From Stina Stockholm, Flickr

When I became a corporate “outsider,” almost three years ago, I felt that marketing as a business function was changing fundamentally.  I plunged into research mode to learn how the “old media” (print publications, radio, network & cable TV, with staff writers employed by giant media companies) were giving way to the “new” (citizen publishers producing content on the web for free).

I launched my consulting business by exploiting social networks, this blog, and free content (see Resources) in order to stimulate my network and tease out interest in project work ranging from part-time-CMO to white papers.  It worked.

I also witnessed “tulip mania” as self-styled (and genuine) experts emerged and captured the attention of almost everyone on a marketing career path.  For a time during 2009 old media events (conferences) were popping up left right and center headlined by new media gurus extolling one of the movement’s foundation principles: Give, give, give… listen, listen, listen… engage… and in the end you will be rewarded a hundredfold with opportunity (and, presumably, filthy lucre).  Become known as a source of quality content, and customers will beat a path to your door.

A couple of months ago, I spotted an ad on Facebook which quoted social media beacon Chris Brogan’s daily rate at something in excess of $20,000.  The offer was to gain all of that wisdom by joining a new community featuring Chris, Darren Rowse, and Brian Clarke — known as Third Tribe Marketing — for a mere $97 initial payment, followed by $47 per month.  As their blogs, collectively, have over 300,000 readers, even using the old school marketing yield on direct mail of 2%, that’s a neat $3 million (with an M) per annum!  Now that’s capitalism for you.  My guess is they timed that initiative just right.

Go for the promotional material on the website if you wish (after all, they’re amongst the best at web copy writing), but let’s be clear: as well as these guys have been doing living off the “give it away for free” model, these leading lights have clearly seen an opportunity to do business one $500-per-year subscription at a time.  Perhaps, like Lebron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — it’s not about their ego or the money — they just want to win the new media world championship.  Time will tell.

Another recent observation: though the new media mantra of “inbound marketing” (nowhere more religiously observed than at Hubspot) poo poos the old-school outbound tactics of telemarketing and direct mail, I know many of us with marketing in our online profiles were bombarded with offers to sign up for the April Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco — notably as the conference’s dates were drawing perilously near.

So should this mini-bubble burst, should the petals drop from the precious tulips (and I believe it/they will), what can we take away?

First, it is true that the media have irreversibly changed. The problem is, the changes are not that dramatic, nor are the implications that difficult to understand.  There isn’t a huge amount of magic; no need for wizards; no new secret handshakes and shibboleths for the elite of this new marketing paradigm.  Brands are their own publishers, and they are largely in control of their own media.  A capability once outsourced to one or more agencies has moved in house, and media costs are heading toward zero.  That’s about it.  I speak to groups of young entrepreneurs from time to time… and after two hours of very high level teaching, they are off and running and becoming their own content foundries.

Psst… guess what… it’s not really that hard to figure this stuff out!

Second, brands (and marketing professionals in particular) need to take much more seriously the content responsibility with which they are now saddled.  We used to talk about a people to programs ratio of 40:60.  Leverage in marketing meant distributing costs 40% in human resource costs, and 60% in media and external programs designed to “drive the fish to the nets.”  Today companies need to invest much more heavily in the creation, curation, and distribution of content — using human beings to do so.  Marketing departments will be moving discretionary spend (which is easy to cut in case of a revenue shortfall) to personnel expense (which is difficult to cut, at least for most sentient humans).

Finally, marketing needs to attack with every fiber in its being the “signal-to-noise ratio” problem which all of this new media and social networking technology has created.  Zero barriers to entry for publishing and vastly expanding user-generated content volume conspire to create a polluted information environment which makes the BP Deepwater Horizon mess look like “On Golden Pond.”  In addition to relentless promotion of our own messages and achievements, we are going to have to exhibit leadership in filtering the extremely high volume of extremely low value information, and continuously enhance our web sites to make them more like museums, libraries, and exhibits — destinations for quality, creativity, and clarity — and less like cheesy storefronts.  Content curation solutions, like the one just launched by HiveFire, may be extremely valuable in attacking this enormous challenge.

What do you think?

I had the great pleasure and distinct honor to give a talk to about 200 students of photography a couple of weeks ago — out in Turner’s Falls at the Hallmark Institute of Photography.

I was invited by an old friend, John Nordell, who is an artist and photojournalist, and also an instructor at Hallmark.  He writes a great blog on the creative process, called Create Look Enjoy, and you can see a great variety of his work at JohnNordell.com.

My purpose was to impress upon these budding entrepreneurs (most will be going into business on their own, others joining established pros as assistants) why the outbound marketing era is over; the importance of embracing the techniques of inbound marketing; and to get “unbound” — to begin NOW to get their brand-building efforts going.

What a great time… and what an amazingly gratifying set of responses from the students!

During my talk (a link to the slides is below), I told some stories from my own experience with social media.  How I got my first really big consulting gig through my blog and Facebook within about ten days, how one of my amateur photos is on exhibit at Arizona State University thanks to Flickr.  I wonder if  Woody Allen knew how much marketing and the media would change when he wrote, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

What a thrill to hear from Tanisha Stephens, who shared the following on Facebook after my talk:

Yesterday @ school we had a guest lecturer by the name of Tim Dempsey, who talked about the importance of social media and the positive impact it can have on your business. Today we had a class(w/ John Nordell) on social media in relation to gaining business exposure through sites like FaceBook, Twitter, & Flickr. Because I believed every word of what they said, I now have this FaceBook account !

Tanisha started her Facebook page… Tanisha Stephens Photography… the very next day.

But she didn’t stop there.  She started reaching out to build her network, and posted an offer to kick start her business when she graduates this Spring:  Here’s her promotion piece, which was featured only on her Facebook page:

Tanisha's Promo Piece

Hi Tim, I didn’t get a chance to speak to you personally after you spoke, but I want to say thank you. Since you were here, I have really taken advantage of the benefits of social media. I’ve planned a photo shoot in my hometown in Alabama for the end of this month & without any advertising other than facebook and I booked all 32 of the appointments I had available in less than a week. I printed flyers that my parents were supposed to put around town for people who aren’t on facebook, but at this point there is no need for that, because I already have a waiting list. I went from about 200 friends when you were here to over 700 friends today. I started a fan page and have 400+ fans. You were 100% on point and I thank you so much for coming and sharing this knowledge.

There’s not much more rewarding than having this kind of impact on a young entrepreneur!

Here are the slides… and don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like me to speak to YOUR group of budding businesspeople.

I Love Boobies Bracelet

I love clever marketing — campaigns that gently walk the line between the clean-cut and cool.  Slogans that have you laughing a bit but remind you of an important issue or problem or opportunity.  I think of the “I ♥ Boobies / (keep a breast)” program as clearly in this category.  Right at the edge; funny; provocative.

However, education administrators see things differently.  School administrations around the country are banning the wristbands which are sold to raise funds to educate young women about the importance of early detection of breast cancer.  Out, out naughty teens and your filthy slogans!

Educators see things differently in South Hadley Massachusetts, as well.  In South Hadley, a remarkably large group of misguided and apparently unobserved punks (nine have been indicted at this writing), hectored, harassed, and hassled young Phoebe Prince with absolute freedom until, tragically, the object of their ridicule took her own life.

Hypocrisy is always worth calling out for scrutiny.  I find it astounding that our culture has reached a point where educators — adults responsible for how we shape and teach our youth — can see fit to ban perfectly harmless slogans in favor of a good cause, while in the very same news cycle they are revealed to be oblivious (and so far free of any retribution or legal responsibility) to the presence of evil in teenage form among them in a small New England high school.

Whither common sense?

Flickr: Swamibu

Sorry, but the iPad announcement was an iDud.  Steve Jobs looked and sounded weak, and I just got the feeling that the iPad was a LARGE TYPE version of the iPod Touch. So much missing. But perhaps he’ll get the sympathy vote and the product will recover.  Just such a yawn — and after all of that uncharacteristic leaking of information and features!

And the State of the Union?  Again, the anticipation preceding any speech from the Great Orator is always high — and I’m not sure even Chris Mathews felt the tingle up his leg after this one.

Are we in a marketing malaise?  A Sargasso Sea of cynicism?

Or just the winter doldrums?

Based on the roaring finish which was calendar Q4 of 2009 (at least for us), I think it’s precisely the wrong time to curl up in ursine slumber.  And marketing must continue to lead — to set the psychological tone months ahead of consumer sentiment broadly.

Let’s be bold, people!

Now, on the other hand, here’s a new web site that has done something extremely bold: GolfTripGenius.com.  Disclaimer: I’ve advised them over the past few months.

They’ve solved several of the most annoying problems facing golf trip captains — and done so with extremely powerful technology made simple.

Whoda thunk the golf industry had much room left for innovation outside club design and fertilizers to keep those desert courses green?

You?

In last week’s post, I asked: What was Coca-Cola’s long-term financial gain from the Coca-Cola Classic marketing debacle?

The answer: Coca-Cola’s long-term financial gain came as a result of recipe legerdemain which saved the company hundreds of millions in costs.

At the time the New Coke was foisted upon us, sugar prices had spiked to historic highs.  The original Coca-Cola product was, of course, made with sugar.

Under the cover of the brand darkness created by the New Coke, the company created a new Coca-Cola recipe, now know as Coca-Cola Classic, which was made with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), not sugar.

The cost to produce the new product, which many consumers believed was “good old Coke,” fell dramatically.

Ironically, prices have equalized to some extent in recent years, and many vendors (notably, Pepsi), have brought sugar-based recipes back to the market.

To obtain Coca-Cola made with sugar, you have to buy the “hecho in Mexico” (made in Mexico) product.

I’m glad I’m not responsible for a big brand.

I lie.  I would love to manage a massive “enduring promise of value” like Coca-Cola.  But the challenge those big brands face is huge and growing — and it is coming from itty-bitty brands.

May I explain?

The disruption to the nice, rigidly structured media world which the web and social media have forced means alot for big brands.  It means that their control over the publishers, represented by their multi-billion dollar budgets, is diminishing.  Why?  Because the barriers to entry, the height of the bar, the cost to gain access to buyers — have been eliminated, lowered, trivialized, respectively.

Publishers used to control access to buyers, and big brands owned the publishers.  Little bitty brands can now become their own publishers — using tools that are free and by gaining access to buyers via channels that are also (essentially) free.

Coca-Cola used to be the dominant soft drink product on store shelves in general.  Now, Coca-Cola distributors have to carry dozens of products “on the truck” in order to keep the overall sell-through volume stable or growing.  The market has been fragmented by dozens of smaller, niche products (energy drinks, water, fruit juices, teas) which have effectively ‘dis-integrated’ the once monolithic soft drinks segment.

The second place I’m glad I don’t live is in the high-end web marketing design agency world.  Just like at the macro-level described above, I believe those guys are going to be disintermediated as well.  Free open source tools (like those used to power this site), crowd-sourcing, and an ever-sophisticated generation of technically savvy young people will put more and more and more pressure on the $100,000 logo design project, the $500,000 web site redesign, and the like.  More people will simply have more access to more tools to do excellent work on their own.  Yes there will be brands that need to (and have the requisite profits to) always pay the highest price to have the Chanel or the Prada or the Coca-Cola of marketing sites and  identity systems.

I just think that buyers will begin to see smaller and less significant differences between those massive investments and the results achieved by the more agile, more savvy, smaller brands.

What do you think?

Extra credit question: What was Coca-Cola’s long term financial gain from the Coca-Cola Classic marketing debacle?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Profit Edges Up at Coke, but Sales Stall in North America (nytimes.com)
• Coca Cola going social media (ecombizcenter.blogspot.com)
• A World of Cokes (simplygreen.co.za)

Merry Christmas.  Whatever your celebration at this time of year may be — may each of you enjoy a warm and restful holiday break.  I most certainly intend to!

2009 has been one of those “Best of Times, Worst of Times” years.

In what ways was it “Best?”

• My consulting business not only survived, but thrived.  I added several new accounts, including Acquia, GolfTripGenius, and Rosen Law Offices.
• My most significant piece of marketing advisory business, RSD, remains a strong account for me.
• I added Presence Engineering, or interactive website design and delivery to our offerings, launching several small business sites including Olde Thyme Home, Dana Landscaping, and Todd Michel Construction.
• I added photography services, bridging my lifelong hobby with my business, via my ‘affiliate’ Synopshots.

In what ways was it worst?

• Many friends and former colleagues experienced varying degrees or financial or professional hardship.
• The markets are seeing signs of recovery, but somehow no one believes we are in a dynamic recovery just yet.
• Our domestic political atmosphere is as partisan and replete with hypocrisy as I have ever observed.

So looking forward to 2010, here’s a few things I foresee:

1. Glacially, buyers will be authorized and funded to invest… and well-positioned businesses will begin winning and growing once again.
2. The businesses that are in position to win have the following characteristics:
   1. Rather than reinventing themselves under the stress of the last 18 months of economic uncertainty, they further refined and in many cases narrowed their “addressable market” scope.  Did you?
   2. They pulled back, perhaps both in overall spend and in staff levels, but are poised to reinvest in calendar Q1 as the number of indicators of recovery, however soft, begin to build.   Are you?
   3. They have built strategic reinvestment strategies and tactical plans, which are not radical in their love embrace of social media, but aware of the need to earn a loyal prospect / buyer community.  Is yours?
3. Small and growing businesses (most of the companies I work with) will clearly see that in the online world, they can stretch their brand to have every bit of the presence, authority, and reputation that far larger businesses possess.  And because they can act with more agility, they can disrupt those larger competitors with decisive strikes and aggressive tactical actions.  In other words — it’s going to get fun again!

And that’s what I miss most… the fun.  Let’s raise a virtual glass to seeing the fun return to our business lives in 2010!

There’s change in the air for “social media,” and even Chris Brogan — whose visibility on this “movement” is perhaps greater than any other’s — has recognized it.  Why?  Because I think too many businesses and revenue or profit-oriented business people just got fed up.

Here’s a recent interview I conducted with one particularly fed up, overhyped, victim of the Snake Oil salesmen, whom I’ll call FU.

TD: You’ve been getting worked up about the social media hype out there… why?

FU: I am getting sick and tired of the entire blogosphere.  It makes me want to stop blogging.

TD: Why’s that?

FU: Because the blogosphere is full of the most painfully self-centered a-holes on earth.  OK, it is not replete with them.  It is, IMHO, engorged with them, which, the more I think about it, is apropos.  But if you use the web’s metrics of the moment, there are hundreds of oft-read bloggers whose subject matter is so blatantly their eponymous greatness that I just find myself wanting to puke.

TD: Steady on, mate!  Why are you so angry about all of this?

FU: Think about these d-bags: thought of themselves as intellectuals back in college.  A liberal arts major, likely.  Had a decent career applying those skills to a field that, well, s*&t, wasn’t all that high minded — like, say, technology marketing.  Before long they refer to themselves as “serial entrepreneurs” and boast assignments as “executive in residence” with a VC firm in Waltham as though it were a f*&^ing Fulbright scholarship.

TD: Hold your horses, there Fred.  I was a liberal arts major — I’ve been in technology marketing for 20 years — I’ve done OK by this industry and while I admire my friends who followed their dreams… (FU interrupts)

FU: Along comes the web, and blogs.  No barrier to entry, and exploding adoption.  Unlike their high school classmates who sacrificed to be real writers and earn their living as authentic journalists, suddenly they, and the wisdom achieved persuading “senior business executives to optimize their business performance by accelerating innovation,” or some other bucketful of meaningless tripe, feel entitled to share the insight thus gained with the rest of the world.  So these people start sharing with the world their most mundane work habits and productivity secrets.  “What comes up on my iMac when I lift the lid at Oh-Dark-Thirty.”  Ten Twitter Tips, Thirteen Must-Have Plug-ins,  Nine Ways You Too Can Become a Self-Involved Twit.  Soon we’ll start reading these f#$#ing genius’ predictions about the f^%$ing future.

TD: Actually, I see that those have started already — including Chris Brogan’s prediction of the consolidation / rationalization of this whole social media space.

FU: They share all of this with their precious communities, their friends, their followers — for free — because they know that NOW it’s all about giving and if you give enough you’ll get back ten times over.  They use the no cost, no barrier-to-entry platform like a step class at the Boston Sports Club.  They step up to tell the world what a moron an executive at one of the worlds largest manufacturing companies is because he doesn’t watch YouTube videos between calls with his steel and rubber suppliers.  Then they step down, back into their pathetic near-anonymity, and see if the stupid s@#t goes viral.

TD: But it has to be said that sometimes those things do go viral.  And I think it’s a bit unfair to call these people nearly anonymous — big blog sites like ProBlogger get 10s of thousands of visitors per day, my man.

FU: Come on — you know one of these bloggers, don’t you?  Don’t you just hate them?

TD: I envy them, at least at the moment — they’re riding a fairly exciting wave, no?

FU:  Well any way, that’s why I think you should quit reading blogs, including this one.

[TD - post interview: or, share your thoughts about this post below!]

We are allegedly on the cusp of recovery.  Things are supposed to be improving.  All we need to see is those floodgates of new business open up and… we’ll be all good!

But I find that when I talk to customers and prospects, we are all frustrated.  We all want this recovery to take hold in a real way — real in terms of easier deals, more deals, less stress.

One thing that doesn’t seem to change, whether we are under stress or things are going great, is the self-discipline required to keep the basics of our marketing going.  Certainly I fall victim to this syndrome — I ignore the blog, fail to attend to my SEO hygiene, drift from the beloved Twitterverse for days on end.

An apple a day.  Once in the morning is not enough.  Pablum, but common sense.

Today, I got back to the blog — fixed some bugs, and got this post written.  Not sure what I’ll tend to tomorrow… are you ?

* – today’s blog title attributed to Christine Mann of Randori Partners.

If you were paying attention during the dot com era, there was a lot to be learned. Learned in the sense that George Santayana wanted us to learn from history — or be condemned to repeat it.

Speaking of history, the vaunted authority Wikipedia has this to say about the Gold Rushes of the 19th century:

Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a “free for all” in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly. The significance of gold rushes in history has given a longer life to the term, and it is now applied generally to denote any capitalist economic activity in which the participants aspire to race each other in common pursuit of a new and apparently highly lucrative market, often precipitated by an advance in technology.

Surely the incredible growth in the formation of businesses — complete with CFOs, HR departments, health benefit plans — around very small ideas which took place during the dot com craze was like a gold rush.

Who knew there would be so much investment available to support so much overhead when compared with the technology or product idea at the core of these internet businesses?  Thousands of companies sprang up — each requiring space, phones, furniture, accountants, parking spaces and dental insurance.  Some with ideas so small the founders couldn’t even articulate what it was they were in business to do.

Well we all learned our lessons.  Or did we?

Business Week’s December 14 issue (online December 3)  includes an article by Stephen Baker entitled “Beware Social Media Snake Oil.”  In the article, Baker does the unthinkable: he calls out the self-styled “experts” who are flogging all social media all the time.  “The consultants evangelize the transformative power of social media and often cast themselves as triumphant case studies of successful networking and self-branding.”

Baker gets it.  Go ahead and wade into the social media… just your little toe… and you’ll be awash.  But not in gold dust rushing through the stream caught in your pie-tin pan.  Awash in an amazing volume of offers to help you get your social media mind right… or else!

Social media doctrine? “Engage your community.”  “Listen twice, talk once.”  “Be transparent.”  Don’t worry about troubling prospects for contact information… just give all of your information away.

I really loved Josh Kopelman’s post on Redeye VC that cautioned those who, when the rubber meets the road and they realize they don’t have a proper go-to-market plan, say at the last minute, “Oh, we’ll just make it viral.”

After the dot com bubble burst, sales people had to sell, not just stand by the fax machine taking orders.  Lots of sales guys lost their jobs as a result.

Mark my words: we are passing through a marketing gold rush.  There’s gold in them thar hills, at least today.

But in the long run, marketing is about expressing an enduring promise of value, and delivering it.  Though the media may change, that challenge will not.

Photo Credit: flickr/Rossco