The Best Real-Time Marketing Cookie in the Jar

I’m often asked which cookie has the best track record in real-time marketing.  The BuzzFeed headline “Oreo Again Dunks The Competition On Twitter” tells the story.  Not only is this brand quick with the retort, but it is hilarious.  If I were a cookie and wanted to know how to use humor in social media and marketing, I’d ask Oreo to be my mentor, and watch it’s Super Bowl commercial again (below).  I’d also read David Meerman Scott’s book on the topic, which might be a challenge as the literacy rate among cookies is notoriously low.  As Ann Handley and I recently debated on our new series Better Marriage Through Big Data, this brand has raised the bar for all marketers to get on board with real-time marketing.

BtoB Magazine: Elements of a Great Story

Usually the first question I ask when I’m preparing to produce a corporate video is “Can we film this in Burlington, Vermont?”  It’s a beautiful location, especially August through October.  But on our recent trip, the temperature on the lake with the windchill was minus 40.  Communication is challenging when your jaw is frozen shut.

Stalling so we could stay indoors a little longer, Steve Shepard and I had a chat with Ann Handley about corporate storytelling.  It’s featured in BtoB Magazine this week.

Plan to shoot your next video there, and schedule stops at Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory, ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, and American Flatbread. But keep an eye out for the lake monster.

Vampire Bats at SXSW

Technically, they’re not vampire bats, which might be behind the inferiority complex.  But the 1.5 million bats living under the Congress Bridge in Austin can brag about being the largest urban bat colony in the world, as Reuters reports.  Be sure to add this to your list of  destinations while you’re in ATX.    Last year I had a fun visit with Scott Laningham and Turbo Todd Watson about some of our humor projects at IBM, including Art of the Sale, Mad Science with John Cohn and the smarter planet animation series.



The year before, David Meerman Scott and I watched the bats along the way of our aimless tour of ATX.



I hope to see you if you’re heading down this year. Ann Handley and I will record an ATX version of our new series , and I’ll tweet out when we have the session planned.   If you need help picking which events to attend, check out the Golin Harris marketer’s guide, SX Scout.

Super Bowl Commercial: Off The Press

In honor of this weekend’s Super Bowl, here’s a repost of a Dunkin Donut commercial I was in with Matt Oberg (Onion SportsDome, 30 Rock)

Director Harry Cocciolo was able to fit a :20 script into a :07 scene.  Even under that duress, there was no lip-synching.   It ran during Super Bowl XLV in limited markets.  Advertising agency: Hill Holliday.  Click on the photo to view the ad, or click here.

Marketing Over Coffee

John Wall and Christopher Penn produce a brilliant podcast called Marketing Over Coffee, and I joined for the Thanksgiving holiday special.  Their series is one of the best ways to stay current on the wonderful world of social media marketing and tools.  It’s loaded with excellent tips that can improve your success in social business, although not this week.   We talked more about producing content and some approaches to using comedy in B2B social; as well as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and upcoming BlogWorld in Las Vegas.

Subscribe in iTunes, or listen here.

Superstorm Sandy: A Lesson in Gratitude

Update:  Watching my family and friends struggle through Hurricane Harvey in Houston reminded me of our storm experience a few years back. 

Last night, we got back on the grid after Frankenstorm Sandy.  It feels a little strange, but we’re grateful for six days without power, not just because we escaped pundit noise about the election. It’s wonderful to see how a community pulls together — all the invites we had for warm meals, hot showers and places to do laundry. No injuries to our family or home. An experience like this can give you great compassion for people only an hour away who had a much worse struggle, and for those in the world who don’t have shelter, electricity or clean water. It’s a good reminder to me to become more involved.

This tree fell about 100 yards from our home, and took down a power line and snapped the pole in half.

We spent more time around the fireplace as a family.  My daughter wrote a pirate play, one act comedy, that we all performed together.  Fortunately she didn’t have much time to audition actors outside of our home, so I was able to book a key role.

We survived on a steady diet of grilled waffles and Starbucks Via.  The coffee helped fuel our cleanup efforts … another reason that I don’t drink decaf.

Halloween was canceled for the second consecutive year.  Last year Snowstorm Alfred last robbed us of Trick-or-treating and of power for a full week. This year, we did have the halloween walk in town. I tried to grab an extra Snickers from Linda McMahon, and she put me in a sleeper hold.

Now, every time I flip on the light switch, I hear George Frederick Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus in my head.

Portlandia — The Social Media Explore Tour

Cancel your plans for Nov 14-15 and catch the Greyhound to Portlandia.   Jason Falls and the Social Media Explorer crew make their next tour stop in the City of Roses.  I learned so much from the event in Orange County last week, and met some great folks, including OakMonster, who cracked me up with this image:

This doctrine has defined my success as a communicator.

Falls’ event also taught me a few things about what to look for when choosing a conference speakers who have deep domain expertise in marketing and social media, and are also entertaining and inspirational.  Here are a few presenter characteristics:

1) Numbers guy. Larry Rosin clearly has a passion for standard deviations, and he combed through the pie charts in an entertaining fashion.  He told us that political campaign yard signs have a surprising influence on voters.  Uh-oh.  Larry also revealed that the stories we hear about the death of Facebook come from traditional media — there are no data to support this claim.  As I’ve often said, don’t let facts get in the way of a good story.   I’d recommend looking through the Social Habit Report.

2) Vulnerability. While most of the presentations will change how I conduct my business, Courtney Seiter’s opening will change how I conduct my life.  She opened with quotes about a friend who passed away recently.  At the memorial service, everyone was reflecting what a good, guine listener her friend had been, and how he asked questions.  “It’s amazing to see the effect that someone paying attention to other people can have.”   It was a moving way to begin her presentation, The art of being interested.   She went on to walk us through a vast array of tools, demonstrating how we can show our interest in people on social media.

3) Knowledge of Market Trends.  Tim Hayden‘s presentation, “All of Your Marketing is Mobile, You Just Don’t Know It” was full of actionable ideas that I’ve already started implemented.

4) Good Teacher. What is truly remarkable about Marcus Sheridan was simplicity in which he lays out an inbound marketing / social media plan that anyone can implement.  In short, quit talking about yourself and become a good teacher.  Use your blog to answer the questions your prospective customers have.  His free e-book shares all the detail.

With this caliber of speakers, keynote Scott Stratten, fun locals like Babcock Jenkins’ Carmen Hill and Voodoo Doughnuts, you can’t miss Portland.  Register here.

Ghost in Room 217: Stephen King and The Shining

Our ghost tour guide, a Colorado University student, unintentionally convinced me that we were in the presence of the paranormal during the Stanley Hotel Ghost Tour because the only time she seemed to be relaxed and unscripted was when she was talking about the ghosts nearby.  (See New York Times article about “Scary Mary”).  I’ve been fascinated by the story of Stephen King’s failure, which led him to a frightening night in room 217, which then led to the novel that put him on the map, The Shining.  It’s a beautiful and redemptive reminder to me that failure is a necessary part of the creative process.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to write and produce a dark comedy about the story.  For now, I’ll use it as the topic of a new YouTube series: Better Marriage Through PowerPoint.

The Atlantic reported,

“Jim Carrey requested 217 during the filming of Dumb and Dumber, but checked out—so the story goes—after only three hours. “That’s a shady one,” says the hotel’s tour guide Kevin Lofy. “What happened to him in that room, we don’t know. He’s never spoken of it.” A fantastic, if apocryphal, image: Carrey the rubbery actor-medium, the channeler of presences, windmilling out of the Stanley in a post-ghost panic.”

This year at the Sundance Film Festival, director Rodney Ascher premiered his feature documentary “Room 237” which explores Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of the story. (BTW, the hotel asked Kubrick to change the room number for the film.)  Another Stephen King feature was announced last week — “The Breathing Method.”  Congrats to my creative partner from the mainframe videos, Scott Teems, who wrote the screenplay!

Special thanks to Barbara Barna Abel and Ann Handley for the creative support and encouragement on this PowerPoint video series.  Thanks to Garth Beams for the animation, and Justin Balog at HOSSedia for this eerie shot of room 217.

The Marquette Beer Runner

My first visit to Milwaukee far exceeded the expectations, probably because most of my knowledge of the town comes from watching Lavern & Shirley. Tim Blair, a good friend and mentor from IBM now at Grant Thornton, invited me to speak at the PR + Social Media Summit, hosted by his alma mater, Marquette University.  Tim is still a mentor, but we’re no longer friends.

The event’s first speakers was Olympic sprinter Nick Symmonds who turned to eBay to auction real estate on his deltoid for a tattoo of a corporate twitter handle.  Creative agency Hason Dodge narrowly outbid Nick’s mom.  Before I try to sell tattoo space to raise funds, I’ll need to shave a few seconds off of my time in the 400 hurdles.

Molly McKenna, social media director at McDonald’s, masterfully blended humor, candor about taking risks, and  fascinating stories from the trenches, including a recent twitter battle  between two prominent mayors over a beverage ban, as an example of standing up for your brand on twitter: “RT @McDonalds .@MikeBloomberg We trust our customers to make the choices that are best for them.”  She’s one of the best speakers on social media I’ve ever seen.

After speaking on The Business Case for Nonsense and showing a few comedy videos and a clip from our documentary, Tim  Blair and I headed over to Sobelman’s, a burger legend featured on the Travel Channel’s Food Wars.   An excellent choice, as was our dinner the night before at the Iron Horse Hotel.

In addition to the speaker lineup that included some social media rockstars like Kathryn Janicek from NBC Chicago, Augie Ray from Prudential and Mary Henige from GM, one element that made this conference stand out was the host, Tim Cigelske, aka The Beer Runner.   Not only did he help everything run smoothly and was a fun guy to work with, but he’s an established SM leader as well. Check out his interview in Wired Magazine on combining his passions for craft beer and fitness.  I hope to return soon to spend more time at the river walk and tour the Harley Davidson Museum, but as Cigelske suggested, I think I’ll wait until after the Wisconsin winter, when conditions aren’t the same as Ice Station Zebra.

About the Comedy & Cheeseburger blog.

BtoB Magazine: Take the time to lighten up and LOL!

In Paul Gillin’s BtoB Magazine column, he outlines a few different approaches to comedy in B2B videos, including one of the indisputable laws of physics: comedy comes from pain.  Check out the Top 10 B2B Comedy Videos Kipp Bodnar and Jeff Cohen’s blog.