Hands up (okay, blogs up) anyone who can tell me in one sentence what Cherryflava is all about.
I thought so.
“Trends and innovation”. You mean like Sasol’s human resources strategy or the new Merc? “Seriously passionate about fresh thinking.” You mean, like new ways of using sex to sell groceries? Or how about, “a web magazine dedicated to hot new trends emerging in business, marketing, advertising and fresh thinking that’s igniting a creative revolution”? That’s under the logo on the blog, and it still doesn’t tell us what makes Cherryflava special.
And that is precisely why its creator, John Cherry, is our blogging Player of the Week. He has created a hub of entertainment and intrigue, attracting marketing geeks (for that’s the real focus of Cherryflava) and mainstream readers alike, even though they don’t quite know what they’re doing there. That’s some achievement in a world where we are always being told to differentiate, focus and become niched.
And he does make a living from the business, but not all revenue comes from “the visible online operation”.
Now before you get the idea that the only criterion for Blogger of the Week is mixing blogging up with the mainstream, here are a few more credentials for Mr Cherry:
He also has a gossip blog, but Amablogoblogo is superstitious about getting too close to the hotel heiress or her chihuahua bitch. So for fear of stepping in their trash, I won’t even mention the blog’s name (instead, you can buy a purse shaped like a dead chihuahua at the Boingboing blog — no relation to Cherryflava).
John confesses to his first-ever blog entry, on January 3 2004, being about the weather, and it embarrasses him most awful (the URL can be obtained in exchange for filthy or laundered lucre). However, he has had compensations since then: “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the blog would clear one million page views and I’d still be posting nearly four years later,” he says.
But he doesn’t have a choice in the matter: “It’s now an official vice (like coffee and smokes).”
John Cherry is the kind of blogger who can blog anything. Most of us are one-trick bloggers, who come up with a dazzling idea, start a blog, post once and then leave a ghost blog in the graveyard of lost posts. John gives us hope that there is life after that first, misguided post about the weather.
What is especially appealing about Cherryflava is the way in which it ropes in the blogging community, offering a real sense of, well, community, across its various operations, which it jointly styles as South Africa’s “first micropublishing company”.
The sites are put together by the following people, who each earn an Amablogoblogo cap:
He has new plans in the pipeline, but “for now it’s all about consolidation and upgrading the existing infrastructure. It may be time for some brand extension.”
The question that always worries me about heavy-hitting bloggers is whether they have a life, or whether they believe online is real life. John does not want me to have sleepless nights worrying about him: “Oh, no — online is just an easier place to start things, there are still many real-world projects to come.”
You have been warned … er, blogged.
Feel free to submit nominations for blogging Player of the Week here or to my email address.
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