Articles About Radio Search Results

1. OK Go Ditches Label Over YouTube Embedding Rights.

   

   How many times does a band have to take the music video world by storm before its record label gets that its members might know a little something about music videos? We may never find out, because OK Go, the band in question, has just ditched EMI, the record label in question, largely due to that very problem.

   OK Go rocketed up through the indie rock world in large measure due to the band's brilliant, lo-fi music videos, which have spread like wildfire on YouTube. But EMI, in a misguided attempt to wring every penny out of the band's success, decided to block embedding on the YouTube videos--meaning the videos were unable to disseminate out through music and pop culture blogs, news sites, and personal blogs the way they did before the restriction. And that's not a minor detail: the band saw a 90% drop in views when that restriction went into effect. As in, 100,000 views one day, 10,000 views the next.

   OK Go isn't a band with huge hit radio singles; they're a journeyman power pop act that puts out reliably excellent, not blockbuster, albums. Music videos are the band's way of making themselves buzzworthy, and it works: their homemade videos have achieved a level of popularity nobody could have predicted. So when the label makes their videos less popular, it means, in no uncertain terms, that less people out there know about OK Go, which means less people can buy albums and tickets for the hard-touring band's shows.

   It's a ridiculous decision from the label, and the band was never shy about voicing discontent, even in the most public way possible. Singer Damian Kulash wrote an op-ed that appeared in The New York Times, a letter to his fans that appeared, among other places, in Gizmodo, and the issue came up in just about every interview the band gave. Now, the band has taken the final step: leaving EMI, and forming their own Paracadute Recordings label to release future (and a re-released version of the current Of the Blue Colour of the Sky) music.

   [youtube qybUFnY7Y8w]

   The very first change? The band's explosively popular (and completely mesmerizing) Rube Goldberg-gone-berserk "This Too Shall Pass" is now embeddable. And the band, which despite a Grammy award has never been a huge seller, is seeing results: since the videos have become embeddable, digital album sales tripled and digital tracks sales have jumped more than sevenfold.

   In a press release from the band, Kulash makes it clear that the choice, if not the actual act, to split was an easy one:

   "We'd like to thank the people who have worked so hard on our behalf," said OK Go singer Damian Kulash, who will discuss the band's departure from the label on NPR's "All Things Considered" today. "And we'd like to thank our fans for making this choice an easy one for us."

   It's not totally clear if this means every OK Go video will be made embeddable--EMI may still own the rights to those videos, so the famous treadmill video for "Here It Goes Again" as well as the band's other videos are still blocked from embedding. But at the very least, this means the next huge OK Go smash video will be open for all to see.

   [OK Go]

   
   

   
   (03/11/10 09:00 AM)

2. How to Write a Mission Statement That Doesn't Suck [video].

   

   I want to show you why most mission statements are so terrible.

   Let's say you founded a pizza parlor. And your first idea for a mission statement is something like this: "Our mission is to serve the tastiest damn pizza in Wake County." That's pretty good. If I worked for you, I could get excited about that. Now here's how it will go off the rails.

   [twistage 0fd64afa78711]

   So you'll call your colleagues around the conference room table to unveil the mission, and all of the sudden, these people that you like and respect are going to transform into 10th-grade English teachers, nitpicking every word. Everybody starts chiming in with opinions: "Hey, I really like the word 'present' better than 'serve,' it has a nice resonance." And someone else will say, "Well, we obviously can't say 'damn,' that's just offensive." And so it begins. And as you go around the table, your mission statement will be pecked to death.

   We can't limit ourselves to Wake County--and also, it's not just tasty pizza right, it's about freshness--we should say "high quality" not tasty.Isn't it weird that we mention pizza but not our great salads and calzones? What if we changed it to "highest-quality Italian food"?That's good but even "Italian" seems limiting--what if we decide to move into gyros?Hold the phone, people, we haven't even mentioned the great family atmosphere--the coloring books and big comfy booths and all that.Great point--you know what we're really doing here, at the end of the day? We're providing a family "entertainment solution!"Yeah, solution!NAILED IT.[Dan] Everyone's excited now. You're almost there. And then Steve at the end of the table pipes up ... [Steve] Listen, guys, we haven't mentioned anything about integrity. That's what it's all about, at the end of the day. Integrity.

   And is anyone at the table gonna go to the mat against including "integrity?" Nope. So it's in. And presto--there's your new mission statement:

   "Our mission is to present with integrity the highest-quality entertainment solutions to families."

   That's what 99% of the world's mission statements sound like, and I think you see the trap here--getting so vague and fancy with the language that it just becomes meaningless. Here are 2 ways to avoid it:

   Use concrete language. Check out this mission statement from SonicBids, a fast-growing small business: "We want to help musicians get gigs, and promoters book the right bands. ... We're a bunch of people who think that music can truly change the world and make it smaller and better. ... We believe that independent music belongs everywhere: on festival stages; in video game consoles; on film screens; in college theaters; on the radio; in advertisements; on club stages and at sporting events." Wow. It gives you a picture of what they do and tells you why it's worth doing.

   Talk about the why. Most mission statements are all statement and no mission. The whole point is to say why you're doing what you're doing. What makes you care? Look at the start of Johnson & Johson's famous credo: "Our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, and patients, mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services." Well, okay, that's worth getting out of bed for. Compare that with ExxonMobil's. Did you feel that? A little part of your soul just died, reading that.

   So you've seen why bad mission statements happen and two tips for making yours different. At our home Web site, I've put together some other resources for you to check out, if you're interested. And in the meantime, let me challenge you to do the impossible: Write a mission statement that means something. And I'll give you a hint: If it contains the word "solution," you're not there yet. Thanks for watching.

   For More on this topic: Download this document Chip and I developed: "5 Tips for a Sticky Strategic Vision." Here's a funny and illuminating review of a book on Mission Statements. My opinion is that most organizations would benefit more from setting a clear, ambitious goal than from crafting the perfect mission statement. On that front, check out Collins and Porras's work on setting a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal)--here's the original piece (for free) and a helpful overview with lots of examples. (Bonus: here are some audio resources from the guru Jim Collins himself.) And, for inspiration: The J&J Credo. (Many observers credit the Credo with helping to shape J&J's admirable response to the Tylenol-poisoning crisis in the 1980s.)

   
   

   
   (03/10/10 09:00 PM)

3. White House Tweets, but How Many People are Listening?.

   

   Cast your minds back to 2008. As well as the traditional settings of TV, radio and print, the race for the White House saw a new battleground: that of social media. The presidential campaign of Barack Obama used Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to good effect, alongside a massive online push for fundraising. Fifteen months on, Twitter is still being used, but this time as a tool for spreading the President's message. But, post election, does it work?

   The White House's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, is a voracious tweeter. With 33,000 followers (his deputy, Bill Burton, boasts 6,000) he uses those 140 characters for anything from the US's prowess in the Winter Olympics, announcing Obama's first press conference, to posting links to articles that reflect government policy. But, given that someone like Ashton Kutcher can boast over four and a half million followers on his Twitter account--POTUS has, at the time of writing, 3,384,285 followers--just how useful can Twitter be to a government in power?

   We all know that the birds do it (but let's not forget about the bees and the educated fleas), and even the US state departments have twitter feeds. Susan Rice, Obama's ambassador to the UN has got an account--although maybe her somewhat Lilliputian 1,496 followers can be put down to the fact that she's only been tweeting since January. But maybe it's more than that. Only last week the Environmental Protection Agency started tweeting, and Lisa P. Jackson has already got one call wrong: she thought Avatar would win Best Picture at last night's Oscars. Oops.

   I have a little theory about why social media works so well in an election campaign. It's because it's war, chaps. Every four years the country gets enthused about who's going to be roller-skating down the corridors of power next (but let's not forget the age-old adage of not voting governments in, but voting them out) and a clever campaign (Obama enlisted the services of Chris Hughes, who'd lent a hand to classmate Mark Zuckerberg when he was starting up Facebook) and red goes mano-a-mano with blue.

   Once a new administration is in, however, the hubbub dies down--and the figures support that. People just want the powers that be to roll up their sleeves and get on with the job of improving people's lives. If you think that just 60,000 people watched Obama speak on the subject of healthcare to Congress, with 20,000 of them staying behind to quiz officials about the speech, that's not what I'd call interaction with the public on a grand scale. Director of New Media at the White House, Macon Phillips, claimed that it gave the administration "a taste of what questions the actual public had in raw form, rather than simply the questions cable news and Beltway pundits have." Which begs the question: just how many non-journos and policy wonks were watching?

   [Via Breitbart]

   
   

   
   (03/08/10 09:00 AM)

4. Learn to Promote Your Online Store. Internet has become an important part in our day to day life. Earlier days newspaper was the most powerful media. Then slowly technology gave better Medias like the television and radio. The major adv... (03/04/10 09:01 AM)

5. TargetSpot Streams Ads in Mobile Radio Applications. TargetSpot, the nation’s largest internet radio advertising network, has launched a mobile advertising platform that allows marketers to serve audio ads to mobile applications on various... (03/02/10 09:00 PM)

6. Shazam Lets Users Create Mobile Radio Stations from Tagged Music. Mobile music provider Shazam has enhanced its iPhone apps Shazam Encore and (Shazam) RED to allow iPhone and iPod touch users to use Pandora and Last.fm to create internet radio stations from their... (02/16/10 09:01 PM)

7. Ask MarketingSavant BlogTalkRadio show today.

   We're kicking off the Ask MarketingSavant BlogTalkRadio show today. It's a soft launch, and we're using the TechnoMarketing platform as a gateway into the call, deriving the questions from some of our social media & marketing technology events. In the future shows, we'll be inviting guests and some really exciting marketing folks to chat with us! Today, it's just me, working through some questions, and working through the bugs!

   You can also ask your questions today (though we may not get to all of them) through the BlogTalkRadio chat or by using the Twitter hashtag, #askms.

   Click on the link below to listen to the Ask MarketingSavant Radio show

   http://www.blogtalkradio.com/marketingsavant/2009/05/05/Ask-MarketingSavant-Radio

   Date: TODAY! Tuesday, May 5th
   Time: 11AM Central
   Duration: 30 minutes

   
   
   (05/05/09 09:01 AM)

8. TechnoMarketing on Marketing Matters Live! Today.

   If you've got a free hour from 9-10 PST today, January 9th, we'll be discussing TechnoMarketing on the AMA Radio show Marketing Matters Live! on WSRadio.

   David Kinard is your host and it promises to be a great show! We'll be discussing technology tools in marketing and what's next for marketers. Fun stuff!

   The world of marketing as we know it is rapidly changing all around us. Engaging your customers through the newest media vehicles such as social media, customer communities, blogs, RSS, and podcasts requires a solid foundation steeped in customer understanding, marketing planning and technological prowess. The challenges marketers face today are often compounded by the sheer volume of new media channels and the depth of expertise required to execute well in each channel.

   When you listen in, you will:

   * Increase your knowledge of terminology surrounding the newest technology-centric marketing tools
   * Acquire a better understanding of the most popular technology-driven marketing vehicles currently in use and on the horizon
   * Begin to identify which technology-centric marketing vehicles will work for your customer base and pair those up with your existing marketing strategy

   Who should listen in:

   * Sales and Marketing Executives of any size organization
   * Marketing directors responsible for digital or integrated marketing strategy
   * Anyone involved in customer-facing internet initiatives with their company or clients
   * Ad agency media directors looking for a competitive edge for clients

   

   If you'd like 2 days worth of TechnoMarketing, check into the AMA training series: TechnoMarketing: Using the Tools and Technology of Tomorrow to Reach Your Customers Today
   

   

   
   (04/04/08 09:00 PM)

9. Marketers and Automobile University.

   I remember listening to a Zig Ziglar tape (yes, this was a while ago, college perhaps...~10 years ago) where he brought up the terms "automobile university". I've never forgotten that term and as I'm speaking to more and more diverse groups of marketers who tell me that they 'simply don't have time to read', I'm inclined to recommend that they too enroll in Automobile University.

   Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar coined the term "Automobile University" to describe how time spent in traffic can be used to educate yourself on a variety of subjects. Using audiobooks in your car is a great way to learn almost anything from finance to philosophy, literature to languages. In a year, the average driver can learn about as much as a college student attending a year's worth of classes.

   What's that, you ask? Well, if you're looking for the how-to, you can certainly read this super-helpful piece in e-how. Although, I think that by stating books on CD or podcasts and books on iPod are the likely the best learning devices for time-starved marketers and that listening to any of these in your car on the way to work, to a client or in the airport/on the plane is the best way to keep up on what's new in marketing.

   The next question I get is "what should I be listening to?" Well, here's a few ideas:

   1. Why don't more marketing authors release their books as audiobooks? Now, I'm not sure about the market dynamics of this (perhaps it's cost prohibitive?) but when you look for books with "Marketing" in the title in the audiobooks section of iTunes, you find only 39 titles. So, that's one place to start. Now, not every great marketing book has "marketing" in the title, but look at that list of books you should read that you've been sitting on for a while and see if you can't find a few of those in iTunes and download them.

   2. There are GREAT marketing podcasts out there. There are over 200 podcasts on iTunes that are some how related to marketing, business or PR. You can only choose a few and still keep up a sane listening schedule. Here are a few good ones:
   .....Joseph Jaffe's podcast
   .....Duct Tape Marketing with John Jantsch
   .....any of the other 200 or so podcasts in iTunes that trip your fancy

   3. The AMA Marketing Matters Live radio show and podcasts. Great guests, a great host and solid interviews. Always timely and always helpful. A must listen!

   
   (04/04/08 09:00 PM)

10. Links for 2007-08-21 [del.icio.us].
    • YouTube Initiates Monetization Strategy With Transparent Video 'Overlays'
      No pre-roll ads here. Smart move.
    • Dear Palm: It's time for an intervention - Engadget
      Some (much-needed) advice for Palm.
    • Microsoft launches Tafiti - Search and Silverlight experiment - LiveSide
      Some signs of life from Microsoft search.
    • GigaOM Schmidt: Google will ‘Probably’ Bid on Spectrum «
      Google signals it's ready to rumble for next-gen radio waves.
    (08/22/07 09:00 AM)

11. Disruptors Video: The Future of the Wireless Web (Vanu). This week's New Disruptors video is up on CNNMoney. In this episode, I speak with Vanu Bose, the founder of Vanu, about how wireless networks could be more like the Internet if they were open to all devices (as the FCC is requiring in the rules for the upcoming auction of broadband spectrum). Vanu's technology, software radio, can help connect multiple wireless standard to the same network, whether it's GSM, CDMA, or iDen. Thus, the open-device rules could really play into its hands. Vanu is also an investor in Frontline Wireless, which was hoping to use Vanu's software radio technology to build a network that could seamlessly switch to support public-safety radios in cases of emergency. Frontline's plan looks like it may be in jeopardy now, but Vanu still hopes to cash in on the need for device-agnostic wireless networks.... (08/10/07 09:00 PM)

12. "50 Who Matter" Radio Interviews. I recently did a long radio interview on an Atlanta-based talk show called Technology for Business Sake. The topic was our July cover story: The 50 Who Matter Now. I talk about how the list was put together, and discuss some of the people who made it, including Steve Jobs, the Fake Steve Jobs, Susan Decker, Michael Moritz, Arrianna Huffington, and Mark Zuckerberg—and those who didn't—like Bill Gates and Kevin Rose. (Rose, as it happens, came in No. 9 in our reader poll, after attracting an impressive 295,314 votes. We decided to put Digg CEO Jay Adelson on the list, instead of going with the more predictable choice). I also did a WSJ Radio interview on the same topic. I start about a third of the way in.... (07/05/07 09:00 PM)

13. Random Links for a Tuesday. Different takes on being purple:Digg now does video.OttoBib launches a very simple bibliography tool.And Jim Leff, never shy, riffs on the radio about being remarkable, authentic and delicious....and unrelated, Cisco launches an iPhone, demonstrating that Apple isn't always so good... (12/19/06 09:01 AM)

14. [The Social Customer Manifesto] Relationship Hubs in the Long Tail. http://socialcustomer.typepad.com/the_social_customer_manif/2005/02/passion_amplifi.html How can any place, let alone an unfinished cabin in the middle of the Alaskan tundra, be the "heart" of the Long Tail? Well, this particular cabin is ground zero for a little radio station called Whole Wheat... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

15. What happens to radio?. I did an interview with Mark Ramsey about the future of radio. Here's a little squib about the four ways I think the medium might go: Scenario A: Everyone has Wi-Fi or WiMAX in their car. Once that happens, we're... (08/23/06 09:01 PM)