Video of the Week: A Trumpet, The Star Wars Theme, and a Beauty Pageant - A Not-So-Pretty Combination

Link for the feed readers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wffwg7pA0t8

A branding expert - David Russell

I had the opportunity to have lunch yesterday with branding expert David Russell. David's an advertising industry veteran who's worked with some of the biggest names in the business. We were talking about new media verses traditional media and the new promotional outlets verses the old promotional outlets. One of those old promotional outlets we were talking about was newspapers. He had a great one liner that I had to share here...

"You'll find newspaper readers every day in the obituaries."

The point was, obviously, that if you're still looking to newspapers (and many other traditional media) to reach your audience, you're promoting through a declining medium. It's declining in reach which means it's declining in focus, impact, and effectiveness. David spoke of the old promotion paradigm where advertisers could place an ad on television or in newspapers and know it was reaching a large percentage of their target audience. David knows that world no longer exists and it was extremely interesting to talk with a guy who's lived in the old advertising/marketing world but recognizes the new one filled with niche markets, new media, high interactivity, and narrowly focused promotional strategies. I believe he's a rare exception to the rest of the industry which is in many way digging in and trying to push the old methods as if they are still as effective today as they used to be.

Additional note: David certainly didn't ask me to do this but I feel compelled to mention that if you are looking for branding development or clarity, David is absolutely your guy. He has a method and perspective on branding that is both simple and profound and applies to just about every organization whether they realize it or not.

Don't Kill Your Blog

I heard recently of an organization that created a blog for a large event they were having. The blog drew a significant audience quickly in the weeks leading up to the event and also saw a surge of traffic and comments in the days following the event. It was a successful blog in almost every way possible, but three weeks later the blog was dead (meaning taken offline and totally inaccessible.) Why? Apparently since the event was over the organization decided it wasn't worth keeping around.

Never mind the fact that the organization just created a valuable asset to communicate about future events (not to mention this was a quick and cheap way to do it.) Never mind they created a great platform for conversations and feedback about the event which didn't exist previously (and now doesn't again.) Never mind they had a huge opportunity to engage the readers with other product offers that they would almost certainly be interested in. The fact is, when they killed the blog they killed multiple opportunities with a highly focused and interested niche of their customers who were prepared to give them their undivided attention. They killed a feedback opportunity, a sales opportunity, and a promotion opportunity.

The bottom line is this: don't kill your blog. It's too easy to maintain even if only at a minimal level and almost always too valuable to kill.

Video of the Week: The NASCAR Coach

I recently discovered my good friend Chris is a new NASCAR fan. This is a fairly recent love for him so I thought he might be interested to see this interview with a NASCAR coach. Just remember...the key is to drive fast and turn left...except when you drive straight.



Here's the link for the feed readers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-4f-x1bSGE

How to Seth Godin Yourself

A while back someone asked me if I knew of Seth Godin to which I responded with something like, "Heck yeah, I think he's remarkable." After we talked a bit he asked me how I thought he could "Seth Godin" himself...meaning he was wondering about the secret to Seth's seemingly widespread success through unconventional means and how could he replicate it. The person I spoke to has developed himself as a brand in his area of expertise and sees Seth as a model to follow for further growth. I agreed with his take and gave him the following thoughts on how he might be able to Seth Godin himself (without shaving his head):

Seth leverages his blog. Blogs are unique for many reasons:

• Blogs have tremendously positive effects on Google rankings because the content is updated regularly and therefore shows Google it's more active than a static website thus ranking it higher.
  
• Blogs allow your ideas to be easily distributed by allowing people to reference specific posts and talk about them on their own blogs (thus beginning the word-of-mouth marketing).
• Blogs give you an immediate forum to expand your base of readers, post new ideas, coordinate a meet up on the fly, get feedback on an idea, or respond to critics quickly and informally.
  
• Blogs let people connect with you through comments (though Seth actually doesn't do this on his.) With a blog people get to talk back to you and you can listen but don't have to respond to every comment. It allows you to get valuable and immediate feedback in a way you can't (and won't) get on a standard website or email newsletter.
  
• Blogs give you an opportunity for greater to . If a well known blog posts about your blog it will take the awareness to an entirely new level. Though it's possible one could do that without a blog, it seems like bloggers prefer to link to other blogs because they want to reference something specific most of the time and blogs make it possible.
  
• Blogs are accepted as more authentic than traditional marketing. With so much marketing today people have natural filters and defenses up to deflect the barrage of ads. Those defenses drop when reading a blog that they respect so if a blogger talks about you, people are more accepting of the idea and more willing to respond or research it further. They're taking the blog post as a personal recommendation from the blogger rather than a professional promotion by marketer.
  

Seth leverages his audience. He knows he's making the most of his base by always giving them something. He knows that if he gives away valuable ideas long enough he buys the person's attention, respect, and time. He then strategically asks the audience for things from time to time but not in a pushy way, but more like "Hey, I'm doing this and if you want to participate here's what you do..." He displayed this recently with a good idea to promote his new book, The Dip. In essence he told people he would fly to speak to them if they coordinated groups that would purchase five books each for admission. He made the offer and left it up to his readers to take him up on the offer.

Seth limits his accessibility (but is highly accessible in other ways.) Seth is interesting in that as a high profile guy, he answers all of his own email and does it rather quickly. He writes numerous blog posts a week as well. People feel like they know him and he accomplishes that through both his personal email responses and frequent blogging. To see Seth, however, you have to be part of a select group but that doesn't mean he selects you, it means you select yourself. He uses exclusivity to his advantage by teaching seminars to small groups and charging a premium for those seminars. That creates the best possible opportunity for him to make money off the event yet also create demand for those who didn't get in on the seminar and want to get in next time.

Seth focuses on quality. Seth believes that if anything is remarkable (reference Purple Cow) it will be talked about (reference Unleashing the Ideavirus) and then people will buy it. Quality is the key rather than a mediocre product or service with a razzle dazzle marketing plan.

So to sum it up: You can Seth Godin yourself by building an audience, leveraging that audience at key times, limit some forms of accessibility, and wrap the whole thing up in high quality and remarkability.

NeSmith Named Director for Tech Ops at ConnectivHealth

I just saw the official announcement this afternoon that my friend and former colleague, Steve NeSmith, has accepted the position as Director of Technical Operations at ConnectivHealth here in Nashville. Steve is leaving the Broadman & Holman Publishing Group as their Director of E-Business.

I've known Steve since I first came to Nashville six years ago and have always looked to him as a guy who combines a great knowledge of marketing and new technology. Steve really displayed this a year ago as the creator of RealVerse, a weekly video blog that got widespread attention around the country and was even a 2006 Weblog Award nominee. At B&H he put it to work most recently with the Holman TV campaign and strategy. ConnectivHealth seems to be hopping so it will be interesting to see what Steve does there as he gets back to his health care industry roots.

Top Online Video Types - Funny Videos Win

A new study out today shows that the top types of online videos people watch are. Here are the top five:

1. Jokes/funny videos
2. News/current events
3. Amateur videos
4. Movie trailers
5. Music videos

I wasn't surprised by the top category because it seems like people are more likely to share the funny videos beyond anything else. The one that surprised me most was down the list at number nine: Full length TV shows. As almost every major television network is now providing most or all of their shows online, this is an interesting stat in my view and further validation that online video will only increase and the new Nano was a significant announcement as these videos get converted over to the iPod.

Here's the rest of the list: