This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Create a Journalist Listening Station Garnering great press for your business is a powerful marketing strategy and as such, journalists should be on your radar as a target market. Now, instead of abusing them with buy (press releases) messages, how about starting by building some know, like and trust before you [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Automating Social Media Activity Does automating some of your social media activity automatically make it, well, less social? That’s the question I’ve been batting around a bit with some social mediaists. See, I think that small business owners sometimes stay away from some new media tools because they seem like a [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Two Great Software Titles, One Great Price As you may know I have partnered with Palo Alto Software to produce a marketing planning software based on my Duct Tape Marketing System and book. The software is very practical and functions more like an action planning tool than a document creation tool. [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Reality Check with Guy Kawasaki Guy Kawasaki stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to discuss his newest book Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition. Reality Check is a compilation of some of Guy’s greatest hits, posts and articles, but it is not simply a rehashing. [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Free Social Media for Business ebook You know I’m a big fan of the use of social media for marketing a small business. Having said that, I’m really a fan of social media done right for small business. That means that some of the tools won’t be right for you, the [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Is This a Skype Killer? Free online phone, chat and now video chat is a tremendous business and personal tool. Skype pioneered the platform, but Google just launched it’s own version of voice and video chat that connects directly into Gmail. You can download the Gmail voice plug-in here. I don’t know about [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Live Call with Guy Kawasaki and Penelope Trunk Today Join Guy Kawasaki, author of Reality Check and Penelope Trunk, Boston Globe columnist and author of Brazen Careerist as we talk about whatever comes out Guy’s mouth! Seriously, you need to read Reality Check and get in the right frame of mind and [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Be the Red Leaf So I come back from my chilly morning run and am greeted by the site of one lone red leaf popping out of a sea of green ivy and decaying brown leaves - and I can’t help but take notice. Stand out - can’t help but take notice [...]

I was in Detroit last week... I have family there. I also drive a car. And I would rather that the world doesn't melt and the economy thrive. So I'm uniquely qualified to weigh in on the automobile industry.

Not only should Congress encourage/facilitate the organized bankruptcy of the Big Three, but it should also make it easy for them to be replaced by 500 new car companies.

Or perhaps a thousand.

That's how many car companies there were 90 years ago.

That's right, when all the innovation hit the car industry, there were thousands of car companies, with hundreds running at any one time. From Wikipedia:

Throughout this era, development of automotive technology was rapid, due in part to a huge number (hundreds) of small manufacturers all competing to gain the world's attention. Key developments included electric ignition (by Robert Bosch, 1903), independent suspension, and four-wheel brakes (by the Arrol-Johnston Company of Scotland in 1909).^[16] Leaf springs were widely used for suspension, though many other systems were still in use, with angle steel taking over from armored wood as the frame material of choice. Transmissions and throttle controls were widely adopted, allowing a variety of cruising speeds, though vehicles generally still had discrete speed settings rather than the infinitely variable system familiar in cars of later eras.

Between 1907 and 1912, the high-wheel motor buggy (resembling the horse buggy of before 1900) was in its heyday, with over seventy-five makers including Holsman (Chicago), IHC (Chicago), and Sears (which sold via catalog); the high-wheeler would be killed by the Model T.

Back in its heyday, Ford Motor made every single part of its cars, including raising the sheep that grew the wool that made the fabric that upholstered the seats. That's not true any more. Now, suppliers make just about every part. We need those suppliers, and we need them to stay healthy.

What we don't need are giant companies with limited choice, confused priorities, private jets and a bully's attitude.

I'd spend a billion dollars to make the creation of a car company turnkey. Make it easy to get all the safety and regulatory approvals... as easy to start a car company as it is to start a web company. Use the bankruptcy to wipe out the hated, legacy marketing portion of the industry: the dealers.

We'd end up with a rational number of "car stores" in every city that sold lots of brands. We'd have super cheap cars and super efficient cars and super weird cars. There'd be an orgy of innovation, and from that, a whole new energy and approach would evolve. Betcha.

If you're a signed in user of Google, you'll notice the most significant change in search since their launch.

You can now interact with search results, wiki style.

You can vote them up or down and leave comments. And they will be seen by others.

1. This is going to lead to an incredible rush by small businesses and social networkers. They're going to go crazy trying to game the system.

2. Google is going to find that millions of people pay a lot more attention to their search results (for now).

Interesting to consider what happens after that. How do they handle the deluge? Does democracy matter when it comes to search? How do you filter out the gamed votes?

Also interesting to think about how a tiny change in a beloved interface changes the way you think about and use it.

Google is a natural resource. We're defensive. We don't want them to wreck it, we want it to be here forever and we want it to work better for us. All at the same time. I give them ten points for bravery.

Why do banks spend so much money on marble lobbies, high ceilings and yes, $400 million to name a baseball stadium?

Why do marketers buy TV ads that don't increase sales in the short run?

Why have a receptionist and not just a house phone where you can call the person you came to see?

For the same reason that so many people have a green front lawn.

It's organized waste. Profligate spending designed to communicate confidence and just a bit of hubris.

Do you really want to invest money at a bank run by a guy with nothing but a bridge table and a cheap suit? Probably not. At some level, we like the confidence that we get from that big lobby. We are more likely to perk up when the reporter has her cameraman aim a huge black video camera (with lights!) at us, even though the little hand held camera might work just as well...

In times of financial stress and bailouts, the obvious solution (eliminate all the waste!) is not the one that works. In fact, in these times, we're more likely than ever to be nervous about the status of the organization we're working with.

I'd replace the expensive sponsorships and buildings with something more valuable, quicker to market and far more efficient: people. Real people, trustworthy people, honest people... people who take their time, look you in the eye, answer the phone and keep their promises. Not as easy to implement as writing a big check for the Super Bowl, but a lot more effective.

[This post is cynical. You've been warned.]

If you think that's a friend of yours on twitter, don't be so sure.

If you wonder why your boss sent such an insane email to you, don't be so sure.

If you get a chance to invest online, think twice.

Don't buy anything from an inbound phone call.

That email you sent in confidence... probably won't be read that way. And that photo, yes, it's going to show up in the digital world where you least want to see it...

In your little village, where you see your neighbor every day for ten years and the person in the next car might be the local constable, the rules are very simple and obeyed by all. In an electronic world, it's trivial to impersonate, hack and otherwise annoy.

Online, rely on direct, personal interactions to be sure you're seeing what you think you're seeing. Trust, but verify.

You hear yourself saying:

"First, let me apologize for the lighting. We tried very hard to make the screen brighter, but we failed. Before I start, I want to thank seventeen people by name... Now, on this third slide, we see the dynamic effects of our incendiary marketing strategy... Just a few more minutes here... I'm sorry, I don't know why the web connection isn't working quite right... For those of you that remember my talk two years ago... As I was saying to Sir Reginald..."

What the audience hears:

"Blah, blah, blah... interesting tidbit... blah, blah, blah... exciting insight... blah, blah, blah, etc."

My suggestion is that you eliminate all the blahs, eliminate the apologies, eliminate the thank you's, eliminate everything except two interesting tidbits and all the exciting insights.

No audience member, in the history of presentations (written or live) has ever said, "it was exciting, useful and insightful but far too short."

That's the current motto of the folks over at Motrin. There's been a ton of buzz the last two days about a botched ad campaign they ran, but this post isn't really about that. It's about being a human being and feeling pain.

After running an ad that offended some people, Motrin decided to take it down. This is what they put up on their website:

This isn't a honest note from a real person. It's the carefully crafted non-statement of a committee. What an opportunity to get personal and connected and build bridges...

Read down to the fine print. It says, "Why you can no longer find Children's MOTRIN® Chewable Tablets". This obviously has nothing to do with the apology, it was always there. Click on it. It takes you to their FAQ, so you have to read through all the questions to find the one to click on. Click on it again. Read through the text until you find this: "Children's MOTRIN® Chewable Tablets have been temporarily discontinued."

Oh!

Thanks for telling us.

TV demands that you broadcast. TV demands that you talk at us. It's the only possible solution.

The web, on the other hand, doesn't respond as well to that. It responds extremely well to moments of honesty and candor. Real people feeling our pain.

I had lunch (a big lunch) with a college student last week. An hour later, she got up and announced she was going to get a snack. Apparently, she was hungry.

By any traditional definition of the word, she wasn’t actually hungry. She didn’t need more fuel to power her through an afternoon of sitting around. No, she was bored. Or yearning for a feeling of fullness. Or eager for the fun of making something or the break in the routine that comes from eating it. Most likely, she wanted the psychic satisfaction that she associates with eating well-marketed snacks.

Marketers taught us this. Marketers taught well-fed consumers to want to eat more than we needed, and consumers responded by spending more and getting fat in the process.

Marketers taught to us amplify our wants, since needs aren’t a particularly profitable niche for them. Isn't it interesting that we don't even have a word for these marketing-induced non-needs? No word for sold-hungry or sold-lonely...

Thirsty? Well, Coke doesn’t satisfy thirst nearly as well as water does. What Coke does do is satisfy our need for connection or sugar or brand fun or consumption or Americana or remembering summer days by the creek...

People don’t need Twitter or an SUV or a purse from Coach. We don’t need much of anything, actually, but we want a lot. Truly successful industries align their ‘wants’ with basic needs (like hunger) and consumers (that’s us) cooperate all day long.

Think you could live without the $1800 a year you spend on cell phone service and $1200 a year you spend on cable TV? Of course you can. You did ten years ago. But now, that high-speed, always-on connection to the rest of the world is so associated with your basic need of connection that you can't easily divorce the two.

As discretionary corporate and individual spending contracts, what’s going to get cut first? The obvious wants. The corporate dining room or the big screen TV for Christmas. What’s interesting to watch are the things that we can’t live without, the things we think we need, not want. Those things won’t get cut, yet most of them aren’t needs at all. That’s because the industries that market these items have done a brilliant job of persuading us that they are needs after all.

If you truly believe in what you sell, that's where you need to be, creating wants that become needs. And if you're a consumer (or a business that consumers) it might be time to look at what you've been sold as a need that's actually a want.

Dozens of volunteers, working together, put together this ebook:

Download TribesQA2.pdf

Yours to share or print or email, but please don't sell it or change it.

Not only is there a juicy insight on every page, but I'm comfortable saying it's the best designed PDF I've ever seen, worth making into a template for your next project.

Enjoy it.

If not, what are you doing about it?

If so, who do you think you're kidding?

[Interesting side alley: I was talking to a friend yesterday and encouraged her to speak at an upcoming conference. She said, "No way. I don't know enough." I explained that volunteering to speak was the best way to be sure that she'd end up knowing enough by the time she was through.]