Odds and ends and Arcade Fire

Mashable looks at the next check-in craze, and as a follow-up to yesterday's Johnson & Johnson post, here's a breakdown of the company's response to the Tylenol scare of the 1980s.

Finally, my friend Dave Copeland, teaching a college PR class in the fall, sends along this nugget about Arcade Fire that deserves a closer look. Seems some of the band's hard-core fans are irked over Arcade Fire's aggressive marketing tactics and sudden commercial success. Frankly, I've never understand why some people don't want the artists they love to succeed. All that matters is the integrity of the product, and the band seems to have taken care of that, at least for now, by owning their own music.

Besides, it seems to me that it's never been easier to stick to your roots and still enjoy a measure of commercial success as a recording artist. Call it the long-tail effect if you want, but it has less to do with the Internet's on-demand inventory than with the democratization of marketing. Relatively few people know how to go about purchasing commercial time on television, or how to effectively target a press release distribution, or how to put on a press junket. But a lot more people know how to put together a good Facebook page, or use Twitter to drive you to their web site, or create a clever YouTube video that ends up in one of those annoying email forwards from your dad.

On the other hand, having Amazon sell your CD for $3.99 can't hurt.