Seth Godin is a National Treasure For His Amazon Kindle Idea

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Jun 19, 2008 in Blogging | View Comments

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Seth Godin is a National Treasure For His Amazon Kindle Idea

From his most recent blog post:

What happens to reading habits when you can buy all the books you want for $40 a month? What happens to book consumption when books become social objects, commented upon by you and your participating friends or network? The conversations surrounding books are often a prime driver behind book sales (“You haven’t read it yet?) and the conversation-enabled Kindle takes that to a whole new level.

Imagine what our nation – our WORLD – could be like if you had all you could read for $40/month? Imagine what would happen to literacy if books became as cheap and as prevalent as every other form of media?

Answer: hard to say, but having a world swamped with good reading is a problem I’d like to have.

We’re seeing this happen with eBooks to a degree already. eBooks have a near zero manufacturing and distribution cost, which means you can make a lot more of them for the same money as a regular book. Imagine if a forward-thinking college professor simply aggregated all the eBooks from a particular industry as a course’s textbooks – no books to buy, no trees to kill, just knowledge.

Food for thought: a recent study in Britain (whose URL eludes me) showed that placing things in a buying position in a cafeteria increased sales of whatever it was that was in the buying position. Junk food sold as well as healthy food, so a cafeteria manager swapped out fried whatever one day for fresh fruits and vegetables, and saw the fresh, healthy food sell as fast as the fried stuff had in the days before.

Imagine if we could get free or low cost eBooks to be as widely available and as convenient as a song on iTunes. Put books in the buying position, and consumers might just buy ‘em because they are there and priced right. The societal benefit of increased literacy and increased consumption of knowledge would be vast and far-reaching.

Seth Godin, I hope Amazon reconsiders your offer, and I hope someday to read every book you publish for $40/month.

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MySpace Bots Updating Now

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Jun 18, 2008 in MySpace | View Comments

For those marketers using MySpace profile management software, chances are the redesign broke it – expect manufacturers to be issuing updates soon.

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Proud to be an American?

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Jun 18, 2008 in Rant | View Comments

Image by denmar via Flickr

Proud to be an American?

Today’s CNN front page story? A group of physicians ascertained that America committed war crimes by subjecting prisoners to torture, from electric shocks to beatings to sodomy.

“There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account.” – retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba

It’s difficult to be proud to be an American when you realize that you are the bad guys. If life were a movie, we’d be the villains. Yes, we started out fighting evil people like Osama Bin Laden, who made it no secret that they sought our destruction, that they wanted and still want to kill as many innocents as possible.

When I was growing up, Superman was still popular. Truth, justice, and the American way – all things good, all things worth fighting for.

But we’ve lost our way. Literally.

I wonder if Superman would ever repudiate the American way. Truth, justice, and… ?

How do we fix this? An apology would be a start, followed by holding accountable the commander in chief of the United States military for war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib. After all, it happened on his watch, by his order, and ultimately, he is responsible.

War crimes are defined in the statute that established the International Criminal Court, which includes:

1. Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as:
   1. Willful killing, or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health – guilty.
   2. Torture or inhumane treatment – guilty.
   3. Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property – guilty.
   4. Forcing a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of a hostile power
   5. Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial – guilty.
      
   6. Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer – guilty.
      
   7. Taking hostages

The United States – our country, my country, is guilty of 5 of the 7 major war crimes established under the Geneva Convention and the International Criminal Court. The leader of a nation and commander of the military that is responsible for the commission of war crimes must be held accountable.

Will that ever happen? I doubt it – and until it does, we’re still the bad guys.

“Loyalty to my country? Always. Loyalty to the government? Only when it deserves it.” – Mark Twain

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The Most Effective Marketing A Non-Profit Can Do Is Build The Database

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Jun 17, 2008 in Advertising, Marketing, Twitter | View Comments

The Most Effective Marketing A Non-Profit Can Do Is Build The Database

I’ve been seeing more and more “brand awareness” campaigns, especially for non-profits and social good organizations lately, and I genuinely have to ask – what’s the value of that? From tweets on Twitter saying “Raise awareness of the plight of…” to advertisements on MySpace like the one to the right, awareness campaigns seem to be everywhere.

What’s the value of awareness?

What’s the return on investment of awareness?

If I were a marketer for a non-profit, a social justice cause, or just about anything like this, I’d have to think long and hard about the value of my limited marketing dollars going towards headshare versus more actionable marketing.

Let’s take this Zimbabwe campaign, for example. Ask the average American to locate Zimbabwe on a map and you’ll have an appallingly low success rate. Heck, ask them to locate the continent Zimbabwe is on and you won’t do much better. Why advertise an awareness campaign on a predominantly US-centric web site to an audience that likely can’t even find the target, and advertise in a way that has no action?

If I were trying to market this campaign, here’s how I’d approach it. If MySpace is the venue where in fact the audience for this campaign exists, fine. I’d put up a simple widget, maybe some scrolling scary pictures of what Mugabe does to his people, and have a “sign the petition” form with slots for name, address, email, etc. right below it, and the requisite opt-in to the mailing list checkbox, pre-checked for your convenience. Maybe make it a Flash widget that scrolled and displayed the last 50 petitioners’ names and locations.

This widget would in turn feed a nice SQL database that would aggregate the petitioners’ data and dump it into a mass mailer like Blue Sky Factory (disclosure: BSF is a sponsor of one of my podcasts, Marketing Over Coffee) and start soliciting donations. Sure, we could print out a list of petitioners and drop it on a politician’s desk, but I’d bet it would be far more effective, once a huge house list was amassed, to offer a politician’s PAC an email to the constituency on their behalf in exchange for their vote/support/introduction of legislation.

Forget spending money on awareness. We live or die on our database. The database is a tangible asset that has real, stored value which we can use for barter, trade, or sale (assuming you have the permission of the audience to do so). If you have scarce marketing dollars, if you have scarce resources, building up a marketing database is one of the fastest ways to add value to your non-profit, stay in touch with your constituency, drive donations and funding campaigns, and make real change in the world.

Yes, you have to use your database wisely, perhaps sparingly, always with the privacy and security of your constituency top of mind, but having an effective database is an incomparable value.

In the information economy, the non-profit with the most information, effectively used, wins.

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Current Blogola

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Jun 16, 2008 in Blogging, Podcasting | View Comments

Image by lemoncat1 via Flickr

A post by Chris Brogan inspired me to put a widget on my blog here describing what blogola I’ve received lately, as a way of disclosing potential conflicts of interest. You’ll see it on the side, under the photos.

Blogola is a portmanteau of blog and payola, the practice of paying off DJs at radio stations by record companies to spin certain records. Blogola is stuff people have sent me for evaluation and, I would imagine, recommendation.

If you’d like to send me blogola, that’s fine, but be aware it will be fully disclosed and a positive review is not at all guaranteed. If your product or service sucks, you will know about it. Just ask Snapple.

I reserve the right to “re-gift” any blogola. If you’re not okay with that, please don’t send it. (no, I won’t re-gift opened food) I also keep whatever you send, so if you’re not okay with that, again, please don’t send it.

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