psychic medium needs someone to validate any information that comes across. Dick is a world-renowned expert on Barnum and graciously donated his time to serve that purpose.

The best accounting of the session is over on the Twitter link above, but allow me to point out a few of the truly memorable moments.

Barnum was asked about the Feejee Mermaid, which was famously described as a hoax. Was it indeed a hoax? “Does it matter?” was all Barnum would say on the issue.

When asked if there are any modern-day Barnums, the great man interestingly didn’t look to the entertainment world. He cited Bill Gates and the founders of Google — those entrepreneurs who take chances to build a better world.

I also found it interesting that when asked about all the tragedies in his life — the fires that burned down his museums and home, for example — it came across that “tragedy” is an odd word, because if what comes out of that tragedy is an opportunity or a new success, can it really be deemed a tragedy?

Perhaps I was most struck by the reactions of those assembled to bear witness to the mediumship session. People did not know what to expect, but they definitely didn’t expect what they witnessed.

Several people told me they had goosebumps at various portions of the session. Others told me that what they heard Barnum saying through Gemma, and what they heard Gemma say about mediumship itself, was consistent with their readings about near-death experiences. Many were fascinated by the answers to the questions posed to Barnum, and were utterly convinced that those answers were authentic.

The session was not intended to raise questions about the afterlife, but such questions are, of course, unavoidable.

Did Barnum’s spirit really appear in the center of the ring yesterday to answer questions from the press? Or was it merely a celebration of the spirit of  P.T. Barnum?

Each of us will have to answer that question for ourselves. I know where I stand on the issue, and I know where Barnum does, too:

“Does it matter?”

JULY 6 UPDATE: AOL ran a story; see it here.

I don’t know who the PR point person is for BP, but clearly he or she is doing a terrible job. Or maybe a great job and BP is simply not listening, otherwise  there wouldn’t be so many horrible gaffes like these.

I do know, though, that if BP’s media relations were handled by BP Media Relations, then they’d be in a far better place today.

In a weird twist of fate, the oil spill in the Gulf has reached the shores of New York’s Central Park, where BP Media Relations has absolutely nothing to do with the oil industry and everything to do with being a boutique media relations agency that understands all the changes digital communications have brought to the PR profession, and continues to remain three steps ahead of the curve.

The fateful twist: Do a Google search for “British Petroleum media relations” and BP Media Relations appears as the number-one result. (More bad news for BP: Do a Google search for “British Petroleum PR agency” and this fake Twitter account appears as the number-one result.)

Barbara Pflughaupt is the “BP” in question of BP Media Relations. I’ve known and worked with her for about 15 years, and as you might imagine: She has a tough enough time making sure people spell her name correctly without having to worry that anyone’s first impression of her company is being ruined by British Petroleum’s negligence and Tony Hayward’s tin ear for the media.

Then again, who knows: Maybe someone with a far greater audience than this blog will do a story about “BP Media Relations” and she’ll win a fistful of new clients. Should that happen, I know one thing for certain: BP Media Relations will do a hell of a lot better job for those clients than British Petroleum’s agency, whoever they are, is doing for them.

Actually, since putting this Philly Creative Guide article together, which offers four object lessons in creativity drawn from Springsteen’s career, I thought of a fifth:

Viewing the familiar from a radically different perspective can offer unimagined rewards. In the late 1980s, Springsteen threw a hard curve ball to Tunnel of Love tour audiences waiting for the exuberance of “Born To Run.” Performing the song solo on acoustic guitar, the energetic thrill of escaping that “town full of losers” was replaced by a stark reality: What do the song’s protagonists do next? Though fans lost the thrill of an energetic set-closer, they gained a powerful new view of a familiar song. Or listen to his re-imaginings of decades-old songs like “Open All Night,” “Blinded By the Light” and “If I Should Fall Behind” on 2007’s Live In Dublin with the Seeger Sessions band. As one of my favorite Robert Hunter lyrics goes: “Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” Sometimes creativity means forcing yourself to see the familiar from a radically new perspective in order to move forward … occasionally in ways you never anticipated in the first place.