Everyone can tell when a product, idea or program has got good buzz, but so few organizations really know how to get people talking and keep them talking. I know I’m confused. Do I need to talk to early adopters, mavens, cool folk, networkers, influentials, or hairstylists? Need a little clarity yourself? Check out Five Common Misconceptions About Buzz Marketing. In this extended tutorial, author Emanuel Rosen clears up some common misthinks about how organizations can “engage consumers in conversation,” and create lasting buzz.

PS: Please send this post to your entire email list and tell them we’re really cool.

Michelle Hensley, artistic director of Minneapolis-based Ten Thousand Things Theater Company, has won the 2005 Francesca Primus Prize, a national award recognizing outstanding accomplishments by female artists in theater. Hensley, 46, will accept the $10,000 prize later this month at the National Critics Conference in Los Angeles. She is the first non-playwright to win the award. The company’s core patrons are those in prisons, urban community centers, senior high rises and other audiences not generally exposed to theater. Right on! Now that’s what I call outreach. Congratulations Michelle!

Reblog from hintmag:

“Godzilla, Hello Kitty and her fellow feline Doraemon are among the cast of characters making an appearance in Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture, an exhibition at the Japan Society that’s packed with all the punch of a pachinko parlor. However, much more than just fun and games, the show reveals what lies beneath the candy-colored surface.

Curated by Japan’s neo-Pop answer to Warhol, the artist and intermittent Louis Vuitton handbag designer Takashi Murakami, Little Boy is out to show that the cutesy critters, doe-eyed prepubescents and science fiction fantasies that permeate Japan’s pop culture are a deeply embedded response to World War II and its aftermath