Marketing Roadmaps

Politics/Policy

New Workshop: Getting the Message Out – Be Heard, Understood and Remembered 

by

Two months ago, I gave a short talk on communications to one of the dog clubs to which I belong. This group does a fair amount of lobbying on the state level, and the club officers wanted to give the members some guidance on how to speak effectively with legislators and other influencers. I’ve turned the material into an one-hour workshop:

Getting the Message Out – Be Heard, Understood and Remembered 
Whether you are talking to a reporter, lobbying a legislator, or speaking to your employees, you need to be heard, understood and remembered. Our one-hour workshop “Getting the Message Out” offers three tips that will help you tell your important message effectively and memorably.


While this is a for-profit endeavor when it comes to for-profit organizations, I’m happy to do the workshop pro bono for charities and civic groups. All I ask is that the group cover my expenses to get to their location. Drop me an email at sgetgood@getgood.com if you’d like more information.

Tags: , , ,

R is for ROCKET, P is for PERSPECTIVE

by

Well, I am just back from vacation, and still catching up on work, so this post will be mercifully short.

It’s about perspective, people.

Amanda Congdon leaves Rocketboom.

North Korea launches missiles.

Yeah, both news items are about rockets, sort of, but let’s get real: a business split, of a small though high profile tech business, versus ongoing proof that our fearless leader picked the wrong "axis of doom" when looking for weapons of mass destruction.

Sure Amanda is cute and Rocketboom was fun and the ongoing soap opera is like the proverbial train wreck. But, let’s have some perspective.

Troops are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. North Korea is marching irreversibly down a nuclear path. Gas prices are horrendous for consumers as Halliburton and other Cheney friends line their pockets. Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the London subway bombings.

Think about it.

Then hug your kids, pat your dogs and cats, kiss your spouse, call your mother. In whatever order floats your boat.

Rocket who?

Peace out.

Tags: , 

THIS is real satire – Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner

by

Take note, would-be satirists, THIS is how it’s done.

Stephen Colbert’s bit at  Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner (tip of the hat to Peter Caputa at PC4media, first place I saw it)

Other links of interest: Editor & Publisher’s report on the event; a number of threads on Atrios -start here.

See it on YouTube.

UPDATE 5pm: Two interesting posts by Peter Daou and Chris Durang on The Huffington Report about the major media essentially ignoring the Colbert perfomance, and focusing instead on Bush’s appearance at this event. I originally posted this item in awe at Colbert’s masterful performance. Funny, disconcerting, uncomfortable, courageous.

But given the way the coverage has played out, I think it will have far more long term impact than perhaps even he realized as he wrote his material.

As Durang points out, before C-SPAN and blogs, many of us (myself included) wouldn’t even KNOW about Colbert’s performance.  How important are blogs? What HAS happened to mainstream media? For a great essay on this, check out Lap Dogs of the Press by Helen Thomas in the March 27 06 issue of The Nation. Not surprising that she had a supporting role in the Colbert video.

I’ll be coming back to this.

Tags: ,

Powered by Qumana

Cleaning out my Bloglines Closet

by

I read a lot of feeds, on a variety of subjects, and take advantage of bloglines "keep new" to save things to look at/blog later. When I’m busy, the "blog closet" gets pretty full, and quite often, many of the things I’ve saved for later are over and done with.

But some things are timeless.

Others worthwhile.

And of course, some things, you just know I am going to comment on.

Like character blogs.  At Beyond Madison Avenue today, Mack Collier writes that character blogs would be a good solution to carry on cancelled TV shows. You betcha. Just take a look at the sheer volume of fan fiction on the Internet.  I would still pay for a Whedon-produced character blog featuring the characters from the Buffy/Angel-verses.

Great advice from the Copyblogger. Writing about this week’s NY Times article "This Boring Headline Is Written For Google," which discussed the ramifactions of search engine optimization on the news business, he reminds us: "Write for people, people." Amen. We don’t need fancy footwork (or cute headlines) as much as we need clear, concise writing. A little time spent there can save a boatload of hassle, not to mention cost.

Bonus links

Two from Neville Hobson: a European business blogging survey and some info on search behavior

Tags: , , , ,

Powered by Qumana

Whew.

by

I started my marketing consulting business in 2004. For the previous 10 years, I had been employed, in various capacities, and under various corporate owners, at a web and email filtering company. My last position was head of marketing.
 
I really love what I am doing now, and after my blog reading today, I am doubly, triply glad I no longer manage the public relations function at a filtering company.
 
Today, BoingBoing effectively declared war on filtering company Secure Computing, the maker of SmartFilter (and by the way, that is not where I worked. If it were, I would not be writing this post.)
 
It seems Secure is including BoingBoing in its “nudity” category, resulting in the wildly popular blog being blocked lots of places, including entire countries that use the Secure product. You can get the details at BoingBoing.
 
For the record, I think Secure made the wrong decision here, both in the initial decision and the way they handled the issue with the BoingBoing team. And it is really going to hurt them. There are legitimate reasons for using filtering software, but I won’t go into them now. This post is not about filtering software. If you’re that interested, google me and some of the older results will be my public statements and testimony on the subject.
 
What I am interested in are the PR and business implications. Because this will end up being more than just a PR firestorm that will blow over in a few weeks. This will become a business nightmare. Blogs are going to spread the word further faster and more furiously than we ever faced in the old days of the Communications Decency Act. And the folks at BoingBoing have much more clout  — through the blog and their other business and personal interests — than any of the opponents the filtering companies faced before.
 
Figure it out fast, Secure — blogs are more than just “personal diaries” and now, you’ve got the most popular one in the world gunning for you.
 
Like I said, glad I’m outta this space!!!!!
 
 
Powered By Qumana