800-CEO-READ Blog: Marketing

Books and bikes - one bookstore makes a difference

To go along with Kate's post on biking to work, check out what one book store is doing to reduce its ecological footprint: From Shelf Awareness, the book world's daily e-newsletter:

Cool Idea of the Day: The Bicycle as Bookstore Sideline
Monkey See, Monkey Read, Northfield, Minn., which opened two years ago (Shelf Awareness, February 22, 2007), is now selling the Kona Africabike 2.0 in the store and online. In his blog, owner Jerry Bilek explains why he's stocking the $299 bike that he calls a "utilitarian riding machine. . . Single speed, coaster brake, chain guard, fenders, basket on the front, rack on the back, thornproof tubes, rear wheel lock."

He wrote: "I know, why would a bookstore sell bikes? It goes like this. Books and bikes are two things I enjoy the most. Okay, add beer to the list, but I don't have a liquor license. And ice cream, but no freezer. So I settled on bikes. Not just any bikes, one bike. The Kona Africabike."

Bilek added that a T-shirt phrase he summed up his views on the matter. It read: "Gas sucks ride a bike."

For every two bikes that Monkey See, Monkey Read sells, manufacturer Kona will donate one to a home health worker in Africa as part of the BikeTown Africa program.

Consumer or Consumed? BusinessWeek reviews two books about brands

Yesterday Dylan did a nice job of summing up the latest reviews and discussions about business books in business magazines. Sometimes it's hard for us to keep up with everything, so here's one from a few weeks ago.

In the June 19 issue of BusinessWeek, writer Susan Berfield reviewed two books that "explore the question of whether brands control us, or vice versa": Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker, and Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion by Lucas Conley. (Image source=BusinessWeek.com)

Here's a snippet from the article:

My girl's request [for a Go-Gurt in her lunch]--fleeting, trivial, and unrepeated--nonetheless says something profound about our high-impact, omni-consuming culture. But what? Is she--are we all--just easy marks? Or is there a more complex dynamic between the marketer and the mark? Rob Walker, the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, argues for the latter view. Walker, who writes the "Consumed" column in The New York Times Magazine, offers a sophisticated and sometimes lighthearted take on how consumers interact with brands, defining and controlling them as companies struggle to keep up. By contrast, Lucas Conley, a contributing writer for Fast Company, takes a grimmer view. His book, Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and The Business of Illusion, is a bleak assessment of how defenseless we are against ad creep, as he calls it.

Check out the BusinessWeek article to see which perspective Berfield tends to agree with more.

Fall book preview - Relevance by Tim Manners

A crop of books about brand marketing has sprung up this past publishing season. We're starting to receive galleys of the fall books. This one just came across my desk and caught my eye: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters by Tim Manners. It was the marketing copy on the back cover that drew me in. "Branding expert Tim Manners says that marketers should give up the flashy practices and groupthink of the last fifty years--the demographics-driven strategies, fashion-obsessed things, and old-fashioned advertising. Today's customers don't care about those things. All they want to know is, "Why should I care? What's in it for me?"

This is a book we'll be keeping our eye on when it pubs in September. Here's a snippet from the working introduction:

An epidemic of irrelevance has brought once-powerful brands to their knees. The virus is an inordinate fixation on demographics-driven strategies, fashion-forward images, and media-focused communications.

The autopsy points to a lack of organic growth.

The cure is a reaffirmation of the essence of marketing, which is simply to help people solve problems and live happier lives. Interestingly, at least a few brands have managed to make comebacks after years in the wilderness.

• Levi's reasserted relevance when it created wardrobe solutions for men.
• Hasbro reasserted relevance when it reinvented board games for today's time-pressed consumers.
• Staples reasserted relevance when it stopped wasting its shoppers' time with extraneous products.

Manners goes on to describe a number of precepts that have shaped marketing practices for the past half century, and then offers a solution: six principles relevant brands understand and embrace.

Side note: Did you know that you can sign up for RSS updates on the books you're interested in? You can receive notices when we post an excerpt, blog post, interview with the author, or other news about a particular book. Relevance comes out September 18, but you can pre-order it from us or sign up for notifications from our blogs.

I Can't Remember The Last Time...

Jack and I have been pretty quiet on the blog over the last year. The process of writing a book took more time than I ever imagined. I have a completely new appreciation for the authors who have come before me. Seth suggests everyone write book in a post on his blog today, and I agree it is a great idea, but understand the work you are in for.

Anyway, this post is really about the first chance I have had in months to spend the morning looking through books. I promise more posts in the coming weeks, but here is what has caught my eye this morning.

• The Word of Mouth Manual Volume II - Dave's new book is worth a look. You can download it for free or buy it printed on paper.
• I am reading The Breakthrough Imperative. This is a book from Bain & Company. I have read enough of their partners' work to finally say that I like their message. I am just getting started, but I think this is a culmination work for the company combining the ideas of Fred Reichheld, Chris Zook, and others. More on that soon.
• There is a new second edition to The Age of Heretics by Art Kleiner. Too many people have told me that I have to check this out. I am going to read the book and then have Art on for a podcast.
• I am a huge fan of the Memo To the CEO series, which we post the Jack Covert Selects for on Friday. Check them out.

Enough for now. And I promise again to get back to writing more here.

PR Fairy Tales - Inc. magazine article

In the current issue of Inc. Magazine you'll find a short article on companies using children's books (or similar formats) to pitch their messages.

PR Fairy Tales: Pitches Disguised as Children's Books

Entrepreneurs have a habit of describing their companies in David-and-Goliath terms. Now, some are taking cues from Eloise and James and the Giant Peach. A mini trend in the world of public relations has companies replacing their run-of-the-mill press releases with promotional materials that look and feel like children's books.

We occasionally see corporations buying large quantities of children's books for their employees, and recently Roy wrote about the Conservation International and Random House re-release of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax for Earth Day.

In which children's books do you find inspiration? Would you consider pitching your employees or clients with this format?

"When it unveiled the Windows Home Server, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) released Mommy, Why Is There a Server in the House?"

Where's Your Wow?

There's a book coming out sometime in the next few weeks called Where's Your Wow?: 16 Ways to Make Your Competitors Wish They Were You! The authors, Robyn Spizman and Rick Frishman, talk about Wow people: "Everyone wants to be around them. They attract customers, supporters, readers, and purchasers, and they can help spread the word. They knock us off our feet with their energy and charisma, their confidence, or their style." They go on to say that "What Wow-achievers and companies with a Wow have is a personal brand--an identity that others recognize. [...] Remember: Ordinary is not extraordinary. The difference is extra." Companies and brands can be Wows, too.

Where's Your Wow? is presented in three parts: What Makes You Special?; Outstanding, Outrageous, and Out of the Box; and Wire Yourself for Success. Each chapter details one of the 16 laws of wowing customers; you'll learn how to develop your brand into a Wow, get it out there, and keep the momentum going by analyzing your results and sharpening your brand's edge. Spizman and Frishman share personal experiences and illustrative stories to support their theory that "Wow is within all of us...it's a matter of finding the qualities inside you that match a need in the marketplace and developing that match by following the elements of a sound business plan."

Where's Your Wow? is one of those inspirational books you can pick up and use to recharge your brainstorming or creativity engine. More story-driven than how-to, it will get you thinking about your own branding or marketing campaign and the state of its Wow factor.

Ferris' "Then We Came To The End" Wins B&N New Writers Award

Joshua Ferris was named a winner in Barnes & Noble's 15th Annual "Discover Great New Writers Awards."

His book Then We Came To The End is a novel about a Chicago ad agency and the tumultuous 1990's. Our resident writer Todd Lazarski wrote this short piece about the book for an upcoming 800-CEO-READ project:

The next generation of the business novel, Ferris' hilarious critique of modern office life and the world of marketing acts almost as the written word companion to "Office Space" or "The Office." Addictively funny, it also belongs in the same vein of rumbling satire employed by [John Kennedy] Toole. Ferris sheds light on all of our oft-overlooked, inter-office mannerisms, inanities, and silly drama. Throughout the prose paints a portrait that, while obviously entertaining, is also sharply revealing about that 40-hour-a-week, alternative universe known as "work."

We mention it here, because some times it helps to see the business world through a different lens with someone else describing the scene we see every day.

5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website

There are countless ways to get the most out of your web site, and even more opinions about the best ways. In Zero to One Million, Ryan Allis offers an evaluation system to determine whether your business idea is viable. Then, he provides strategies and steps for optimizing your online marketing efforts. The excerpt below is from Chapter 10, Step 8: Build Your Online Marketing Strategy.

A note about the author: Ryan Allis is CEO of iContact Corp., a venture-backed marketing and online communications firm that has grown from nothing to over $10 million in annual sales and 80 employees. He is also the Chairman of the web marketing firm Virante, Inc. For more info, visit www.zeromillion.com.

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5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website

The majority of Web site owners have fewer than 10 incoming links to their sites. The search engines view incoming links as verification that your site has quality content. The more related links your site has from other sites (with the underlined clickable text that includes your targeted keywords), the higher your ranking in the search engines will be. Here is a step-by-step overview of this entire SEO process:

1. Select your keywords. Use tools such as the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, Google's Search Term Suggestion Tool, and Word tracker to determine which related keywords or key phrases it would be best to optimize your site for. Once you have a list of potential keywords, go to Google and type in those keywords. Then see how many incoming links the top few sites have. You can determine this number by typing in "link:http://www.competitordomain.com." Take a look at whether the first few sites have the targeted keyword in the domain name or in the title, or whether they appear often on their page. Use this information to estimate what it would take to get your site above the current sites in the rankings.
2. Ensure that your site has those keywords on it. Make sure that the keywords you are targeting are on your home page at least five times. Having a 5 percent to 15 percent keyword density for your targeted search term on your home page is optimal. Also ensure that your title tag and image alt tags contain your targeted keyword. Add your targeted term to an H1 header tag for added prominence.
3. Build good-quality content on your site. I call this phase the "content campaign." Either write articles yourself for the site or go through the search engines to find related content. If you find an article on another site that you'd like to publish on your site, send an e-mail to the author, site owner, and/or publisher to request permission to syndicate the article on your site. Present it as a win/win quid pro quo in which you receive good-quality content and the author/publisher receives free exposure and a link to his or her Web site in the byline of the article. I'd suggest having at least 25 quality articles on your site before going forward. Optimize your home page for the two or three most competitive target terms. Optimize your in-site pages for the more unique and less competitive terms. You can also outsource the creation of this content to copywriters, using a service such as elance.com, for about $30 per 400-word article.
4. Build links to your Web site. Without incoming links to your site, it will never have a chance at being at the top of the search engines for competitive terms. Use the research you did earlier on the number of links the sites at the top of the listings have or your targeted keywords to set a goal for how many related incoming links you want to build to your own site. To obtain links, go through the search engines and find related Web sites, then contact the owners of those sites and offer to exchange links. Add their links to your Web site and e-mail them to let them know that you've linked to their sites and would appreciate a reciprocal link. I'd suggest contacting them first via e-mail and then via phone if necessary. In your initial e-mail to site owners, include the URL and description of your site, as well as the location of where their links are and which sites of theirs you are referring to. I'd suggest creating a resources section on your site and placing your link partners in the appropriate category within. You can also build links naturally through press releases or by having great content, a useful tool, a viral video, or an interesting blog. If you have more money than time, you can also purchase relevant links from quality Web sites through a service called LinkExperts or purchase reviews with links from sites such as PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and Blogvertise. Ensure that whatever links you build to your Web site have your target key phrase in the anchor text, the words that are clickable and underlined. Finally, text links are much more valuable than image links, as the search engines can follow text links and associate the link text with your Web site, but they cannot do this for image links.
5. Continue building your site's reputation. Once you have built a few related incoming links, the search engines will find and index your site. If your site is new, it can take up to nine months for Google to allow it to show up for competitive search terms. During this time, continue building good-quality related content and work to build as many incoming links from related Web sites as you can.

Update from Tools of Change Conference

Yesterday Kate and I got to hear Douglas Rushkoff, author of Get Back in the Box, talk about how content context contact is king. He explained that what people are really looking for online is social currency, the opportunities to interact with and respond to other people. The predominant marketing model has been to get people to interact with products, to take them away from other people so that, as Doug said in an example, they buy their oatmeal from Quaker, and not from Joe at the local farmer's market. That's changing as marketing is shifting from the hands of producers to the hands of consumers, whose opinions are more valuable because they can be shared without bias (for the most part) directly with other consumers.

The idea of social relationships in publishing has been a major theme at this year's conference. This morning I heard Gavin Bell from Nature Publishing Group talk about how your online services deserve the same degree of customer service your bricks and mortar business boasts. He talked about "Moderation" -- talking to people and finding out what's working and what's not, whether you're an online retailer or a blogger trying to join a broader conversation. One of the hardest parts of moderation is, Gavin explained, listening to what people say and accepting that they know what they want.

New Excerpt - from The Open Brand

There's a new excerpt up on the Excerpts blog. It's from The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World by Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins, Ph.D. The authors discuss marketing strategy in the new world of participatory media and consumer-generated content. The book isn't out until March, so be sure to bookmark this post if you're interested in getting a copy.

People Like Me In contrast to the pre-internet world, a "person like me" no longer has to live in the same neighborhood, belong to the same book club, have kids at the same school or work at the same firm. In fact, a "person like me" doesn't have to be anything like "me" -- at least, not demographically. That person just has to share a similar interest or experience, which I discover while surfing, searching or checking out my favorite social networking site. That "person like me" becomes an ally and advisor by virtue of having a seemingly independent, informed opinion about a subject that is relevant to me.

Forrester Research reports that over 52 percent of adult consumers typing queries into search engines are doing so to make or influence routine purchase decisions. All consumers are 50 percent more likely to be influenced by word-of-mouth recommendations from their peers than by radio or TV ads, according to a Nielsen BuzzMetrics 2005 report. Why? Because trust is now in the network -- in groups of interconnected "people like me."

Here's a direct link to the post: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007616.html

Kelly Mooney is the author of The Ten Demandments, which was a Jack Covert Selects in June 2002.

Other Reviews of Meatball Sundae

Here is a list of reviews to give you an idea of what other have been saying about Meatball Sundae:

• Jack Covert Selects - "Meatball Sundae is a wake-up call for companies to get rid of old ideas. I was captivated by the examples Godin uses to explain how the trends work, why the new marketing tactics don't work for many companies and how they can use this knowledge to grow and change along with the trends. This is a must-read for anyone who thinks that, by default, they have to use new media to sell their products."
• Church of the Customer - Jackie actually eats a Meatball Sundae (no, not the book). Watch the video.
• Gaping Void - Hugh asks Seth ten questions including "The fact that blogging changed your book writing style over time is well documented. Has anything come down the pike recently that's affected your blogging style?"
• Bruce Clay - "What is a meatball sundae? A meatball is a worthwhile commodity. They are things we need and sold to everyone. The sundae is the hot fudge and the peanuts, the tactics of social media and the MySpace profiles."
• Copyblogger - "Seth explains that you’ve got to reinvent your business to fit the realities of the new marketing (rather than the other way around), because ideas that spread through groups of people are far more powerful than ideas delivered at an individual. Those are Seth’s words, and that’s the best definition of social media marketing I’ve heard."
• WebInkNow - "Godin says fourteen trends are completely remaking what it means to be a marketer. And while these trends are transforming organizations that have the right approaches, they are crippling the organizations that are stuck with nothing but meatballs. Once again, marketing is transforming what we make and how we make it."
• MSNBC - Contributor Peter Hartlaub says "Chances we’ll be using [Meatball Sundae] in 2017: A new marketing book comes along every few minutes, but this cool new coinage has some staying power."

Seth in Stereo

We have a 30 minute podcast with Seth posted. We talk Google, Civil War books, and how all the cool stuff happens in marketing.

Jack Covert Selects - Meatball Sundae

Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin, Portfolio, 256 pages, $23.95 Hardcover, January 2008, ISBN 9781591841746

In Meatball Sundae, marketing guru Seth Godin explains that not all products are created equal in terms of marketing approach. In the old days of marketing, consumers really had no choice but to listen to whatever marketers, sales clerks, or the media ads wanted them to hear. And for companies trying to promote a product, there were only a handful of media tactics to control. But things have changed, and the old target audience can fast-forward through commercials and block ads with TiVo, DVRs, and SPAM blockers. So, companies must turn to other media channels like YouTube, MySpace, Google, blogs and blog trackers. Consumers have adapted to hearing those messages from this new media and, Godin assures, there are plenty of consumers to target. But, he cautions against doing a new media patch job on any old product. Certainly we've all done it, tried to pass off something as different from what it is. Maybe it's growing a beard to cover a blemish or wearing black because it's slimming. But in the marketing world, that's like making a meatball sundae.

Godin refers to any kind of base company, product and/or service as meatballs. The new marketing tools and tactics--YouTube, Google, blogs--are the whipped cream with cherries on top that these companies think they should be using in this time of new marketing. Godin offers the Proctor and Gamble line of cosmetics, Reflect, as an example of how a meatball can get drowned in whipped cream. Six years of being in the red, P&G stopped production because their demographic did not want cosmetics from a small appliance company. Godin urges companies to be smart, and either find the ice-cream for their toppings, or just stick to meatballs without the sweets. Marketers can use Godin's 14 Marketing Trends, which include outsourcing, authentic product stories, the long tail, and the triumph of the big idea, among others.

Meatball Sundae is a wake-up call for companies to get rid of old ideas. I was captivated by the examples Godin uses to explain how the trends work, why the new marketing tactics don't work for many companies and how they can use this knowledge to grow and change along with the trends. This is a must-read for anyone who thinks that, by default, they have to use new media to sell their products.

Marketing Mismatch - A ChangeThis Manifesto

This month, ChangeThis published Marketing Mismatch: When New Won't Work with Old (Riffs on Meatball Sundae). This is consolidation of the ten Meatball Monday riffs Seth wrote leading up to the release of the book.

If you followed along, it might not be a piece for you, but I imagine you know someone you could be helped by hearing the message.

This link will get them there:

http://www.changethis.com/42.01.MarketingMistmatch

Final Stop on Meatlball Sundae Post2Post Virtual Book Tour

Welcome to all the visitors for the Post2Post Virtual Book Tour.

We are featuring Seth Godin new book Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?

We'll be putting up some posts this morning, but first you may want to check out the other stops that have already been made this week.

Monday - John Moore at Brand Autopsy summarized, questioned, and took Seth on a photo shoot.

Tuesday - Phil Gerbyshak at Make It Great interviewed Mr. Godin. The 30 minutes is available as a mp3 file or pdf transcript.

Wednesday - Martin Bishop at Brand Mix asked Seth five questions from the viewpoint of a Fortune 500 executive.

Thursday - Patrick Greer at SpinningSilk Multimedia talks with Seth about Star Trek, buying stories, and the forwarding email button.

Friday - You are here with us. We have a podcast with Seth, a ChangeThis manifesto, and a list of others who have talked about the book including our Jack Covert Selects of Meatball Sundae. Being a good bookseller, we also have a few of offers on Seth's books for those who have been following along.

If you want a Seth Godin action figure...

Yes, there's now an action figure of the famous business guru Seth Godin. At a towering 5.375", he'll fit in any cubicle and your suit pocket. He comes with a free prize inside (not the book), a Little Book of Marketing Secrets and special Seth powers.

We're doing a special deal. We'll send you a free action figure when you purchase a 10-pack of Seth's newest book, Meatball Sundae. First come, first serve.

Meet Seth, the action figure:
Get your own Seth action figure and 10 copies of Meatball Sundae to share.

If you haven't seen it yet, Jackie of Creating Customer Evangelists and Citizen Marketers built and tried her own Meatball Sundae. ew.

Hugh MacLeod's 10 Questions for Seth

With the release of Seth's new book, Hugh posed 10 questions to Seth. Here's number six:

A lot of your books seem to be continuations of conversations you started with your seminal book, "Purple Cow". Meatball Sundae I'd say would qualify, as would "Free Prize Inside" and "All Marketers Are Liars". But then your last book, "The Dip", was about something relatively unrelated. Do you find yourself, as an author, often feeling pulled in two different directions?

I worry about Neal Stephenson and I worry about Robert Parker.

Snowcrash and Diamond Age were brilliant books, seminal stuff that actually changed the world. That gave Neal the power to pretty much write what he wanted, but what he wants to write, it turns out I don't want to read. I think he lost a great opportunity and I feel the loss.

Robert Parker hit it big with Spenser novels, but every one is so similar, I can't remember which ones I've read and which ones I haven't.

I don't want to be in either camp. So, I write what's important to me, I write what I think will reach an audience and I write what I think will cause change. I honestly don't worry a bit about sales. The selling of the book is just a tool to spread the idea to people who like buying a book.

Click here for all 10 questions.

Dip into Seth's Meatball Sundae: it's available.

With all the hype and Meatball Mondae blog posts, we've been waiting for this book. Seth's latest is now available!

Check out Squidoo to find excerpts and riffs from the book. And MarketingProfs is hosting Seth for a 60 minute, live web broadcast on January 3rd. You can sign up here [details fixed; thanks Shelley!].

And, meet Seth, the action figure with different colored socks:

[Psst...a little bird told me a ChangeThis manifesto is in the works. Stay tuned; the next issue to be published on the 16th.]

2007 Brand Autopsy Marketing Book Awards

John over at Brandy Autopsy has announced his favorite marketing books of the year. Among them are What Were They Thinking?, Wal-Smart, and Made To Stick. He also called out our ChangeThis manifesto The Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders as the "Best Business Book That is Not A Book".

BTW, the short lists for the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards will be announced next Monday (December 17th).

Do It Wrong Quickly - Marketing in the Age of the Web

A little background...Pearson, a major international publisher of educational and resource materials, puts out some of the best books on Internet marketing, technology support, and learning HTML and multimedia software. (And they're not paying me to say so.) You've probably seen Pearson's many imprints on your resource books -- IBM Press, Financial Times, Prentice Hall, Peachpit Press, Longman, and Wharton, among many others. Peachpit's Quickstart guides, for example, give non-technicians the basic tools to make heads or tails of programs once mastered exclusively by programmers and graphic designers. As much of our creative work becomes do-it-yourself or stays in-house, it's almost necessary to start a reference library. Over the next few months I'd like to recommend a few titles to get you started.

As we're thinking about ways to expand our online presence, Todd and I have been talking a lot about the best ways to approach new projects. It used to be that we decided to do something--print a new brochure, redesign a web site, incorporate a new technology--and then presented a plan to a designer. There might be some initial back-and-forth about needs and goals, but what the designer came back with in the end was essentially a finished product. We had to be sure we knew exactly what we wanted before we asked (and paid) for it. Today, though, there's a lot of wiggle room. Especially online, we can try and fail at something new without taking a significant hit (or any at all, sometimes).

A few weeks ago Todd wrote about a book called Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres:

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007328.html.

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007292.html.

This week I opened up Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules (IBM Press). The subtitle might make you think "Um, where have you been?" but the author, Mike Moran, actually gets at something close to what Ayres talks about in Super Crunchers. Using a bow-and-arrow analogy, Moran suggests that the archer with three arrows has a higher chance of success than the archer with one. In other words, it's great if your shot in the dark hits the bull's eye, but chances are it won't every time. On the other hand, if you take three shots at the same time, you might not hit the bull's eye, but you'll score more points--and learn more along the way.

I'm probably not doing justice to the author's message, here, but I think that the important thing to take away is that it no longer makes sense to expect that even a carefully thought-through, well-executed marketing campaign will hit the target in today's world. In fact, Moran believes that the new marketing means getting away from the plan-then-execute approach, and starting to try lots of approaches at the same time. In addition to systematic ways of assessing your online marketing (conversions, metrics), you have to listen better to your customers. He talks about the social media phenomenon, incorporating multi-media approaches in your message, and creating deeper relationships with your customers by engaging them in a conversation.

As Moran puts it, "whether change gets your blood pumping or leaves you in a pool of sweat, marketing is undergoing a revolution more profound than any of us are likely to see the rest of our lives." Do It Wrong Quickly is a friendly invitation to that revolution.

Bzzz...

Last night Jon and I listened to a speech from Malcolm Faulds of BzzAgent -- the company founded by Dave Balter, author of Grapevine. I'm still fascinated by what BzzAgent is doing.

Dave created BzzAgent to harness the power of word-of-mouth. Both the agents and the marketers benefit from it. The marketers have The agents get to try the latest and greatest products and tell their friends about them.

The company assumes that, on average, every agent will tell 12 people about the product/service; those 12 people then turn around and tell four other folks. Back in 2005 there were 75,000 BzzAgents. Malcolm said they're up to 310,000 now. The price varies by project. An estimate for a 10-week project with 1,000 agents that includes shipping is $70,000.

I wish I was a better BzzAgent. Then, perhaps, I would have had a shot at trying out a new car:

When the new VW Passats were unveiled, BzzAgent worked with VW dealers to arrange a 48-hour test drive for a handful of agents. Of the original 6302 agents invited to participate, 1167 scheduled test drives and 1071 completed a test drive. In the end, 375 Passats were sold/leased.

What I always find interesting is how other ideas (often found in books) are implemented in strategies. For example, BzzAgent uses Reichheld's NPS. And for phone polling they work with Jonathan and Edward's company.

Oh, and if you're looking for WOM books, see BzzAgent's Resources.

Business Books About The NFL

I am a sucker for NFL books. I love the sport (yes, my fantasy team posted their first win this week) and I am even more fascinated by the business of the NFL. Last year I interviewed Mark Yost about his book Tailgating, Sacks, and Salary Caps which deal with the business of the NFL.

This fall, there are two more books that caught my attention:

Hiring Secrets of the NFL: How Your Company Can Select Talent Like a Champion by Isaac Cheifetz uses the NFL as a metaphor for bringing the best people into the organization. Did you know second round picks more often become Pro-Bowl players than first round? Yet look where all the emphasis is placed by teams and in the media. At 120 pages, it is quick and punchy.

The second book is called Brand NFL By Michael Oriard. This one might be hard to place at the local bookstore having been published by University of North Carolina Press. I'll let you read the Washington Post review for more on the title, but let me quote one paragraph from the piece constrasting Oriard's book with two others:

Oriard traces this evolution in convincing detail. He is scarcely the first former player to write about the game -- Jerry Kramer's Instant Replay (1968), published while its author was still a member of the Green Bay Packers, remains to this day the best book about football qua football -- but the combination of his playing experience and his deep knowledge of the league's inner business workings makes for a unique and useful point of view. Much of the material in the first two-thirds of the book will be familiar to readers of Michael MacCambridge's America's Game (2004), the best history of pro football to date, but his discussion of what can fairly be called the game's larger meaning is especially interesting and insightful.

(I had to get a Packers reference into this post :)

Fall preview: The Art of Woo

When the entire office completed our StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessments, we were quite surprised by some of the strengths that emerged. We expected certain outcomes; for instance, Kate had "achiever," Todd had "futuristic." But everyone nearly fell of their seats when Jake, our former shipper and receiver and now customer service rep, told us that "woo" was one of his top five strengths.

According to StrengthsFinder*, "woo" stands for "winning others over." If you're a woo-er, "you enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you....Not only are you rarely at a loss for words; you actually enjoy initiating with strangers because you derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection."

Diving deeper into the description, it made sense to us that our vegan, fro-sporting mover of books possessed these qualities. It's funny--perhaps we had an old-fashioned, Austen-esque notion of "woo" in our minds, of the suave hero winning over the stubborn yet vulnerable heroine.

Given the great success of Gallup's online assessments, it's really no surprise that I received an October title called The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas, by G. Richard Shell (Bargaining for Advantage) and Mario Moussa.

Shell and Moussa define woo as:

It is a relationship-based persuasion, a strategic process for getting people's attention, pitching your ideas, and obtaining approval for your plans and projects. It is, in short, one of the most important skills in the repertoire of any entrepreneur, employee, or professional manager whose work requires them to rely on influence and persuasion rather than coercion and force.

The Art of Woo lays out a step-by-step plans for identifying and using a persuasion technique to carry out a strategic initiative. For instance, one way to persuade might be to "Put Your Heart into It" -- show that you truly believe in what you're saying. Or, you might "Build Bridges with Analogies and Metaphors" -- make decision-making easier by illustrating a point with a story or concept your audience is already familiar with. The authors introduce six other persuasion pathways to success.

The book also includes the authors' own stories of advising leaders, as well as stories about famous people--Nelson Mandella, John D. Rockefeller, Bono--who used the strength of woo to accomplish extraordinary feats.

*The StrengthsFinder version of "woo" actually appeared first in Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. We just happened to find out that Jake is a woo-er through the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment.

Excerpt from WATCH THIS, LISTEN UP, CLICK HERE

Yesterday I posted a new excerpt on the Excerpts blog. It's from Chapter 1 of WATCH THIS, LISTEN UP, CLICK HERE by David Verklin and Bernice Kanner.

"This means that we're exposed to an estimated 3,000 ads a day. That's counting highway billboards, posters in trains, buses, and bathroom stalls, commercials in movie theaters, holograms on buildings and taxis, "talking" grocery shelves, and stickers on food (CBS has stamped eggs with ads for its shows). But that doesn't take into account all the bumper stickers, t-shirt slogans, and ads on people's anatomy that we see (yes, Dunkin' Donuts paid college kids to panel their foreheads with messages about great coffee). And that 3,000-ad tally doesn't count the now almost ubiquitous product placements embedded in films, TV shows, and games.

No wonder some are calling this the Age of Interruption. Commercial avoidance has become a high art. Seven out of 10 people wish they could will the ads away. But it's not the advertising they hate as much as the uninvited disruption."

Here's a direct link to the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007181.html

And the book: http://800ceoread.com/products/?ISBN=978047005643

Excerpt from Profitable Marketing Communications

Check out Chapter 8 of Profitable Marketing Communication on our Excerpts blog.

'Think Different' should be the slogan of all marketers who want their marketing communications to deliver a return. There is no point in being identical to the competition and saying the same thing - only perhaps a bit louder and across more platforms. As Jason Frost, Managing Director of Publicis Blueprint, points out: 'Any successful brand has found a way of differentiating, whether it's through accident or design.'

Profitable Marketing Communications: A Guide to Marketing Return on Investment encourages businesses to view marketing not as a cost, but an investment and added value. "The book introduces investment disciplines and strategies to marketing practices and gives insight into how marketers have delivered outstanding marketing return on investment. Finally, it provides a blueprint to maximize the returns from marketing communications" (Kogan Page, publisher).

Here's a direct link to the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007160.html

Changing the world by learning to sell green products.

MarketingProfs applies Levitt's marketing myopia to "green" businesses. When creating environmentally friendly products, businesses can easily fall into the marketing myopia trap; that of, focusing too much on the green benefits.

It seems the majority of consumers won't go out of their way to buy a product simply because it's green. Take Philips' fluorescent lightbulbs named EarthLight pitched in 1994 with a price tag of $15. Sure, it was good for the environment (though didn't fit most lamps) but sales never took off. When the bulbs were repackaged and promoted money savings in 2000, sales took off. [Now, green bulbs are becoming an industry standard.]

The problem: consumers didn't understand what was in it for them.

Which makes me wonder how many people bring their grocery bags back for 5 cents savings or their Starbucks' mug in for 10 cents off. How much value do consumers need to see to convince them go green?

What Podcasts People Are Listening To

Here is a little peak into what people are listening to on our Podcasts blog. This is a ranked list for the first four months of 2007.

1. The Elegant Solution Interview with Matt May
2. Marketing and Sales for Big Complex Selling Interview - Part 1 with Brian Carroll
3. Marketing and Sales for Big Complex Selling Interview - Part 3 with Brian Carroll and Jill Konrath
4. Everyday Greatness Interview with Stephen Covey
5. The Difference Maker Interview with John Maxwell
6. Confessions of An Economic Hitman Audio Excerpt
7. Made To Stick Interview with Dan Heath
8. Growing Great Employees Interview - Part 2 with Erika Anderson
9. Purpose Interview with Nikos Mourkogiannis
10. Growing Great Employees Interview - Part 1 with Erika Anderson

Authors visiting Google

Google has been bringing authors in to speak for quite some time now. They recently shared the videos of the authors' visits from John McCain to Valentino Achack Deng. In the business arena, you'll find these folks and more:

1. James Scurlock, Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
2. Chris Anderson, The Long Tail
3. Max Barry, Company
4. Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

So far there are 68 posted.

Wii-ly Cool

In a current Business 2.0 article, "How the Wii is Creaming the Competition," John Gaudiosi discusses how Nintendo remade itself with its latest gaming system: the Wii.

If you haven't heard of it, Wii is a relatively inexpensive, motion-controlled system that blends physical activity with the video game environment.

Unlike high-end products like the Sony Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox, Wii has a basic design that allows Nintendo to make a profit from the get-go. Nintendo knew it could make an instant $50 in profit on the system (whereas Playstation and Xbox actually take a hit before they make a profit on expensive games and accessories), so they offered its "killer app," Wii Sports, for free with the purchase of console and controller.

Gaudiosi explains how, in addition to the system itself, Nintendo revolutionized its marketing approaches:

Finally it came time for Nintendo to market the Wii to the world. In addition to its standard TV campaigns targeting schoolkids, the company pumped 70 percent of its U.S. TV budget into programs aimed at 25-to 49-year-olds, says George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America.

He even put Wii ads into gray-haired publications like AARP and Reader's Digest. For Nintendo's core users, he took a novel, Web-based approach: 'To reach the under-25 audience,' he says, 'we pushed our message through online and social-networking channels' including MySpace.'

It seems the Wii serves as an excellent example of taking a popular technology and incorporating social values and marketing trends.

I had the chance to bowl with "the Wii" over the weekend with some friends. It's a pretty cool experience--and my score was surprisingly close to its real-world average. (I hoped it would be better, though.) I'm not a gamer in any way, shape, or form, but I have to say that even a short experience with the Wii was enough for me to say that it was unlike any other game I've played. And somehow, that made it even better.

You can read the article here.

You're Already a Citizen Marketer

The second event in our LeaveSmarter Series took place last Thursday afternoon. We're crazy busy around here (just ask inBubbleGuy) so we haven't had a chance to blog about it, but we'd be remiss not to mention how enjoyable Ben McConnell's presentation was. He even took a few technical glitches in stride, showing off his shiny red sneakers to keep the momentum going.

One of the strongest messages I took away from the event is just how powerful social media are. Ben showed us some pretty cool (and, in a few instances, kind of scary) examples of the videos, blogs, and other online content that citizen marketers are creating. I particularly liked the fan version of Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" music video.

Using our nametags as a talking point, we shared with each other the products and services we're citizen marketers for. For instance, I wrote down Sala da Pranzo, a great little Italian restaurant on Milwaukee's East Side. inBubbleGuy promoted the bacon-wrapped water chestnuts we provided --one of the driving attractions to the series. Todd talked about More Space.

The name tag idea was Ben and Jackie's, and I highly recommend it as a way to get people mingling at your next event. Speaking of the next event, we would love to see you at our final LeaveSmarter event on May 16. Nikos has a powerful message that we're sure will bring this season to an inspiring end.

We'll have some photos from the event up on our Flickr site very soon.

If You Can't Be Here...

We are on our way over to the Citizen Marketers LeaveSmarter event. Since most of you aren't in Milwaukee today, I have posted a podcast I did with Jackie Huba.

If you want to really pretend you were here, you can cue that up around 12PM Central. That's when things will be starting up here.

Harvard Business Review's Big Ideas for 2007

Harvard Business Review publishes a list of breakthrough ideas each year. Bob Sutton doesn't think breakthrough is the right word for them, but I think there are a few definitely worth paying attention to this year.

Duncan Watts' piece on Accidental Influentials is going to create interesting discussions with the word of mouth marketing community. Watts says "Our work shows that the principal requirement for what we call "global cascades"—the widespread propagation of influence through networks—is the presence not of a few influential but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people, each of whom adopts, say, a look or a brand after being exposed to a single adopting neighbor."

Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe Institute says size matters when it comes to innovation. Read the piece. There is too much there to try and summarize. He talks about power-laws, metabolic rates of cities, and theoretically unbounded creative growth for large organizations.

And I am not sure I agree with Philip Longman's conclusions of a continued rise in patriarchal families and conservative thought. He basically says conservatives are the ones having larger families and they in turn are going to produce more children who will grow up to care about these issues.

There are a total of 20 ideas. You might find some others that work for you.

Today's Vocabulary Quiz

I am sure you already received your November/December issue of Selling Power. Seth is on the cover (ten times).

We tend to talk about Seth alot and thought we should take a moment to get the new folks caught up. There is a short vocabulary list of Seth-isms from the article. Take a shot at what you think the words mean and then highlight the area next to the word to see the definition.

Interruption Marketing -> Broadcasting messages people don't want to see or hear; message that "interrupt."

Permission Marketing -> Narrowly delivered message that are anticipated, personal, and relevant.

Remarkable -> Anything the consumer believes is worth remarking on.

Megaphone -> When customers choose to promote you by talking to their friends and colleagues.

Edgecraft -> The process of digging deep and being bold to come up with edgy, remarkable ideas

Marketing -> Telling authentic stories that customers want to hear and believe in.

[Hat Tip: Chris Anderson for the answer hiding idea]

Which would you rather get?

We get 10 to 15 books every week. The majority of the time it is just a book with a letter telling me why I should like the book. Every once in a while, we get something more. I highly recommend to authors taking the extra time. It is not difficult to make your book standout in the pile.

There are two pictures below showing what authors did to go above and beyond. Both of the examples below were remarkable, but only one of them got me to read the book. I will let you guess which.

Brand Autopsy's Best Marketing Books For 2006

John Moore announced his 2006 Brand Autopsy Marketing Book Awards today. Treasure Hunt won for Best Marketing Strategy Book, ZAG won for Best Marketing Book of the Year, and Adrian Zackheim of Portfolio (Penguin) was awarded The Phillip Kolter Vanguard Lifetime Achievement Award.

Go help Guy.

Guy Kawasaki is seeking help with a title for his next book. As he says:

It’s been two years since The Art of the Start hit the streets, and I’m ready to write another book. I have some ideas, but I'd like to tap the “wisdom of the crowd� in order to ensure that it appeals to “the long tail� in this “Web 2.0� world. :-)

Have ideas? Go help him out here.

Eyes Wide Shut

Here’s a quick test: while you’re reading this, imagine that you’re at a restaurant and you are served an indulgent dessert. What is it? Write it down.

Now try the same exercise again, but this time close your eyes and transport yourself anywhere in the world. Imagine the smells, the sounds, and the kind of tastes that place evokes. Keep your eyes shut for at least fifteen seconds for the whole picture to come together in your mind. Let your dessert truly come from that place.

Now write down your answer. How is it different? Chances are that by closing your eyes and mentally putting yourself in another place, you gave your mind a chance to escape your physical surroundings. You were no longer relying on your brainpower, rather tapping into your memories and imagination, which is far more powerful. Furthermore, the success of the brand itself is often tied to the place that inspired it, and can spark similarly powerful images in the minds of consumers.

Where would you go to find one of the answers on your list? Is it a place? A decade? A state of mind? It’s a funny example to try with the stapler, but I’ll give it a shot. Since I know that one of my goals is to create a new and elegant design, I’m going to imagine it as if it were a sculpture in a modern art gallery. Try it, too. Really close your eyes and open your mind to what that would look like.

What was yours? Mine was black and glossy, and stood up vertically. It closed like a clamshell, so that you couldn’t tell it was a stapler until you opened it up.

Hmmm… camouflage desk art…I might be on to something.

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By Lynn Altman, author of Brand it Yourself.

Branding by the numbers.

Maybe it’s because I’m the daughter of an engineer, or maybe it’s because I actually liked my algebra teacher back in high school, but there’s something about using numbers as a source for ideas that I’ve always found particularly fascinating.

In branding and new product creation, the ability to own a particular number is invaluable. Think about the difference between a “blended vegetable drink� and “V8.� From the name, you know that there are eight vegetables, or servings of vegetables, in every bottle. Heinz 57 brags on its website that in 1896 Henry Heinz turned “more than 60 products into ’57 Varieties.’ The magic number becomes world-renowned and now is virtually synonymous with the H.J. Heinz Company.� The number has well outlasted the name, with many of the 57 varieties, such as mincemeat and pickled cauliflower, thankfully gone from the shelves. You can also use numbers as a source for new product and brand ideas. Start with the number first and see where it takes you.

Numbers can evoke any number of things, from ingredients, such as Five Alive juice drinks; time it takes to use, such as the Aussi 5-Minute Miracle; the frequency with which you use it, like One-a-Day vitamins. The best part? Numbers can also be totally made up. The Oil of Olay brand created their “7 Signs of Aging� only to have their lotions contain the ingredients that treat them all. Car companies do it all the time with their 3000, 6000, and 9000 model cars. What do they signify? Absolutely nothing. Software developers use numbers to show newer versions and editions. Razor brands use the number of blades they have to suggest efficacy, which is why we have the Mach3 from Gillette only to be outdone by the Quattro from Schick, which has been (temporarily?) trumped with the five-bladed Fusion from Gillette.

There’s a risk here: when the number means something specific, such as a sale number, an interest rate, or something that can be easily one-upped by a competitor, it’s better to look elsewhere. Also, when thinking about numbers be wary of using numbers like “2000�, especially in our post-millennium world. The Dilbert cartoon featured a product called the “Gruntmaster 6000.� You don’t need me to tell you that if your product sounds like a Dilbert cartoon, run.

In most cases, however, numbers can help formulate your product’s promise and turn what could be a parity product into something that has a clear point-of-difference. So pick a number. Any number. And see what happens when a certain number or numbers become attached with your brand. If you’re feeling indecisive, use the number “3�.

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By Lynn Altman, author of Brand it Yourself.