MarketingInsideOut.com

I’ve been a Bose fans since way back in college when I actually saved enough to go invest in my first set of 901 speakers.  Today (some XX [many] years later) I still have those speakers and they still sound fantastic.

Recently I was reminded why I love Bose.  We’re a 4 iPod family and decided we wanted music to cook by that we could listen to without the tether of those damn ear buds. We went to our favorite haunt, Target, and listened to the various iPod sound docks and…surprise…the Bose was by far the best (the most expensive, but in my book well worth it).  We get it home and the most complicated thing about set up was getting it out of the tight packing in the box.  Once we wrestled it out, we just plugged it in and Bingo– we were ready to go!  There was even a battery in the remote.  Just one problem…the iPod we wanted to use in the kitchen was a Nano. The Sound Dock came with multiple little plastic converter things, but not one for the Nano.  So, I called Bose.  Got right through.  They identified me immediately…from the phone number I guess, because I didn’t give them my name.  They confirmed my address and told me they’d send me a converter.  I expected to pay something, but they never said a thing about any cost. 

The whole conversation impressed me tremendously because it was just…so easy.  (Somehow I never expect that anymore. Now everything is a hassle.)  Anyway a couple days later an express package shows up containing the converter.  WOW!  Not only did they send it right away and charge me nothing, but they express shipped it!  That’s class.  World-class. 

Not only do they make a great product, but their service is truly extraordinary and they’ll always have my business; as evidenced by the fact that I bought another Sound Dock for my office so I could listen to my music there without having to use my ear buds.  (By the way, Apple — those ear buds that come with the iPods kind of suck if you’re over 14.)

After all the speculation and hoaxes yesterday, the real winners of the record setting lottery ($365 million)jackpot came forward today to claim their winnings.   The seven men and one woman all work (or perhaps I should say worked) at a ConAgra ham processing plant in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Given that they worked in a meat processing plant…does anyone besides me find this rather ironic?

In a story posted yesterday (before the winners were identified) in Lottery Post…

In an unprecedented move, Long John Silver’s wants the winner of the largest-ever lottery to be the company’s official spokesperson for its new Buttered Lobster Bites.

“We think this is a first in the history of business,” said Steve Davis, President of Long John Silver’s. “We’ve selected a product spokesperson without even knowing the person’s identity, age, gender, marital status or occupation. What matters to us is that the winner represents what our new Buttered Lobster Bites are all about – that everyone in America can enjoy a taste of the good life.”

Hummmm.  Maybe it’s just me, but the idea of fried lobster balls in a box that will be delivered through a drive-thru and promoted by a group from a meat packing plant not only doesn’t sound yummy to me in any way, it makes me chuckle at the irony of it all. 

Yesterday Paul Beelen posted a whitepaper titled Advertising 2.0. It looks at the influence of technology in and on advertising, marketing and media, and the threats and opportunities triggered by the revolution of the new, social internet.

Bloggoggle is a new beta version of a directory of bloggers you can search by the category of the blog or profession of the blogger (bloggers create their own profile).  Looks like it could be a decent new tool.  But its sucess will likely depend on how well it’s marketed to and promoted by bloggers to see if the biggies will sign up.

With over 27 million blogs now, and the number doubling every five months, it can be overwhelming to keep up. That’s a whole lot of voices. Today, Technorati launched  Technorati Favorites. Here you can create your favorites list and get a custom page that lets you monitor, search and share.  Read more from Technorati about this new service.

And while your at it, add us to your favorites by clicking the button below.

If you are a marketer, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably kept an eye on what’s going on in the blogosphere that might have impact on your success or failure. The latest State of the Blogosphere report, part 1 issued in early February by David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati shows that the blogosphere continues to grow at a quickening pace — with a new blog being created every second of every day.

But what I found most interesting was in Part 2 of the report which looked at the big head, long tail premise and the growing role blogs are playing. Bloggers are climbing higher on the “big head” of the attention curve, with some bloggers getting more attention than sites including Forbes, PBS, MTV, and the CBC.

Here’s the quick stats relative to the State of the Blogsphere

• Technorati now tracks over 27 million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives
• Sophisticated spam management tools eliminate the spings and find that about 9% of new blogs are spam or machine generated
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
• Over 81 million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day
• Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers

Marketers…heads up. Now there’s a really easy way word of mouth can get around. Buzz-o-phone, launched by Matt Galloway earlier this month as an experiment in the power of word of mouth. It’s intriguing and worth watching to see if lowering the amount of effort required to share an opinion makes consumers more apt to do so. To praise, rant or blast — consumers just call the buzz-o-phone toll free number(1-800-591-5375), and for up to two minutes they are recorded. And the recorded calls are then available to listen to (through various podcasters including the iTunes Store and on the buzz-o-phone web site.)

In the world of PR, planning is everything. We sweat the details — the best day, the best hour, the best place to host a news conference, march, or outdoor event or extravaganza. But name me a PR pro who hasn’t on occasion had his or her best laid plans dashed by the weather, and I’ll name you someone who’s been in the business less than five years. Take my colleague’s campaign launch in Chicago this fall. It involved a national nonprofit whose spokesman was set to start walking from Chicago to Los Angeles along Route 66. The timing was perfect. 10 a.m. A Monday. At Chicago’s highly visible Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue. It was all systems “go.” Even the weather forecast was accommodating— no serious rain in Chicago since late summer. No rain, that is, until that Monday. At 10 a.m. On Michigan Avenue. And not just a sprinkle, either. We’re talking torrential sheets of water slamming into our event, and soaking everyone to the skin. When it came to this particular event, taking a “rain check” wasn’t an option, so the walk began despite the downpour. And despite the lack of news media that had said they’d be there. (What ever happened to intrepid reporters?)

This ill-fated campaign launch came rushing to mind a few weeks ago while I was in New York for a mid-February media tour. I knew something was in the air that Friday night as I shopped for dinner at the local Fairway market. The lines were wrapped around the block — at 9 p.m. I’d seen those lines before. In Denver when the threat of a weekend blizzard would provoke a stampede to the nearest supermarket to stock up on enough canned goods, frozen pizza and beer to last to summer. An hour later—toting my sack of survival goods (bagels, lox, a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia)—I was met in the hotel elevator by a Chinese tourist who cheerfully assured me that we were in for a “momentous” weekend.

And momentous it was. By Saturday afternoon, light flurries had given way to a full-blown white out. By morning, the city was buried under four feet of snow—the most that had fallen in a single day since the 1880s. Airports were closed. Traffic was stopped. The moderately adventuresome, like me, braved the knee-high drifts and arctic blast to snag fresh coffee and a Sunday New York Times. The truly hardy sled down Broadway or headed for Central Park with their cross-country skis. The city looked and felt like a Currier and Ives Christmas card.

But then came Monday—and the realization that I had to make it to my media appointments. Forget taking a cab. Those that weren’t stuck in the ridges of snow churned up by the snowplows, were occupied with tourists hoping to beat it out of town. Forget the dress shoes, too. Between the drifts, the ponds of slush at each crosswalk, and the ice-coated sidewalks, the trek to the subway station felt more like a scene from Dr. Zhivago. And then the calls began. One contact couldn’t make it in for the meeting—he was stuck on Long Island. Another made it to his office, but was in such a foul mood thanks to spending three hours on the train that he didn’t want to see anyone that day (I totally understood!). And so I trudged from Midtown to Soho, from pond to icy pond in search of an appointment. Luckily, there were sock stores along the way, and three changes of black socks later, I met up with the fourth of my scheduled appointments—an independent producer who lives near his studio.

The good thing about weather— rather than other unexpected events—is that barring a category 6 hurricane or a town-leveling tornado — things do eventually return to normal. Our Route 66 sojourner was greeted by blue skies and plenty of media attention just a few days out of Chicago. And in New York, by the following Tuesday, although the ice water at each crosswalk was deeper, my media tour was back on schedule.

There’s a new viral campaign that’s pretty interesting because at first glance it looks cheesy and fake.  The sales pitch: a ringtone can make you irresistible to the opposite sex. There are banner ads with headlines like: “Can a ringtone make you sexy?”

Rather than some revolutionary new product, the whole thing is indeed a fake pitch and all part of a buzz marketing campaign.  Fake ads, fake doctor (Dr. Myra Vanderhood), fake web site (Pherotones.com) and fake videos.  (Check out the wedding ceremony video.)  All this for a real client with a limited budget and lots of guts, Oasys Mobile.  A little known cellphone provider that markets games, wallpapers and ring tones to the 18-24 year old demo.  A tough and cynical demo to reach out to.  Drawing them in like this in a participatory, fun, and quirky way is a smart move.

Is it working?  Looks like it.  Last week on Technorati, a Web site that tracks blogs, Pherotones.com was in the top 10 percent of the most popular blogs worldwide.  It’s been reported that the videos have been  downloaded about 3,000 times on Web sites like YouTube, Punchbaby and Kontraband.
The power of buzz/viral marketing is growing.  Rapidly.  And some real money is now being put in to it. Advertising Age estimated that buzz marketing is now a $100 million to $150 million industry annually.
A study by Northeastern University released last month found that even when participants who pitch products in word-of-mouth campaigns identify their commercial affiliations, it usually does not affect consumers’ willingness to pass the marketing message on.

For more on the study, check out Walter Carl’s blog, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University.

Sure he would have still been the butt of jokes on Letterman, Leno and the dozen other late night shows (as well as around every water cooler in the nation), but now thanks to the speed and multiplying effect of the web his “incident” will have a long shelf life.  Dick Cheney Shooting Gear

And then, there’s this video on Current:  http://www.current.tv/video?id=1689949