Evidence enough that the majority of people hate gurus?

Take a look at the info graphic below for more data that suggests the same. Then read more below for analysis and commentary.

Why The Guru Backlash?

I think it’s pretty obvious. Most people reject the premise that you can “get rich beyond your dreams with the click of a button,” no? Everyone wants to believe that though, and perhaps that’s why guru-tactics of “selling the dream” continue to proliferate the Web and continue to rack up millions and millions in sales.

But what happens after you figure out that getting rich without work is a pipe-dream? That’s right, you lose trust. And without trust, you’re just a flash in the pan.

Are You in This for the Long Term or Just for the Cash?

Are you building a business or are you just trying to make as much money as possible, as fast as possible? Because doing it the “guru” way can earn you a lot of money fast, but will it really build you a long-term business? No! Because real businesses are build on relationships. And you can’t have a real relationship with someone when you’re tricking them into opening your emails.

So what’s your opinion? Are you a “guru”? Or are you a real business?

Why are you making it so hard for someone to give you their money? Asking someone to “call for a quote” is like saying, “We need to find out how much money you have first, then we’ll give you a price.” At least that’s what the customer is thinking. Every business, regardless of what you offer, should have some type of packages or set pricing in place for people who want it. If not, you’re leaving a large percentage of cash on the table that they were ready to hand over to you.

Graphic designers are usually the worst offenders at this. They say, “We can quote you as soon as you tell us what you want exactly.” Fine, I get it, but not everyone wants to play that game anymore. Why not instead offer a few packages that a customer can evaluate, and buy, without having to interact with you first? It’s easier than it looks. Here’s an example:

Package A: New Business Logo/Branding Package  $499

This package is perfect for the new business or brand who wants to get a professional logo that will make them stand out! You get 5 different logo concepts to choose from, as well as up to 3 revisions. Final logo is delivered in digital format as a vector image, which  allows you to use it on business cards, websites, brochures and anywhere you need it. If you order by September 2010, you get 20% off! Click the order now button below to get started.

Package B: Rebranding Logo/Branding Package   $1499

This package is perfect for the business or brand who needs to re-brand themselves. You get 25 different logo concepts to choose from, as well as up to 10 revisions. Final logo is delivered in digital format as a vector image, which allows you to use it on business cards, websites, brochures and anywhere you need it. If you order by September 2010, you get 20% off! Click the order now button below to get started.

Tell me, if posed with those choices or “call me for a quote,” which one are you more likely to choose? The point is that there are going to be a large percentage of your customers who won’t need, or want, to “contact you for more information.” They will simply see the package they want and click to buy it.

For this to work, you have to make sure you have a secure, safe way for the customer to pay you right then and there.You should consider getting a merchant account, so you can accept credit cards. Sure, it’s a pain in the butt to set up, and those pesky fees from the card companies stink, but it’s the cost of doing business on the Web. If you don’t want to spring for a merchant account and offer credit card transactions, then at the very least get a PayPal buy button in place. However, many customers aren’t going to want to use PayPal. Small-businesses owners or employees at corporations don’t have access to PayPal accounts. However, many of them do have corporate credit cards. Again, make it easy for them.

You may be saying to yourself now that your business is different. That you can’t offer packages. Bull! The truth is you don’t want to, either because it’s not how you’ve done business forever, or you just don’t like the taste of it. Fine. Know this though: The days are gone when a potential customer had only a few choices. Sure, it used to be you and your competitor only, but now your customer has more options. They’re often going to choose the company that makes it easier for them. You know this is true. You do the same thing when you go shopping for anything. Deny this at your own peril.

* * * * *

For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money”, as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.

The world, but especially here in the United States, is still stunned by Tim Russert’s sudden death yesterday. The accolades and eulogizing has begun as people grapple with his passing and I have no doubt much will be written about the native New Yorker and political junkie.
I must admit, this is not an entirely objective commentary. I liked Tim Russert a lot. I respected him for his knowledge and ability to reduce the complicated to the simple. I trusted him.

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When I read that post, it struck me how a person’s personal brand, or company brand, is defined most often as his/her/its legacy after the fact. Drew’s post also inspired me to pull out my own whiteboard (in the video above) and talk about how I admired Tim’s personal brand and how many marketers and businesses should learn from him.

Summary: Franchise pizza chain Papa Johns loses control of a Washington-based franchise who calls Cleveland Cavs star Lebron James a “crybaby” by having t-shirts made that say as much.
Cleveland media and fans pick up on the t-shirts and now Clevelanders, who also have Papa Johns, are fuming mad and planning to boycott the pizza chain.
Now Papa Johns has apologized and is giving $10k to a charity and offering pizzas for a mere 23 cents to all Clevelanders.
So, who’s to blame here? And is Papa Johns handling it right?
But more importantly, isn’t this exactly what all brands fear in today’s connected world? That some rouge outfit or person in their organization makes a decision that they didn’t approve and it spreads like wildfire?
Yes, it is. And it’s things like this that ruin the chances of people like me being able to sell “losing, or giving up control” of your brand to marketing and communication directors of big companies. I’m very interested in your thoughts.

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I still remember reading this line of text in Steve Krug’s excellent book ‘Don’t Make Me Think‘ years and years ago. It read…

“People don’t read, they scan.”

How very true when you think about it from a long-tail/majority perspective. Sure, “some” people still like to read long copy and drawn out blog entries, but in general, most people do not. Steve’s words hit me on the head like a hammer. That was the day I changed the way I thought about web design and copy-writing.
It was also the day, looking back now, that I knew that the written word as we known it was on a down slide.
Video scares the heck out of everyone because it’s a massive change in the way things “have always been”. I get that, and I certainly understand that change can be frightening. What I don’t get though is the slew of people out there who are refuse to believe that the world is moving away from the written word.
No, I’m not saying that nobody’s going to read in 20-years (50 maybe). What I am saying is that if you look at the innovations that are taking place in our society in the past few years (iphone, youtube, etc…), you have to at least believe “possibly” that our society is moving towards a more word-free world, right?
Ask yourself this question and answer it honestly. In ten years, do you believe you’ll be reading a long text blog post or NY Times article on your personal hand-held phone/computer/video camera/whatever else device?
Or, is it more likely that you’ll be watching short video and text blasts from your favorites blogs and news outlets?
One of my favorite bloggers, Mathew Ingram, writes….

I’ve said it before – I just don’t think video is as compelling a medium for discussion as blogs are. Video can start discussions or conversations, and Loren’s vlog is a great example of that, but it doesn’t really lend itself to the back-and-forth that makes blogs so appealing.

I would argue that the conversations are moving. Both in terms of how they’re delivered (text to video), and in length and detail (longer to shorter). Sites like Seesmic and Twitter represent microscopic starting points for what we might perhaps see in the future.
Some type of evolution is happening to the way we digest information, we can all see it happening. Questions remain to which theory you believe in. Will the written word live on as it stands today, or will it evolve?
I think you know where I stand on this topic. What do you think?

I’m calling you out, all of you. Consider this an intervention, and a challenge. Do you accept? If so, post links to your video(s) in the comments below.
Or maybe you’d like to keep making excuses about why you are not doing online videos yet? That’s fine too. Please share with me and the readers the top reasons you haven’t gotten it done yet?
I’m sure we can all learn from this challenge. Personally, I look forward to seeing what other marketers are doing, and also finding out why many are not. Maybe at the end of this discussion we’ll all learn a thing or two about how online video can make us all better marketers.

So are ads in video now bad too? Jaffe seems to think so. In fact, he calls this move by YouTube “dumb.”
Perhaps, I certainly respect his opinion, however I don’t have to agree with it.
I’ll argue differently. Aren’t we simply resting on the cusp of another big technology swing (like when blogging emerged)? I think so. Online video is going to be bigger than blogging, by tenfold. Right now it’s raw, uncensored and untouched (until recently) by the dreaded “ads”. Just as all new things are when they first emerge.
But just like any medium, the ads will find a way to work themselves in. From the guys who are working to show you an ad while you’re fast-forwarding your Tivo-recorded program, to the other guys who sold an ad for a local dry cleaner in your pizza box cover. Ads are always going to be there. I think everyone gets that.
YouTube didn’t do this to make money. If you look at the numbers in this, the projected revenue they can earn from this is very, very small compared to their net worth and gross revenue. Nope, this ain’t about the money.
This is about being first. And continuing to be #1.
YouTube/Google holds the world’s largest collection of advertisers in the palm of their carpal-tunneled hand. Were they going to let 100 other competitors eat away at their client list by offering something they didn’t want to offer?
The answer is no.
Will this cause a small, insignificant defection from YouTube? Yes, so small nobody would ever notice. Will this entice even more people to post their videos at YouTube in the hopes of earning a few bucks? Yes, and way more than the people that defected.
Google isn’t dumb Joseph. Look back at this in a year and tell me they are. I don’t think you will be able to.

For Father’s Day, I requested a trip to one of my favorite restaurants called PF Changs. It’s kind of like a chain-type Asian food restaurant. I would describe it as high-quality, not-fast-food type Chinese food.
My past experiences with PF Changs (about 4 other times over the last 5 years) have all been great, therefore I equated the brand with high-quality. I reserved trips to this restaurant for special occasions.
However, this past trip I noticed a few things. First off, I noticed that they stopped using nice white table cloths, which to me give a restaurant a touch of elegance as opposed to wood “wiped down with a wet cloth” tables. The second thing I noticed was that the portions were smaller by about 25%, I figure.
I’m going to guess in pure speculation here that the changes were made to reduce costs. Less money needing to be spent on cleaning table cloths and a reduction of portions to trim a few percentage points off the bottom line of materials. Those are guesses. I have zero facts to back them up.
To me, they quality of the experience was severely damaged. The PF Changs brand in my head is no longer a “special occasion” type of experience. The reduction in quality now makes me think of it as a place that’s “ok, I guess”. But I’m not going out of my way to go there anymore.
I’ve seen this happen many times before, and not just in restaurants. And everytime it happens to me I do the same thing. I stop evangelizing and purchasing from the brand in question.
You cannot reduce quality and expect to keep your brand intact. You’re better off simply raising prices. Take a lead from companies like Jaguar. They don’t “cut back” on their quality. In fact, they continue to make improvements in quality.
Do you have any examples of brands that have suffered from a quality reduction?

In a nutshell, the season ended into nothing. In other words, nothing happened. Nobody (Tony and family) got wacked, nobody went into witness protection and nobody knows nothin’, especially the audience.
As I analyzed the ending over and over in my head, I began to think about why the producer, David Chase, would end a series in such a manner. As my thoughts went deeper I began to think about how he could have ended it, and how he should have ended it and how I would have liked it to end.
Then I started reading message boards and blog comments about the ending. I must have spent an hour after the show reading online trying to learn more about the ending to try and gain more closure for myself. I thought, maybe I missed something?
Then two things hit me.
1. I’m a huge fan because I spent time actually seeking out extra information about the show beyond the television. I wanted more!
2. There simply was no other way for him to end the series. Why? Because the expectations were too high.
If he would have ended it with Tony being wacked or going into witness protection, many fans would have said it was predictable. If he would have ended it with Tony and his family living happily ever after, then many other fans would have been upset for the exact same reason.
It would have been an impossible task to write the perfect ending. The expectations that fans/consumers/viewers like me gave him no other choice. Instead, he did what needed to be done. He created a non-ending.
Whew, all that to get to my marketing point.
Be careful not to oversell expectations to your customer. Usually there is a long-term brand at stake.
Of course, I have questions for you as a marketer. Do you have answers?
Are you carefully managing your customer’s expectations? Do you oversell?
What happens when you are unable to deliver on your marketing message because the expectation you created is too good?
What should have happened to Tony Soprano?

Summary: Guy buys digital camera, gets box home, nothing in box. Blogs about it, gets note from idiot CompUSA executive saying “he should have checked the box, all sales are final.” Story goes viral, through blogs, all the way up to Fox News. You can guess the rest.
We all know who’s to blame in this story. It wasn’t the fault of the marketing team, that’s for sure. It wasn’t even the fault of the PR team.
However, blame aside, is it the responsibility of the marketing team to turn this lemon of a PR move into lemonade? Or is it the PR team’s job?
Normally most would say that the PR department should be in charge of this. And perhaps they should (20 years ago). But I argue that a good marketing team in today’s marketplace should be able to take a disaster and turn it into a win through creative marketing. PR should not be involved anymore.
Why? Because as Jackie and Ben allude to, you cannot stop the conversation from happening, you can only embrace it and work with it. PR only seems to want to bury it.
Instead, I say a good marketing team should embrace the story. How about a marketing campaign of a contest based around finding some cash in a random box? For example…
“Whoops, we messed up! You may have heard by now, we accidentally left a computer out of one of our boxes. To make up for it, we’ve decided to put $10,000 in one computer box for some lucky person to find with the purchase of any CompUSA purchased computer. Anyone can win, just buy a computer from CompUSA in the next 30-days and look for your cash!”
Some would call this unnecessarily calling out the problem, but I would argue that the problem is already out there, it just hasn’t been read by everyone yet.
In today’s connected world, and with today’s savvy customer and rabid competitors, getting any attention is better than getting none. Most likely PR would apologize (as they did) and try to kill the conversation.
But in reality, is that the best move?
What do you think? Can PR effectively solve problems anymore? Or is it marketing’s turn to carry the load?

Did you feel the deep sarcasm and anger in my above sentences?
Yes? Good. Want to feel it too? Go read this from MSNBC.

Is Online Marketing Making Kids Obese? A new study highlights ways companies use the Web to promote unhealthy foods to youngsters and asks regulators to step in.

While I’m all for healthy eating, I do take offense as an online marketer for having to bear the burden of “making kids fat,” and I’ve never even marketed in that industry.
Let’s leave fast food behind and talk about the higher-level point I’m trying to make here. And that is that marketers are not responsible for individual’s actions, despite what a journalist looking for a story/headline, or the government says.
In the end, a consumer makes the final decision based upon a marketing message, whether it’s to suck down that Big Mac or buy that Xbox, they decided on their own.
Blame the marketers for everything that’s wrong in the world? Nonsense.
Don’t you agree?

The results were interesting to say the least. Specifically, there’s one stat that I wanted to focus on, and that was that only 8 out of the 25 marketing blogs chose to include ads on their blog.
This got me thinking… Why don’t marketers like ads on their blogs?
It seems kind of silly at first doesn’t it? I mean, we’re the marketers, and we are the ones out there trying to get others to spew our marketing messages, yet, we don’t want to do it ourselves.
Perhaps we’re too snobby to think that we need ads? Or maybe we feel that ads cheapen our brand? But shouldn’t we practice what we preach?
From my feedback over the years, I’ve come to conclude the following about why marketers and bloggers don’t want ads on their blogs.
“I Don’t Put Ads On My Blog Because…”
1. My real estate is too valuable to give away.
2. I’m building my own brand and selling my own products/books, so why should I?
3. Ads are ugly, I hate them.
4. I can’t make any “real” money, so why bother?
5. I don’t want some ugly “dating-type” ads on my blog.
6. I don’t need too, I’m rich already (Seth/Guy).
And so on…
If you don’t have ads on your blog? Why not?

What is the one defining quality that all great marketers posess that makes them stand out from the rest?
Is it the ability to understand their target then give them what they want?
Is it their knowledge of marketing tricks and techniques?
Is it their prowress at selling themselves as a great marketer?
All good questions.
Or…
Is it impossible to define a marketer to one specific trait or skill?
I couldn’t think of a better place than the Daily Fix to ask these questions. So, dear readers, and fellow authors/marketers. What do you think?

1. My father (who was watching me at the moment, and I say watching loosely) has never heard the end of it from my mother, 34 1/2 years later.
2. All the right-side brain stuff, like math and engineering and handy work… well, that all got knocked out and made more room for the marketing stuff.

At least that’s my story anyway. But back to the point.
Today a company called MyBlogLog was acquired by Yahoo! for 10 million smackers. If you haven’t used MyBlogLog before, it’s a really great tool that combines social networking with other fun stuff like stats for your blog, etc… It’s fun, smart and just generally useful.
Of course, the conversations ensued, and thanks to the power of Techmeme I was able to follow them closely. One in particular stood out to me, and that was from a gentleman named Don Dodge, who wrote ‘Yahoo acquires MyBlogLog for $10M – Has anyone done the math?’.

Yahoo has acquired MyBlogLog reportedly for $10 million. Does anyone stop to do the math on these things? MyBlogLog started business in July…just 6 months ago, and they have 5 employees. They reportedly serve 45,000 blogs, have 33,000 registered users, and zero revenue.
Valuing startups is an inexact science for sure, but there are some guidelines. Here are a few “back of the napkin” approaches without the benefit of any due diligence or facts.

Don certainly seems right. His argument makes a lot of sense from a financial standpoint (I guess), however, what Don is missing is one key factor that “numbers guys” can’t seem to buy into, and that is…
You can’t just be cool, you either are, or you aren’t.
MyBlogLog didn’t get acquired because of the money, it got acquired because Yahoo! knows cool when it sees it, and realized that no matter how much less $$$ they could spend on developing something similar, it would be extremely hard to reinvent cool. The challenge for Yahoo! now is to keep the cool bottled up and fresh.
Don’t get me wrong, you numbers guys are smart guys, but every once in a while, walk over to the marketing or branding or web guy/gal in your office/building/neighborhood and ask their opinion first. It’s not always about the numbers.

No kidding, it does. SHOCKING, I know. Yet, inevitably, in classic link-bait fashion, somebody with a vested interest (darn consultants!) is trying to reinvent what we all have known by making up a lame buzz-word.
Introducing… Simplexity! From Mediapost.

Market researchers believe that 2007 will find consumers seeking out a new trend, which Robbie Blinkoff, managing partner of Context-Based Research Group, is calling simplexity.
“Consumers have been trying to simplify and organize their lives,” he says, “but they’ve also been going down the complexity path, and the two are converging. Simplexity will be a synthesis of the two, yet distinctly different.”

So let’s break this down for you in case you didn’t get it.
1. As the future rolls on, things get more complex in our lives.
2. As things get more complex, the ones that are simple are what people like.
Got it? It’s called Simplexity!
Alright, let me end the deep sarcasm for a moment and try to make a point in one simple word.
DUH!
Happy new year to everyone, and keep it simple. I highly suggest you read my all-time favorite “simple” book entitled ‘Don’t Make Me Think‘ from Steve Krug.

I don’t think so. I firmly believe that you have to believe in what you own/build/market/sell, etc… or you’re just pushing the company line and will never really see a success that is beyond average.
Case in point, a story came out recently about longtime Windows development chief James Allchin, who wrote in a January 2004 email to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and company co-founder Bill Gates that the software vendor had “lost sight” of the needs of customers. He said he would buy a Mac if he wasn’t working for Microsoft.

“In my view, we lost our way,” Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft’s platform and services division, wrote in an email dated Jan. 7, 2004. The e-mail was presented as evidence late last week in the Iowa antitrust trial, Comes v. Microsoft Corp.
“I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products.”

In my view, there’s a few ways you can look at this. First, you could say that this person should have been applauded and promoted and put in charge of making those changes. The second way of looking at this is to wonder why this person stayed with the company if he didn’t really believe in the product.
My first reaction to this email as Bill Gates would have been to call a meeting and address these issues and find out if they were really true. Then I would have put a team together to fix the problem.
So, what would you have done? And when you look at your own marketing experiences, or general work experiences as a professional, can you, or would you, or have you worked for something you don’t believe in? If so, why?
Personally, I live for the passion around something, and I could never work or promote something I didn’t believe in.

Now, normally, most businesses start with those things in a business plan. However, more often than not in today’s Web community, ideas are rapid and businesses form quickly, and those “minor details” get left behind to be filled in later.
What to do? Well, I have an idea that may help.
Pitch your business to TechCrunch.
Or at least just pretend to. It doesn’t matter if your business isn’t about online technology; this exercise still works. The form on TechCrunch is the perfect tool to help you fine-tune your pitch.
It requires you to briefly describe what your company is/does in hopes for a review. You answer things like, “describe your product or service,” “key competitors,” and “please tell us anything else that you consider important about your company.”
I suggest that all marketers take this exercise for each product/service they work with. I recently did it myself and what I ended up with was a lot different/better than what I started with.
Oh yeah, if you get accepted & reviewed by TechCrunch (142k rss subscribers), that’s not such a bad thing either. :0

We’re all marketers, so we get the tactics they use. You know, things like: free shipping, 2 for 1, % off sales, etc… It all makes sense, and most of it works. But retailers need to be careful.
There’s a line there that I don’t think many retailers consider. That line is crossed when two things happen to consumers.
1. You try to fool us
2. You’re wasting our time
Both are unforgiveable.
Case in point. A local holiday store in my neighborhood put a full page ad in my local newspaper advertising “HALF-OFF WREATHS!” My wife has been wanting new wreaths from the front of the house for years, so we planned a stop at the store during our weekend runaround with the kids.
When we got to the store, we went to the wreaths and thought they were very nice. I told the salesman that we’d take two at the half price the ad mentioned, only to hear this, delivered almost annoyed…
Salesman: “Oh, yeah, that ad says the second one you buy is half-price, if you buy one at full price first”.
Me: “All I saw was 1-inch bold letters that said HALF OFF ALL WREATHS; nothing about that.”
Salesman (said almost snarkily): “It was there, you had to read the fine print.”
Me: “Thanks for wasting my time.”
Nothing is worse than wasting a consumer’s time. Nothing. If your objective is to drive people into your store, you really need to consider how they’re going to react when they find out they’ve been “fooled.” Now I will never, ever shop at that store again, regardless of what sale they have… because they wasted my time and tried to fool me.
That’s a sure fire method for killing your brand. Think twice about your tactics. You may end up gaining a few more sales in the short-term, but losing lifelong customers long-term.

Here’s a little secret, reprinted from my previous piece in Feb of 2006…

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A-LIST BLOGGER TO BE SUCCESSFUL
It’s not all about traffic, ads and egos. Successful blogging is not always defined by high CPM rates and famous blogrolls. There is more to blogging. There are more powerful, deeper strategies and levels of success that blogging can bring you.
What a reporter would find if they cared to look deeper into the rabbit hole would be thousands upon thousands of A-list bloggers within thousands of verticals, albiet smaller ones, but A-list type bloggers catering to what I would argue to be an even more highly regarded and valued target of content specific readers.
In other words, an A-lister who blogs about small businesses may only have 20,000 readers a month, but every single one of those readers is her exact targeted audience.

This site defines the a-list as:

The Very High Authority Group [A-List Bloggers]
(500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)
In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer …. a year and a half on average …. and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati and we’ve grown up together. Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic.

First off, defining “list” status based upon links is just stupid. There is no direct correlation in my mind behind how many people link to you and the amount of influence you have, none. I bet a lot of people link to Paris Hilton’s sites…
Second, most of these “blogs” they are talking about aren’t really even blogs anymore. They’re professional businesses that happen to use a content management system with comments. So they’re the a-list of online businesses.
REAL blogs are all on the same list. SUCCESS is defined by you. FORGET the lists, just keep blogging.
By the way, MPDailyFix.com is on the b-list.

I say that not to be arrogant, it’s just that the affiliate marketing circles are pretty small and close, therefore we need an outside perspective.
So I need your input as “outsiders” who play in the same marketing game, just not with the exact same ball. All of us tend to get polarized in our own little world, and recently I’ve been thinking about one specific question in that regard.
What is affiliate marketing’s brand? When you think of it, what comes to mind?
I should also point out that this is a good exercise for any marketer to put to use. I think what you’ll find, as I have in other areas, is that what your customer and/or the rest of the world thinks, is drastically different than what you think.
And how can you market a brand if you don’t know what they think of it?

I was killing time browsing books in the Cincinnati airport before my flight to San Francisco for a conference, when I looked down and saw a book cover with a picture of a sumo wrestler dunking a basketball. Roughly 70 pages later and halfway to San Francisco, I had a note pad full of new ideas on how to market many of my projects/products, plus a new-found energy, and mindset for how to take my marketing to the next level.
I’m not kidding, it was a light-bulb over the head moment for me, and a week later I have several high-quality ideas already in motion that just might work, we’ll see. The last, and only real time, that happened to me was way back in 2000 when I read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, which I have reread every year since then.
Back to Jon’s book, and the point of this article. Chapter 2 is entitled ‘What’s it gonna take?’

What if you asked the following question at your company? “What’s it going to take to be the best company in our industry this year?”

For example, when he was the President of the Portland Trail Blazers, Jon recalls that one of the first things he did in the meeting with the executives and coaches was to ask the question, “What’s it gonna take to win the NBA championship next year?” Now, as he mentions in the book, the Trail Blazers were a poor team at the time, so asking that question was kinda like asking something that was impossible, so most of the people on his team thought he was insulting them, or crazy.
But in reality, what Jon was doing was setting goals and creating mindsets, which then turned into real discussions and actionable items about exactly just how to meet those goals. In other words, just by asking that question, he was able to put the wheels in motion to making them happen.
When was the last time you tried this exercise?
What’s it gonna take for you to try it?
Here’s my solution. Go ahead, buy a copy of Jon’s book. If you don’t find it as mind blowing as I did, you can send it to me and I’ll write you a check for it out of my own pocket and I’ll give it to someone I know as a gift.
The rest of the book is equally inspiring. From chapter 3, entitled ‘Pushing the Outrageous Envelope’, to chapter 12 ‘The Rubber Chicken Method’, Marketing Outrageously is a must-read.
How about you? Got any books that have had the same effect on you as Jon’s book has had on me? And if you’ve read this book, let me know your thoughts and/or successes/failures that you’ve acheived from its ideas.

Many thanks to Ann for starting up the conversation around the blog honor badges I threw together last week. There’s some great conversation beginning to happen about this topic (check the comments on Ann’s post) from both sides (hate mail to me, etc.)–.
Yes, mail arrived even from the dark side, who seem to take these honor badges as some type of threat. Go figure, eh? You know who you are.
One of the biggest questions surrounding this blog honor concept is, “Can’t anyone, even non-honorable blogs, simply display the badge?”
The answer is yes, they could. The follow up to that is then, “Why not have a credible source like MarketingProfs back up the badges and then only administer them to people who have “passed” the requirements?”
Right, like a TRUSTe for bloggers. I get that line of thinking, and I certainly considered it. But then I realized one important thing, and that is–
The institution of a police force for bloggers, which is essentially what would need to be done, is counter-minded to the main reason why blogs are so successful in the first place.
In other words, blogging removed the gatekeepers of content and put the power of expression into the hands of everyone, without rules. Wouldn’t the ‘Blog Police’ be an indictment of that fact?
Furthermore– How do you enforce “honor”? Can one person/company/group/deity objectively enforce standards and rules across millions of blogs?
I’m not sure it’s possible.
Like any good community, the enforcement of its policies really only work through self-policing. Look at Web forums like http://www.earnersforum.com, and/or any other community you see out there online today. These forums maintain themselves through the participation of evangelical-minded members who help to enforce rules and policies, with zest and immediacy.
Sure, it’s going to be tougher for us as bloggers to self police, well, not just tough, frankly, impossible. The point of the blog honor badges was/is to help that process begin; to assist honorable bloggers to begin to show their unity.
Where we go from here is up to all of us, together.
I’ll leave you with one of the comments from Ann’s post from Claire, which I think sums up my thoughts nicely.

“There are gazillions of blogs now, and like everything else, the relevant, honest ones will rise to the top. The rest will die away. The truth will always out, and smart people will avoid interacting with fakes. ”

Isn’t that what this is all about? Open discussion and the exchanging of thoughts and opinions? The answer is yes for those who were wondering.
So for my follow up, I’d like to talk about what I like to call the The Great BIG Branding Lie. Get your torches and pitchforks ready!
The Great BIG Branding Lie is what advertising agencies and marketers of all types like to tell themselves and their clients. Specifically:
1. Only we (the agencies or marketers) can help you define your brand.
2. Don’t worry about your product, our brand marketing efforts will overcome your lack of quality.
3. Your brand is what everyone else says it is, so you better hire us to tell the world that it’s good, or control the naysayers (Google?) who are out to destroy you.
4. Perception by those who don’t touch your product means more than what your current customers think.
Did your head explode yet?
Look, I’m a marketer, and a brand manager. I’ve done both for publicly traded companies and mom and pop shops alike. I do understand the business I hope. I certainly have an opinion, eh?
I just happen to disagree that marketing and perception are the same thing as brand. BOTH are important, but different. No, marketers aren’t evil, and ad agencies gotta eat. But–
I sometimes wonder if marketers are too worried about perception (and their egos) when maybe what they should be more concerned with is helping their customer improve their product through marketing intelligence.
Isn’t that the appropriate way to service a customer? Shouldn’t a marketer take the data they have uncovered and use it to help their customer build a better mousetrap?
Or is it your opinion that marketers are solely responsible for spreading a message? Maybe that’s why marketers get such a bad rep, especially online?
Martin S. comment to me in my last post.

Brand, and all things associated with branding, are within the domain of perception and marketing – period. Thinking of it otherwise is simply bad business and very bad marketing. If you think a brand’s meaning or value is only truly defined by those who have actual experience with the product/service, then you have limited your abilities as a marketer and severly hobbled the marketing efforts of anyone who has hired you. Perhaps that is why some of us work in marketing, and others of us work as bloggers.

Perhaps Martin. And actually, I am both a marketer and a blogger, but those are two different roles. And perhaps my inability to allow my client to simply flounder away with their product/service while I continue to spew ineffective marketing messages is what you like to call bad marketing.
I disagree, and it’s not how I or any effective marketer should approach their efforts. To me, that’s a huge disservice.
It’s ALL about the product. That’s where I start and where I explain to my client we’re going to focus our efforts on– improving your product, which is in essence your brand– period.
How the customer gets to your product is the marketing. And yes, perception plays a part in that spot, but let’s be honest, at the end of the day, when I need to look my client in the face and show them a return-on-investment from their marketing spend, I darn sure need to be able to say more than “Well, Google thinks your brand sucks.”
Instead, hopefully, I was able to walk into my client’s board meeting and say that through our marketing intelligence we’ve determined that your product needs some improvements, and here’s why, and here’s the marketing methodologies we’re going to institute to get you there after your product issues are addressed.
How many marketers/brand managers reading this have done that? I have, and it’s the only way I’ll continue to operate. (Probably the reason I’ll never get a job at an agency, and I don’t want one for that exact reason). It takes a lot of walnuts to look a paying customer in the face and tell them that, wouldn’t you agree?
Of course, yes, there are products that simply can’t be improved, so what then? Someone brought up diamonds in my last post, great example. No, you can’t improve a diamond. But are marketers really selling the diamond, or are they selling the experience?
You buy a diamond because it means something; because the idea of it has value. Therefore, in this case, the brand (the experience) is the sizzle, not the steak. So in that example, and others, it is appropriate to say that the marketing is the brand.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about products and services that exist solely on their merits of quality in their performance. A diamond can’t perform or improve, but a piece of software can, etc–
Perhaps my views on all of this are wrong. I certainly have considered that. I can only go by track record of my performance and the success of my past customers, to which I have used my manta to hopefully improve both their marketing AND their brand.
Do my views and choices make me a marketing snob? Maybe, but I’ll only work with customers who “get it”. Otherwise it’s a waste of time for them and a long term hit on my own personal brand as I won’t be able to perform effectively. Again, to point, I could care less what Google thinks about me, only what my former customers think.
To those of you who disagree with me, and I know many of you will, I want you to ask yourself, if you were the client, which marketing team you would rather employ?
The team that is more worried about what people think about your product and how to control what they think, or the team that understands that your brand IS the product, and before you can craft an effective marketing message, your product may need to be tweaked by working with your customers (the people who really matter).
Fire away. I have my blindfold and cigarette in place.

“Your brand is what Google says your brand is, not what you say your brand is,” Anderson told staff at Universal McCann this morning in a discussion about his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.

Ok, that’s just silly to suggest that Google defines your brand. Your product/service defines your brand, bottom line. It’s either a good product/service, or it’s not.
The experience your customer has with it is your brand. Perception, well, that’s another matter.
I define perception as a part of marketing, not brand. In other words, I believe you cannot fully make a judgment on a brand until you experience it first-hand. Everything up until that moment of experience is marketing/perception.
Yes, Google can help determine perception by dissemination of negative reviews and commentary about your brand. But you know what? If your product was as good as it could be, the risk for extreme exposure to negative reviews is limited, and you can hardly blame the messenger (Google) eh?

This development, he says, has given rise to “the tyranny of the customer,” which can lead to some “really unfair” results, as one dissatisfied consumer can cancel out decades of accumulated goodwill.

So as you can guess, I don’t buy the “tyranny of the customer” and the relation to Google as an “really unfair” results tool, do you? Make me believe!

Look, if you’re trying too hard to be viral, well, it just ain’t gonna happen. Ok, well maybe if you pay some giant ad agency a few million bucks to try desperately for you, it could happen. But for those of us who can’t hire a mega-agency, the chances of going super-viral are poor.
According to a study from Jupiter Research, 20 percent of all marketers “plan to use viral marketing” next year. Um, ok, just exactly how are you going to do that when:
A. You honestly have zero idea on how to do it, and
B. You honestly aren’t even sure what viral marketing is?
I remember reading a similar stat a few years ago about how every business was planning on using blogs for business. Here we are a few years later, and, while business blogging has taken off (not as fast as predicted), viral marketing is a completely different beast; one that is 100 times more difficult to do than blogging.
Corey Treffiletti of MediaPost explains it well.

Viral marketing is a phenomenon that occurs when the creative message you’re trying to convey resonates deeply with the audience you’re speaking to. If you’re doing your homework and adequately planning the right messaging, with some incentive that clearly benefits the consumer, then viral marketing occurs. It’s a confluence of research that results in pass-along and forwarding.

Homework or not, super viral success is a pipe-dream for most businesses, no, wait, not just for businesses, for everyone. Instead, small businesses should be focusing on niche-level viral efforts, only then might they have a chance of success.
But before you get started, remember the Fonzie rule. You can’t try to be cool, you either are, or you aren’t. Viral marketing is the same thing. If you’re going to try, keep it simple, fun and take a few chances and just see what happens, but don’t sweat it if it doesn’t work.

…and all you have to do is look around the latest viral media projects that keep popping up to see that, in fact, creativity is innovating online entrepreneurship.
Viral media entrepreneurism stems from projects like the Million Dollar Home Page, and most recently sites like 500Words.com, 1024ads.com and (my personal favorite) 1000 Paintings.
Creative? Yes! Innovative? Yes.
Let’s step back and take a different look at these types of viral media projects. So much has been written about how these projects are a “flash in the pan” or “short-term money making scams.” The negatives aside, what we’re seeing here is a creative, and innovative wave of online entrepreneurs who are using the Internet to reach beyond the regular pre-defined uses of how we interact with “our” Web. These projects, albiet not serious business models (yet), are providing both Web users and webmasters a look at how online marketing can think out of the box.
So what can we expect moving forward? Creatively, I don’t see an end to projects like this as long as the money keeps flowing in, and most importantly…
As long as the value for the buyer continues to “be there.” After all, in the end, any marketer will measure their return-on-investment against the cost. Well, they should at least.
Interested in the viral media universe? Keep up-to-date at MillionMarketingBlog.com.

What you consider valuable, others may not, and vice versa. The only way to really level the playing field is to agree upon a decided definition of the term. Easier said then done.
In this case, Google, the 800 lb. gorilla of search wants you to know how it defines value, sorta, and is making it perfectly clear that violaters of its value definition will be banned from their index.
Stop shaking, I’m not trying to scare you. Your site probably isn’t going to banned from Google, probably, as long as you live by their guidelines. Here’s a breakdown.

Quality guidelines – basic principles

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines – specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other href="http://www.stopbadware.org/">badware.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Here’s where it gets “tricky”. For example, Peter Figueredo, pulls out this line.

* If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

And he comments…

Basically, this seems to say that Google may remove websites from it’s ORGANIC search listings if they participate in affiliate programs and do not “add value” by Google’s standards.
Does this mean that Google feels it can dictate how affiliates should be promoting advertisers (other than Google) that they work with? It sure sounds like it.

Does Your Website Have ‘Google Value’?
Most likely you have nothing to worry about. Yet, you have to wonder, as more and more online businesses rely solely on their organic search rankings from Google as a primary traffic source, what happens when Google decides that your site doesn’t meet their value as they define it, affiliate site or not?
The point is, values that are not 100% clearly defined can be risky when trying to adhere to, and in Google’s case, being the monolith that they are, they could easily change them at their own whim if they wanted to. Will they, probably not, but they could.
Now, more than ever, it’s important to review your online marketing initiatives across the board, including your vendors’ practices, particularly your search engine practices.

Can you believe they’re teaching e-marketing in college now? To those of us who learned it “on the fly” as it grew, it’s hard to believe it’s a “real” curriculum now, right? Or maybe I’m just an old Internet geek who’s out of touch. Probably.
As I made my drive to the class this morning, I thought of questions to ask the students for my own curious benefit. I wanted to gain some knowledge from the trip by tapping into the minds of the demographic that was once me (10+ years ago), but before the Internet.
So I started asking questions. I asked if they had blogs, about 2 of them did. I asked if they knew what Google Adwords or Adsense was, none did. I asked if they knew how people made money online. One said, “spamming.” Ok, he’s right, some do I explained, but it’s wrong to do that and here’s why.
Then I asked how many had MySpace profiles.
Half of the 20 person class raised their hands gleefully as if to say to me, “MySpace is great.”
Great I thought, now I have their interest. Let me tell them some more.

• I told them about how MySpace has 61+ million registered users and is growing at a pace of about 220,000 per day
• I told them that MySpace is 50.2% male, 49.8% female
• I told them it was the second largest destination on the entire Web
• I told them that MySpace earns about $750,000 per day in ad revenue

All true facts, and they seemed to love MySpace even more than a few minutes ago.
Until… I asked them a few more questions.
“Did you know that everything you post at MySpace is currently being recorded, and spidered by search engines such as Google? In other words, do you realize that everything you say on your MySpace blog can be easily read by anyone who really wants to find it?”
The smiles began to fade. Another question from me.
“Did you know that right now all human resource professionals not only Google your name when they’re checking up on you, but they also use tools to look inside MySpace to see if they can find information about you? You know what you’re writing on your profiles, do you think that information is going to help you get a job with that HR person, or hurt you?”
No more smiles. I could see the wheels turning in their heads. “Should I have written about passing out in the kitchen last night after doing 15 Jello shots? Hmm, probably not.”
No, probably not.
MySpace is a neat product. But when you really think about it, the demographic that primarily uses it is setting themselves up for a big fall down the road as they grow up and enter the “real world.” Think about it. Would you like someone to be able read about all the things you did back in high school and college your parents never knew about?
Imagine a scenario like this in the years to come.
Political: “Excuse me Senator, but your re-election campaign is going to fail. It seems that someone dug in the archives and pulled up your MySpace profile from 2005 when you were in college that shows a photo of you mooning some nuns off the roof of a moving car. But that’s not the worst part. Did you really build a bong out of mailbox?”

Of course, I’m not really going to do that today, but I will use that example to lead in to a topic that most marketers seem to have forgotten. And that is…

You don’t always have to play nice in the sandbox to accomplish your marketing goals.

Marketers have become too nice for their own good. There used to be a time when marketers would directly compare their service/product to one of their competitors. Sure, some industries still do this type of thing, mainly telecommunications, insurance providers and other industries where the competition is fierce. But not enough other types of small- to medium-sized businesses do this anymore. Why?
I have two grocery stores near my home that are convenient to me, therefore, they are both in my consideration as a resource. Store A has had me as a customer for years, and now Store B has opened and is trying to get my business. Store A has done nothing to keep me shopping, and when I asked the Store A manager why I should continue to shop at her store instead of Store B, she could not give me a clear reason. Meanwhile, Store B gave me 3 very clear, solid reasons in a marketing message that directly “took on” Store A. Price, quality and experience.
Where do you think I shop now?
As a consumer, I want one answer when I’m shopping for a service, and that’s “why should I use your service/product over your competition?” If you can’t answer that question for in clear fashion with pointed benefits, then I’m not buying from you, unless I have no choice.
As a marketer, I am darn sure that I’ve prepped my sales staff with enough information to easily answer that question. And frankly, if my product/service isn’t better, why am I wasting my time selling it? Time to get on the right team, because your team is going to lose.
As an executive who the marketing team reports to, what’s the benefit of not telling your customers why your product is better than your competition?
More marketers need to toughen up and start seriously considering their approach when it comes to comparitive competition. In an ever-changing world of fast-paced consumerism and technology, it’s becoming harder and harder to weed through the noise for the clear signal.