Is this a good day? Bad day? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments. I couldn’t let the day pass without a commemorative cartoon.

Next time you’re sitting in a restaurant or cafe take a look at the people around you. Practically everyone is typing on a smartphone. What I find amusing is the posture: head slightly forward with arms outstretched. It made me think of human evolution and how smartphones may eventually change our physical anatomy.

Trust me. This strategy will work. Use “iPhone 4″ generously throughout your ad copy and people will line up in droves to fork over their hard earned cash. If it worked for Sam the Hobo (see below), it can work for you.

If this is you. Seek help. Now.

This is my final cartoon of the year. A big thanks to all of you for your support in 2009.

I have a holiday wish that I hope will come true in 2010: My wish is for PR professionals to integrate more humor into their work.

As I’ve written before, humor can be a powerful tool for achieving serious PR objectives. That said, I realize that many of you still need to be convinced of its value. I will do my part to share more case studies, strategies and interviews in 2010 from PR people who have been successful using this approach.

Feel free to contact me if you have a case study to share or want to brainstorm an idea.

With that, I wish all of you Happy Holidays and a great New Year.

Guhmshoo

Earlier this week, the FTC provided some additional guidelines on sponsored posts. The gist was this: If you fail to disclose your connection between advertisers and endorsers you could be looking at a fine of up to $11,000 per incident.

But it seems those additional guidelines may have been misinterpreted, according to a report yesterday by PRNewser. Quoting Richard Cleland, assistant director of the FTC, PRNewser reports:

“The root problem here is that reports that there is a monetary penalty for violating these guidelines is untrue. The FTC does not have the authority to impose a fine for a violation to the FTC act.” “We have never brought a case against a consumer endorser and we’ve never brought a case against somebody simply for failure to disclose a material connection.” “Where we have brought cases, there are other issues involved, not only failing to disclose a material connection but also making other misrepresentations about a product, a serious product like a health product or something like that. We have brought those cases but not against the consumer endorser, we have brought those cases against the advertiser that was behind it. If people think that the FTC is going to issue them a citation for $11,000 because they failed to disclose that they got a free box of Pampers, that’s not true. That’s not going to happen today, not ever.”

We’re not sure if that makes it all better, but it certainly seems that the guidelines have less “teeth” (see toon on right).

As we’ve written before, we think it would be best if the FTC minds its own business.

Have a good weekend!

I’ve been following the uproar over Brands in Public these past few days on Twitter and the blogs. There are a lot of disappointed people out there (I’ve tried to capture the prevailing sentiment in the toon featured on the right).

I don’t know Seth Godin all that well. I never finished his book Tribes. I’ve never heard him speak but I do read his blog from time to time (which I like). All I know is what other people have written about him which until recently was mainly positive.

Personally, I think Godin’s venture is kind of interesting and rather than jump on the Seth Godin Is Evil bandwagon, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. From what I read, he’s smarter and more successful than most of us anyway. That should count for something. Right?

That said, there’s nothing like controversy to get the cartooning juices flowing. So, thanks for all the tweets and blog posts. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Have a pleasant weekend (you too, Seth).

Just to be clear. Brody PR screwed up and deserved to be outed. But I believe humor could have saved them.

As blunders go it was a doozy, but did anyone get offended or hurt? No. Other than irritating a few influential social media folks during their busy day, it was harmless. In other words, here’s a situation where a bit of self-deprecating humor would have been helpful without further fanning the flames.

Sadly, Brody PR opted for a weak apology which they posted verbatim in the comment sections of several blogs. All it did was further demonstrate their ineptitude.

Soon after the situation surfaced, I started working on a couple of cartoon concepts. I finally settled on this toon. Naturally, I intended it as a criticism, but what if Brody PR had posted this image on their website with the title: “Meet Beth Brody”? It could have been followed by a one sentence apology like: “We screwed up and we’re sorry.” Do you think it would have changed public opinion?

Too often in minor crisis situations like these we tend to focus our energies on what we are “expected to do” (e.g., issue a formal apology, blame others, make excuses) rather than what is “unexpected” (e.g., take responsibility in a humorous or heartfelt way). As a case in point, see how this minor crisis was masterfully handled.

Call me naive, but I think it’s doing the “unexpected” that ultimately saves the day.

What do you think?

On Monday Mike mentioned the importance of having a "producer" in your corporate newsroom, someone who is "obsessed with the distribution of your content." Not a bad description for what I've been doing for the last year and half with Newsvetter and Guhmshoo.

Many of you may have figured out a lot of this on your own already, but I thought it might be worth sharing some experiences with readers who are new to the content business. Using the delivery truck as a metaphor, here are four basic recommendations:

Step 1: Carry something people will want. As obvious as it may seem, this single most important point is often missed entirely. Before embarking on Newsvetter and Guhmshoo, I dedicated a great deal of time and research to identify a problem, learn what people needed, and offer a practical solution. I can't stress enough how much sacrifice is involved in the process--you can forget about remuneration--but there truly is no substitute for hard work. Otherwise, you'll be driving nothing more than a garbage truck.

Step 2: Choose the best path for delivery. There are many routes you can take, but the key is finding the most efficient way to bring your product to your customers without landing in the neighbor's driveway or on the roof. I chose Twitter partly because my target audience was most active there, as well as simplicity (140-character limit) and redistribution (re-Tweeting). This does not mean that Twitter has more value than FriendFeed, Facebook, or other applications. I tried them all (yes, even Identi.ca and Second Life), and I would recommend that you experiment with all the latest shiny toys available.

Step 3: Meet the people on your route. Before I was really active on Twitter, I lurked to get a feel for the place--how people used the medium, what they got away with, and what they didn't. I also identified the leading Twitter users in my area of interest. I tried to engage them, to get them to look at my feed in hopes that they might find something of interest. Don't be shy to do this; it's no different from walking into a room and engaging people you don't know in conversation. Sure, you'll make mistakes and some people will be jackasses (as in the physical world), but eventually you'll assemble a group of people you respect who will be happy to share your work. Again, if you have something worth delivering, you won't have a problem. If everybody hates you, repeat Step 1.

Step 4: Deliver with a personal touch. I want people to read my stuff, and that often means delivering content that is highly specific to them and their interests. For example, one of my first Guhmshoo toons featured Peter Shankman skydiving with one of the guys from ProfNet. Shankman really appreciated the toon and shared it with his huge network of fans. This gave my cartoons instant visibility and, I hope, credibility--two features necessary for your delivery channel to succeed. This approach proved effective with numerous other toons.

You may have noticed that I've left out one of the most common delivery routes used by public relations agencies, the newswires (PRNewswire, PRWeb, et al). The omission was intentional because these "blasts" or "sprays," as they are known in the industry, are the opposite of what you should strive for: indiscriminate, impersonal, and--not surprisingly--ineffective.

What you should do is create your own distribution system, tailor it to your needs, and control every inch of it so that you can make adjustments on the fly. Believe me, you'll need to.

Welcome to the Guhmshoo Gallery. I've archived all my toons here (in reverse-chronological order). Feel free to share with your friends, colleagues, and loved ones, and post them on your websites and blogs. A wise man once told me that "humor is  subjective as hell," so I won't be offended if you don't get it. That said, I'm guessing you'll get a chuckle from at least one of them.

Like what you see? Want a custom cartoon for a future blog post, presentation, white paper, product launch, event, etc.? Call or email me and let's discuss.

• Happy Dependence Day! - No. We are not free.
• Preorder Fail: As expected people go crazy for the new iPhone 4 and Apple screws up the orders in a major way.
• Twitter Downtime - How Twitter can screw with your priorities (and get you into deep doo doo)
• Keyword Auction for BP - BP decides to buy up keywords from the search engines. Which words should they buy?
• Hot Topics at D8 - Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher question Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook privacy and the sweat starts pouring. Maybe a bit too much.
• Al and Tipper Divide Assets: Guess who gets the Internet?
• Quit Facebook Day - So did you quit Facebook on May 31, 2010? Didn't think so.
• My new logo - If Chris Brogan can have a new logo, then I can have a new logo.
• The Island the BP Oil Spill - Lost fans take note, the power of the Island continues to work in mysterious ways.
• New Tech at Google I/O -Three Google apps you wished you had.
• Facebook or Faustbook? - Would you sell your soul to the devil just to use Facebook for free? Oops. You just did.
• Facebook Privacy - Sometimes a privacy policy needs to be stripped down to its bare essentials.
• Virgin's New Plane Design - Gary Vaynerchuk cuts a deal with Virgin America to design their in-flight wine list but he doesn't just stop there...
• Forbidden Fruit - A toon about the stolen iPhone and the Wrath of Jobs.
• It's the end of the world - When this happens, you'll know Facebook has gone too far.
• From Ning to Ka-ching - Ning tells its free customers to take a hike causing a major incident that grounds flights all over the world.
• Twitter Releases REAL ad strategy - Just you watch how quickly Twitter becomes profitable with this approach.
• Social Media Freedom Act - The U.S. government allows agencies to use Twitter and Facebook and look what happens.
• You will be I-ssimilated - Apple launches the iPad and once again we will do anything to get one.
• Nestle Re-strategizes - After the Palm Oil debacle, Nestle rethinks its presence on Facebook.
• Welcome to Cafe Newswire - Stuffed with boredom and smothered with a meaningless cream sauce, who wouldn't want to eat here?
• Foursquare Fanatics - It's all about location, location, location.
• Resistance to SXSW is futile - Parties, SWAG, fun, etc. Isn't that why we go to SXSW?
• Engage! - Brian Solis writes the book on engagement and kicks Jean-Luc Picard off the bridge.
• All Things Digiphobic - Why should just humans fear Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher? BTW, this toon appeared on Swisher's blog. Woot!
• Corp. Communications at Twitter - Twitter get's a new PR guy. What will be his first task?
• PR at CES - Exciting show, boring PR.
• Santa's Modern Workshops - Santa pines for the old days.
• Two Facebook - Facebook gets hammered (again) on its new privacy policy.
• Dumbfounding predictions - Killer predictions for 2010 that will change your life forever.
• Maclaren Does Tommy Flannagan - Maclaren creates a media storm but CEO says he didn't know. Yeah, that's the ticket...
• Embargo Insanity - Lose the embargo and it will save lives.
• Reporter Hats - Thanks to a dying media, journalists are experts in nothing.
• Laws - The FTC's bark is worse than its bite.
• Old Media - Ah. There's nothing like the smell of burning newspaper in the morning.
• New Business Card - Seth Godin launched Brands In Public, so it's only fitting that he have a new business card.
• Boeing Discovers Blogs - It's hard to believe that a company that builds some of the world's most sophisticated airplanes is just now making use of a blog to help sell its planes.
• HARO Family Tree - Peter Shankman's HARO keeps growing, but who is REALLY calling the shots. Hint: Karma and NASA are Peter's cats.
• Swine Flu Ad Campaign - Pigs are back in the spotlight as the swine flu season begins.
• PR-Gatory - Brody PR mass pitches influential social media types and suffers their wrath. Oops!
• Law Enforcement 2.0 - I did this special edition toon in honor of Chris Brogan's new book "Trust Agents." Yep, that's the kind of guy I am.
• The World Sans Twitter - Twitter suffers a denial-of-service attack giving everyone a brief moment to see the world the way it really is.
• Wiping the slate clean - Michael Arrington of TechCrunch loses a libel suit filed by UK resident Sam Sethi. Arrington argued that the UK courts have no jurisdiction in the US and elected not to defend the case. The UK courts thought differently.
• Link Bait - The City of Portland with a $90 million budget wants you to redesign their website for free. What you get: a name credit link on every page. Oooh!
• Marked Men at TechCrunch - TechCrunch tries to do the right thing regarding the stolen Twitter files but no one seems to care.
• Twitter's Un-Safe - Hacker gains access to secret Twitter documents because of easy-to-figure-out passwords and weak security. Time to change the combo on the Twitter vault guys.
• Echo Chamber in the Alps - The echo chamber keeps spreading from the blogosphere to the twittersphere and yes, even to the...
• Happy Dependence Day! - No explanation needed. Appeared on Mashable too.
• Head in the Clouds - Special order toon for Dennis Howlett at ZDNet about cloud computing.
• Our Tax Dollars at Work - The FTC wants to regulate bloggers. Good luck getting them to pay their fines.
• The Media's New Keyboard - The latest recipe for news. Just add Twitter.
• The Twitterverse - According to a recent Harvard study, "The top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets." These users have a special place in the Twitterverse.
• Reverse Engineer Fail - Peter Shankman's Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a huge success. As expected, people are trying to replicate it and divert some of his traffic. But the success of HARO is due in large part to Shankman himself. Good luck trying to copy that!
• Microsoft vs. Google Launches - Microsoft launched Bing, but Google Wave stole its thunder.
• Lookin' for some hot stuff - WolframAlpha launched and everyone fell instantly in love. At least for now.
• Creative Writing - New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd gets busted for plagiarism--but was this the first time?
• Content Thieves - The newspapers blame Google for stealing their content.
• How Pandemics Spread - What spreads faster? Swine flu or people re-Tweeting news about it?
• This Space for Rent - Sponsored bloggers and what they might look like in the future.
• Dime a Dozen - Everyone claims to be "social media expert" these days, rendering the term meaningless. But they still have a purpose.
• Twitter Gets a New Look - Ashton Kutcher and Oprah join Twitter, and Twitter rushes to accommodate their every desire.
• Amazon's New 1 Click - GLBT books are removed from Amazon sales ranking, causing a major uproar on Twitter and blogs. They called it a "glitch" caused by a Frenchman. Hmm...
• Introducing the New Fiesta - Ford launches the Fiesta Movement and pins its success on 100 loquacious social media types.
• Guy Interviews Casper (the friendly Ghost) - Guy admits he hires people to Twitter on his behalf (aka "ghost Twittering").
• Education 2.0 - Britain announces that it will start offering classes in social media as part of its official primary school curriculum.
• Poetic Justice - John Mayer would rather Tweet than spend time with hot girlfriend Jennifer Aniston. Aniston dumps Mayer.
• Ev's Baby in Utero - Evan Williams (Twitter founder) shares (via Twitter, of course) that wife is pregnant with their first child.
• John McCain Meets Twitter - George Stephanopoulos conducts an interview via Twitter with super tech-unsavvy John McCain.
• Social Media One-Night Stands - Hand-picked digerati visit P&G HQ and then are forced to shill for Tide. Also see: Digerati Visit P&G HQ
• SXSW from Space - What happens when digerati descend on Austin, overload Wi-Fi and plug into all available outlets.
• Facebook's New Terms of Service - Facebook clandestinely alters its TOS (terms of service), claiming it now owns all of your FB content, causing major PR crisis. Later, Facebook reverses course and says they are all about transparency from now on. Also see: Facebook's New Transparency.
• Fact-Checking at Techcrunch - While Arrington takes a vacation, TechCrunch editorial standards get criticized.
• Arrington Takes Time Off - Arrington gets spat on in public and decides to disappear to a place supposedly free from harassment.
• Twitter TMI - Unfortunately, people feel the need these days to Twitter about the sickest things.
• Fail Whale Therapy - In the early days of Twitter, people hated the Fail Whale. But did anyone care about how the Fail Whale felt?
• Loren Sees the Light - Loren Feldman of 1938media tricks everyone into believing he has changed his ways and become your best friend. Yeah, right.
• Study Hall - Chris Heuer, Social Media Club founder, forms the pretentious Ad Hocnium consulting collective which includes some of the Web's top minds or "catalysts" as he calls them. But can anyone pronounce or spell it?
• State of the Spheres - The explosion of the blogosphere and Twittersphere begin to smother the atmosphere.
• Death to the Embargo - TechCrunch announces it will no longer honor news embargoes from anyone. Well, except for companies like Microsoft and Google and Yahoo and...
• LeWeb Meets Survivor - LeWeb conference gets blasted for poor Internet connectivity, freezing room temperatures, and, unconscionably, a lack of snacks.
• Canine E-Mail - What? You think humans are the only ones with email?
• Santa's Costly Tweet - Holiday toon about Qwitter application, which allows people to see who unfollows them on Twitter and why.
• Working for Abrams Research - Dan Abrams, chief legal correspondent for MSNBC, starts his own PR firm and hires journalists as consultants. Ethics issue? Nah.
• The Motrin Distraction - Mommy bloggers enraged by Pfizer's Motrin ad campaign ignore their kids so they can Twitter and blog all day about it.
• TechCrunch vs. PR - Arrington sends a cryptic Tweet declaring war on PR firms sometime in the near future. PR firms strike back in the only way they know how.
• Cafe PRNewswire - Why would anyone want to eat there?
• Collection Time for Twitter - How will Twitter make money? Find out here.
• Neo (of "The Matrix") Meets His Match - Brian Solis is so smart its scary. Run, Neo, run!
• Social Media Measurement - Easy to measure: social media consulting fee income. Harder to measure: social media.
• Modern Newsrooms - Anyone can be a citizen journalist. I mean anyone.
• Day One @ the Dept. of Gov't 2.0 - Are you sure we should be encouraging the government use Facebook and Twitter?
• Social Media Release Achilles Heel - PR tools (i.e., hardware) are only as good as the tools (i.e., software/PR people) who use/power them.
• Social Media Becomes a Liability - This could happen to you.
• How Media Use Press Releases - PRNewswire issues a self-serving study that claims that journalists use their press releases more than those of their competitors. It's true.
• PRNewswire Hitmen - Profnet killer Peter Shankman gets invited to speak at a PRNewswire conference. They try to assassinate him.
• PRSA on Ethics - Public Relations Society of America encourages political campaigns to uphold the highest ethical standards in their communications. Hmm.
• Social Media Enforcement Agency - Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb writes a post about how to use social media to reach people who don't use social media. Here's one way.
• Brogan: The Early Years - Chris Brogan is a great listener. But sometimes being a great listener doesn't help get chicks.
• BadPitch Crime Fighters - If anyone deserves superhero crime-fighting skills, it's the folks over at BadPitchBlog.
• Works of Great Length - Brian Solis may be the smartest person in the Twitterverse, but he's also the longest-blog writer in the Twitterverse.
• Body by Strumpette - Heard of Amanda Chapel? She slays people in the Twitterverse everyday. But sometimes she uses her powers for good. Here's how she motivates Jason Falls and Geoff Livingston toward better health.
• Making Amends - When Peter Shankman launched Help a Reporter Out,  PRNewswire's Profnet responded aggressively. Words were exchanged, but it all worked out in the end. Or did it?
• PR Is Dead - If I had a dollar for every time someone announced the death of PR, I would be a ...
• Web 2.0 Spying - Let me get this straight. The government needs a court order to find out what you're up to, but Twitter lures you into giving that information out freely. Genius.
• Web 2.0 Pick up Joints and Web 2.0 Come-ons - My first two cartoons ever. No explanation needed.

What some people have said about Guhmshoo:

• Allen Stern
• Amanda Chapel
• Beth Harte
• Bill Austin
• BL Hussein Ochman
• Brian Solis
• Chris Brogan
• David Armano
• Doug Haslam
• Evan Williams
• Geoff Livingston
• Guy Kawasaki
• Jason Falls
• Jason Kintzler
• JD Lasica
• Jennifer Leggio
• Kara Swisher
• Kevin Dugan
• Kristie Wells
• Mark Drapeau
• Marshall Kirkpatrick
• Neville Hobson
• Paula Drum
• Peter Shankman
• Rachel Sklar
• Rafe Needleman
• RedEyeChicago
• Scott Monty
• Ted Murphy
• Todd Defren
• Todd Jordan
• Walt Mossberg