Adver-Whatever

AoC 2008!

I've been holding off on doing this post until I had a little more information, but I'm now ready to do my part in promoting this year's sequel to the Age of Conversation.

Last year, over 100 authors came together to write a book entirely on the topic of "conversation" in marketing and new media, and all of the proceeds went to Variety: The Children's Charity. They recently held a "bum rush the charts" effort to get a last spurt of support, and climbed the Amazon sales charts to finally be #36 in business and #262 overall by the end of the day. The whole project was a great success, and from the sound of it, a good deal of fun.

So, the publishers of the first book, Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, are at it again, organizing another huge communal book-writing effort. The topic this time around is "Why Don't They Get It," and because an amazing 275 people volunteered to write a chapter, they've broken it down into subsections:

• The Accidental Marketer
• Keeping Secrets
• A New Brand of Creative
• My Marketing Tragedy
• Business Models
• Conversation to Action
• Life in the Conversation Lane
• Manifestos

We'll have to wait for the book early this Fall to get exactly what each of these topics means to the individuals writing about them. So of course, I volunteered as soon as I heard about the opportunity (I'm writing about My Marketing Tragedy, which should be fun), but here is the full list of all 275 of the contributing authors. Be sure to check some (or all) of them out!

Adam Crowe, Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob Carlton, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Bradley Spitzer, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Clay Parker Jones, Chris Brown, Colin McKay, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Cord Silverstein, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Goldstein, Dan Schawbel, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Darryl Patterson, Dave Davison, Dave Origano, David Armano, David Bausola, David Berkowitz, David Brazeal, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Emily Reed, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, G. Kofi Annan, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Graham Hill, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, J.C. Hutchins, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeremy Middleton, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, Joe Talbott, John Herrington, John Jantsch, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Flowers, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kris Hoet, Krishna De, Kristin Gorski, Laura Fitton, Laurence Helene Borei, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Barnes-Johnston, Louise Mangan, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Marcus Brown, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Mark McSpadden, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Hawkins, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Monica Wright, Nathan Gilliatt, Nathan Snell, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul Marobella, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman, Rachel Steiner, Sreeraj Menon, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Beeker Northam, Rob Mortimer, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen, Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Cribbett, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood, Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tiffany Kenyon, Tim Brunelle, Tim Buesing, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Longhurst, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman, Uwe Hook, Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau, Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff, Yves Van Landeghem

Third Time's a Charm

I'm way behind the ball on this one because well, I've been busy. But I'm sure a little continued buzz never hurt anything. The Age of Conversation bumrush is officially (finally) back on the calendar. The book has been made available to a wider audience through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com, and since things have actually been worked out with Amazon, they won't be canceling this one at the last moment (we hope). To reiterate the point of the whole thing, bumrush the charts efforts have been attempted, to the best of my knowledge, three times before, all with great success. It works very well as a way to get people involved around a product, to create and enlarge a community, and at least for one day, to boost sales significantly. Essentially, it's a day-long event where everyone who was going to buy the book does it all on the same day to make the product's sales ranking increase much faster than it otherwise would, getting it more attention, and then more sales. It's fun to watch, and more fun to get involved with.

So, here are the details:

• Buy the book here on March 29 (THIS Saturday)

That's it! Plus, of course, anything that you can do to spread the word to make this a successful event is also good. I'm just glad to see that after two failed attempts this event is finally getting off the ground!

UNM2PNM Pre-Game

Last week, I promised details about an experiment of Joseph Jaffe's that I'm participating in. So, here it is:

Jaffe's second book, Join the Conversation was released last fall, and since then he has been promoting the book using the non-traditional New Marketing methods that he's been preaching about for years. The effort has gone through two stages. The first stage was a "Bum Rush the Charts" event done shortly after the book's release, in which Jaffe asked anyone and everyone who was planning to buy the book to do so on one day from Amazon.com, making the book's sales ranking soar for the duration of the event. The second stage is the one I'm getting involved with now. You can see Jaffe's comments on the whole thing here, but a brief summary of the whole thing is that he decided to give away 150 copies of the book to anyone who agreed to review it on their blog. I just recently got mine in the mail, and am reading it as hurriedly as I can (and enjoying it thoroughly).

As far as I'm concerned, it's great for everyone involved: the bloggers reviewing the book get both a free book and link love on Jaffe's blog which increases their traffic, and Jaffe gets 150 book reviews and a chance to prove that his new marketing method works. Awesome.

As of now, I believe all 150 books have been claimed, but you should definitely go and buy it, and join the Facebook group about the effort - it's a lot of fun to follow and get involved.

Well, I'm excited

While the Age of Conversation bum rush event is still on hold, there is some new and exciting news to report. Drew and Gavin are at it again, organizing another collaborative publishing project. Last time, over 100 bloggers got together to work on what turned out to be a wildly successful Web 2.0-type experiment, which raised over $10,000 for Variety: The Children's Charity.

Now, in an attempt to top last year's fun, they are leaving the topic of the book up to anyone who wants to get involved in any way. Well, mostly - they've narrowed it down to a few topics to be voted on. But all together, it makes for a much more collaborative experience than the last book.

I'm fairly new to the blogging world, and I realize I've got a lot to learn, but I plan to contribute a chapter, and I'm looking forward to getting involved. To anyone else who wants to join in, email Drew, and be sure to get the word out!

My little case study

Lacking anything better to rant about today, I’ve decided to come back to something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while now - a case study that I found fairly interesting. During my school breaks for the last year and a half, I have been working as a sales associate for Aerosoles Shoes in both of the two stores located in Orange County, CA. I keep coming back because it really is a great job – laid back, not terribly difficult, and hey – shoes. However, last summer, one thing began to bother me more and more: their entire marketing strategy. It seemed simply unforgivable – especially on the West Coast.

There was absolutely NO advertising, in fact, no one I knew had ever heard of the brand before. Even the people who walked into the store often asked if we were new to the area (we very much weren’t).

In addition, even though the company had a long history of appealing to older women as a place to get extremely comfortable shoes, they had recently switched designers to appeal to a younger, more fashion-oriented audience. This not only made their whole marketing strategy very schizophrenic, but it also placed the already faltering stores into a completely saturated market. Do you have any idea how many fashion shoe brands are out there? Umm – a lot. They had created a double-sided problem for themselves. First of all, they were alienating their traditional customers as more and more older women walked out disappointed in the new styles, and second of all, they were failing to attract new customers, as the young audience continued not to know that the brand existed.

There were also several little problems with the stores themselves and the company website. The stores were all heavily decorated in posters of models wearing the shoes, which is pretty normal. However, someone in corporate decided it would be a good idea to cut off the model’s heads in the pictures, and then use background colors that were so dark that the shoes couldn’t be seen – making me wonder why they bothered to pay all the money to hire a model and print out all of these useless posters. The website didn’t include all of the styles available in the stores, which was infuriating for me when I was in Ithaca and didn’t live near a store. In addition, the descriptions of the shoes on the site didn’t do nearly as good a job of describing the benefits and details of the shoes as the sales associates were instructed to do on a daily basis, which seemed like an incredibly inconsistent message.   

So after a long summer of thinking that everyone in corporate must be something akin to a headless chicken, I sent a long email to customer service explaining my issues, even though I assumed that with all of the company’s other problems, they probably didn’t listen to complaints of any kind.

I was wrong.

The very next day, I got a long email from Jules Schneider, the president and founder of Aerosoles, asking me questions about some of my comments, and explaining some of the things the company was working on which addressed problems I had mentioned. I didn’t agree with all of the tactics they were using, but I really did appreciate the response, and it kept me from giving up on the company entirely. Specifically, he talked about their VIP program, which I had known about as an associate, which distributed coupons, and let people know about sales. He mentioned that promotion was “a battle of cost and benefit” and that it was all about keeping current customers happy, because “the greatest marketing is satisfied customers.” That’s all well and good, but I don’t think it really works when you are trying to completely change your target audience (no matter how highly old women think of the company, the younger audience will never hear about it, because they aren’t in the same social circles). But that’s a rant for another time.

The thing that struck me the most about his email was the fact that he and others at corporate had been listening to the complaints of customers and other associates such as myself, and they recognized that they had lost some vital product qualities, and steered away from who they had always claimed to be as a company. Keeping this in mind, Jules stated that they were “on a very comprehensive program” to get back to their roots.

Having gone back to the stores to earn some extra cash over my winter break, I have seen that he really meant it. The products have really gone back to their comfort-based roots, and while they are still stylized more than they were in the past, they are, once again, appealing to the traditional older audience.

Many of my other problems still stand: they are still cutting the heads off models in the posters, the website still doesn’t have all the styles, and there is still no advertising on the West Coast, but Aerosoles’ claim to be a customer-oriented company has been proven true: the one thing that the company does extremely well is listen to complaints, and completely change directions when needed.

Rescheduled

I've been crazy busy this week with finals coming up, but don't think I've disappeared.

I just wanted to make note of some news - the Age of Conversation Bum Rush is being postponed due to some technical difficulties with Amazon. It is now going to be held January 5th. It's still an awesome idea, and a great way to promote a really good book, so mark the new date!