Greg Verdino

Podcaster J.C. Hutchins has killed the president

Not the real president and not in real life. And technically speaking, J.C. didn't do the deed -- but he dreamed up the child/assassin who takes down America's main man in the opening lines of his sci-fi thriller 7th Son: Descent.

Regular readers know that I have a bit of a mancrush on J.C., who has the social media chops so many brand managers can only dream of. His last print novel, Personal Effects, was a participatory, multimedia tour de force (learn more) and with 7th Son he does it again.

Now, for those of you who haven't been poking around the social media space for the past few years I should mention that although today marks the first day 7th Son is available (as they say) everywhere books are sold, the story has already been told through social media.

A couple of years ago, frustrated by his inability to find a publisher for his work, J.C. released the novel chapter-by-chapter in podcast form. The series went on to become one of the (if not the) most popular audio podcast novels and amassed J.C. a nice-sized army of fans. And then, well, one thing led to another and now the man has a book deal with St. Maarten's Press. Solid...

But that doesn't mean he's kissing his social media friends goodbye. You can (and should) buy the book. But you can also download the first 10 chapters as a free PDF (available for download across a network of social media and sci-fi blogs) or read the entire book for free on Boing Boing, where it's being serialized chapter-by-chapter. Eyes too tired from staring at spreadsheets all day? He's also offering it all as a 10-episode audio serial that should appeal to both audiobook fans and his original podcast audience.

If you want to see a great example of social marketing done right (by someone who isn't a trained marketer, no less) check out the site. There are a ton of other goodies -- from free prequel content to a killer loyalty points program for anyone who helps evangelize and promote the book.

Disclosure: I am not a member of the points program but J.C. did send me a free copy of the book (no, I haven't read it yet, but I plan to as soon as possible.) I also recently interviewed J.C. for my book (which is certain to be less interesting than his, although I hope it will be marketed at least half as well.)

Now go and get your clone on...

 

What's the price of five dollars?

 

That wasn't meant to be a trick question, but rest assured the answer isn't five dollars.

Here's the scoop. I drive a Nissan Altima and I've been reasonably happy with it. It's neither the best car I've ever owned nor the worst, but I'm not a car guy so if it gets me from point A to point B safely without costing me an arm and a leg in gas money I'm satisfied. The Altima more than fits the bill.

I don't mind telling you that the lease runs me about $315 per month and I'm pretty diligent about paying right on time, almost always by check through the good ol' U.S. mail. This month though, I lost track of time and when I woke up this morning realized that I hadn't yet mailed the payment that is due today.

Luckily, Nissan offers an online payment option -- so I logged onto their site and authorized an electronic deduction from my checking account. No worries, but here's where the $5 comes into play.

Nissan, for whatever reason, charges customers an additional $5 for online payments (more if you prefer to charge it to a credit card.) Now, don't get me wrong -- $5 isn't a ton of money and, for all I know, other auto manufacturers levy similar "convenience changes" for online payments. But I pay plenty of bills electronically and none of my other creditors ding me for choosing my preferred method. Some -- Peapod springs to mind -- even offer discounts for customers that choose direct debit over other forms of payment.

Why? Because (and I'm pretty sure I'm right about this) even taking into account any fees charged by the third party payment processing vendor, it has to be less expensive (not to mention simpler and more reliable) to accept an electronic transfer than it is to print, stamp and send an invoice then receive, open, log and deposit a physical check.

So if it's better for their customers and ostensibly better for their company, why does Nissan charge $5 for an electronic payment? If I told you, I'd have to kill you. OK, the truth is I can't tell you because I have no idea. I suspect that someone (I'm guessing some dude or dudette in the finance department) figured that the incremental service charge would for the most part flow directly to the bottom line. In terms of pure dollars and cents, the decision seems like a smart one.

But in terms of perception and sense, I'm not so sure. Like I said, I'm a pretty happy Nissan driver but on this fine Fall morning I'm pretty annoyed with Nissan as a company. Even a minor inconvenience (in the form, ironically, of a convenience charge) takes its toll on how I feel about the brand itself and my experience as a customer. So much so that I'd not consider trading in and trading up to another Nissan when the time comes? Maybe. I'm not sure. But if that were to happen, wouldn't the lifetime cost to the company (in the form of lost opportunity and lost business) outweigh the near term $5 windfall?

Perhaps this is a case of accidental blame (should I be railing against the payment processing company?) but that almost doesn't matter. Despite my generally acceptable experience with my car, my perception of the Nissan brand takes a hit over this one trivial thing. And of course, when I tweet or blog about my frustration I potentially influence how others perceive the brand as well.

And so, a seemingly simple accounting decision ladders up into a potentially thorny sales and marketing challenge.

But enough about Nissan...

If we view this through a wide angle lens, the truth is that most of us work for companies that do things (no matter how small) that might look like good ideas when viewed up close, but turn out to be slippery slopes with plenty of downside when seen from a distance.  I've written about this before but it's worth repeating... cuz in the race to bump up this quarter's numbers so many businesses don't stop to take in the long term view.

A fiver for your thoughts. Chime in.

What if the future of technology is more sand than silicon?

 This is just flat-out smart and cool.

The Institute for the Future teamed up with Sun Microsytems and Boing Boing to host The Digital Open, a tech expo for teens under the age of 17. Last week they announced a series of winning projects, one of which caught my eye -- not because it made use of amazing, forward-looking technology, but because it ostensibly uses no technology at all...

Actually, that's not quite true. Let me explain.

The project, developed by a 17-year-old girl named Alexis McAdams, is called "DiorActive" and essentially takes the big world  issues -- political, social, cultural, economic, environmental, etc -- that we all hear about (in the abstract) through the constant barrage of information available at our fingertips every day and brings them to life in a tactical, experiential way at a human scale. How? By portraying them live in the real, physical world, reenactment style or interactive diorama style.

You can learn more about the project and its inspiration in Alexis's own words  (video):

So of course technology plays a role -- the real world experiences are informed by all of the online and media information available to DiorActive "builders" as they research the issues they'll bring to life. But the idea of using technology simply as a conduit to bridge a world-scale issue that we hear about to a human-scale physical experience that hammers the issue home in a meaningful, personal way is brilliant. And I think that it also speaks to an interesting blur between the digital, virtual and physical and provides a firm reminder that even for a generation that was "born digital," real world connections matter most of all.

As marketers, we intuitively (if not through hard and fast data) understand that online activities ranging from traditional digital advertising to web-based research and social media word-of-mouth translate into real world behaviors. As social computing evolves and becomes increasingly mobile -- and increasingly blurs the distinction between online connections and real world friendships -- the distinction between the digital and physical worlds will become less, well, distinct. And as we geek out over shiny objects that tap technology to enhance the physical world, it's good to remember that it flows the other way too -- that real world experiences can, do and will absolutely serve to enhance the digital (think about even the humble tweetup...)

I love the way Alexis's DiorActive project reminds old people like me, "hey, while you guys talk about where this might all be going, some of us are already there..."

I'd love to hear your thoughts. What do you think?

Miscellaneous Monday

  

This is just a quick jumble of recent and new items that may be of interest (to me, if not to you.)

• Blog World & New Media Expo: I'm fresh back from Las Vegas where, as I noted last week, I presented at Blog World. Home improvement blogger Tony Saucier attended my session and wrote a nice summary of my presentation. I believe a video of my speech will surface at some point, but in the meantime Tony captured the gist of it.

• Time Off in Las Vegas: If you were at Blog World and we didn't see one another, that's probably because I didn't spend much time at the conference. What was I doing? No - not getting married... Check out my photostream to find out.

• Now More Famous in Lawrence, MA: While I was on the road, I heard from a cousin-of-a-friend who is currently a student at Emerson College in Massachusetts (the cousin, not the friend.) She is taking a social media class and needed to profile a blogger. So apparently I was that blogger. Check out the write-up on her blog. Wanna know what's most interesting about it? She wrote the post before I had the chance to respond to some specific questions she sent my way, so she was working off nothing more than my blog itself. And she managed to get a pretty good sense of who I am, what I'm interested in, how I think and even how to pitch me properly. Why is this interesting? Well, that's more than most PR reps who actually pitch me bother to do. So riddle me this: if Dana Evans can learn so much about me by simply spending some time with my blog, why do so many so-called social media pros get it wrong? Someone offer this girl a job (or at least an internship.)

• Because I'm a Fashion Icon: My buddy and ace media man Darren Herman has booked me to speak alongside Sir Ian Schafer from Deep Focus, and Media Kitchen president Barry Lowenthal at a Fashion 2.0 Meet Up in NYC next week. We'll be talking about the future of media and showing off our latest couture duds. The event goes down on the evening of October 27th, and although the RSVP list full you can throw your name on the waiting list if you'll be in the city and are interested in grabbing a seat if one opens up.

• Panasonic LiHD Insider voting begins: And last but not least, the Living in HD Insider competition I blogged about at the beginning of September has entered its final phase -- with the ten finalists going up for a public vote that will crown the winning Insider. Votes must be in by October 23rd, so I hope you'll take some time to check it out and cast your vote. I think we have an interesting batch of social media content creators in the running, so I'm excited to see what happens. (If you're a regular reader, you already know that Panasonic is a crayon client. If you're a first time visitor, now you know too...)

Peace...

Turn skeptics into advocates at Blog World Expo

 

Tomorrow morning I hop a plane to Las Vegas where, on Saturday afternoon, I'll be speaking at Blog World & New Media Expo. In my session -- From Skeptic to Advocate: Making the Business Case for Social Media -- I'll take a practical look at a variety of different ways to get a reluctant client or boss to say "yes" to social media. No theory here -- the entire presentation is based on personal observations and real approaches that I've used to get potential clients over the hump and on the road to social media greatness.

From Skeptic to Advocate is a "Lightning Round" presentation and the format is kinda unique: I'll present solo for 30 minutes in a room and then move to a table on the Exhibit Hall floor for an interactive "Ask the Expert" Q&A session with anyone who wants to pick my brain (presumably about my presentation topic, but I'll be happy to discuss pretty much anything related to social media, marketing or haberdashery.)

The details, for those of you interested in attending:

Lightning Round Presentation:
Saturday, October 17, 2009
12:45 - 1:15 pm
Room 222

Ask the Expert Roundtable Q&A:
Following the presentation
2:00 - 2:30 pm
Look for the assigned table on the LVCC Exhibit Hall floor

As I generally do before speaking at a conference, I thought I'd preview my slides right here. You'll note that they're pretty bare bones -- an intro, a few provocative statements, some iconic images, and that's about it. The real meat is in the voice over and -- more importantly -- I hope we'll spend most of the 30 minutes allotted for presentation having a discussion about the topic instead.

From Skeptic To Advocate

View more documents from Greg Verdino.

Although I'll be in Vegas for several days, I will only be at Blog World for my speaking slot -- I'm happy to catch up with anyone who is interested in meeting during that time, but don't expect to see me walking the trade show floor or raging at the parties.  So if you'd like to say hey you'll want to catch my session. This isn't a ploy to fill the room (although I've got nothing against full rooms) -- I'm just mixing business and pleasure and plan to use the rest of the trip for a li'l bit o' r&r.

Marketing is an infinite game

This morning, as I was doing some research for microMARKETING I came across a great quote by a religion scholar named James P. Carse. The quote comes from his book Finite and Infinite Games, which served as inspiration for an early massively multiplayer online game called Game Neverending and, after that, a little online photo sharing service called Flickr (developed by the same company that created Game Neverending.)

While nothing could have been further from Carse's mind than media and marketing (he tends to focus on stuff of a, erm, higher order), I found that he could have just as easily been writing about the differences between old media vs new, old marketing vs new. And of course the differences between the scarce-choice-abundant-attention world in which mass marketing held sway and the infinite-choice-scarce-attention world in which microMARKETING makes a whole lot more sense. In fact, I liked it so much I worked it into the book.

OK Verdino (blah blah blah), so what's the quote? Funny you ask, good reader. I slapped together a quick graphic suitable for framing (or at least sharing with your fake online friends):

 

If you like it (or can't read it cuz the type in the embedded image is too tiny for your laptop-bleary eyes), you can download the original from (ahem) Flickr.

#deadlinefail

Where does the time go? I'll be damned if I know...

Today is October 1st and, as I write this, it isn't even the morning of the 1st. It's already prime time (heh, remember prime time? It's when people used to tune into whatever programming the networks were showing, before the days of what-you-want-when-and-where-you-want-it.)

And you know what October means? My editor at McGraw-Hill is expecting to see the manuscript for my book before the month is out. Well, not so much is as was. Dudes and dudettes, let me tell you -- writing a book is hard work. Harder still when you're trying to balance it with a super busy day job and even a teeny tiny bit of a personal life. Hint hint: this is also why you haven't seen too many posts on this blog over the course of the past month.

So if the title of this post and my lame attempt at foreshadowing in the previous paragraph weren't enough to tip you off, I'm way behind schedule and won't make my original October deadline. Thanks to a super cooperative team at McGraw and an assist from my agent, I've bought myself another couple of months. I'll be working through the end of the year, delivering the manuscript piece-by-piece leading up to New Year's Eve. In return, I'm aiming to make it badder (in a good way) and better (also in a good way.)

We're still looking at a summer 2010 release date. Pray for me. Oh. And don't forget to join the microMARKETING mailing list for occasional updates, on-sale info and more.