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Matching entries from B.L. Ochman's blog
What's Next Blog Interview: Suzanne Lowe on how to keep corporate silos from impeding success. Just move past them!
What's Next Blog interviewed Suzanne Lowe, the president of Expertise Marketing, LLC, about her important new book, "The Integration Imperative." The book addresses the silos that create structural and cultural barriers to effective marketing and selling in professional and business service firms. But the principles and case studies apply equally well to the corporate silos that keep corporations in B2C and B2B from grasping and responding to the changes they must make to remain competitive in the Internet Age. Lowe is a professional services marketing analyst, advisor, writer and speaker on the best practices and emerging strategies in professional services marketing. Her firm provides marketing and management analysis and guidance to the leaders of major professional service firms including Nielsen, Deloitte, Perkins+Will, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Turner Construction, among many others. The gist of her extraordinary new book is to identify the silos, fix them, and move on. Easier said than done? Lowe's advice in a nutshell: Recognize that you'll have to change Identify and talk about the issues. Don't place blame. Find the problem and fix it. Get past it. Get over yourself - be open to new capabilities. Learn from others and be open to new capabilities - this makes...
E.P. Carrillo cigars seeks the long-elusive social media mashup business model
There's no shortage of mashups of social media tools Google Earth and Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, and Facebook. But so far, they've been almost entirely for social causes, politics, fun, and, in the case of the swine flu, a way to track the possible global pandemic. This just-launched mashup of Google Maps and Twitter from E.P. Carrillo Cigars seeks to add business to the mix by creating an international community of cigar smokers. The current mashup is simply a placeholder for the website, which launches in late October. Elegantly simple, the E.P. Carrillo mashup features a real-time map shoring the origin of Tweets that mention cigars anywhere in the world. When the site launches, it'll use the same principle to add virtual tours of the brand's cigar making process - from videos of the growers to tours of the factory. And it'll feature UGC on favorite places to enjoy a cigar. The purpose is brand awareness, not sales, and my guess is it'll create a good deal of buzz and camaraderie among cigar aficionados. The ad agency that created the mashup is DeVito Verdi, New York, Creative Director, Sal DeVito, Interactive Creative Director, Tyler Deangelo. Full disclosure: DeVito Verdi also is...
From two great minds: a start-up wedding registry and a social media cake
Drue Kataoka of Valley Zen, one of the most delightful and creative people I know, is getting married to Svetlozar Kazanjiev, the founder of a stealth mode startup. They didn't want to "drag everyone through the same old routine of the traditional wedding registry...so we said -- what if we created a registry with no tangible items, only virtual ones." And that's how The World's First Startup Wedding Registry! was born. The registry, Drue says, is a tongue-in-cheek look at the toils of starting a silicon valley company. They want to make their guests laugh, "since all of them are entrepreneurs/ VCs/startup lawyers/academics involved in the valley." No blenders, frying pans or champagne glasses here! Instead, you can feed an engineer, or Tim Draper; give someone health insurance for a week; pay a month of utility bills for someone who's starting a start-up, and add your own ideas too. I don't want to spoil any of the wonderful surprises Drue and Svetlozar have planned - like their social media wedding cake. And i certainly would never tell you what the always fabulous Drue will wear. Congratulations to two wonderful people. I met them online. Natch....
PR Industry Leaders Put Their Feet in Their Mouths at Critical Issues Forum
I was one of the people interviewed in a video (below) shown at a Council of PR Firms Critical Issues Forum at the Yale Club last week. The topic of the meeting was the future of public relations." And some pretty dangerous ideas came out of the mouths of people who really should know better - like the CEOs and Sr VPs of some of the biggest PR firms in the world. The CEO of a huge PR firm, for example, said "There is always someone out there with a new idea. Our job is to steal their ideas and put them into our DNA." When I asked "Did you really mean to say that?" he said "Yes". A Bronx cheer I don't see it that way. I think it's the job of professional communicators to create rather than steal new ideas. The best and the brightest always have, and always will have that concept in their DNA. There are plenty of smart people working in PR. But there are more of us who just became disgusted with the way it's done these days and turned our talents to new media. That's why I left the PR field in 1996,...
RocketON: A Virtual World That Travels With You on the Web
I love RocketON! And I think you will too. I have 500 sneak peaks to RocketON's closed alpha for What's Next Blog readers. Instead of going to a site to play a massively multi-player game, San Francisco-based, venture-backed startup RocketON has actually placed a virtual world on top of the Internet. Your avatar can roam the Web with you, inviting friends to join, discuss and interact on any site. RocketON was co-founded by two veterans from the gaming industry - Eric Hayashi and Steve Hoffman. They gave me a personal tour the other day, and I'm knocked out by RocketON. TechCrunch explains how it works. What fascinates me is the marketing potential. It's a whole new branding system, destined to reach Google AdWord proportions. In fact, I'm already discussing ways to have two clients partner with RocketON. The demographic target is 13-25 - the age group that loves to interact with friends, but my guess is that the appeal will span age groups. You can design your avatar, down to its eyebrows; have your own stuff; and your own room, which you can furnish with stuff from participating websites and from the RocketON store. You also can own virtual pets,...
This Press Release Sucks. Re-write It to Win a Seth Godin Action Figure
The following is a 936-word press release I received today from Wyndstorm Corporation. It sucks. The best re-write - chosen by What's Next Blog Readers - will win a Seth Godin Marketing Guru Action Figure. Why this press release sucks: 1. It's full of jargon 2. A "destination widget"? Gimme a break. 3. I don't know WTF they are talking about, and I create widgets for clients 4. It's 936 words, including a huge legal disclaimer that seems to say it might not even be true 5. It doesn't include a link to an example of one of its widgets I could go on..... Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, is to re-write this godawful release into no more than 300 words and make it clear what they're selling and why we should care. UPDATE: Here's Seth Godin's re-write: my rewrite: We launched something today, but it's not very good. Here it is: www.widgetthing.com # # # OK, here's the Wyndstorm release: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx (703) 000-0000 tel. (202) 000-0000 cell. pr@wyndstorm.com SOCIAL NETWORK INDUSTRY'S FIRST "DESTINATION WIDGET" OFFERS FASTEST GO TO MARKET PLATFORM FOR ONLINE SOCIAL MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS Wyndstorm Corporation Launches Socialframes™ -...
Virtual Worlds Conference - Lackluster Presentations, Meager Tsotchkes, Yet Fascinating
By B.L. Ochman The 2008 Virtual Worlds Show had the worst tsotschkes of any show in recent memory. It has long been my theory that the cleverness and value of the tsotchkes at a show is a reflection of the health of the industry. And judging by the cheap candy, pens, and mugs that dominated the tsotchkes at this show, Virtual Reality is in a slump. The show, nonetheless, was fascinating. After all, while we may be heading toward a 3D Internet at a slower speed than expected, we are still headed in that direction. Part of the problem is that companies involved in virtual reality are immersed in jargon and seemingly unable to provide plain English explanations of what they do. The vice-president of sales prevention of one major virtual world developer responded to my question about what they do: “We create conversations around brands.” I asked him to clarify and he said “That would be like trying to bring home the air from your Hawaiian vacation.” Seeing my eyes glaze over, he asked “Are you even enjoying this conversation?” Well, I said, you must have an elevator pitch that explains what the company does.” He, annoyed: “I just...
Philoctetes Center Roundtable: The Future of Technology
Click to Play I went to a Round Table at The Philoctetes Center on Saturday on The Future of Technology with an absolutely stellar panel. (The video is Jaron Lanier, who coined the term virtual reality in the early 80s, playing ancient wind instruments he described as some of the first computers. )The discussion, moderated by David Kirkpatrick revolved around the global network of the Internet as the unifying strand in all major change. Will we interact in unimagined ways? What are the privacy issues of global connectivity? Will life be better, or worse? Can the mind keep up? Can we recognize our future? Panelists were Esther Dyson, Lanier, Bernard Meyerson and Ken Perlin Highlights: Much of the discussion revolved around issues of privacy, which Esther Dyson pointed out is about the same now as it was in 1800. But the key points were about the value of our remarkable access to data and the fundamental desire to connect with others on a one-to-one and one-to-many level. A video of the event will be on the Philoctetes site soon.My favorite line of the day was from Jaron Lanier: "the future of the Internet It wont be as good as...
Don't Give Up on Second Life, Eric Reuters Tells NY Social Media Breakfast
By B.L. Ochman Although I'm more of an 8 PM type, than an 8 AM type, I got up before the sun this morning to go to the first NYC Social Media Breakfast. It was organized by Bryan Person and Paull Young. The event was sponsored this morning by Converseon and Text100 (who paid for breakfast. Thanks!) at Big Daddy's Diner near Union Square. I learned of the breakfast on Twitter, and was glad to see old friends and meet some people I only know from Twitter. I love blogging and Twitter, but nothing beats a face-to-face. Nick Denton, Heath Row, Paull Young, Constantin Basturea (finally we meet!), Rob Key, Aaron Uhrmacher, and David Bradfield were among the people I got to talk to at some length. It was hopefully the first of many such breakfasts which welcome marketers, PR people, entrepreneurs, bloggers, podcasters, new media fanatics, and online social networkers. You'll find the events schedule here. Reuters Second Life bureau chief reporter Eric Krangel (aka Eric Reuters) spoke about virtual worlds, the changing media landscape and Second Life opportunities for marketers. Back in 1997, he pointed out The Well, was among the first virtual communities. It had a strong...
A Good PR Pitch - Now That's a Switch!
Just when I'd lost faith in flacks, along comes this excellent pitch from Doug Haslam. It's a study in contrasts with this pitch from hell. Besides pitching a survey on a topic he knows I follow because he reads my blog and my tweets, Haslam did several things right: - He responded to my post on twitter pimping my pitch from hell blog post - He referred to that blog post - He used bulleted points - He used lots of white space - His thoughts are organized and brief - He provides a sample of survey results in the email instead of making me go somewhere to look for them - He asks me if I want the whole survey instead of just sending it to me. - He makes a joke. After all, none of this is rocket science. - He got right to me, while my blog post and tweet were fresh in my mind - He says it's ok for me to run his email in my blog. So here it is: B.L., Your PR pitch from hell post caught my eye because we actually had a client called “Booyah!” Fortunately I was not on that...
What Marketers Need to Know About Twitter
I spend a lot of time on Twitter every day. If you're a marketer, you should too. Last week, Google bought social networking tool and Twitter competitor Jaiku for an undisclosed sum. There was immediately lots of talk about the death of Twitter, and the need to migrate to Jaiku. Where were these conversations happening? On Twitter, of course. As a marketer, I need to check out new social networks to see if they have value for my clients. So I have a Jaiku account, and I am exploring Jaiku. Steven Streight points out that Jaiku allows comments on messages, which expands its usefulness as a microblogging platform. But like many of the Twitterati, I'm not anxious to move to the latest shiny object. That's because, for me, Twitter has become: o a major source of business news o a quicker way to find out what's important today than my feed reader o a place to find out what the people I'm interested in are finding interesting o live blogging from conferences and other events o an excellent source of experts on various technical topics o a place to build relationships through common interests o a place to (selectively) pimp...
Virtual Sex Machine Inspires Real-Life Lawsuit
Well this ought to do a lot to encourage corporate types to enter into Second Life marketing campaigns! Lawyers, the scourge of first life, have reared their ugly heads in the metaverse. The 3D virtual world now has its first real life copyright lawsuit. Kevin Alderman, whose avatar is named Stroker Serpentine, and who is owner of SexGen, is suing the avatar (virtual game character) Volkov Catteneo. He says Catteneo broke his code and sold his intellectual property illegally. Alderman realized that people who had avatars on the popular site wanted their characters to not only have realistic genitalia, but also to be able to have sex. So he created code that provides avatars with 3D genitalia and allows them to engage in sex....
My 2007 Marketing Predictions Were Half Right - Thinking About 2008
Predicting the future is the fun part of being a pundit, and a necessary part of giving advice to corporate clients. Thinking about 2008 and beyond, I took a look at my predictions for 2007. Seven months in, I was half right....
New Barbie Online World Fosters a Materialistic Kiddie Culture
Dear Mattel – You’re blowing it. You had a chance to enrich the way kids learn, interact, and engage their imaginations in play. But MP3 Barbie has absolutely no redeeming social value. Mattel is about to launch its new combination Barbie/MP3 player and to take its Barbie Girls site out of beta. The starter set for the BarbieGirls site is sold for $59.99 That investment brings young children into a culture of materialistic greed – before the values that might temper that greed have been formed....
Second Life Bashing In Full Gear - But the Bashers Are Missing the Point
The LA Times bashes Second Life, noting that participants in the metaverse aren't there to buy real world products. Doh! It's easy to put Second Life down - its software can be clunky, it's not easy for the uninitiated to understand how to use it and much of the content is anything but mainstream. Nonetheless, the 3D Internet is coming, and Second Life will, a year, or five years from now, be seen as the pre-cursor. Right now though, things are dicey in the corporate areas of the metaverse. Starwood Hotels is closing Aloft, its Second Life shop, and donating its virtual land to the nonprofit social-networking group TakingITGlobal....
gene2music Demonstrates the Internet's True Teaching and Learning Potential
The Internet, in terms of world-changing technologies, is still in its infancy. Now gene2music raises the bar to new heights. These characteristics of the Internet have forever changed the way we can communicate and learn: - the wide availability of multi-media content widely available - unlimited space for explanation - the way that hyperlinks have the potential to connect and relate all forms of knowledge to each other - the opportunity for any user to create content But that's just the beginning. When I first started to study the communication, and then the marketing potential of the Internet nearly 20 years ago, I imagined that there would someday be a site that would find a phenomenal and completely new way to make learning complex information fun. Educational games and virtual worlds come close. gene2music creates music by assigning notes to genetic matter. Not just a bunch of atonal notes: gene2music makes tunes. You can even convert your own genetic information to music. The gene2music project's magnificent goals: "The primary goal of this work is to convert genome-encoded protein sequences into musical notes in order to hear auditory protein patterns." But it's the second goal that altogether slays me: "...we also...
Mattel Launches New Barbie Site, Toy, for Plugged in Pre-teens
Although the website's been down for hours, and the company press release has the wrong URL, Mattel today launched the Barbie Girls community, its first big new Barbie concept for the 48 year-old doll in four years. Kind of surprising that the world's largest toy company would do a launch and its IT people are not able to keep the site live! What's up with that? The new Barbie site brings together Web surfing, shopping and music downloads -- territory already successfully occupied by Webkinz, My Scene Everything Girl, Club Penguin and others. All require real credit cards for purchases. Nonetheless, Mattel's breathless press release describes the site as "the first global, virtual online world designed exclusively for girls. At BarbieGirls.comSM girls can create their own virtual character, design their own "room," shop at the mall, play games, hang out and chat live with other girls." Rumor has it that Barbie will soon turn up in a virtual world of her own. According to my teenager-in-training seven year-old niece, girls are more interested in stuffed animals than dolls these days. But the idea of a Barbie MP3 player sure got her attention. "Oooh, Aunt Ba, send me the link," she...
Eric Kintz: Marketers Flopping in Second Life
Eric Kintz of HP posts the top 10 reasons he's still not convinced about marketing in Second Life spurred on by a recent negative article in Brandweek. Several of his reasons are my reasons that ad agencies and so many big companies are failing in their Internet efforts overall. Kintz: #6. Brands are underestimating the investments required. Most brands have focused on the upfront cost (i.e buying land, web design and creative fees), but most have not taken into account the on-going investment ..."brand operate that way. WNB: Equally so: brands allocate 2-5 % of their budget to online, don't measure the ROI, don't follow through to tie the concepts to other mediums. Kintz: #7. Brands are not staying true to the Second Life values. "... most brands mimic their real life experiences and value proposition in Second Life." WNB: Substitute "Internet" for Second Life and you'll see why so many online campaigns fail. Kintz: #8. Second Life experiences are not integrated with the overall brand experience. New Second Life ventures by leading brands still feel too much to me like PR coups vs. being truly integrated into the broader set of the brand promise and experience. How many brands...
Reasons Not to Bet on Second Life
Second Life bashing has become a sport of late. And now there are rumors that Google, IBM and/or eBay will introduce a virtual commerce form of virtual reality. You can be sure they won't require a complicated download or interface. But don't hold your breath for one that really takes off. Virtual reality is still an idea waiting for a neural interface technology, and it won't look anything like Second Life, which is basically a game that is disliked by most people who try it, says Clay Shirky at Valley Wag: "One of the basic promises of virtual reality, at least in its Snow Crash-inflected version, is that we will be able to re-create the full sense of being in someone's presence in a mediated environment. This has been a human desire at least since Shamash appeared to Gilgamesh in a dream. Re-stated in technological terms, this version of virtual reality is a belief that communications will finally become an adequate substitute for travel. We have been promised that this will soon be achieved with current technology since ATT demoed a video phone at the 1964 World's Fair."...
Webkinz' Second Life/My Space Mashup Takes Kids By Word-of-Mouth Storm
My soon-to-be-10-year-old nephew took me on a tour of Webkinz, today - the hottest thing since, well, the last hottest thing, for kids from 4 to 12. 14. Webkinz.com combines the kid appeal of Neopets with a kid-friendly mashup of MySpace and Second Life. Take a look at it and you'll begin to realize how soon the kindergarten through junior high generation will leapfrog over adults in their ability to use the Internet, their understanding of e-commerce, their acceptance of online community, and the idea that one's social life can be centered in a virtual world. Publishers, this is how kids will learn instead of with already obsolete text books. Fashion, music, art and commerce online will be as natural a part of young digital native's lives as TV was to baby boomers. The Internet really has changed everything. And we sure live in interesting times....
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