The Fresh Air Fund is looking for help to give inner-city children a chance to get away from New York for a summer vacation. If you’d like to help you can get more information here:
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Author: themshow
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Why Blogging Changes Journalism
Boston Red Sox Pitcher Curt Schilling gives an amazing first person account of his shoulder surgery. It’s as if your your own brother played Major League Baseball and showed up at the family reunion with the tale of his latest surgery, and even some pictures to freak out the kids. Besides the surgery you get a glimpse into the business end of baseball with a bit of detail about how his contract defines the medical care he will get (third opinions?!).
This post stands toe-to-toe with the best stuff I’ve read in Sports Illustrated, which I consider some of the best writing you can find today. At a Podcamp session yesterday Mark Bernstein presented the idea that “Professional Journalism is a complete myth”. The only real requirement to being a journalist is that you can write. That’s it, it’s not like being a doctor or lawyer where you need years of education to be able to do the job. Granted, you can learn to write more gooder better and communicate more effectively, but no matter how well a journalist writes, it would be impossible to match what Curt himself has written about what he’s going through.
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Roasting Scott Monty
Last Friday a group of Boston Professionals met to send Scott Monty off to Michigan for his new job with Ford. In the spirit of a classic roast, most of the jokes were at his expense or at Crayon’s (apologies in advance to the Crayonistas).
Please keep in mind this is explicit content, and not safe for work. Just to drive it home it opens with an F-bomb and a joke with no taste at all.
Here’s the audio program:
Intro: Scott Monty’s rotten Joke
01:18 John Wall lays downs the rules
02:04 The Roast begins
06:30 Len Edgerly steps up
12:08 Doug Haslam
17:15 Adam Zand
19:11 Todd Van Hoosear
24:36 Chris Brogan
27:50 Laura Fitton
34:10 The Guest of Honor – Scott Monty
Among the offended:
Susan Getgood (also in attendance), Christopher Penn, Crayon, Coca-Cola, Second Life – Linden Labs, ooVoo, Chip Griffin, Sarah Wurrey, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, Bryan Person, Maggie Fox, C.C. Chapman, Joseph Jaffe, Chris Abraham, Greg Verdino
Get the file at: http://media.libsyn.com/media/themshow/RoastMonty.mp3
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Hanging with the Mad Man
“It’s all over for you Mickey…”
I have not vanished off the face of the earth (although my cellphone did in New York City this weekend, but that’s a tale for another day).
Lots of interesting stuff over the past couple of days. I’m putting the final touches on the audio for the Scott Monty roast from last week, which was a fantastic time. I was then off to New York City to catch both Avenue Q on Broadway and Ricky Gervais at Madison Square Garden. Both were great.
I also got to finally check out B&H Photo after 3 unsuccessful tries, but couldn’t buy anything because I blew my extra cash replacing my lost phone. Plenty more going on with Podcamp Boston coming up this weekend, if you are going please send me a line and we can catch up over a cool beverage in what is supposed to be a very humid weekend.
Here’s today’s Marketing Over Coffee:
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Scoring and the Buying Cycle
Having worked with a scoring system for a couple of months, I’ve been watching closely to see what I can learn about how to set it up properly. I was fortunate enough to catch a great session at the MarketingProfs B2B event earlier this summer, and I have a co-worker that has hooked me up with a few recent articles. Some of the more interesting points:
- Depreciation is Key: knowing how long your buying cycle should be will allow you to automatically downgrade leads, I’ve heard that best practice is that anything that is in 2x longer than the average should probably be discounted to 50% and gone by 4x
- Identify the Tipping Points: In short order you should be able to identify buying signs, often in terms of website traffic patterns and resources requested. This is where the points pile up to prioritize leads.
- Understand the Customer’s Buying Cycle: Knowing how long the cycle is between purchases will define the size database you will need to generate enough pipeline. Although a longer cycle tends to be more painful, it does allow you to build up momentum.
- Generate Awareness for when the Prospect is Ready: This closes the loop. Ultimately your database is full and you’ll have to go back to generating awareness to make sure that the names you’ve worked so hard to gather continue to keep you at the front of their mind – and these actions may not generate points at all as they are not buying signs of any fashion.
Now to get on to email campaign A/B testing…
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July 11th – Roasting Scott Monty
The countdown is on for the Social Media Roast of Scott Monty. Come join us for a steak dinner and a chance to berate Scott. If you are unable to make it to Boston, feel free to send over any text, audio, or video you want to send. Depending on the virtual response we may add to the online side of the event, but we are limited by the tech infrastructure of Ken’s Steak House…
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Lacking the Will to Write
It’s the weekend and I am. I really should be working on the book project, but the weather’s just too nice and I’m going outside to enjoy it.
I have tackled a bunch of paperwork, and just completed the monthly backup (and you should too).
Last night I watched Tin Man, which was excellent, if you were scared of the flying monkeys as a kid you should check it out. There’s also new shots up on Flickr.
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Surprise
Ok, I’m back. We were at a wedding in North Carolina for the past couple of days, that’s where this charming young lady saw a flashbulb for the first time. The trip home was an Oddessy through hell, but I’m not going to get into that right now. I’m off for a couple of days for the fourth, and am going to try and make it down to the River Charles for the fireworks, which I haven’t seen in more than 5 years.
On the marketing front you can check out the latest Marketing Over Coffee:
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Social Media Roast of Scott Monty
At a recent conference I was discussing a party for Scott Monty to celebrate his new position at Ford. A flash of creativity created the first ever Social Media Roast.
You are cordially invited to attend dinner on Friday, July 11th at the luxurious Ken’s Steak House (Home of the Famous Salad Dressings), in scenic Framingham, Massachusetts. Your $50 ticket gets you a steak and all the drinks we can afford, and the right to mount the podium and insult Scott in any way you think will be amusing.
If the idea of a roast is new to you, check out this classic, though dated clip from Dean Martin’s series:
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To attend you must purchase a ticket from eventbrite.
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Fresh Audio
The M Show is back this week with some discussion about Grand Theft Auto being too violent and dangerous.
And I was a guest on The Beancast this week talking about Cannes, social network ownership, direct mail, and other stuff:
If you have an iPod, consider subscribing to this stuff direct through iTunes (ask me if you haven’t done it before).