Tag Archives: marketing

6 New Rules of Marketing: Get Enlightened, Stupid.

Apparently I have to relearn marketing again, which is fine... it wasn't hard the first time.

The coolest thing about marketers are the titles they give their books. Common, right? They’re marketers. What do you expect?

Yep, while marketing and advertising may be dead, the business of proclaiming it even more dead... is booming. Here are the six rules, and as you can see they defy the 6 marketing rules I learned in my MBA (which I’ve added in italics).

Oh- I think it goes without saying that I haven’t read the book, but I am considering adding it to the prized bookshelf of “The Enlightened Stupid Marketer.” At least he embraces book covers over books, right? Is there any irony to the fact that years after shooting that video I’d write a book and, to date, not read it?

  • The Core is Everything (screw the customer, kill or be killed, don’t sleep)

Key chapters: Brand essence is important, customer knows best, your reputation is vital, play nicely, sleep soundly and work fearfully.

  • You Have Nothing Without The Foundation (integrity is for the unemployment line… Ps in 2006 were product, price, piss the customer, and pimp it)

Key chapters: Integrity, single word or symbol, whole is larger than parts, mind your P’s….

  • There Are Many Choices But Only One Customer (there’s a sucker born every minute; it’s easier to find a new customer than try to keep one).

Key chapters: Strategy is the heart and measurement is the blood, frameworks, perception really is your customer’s reality, communication, more than channel surfing.

  • Do the Right Things for the Right Reasons (we watched Wall Street in Ethics class, talked about Walmart, and then all proclaimed: greed is goooood).

Key chapters: Relationships matter, partner, it’s about them not you…

  • Infrastructure is More Than Pipes (in fact, a virtual tributary allows for add-drop multiplexing of subrate traffic… come to think of that, I might have learned that when my boutique web agency was acquired by Qwest Telcom).

Key chapters: Technology is just an enabler, right information, right people, right time… and don’t have wrong thought.

  • Lead And Others Will Follow (be a fast follower… let your competitor take the arrows, then pull them from their body and use them against anyone that tries suing you for stealing their idea; be sure to pluck out their gold fillings… they won’t need them anymore because they’re dead).

Key chapters: Leadership is a verb not noun.

So, yeah. I have to relearn marketing again, but this time there’s not a test (which sucks because I would have cheated off of my friend Mike Skoler). I wonder if my damned MBA comes with a money-back guarantee (It probably does, but the small print says “not valid on days ending with the letter Y”).

For the record, this marketing-satire video (“Enlightened Stupid Marketer”) was indeed shot in a conference room of an employer who shall remain nameless. You’d never know that unless you worked there, so while I maintained the spirit of the no-camera law (confidentiality), I broke the “letter” of the law. More importantly, it was a satire not of my co-workers at the time but of a Coke executive I’d seen a month prior at a conference. Nobody believed me, and a number of people took offense to this (like the guy who sucked my will to live).

The nice thing about this video is that if you’re offended by it, I’ve struck a vulnerability nerve haven’t I? Are ya offended or are you secure in your marketing competencies? Do you see yourself lampooned, or do you giggle at the absurdity occasionally? If your teeth clench while watching, you MAY just have gelatophobia. There’s only one cure. Avoid people unless wearing ear muffs and blinders. Or just keep reading the latest marketing book that proclaims the last guy slightly dumber.

The Flying Car is Just Around the Corner

Screw you, flying car. You haven’t been invited, and you never will be. Screw you, Fox News. I’ll believe it when I’m riding a terraguia flying car that cost less than $50K. I’ll be riding it with my hover board under my seat, and the animated head of Walt Disney on my lap. 

Sure we'll have flying cars as soon as we invent time machines and hover boards.

Sometimes when you’re trying to be controversial, you end up being right. Around 2001 I kept hearing that “electronic medical records” (EMR) were just “one or two years away.” I’ve since joked that it is indeed “one year away” perpetually (no matter what the year is). I’ve not been significantly wrong yet.

Here are some more pathetically pessimistic statements I’ve made about the future of technology and advertising, but they haven’t failed me yet. If I’m right, please remember that. If I’m wrong, I respectfully which to join the top 87 bad predictions about the future (that have been wrong). Perhaps I shall rank as high as “Everything that can be invented has been invented,” which is attributed to Charles H. Duell, an official at the US patent office in 1899.

  • Mobile-Marketing: While working at KPMG Consulting more than a decade ago, I was asked to speak about the future of mobile marketing. Naturally I knew almost nothing about the subject but most didn’t. So I did some fast research and made up some decent crap that seemed plausible. Then, to ensure I put my own touch on it, I expressed a contrarian opinion or two. Most over-zealous experts were predicting that we were just years away from mobile ads that gave you real-time promotions based on geographic proximity. The most-viral example was a Starbucks “offer” that summoned a person back if their device’s GPS told the advertising network that the individual passed a store (see parody below). So I cried “nonsense,” and said those wouldn’t be coming for a very long time, and that usage would be minimal. Just a hunch, but I was right. Here we are 11 years later and here’s 8coupon and how many people use these things? >>> Sure mobile marketing is a big deal, but we’re not idiots… we’re going to find ways to ignore intrusive spam and let very select companies and brands into our smart phones. Or, arguably the phones (and their owners) are not really smart, right?

  • What's the matter, Coyote? Did you step onto that TOTALLY fake hole. It's just a piece of black circular velvet, dude.

    Customized Marketing: Yeah, right. The Tom Cruise scene in “Minority Report,” created the character with competing talking voices by ads mentioning his name and specific tastes. I cried “bullshit” because Chief John Anderten (Cruise’s character) clearly hadn’t opted in for so many programs. Furthermore the audio delivery would need to be incredibly precise to target an individual’s ear without spillover. And did I mention that fake hole the Coyote uses with Road Runner is total and complete bogus. I’m so sure. A black circular sheet that creates a whole wherever you place it. Utter bullshit. We barely ever see custom digital ads, which would be incredibly easy to create and deliver. It’s because media buyers are too dumb and lazy (except you, dear reader). >>> We’ll get better at custom marketing, but the vast majority will not be conspicuously targeted. It’s best that the buyer not know the magic we’re using to reach them. It’s creepy.

  • Y2K Will Be Anticlimactic: Having a contrarian opinion about a popular belief makes you more interesting and credible. Like when I did a Y2K interview I decided to take the “nothing bad is going to happen” approach. I had no real facts, but I figured if I was wrong nobody would remember. And if I was right I’d be a genius (which, of course, I am). >>> Most of the warnings of Y2K turned out to be hogwash. One of my sisters packed a “Surviving the Apocalypse” supply of food and water, and still has it. Another called me in tears in the last minutes of 1999.
  • No Flying Cars: When I spoke last fall at my son’s fourth-grade class (about writing and my book) I told them that when they’re adults they will desperately need to write, even if that writing may occur in radically different ways (like using the voice or swiping the fingers in the air). Ways they couldn’t even imagine. Then I told them when I was in fourth grade I predicted flying cars by the age of 2000, and I was wrong. Before I could observe what was coming out of my mouth, I heard my lips say with great ferver, “there will NEVER be flying cars.” >>>> Sure the elite might have magical flying cars, but I don’t see them as a travelling device for the unwashed masses. Too many accidents in the sky, a place that does not very well accommodate such things as red lights, speed bumps, stop signs, and white/yellow paint. Sure could find electronic equivalents, but I’m betting it’s not in any reader’s lifetime.

And now here’s PC Magazine showing the 12 flying cars that led to Terrafugia. Yeah, right. Terrafugia (see commercial example). George Jetson called. He wants his briefcase packed with a flying car back.

"The flying car, something I imagined in fourth grade, will never happen," I said.

10 Online-Video Stats (Advertising & Reach) Worth Knowing

youtube statistics

There are too many and too few statistics about online video and YouTube. We’re quite tired of hearing some of them: like how many videos are uploaded in a given timeline. But thanks to Pew and the increasingly popular “infographics” for giving us more than we could ever remember.

This one (image on right) is courtesy of Mashable and was created by Emily Caufield. It’s somewhat miss-titled “The History of Advertising on YouTube” because it starts with a history of the video-sharing site, then expands to mobile stats and other areas).

If you want a quick scan of some key online-video and YouTube stats that are public, here’s my list….

  1. YouTube represents more than 22% of mobile traffic. That’s data not time, and mobile use has skyrocketed by 70% over the past six months, according to Allot Communications Mobile Trend Report.
  2. About 70% of YouTube’s traffic is outside the United States. Yep- only a third are in America.
  3. Globally, YouTube is monetizing 2 billion video views per week. The number of advertisers increased 10-fold last year (good timing on the publication of that amazing online-video marketing book called Beyond Viral).
  4. Daily views are more than 2 billion a day as of the 5th year birthday Yeah two billion.
  5. To learn more about YouTube advertising, visit this page.
  6. YouTube scans more than 100 years of video each day using “Content ID.” That’s an automated tool to identify, claim and monetize content that belongs to you.
  7. One in four Americans watch a video online each day (Huffington Bloat). And 71% of us use online-video sites. comScore actually upped it to 85.6% as of June 2011. Remember when people said only teenagers watched videos online, and I said it would soon mimic web use? I did. What matters, however, is not whether or not we do something online… but how frequently.
  8. Only 8 percent U.S. subscribers to broadband users don’t have television subscriptions (the infamous “cord cutters” also don’t consume much more online video than the rest).
  9. Hulu has done somewhat better with advertising than YouTube, according to many analysts and idiots. Hulu did 1 billion ad impressions (that’s not all pre-rolls, friends).  Each viewer watched 38.8 ads in the month. Sigh.
  10. And here’s eMarketer’s forecast about online video from 2008. Just tossing in an expired piece of data to make the rest fresh by comparison.

    The Pew data shows online-video growth is on the rapid incline.

 

Turn an Audience Into a Cult: 10 Steps

Editorial note: I’m writing about building cults on YouTube, and doing so with authority since I’m a marketing author who has been seen more than 200 million times on YouTube alone. More importantly, I’ve read The Secret, and I’ve placed my “order to the universe” that you’ll read this, share it, and refer to it as “brilliant.”

So I sat recently in a crowd of 500 people, and listened to an author speak about the similarities between cults and brands. Yeah it creeped me out a bit.

I had some moral problems with this, and involuntarily pictured the Kool Aid man running through Jonestown with Manson. I think I’ll avoid Photoshopping that, so do your own mental work.

But use your audience cult-ivation skills carefully

Now before we use “cult” and “audience” in the same blog post, let’s be clear about connotations. Then back to how you can apply this to your relationship with viewers. We end with 10 steps on turning viewers into a cult army.

The word “cultivate” (which seems to have mostly positive connotations) originates from the Latin “cultīv” (care for). But according to Wikipedia (so you know it’s somewhat true), the concept of “cult” was introduced into sociological classification in 1932 by American sociologist Howard P. Becker as an expansion of German theologian Ernst Troeltsch‘s church-sect typology.

So let’s focus on the 1.0 connotation of “cult” here:

  • Cult 1.0: Becker created four categories out of Troeltsch’s first two by splitting church into “ecclesia” and “denomination“, and sect into “sect” and “cult.”
  • Cult 2.0: In the early 1970s, a secular opposition movement to “cult” groups had taken shape. The organizations that formed the secular “Anti-cult movement” (ACM) often acted on behalf of relatives of “cult” converts who did not believe their loved ones could have altered their lives so drastically by their own free will. In the mass media, and among average citizens, “cult” gained an increasingly negative connotation, becoming associated with things like kidnappingbrainwashingpsychological abusesexual abuseand other criminal activity, and mass suicide.

“Cult marketing” and “cult brand” has taken such a positive connotation that one company claimed the phrase as its name. And there’s a whole Wiki on “cult brand” with no sources.

Now: Cult Marketing & YouTube Applied

Bring your devotees together in person to permit them to touch your sleeve

10 Easy Steps to Building a Cult on YouTube…

  1. The first step is to refer not to yourself, dear YouTube creator. Focus on the collective group. It’s not “I” and “me” it’s WE.
  2. Name your collective. The Vlog Brothers have Nerdfighters. Shaycarl has Shaytards. Olgakay has the Moosh Army. And Zack Scott has “my babies.” As Michael Buckley once told me, never refer to your audience as fans. They’re viewers, but not necessarily all of them qualify as “fans” just because they subscribed..
  3. Introduce an icon. A giant fist punching an eagle is a good place to start, but a monkey with shades shows commitment.

    My own thumbnail is represented here with an eye closeup, which is strangely hypnotic
  4. Create a theme song. The music can be hypnotic, and will create a sense of belonging. For example, I have mysteryguitarman’s classic “Nalts/Waltz” theme, as well as “Nalts Makes a Video Every Time You Poop.”
  5. Distribute wardrobe. Start with t-shirts like Ray William Johnson’s =3 collection. Then step it up with “Moosh-shoes” or “Mythical Shoes” ala Rhett and Link. Finally, introduce something that allows a viewer to express extreme devotion. Try a Cult Snuggie (see video).
  6. Transform yourself. You can get a hair transplant, or disfigure yourself in other ways. Invite your devotees to follow suit.
  7. Tell people how to live. Make up rules of humanity and cultivate a sense of group “right” and “wrong.” Tell them how NOT to live, and find an enemy. Find examples of “rule breakers” outside the cult, and chastise them in the style of McCarthyism or Salem Witch Trials.
  8. Make them laugh. They’re much less likely to think for themselves if they’re laughing. It increases their vulnerability better than sleep deprivation and chocolate milk.
  9. Let your cult followers fight your battles. They’ll not just do the fighting for you, they’ll want to. It’s a reward for all of your effort and smarts.
  10. Go a little nutso. Stop shaving, and make 7 minute rants on YouTube. Put a pot on your head, insert fake teeth and call the suicide prevention hotline (see Mr. Pregnant). Next, reduce visibility. Vanish suddenly to create intrigue. It’s called “pulling a Mr. Safety.” Don’t worry- you’ll be back in the limelight soon. If you’re so inclined, you may wish to make a“Heaven’s Gate” video and let your peeps know how it’s going down in the after life.

Now they’re your stone-faced zombies, so feel free to encourage them to buy stuff, donate their life savings to you, or takeover a country. If things go sour, just hide in plain site. But put up 18-feet walls around you and don’t use the Internet. That may be difficult, but who said leading a cult is supposed to be easy?

 

 

Google Eats Its Own Dogfood: 7 Ways Its Using Video

Okay let’s just get this out. I’m a big Google fan, user, and customer. I’m also making non-trivial income from Google’s YouTube Partner program (through ad sharing on my Nalts videos seen 200 million gazillian times). So I really hesitate commending the company in a post headline. It looks I’m friggin’ shilling incognito and I hate that crap (see my parody on f’ing buzz marketing).

Instead I prefer to prank, complain and criticize the company to ensure my “checks and balances” are in place. It can border on “biting the hand that feeds you,” but I’ll call it tough love. You don’t own me, bitch (sorry I’ve got an authority issue).

Today’s post, however, is to observe that Google’s brain seems to be developing a frontal lobe (the rather useless part of the brain where insanity and marketing occurs). I’ll be damned if Google isn’t using video (even the YouTube player to keep Salar “Little Superstar” Kamangar happy) in increasingly effective ways. (The marketer rubs little puppy’s tummy and says good boy, as he naively thinks he’s more evolved than a wonderfully blissful animal).

Parenthetically I literally laugh outloud every time I refer to the head of YouTube as “Little Superstar” because I’m aware it appears so completely inappropriate and racist. But I’ll trust you WVFF loyalts will know that if I really felt that way I’d suppress it incredibly well. I stereotype into only two segments: people who make me happy and people who suck away my will to live. Anyway Salar isn’t even Indian he’s Persian or Iraq, and frankly I don’t know the difference or care. I just needed something to use to “downsize” him, since my ego is threatened by him having the coolest job in the world. It was the same thing with Chad, but Chad was a much easier victim since he generally looked stoned.

I wonder if Chad and Samar ever went to Dubai together and ate sushi off of woman’s stomaches.

Okay back to the news. Google using YouTube shouldn’t surprise us at first glance, but put aside Google’s products and branding (it’s hard to do), and ask yourself a question. Do you see Google as a great marketing organization? Or put more succinctly, how well does it tap the advertising medium that feeds it? Right your reaction because I’m coming back to read ’em.

Google historically has done almost no advertising for itself. It kept quiet, muted PR, and rarely showed evidence of advertising/marketing competencies from an external view. Sure, you might credit YouTube took out a Superbowl ad years ago (side note: good luck finding it on YouTube). But I’m convinced that was not for viewers, but simply to sneak access to “Superbowl Buyer’s Man/Boy Club” to pitch well-funded brands on the merits of diverting TV dollars to web.

But now I’m seeing real signs of life. Google print ads with direct-response offers? A discount on Google ads and to encourage app purchases? Really? It’s like watching my son Grant suddenly blossuming academically and reading voraciously. I know I had nothing to do with it, but I’m proud of the double G’s. Sidenote 2: Did I ever tell you I had a clubhouse in my house that I named Google in the late 1970s? Note to self: get time machine, go to 1995 and squat domain name for your childhood clubhouse.

So now the engineering anthill is using video to engage customers and promote? How charming! Let’s review recent and cumulative examples.

1) Branded Entertainment: Today we see a “Google Doodle” (typically an illustration of the logo marking an event) taking video form. The typically clean/sparse homepage features not a small custom image, but an embedded player with a nicely done Charlie Chaplin homage.

2) Satire/Entertainment: On April Fool’s Day Google pulled its annual prank by rolling out advanced “Gmail Motion” via video. The new solution featured a typical Google product director’s awkward monotone, complemented by a model (Steve Buscemi) demonstrating how physical movements (thumbs up, waves) can be interpreted it into text. One might expect a collective drone if he/she concedes that it was a clever prank, but I liked it. Why? It wasn’t too far fetched, it was executed fairly well, and I interpreted it as a subtle diss on Apple and its self aggrandizing swipes, pinches, and three finger whatevers.

Steve Buscemi in the Gmail Motion prank video

3) Product Launch: Google is increasingly using video to promote and teach out new products (see “advanced gmail” video). Sure Google has been criticized for a somewhat dated approach to product marketing (and some “areas for improvement” in its design/test/launch). But the sheer number of new innovations have me increasing my daily time-share significantly, and I want a Google GPS, Android simulator on my iPhone, and a Google-search brain implant for “just in time” information.

4) Humor: I’m not kidding. You have to look hard, but there’s humor lurking in the hallways. It’s probably like a secret society afraid to draw attention to itself among fellow engineers. But there’s the humanized personification of Google auto-complete (Hiring Autocompleters) that was funnier than its view count would suggest. (Last minute update- I was searching for more examples before hitting post and I remembered I was part of “Demo Slam” to promote additional tools/solutions to a broader audience… now you’re going to think this whole post was motivated by that, and you can kiss my ass because I nearly forgot I did it.

5) Public Relations: Remember all the drama about privacy invasion resulting from Google Earth (buttcrack) and Google Street View pictures? This video that shows “behind the scenes” of Google’s streetview camera vehicle. It replaces the images in my head of a creepy zit-faced MIT intern driving a black van, snapping photos, and wearing no pants.

6) Education & Community: Google uses videos to support community, health education, public service and economic summit Davos whatever… but that’s so damned boring I don’t feel like writing about it.

7) There is No Seven. I just don’t like posts with six items. Actually seven is “reader’s choice.” What’d I miss?

When You’re On MSNBC… Try Holding Your Book Right-Side-Up

I'm in this week's "Your Business" on MSNBC

I appeared on MSNBC’s “Your Business” yesterday, and again tomorrow morning. It was a special about using online video to promote your business. Here’s me holding my book, Beyond Viral, upside down. Classy touch, right? It, um, was… on purpose. Right.

kevin nalts nalty book beyond viral
Maybe the camera was just upside down?

Online Video Tips for Small Business (MSNBC)

Get some coffee or program your TiVos, kids.

That video I shot Sunday for MSNBC Small Business (see MSNBC/Amex site) is going on television not the web (glad I didn’t quite realize that when I shot it, or I might have gotten nervous).

It airs this week 3/20/11 at 7:30am EST and will re-air Saturday, March 26th at 5:30am EST. This timing should work well for small businesses and entrepreneurs since they never sleep. And the YouTube peeps? They’ll still be awake from the night prior.

In the meantime, you can check some of the tips I shared with AOL small business, or buy Beyond Viral (Wiley) at your local bookstore or Amazon. And tell your friends at ABC and CBS they should book me. 🙂

Oh- I made an epic mistake on the video that I’m hoping people think was intentional because it’s so blatant. Be the first to notice it and comment below, and you get a free piece of cheese (and maybe an autographed copy of Beyond Viral if I actually remember).

One of Top 25 Most Innovative Digital Publishers

Congratulations, dear reader. We’ve made the cut. We’re one of the top 25 most digital publishers (David Garland “Rise to the Top”). Scoble made it too, so we have some good company.

I use “we” in a collective sense, since I probably wouldn’t be in my 5th or 6th year of publishing without you. Yeah I’m pretty sure without your intellectual comments I’d grow weary. And I’m certain that if I didn’t see some of the mindless and humorous ones I’d have long since regressed to a newsletter only my mama reads.

Have a glass of champagne, or celebrate in whatever way you see fit. Heck, while you’re here… how will you celebrate your victory?

You and I made the cut, baby. Barely, but we made it.

Online-Video Marketing for Small Businesses

How can a small company take advantage of this bountiful new online-video market? They can personalize their offering, increase reach, optimize search-engine rankings, and target with greater precision. While few startups will “go viral,” entrepreneurs have a competitive advantage in their flexibility and agility. Without large bureaucracies or expensive agencies, a smaller business can leave out the nonsense and get their message out via the less crowded medium.

I have not yet found a way to profitably help small businesses take advantage of online video. As an entrepreneur I couldn’t justify my own fees to a startup. So that’s one of the primary purposes of writing “Beyond Viral,” and in sharing secrets with whatever journalist comes my way… last month it was Entrepreneur magazine and “Rise to the Top,” and now it’s AOL Small Business.

AOL Small Business writer Lauren Drell does a nice job of providing some key insights and recommendations for smaller businesses. Check out her 5 things you need to know… because you do.

Beyond Viral (go buy it at Amazon) has a chapter devoted specifically to small businesses, although most of the entire book is applicable. The secret trick is to stop thinking about a specific funny, viral video… and engage the medium strategically. Finding where your audience is, what will get their attention, and how to compel the right ones to consider purchase or trial. It’s not brain surgery, but it’s easy to waste time or money.