The future of e-books: iPad's Bram Stoker's Dracula

Posted At : February 15, 2011 4:17 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Technology,Commentary

While e-books are growing in popularity, they represent only 8% of all books sold today. Sales will continue to climb as new concepts hit the market like the iPad-based Official Stoker Family Edition of Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula.
This isn’t your Mom’s Kindle e- book.
While it’s the original 1897 Stoker tome, Dracula has been wonderfully re-imagined. Most of the 300 pages come alive, driven by a game engine developed for the Apple iPad by PadWorx Digital Media. This enables readers to experience a book in a whole new way, from social media to gameplay to touch screen interaction.
And then there’s the glorious, shiny, iPad color “pop.” When blood trickles and howling wolves walk across the page, it’s mesmerizing.
There are hundreds of interactive experiences in this iPad Dracula. The compound effect is addictive. We’ve all talked about books “we can’t put down,” but this app takes the expression to a new level:
  • Can’t read a page because it’s too dark? Light a candle, then move it closer to the text.
  • A heavy gravestone slab is blocking your path… so… drag it and listen as the stone scrapes and moves away.
  • As Stoker describes Lucy being hypnotized, she appears in illustrated form, eyes open. Move your finger across her face and she falls into a trance.
  • Press the tip of a transfusion needle and blood flows through the tube.
  • Tilt the iPad and a character’s face changes from glorious to macabre.
  • Blow leaves off a tombstone so you can read the text beneath.
But the real kick, for me, were the small, unexpected touches like…
Snow falling across the page…Touch an envelope and out comes a handwritten letter…Press a (blood) red word and it launches you to a just-received telegram…Rats scramble across the page… Open the window of an insane asylum and peer inside…Unlock a mausoleum’s door with a key…Feed sugar to flies as they buzz across a page.
Music plays a key role in setting the mood. Each of the book’s 27 chapters features original, full-length songs – activated by touching a drop of blood. Eerie music starts playing when you’re reading a particularly creepy or suspenseful passage.
If all this wasn’t enough, there are eight “bonus” forms of content hidden within the application, including:
  • The entire 1922 film Nosferatu, based on the 1897 Bram Stoker Dracula
  • The entire Orson Welles radio adaptation of Dracula
  • The death certificate of Bram Stoker
“It really is a different kind of reading experience," said Jeffrey Schechter of PadWorx Digital Media.
He got that right. Dracula is the future of e-books. And you get all this for $4.99.

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Super Bowl ads 2011: what worked, what didn't

Posted At : February 7, 2011 2:44 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Branding,Commentary

What worked & what didn't with 2011's Super Bowl ads

  • What happened to social responsibility? Super Bowl ads were trending this way but we lost it last night. My hopes started rising when Timothy Hutton began talking about Tibet, but the ad speedily deteriorated into a pathetic sales pitch for Groupon. Not aligning purpose-driven brands with authentic social responsibility marketing campaigns is a missed opportunity.
  • Bloat busts brands - I usually love Coke's Super Bowl ads, but not this year. The medieval-themed animated world was visually mesmerizing but the idea fell apart. The evil dragon can't breathe fire because he guzzled a Coke...the invading army retreats. Too much set-up for a petering payoff. Ditto for Coke's enemies border guard ad - a lengthy build-up to a disappointing ending. Other brands lost their way: Motorola's de-positioning of Apple's iPad tablet was another example.
  • Jumping the shark - The E*TRADE babies aren't cute anymore - the concept is hackneyed. Cloud computing must be jumping the shark when animated Black Eyed Peas characters are pitching the atmospheric technology concept in salesforce.com ad. Some topics should never go consumer. 

 

  • Simple trumps complicated - the ads that stuck were also short and simple. VW's endearing Darth Vader and Faith Hill's "your rack" ad for Teleflora artfully demonstrated how a tight focus generates the most impact and memorability. 
  • Dumbing down can be dumb - we faced an onslaught of sophomoric Doritos and Bud Light spots in the early going. Post-SB measurement is validating how the lowest common denominator doesn't always equal effectiveness.
  • Dumbing down cleverly is better - Bud Light's dog-themed "They'll do whatever you want" was clever-dumb, right down to the canine poker game fade-out.
  • Long builds can work if the concept is tight - while bloated, convoluted ads (see Coke) can lose the brand, the Detroit-themed "this is what we do" Chrysler commercial featuring Eminem was captivating.

 

  • Connecting TV to the online brand - Go Daddy made the most blatant connection between traditional and new media, driving viewers to its website to see the presumably titillating payoff.  
  • Fresh creative will always pop - the CarFax ads were original and felt it. The messaging platform "Service shouldn't be a thing of the past" was brilliantly set up by eager beaver 1950's era service station attendants and home delivery milkmen. Ditto for this brand's "I feel like a..." ad. It was fun to watch because we haven't seen it before. Ditto for GM's Camaro ad featuring voice-overs from TV creatives talking through their ad concept as we saw it unfolding. The schoolteacher ending was cherry-topping.
  • Flashback montage winner - who wasn't sucked into the NFL Channel's zippy montage of favorite TV characters brought back to life? 
  • Seventies music ruled - from Budweiser's Western gunslinger to BMW's X3, the music often took a retro turn featuring baby boomer classics like Elton's "Tiny Dancer" to Bowie's "Changes." 
  • Best tease - went to VW's "Beetle" ad. Their only mistake was using Ram Jam's politically incorrect 1977's "Black Betty" as the theme. They could've picked a better-fit song; this will backlash.
  • Subtlety thy name is not Audi - it's unusual to see a car company select one - and only one - competitor to aggressively and directly de-position. Like its previously themed ads, Audi used nearly all the time from last night's spot emphasizing how Mercedes is no longer relevant. The new Audi 8 makes a quick appearance a few seconds at the end as the shiny relevant machine. Meanwhile, Mercedes relied on Janis Joplin's tune and P. Diddy to assert its hipness - it didn't work. 

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What's jumping the shark in 2011 in the world of tech?

Posted At : January 20, 2011 2:18 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Technology,Commentary

As I watched The Office the other night (missing its original cleverness & quirkiness), I wondered: what’s jumping the shark in the world of tech?
Some are obvious: MySpace; cable TV subscriptions; brick & mortar video chains; Digg; flip phones, eBay and DVDs.

But what’s jumping the shark before our eyes? Consider the following candidates - some are unquestionably declining; others remain arguable in their pending sharkiness :

  • Delicious – word got out last month that Yahoo was shutting down its social bookmarking site. Then it shifted gears, talking about selling the service. Does this mean the world doesn’t need wide-scale storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks?
  • Netbooks – the handwriting is on the tablet – netbooks from the likes of HP, Dell and Asus have been usurped by the Tablet Rush. (Thanks Apple for showing the way.) Now established companies like Motorola are in the game with the favorably reviewed Xoom and unknowns - like Notion – are garnering buzz with Adam. RIM skipped the netbook phase and moved directly to the tablet.
  • Virtualization – although it might be a tad early to make the call, there are some indications virtualization may be taking a hit as all things shift to the Cloud as companies worry more about taming management complexity issues.
  • Cloud computing – a harried, flight-delayed couple gets happy when they say “let’s go to the cloud” in a current TV commercial. Is cloud computing so mass market already that it’s jumped the shark? Some people think it’s already peaked.
  • Chatroulette – who doesn’t want a face-to-face webcam experience with an endless parade of strangers with a complete inability to manage the experience (find friends, trace your steps back, etc.). Evidently, a lot of people.
  • Twitter – a frequent knock against Twitter is “lots of talk but is anybody listening?” If Twitter usage hasn’t peaked, has its clout?
  • Large email service providers – several very capable small email service providers have proven themselves and are delivering a high level of functionality at far less cost. Why pay more when you can get it from vendors like Newsberry?
  • Quora – it hasn’t been around long (launched June 2009) and buzz is growing not declining, but some are already questioning its viability. If you’re not familiar Quora, it’s Search meets Wikipedia meets Yahoo Answers. Is it a retread or a valuable idea we’ll need more.
  • Facebook – some pundits are saying Facebook has peaked. With 500 million friends and climbing, it’s hard to make the case though. But maybe they’re right…The Social Network won a Golden Globe for Best Picture.
  • Augmented reality – there’s growing buzz that while it’s definitely cool, augmented reality hasn’t (and might never) find a useful purpose. To avoid jumping the shark, it needs to go from cool to practical applications.
  • Blu-ray – every year since it came out, marketers have prophesized “the year of Blu-ray” but it hasn’t happened yet. Blu-ray video now accounts for 11% of all movie sales according to Nielsen. The format appears to be growing, but the buzz has flattened. For example, there were fewer Blu-ray announcements at this year’s CES (except for the Star Wars trilogy news). Will 2011 be the tipping point year?
  • Blogging – last year’s Christian Science Monitor article (Has blogging peaked?) made a case for Twitter and Facebook now being the glue that keeps online communities together. There’s growing buzz that blogging requires too much work and diminishing returns. The biggest sharkiness sign may be that the majority of blogs are never updated.
  • Governance risk and compliance (GRC) – is this software being increasingly marginalized as more and more customers go SaaS?
What isn’t on this list that should be? What shouldn’t be on the list? Talk to me…

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Can we get more media variety in 2011?

Posted At : January 4, 2011 11:08 AM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Commentary,News

We either get too much of the same thing, too little of the formerly hot thing or not enough of the real thing.
Consider too much of the same thing: last year the media focused incessantly (and often aggravatingly) on BP’s oil spill and its blackened brand, Toyota’s troubles, Facebook’s face, Gap’s new logo, Android’s surge and iPad’s popularity. And let us not forget Foursquare, GM’s resurgence, Nestle’s blunders, Jet Blue’s whacko attendant, Twitter’s apparent omnipresence and technology’s journey to the cloud.
But this isn’t anything new; beating a story to death personifies today’s media.
More curious are the occasions when the hottest story goes glacial. Not because the story ended, but because media interest waned. Case in point: the Haiti earthquake. The story dominated TV, online news and mainstream pubs for three months. But then coverage virtually stopped. Sean Penn called the media on it.
A similar thing happened with the BP oil debacle. Yes the oil had stopped flowing, but like the Haiti earthquake, life-altering ramifications continued to unfold including more affected shoreline, oil tenaciously clinging to marsh grass and people disagreeing with the FDA that it’s now safe to eat Gulf seafood.

Finally, and most inexplicable, we have the third story type affecting the media blend: not enough of the real thing. Consider this mere handful among hundreds of underreported stories:

  • While we heard all year that Twitter was everywhere and a major social force, a December 2010 Pew study about Twitter gave us fresh perspective, saying only 8% of American adults using the Internet use Twitter. This equates to only 2% usage on a typical day. Nearly half hardly ever read a word of the endless Tweets being Tweeted. You wouldn’t know that from all the buzz. 
  • Who knew that defrauding health care companies has now become the hottest thing since Medicare fraud? $2.5 billion was collected in the past year alone. It’s only going to get worse.
  • Last week, Amazon announced the Kindle 3 became its best-selling item of all time. Interesting news considering iPad’s media mania.
  • More than 30 states are extracting natural gas from shale rocks, fueling a new “gas rush” as we seek to diminish our reliance on foreign oil. But critics are saying the EPA is underestimating the impact this is having on our drinking water.
  • Fiber optic cable was positioned as a be-all-end-all solution, but last year companies holding dark-fiber inventory (fiber not being used) took portions off the market to push prices up. Prices have doubled in the last 12 months as the inventory shrinks while more computing goes to the cloud. Is our Internet future in danger?
  • Good news! Did you know people gave more money in 2010, despite a troubling economy?
  • Did we hear enough about the anti-regulators who “permitted the Great Recession” who were left in charge, or even promoted?
  • Even though the banks repaid TARP funds, this doesn’t mean they are healthy. “Their asset values are often grossly inflated, which means their net worth is grossly inflated.”
Getting more story richness and balance in 2011 is arguably a naïve request. But can you imagine a media climate where we heard less of what we’re tired of hearing and more of what we don’t know? Bring it on, we have the time, interest and ability to deal with more variety, not less.

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No brand's perfect, and that's okay

Posted At : December 23, 2010 11:04 AM | Posted By : Steve McGrath
Related Categories: Branding,Commentary

Rhetoricians call it “arguing against interest.” In simple terms, it’s a good way to build credibility fast. You readily admit a weakness in yourself or your argument to actually advance your larger case. I swear to you, your honor, I had no role in the killing of which I’m accused. I was out of state, uh, delivering a shipment of drugs. This mechanism causes the audience to wonder, who but an honest-to-God truth teller would disclose something so damning?
 
Arguing against interest can be a powerful tool for building brand credibility. Look at Domino’s Pizza, now publicly admitting their old pizza was terrible. Or Dos Equis: What, the Most Interesting Man in the World doesn’t always drink beer? This is a beer commercial!
 
What makes arguing against interest so powerful is its stark contrast against the vast majority of communication that argues, often lamely, in its own interest. Ads, websites, press releases and corporate blogs dump buckets of overstated goodness on a cringing consumer. You know, if you buy the right camera, you’ll shoot National Geographic quality images. With the right diamond necklace, you’ll be back on your honeymoon, and with a fabulous spouse.
 
Not saying such images aren’t seductive, but overstatement is the Achilles heel of marketers who are mired in old-school corporate communications. While gilding the lily has never been a great persuasion technique, today’s audiences despise it. They are sophisticated, discriminating and skeptical, if not cynical, driven largely by social media.
 
Case in point
A wonderful example of a brand arguing against interest to deepen credibility is Patagonia, the maker of outdoor apparel for skiers, rock climbers and campers (it’s like a crunchy Timberland). They’re not just sprinkling their content with a few aw shucks asides, they’re actually building their brand around a concept that, at first glance, is directly opposed to their own goal of making money.
 
The company’s Common Threads Initiative is urging customers to buy less clothing, wear it longer, repair it instead of throwing it away, and when it’s worn out, hand it back to Patagonia for reuse or recycling.
 
… to wrest the full life out of every piece of our clothing, the first three of the famous four R’s are equally important – to reduce, repair and reuse as well as recycle.
 
Under reduce, the company is calling on consumers to “buy what you’ll wear, and want to keep long enough to wear out” in order to “get by with fewer clothes.”
 
Under repair, it’s offering to fix zippers for free if the garment has enough life left in it.
 
(The company already has a recycling program that’s collected 39 tons of used clothes.)
 
This initiative is like General Motors telling you to drive your clunker into the ground because it’s the right thing to do. Of course, Patagonia is a for-profit business and commercial brand. So their larger goal with the Common Threads Initiative, one assumes, is to deepen customer loyalty, reduce raw material costs, and put a noble face on plain ol’ customer service (I mean, they’re probably going to fix zippers anyway).
 
Deep in the content
All this is clearly a flavor of cause branding, but Patagonia is taking it to the next level with a generous dose of argument against interest throughout its public content. For example, Patagonia recently underwent a corporate social responsibility (CSR) audit. A nonprofit watchdog organization took a hard look at their operations. Patagonia blogged about the audit in great detail. The post mentions a couple of instances of where the company fell short in the review (arguing against interest). They even admit they’re a founder of the group that was auditing them. Who even blogs about audits, much less the negative findings and conflicts of interest? Now you might be asking, where’s the marketing value in this? What comes through is not Patagonia’s warts, but its seriousness about being green and transparent. It’s as authentic as you can ever expect communications to get. And utterly believable.
 
Another example: In writing about the new Common Threads Initiative, Patagonia talks about its five-year-old recycling program, whose goal was to make all Patagonia clothes recyclable within five years. “This we will achieve in fall 2011,” Patagonia writes, “a year behind schedule.” Another argument against interest. This line is just sitting there in the copy, no excuses, no tortured transitions, just a fact. You make the call. This kind of statement is convincing.
 
Patagonia has a minisite, The Footprint Chronicles, that drills into the origin of Patagonia garments. Click on the Merino 2 Crew sweater and learn that the wool is sustainably ranched, the dye is okay, and the factory is okay,  but the wool travels 16,280 miles from sheep to store. “This is not sustainable,” the Patagonia website tells us. Who says this about their own supply chain? Nobody. In how many instances is it true? All the time, presumably. Patagonia cares so much about getting it right they readily admit what they’re still getting wrong.
 
In another Patagonia post, a blogger admits his orthopedic problems ruined his climbing adventure. One would expect tales of glory. But while Nike has LeBron and UGG Under Armour has Tom Brady, here’s Patagonia speaking through a guy whose arm keeps dropping out of his shoulder socket.

If all this arguing against interest sounds like overkill, it’s only because we’re calling out the exceptions to the rest of the Patagonia content, which as you would expect is generally favorable to the company. But this positive content is all the more believable next to a few well-conceived arguments against interest.

By acknowledging that’s nobody’s perfect, starting with yourself, you can strike the perfect note.

 

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Who are today's most effective thought leaders?

Posted At : December 9, 2010 1:57 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Branding,Commentary

Nearly every organization/company would agree thought leadership is a good thing.
But when it comes to readily naming brands that exemplify thought leadership, most people struggle. When they do name names, the results are either remarkably similar or widely diverging.
I surveyed 20 high-level opinion leaders to uncover their insights and opinions on this topic. Their titles included CEO, CMO, Chairman, Founder, Partner and EVP.
First finding: people have a hard time. One CEO’s response sums it up: “Your question gave me pause, because no company came to mind immediately.” There were many extended pauses with the others.
Second finding: they have the obvious in common.
It’s amazing how frequently people answer “Apple” when asked questions like “Who’s the best branding company?” or “‘Who’s the best marketing company?” or “Who do you admire the most?” In this particular instance, our question was in the same zone, but substantively different:
Who does the best job being a thought leader?
Apple’s brand reputation is built on product innovation; they dream up cool products so thoughtfully conceived people buy them en masse. They definitely shape agendas. But do they personify creative, proactive, 35,000-ft. thought leadership?
Beyond Apple, the two most frequently cited were the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wal-Mart. On the latter, one EVP said, “I have to admit the evil empire has led its industry in the adoption of clean energy for its stores, arm-twisting its suppliers to use more eco-friendly materials and packaging. It’s pushing organic food and it’s starting to buy more locally grown food.”
Third finding: beyond the obvious, there was zero commonality. Answers ranged from Bank of America, AARP and PositiveDeviance.org to Facebook, Pepsico and IBM to Mass General Hospital, Stanford and Nike to The New York Times, DreamWorks and Amazon to P&G, the Koch Brothers and Disney.

Fourth finding: several strong candidates emerged for which respondents passionately defended their thought leadership. These included:

  • Zappos – “They’re all about building a great company that customers want to deal with - even in the potentially dehumanizing/commoditizing world of the Web.”
  • McKinsey - “Unquestionably my number one example”
  • Brighter Planet – “Putting their money where their mouth is in terms of creating interactive, collaborative environments for change.”
  • Deloitte – “That’s the business the consulting firms are in and they are the best at it.”
  • TOMS Shoes – “Has a social philosophy built into it”
  • NPR – “A thought leader both in content that flows through the organization as well as their innovative use of multiple media”
  • Tea Party –“Hate to say it, but they’re a thought leader (very little thought) for 15% of the population.”
  • Nissan – “For their Nissan LEAF ‘Innovation for All’ electric vehicle adoption campaign”
  • Stonyfield Farm – “Using its high profile CEO to advance sustainability”
  • 3M – “Good positioning of the company’s focus on innovation and building”

Companies and organizations create thought leadership campaigns to differentiate and establish leadership personas for themselves. Messaging of this type has broad, forward appeal. It’s not a rehash of where things have been, but rather a brilliant articulation of how things should be.

Compelling thought leadership lives a long life … years, not days. The ideas are so strong that direct competitors frequently adopt them - either overtly or indirectly. The best ideas are thought-provoking, sometimes controversial. They challenge the marketplace, are perceived as newsworthy by traditional and social media and energize consumers to take action.

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Cool branding at Greenbuild 2010

Posted At : November 22, 2010 4:46 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Cleantech,Commentary

Greenbuild 2010I kept an eye out for branding innovation at Greenbuild 2010 as I maneuvered my way along (what felt like) miles of floor featuring over 1,000 exhibitors and 25,000 attendees.

Branding highlights:  

  • Social responsibility alignment – besides the typical association with energy saving and planet-survival, some Greenbuild companies extended their brands beyond the oh-so-obvious. Accoya, for example, had a “Sign our wall” fundraising effort with every signature translating into $10 for Haiti rebuilding. Other companies displayed Susan G. Komen for the Cure pink ribbons. Shaw asked people to respond to Twitter queries so it could donate $1 to the Make It Right Foundation, helping rebuild the Hurricane Katrina-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. Good for them, good for the world.
  • Transparency – Interface Floor won my prize for branding transparency. A massive graphic displayed above their booth featured a black and white illustration of a brain beside a barrel of oil. Their messaging platform: “Be smarter than oil.” Gradually leaving its oil industry connections behind, the company’s mantra is zero environmental impact by 2020. Clear messaging permeated the booth on laminated cards: “16 years and counting to becoming a sustainable company…” Other companies shy away, evade or obfuscate; this brand appears to be living its stated mission. 
  • Personal reinvention – David Gottfried wore shoes as he autographed free copies of his book “Greening my life.” The founder of USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council) and LEED standard creator personalized his brand, sharing insight into his personal transformation from hard-charging empty life exec to green-inducing happiness. Kudos for having the guts to share lessons learned with others.
  • Promotions – not surprisingly, the top tease prize at Greenbuild 2010 was the iPad. Several companies featured iPad promotions including Dupont and NCI Group. My favorite giveaway? The cool hybrid Sanyo Eneloop bike
  • Living its mission – While 80% of Greenbuild 2010 exhibitors are indistinguishable (packing too many products, imagery and pleas into every corner of space), Dyson stood out with its "less is more" approach. Only two products were featured: hand dryers and bladeless fans. The booth was white, spacious and all messaging was tightly displayed on five panels. Copy was simple and memorable, contrasting the way it used to be with the way it is now (thanks to Dyson).   
  • Let’s have fun – Next time a company or client says “our stuff is in the weeds; we can’t do much creatively” remember Bluebeam. This company essentially has a better Adobe: a PDF based real time project collaboration file management tool. Yawn. But Bluebeam made the mundane come alive with its “Mighty Bluebeam” cartoon character, case studies galore, comic books, exhibit booth worker matching t-shirts and fun messaging like “It’s PDFin’ time!”
  • Interactive messaging – Most companies struggle with messaging. Not only trying to explain what they do, but also finding clever ways for people to “get it” and relate. Kudos to SYNLawn and SAGE for doing both. The former divided its narrow booth into three sections, allowing visitors to putt on a golf course, feel astro turf in a stadium and stand on a front lawn at home. Dynamic window maker SAGE (disclosure: client) made its “Power to change” tagline come alive several ways, including windows showing multiple exterior views and an interactive exhibit where visitors pressed a button and the glass transformed. Whenever messaging can be experienced like this, it’s a very powerful thing.
  • Green nation building – standing out from a sea of corporate sameness were… countries. Scandinavia, Canada and France all sent delegations to Greenbuild 2010, positioning themselves – via products, technologies and companies - as green-inspired economies.

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What makes you tick is tasty bait

Posted At : November 4, 2010 1:37 PM | Posted By : Mike McGrail
Related Categories: Commentary

People are naturally nosy. We want to know everything about each other, especially if it’s none of our business. Why else would magazines like People, Entertainment Weekly and US Magazine flourish, even though most of us claim not to read them?
 
This ingrained snoopiness isn’t just directed at Demi & Ashton & Britney & Miley et al. It applies to technology companies too. When someone gets seriously curious about a company, they want to know the back story. Yeah, if you’re an investor or journalist you need to read about the hot new product or service. But knowing about the people behind them makes the company’s story more textured. Where did they come from? How did they get where they are? What makes them successful? What do they do? What makes them tick? If you’re skeptical, consider how much money the movie “The Social Network” about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg,” earned. You can mine that curiosity to build your company’s brand.
 
The CEO who beat cancer. The VP of engineering who dives with sharks in the Galapagos. The single mother who put herself through school and launched a successful company. Readers never get tired of personal color and anecdotes. Sick of reading about Steve Jobs’ black turtlenecks or Larry Ellison’s jet planes and Japanese mansion? Too bad. Details like that helped establish Jobs and Ellison as two of the most recognizable personalities in high tech. Their faces are on the company, love them or hate them, and are valuable tools for advancing their companies’ positions.
 
You don’t have to be Jobs or Ellison to use personal background to your company’s advantage. But the world wants to know who you are, where you came from, what you’ve done and what you think. Using social media channels to offer your key audiences personal nuggets helps convince them you’re more than the standard issue tech drone who was apparently born at MIT and spent every waking moment since then at Digital, HP, an Internet startup in the late nineties (yawn) … they’ve heard it all before.   

Pick up a copy of any business publication. It’s not all business. It’s shot through with tidbits about the people behind the companies. In a 2010 Guardian interview, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt wasn’t just CEO, he was “the 6’4 former college footballer.” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz once hosted Mick Jagger for dinner at his house and takes a daily 6 a.m. bike ride with his wife. Time and again, we’ve seen clients with interesting backgrounds and hobbies (ultra marathon running, shark diving, extreme skiing), birthplaces (everywhere from Lowell, Mass. to Transylvania), fashion statements (a penchant for orange pants) and family life (father of triplets) win interviews or appear in print.

Putting a personal face on your company is as easy as talking about yourself beyond your professional pedigree. If you’re worried about coming off as an egomaniac, put your mind to rest. Talking about yourself does not, in itself, make you a braggart. Try these simple guidelines for putting a public face on your company:

  1. Open up - When you’re in an interview and a reporter asks you to tell him/her about yourself, open up a little. Go into the interview having thought about what you are going to say. Who were your earliest influences? What were some formative experiences? What do you do in your free time? How did your history influence your professional life? What was your worst job and why? How did you choose your career? What lessons did you learn along the way?
  2. Open door - If a blogger or journalist or investor or analyst comes to your company to talk to you, take them into your office. What you keep around your office – books, photos, mementoes – invite ice-breaking questions and help tell your story. (As a side note, if there’s anything you DON’T want them to see, get it in the bottom drawer before the interview.)
  3. Speak real - Don’t use colorless quotes in press releases. If your quote begins with the phrase “We are delighted …” then you’re dishing out pap. Your quotes influence the image of you that people form. Say something you’d actually want to come out of your mouth in a conversation.
  4. Share details - Spice up your biography with a few personal details – one or two sentences will do the trick. Also, be specific about your accomplishments. If you’re a technologist, don’t just say “developed Gigabit Ethernet switching solutions at HairNet Communications.” Tell the world that you designed the switching fabric, wrote the embedded code, managed the team, achieved this breakthrough … whatever.
  5. Speak simply - Don’t allow your company to sound like its competitors. This is a common trap: companies in the same space using the same buzzword-laden terminology to explain what they do without really saying what they do. Try some plain, blunt English on your website and in your marketing materials. It will set you apart from the competition.

If you’re terminally shy, or it just cuts against your grain to talk about yourself, this exercise isn’t for you. If, however, you’re comfortable talking openly about your background, then you are positioned to create value for your company by using your personal history to attract favorable coverage.

 

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Dirty little secret: BP oil remains, media doesn't

Posted At : October 28, 2010 1:36 PM | Posted By : Steve McGrath
Related Categories: Cleantech,Commentary

The media decides what we’ll worry about. Today, that would be the economy, midterm elections, two wars, a tsunami, a new Bin Laden tape and a party drink dubbed “blackout in a can.”
 
Nothing much on BP these days, so the Gulf of Mexico oil spill must be pretty much taken care of, right?
 
Not according to this article in USA Today, which reports that:
 
·         The length of shoreline where oil is present has increased from 287 miles in early July to 320 today.
·         In Bay Jimmy, La., alone, 32,000 gallons of oil were sucked up in a recent 10-day period.
·         Oil, not surprisingly, is clinging tenaciously to marsh grass.
·         Cooler fall and winter weather will thicken the oil and make it harder to extract.
·         Cleanup worker count has dropped by nearly two-thirds, from 47,000 at the height of the spill to 16,200.
 
The disaster hasn’t gone away, but where’s the media? Well, kudos to USA Today for the above info, and to Frontline for kicking BP’s tail on Tuesday night. But in general, the media follows the conflict, the drama and the fancies of its paying audience to those insipid places we yearn to go. As a result, we’ve moved on from Afghanistan. We’ve moved on from Haiti. And we’ve moved on from the Gulf of Mexico.
 
To document this catastrophe fatigue, we searched for news stories on “Deepwater Horizon” (the name of the exploded rig and shorthand for the entire debacle) from April 2010 through Wednesday, Oct. 27 at 10:30 EST. Here’s what we found.

 

 

As you can see, the media bombards us with stories from April through July. Then the fatigue sets in. Just six months after the worst oil spill in history, the media is practically silent.

But the problems remain. That’s why Sean Penn is still in Haiti. That’s why Billy Nungesser is still in Plaquemines Parish. That’s why BP workers are still cleaning up the oil – some of them, at least.

 

Meanwhile, the media, drawn by our own insatiable appetite for trifling entertainment, has moved on to … well, Brett Favre’s … ankle.

 

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Interpreting Gladwell: Why the revolution will be tweeted

Posted At : October 18, 2010 11:40 AM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Social Media,Commentary

Malcolm Gladwell’s piece in The New Yorker stirred a reaction.
“Small change – why the revolution will not be tweeted” draws a clear distinction between weak-tie activism and strong-tie activism. The former is aligned with social media, the latter with “critical friends” and hierarchical organizational structures. He cites the American civil rights movement and Al Qaeda (before it became a loosely bound “network”) as two examples of strong-tie activism.
True activism, Gladwell says, embodies critical elements social media can never deliver: a feverish zealousness that’s “high-risk” where people are motivated to “make a real sacrifice.” By comparison, social media is “low-risk” activism where people get involved “by not asking too much of them.”
Gladwell explains, “The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.”
Some critics have cited his misunderstanding of social media. My reaction was different; I think Gladwell gets it. There is a difference between sacrificial activism and easy activism. It’s an important distinction. What I don’t agree with is minimizing the role social media plays in seeding activism. Unstructured, weak-link-ties can eventually inspire personal commitment and real sacrifice. Angus Johnson makes a case for this in his post.
American Cancer Society’s birthday movement, for example, has gone from zero to 100,000+ Facebook friends in a few months. While the vast majority of people may never become “feverish” activists, they are playing an important role in raising money, getting involved and raising consciousness. Yes, fighting cancer is different from fighting intolerance. But, it’s not an either-or scenario; the two can (and do) co-exist in driving movements forward.

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