Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Blog

  • Oddities in Sweden

    Oddities in Sweden:

    1. A lot of things are made of wood – like your hotel room key, coffee spoons, ice buckets for the room, clothes hangars, and more. It’s environmentally understandable – better to use wood than plastic, especially for anything disposable, but it’s still odd at times.

    2. Leather elevator. I kid you not, the walls of the elevator were paneled with leather.

    3. One night stands on the menu. I kid you not – we asked about this at the restaurant, what dubbelrum was, since it was 10 times the price of anything else on the menu. The waitress said, yes, that’s exactly what you think it is. It’s a hotel room upstairs if your date and dinner is going very well.

    One night stand

    4. Exceptionally clean. Chris Brogan joked that the city was so clean he could lay down and sleep in the gutters.

    5. Not an SUV in sight. Plenty of SMART cars, BMWs, Volvos, Mercedes sedans, a few Toyota Prius cards, but no SUVs at all.

    6. English transliteration cannot be phoenticized. For example, PodCamp Europe was held at a town called Alvsjo. It’s pronounced “Elve-koi-ya”.

    7. No chlorine in the warm water bathing pool. This was odd to me, but the water was sparkling and clean, not a bit of dirt or other pool critters in sight.

    Despite these little idiosyncrasies, Sweden is a beautiful country, and Stockholm seems like a wonderful city to visit and live in. Night life is lively, crime is low, and the city is waking up to new media.

  • Podcasting is missing half a million in Europe

    We as podcasters may be missing half a million or more audience members, and we don’t even know it.

    Here’s the thing I noticed all over Stockholm, and other European PodCampers confirmed in other countries – there were an awful lot of people listening. They had headphones jacked into devices all over the place.

    FEW of those devices were iPods. Of the ones that were MP3 players, the iRiver T series seemed to be the player of choice.

    For every MP3 player I saw, I saw 10 mobile phones being used as media devices. Mobile phones that were spinning up music, content, and everything primarily from telco carriers.

    I also learned that there are an awful lot of handsets equipped to be able to listen to podcasts – most of the Nokia N and E series phones supposedly can – and that the only thing missing is a way to get the listener to subscribe easily. Right now, asking the user to key in an RSS feed is far below optimal, but if we can figure out a way to get one click subscribe working on those handsets, then podcasts can join the music on headphones everywhere.

    If you had the opportunity to have your show – audio or video – on half a million more devices, to half a million more listeners, would you? And how much would that be worth to your show?

  • To the land of köttbullar!

    I’m off to Sweden today with PodCamp Co-Founder and partner, Chris Brogan. We’re headed, of course, to PodCamp Europe, a gathering of new media minds veteran and new, for two days of sharing, learning, and growing. It’s shaping up to be a great event, with lots of interest from mobile communications companies, students, journalists, and more – which reflects Scandinavia’s strong points, from what I’ve been reading.

    A quick shout out is earned by Andy Nyman and the Swecasters for being co-organizers, and of course to Jeff Pulver and VON, and Audana for sponsoring.

    Other random things… apparently, Swedish fish actually were Swedish at one point. The Swedish Chef from the Muppets was not Swedish, but may have been based on an actual Swedish chef. Swedish meatballs are called köttbullar and are served at IKEA. This I did not know.

    Rehearsal went well last night for the Podcast Marketing presentation. I’m much happier with the current version, which is a lot more coherent, as opposed to being just a bag of stuff.

    If you’re going to be in Stockholm, email me – FinancialAidPodcast at GMail dot com – and we can try to grab a cup of coffee and see the sights of Stockholm!

  • A Missed Opportunity for Podcasting?

    A Missed Opportunity for Podcasting?

    Just got off the phone with a company representative that wants to do a regional sponsorship for a few grand here in New England. My show was very much not the right fit, so I talked the rep through navigating MySpace and Google to locate other podcasters in the area, as well as pointing them at the New England Podcasting home page for other great shows in New England that might be a better fit.

    Here’s the zinger – the rep was on every major podcast network site out there, and couldn’t search by locale. This is a local sponsor, and there was no way for them to say, “Show me all the podcasts in Massachusetts” that they could find. MySpace is one of the few sites that publishes that info.

    And Todd Cochrane – I stand very much corrected in my initial statement about demographics in the last post. This advertiser wants a specific area because their ad spend would be wasted if the target audience isn’t within an easy drive of the locale, so demographics very much do matter here. Crow ain’t bad with dijon mustard. A little feathery.

    To everyone out there running their own podcast or podcast network – if you want to take advertising, make sure you have a media kit. Want to see an awesome media kit? Check out the Mommycast media kit. It’s a thing of beauty. If you run a podcast network, please help make it easy for people like this potential sponsor to figure out which shows would be a good fit for them, right on your site.

    Maybe I’ll add how to create a nice media kit to PodCamp Europe.

  • I don't care about podcast demographics and neither should you

    Okay, that’s not strictly true, but it is true that podcast demographics aren’t terribly important to me for the purposes of audience building. Why? Because this is new media, not broadcast media. What’s the difference?

    In broadcast media, you send out a message to your target audience and hope there’s enough relevant people in that database that some of them take action and buy your product or service. Broadcast marketers tend not to give a rat’s ass about feedback unless it involves a lawsuit; the only feedback they want to hear is the ringing of the cash register.

    In new media, you send out a message to people who want to hear from you. Not only do they want to hear from you, they want to talk to you and each other, and if you do your job well as a new media creator, they’ll want to talk to lots of other people about your media. Here’s the thing. Except for the highest profile people like the Scobles and Pirillos of the world, it’s very hard to quickly make a judgement call on who is an influencer and who is not. Thus, either you spend a crapload of time researching everyone carefully in your database, or you treat everyone like an influencer.

    That’s the secret that broadcast marketers are missing. For example, with my show, the Financial Aid Podcast, a broadcast marketer would say, okay, the audience is students, so specifically market and target 18 – 21 year old American students. If a listener who is a 33 year old parent of an 8 year old and a 5 year old, broadcast marketing tactics would say completely ignore that person, because they have no sales potential.

    However, that broadcast marketer is going to miss the fact that said parent has their own podcast with thousands of listeners, and a positive mention of your show could instantly add 10% more audience to your own show. New media marketers understand this one fundamental tenet (which is also a Buddhist one):

    Everyone is connected.

    In your marketing efforts, step back and think about your audience, whether you’re a broadcast marketer or a new media marketer. Are you excluding a group of people from your market segmentations – and if you are, who do they know that you’re no longer able to reach? If you have advertising on your podcast – do your advertisers understand that demographics are less important than word of mouth and influence?

    Edit: I’m clarifying this post to mean demographics shouldn’t matter as much for your audience building efforts as a podcaster. The subsequent post will explain why they’re still relevant to advertisers.

  • Is C.C. Chapman a Podcaster?

    Is C.C. Chapman a podcaster? Does he produce podcasts? Recently, I tried out the Songbird browser, which is part iTunes clone, part Firefox. When you browse any web page with MP3 links and/or RSS feeds, Songbird brings up a panel, kind of like iTunes’ mini-store, that lets you listen to the MP3s, download them (or queue them for batch download), and subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s a podcast producer’s dream browser in a way – instant connection for the audience members who want to listen right now, who want to subscribe, or who want to queue up selected shows for later listening. I decided to point it at a couple of web pages – my own, of course, at the Financial Aid Podcast, and I was rewarded with my most recent shows.

    Now, before I continue, I should clarify something. C.C. Chapman is not only a good friend and a brilliant guy, he’s also the Podfather of New England. C.C. started the first podcasting group in the area as podcasting was just getting started, and that became the New England Podcasting network. He’s unquestionably not only a podcaster, but a podcasting pioneer.

    I decided, let’s check out C.C.’s show, Accident Hash. Since I’ve been a little hard on Podshow recently, I figured I’d show off Songbird pointing to C.C.’s page on Podshow Plus – AccidentHash.Podshow.com, show a little love. Was I surprised. C.C. is not a podcaster. There’s no MP3s to download, no RSS feed to subscribe to, no way to get the show, his show, right then and there.

    CC Chapman is not a podcaster

    I headed over to AccidentHash.com, and found that on his own site, C.C. is a podcaster. MP3s, RSS, the full deal.

    CC Chapman is a podcaster

    So, in the tradition of trying to help Podshow Suck Less, I offer this suggestion to the development team at Podshow – on Podshow podcasters’ home pages on Podshow Plus, put links to the MP3s and RSS feeds – use the Auto-Discovery links so that browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Songbird, and Google Desktop-enabled browsers can find and subscribe right then and there. It’s a fast, easy way to quickly get new listeners.

    Nothing is more transient than a web site visitor. You’re lucky to get 5 seconds of their attention. If they can’t be rolling with the Podshow podcast they presumably came by to tune into immediately, they’re gone – and that listener may never come back. If you need the syntax for the auto-discovery, use this HTML:

    <link rel= "alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title ="RSS 2.0" href ="https://www.accidenthash.com/feed/" />

    This goes between the <head></head> section of the page and lets any browser find the RSS feed of choice. Please help C.C. Chapman become a podcaster again.

  • Podshow's Gold Mine, the RIAA, Sound Exchange, and sucking less

    Time to turn the Podshow discussion more positive with an idea they can execute on, instead of just complaining. One of my many causes is helping podsafe independent artists as much as I can, and this year I’ve been fortunate to be part of two projects to do that – Bum Rush the Charts (yes, still waiting on IODA to get me sales data) and Virtual Hot Wings.

    A few friends and I were standing around in CC Chapman’s U Turn Cafe in Second Life the other night and had an idea the other night that I would LOVE for someone at Podshow to steal/use/borrow/make. Podshow is the only company that can legally execute on the idea because they own the PMN.

    From the PMN license for artists:

    “Broadcast” means Work or an acceptable Derivative Work thereof that is played publicly for the benefit of interested listeners, and particularly when such Work is played by a listener accessing a digital file such as a podcast or streaming media file.

    3. You hereby waive the following rights to any and all musical compositions:
    a. the right to recover performance royalties under blanket licenses, including the right to collect such royalties individually or through a performance rights society.
    b. the right to recover mechanical rights or statutory royalties.
    c. the right to recover any royalty that may be applicable for public digital performance of the Work, such as webcasting or podcasting.

    From the PMN license for podcasters:

    “Broadcast” means Work or an acceptable Derivative Work thereof that is played publicly for the benefit of interested listeners, and particularly when such Work is played by a listener accessing a digital file such as a podcast or streaming media file.

    2. Subject to these Terms of Use, You are hereby granted the following world-wide, non-transferable, non-exclusive, royalty-free rights
    a. the right, and to access the Music database and reproduce each Work included therein for the purpose of Broadcasting the Work, including the right to use and incorporate each Work into a Collective Work, which may itself be Broadcast.
    c. the right to create and distribute webcasts and Podcasts that contain the Works

    What am I getting at? The PMN contract overrides the statutory royalty issues that SoundExchange and the RIAA have been nailing Internet radio/streaming radio stations with. By my read, as long as you are a valid, registered podcasting member of the PMN, you can play podsafe music and NOT have to pay SoundExchange/RIAA. If you run an Internet radio station, record all your shows with podsafe music from the PMN and publish them as podcasts as well, and you get to stay in business and not pay SoundExchange a cent.

    Pandora’s been making noise about going bye-bye due to increased web radio rates. A lot of other small Internet radio stations are saying the same. The law around SoundExchange is that it is a compulsory license – if you don’t have any other form of licensing, you MUST pay up to the RIAA, whether or not the artist ever sees a dime of the revenue. The law also states that the compulsory license can be overridden with a license directly from the artist, and Podshow has that license with the PMN.

    So the idea can go one of three ways:

    1. Give/sell/rent/grant Pandora a license to use the music on the PMN under the terms of the PMN license. This effectively ends their liability for royalties to SoundExchange, AND provides a great tool for exposure to podsafe artists.

    2. Built an equivalent Pandora-esque system using PMN artists.

    3. Alert every single streaming internet radio station in the United States and wherever draconian RIAA-sponsored laws apply that with a registration to the PMN as a broadcaster, they too can eliminate SoundExchange royalties as long as they only play podsafe music from the PMN.

    It also almost goes without saying that Podshow should be negotiating playlist time with lots of small, independent internet radio stations for its contracted podcasters, because those podcasts on the air also incur no SoundExchange penalties. Get Accident Hash or In Over Your Head on the hundreds of college radio stations, web stations, etc. so that not only are more people exposed to podcasting, but the Podshow family of podcasters also gets more promotion.

    So, to Joe Carpenter, Adam Curry, Jersey Todd, and everyone else involved in music at Podshow who was party to the last discussion about Podshow, here’s an opportunity to single-handedly save internet radio, earn goodwill, promote the PMN, and most of all, help podsafe artists all at once.

    This one’s on the house. Go to it, guys!

  • Here is what is wrong with Podshow (and maybe how to fix it)

    Here is what is wrong with Podshow (and maybe how to fix it)

    I’ve been collecting Twitters from folks about Podshow’s campaign:

    Mike Yusi: Is anyone else on Podshow getting emails complaining about the new openings?
    P. W. Fenton: Better question: Is anyone not?
    P_Dub: Some podcasters have avoided putting out podcasts until the one minute “suck less” goes away.
    Mike Yusi: P Dub: I actually got someone that said they weren’t going to listen to any more of my shows until they change it.
    C. C. Chapman: @UCRadio – I have already lost some listeners due to it.
    Rob Usdin: Podshow needs to use the radio model – have 5-10 different spots ready to go at the get-go – rotate them. Less listener fatigue.
    Rob Usdin: @P_Dub: See my comment to noebie re: having multiple spots ready at one time. Want me to listen? Make it so I have a reason to.
    Ranslow: I listen to a lot of podcasts from Podshow. The new intro is annoying after awhile. How about some variation on the theme.
    Matthew Ebel: Hey PodShow… the 60-second Suck Less crap is making me stop listening to your podcasts. CC and R&RG are all that remain on my iPod
    Britney Mason: Wondering if i listen to too many, PodShow Podcasts…They can suckless by coming up withnew plug for Suckless, tired of hearing it already
    Britney Mason: I do luv My PodShow friends, but not sure what knowing how much I make per year has to do with suckingless…
    Britney Mason: PodShow should put together a podcast like bluberry does.. let people know whats going on..be open!
    Britney Mason: Okay then not to turn this into a PodShow pick on session..where does the $25 mill VC go? equipment?

    All of these comments were made publicly on Twitter. They indicate a serious problem in the marketing department and in many ways, in the corporate culture of Podshow. Here’s what is broken about Podshow: Podshow believes it is the most important part of its network.

    It isn’t. Not by a long stretch. What is?

    The podcasters. The people who are providing the content for the network. Podshow has some of the finest, best podcasts online – Lifespring, Managing the Gray, Digital Flotsam, UC Radio, the Jersey Todd Show, Pacific Coast Hellway, Accident Hash, Phedippidations, Geek Brief, the ReMARKable Palate, U Turn Cafe… I could go on for quite some time. The network derives its value from the content its members are providing it, and by extension, the audience that is attracted to that content.

    What’s broken is that Podshow treats its content producers as commodities. What do I mean?

    Example: the Super Panel. You don’t need a Super Panel to tell you what listeners want. Listeners do that already with each of the shows they listen to. Look at the comments on AccidentHash.com. Look at the sales of tracks in iTunes from podsafe artists. Look at the subscriber base, server statistics. Listeners are already telling your content producers what they want, and the most successful shows are listening and changing to fit their audiences’ needs.

    Example: Suck Less. This may have been funny in a conference room somewhere, but hearing Suck anything in front of shows like Lifespring, which has a dedicated, super-family friend focus, or in front of Managing the Gray, a business show that has executives (like myself) listening, is just inappropriate. Asking your producers, “Hey, what do you think of this new campaign?” before you start putting it in front of their shows is not only a good idea, it’s also professional courtesy.

    Example: Podshow Plus. I’ve asked many Podshow-contracted producers about the tools they receive when they sign onto the network or how it’s performing. I’ve been told that frankly, there really aren’t any. There’s no indicator of how large the network actually is (44,067 as of 1:50 PM ET 6/1/07) or how fast it’s growing. What’s more, Podshow controls the Podshow Plus platform – why do their content producers, especially the ones under contract, have to manually DIG people like any other user? Why wouldn’t you give them special tools to reach the entire 44,067 registered users to promote your premium shows?

    Example: Contract. Keith and the Girl made quite a show about this, but fundamentally, why wouldn’t Podshow publish a standard contract for everyone to see? At the Student Loan Network, our affiliate contract is public, open, and a matter of record, so prospective affiliates can see what the terms are and whether it’s worth their time to sign up.

    Example: Sirius. Did anyone ever explain to the podcasters WHY the Sirius contract vanished so suddenly?

    How do you fix something like this that’s broken? Change focus. Your podcasters need Podshow for its ability to aggregate advertising dollars across a network, broker deals, do promotion, and provide tools. The function of the podcast network is a lot like a well-run, ethical record label like Binary Star Music. They take care of all the administrative functions for the artist so the artist can focus on making music. They even help the artist improve their music.

    A podcast network needs to do exactly the same and more so. Provide podcasters with great marketing tools – MySpace data managers, mailing list software, podcast widgets, chicklets, blog themes, anything and everything you can use for guerrilla digital marketing. Heck, I give away most of my tools when I present podcast marketing at PodCamps – Podshow should be doing the same thing on a network-wide scale.

    Treat your podcasters not as commodities, but as talent, as rockstars. Make them the rightful stars of their shows with tools like inexpensive press releases, search engine optimization for their show notes, webinars and seminars for them to learn how to improve their shows, and more.

    I have no plans to start a podcast network. I don’t have enough free time as it is. If I were to, however, I’d invest the bulk of my time helping podcasters who joined the network with so many tools that any independent podcaster who wanted to grow their audience as fast and as large as possible would be insane NOT to join the network. Tools, metrics, advertisers, everything I could find to help them be insanely successful immediately, because the more listeners they gathered, the more advertising dollars I could raise.

    Let me also be clear about this: I hold no animosity towards Podshow or any other network except for what it earns. I very, very much want Podshow and ALL podcasters to succeed, to grow, to be able to QYDJ if they so desire, or become new media rockstars. To that end, I want Podshow to suck less by helping their rockstars instead of focusing on the organization itself. The network is nothing without the people who produce for it.

    Bottom line: help your podcasters become the very best they can be, and network growth will take care of itself.

    THAT is how you suck less.

  • How To Suck Much Less

    For anyone who listens to Podshow podcasts, like Accident Hash, In Over Your Head, the ReMARKable Palate, and others, and is tired of hearing the 59 second pre-roll ad for their Suck Less campaign, I just posted directions for skipping right past it or any other pre-roll ad using iTunes on a Mac. No idea how to do this on Windows – if you know, post it in the comments at Marketing Over Coffee!

  • In a World of Warcraft, I Script Tetris

    It’s funny, being a weird blend of developer, manager, and marketer, how people perceive your abilities. I was reflecting on this when I was looking over both the Facebook Development Platform and some of my work at the Student Loan Network. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a snack coder, a snack developer. In a world where video games are Hollywood-style productions with casting, special effects, and workforces greater than some investment firms, I’m the guy who can whip out Pong in an afternoon – but not much beyond that. Tetris, probably.

    The thing is, for a lot of what I do – prototyping, idea generation and early implementation, experimentation – snack coding is exactly what’s called for. Create a wireframe, create a simple implementation as a proof of concept so we can decide to see if pouring scarce resources into a technology is a worthwhile investment or not. I’m the guy you want writing up that widget or wireframing the new web site, but I’m definitely not the guy to build you World of Warcraft or Second Life.

    I used to think that I was an amateur compared to professional developers, but realized that I’m a snack builder, not a buffet chef. Both have their place in the ecosystem of development and marketing, and both can create a TON of value – just ask PopCap Games, developers of casual games like Zuma, Bejeweled, Heavy Weapon, and more. Sometimes you want to sit down for a major campaign battle, and sometimes, you just want to shoot at things for five minutes.

    What’s your niche? Where do you operate best? Do you know? If you do, how did you find out?

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