Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Blog

  • Virtual Hot Wings Now Available

    I’ve been a part of a project called Virtual Hot Wings, which is a fan-generated virtual CD for indie musician Matthew Ebel, who you’ve heard on the podcast a whole lot. I respect Matthew greatly for being a fantastic musician AND for breaking out on his own to do what he loves most, and helped with the creation of this CD. Here’s what is on it:

    • 300 DPI cover art for printing your own jewel case insert
    • 300 DPI label for printing your own CD label
    • 4 complete free concerts of Matthew’s at various venues in Second Life
    • 13 pre-ripped MP3s for use in iTunes or the MP3 player of your choice
    • Matthew Ebel’s press kit – if you know of anyone looking to book a gig with the new hardest working man in music (with respect to the late James Brown), or is looking for corporate music production, please feel free to distribute Matthew’s press kit
    • Two 30 second ringtones for your phone or Skype – Drive Away, and Coffeehouse Interlude

    It’s available at https://www.VirtualHotWings.com right now.

    Please buy a copy of Virtual Hot Wings. It supports an independent musician and absolutely every penny/Linden goes to him, no middlemen. This distribution model has the potential to help indie musicians everywhere earn a living doing what they do best, and what we love them most for – playing music.

    Virtual Hot Wings Now Available 1

    Check out the press release here.

  • For Today We Are All Hokies

    Been waiting for youAfter the shootings on April 16, 2007, I watched as communities formed and reformed in the aftermath of the tragedy in Blacksburg. One of the most impressive and touching efforts was the For Today We Are All Hokies A Cappella tribute CD, put together by college a cappella groups across the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s a damn good CD – all of the groups are professional quality, and the CD is a worthy buy. Two disc set for $20, proceeds go to the Hokie Memorial Fund.

    For Today We Are All Hokies… a proud new member in my collection.

    (crossposted to the Financial Aid Podcast blog)

  • Dear RIAA: Please get your royalties from terrestrial radio

    Steve from the Wicked Good Podcast points us all to this LA Times article. Short version: the RIAA wants more money, and is tired of radio freeloading off of its content library. They want to extract performance royalties from terrestrial radio just as they want for every other form of media in which their artists are played.

    To which I say:

    You go, RIAA! Please, please, PLEASE demand money from radio stations. Please ask for as much money as you can in your demands from ClearChannel. Please make terrestrial radio PAY!

    Why?

    Because this could be a major opportunity for both podcasting and podsafe musicians. Working together, working as a coalition, we can offer terrestrial radio an alternative to paying huge bills from the RIAA. The arrangement is as clear as day – free play for free promotion. I’ll tell you as a podcaster, and I’ll put it out here publicly, that terrestrial radio stations may play the Financial Aid Podcast free of charge. I hereby waive the non-commercial clause of the Creative Commons license for any FCC-licensed terrestrial radio station. Please play my stuff.

    For podsafe artists – NOW would be a great time to make sure your EPK is looking great. Now would be a great time to make sure that your marketing and sales teams are on hot standby, because if the RIAA successfully overturns the federal exemption on performance royalties, simple economics will favor the podsafe independent artist over the RIAA-signed artist, but you’ve got to have your stuff together, your quality as good or better than what’s currently on commercial radio, and have pre-drafted paperwork for radio stations.

    As with many empires, the downfall of the music industry empire must come from within, and they’re doing a bang up job. Thanks, guys.

  • Power and morality, gas and steering

    I was talking last night with a good friend about something that popped up in Google Earth. There’s a layer that automatically got added – the crisis in Darfur, all the flashpoints in the conflict, and the topic drifted to – how do you make a difference? Ultimately, how do you effect real, lasting change? Will donating? Writing your Congressman?

    Ultimately, the ability to effect change is power. Without power, you cannot effect change, you cannot make a difference. If you have a little bit of power, you can make a little bit of change. If you have a lot, then you can singlehandedly change entire countries or continents. Consider at his apex just how powerful Alan Greenspan was – a single sentence could rocket or sink the economy for days, and create or destroy billions of dollars in wealth.

    That tangent led us to the discussion of power vs. morality. They’re not the same thing, and in the drive in this morning, it finally occurred to me what they were. Morality is the direction you go – the way you steer. Morality is the gas and the engine that takes you there. No power means that you can steer as straight and true as you like, but you won’t get anywhere. No morality means that you can head off the road really, really fast.

    You need both. Ideally, morality and moral guidance for most people is more or less in place; the trick then is to stay on target, stay on the road while you learn how to build power. That’s the harder part of the equation. We live in a society that actively encourages the bulk of citizens to NOT become more powerful, to forfeit their power to government, business, leaders, demagogues, zealots, religion, and so forth. You hear the pleas for the surrender of your power every day:

    – Buy this product and you’ll be happy.
    – Elect me to office and I’ll fix your problems.
    – Worship this deity and you’ll go to heaven.
    – Trust me with this decision and I’ll reward you.

    The powers that be don’t want to steer you off the road. They want you to stop driving entirely.

    How do you resist giving up what power and steering you have?

  • I Don't Want to Know Clarence

    Clarence Smith Jr. of 42minus71.org and Do You Know Clarence?, was asking recently about his show, Do You Know Clarence? Truth? No, I don’t – but it’s not what you think.

    In ninjutsu, a technique you look at today will look different in a year’s time, in a decade’s time, and when you finally retire from training. One of my teachers compares it to a chalk mark on a wheel. As the wheel rolls, the mark might look like it’s at the same spot again after one rotation, but the wheel has traveled some distance in that time.

    One of the worst mistakes to make with any technique is to say you know it, to say you’ve got it, because you effectively close yourself off from learning more about it, from being free to revisit it in a day’s time, a year’s time, or a lifetime. That same technique, as your skills improve, opens up to reveal more and more secrets, like building a staircase on the fly. Every step you build raises you higher and lets you see more, even if the technique of adding one stair on top of another is relatively the same.

    Do I know Clarence? Nope. I don’t want to, either. I want to be open to learn more about Clarence. I want to be free to be surprised, amazed, and shocked by the things that I’ll learn about him in the years to come. To say I know him is to imply that he’s told me everything, and not only hasn’t he, but he can’t. There are some things you just can’t explain. I don’t want to know Clarence, but that doesn’t mean I won’t subscribe to his blog or podcast or new media ventures, because I do – and that’s the first step to learning more.

    Do YOU know Clarence? As Clarence says, let it marinate.

  • Jerry Falwell, I'm glad you're dead

    “If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”

    “God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

    “I put all the blame legally and morally on the actions of the terrorist, [but America’s] secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord’s [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture … the result is not good.”

    “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”

    “Blow them all away in the name of the Lord.”

    Jerry Falwell, boy am I glad you’re dead. You nearly singlehandedly turned a fine religion into a fundamentalist, greed and hate-based one, and oh yeah, you took it to the bank along the way, collecting over $200 million a year on the backs and name of Jesus Christ. If I were Christian, I’d probably be praising the Lord right now. As a Buddhist with a strong belief in karma, I can’t wait to see what you come back as.

  • Why MySpace marketing is still relevant

    A lot of folks on the cutting edge have already written off MySpace and headed to different online communities. This is perfectly understandable – MySpace has been plagued with spyware, usability issues, and an image problem that Madison Avenue firms would cringe at. The cutting edge has left, and the hip crowd has left for greener pastures.

    So, who’s left?

    Everyone else. MySpace is over its Dip, if you’re a Seth Godin follower, and is gaining widespread, mainstream adoption. When the cashier at the supermarket, when the 47 year old account, when the woman on the street is talking about MySpace, it’s hit the mainstream, and the reality is that the bulk of your market – unless it’s cutting edge technologists – is in the mainstream.

    Now is the time to refocus your MySpace marketing efforts. The bots and scripts are slowly coming back, the service is more aggressive about spam, and the numbers of mainstream users are swelling every day. As of this morning, approximately 4 profiles were being added PER SECOND.

    Marketing to MySpace members now also needs to take a more mainstream-friendly approach. If you’re a podcaster, telling people to copy your RSS feed’s URL won’t fly with the mainstream crowd. One click is the limit – make it so easy for your new MySpace audience to get to what you have to offer.

    If you follow powerlaw distributions, about 80% of your potential audience is in the mainstream, and they’re just arriving at the party now. Late to the party, perhaps, but they’re bringing spending money, and at the end of the day, that’s what counts most.

  • Fuel for the engine

    In talking with a friend tonight, I posed the question:

    “What do you feed your brain with?”

    Power comes from within you. True, there’s a lot to be said for things like money and Rolodexes, power lunches, etc. but these are outward symbols of what’s going on inside your mind. The conversation got me to thinking about some of the things I fuel my brain with, and that in turn got me thinking about publishing a list of some of my favorite pieces of brain food. All of the food below is free to access!

    1. Mitch Joel at PodCamp Toronto – Building your personal brand. This is a 45 minute video that is worth paying for, but amazingly is free. If you finish watching this and your personal sense of identity is not refined, you need to watch it again.

    2. Malcolm Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce – TED conference. A great session that gets you thinking about choice and happiness.

    3. Julien Smith discusses SEO – a great primer and refresher on the basics of search optimization. If you have any desire to understand the real power behind monetization and podcasting, then you need to listen to this episode of Canadian Podcast Buffet.

    4. Managing the Gray with C.C. Chapman – a great marketing podcast that will get you thinking about new media.

    5. New Comm Road with Bryan Person – a far more tactical perspective of the tools of new media, with techniques and specifics for implementation.

    6. Tony Robbins at TED – another great video on what makes human beings tick. Tony’s legendary in the human performance community and his stuff is ALWAYS worth watching.

    7. Stephen K. Hayes. Master instructor, master practitioner of ninjutsu, just about everything he does and creates is instantly usable and worthwhile. Some stuff will take a decade or so to marinate. His speech, Faces in the Mandala, is a must-read.

    My good friend Chel also reminds us that there’s great music to be had all over the place that is a profound source of inspiration as well. That is an entirely different blog post.

  • It's electric

    PriusYesterday we traded in our 2001 Hyundai Elantra for a new blue Prius. Very nice car, lots of goodies. A few things I’ve learned so far:

    • Coasting generates the most power. Regenerative braking is a bit of a misnomer – as long as the car is moving and you’re not actively accelerating quickly, the car’s generating power.
    • Handles about as well as any 4 wheel, 4 cylinder sedan. Fine for me, probably would irritate performance-minded street racers.
    • Lots of little hidden spaces all over – extra trunk well, dual glove compartment and much more. Very nice for hiding things.
    • The aux input is a standard headphone jack – podcasting in my car!
    • Podcast producers – be sure if you put your shows on CD in MP3 format that you use ID3 tags – the onboard display reads ID3 tags and displays them on the console.

  • Mental Caffeine

    If you haven’t tuned in yet, be sure to check out Marketing Over Coffee, the marketing podcast I do with M Show producer John Wall. It’s a weekly podcast that is a giant audio Twitter – what are we doing in marketing?

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