Influential Marketing Blog

The Personality Project: Women of Personality

There are generally three kinds of ideas. The most popular two are the ones that you act on right away and those that you never do anything about. Those are the majority. Most of us love the third kind. Those are the ideas that are too big or complex or important to do quickly, but that you simply cannot let die because of how you feel about them. Today I finally launched that kind of idea. Since Personality Not Included came out about a year ago - I have been getting emails from people sharing their experience with the book and how they felt about it's main premise that businesses (like people) need to have a strong and authentic personality.

Soon after the book launched, I noticed that many of these emails were coming from women working in professional roles and those that had started their own businesses. These female entrepreneurs were responding to the message of personality in a way that I didn't expect. So since that moment I started thinking about bringing those voices together. Of course, part of the reason would be to promote my book ... but like most authors the important thing for me was for my idea to find a home and actually help people change their careers or make their business more successful.

So today, you can download a free ebook called "The Personality Project: Women of Personality." It is an extension of a site that I launched some time ago with a similar mission - to get visionary people in many industries to talk about why personality matters. This ebook features 20 business women that I respect and admire who each agreed to share their story as part of the ebook. These include founders and CEOs, best selling authors, popular bloggers and online personalities and even the first woman to ever row solo across the Atlantic Ocean (and she's now making her way across the Pacific).

See the ebook embedded below and click on it to download a free PDF copy:

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Books marketing blogs

Once you get a chance to read it, please visit each of the contributors sites and blogs, buy their books and support their efforts. The best thing you can do is to validate their ideas and use their examples to improve your own business and your career. And then let them know they made a difference.

PS - If you mention this ebook on your blog or twitter or facebook or anywhere else online, use the tag #wop (on Twitter) or "WOP" (anywhere else) as this is the one that all the contributors will be watching and responding to.

6 Ways Ford Is Finding Its Own Voice

Yesterday evening I co-hosted a tweetup in New York City where Ford was unveiling the new Ford Fiesta and a brilliantly conceived social media program to get 100 influencers to take the car on an extended test drive for 6 months as part of the Ford Fiesta Movement. The event was a gathering designed to help put a more human face on Ford and talk about a new Ford car that many of the 20 and 30 somethings who showed up (and are the target market for the Fiesta) may not have known about.

The effort is just one example of a greater shift that has been taking place at Ford over the past year as the company has worked to not only reshape its image in the eyes of the American public, but also to change the way that they tell the story of Ford. It is a rich story to tell, one that is linked to the history of America in a way that few companies can authentically claim. And despite being in the maligned automotive industry that seems a permanent fixture in the negative news cycle, things are changing at Ford. How are they managing to do it? Here are six elements to consider:

1. Having a strong story to tell. In the midst of all the scrutiny, Ford is (and has been) shifting their image from stodgy truck maker to a more forward thinking company making cars that the American public actually want to drive. The relaunched Taurus was a hit, winning top safety ratings - the Flex has had rave reviews, and other cars like the Fusion and Focus are winning many fans.
2. Tapping the passion of employees. Ford has always described itself as a family, and employees often demonstrate a stunning loyalty to the company ... even describing themselves in terms of the cars they have always driven. The old mode of communications would be to keep all these voices silent, and instead only authorize a small group of people to speak on behalf of Ford. Today many of these voices are being encouraged to speak and share their thoughts and experiences online.
3. Making a commitment to social media. Social media has played a big part in this evolution to using the voices of "accidental spokespeople." Scott Monty was hired nearly a year ago as the Head of Social Media for Ford and has actively been offering a voice to the brand and adding social media as a core element of all their communications.
4. Getting out of Detroit. One of the most powerful effects of this shift has been a willingness for even the most senior members of the management team at Ford to get out of Detroit and meet customers. Ford's President of the Americas, Mark Fields and Ray Day (the VP of Communications) even came to the Tweetup last night. Alan Mullaly, CEO of Ford showed up to a blogger event during the Consumer Electronics Show (in a sweatshirt instead of a suit and tie!) and stayed graciously for nearly an hour answering questions and doing podcast interviews.
5. Capitalizing on being Ford. There are not many companies that are as visibly at the epicenter of the American economy as Ford is. Like it or not, the success or failure of Ford is seen by many as a symbol of the success or failure of America. From a communications point of view, this is a major positive ... for the simple reason that the fate of Ford matters to people in a way that AIG or Enron just don't (unless you're a shareholder, of course)
6. Overcoming the American ego. One of the most interesting things for me has been Ford's recent willingness to take cars that have been huge commercial successes overseas and introduce them to the United States market (like the Fiesta and the Transit Connect). For many years, most of Detroit would never have considered taking these foreign cars and allowing them to be revised and sold in America. Finally ego and turf wars are taking a back seat to solid business decisions and introducing cars best suited to succeed.

Any other lessons you think Ford has learned which are contributing to their growing reputation?  Or if you think one (or all) of my points are completely off base, leave a comment and share that point of view too.

Disclaimer: I currently work for Ogilvy and Ford is a client of our team. The Ford Fiesta Tweetup was an official party organized as part of our efforts with Ford and I was on the team that helped organize these events. I have NOT been paid or compensated by Ford to write this blog post, though - and the opinions I share in this post are my personal views only and don't represent what Ogilvy, WPP or Team Detroit thinks about Ford.

4 Ways Social Media Could Save The Arts

Last week I had the fortune to be part of an event that we should all care about. It was a meeting of the National Arts Marketing Project, a conference sponsored by the Americans for the Arts and designed to help art based organizations around the country use marketing to drive more engagement, subscriptions, and attendance with patrons (a much better word than consumer, by the way). To understand the vibe of the event you need to look no further than a colllection of titles from some of the sessions put on during the three day conference:

• Are You An Urbanite? Attracting Young Ticket Buyers and Donors
• Hacking Copyright: Making "Free" Work In The Arts
• She Says Pithy, I Say Prissy. Let's Call The Whole Thing Off: How Marketing And Development Can Sing In Harmony
• I Can't Do That! How To Make The Big Ask For A Major Gift
• Release Your Organization's Inner Blogger
• Strategies For Countering The Reasons Patrons Resist Subscribing

My own session was called "Embracing Your Accidental Spokespeople: How Obama Let His Best Supporters Speak For Him, And Why You Should Too" and in the roundtable format, we talked about how to find the voices that are passionate about what you do, and unlocking them to share their experiences more widely online and through social media. Over the course of two round table discussions, I learned a lot about the unique challenges that many arts based organizations are facing, as well as discussed several engaging ideas for solutions. Here are a few of the creative solutions that we all came together and discussed as a group about how social media and interactive marketing techniques might help arts based organizations to better promote themselves:

1. Create a sonic brand. Though more specific to groups that create or promote music, one idea that we collectively talked about was what it might be like if every venue or group had a sonic brand. So, for example, like you might hear the Intel jingle at the end of an ad, you would hear a signature piece of music to signal the end of intermission. Something that offers a recognizable brand for a music based organization, while offering an apt extension of a brand based on something that is inherently a part of it.
2. Offer creative material openly for mashups. As more and more people create content online, they will need material like music, still images, and video clips to incorporate. One of the marketing tactics I am fond of at istockphoto.com (a site I use all the time to purchase images to use in my posts and presentations) is having an image for free download each day. What if an arts organization created their own collection of content and offered it for free reuse, dependent on giving credit back to the organization? It could be a great way to spread some brand awareness, as well as offer something viral and useful to content creators.
3. Invite social capital donations. Many people using social media tools are supporters of the arts, but not necessarily donors or people to go to art events. Though it may be difficult to convince them to open their wallets, it may be much more acceptable to have them donate their influence. One brilliant example was a campaign run across both parties during the recent election where you could "donate your Facebook status" to remind people to vote for your guy on election day. It's an example of letting people donate their social capital instead of real money.
4. Allow patrons to share their experience. This topic raised some concerns among the group for a variety of reasons. The two most vocal were that sometimes performers have union contracts that prevent any recording, and that sometimes the artists are afraid of negative criticism that may come with letting their work be freely shared. Still, there are other ways to let people share their experiences - perhaps through live Twittering, or making a cast available after a performance for flipcam interviews with video bloggers. The point is that every arts group needs to find a way of helping word of mouth about what they are doing to travel.

Saving the Personality Project: How I Avoided Killing My Blog

About six months ago, I launched an ambitious idea related to the release of Personality Not Included called The Personality Project. My idea was to collect 100 of the most visionary minds in marketing, art and business and invite them all to contribute a single blog post to a collaborative group blog. I launched the site at www.thepersonalityproject.com and had a brilliant initial list of folks agree to participate. For several months, the content was great ... I had posts from Dave Balter of BzzAgent, Premal Shah from Kiva.org and many others. Then I ran out of time to recruit new entries and follow up on them. The content was getting old, I had no new posts and my great idea was rapidly dying and I just didn't have the time to save it.

So over the last few months, I started to think about how I could bring the site back to life - and even whether I should. Along the way, I had an interview with my good friend Scott Jordan and added him to the project as the first video entry. Looking at my calendar of events coming up in the Fall, I realized that I would be meeting many of the people who I was pursuing to participate in the project in person. Getting them to take the time to write an entry may be an uphill battle, but surely I could grab five minutes of their time and do a video interview? Video is a lot easier to capture, more engaging and real, and frankly ... can have more personality than words written on a page if done right.

So at Blogworld Expo a few weeks ago, I tried the experiment out and captured several people on video. Once I did, I realized that the solution to my questoin of saving the Personality Project was simple - convert it to a video blog. I'll still feature written contributions and have a few coming up, but for the most part the new entries on the site will be a series of video interviews all exploring the same topic: why personality matters. Check out my latest video - a conversation from this past weekend with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and look for lots more content over the next few weeks and months until I hit 100. Let me know what you think!

A Video Introduction To Personality Not Included

Several months ago, I had the chance to go into the studios at the CNet offices in San Francisco to record a session for something called a "Business Book Brief" that runs on cNet's companion site for business called BNet. The video has been produced, professionally edited and is now online on the BNet site. Check out the video below for a brief introduction to Personality Not Included and let me know what you think. 

Also, below that is a "making of" gallery of sorts from the video shoot where you can see behind the scenes of the filming and what it was really like. The team was professional, we did two takes with two different camera angles, and there was a green screen to allow all the imagery that they added to be placed.

PS - Yes, I know about the screwup in spelling Jared's name and we're trying to get that corrected. At least my name is right so the glass is definitely more than half full ...

Dancing With The Stars: Personality Marketing In Disguise?

I am not what you would call a fan of reality television. In fact, I have previously said that I can literally feel myself getting dumber every moment that I am around a reality TV show that happens to be on. So you can imagine my chagrin at being forced to watch part of Dancing with the Stars last night because one of my wife's favourite actors was on (no, not Kim Kardishan - but you can't blame me for using her bio shot among all the participants). It wasn't a complete loss, however, because I had a chance to think about what may be one of the more brilliant marketing strategies to come through celebrity reality shows that is now possible for the large networks: namely, promoting their stars through appearances and doing it in a virtually unnoticeable way by not dominating the list of participants with only ABC affiliated actors.

This is not necessarily new, as you would always have stars from a particular network showing up on the late night shows like Letterman and Leno as well as the daytime shows. Unlike those interview-style appearances, however, Dancing with the Stars is doing something very different. The stars who appear on the show are demonstrating something that people love to see, vulnerability. Most look scared, outside their comfort zone, and challenged to say the least. The result is that you get to know the actors of those shows in a very personal way. You get to know their personality.

In a world of social media where authenticity is becoming a more and more important currency, any network that can help their stars to have less of a celebrity profile and more of a human one is using a very smart strategy indeed. Though I still don't get why anyone would want to waste their time watching 12 morbidly obese people trying to lose the most weight, I do get why ABC would put as many resources as they can behind a goldmine of a promotional platform that is Dancing with the Stars. It may be one of the most valuable television properties on the air today. I may not like what reality television is doing to the collective intelligence of the nation, but as a marketer Dancing with the Stars makes a whole lot of sense.

A Law Firm With Personality?

In this month's Fast Company, there is an interesting profile of a law firm from LA called Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges which is making waves in the legal industry for being less formal and actually having a personality. Unlike other firms, they focus only on business litigation, take some cases on contingency, and have an on-staff barista. The photos in the article show a business that looks a lot like a Silicon Valley startup environment where all the lawyers are wearing (gasp!) jeans. A part of their story is a decentralized structure and far fewer management layers ... but I suspect an even greater element is the fact that they have a powerful recruiting story to tell.

What lawyer stuck in a stiff and formal environment wouldn't dream of working at a firm like Quinn Emanuel? When you are the envy of your industry, recruiting the best people is far easier. If you can get the best people and let them do what they do best, you can have the best company. It's not a difficult formula, and it all starts with personality for this law firm shaking up their industry and making millions along the way. And it just might inspire you to think differently about what you do everyday as well. After all, if a law firm can understand and use the power of personality, what's holding you back?

* The photo above is used without permission from the Fast Company article online. If they sue me, maybe I'll try to hire Quinn Emanuel to represent me ...

The Great #080808 Beijing Olympic Twitter Campaign Catches Fire

Anyone who has been to enough events with social media creators knows that it is inevitable that people will find a way to connect and find one another. To a degree, Twitter first caught on from this need a year and a half ago at SXSW in 2007. I have witnessed it over and over, through examples like attendees of four conferences finding one another to share an evening of Korean BBQ in NYC a few months ago, or finding someone to hang out with as you are travelling to a foreign city for business. Social media creators are not just creating content, they are becoming experts at connecting with one another.

So I wasn't surprised to see that the tag 080808 is catching on as a way for all of us in Beijing at the Olympics to find and connect with one another. Started by three Chinese bloggers (Flypig, Webleon and Babechloe) and described on http://tag080808.com/, this campaign is already bringing together not just everyone here in Beijing who is creating social media content, but is also becoming a brilliant way to follow all these live voices of the Games in a real time stream. As the Olympics kicks off tonight, this tag and the resulting conversations on Twitter will accelerate dramatically. For my part, I have already started tagging my content with this and will soon revise my Twitter icon to use the 080808 template created for the campaign (the image below is a compilation of current icons from a post about the campaign on Read Write Web).

In addition, I just sent out a Tweet about a blogger meetup that will be sponsored by Ogilvy and Lenovo where we can try to get some of the many diverse bloggers here in Beijing together for a drink and chat. If you happen to be here, send me a message at @rohitbhargava and let me know if you can make it to The Bookworm in downtown Beijing on Sunday, August 10th at 7pm. And even if you're not in Beijing, you'll want to start using this tag to find the best content and impressions from social media creators here at the Games. This is a case study in the making ...

Official Image from the Tag080808 Site:

The Rise of "Egommunication"

There is a magic power that a growing number of people are starting to have. It's happening all around us with social media and yet most of the time it is going without notice. I can now communicate with someone without communicating with them. I can tell them something without talking to them. And I can virtually guarantee that my message gets through to them no matter how flooded their inbox. Welcome to the world of something I would call egommunication.

Egommunication is a form of communication where you can share a message or piece of content with someone based on their own consistent habit of checking mentions of themselves and their content online ... in other words, relying on their ego as a channel for your message to get through. It is a tacit form of communication. In effect, you take advantage of the fact that just about everyone in social media is self-googling on a frequent basis.

Here are a few examples of what I would call egommunication:

1. Tagging someone in a photo, note or other content on Facebook so they will go and check out that content
2. Writing a blog post mentioning someone's blog post and counting on the fact that they will check their Google alerts to see that mention
3. Writing a tweet on twitter mentioning someone or something so that you can reach the audience of people that are doing searches for those terms

The nicest thing about egommunication is that the more popular the person you are trying to reach, the more likely it is that this form of communication will work because they often have the biggest egos (and I don't mean that in a negative way). It's the only communication form I can think of where ease of connection is inversely proportional to the internet fame of the person you are trying to connect with. Think Guy Kawasaki is unreachable? Send a tweet mentioning his name and see what happens. Dream of capturing the attention of Robert Scoble? Write a blog post mentioning him and link to his blog. Of course, it's not a substitute for direct communication and any of the examples above are people you could also email. 

Yet as volume of email goes up for us all, sometimes egommunication becomes a much more efficient way to communicate. Instead of emailing Guy and Robert about this post, I'm linking to both of their blogs - as well as Jeremiah Owyang, John Bell, Ann Handley, David Vinjamuri, Andy Sernovitz, Virginia Miracle and Doc Searls (all people I respect that I want to read this post and possibly comment on the idea).  I suspect it won't take any of them long to see this post and read it. They may or may not comment, but I'm just about 100% sure that the idea of egommunication won't be lost in their inbox ... and at the end of the day, that's a really interesting phenomenon to watch.

Introducing the Nametag 2.0 ...

Earlier today I wrote about standing out at an event and creating smart event marketing strategy. Tonight I'll be at the Mashmeet San Francisco event as a sponsor for my book and trying to create some buzz at the event. As I saw it, here were my key challenges:

1. How do I get people to walk up to a table selling books at a cocktail party?
2. What can I give to people as a free incentive to get them interested in the book (without spending a lot of money)?
3. How do I get across the premise of the book very quickly and get people interested?
4. And finally, how can I make the sponsorship that I paid for work harder and do more with it?

My solution was to try and offer something that would be both useful and relate to the premise of the book ... a "Nametag 2.0."  A Nametag 2.0 offers more than just your name - it also gives a snapshot of who you are and why people would want to interact with you, as well as giving them the vital "2.0-style" information of what keyword you would like to have used as a tag online for content about you. If you've been to many of these events, you know that often they don't have nametags and if they do, they are usually useless white stickers where you write your name and little else.  A Nametag 2.0 is a lower tech version of what pioneering nametag companies like nTAG offer (Full disclaimer - my brother works with nTAG).

Here's what the Nametag 2.0 I'll be giving out looks like:

Hopefully party goers will find the nametags useful and choose to fill them out and use them.  Also, as people take lots of photos of one another, hopefully the nametags are big enough to be seen and I'll get some extra exposure on Flickr.  What do you think about this idea?  I'll be sure to post an update on the event tomorrow for those won't be there and let you know how it goes.