Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

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No such thing as a free lunch

No such thing as a free lunch

How much did you pay last year for Facebook? For Gmail? For Foursquare? For Twitter?

Right.

Nothing.

How much value did you derive from these services?

If you don’t know or can’t tell, the easiest way is to ask yourself how much you would have to spend out of pocket to recreate them. Take something like Gmail, as an example. You’d need a computer with an Internet connection, the Linux operating system, the Postfix mail server, the Apache web server, knowledge of how to securely configure all these pieces, and the web interface.

You’d need to administer this server, applying software updates and security patches on a frequent basis. It’s not an impossible task – I did it for years as an IT administrator – but it is not a simple thing to do, and it is not an inexpensive thing to do.

How much would it cost you to develop your own Facebook, where you could set your own privacy terms, run the service exactly the way you wanted it to, be everything that you wanted it to be?

Services like Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail are not free. They have never been free. Up until now, the costs to you have merely been deferred. They have real costs that are traded in exchange for something of value from you. In this day and age, that’s personal and behavioral data. Your goodwill? Your word of mouth? Both combined with $5 will get you a cup of coffee from the local commercial coffee chain. What’s for sale is you, the consumer, to advertisers and partners.

If you don’t like how these businesses – and they are businesses, seeking to make profits – treat you, don’t use them. Don’t sign up for them. Don’t give them your time, data, or mindshare. Build your own or use businesses that are more aligned with your values – and be prepared to pay cash out of pocket for them.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

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May 27, 2010
Know when to skimp and when to splurge

Know when to skimp and when to splurge

Have you ever noticed that people skimp on the strangest things?

For example, I moved into a new office complex at Blue Sky Factory and the new place had neither a coffeemaker nor a filtered water system. However, the new place has plenty of other expensive amenities like a giant office printer.

I’ve noticed this when people purchase electronics. They’ll spend thousands on a new laptop and then skimp on memory or drive space, two items that will make a giant difference in their experience with the laptop. They’ll commit to buying an iPhone or an Android and then will get the smallest, lowest cost amount of memory possible.

I’ve noticed this at hotels, especially. Hotels will have 300 thread count sheets on the bed but will have sandpaper in the bathroom, making your stay there a literal pain in the ass.

Why do we skimp on some items and splurge on others?

I suspect it’s largely what gets our attention and what mindset we’re in when we’re making purchases. Toilet paper and coffee seem like commodities to us, while laptops and sheets may not be, at least not mentally. The more we buy of something, the less we may be inclined to pay attention to the quality of what we’re buying. The more mundane and unsexy something is – like toilet paper or laptop memory – the less we are inclined to pay attention to it.

The paradox is that some of these commodities make a bigger difference in the richness of our experiences than the highly focused items. I’d gladly take last year’s laptop stuffed full of memory and disk space over the latest and greatest machine that’s starved for operating resources. I’d gladly trade down a model of office printer for a coffeemaker or water filter on site – and I’d bet a company would generate far more productivity via the coffee machine than the copy machine. I’m more likely to stay at a hotel where the quality of experience is more even – nicer toilet paper, slightly rougher sheets (I can’t tell the difference between 200 thread count and 300 thread count, honestly) – rather than luxury sheets and a roughed up bottom.

Want to make a difference in your own life? Look at the nearly unconscious choices you make while spending and evaluate whether or not a slight upgrade could have a major but quiet impact on your quality of life. Some things won’t matter – generic , white label sugar at the grocery store is no different than Brand Name sugar. Some things will matter a great deal – a slightly better kind of coffee may taste MUCH better to you.

Here’s a relatively simple rule of thumb: the more you use it, the more you should invest in quality. If you’re buying a stereo, for example, and you plan to use it once a year, it probably won’t matter what you buy. If you plan to use it every day for 8 hours a day, buy a very nice stereo because crappy sound will make you feel worse rather than better. If you drink coffee once in a blue moon, buy any quality of coffee and coffeemaker. If you drink coffee several times daily, buy decent coffee and a good quality machine.

Look for opportunities to trade expenses as well. For example, at this office space, the employees (lacking access to a filtered water system) bring tons of bottled water and buy Starbucks every day. Rather than chew up money doing that, it makes much more sense to get a countertop pitcher that will filter water to a better quality than even bottled can deliver (you do know that 30% or more of bottled water is someone else’s municipal tap water, yes?) and brew your own higher quality coffee rather than drop $5 a cup to the coffee shop. No one loses out except the bottled water company and the corporate coffee shop.

Are you skimping and splurging in the right places for maximum quality of life on the same fixed budget?

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May 25, 2010
Mandatory viewing: Sir Ken Robinson at TED 2010

Mandatory viewing, especially if you’re thinking at all about education and how badly we’re failing the generations of students now in school. Read more at TED.com.

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May 24, 2010
Bringing back the morning numbers tweet

Bringing back the morning numbers tweet

A long time ago (by Internet standards, anyway) I used to tweet out a bunch of financial indicators, in the days when I did a financial podcast. After making the move to Blue Sky Factory and the the world of email marketing, I lost touch with some of the day to day market numbers, and I’m finding that my ability to understand the world – especially the news headlines – is diminished.

So I’m bringing back the financial morning tweet, for my own benefit if not for everyone else’s. Every morning that I do #the5 (see this post for what #the5 is all about), I’ll do the numbers as well.

Now, if you’re not at all interested in financial data, this sort of tweet will be uninteresting. Just skip it.

Here’s what it will look like:

DJIA -81 SPX -11 VIX 40 TED 35.7 LIBOR91 51 OIS 22 MSCI 1074 BDI 3844 30yr 4.87 BCF 71.24 GLD 1183.40 RR 12.25 #econ

If you’re interested in financial data but have no idea what any of this means, let’s take a cruise through it.

DJIA: The Dow Jones Industrial Average. While it’s not the be-all/end-all of the state of our economy, the Dow is the most popular and well known indicator in the press and media, so it’s included for its psychological impact. Measured in dollars, and in the mornings, it’ll be listed as the futures, or what investors are predicting will happen the moment the markets open up.

SPX: The Standard & Poor 500. One of the better measures of the overall economy, the S&P 500 includes the stock prices of 500 companies from around the business nation. Measured in dollars, and in the mornings, it’ll be listed as the futures, or what investors are predicting will happen the moment the markets open up.

VIX: The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index. One measure of seeing how confident investors are. When the VIX is low (under 20), there’s not much volatility in the market. When the VIX is high (over 30), it means there’s a lot of volatility and not a lot of confidence. Measured in basis points; 100bp = 1%.

TED: The TED spread. This is the difference between 3 month Treasury bill rates and the 3 month LIBOR (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate). The TED spread indicates credit risk in the economy – when the spread is wide (more than 50), it means that the banking system is in trouble. Measured in basis points; 100bp = 1%.

LIBOR91: 91 day, or 3 month London Inter-Bank Offered Rate. LIBOR indicates the cost for banks to borrow from each other. LIBOR indicates how expensive money is to borrow, and higher LIBOR rates will correspond to higher borrowing rates for businesses and consumers. Measured in basis points; 100bp = 1%.

OIS31: 31 day or 1 month Overnight Indexed Swap rate. OIS measures how much liquidity – cash – is in the financial system. Higher OIS means less cash is in the system, while low OIS means lots of easy money is floating around. Measured in basis points; 100bp = 1%.

MSCI: The Morgan Stanley Capital International. The MSCI is an index of 1,500 world stocks from developed nations, giving a broad overview of the world’s corporate performance. As MSCI goes up, so do the world’s economies. Measured in dollars.

BDI: The Baltic Dry Index. BDI measure the cost of shipping bulk dry cargoes. This is important because unlike speculative investments, BDI measures the price of actual goods in transit. You don’t buy space on a cargo ship unless you have something you’re selling and shipping. Higher BDI indicates more demand for shipping and means the economy is growing. Measured in dollars.

30yr: The 30 year fixed mortgage rate as published by Bloomberg. The most standard kind of mortgage, mortgage rates go up when the cost of borrowing money goes up and vice versa. Measured in percentage points.

BCF: Brent Crude Futures, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil. BCF tells you how expensive oil is on the market. Oil fuels your car, heats your house, and indirectly impacts consumer goods (since most everything is made of some plastic), as well as food prices – most fertilizer in agriculture is derived from oil. Interestingly enough, if you divide the BCF number by 25, you get roughly the price at the pump in a few weeks. Not a hard and fast rule, but a useful forward-looking indicator. Life gets more expensive when oil prices go up – but pollution and consumption goes down. Measured in dollars.

GLD: The price of a troy ounce of gold. Gold is one of the world’s benchmarks for inflation. As a currency inflates or as an economy deteriorates, people buy gold as a hedge, a way to protect themselves from loss. Gold itself isn’t really useful – it’s just a lump of metal – but it doesn’t lose physical mass sitting in a vault in the same way that a stock can lose value rapidly on speculation. Measured in dollars.

RR: Rough Rice. This is the world price of a bushel of rough rice, or rice just harvested from the fields. 20% of the nutrition of all humanity comes from rice, so when the price of rice goes up, it’s effectively a tax on the world. If the price of rough rice goes really high (above 15) you will see headlines in the world news about food shortages and hunger with greater frequency. Measured in dollars.

What does it all mean?

Individually, each indicator tells you something about how the world is doing financially. Some indicators tell you about banks and governments. Others tell you about commodities, raw materials, or corporations. Put together, they’re a very diverse view of the world economy and can even predict the future a little bit.

For me, I look at them to see how the world is doing. What’s in the headlines very often has financial underpinnings. If you know from these indicators what’s happening financially today, you’ll know what the news will be in a few days or weeks ahead.

If the price of oil skyrockets, you’ll see changes in the news and daily life. Seeing BCF spike now will tell you that those changes will be coming in 4-6 weeks as that barrel of oil eventually works its way into finished goods that consumers use.

Seeing the price of rough rice spike today and stay consistently high for a month will tell you that poor countries who are dependent on rice as a nutritional staple will be headed for famine if the price doesn’t come down.

Seeing the VIX skyrocket as it did a few years ago gave insiders advanced notice of the major stock market crashes long before the general public knew. Way back in the day, I saw the VIX leap above 30 and stay there in the summer of 2007. I dumped my entire retirement portfolio into a money market account in reaction to it. While I made almost no money in the following two years, I managed to completely avoid the market crash, too and saved my retirement from disaster.

I’d encourage you to not just pay attention to these numbers or tweets, but to also pick your own indicators, your own interpretation of what’s important in the world. You’ll know long before your friends and colleagues what’s going to happen if you study the numbers and learn what they mean.

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May 22, 2010
Photo Friday: Morning sunrise

In an effort to remind myself to take and post more photos, we’ll have a little fun called Photo Friday.

Click for a larger version

This is a sunrise I’ve been waiting to take ever since starting to work for Blue Sky Factory email marketing. It’s a reservoir near my house, not too far from I-90, and there’s a relatively unsafe
place to park on the side of the road that during regular traffic hours would be stupid to park in, but you can get away with it at sunrise because there’s not much traffic on the road at 5:30 AM.

I took three exposures, -2, 0, and +2 with my D90 and merged them in Photoshop.

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May 21, 2010
The marketing pitch cookie

The marketing pitch cookie

Have you ever heard of the fortune cookie joke where you add “… in bed” to every fortune?

For example, these standard-issue fortunes become much funnier:

“You are talented in many ways.”
“Any rough times are behind you.”
“Decide what you want and go for it.”
“Many a false step is made by standing still.”

Try applying this – silly as it is – to your marketing copy. For example, try “… in bed” with these well-known marketing slogans:

“Simply the best.” (Toyota)
“Can’t beat the real thing.” (Coca Cola)
“Thousands of possibilities. Get yours.” (Best Buy)
“Just do it.” (Nike)

If you don’t have billions of dollars to expend on an advertising blitz to back up a meaningless marketing slogan, chances are it will fail to be memorable or move the needle at all.

If your marketing slogan just gets confusing or makes no sense with “… in bed” appended, you’re on the right track. If, on the other hand, it’s downright funny, then your marketing copy is far too vague and unfocused.

Try it and see how it works for you…

… in bed.

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May 19, 2010
How you sold me at triple price

How you sold me at triple price

I’ve been in the market for an arborist – a tree professional that can take care of some dead wood and pruning in my yard on some very old trees. I’m far more capable when it comes to pruning databases than I am dogwoods, so I solicited bids from local arborists.

Three contractors came by the house and did their sales pitches. As with all things, I pay attention not just to the pitch content but how well trained the salesman is. Here’s what I got.

Contractor #1: Came by the house, presented me with a very direct, upfront list of what he’d do. Prune here, trim there, cut down some saplings – all very efficient. He presented his credentials, demonstrated a certificate of insurance, and gave me a price quote with no hassle: $697.

Contractor #2: Came by the house, apologized immediately and in advance for being a poor speaker and a poor salesman. Said he’s been working in landscaping for years, but just can’t speak well. He gave a brief overview of his services, what he’d do, and gave a $600 price quote which he said was firm no matter how much the scope of work changed. He made an additional point that no matter what other price we were quoted by competitors, he’d match or beat it.

Contractor #3: Came by the house and asked what we wanted, what we were trying to achieve. Asked whether we were looking for more sunlight, hazard reduction, etc. Noticed and pointed out some spots of rot on two of our trees that other contractors had missed and said that while there wouldn’t be a big impact for at least 10 years, eventually the rot would cause trouble down the road. Went into the front yard, which we griped about because the town’s trees on the sidewalk are never trimmed. Contractor mentioned that the law about trees is abundantly clear: if it hangs over your property, you have the right to trim or prune it without asking permission even if the trunk is on someone else’s property. He did a great upsell to his day rate, unlimited trees for $1900, and then explained how the trees would look in 1, 5, 10, and 30 years. He also said his insurance company would send us the coverage policy and paperwork with the written quote, which he’s not allowed to touch due to the possibility of fraudulent insurance.

If I were motivated solely by price, contractor #2 would have won easily. However, while price was definitely a factor, quality of work and expertise outweighed it. Contractor #3 won my business even at triple the price because he demonstrated expertise above and beyond just pruning trees – knowledge of the law and botany, expertise that indicates to me that he really knows what he’s doing.

Why is this so powerful that it justifies such a premium price tag? Unlike commodity widgets or generic chewing gum, trees and landscaping are very long term projects. There’s no undo with a chainsaw – once you do the work, it’s done. I was unwilling to leave my yard – which I value greatly – to the lowest bidder because, as in many things in life, you get what you pay for. I’m ready, willing, and able to pay for expertise if you can demonstrate your mastery before asking for the sale.

If your first instinct as a salesperson is to cut prices and focus only on the money, you will alienate the premium buyer who is willing to pay more in order to get more. Start with demonstrating service and expertise before the sale and you may make the sale without price ever becoming an objection.

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May 18, 2010
Fighting slander with a champion

Fighting slander with a champion

At the recent NEDMA conference keynote, an audience member asked a very insightful question:

In an age when the power of a single voice can be amplified so loud that it can take down a company or a brand, what recourse do we have?

What a powerful question, and certainly one on the minds of a lot of people. While the speaker’s answer – that the wisdom of the crowd is inherently self-policing – has some validity to it, it’s probably not an answer that’s going to satisfy someone in the corner office.

My take: first, you do need to legitimately not suck. That’s the hard part. If what you’re doing, what you’re creating in the world is worthwhile, valuable, and ethical, then you’ve got your best long-term insurance against trial by the court of public opinion…

… but that’s not enough. What you need on your side are champions. Not athletes, but in the truest medieval sense of the ideal, knights who will step up to battle for your cause. Bear in mind, we’re not talking about armed physical combat (but boy, wouldn’t that shut some critics up really fast), but having champions who are well-respected members of their community defend you in that court of public opinion.

Recruiting champions is very much a conscious effort. As you do business in your community, look for the folks who are the hubs of your niche. Get their attention and help them understand who you are and what you do, why your business, organization, or personal cause is worthy of their attention. Once you do, support your champions in any way you can. Help promote their causes, what they believe in, what’s of benefit to them and their community.

When the time comes – and it will if you’re successful – that you need to defend yourself against innuendo or false claims, summon your champions to your side and ask them (usually privately) to help stop the momentum of whatever issue you’re facing as long as you’re in the right. Don’t ever ask someone else to put their reputation on the line for you if you’re in the wrong – fix what’s wrong instead and own up to it.

If, however, you’re facing someone trying their damnedest to execute a smear campaign against you, if you’re facing unwarranted criticism or unjustified slander, your champions are your best defense in a court of public opinion. One last tip: the more successful you are, the more champions you’ll need in your stable, because there will be that many more people gunning for you.

Now ask yourself this: who are YOUR champions? Who will go to bat for you?

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May 14, 2010
The most basic business lesson taught by World of Warcraft
The most basic business lesson taught by World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft’s Auction House is the in-game marketplace, the bazaar where players can sell virtual stuff to other players. Magical potions, plate armor, everything under the virtual sun gets traded millions of times a day. Auctions listed in the Auction House can last up to 48 hours, after which they expire and your virtual goods are returned to you. If you don’t relist them, they just remain in your character’s bags. To be a successful auctioneer, you have to be “open for business” by constantly keeping items on the market for sale.

There’s one fundamental lesson the Auction House can teach us, one fundamental lesson we must take to heart and practice in our businesses:

If you’re not open for business, no one can buy from you.

It doesn’t matter how epic the items you have for sale are. It doesn’t matter how long it took you to win them in the game or make them from your trade skills. It doesn’t matter how low or high demand those items are. If they’re sitting in your bags and not on the market, no one can buy from you. You must be open for business to make money.

I know what you’re saying. You don’t play the video game. You don’t have a business that even remotely looks like this. The principle still applies, however. If You’re not open for business, no one can buy from you.
- You’re not open for business when someone calls and no one answers the phone, or worse, robots do it (poorly) for you.
- You’re not open for business when someone searches for your product or service and you don’t appear anywhere in the search results.
- You’re not open for business when someone emails you and you don’t respond ever, or worse, their email ends up in your spam bucket.
- You’re not open for business when someone asks a question about your company in social media and you aren’t part of the conversation at all.
- You’re not open for business when someone goes to check out online and your web site doesn’t let them complete the transaction.
Where are you open for business? Where are you effectively closed, turning away actively interested buyers who want to give you their money?

Want to make some real money? Where are your competitors not open for business, and can you be open for business in that space?

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May 12, 2010
Why you must bet the farm on mobile and social media
Why you must bet the farm on mobile and social media

Mitch Joel‘s keynote at MarketingProfs (which is a neat evolution of a talk I saw him give at PodCamp Toronto years ago) sparked an idea in my head about how we’re communicating with customers and what it means for your business. In his talk, he mentions the internal conversation, the one to one conversation, and the one to many conversation – how marketers can interact with their audiences.

Let’s take this a step further. Before we do, let’s look at a few changes in computing and communications.

The 1990s were the decade of email and email marketing. Computers were leashed to the wall for nearly every task. Even my ultra-awesome at the time Powerbook 1400cs (cs stood for color screen, imagine that!) needed to be tied to the wall for any form of communications. Most people were still computing using machines the size of aircraft carriers, and while the Web had just gotten popular amongst the high-tech crowd, by no means was it mainstream. Email was it, partly because email was something that people could grasp onto and understand immediately – form of electronic communications that worked very much like the real world’s analog equivalents. There were letters, addresses, inboxes, etc. – a good entry point for many.

2000-2009 was the decade of the Web, unquestionably. Computers got smaller and much, much cheaper. The decade started out with the Pentium III line of processors barely topping 1 GHz, and ended with computers shipping with four-core CPUs. People figured out the Web, they figured out what was possible beyond making a brochure of their company. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter arrived. Wireless Internet access via Wi-Fi finally got hot and achieved some level of market penetration.

Here we are in 2010. Computers are shipping now with as much processing power in a handheld as in a desktop, and Wi-Fi + 3G are the standard rather than the exception. The latest computer is fully mobile – the iPad – needing only to stop to recharge its internal battery and not much else. All this and we’re barely into the mobile revolution. This corresponds with the latest change of mind – social media.

While social media got its start in the era of the Web, it’s rapidly evolving to take advantage of the devices now afforded to it in ways the regular web simply cannot. There’s nothing more social than hanging out with friends and passing a mobile device for someone to have a quick laugh at a text, a mobile pic, or a Tweet. There’s nothing more social than sitting with colleagues and just handing someone an iPad to say, “look at this…”

As devices get smaller and easier to use, they become more social. Clay Shirky said it best – when something becomes technologically boring, it becomes socially interesting. In the case of the iPhone and iPad, the interface becomes so intuitive so quickly that it fades away to nothingness, leaving only you and what you aim to accomplish.

So let’s tie all this together. Email was and is, for functional purposes, the one to one conversation. Yes, you can broadcast email, yes you can reply to all in a manner that’s as convenient as it is painful, but fundamentally email is a one to one conversation.

The Web was the one to many conversation. Put up your site and as long as your server can handle the traffic, you can do one to many conversations better than at any point in human history. You can get noticed, become popular, and do business at greater velocity than ever before.

Social – and the mobile devices that will increasingly power it – is the next logical extension of Mitch’s framework. Social is the many to many conversation, where you as a marketer are an active participant, but you’re not in control, not in charge, not even directing the conversation. You are among your peers, interacting, collaborating, and creating.

Just as the rules for email are different than the rules for the Web, so are the rules for social different than what preceded it. Chris Brogan and Greg Cangialosi often like to quip that the strategy of choice is “be there before the sale” but that’s not enough. You have to be relevant before the sale. You have to be credible before the sale. You have to earn a seat at the table not only before but at the time the decision is being made, which means you have to have persistent presence of mind in the business cycle of your prospective customers.

In this framework, that also means that everything you do has to have at least an idea of how it will appear in a mobile computing landscape. If all you do is broadcast useless updates on Facebook and Twitter, you won’t be shared or talked about. You’ll stop appearing in people’s streams – and when the majority of communication is done on smaller form factor mobile devices, what little slice of screen real estate attention you have left will vanish.

If someone were to pass around your web site on a mobile device at an executive roundtable, what would they see?
- How easy is it to find a call to action?
- How easy is it to find a call to share?
- How easy is it to pass around by word of mouth?
The future based on trend growth is clear: mobile devices will power the way your prospective customers communicate, and social media will be the many to many conversation medium in which you will do business. Bear in mind, there will still be one to one and one to many – but there will also be many to many, and you need to be there.

Are you ready?

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May 10, 2010

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