It was a great honor to be named Person of the Year by TIME magazine. Charles Lindbergh was the first. It honored the American Fighting Man in 1950. Albert Einstien was named Person of the Century.
It was a brand. A marketing brand that indicated a great honor. It was somewhat controversial at times. Ayatollah Khomeini was named one year. Adolf Hitler was named in the 30's.
It didn't mean you were the most admired, just that you were the most influential person that year.
Now, I don't really care who is named person of the year. However, from a marketing standpoint, I think the decsion to name EVERYONE in the world Person of the Year is just stupid.
It is a joke now. YOU, yes you are TIME's Person of the Year. Put it on your resume. Shout it from the rooftops. YOU are now as important as Albert Einstien and Rudy Giuliani. Even if you just sit at home and eat potato chips and watch The Game Show network. Even if you are a rapist or a murderer.
So they just destroyed the brand. Only a few could say they were Person of the Year. Now anyone can. So where is the honor for the person named next year?
Ugh. This is such a socialist/communist thing to do.
Okay, enough rant. I have to contact CNN to see if they want an interview with a bona-fide TIME Magazine Person of the Year.
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5 comments:
I do not agree, even though I think "person of the year" is silly anyway. Time jumped the shark on that one years ago.
But you have to admit that their idea that CONSUMER GENERATED CONTENT IS CHANGING THE WORLD is more accurate than not. Bloggers are scooping major news stories, Open Source software is challenging Microsoft for dominance, and sites like Flickr are bringing home scenes from the world to our doorstep.
Still, this would have been MORE accurate the year Bush won his second term, and Dan Rather got fired largely due to Blogs.
The point of Person of the Year (which I agree they sold out years ago) is not to point out that CONSUMER GENERATED MEDIA IS CHANGING THE WORLD. The point is to honor an individual who has impacted the world in a specific way.
From a branding standpoint, they killed the brand. TIME and other news magazines are relics from a different age. They can't break news anymore, they can only offer exclusive interviews, and even then it will probably be leaked on the internet before the magazine comes out. They can do "in depth" stories, but NPR does that every night.
So this was one thing they had as a brand that they could point to, a prestigeous honor. And now... they killed that brand.
[[The point is to honor an individual who has impacted the world in a specific way.]]
No, I would argue the point was to select a person who represented a specific event or trend that was significant in the last year. I agree they would have been better chosing a specific blogger or Open Source developer (maybe Linux Tovalds) but this does not seem all wrong.
Well, regardless, they didn't choose someone who represented a trend. They chose everyone.
I honestly don't think most people deserve that. Even those who are bloggers or YouTube users don't deserve it. Frankly, who cares if you have a blog and can spout your opinion to everyone. There are other things that happened in this world that are MUCH more important. Iran's kooky PM is one idea. We may end up in WWIII because of him. And he has also accomplished the task of making hte US look impotent and out of touch in the world at large. No mean feat.
Anyway, you can disagree, but I still think it was a branding fiasco and a joke. I say that as one Person of the Year winner to another.
Pssst! You may enjoy this as well: http://gigliwood.com/weblog/General/You_really_ARE_Time.html
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