Every time I visit a particular convenience store, I wince at the repeated announcement of its Web site: "Eichi chi chi pi koron surashu surashu daburyu daburyu daburyu dotto . . . " It is supposed to be such a cutting-edge play, but it only reminds me of how clumsy the analog world can be, and of how far it is from the digital domain.
Sure, everyone's hawking Web sites -- on the subways, in the back seats of taxis, on grocery store shelves, on TV programs and radio shows. And in conference rooms, everyone's babbling about "Web presence," "spiral marketing," "offline/online synergy." Gotta get the word out. Gotta add value. Gotta drive those eyeballs online.
Above all, gotta be creative. They know how to do that in San Francisco, where free shopping bags plastered with dot-com solicitations are being offered to brick-and-mortar stores. You think Tokyo's ad buses are fun? Autowraps.com should impress. This company pays people to transform their private cars into mobile ads. (But what happens if a Yahoo! does a hit-and-run?)