“The more authentic you are, the more authentic you can be with others. It has to come from an intention not to manipulate.” – National Geographic photographer Lynn Johnson.
Great advice for modern marketers. The best marketing is not marketing.
Author: Mike
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Stop Selling
Last week, I had the pleasure of being the opening keynote speaker at the second annual Social Media Business Life Conference produced by Chuck Hall. I’m usually the guy writing speeches for others, so it was an interesting role reversal to be the guy in front of the audience for a change.
Chuck does a great job organizing this conference and putting together a full-slate of content that is, refreshingly, vendor-free. Too often, those of us who have been involved in social media for years forget that many people are still ramping up. There were nearly 250 people drawn to learning about how they could use social media to improve their organizations. In a suburb of Philadelphia. As my friend, John Patrick, often said when the web was first molten hot: “We’re only 10% of the way there.”
My talk focused on the need to look beyond the tools of social media and see the humans behind those tools. I also challenged the audience to stop using social media to sell…which I think forced Chuck and several members of the audience to wonder if I’d started the conference-ending happy hour a bit early.
(My keynote starts at ~9:30 into the video.)
Because Face Time is as Important as FacebookView more presentations from Mike Maney -
Normal
Every town has a mainstay, that person everyone recognizes, but never knows by name; that person who is seemingly seen everywhere, yet at the same time never seen.
For me, it’s Randy. He’s the ever-present kid on the bicycle, working the bags at the Doylestown Genuardi’s, tooling around town. He’s the kid who life threw a thousand challenges at; challenges you and I will never know.
I ran into him this afternoon at the local burrito joint. He had a new shirt, a new name tag. No longer stuffing bags and sparking up conversation at the recently-sold supermarket; now slinging burritos at the recently-revamped California Tortilla.
He noticed the shirt I was wearing. I got it after riding last year’s tour of the county’s covered bridges. Randy asked me about it and we ended up talking about bicycles while I waited for my burrito. It was mid-conversation when something he said almost made me tear-up in the middle of the restaurant. He casually mentioned that we should go riding someday. He promised to take it easy on my much older legs. He said I should meet him “where the buses pick up the normal kids.”
Where the buses pick up the normal kids.
It was that moment – that single. microscopic blip in the fabric of the cosmos – where I saw the world through his eyes. Eyes that have been taught that different is normal and normal is different. Eyes that have seen everything despite never being seen themselves. Eyes that somehow still manage to look on the world with a sense of adventure and fun, enough to invite a neighbor to go riding. Eyes that see the fun in a Saturday bike ride for no particular reason.
Just like the normal kids.
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Where Innovation is Born
This tavern (taberna in Catalan) is where our team has met each February for the past three years. It is where many of us have met for the first time.Mikel Etxea 1 is just off La Ramblas in Barcelona. Small and lively with great tapas, great service, big Estrella and powerful fruity sangria – all fuel for day-long sessions of animated debate and discussion.
We stumbled upon it back in 2010 during our team’s first visit to Mobile World Congress. We return each year, commandeering the long table to the right of the bar. This year, we didn’t even need to order…the waitress remembered us from each of the previous years.
Where was your innovation born?
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Know What Makes Influencers Tick
If you work with influencers – be they traditional media, analysts, bloggers or something in between – you need to know what makes them tick. In my “Influencing the Influencers” presentation, I somewhat flippantly called this stalking (of which I meant the non-creepy, from afar kind).
This thread between the BBC’s Dave Lee & online journalism lecturer Andy Dickinson is but one example of how just doing something simple, like monitoring Twitter, can make you smarter about the influencers you work with…and, in turn, make their lives a bit easier.
What looks like a fun exchange about headline character count is, to the insightful PR pro, a deeper education in how the BBC and Dave work. Armed with this newfound knowledge, a smart flack will tailor any story idea he pitches to Dave (or other BBC journalist) to the BBC’s 30-4-16-40 rule.
So, sure, some may call me a professional influencer stalker. I’m okay with that, especially when it means I’m giving myself a leg up on my competition and doing my part to stop the spread of PR spam still running rampant in the industry.
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My Wild Ass Idea to Save Cougar Town
The Problem: Cougar Town (a fan-loved show by the guy behind the successful Scrubs series and produced/starring Friend’s star Courteney Cox) is at risk of being cancelled. ABC, which owns the show and on whose network the show airs, has all but indicated they no longer support it…despite a passionate and loyal fan following. The show’s creator and cast have shown a willingness (and creativeness) to do what it takes to keep the show alive for their fan base.
The Fix: Use new crowdfunding services like Kickstarter to:- Buy the show back from ABC
- Fund future episodes based on loyal sponsors, fan micro-donations and series subscriptions, and
- Reduce/eliminate distribution costs and network fees by offering the show exclusively on iTunes or the web for $1 per episode.
While I have zero clue what it would cost to purchase (or even license) the show from the network or what each episode costs to produce, I do know that Cougar Town is pulling roughly 4 million viewers each week. And, given the lack of support by the network, it can be assumed that a high percentage of those are loyal viewers who would most likely be willing to shell out a shekel to see the show continue.Insane idea? Just insane enough to work? An opportunity to create the first mass-market, viewer-funded show? Let me know what you think. -
dmr: stories
Last week, I had the honor of meeting a number of Bell Labs researchers who worked alongside the man responsible for the connected world we today live. His name was Dennis Ritchie.
I, clearly, am no big-brained Bell Labs scientist, but back in 1995 I, too, had the opportunity to work with Dennis. He and his team were launching a new operating system called Plan 9 and I was the PR guy responsible for getting it noticed.
Unfortunately, I was too young, too early in my tech career to realize what a unique moment that would be. Which is why I didn’t hesitate to ask the researchers I met in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress if I could capture their remembrances of Dennis on my Flip while I had the chance. The video quality is rough (Spielberg’s job is safe), the sound is more Dummy than Dolby, but the words are important entries into the historical record of one of the most important humans since Edison.
Mike Maney 
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