Tim Washer. Keynote Speaker + Event Emcee

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Tagged ‘social media‘

B2B Comedy Classics

The age of the curator seems like the perfect time to assemble a collection about something, so I put together a list of the Top 10 B2B Comedy Videos for a guest post for the Social Media B2B blog.  Above is a bonus video for Valentine’s Day.  Thanks to Jeff Cohen for the opportunity, and for his virtual tour of North Carolina wine.  His Biltmore photos compelled me to plan a return trip to my favorite vineyard in the Smokies.

Inc. Magazine: How to Use Humor in Advertising

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Lou Dubois and I first crossed paths and the IMS10 and again at BrandsConf, and continued our discussion about corporate comedy in social media for his Inc. Magazine article.   Check it out.

WebProNews: Adding Humor to Social Media Marketing

Mike McDonald of WebProNews asked a few questions at the Inbound Marketing Summit about our approach of using humor in social media.  I also shared a few examples of a recent travel series we did.

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A Vote for Comedy in B2B Social Media

I had the pleasure of meeting Paul Gillin at the Inbound Marketing Summit this month in Foxboro, MA.   He was interested in a series of YouTube comedy videos  “Mainframe: The Art of the Sale,” and wrote a nice article about them.

A notes from behind the scenes:

The question I get most often about these is “how did you get these approved at a big corporation?’

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By starting small.  The first comedy I produced at IBM was at the end of 2004, and it was internal only — for a sales meeting — which kept the risk very low.  I kept the cost low by asking one of my best friends, Scott Teems, a director, to help me for $400.   The video was a hit, I was asked to create a sequel, and was able to pay Scott a nice tip.

Social Media Strategies Summit

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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

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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.

SXSW panel: Late Night Comedy meets Corporate Video

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Our proposed panel has made it through the first round of the SXSW Interactive selections, and now we need your vote to make it to the show.  Scott Teems, SXSW Film Festival winning director for THAT EVENING SUN and I (contributor to SNL, Letterman, Conan, The Onion) will discuss a few of our corporate YouTube video hits that earned recognition from The New York Times and Comedy Central, as well as lessons learned from near “fireable offenses.”   Bestselling author David Meerman Scott (New Rules of Marketing & PR, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead) will join us.

We’d appreciate your vote for our panel (voting ends 11:59 CDT Friday, August 27.) It takes a minute to register for an account, then click here [note: the panelpicker page doesn’t allow for listing of all panelists, hence the above post]

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7744

Mr. Bartley’s @ Harvard Square

When you’re at Harvard, you have to make smart decisions, and mine was to never again order a cheeseburger with barbecue sauce.  I arrived at that decision after eating at Mr. Bartley’s, a venue the Boston Herald describes as “Boston’s best burger, in cheerfully, post-hippie dorm surroundings.”   I got into the barbecue sauce-on-cheeseburger habit back in my high school days, ordering the Rojo Burger at Chili’s.  I thought it was a classy move, but not everyone agreed, including my prom date. (btw, “Rojo” is the Spanish word for “impossible to get out of Taffeta”).

Bartley's Harvard Square

This place has a fun student vibe,  and I kept thinking I’d see Will Hunting sitting in the corner solving word problems.

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I was on campus to speak about using comedy in social media to help put a face on the corporation.  Below is a short clip of my PowerPoint disaster.  And check out this review of Bartley’s from Billy Idol:

 

Yelp gives it 4.5 stars

Mr. Bartley’s

1246 Massachusetts Ave

Cambridge, MA

(617) 354-6559
About the Cheeseburger & Comedy series.

The Business Case for Nonsense

I went to Harvard Business School.

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.

Here’s my presentation:The Business Case for Nonsense: IBM Social Media

BtoB Mag: “Comedian Tim Washer and IBM’s viral campaign”

From BtoB Magazine:

COMEDIAN TIM WASHER RARELY TAKES HIMSELF seriously, appearing     everywhere from “Saturday Night Live,” to Budweiser commercials, to a plethora of late-night talk shows. But in 2004, the strictly humorous man landed a new job—this one with IBM Corp., whose brand would hardly be considered comical. IBM, in an attempt to poke fun at its newly established Mainframe Division, hired Washer for a series of viral videos featuring absurdist marketing humor for IBM’s then-new System z technology. The campaign took off, garnering almost 500,000 views for the six-part series on YouTube—with each video providing a link, and driving traffic, to the Mainframe informational Web site. Last month, Washer appeared at a Business Development Institute seminar on corporate social media practices. Though now several years removed from his Mainframe campaign, Washer praised IBM’s willingness to embrace creative absurdity in the corporate marketing world and warned the audience that fear was the greatest hindrance to a company’s ability to maneuver successfully in the social media realm. —Dillon White

Comedy, Social Media and Big Business

David Wenger and I had a conversation recently on the role of humor in the corporate world, social media, and “stretching the boundaries of comfort when talking Big Business.”  Read or listen to the interview on his blog.