My friend Melissa Mines and I presented at the GSMI Social Media Strategies Summit. As usual, when I visit San Francisco in September, I forgot that the climate can reach Ice Station Zebra conditions. Melissa, sporting a sleeveless blouse on the way to dinner in Union Square, hypothesized that most tourists also don’t pack appropriately, forgetting about the temp drop and remedying their mistake by purchasing a cheap sweatshirt from the first street vendor they can find. Which explains the following:
The next day at the conference, when our teeth stopped chattering, we presented a few case studies on Cisco’s work in the B2B social media space. In the Service Provider Marketing group, we have a relatively small, technical audience. I love the fact that we strive to balance the engineering content with some of the funny. Our presentation is below.
Like everyone one of my trips to San Francisco, I came home wishing I could have stayed longer, and sporting a new “Escape From Alcatraz” hoodie.
But it was only for one evening. Last Thursday, I was invited to present a case study on using comedy in corporate YouTube videos, and shared “Mainframe: The Art of the Sale.” This video series we published in August 2006 continues to be discussed, simply because it’s funny. It’s listed as a case study in the second edition of bestseller The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, published this month. (Congrats, David!)
Comedy done well has the power to cut through clutter and to influence, and that’s helped me get an honorable mention on Click-Z’s Social Media All-Stars list. My thanks to Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics.
