Marketing Roadmaps

Archives for December 2005

Blog withdrawal and Back up your Blog!!!

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So TypePad had some more problems over the weekend. Since I don’t tend to blog over the weekend, I didn’t even notice, except my Mom asked me about two disappearing posts…

Apparently I was in the minority, as quite a storm ensued in the blogosphere. Many folks experienced severe withdrawal and high anxiety at not being able to blog and lost posts. Lots of criticism of Six Apart (constructive and otherwise).

While I agree that there really is no good excuse for so many problems in such a short period of time, and hope that Six Apart gets its act together, it occurs to me that folks need to remember three basic things about computing.

  1. We have choices. We can switch platforms — blogging, browser, whatever — if we don’t like what we’ve got. May not be easy but so it goes.
  2. When a system goes down, and they do, just go do something else for awhile. There is a world beyond blogging 🙂 
  3. Back up your blog. It’s that simple. Then it won’t matter so much if/when your blog service has a problem.

Backchannels at conferences. Huh? Why?

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A little behind in my schedule for the year end blog posts, but the promised trade shows post should be tomorrow. The puppies ARE really cute!

In the meantime, my thoughts about official backchannels at conferences.

I would not want to be a speaker at a conference that broadcasts an official "backchannel" behind the speakers. When I speak in public, I want the audience to be paying attention to me. I work very hard to create a memorable, interesting, usually interactive session so they will. If someone in the audience is bored, I’d prefer it if they just left. If more than one person in the audience is bored, they can leave together. And if everyone is bored, well then, I haven’t really done my job, have I? And I won’t get a lot of speaking invites.

I know this "backchannel" is the "in thing" these days, but why go to the conference if all you are going to do is chat with your friends? You can do that at home for a LOT LESS money. Unless of course the point of going to the conference isn’t to learn something or share something, but rather to be seen…..MMMM?

I realize that even without a sponsored, official chat, people at a tech conference will be emailing, chatting, using their crackberries etc. Bad enough, in my opinion. I don’t even like to hand out copies of my presentations in advance because I hate it when people read ahead.   

And I suppose since we know people are going to be doing it anyway, better to have a sponsored chat room so all attendees are included rather than private little cliquey things of just the "in" people. I know, you are flabbergasted that cliques can develop in an industry. 🙂

But broadcasting the backchannel chat behind the speaker. Nope, not for me. Can’t think of a single good reason to do it.

Check out Elisa Camahort’s post Backchannel Smackdown. She makes a number of excellent points about backchannels, and has links to most of the relevant blogs involved in the Trott/Metcalfe les blogs incident — if you aren’t already bored with it, that is 🙂

Probably will write more on backchannels when I write about trade shows. And please, if there is a good reason to broadcast the backchannel behind the speaker, I’d love to hear it.  Have one if you must, but don’t force it on the speaker and those in the audience who came to hear what the speaker has to say.

Puppies

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The promised post on trade shows in the marketing plan has been delayed due to the arrival today of new puppies. As many of you know, I breed and show Scottish Terriers. Up until now, all the puppy litters have been born at my co-owner’s house, and I get them at about 3 weeks. Well, we swapped on this litter, so the puppies were born at my house this morning. Maybe by tomorrow I will be sort of back on schedule, but today is all about puppies. 🙂

More on advertising

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Advertising seems to be the topic de la semaine.

Bob Bly posted Is Madison Avenue Advertising a Total Fraud. While I am not sure I’d say total fraud, one of the points he makes is that agencies value creativity more than sales, which is not in the best interests of the client. Now, not all agencies are clueless about the need for actual SALES RESULTS, but I do agree that awards and "cool ads" seem to be more valued than the perhaps less exciting but maybe more effective ad that actually drives response. As I said in my earlier post this week, the message and getting the prospect to take action are the important elements. Art and design help get the message across, they aren’t the goal.

Jennifer Rice (What’s Your Brand Mantra), commenting on an earlier Bly post about the Madison Avenue Branding Rip-Off, makes some excellent points about advertising and branding:

IMO, there are two core issues here: first is the fallacy of ‘brand advertising’, and the second is that agencies are usually not well-suited to do brand strategy.

The brand-advertising fallacy:
As a client, I was told by my (nationally recognized) ad agency: "no, we cannot do response-oriented advertising until we’ve run ‘brand’ advertising for at least 3 months." Sorry, but that sets off my bullsh*t meter. The imagery, tone of voice, tag line, copy… there are plenty of elements that can deliver the brand message in conjunction with a sales promotion. CFOs don’t have the patience for so-called ‘brand advertising’ anymore, and marketing is now accountable for results.

Absolutely!! Your advertising is ALWAYS brand advertising (even if you don’t realize it). Best to do a little selling as well. As well as realize that everything in the business impacts the brand. You can’t create a brand image separate from the reality of the organization or the product. It won’t work.

Which I suppose bring us back full circle. So much advertising DOES seem to try to create a brand image not grounded in reality that it is ineffective, leading to a conclusion that advertising doesn’t work.

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On a completely different note, thanks to David Parmet (Marketing Begins At Home) for posting about this non-Christmas carol. If you are getting sick of Jingle Bells and Drummer Boys, you’ll get a kick out of it (even if the music itself isn’t your favorite genre).