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?’

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.

Chicago Cheeseburger Classics

What must have happened is when I entered Chicago airspace, my Lose It! iPhone calorie counter was scrambled.  Oh, well.  I gained a few pounds during my week in the windy city as I managed to visit three cheeseburger joints. My buddy Kurt told me about the Billy Goat Tavern, which inspired the classic SNL sketch “Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger.” Kurt warned me, “you don’t go there for the cheeseburgers.” He was right, but it was a blast to dine in the icon.

I always check in with Hamburger America author/filmmaker George Motz when I’m traveling for advice on joints I shouldn’t miss.  (Thanks Sean Amore for the intro).  He noted three, including M Burger, next to the hospital, which is frequented by doctors — mostly cardiologists.  I’m not sure, but the guy hiding next to me behind a dyed beard may have well been Dr. Richard Kimble.

Finally, I visited Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse and grabbed a burger in the bar.  Holy Cow.

But hands-down, the best meal I’ve had in recent memory was at Hugo’s Frog Bar & Fish House. No cheeseburger here, I went for the fish.  Outstanding, and almost justifies a trip back to Chicago, for the goat cheese appetizer.  Don’t miss this if you’re in town!

About the Cheeseburger & Comedy blog series.

Obama Burger w/ David Meerman Scott

I owe a great debt to David Meerman Scott for advancing my social media comedy career, and now I also owe him for lunch.  David authored the top selling book New Rules of Marketing & PR, and included my first corporate comedy

YouTube video as a case.  He’s been a huge help in getting me on the speaker circuit. We missed lunch during our tech-check, so after speaking we ducked out of the Inbound Marketing Summit for a cheeseburger at Five Guys in Foxboro, MA.  The same chain where President Obama made a cheeseburger run with Brian Williams.  No sign of either of them this time.  The establishment boasts Zero artificial trans fats, which is why POTUS has enrolled it a critical component of fixing health care.

A few years back, David, Scott Teems and I created a trilogy to promote World Wide Rave. Here’s episode 2:

Yelp gives Five Guys 4.5 stars

296 Bleecker St
Manhattan, NY 10014
(212) 367-9200

For more locations, click here.

About the Cheeseburger & Comedy series.

When Powerpoint Attacks: 6 survival tips

If you forced me to rank the places where I would most prefer not to look like an idiot, the Harvard Kennedy School would come in fourth.   Or maybe sixth.  Some of history’s most eminent figures have spoken there, like Jack Donaghy.
But even after a successful tech-check before the presentation, things can go terribly wrong.  Especially if you’ve embedded videos into a powerpoint presentation.

I was attempting to show two commercials, but another video popped up, and what’s worse, the audio was out of synch with the video.  But here’s what I’ve learned:

1)    Take a deep breath and relax.  You’re still in control of how you respond.  One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from a decade of standup comedy is that audiences are incredibly empathetic.   If you’re having a good time, they are.  If you’re stressed out, they are.  Audiences want you to be successful.   It’s important that you understand and remind yourself that they are rooting for you.

2)    Bring backup.  I always carry a copy of my presentation on a USB stick and load the file on a backup presentation computer if available — the AV folks usually have one.

3)  Bring a short 3-4 minute video about your topic on a DVD.  Give it to the AV folks during the tech run-through.  If there is a problem, they can play your video to give the audience something to watch other than you sweating, while the tech folks are resolving the issue.

4) Take an improv class.  You may have to do it on a dare.  I came very close to running out of my first improv class in 1998 at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theater.  It was scary to get through, but has changed my life.  Give it a shot.

5) Have an alternative slide-free version of your story ready to tell.  It’s important to be ready to present a compelling case without powerpoint slides, as I sometimes have to do when negotiating with my wife.  Hard to believe but history has witnessed a few speeches that went pretty well without foils and an overhead projector:  the Gettysburg Address, the Sermon on the Mount and King Henry V’s Crispian Day speech.  To be fair, one of those speakers relied on 3×5 index cards and was a fictional character.

6)    Get a Mac.

Inbound Marketing Summit

Here’s yesterday’s presentation from the Inbound Marketing Summit.  I’ll follow up in the next few days with posts covering the comedy writing homework assignment, the Hyde Park chapel story, and answer a few questions I received via twitter.  Steve Garfield’s interview provides a little more detail.

It’s nice to be warm again.

Ted’s Steamed Cheeseburgers + IMS10

On the to way Foxboro, MA to perform a little comedy at the Inbound Marketing Summit, my car uncontrollably veered off of 691 into Meriden, CT, and parallel parked itself in front of Ted’s which has long been on my list.

This burger would be served well by a wheat bun.  The cheese was unquestionably the best cheese I’ve ever had on a burger, and maybe even in block form.  The place is incredibly small and smokey, but we’ll worth the stop, as Adam from Man vs. Food will tell you.

Yelp gives Ted’s 4.5 stars.

1044 Broad St
Meriden, CT 06450
(203) 237-6660

About the Cheeseburger & Comedy series.

Social Media Strategies Summit

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.

RIP Greg Giraldo

I first met Greg Giraldo when I was just starting out in stand-up, and was so impressed by how gracious and encouraging he was.  He’s been one of my favorite comedians, and I had always planned to reverse engineer his first Comedy Central Presents show — it was technically perfect.  Oh, and hilarious.  (and not as angry as his more recent work.)

What I also loved about this guy is that even though he nailed a near perfect score on the LSAT and a cush job with a swanky NYC law firm, after his first stand-up performance, he quit his job the following day to pursue what he loved.  RIP brother.

VisibleGains B2B Video Roundtable

I spent some time this week at our Tewksbury, MA office  meeting our mobile networking team, headed up by Ash Dahod, recently profiled in the Boston Globe. What a fun group.  I filmed an into for a video travel blog we’ll be producing when one of my colleagues Angela Singhal-Whiteford treks to Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai and Delhi to visit with customers.

David Meerman Scott invited me to speak Friday afternoon at the VisibleGains B2B video roundtable, along with Steve Garfield and others.   I shared a funny video and talked about some of the interesting things we’re doing with video, including the upcoming Doobie Brothers Cisco TelePresence event.

Update:  Here’s a comprehensive review of the Doobie Brothers concert from Howard Lichtman.

SXSW panel: Late Night Comedy meets Corporate Video

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