Nice. Charlie Brown’s teacher as the zoned out messenger. Good impression with hand gestures to boot.

Justin’s flagpole – the story will happen and will you join the conversation.

The conversation is uncontrollable. It’s the old Oscar Wilde quote about the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Twitter.

Two chances to make a first impression – when you first meet and when you first screw up. A Huntington attendee took the idea and threw it round his bank as a mission statement type thingy.

So how does one maintain one’s online reputation.

Half of all purchases are made with online customer reviews. Negative and positive.

Search Providian

Really. As if a Boy’s Gone Wild video starring Justin would’ve sold any copies whatsoever. Now I’ve got a terrible mental image.

46% of all employees have talked about their workplace online.

Google Health Service

Truly universal healthcare provision.

Ebayink.com

How on earth do you win a severed finger in a bet?

All businesses have advocates. Embrace them and cajole them. Take them skiing like Brad does on a regular basis.

THREE THINGS TO DO TONIGHT

google.com/alerts

Techrigy

Start building a Web presence – even if it isn’t a site per se, start building a rapport online. You can use one of the above services to find out where your brand is being mentioned.

Set up a paid search accounts – only half an hour on Google and Yahoo with your brand and business name results. If and when it happens it’s set up so you can adjust whatever it is that has occurred as a modifier.

“Google are awful! Absolutely awful!” – Justin Seibert, President, Direct Online Marketing.

Man, this isn’t half a test of my flabby touch-typing skills. Then again, it doesn’t take much.

Developing relationships in marketing in an eHarmony stylee – the 29 degrees of ultimate connections. Is eHarmony that one with all those smug self-satisfied types wittering inane anecdotes about what they did after they met. Whoops….we’re onto something else.

Prioritizing Customers – in no particular order:

revenue – potential
revenue – historic
repeat revenue
profitability
lifetime value
relationship
influence on others
noise.

Let’s concentrate on the influencers. By the way, I might as well plug The New Influencers by Paul Gillin as some follow up reading.

What kind of weird term is pyschographic targeting? Is it one step removed from pyschopathic targeting? Sounds like facebook and Beacon.

Google Books preview of The Tipping Point

Mavens – connectors – salesmen.

Influencing influencers isn’t quite the same as trying to suck up to the cool kids at school. However, it’s key to find those people who personify and embody the exact values and demographic of your target market. If you can excite the people who may be purchasing your products or services then you can or should be able to excite the influencers.

Is it the same as John McCain and his his family bbqs for journalists?

It certainly isn’t the same as the John McCain campaign trying to spam / troll / influence other political blogs by sending out his online minions to comment on related posts and receive points for posting what they’ve posted back on his site.

I’m not having a go at Mr. McCain, just at a really dumb tactic.

Lunch time, my good fellows.

1. What has been the biggest change you’ve seen in how universities market and promote their sports programs since you started out at UConn?

The internet is biggest change. When I started at UConn in ‘93 the internet/email was in the very early stages (if we even had it all – I can’t remember ever using it at UConn in the beginning). Now, it is generally the first medium we think of when deciding how to best promote one of our games/events.

We still promote our events through traditional vehicles, but the internet is the one we think of first. It allows the most flexibility and the best opportunity to hit the most people during the course of a day.

2. How are you moving the WVU athletic department forward in terms of new methods of advertising, marketing, public relations, and measuring their effectiveness?

We are constantly looking at new ideas for our web site. Recently, we have started adding more video features to the site. We receive instant feedback with our web site via the traffic. We can see right away if something we did on there was well received. That is tougher with traditional television, radio or print advertising.

Most of measurement techniques are basic at this point. If it’s web based we look at the page views, unique users and or “click throughs” if it’s a pop up ad or something similar.

We are fortunate that we get most of our feedback about events by looking in the seats at a game. We can tell pretty quickly at a game if our promotion worked or not. I can expand more on this topic at the conference.

3. You mentioned in the last session that you’re moving ticket sales to an all electronic-based system in the near future and that you’ve experienced some resistance to that, particularly with older generations. If you could sit down with one such person, how would you explain why you’re moving these sales to online processing and why it’s a benefit to both them and you?

Great question. I still think it will take us a few years to become fully automated in this area. I think the benefits are the overall ease for the customer. No more waiting on the mail to arrive with the ticket application in there. No more writing out two different checks and sending them back. Click a couple of buttons, put your cc info in and you’re done. No filling out forms, doing the math on how much you owe. It’s all right there.

4. Which Web 2.0 / social media / new marketing applications are most exciting to you?

Facebook and MySpace I think are extremely interesting applications. It’s amazing to me how many students/people use one or the other. As I mentioned at the Charleston event, I think people have to be careful with this as well. While it can be a great marketing tool (both individually and for groups), people that post to and speak to our athletes about their image and how much one picture on their Facebook page could change the perception of them that is out there.

That said, they can be valuable promotional tools. We had interns post events on both sites this year in an effort to attract people to a soccer game, wrestling meet, etc…

5. You’ve now had the opportunity to speak at one city (Charleston) and listen to a couple of the sessions. Do you think this is the type of event marketers in West Virginia can use to their benefit?

I think these events are great. I think it is invaluable for marketing people to get out of “their world” and share ideas as often as possible. So often I think busy executives get hung up in their day to day duties and don’t have the time to think on a bigger scale. I know I do. It’s amazing how much more creative I feel after sitting in a room with a bunch of other marketing people and throwing around ideas. I think these conferences are outstanding and will only get better as they get more and more participants!

6. What do you think are the benefits of holding conferences such as Next Generation Marketing in West Virginia in cities like Morgantown and Charleston?

Both have so much to offer. Charleston is great because of the multiple ad agencies, gov’t groups and just the fact it is the capital. Morgantown because of the obvious draw of the University. But, Morgantown gives you more than just the Univ. It has been one of the few areas in West Virginia that continues to grow and thrive. Construction continues at an unbelievable pace. More and more students are coming to the Univ each year only leads to more and more growth in the business community.

Morgantown and Charleston are both vitally important to the growth of our state. I think bringing bright, energetic, talented people together (as these conferences are doing) will benefit not only the individuals, but also the cities in this state and the state as a whole!

We all know that people live, socialize and communicate within networks … and today across social networks such as blogs, forums, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc. People talk about their kids, hobbies, their vacation destinations and their favorite sports teams; naturally people also share their experiences as consumers.

Studies prove this. The Coca-Cola Company conducted a study in the late 1960’s and found that a highly satisfied customer is likely to tell four to five people, on average, about a positive experience. On the other hand, a bad experience will also be communicated—to an even greater extent. Coke learned that a dissatisfied customer is likely to spread the bad news to nine or 10 people.

Such information provides substantial motivation to the business owner to seek out and repair customer complaints. In fact, such situations create an opportunity for a company to inspire a loyal, engaged customer. (Remember, you cannot convert a customer to a loyal advocate. You have to inspire them to become advocates.)

When a company successfully recovers from a service snafu (i.e., makes it right for the customer and successfully addresses the situation), it can be a very powerful experience. The Coca-Cola study found that in service recovery situations the consumer is likely to share the news of the resolved problem with nine to 15 people. Today with the prevalence of social networking tools the numbers are likely multiplied. Still, the ratios are likely to remain intact.

As Justin Seibert explained: “You only have two opportunities to make a good first impression. One occurs upon initial contact; the other occurs after you’ve screwed up (and fixed things).”

CAMC Chief Marketing Officer Elizabeth Pellegrin was our lunchtime marketing Rock Star. She spoke to the sold-out crowd at Next Generation Marketing in Charleston about a day in the life of a CMO and the high-level view of the fit for new marketing in the overall marketing mix. http://MarketingGenius.blogspot.com

Details of the University’s decision (a no-brainer in my opinion) and Pat White’s credentials are well documented in today’s Daily Mail column by sportswriter Jack Bogaczyk.

Here’s my question to all of you marketing geniuses: What would you to generate publicity and create buzz in support of Pat White to maximize his chances of winning the coveted Heisman Trophy, college football’s top individual honor? Put your sports information director (or athletic director) hat on … and let’s have some suggestions. Please post your suggestions as a comment below.

By the way the award is decided by a voting process by the members of the Downtown Athletic Club of New York. It will be awarded in early December of 2008. More about the award here.

Cross-posted from the Maple Creative Marketing Genius Blog

Since that time, I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations with Jose about the steps eBay is taking to join the conversation. Earlier this week, I even had the opportunity to visit Jose on eBay’s main campus (you know a company is large when it has any campus, let alone multiple ones). During that time, I was able to meet Richard Brewer-Hay and get a sneak peek at eBay’s new corporate blog: eBayInk. Pretty good stuff. I was talking with Paul yesterday and said they seemed to have hit everything I think we would have recommended (except for the fact that I can’t seem to easily pull the logo – sorry, but I’m way too tired to open up photoshop).

The blog launched earlier today and the limited comments so far have been very interesting. They show eBay has its negatives or perceived negatives and that some people felt that it hasn’t until now engaged in any meaningful online conversations (see esp. comments by “implog”).

Now the tempting thing for eBay would be to not post these “negative” comments, or write them off as just some whacko, feed standard company lines, or give up on the blog altogether. I put “negative” in quotes, because I prefer to think of it as an opportunity to really become part of the larger conversation taking place outside their San Jose walls. (Or basketball court that the new CEO just had put in.)

Richard’s got his work cut out for him, as anyone launching a real attempt at a conversational blog for any corporation that size would have. But I know he has the right attitude and he seems up for it. Good luck to all involved and for continued improved relationships.

What’s that you say? Aren’t we going to be talking about joining the conversation during the Next Generation Marketing series? Why, yes we are. Thank you for asking. If you’re in or around West Virginia in April or May, come check us out. We promise you’ll walk away with some new ideas you can put into action for improved marketing ROI for your business even if you’re not a billion dollar Silicon Valley firm.

Then, as a business owner, you’re expected to go out and network so you can make connections and influence people.

Blogging and other forms of social media are a great way to network without having to press too much flesh. One of the first things you have to do is float around commenting on other blogs. It’s imperative that you manage to engage other bloggers within a related niche with how truly smart you really are.

But be prepared for it to take a little bit of time and effort to build the blogger/commenter dynamic. Especially with bloggers who are creaking under the weight of their own legend.

However, whenever you read a blog post and feel compelled to comment because you’ve been moved sufficiently to write one, you can be fairly rest-assured that the blogger will respond if your comment manages to move them sufficiently too.

New bloggers get so excited that they’ll almost invite you to dinner over any old comment. (Remember this when you’re five years down the line and jaded beyond recognition.)

Blog comments spam is the bane of many a blogger. We have more than a few methods and plug-ins set to stun in order to weed out this unpleasantness. No blogger worth their salt would be seen allowing a spam comment for a nanosecond.

So, to have somebody come along and offer a human blog-spamming service is one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard in quite a while. It’s well worth reading Darren Rowse’s take on the whole sorry idea and the comments that follow.

The logistics of somebody being able to write 1,000 worthwhile comments on various blogs in a three-day timespan for a mere $239.99 are beyond comprehension. It’s also beyond stupid.

The kind of damage this blog commenting guy could do to his own business is quite frightening. He might be coming from the ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity school’, but I’m afraid I don’t always subscribe to that.

How do you ride out a storm if you haven’t built anything to ride on?

So, with all that in mind, I hope I haven’t frightened anybody off the idea of starting a blog. They aren’t difficult and can be awfully rewarding, both intrinsically and extrinsically. You just need to spend a bit of time so that you’re sure in your mind that it’s right for you.

That’s why it’s interesting seeing the mix of online marketing methods we have in store for anyone attending Online Marketing: Innovations That Work. You’ll get to find out whether blogging, mobile marketing, search marketing, and paid search advertising will fit into your online marketing mix and how best to measure their effectiveness. You’ll also be able to work out how to make them all play nicely together.

You’ll even be able to find out how to combat the sort bad publicity the blog comment spam guy is currently experiencing should you ever do something a bit silly.

Then again, if you listen attentively in the first place it should never come to that.

Jose Mallabo is currently the Director of Financial Communications at eBay Inc. In this role he oversees and leads the company’s communications strategies around its financial activities and performance as well as setting strategy for internal and external communications around mergers and acquisitions globally.

His session will address how you can increase the reach and lifetime of your public relations campaign by using online methods such as press release optimization.

1. Do you see new online methods of public relations replacing or enhancing the more traditional means?

I don’t see the online methods replacing traditional channels as much as I see them as an evolution to the tools we use. When you look back to the pre-mass media days of public relations when what you might call a PR practitioner was promoting his cause or company you’ll see a lot of what is all the vogue today – a focus to drive word of mouth at the grass roots level. PR and marketing people tend to tout it like word of mouth marketing is some kind of recent discovery when in fact we’ve known intuitively and empirically for a long time that the most powerful information is that which is delivered by someone you know and trust. Because of the interactivity that online forums enable, it has proven to be more effective than traditional mediums at mobilizing people. Many mass communications researchers would argue that the media don’t tell people what to think, they tell people what to think about. The Web, in my opinion, empowers people to do something about what they’re hearing, feeling and thinking. That’s pretty powerful.

2. Which online public relations applications are most exciting to you?

Obviously I work in corporate PR because I still believe the most important (though somewhat underutilized by consumer programs) is the online conference call with reporters, analysts, customers and investors. The Web cast of the earnings call came to be the de facto tool for PR and IR people to use around quarterly earnings and material news in the late 90s – targeted largely at investors. But with today’s very accessible technologies this online tool can be used for so much more. Smaller firms that want to do a media tour without the expense of flying people around the country can do this all on a series of online calls that can be supported by Web based presentations, virtual product demonstrations that then can spur real-time chats, live blogging and of course a live Q&A. There’s a way to do this in an innovative, yet non-gimmicky way. I’d love to see what can be done beyond the same old stale corporate earnings call online.

3. Is the press release dead?

No. In fact, after Regulation Fair Disclosure was ratified (in 2000) to keep public companies from selectively disclosing material information, the overall volume of press releases increased dramatically. What used to be communicated in conference calls, meetings or filings began making their way into a news release. Mercifully, that knee jerk reaction has been tempered by time and companies have developed a better filter for what is material, what is news and what is simply better fodder for a blog post or email.

While some companies (large and small) continue to create unnecessary noise with non-news announcements, the sanity has come back to most PR departments. Reporters and editors don’t want to get feeds that touts about a Web site re-launch. They’d rather get a call or email telling them what that site re-launch might mean to the industry as a whole. The growth and legitimization of the blogosphere may well be the biggest in the use of the press release. With so many bloggers, companies pushing out releases need to keep them in mind when creating the content and tone of press releases. They cut and paste content from release much more so than traditional media, so if you write something you better mean it.

4. You’ve lived and worked all over the country. What do you think are the benefits of holding conferences such as Online Marketing: Innovations That Work in places such as Pittsburgh?

I’ve been fortunate enough to work and live in small and large markets over the past decade or so – most of which in high-technology and using the Web for communications. In the smaller communities where there’s some need for an economic makeover or resurgence, I think the benefit is to see just how much talent and interest there is in the area. The first time I attended a forum like this in Rochester, New York was as an entrepreneur looking for partners, education and a line into some equity financing. I thought we’d be the sole Web-heads in the room but it was standing room only for a full week of sessions. It was really empowering and heartening to see that there were so many great ideas, entrepreneurs and resources at our disposal – locally. And unlike some other industries, people involved in the online world are almost to a fault overly enthusiastic about sharing with you what they’ve learned. I think it just comes with the spirit of the Web.

Blogs let you communicate directly with your audience. Of course, we’re too busy building product to communicate with our audience so let’s hire a marketer to do it for us. And when inexperienced marketers get a blog, they all blog the same way. Their voice is as authentic as a Twinkie is organic…. [Their] ire should have been directed at whoever gave the keys to the blog to someone whose authentic voice reads like a Newsweek health supplement advertorial.

So, to recap, the recipe for a disaster is easy: hire marketers with no authentic voice, ask them to pimp offal, and when they’re busted for it make them force out an apology in which they blame it on their authentic voice. You too can make the front page of TechMeme for two days running with three easy steps, though you might get wet sleeves fishing your career prospects out of the toilet when you’re done. You’re welcome!

Now this isn’t just a killer quote but a serial killer quote from an article that is truly worthy of your attention if you’re in the game of setting up blogs for clients or even setting up a blog for your own business.

Think on.