Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Author: Christopher S Penn

  • Wasteland

    A followup to the previous post. I’m sitting in a courthouse jury pool in Marlborough, Massachusetts as I write this, and in the jury pool room is a TV with a daytime talk show playing, talking about digital tactics to spy on your significant other. A quick check of other channels by one of the jurors reveals more of the same on nearly every other channel.

    This is the wasteland of media on the other side of the digital divide, entertainment for the lowest common denominator – entertainment that is so crude and base that anyone can consume it. It’s mental fast food.

    How many people are sitting in living rooms, kitchens, even workplaces today being forced to consume only what’s on the mainstream media outlets? How many people have no other choices because they don’t know other choices are available?

    Our mission as new media producers has to strongly incorporate outreach. At each PodCamp I attend, I usually present on the topic of podcast marketing, and without fail at least one member of the audience wonders why I’m “giving away my secrets”. It’s a valid question, and the answer is simple: the more people who tune into podcasts of any kind, the more reach we ALL have. Once you tap into one podcast, it’s only natural to find other kinds of new media that fits your interests. If each podcast producer brings in 10 new people a month, with over 250,000 podcasts being produced, you’re talking millions of new listeners. That’s why I give away as much as I can – it benefits me, too.

    Mainstream media caters to the lowest common denominator of content because they can’t provide highly focused, highly targeted content. We as new media producers can. The Internet is an infinitely large radio dial, an infinitely large TV tuner. Instead of being forced to choose from a palette of bland, offensive, or pointless on the TV tuner, we can offer audiences content that is relevant, focused, targeted to their interests, and create conversations and communities around the content that will make life better for our audiences.

    The most important email I’ve ever received as a podcast producer was from a girl on MySpace who listened to my podcast and was inspired to go back to college to complete her degree. She’d dropped out a couple of years back. How many people has Jerry Springer encouraged to go back to college?

    I know lots of other new media producers who’ve reported similar experiences.

    Our superpowers:

    We can reach global audiences.
    We can provide our audiences with content that’s useful, relevant, and focused.
    We can engage our audiences in conversation and change lives for the better.

    Rip open the metaphorical shirt and reveal your superpowers to the world. Bring as many people into new media as you can. Serve your audiences as best as you can, and we can not only combat the wasteland of mainstream media, but also make the world a better place.

  • Superhero, reveal yourself!

    The Superheroes of tomorrow are at today's PodCampsI don’t know about you, but lately, from my perspective, there have been a lot of things going wrong with life in general around me. Not specifically in my own life, which has been blessedly good, but in the bigger picture. Whether it’s the overseas military campaigns, scandals in loan industries (take your pick), it seems some days like we’re barely staying afloat in a torrent of bad news.

    At the PESC conference this week, one of the key points I made about podcasting and new media was that it gives us our voice back, gives us the same power as multibillion dollar corporations to express ourselves and be heard. This is a superhero power that is unlike any other we’ve ever had the chance to use. We’ve pontificated long enough on the meaning of new media, the implications, and its myriad potential uses.

    The time has come to make use of our powers. If you believe, as I do, that everyone who picks up a microphone or camera, is a rockstar and superhero in waiting, now is the time for us to unleash our powers as fully as we can on the world. Produce media, gather audience, gain mindshare, and let new voices be heard. The PodCamp UnConference series is a good start to this, but there’s more to be done, more to share with the world.

    Take a look at our world. Look at the headlines on the news, in the papers, on the radio. The world desperately needs us – all of us – to share media that gives a truer, broader, and more authentic big picture than we currently get from mainstream media.

    Are you ready to show your superhero powers?

  • Numbers redux

    I talked to a fellow podcaster this evening, who was told by his network (the podcaster and network shall remain nameless) that in order to get sponsor deals, he needs to get his numbers up, hit certain metrics, etc. His network is missing the point because it’s still on the CPM model. CPM is an old media metric that makes little sense for most podcasters, because most podcasts have niche audiences. Even if you have a broad subject, like music, your slice of the overall audience will still be relatively niche compared to the broadcast media numbers advertisers were used to seeing in the 20th century. CPM is a loser for them because they’ll chew up an ad budget quickly, and it’s a loser for the podcaster because the numbers won’t be there to derive a huge income unless you literally have millions of listeners for every episode.

    No, where podcasting shines is in audience engagement. Again, if you sell Gulfstream aircraft, you need to sell one G5 every two years or so to live well. If your podcast has 2 listeners and they both buy airplanes, you’re golden. If your podcast has 2,000,000 listeners and none of them buy airplanes, then your audience is just chewing up your resources.

    Action is all that matters. So where as a podcaster do you get some action? (belay the snickering in the peanut gallery) If you don’t belong to a podcasting network that is managing sponsors for you, your best bet is existing affiliate network programs, like those at Linkshare, Commission Junction, etc. They pay for performance, usually per sales lead. Take a look at some of the top paying performance programs on Commission Junction:

    • Loans.co.uk – $852 EPC (earnings per click)
    • Capital One mortgages – $771 EPC
    • HSBC credit cards – $499 EPC

    Look at some of the payouts per sale:

    • Gay Date.com – $40 per sale
    • WebEx – $130 per sale
    • AN Hosting – $100 per sale

    If you have a specific niche you serve, there are products, services, and advertisers waiting for you to come help them out, and they’re willing to pay. An audience of just 100 people, if 50 bought AN Hosting Packages or WebEx packages, would pay the rent for a month with money left over.

    Leave CPM behind, leave raw audience numbers behind, and start actually making some money AND serving your audience with highly qualified, highly relevant sponsorships that you can get right now.

    Example: consolidate your student loans with the Student Loan Network, and my podcast gets $100 per signed, returned application. All I really need to make expenses for my podcast is 1 loan application a month (to pay for Libsyn). Anything on top of that is gravy.

  • Amazing builds in Second Life

    I was sailing around the SLuniverse this evening, and found myself in the midst of a HUGE build. Someone is constructing a Nova class starship inside of Second Life – complete with blueprints, floorplans, etc. The attention to detail is AMAZING. Take a look:

    Adventures in Second Life

    Adventures in Second Life

    Adventures in Second Life

    With builds this high quality, machinema inside of SL is a no-brainer.

  • Your brand is not my idea of your brand

    C.C. Chapman sent out a message (okay, more than one) about a contest and promotion he’s heading up for Coca-Cola, called Virtual Thirst. Submit an idea to the contest for a virtual vending machine to be built in Second Life, and if you win, you get flown out to San Francisco to be featured in the video of the making of the vending machine. From the official web site:

    Imagine a world in which a simple vending machine could dispense – not Coca-Cola – but the ESSENCE of Coca-Cola: refreshment, joy, unity, experience… So throw away the box, your expectations and interpretations of what a Coke machine is. Think expansively about the possibilities for having fun and being part of a great experience. Show us your best ideas – what do you wish you could do or see in Second Life? Do not limit yourself to your own abilities to create objects inside of Second Life – find any way to express your idea and get it to us. Let us and the developers of Millions of US help you make them real in Second Life.

    Incidentally, I have to wonder about the following rules for entering:

    You may submit your idea in any of the following ways: – gift an object to us in Second Life – teleport your avatar to https://www.virtualthirst.com/launch and use the drop-box to gift us your object
    – share a video in YouTube – visit https://www.youtube.com/virtualthirst and use the “Connect with VirtualThirst” function to send us a message and attach your uploaded video
    – share an image/description with us in MySpace – visit https://www.myspace.com/virtualthirst and use “Send Message” to post your idea as a message to us
    – US residents only can also e-mail us your idea – send an email to [email protected] with the subject line, “Virtual Thirst Entry” and attach your idea to the email. Please do not use the body of the email to describe your idea.

    Why isn’t blog post in there anywhere?

    Here’s the problem I have with the contest – and I’ll be frank, because as much as I want C.C.’s first major public project to succeed wildly, I think he’d be more disappointed if I didn’t speak my mind.

    Coke’s idea of its brand is not my idea of its brand.

    The essence of Coca-Cola to the company is “refreshment, joy, unity, experience”. For me, as a consumer of its products, Coke products fit the first to a greater or lesser degree, and the other three don’t apply. Coke’s brand to me is essentially a source of cold caffeine, as is Pepsi, and virtually any other soda manufacturer out there. It’s what I drink (usually diet) when coffee does not fit the bill. If you were to sit me down in a focus group and ask me what the brand makes me feel, it makes me feel somewhat energized (or at least less lethargic, as I usually have it after lunch), carbonated, occasionally burpy, and less thirsty. I don’t have a particularly strong attachment to the Coke brand, even though I really enjoy reading about the company’s history and its original recipe.

    And yes, if Classic Coke were truly Classic Coke, a la Pemberton’s recipe, it’d be illegal in the US. Ah, cocawine!

    Can I create an idea around Coke’s idea of its brand? Sure. But it’s not my idea of their brand, and in the age of the empowered consumer, my idea of their brand is more important than theirs. Why? Because my idea and feeling about their brand ultimately dictates whether or not I buy it, whether or not I recommend it. A virtual vending machine dispensing their brand ideal in Second Life will not make me more likely to choose their product over another’s – whose product is most readily available at a good price point at 1:30 PM on weekdays will most likely influence my purchase. Happily for the Coca-Cola company, the Student Loan Network has a contract with a local distributor that provides employees free Coke products at work.

    Ultimately, Coke has fairly little brand equity with me – they’re a provider of beverages, and if I need or want a beverage, they certainly are in the running as a potential source, but they haven’t secured enough brand loyalty with me to make me automatically choose them over another product. They have brand recognition with me, of course, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into sales. What would improve my loyalty to their products? Not sure. I do know that when Pepsi ran its iTunes promotion a while back, I grabbed an awful lot of Pepsi products during the promotion, and I remember it, but since the promotion ended, I’ve defaulted back to convenience and cost as drivers of my purchases.

    So, all that said, here’s my idea for the Virtual Thirst contest. It’s automatically invalid, I guess, because it’s being submitted via a non-approved way, but since I probably will be booked whenever the contest winning time is announced anyway, (if you can’t travel on the dates specified by the contest, you forfeit your prize, and my Google Calendar looks like my defrag map on my hard drive) here’s my idea for Coke’s view of its brand:

    Build a vending machine that you step into and it shows you various types of Creative Commons licensed new media that have been tagged with the same qualities as Coke’s brand – refreshment, joy, unity, experience. As you experience each media type, you vote on whether you think the media fits with its tag. After a while, you’ll have a pool of Creative Commons media – photos, audio, video, music – that the community has voted as the most refreshing, the most joyful, the most unifying, the greatest experience.

    Good luck with the project, C.C., and I hope that you get some truly wild ideas for thing to build in Second Life!

    Technorati tags: virtual
    thirst
    virtualthirst
    Coca-Cola
    Coke
    experience
    Second
    Life
    SecondLife

  • MySpace Marketing in the Post-Bot Era

    MySpace Marketing in the Post-Bot Era

    Hat tip to Social Ham for documenting what everyone knew was coming: MySpace cracking down on the providers of MySpace automation software. For MySpace, it’s a big step towards cleaning things up a little. For independent marketers and promoters, it’s the tragedy of the commons – the spammers effectively destroyed their own tools, and took a lot of tools away from people who were using them in relatively ethical ways. (i.e. Friend requests from bands who sound like bands you like…)

    Of course, some bots will continue to function for a little while longer, until the next major code shift at MySpace. Some bots are open-source, meaning that independent developers savvy in the language the bots are written in will be able to adapt. For the most part, for the bands, promoters, marketers, and podcasts that don’t have the technical firepower to keep up with MySpace, this is pretty much the end of the line for MySpace marketing 1.0.

    The big question now is – what’s next? What comes after the era of MySpace bots? Three guesses: arbitrage, hub concentration, and whore trains.

    Arbitrage. There are already some outsourcing firms that offer to manage your MySpace profile for you, including friend requests and messages. Workers in labor markets overseas handle all of the mundane work of managing your profile manually, and you get billed a service fee. These services will probably start to take off, since there’s really no way to stop them – at the end of the day, it’s a human at the keyboard instead of a bot. The arbitrage is taking advantage of exceptionally cheap labor overseas to be able to bill at a reasonable price.

    Hub concentration. Your profile will take a lot more work to market now if you don’t have access to automation tools, which means that marketing on MySpace will likely take on a more LinkedIn-style, where you endeavor to attract and befriend as many major hubs as you can – people with gazillions of friends.

    Whore trains. Expect this relatively pointless pastime to suddenly become relevant again. Without automation tools, you’ll have to rely on friend of a friend networks, and whore trains are the fastest way to bridge networks quickly, at the cost of a friend base that is less relevant and focused.

    Where’s the smart money? Refocus your efforts on your own destination site first, and add links to the relevant social networks as appropriate. The window of opportunity to use social networks themselves as promotional vehicles is closing rapidly, so extract the last value out of them that you can, and then use them as brand extenders, but not as lead generators.

    Where’s the next big thing? Remember the conversation we had on Marketing Over Coffee. In the beginning, there was word of mouth at the market fair. Mass media brought mass marketing – advertising. Google brought us the Third Age of Advertising – search. Now we enter the Fourth Age, characterized by community and prediction. Community and prediction are two sides of the same coin – your database. We as marketers will live or die, profit or lose, flourish or flounder on our database, because as permission marketing gets tougher and tougher, we’ll need to mine our databases more carefully and more thoroughly, more humanly and more accurately. We’ll need to predict the needs of the people in our database, as well as use the data to predict the needs of new customers, and do it in a way that invites them into our community, and not just another row in the customers table.

    Marketing 2.1 just had a fatal error. Time for a service pack to Marketing 2.2. Are you ready?

  • For the Public Good – Pseudoephedrine and Phenylephrine

    Ever heard of these two drugs? Pseudoephedrine and Phenylephrine. One is a vasoconstrictor, the other a vasopressor. One is a precursor chemical used to manufacture methamphetamines, and that’s where the trouble begins.

    A bit of history: pseudoephedrine has been used for years as a nasal decongestant. It’s effective in temporarily relieving congestion and stuffiness, and works well for a lot of people. Unfortunately for pseudoephedrine, it can be reduced using a variety of chemical methods to form methamphetamine, a potent, addictive drug. As a result, legislation passed in 2005 has restricted the sale of pseudoephedrine, and many retailers, drug manufacturers, and distributors have substituted phenylephrine in their cold remedies.

    What’s the problem with this? At least for me, and for others, phenylephrine is ineffective as a decongestant. I’ve tried it a number of times, and it has no effect whatsoever on me. Why? According to Wikipedia and subsequent sources, phenylephrine doesn’t activate a norephedrine response in the body, and is metabolized by monoamine oxidase through ingestion, with up to 2/3 of the drug being broken down before it gets into the body. The net effect? Phenylephrine doesn’t clear a stuffy nose for me, making it a waste of money.

    So here’s the question: does the public good of reducing the supply of pseudoephedrine for potential misuse outweigh the cost of a drug which has questionable effectiveness? Does the mitigation of potential criminal activity balance out with increased discomfort from illness?

    If you buy a decongestant containing phenylephrine, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t have the same bang for the buck that pseudoephedrine-based decongestants did.

    Side tip: even though it’s marketed for treatment of allergies, drugs like loratadine (marketed under the name Claritin) are also helpful for suppressing the histamine response for colds, and is effective for me against a stuffy nose. Disclosure: I work in student loans, not medicine or pharmacy. I have no expertise in this stuff at all besides what works for me – consult someone who’s actually qualified before self-treating with drugs.

    Side tip 2: even though directions for making methamphetamine are readily available on the internet, I’d suggest taking a course or two in organic chemistry first. Using the directions available, you’re more likely to blow yourself up than make something that will give you a high. It’d be like giving you this set of directions for making a cake: flour, sugar, milk, eggs, water, cocoa powder. Mix and bake. Good luck actually getting a cake out of that.

  • This is why I have a personal blog…

    … because even though this post is loan-related, it definitely doesn’t belong on the company’s web site.

    Senator Charles Schumer, you’re an idiot. Specifically, you’re an idiot for proposing legislation that will provide a bailout for homeowners facing foreclosure, according to the Washington Post.

    “We will be proposing significant amounts of dollars,” Schumer told reporters after being asked if a large federal bailout may be needed.

    More from your colleagues:

    “We’ve heard one heartbreaking story after another of borrowers with limited incomes being sold mortgages they could not afford,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said at a briefing on Capitol Hill.

    Full stop. Reality would like to have a word with you, then possibly bitchslap you. Unless a mortgage broker forged a signature on a loan document, the borrower signed for the mortgage. If they didn’t sign for it, then that’s fraud and they’re not liable for a penny of the debt. If they did sign it, but didn’t understand what they were signing, that’s not fraud, that’s stupidity.

    Lesson the first: never sign something you don’t understand. Ever.

    Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn, said he would call for a summit on Capitol Hill soon “to try to work out a process for providing relief to homeowners.”

    Senator Dodd, you’re added to the list of idiots.

    Why? Because when you execute a bailout on bad debts, guess who gets the money? Not the homeowner. Not the poor grandmother and the other sob stories you’re trotting out. The banks get the money. You’re essentially proposing to funnel a billion or so dollars straight to the loan portfolios of Citibank, Wells Fargo, Chase Manhattan, and other lenders, and I’m sure they’re very happy with your idea. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that they’ll repay the favor with some campaign funds.

    Wait, let’s go check.

    CHARLES E. SCHUMER (D-NY)
Top Industries

The top industries supporting Charles E. Schumer are:
1 	Securities & Investment 	2,507,200
2 	Lawyers/Law Firms2,009,721
3 	Real Estate 	1,529,498
4 	Commercial Banks549,249
5 	Misc Finance 	$534,248

    And for some names…

    CHARLES E. SCHUMER (D-NY)
Top Contributors

1 	JP Morgan Chase & Co 	129,800
2 	Merrill Lynch127,000
3 	Bear Stearns 	126,400
4 	Citigroup Inc111,550
5 	Morgan Stanley 	$109,500

    I call bullshit on you and your bailout of your financiers. This is payola, plain and simple, disguised as an appeal to a middle class who won’t see a dollar of your proposed aid to them – but they’ll pay it out in higher taxes. What about you, Senator Dodd?

    CHRISTOPHER J. DODD (D-CT)
Top Industries

The top industries supporting Christopher J. Dodd are:
1 	Securities & Investment 	1,552,013
2 	Lawyers/Law Firms749,472
3 	Insurance 	697,458
4 	Real Estate504,941
5 	Commercial Banks 	$403,700

    Again, I call bullshit, but let’s dig once more…

    CHRISTOPHER J. DODD (D-CT)
Top Contributors

1 	Citigroup Inc 	196,550
2 	Bear Stearns186,350
3 	United Technologies 	157,950
4 	American International Group121,378
5 	St Paul Travelers Companies 	$105,800

    Nice to see your legislation will fatten the profits of your supporters at the expense of my wallet.

    Go take a long walk off a short pier. If you ever wondered why America doesn’t trust you, this is why. Payola sucks, no matter how you slice it. I swear, I’m going to find that C-SPAN video of your speech on the Senate floor and put a big-ass “This appeal for more government misuse of tax dollars is brought you you by these fine banks which would like some free money…”

    Disgusting.

  • PodCamp NYC Presentations

    For those interested, these are my slide decks from 4 of the 6 sessions I did at PodCamp NYC.

    As per all things PodCamp, these are released under the Creative Commons 3.0 US by-nc-sa license.

  • Why I'm a Session Madman

    A few people asked me why I presented so much at PodCamp NYC. Here’s the simplest reason: I get too comfortable. By that, I mean it’s not only human nature, but very much in my own nature to hang out with people I know and enjoy being with. At an event like PodCamp, that’s bad. Very, very bad, because it means I’m not taking the opportunity to meet new people. My way around this, my mindhack if you will, is to do lots of sessions on different things and see who shows up, then meet them. Based on the sheer volume of emails in my inbox waiting for replies, I think the strategy is working. Hello to all of my new acquaintances and friends!

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