Book Short: A Primer on Viral Marketing “People talk about Andy,” writes Seth Godin in the foreward to Andy Sernovitz’s new book, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. “He’s a living, breathing example of the power of word of mouth.” Andy’s the CEO of WOMMA, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and a former colleague of mine. Ever since reading The Tipping Point, I keep looking for the secret sauce around viral marketing. What is it that makes something cool enough to buzz about? My conclusion from reading Andy’s book is that secret sauce doesn’t exist. Like everything else, being buzzworthy comes from hard work, being inherently good, AND using the techniques and understanding in Andy’s…
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Business
I’m Embarrassed for My Profession
I’m Embarrassed for My Profession File this under the heading of “just when you think you’ve seen it all” — I am a marketing services person and typically applaud ingenuity and buzz-generating things wherever I see them. But even I was a bit surprised last night at dinner when I went to use the restroom to find a new form of advertising — the custom urinal cake. Universal is promoting its new film, Let’s Go to Prison, in this somewhat unorthodox manner. It did have my rapt attention for, say, 30-60 seconds, which is more time than I usually give ads. And perhaps I paid more attention to it than I would have had it been a wall-mounted eye-level ad…
Book Short: Another 8 Habits
Book Short: Another 8 Habits Besides having a fantastic title, Richard St. John’s Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky, and Rich is a fun and quick read. It’s a completely different style than Stephen Covey’s “habits” books (The 7, The 8th). It’s a little cartoony and list-oriented, and it’s a much quicker read — and also easier to put down and pick up without feeling like you’re losing your place. The book’s foundation is interviews, mostly by the author, of successful people who span many different careers, from artists to actors and models to athletes to politicians to business leaders. The organization is very solid, and the content is highly motivating. It’s a good guide to success in any field, and in particular…
The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, Part III
The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, Part III To recap other postings in this series: my original, Brad Feld’s, Fred Wilson’s first, Fred’s second, Tom Evslin’s, and my lighter-note follow-up. So speaking of lighter-note takes on this topic, Lary Lazard, Tom Evslin’s fictional CEO who ran Hackoff.com, now has his own tips for effective board management. You have to read them yourself here, but I think my favorite one is #3, which starts off: Never number the pages of what you are presenting. Lots of time can be used constructively figuring out what page everybody is on. Enjoy.
A Tale of Two Strategies
A Tale of Two Strategies Two headlines right next to each other in today’s Wall Street Journal tell an interesting story. First, they tell of Google’s strategy to allow advertisers to use Google’s web site to bid on and buy print advertising in over 50 leading newspapers. Then comes CBS’s strategy to bring in a new executive digital media M&A guru, Quincy Smith from Allen & Company, to “find the next YouTube.” (These links should work for a week, but I think that’s all the Journal allows – sorry!). So there you have it. CBS’ grand interactive plans are about trying to do value-based Internet acquisitions. Best of luck. Les Moonves’ quote is somewhat sad — “This shows how serious…
The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, Part II
The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, Part II Much has been written of late on various VC and entrepreneur blogs on effective management of a Board of Directors, Board materials, running good Board meetings, and the like. A couple years ago, I even wrote out a few tips for those things myself. But here’s one critical ingredient of a good Board you won’t find in all those posts: have fun! This picture was from today’s Halloween Board meeting at Feedburner…as one of Dick’s colleagues labeled it, The Dawn of the Living Costolos. Happy Halloween!
It’s a Little Weird When Your Best Customer Experience of the Week is with the Government
It’s a Little Weird When Your Best Customer Experience of the Week is with the Government Mariquita has been doing a lot of personal admin lately for us. This week had a little surprise in it. Verizon continues to be one of the most awful, painful vendors in the history of the universe. At least their phone network is solid, since any interaction with the people at the company is so bad. We came to the conclusion this week that they actually do some things which aren’t just the usual bad customer service or outrageous pricing — they have some policies in place that are literally designed to systematically rip off their customers. The one we ran into was (after…
Choose Voice, Part II
Choose Voice, Part II One reader writes to me: I am a vice president at a startup that isn’t in great shape. We have some customers and a product that is meeting some market needs, but we’re way off our plan and don’t show signs of changing our trajectory in a material way. I disagree with the direction our CEO is taking things, which is ok, but more important, our CEO refuses to listen to me when I try to discuss and debate strategy with her. One of our board members has asked me what I thought we should do. I don’t want to be disloyal to our CEO, and I want to seem like a team player who rallies…
Doing Well by Doing Good, Part IV
Doing Well by Doing Good, Part IV This series of posts has mostly been about things that people or companies do that help make the world a better place — sometimes when it’s their core mission, other times (here and here) when it becomes an important supporting role at the company. Today’s post is different — it’s actually a Book Short as well of a new book that’s coming out later this fall called Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, published by Yale Press and written by Daniel Esty (a Yale professor and consultant), and a good friend of mine, Andrew Winston, a corporate sustainability consultant. Green to Gold…
A Better Way to Shop
A Better Way to Shop I love Zappos.com. It’s rapidly becoming the only place I buy shoes. Their web site experience is ok – not perfect, but pretty good, but their level of service is just unbelievable. They are doing for e-commerce (shoes in particular) what Eos is doing for air travel. They’re always great at free shipping and have always been super responsive and very personal and authentic when it comes to customer service. But today took the cake. I emailed them when I placed an order for new running shoes because I also wanted to buy one of those little “shoe pocket” velcro thingies that straps onto shoelaces and holds keys and money for runners. I didn’t find…
Seth Responds
Seth Responds About an hour after I posted a not so flattering review of Seth Godin’s new book this morning, I got an email from Seth with a couple good points worth responding to here. His main points (other than offering me a refund, which was nice) were that (a) the book itself was very clear about its content — on the book itself (back cover, inside flap, marketing copy), kind of like a ‘live album’ for a recording artist; and (b) if I thought the blog postings were worthwhile, why did I still feel like there was a downward trend in his writing? Ok, so these are fair points. Let me try to clarify. I am 99% sure that…