Categories
Geek Stuff

Ronin Return

I’m back and throwing a punch this week for DYKC’s Friday Night Fights!

From Superman 676, this month. I’m very excited about next month, author James Robinson will be taking over the title and rumor is it’s for close to 2 years. If you’ve ever thought about reading a comic check out Robinson’s run on Starman, a fantastic story with some excellent characters including The Shade, one of the few literary characters I actually miss hearing about (c’mon, less than $5, how can you miss?)

Categories
Great Marketing

Auction Watch 2008

Social Media Consultants

Follow up to the Social Media Consultant Auction. While checking out the rates I found a similar offer to Golf with Tiger Woods. We’ll call that one an outlier.

Categories
Podcasting

Sleazy Email

The latest Marketing Over Coffee is up and I run with a continuing theme of spam, relevance and responsibility.

Direct Link to File

Categories
Brain Buster

Social Media Consultants On the Block

I have to give a tip of the hat to Jaffe, Brogan, Livingston, Strout, and Verdino for putting themselves on the block as consultants on eBay. It’s to raise money for charity, but I see it as an indicator of the point in evolution of the Social Media Consultant (in contrast to the critics who have coined the phrase Social Media Douchebag).

There can be no whining, crying or questions, the numbers are out there for the whole world to see and bid on. The questions is: Can all of the Social Media Hype cross over to become honest buzz, and better yet, profitable business?

The biggest blind spot in the Social Media Consultant is the marketing of services to the converted. Talking about your social media prowess on twitter and through Facebook is showing off your flycasting in the sandbox. There are no other fishermen there to pay you for lessons and you qualify as a hobbyist, not a professional.

The fun part is that this is no longer concerned with social media, it will come down to marketing. Who will do the best job of getting their message beyond the fishbowl? My money is on Jaffe, and I know it’s lame to take the odds on favorite, but with 2 books and a ton of speaking gigs around the globe, he’s got the best reach. (I think he’s also got the foresight to see what a $10k deal could do across the board for hype. I wouldn’t think less of any of them for going Red Saber to do whatever is necessary to get that number up)

Right now, 9 days left, no bids in yet. Here’s the links to add to your “My Ebay”.

Brogan.

Jaffe.

Livingston.

Strout.

Verdino.

Let’s get ready to rumble…

btw, Verdino was in the original post but wasn’t up when I checked, more news as it happens… Link added!

Categories
Daily Life

All I Want is a Photograph

Digital Water

Some of the shots from last weekend’s adventures in San Jose are up on Flickr, click the photo to check them out. And if you haven’t downloaded PicLens yet, what are you waiting for?

Categories
Podcasting

Copywriting and Other Stuff

The latest Marketing Over Coffee is up, some interesting stuff on copywriting and things to do on the trade show floor:

Direct Link to File

Categories
Brain Buster

Unlikely Champion – Amazon Unbox

I’ve complained a number of times before about not being able to get the television show Heroes on iTunes anymore. When I got the Tivo up and rolling last week one of the things I was looking forward to was trying out Amazon Unbox. I wasn’t expecting much from the service, I thought it was more of a media player that may have some commercials running prior to the show.

Instead, it’s a full featured media store. I downloaded a bunch of episodes to the Tivo and was surprised to see I had the rights to also download the episodes to my laptop. Even more impressive, they run without any trouble on my work laptop (it has a crummy graphics card and it cannot play an iTunes video, or a DVD without stuttering when running only on battery power). The good news is that it worked, the bad news is I then proceeded to watch 6 episodes of Heroes straight on a recent flight to San Jose. (For those who care, Season 2 is not as good as season 1 but is still a lot of fun).

It also says I have rights to download to a media player, such as iPod, which I should test but probably won’t get around to. The other good news – while on the road the connection at the Fairmont was good enough that I was able to pick up some episodes of Battlestar Galactica that I haven’t been able to get to.

Categories
Podcasting

Now, with more French Maids

This week’s marketing over coffee audio program talks about using sex to sell, among other topics.

Direct link to file 

Categories
Swipe File

Viral Marketing – May 2008

I had an inquiry come in on viral marketing today. Here are a few things that I’ve taken notice of in the past few months:

Crank dat.
26 million views. MIT Takes notice.

[youtube]LpocrqvP2Yg[/youtube]

On the other side: GhostRide

Everybody backs out due to safety concerns

[youtube]hJDLRCXR2ZM[/youtube]

Crossfit

Uses online community and video for a demanding workout program

[youtube]w6Eyg32W4aE[/youtube]

Twitter has spread with no marketing spend

And I’ll give a plug for the Oovoo campaign I was part of.

[youtube]5cacYjY46Do[/youtube]

Categories
Podcasting

It’s Not The M Show

Jeff Cutler decided to take a cut at The M Show since the production schedule has gotten so lazy with the bums over there.

Check it out:

Direct link to file