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TVB Revises '09 Forecast to Reflect Larger Declines. The poor condition of the US economy has caused the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) to re-issue its 2009 forecast for the local broadcast television industry to reflect larger-than-expected...

(11/18/08 09:00 AM)

TechStars on Current TV.

Current TV ran a great segment on TechStars tonight. I hung out in the bunker with a bunch of the TechStars gang (including the Foodzie folks who are highlighted.) Following is the longer (better) version - ten minutes of TechStars fun that gives you a sense of some of the personalities involved in the program.

My partner Jason Mendelson makes a surprise (and very entertaining) appearance at 8:50.

(11/18/08 09:00 AM)

A Few Requests for President-elect Obama.

I've been an unabashed Obama supporter for a while. I'm glad he's going to be our next president and am optimistic about his leadership. I've been enjoying listening to some of the punditry ricocheting around about his coming administration now that I don't have to listen (or - in my case - try to ignore) the endless analysis about the campaign. A few requests on my part have come to mind as I start to synthesize what I'm hearing. Of course, I'm not so arrogant to believe that President-elect Obama - or for that matter - anyone in the administration - will care about my specific requests, but since this is my blog afterall I thought I'd toss my thoughts out into the wild.

1. Appoint Some High Profile Republicans to Your Cabinet. I believe we need to eliminate the extreme partisan divide that exists in the US today. The best way to start to do that is from the top - if President Obama makes it clear that he has no interest in perpetuating the "partisan politics as usual" dynamic, we actually have a chance to start to change it. The biggest, loudest way to send this message would be to get the absolute smartest and most capable people in the cabinet, regardless of their party affiliation.

2. Veto The First Pork Laden Bill. I continue to be baffled by the dynamics around Pork in Congress. I want my politicians to become vegetarians and reject Pork. TARP is such a disgusting example of this - as far as I can tell, the only major difference between the TARP bill that failed the House and the one that came back from the Senate and passed was the addition of a bunch of Pork. Disgusting. When the first bill hits Obama's desk that has one key issue in it that is covered with Pork, he should Veto it. He should then get on TV and explain the bill in clear English to the American population. He should describe the single issue in the bill, and then list the Pork - state by state, Congressman by Congressman. He should then insist that Congress revisit the bill, take all the Pork out, and send it back to him for approval.

3. Continue Being Confident But Not Certain: Amy and I had a great brunch in Chicago over the weekend with a bunch of folks from Wellesley. The guest of honor was Madeleine Albright (Wellesley '59) who was the US Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. Secretary Albright was amazing and it was so humbling to get to spend some time with her. When asked what advice she'd give Obama, she said two things. First - "listen". Second - "be confident, but not certain." She described Bush as a president who has been too "certain" - he's "certain that he is correct on all issues and then never listens." In contrast, she wants a president who is "confident" yet willing to listen, learn, and adjust his point of view based on the data presented. That resonated with me - being confident but willing to listen is a key tenant of a great leader in my book.

Now - go download Zynga's Live Poker on your iPhone and play a hand or two. If you made it through this blog post, you deserve a break.

(11/13/08 09:00 PM)

Taking the Mass Out of Marketing: Embracing Micro Media Marketing. You do not have to be a key player in the marketing industry to know that it was shortly after World War II that mass marketing took full affect. With a seemingly singular audience, television, radio ... (11/11/08 09:00 AM)

TV Network Site Viewers up 155% in September. All four major TV networks enjoyed month-over-month growth in online video viewers in September, fueled by high interest in season premieres, financial news, and political news and comedic parodies,...

(11/10/08 09:00 AM)

One-Third of Web Users Watch TV While Surfing. Nearly 31% of people who went online at home in October were also watching television simultaneously, demonstrating that web surfing and TV watching are complementary behaviors, according to research...

(11/10/08 09:00 AM)

The Oprah Effect: How TV Saved the Literary Star. Last Friday afternoon I came home to an excited message on my answering machine (yeah, I still have one of those…) My mother wanted to know if I’d seen Oprah, if I knew about the Kindles. At first I thought she was talking about some unique family, like the Duggars. But later that day I [...] (11/07/08 09:00 AM)

Declaring A Jihad on My Weight.

With a nod to a line given to me from a recent television show that I enjoy, I'm declaring a jihad on my weight.

I've struggled with my weight for the past 15 years. I was a skinny person until I hit 28. At that point, something happened and I gained about 60 pounds. At my peak, some of my friends referred to me as fat. Eek.

I started running about seven years ago. I lost about 20 of the pounds. Some them went into muscle, some of them went away. But a bunch of them hung around - mostly my belly and my ass.

In 2003, when I was training for the Chicago marathon, I dropped another 30 pounds. None of my clothes fit; that was very satisfying. I ran my fastest marathon by a wide margin. I'm sure my cholesterol was a lot lower. No one called me fat anymore.

Five years later, I feel semi-fat again. I'm still running marathons, but those 30 pounds are back. I'm 20 pounds off my peak, but no where near where I want to be.

Enough. Starting today the weight comes off. If you are having a meal with me, help me help myself. Send the bread back. Ask me if I'm sure I want another drink (one is plenty). Remind me that I only have to eat half my food. Notice all the vegetables that I'm eating. Pat me on the head when I skip dessert.

Weight - you are going away.

(10/27/08 09:00 AM)

Sad Money: The Backlash Against Jim Cramer. "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer, that chrome-domed hero of trashy TV addicts and armchair-finance junkies alike, has fallen on hard times. He appeared on “The Today Show” on October 6th, imploring viewers: "Whatever money you may need ...

(10/27/08 09:00 AM)

Encourage The FCC To Improve the Internet.

If you'd like to do something political that has nothing to do with the upcoming elections, read through Tom Evslin's post Act Now for Better Internet Access. Then go sign the online petition at freetheairwaves.com.

It kind of blows my mind that the National Association of Broadcasters is still fighting this stuff, especially with the impending federally mandated cutover to digital TV in February. But hey, lots of things seem illogical - this is nothing new.

Thanks Tom for alerting everyone to this. The deadline for comments is Tuesday 10/28 so click and comment now.

(10/26/08 09:00 AM)

Running and My Professional Self.

Yesterday, I got the following question via email: "I was wondering if you think running has had a long-term impact on your professional self? Does it help keep you focused and motivated while you work, or does it reduce the amount of time you could spend reading about business and financial trends?"

This question hit an interesting chord with me - both because of the general nature of the question as well as the "or" part (e.g. the specificity of the "reduce the amount of time you could spend reading about business and financial trends.")

Running has definitely had a long-term impact on my professional life. I categorize it as a hugely positive long-term impact. While I'm physically healthier, I'm also mentally healthier as I find running to be my equivalent of meditation. I need time away from everything on a regular basis to clear my head, and running is my time for this. While I used to run with headphones, I now run naked (no headphones) so I just let whatever is in my head wander around. I find that after an hour, the wandering becomes either (a) very interesting or (b) non-existent.

Those of you that know me know that I am extremely intrinsically motivated. I'm not motivated by the external scorecard (what other people think of me, what I get public recognition for); I care entirely about the internal scorecard (what I think of myself and what I've done.) Running gives me extra time to ponder my internal scorecard without distractions.

I've also written about my split introvert / extrovert personality. I need time alone. I don't get very much of it. Without it, I eventually start to melt down. Running gives me regular jolts of alone time that rapidly recharge my extrovert battery.

I could continue for a while on the benefits side. However, as I puzzled through the cost side ("what does running cost me?") I couldn't come up with anything substantive. With regard to the specific question asked by the blog reader, it has no impact on the time I have to read anything as I already read much more than "I need to" for business. I also substitute other stuff quickly - I watch very little television, I don't have kids - so running even 10 hours a week barely cuts into the time spent by others on their kids, TV, other stuff.

There is one area that I'm trying to figure out better, which is "recovery." This has been in my face this week - I ran a marathon on Sunday and have been on the road continuously since the previous Thursday. Monday was a tough day - I was tired and sore from the marathon. The second day after the marathon is always the hardest for me as exhaustion really sets in. Usually by the third day I'm more or less back to normal. However, during this trip I've been nauseous (ranging from low grade annoying to "oh shit, where's the bathroom") regularly through the day (and night) all the way through last night. I feel fine right now, but we'll see how the day goes. While this isn't impacting my professional life (I've been fully engaged in all the stuff I'm doing this week), it's definitely been harshing my calm in my downtime. Fortunately, I get home tonight from this road trip and have a nice quiet weekend in front of me, so I expect I'll feel 100% by Monday, but it's been a little strange (and physically uncomfortable in an unusual way) this time around.

(10/24/08 09:01 AM)

Help the S and M Chicks. This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Help the S and M Chicks Sales coach Kim Duke and Canadian Duct Tape Marketing Coach Cidnee Stephen (Sales and Marketing) have put together a very playful promotional video for a contest sponsored by the WNetwork. The WNetwork is searching for a variety of experts to appear on a weekly TV show [...] (10/22/08 09:00 PM)

Ok Entrepreneurs, Time to Step Up.

Of all the macro events happening in the world, there are two occurring in the US right now that seem to be dominating most people's thinking: (1) the US election and (2) the credit crisis (or whatever it's being called today).

While I don't watch TV news (and therefore get to miss out on all the talking heads on CNBC and CNN) I do read extensively online, especially about startups, software / Internet technology, and venture capital. Most of my general business news is either via headlines (once a day in the morning when I scan several newspapers), alerts (whatever WSJ, CNN, and NYT alerts send out during the day or tidbits my friends put on twitter), and business magazines (Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek). The business magazines are usually already two weeks old by the time I get to them (in the bathroom) and they lag the actual events by another week or two.

So - I get a nice mix of current sentiment (via headlines and alerts), two to four week old stories (via magazines), useful industry information, and a small mix of random stuff, without getting sucked into the day by day, play by play endless noise, chatter, and punditry. While this isn't a pure or organized stream of information, I've found the tempo enables me to stay "informed enough" without being distracted.

Since I returned from my Q3 vacation two weeks ago, each day seems to bring more bad news and overall negative sentiment. In the last week I've started to notice a bunch of doom and gloom among entrepreneurs, especially high profile ones. In most cases, these aren't cautious warnings, or suggestions of behavior modification, or real analysis of what's going on. Rather, it's an emotional response which is starting to creep into the zeitgeist of an otherwise typically optimistic set of people.

If you remember that Fear Is The Mindkiller you'll quickly realize the correlation between the general commentary (the sky is falling, the world financial markets are collapsing, all your money will disappear, things will never be the same) and the notion of "killing your mind."

My recommendation to all of you entrepreneurs out there is to get off the negative sentiment treadmill, step up, and lead. The people working for your company are likely confused, concerned, and overwhelmed with all the noise in the system. In the near term, building your business will likely be more challenging on a number of dimensions. So what - that's the normal cycle of business. You don't need to be a blind optimist and spout happy talk, but you do need to have a clear sense of purpose and goals for your company. Leadership 101.

When I look back at the dotcom apocalypse that was 2000 - 2002, I realize some of the best companies I've ever been involved in were created during that time. In the midst of this, I remember the endless stream of "the Internet is over" and "the information technology business in now a mature business and there will never be innovation again." Yeah - whatever.

Get some exercise, take a shower, eat a good breakfast, and get out there and build a great business.

(10/11/08 09:00 PM)

Ok Entrepreneurs, Time to Step Up.

Get some exercise, take a shower, eat a good breakfast, and get out there and build a great business.

(10/07/08 09:00 AM)

Focus on Things Under Your Control.

I've got a little end of day advice for everyone out there that is getting whipsawed around by all the craziness in the financial markets. While this is aimed at entrepreneurs, it applies to everyone.

Focus on things under your control.

When I was a teenager, my dad said something to me that has stuck with me and informs many of the decisions I make and things I decide to spend my time on. He said something like "Brad - if you want to change the world, start with the 2% you know best."

Now, this doesn't mean "don't be curious." It doesn't mean "don't learn new things." And it doesn't mean "don't try new things." However, it does mean "don't get distracted by all the things you don't know, or can't influence."

This is especially important when confusing and chaotic things are happening all around us. Since I've returned from vacation in England, I've been asked numerous times what I think of the current financial crisis, how it impacts entrepreneurship and venture capital, and what the government should do about it. In general, my answer has been "I have no clue." Now - I have some very specific ideas about how it might impact some of the companies we are investors in - especially if the macroeconomy continues to deteriorate. But I know enough to know that I can't actually predict what's going to happen nor can I influence the macro stuff at all.

As a result, rather than get all spun up about what's happening minute by minute in Washington or in the financial markets, I concentrate on making sure that the companies I'm an investor in are thinking through the issues that will directly impact them - either because of exposure to certain customers (e.g. the financial services market) or a broad macroeconomic downtown. These are things I understand (in my 2%) and can influence.

Fear and anxiety comes from lots of places, including fatigue, misinformation, and the endless blathering on of talking heads on the television. If you start feeling your anxiety level increase because of things you have no ability to influence, step back and reconsider how you are spending your time. Go for walk around the block and enjoy a nice October afternoon. Take your best friend out to lunch at a restaurant you've never been too. Get a good night's sleep. Take a deep breath and - as my dad once told me, focus on things under your control.

(10/01/08 09:00 PM)

Focus on Things Under Your Control.

Focus on things under your control.

(09/30/08 09:00 PM)

Eyes Wide Open.

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Palo Alto after 20 hours of travel from Hampshire, England. Amy and I took our Q3 vacation in the English countryside at the Hampshire Four Seasons where we had a glorious week off of the grid. I find myself really wanting to be tired, but I am so far beyond tired that I'm wide awake well past midnight California time.

Our Q3 vacation was dynamite. I would have never thought to choose the English countryside, but Amy loves horses and our Q3 vacation is near her birthday, so we go wherever she wants to go. The weather cooperated in some sort of pleasant karmic-recovery from our abysmal Alaska weather (yes, I know they are uncorrelated events, but one can fantasize), my runs along with Basingstoke Canal were awesome, and the food surpassed expectations.

We were off the grid - mostly. I had a few work related things that reared their head during the week - none required a lot of time but each harshed my mellow a little bit. I was typically agitated for the first few days, which is a sign that I really needed a total disconnect to recharge my batteries. After four days of sleeping more than 12 hours a night, I started to calm down. The daily runs, swims, tennis, massages, books, and adult activities helped.

During our Q-vacations, I turn off my computer and cell phone. My assistant Kelly reads my email and calls me if there is something I have to pay attention to. However, we do watch TV - mostly movies - as we lay in bed before we fall asleep.

This week, the best movie on TV was CNBC Europe as our bed time correlated to the last hour of the market in the US. I never watch CNN / CNBC / MSNBC / Bloomberg / local news so it's a rare treat to watch a chunk of it. Last week was a doozy. If we hadn't turned the TV on at all and just checked the Dow Jones index on Friday when we left for Europe and Sunday a week later when we reconnected, we would have noticed a measly 30 point drop in the Dow. Instead, we got to watch talking head after talking head analyze, speculate, prognosticate, fluctuate, pontificate - basically everything except masturbate - while chart after chart appeared with radically spikey looking graphs that changed every few seconds.

In the midst of this noise, we watched a few movies (I finally saw Ironman - yes - the first half was much better than the second half) and I reread Nassim Nicholas Taleb' brilliant book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. I reached a very simple conclusion - everything that I was watching being discussed on CNBC was probably incorrect and, more importantly, likely irrelevant. The actual events that occurred would take me less than five minutes to read the following week when I skim BusinessWeek in the bathroom. The commentary was just noise.

But I knew this already so this wasn't my key insight. Over the weekend, we ended up watching Davis Cup Tennis (Andy Murray is going to give Nadal and Federer some trouble) while avoiding the endless Ryder Cup coverage. I tried to understand cricket (still no luck), watched some rugby (or is that Australian football?), and watched the soccer highlights (why suffer through a game when you can watch the highlights.)

And now for the insight. During the week, we have CNBC. Over the weekend, we have ESPN. They are exactly the same - just with different uniforms and commentators. As Taleb would suggest, the only way to keep your eyes wide open about what is going on is to turn off the TV and stop reading the newspapers.

I just yawned, so it must be time to end this "welcome back" post, close my eyes, and dream of fields of golden retriever puppies. I wonder if that's what Hank Paulson is doing.

(09/26/08 09:00 PM)

If You Aren’t Growing, You’re Dying.

Once a year I go on a long weekend trip with the men in my family (my dad, his brother, my brother, and my two cousins.) We hang out, see a baseball game, eat, talk about our lives, and discuss the future.

This year we went to New York City. My dad and his brother grew up in the Bronx and we decided to see one of the last Yankee games at the old Yankee Stadium. Before the game, we spent three hours touring the Bronx where my dad and his brother grew up. I don’t remember the Bronx at all; my world view of it was shaped by a combination of my dad reminiscing about his childhood in the Bronx in the 1940’s and 1950’s and Tom Wolfe describing the bombed out Bronx of the 1970’s and 1980’s in The Bonfire of the Vanities.

As we drove around the Bronx, we talked about the natural cycle of life from birth to death. Against the backdrop of their childhood, we talked about the current economic cycle in the United States and the chaos we were seeing in the financial markets. We talked about the growth of China and India, especially in the technology business where most of us are involved. We talked about what makes people, companies, and countries great, and what happens when they stop being great. At some point my uncle tossed out the line of the weekend - “If You Aren’t Growing, You’re Dying.”

We kicked around the idea of growth for a while over dinner. When we talked about growth with regard to people, we didn’t just mean physical size. When we talked about companies, we didn’t really mean only growing headcount or revenues, but included skills, experiences, product lines, and geography. When we mapped this idea to a country, we included economic expansion, job creation, company creation, and innovation.

As a long time entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I have strong opinions about the critical importance of innovation to society. To me, growth is all about experiences. As an entrepreneur, you learn from every success, but I think you learn even more from your failures. Since it’s both socially and legally acceptable in the United States to fail, some of the best entrepreneurial successes come immediately after entrepreneurial failures. It’s one of the pieces of the equation that I think makes the United States so great at innovation.

The world we live in today is much more complex than the world my dad and his uncle grew up in. Yankee Stadium was the center of their universe. TV was a new idea. The computers and the Internet we use every day had not yet been invented. Entrepreneurship existed, but it wasn’t the mainstream.

As we drove around the Bronx, we were all amazed by the incredible amount of growth we’d experienced. We decided that much of it had come from the endless efforts of entrepreneurs. Some resulted in success while some resulted in failure; all of it contributed to growth.

We concluded that every entrepreneur has an opportunity to grow, to create new businesses, new jobs, new industries, and change the way we think about things. In fact, I think that if you are an entrepreneurs, part of your responsibility is to do everything you know how to do to grow.

Or else you are dying.

(09/26/08 09:00 PM)

Social Media Marketing Best Practice Tip.

I'm fond of saying that social media doesn't have 'best practices' per se, we just have 'current practices'. Those things that we know are working right now with very, very limited play in a real market. That said, I see that Mitch Joel, Six Pixels of Separation, has started a blog meme on pulling together the best practices and has challenged bloggers to write one post. I also see that Toby has already contributed some outstanding insights. Here's my take

Social Media Best Practice Tip:

Alignment: Yes, that's it. Alignment. If your organization is considering (or is well on their way) pursuing social media in your tactical marketing plans. It (social media) MUST be in complete alignment with your strategy and differentiator as an organization and in complete alignment with what you're already doing in your marketing plan.

Strategic & Differentiation Alignment:
If you've not yet read Seth Godin's book, Meatball Sundae, I highly recommend you check it out. In a nutshell, it gets after this very issue. If you're in charge of marketing for any organization that does not (and is not likely to in the future) embody openness, sharing, trust and all of those things that are required in a customer-owns-your-brand world that is social media, this might not be a strategic fit for you. Should you change, perhaps, but that's not the issue here. Just as I would rarely advise a B2B startup client to advertise on network television, there are some companies that aren't going to align on social media. One last thing - even though your company has some aligning characteristics...if your legal department doesn't, your social media marketing plan may have a hard time getting off the ground. I'm just sayin'...

Marketing Plan Alignment:
This one's a bit easier, but still a challenge, and we're still talking about alignment. If you decide to setup a Twitter account because it's cool, but you're not blogging and you're expecting things to just explode for you, that's unrealistic (but, you already knew that...) You need to align social media vehicles with that you're already doing and plan appropriately for their launch. If you have a customer database but you've never sent an email, maybe do that first...then put up the videos, then email your customers again, then get the blog going, then seed you customers with that and get the real conversation going... I'm still bullish on data and collecting it on prospects and customers (RSS subscribers and video viewers are not success metrics in the end) and employing that data in your marketing and social media efforts.

[UPDATE] One more thing... This 'social media thing' is new, and it's not...you know what I mean...right? Well, here's what I mean. Companies that do well in social media are those same types of organizations with the criteria identified by Jim Collins in Good to Great. They would meet the test of social media readiness. Examples of that criteria include: humility, acting as a servant leader, being able to accept brutal honesty, availability, a willingness to share credit (ideally, give full credit to others) and take sole responsibility and blame for failures.

(09/11/08 09:00 PM)

Direct-to-Consumer PR Reflects Power of Do-It-Yourself. With the rise of search engines, Wi-Fi, and a Do-It-Yourself mindset, today's consumers are more empowered than ever before. They not only believe that they're entitled to information but also have unprecedented access to information on a global scale. An increasing number of consumers turn first to the Internet when they want to make a purchase?even if the product will be bought offline. That's why any PR strategy focused solely on media gatekeepers is missing a large piece of the market. While there's still value in sending your message via traditional media, more and more prospective customers are doing their own research online, bypassing newspaper, magazines, radio, and TV complet (09/02/08 09:01 AM)

If only it had... some implicit personalization. There are two types of personalization: 1.) Explicit - a person sets some preference or takes some action to make the system more useful to them. 2.) Implicit - the "system" makes some inferences about the person using it based on usage / behavior. I was thinking about this last night when we got home and turned on the TV, there are probably only a handful of channels or even shows that my wife and... (07/02/08 09:00 AM)

Insight for Ad Agencies - Listen or Go Back to Print.

This is quite possibly the most timely and exciting article I've read as of late (come to think it, this I've been rather busy and this might be the only thing I've read of late...nope, this really is the best).

Joseph Dumont penned a piece for Imedia entitled "Why Agencies are Failing" in it, he lays out several of his own observations that are founded in a report from Forrester (might be worth the $279 price tag if you're seeking some Forrester Research Therapy for your agency) and compiled from his keen insights into the agency world.

This article really hits home as it comes at a time when I'm doing a bit of work with a few agencies that I regard with the utmost respect and I can't help but see some of their challenges echoed in this article. Those are the agencies that are truly students of advertising, marketing, customer behavior and have a genuine purpose in this world. They will succeed because they can learn, they can grow and like energy (you know, never at rest) they are always moving and changing and they're on the right path.

On the other end of the spectrum are agencies who are truly stuck. They're afraid of stepping outside of their comfort zone, afraid to admit that they need help, don't have a mastermind group internally that's challenging their age-old positioning and their clients are suffering as a result by way of crusty old strategies, reheated ideas and basically an ignorance of the end customer that we're all trying to reach. Those agencies will fail a they aren't even on a path - they're standing still.

Here are a few observations that I took from Joseph's article. I really recommend read though it with you highlighter handy - there are some real nuggets in there. If you're an agency, take this to your next staff meeting and discuss it. It's that important. If you like, buy the Forrester report (and tell me if it was worth it!)

1. Damnit, get out there and do the hard work to really understand how your client's consumer has changed their habits, where they hang out and what they want to hear from you. Media kits are for armchair advertisers. You need to get out there, listen, react and move. Oh, and get your client's leadership and front line folks on the same page too. Customers are smart. They see through the disorganization.

2. Watch political marketing. I've said this for years and I'll say it again "the harbingers of the next generation of marketing are working in politics". Watch all 3 candidates and how they leverage the digital space. Also, pay attention to their budgets. They're moving mountains and spending very little (comparatively) online...they reach the masses on TV and the influencers through digital (online) means...it's a great country we live in!

3. Interactive does NOT mean Internet. It means really in-ter-acting... get people involved, acting and interacting and engaging. Most of what's called "interactive" is anything but.

4. User generated content is not the holy grail. User generated genuine interest in a brand that excites consumers and pushes their 'loyalty button' is what we're really seeking. There are many UGC campaigns that are bolt on piles of crap... If UGC is not aligned with your brand and the only respondents are professional contestants, you should rethink things a bit. Just because it's cool doesn't mean it's you (or that an agency should sell it to you)

5. I actually think that we're in pretty good shape - there is BRILLIANT marketing going on out there (just read iMedia, Marketing Sherpa and others to see the kick ass campaigns and strategies that are rocking the marketing world)...but there's always room to do better. Both agencies and internal marketers can't afford to get lazy. The entire profession of marketing is founded on a "faith in the future" perspective! That's why we market - for the future...so hurry up and let's all get there!

(06/09/08 09:00 AM)

Insight for Ad Agencies - Listen or Go Back to Print.

3. Interactive does NOT mean Internet. It means really in-ter-acting... get people involved, acting and interacting and engaging. Most of what's called "interactive" is anything but.

(05/29/08 09:00 PM)

Woke Up This Morning.

No, I didn't get myself a gun. But I can tell already that this is not going to be a good day. My head is kind of fuzzy. My law firm client sent me a zip file containing about 20 files that I don't want to look at. I have numerous e-mails from my client with the manual, all of which contain corrections and additions. I don't want to look at those either.

My computer is sick and won't boot up properly. A few days ago the little TV that I keep in my office decided not to turn on anymore, so now I can't watch the stock ticker on CNBC to see how much money I'm losing. I can't make any spring vacation plans because recompete #3 has not come out yet and I don't know when it will appear or when the due date will be. Yep, I've got lots of complaints this morning. I should just go back to bed.

But instead, I'll promote my Bid/No-Bid Guide. Below is a link to it. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

clipped from www.proposalwriter.com

Wasting time preparing a bid that you can't win or aren't prepared to take on can be costly and demoralizing.

My Bid/No-Bid Decision-Making Guide helps you think critically about whether you should bid or pass on an RFP/RFA.

The Guide takes you step-by-step through the decision process, advising you of the critical information you need to assess and the key issues you should consider.

The accompanying Bid/No-Bid Evaluation Form provides an easy way to summarize your key findings and to use these findings to make an informed decision.

(03/26/08 09:03 AM)

#1 Lesson from 2007: Using a Sense of Urgency in Marketing.

If there's one theme that keeps coming back to me from the past year, it's got the be the proper use (and the ease of misuse, if you're not careful) of a sense of urgency about doing business with you and your company. I'm not talking about the cheezy 'limited time offers' that you see over and over on TV (limited my ass...you mean, limited by your budget for spewing out shitty ads...) but genuine urgency created by inflection points in your business which moves the needle on buyer behavior.

Keep in mind here that I'm talking mostly about B2B, which, from my perspective, makes this even more exciting. B2C gets all the urgency in the mass media, and sometimes it's a rare day for most B2B organizations to be able to substantiate a genuine sense of urgency within the base of prospects.

That said, urgency is not for everyone. It's a powerful weapon that's not to be used without forethought and and crisp and clear understanding of not only the immediate implications, but also future consequences of the slippery slope that it can create, as discussed in a concise little bit about urgency in the Marketing Experiments blog.

So, what's this urgency thing all about and how do you create it?

I guess that this will be different for everyone, but frankly, the most successful levers that I've found are timing around pricing and production and availability, quotas and caps. I'm keen to hear more about what you think. Again, I'm talking sustainable things here - not just a 50% off sale or something....

Timing and production to create urgency:

This is the fun one. A great example is an impending price increase. If you've been doing a great deal of lead nurturing with your base of prospects, this is especially useful because the already know and trust you. On the other hand, if you don't have a base of prospects that you're nurturing, then you're just another average dude with a deal. Seriously, there's a lot of you out there...this type of urgency play almost has to come from a position of trust to be truly effective. Sure, you can impose urgency on a facelist list of prospects, but your conversion will suffer.

Proper planning improves urgency results:

Again, you can take this for what it's worth, but like everything I preach about when I talk about thought leadership marketing or 'altruism before capitalism', you can't just wake up one day and say "I need to create a sense of urgency and get more sales." Crap, what's first. Wrong way Charlie. Not going to work. You need to plan this. You need to understand what the next inflection point in your business will be (obsolescence of an old product, price increase across the board, new product design coming out, office move/clearing inventory...something that's almost 'external' to you yet internal at the same time) and work in a sense of urgency into your marketing to coincide with (or, preferably leading up to) the genuine, non "manufactured" inflection point.

Quotas, caps and limited availability:

Take a page from event marketers (if any of you are attending sold out football games as we near playoff time, you understand the acute sense of urgency that surrounds ticket prices and the limited availability in stadium seating) and keep an eye on your quota for items, or your geographical territories that are quickly filling up or the number of 'limited edition' items that you can produce in one quarter. From a services perspective, such as social media speaking or marketing consulting (things which I have some familiarity with) the best creator of urgency is the calendar and the limited number of dates you have available.

This is not the end of the story. There's so much more to this urgency thing (like neuromarketing and buyer behavior) but for now, that's enough.

Action Items:

What ideas do you have for creating urgency? Please share in comments!

(12/31/07 09:00 PM)

Got Local Video Ads?.

I think this is pretty big news for local and small business. With the advent of Superpages local business video ad offering, which, accoding to their press release and a follow up conversation posted by Greg Sterling, is going to offer production in the sub-$1000 range, while also seeking video syndication on other sites (not sure what your rights are to the video yet, can you put your own, Superpages produced video on YouTube, etc?) this breaks down most every barrier that any small business formerly had with doing video ads and video on the web.

Image Cred: Superpages

Who else is doing this:
TurnHere
Yellowbook

Newspapers beating TV stations at the online video ad game (Seeking Alpha)
[via: ClickZ]

(10/18/07 09:01 PM)

Content Consumption Continuity.

I'm in the middle of a great article in E-Content Magazine (sorry, don't see it online yet) and caught an interesting perspective from Russel Holliman, the CEO of Podcast Ready. This idea, which I call Content Consumption Continuity involves the many types of media that all of us use to consume content & information. At the end of the day, there needs to be some continuity across the multiple media devices through which we can access content & types of content. As Russell puts it:

"In time, I'll be able to download an article to look at on my television, zap it to my phone, listen to it in my car, and then read it on my Sony Reader while I'm in the airport."

Well said. Welcome to the age of Content Consumption Continuity!

(10/03/07 09:00 PM)

Time Warner Cable Tries to Turn Back the Clock on DVRs. Please, just give me back that one hour... Originally uploaded by SylV - like Sylvie... Cable companies may hate TiVo, but at least they've come to accept that digital-video recorders are here to stay. Or have they? Time Warner Cable is introducing a DVR-like service called Look Back that lets viewers time-shift shows but doesn't let them fast-forward through the ads. (Time Warner Cable is a sister company of my employer, Time Inc.). From a viewing-experience point of view, Look Back is a step backwards compared to a full-throttled DVR like TiVo. You can only watch shows from earlier the same day and you are forced to watch the ads. The whole point of DVRs is that they allow you to watch shows when you want to watch them, which might include catching up on a whole week's worth of The Daily Show at 3 AM on a Saturday. Being limited to one day's worth of TV sort of defeats the purpose. And don't underestimate the appeal of being able to skip through the ads. It makes the TV-viewing experience both more enjoyable and more efficient (you can watch more actual TV when you strip out the ads). So what are the folks at Time Warner Cable smoking? They are betting that people will put up with their hobbled, networked version of a DVR because it will be free. (TiVo, in contrast, charges an extra $13 to $17 a month for its service). It's amazing what people will put up... (08/13/07 09:01 PM)

Startup Watch: Fellowforce.com (the Business Smarts of Strangers). The best ideas for new products and businesses often come from outside a company's walls. Now, those companies have a Website called Fellowforce.com to help them try to tap into the business smarts of strangers. On August 1, the Amsterdam-based startup launched its consumer-facing site where people can sign up as fellows and answer challenges posed by companies large and small. There are only about 20 challenges so far. Some have been posted directly to the site itself, like one startup's plea for a blockbuster TV-format for a new website. While others are links to existing crowdsourcing efforts elswhere on the Web, such as Nokia's invitation to consumers to help design an N76 phone, or the Motion Pictures Laboratories quest to develop a theatrical projection screen that can handle both 2-D and 3-D movies. Like InnoCentive or NineSigma, what Fellowforce fosters is a form of open-source innovation. People who submit the best ideas can get paid by the companies anywhere from $250 to $10,000. Fellowforce itself is offering 1 percent of its stock to the person who comes up with the best tag line for the site. (How about: Where it pays to have good ideas). Fellows can submit unsolicited brainstorms to specific companies as well, such as one member who came up with a novel type of door hinge. Fellowforce charges companies $295 to $1,000 to post a challenge. The site is free for Fellows. And in a few days, the company plans to release an Innovation Box—essentially a... (08/09/07 09:00 AM)

ABC.com Launches HD Streaming (in Beta). Ready to watch Ugly Betty in high-def? Yeah, neither am I. But if your computer screen can handle HD video (a minimum 1024 x 768 resolution is recommended), you don't need to buy an HD TV. ABC.com is experimenting with streaming shows over the Web in HD. You will need to download a new player from Move Networks (that won't let you fast-forward through the ads, sorry) and a broadband connection. (Move just hired the former CTO of the Disney Internet Group, Douglas Parrish, as a senior VP). This is a beta, though. When I tried to install the player, nothing happened. But it shows that media companies are thinking about bringing HD to your PC as well as your TV. They just need to get it to actually work (caveat: the problem could very well be on my end).... (07/25/07 09:01 PM)

What Will You Ask On The CNN-YouTube Debates?. Tonight's questions for the Democratic presidential debate on CNN will all come in the form of YouTube videos. Whether this comes off as a leap forward in participatory democracy (and participatory media) or just as a stunt will depend on how good the videos are. Most of the nearly 3,000 videos uploaded so far simply show someone sitting at a desk or in their living rooms asking a question. That is not going to make for good TV. But some uploaders have been a little more creative. I've picked a few questions I'd like to see tonight. Here's a good one about Iraq: Here's one that uses cleverly-edited CNN footage to ask a question about government surveillance: Here's one in the form of a music video, asking, Who would you pick as your running mate?:... (07/23/07 09:01 PM)

Disruptors Video: The Anti-YouTube (Veoh TV). In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, Veoh CEO Dmitry Shapiro shows me a demo of Veoh TV, his new video browser that sucks in video from all over the Web and displays it in full screen. (Full transcript after the break). Verizon recently signed up as an advertiser. I wrote about Veoh TV in B2.0's July issue. (Disclosure: Time Warner, B2.0's parent company, is an investor in Veoh).... (07/20/07 09:01 PM)

Facebook Group Wants to Save Business 2.0. Speaking of Facebook, ever since the New York Times reported earlier this week about the potential demise of Business 2.0 (my employer), a group has spontaneously formed on Facebook to try to save it. In the span of a few days, it's grown to more than 880 members, including folks like Walt Mossberg, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Reid Hoffman, and Craig Newmark. Thanks to everyone who has joined. As my boss, Josh Quittner, says: It choked me up -- an old cynic like me. I know the internet has saved some TV shows. I've never heard of it saving a magazine. If you are a fan of the magazine, please join the Facebook group to voice your support. Traditional business advertising may be in a slump, but it is gestures like these that get noticed by advertisers (and the higher-ups here at Time Inc. as they decide the fate of Business 2.0).... (07/20/07 09:01 PM)

Microsoft Plays With P2P TV. Video: LiveStation Demo Microsoft Research (MSFT) and a UK-based company called Skinkers are developing peer-to-peer software called LiveStation for streaming live television over PCs. Think of it as a Slingbox Without the Box. (See demo video above). Except that TV stations would have to sign up to stream their broadcasts over the service. Using P2P networks is the most bandwidth efficient (and least costly) way to deliver video over the Internet. Joost, Babelgum, and Veoh also all use P2P distribution techniques in one form or another. But they all deliver videos that are already stored somewhere (their servers or the computers of their members), as opposed to live streams. I'm not sure how difficult it would be for any of these services to offer live streams as well. It doesn't seem like that big a deal. Joost, for instance, is working on (or already has) the ability to synchronize the streaming of a particular show so that you and all of your friends can watch it at the same time while chatting over Joost. Making that a live stream should be easy enough. The bigger question is: On the Internet, does live TV even matter any more? The TV schedule is a product of the historical limitations of broadcast television, where you have to broadcast the same shows to everyone at the same time. But those limitations are falling away. Even in cable and satellite TV, the growth of pay-per-view and on-demand channels proves that if you give consumers more... (07/06/07 09:01 AM)

NBBC Becomes National Bye-Bye Company. duck vacuum Originally uploaded by nj dodge The short-lived National Broadband Company (NBBC), NBC-Universal's attempt to create a TV syndication network for the Web is now being sucked into the NBC-Fox joint venture to create a YouTube competitor. Thus NBBC joins the deadpool. It looks like NBC is trying to salvage as much as it can from the ill-fated venture by putting all of its digital eggs into its "NewSite" basket. (They'd better come up with an actual name for it pretty soon, otherwise the Google-dubbed "Clown Co." is going to stick). No matter how it tries to get into the business of syndicating TV clips online,NBC (and now Fox) face a huge challenge. As I've mentioned before:At the end of the day, will CBS, ABC, or other networks want to split Web syndication fees with NBC? When you are trying to become a syndication network that distributes other people's content, it helps to be a neutral party.Meanwhile, Web TV syndication startup ClipSyndicate keeps chugging along. (See earlier coverage here)... (07/05/07 09:00 AM)

Buy Google, Sell Apple. After all the buildup over the past couple months to last Friday's launch of the iPhone, the clearest winners are Apple's shareholders, who have seen a 35 percent jump in the stock since April. In fact, Cowen and Company estimates that the price jump has added $24 billion to Apple's enterprise value in that time period (when the stock went from $90 to $122, as of the close on Friday), meaning that the market thinks the iPhone alone is worth two-thirds the enterprise value of Motorola and one-third that of Nokia. (Enterprise value is slightly different than straight market value because it takes into account debt and other liabilities). To put that into perspective, Apple hopes to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. Nokia is expected to sell 650 million cell phones. In a note technology Cowen sent out on Friday, it cautions:We smell a lot of retail participation in this process.That is code for the average investor, suckers like you and me who have been watching too many iPhone ads on TV as opposed to the Wall Street pros who supposedly look at the market dispassionately through the cold logic of their spreadsheets. The analysts at Cowen also made another observation. Over the past two years, Apple's stock (AAPL) and Google's stock (GOOG) have tracked each other very closely )see chart at right). But there's been an extreme divergence since April (see chart above). Since Wall Street always assumes that stocks revert to the mean, Cowen suggetsts this is... (07/01/07 09:00 PM)

Swedish Television starts Pod-TV. SVT, the Swedish public service broadcaster, has started Pod-TV. A number of programmes are available for subscription via RSS; news of course but also sports, culture, entertainment and so on.

Nice initative, and I noticed the other day that they not only make this available, they promote it quite heavily. They told about it in Rapport, which is Sweden's largest news show and described how people now can watch SVT on their PSP's and other devices. Feels like we're on the verge of mass adaption of the "subscribe to content" idea. (04/06/07 09:01 AM)

The Merits of Cheap Ass Marketing. My esteemed colleagues at Bazaarvoice found a fun little site that allows you to make up your own Google search interpretation. It's called GooogIe search, and here's what they came up with as a search phrase for me and their corrected interpretation of that search: Isn't that nice? :-) Actually, internally I am known as the world's cheapest marketer, and I don't reject that title. Read my Marketing Bullseye series on the right -- the whole idea of bullseye markeitng is how to spend the least amount of money for the highest impact combining creativity with measurement rigor. Typically marketing as a practice is thought of with big budgets towards advertising, direct mail, TV, etc. When I think of great marketing I first think of great products, great service, positive culture, good press, and amplifying the resulting word of mouth. If you have all that, then you can think about downstream marketing because it will be 4X more effective! To date, Bazaarvoice has done no advertising, except for tradeshow exhibiting and sponsorships (and we didn't start exhibiting until word of mouth and press required us to have a place people can find us). I'm usually the first to cut my marketing budget (but I've got to stop that at some point!). Alternatively, I'll invest in consultants and contractors to help make our products better. Being a markeitng cheap ass (in the most positive sense) is good if it forces you to make your company and products better because you can't... (01/06/07 09:00 PM)

The YouTube President. John F. Kennedy was the TV president. The debates got him elected and his newsreel footage lives on. (When was the last time you saw Eisenhower in a video clip?) That began an era of politics that lasted more than... (12/28/06 09:01 AM)

Remember your RSS feed. My secretary won passes to a local fair by visiting our local WZZM-TV website, noticing the contest, and entering.

I've been subscribed to their RSS feed for maybe a year. Had no idea the contest was being offered.

Lesson: If you have an RSS feed, make sure you are feeding worthwhile (and promotional) content to the subscribers, assuming that they aren't otherwise going to go to the website.

Now she gets to go see Tesla in concert and I don't. Darn. (No, not really.)

(UPDATE: Larry, click on the link for a sample on Tesla's splash page...sounds like Aerosmith to me. My musical tastes BTW are: 80s pop/new wave, mash-ups, and blues.) (07/29/06 02:28 PM)