» Marketing

No, You Rock, Seth Godin!

shawn — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:44:45 +0000

This morning, Seth Godin posted this:

You rock

This is deceptive.

You don’t rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it’s a self-defeating goal. You can’t do it.

No, but you might rock five minutes a day.

Five minutes to write a blog post that changes everything, or five minutes to deliver an act of generosity that changes someone. Five minutes to invent a great new feature, or five minutes to teach a groundbreaking skill in a way that no one ever thought of before. Five minutes to tell the truth (or hear the truth).

Five minutes a day you might do exceptional work, remarkable work, work that matters. Five minutes a day you might defeat the lizard brain long enough to stand up and make a difference.

And five minutes of rocking would be enough, because it would be five minutes more than just about anyone else.

It is a great example of the quick shots of inspirational adrenaline that Seth scribbles out nearly every day (sometimes multiple times a day) on his blog. But I would amend his wise words just in the slightest and add emphasis to one line in particular.

First, the amendment. I don’t think five minutes is enough. I also believe that we are capable of much more than that. I appreciate that Seth is letting us off easy, but I personally feel that I can work in flow for between 30 minutes to 2 hours almost every day. For more on Flow, a brilliant practice that you should be bringing into your business life, you can go here.

Now for the emphasis. He says that a potential great work is “to deliver an act of generosity that changes someone.” I say that the greatest work you can do is lift another person with your generosity. I would emphasize Seth’s point that the work you do in a day is measured by the people you can effect.

If you are in business, your output of a product or service is only as good as the positive change it creates in the lives of your customers. But you, as a human, are also only as good as the positive change you are directly making in the lives of your people. Your employees, your co-workers, your family and friends should all end each day feeling appreciated and fulfilled, bettered for having passed through another day of trials, growth and human interaction.

And that typically takes you just a little longer than five minutes.

Social Networking Existed Before LinkedIn and Facebook

shawn — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:52:37 +0000

The other day I had someone ask me, “Hey, I saw that you know thousands of people on your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages, could you ask one of them to get me a job?”

I felt utterly stunned at having to state the obvious, “I don’t actually know most of those people.”

I love social media sites. I spend entirely too much time on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter… especially Twitter, but I want to establish a clear distinction between social media sites and social networking.

“Social Media” is the term that generally groups together websites where the majority of content is created by the users. Typically they use log-ins, account names and personal profiles to connect people and focus on the “interactive” elements that have been key to the web 2.0 progression. We think of sites like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. But “Social Networking” existed long before Web 2.0.

Mankind is a social animal with a long tradition of societal interdependence. Ashton Kutcher, the self-appointed champion of the Social Web, recently said:

“[H]uman beings are born not able to even sustain themselves, so at the end of the day, if you ultimately did something in your life that was great, you at least owe your mom.” –Ashton Kutcher from AK FTW, SKY Magazine, Feb. 2010.

Social Networking is the normal and timeless practice of making connections and helping people out. Using technology to facilitate these contacts makes it easier and more efficient, but just as in the past, “It’s not about the number of contacts you have; it’s how you use them.”

Another great quote about the effectiveness of this new tool today and its potential in the future comes from one of the all time greats in peer-to-peer marketing, Seth Godin:

“Social media is either a time-wasting, wool-gathering, yak-shaving waste of effort or, perhaps, just maybe, it’s a crack in the wall between you and the rest of the world. It’s a choice” –Seth Godin

Make your choice. Use your tools wisely.

Inexpert Review: Economic Support for Becoming a Call Girl

shawn — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:51:20 +0000

“Levitt and Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics: Rather than a Sequel to the Original and Uncanny Economic Stories We Presented in Freakonomics, We’ve Created a Dry Scientific Journal of What Other Economists are Doing and How They’re Passing It Off as Pop Psychology. Also, We’ve Included a Bonus Guide on How to Start Your Own Business as a High Paid Escort Including Suggested Services and Hourly Rates.”

The full title is very long, but funny in a “pick it up off the shelf and show your friend to get a laugh” marketable way. SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

Levitt, the economist and presumably “the source” for the material again pairs up with Dubner, the storyteller, to rekindle the magic they made together four years before with Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I loved Freakonomics. It was, in so many ways, the right book at the right time. Like lightning striking, many factors came together to create the perfect conditions for a dramatic effect. Freakonomics published on the heels of Gladwell’s counter-intuitive bestseller, Blink, into a general resurgence of interest in pop psychology and pseudo-educational non-fiction.

Levitt and Dubner grabbed some literary headlines with their sensational, statistically-based assertions, including the deliberate counter-argument to Gladwell’s explanation of decreased crime covered in The Tipping Point. They had a lot of fun, fresh and surprising discoveries that were shared in a punchy and “radio-friendly” way that is a tribute to Dubner’s writing ability—he was able to convert Umberto Eco into Dan Brown. The masses could enjoy Freakonomics.

But like the old adage about lightning striking, Superfreakonomics is a miss.

UNLESS you are looking for financial data to support your transition from your current career into the thriving industry of High-Paid Escort Service Providers. In which case, the first 55 pages are a “must read.” In these pages, a world-renowned economist will explain to you that prostitution is not about buying sex, but really about limited suppliers seeking to satisfy a decreasing demand for a price inelastic service. It is virtually a cut-and-paste business proposal for you to take your Brothel plan to the investors for your A round.

If you have the time and interest to learn more about effectively selling yourself on the street at an hourly rate, this book is for you. If this does not currently align with your career goals, borrow it and read chapter 5 about global cooling, as this will be the water-cooler topic sometime in the near future where you can impress your friends.

My rating for the book is 20,000 otherwise stable housewives turned drug addicted prostitutes because of inalterable economic incentives out of a possible 50,000 otherwise stable housewives turned drug addicted prostitutes because of inalterable economic incentives.

Also, in my extensive research for this blog (i.e.- “reading wikipedia“), I learned they are making a film adaptation of the first book. This will be bad. I look forward to writing another Inexpert Review in the future, apparently sometime around August 2010.

Inexpert Review: Performing Occult Rituals on Frogs and the Occasional Princess

shawn — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:15:31 +0000

Because, as a thoroughly indoctrinated believer in the fast movement towards the “inexpert web,” I will contribute media reviews for which I am fully and openly unqualified to make. This is my review of the movie The Princess and the Frog.

I saw The Princess and the Frog with my wife and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. We went with friends who had three daughters, ages 2, 5 and 8. I had already been warned that the movie was “going back to Disney’s roots” and that it was a little “over the head” of the carefully targeted young, purchase decision driving Disney audience.

But my wife had been prepping our princess-obsessed 2 year old for more than a month about a “new princess movie” and we were excited about her first outing to the great American tradition of paying for television, so we headed into the appropriately marked theater and took our seats. Even though we arrived twenty minutes early, we missed the first few minutes of the show (to be explained later), but this proved to not be a problem.

I feared that I had missed a few key plot drivers that would be significant later. These fears were unsubstantiated. Many key plot drivers were missed throughout the show and it had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t confused at any moment about WHAT was going on in the movie, but I often wondered WHY it was going on. Some of those questions include:

Why is the prince making deals with a voodoo priest?
Why is the prince’s servant suddenly such a willing accomplice in fraud, kidnapping, deception and eventual attempted homocide?
Why is this kid’s movie telling me so much about how to work voodoo magic, make deals with evil spirits and otherwise begin my own practice in the dark arts?

This last question occurred time and time again during various voodoo magic scenes in the movie where I saw beautiful animated sequences set to catchy songs filled with chorus girls and colorful flashing lights while characters performed blood rituals, fortune telling and otherwise sold their souls to the underworld. I kept tapping my feet and fighting the urge to shout, “Boy, black magic sure looks fun!”

At least there was an overt moral lesson near the end of the movie where the voodoo practitioner’s soul is violently, albeit colorfully, harvested by his demonic overlords. A valuable scene that clearly states to viewers of all ages, “Black magic isn’t ALL fun and games.”

On the ride home, while curtly checking the offspring over for signs of long-term mental and emotional injury, I determined she survived unscathed. I believe her two-year-old mind was confused during the film as well, but her recurring questions may have been more along the lines of:

Why aren’t there more princesses?
Why are we watching these boring frogs so much?
And What happened to the princesses?

Interrupted by the occasional thought, “When Genie did magic in Aladdin, he did it without human blood, voodoo dolls or apparent soul bargaining. Was that even REAL magic or was it just pretend?”

My overall rating for the movie is 3 and a half shrunken head voodoo talismans on a scale of five shrunken head voodoo talismans.

Rating: 3 and a Half Shrunken Head Voodoo Talismans Out of a Possible 5

And my summary statement is: “The Princess and the Frog: Not at All a Re-telling of the Beloved Fairytale, but Rather a Beautifully Animated Infomercial on How to Start a Career in Black Magic and Be Your Own Voodoo Priest. With an Occasional Princess.”

Georgia Rivalry Week and a Video

shawn — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:07:01 +0000

Here at Relevant Social Media, we’re from Georgia and we love college football. That makes this week a significant one. You see, the two top football schools in the state, Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, have a long-standing college football rivalry. And usually, the game where they play each other is steeped with tension and, um, even a little, shall we say, animosity?

Well, this year, Tech is a top-ranked team and headed to a BCS bowl regardless of how they play on Saturday. Meanwhile, UGA is having one of its worst seasons and has suffered some significant losses, including the unexpected death of their mascot Georgia Bulldog, Uga VII.

Well, we decided to add insult to injury and share our slightly veiled opinions of how the usually heated rivalry will play out for the 2009 game. This Mac vs PC style ad highlights that for Georgia college football fans, this is the Most Important Football Game that Doesn’t Matter at All.

The Georgia Rivalry game will be played this Saturday, November 28th. Kick-off at 8pm at Bobby Dodd Stadium.

Or Leave Us a Comment on YouTube: UGA vs GT 2009 “Obviously”

Social Media Internship in Sports Marketing

shawn — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:39:00 +0000

I am looking for 6 to 8 Social Media Interns to work at our Sports Marketing Firm

Do You Love Sports and are you already spending hours of your life on blog sites (your own or others) posting comments and responses? Then you should be able to put your passion to work, be compensated for your skills, and be able to write about your ability on your resume.

If you would like a chance to prove yourself in the world of Online Sports Marketing, please send me an email or DM me on Twitter.

Please know that to be considered for this position, you must have a knack for online promotion, creating groups and collecting friends using MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We can help you turn those skills into a resume-building asset, but you have to bring some know-how and a lot of passion. We are promoting an exclusive sporting event that will be broadcast on national television this fall. Let me know you’re interested by sending your resume along with links to your social networking profiles to my email: sbutler@sportslegendschallenge.com.

Location: Sandy Springs, North Atlanta
Compensation: $8 per hour/ 40 hours per week

Who You Need to Run a Company

shawn — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:13:00 +0000

I have heard it too many times to even know if this needs sourced, but you need three things to run a successful company:

The Right People
Product(s)/Service(s) that Customers Want
Customers

Although all three are worthy of a blog post (and have been written about ad nauseum) I want to write my current ideas on the 1st one.

Who are the Right People?

I believe that every company really needs people who fill these five roles:

Idea Guy
Legal Guy
Numbers Guy
Sales Guy
Get Stuff Done Guy

Now, I don’t believe these need to be five different guys (or even “guys” at all, so don’t get hung up on the gender-specific pronoun, obviously these can be girls, too). What I DO believe is that these skill sets need to be represented in the company leadership or out-sourced to someone that can handle it competently. Here is what each role should be bringing to the table:

Idea Guy needs to have strategic long-term thinking. This would be a Marketing or Strategic Planning title at a big company. Someone with vision and lots of imagination. He sees opportunities in places that other people haven’t even thought to look. When you’re like, “What about an online video contest?” he’s already saying “And they can call in on their mobile phones and vote for their favorites– for $1.99 per call. Bam! Digital revenue stream.”

Legal Guy needs to love the law. He gets fired up about reading contracts, licensing, intellectual property ins-and-outs and any print smaller than 10 point font. Legal documents, IP/patents, and law suits are a common part of business today, so someone at your company needs to love it. LOVE IT!

Numbers Guy should also be Spreadsheet Guy. He doesn’t just like tables, charts and numbers, he has general ledgers printed on his bedsheets. This guy understands that money is making money even when it isn’t creating revenue from assets. He does percentages and long-division in his head, can give your company’s current cost per sale ratio in his sleep, and feels physical pleasure when the monthly account balances just right.

Sales Guy is your best friend and your worst enemy. He knows everyone and would rather be on the phone or in a meeting than working alone on his projects. Don’t ask him to do paper work, just let him create relationships and get other people excited about what your company does. The people who are best at this are True Rainmakers, not salesman-types looking for a quick deal or taking advantage of customers.

Get Stuff Done Guy is the Executor. It needs done, he finds a way to get it done. He is to a Gantt Chart as a 13-year-old girl is to WhateverLife. Put him in charge of your projects, your staff or your whole company and he will make sure it all gets done within scope, on time and under budget. Do you need to have a presence at a trade show in Albuquerque in 3 days? Give it to this guy and get out of the way.

In this essay by Paul Graham, he refers to Good People as “Animals” and illustrates them as: “A salesperson who just won’t take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.”

I think he’s on the right track. I would call these people Passionate, but that’s because I’m a soft/squishy Idea Guy and not a hardline Sales Guy or a straight-shooting Numbers Guy.

Marketing and Passion

shawn — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:08:00 +0000

Yesterday a co-worker asked me how I became so passionate about marketing.

The answer to the “How” question was rather boring: 4 years in undergrad, 2 masters programs, 5 years in corporate marketing with brands like Home Depot, Rubbermaid and Georgia-Pacific…

But the interesting answer is to the question he didn’t ask: “Why am I so passionate about marketing?”

Here is my answer to the unasked question:

Because I love the psychology of buying; answering “Why do we purchase the things we do?” and “What makes this non-necessity item more desirable than another?”
Because the symbols of the products and services we buy become more important than the Prod/Svcs themselves.
Because “Consuming” is today’s Socio-political Religion. Like the Ancient Greek, who identified a fellow worshipper of Athena by the image of an owl or an olive branch, today’s Versace-wearer or Porsche-driver can quickly identify others of similar lifestyle and belief system.
Because we are living in the era of the shift from Professional Advertising to Authentic Promoting. This excites me to no end. I have blogged before that consumers are no longer waiting around for Madison Avenue to identify the next must-have product, as they did four decades ago. Today, we each turn to our peers, to other people that we know and like–that we identify with–to gather opinions on the products that we choose to purchase.

Seth Godin said yesterday: “It’s quite possible that the era of the professional reviewer is over. No longer can a single individual (except maybe Oprah) make a movie, a restaurant or a book into a hit or a dud. Not only can an influential blogger sell thousands of books, she can spread an idea that reaches others, influencing not just the reader, but the people who read that person’s blog or tweets.”

No Bastilles are being stormed and no shots will be fired, but there is a revolution occuring in the way and reason that we purchase and consume. Rather we are informed or not, rather we are proactive or not, we will all be a part of this. That is exciting. For me, that is something I can get passionate about.

Go See Benjamin Button, Unless…

shawn — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:37:00 +0000

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great movie to see, unless you feel like you have already seen it. Or have already seen another schmaltzy/romantic time-traveling film like it. Or if you are in the mood for something funny. Or you’re on a date. Or you’re a teenager. Or you’re really old. Or if you’ve recently lost a loved-one. Or if you get emotional over hurricane Katrina footage. Or you’re kind of sleepy. Or you have anything else to do for the next 2 hours and 45 minutes.

I’m not saying I didn’t like it, because I did, I’m just saying that it is not a great movie for everyone to see. Disclaimer Moment: I am a marketer, not a movie critic; for a professional’s opinion, go here. IMO, the demographic for this movie is Middle-Aged Women. You know, the same people that loved The Notebook, The Lake House, or The Bridges of Madison County.

If you’re the kind of person that loves going to movies with the intent to cry through the whole second half, then this is a great movie for you. Or if you like the idea of seeing Cate Blanchett age before your eyes. Or if you love hummingbirds. Or if you are in the Somewhere in Time Fan Club. Or if you believe Brad Pitt is an Oscar-worthy actor.

Now, I’m not ruling out Brad and Cate for Oscars for this one, in fact, they’ll probably get Oscars for it the same way Charlize got one for Monster and Nicole Kidman for The Hours. We all know that getting ugly gets the Academy’s attention. I’m just saying I’ve seen better movies come out this year and I’ve definitely seen better film adaptations of books.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 24-page original story is here and it is a great story in its own right. However, besides the title and the lead character’s name, it has little in common with Fincher’s film. My wife says it borrows heavily from the 2003 novel The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I haven’t read it, so you’ll have to take her word for it. Or, if you don’t feel like reading it, you could just wait a few month’s and see it in theaters. I just read that Brad Pitt’s production company has picked up the title, which is set to release later this year. I, for one, won’t be going to see it. Unless I decide I’m in the mood for another romantic time travel film.

Shawn's Graduation Speech

shawn — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:43:00 +0000

Shawn’s Graduation Speech for the GSU
Global Partners MBA Class of 2008

The four things I learned from my MBA program.

1. I’ve developed a physical dependency on PowerPoint.
2. I learned a new language.
3. I learned that anything worth learning can be conveyed in a chart
4. I learned to take existing models, charts, concepts and ideas and apply them to new sets of data.

I have elected to not simply tell you about these new competencies, but also to demonstrate them to you during the course of this speech. Item number one, my adeptness at PowerPoint that has been carefully honed over the course of the program, is best illustrated by the creation of this presentation. Number two is that I have learned a new language. To enter the global partners program, it is a prerequisite to know another language besides English. We were told that this was so that we would be able to quickly adapt and understand in the cultures and countries that we visited as part of the program. But we were lied to.

The REAL reason is that our professors wanted to make sure we would be able to learn a brand new language: the language of business. As MBA students, we have learned a brand new language, complete with its own vocabulary. I apologize to those who are in attendance who have not yet learned this language, because I would like to deliver the next segment of my speech in b-school-ese.

“4Q and 1600 ICH ago,
We determined that the FV of our WACC
Could be improved by exchanging CA for FA
and leveraging our IP.

After a SWOT analysis of our OTB,
We chose an MBA with GSU in the program called GP.
In Oct. 07 in CS 600, the Cof’08 began.
We met P-Y and KDL. And also Robin M.

We learned Econ and Pol Strat, Comm Dip and Int Bus,
Bus Law and Bus Mark, and Cost and Info Sys
In our IT class we read how HDVD
Would go DOA thanks to PS3
And in P-Y’s Ops class at IAE
We learned to streamline Mfg using JIT

We saw RDJ and flew to CDG
We changed our USD into RMB
In PRC we toured the BOG,
Then grabbed some US food at MickeyD’s

After all that, we’re back at GSU
Here in ATL with 1 thing to do,
To cross the stage and receive our degrees
And add 3 new letters to our CVs.”

The third thing that I learned was that anything worth learning can, and SHOULD, be communicated quickly and easily with a graph or chart. I would like to demonstrate the truth of that too you with a few examples.
· A Pie Chart About Pie
· A SWOT Analysis of the SWAT
· The f(x) = excitement x effort
· The Brown Cloud and
· The Classic Marketing Matrix

The fourth thing that I learned was how to apply existing models and analysis to new data sets to reveal new patterns and models. I feel that this skill can be accurately demonstration by taking the comedic model of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck” and applying it to our own particular data set.

You might be a GPMBA…
1. If you’ve ever tried to calculate your student loan debt in Euros.
2. If you know the right way to pronounce “Strategy” and “Tactic”
3. If you’ve ever used the word “widget” to describe a theoretical product line.
Or if you’ve ever looked up the translation for “widget” in French or Portuguese.
4. If you’ve ever checked with a fellow student to know not only what class you have tomorrow, but what country it’s in.
5. If you’ve ever sat in a class taught in English and had to think “What language am I hearing?”
6. If you’ve ever lost 150 thousand dollars in a virtual margin call on the virtual stock market.
7. If you’ve ever accidentally started a nuclear war in Brazil or depleted the world’s oceans of their fish population.
8. If you’ve ever spent more than 8 hours in the DC airport. Twice.
9. If you’ve ever begun a question with the phrase “I was reading in the Wall Street Journal…”
10. If you’ve ever bragged that your new suit was made in China
Finally, If you’ve studied 20 subjects across 4 continents and traveled around the entire world in 432 days as part of your international business education…