What will you be preaching about at the Connection Planning Conference?

Murketing.

What are things that you believe advertising agencies need to do more of?

I am loathe to tell agencies what to do, as I am merely a journalist.

I can’t give a bunch of non-answers though, so I guess I can say this: I once listened to a friend of mine in that business bemoan the fact that he didn’t have the kinds of pro bono (or whatever equivalent term) applies) that he wanted. And I wondered: Why do you need someone else’s cause to represent? If you have some point of view you believe in, go out there and convince the world.

I’ll give you an example that I’ve considered writing about. One of the big problems with the whole bottled-water thing is simply that people don’t recycle the bottles. (Water bottles have no deposit in most states.) As I understand it, this is not a demand problem — there’s demand for this kind of plastic. Why not make an effort to convince people to recycle these bottles? If an agency or a bunch of agencies did something like this — not for a client, just did it — that seems like a good thing for the world, no?

Maybe that’s a bad example, and I’m not in a position to go into details right now, but you get the idea.

You’ve talked about what customization means for the consumer.  What does it mean for the industry reaching these consumers?

Um. I think it means they’ll offer more of it. Because it sells, and the margins are good. I do think people in general — or in the industry, I guess — need to remember that customization pre-dates the Internet. Being an individual is not something that companies “allow” the rest of us to do. But I’d be pretty surprised if anybody in the business needs to hear me say that there’s a big demand for custom everything.

Blogging topics have ranged from just about every corner of the consumer world, how do you choose a topic? How do you know you have something significant to say?

Wow, that’s tough, because I don’t think I’m very good at this form of writing that I’m doing on Murketing.com, or I’m still learning it, or something. Basically Murketing.com is a very, very pure reflection of two things:
1) What’s caught my attention that I have a comment about, and 2) How much time I have that moment.

Online writing is a very strange mix of the ephemeral and the permanent: Here’s something that’s interesting to me this second — and the haphazard string of words I put together about it will hang around forever.

I definitely think of what I’m doing there as for a small, almost intimate, audience. I’m not trying to do something that will get a billion Diggs or whatever.

I spent three years writing online for Slate, 2000-2003, and what I learned from that is that there’s a fly-by audience, and a dedicated audience. Most bloggers are interested in the fly-by audience — maxing out on hits. I don’t care about that (of course that’s partly because I have access to a fairly large audience via the NYT Mag, and also because I’m not selling ads, or trying to sell myself as an influential consultant, etc.), I care about the smaller audience of people with whom I can truly have a relationship.

What a cliche!

But it’s true.

What is one thing you’ve learned about the City of New Orleans while you were writing Letters from New Orleans?  And what are you looking forward to the most?

Damn. Okay. The one thing. The most important thing I learned was that life really can be lived differently, even in these United States.

As for what I’m looking forward to, this is an in-and-out trip for me, so I’m trying to keep my city-specific expectations in check. (It helps that I know we’re going to be back in December for a longer stay when I can really do all my New Orleans stuff.) So I’m looking forward to meeting some new people, and hearing some new points of view.

And also I’m now looking forward to taking you to task for asking me these questions.