I have been writing for the past two weeks, it’s just that none of it has made it here. I’ve got about 20 pages of email best practices that’s coming together for an eBook.
That and getting a roof fixed, and continuing my pledge to work on actual projects including a top secret photo project and music too!
Here’s to being busy, I hope all is well with you.
Lately I’ve been testing a few things out and I’ve found that I’ve learned a lot more from the practical application of tactics than just reading about them. Yeah, I know, big surprise. The thing is – it’s much easier to just read as much as you can rather than try some experiments on your own. All the training in the world can’t substitute for time spent in the field under fire. This is probably why I don’t spend my time doing case studies – I’d rather be doing the program than reporting on somebody else’s results.
Speaking of projects, I’ve rented a 15mm fish-eye lens for the weekend and I’m going to be putting it through the paces at Tanglewood. I’m also starting to think about two other photography projects – there’s a studio in MetroWest that can be rented for less than $300 a day (includes lighting gear), if you are interested in a ghetto style photo clinic drop me a line. In the same vein I’d like to make some prints that could be shown in a gallery, but that’s a much bigger project than I want to bite off (right now).
Sometimes my brain feels like my Grandfather’s workshop, overflowing with random stuff, ideas on projects all in varying states of completion. My daily dose of Seth Godin in Google Reader is like hurling a wrench into the workshop – it tends to knock some stuff around, wake me up, and perhaps think about something differently.
This week he did a piece on critics, please check it out before going further. No problem, I’ll wait…
So I start going through Robert Morris’ reviews and spot an interesting trend – the majority of them are positive, 4 or 5 stars. Based on adding his RSS feed to my reader I looked at over a hundred and didn’t see any 1 to 3 star ones.
This made me wonder about the Janet Maslin point he made – is there a place for negative criticism on the web?
I can see the mean spirited ivory tower stuff getting extinguished by two way communication and community voting, but what about legitimate negative criticism? For example, I recently bought a memory card adapter so that I could use a standard MicroSD memory card instead of the proprietary Sony card that’s 4x the price (big shocker, betamax-style baby!) . Of course the Sony device wouldn’t read it (shocker #2).
Posting a negative review would be very helpful as a “buyer beware”, more helpful than another 5-star review for a book on the NY Times bestseller list, but putting up a negative review has consequences – both the seller and the manufacturer have an interest in voting the review down. The buyer may consider the review but odds are, won’t vote because they don’t know for sure, and now they are less likely to try the product and find out.
As I’ve written this, another idea starts to gel – negative criticism has a tipping point and perhaps that’s the key. When you see something on Amazon with 20x the 1 star ratings over 5 star you avoid it. 80% of those are “pile on” 1 stars, and the 20% of 1 stars that came in were people so angry that they didn’t care about what anyone thought, they had to vent.
The end result – those who write negative reviews will always be always be at a disadvantage in scoring, and therefore visibility and level of trust (due to the automated nature of the system), compared to those who avoid writing any negative reviews.
This raises a bunch of interesting questions:
Will the job of the critic transform to that of referrer of quality stuff only?
What’s lost by having only positive reviews on the web?
Is it worth the risk to be a negative critic in a public forum?
Should negative criticism only to be done in private forums? Think about the waiter that will mention avoiding a certain dish, as opposed to reading a negative review on Yelp.
Web reviews could be considered SEO, content generation, social networking, branding, providing a good and valuable customer service, demonstrating thought leadership, perhaps even generate leads, or it could be just a hobby. With so many different motivations, what’s important?
I’d really like to hear your opinions on these items, and I’d really like to hear more from Seth Godin. Here’s my offer – if he’s willing to answer the questions above (in the comments, send them to me, whatever), I’ll give him $100 (or $100 to his favorite charity). Everybody else, you can get the latest Marketing Over Coffee audio program from iTunes for FREE! Ok, not as good as $100, I know, but this is a one man show…
Today is my first day back in action, I had a wonderful vacation and I’ll be giving the full story out over the next couple of weeks, but here’s the highlights:
We flew out to Michigan about 10 days ago for MarcusMania, the annual family runion. On the way up we missed our connecting flight and met up with two other folks who missed it too, so I rented a car and we all drove up to Traverse City – myself and the lovely Carin, along with one of the curators from the MFA and the manager of a Squash Club downtown – a great random adventure.
A week on the lake was incredibly relaxing, as it always is and we also had a chance to wander around town. I found a really cool new brand called M-22 that I’ll be writing more about, it’s where the cool kids are hanging.
On Thursday it was the return flight to get back in time to see Chris Botti at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Friday. Saturday was Carin’s High School Reunion, and then a mad dash off to the Cape at 6:30am on Sunday for the Falmouth Road Race, complete with “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” reference.
Along the way I also stumbled upon Steel Panther, the most offensive 80’s band parody ever. Sadly, I find it one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard (NOTE: Not Safe for Work – your family, your kids, etc. You have been warned!)
Unfortunately vacation got in the way of Podcamp Boston 4, which sounded like a great show, and catching up with people who had come to town for it. Plenty of interesting things going on, but for now I have to dig through the pile that grew while I was sleeping on the dock.
Where have I been? Well, busy of course. Q2 was actually good. I got to see Diana Krall, and for some reason I can’t stop listening to Def Leppard. Marketing Over Coffee will be recorded tomorrow, and yes, there actually was an M Show yesterday. Now if I could only get around to uploading my latest photos to Flickr…
[audio:http://media.libsyn.com/media/themshow/TheMShow203.mp3]Lots of things going on now chewing up time. I was back in the Berkshires last weekend, check out some Flickr pics here.
I’ve also gotten sucked into Bioshock on the Xbox 360 which I waited until I could get it used for a reasonable price. The bad news is that it’s good and Bioshock 2 is out soon.
We’ve run some great events at work and Q2 is actually not that bad so perhaps the winds are shifting.
Marketing Over Coffee is looking for sponsors, give us a shout over there if you have any interest.
I’m starting to evaluate where my time is going and I’m thinking that it’s time to re-assess hours put into social media and the payback from it.
Things have been crazy the past two weeks, the biggest spanner in the works being the flu that knocked me down completely back on Tuesday and I was still sleeping it off on Wednesday. Losing two days from the work week creates a total loss for blogging and podcasting and I’m just now catching up and getting ready for a new Marketing Over Coffee tomorrow. (Wait, maybe not a total loss, I did finally regain my strength to make it on The Beancast this week, complete with Steve Hall telling Microsoft that Bing will suck by default)
Lots of big news though. I had a good time catching up with John Federico last week as he was in town for a project and Steve Garfield was there too for some garlic fries at Flash’s. Steve’s book was announced as part of David Meerman Scott’s book series (as well as MOC sponsor Hubspot!) so that’s been very cool along with him hanging out doing both late night and early morning TV in New York City.
I’ve been checking out Blue Sky Factory and doing a mailing for the Matthew Ebel Show tonight! Check it out…
Also going through notes for the Salesforce.com summer upgrade and I even had a chance to talk to the marketing product manager about some other possible new features.
After I got over the flu my wife came down with it and her sister came to town with her two dogs and the 4 dogs in total proceeded to get sick, requiring me to rent a rug steam cleaner on Sunday, damn that was fun.
And if all that wasn’t enough news, we’re expecting a baby!
SugarCRM is an open source CRM system, kind of a David to Salesforce.com’s Goliath. It’s been doing very well, but there was a surprise last week as the Co-Founder and CEO stepped down.
Check out this post: Never before has news been gathered and spread so fast. Is it any wonder that trade magazines are doomed to extinction?
I’ve had a lot of random thoughts about the current financial crisis, and the role the media in shaping the public opinion. I get the feeling that the economy will bounce back when people get tired of hearing about bad news. Will consumer spending patterns really change so that Americans actually do some saving rather than live off debt?
I’m all set with every marketing campaign or event talking about how to do “x” in this economy, or in this recession, or in the downturn. From a sales/marketing perspective I haven’t heard anything from any of these sessions that wasn’t crap.
Yes, you should step up your marketing during a recession, the brands that do will never have an easier time getting attention. This is about as useful as saying “if you are in the desert you really need to drink more water”. The problem is that you have no budget and you need sales to get that budget.
Am I the only person that’s offended by these arguements? As if last all the projects I was working on last year were drowing in inefficiencies and had no concern for budget- “Yeah that free SUV campaign was a big mistake, and the junkets to the Bahamas, maybe we should try email campaigns, webinars and social media now”.
Panic and fear spread. I had a good laugh last night at the PRSA cocktail event as we came up with a list of the previous “Swine Flu” panics:
Spreading disaster makes for great news, who cares that if you add up all of those they are nothing compared to Heart Disease, or diseases that could be wiped out of developing countries. That stuff is just too boring. I’m enjoying all the great buys on Craig’s List, but the financial news is boring me. Move along people, nothing to see here.
The past month has been absolutely insane. This weekend was the first chance I had to stay at home and try and get things back together, I slept 10 hours on Saturday night. So what’s been going on? Here’s the best picture of the past month:
Carin has always talked about getting to swim with the Dolphins so I got her an early birthday present and we went to Discovery Cove, which is part of Sea World. You can click on the picture to see the rest of the Flickr set, we did the “Trainer for a Day” program and the backstage tour of the aviary, the feeding rooms and got to meet some interesting “critters” as the lovely Carin calls them.
This was the first half of our trip down south, from there we went to Alabama for a wedding of one of Carin’s cousins. The wedding was a great time but I have to say I was a little disappointed, I was hoping that I’d have some good stories about Alabama, like somebody with an accent so thick that I couldn’t understand them, or some jokes about me being a Yankee. Instead I was surprised to see south of Birmingham could have easily been mistaken for Birmingham, Michigan, or any other part of America. I was able to get the same Chick-fil-a sandwich I get in Burlington, Mass, and the Church had all the multimedia systems that you’d see anywhere in Los Angeles.
Not that this is a bad thing, in fact perhaps we are becoming more of one country, but I’m just sorry I don’t have some kind of cool story about driving around in the General Lee using dynamite arrows to blow stuff up.
In other news there’s been a lot going on at AccuRev, and Marketing Over Coffee continues its rampage. I was not able to go to SXSW and kind of regret it, so I’ll have to fix that for next year. I’ve been having fun talking with a bunch of other people doing new media projects so maybe that will motivate me to get another M Show out the door soon.
I also had today off as a “floater” and got to go downtown to watch the marathon. Surprisingly I haven’t written a post about when I ran in 2002 (pulling a Commander McBragg here, anyone else remember him?), so I need to dig up some pictures to post about that. It’s also time for the quarterly goal update – and thanks to a full year of mortgage payments in 2008 we finally got a tax break that paid for the dolphin adventure!