Marketing Secrets

I saw an absolutely brilliant post by Seth Godin today. These top ten marketing tips account for nine of the obstacles I'm dealing with right now. The tenth - budget - fortunately isn't my problem on this one, although I am going to be looking out for those bright coloured alarm bells.

I'm trying to decide whether the image of a company, its history, its values and ambition are best represented by a mission statement or by a human being.

It's easier to follow a guideline as they are not the moving targets CEOs invariably are, but I can't help feeling it's much more human to follow a leader.

Also what happens when the PR agency comes up with the mission statement? Who gets the identity-kudos then? I might be wrong here, but my gut feeling is that a physical point of reference is easier to focus on than a slick slogan.

Now all that's left to do is convince "them"......

Last night a filter saved my life...

I'm having trouble with Gator news.

Learning to navigate through a new program or service is bad enough, cramming all that information into a single day is asking too much of myself.

My eyes are bigger than my mind.

Is St. Francis online??

I'm still in awe over my Umbria trip. There's always going to be a natural affinity between a Brit and that region of Italy. Hey, I'm no different the the next guy!

This week has been a sort of awakening. Seth repeats Nike's Mantra and he's right. When you do start something, the rest just can't stop itself from falling on you.

On the one hand I'm still finding my way around the blogosphere, carefully tiptoeing from blog to blog in a vain attempt to see life from the outside. On the other I have learnt that sometimes, people you are taught to fear are often your greatest allies.

High profile social media is like the main event at a Las Vegas a boxing event. Yet for every testosterone-filled thug bulldozing his (so far not her) way through other people's reputations, there are just as many willing to stick their own necks out for you.

Umbria was magical, but the blogosphere is even more surprising.

Umbria and the long tail of tourism

Assisi 10,
originally uploaded by lingolook.

Shel gets his baggage sent to Azerbaijan, we get to bask in the fabulous Italian Indian Summer in Umbria.

Umbria is just south of Tuscany, and shares quite a bit with its famous neighbour.

Yet as it isn't Tuscany, there are far, far fewer tourists (although we did have to wade through thousands of American and German faithful in Assisi).

Which got us thinking. OR me at any rate. If I were looking for somewhere to escape to, somewhere to take my wife when we've had enough, I would choose the long tail of Italian tourism every time. It worked this week-end, why wouldn't it work again?

But as there isn't an aggregator, a collective, personal view of long tail tourism for runaway parents, maybe we just stumbled on an idea...

Anything to get out of Milan really ;-)

Scratching the surface

I'm impressed. I never imagined blogging could be the new realm of like-minded professionals but this social medium has uprooted and tossed aside my fear of identifying myself and has, once and for all, demonstrated that even someone as far out on the long tail as me can add considerable weight to the debate.

I am a ghost writer. More than simply writing in someone else's shadow, for the majority of my clients, I simply do not exist. I've been hidden away for so long I almost forgot my identity. But then along came a spider, sat down beside her, and scared my fear away.

There is something magical about the moment something clicks. The instant it dawns on you that what you have been doing so far was just scratching the surface, and that if you push a little harder, you can actually overcome obstacles you'd become so used to they have become part of your scenery.

Call it inspiration, call it discovery but from where I stand, that moment is happening right now. What's really strange, is that the biggest encouragement has come from one of my client's single largest competitors.

This form of encouragment is, I believe, a clear demonstration of just how important mutual professional respect is for healthier comptetition and, ultimately, a better relationship with the market as a whole.

So many thanks to Richard for his unexpected yet thoroughly appreciated comments both on and off the beaten track.

Starting from scratch

The ongoing discussion over at Shel Israel's blog is keeping me up at night.

Not only because it's the single most interesting thing I have participated in professionally for years, there is also a serious time lag between my input and everybody else.

I don't know where Shel is at the moment but I assume Richard Binhammer is in Texas, meaning he's on the ball when I'm tucked up in bed...

Still, it's a fascinating development, and one I am going to stay up for every step of the way.

When the dust settled...

Yesterday I was part of the single most interesting event since I started blogging. That wasn't too long ago either so I guess *events* lurk around every corner.

Masked Blogger claims he's trying to reach Apple from the inside. He publishes an intriguing post and the world jumps. Apple has blogged!!

Within 12 hours there's even an *official* response from Dell's senior communications man and the thing looks like it's about to snowball.

But it didn't and in the time it took for most of the non-listening world to notice, the storm was over. Yet in just 48 hours MB had managed to raise enough dust to cover the entire Gobi desert.

The conversation has since moved on and MB is drawing his own conclusions. The one thing I truly felt is that some companies heard. No matter how far up or down the food chain, they noticed, gave opinions and shared their thoughts on the subject.

OK, I *defended* Acer and took a harmless pot shot at the press-release response from Dell but rivalries aside, an exchange of views took place and they weren't at watercooler level either.

Some of the points on MB's post today show that companies are both listing and willing to participate but also illustrate just how important it is for companies who come onboard the bloggeride to set the record straight.

Changing from the inside? More like an opportunity to battle it out.

I knew this was going to happen.

Anyone who's read Naked Conversations will have noted the authors' persistent message: Apple doesn't blog. Google doesn't either. Be warned...

Yet someone has spoken up. The masked blogger has come along and reached out to Shel Israel in public (or perhaps in private is a better way of putting it). I share the masked blogger's predicament and fully sympathize with his frustration.

Millions of bloggers *get* this social medium thing. Yet just as many companies do not. While it can't be denied that the international business community has been slow to pick up on the arrival of blogs, I think it's a little unfair to criticize the slow-moving conglomerates for not having a blogging voice.

Some companies are slicker than others, faster to adapt to the winds of change. Granted this gives them an advantage, and the case studies of Kryptonite and even Scobles' close call with IE7's toolbar issues prove the validity of an alert presence, but you just can't escape the inertia and the firm grip of traditional, tried and tested media.

Having said that, I don't think this post was the most suitable place for corporate messaging, and Dell's Richard Binhammer made a brave move to post what is a shiney, carefully-written press release.

While having the Senior Manager for Dell's Corporate Communications underlying his company's commitment to hearing its customers can by no means be dismissed as a bad thing, you can't get away from the fact that it was a well-worded attempt to, how does Scoble put it? "..improve their image", at the expense of everyone else.

Now that someone has entered the argument *officially*, the best that could possibly happen here is that the major competitors slug it out. Thing is, as there's no-one else out there right now, I doubt that's going to happen in a hurry.

1-0 to Dell, but it should have been disallowed.

50:1

This is well worth a read. Seth Godin spells it out again...

Common Sense - Everything Never Changes

In 1776, just months before the signing of The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, a strong defence of American Independence from England.

Being English, anti-monarchist writings like this weren't exactly on my school literature's top 10 list, meaning that I have only just discovered it's existence (thanks Nicholas Cage ;-)) .

I find manifestoes , essays or writings like this truly fascinating. In a world sullied by tales of Anthony Hilder's list of the "Brotherhood of Death", the thoughts and feelings of historical intellectuals, journalists and religious thinkers is downright purifying.

Right on the second page of the introduction, the raison d'être of governments is laid out clearly and succinctly, confirming the point I made in my last post:

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. (source: ushistory.org)

This pre-dates the Declaration of Independence... I find the contrast between the goals of man to better his own standing and the controls imposed by necessity simply astounding, even more so as these same contrasts exist today.

Modern-day conspiracy theories aside, I still think that blogs are the voice of a new population, the one that has been promised yet never realized ever since the arrival of the Internet.

It is a new ground, populated by pioneers and formed through an overwhelming desire to speak out, declare our individal worth and be heard by others.

Paine continues:

In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto; the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him to quit his work, and every different want would call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for, though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.

Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would supercede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but Heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue. (source: ushistory.org)

In Naked Conversations, Shel Israel tells of how he shared drinks with John Naisbitt who hit him with the declaration "Everything Never Changes". As I'm inclined to agree with this concept, it seems to me only a matter of time before the blogosphere evolves to such a degree that colonies will form controlled by regulating bodies.

Some convenient tree will afford them a State House, under the branches of which the whole Colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of Regulations and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man by natural right will have a seat.

But as the Colony encreases, the public concerns will encrease likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present. If the colony continue encreasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number: and that the ELECTED might never form to themselves an interest separate from the ELECTORS, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often: because as the ELECTED might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the ELECTORS in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this, (not on the unmeaning name of king,) depends the STRENGTH OF GOVERNMENT, AND THE HAPPINESS OF THE GOVERNED. (source: ushistory.org)

Witness b5media. Is this the future of blogging already in the making? Large communities of bloggers all regulated under one "colonized" roof? I can't wait to see how b5media develops and whether it spearheads a "controlled revolution" of a "revolutionary media".

If nothing else I can't wait to see what's left for us outsiders once the new powers have signed their own constitution.

Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, 'tis right. (source: ushistory.org)

Perhaps, though, when the dust settles, there will indeed be a long tail left over for the rest of us. After all if powerful colonoies of self-regulated organizations form, they will more than likely be listed enterprises with a responsability to their shareholders and financial backers to produce profit. That alone must surely limit their scope.

Everything never changes, you say? That won't stop some people from trying.

Legislation after the long tail

I knew this was going to happen. 2 chapters in and I'm already hooked.

Finding out how our web-driven society is changing is like watching the DaVinci Code unfold in slow motion.

So the world of hits has become a world of niches. I like the sound of that.

Yet I do see a fly in the ointment. Normally technology and/or society changes, then governments legislate. In Italy for example, emails weren't recognized as legally-binding documents untill about two years ago.

They do catch up but often there is a worrying gap between the moment the change appears on the radar and the introduction of some new control, law or tax.

This gap is of course a land of opportunity for early adapters but when the opportunity for some turns into a benefit for the many and we reach the tipping point for whatever change has arrived, government legislation can and often does get in the way.

So what happens when all the bits and pieces I need to satisfy my chosen niche happen to come from outside my national legislation? Will the old guard obstruct even more opportunities? Come to think of it, how will national governments cope with infinite choice? Does web-based TV content signal the end for national television licences?

I for one sincerely hope so. If the supply-industry as a whole has to adapt in order to compete in a world of ininite choice, I don't see why governments should have it any easier.

Never underestimate what a blue fish can do for you...

OK. Finished Naked Conversations and am really starting to see where it all fits together.

Thing is, this consumer-empowering standpoint really is so far from where I am right now and what I do that it's gonna take a pretty big yank at the wheel to turn this ship around...

I expect the Long Tail to be just as ground-shaking and equally difficult to get across to my "interruption" clients. I just wish I could get to some seminars on the subject. Lucky yanks ;-)

For now, I'll take Dori's advice: just keep swimming... just keep swimming...

PS I want to try and hook this blog up with some of my favourites, but I'm so wet behind the ears in blogsville that I wouldn't recommend anyone holding their breath. Can anyone out there help?

Silence is not golden

Have any you read Shel Israel's post on the exploding batteries saga and Sony's reluctance to talk?

A number of years ago I was involved in a crisis management team set up to "protect" the dodgy management practices of a bank that was imploding. I was young and naive and it was one of my first insights into the corridors of power of senior bank management so I leapt at the chance.

At first no-one "saw" what was happening except for a single, stubborn online American journalist who just wouldn't let it drop but because he was alone, the PR spinners (my bosses) decided to keep silent. He went public and in a few days the story was global and the end of the road was in sight, as at that point, the snowball had grown out of all proportion.

To bare too soon?

I have just finished chapter 9 of "Naked conversations" and it's made me realize what a steep hill I've given myself to climb.

The 10 reasons why companies shouldn't blog and the FUD concept (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) that "..reflects corporate inertia to changing existing systems" rang more than a few familiar bells.

There's a lot more to jumping on the bandwagon than a good leap. I agree that it takes focus and a solid foothold if you're going to avoid bloody noses.

So how is the 1D PR world I live in going to change and adapt to 2D dialogues? I'm not in the position to answer that question yet but it's one I've started asking myself.

It was a busy one today. "Same old same old" springs to mind but lessons are there to be learned if we open our eyes and minds.

Today I learnt an important lesson and that was to find out about myself by going public with my thoughts.

It's not easy being innovative in one of the world's most creative nations accursed by age-old PR principles but it sure is fun trying to put new ideas and concepts into practice!

There are very few English/American copywriters in Italy (or at least I think there are) so in a way it's a lonely path but I have always felt that this country, it's creations and history needs a broader platform to shout about its true beauty so I'm looking forward to seeing and sharing just what can be done.

Another day another change. At least that's what's happening in my life right now. It's all moving so fast sometimes it's hard to focus..

Re-track a little: up until January 2006 I was just a copywriter working, among others, for Acer Emea. Still am, but things are beginning to move. Fast. Acer's company's entire communication strategy is evolving and I'm right in the thick of it. How did it happen? Well it all started with a simple comment I made during a coffee break about the potential of web-based strategies. You know, interactivity, blogs, that sort of stuff.

Now I'm no communication guru, but I do "live" in PR and am quite fluent in the language. And that's where the problems started. I mean, even though the content of their traditional marketing material has shifted from technology to benefits (finally!), I can't shake that feeling that this form of communication is very much rooted in the past. There's nothing really wrong with it (I do put a lot of effort into trying to get the right message across), but it just seems a little, emm, flat.

Besides, there's just soooooo much more to Acer than mobility, performance and value for money. Does anyone out there actually know what Empowering Technology (I didn't create the name, honest!) actually is? what it does and, perhaps more importantly, why it got onto almost everything Acer builds in the first place??

But I digress

While on holiday this summer, I started looking into SEO techniques to spruce up the content and stumble across a treasure chest of combined knowledge I never knew existed. Web marketers like Michel Fortin introduced me to others like John Reese and my current favourite Ewen Chia and that was just the start. When I discovered Seth Godin it felt like my flat world had just been bent into a perfect circle, hurling me towards the awkward path of rediscovering who I was and re-learning everything I know.

Now I'm no slouch when it comes to picking up stuff online but obviously the path I've been treading (Italy? Acer?) was simply light years behind all this. And if anyone's wondering why I'm ranting, the answer's in the book "Naked Conversations" by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.
Let's put this into perspective. I love Acer, it's products and its serious crack at changing things. OK it has a pretty lame mission statement but it does remain true to it's own promise. Perhaps it's finally waking up to itself.

Trust me, if Acer gets it's act together, we're all in for a treat.