Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Blog

  • An economic solution

    Here is a dead simple solution for foreclosed houses: offer these at cut rate auctions to affordable housing developers like CASCAP in Cambridge, MA. These agencies can use the properties, otherwise fated to decay, for affordable housing for the poor and homeless.

    Why we won’t embrace this solution:

    Few businesses understand the sunk cost fallacy. Banks and mortgage holders cling desperately to assets that continue to decline in value in the vain hope that they’ll be worth something close to what they paid.

    Remember this: a bag of gold, no matter how valuable, will kill you if you’re trying to stay afloat.

  • Why You Should Go To Jeff Pulver's VON.x

    Laser beam at the iSightJeff Pulver’s hosting Spring VON.x in San Jose the week of March 17. While I can’t make it, if you have any interest in voice or video online, you should.

    Top 5 Reasons to go to VON.x

    1. See great speakers give you an idea where things are going for them
    2. Watch a professional conference team put on an event with operational excellence that would make your ops team envious
    3. See Jeff try to broadcast his entire conference from a Nokia N95
    4. Pulver’s All Conference Party. If you’ve been to one, I need say no more.
    5. Cisco gives away laser pointers at their booth on the VON expo floor. Frickin’ laser beams.

    With luck, you can make it to VON.x. Wish I could! Register here.

  • Join the Conversation Book Review

    Slackershot: Join the ConversationJoseph Jaffe was kind enough to send me a review copy of his latest book, Join the Conversation. It’s a really, really LONG book, weighing in at 300 pages. I managed to get through it in about two weeks of sporadic reading.

    The Good

    • The book has plenty of case studies and examples of conversational marketing. Everything from Fedex Furniture to Virtual Thirst.
    • Jaffe writes in a similar style to Seth Godin – short sentences in second person voice, so it’s easy reading.
    • Standalone text units mean you can pick up and put down the book easily.

    The Bad

    • If you like books to flow, this isn’t it. Each unit of text practically stands alone. If you’re accustomed to more of a story, this book is, as Mitch Joel put it, like a series of blog posts.
    • There are almost too many case reviews and not enough actionable plans.
    • Whoever did the font typesetting needs to be slapped around. There are WAY too many fonts, so many that it’s distracting.

    Overall

    It’s hard to actually review this book because it’s in sort of a grey zone for me. Is it a good introduction to conversational marketing? Not really, at least not for the beginner, because there are very few clear takeaways or plans to begin implementation. For the advanced new media marketer, the book doesn’t break a lot of new ground in ways you can disrupt the marketplace with marketing – it’s more of a series of case studies than it is a blueprint for your next marketing Death Star.

    Join the Conversation is probably best suited as an idea book – the kind of book you pick up from time to time when you need to leaf through a few examples to generate ideas. Get inspiration from how people have done things or glean lessons from how NOT to do things based on missteps of the past.

    Join the Conversation Book Review 1Would I recommend it? If you’re at the journeyman stage of new media marketing, I think Join the Conversation is a worthy addition to your bookshelf. For those who haven’t played Sid Meier’s Pirates!, that’s the second of four stages:

    • Apprentice (and not Donald Trump’s kind)
    • Journeyman
    • Adventurer
    • Swashbuckler

    Join the Conversation fits for those no longer new to new media marketing, but haven’t developed an arsenal of their own yet. It’s also probably too long for most executives to plow through, except maybe in audiobook format, but it’s still a good resource if you’re needing inspiration for your new media marketing campaign.

    Join the Conversation is available for sale here on Amazon. (disclosure: 5% commission goes to my employer, the Student Loan Network)

  • Prediction: Divorce rate to skyrocket in US in 4/08

    Mortgage Rate resets

    Give people about a month after their subprime mortgage payment balloons to obscene proportions and it’s not hard to guess that in some cases, that will lead to divorce and broken homes. The next big wave of resets begins in March 2008, based on the CSFB data in the chart above.

    Buckle your seatbelts and unplug the popcorn machine. 2008 is going to be a rough year.

  • Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: The Worst Is Just Beginning

    [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETQj3a221EQ[/youtube]

    The market crashes, turns to ashes that you’re dancing on
    while some fat lady cues up for a song.

    You just don’t panic, so they said
    in all the good books that I have read.
    You just lay back and feed your head,
    but that ain’t clever, that never got nothing to
    sell, hell, oh well, maybe we were
    better off dead.

    – Matthew Ebel, Better Off Dead from the album Goodbye Planet Earth, the best damn album you’ll buy today

  • Happy Valentine's Day!

    Valentine’s Day doesn’t rank highly on my list of important days. As CC Chapman said, if you need a holiday to show someone you love that you care, you have serious issues you need to address in your relationship.

    Happy Valentine's Day! 2Combine that with crass commercialism and an attempt to raid your wallet through your heart by major corporations (check the stocks of 1-800-FLOWERS today – ticker: FLWS, FTD ticker: FTD, Red Envelope ticker: REDE) and you have a day I’m not wildly thrilled about.

    So let’s rearrange the day of showing love a bit.

    Figure out what you’d spend on an average Valentine’s Day among flowers, gifts, dinner, cards, and the other corporate subsidies pop culture asks you to buy. Total all that up, and then make a contribution to your significant other’s favorite charity instead, in their name. If you’re going to spend money today, spend it on something that will show true love – a contribution to an organization that will serve the greater good.

    There’s no shortage of charities to choose from, and tons of good causes. Check out Charity Navigator to find efficiency ratings of various charities, to see how your money is used and what percentage of each dollar goes to actually help the people or causes you donated to help. Every non-profit charity with 501(c)(3) status is also required to disclose its IRS 990, so you can inspect for yourself how they use their money.

    Make Valentine’s Day about love – love not only for your significant other, but about love for your world, your community, and the greater good. As my teacher Stephen K. Hayes says, there is no greater way to serve yourself and make yourself happier than to help others.

    Got a charity you want to promote? Post a link to it in the comments! 

    Photo credit: Sister72

  • Daily Show Clip

    Worth watching, on the housing crisis.

  • Where does your beer money come from?

    I’ve got a post on the work blog about beer money, and would LOVE your thoughts and comments on it:

    Financial Aid Podcast Community Question: Where do you get your beer money?

  • Metcalfe's Blog

    Metcalfe’s Blog

    We’ve talked in the past about Metcalfe’s Law, the idea that in a network, every new member of the network not only derives value from the network, but makes the network as a whole more valuable; the classic example cited is the fax machine. Every fax machine sold increases the value of existing fax machines.

    Blogging is one of those Metcalfe applications. Consider this: you’ve got a blog with a decent theme, and on that blog, chances are you have a blogroll or list of friends, sites, and links. (and if you don’t, you might want to consider it) On here, the blogroll is on the right-most navigation bar. The navigation of your blog probably also contains links to other things you care about, such as causes, friends, and even your own stuff on other sites.

    Here’s the neat part. Every time I write a blog post, WordPress creates a new page, with a new URL. On that new page, there are a whole pile of links to other pages on this site and on the blog roll. Every blog post makes preceding blog posts more valuable, and as a bonus, every blog post creates an entirely new page with outbound links to everyone in my blogroll. They all benefit every time I blog. I benefit every time I blog. Blogging is self-reinforcing, and that is one of the features that makes it such a powerful tool.

  • 18-1, Super Choke, and more

    The latest Marketing Over Coffee is now available, in which we discuss how you can make millions of dollars with useless sports slogans.

    I nominate for the latest from Super Bowl XLII:

    • 18-1
    • Super Choke
    • Nobody’s Perfect

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