In business, people spend a great deal of time and money evaluating risk. It's one of those things they teach in MBA school.
But are we looking at risk in the right way?
According to the American Bar Association, there were 1,143,358 resident and active attorneys in the United States in 2007 (the most recent data I could quickly find). That's over a million people, many of them advising businesses on what to avoid because it is risky.
They lawyers say things like: "Don't let people blog and tweet because they may say something that gets the company in trouble." As I wrote last week, lawyers clamping down is especially true in highly regulated industries.
From the legal perspective, saying "no" might make sense (it avoids lawsuits). But thinking about risk in totality (instead of just what the lawyers think) is saying no the right way to do business? Frequently the businesses and the people saying "yes" to risk are the ones that succeed.
When the perceived risk is low, we tend to do okay evaluating a situation. Yes, it is risky to fly to the business meeting (the plane may crash) but we figure the risk is worth taking.
But when the risk seems high (starting a business or quitting your job to go freelance) we are unable to accurately evaluate the risk.
I think this is because we humans fail to evaluate the risk of staying the course. We don't evaluate the risk in *NOT* starting the business or keeping the job at the big company.
How's that big stable company working out for you?
Perhaps your parents advised you to get a degree from a good university and then work for a nice, stable, well-known company. We're told that is the least risky path. But is it?
If you worked for Lehman Brothers or Washington Mutual or Enron or your company had to downsize or your division was acquired or manufacturing moved to Laos or your boss thought you were too smart and therefore a threat or the company moved to Atlanta or you hit 50 years old or any number of other scenarios - BOOM - you were out of a job. Unemployed.
When you put yourself at the mercy of an employer, you have significant risk. When you work in an industry in decline, you have significant risk.
The flip side of risk
In my experience, people fail to evaluate the risk of taking the opposite course. They look at risk without thinking the problem all the way through.
What is the risk of *not* starting your business this year?
What is the risk of *not* letting your employees communicate via Facebook?
What is the risk of *not* taking a few years off to travel with your rock band?
What is the risk of *not* learning that new skill?
What is the risk of *not* quitting your job and going freelance?
Consider the opening line of this blog post again: "Don't do that, it's too risky."
Maybe the better statement is: "You had better do that, because it's too risky not to."
On the global speaking circuit, I frequently get pushback from audience members who work in highly regulated industries. They claim, erroneously, that laws like HIPAA and regulations like those from the SEC and the FDA forbid them from creating valuable content on the Web or engaging in social media.
Nonsense!
This is just a fear-based excuse perpetuated by lawyers in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and financial services industries who want to avoid risk at all cost.
Ignoring the data
The fear is particularly shortsighted when considering the data on how people make decisions related to their health. Last week I delivered a talk at the National Healthcare Marketing Summit and had an opportunity to meet many marketers who are happily reaching their audiences with valuable information because they live in reality not fear.
According to data presented at the conference by Tim McGuire from Greenville Hospital System, Bill Moschella of eVariant, and Anne Theis of Salem Health, 80% of Internet users look up health information online.
More than three out of four people use the Web to make healthcare decisions!
Yet 64% of hospital marketing departments devote less than 25% of their marketing budget to interactive. Even more telling is how hospital marketers spend their time. 83% of hospitals devote less than 30% of staff time to interactive media.
This is ridiculous.
The fearful lawyers say “no” to the 80% of customers and potential customers who use the Web to research health? Fear means that hospital marketers are busy making brochures and TV ads instead of creating Web content?
Can your organization afford such a disconnect?!
Learning from Chris Boyer and Inova Health System
For example, Chris Boyer, Director, Digital Communications and Marketing, Inova Health System is doing a terrific job. Inova is Northern Virginia's leading not-for-profit healthcare provider, serving more than 1 million people each year.
Under Chris' leadership, Inova is active on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest (and more). You can see all the social platforms on this page, which also has information on Inova's social media policies. In addition, Chris has a personal blog (as do others in the organization).
But it the content that Inova publishes to reach specific buyer personas that interests me the most. For example, there is a Life with Cancer site that contains valuable information for patients and their families.
In the last two years, Chris has transformed the Inova organization to be more focused on creating relevant content. I asked a bunch of questions so that we can all learn from his efforts.
"We take a lot of time understanding who our viewers are and actually write different types of content for different types of users," Chris told me. "Patients are using our patient and visitor information so they're looking for specifics about how to make their stay easier and we write with them in mind. Other people view our services and all the different clinical stuff that we provide at Inova. They could either be referring physicians who want to research what we're doing here or there could be consumers who are actually shopping for healthcare and we want to provide them content that's appropriate for them. It is written so that they don't have read through pages and pages of clinical content to get to the crux of what they're looking for."
Hire journalists
Chris manages the digital marketing and communications team, including a handful of editors and web graphics professionals as well as several part-timers.
A full time social medial manager on the team focuses on social media channels, although there's a lot of content interaction and cross-publication efforts because the lines between social media and the website are blurring tremendously at Inova.
Long-time readers of this blog know that I frequently talk about hiring journalists to create content. Professional reporters and editors, more than marketers and PR people, are the best staffers for content sites because they understand how to tell a story and don't fall back on product pitching. That's exactly what Inova has done.
"The two main editors for our website are actually former journalists," Chris says. "So they have experience in terms of writing; of course, they started in traditional media. But in the last few years, they migrated over to focus exclusively on online journalism and communications."
Manage fear
I wanted to know how Chris has dealt with the whole "fear" thing. Why has he been successful in hiring journalists and creating content when so many other management teams and legal departments simply say: "no".
"Healthcare organizations typically are very conservative in how they market or communicate about their services," he says. The main concern of management was that a shift to content marketing would mean a shift away from what they thought were the key differentiators of Inova Health System in the market that attract the best physicians. "It took a long time for us to educate that the existing content is not being lost, we're just providing it to each audience in the appropriate places. There will be pages for consumers, pages for physicians that are looking to refer or be employed here. It took a while for them to be comfortable with that."
Measure success
What about the whole ROI thing? With a team of people, there are significant resources devoted to this effort. Is it paying off?
"We use tools like Vocus to measure effectiveness," Chris says. "But I also manage, as part of my larger responsibilities, our CRM team and our customer relationship management database. So I've been creating a social media strategy that is aligned with our customer relationship management database so I can actually measure downstream utilization and ROI of our social media activity."
Chris is a bit of a social media ROI rockstar and was even filmed at a Mayo Clinic conference singing his Social Media ROI Rag.
Chris has three specific areas that he measures:
New patients. How many people become patients who first connected online either through content on the Website or social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
How much money can be saved by using online tools. For example the existing Inova nursing communications is a printed newsletter that goes out to all nursing staff and it costs $80,000 a year to produce. So converting over to a blog they means eliminating that expense while increasing readership.
Long-term patient engagement and wellness. Chris measures patients (or potential patients) who get involved wellness programs. For example, Inova has email communications focused on how to have a healthy heart, how to eat well, and the like. He’s looking for people who stay healthy because of the information they consume and how that effects things like re-admittance rates.
Advice to the fearful
With all of his success, I wanted Chris to provide suggestions to people in other regulated businesses.
"Realize that you don't have to transform your entire organization all at once," he says. "I found a lot of success in focusing on areas where there are some obvious opportunities and used social communications in those areas. Try something and see how it's working. You're gaining valuable expertise and understanding about how to use the tools. Eventually in most organizations once you introduce social communications to your portfolio, very quickly you'll start to see how it will start to augment, if not replace, some of the current ways that you're communicating."
No excuses
As Chris shows, content marketing is alive and well in highly regulated industries.
Isn't it time for your organization to eliminate fear?
UPDATE - May 9, 2012 - Alison from @Acura_Insider commented (the 22nd comment down). Please be sure to read her explanation about what happened as you consider this story.
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This afternoon, Renee tweeted me from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival because she knows I am a big live music fan.
I tweeted her back using the #JazzFest2012 hashtag.
Which resulted in a tweet from @Acura_Insider "Acura's official Twitter account. Get the inside scoop & other Acura news. On duty: Alison w/ Acura PR."
This linked to a PURL that offered me a VIP experience at Jazzfest. (In case the PURL has been removed by the time you read this, I have reproduced it below).
Checking the @Acura_Insider Twitter ID, I note that there are hundreds of people who received such a spam message directed at them. In fact, the account is in broadcast only mode. There is no interaction at all, no humans involved. For the past two days the account has been generating hundreds of examples of this nonsense. (I have included a screenshot below).
This is spam. Plain and simple.
Just to be sure, I tweeted back to @Acura_Insider and got nothing. It would appear that nobody is monitoring their feed (heck it's a weekend, why would they be checking Twitter).
I'm not at #JazzFest2012 and anyone can see that from my tweet back to Renee.
I'm sure Acura spent a boatload of money sponsoring Jazz Fest. And they probably paid an agency a bunch of money for this campaign.
Actually, this could have been an interesting use of Twitter had a human been involved. I go to music festivals and it can get hot and I can get tired. If I tweeted that I was tired at #JazzFest2012 and then I got a tweet back inviting me to the VIP area, I would be kinda psyched. I might have taken them up on the offer. Then if I enjoyed it I would have talked it up. That would have worked.
But this machine-generated stuff is not a good way for Acura to generate attention. The negative feelings of those who are spammed far outweigh the good vibes of Acura being onsite.
Today when I checked out the Google News headlines as I do several times a day, I noticed a new feature.
Now, for each breaking story covered, there is a button called See realtime coverage. Clicking the button brings you to the latest news.
This is a cool development. As I've said for several years now the most significant development on the Web is the rise of real-time.
Social media are tools. Real-Time is a mindset.
As I write this, a breaking business story this morning is about Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson and the inaccurate educational information found in his biography. Clicking over to the real-time coverage of this story shows what the latest mainstream media journalists and bloggers are saying. (Note that if you are reading this much after the breaking stories in early May 2012, you may not see any real-time news so I include screen shots in this post.)
If you're clever and you understand how journalists scramble to file breaking news stories quickly, you can insert your ideas into the mix.
Think about this story for a moment. Who might newsjack it?
An expert in executive recruitment could blog their take on finding a new CEO.
An ethics professor could do a YouTube video with thoughts for CEOs about honesty.
An employment law expert could create a discussion document on the legal ramifications of this situation.
A securities analyst could give the stock price ramifications via an instant PDF report.
What ideas do you have? Get it out there now because now is the time. Journalists are looking for additional angles on this story right now.
The new Google News real-time feature is ideal for Newsjacking. Do what I do and check out Google News a few times a day to see what’s going down and consider how you can add to that discussion.
Back in the day, the only way to easily communicate with your public was to use mainstream media and analysts as your mouthpieces. So the public relations department and the agencies they employed spent a great deal of effort convincing editors, reporters and analysts that your company was one worth talking up.
Prior to the Web, there wasn't an efficient way for organizations to communicate directly to the public.
What's the role of public relations in the new world of the web?
There has been an explosion of channels that organizations can reach their audience directly with valuable online content: videos, ebooks, white papers, photos, infographics, and more – and then have that information shared in social networks.
However, many PR professionals still operate as if their only conduit is mainstream media.
Apologies if you've heard this because I've talked about this many times in the past. But there are still many holdouts so I say it again.
Don't confuse the superset (public relations = reaching the public with your information) with the subset (media relations = using the media to tell your story) and therefore insist that PR is only about mainstream media.
What you need to realize is that these are different activities. Media relations is still valid as a way to get attention. Who doesn't want to be quoted in an important newspaper, magazine, or television broadcast?
Today there are so many other ways to communicate with your publics
If your organization operates this outdated way, my recommendation is to re-name your public relations department the media relations department to reflect what they really do.
In this new world, smart PR pros realize they have a tremendous opportunity if they can effectively communicate directly with the public. They are transforming themselves into content creators. However, most are still operating in the traditional press release and pitching mentality.
If you're an entrepreneur or executive, don't put your PR department in charge of content creation for your company (unless they understand completely the power of the new world).
On April 6, 2010 after a two year fight Amanda Palmer finally freed herself from her record deal with Roadrunner Records. For the seven years prior to her label divorce, anything she had written and recorded (either solo or with her band, The Dresden Dolls) has technically been owned and under the ultimate control of the label.
As I write this, within two days, more than 6,000 people have backed the project with an incredible $350,000. And there are 29 days to go. (Each time I refresh Amanda’s Kickstarter page, the total grows.)
One fan at a time
Amanda connects with her fans every day and has built a tremendous fan base. She's very active on social networks - 550,000+ Twitter followers at @AmandaPalmer for example. Her site is a great example of a content rich resource for fans and her blog is always a great read (often with hundreds of comments on a post).
Amanda writes: "since i'm now without a giant label to front the gazillions of dollars that it always takes to manufacture and promote a record this big, i'm coming to you to gather funds so that i have the capital to put it out with a huge fucking bang. i think kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms like this are the BEST way to put out music right now - no label, no rules, no fuss, no muss. just us, the music, and the art. i'm also making sure EVERY PRODUCT sold through this kickstarter is unique to this campaign, to reward all of you who KNEW ME WHEN and were willing to support me from Day One."
There are packages starting at just $1 (a digital download of the album) to $10,000 (dinner with Amanda plus all sorts of extras). I dig the $5,000 level, which includes Amanda coming to your house for a party. The package I chose was a pledge of $300 and includes tickets to a VIP party and intimate show with Amanda and the band in Boston (there are similar options in other cities).
We are the media: Amanda Palmer and the future of music
In just a few days, Amanda has raised more money via her fans than she would have gotten from her label for producing her album. And she retains complete control. Who knows how much she might end up with at the end of the month?
To succeed at this technique, a musician has got to build a fan base one person at a time. Social media is a great way to connect before and after the live gig, but the personal connection is essential.
"Being a touring musician means meeting fans," Amanda told me. "I go out and meet fans after every gig. It's important to make contact in real life and not just online in social media like Twitter. If you don't meet fans in real life too, then you're a fraud. If you're not comfortable getting into the sweat with them and talking with people at shows, then how can you do it successfully online? I love connecting with fans. Speaking to people at the merchandise table after the show is great. I can stay there forever."
The future of your business
If you read this blog, you know that I am a huge live music fan. I see parallels to all kinds of businesses – including yours.
While your work may be completely different from that of a rock star, Amanda has something to teach you.
Your product comes first and must be created with passion. You’ve got to engage with your customers on a human level. Social networking can help you build your fan base. And if you do these things well, you can build a great company and a fantastic career.
Last month I wrote a post called Tough love for marketing and PR job seekers. In it I challenged you to prove you are a great marketer by showing, not telling. I said that you need to create content that will brand you as someone to hire. Now. Starting today.
I've delivered this advice to hundreds of people. Sadly for them, I know from experience that nearly all ignore this advice.
Lindsey Kirchoff, as I write this a graduating senior at Tufts University, is in the tiny minority. She eagerly took up the challenge and started a terrific blog How to Market to Me.
In her blog, Lindsey offers her opinions on how to market to millennials like her. She says: It's my opinion. It's about the advertisements that "get" me as a collegiate and twentysomething consumer. The companies that understand my values, participate in my humor and reach me when/where I’m most likely to need them. It's also about companies that don't do any of those things and how they can better reach me (and people like me) in the future.
Lindsey is currently on the hunt for a job at a mid-to-large marketing firm with a strong entry level program to help her really learn the industry. She says: "And I wouldn’t complain if I could relocate to somewhere sunny (I’m looking at you Austin, San Francisco and Nashville)."
If I was hiring new graduates, I'd jump to hire Lindsey before anyone else does.
After my speech at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in July, 2011, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of interns at Microsoft.
I provided the same advice I offered to Lindsey about getting a great first marketing job. Part of the discussion was filmed and I offer it here.
If you know someone looking for that first marketing or PR job, please share this post with them.
Disclosure: I got to know Lindsey because my book The New Rules of Marketing and PR is used at Tufts and I reached out to a professor there looking to hire an intern on a project for the Massachusetts Air and Space Museum. Lindsey has been working directly with me on that project.
This week "Marley," the new Bob Marley documentary hits the screens in many countries. Naturally, the official U.S. release date is 4/20. The film is terrific and I have a small role in finally telling the reggae legend’s story on film.
While in New York City after a gig at Madison Square Garden, Bob Marley learned that he had terminal brain cancer. He headed to Pittsburgh anyway, travelling by bus with his band The Wailers for a gig at the Stanley Theater two days later in what turned out to be his final concert on September 23, 1980.
Road Trip
On that same day 32 years ago I also road tripped to the Stanley Theater to be at the show, although nobody in the crowd knew what the world would learn soon after, that Marley was very, very sick.
I was a sophomore at Kenyon College in Ohio at the time. Having grown up a rock kid in the suburbs of New York City, I was already a concert veteran by then, having caught dozens of bands like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, The Ramones, Black Sabbath, Frank Zappa, and the Grateful Dead plus classic blues artists like Muddy Waters and Albert King.
But when I first heard Bob Marley blasting from my friend Ned’s dorm room at the beginning of freshman year, it was like nothing I had heard before. I was hooked and bonded immediately with the others partaking in Marley’s music and all that goes with it.
My friends and I just had to be at that Stanley Theater show, so we drove four hours to catch it. For some reason, I felt compelled to borrow a friend's excellent camera outfit complete with telephoto lens. It was a cosmic thing because I had never brought my own camera to a show before. Since the big Canon looked "official" back in the days of film cameras, the staff let me fire away from anywhere I wanted. Somehow I managed to focus the unfamiliar camera even though we had "prepared" for the show for the entire drive.
The show was epic. The i-Threes opened (Marley's wife Rita Marley, plus Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths) and I still recall them swaying in time to the music. They did three songs before Bob came out to thunderous applause. He was dancing the entire 90 minute show except for the acoustic "Redemption Song" which he performed laid back and solo. They did three encores as if Bob just didn't want to leave the stage. Nobody in the audience knew that Bob was sick. His energy level was extremely high and he had total command of the audience.
My resulting photos didn't see the light of day for several decades. Then 2 years ago, the Marley family released a live album of that Stanley Theater show.
Content drives action
When I noticed that the photos used in the live album packaging were not actually from the Stanley gig, I left a message in my Amazon review of the CD: "If anyone from the label reads this, I have some great photos from the show."
Little did I know that a film was in the works from Academy Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald.
"One of the challenges with Bob is that there's so little great archive footage," says Macdonald. Marley's last show was a critical aspect of the film and there was no video or photo record... except mine.
The weird vibe of borrowing the camera and reviewing the CD came full circle when the filmmakers, who had read those reviews, contacted me.
I'm not trying to make a marketing lesson out of this story, but had I not posted content in the form of that Amazon review of the CD, the world would never have seen photos of Bob Marley's last concert.
"Of course you can use my photos!," I said. And for a little added ego boost, I got a credit in the film.
"Marley" is a terrific film even if you aren’t a fan. My wife watched the screener with me and she loved it too.
Bob Marley's universal appeal, impact on music history and role as a social and political prophet has only grown in the past three decades. "Marley," is the definitive life story of the musician, revolutionary, and legend, from his early days to his rise to international superstardom. Made with the support of the Marley family, the film features rare footage, incredible performances and revelatory interviews with the people that knew him best.
Bob Marley's music became an important part of my life. So much so that on a visit to Jamaica in the mid-1980s, I even traveled several hours by car to Bob's childhood home in the village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish.
"I think what's great about the film," says Bob's oldest son, David "Ziggy" Marley, "is though there's been a lot of things done on Bob, I think this one will give people a more emotional connection to Bob's life as a man. Not just as a reggae legend or a mythical figure, but his life as a man, you know? The struggles he went through."
Ziggy is right. The film does provide an emotional connection to Bob Marley. I'm amazed that through some remarkable serendipity and cosmic 420 vibes, I played a small part in bringing this story to the world.
open cycle, the new project from Gerard Vroomen, officially launches today.
Back in 2006 when I was looking for interesting examples of companies for inclusion in the first edition of The New Rules of Marketing and PR (now in its third edition) a cycling friend told me about Cervelo. I checked out the site and quickly learned Cervelo was a content marketing pioneer so I interviewed Gerard, a co-founder of the company.
Back then, Gerard told me that he is an engineer, not a marketer. He said that Cervelo does not have any marketing experts.
Yet, in the past six years, Cervelo has generated much more attention than their bigger rivals and has grown quickly into one of the most important bike companies in the world.
Yes, Cervelo has awesome products used by the top road racers and triathletes. But the content on the Cervelo site as well as their attention to social networks, built to educate and inform and keep the community involved, has been instrumental in the company's success.
I've kept up with Gerard via social media and this past January went on an expedition with him into the jungles of Panama where he told me about selling Cervelo and shared his vision for a new company called open cycle which he is launching today.
open cycle
open cycle, co-founded by Gerard and his partner Andy, is producing high-end mountain bikes unlike any other on the market.
As they say on the site:
"Three words describe this new venture: bikes, open and simple.
Bikes we live and breathe. Andy's career spans from downhill racer (back when helmets were optional!) to CEO of a mountain & road bike company. Gerard’s career includes co-founding Cervélo, where's he's done everything from engineering and design to sales, supply chain and marketing.
Open means open to new ideas; from our customers, retailers, vendors and ourselves. Open to show the intricacies of our products but also our company. Open even to issue shares to some of our customers.
If open is the goal, simple is the tool.
'Relentless simplicity' is our guiding principle. Reduce the number of models and you simplify production, logistics, customer decision making, the website, everything. Avoid traditional advertising or sponsorships and free up precious time. Transfer logistics to third parties and you can focus on what matters most, which in our case means:
Designing better bikes, the first of which we introduce here.
Connecting with our customers.
And when you put it that way, is there really anything else to do?"
An unfolding marketing case study still in its infancy
open cycle is a marketing example to watch because we will witness a social media and content marketing enthusiast launch a company from day one.
Right from the start, the company is focused on social engagement throughout the site, with community aspects and social network links. Anyone can comment on anything. They are committed to having the community of enthusiasts help them so everything is open.
The open cycle site also features a blog. What's interesting is that Gerard and Andy have been blogging for a year as they’ve secretly developed the technology for their new bike. But the blog posts went unpublished until now. Kind of cool, don't you think?
Are you a marketer?
A few days ago I revisited the question I asked in 2006 when I again asked Gerard about marketing. As I wrote way back then, I think he is a marketer extraordinaire, but he always pushes back:
"To be honest, I don't think of it as marketing," Gerard says. "It feels simply like talking to people. And companies like Facebook, Twitter, et al have given us some interesting ways to do that.
They turn companies such as open cycle into the global version of the village baker of yesteryear (to paraphrase Gary Vaynerchuk). You know your customers, they know you, so you want to treat them well. You want to give them good quality and they tell their neighbors. You mess up and you feel bad and try to make it right. The opposite of what's happening at many companies today (Goldman Sachs anyone?)
And of course, the flipside is that if you don't treat them well, they'll tell the rest of the village."
I'll be updating the progress of open cycle from time-to-time in the next months and years and expect great things from Gerard and Andy.
I'm presenting at the LinkedIn #B2BConnect 2012 event today - April 17, 2012 - in Mumbai, India.
A few weeks ago as I was preparing my talk, I asked my friends at HubSpot if they had any data on the effectiveness of LinkedIn that I could share with my audience. Rebecca Corliss came through with some awesome new data which I am releasing for the first time here.
In a study of 3,128 HubSpot B2B customers, LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.60%, four times higher than Twitter (.67%) and seven times better than Facebook (.39%).
The methodology was a data dump of all of HubSpot customers' social media traffic and leads collected through the HubSpot system in 2011. From there, data was segmented to look at B2B companies that had generated visits and leads from social media. Companies that generated less than two leads in the year were excluded from the sample.
Lead generation with LinkedIn
This data clearly shows that LinkedIn is a good lead source. But few B2B companies use LinkedIn to its full potential.
Disclosures: I am on the HubSpot board of advisors and I serve as Marketer in Residence for the company. I am being paid to speak at the LinkedIn #B2BConnect 2012 event.
For the past several years, I've written and spoken extensively about the idea of real-time marketing & PR, the subject of my Wall Street Journal bestseller, now published in eight languages.
The biggest challenge of implementing real-time is one of mindset. It is tough for marketing and PR people who operate in the typical long-term planning of "campaigns" to adapt to instant engagement. This seems to be especially true of agencies that have built a business around implementing campaigns for their clients.
GolinHarris shows how an agency does real-time communications right
This Wall Street trading room approach is exactly what I've constantly talked about and I’m excited to see it being implemented so I connected with Jim Dowd, Executive Director, National Media for GolinHarris, to learn more.
"We use The Bridge as a listening outpost but we are doing it a little differently because we have the mainstream media folks and the digital folks working side by side," Dowd says. "So we are not just looking at social media which is obviously the flavor of the day. Digital and mainstream are literally sitting next to each other and they are coming up with ideas and are pitching media together and that is where we have seen just terrific traction."
For example, on the day that Michelle Obama announced a new food pyramid called MyPlate, the GolinHarris team watched the press conference live on CNN looking for ways to get their clients into the emerging memes. "We are watching all the activity online and took an idea to Hartz to create a food pyramid for dogs," Dowd says. The client loved the idea and reacted quickly. The team generated some attention as a result.
Generating quick client approvals
With most clients working at a glacially slow pace, requiring lengthy legal and PR client-side reviews, I wondered how GolinHarris is able to get speedy signoffs on ideas generated from The Bridge.
"Yeah, approval is always tricky particularly with legal departments," he says. GolinHarris works with clients to develop topics ahead of time in anticipation of potential stories so that they can work quickly. "With clients like McDonalds we have general topics that we predict, like if something comes up about the Happy Meal. McDonalds have preapproved that we can have certain conversations about Happy Meals with language we can go out with."
Just like a 24-hour Wall Street bond trading desk
The Bridge is set up just like a 24 hour Wall Street trading desk with three regions – Asia, Europe, and North America - passing the work around the globe.
"We are truly doing it globally," Dowd says, "We are 24/7 so we will scour the landscape the first few hours of the day here in New York then we will pass all of our results and insights onto Chicago and Chicago to LA. And you know, the whole notion of offices and cubes may go away. It's exciting to be able to walk in The Bridge and literally see what is going on."
Newsjacking the Super Bowl
When you have a real-time mindset and the tools of a facility like The Bridge, then Newsjacking becomes second nature.
"Our client AutoTrader.com challenged us to make them the leader in all of the post- Super Bowl auto commercial coverage," Dowd says. AutoTrader.com did not advertise during the Super Bowl but wanted to generate a bunch of attention anyway - a classic newsjacking strategy.
AutoTrader's analysts worked with GolinHarris to create data on consumers' real-time search patterns during the Super Bowl. They used data from the AutoTrader.com site and correlated that to the times auto commercials aired looking for lift (how much of a boost in search activity each vehicle got in the hour after its ad appeared). They provided the resulting data to the media who used it in stories like Acura NSX Won Big with Super Bowl Spot, Survey Says which appeared on the Wall Street Journal site.
Overcoming fear
"There are lot of clients who love the notion of the bridge and real time marketing and what we are doing but aren’t jumping on it out of fear - fear of the unknown, fear of the new," Dowd says. "A lot of our clients are still quite old school and traditional."
There's nothing like success to break down the fear barrier.
Dowd cites Dow Chemical as a noteworthy GolinHarris real-time success. The company is very careful with stories related to such topics as chemistry or chemical engineering or stem research but that doesn't mean they can't engage in real-time.
"We were in The Bridge tracking that President Obama was going to give the Teacher of the Year Award and we were watching live on CNN," he says. "And it was a chemistry teacher who won that award so we immediately got approval from Dow Chemical to go ahead and offer up public congratulations to the teacher and that resulted in some nice coverage. Even with the trickier clients there are always topics that will work."
Instagram is a photo sharing application that makes it easy and fun to manipulate a photo with various filters and turn it into instant art. Then with a few clicks, you can share your photo with a caption via Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks.
For example, a few days ago in Krakow, Poland I shot a mundane photo of some telephone booths with my iPhone and used Instagram to turn it into instant art.
Yesterday, Facebook announced a USD $1 billion acquisition of Instagram.
It seems to me that the big social players – Google, Facebook, and Twitter – are building walled gardens around their users in the exact same way that portals like Lycos, Excite, AOL, and Yahoo did a decade ago.
They hoard users and don't like to have hooks into each others' services.
Yes, I do understand that companies need to make money. I get that. Instagram's founders, employees, and investors deserve a payday.
How are Lycos, Excite, AOL, and Yahoo faring today??!!
Building walled gardens of Portal 2.0 is bad for users and ultimately leads to failure.
While the Zuck's statement says things won't change, I'm pessimistic.
I can imagine a day in the near future when you can no longer post Instagram directly to Twitter.
I'm also seeing a future where we are forced into the Facebook mobile app to use Instagram.
Or perhaps, just like Google not playing nice with Twitter, you won't be able to access Instagram from other social sites.
Read the Zuck's statement. Has he earned your trust? Do you believe him? Or if you are an Instagram fanboy like me are you worried too?
My friend Ann Handley introduced me to Instagram. So went over to Ann's Twitter to see her take. "I love what she said: For many fans of Instagram, the news that Facebook is acquiring the photo-sharing mobile platform is a little like hearing that your best friend is engaged to that jerk. She might be thrilled. But you can’t help but feel a sense of doom about the whole arrangement."Here is Ann's thoughtful post.
What do you think? Are you worried like me and Ann? Or are we missing something?
Photo: Shot by David Meerman Scott near Krakow, Poland on an iPhone 4S and tweaked with Instagram. CC
Over the years, I've read countless corporate blogs, seen a bunch of videos, and watched tons of Twitter feeds that look as if the PR pros or Marketing geniuses have gotten their grubby little hands into the mix.
The language is clean but generic. The passion is non-existent. And corporate messages are inserted at every opportunity.
When you create content to educate and inform, authenticity is a must. You must create information that comes from the passion of caring deeply about a subject.
Don't let your marketing communications or public relations staff vague up your stuff. Don't let the agencies MarCom it to death.
As soon as content has been through the Marketing Communications wringer and the PR gauntlet, it ceases to be authentic and people don't pay attention.
Resist the urge to message.
Allow people to let it all hang out, quirks and all. Your readers will thank you for it. And your business will prosper.
Write a book, start a company, run a marathon, establish a nonprofit, build a house, play the piano. You can do these or anything else you care to do!
If you believe Malcolm Gladwell's idea in Outliers - that you need 10,000 hours of practice to become world class at a task - consider how damned easy it is to find the time! Just cut out television for 5.3 years.
And in most B2B companies marketing people spend lots of effort providing them.
But too often, especially in B2B sales, there’s an artificial demarcation between the role of sales and that of marketing.
Consider the tradeshow: many companies spend thousands of marketing dollars to exhibit at important industry events. But after the show concludes, marketing simply ties a pretty ribbon around the business cards they received from prospects and tosses the leads over their shoulder to the sales manager.
B2B sales and marketing circa 2012
How can you deliver valuable information to people who express interest in your organization? How can you do it without annoying them?
How about warming up potential customers by giving them gifts of valuable content well before the salesperson bugs them by triying to sell something?
Last night got an email saying that the new Pottermore ebook store is open and that the Harry Potter books are (finally) available in electronic format.
This is significant because it is the first time that Harry Potter books are available as ebooks and the only place to buy them is on the author's own site. (If you go to Amazon to buy a Kindle version of a Harry Potter book, you're re-directed to Pottermore).
Attention
The book business is changing. So is the music business. And these changes have ramifications in your business too: How you generating attention?
Now authors can easily get a book out without going to a publisher and without using paper. And they can control their distribution.
That's not to say that traditional publishing is going away. I actually think print books and the big publishers have a future in the new ecosystem.
You no longer need to convince an editor in New York or an A&R guy in LA that your work is worthy.
Now you can create your own audience, build your fan base, publish your art, and control its distribution. Or you can make your work completely free so you can spread it far and wide like Summer Land did.
In the past year and a half I have lost 40 pounds.
But losing 40 pounds actually took two decades because that's how long I was paying attention to the wrong measurement and failing.
When I measured just on my weight, I couldn't lose weight. No matter what I did I stayed basically the same.
However, when I measured different things such as bodyfat percentage, metabolic age, calories burned, and the foods I eat, I changed my behaviors leading directly to weight loss.
I see the same idea at work with organizations and how they measure success. I'll share those ideas in a moment, but first I want to talk about my health.
Bodyfat, burning calories, eating right, and metabolic age.
My exercise.
I use an elliptical trainer every morning. I used to measure the length of time I exercised and I did a half hour a day for a decade. It felt good but I wasn't really making progress with my weight.
Turns out that time exercising was the wrong measurement. For me calories burned is the better measure.
When I started to focus on the readout for calories burned on my elliptical, I realized that I was not working hard enough or long enough to do much good. I gradually increased my activity by measuring calories burned instead of time on the machine. For the past year, I've burned 800 calories each morning, which takes me about an hour of hard work.
Several weeks ago, I also added a Nike+ FuelBand as another measurement of calories burned and how active I am. The Nike+ FuelBand is an awesome piece of technology that you wear on your wrist and synch to your iPhone. They are tough to get because they are so popular. I got mine on eBay by paying a premium.
My body:
The most important measurement tool for me is my scale. When I was using a standard scale that only displayed weight it was so damned frustrating because I would exercise like hell and my weight would stay the same. Or I’d eat like a rabbit for a week or a month and lose a tiny bit of weight and then gain it right back because I was hungry.
Turns out that weight was the wrong measurement. For me bodyfat percentage and metabolic age are the better measures.
I now use a Tanita Body Composition Monitor (there are other brands available that do the same thing). It gives about a dozen readouts, but the main things I focus on are bodyfat percentage and metabolic age.
Your bodyfat is simply an indication of the percentage of your body that is made up of fat vs. everything else (mainly muscle and bone).
Metabolic Age is a calculation made by the monitor comparing your stats to averages of other people of your gender and chronological age and is used to describe overall fitness and metabolic activity.
I'm incredibly excited that my metabolic age has gradually dropped over the past year from being my actual age to now be the age of 25. In other words, I now have the body of people just out of University, people who are half my chronological age.
My food:
I used to "diet" which for me meant smaller quantities of the foods I normally ate. Instead of two slices of pizza I had one. It was awful. I was always hungry.
Turns out that quantity of food was the wrong measurement. For me the type of food is the better measure.
When I started to focus on what I ate, I realized I was eating too much of some things (such as starch) and not enough of others such as vegetables, beans, and chicken. Now I eat the right things and eat until I am stuffed full so I am not hungry. A few books that helped me with eating are The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss and The End of Overeating by David Kessler.
I realize this is a really long lead in to talk about some ideas about measurement for organizations. Thank you for reading this far.
B2B companies obsession with sales leads are the wrong measure.
Consumer brands’ obsession with advertising creative and awards are the wrong measure.
The PR industry obsession with the thickness of the press clip book is the wrong measure.
Just like me focusing only on my weight, when companies focus on awards or leads or press clips, they have a difficult time achieving the ultimate goal, which is usually to profitably grow their business.
Here are some things you might consider measuring instead at your organization:
Do customers love your products and services? When you have happy customers, they talk you up. If your customers aren't happy, what can you do to increase their level of happiness?
Where are you appearing in search results for important phrases? Are you in the top of the natural search results for broad and long tail search terms? How about local search via mobile devices? How about real-time search? You can implement a content creation strategy to increase your search visibility.
How often are people talking about you on social channels? And what are they saying? You can measure levels of interaction and things like sentiment.
How many people are eager to participate in your online efforts? You can measure how many people "like" you on Facebook, subscribe to your blog, follow you on Twitter, sign up for your email newsletter, or register for a Webinar.
How many people are downloading your stuff? You can measure how many people are downloading your ebooks, presentation slides, videos, podcasts, and other content.
How are sales looking? Is the company reaching its goals?
Ultimately, the most important form of measurement within management teams is revenue and profit.
Here in the U.S., if you’re plugged into real-time news, you can't avoid hearing about the Etch a Sketch brouhaha.
An aide to Republican candidate Mitt Romney said in an interview that the candidate could reset his campaign after he wins the primary battle "like an Etch a Sketch."
The reference to the classic toy which is familiar to so many played into the narrative that Romney changes positions frequently to appeal to whoever he is talking to at that moment. In many ways it was a perfect story and journalists ran with it resulting in thousands of stories mentioning the toy. (See below for a Google News image of the thousands of stories).
The Etch a Sketch is produced by Ohio Art, a family-run business. The toy has sold more than 100 million units worldwide since its introduction in 1960. I had one when I was a kid and played with it a lot.
When the newsjacking opportunity falls in your lap
Sometimes, the Newsjacking gods shine on you and present an opportunity that is so perfect that you can't help but jump in. So how to do it to the most effect?
So far, Ohio Arts has done an excellent job with media relations but has missed a huge opportunity to create original content.
Get in front of journalists
At least three Ohio Arts executives are doing media interviews. They are using humor, which gets some wonderful quotes into stories like this one which I love from a Wall Street Journal piece Ohio Art's Etch A Sketch Shakes Up Political Debate:
One thing the Etch A Sketch won't do is pick sides in the campaign, Martin Killgallon, the company's marketing director said. "We have a left knob and a right knob," he said, "so we neutrally speak to both parties."
Product placement
The company sent boxes of Etch A Sketches to the campaigns because candidates including Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have been holding up the toy, generating tons of images in the media.
When yours is the product of the moment, particularly when it is such an awesome visual, you can generate ink just by having people hold it in front of cameras.
Missed content marketing opportunity
The only mistake the company is making is that they have not created any original content to take advantage of the sudden media interest.
Freek writes: "Reporters are constantly looking for context and insights for their stories – newsjacking allows PR to become a source, not just for the benefit of being quoted. This is profoundly changing the world of PR: we are there much more to help clients become sources than to just communicate news or a message – brands are increasingly using their own channels for that."
In his post, Freek shares a link to an excellent video from the UK's Guardian newspaper on how their journalists cover stories in real time. The video shows what goes down in newsrooms by imagining how reporters might cover the story of the three little pigs in print and online. It is definitely worth a watch.
Today's real-time journalism means there is room for anybody to add their take to breaking news stories simply by blogging or tweeting or commenting.
But you've got to be quick. Review cycles usually mean failure.
For PR pros, this is not endless pitching on your timetable. It means turning the PR relationship around and providing information at the precise moment that journalists are looking.
Late last week, Obama for America (President Obama's reelection operation) released a 17-minute film called The Road We've Traveled.
It's interesting timing for this content marketing effort because the Republican challengers for the nomination are locked into a protracted battle that is unlikely to be decided until this summer.
The film is worth a look because it is classic content marketing. It is an excellent example of using video to tell a story.
As regular readers of my blog may recall, I love looking at US presidential campaigns as case studies in marketing that can be applied by all sorts of organizations. This is not a political blog, nor am I supporting a particular candidate by highlighting what they are up to.
The Road We've Travelled is directed by Davis Guggenheim and narrated by Tom Hanks. It gives an inside look at some of the decisions President Obama made and featues interviews with President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, and others.
No matter what sort of organization you're part of, a short film featuring interviews is a great form of content marketing. It works for companies, educational institutions, rock bands, nonprofits, individuals, and, well, any organization.
I delivered a keynote presentation at The NAMM Show on January 20, 2012 in Anaheim, CA. The NAMM Show is one of the largest music product trade shows in the world, founded in 1901
My interactive presentation to 1,287 audience members (people were scanned as they entered so we know exactly how many were there) was titled Real-Time Marketing & PR and was based on my bestselling book of the same title. I show how to instantly engage your Market, connect with customers, and create products that grow your business now.
It is an honor to be able to work such an awesome stage with such an enthusiastic audience! I appreciate the gift I am given every time I am asked to speak.
Make it free
Several things important things come to mind about this video: 1) I am releasing it freely on the Web and 2) NAMM is offering it freely on their site. So many speakers want to control their content and not allow people to see the video. "I’m a paid speaker," many speakers say. "Why should I give away my speech?"
Conference organizers are reluctant to give away content for fear that people won't buy a ticket for next year’s event if they can count on the content being available.
Content drives action.
Get your valuable content out there where people will find it in search engines and will share it via their networks.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica, the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still in production, was first produced in Scotland in 1768.
The company announced it is going completely digital. If you want to pick up your very own copy, the final 2010 print set edition is available at The Britannica Store for USD $1,395.00.
Everywhere we turn there is evidence of the communications revolution.
I've often said the revolution of Web content and social media is the most significant communications revolution since the invention of the printing press.
It took centuries for the world's population to become literate. But in just a few short years, of the 6 billion people on the planet, 4.8 billion have access to online information in the form of mobile data. In fact, there are more mobile phones in the world than toothbrushes.
I've been talking about the importance of online information as a tool of marketing and PR for nearly 20 years now. For the last decade I have run my own business focused on helping companies make the transition from traditional offline marketing to online marketing and PR strategies.
In 1998, people thought I was insane to argue that marketing & PR is going to the Web.
In 2002, I was that weird Grateful Dead listening oddball insisting that the revolution is coming. That's the year I got fired from my corporate VP of marketing job partly because I insisted on the Web and didn’t agree on investing in print direct mail the way others in the company did. In 2002 I started my own company to develop strategies and write and speak about what the communications revolution means to marketing & PR.
In 2005, others began to realize we're at the cusp of a revolution. These pioneers fought the bosses and the entrenched powers and started to create content on the Web as a form of marketing.
In 2009, many people saw the power as hundreds of millions gravitated to social tools like Facebook and Twitter.
Now, in 2012, while over a billion people are engaged via social media and tens of thousands of organizations have a dedicated online content effort for marketing purposes. However, there are still many holdouts resisting the revolution.
Encyclopaedia Britannica print set discontinued after nearly 250 years
In a New York Times blog post, Jorge Cauz president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. was quoted as saying: "It's a rite of passage in this new era. Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia."
Exactly.
So here are a few questions for you:
How much effort are you putting into producing brochures and other print materials?
What happens if I Google the name on your resume and the most recent company you worked for?
When I am asked to vet a candidate for one of the companies I am associated with, the first thing I do is head to Google and see what content appears. And that's what I suggest potential employers do.
On the Web, you are what you publish
Sadly, for many job seekers, what pops up on Google are a few random things (like your membership in the company softball league), your LinkedIn profile, and not much else. Sometimes there is a Twitter feed but frequently it was started years earlier and has been abandoned or it's only updated a few times a month.
With more senior people, I always laugh when the top content when I Google your name is the press release that your company issued a few years earlier to announce you are joining.
Today's marketing and PR is about content creation. Your personal brand is also about content creation.
If you don’t care enough to build your personal brand then why should a company employ you to create a brand for them?
On Saturday at #SXSW, I met with my good friend Jon Ferrara (@jon_ferrara) who is the CEO of Nimble. Jon told me that he has a position open for a senior-level marketer and wanted to get my advice on the sort of person he should hire.
I told Jon to never look at a resume. Just delete it. Instead, administer the "Google test." We agreed that eliminates nearly all candidates from consideration.
People like Jon look for potential hires who are very active on social media and creating content. Jon and the other CEOs and senior executives I work with are not looking for professional managers. They are not looking for agency wranglers. They are not looking for talkers, they are looking for doers. They want marketers (even at the senior level) who are passionate about creating content on the Web.
Insisting on a positive result for the "Google test" makes it tough for CEOs like Jon to find qualified people, but greatly increases the chances that the marketer who ends up getting hired will be a good fit for achieving the company’s goals. Jon told me that anyone who wants to be his top marketer needs to be at least as successful on social networks as he is. Seems reasonable to me!
Prove you are a great marketer
The good news is that you can fix the problem that eliminates you from consideration for the hottest jobs.
You need to show, don't tell. You need evidence that you are passionate about your personal brand. You need to create content. Now. Starting today.
There are a bunch of things you can do, starting today, that might include some of the following: You could start a blog, create a YouTube channel, or tweet more than a few times a month. You could create an infographic about the industry you want to work in or your particular area of expertise. You could get active on some newer channels like Google Plus, Instagram and Pinterest so you can speak intelligently about them. You could sit on panels at events like SXSW and have people in the audience talk about you on social channels. These are just a few examples.
I've delivered this advice to hundreds of people. Sadly for them, I know from experience that 90% of people ignore this advice.
Will you be in the 10%?
I am convinced if you are a job seeker, you need to pay attention to this tough love.
Bonus for reading this far: People who get really clever with this strategy then target companies they want to work for and create content (a blog post or video for example) that relates to that company. Perhaps a suggestion for how that company can do something different. You want to get noticed by the marketing department of your target company? Forget sending a resume. Instead create something interesting and publish it on the Web. Your potential hiring manager will be eager to consume your work and you brand yourself as a player.
But mostly, I'm a fan because Dr. Tyson is such an awesome communicator. When I read his books and articles or watch him on television, I always take away something that I can apply to my own work as a marketer and communicator.
His bio says Neil deGrasse Tyson s an astrophysicist and the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. But he is so much more.
Neil deGrasse Tyson as master communicator
Dr. Tyson is so good at speaking and writing about the cosmos and why it is important for us to have an understanding of the wider world in which we live.
In the clip, he explains how fear contributed to the development of America's space program in the late 1950s, thereby spurring economic growth. "We no longer advanced a space frontier," he says. "The Space Shuttle boldly went where hundreds have gone before." Watch the clip to see a master communicator at work.
By the way: An astrophysicist with 350,000+ followers on Twitter? What's up with that? Yep, that's @neiltyson
Space Chronicles
His newest book, just out, is Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier – a collection of essays and speech transcripts around the theme of space exploration and how America & NASA has not done much to inspire people in the past 40 years outside of some cool robotic missions and the Hubble telescope.
I read Space Chronicles in three sittings because it is that good.
In the book, he talks about how America boldly embarked on the most audacious scientific endeavor in history by sending humans to the moon. However after 9 lunar missions (6 that landed) we... stopped exploring! For 40 years we've only been to low earth orbit with manned missions.
Dr. Tyson argues we're not inspiring our young people to study science and engineering and that’s a problem for the economy.
"Absent such curiosity, we are no different from the provincial farmer who expresses no need to venture beyond the county line, because his forty acres meet all his needs. Yet if our predecessors had felt that way, the farmer would instead be a cave dweller, chasing down his dinner with a stick and a rock."
- From Space Chronicles.
If you want to see how thought leadership is done by a master communicator, read and watch the work of Neil deGrasse Tyson. You don't need to agree with him nor be a space geek to learn from his style.
Quick aside – In high school my buddies and I would go to the Hayden Planetarium (after some appropriate preparations of course) to see evening productions of "Laser Floyd" – a cosmic mixture of loud Pink Floyd with colorful lasers projected on the planetarium dome. I've even got a ticket stub from 1978 to prove it. Neil is close to my age. He grew up in New York City. I wonder if he went too? Nah, probably not. He was studying while I was partying. But maybe?!
This afternoon, Tuesday March 6, 2012, President Obama held his first solo news conference from the White House since October 6, 2011.
President Obama and his advisors' choice to answer journalists' questions on Super Tuesday, when voters in ten U.S. states vote in the Republican Presidential Primaries (arguably the most important date of the entire primary season) is a classic example of political newsjacking.
So in today's online news stories, this evening's television and radio broadcasts, and tomorrow’s newspapers, the Republican Super Tuesday winner(s) need to share the top story with the President.
It's not just the President who drafts off the Republican challengers for the White House. Anybody can do it if they can find an appropriate angle to create some content around some angle in real-time.
For example, when candidate Rick Santorum commented about homeschooling, it gave homeschooling expert Christa Johnson an ideal opportunity to respond on her blog: There Isn’t One Face of Homeschooling.
President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, March 6, 2012. Photo: Screen grab from WhiteHouse.gov live streaming feed.
Yesterday I was a guest of Boeing Commercial Airplanes on a preview tour of the brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The 787 test aircraft was at Boston's Logan Airport because it is scheduled to be the first US airport with regular 787 commercial service with a nonstop Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo.
In this short video, I speak with Capt. Randy Neville, chief pilot, 787 program, Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Diana Klug, Director of Marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. We tour the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner cockpit and cabin and I focus on passenger comfort including the large windows and customizable LED passenger compartment lighting.
This airplane is terrific. The passenger compartment is higher than other passenger planes and that gives it a less claustrophobic feel. The large windows with a dimming feature (see the video) means that there is no longer "up or down only" like with normal shades and there is no need for sunglasses if you want to look for icebergs on the return day flight from Europe in the winter sitting on the right side of the plane.
It's exciting that my home airport will now have nonstop service from Boston to Tokyo on Japan Airlines. I’ve had a primary US residence in Massachusetts for more than 20 years and for 7 of those years I lived in Tokyo. The hassles of switching planes vs. a 14-hour nonstop are enormous.
Boeing actually worked with a psychologist and a cultural anthropologist and conducted many interviews with frequent flyers to design the plane the 787 Dreamliner from the passenger perspective, thinking that people will book travel based on the plane.
That's exactly what I do (and what other frequent travelers do too). When you're in the air as often as I am comfort is the most important thing -- more important than price, special deals, and other things.
But I wonder how many people would choose based on the airplane? It seems most casual flyers choose on price. Business travelers often choose based on schedule.
Fun aside. When I was taking a photo of the 787 Rolls-Royce engine turbine that I posted to Instagram, the Boston Globe was photographing me in an image that was published here.
PR thought: What better PR asset than a beautiful airplane with articulate pilots and marketing staff to explain it. Great job @Boeing and @BoeingAirplanes.
What would you do?
So what would you do? Given a choice between variables like price, schedule, an airline that you have a frequent flyer account with, and number of stops, what are the most important factors for you? Would you choose to fly the 787 Dreamliner for the experience?
Note: I filmed the 787 video myself with my iPhone 4S and edited it in iMovie.
Anything goes, as long as it's topical. Just think, make and launch. Your content could be a blog post, an infographic, a video, a flashmob that you film, a Facebook game. Whatever you want.
The team that creates the content with the most hits / likes / retweets wins. In addition, UrgentGenius has "a who's who" (their words) of media folk to appraise the work so even if your creation doesn't win, it could be a "judges favourite." (I'm one of the judges.)
Today, Friday March 2 at 6:00 pm in your local time zone the competition begins. You’ve got just 48 hours to create some awesome content.
On Sunday March 4 at 6:00 pm in your local time zone the competition ends and your content needs to be complete and posted.
Between March 4 and March 11 you seed people to react – to tweet, like, link, +1, and other ways - to show people are interested in your creation.
During South-by-Southwest - SXSW - interactive festival I'm speaking on Newsjacking and the UrgentGenius team are involved in several panels. We’ll be talking about the entries from the stage.
On March 11 UrgentGenius tallies the results and declares a global winner
Last years' Urgent Genius Weekender resulted in content featured everywhere from PerezHilton.com to Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Empire and MTV with the best stuff gathering more than 2 million cumulative hits.
Wikipedia is among the top ten most visited sites on the Web. When there is a Wikipedia article on a topic that you search on, I'm sure you’ve noticed that article usually appears as one of the top few results, frequently in the number one position.
There's no doubt that Wikipedia is important.
However there are few people who understand the inner workings of Wikipedia and how the more than 3.8 million articles in the English language (and millions more in 282 other languages) are created.
Sure, Wikipedia is an open platform and anybody can create or edit an article. But it's more complicated than that. A lot more complicated.
I asked my friend Colin Warwick to help us out. Colin is a Product Marketing Manager at Agilent Technologies. He writes the popular Signal Integrity blog and tweets at @SignalIntegrity.
David: How did you get interested in contributing to Wikipedia?
Colin: "Around 2004, a colleague at MathWorks - Ned Gulley - gave a talk on the crowdsourcing phenomenon: What it was, why it was happening, and Wikipedia was his prime example. His point was the success of Wikipedia is surprising. How can a bunch of unmanaged volunteers compete with the resources of, say, Microsoft (who had Encarta at the time) or the venerable Britannica. There's that famous quote: 'The problem with Wikipedia is that it works in practice, but not in theory'."
David: So why does it work then?
Colin: "It's true that a naive application of a theory like the tragedy of the commons would predict failure. But in the case of Wikipedia we get the inverse outcome because the cost of a contribution is much less than its value over time. For example, it costs very little for a contributor to enter knowledge from their experience into the servers, and very little for Wikipedia to serve that information over and over again to readers, generating great value over time. Unlike the pasture of a physical commons, information isn't degraded much by use. So the value of Wikipedia increases over time attracting more readers, some of whom become contributors, forming a virtuous cycle."
David: So you got sucked into the vortex?
Colin: "Yes. I became intrigued and started to add little facts I found here and there. The interaction with other contributors was startling at first but I began to realize that in questioning my assumptions I was not only contributing but pushing my own understanding to a higher level."
David: Give us an example.
Colin: "In my work, I had to learn about a new technology we wanted to enter called ODB++. I started researching it and gathered and read a ton of web links. But I noticed there wasn't a Wikipedia article about it. So I started one."
David: Just like that?
Colin: "Just like that. The best way to start or add to a Wikipedia article is to gather good web links first. Web-based versions of newspaper and magazine articles. Books. In Wikipedia-speak, it's called reliable sources."
David: What about blog posts and other social media?
Colin: "Ironically for a user-generated content site, Wikipedia looks down on user-generated content. Blogs can be a reliable source if the blogger is notable for something other than blogging."
David: Interesting. I didn't know that before speaking with you. So what happened next?
Colin: "Other editors started contributing to the article as I was writing it. At first it was really irritating to have some unknown person editing 'my' article as I was writing."
David: Wasn't it your article?
Colin: "Technically, no. If you contribute to Wikipedia, you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the Creative Commons license. And they warn you 'If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here'."
David: That seems harsh. So what's the value for contributors on Wikipedia if that's the case?
Colin: "Well, once I got over the irritation, I began to see a benefit: I learnt whole new perspectives from the other contributors that I didn't even know existed. There's a discussion page behind every article where you can ask: 'Why did you delete what I wrote?' It's kind of addictive. Who's going to end up right or wrong or what compromise will be reached? You can see why Wikipedia contributors give each other virtual barnstars as a token of appreciation in at those moments. It's evocative of communal barn building in certain rural communities. I had my barn-building moment on that article!"
David: The article you wrote wasn't directly about your company. Many people want to know if they can create an article about their own company or its products and sevices. I'm asked that a lot. Can you do that?
Colin: "You can but it's very difficult to not run afoul of Wikipedia's conflict of interest rules, COI in wiki-speak. Other editors can smell marketing puffery a mile way and will delete it as advertising in a heartbeat. The only workaround is to put Wikipedia's goal of a neutral point of view (NPOV in wiki-speak) first, and then either proactively seek what's called a COI review, or simply let nature take its course. As with all articles, you have the best chance of your edits 'sticking' if you come armed with reliable sources: don't simply add your opinion."
David: Cool. Finally after many years of using Wikipedia I feel like I know a little about how it is put together and how someone in business can benefit from contributing. Hey Colin, you should write a book about all this stuff.
Some smart editor or publisher who is watching this blog should cut a deal with Colin to do a book.
My friends over at Urgent Genius released a terrific little application last night during the Academy Awards called The Artistifier.
The Artistifier allows you to turn any YouTube video into an "award-winning" silent movie in the style the Oscar-winning film The Artist. You can even add your own captions before sending your finished black and white masterpiece via Facebook and Twitter.
I turned one of my speaker videos into Artist-style and it is really cool.
Fun with Newsjacking
This is a terrific example of Newsjacking. The idea of taking something that is being talked about in the news and drafting off of it in order to get media mentions and social sharing is a fantastic strategy for real-time PR.
However, the vast majority of PR people are still in campaign-only mode. They focus on what's important to them and not what's important to the media and the public. If you think in real-time and create content that is valuable for the moment you can use Newsjacking to get ink and shares. Sometimes you can get a lot.
If you're going to the South-by-Southwest interactive festival in March, you can hear me speak about Newsjacking. Stop by and say hello.
Also at dinner was Joe Grimaldi, CEO of Mullen. We got to talking about my second most favorite Super Bowl ad of all time, which was created by Mullen Advertising: When I Grow Up (1999) for Monster.com.
This commercial tells a powerful story. It doesn't talk about the product directly. Yet there is no mistaking what the benefits of the product are even though they are not spoken. The spot uses humor but in a powerful way. It is memorable.
Ever since I first saw the ad in 1999, keep coming back to it as a model of what a good Super Bowl ad can be.
Others agree because "When I Grow Up" makes most “top” lists such as the number 18 spot on this 100 Greatest Super Bowl Ads Ever list.
Okay, so what's my number one most favorite Super Bowl Ad? It’s Tabasco Mosquito from 1998. I spat up my beer when I saw it live. And I've watched it on YouTube dozens of times. It just works in all the ways that the Monster.com ad does. And it uses humor with no words spoken at all.
Ads like these get talked about.
The ongoing PR value, even a decade later, makes producing them worthwhile. I'm generally not a fan of big-budget ads, but with work like these, I make exceptions.
What?! Jeremy Lin has been the hottest sports story for less than two weeks and there's already books about him?
Welcome to the new world of Newsjacking via Kindle.
This book is by Alan Goldsher and according to a Fast Company author interview with him, it took 72 hours to write a 15,000-plus-word manuscript, 36 hours using Vook technology to build the e-book, and then another 24 hours to arrange distribution.
And now we're not only talking about Lin the basketball player, we’re also talking about Lin the book and about author Alan Goldsher.
Newsjacking
Whenever there is a hot story in the news, there is an opportunity to create and publish original content that the media will find and will get you coverage.
Newsjacking can be by writing a blog post, doing a YouTube video, creating an infographic, or even publishing a book on Kindle.
Business-to-Business and Nonprofits too
In B2B markets, I'm imagining a scenario where a new regulation hits an industry and some smart person does a speedy analysis of what it means for the industry and publishes that as a Kindle book.
Or in the nonprofit world, a natural disaster strikes and people are looking for how to help the victims and how to protect themselves in the future.
Write the book quickly and get it out fast. Then blog it, tweet it, and send a media alert about it.
The Newsjacking aspect comes in because the media, looking for background on a story, may read and then cite the book in their stories on the new regulation.
Newsjacking is cool. It's fun. And it gets you ink!
A hat tip to Tony Faustino who alerted me to this story. Hey Tony, you newsjacked the story of the Kindle newsjack of Jeremy Lin. Nice work!
When you provide superior service, people talk about you online and that drives new business.
I caught up with my good friend Doug Weil recently. We used to work together in Tokyo in the 1990s. Like me, Doug moved back to the USA and now runs his own business.
Doug's business, Clearly Resolved, provides video calibration services to customers throughout the Midwest. Video calibration is the art and science of adjusting high-end video displays (such as those used in home theaters and sports bars) so that the on-screen image matches original source content. When a video system is properly calibrated, the image looks just like in a movie theater or ballpark or concert stage. If not, the colors can be out of whack, sometimes dramatically, because factory settings are optimized for showroom floors and are typically way too harsh.
A proper professional calibration requires expertise, equipment, and several hours. Since starting his business in 2002, Doug has calibrated over 1,500 systems.
Lead Generation
I asked Doug about how he generates new business.
Turns out many people find him through the reviews that his happy customers post on video and home theater forums and blogs such as this one in AVS Forum (scroll down to read the review).
Because Doug provides superior service, his reviews are excellent, driving people to seek him out.
It seems so simple.
Provide excellent service and people will talk you up.
But there’s one more step. Make sure that your business is listed in appropriate places where people will look once they hear of the great work you do. For Doug, that means his listings in ISF Forum and other similar places. Note his Clearly Resolved listing and how he provides excellent content describing who he is, especially his bio description of how he was bitten by the video bug.
Are you providing great service? And when you do, are you making it easy for people to find you and providing the content that gets them to reach out to you?
My friend Gerard Vroomen, who lives in Amsterdam and flies KLM frequently, alerts us to KLM Meet and Seat.
Gerard (who tweets at @gerardvroomen and has an excellent blog) is a co-founder of Cervelo, the premier high end racing bike company. He built his company by focusing on a great product for his buyers (including road racers and triathletes) and by building a huge and passionate following through social media. So when Gerard brings something to our attention it is certainly worth checking out.
The KLM Meet and Seat lets those booked on certain KLM long-haul flights find out who else will be on flight too. With Meet & Seat you can view other passengers' Facebook or LinkedIn profile details and see where they'll be sitting – long before the flight leaves the ground.
You might search for people who are going to the same conference as you. Or someone from the same industry.
Opt-In to Meet and Seat
The KLM Meet and Seat service is opt-in. You can still be anonymous if you want. Or you can share your Facebook or LinkedIn profile through the KLM Manage my Booking interface. Once you share yours you can see the profile details of other passengers as well as their seat assignment (you can even try to sit next to someone interesting).
"I think this is a great way to use the capabilities of social networks," Gerard says. "Let's face it, many airline offerings are very similar and the consumer focuses on price a lot, so any time you can get your customer to think about something else, that's a good thing. Of course, KLM has to be careful it doesn't backfire, you can't run before you can crawl. Their website has had problems in times of crisis (Icelandic volcano, snowstorm at Schiphol airport) where online management of bookings wouldn't work, and their call centers would only play a recording telling people to manage their bookings online and then hang up on them. If you offer fancy services but the basics don't work, you'll take a real beating. But presuming they got the basics working now, this is a great addition and it also shows the benefits of being original; people will talk about it simply because you're the first to implement it."
KLM is a social media pioneer. When Foursquare first took off, they created a KLM Surprise program for those who checked into their flight on Foursquare at the airport gate. Sometimes, KLM staff would surprise you with an upgrade or travel bag or some other gift.
Each of these interesting KLM social initiatives are designed to get people to talk about the airline on their social networks. Imagine being seated next to your next customer or business partner (or even your future spouse) as a result of the social matchmaking.
In my post, I said: "[GoPro] should focus on user-contributed photos [and videos], but the product was only introduced a few weeks ago, so I’m sure that with a product like this, more will come very soon."
Let your customers tell your story in social media.
Wow, have they ever tapped the crowd! The GoPro Facebook page has nearly 1.7 million "likes" and many people post photos and videos to the page. For a taste of the sorts of things people post, check out this awesome video (direct link on YouTube here.)
Buyer personas
GoPro excels because they are focused on the problems people are willing to spend money to solve (in my case, someone who wants to shoot photos and videos while surfing).
Not long after my original post, I interviewed Nicholas Woodman, founder & CEO of GoPro for a story in the book Tuned In I co-authored.
"The larger camera companies are building product on such a massive scale that it is not interesting to sell to a small niche market," Woodman told me then. "GoPro’s cameras are more specialized and compliment your regular camera. You still take your Canon to a wedding, but out in the surf or on the mountain you need something else."
What's so fascinating about this example is how different buyer personas articulate problems. Photographers said, "How can I protect my camera in the water?" But surfers asked, "How can I take photos while surfing?"
Buyer persona research yields surprising information and when you are tuned in to a problem people are willing to spend money to solve (in this example, the desire to shoot photos while performing an already difficult task). When you build a product that solves it, you are on the road to success.
Since my original post, the company has expanded way beyond surfing.
Soon, Woodman tuned in to buyer personas representing other extreme sports.
"Because surfing is so demanding from a usability and environmental standpoint, our product also worked very well for other adventure sports," he said. For other sports, the core camera is the same, but the associated accessories and mount is different. For example, GoPro adapts to mount onto bicycle handlebars and onto helmets and other body parts for sports like rock climbing and kayaking.
When adapting the camera to a new sport, Woodman told me that he has several prototypes built and then goes into the field to ask people to use the product, beat it up, and give feedback. "One of the great things about the markets we sell to is that they are made of passionate people," he said. "The things that we think of could never be thought of in a boardroom. Ideas come when we are out playing. We go straight to the source. We don't ask our grandmother what she thinks about our motorsport mounts apparatus; we ask race car drivers."
So how is GoPro doing now, five years after I first spoke about them?
In an article on the front page of today's Boston GlobeHelmet cameras grab the slope action is this: "Sales tripled from 2010 to 2011, to 1.3 million units, according to Chris Chute, a research manager with the Framingham office of International Data Corp., a global market research firm. The devices, known as hands-free or wearable video cameras, generally retail for $200 to $400, depending on the model and accessories."
Holy cow. That's hundreds of millions of dollars. From zero five years ago. All based on buyer personas!
Are you focused on your buyers?
By breaking down buyers into distinct groups (such as surfers, race car drivers, sky divers, and others in the case of GoPro) and understanding what problems each one has and how to solve them, you make it far easier to create breakthrough products like the GoPro camera and its associated mounts.
Buyer Personas also make it much easier to market your products. Rather than web content that is simply an egotistical spewing of gobbledygook-laden corporate drivel, you actually create content that people want to consume and are eager to share.
However, this approach is utterly different from what most organizations do: either not segmenting the market at all (creating nonspecific marketing for everyone) or segmenting based on their own product-centric view of the world.
Since then, I've been using Boeing as an example of an organization that is creating great content but until yesterday I had never met Todd in person.
We both spoke at the Purina Digital Summit "Feeding the Beast" event in St. Louis. What a perfect tag-team: I talked about how companies can create excellent content and how journalists make excellent content creators (print journalists, photojournalists, and broadcast journalists) because they are skilled storytellers, then Todd outlined how he is doing it at Boeing. Todd and I are both looking forward to Purina taking up the ideas for their marketing programs.
Brakes on Fire!!
For a great example of the sort of content that Todd and his team create, check out this video Boeing 747-8F Performs Ultimate Rejected Take-off where a fully-loaded 747-8 Freighter with worn-out brakes attempted an aborted takeoff on a California runway. The rejected takeoff or maximum brake energy test is one of the most dramatic for a new airplane. The resulting video has 680,000 views as of this writing. The video is great because it is not a product pitch. Rather it is branded content that people want to consume and that shows Boeing in a great way.
"We publish content that supports business objectives and fosters positive opinions about Boeing," Todd told me. "We're not (directly) selling planes. We’re selling Boeing."
Todd understands that brand journalism is not a product pitch. It is not an advertorial. It is not an egotistical spewing of gobbledygook-laden corporate drivel.
Interestingly, many Boeing communicators were former reporters. Todd himself was a former real-time wire service journalist at Bloomberg News who now among other duties manages the @Boeing Twitter feed.
Effective brand journalism is about telling stories. Like newspapers, magazines, and television news reports, Boeing brand journalists publish their by-line with their reports. This shows that real people are behind the stories.
I also like that Boeing's reports end up serving as fodder for the media. They repurpose content all the time, promoting it via social media the Boeing site, on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. And they pitch their homegrown stories to the media.
Here's a quick discussion with Todd on how brand journalism is done at Boeing.
I frequently hear from people that their buyers are not on the Web. This myth is used an excuse not to create a valuable Web site and to avoid creating content.
Sorry to deliver a reality check, but the truth is that very few people are offline, particularly when you include lower cost mobile technology.
I saw this phenomenon in action this week while on a one-week expedition in the Panamanian jungle. Together with seven other international business executives, plus guides, and support staff on a trip organized by Earth Train, we hiked and kayaked the Cangandi River in the autonomous indigenous region called Guna Yala, traveling from the Pacific side of the continental divide all the way to the Atlantic ocean. What an amazing trip.
Even though I was "off the grid" for the vast majority of the time, I ran across people in some of the most remote parts of the world connecting to the Web.
In the village of Cangandi, with about 250 inhabitants, I saw dozens of people on mobile phones. This village has no running water (they drink from the river), they build their own houses from local wood, and they grow their own food. There is no electrical power, so they use solar panels to charge their mobile devices. They built the community on the top of a hill partly to take advantage of a distant cell phone tower.
If you are still clinging to the fiction that your buyers are not on the Web, you might want to ask if they own a toothbrush. I think you're living a myth.
Image: Photos of Former Secretary General of the Kuna General Congress (and Earth Train board member) Enrique "Kike" Arias while in Cangandi, Guna Yala, Panama.
Perhaps you've seen the video Lego Man in Space that’s gone around recently. It's an interesting time-lapse sequence of a ride on a weather balloon and has generated two million views in five days.
Whenever there is a new technology like this, it is inevitable that somebody will use it as a place to sell ads. Enter JP Aerospace, a company that flies a high altitude balloon, carrying ads, to the edge of space and returns photos for the sponsor to use.
The JP Aerospace site says: "Creates impact! Gives customers a lasting impression of your logo or message! Provides a dramatic image for your company's press releases, corporate reports and web site!"
We have ads on the tray tables of airplanes, on supermarket carts, in blaring videos mounted on gas pumps, and in public restrooms (above urinals, on the back of stall doors and on mirrors).
When you're engaged in buying attention through advertising, it is like an arms race - you need to find new ways to “get your message out there” even taking it into the edge of space.
It costs a lot of money to buy attention (in 2012, a 30-second Super Bowl ad is reported to be $3.5 million).
But if you're generating attention by creating content on the web instead, search engines find it and people share via social, and you’ve got an asset that you can build for free.
I find it fascinating that the big goal of many Super Bowl ads in 2012 is to get people to engage with the brands via social media. Incredible. Pay $3.5 million for the time (and probably another million at least for the ad agency "creative") in order to get people to talk you up in social.
There's a better way. And it's free. Create content that people are eager to share.
As I evaluate Web marketing such as blogs and websites, one thing I look for is evidence of both left-brain and right-brain thinking in the creation of the content. This obsession might seem trivial, but I guess my right-brain outlook on life causes me to take a holistic view of content.
The right-/left-brain concept is widely credited to have developed from the thinking of American psychobiologist Roger Sperry in the late 1960s. Sperry's Nobel Prize-winning work opened whole fields of psychological and philosophical debate including the idea that there are two different sides of the brain, each controlling a "mode" of thinking.
What kind of thinker is your buyer?
Left-brain thinkers focus on the logical, rational, sequential, and analytical while right-brainers prefer more random, holistic, and free-associated approaches.
Psychologists say that left-brainers focus on words and numbers while right-brain people focus on visual images and patterns.
In our world of creating content for marketing purposes, one might say that left-brain people make logical deductions from information while right-brain thinkers prefer to make lateral associations from information.
What right brain / left brain means for content marketing
The best websites, blogs, and social pages (Facebook and G+ for example) include a combination of text content, images, video and charts. Your goal is to create a mix so that people who are visual have an infographic or photo and those who are analytical might have text and numerical charts.
But there are two problems.
1) Most ad agencies and design agencies are populated with people who are great at creating visual content but less good at writing and other left-brain content creation. This means that while sites offer visual cues and easy-to-access lateral information few deliver words and numbers in logical ways.
2) At the same time, left-brainers dominate the top ranks of many companies. Often the top marketing person is a left-brained MBA-type. Need proof? Just count the times "MBA required" is listed on the job description of marketing people at companies. How many liberal arts graduates do you see? Some, but they are greatly outnumbered.
One organization that does an excellent job delivering content for all types of people is Amazon. There are multiple ways to find content including search, by topic, and through "best of" lists. There are videos and images and graphics.
As marketers we need to include both right-brain and left-brain people in our content creation efforts.
Finally, a note to HR executives and headhunters: Please remove the""MBA required" label from marketing jobs—you'll have a better candidate pool if you don't exclude right-brain individuals.
When I first saw the original Playing for Change video Stand By Me on YouTube I was moved and fascinated and jumped for joy. Wow. As a music lover and collector of social media success stories, here was both music and social media triumphantly on display and coming together to support a good cause. I talked up the videos via social and in person to everyone I saw.
Stand By Me now has 37 million views on YouTube and has sparked a movement. Now, Playing for Change has 15 videos in the Songs Around the World series with a combined 140 million views. If you haven't seen a Playing for Change video yet, please watch their version of Bob Marley's One Love.
I had the honor of meeting Mark Johnson, the leader and inspiration behind the Playing for Change movement at the NAMM show this weekend where I delivered a talk. He says: "Create inspiration and let it take care of itself."
Who would have thought that one person with a good idea could bypass traditional channels of getting attention (major record labels and mainstream media) and simply through the power of social media create an organization from scratch. In this short interview, I ask Mark about how he came up with the idea for Playing for Change and why YouTube was essential for its success to date.
Mark also created a separate non-profit organization called the Playing For Change Foundation which builds music schools for children around the world.
Learning from Playing for Change
In a world where marketers and PR people are still mainly focused on the traditional big budget mainstream approach to gaining attention, Mark shows us how a good idea can catch on as people share one to another on the social web.
If you are trying to start an organization from scratch it is nearly impossible to do so within the established system of your industry. Want to make a movie? Good luck getting funding from the majors (who will want to sue bloggers who talk it up anyway as the whole SOPA/PIPA nonsense showed). You’ve got to just get it done and get it out and see what happens. Same for music, or books, or software, or any other endeavor: Do it well, get it out, and go social.
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