My colleague Matt Jones wrote another opinion piece published in B & T Magazine. In it he discusses that no matter what channel you're using to connect to your audience, the important thing is keeping communications and experiences REAL.

"If it looks good, you’ll see it. If it sounds good, you’ll hear it. If it’s marketed right, you’ll buy it. But if it’s real, you’ll feel it.” So said Kid Rock (underrated both as a musician and a marketer). The point of quoting the Kid is to introduce a simple notion. Real.

Continue reading "To feel it, you've got to keep it real"

As I noted in this post a couple of months ago, this economy is really going to suck some wind from the sales. (Yes, I know a bad pun when I write it!) Today, I felt the first effects of it: MajorCorporateClientX just missed its quarterly earnings "by a mile" and suddenly that no-bid proposal that was a sure thing is simply gone. Another project for that client has shifted from Q2 to Q3. Buckle up.

As budgets shrink, I expect we'll see a drop in attendance at B2B events in the coming year. We'll see internal events scale down. We'll see less ostentatious consumer events. One the other end of the spectrum, I think we'll see continued growth in social media marketing -- sponsored facebook applications, blogging, influencer networks, and the YouTubing of the corporate world. There's no cheaper way to gather a crowd and engage them in conversation, and the fact that it is a conversation, with consumers self-selecting to interact with your brand, makes it not just cheap but also valuable.

We're launching a facebook application for one of our clients this week. I'll be posting more about it after launch.

In honor of Earth Day, our San Francisco office invited our power company (PG&E) to do an energy audit on our operation. Turns out, we're in pretty good shape -- we had already swapped out most of our light bulbs, make good use of natural light, no wasteful appliances, standby modes for computers, printers and copiers.

The big thing we learned was about their "Climate Smart" program, which allows us to purchase carbon offsets for our in-office power consumption, and it costs only $22/month for an operation of our size! We signed up immediately.

But it raised the question: what exactly are we paying for when we buy carbon offsets? You can learn more about it at the Climate Smart site, or get a more elaborate and objective education on the topic at Wikipedia.

This is an important (and controversial) topic that won't be going away anytime soon, so take a little time to educate yourself on it.

You'd think they'd be happy -- Microsoft, that is -- that over 160,000 online petitioners are actively supporting one of their products. The problem is that the product is Windows XP, and the consumers are petitioning Microsoft not to phase it out so they won't have to upgrade to Windows Vista.

That's the conundrum when you're a near monopoly: your biggest competition is that last version of your software. And it doesn't help that Apple keeps running those "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, which probably haven't cut into the Windows marketshare significantly, but have had the effect of making Vista seem like a total flop. Those ads probably are partly to credit for the "Save XP" movement. (Weird how this stuff works!)

Yesterday on the Microsoft quarterly earning call, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell confidently stated:

There are no Vista-related issues at all

All of our operating systems have hit an end-of-life at some point, and XP will do the same. We have announced one and, if customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter.

Dax just sent me the link to this amazing presentation from the TED conference, Janine Benyus talking about "Biomimicry" -- looking to nature for solutions to design and engineering problems. Find 20 minutes in your day to watch this. (Thanks Dax.)