Greg Verdino

Book 'em Verdino: announcing microMARKETING

I'm excited to announce that I've inked a deal with McGraw-Hill for the publication of my first business book, microMARKETING: A Breakthrough Approach to Building Brands by Thinking and Acting Small.

If the title alone isn't enough to clue you in, I'd like to give you an idea of the ground I'll cover in the book.  Here's a bit of how I described the book in the proposal itself:

A media revolution is underway, fueled by a micro-content phenomenon that is shifting the balance of power from mass communications to masses of communicators.  This shift plays out daily on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Ustream and other social sites.  It’s in the notion that an otherwise normal individual can use social media and low-end technology to become a micro-celebrity with a significant following.  It’s in the viral effect that takes hold when even one online influencer (in essence a one-person media outlet) sparks a conversation that makes or breaks a brand.  It’s in the shift in behavior that is turning the smart phone into the “first screen” for Gen Y and many increasingly-mobile Gen Xers.  It’s in the shift from watching 60 minute television shows interrupted by 30-second advertisements, to watching 30-second pieces of online video content with no advertisements at all.  It’s even in the changing of our expectations of product design and retail sales, giving rise to dozens of successful small businesses and individuals (think Threadless, think Etsy, think Mimobot, think Lemonade) that can create and sell enough high quality, unique or custom merchandise at a premium to shoppers for whom choice and individuality matter more than convenience and price. 

These are exciting times, but they can also be scary times for marketers who have been trained to think that bigger is better, and for whom the excesses and successes of the past 50 or so years – big budgets for major media ad campaigns designed to sell mountains of product through big-box retailers – seem to be the only way to build a big brand.  For better or worse, the new reality is that the old way doesn’t work so well anymore. Simply put, micro-content and macro-marketing don’t mix – and trying to maintain the status quo while consumer behaviors and expectations change amounts to little more than a recipe for failure.

Enter micromarketing – a new approach to building brands, marketing products and services, and growing meaningful long-term customer (and corporate) value.  Micromarketing emphasizes relationships over reach, interactions over interruption, and the network effect over the broadcast network.  It is built upon the premise that the “next big thing” is really lots and lots of small things, and that to survive and thrive, even the biggest marketers must think and act small (make that “micro”), too. 

microMARKETING is not a "Twitter book."  Puh-leeze... In signature Verdino-style, I will aim to help marketers understand the larger trends that are driving the popularity of tools like Twitter and what the real world implications are for businesses (even if Twitter itself -- or Facebook or YouTube, for that matter -- goes away), but my focus will be aimed squarely at the big picture.  I also don't plan to trot out the same ol' tired social media case studies.  In fact, one key piece of my approach is to help large companies understand how to thrive in the era of micro-content and micro-culture by taking lessons from the people and organizations that are involved in the revolution at the grassroots level.  In other words, I'll be looking at what the biggest of big corporations should learn from "whatever experts." 

Again, from the proposal:

Over the past several years, social media has evolved from a trend to watch to an irrefutable fact of life for marketers of all sizes.  Now – before most companies have even gotten social media right – the mainstreaming of micro-content services, the ubiquity of powerful low-cost handheld technology (from Internet-ready phones to consumer-grade HD cameras) and the rise of DIY culture promise to change the rules of consumer engagement yet again.  It is important to understand how these changes impact our ability to build brands, manage customer relationships and drive sales today, and this will only become more important over the coming years as more and more consumers flock to the technologies that are powering the shift.

On the flipside, it is also important that marketers not get swept up in the hype surrounding a single tool or tactic, losing sight of the bigger implications for their businesses.  As has happened with core social media tools like blogging, podcasting and social networking (and short-lived fads like Second Life), marketers now run the risk of not seeing the forest for the trees – of jumping on the “Twitter bandwagon” with short-lived, ill-advised tactics that do little to impact their businesses.   

On the one hand, microMARKETING educates decision makers about larger trends and what they mean for companies who are looking to more effectively engage consumers through new digital channels.  On the other hand, it delivers tangible and practical case studies, stories, tips and tricks from familiar competitors (other large corporations) and unlikely sources of inspiration (micro-businesses and individual creators.)

microMARKETING is slated for a May/June 2010 release.  I need to hand in the final manuscript by mid-October.  Needless to say, I've got my work cut out for me over the next few months.

That may mean less blogging for the next few months, although I'll still try to post here at least once/week.  And you should stay tuned for periodic updates on the book, my progress and the process.  Hell, I may even ask you for some input along the way.

Finally, I'd like to thank the good folks at McGraw-Hill -- especially Donya Dickerson -- and my agent Ethan Friedman at LevelFive Media.

Good times, ahead...

Storytelling at the brink of the future?

Although the odds are pretty good you'll never read a fiction review on this blog, I can't help but tell y'all about J.C. Hutchins' forthcoming novel Personal Effects: Dark Art.  It's a supernatural thriller that pits an art therapist at a psychiatric institute against a blind serial killer/patient -- it may or may not be your cup of tea, and the actual content of the book isn't why I'm telling you about it.

The thing that probably will interest you is the way (ways plural, really) J.C. has taken what he has learned through years of social media self-publishing to create a work that goes well beyond the printed page, encompassing digital, mobile and the physical world to create a fully participatory multimedia narrative.  In many ways, Personal Effects is a novel custom-designed for digital natives (although J.C. and his publisher may not think of it that way) and it just might offer a glimpse at the future of storytelling.

 And the future of storytelling should matter to you no matter what products your company produces or promotes because, as marketers, our success often rides on both our ability to tell compelling stories and our customers' willingness and ability to spread their own stories about their experiences with our brands.

 Of course, everything begins with the book itself.  Let's assume it's good -- I haven't read it yet, but look forward to digging into the advance copy I received over the weekend (thanks J.C.)

But Personal Effects really gets interesting when it gets innovative.  If you aren't familiar with J.C. Hutchins (frankly, I only knew of him through some mutual contacts and from hearing his name bandied about in social media circles), he is a good example of what I have called a "whatever expert" -- someone who is good at what he does and has found a way to succeed at it through smart, effective use of social media.  Although Personal Effects is his first published novel, he has been writing for years, releasing his work as free audiobooks and using the web and social media to build a loyal audience.

J.C. isn't a marketer by training or trade, but the digital and multimedia components of his project offer a practical blueprint for any marketer looking to transform their brand storytelling into an active, participatory experience that is fueled by community and optimized for customer-to-consumer word of mouth.  Readers can enter the world of Personal Effects in a variety of ways:

• Technology-Fueled Calls-to-Action: Clues peppered throughout the novel and in the killer's personal effects packaged with the novel (e.g., a drivers license, photos, hospital paperwork) drive readers to companion websites, forums, onto email lists, into mobile phone voicemail systems and opt-in text messaging programs and more where they can find and explore additional layers of narrative.

• A Distributed, Online Experience: Readers can get inside the heads of key characters through their social network profiles, personal blogs and Twitter streams.

• Original, Distributable Content: Tapping into his heritage as a popular and well-established podcaster, J.C. has produced an exclusive audio-only novella prequel, as well as a series of YouTube-friendly video promos featuring well known horror personalities.

• Seamless Integration with Relevant Third Party Sites: One of the characters (yes, a fictional character from the book) has written columns for Suicide Girls, a site (some content NSFW) whose readership seems to be well aligned with J.C.'s audience, and there is a planned deep integration that brings Suicide Girl models into the novel's fictional world and provides readers with an additional web-only subplot.

• A Fan Community: Readers can 'commit themselves to the Brink' (aka Brinkvale Psychiatric, where the novel takes place), submit their own artwork for display in the community gallery (a logical tie-in with the fact that the book's protagonist is an art therapist at the Brink) and receive personalized intake paperwork.  In other words, readers don't just consume the story; they become part of it.

• Creative, Innovative Influencer Outreach: This is how I became aware of the book in the first place and may bear some of the most relevant lessons for social media marketers.  Over the weekend, the mailman delivered an unexpected package, a good-sized box that contained materials that immediately piqued my interest, earned my attention and (true to the spirit of Personal Effects) drew me directly into the fictional world of Brinkvale Psychiatric.  Containing not only a reviewer's copy of the book and the obligatory media kit, the package was filled with my personal effects from my own stay at the Brink.  Everything was hyper-personalized and it was impossible not to dive in (and just as impossible not to tell others about it -- and last time I checked, that's what influencer outreach is all about.)  Here are a couple of photos and you can check out more on Flickr -- but be warned, you're bound to dismiss your run-of-the-mill blogger outreach emails as downright asinine...

 

 

So what's the bottom line?  J.C. is tapping into the power of digital and the potential of social to turn the lay-back (and some might say dying) act of reading a novel into a fully immersive lean-forward experience.  It's equal parts fiction and alternate reality game, powered by a healthy dose of practical Web 2.0 know-how. Followers of pop culture may draw parallels between Personal Effects and the similarly rich multimedia storytelling approaches used to fuel films like Blair Witch Project, television shows like Lost, video games like Halo 2 and even a recent album release by Nine Inch Nails.  Brands have occassionally tapped into this form of multimedia storytelling to do cool and interesting things -- see Audi's Art of the Heist, for example.  But to my knowledge, this is the first time an author has undertaken something so ambitious in association with a novel -- and it just might get digital natives to pick up a plain old printed book. 

Am I gushing?  Sorry.  It's pretty cool and makes me want to curl up with Personal Effects, my laptop and my iPhone right now.

Barring that though (damn you, workload, damn you), I'd love to hear from you.  Which of J.C.'s approaches do you think you can apply to get your customers involved in your brand's story?

Next big thing? First, master the last big thing

It's the middle of September and we are in smack in the middle of marketing conference season.  As I write this, Advertising Week is in full swing and a number of other marketing, social media and new media events (including OMMA Global, Web 2.0 Expo, Blog World Expo, Inbound Marketing Summit and countless others, I'm sure) have all recently wrapped up.

And as is often the case with these types of events, I'm sure many of these have brought out the usual set of gurus talking about the next big thing to audiences of eager client and agency side marketers hoping to find out what it is, what it means and how to get a jump on the newest, shiniest object before it hits the Marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal.

So I figured I would write a quick blog post advising all the folks who leave these events with visions of shiny new marketing sugarplums dancing in their heads to take a deep breath, turn around and consider which of the 'last big things' they haven't yet used to the fullest of their potential.

Wait a second.  A so-called marketing futurist is telling us to back up and retread the ground we've already walked? 

In a word, 'yes.'

I've often pointed out that social media insiders need to remember that they are ahead of the curve and can't assume that the rest of world is as excited about (or even aware of) the latest, greatest presence applications, mobile social networks or any other new thing that the gods of Web 2.0 throw our way.  Outside the land of the bloggerati and Twitterati, it is still pretty progressive for the average consumer to have both a MySpace and Facebook profile, let alone an account on Flickr, delicious or StumbleUpon.  Mention ExitReality or even lifestreaming and your buddy is bound to call for back-up (ummm, pun intended.)

So I'd like to offer similar advice to marketers.  Stop fixating on the next, and start getting smart about the now -- or even the recent. Before asking what shiny objects are sparkling just around the bend, take a look at the many, many channels that are available to you today and ask yourself if you've done the best job of experimenting, optimizing, standardizing and internalizing the way you use the long list of the not-so-new to engage consumers.

For example, what does your organization do with the following channels?

• Blogging
• Podcasting
• Virtual Worlds
• Gaming
• Social Networking
• Online Community
• Mobile (think SMS, not QR Codes)
• Widgets and Applications
• Feeds (RSS)
• Search Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Behavioral Targeting
• Contextual Targeting
• Video
• Branded Content
• Word-of-Mouth Marketing

None of these things are really all that new, anymore.  At one time or another, every item on that list (and many others, of course) was buzzworthy.  They were the next big thing, or at least the new new thing.  And while most still get plenty of play in marketing circles, most don't raise nearly as many eyebrows as they once did.  Most probably wouldn't be handed off to your 'innovation' guy or gal, as they might have been even a year ago.  They're just more ways to connect with an increasingly multichannel-engaged consumer.

But be honest -- have you cracked the code on any of them yet? I don't believe many marketers have -- fewer still have mastered all of them.  But a lot of these very same marketers are already losing interest in the untried, in favor of the unknown.

What can you do better?  Which 'new to you' thing from the list above can you test (or better yet, turn into a vital element in your overall marketing mix) before you move along to whatever media or marketing innovation the so-called gurus are crowing about today?

What is your organization doing to master the Last Big Thing?

PCB3 smart social media marketing panel

I'm back at work after a great PodCamp Boston 3 weekend.  On Saturday, I shared the floor with Philip Robertson, Doug Haslam and Adam Broitman for a panel discussion/open conversation about Smart Social Media Marketing.

Qik lifestreamer Len Edgerly captured most of the hour+ session on video.  The audio is a bit dodgy but if you're interested in getting a sense of how it went and what we discussed, check out Part 1 and Part 2.

The panelists, left to right: Philip, Doug, Adam and me.  That's Len shooting the video in the lower righthand corner.  Check out Flickr for the rest of my photos from the weekend.

Talking about mobile marketing (podcast)

As we kick off 2008, lots of marketers are chattering about the opportunities that exist for mobile as an advertising and marketing channel.  A couple of weeks ago I joined Buzz Marketing for Technology's Paul Dunay and MYXER's Jeff Sass (more about the guys at the bottom of the post) in a spirited discussion about the state of mobile and what marketers should be thinking about for the new year.

Listen to the podcast here (if you like what you hear, you can download the mp3 or subscribe to Paul's feed.)  The podcast is co-produced by MarketingProfs (and posted at the MP Dailyfix too), so you know it's gonna be good.

[Feed and email readers may need to click through to listen.]

About my co-participants:

The podcast is hosted by Paul Dunay, Director of Gobal Field & Interactive Marketing for BearingPoint and produces the Buzz Marketing for Technology podcast.  Paul has spent more than 20 years in marketing, creating buzz for leading technology companies such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Avaya and Cisco. He also has delivered work for American Express, Motorola, Genzyme, Novartis, Citigroup, Cendant and Ernst & Young. His unique approach to integrated marketing has been recognized as winner of the 2005 Driving New Demand award of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) and as winner of BearingPoint's Best Overall Marketing Campaign award in 2004.

Jeff Sass is Vice President of Business Development at Myxer, the leader in mobile content downloads. Jeff has more than 25 years' experience in the technology and entertainment industries, with a major focus in the last 10 years in the Internet and mobile space. Jeff has also been the successful president/CEO of two Internet startups in South Florida and was a co-founder and CEO of mobile commerce pioneer BarPoint.com. He has also written and produced for film and television and has a deep understanding of the content business that is unique for a technology executive. He is a graduate of Cornell University.  You can text "Jeff" to "69937" (MYXER) for more info. Jeff has two personal blogs, his Sassholes blog at www.jeffreysass.com and the parody blog www.socialnetworkingrehab.com.

New marketing for small businesses

Check out my BusinessWeek video interview about how small businesses can tap into the power of social media and other new marketing channels. 

BW doesn't provide embed codes so you'll have to click through to their site.  Here's what's in store when you do:

I talk about blogging, podcasting, search engine marketing, Second Life, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Grand Central, Gaping Void, Stormhoek winery and of course crayon.  And that's just the first 45 seconds!

So give it a watch and let me know what you think.

Schooling Cisco on social media

I've been invited to speak to Cisco's SMB Commercial Council in a couple of weeks -- this is a cross-disciplinary team inside Cisco that is focused on creating and marketing solutions for the small-to-medium business segment.  My topic is Web 2.0, how SMB decision makers are adopting these technologies and services, and how Cisco can tap into new media behaviors to engage SMB customers more effectively -- in a nutshell, what do new marketing and social media mean for one of the world's leading b2b technology brands.

I'm a big advocate of using new marketing to prove new marketing, so I'd love your help.  How?

Some of you may remember by presentation from the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing e-Conference.  It was a social media primer for business marketers and I leaned heavily on technology industry stats and case studies.  For those of you that haven't seen my slides, here they are:

I plan to use these slides as a starting point and build on them to make my two-hour session relevant and actionable for the Cisco team.

So now I'd love to hear from you -- any thoughts are welcome, but specifically:

• What do you like/not like about the MarketingProfs slides?
• What's missing?
• If you were presenting with me, what are the points you would absolutely want to make?
• If you worked at a company like Cisco, what do you think you would most like to learn about social media and new marketing?
• What are your favorite examples of b2b marketers getting it right?
• More importantly,which b2b marketers have gotten it dead wrong?
• What can a b2b technology marketer learn from consumer social media marketing cases?

I hope you'll join my little experiment in crowdsourcing my presentation.

Social media: how much is too much?

Within the past week, we seem to have finally hit the point at which even social media mavens are beginning to question if all of this is just a bit, well, too much.  Valeria wrote a great post that poses this very question.  So did Jeffro. Ryan questions whether we're now putting too much emphasis on amassing digital "friends" -- another great question given that online friendships and even blog comments are now for sale.  Last week Armano announced that he was giving away coveted private beta invites to a non-existent service called BouGie (just to prove that some people will sign up for anything, as long as it's new and invites are in limited supply) and even Jaffe has asked if we social media folk are a bit Fickl.

All of this chatter prompted me to tally the various social media tools that I use personally (to one extent or another) -- the list is daunting:

I blog here, comment on countless others, contribute to the crayonCast weekly podcast and need to start making time to contribute to the crayonville blog as well.

I keep track of my MyBlogLog community, post photos to Flickr, slide sets to Slideshare and interesting links to del.icio.us. 

I've signed up for three different "presence" applications -- Twitter, Jaiku (to which I really just cross-post my blog feed, Twitter tweets and Flickr photos) and now Pownce.

For safe measure, I also aggregate blogposts, links, photos and Twitter tweets at a Tumblr tumbleblog (and even I don't really know what a tumbleblog really is.)

Social networks?  I'm on MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn (plus a few others that I know I signed up for but can't quite remember.)  I have a YouTube account too, but I've never posted any videos.

And don't get me started on virtual worlds.  I have two different Second Life accounts plus one each in Kaneva, Gaia Online, Habbo, Cyworld, There and Virtual MTV.

Tired yet?  Yeah, me too.

I love new technologies and am particularly passionate about the many ways that consumers can connect with one another through social media applications.  I will always stand near the front of the line to try out the new "next big thing."  It's kinda what I do for a living.

But do "real people" behave this way?  Does the typical consumer even know what Twitter is, let alone Jaiku or Pownce?  I assume (hope?) that the average web user (meaning someone who doesn't work in this crazy business) isn't nearly as networked as I am.  Maybe the average person simply joins a network -- or two or three -- based on where their friends hang out and, rather than constantly scanning the horizon for the next thing to join, actually stays put as long as their friends stick around.

Are social media mavens living inside a bubble of our own making, artificially inflating the impact that most of these nascent technologies are having on the population in general, and ultimately getting our companies and our clients riled up over something that will, over time, turn out to be, well um, nothing?

Of course I don't believe this last bit, not even for a minute. At least not in the macro sense.  I firmly believe that social media has fundamentally changed the game and that social computing will become more, not less, important to more and more people over time.

But I also believe that those of us who are so consumed with "playing the game" do need to remember that the people sitting in the stands don't necessarily look exactly like the guys (and gals) on the field.  And maybe they don't want to.

What do you think?  Weigh in.

True colors shining through

I'm happy to announce that I have joined new marketing innovation company crayon as Chief Strategy Officer.  I'm really looking forward to coloring with Gary, Jaffe, Steve, C.C., Scott, Aaron, Melissa and Seni.

You can learn more about it in Adweek and, come Monday morning, on my crayonCast debut (look for episode #26.)

Of course, I'll still be doing my thing here.  So stay tuned for more.

Is this thing on?

With the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing e-conference coming up next Wednesday, I figured now might be a good time to preview my presentation (so yes, this is a shameless attempt to entice you to attend the event.)  In my session, I talk about what social media means for business-to-business marketers and provide some high level guiding principles for b2b conversational marketing.  Here are my slides (feed and email readers click through here.)

Rather than provide the talking points here, I'd like to suggest that you tune into the webcast at 2pm on Wednesday (or grab the on-demand version or transcript afterwards.)  Although the event doesn't run until next week, we actually recorded the session a few weeks ago.  I'll confess that I'm not entirely happy with how I presented my content but even so I think the key ideas come through -- and the recorded session will be followed immediately by a live Q&A during which I'd be more than happy to clarify my points and answer any questions you may have.

In the meantime, feel free to let me know your thoughts about the slideset.  (A special thanks to Matt Dickman, from whom I cribbed the idea of using a picture of stacked rocks to illustrate the concept of balance.)