Logic+Emotion

Can You Re-Tweet That?

 

The 4 C's of Community

From latest contribution to Ad Age Digital:

Content:
Quality content is a great way to attract the people who are needed to form the elusive community that your brand is hoping will to help build. When considering community initiatives, there are three questions to ask yourself. 1. Where will the content come from? 2. Does it provide indisputable value? Can a regular flow of quality content be maintained? Even pre Web 2.0 initiatives such as beinggirl.com, another P&G powered community for female teens grappling with relevant topics have to focus on keeping the content itself fresh and relevant.

Context:
Context means understanding how to meet people where they are up and serving up the right experience at the right time. Well designed applications and functionality have great opportunities to deliver on context. For example, Facebook’s recently updated iPhone example is perfectly designed for contextual usage in the go. It’s my favorite way to stay in touch with my Facebook community which I prefer to do while away from the PC. Context means investing time in knowing how your users will want to engage with their community—then enabling them to do so.

Connectivity
Communities thrive on squishy, hard to measure activities that are relationship based at the root. It’s not about a mass communications but more about the micro-interactions which I’ve talked about at great length. Designing experiences which support thousands of micro-interactions means you are making a commitment vs. trying to produce a one-hit wonder. Communities can in theory be the new CRM (Customer Relationship Management), but require people to be minding it. Community software platforms such as Liveworld software offer moderation services. This should tell you that if you’ve invested in building a community framework, you need to play host if you’re lucky enough for guests to arrive.

Continuity
Communities which thrive often evolve over time to meet the evolving needs of users. As mentioned earlier, we launched Pampers Village which includes functionality such as a baby name finder, parent blogs, forums and a non-traditional navigation design which tags topics and references relevant products. Communities such as this and others need to be flexible to evolve over time while still providing a valuable and consistent user experience which can be sustained over time.
Read the full article

What Brands Can Learn From A Turkey

I am in awe of the simplicity, agility, and humanity of Tweetsgiving. If you work for a brand or company, take this short post as free consulting. This, in my opinion is a viable model for how "social media" could potentially work for you. Below are the steps in which someone can participate. Participate being the operative word here. As I've stated since day 1 of this blog, it's all about moving people from passive consumption to active participation:

1. TWEET THANKS: Share something you’re thankful for with all your twitter followers. Your tweets can be touching or silly, poignant or fun. Just tweet from the heart and be sure to include the #TweetsGiving tag and a link to http://tinyurl.com/4thanks.

2. GIVE: Make a donation in honor of whatever -
or whomever - you’re grateful for.

• Every $10 buys a brick to build a classroom in Tanzania. (1,000 bricks = new classroom!) Email your TweetsGiving tweet to [email protected], and it will be painted on your brick!
• For $100 or more, you’ll be named one of our “Top Turkeys” and we’ll list your gift on our site.
• Or, with the holiday season approaching, you may buy unique gifts at http://shop.EpicChange.org. With each purchase, you’ll add one or more bricks to a new classroom at the school.

3. SPREAD THE GRATITUDE: Follow @TweetsGiving to fill your twitter stream with gratitude, then blog, retweet, or even change your avatar to the TweetsGiving Turkey.

At TweetsGiving and Epic Change, we’re grateful for some pretty amazing people who are helping to make TweetsGiving such a success. Our TOP TWEETERS have been instrumental in helping us spread gratitude across the Twitterverse. Follow these birds…they’re good eggs!

The formula here is really simple.

1. Find a good cause that aligns with your business/brand
2. Plan and design an ego trap
3. Make it convenient to participate and distribute
4. Do something good for your fellow human beings

The Web is literally polluted with examples of "viral" efforts that never went viral and "social media" tactics which either backfired or went un-noticed. If you need proof, just look at the hundreds of branded Facebook applications which never get used, gimmicks which never gain traction or videos that barely get views. Tweetsgiving offers up another way. Tap into the desire for people to be a part of something bigger than themselves such as a cause and let them carry the message for you. If done right, if it really helps make the world just a little better, than your brand gets to tag along for the ride.

And more importantly, do something. Here's a widget that lets you make a donation that will help build that classroom. With Paypal it took me 3 clicks. Good for them and us.  Special Thanks to Cone Johnson for getting my attention on this.

Popo Mikey's Famous Stuffing & Mom's Turkey + Gravy

When I was growing up, Thanksgiving meant dealing with horrific traffic from Long Island to Staten Island, getting together with family, watching Mighty Joe Young, the Dallas Cowboys and enjoying the best stuffing on earth compliments of my cousin's grandfather AKA "Popo" Mikey. Mikey was a cook in the Navy and passed this recipe on to our family. It's not for the lighthearted—it's practically a meal in itself. Vegetarians beware. And Mom's turkey and gravy was exceptional. If you're looking for a little holiday meal inspiration, this could be it. And feel free to share your own in the comments.

Popo Mikey's Famous Stuffing
3 onions
2 cans of chicken broth
7 stalks cut celery
hand full walnuts
chicken liver small container
1 half pound thin bacon
1 Pepperidge farm ground sausage in a roll and Italian sausage
thyme
2 bags croutons (stuffing mix)

1.    Mince bacon… easy to cut if frozen
2.    Mince onions and celery in food processor
3.    Boil liver about 5 minutes
4.    Sautee bacon until fat is burned, put bacon in container.
5.    Sautee onions and celery in bacon oil add chicken broth to moisten.
6.    Put cooked ingredients in bowl
7.    Cook minced sausage fully.  Add to container.
8.    Place croutons in large bowl, add chicken broth to moisten.  When moist, add other ingredients from other bowl.  Mix together until consistency is like dry oatmeal.
9.    Add walnuts and thyme.
10.   Place in aluminum baking sheet and cook @ 300 degrees for 1 hour or until top is golden brown.

Mom’s Turkey and Gravy:
1.    Wash Turkey with salt including the neck and gizzards.
2.    In bowl add 1 cup flour, salt and pepper.
3.    Melt 1 stick margarine and brush the whole turkey with it.
4.    Sprinkle flour mixture all over turkey.  Rub it in with hands. 
5.    Put 2 apples inside turkey.
6.    Baste with chicken broth.  ( approx. 2 cans)

Gravy:
1.    Put turkey pan on 2 burners.
2.    In bowl add 1/2 – 1 cup flour with chicken broth and water leaving it a soupy mixture.  ( don’t worry about lumps)
3.    Add soy sauce to pan and cook on low.
4.    Add flour mixture and add more flour for thicker gravy.
5.    Strain gravy and serve.

Coloring In, Out + Around The Lines

The other day, our soon to be 8-year-old, Max came home with this artwork. And it made me think about a post I had written about him when he was just 5. I was a bit disheartened about a very seemingly insignificant comment which brought me back to my own childhood. I've always colored outside the lines a bit—have consistently looked at things differently, and while I know his teacher was doing her job to ensure good motor skills, I wondered what things could look like if we could harness little imaginations right from the start as well as enforcing the basics.

So as I looked at Max's latest artwork, it occurred t me that as his motor skills improve with time, his creativity is still what really matters. I'm consistently in awe of how he sees the world and how it gets reproduced in his eyes. Even a skull can be a thing a beauty (well, I think so—but I'm biased).

Coloring inside the lines may get you accepted. Coloring outside of them may get you noticed. Coloring around them may help you actually get things done.

Thanks for the inspiration son.

Shotgun + Sustainable

(click for larger image)

Heather, our head of business development walked into my office with a problem. She wanted to show two types of marketing strategies visually, and so we took to the white board and came up with this. Looking at it I knew right away that I was biased toward one of these approaches—the sustainable type. Think Nike + vs. the Dove Real Beauty video. But taking a step back, I wonder if both are needed—strategies that result in the quick hits combined with initiatives that have a much longer shelf life. Advantages to the "shotgun" bursts is that you get pull that trigger pretty quickly and see what gets hit. Disadvantages are each on of those "hits" if you are fortunate enough to get one, is short-lived. So you have to keep loading up that shotgun.

Sustainable strategies take a bit more planning to target and grow over time. Think applications which evolve and grow over time. Users, consumers, and customers build affinity for that service through the interactions they have with it. These become both interaction and feedback "loops" which over time can be sustained if designed right. Thing about iGoogle.

I suppose the lines can completely blur between the two. As I think about my experience in the world famous Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile I would have probably thought that would have been a shotgun strategy if I was around back when it was first conceived. Over 50 years later, turns out it's pretty sustainable and even scalable (going from 1 to 7 vehicles).

I guess what's left is determining if your organization is doing both. Maybe it doesn't start with strategy either. I'm approaching year 3 of blogging and truth be told—I can't stop. I can't stop the writing, the visuals and the thinking. Maybe it's sustainable after all—though if you read my first 10 posts, you can detect a shotgun somewhere in there. Which one are you doing more of these days?

My Blogging "Secrets" Revealed

 
The thing about people who write blogs (notice I didn't say bloggers) is that we don't have a ton of secrets to our "craft". If you choose to follow what we do, you'll pretty much figure it out for yourself. That said, Steph Grenier has put together a book called Blog Blazers where 40 indivuduals including the likes of Seth Godin, Steve Rubel and Rohit Bhargava share their tips. I'm in it too. Here's what I said:

SG: What makes a blog successful according to you? Is it traffic, reach, revenue, etc.?
DA: In a word—influence.  Influence is the most important way I can think to gauge a blog.  It’s not easy to measure influence, but popularity has something to do with it.  The broader a blog’s reach, the more influence it has. The more people a blog influences, the more successful it is.  It’s not about size—you can influence people in niche groups.

SG:When did you decide you finally reached success with your blog?
DA: Having it featured in the print version of BusinessWeek.  Here’s one of the few magazines that I admire and actually read and there’s my blog—in full color!  At that point, I felt I had crossed into a different league.

SG:How long does it take to become a successful blogger?
DA: That’s like asking how long should you wait until you get married.  It’s different for everyone.  It took me just under a year to get some serious traction—but that’s rare.  It could take many years.  Or you could be blogging for 20 years and never reach the goal of “breaking through” to the audience you want.  It’s something that requires passion.

SG:Who do you think are the most successful bloggers on the internet today?
DA:As far as size goes, you’ve got Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble.  All have HUGE followings.  Personally—I’ve been influenced by Bruce Nussbaum, Kathy Sierra, and I enjoy reading industry blogs such as the Adaptive Path blog and Putting People First.

SG:Which five blogs do you regularly read?
DA:
Nussbaum on Design
Adaptive Path
Micro Persuasion
Web Strategist
Putting People First

SG: Which websites would you recommend for any new bloggers starting to blog?
DA:
Techno Marketer
Boing Boing
Mashable

SG: Which book(s) would you recommend for new bloggers (these can range from marketing books, blogging books, etc.)?
DA: Made To Stick

SG: What is your most successful blog post ever?
DA: Creativity 2.E

SG: What's your biggest tip on writing a successful blog post?
DA: Write something that people will want to talk about.  Do something that others are not.  Make each post memorable.

SG: What's your best advice in regards to content and writing for bloggers?
DA: State your opinions.  Don’t try to write like a journalist.  Do something different.  Use visuals.  Let your voice come through in the writing.  Write in conversational tone vs. formal.  Be true to your personal brand and if you don’t know what that is—figure it out.

SG: How important do you think are the headlines of your blog articles?
DA: Fairly important, but not as important as the content.  Best to write headlines that are both enticing and informative.

SG: Do you spend any money and time on marketing?
DA: No money spent except on Typepad.  I don’t market except through being myself and participating.  I probably spend about 15-20 hours a week on Twitter, blogs and participating in general.

SG: What are your main methods of marketing your blog?
DA: I’ll promote links on Twitter and Facebook, but the best marketing is the content.  That’s where I spend most my time.

SG: Which marketing tactic has surprised you the most in terms of its effectiveness?
DA: The visuals.  People love my visuals and want them for themselves.  It’s both my product, content and advertising.  People take my visuals and distribute them on the Web.  This eventually creates a bigger audience for me as most people can find their way to the source of the visual which is my blog.

SG:What are your quick and short five best tips for blogging?
DA:
1. Find your voice
2. Do something different
3. Be true to your brand
4. Provide value
5. Only write what makes you happy

SG: What is the most common pitfall new bloggers generally fall into?
DA: Self doubt will kill you.  When you’ve got people commenting on your stuff or calling you out or challenging you—you have to be prepared to guard yourself from being something that isn’t you.  You must be yourself first, as imperfect and flawed as that may be.  You won’t make everyone happy.  Most successful blogs are polarizing—people either love them or could care less.  The worst blogs are bland, generic and have nothing original to offer.  Doubting yourself is the first step down the path of boring.

SG: If you knew what you know now when you first started, what's the one biggest tip you'd give yourself today?
DA: Have an idea where you want the whole thing to end up.  When I first started blogging I had no idea where I wanted it to go and went with where it took me.  Now I’m a bit more strategic.  I’m blogging to build credibility in the industry and to make my job more rewarding and enjoyable.  I also like using it to help the company who employs me.  I have a lot of freedom because of the blog.  I would have established a vision for where I wanted to take it earlier.

SG: What repels you the most from a blog (animations, in your face advertising, etc.)?
DA: Bad Content, bad design and over-promotion.  And also a lack of personality.

SG: Do you make any direct money from your blog through advertising, product placements, etc.?
DA:No

SG: What is your best monetization method (Ads, affiliate marketing, etc.)?
DA: My monetization is indirect. I get lots of professional opportunities.

SG: Do you find you get more from direct monetization of your blog or from opportunities that come because of the existence of your blog?
DA: I get invited to speak at places.  If I were on my own, I could make a business of that.

SG: What's your most interesting story related to your blog and blogging experience?
DA: I once wrote a post that was only a sentence long and included a visual.  I asked my readers to write the post for me based on the visual.  The comments were amazing!  Take a look for yourself.

SG: What's the one biggest opportunity that came to you because of your blog?
DA: I wrote a very popular article for BusinessWeek called “It’s the Conversation Economy Stupid”.  I was invited to write the article because of the blog.  It was a great experience—I got to work with an excellent editor and write in a very different way than blogging.  It was pretty cool.

SG:Any other comments or thoughts you'd like to share?
DA: Yes.  Everything I know about blogging is in this slideshow

Hope the interview was helpful. For the other 39 interviews, you'll have to get the book.

Toward A Culture of Rapid Response

(Frank Eliason of Comcast speaking at WOMMA Summit 2008)

"So forget social, forget networks, forget mobile—it’s all about the end customer/user experience. Think like a real person. We don’t draw the line between them. In the end, out interactions with people, brands, and companies will either be either extraordinary, good, ok, terrible, offensive or not worth talking about at all. Social or no social. The line is dissolving and in the end it’s how we feel about what we just experienced that matters. Creating a rapid response culture will be critical to organizations because if they can’t respond at the same pace that their consumers can, it starts the interaction loop off on the wrong foot."
Read the full post at Experience Matters

Everything Is Risky

Marketing maven Seth Godin once said something along the lines of "safe is risky and risky is safe". While I'm no guru, I'd like to make an addendum to this statement.

Everything is risky.

But it wasn't always this way. TV once portrayed perfection—fantasy, and radio told us what we thought we wanted to hear. There was no way to provide instant feedback. If you wanted to pick a bone with a TV or radio personality, you'd have to call the hotline, and chances were slim that you'd get on.  Risk in these mediums could be managed with a degree of precision. Time delays and *beeps* over unsavory language ensured it. We got used to how the mediums worked and mastered their rhythms.

The internet is slightly different. And it's evolving. It's unpredictable, messy, organic, empowering, addictive and pervasive. It's good and bad—highly interactive, responsive, connective and alive. In fact, it's a lot like life. And like life, with it everything is risky. Each time we step outside our homes, we put ourselves at risk. The world can take us out at any time. A car accident, a virus, an act of nature.

The Web is a lot like this. Put something on it that you think is provocative—try to get people talking and you risk being ignored. Put something out that looks "safe" and you might inadvertently upset someone who you never new existed. Put something out that you think will appeal to everyone and you risk appealing to no-one. Stay away from the internet and someone will capture what you did with a mobile phone and put it on there anyway.  With every post I write, I'm taking a risk.

Everything is risky.

When all roads lead to risk, there's only one thing we can do. Live. We live life by learning, by trying, by falling down getting up and learning from the best teacher we've ever had—life itself. Everything is now risky, every piece of media we upload can come back to haunt us. Everything can be frozen through a screen capture.  In life we deal by going out into the world and navigating it's customs. Those who barricade themselves indoors thinking they avoid risk end up risking the quality of their social interactions.

If everything is risky, then nothing is safe. There is no safe anymore. What's left looks a lot like living. You live, you learn. You get up in the morning, tie your shoes and cross the street looking both ways. But you cross it—because if you don't, you can't live. And every once in a while you take a chance. Because everything is risky anyway.

Moms Give Motrin A Headache

Updates:
-As of 8:00 CST, Motrin.com has been down for nearly 1/2 a day.
-Motrin.com is back up and has been updated with the below message in an image format (should have been text you can copy and paste)
-A "cosmetic surgery" parody of the original ad is now is now on YouTube

I am literally in the middle of watching what Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff call a "Groundswell".  As far as I can tell, Motrin posted an ad on their Website (see above) which ignited a community of mothers who were insulted by it. Specifically it seems that many of the mothers use baby slings and objected to the tone of the ad which describes them as "in fashion".

Full disclaimer, I am not interested in taking sides, but I am interested in events like this and how they unfold, specifically as it relates to power consumers, online communities, brands and the digital trail all of this type activity leaves.  Here's a few considerations for any business, brand or even individual to consider in similar situations:


Motrin.com Website Unable To Respond Rapidly
As of 9:30 CST on a Sunday night, Motrin.com is down for the count. Motrin customers have already reported that an e-mail went out apologizing for the tone of the ad and took it off their site. The big takeaway here for me is that e-mail was the default vessel for communication because it can be utilized rapidly, but the Website can't. It's possible that the site went down due to server traffic, but friends in the field tell me this is unlikely. In the not-so-distant future, business and brands will need Websites that are as easy to update as blogs. You can quote me on this one.



Google Results Immediately Influenced
If you were to Google the words "Motrin + Mom" you will get results which look like the screen grab I took. Google has immediately picked up blogs and Twitters and organically placed them in spots from #2 down. It's possibly that it will go to #1 shortly. In the meantime, Motrin's purchased ads on the side make for an interesting comparison.

The Community Organizes
No, it's not slick, it's not marketing and ad people can poke fun at the music as much as they want—it's a real response. Direct and genuine, whether you agree with it or not. And it was put up more quickly than most marketers could ever dream to produce content. The unofficial "motrin moms" took matters into their own hands, and they were heard by the community, outside the community, the search engines and by Motrin itself.

The Motrin Brand On Twitter
The Motrin brand seems to have an official presence on Twitter. Ironically called "Motrin Moms" (can anyone confirm/deny that this is Motrin)?. Here's what the last few Tweets look like as the PR situation unfolds:

There's no mention of the upset moms, and in fairness to the Motrin brand, it's probably designed to handle marketing vs. PR.  But of course those lines are increasingly blurring and presents an interesting dilemma for brands using Twitter which is how to leverage the presence in a communications crisis.

In Summary
As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm not interested in taking sides, but rather I'm interested in studying the dynamics of case studies like this. I have a few recommendations for organizations if faced with a similar issue. They are:

1. Design Your Website For Rapid Response
If your site has to be taken down in order to respond to a crisis, re-design it so that it can be updated quickly and easily without having to throw your organization and agencies into a panic. Worry about your response strategy, not the design of your site.

2. Think Like A Blogger, Tweeter, Community & Citizen Journalist
Look at how quickly the mommy community organized and produced an authentic video. It's because they don't have legal guidelines holding them back. You probably do—but of you can figure a way around them, you can fight authenticity with authenticity, which looks less like a fight and more like a conversation anyway.

3.  Have A Google Strategy In Place
Aside from perhaps smoothing things over with the offended, the real incentive for any organization to engage in situations like this is to influence the search results and digital trail so that your organization presents well on them. The best way to do this is to have people saying good things about you which means you have to give them something good to say and can't force it. The end goal needs to be helping people. The ROI will be a much more positive long tail.

My 2 cents, for what's it's worth. Hope it's helpful.

Video Highlights From WOMMA Summit 2008

Streaming .TV shows by Ustream Above is a video recording from the panel I participated in at the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas. My fellow panelists included Linda Saindon of Kraft, Kevin Dando of PBS, moderated by John Bell of the Ogilvy Digital Influence Group.  All official WOMMA recorded videos from the event can be found here, but I really recommend the session which Featured Frank Elison the man behind Comcast Cares on Twitter, as well as Pete Blackshaw (recorded using the Critical Mass "beta cam").  It's really worth the watch as they both discuss the role of customer service in marketing and how it influences how positive and negative word of mouth spreads.  Enjoy the videos and I'll have more thoughts on WOMMA 2008 in the days to come.

What's On Your WOM List?

I'm off to participate at the WOMMA Summit (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) and it's got me thinking about what word of mouth is in the first place. In a simplistic kind of way, I like to think that word of mouth is essentially something that makes us want to tell others about it. Here's a few I can remember followed by what the first thought was that popped into my head:

Mini Cooper
"cool"

Google
"this makes finding stuff so easy"

Subservient Chicken
'how did they do that"?

YouTube
"makes watching video online fun"

Dove Real Beauty
"that was clever"

Craigslist
"I'll never pay for classifieds again"

Twitter
"not sure exactly, but can't stop using it"

Facebook
"so convenient to stay in touch"

IPhone
"i'll never go back to a regular phone"

Of course word of mouth can also be bad. AOL, Comcast, Microsoft (Vista), and others have experienced the wrath of customers who put considerable energy into saying things about the products or services that weren't flattering. To me the current state of marketing revolves this idea of "viral"—producing something that spreads organically from person to person. Not unlike some of the examples I've provided in the list. But we call videos "viral" before they ever have a chance to be. Is that putting the cart in front of the horse or is has the word viral become so overused that it's actually meaningless?

Maybe it's as simple as asking ourselves, would you recommend this to a friend? And if that's the case, we'll have our work cut out for us because there are so few things in this world that actually are. So what's on your WOM list? And why?

A Very Brief History of Micro-Media

Maps

When ever I'm involved in an initiative, I try to somehow visualize the big picture before diving right into it. Sometimes it means thinking about an experience as a timeline. Other times it's a flow of actions with multiple possibilities. Sometimes it's a map of media properties and other times it's an organic display of connections.

The point is that you can get where you are going without a map. You can ask a stranger on the street, pull over to a gas station or wander around until you eventually find it. But maps always seem to help us find our way and can help others feel reassured about where we are going.  Maps are great—we can still explore with them, but it's just good to know that they're there when we need them. Without them, we might still find out way—though getting lost is never all that much fun.

People, Places + Events

I just wrapped up an action filled week at the Forrester Forum, where I got to meet some great folks for the first time like Bryan Person, who interviewed myself and Deb Schultz (above). Here's a few other places I'll be along with people I've met and stuff we've done together. If you are going to be at any of the events, let me know.

Measuring "Social"
Mark Rogers, CEO of Marketing Sentinel interviewed me for a short podcast where we discussed the idea of measuring things like engagement in the social space. I'm not a measurement guy, so I did the best I could. Listen to it here (mp3).

Amsterdam Bound
I'm off to Amsterdam again for business the week of November 3rd.  If you're in town, let me know—maybe we'll get some folks together and drink Heineken.

WOMMA 2008
I'll be participating on a panel at this years Word Of Mouth Marketing Association. It's a town hall format, so it'll be interesting to say the least I'm sure.

Phizzpop
On November 20th I'll be participating in the Microsoft Phizzpop design challenge in Chicago (register here). This time as a judge. Phizzpop is a Microsoft sanctioned event where design teams get a limited amount of time to solve a design problem using Microsoft tools to execute. This year's problem is Olympics related.

P&G / "Boston Tweetup"
I'll be speaking at another P&G employee event on December 11th in Boston. There is a "tweet-up" happening on December 10th. Details are here.

Marketing 2.0: Paris
I'll be joining a small army of speakers at the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris in March. Marketing 2.0 is billed as follows.

"The Marketing 2.0 Conference brings the intelligence, innovation, and leadership of the Marketing, Media and Internet industry together in one place at one time to learn from best practices and the successful use of the new marketing tools like Social Networks, Mobile Marketing, Internet TV and Video as well as Word-of-Mouth Marketing. The Summit is known for its interactive format, stressing interaction and participation on both sides: the speakers and the audience. Through insightful plenary sessions, cut-through-the-hype onstage conversations, and "show me" presentations as well as in-depth workshops, visionaries and executives, experts and researchers from the Marketing and Internet businesses will come together to explore and present their unique insights in how to use the whole new collection of marketing tools and how brand marketers could benefit from it."

Really excited about this one.

Age of Conversation 2


And last but not least, I have joined some bright minds for a very good cause contributing a chapter and cover art for the Age of Conversation book. All proceeds go to Variety and the contributers include:

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 LeDrew, Brad Shorr, 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, Chris Brown, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Schawbel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Dave Davison, David Armano, David Berkowitz, 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, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne & Todd Cabral, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, John Herrington, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kristin Gorski, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, 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, 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 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, Tim Brunelle, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, 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

Hope to see you in person if we're at the same place at the same time.