I’ve dis­cussed this idea numer­ous times with friends and col­leagues of mine and each time it becomes clear, no mat­ter how many opin­ions are thrown in the ring, that blog­ging has evolved into some­thing dif­fer­ent. It’s no longer just a per­sonal log to gather — in a col­lec­tive dig­i­tal bin — thoughts and obser­va­tions, rather, blog­ging by def­i­n­i­tion is now con­sid­ered a work­ing port­fo­lio for prospec­tive job opportunities.

Over the course of the past year, the term blog­ging has seeped into the media as either the new face of jour­nal­ism, more specif­i­cally a tour de force of inde­pen­dent writ­ers cut­ting the fat from what would oth­er­wise be edited mate­r­ial, or a threat to main­stream media.

Whether you believe blog­ging is the new wave of jour­nal­ism or a creep­ing threat isn’t the point, it’s that despite all that, it’s mostly a medium in which cre­ative types (writ­ers, edu­ca­tors, artists, web devel­op­ers, speak­ers, etc.) can express them­selves and poten­tially col­lab­o­rate, whether it be dis­cus­sions that add new lev­els of thought to the mate­r­ial (be it an arti­cle or pho­to­graph) or bet­ter yet, cre­ate some­thing with a more tan­gi­ble grasp of bet­ter­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and human interaction.

At this point it’s all opin­ion, nei­ther right or wrong, but, it’s some­thing to think about if you ever won­der why blog­ging has become so main­stream and why from here on out it’ll only (hope­fully) evolve into some­thing far beyond our cur­rent lev­els of comprehension.

As a kid, I remem­ber the Kee­bler Elve’s com­mer­cials quite fondly. At the time I never really under­stood the con­nec­tion between the elves and Kee­bler, but I had no knowl­edge at that age of a key com­po­nent of mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing; branding.

Accord­ing to the Kee­bler Brands web site, the Kee­bler elves (includ­ing the main elf him­self, Ernie Kee­bler) are among the most rec­og­nized char­ac­ters in adver­tis­ing, right up there with Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Bud Light’s Spud MacKenzie.

The elves are sup­posed to sym­bol­ize ded­i­ca­tion, gen­eros­ity and good-naturedness as they work in a hol­low tree churn­ing out end­less amounts of Uncom­monly Good® prod­ucts, which include mainly snack items like cook­ies and crackers.

Paul David­son, author of Con­sumer Joe, recently blogged about whether or not it’d be bet­ter to be a Oompa Loompa or Kee­bler Elf;

Let me put it to you this way. Would you rather spend each and every day danc­ing around like a clown, singing songs for stuck-up chil­dren on a tour of your bosses’ choco­late facil­ity, con­stantly bend­ing at the knees (ouch, arthri­tis!), con­stantly hav­ing to wear weird flourescently-decorated striped M.C. Ham­mer stretch pants, and singing in rhyme… OR… Would you rather work in a nice lit­tle for­est, in a great house built into a tree (phat, baby!), and come up with great new and excit­ing ideas for cook­ies, crack­ers and other sweet treats which you, your­self, will always get credit for?

It breaks down this way. Would you rather be a slave or an entrepreneur?

It’s inter­est­ing how these lit­tle elves are per­me­nantly ingrained in our minds as “do good­ers”, the per­fect worker, tiny entre­pre­neurs who do one thing right; cre­at­ing sug­ary good­ness for sweet-toothed consumption.

I don’t know about you, but every time I pass by a Kee­bler pack­age sit­ting there on the shelf I often won­der if a Kee­bler elf might’ve acci­dently fallen in, wait­ing there for me to pur­chase the box so I can take him home and release him back into the wild to con­tinue his (or her) quest for snack good dominance.