Have you heard about the just-published book, THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST: The Final Four of Everything? It’s a fun read where the authors have mocked-up NCAA March Madness-style brackets as a systematic way for “…parsing people, places and things to determine what is good, better, best in the world.”
The authors have invited “subject matter experts” to fill out these brackets with such offbeat categories as the Best Game Show Catch Phrases, Best Sports Rivalries, Best Guilty Pleasures, Best Plastic Surgery Disasters, etc. Fun stuff made even more fun at their DailyBracket website where you can submit your own bracket creations.
Since this is “Bracketology Season,” I thought it would be interesting to compile a Marketing Bloggers Bracketlogy chart parsing through a list of 64 somewhat-randomly chosen marketing blogs to find the BEST marketing blog. (Please note, this list was put together as something whimsical and not meant to be the final judgment on which marketing blog is really the best.)
I’ve whittled down the 64 marketing blogs I chose to include in my bracket to a FINAL FOUR. Three #1 seeds made it to my Final Four and one Cinderella seed made it. Seth Godin’s blog (#1 seed) takes on The Church of the Customer (#1 seed) in one match-up. The “winner” of that contest will face the winner between Creating Passionate Users (#1 seed) versus Marketing Profs Daily Fix (#3 seed).
You can access my full bracket by clicking on the image below to open it as a PDF.
I’ll post the results from my Marketing Bloggers Bracketology Chart on Monday of next week. In the meantime, you can also create your own chart by using this TEMPLATE (.xls). It would be fun to see a slew of other Marketing Bloggers Bracketology charts out there.
John,
Making the first round is a great honor. Thank you. Great list of bloggers. Very creative. Go Gators! (Sorry, as a proud alum, I couldn't resist.)
Posted by: Lewis Green | March 26, 2007 at 01:08 PM
I could totally take Seth.
Posted by: Paul (from Idea Sandbox) | March 26, 2007 at 01:48 PM
John:
I had to read just for the fun of figuring out what your title meant. And I am in the South, with you ;-) Even more interesting is that today I finally updated my blogroll and added yours in.
What an interesting find. I'm almost thinking left and right brain from the two halves... this could go places even for those who end up not making it to be champion.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | March 26, 2007 at 04:52 PM
This is good stuff, plus I am always looking to expand my blogroll. Did you think of this on vacation? :)
Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Matt Ellsworth | March 26, 2007 at 05:14 PM
johnmoore - Honored to be part of your southern bracket. Realize this may be off topic .. but since Creating Passionate Users is a #1 seed .. seemed appropriate to ask your community to support Kathy. http://tinyurl.com/7dncl
Posted by: Toby | March 26, 2007 at 07:51 PM
Wait a sec. Where's Brand Autopsy?
Posted by: Ann Handley | March 26, 2007 at 09:05 PM
Ann ... Stephen Denny's Note To CMO blog upended Brand Autopsy in the Sweet Sixteen. Drats.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | March 26, 2007 at 09:25 PM
Well THAT must have been a catfight.
Posted by: Ann Handley | March 26, 2007 at 09:55 PM
John,
What a fun way to spotlight many excellent marketing blogs! I'm thrilled to be included...and if someone has to get the best of me, I'm proud to fall to CK!
I'm rooting for Marketing Profs -- it seems quite right in the blogosphere for a compilation of incredible individual bloggers to take the crown!
This is great -- thank you for sharing it with us!
Drew
Posted by: Drew McLellan | March 26, 2007 at 11:03 PM
John,
I feel honored just getting invited to the big dance. I have absolutely no doubt Creating Passionate Users whooped my butt big time. Hey there is always next year.. :) Thanks again for the include...
Cord
Posted by: Cord Silverstein | March 27, 2007 at 12:43 AM
I am putting this under protest. I was robbed! :)
Posted by: Paul McEnany | March 27, 2007 at 01:18 AM
Damn, I can only hope for an invitation to the NIT? So much for being a mid-major. ;)
Posted by: Patrick McGraw | March 27, 2007 at 06:05 AM
Pat ... doing an "NIT Marketing Blogs" bracket is a brilliant idea. You can use the same bracket template (excel file) I used -- it's included in the post. Have at it.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | March 27, 2007 at 08:28 AM
How fun! I found it hard to root for anyone in particular, especially since you pitted a couple of my friends against each other, but for the record, Paul was ABSOLUTELY robbed. ;)
Posted by: Cam Beck | March 27, 2007 at 10:54 AM
This looks great...but of course the devil is in the details. Can I ask how the brackets and seeds were picked? It would have been interesting to segment the brackets based on expertise (e.g. branding, user-centric) with 1-2 general brackets?
Were the seeds picked based on any website traffic rankings? That would have been a good proxie for the popularity/polls.
Then; it would have been interesting to have a daily run-off where people to your site actually picked the head-to-head winners. That truly gives the Cinderella team a chance to come out of nowhere to win. It also would have forced all of us to visit some of the sites and find out what they have going on. With a little advance notice there' no telling what type of game-post they could have come up with!
All that said; great post!
Posted by: NW Guy | March 27, 2007 at 12:55 PM
NW Guy ... I ain't about Technorati rankings or anything close to an RPI rating for marketing blogs. The Todd And’s Power 150 List and Mack's Top 25 list are all over the rankings. Nothing analytical or statistical about how I seeded my tournament bracket. Strictly off-the-cuff. I thought about the whole voting idea but didn’t think I could devote the time needed to make that idea happen.
However … it looks like Jeff Jaffe is doing a Most Valuable Blog March Madness tournament with voting from Jaffe Juice readers.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | March 27, 2007 at 01:22 PM
John, I am humbled and psyched to have lost out to you. For the record, though, it is Flooring The Consumer [rather than the Customer - altho we're splitting hairs]. Really fun concept, and another opportunity to discover other great marketing blogs. Thanks very much!
Posted by: C.B. Whittemore | March 27, 2007 at 09:58 PM
John,
Great idea. I put up my own bracket for blawgs, i.e. legal related blogs.
Posted by: Alvin Borromeo | March 28, 2007 at 02:12 PM
Alvin ... I saw your Blawgs Bracket. Nice. Thanks for picking up the ball and running with it. It's kinda cool to see a 64-slot bracket filled up with interesting blogs.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | March 28, 2007 at 02:24 PM
As the 1st blog to go up against Seth, I was really looking for the amazing Cinderella story. But as with my real brackets...it never happened. Oh well....there's always next year. Thanks for indluding me, John.
Posted by: Chris Houchens | March 28, 2007 at 09:52 PM
Dude - Church of the Customer takes Jaffe Juice? Did you not count the hanging chads???
The real March Blogness will kick off on Jaffe Juice today. We've just seeded the 32 competing blogs and will pair the match-ups for voting this morning...
Posted by: jJ | March 29, 2007 at 06:19 AM
I'll be trying to do almost the same marketing blog playoffs in next weeks for italy. Thanks for great idea :)
gluca
Posted by: [mini]marketing.it | April 06, 2007 at 09:44 AM
i hope its useful to you..
we provide all the stuff related to march madness like 2008 March madness schedule, march madness picks, march madness predictions, free 2008 march madness picks , march madness betting odds , march madness handicapping , march madness bracket picks , and more ncaa tournament information. Bookmark us and visit everyday during the 2008 march madness tournament , as we are the best source for NCAA Basketball March madness schedule information, march madness picks , and 2008 March madness predictions .
Posted by: sandhu | February 28, 2008 at 04:17 AM