Focus Groups in vogue again, thanks to Super Bowl

I feel so vindicated.  Which almost makes up for yesterday’s Packer-less Super Bowl.

After last year’s event, I announced the Top E-Holes of the Super Bowl.  Most of the winners, especially the Grand Super Bowl E-Hole — Groupon — had declined to conduct Focus Groups to pre-test their commercials.  My rant was about just that; the utter folly and pure arrogance of taking such a huge chance with their brand.  Given Groupon’s $377 million in funding, why hadn’t they spent the mere $20,000  to do a couple of groups? Simply as brand insurance, if you will.  Like duh. Ask the customer?

I would have been happy to take on a juicy new Groupon project, and of course always delighted to visit Chicago when the snow flies and black ice proliferates.

Oh what a difference a little joking about Tibet makes.  After the Groupon social media firestorm, this year smart marketers returned to their tried-and-true market research toolkit.  The Wall Street Journal reports that companies such as Hyundai to Bridgestone to Chevy conducted Focus Groups in advance of the broadcast. Now that viewers are tapping into Twitter and Facebook in mind-blasting numbers (Madonna’s performance during the halftime show saw an average of 8000 tweets per second), checking in with your customers in advance makes even more  sense.

Still, it’s always something. Yesterday’s reigning hashtags #Clint Eastwood and #Halftime in America were today’s brouhaha, both for questions about the star’s politics, and for the commercial’s mysterious removal and return.  IMHO, the spot and Clint were genius — kudos to the creatives at Wieden + Kennedy who pulled off this new classic.  Extra kudos for the concept of Visual Viralizing:  Share the video from the Chrysler YouTube channel and see how far across the country your Tweets and reshares reach. Brilliant.

(UPDATE) E-Hole of the Week: UCLA Girl Goes Wild on Asians in the Library.

UPDATE: Alexandra Wallace, the UCLA student who posted the vitriolic video about ‘Asians in the library” has issued an apology.

What a week for this “nice, polite American girl” to go wild on ‘these hordes of Asians at UCLA.’ Aside from the utter insensitivity of this video — (on top of everything else, she mentions the tsunami) — this latest E-Hole clearly has forgotten that Google never forgets. As one commenter said so wisely: “there is no delete button in the Internet.” I’d be very interested in following her future career path. A degree from UCLA means zip when a simple search turns up racist rant.

Three Compelling Reasons Why Focus Groups Should Not Die.

You’re a growing company looking to massively increase awareness of your product among mainstream consumers. You have a brand new $377 million cash injection from some venture firms. You have a pre-IPO valuation that hovers around $15 billion. You have a hot-shot ad agency salivating over spending some of that money on disruptive creative.

Super Bowl LXV, with the crowd-pleasing Packers at the helm, looms provocatively.

So here’s the $377 million question: How much of that cash are you willing to spend to avoid being perceived as an E-Hole?

That’s right. A ‘stupid and humorless’, ‘bad taste and bad business’ ‘shame on you’ E-Hole. And oh yes, someone who ‘makes fun of your customers by trivializing very real tragedies.’ *

How much of that $377 million dollars are you willing to spend to avoid losing evangelical subscribers, billions in valuation and pundits pontificating on your #epic fail?

In the case of Groupon, the answer is zero.

I have been fuming about this ever since the Super Bowl. These three Super Bowl E-Holes — Groupon, HomeAway and PepsiMax — need not have happened. Their companies need not have taken it on the chin (or in the case of HomeAway’s smushed baby, the poor thing’s entire face) nor did they essentially have to flush their pricey budgets and previously positive brand perception down the dumpster.

All it would have taken to avoid this E-Holism is a few Focus Groups. Three of them — a day’s commitment — would run around $15,000. That’s approximately 6 hours worth of sitting in a room, chomping on M&Ms and veggie dip, watching your customers and potential customers responding to your $3 million per 30-second Super Bowl spots. Heck, they could have simply viewed storyboards to sidestep spending the big bucks on producing the television.

There is no way any of these spots — from Groupon’s “Tibet” to HomeAway’s “Test Baby” to PepsiMax’s “Love Hurts” – would have made it past even a single focus group scott free. Even with a bad moderator and equally egregious back room behavior, it is impossible to imagine a Focus Group that would give these commercials a complete pass. The most inside of Groupon’s humor-elite insiders would have had to notice that the respondents weren’t laughing.

So why am I, the Guru of New, taking to the blogbox on behalf of a market research methodology that’s been declared if not completely dead, then at least wounded and doddering? Why am I not expounding on Sentiment Analysis, Text Analysis and Eye-Tracking?

Because this latest explosion of of E-Holes has me convinced that marketers are making an enormous mistake in neglecting to create some face time with their customers.

Yes, online research rocks. I pioneered in online groups and interviews way back in the prehistoric era of the Internets. Today, thanks to dazzling technology we could only fantasize about in those early days, I am even more passionate about the power and the possibilities for social research. But after watching this latest Super Bowl debacle and watching as more and more brands step in the digital doo-doo, I strongly urge a return to some of the “old” research ways that got zapped in our zeal for all things new.

*These were some of the comments posted on Groupon’s blog. And believe me, they were some of the kinder ones.

So NOT an E-Hole. @RedCross Rogue Tweet does good.

Ah. It does the heart good to write about good for a change. Especially after a month overflowing with E-Holes.

Earlier this week, an American Red Cross social media specialist named Gloria Huang accidentally sent out a Tweet via the official Red Cross Twitter account about drinking Dogfish beer and “gettngslizzerd”. Now this mis-tweet has happily resulted in a flurry of donations, supposedly from fellow beer fans, including @Dogfishbeer.

Huang was tweeting from a handy Twitter tool called HootSuite and though perhaps not yet ‘slizzerd’, she sent her tweet out into the Twitterverse via her employer’s profile instead of her own. Guru’s Note: Dogfish or not, if you’re managing many accounts on HootSuite or other social media tools, going-rogue tweet is not that unusual. (@HooteSuite also made a lovely donation to @RedCross.)

Enter Red Cross social media director Wendy Harman, who chose to respond quickly and with good humor. Rather than relying on the organization’s serious institutional voice, she tweeted:

“We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

Utterly genius. Instead of calling in the big PR dogs, she simply chose to put @RedCross’ human face forward. Wendy also tapped into one of the Ten Commandments of Social Media. Commandment #8: Never be boring.

And even better, another hero joined the bandwagon –Dogfish Head Brewery , which encouraged donations to the Red Cross with the hashtag #gettngslizzerd. Tweets are still going strong this morning:

To add your donation to the Red Cross, click here.

Have an E-Hole to report? Want to become an official E-Hole Spotter? Send an email to: hello@guruofnew.com with E-HOLE in the subject field.

Another Day, Another E-Hole. (Leave Steve Jobs Alone)

The National Enquirer joins the record number of E-Holes douching up our digital world this month. This latest contribution to bad e-behavior predicts that “Apple Boss Steve Jobs has 6 weeks to live.” The pillar of journalistic integrity then goes on to illustrate this trashy tidbit with a set of photos I refuse to post here. They’ve even asked doctors who have never laid eyes on the Apple founder to evaluate his health based solely on these spurious ‘secret’ snapshots.

If the tabloid wants to scurry around in the shadows following John Edwards, so be it. But following Steve Jobs and wife from breakfast to the Stanford Cancer Center . . . there are no words.  I am no stranger to that esteemed hospital myself.  Whatever goes on there should stay there.

So National Enquirer,  why don’t you leave Steve Jobs alone and go find yourself a Kardashian?

E-Hole of the Day — or Maybe the Decade.

There are E-Holes and there are e-holes. Nir Rosen, (now former) NYU fellow, is an E-HOLE with as many capitals as can be crammed into one word.

Mashable reports that “following a series of offensive tweets about the sexual assault of CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo Tuesday, New York University has accepted the resignation of Nir Rosen, a fellow at the university’s Center on Law and Security.”

According to CBS reports, Logan was covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square for a 60 Minutes feature on February 11 when she and her crew were “surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration.” Logan was then cut off from her team, surrounded and then suffered a “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” before a group of women and Egyptian soldiers rescued her. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently home recovering.

The horrific news has been trending on Twitter and covered on legions of sites, including an important post by Salon’s Mary Alice Williams.

The Twitter conversation was bizarre from the first tweet.

Shortly after news about the assault was released, Rosen, a veteran war correspondent, tweeted, “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal,” referring to Anderson Cooper’s beating in Cairo at the beginning of the month. He added later, “I’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she’ll get,” citing his view that she is “a major war monger.”

In response to backlash comments, he tweeted: “Yes yes its [sic] wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too,” suggesting that it somehow would have been amusing if Anderson Cooper had also suffered a “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.” (Rosen says that, at the time, he was not aware of the severity of the attack.)

Rosen has since deleted both tweets and apologized repeatedly on Twitter. “[I] forgot Twitter is not exactly private,” he tweeted, later saying that he “never meant to hurt anyone” and has “brought shame” upon himself and his family.

Thanks to Mashable’s Lauren Indvik for her excellent coverage, which informs this post.

What would happen if we all took 24 hours offline . . . together?

When it comes to digital media, is it possible to have too much of a good thing? How easy is it for you to go off the grid? You will soon find out should you be brave enough to participate in the upcoming worldwide event called The Big TurnOff. The aim of BigTurnOff is to collectively take twenty four hours off from digital media as a social experiment in order to evaluate the role of and our relationship with technology in our lives.

When the organizers learned about my digital detox –thanks to CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen for her trendsetting coverage of my experience –they approached me for my take on the Big Turnoff. Here’s the recent interview:

On The Grid Guru of New Social media strategist and Guru of New, Sarah Browne, took 40 days off from social media in observance of Lent last year and also recently spent some time offline in Alaska. She was kind enough to take the time to share with us about her experiences with social media abstinence and about her life on the bleeding edge of technology. Here’s what we learned…

BigTurnOff.org: When did you first begin using social media?

Sarah Browne: Actually I crack up when I hear all the pundits act as if social media was just invented. Anybody remember eworld’s Town Square? Compuserve? Prodigy? America Online’s Million-Chatters-A-Day? And of course, BBS, MOO/MUD. I was one of the first AOL Greenhouse Partners, way back in the dino-days of 600 baud, circa 1995. One of the first things we learned from Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, Eileen Bramlet & Company was the value of ‘community.’ Our chat rooms, message boards and content were all powered by our members — some of whom were paid in free (overhead) accounts. Our sites were all about Community, Connection and Conversation. We just didn’t have the cool tools or tech available today. We used to dream of bandwidth.

BTO: What led you to become a social media strategist and expert of the new?

SB: I’ve been an ‘expert of the new’ for (sheesh, dare I say this?) decades. Early on, when I was at Ogilvy & Mather, I was the only one who ever asked — begged — to be put on pitches and new products. Everyone else was hugely concerned with filling up their portfolios — and new products have a long launch time . . . and pitches (see the recent Mad Men) can go poof in moments. But I loved the thrill of starting from scratch, the pulsebeat of innovation and I loved hanging out in corporate labs and research facilities. Ingredients, formulas, technologies turn me on. So for me, social media, in which ‘now is the new wow’ is merely the latest 24/7 focus group laboratory. I never set out to become a Social Media Strategist — I simply sniffed out the next new thing (as always) and applied it when clients asked me to.

BTO: With regards to technology, as the duration of time in product life cycles from bleeding edge to obsolete decreases ever more rapidly, do you find it increasingly challenging to stay abreast of what’s “new”?

SB: Absolutely. We recently snuck away to Glacier Bay, Alaska to go sea kayaking and clap away marauding bears. Connections were iffy and besides, I wanted to go off the grid. I was astounded by how ‘behind’ I was after only a few days. And my 2010 Radar Report, which was produced in January was “old” by February.

BTO: Do you ever feel overwhelmed with the barrage of available information and how do you manage it all?

SB: Yes, I often feel overwhelmed and I am not nearly as uber-engaged as many of my social media cohorts. I have learned that when I get to a certain point, I need to actually make myself shut down the computer and turn off the phone. I really hate Facebook because of what it’s become and really only like the friends/family part of it. I probably have Hidden 75% of my so-called Friends due to their E-Hole behavior. So one way to manage it all is: TURN IT OFF. The other way is to use management features on services like CoTweet, push only certain notifications to your cell and oh yeah, TURN IT OFF.

BTO: How do you keep up and help your clients stay up to date as well?

SB: I have my daily morning drill, which includes certain sites from local to global. Some info is pushed to me — New York Times, of course, and some I scurry after. There are a couple of trend sites I like, too, — I am a Spotter for Springwise, for example. And of course, Twitter, mon dieu! In 30 seconds, you know whether there’s been an earthquake in Chile or whether Justin Bieber is now shaving. I try to keep very current in certain categories because of fave clients and often will either email them or blog about their issues. Right now, I have a number of clients who have been in Name Generation mode — so I made sure they knew about the new .co domain that launched last week.

BTO: Can you share your single best and worst experiences from your perspective in being an early adopter?

SB: Microsoft Bob! Front Page! Microsoft has been a longtime client, which meant I’ve been a frequent beta tester for many of their products. It is still amazing to me how a company with such smart employees can come up with such turkeys. I love working with them because of their brainpower but I still have nightmares about Front Page extensions.

And my best experience as an early adopter? It’s near blasphemy to mention the much-maligned America Online. But digital anthropologists will remember that once upon a time, AOL was the rock star, replete with magazine covers, explosive growth and millions of addicted fans. The early America Online also had something all-too-few Internet darlings ever managed to achieve: a revenue-generating business model. I was there for a few of those shining years, soaking up the smarts from more Harvard MBA’s than show at a Crimson football game. There were so many firsts for the fledgling Internets. And so many firsts for those of us lucky enough to be there.

BTO: How do you feel that social media and technology are changing how we approach our lives (both positive and negative) especially with regards to human relationships, for example our definition of the word “friend”?

SB: I struggle with this question virtually every day. Actually, I’ve struggled with this concept since the dawn of the Interwebs. On one hand, my world is happily jam-packed with friends I never would have made in a completely analog world. On the other hand, the shallow, self-promotion-ness of it makes me crazy and sad. Did you read that New York Times article tying the decline of empathy with the rise of social media? Not sure I totally agree –but I love what the writer said about self-promotion replacing self-awareness. Scarily true.

BTO: What improvements would you make to sites like Facebook when it comes to striking a balance between “open and connected” and user privacy?

SB: I think it’s up to us to find that balance. Facebook is not going to change. Yes, they will make some concessions here and there but ultimately their bottom line is all about 500 million users and how to generate revenue from the teeming masses. Despite all of the Quit Facebook Days and kvetching, their numbers have exploded. But I have noticed some changes being made by (experienced) users themselves. Many are cutting back on authenticity and true self expression; spending less time; being more guarded. Newbies are still bombarding us with new goats from Farmville. It’s like Neopets for grown-ups. But I can’t really complain — I was a big fan of Facebook’s Pirate English. Arrrrlllll, matey!

BTO: Can you tell us a little about your experience with giving up social media for Lent (and perhaps your more recent detox)?

SB: Here’s why I decided to give up Facebook for Lent last year. My reason is a bit different from others who choose to do a digital detox. Most of them are simply and happily addicted to the service and concerned they’re spending too much time online (usually tracking new and old romances.) My problem was that virtually every time I logged on, I’d find myself enraged. The red-in-the face, migraine’s-coming kind. I was furious over the morphing of my cozy mash-up of friends and family into a nest of shamefully self-promoting E-Holes. Plus I knew that it was essentially my fault. This was one prediction the Guru of New got way wrong. I genuinely didn’t foresee that the massive blurring of business and personal would turn my Facebook page into a 24/7 ad for people I wouldn’t recognize at Safeway — many of whom wanted me to ‘uplevel’ my business, sign up for their teleseminar or ‘fan’ their whatchamacallit. Instead of being a daily digital scrapbook Facebook was transformed into Personal Brands R Us. I didn’t want to manufacture a perfect, pretend life for these pretend friends. And I was ticked at the people who enjoyed doing just that.

So being off Facebook for 40 days and nights was a relief. I turned my clients’ pages over to my project manager, tucked my Advil in the drawer and didn’t miss a moment of not ‘upleveling’ my business in any way. Somehow my company has survived the lack of teleseminars, podcasts, MLM and ‘wealth systems’ offered to me via Wall, Status Updates and News.

Off the Grid Guru of New

When we went to Alaska a few weeks ago, one of the best parts of our trip was staying off of Facebook. I do definitely miss seeing pictures of friends and family — and I will admit I love connecting with my sorority sisters and scattered relatives.

Twitter’s kind of a different story. There’s no pretense that someone is your Friend. It’s very cut-and-dried … Follow/Following. No strings attached. And while there are plenty of E-Holes on Twitter, it’s a very ships-passing-in-the-night relationship. I don’t need a detox from Twitter. I’m emotionally detached.

BTO: Do you feel that others could benefit from even a twenty four hour detox? If so, would you see any benefit in doing it together with a number of other people who would share in the experience?

SB: I think everybody who spends more than an hour a day using social media could benefit from a detox of some kind. I actually read books — like BIG ones — when I was in Alaska and offline. Of course, I learned about these particular books on Twitter! (Stieg Larsson) But I don’t know if there is any need to detox from our digital tools–checking bank balances; movie times; texting friends; etc. For me, it’s certain social media that’s the devil.

Please don’t ask me to share my 24 hour detox with my daughter, who practically cuddles her iPhone.

BTO: What do you think of The Big Turn Off as a worldwide event? …and/or as a local event held in ways that a smaller local community chooses on their own?

SB: Worldwide. The Big Turn Off needs to be a statement with a capital S. I remember the August when AOL crashed for 19 hours. Quelle freak-out. There can be smaller local events — like local Ted meet-ups during the big event.

BTO: Would you be willing to participate in either a local or worldwide Big Turn Off event?

SB: Absolutely — I’m in.

BTO: One last question… As Guru of the New, would you say we can officially declare Turning Off “The New New Thing”?

SB: Yes — Turning Off will be officially declared “The New New Thing” by the Guru of New on my blog, etc. I’m psyched!

BTO: Wow! That totally rocks. Thanks, Sarah!

Learn more about the Big Turnoff:
BigTurnOff.org
facebook.com/bigturnoff
twitter.com/BigTurnOff
myspace.com/bigturnoff

Alert! Facebook Password Reset Confirmation Email Contains Virus

E-Holes have ramped up their scamming and spamming recently, flooding social media with insidious attempts to lure users into their traps. Is it a coincidence the black hats have increased their activity just as a significant chunk of Facebook’s recent growth comes from newbies in search of photos of the grandchildren?

Please Nana, don’t click on that link!

Mashable is now warning of a new virus spreading via Facebook. This one – known as Bredolab – masks itself as a “Password Reset Confirmation Email,” appears to come from Facebook, and attaches a file that purports to contain a new password.

That file is actually a trojan horse that will download a host of nasty files from the Web and infect your computer with them. Email security firm MX Lab explains further:

“Bredolab is a trojan horse that downloads and executes files from the Internet, such as rogue anti-spyware. To bypass firewalls, it injects its own code into legitimate processes svchost.exe and explorer.exe. Bredolab contains anti-sandbox code (the trojan might quit itself when an external program investigates its actions).”

How to avoid this E-Hole Epidemic: Did you request your password from Facebook? If not, you shouldn’t be getting a password reset confirmation email. So don’t open it! And even if you did ask for one, Facebook would not send your new password as an attachment. Finally, f you’re still not sure, take a look at the full details of the email – if the mail servers don’t belong to Facebook, you know the message is not legit.

Are You An E-Hole? The Six Tell-tale Signs.

Normally, when I’ve told friends “Hey! I’m writing a book”, the response is polite to vague to “I’m so sorry. I’ve given up reading for Lent.” In LA, they’re likely to suggest a fair exchange: I’ll read your book if you read my screenplay.  In Silicon Valley, they look blank until you explain that a book is kinda like a giant Wordle app or literary widget.  In New York, they immediately kvetch about agents while in Paris they offer to read it once smoking is reinstated in cafes.

But this book?  Amazingly, people have not only urged me to write it but to write it laser-fast. Three of my Twitter pals have already asked if the guide will be published in time for Christmas stocking stuffers. I’ve almost been persuaded to write an e-book first and then follow up with hard copy.

Is this because I am such a crackerjack writer? Although I’d love to say yes, the true answer is ‘probably not.’  The fact is, there is a clear and compelling, even urgent, need to make sense of the good, the bad and the blurry of the digital era, particularly the consumer-friendly, tool-rich phenomenon known as Web 2.0.  The Internet does genuinely ‘change everything’ — including the ethics and etiquette of how we use these tools. Countless books have already been published on this subject, many of them scholarly works of genius from academics that probe everything from user-generated content to mass collaboration to digital innovation and citizen marketing.  

If you’re looking for books of this decidedly brainy ilk, click to close and move on to Amazon or your local library. The goal of my upcoming guidebook is quite simple: to help keep you out of online doo-doo and encourage you to dip into this dynamic digital world. And maybe have some fun while you’re at it.
 
Here’s a small sampling from my new book:
How Not To Be An E-Hole:  The Ultimate Guide to Online Etiquette and Ethics.
 

Are You An E-Hole? The Six Tell-Tale Signs.

Sign 1:  Is Social Media all about you?  Social Media can indeed be Me Media.  Today’s tools make it fast and easy to get the word out about your inherent rockstar-ness. Isn’t everybody fascinated by the ham sandwich you had for lunch? Doesn’t the world want to know about your cool car, your hot bod and the gaggles of groupies hanging on your every tweet?  Smart folks see that switching from Me to We is the secret to shining at Social Media.  And yes, it is possible to be an E-Hole in only 140-characters:  http://tweetingtoohard.com/

Sign 2:  OverSharing  Over-sharing can occur on any of the Social Media channels. Over-Sharing is defined as sharing anything from the too-intimate details of your world (tweeting during your during your prostate exam) to the too-mundane (I had scrambled eggs for breakfast) to the too-frequent.

Sign 3:  Are you a FRAMMER?  Friends just ain’t what they used to be. In fact, my buddy Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Correspondent at CNN, who covered my recent Facebook Addiction story, believes the very definition of Friendship is at stake: “What exactly is a friend these days?”  Well, it sure isn’t FRAMMING them. Friend Spam is being spammed by your so-called Facebook Friends including:

• A barrage of shameless self-promoting links, events, fan pages, webinars, promos, etc.
• “Cherry-picking” among a Friends List — picking the most ‘useful’ for marketing and networking.

FRAM hurts more than traditional spam because, after all, it’s the ultimate in permission marketing. You haven’t merely signed up for an impersonal newsletter, you’ve opened the door wide to your life. You’re not an address on some database sold and re-sold by dead dotcoms. You’ve willingly extended an invitation to participate in your own personal universe.

Sign 4:  Uber-Exuberance   Apps, widgets, links, videos, photos — it’s a smorgasbord of Social Media tech and toys out there. Are you so sure all your friends want that ‘growing gift’ of cactus, that beer or cup of coffee you’re dying to send? Does everybody want to take that quiz, play 25 Random Things and beat you at movie trivia?  The sure sign of a Social Media newbie (and often Accidental E-Hole) is assuming everybody will appreciate these occasionally amusing time-wasters.

Sign 5: Where are the Privacy Police when you need them?  It’s true: Facebook keeps changing its interface, which confuses the heck out of who can see what. What was private on Tuesday may be part of a News Feed on Wednesday. So if you’re not careful about the changing-rules, your mother-in-law may be able to see the pictures of the dinner party she wasn’t invited to posted prominently in Highlights.  Or your boss might see that comment you made about ‘blowing off work’. Or your sorority sister might post racy stories about an era you’d prefer to forget on your Wall for all to see.  The secret to avoiding E-Holism?  Use the Privacy settings!

Sign 6: Keep It Social, Stupid.   Keeping it social means you never forget these new tools are all about people and being personal. Keeping it social means you avoid using robots as well as acting robotically. So personalize your Friend, Follow and Connection Requests, say no to Auto-DMs on Twitter, and develop new online relationships authentically. Don’t think you can FRAM like mad, never bother to check the youtube links your buddy proudly sent of her kidlet’s concert, and then expect favors, shares and RTs (Re-Tweets on Twitter).  Keeping it social is keeping it reciprocal. Friendship is a two-way conversation, not a Me-megaphone. 

Guru’s Note: Please send me your favorite E-Hole stories. Were you an Accidental E-Hole? Do you know an Intentional E-Hole? Do tell all. Email me at: hello@guruofnew.com or post a comment. Thank you!