Managing the Gray - Marketing for the New Media Professional

Thank you to everyone who reads the blog or listens to the podcast.

When I started this podcast earlier this year I didn’t know if anyone was going to pay attention or if there was a point to starting it. Based on what you’ve told me over the past year and what I’ve heard when I speak at conferences and such I know I was quite wrong.

New Media has brought me so much happiness and professional success in 2006 and looking forward to 2007 I can only imagine where this crazy ride might take all of us.

I do know that it’s onward and upward for many people around me and that makes me happy.

Posted in Rambles | Comments(4)

Intro:  Welcome to the brand new world of digital marketing consumer-generated media and no control PR.  The rules of engagement are no longer black and white.  You need to change, to evolve, to manage the gray, and how do you do that?  You let C.C. Chapman help you.

C.C. Chapman: Well, hey everybody.  Welcome to Managing the Gray #23.  I am C.C. Chapman coming to you live from Metro West Boston.  Managing the Gray?  What is that?  Well, Managing the Gray is my podcast, a marketing podcast for the new media professionals as I like to term it.  We talk about everything possible out there in the social mediascape; new marketing, consumer-generated content, viral, Second Life, blogging, podcasting.  You name it, we talk about it.

When I first started this show — this is episode number 23.  When I started it, one of the things I wanted to do every so often was do very specialized podcast that focused on a particular individual, a genre, a market space, a vertical whatever you want to call it dependent.  Today, I got an audio comment that I said, “You know what, it’s time to do one of these,” especially since I have not done one yet.  One minute we would focus on filmmaking and the next we are focusing on music or financial or small business.  If you have got an idea for one, I would love to hear from you, managingthegray@gmail.com.  Let me know what you think would make for a great topic because I would love to focus on the areas that you want to hear about.  I just got an email probably a couple of minutes ago talking about from a small video production company.  I could talk a lot about that area because it is something I know a lot about.

Well, today we are focusing on music because music is my first passion.  It is something I absolutely love.  If you are not familiar, I also do two other podcasts over at accidenthash.com and the u-turncafe.com, both of which are music podcasts.  It is what I am known for by the podcasting community at large until recently and now I got into marketing too.  So, today we are going to focus on musicians and what they should be doing in the new marketing space.  Now, I do not want to step on anybody’s toes because I have a really good friend named Jay, Jay Moonah, who does a podcast called Online Music Marketing.  I have got to be honest, I am subscribed, I have all 15 episodes downloaded and I have not listened to a single one of them because I am so behind in all my podcast listening.  Check him out at onlinemusicmarketing.com.  I know he will appreciate the love and check it out because all he does is focus on this.  If you are a musician and you are looking for a podcast on a regular basis that focuses on that, check this out.

These are my ideas.  I have not listened to his, so I am not stealing any of his ideas.  I love Jay, Jay is a good guy.  He plays in a band called Uncle Seth, which if you want to check him out, musicface.com/uncleseth.  All of these will be in the show notes over managingthegray.com of course.

So, you are an artist.  Whether you are a soloist, a band, and whatever genre you are, there are some things you can do in the new marketing space you can really embrace and do.  A lot of these things would hold true for businesses or individuals, but I am going to focus on the musician angle.

So, what are you going to do first?  You have to have a domain name.  Go buy the domain name.  It does not matter where you buy it from.  There are a lot of different services you can buy them from.  Search the web, you will find places, GoDaddy of course I have a personal affiliation with my other shows.  DirectNIC, I have used for years.  There are probably a million other ones.  Register.com, I do not know who owns them now, but anyway, you have got to own a domain name.  You cannot be going around — and I am sorry, you cannot be going around going, “Go to MySpace.”  I saw some bands are going, “Go to myspace.com/” and then the name of the band.  Do not do that.  Domain names are such a simple thing and you are going to want to own them.  Yes, you might change band names.  Well, let us face it.  You can get domain names for under ten bucks now.  That is cheaper than a beer in most concerts.  So, take the moment, spend the money, invest in your brand.  Buy the domain name.

Now, I know musicians, you probably do not have a lot of money.  That is okay, you do not have to build a website behind it.  You should when you are ready build a website, but if you cannot, one of the other things I am going to tell you is you should have web presence on every one of the free services out there.  Things like MySpace.  Facebook now, we will get to that in a minute.  All these — Sonic Bids, Pure Volume; they allow you to build web presence on them.  If you want a MySpace site, it is great.  It will not cost you a dime.  It is free to set it up.  Own a domain name and every service out there you are going to register it to, will let you do something called forwarding or redirecting where you can change that, you know, bandx.com and redirect it to a MySpace page. So, you go to your bandname.com or dot.org or dot.net or whatever you want to do, dot.ca, and it will bounce over to your MySpace page.  You do not have to pay for the web hosting, but please go get that domain name.  All right?  Please, please, please, please do it.  It is the most important thing you could do because it is going to stay with you.  You are going to want to own that rather than some other band or some other individual, so go buy that.

Then set up a MySpace page.  MySpace of course is really hot right now, so is Facebook.  If you are not familiar with Facebook, Facebook was and is, it was MySpace geared specifically towards college students.  For the longest time, until real recently, you could not get into Facebook unless you had “.edu” email address.  It was a very sweet spot market and it was not oversaturated with marketers and other people.  It was really interesting and organic, kids were posting all kinds of things and it has kind of opened up and kind of shifted a little bit, but you can create groups in there and everything.  It is a great area if you are targeting college students.  Get your fans to do stuff for you.  Get them to create a group for you.  I saw this the other day with the band Kill the Alarm.  They invited me during their Kill the Alarm group in Facebook.  I thought there is a great idea because college students will post photos when they go to your shows.  They will post comments on new songs.  They will spread the love for you, which is the best thing you can do with your band whether you are an individual — see how this all crosses over?  It does not matter but I am focusing on musicians.  You do not have a lot of money, so you want people to help you spread the word about you.

MySpace.  MySpace does some other things.  Make sure you sign up as a musician, make sure you are signing up as a band and not an individual because you get added bonus things.  The biggest thing being you can upload music to it.  Uploading music is very cool on MySpace because all of a sudden people — I am going to talk about this in a minute in detail, but more people, you know, they are, “Oh, I don’t wanna download.”  You do not have to.  MySpace allows you to upload the tune and people can just stream it.  They can also imbed it in their profiles, but people cannot download it.  So, you are protected in that if you are worried about that, which you should not be and that will be another conversation in a minute.  MySpace also has calendar of events so you can put up your gigs where you are playing and people get notified if they subscribe to you.  MySpace also gives you a blog for free.  I am not trying to focus on MySpace alone, but what I am trying to stress to you is the fact that here is a tool that for free you can basically get everything you need to get going on the web as a musician.  For free, that is the key part.  The nice thing now is MySpace blogs is that they get picked up by Google.  If you fill in all the right keywords, you are going to get hit, which is a cool, cool thing for you.

So, you have got your MySpace page, you have got every other — I am going to tell you, there are so many different places out there that will set up free musician sites.  It is funny.  I was actually to the lead singer of the band called Amplifico the other day.  They are from Scotland.  She was talking about how much time her and her band spent putting up all these free websites and never knowing if they are going to get a return.  Yeah, that does kind of suck that you are not necessarily going to get a lot of return from a lot of these, but it is free so how can you not invest?  Probably it is going to take you an hour on each site and most of it is going to ask for the same thing; a bio, a picture, some credential information about who you are and what you do.  It is all canned, just have it up in a notepad or Microsoft Word and just copy and paste, but get it up.  Spend the time, invest the time.  Hit the big ones first of course.

If you want to sell your music, I know a lot of artists go, “Oh, I’ve got a CD, how do I sell my music?”  Cdbaby.com, I am going to highly recommend.  They are so behind the artist, which I think is so great.  Derek Sivers, the guy who created it, I have actually talked to him on the phone.  Great guy, does some amazing things and he is so focused on taking care of the artist because he is a musician, too.  That is very important.  You do not always see that.  What is cool about CD Baby and there are other services that will do, I believe IODA does this too, is they will actually handle the distribution of your music as well to all the online services.  So, you upload it, you give a CD to CD Baby to sell.  I know musicians who have done this when they do not have a physical CD yet but they have — I have a friend, Madsumo, who put together a CD of tracks.  He did not want to actually make and spend the money to make real CDs, so he made some raw, pretty home-burned CD-R copies, sent it to CD Baby, and then bought all three of them so no one can actually buy a physical CD.  Reason being was, all that music got put into all the major distribution channels.  We are talking iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, Tower Records, all those things.  CD Baby does that for you and it is a low — it is a one time fee, I forget exactly what it is.  It is like $35 or $40, something like that, to get that out there.  It does take a little while, I know iTunes takes two to three months if you are lucky, but it gets you out there.  It gets your music out there and it is worth the investment because you do it once and it spreads everywhere.  Then you can also say, “Buy me on iTunes, buy me on Napster, buy me on eMusic.”  That is one of the cool things about it.

Also, you knew I was coming to this, didn’t you?  People who know we personally are going, “When’s he gonna talk about the PMN?”  The Podsafe Music Network is a huge, huge thing for musicians.  Yes I am — full disclosure, I am completely affiliated with the Podsafe Music Network.  I served as project manager, building the site.  I am still heavily involved with it.  I am an evangelist for it.  I use it all the time for my music.  I am getting that out there, I am directly related with the Podsafe Music Network.  But that said, I still think it is an amazing service.  What it allows you to do as an artist is you can upload a track, one track or a million tracks, upload them.  By uploading them, you are giving permission and you are signing a license that says, “Any podcaster can play this music so long as they give me credit, link to my site and then also report back to the system that they played it,” so that way, you are getting data, you are seeing where your music is being played.  Trust me, if you need references as a musician, if you want some references from musicians on how this has worked and if it has worked for them, let me know.  Contact me at cc.chapman@gmail.com.  I will put you directly in touch with the artist who will sing the praise of the PMN as well, so it not just me.

It is still not fully rolled out yet and I hope, hope it comes soon is the ability for you to sell your tracks.  Right now, it is being rolled out in phases.  My dream for the Podsafe Music Network, it was my dream from day one when I got first got told about it was for somebody to be able to record a song that night whether it is on their home studio or at like a live concert; take that track, upload it to Podsafe Music Network so that podcasters could play it right away and they can also set it for sale immediately, so they can record a song and have it for sale as soon as possible none of that waiting for iTunes or the other systems.  Instantaneously, it is in the control of the artist.  That is where it is headed and that is where I hope it goes soon.

So, I am talking all these technology and stuff, too, but do not forget — I hinted this before, your fans.  Use your fans.  If I am a fan of a musician, I will do anything I can for them to help them.  That is one of the cool things about podcasting is I get to help artists.  Trust me, I guarantee you, once you have fans — and you will have fans right away if you are any good at all, there is going to be a techno geek out there who is going to be able to help you.  There is going to be some marketing student who wants to make your concert posters or your T-shirts.  There will be somebody who will sell CDs for you at the door.  You leverage your fan base, they will help you.  Trust me.  Send out an email, you need to have an email list.  Even if it is just a canned — you know there are plenty of services out there.  Even if it is just old-fashioned, hand-coated putting together text, that is fine.  I have seen that too, just old-fashioned email.  We all have email lists, right?  Just do that.  You need to have some way to reach out to your fans and communicate with your fans.  There is such a level of intimacy with artists nowadays where I can literally call up an artist that I know and be like, “Dude,” and just talk to them.  That is cool.  Get that level with your fans.  They will be committed to you and they will do everything possible to help you do that.

But listen, none of these stuff is going to happen overnight.  You are going to have to work at it.  Nothing in life is free.  If you honestly think you are going to be discovered tomorrow playing in that coffeehouse down in the corner, good luck!  It is not going to happen, all right?  It is just not going to happen.  You have better chances being hit by the bus that is going by the coffeehouse.  You have got to work at it.  You have got to be persistent.  You have got to be out there.  You have got to work every angle imaginable.  Contact every podcaster who plays you on their show.  Give me a break.  It should not take you more than a few minutes to email them, but do it.  Thank them for playing it.  Reach out.  When someone leaves a MySpace comment, say, “Hey, what’s up?”  You can tell which ones are spam and tell which ones are sincere.  Blogging?  Yeah, do it every couple of times from the road.  If you can podcast, podcasting is a huge step, but it is not that hard.  With services like Hipcast where you can pick up a phone and just call in a podcast from the road, that is easy.  That is easy, easy money.  Spend a little bit but huge, huge returns if you can do it and please if you are a musician and you can record on GarageBand, you can do a podcast.  All right?  Just ask Matthew Ebel.  That is not a slam against Ebel.  I am just saying that GarageBand empowers musicians to a level that is ridiculously amazing and there are other programs, too, but I know GarageBand, a lot of musicians use it because it is free and it is a good place to start out with.

Thinking about things like fan clubs and incentives, I mean we have all seen the fan clubs for as long as we can remember and they work for a reason.  In the virtual space, they are even better.  I have seen Street Team emails saying, “Hey, who can help me hang up posters?”  “Hang up a hundred posters, we’ll give you a free ticket to tonight’s gig.”  People will do that, little things like that.

Cross over, integrate all these worlds together.  Actually, here is an audio comment I want to play that fits into this because I have not talked about Second Life once tonight.  It is about time, so here is a comment that actually fits perfect in this show.

Rich Palmer: “Hi C.C., Rich Palmer here.  Hey, I was listening to Managing the Gray and you were talking about your really great line on your schedule and how sometimes your virtual schedule and your real life schedule have become somewhat transparent and I am realizing the same thing.  It really enlightened me that past week because I am putting on my schedule my various calendar events for Second Life.  I play a lot of shows there as a live musician in Second Life.  I am doing a lot of performances, four, five, six a week and I am putting those obviously on my regular calendar.  I put them in Outlook and schedule those the same as I would any other scheduled item and I have a lot of scheduled items both real life and Second Life.  So, I am seeing that it is really starting to merge and it is beautiful because Second Life to me is another marketing opportunity. I play so many shows and with those I am able to tag on some other things.  I market not only my own CD and my own original music, but I also market my internet music show, Audio Gumshoe, and it gives me an opportunity in Second Life to see so many people worldwide from so many cultures, so many time zones, that otherwise would not have been exposed to what it is that I am offering. So, schedules aside, here is a great opportunity to market.  Because I am marketing, I have a lot to schedule and there are a lot of appointments, there are a lot of shows, that we even have meetings and we do discussions about how we are going to market and promote life music in Second Life, so it has really been a great, great opportunity.  Again, this is Rich Palmer, Rich Desoto in Second Life.  Find me at audiogumshoe.com.  Thanks for your time and thank you so much for Managing the Gray.  We appreciate you, C.C.  Bye.

C.C. Chapman: See, there is an artist talking about Second Life.  I was going to mention Second Life as yet another place where artists can get their groove on, so to speak.  Again, you do not have to have a major technology because you can work with people to do it.  This past weekend, I actually opened the virtual U-Turn Cafe in Second Life, which is basically — imagine it as a nightclub.  It is a nightclub where artists are going to perform their music and we had it live.  Live, not canned or recorded.  It was a live concert from Toronto, live at Say What was the name of the club.  The band was Uncle Seth and they performed live and they fed in into Second Life.  I had a guy that still blows me away, a guy who got into Second Life just because he heard me talk about this Uncle Seth show.  First time he had ever been in Second Life and he was in Australia.  He was having lunch in Australia and here it was, you know, 10:30 at night, P.M., Boston time and he was having lunch and he got in just to hear this band live.  He has not played with Second Life, he does not know if he is ever going to play with Second Life, but he wanted to take part in this live gig, which I thought was amazing. That tells you the power of these new mediums such as this where it is yet another way where an artist can be heard.  Uncle Seth put up — they had links to their iTunes store, they had links to their podcast feed.  Sound familiar?  Sound like a website maybe?  You know, the same things.  See?  You need the same things, you have that crossover.  Everything you get on the Uncle Seth website, you could get from their Second Life presence during that performance.  They did tip jar.  They made real money that night.  I know because I gave them some and so did everybody else.  They were getting paid.  That is a pretty powerful message.

I am sorry if some of the traditional marketing people listening are going, “I took nothing away from the show.”  Well, if you took nothing, you were not really listening because everything on this show is totally pertinent, except maybe the selling the CDs and the PMN.  It is totally pertinent to every single aspect of marketing as well.  Get out there.  Use the technology.  Do not be afraid of it.  It will not bite and if it does bite, it only hurts a little bit.

So, with that, I am going to leave you for today.  Embrace new marketing, get out there, have fun.  You could check out the show, email managingthegray@gmail.com or swing by managingthegray.com.  I am blogging quite a bit there now.  I kind of separated from my personal blog.  It is really interesting, my wife has not figured out which site I blog which on, so it is an interesting thing.  It is a weird dichotomy, weird double-nature thing going on, but it is all good.  So, you guys take care, I will talk to you very soon and thank you for listening to Managing the Gray!  I will talk to you soon.  I just said that.  Bye-bye.

Closing:  Thanks for listening to Managing the Gray.  Tell your coworkers.  Tell your friends and tell us what you think by leaving a comment at managingthegray.com.

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Posted in Transcript | Comments(1)

I don’t know who is behind these ads, but they have me laughing enough to blog about them.

If you go to CrownTown.TV you’ll see a whole site dedicated around the Budweiser Select logo. The concept is that each of the points on the crown is actually a character. These are definitely targetting their demographic of upscale urbanites.

Below is the “hot tub” episode that caught my attention on YouTube a few moments ago. I found these very well done with a good level of creativity and just enough crudeness to be funny without “crossing the line.” I wonder if they’ll be making toned downed versions for television or better yet THIS could be a fun video podcast.

If they were smart they’d be doing some social media outreach TO podcaster and bloggers that would be more then willing to talk and promote this. I bet they haven’t done so and are hoping it’ll go viral. Who knows….
A bit of a warning that these are PG-13 in nature.

Posted in Video | Comments(3)

Christopher Penn: Combating new media fragmentation with brand, next on Managing the Gray.

Intro:  Welcome to the brand new world of digital marketing consumer-generated media and no control PR.  The rules of engagement are no longer black and white.  You need to change, to evolve, to manage the gray, and how do you do that?  You let C.C. Chapman help you.

Christopher Penn: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.  My name is Christopher Penn.  I am the host of the Financial Aid Podcast doing a Christmas gift cast exchange with C.C. Chapman here on Managing the Gray.  Today’s episode of Managing the Gray will be a little different, but in C.C’s words, it is all good.  So, here is today’s challenge, something to think about.  New media, new marketing is what we are all about here on Managing the Gray.  The challenge facing us as new marketing professionals, that I think is going to come to a real head in 2007, is channel fragmentation.

What is channel fragmentation?  Put simply, it is just a whole lot of channels.  Consider this.  In the last six months, FeedBurner has tracked the total number of podcast just under its care and the have doubled to nearly 90,000.  Imagine a radio dial with 90,000 stations on it.  Your car dashboard would literally be half a mile long.  We already have jokes now about the golf channel, the paint channel, the grass channel, and cable, and with the growing popularity of video on the net and internet TV, we will soon have channels dedicated not only to grass, but to specifically partial shade green or blue fescue grass.  So, the problem with channel fragmentation is both obvious and difficult to solve.  Where are marketers do we spend our advertising dollars particularly if we are in a volume business where large audience is needed to drive profits?  With 90,000 channels on the dial, which ones do we invest in?  How do we reach audiences in more than just the channel directly related to our industry?  The answer, unsurprisingly, is brand.  Brand is the essential quality, the story, the myth that helps us to transcend channels and reach audiences that are outside of our direct domain.  Why is brand the key to crossing channels?  Because ultimately, brand is a story and we social creatures, we enjoy telling stories and sharing stories.  If the story was a good one, we will share it.  If the story is a bad one, we will share it, but where we as marketers must absolutely steer clear of is the mediocre story, the story that is not memorable and certainly not worth sharing.

So, that is the theory part of the show.  One of the things that I love about Managing the Gray is that it contains, in the words of motivational speaker Tony Robbins, profound knowledge, knowledge that once you understand it, it is instantly usable.  So, let us get to the applicable knowledge part of the show.  I will leave it to you to judge whether it is profound or not.

First things first, you need to establish what your story is.  Before you go buying a domain name or buying a SIM in Second Life or firing up GarageBand in the microphone, you need to establish your story.  Every story has a plot and ideally you can sum up that plot in two sentences.  Look at the stories and the plots behind some of the most popular brands in America.  Now, granted a lot of these are old media brands, but they have compelling stories that you know by heart.  Apple Computers, the story of garage innovators who challenged the status quo and brought computing to the masses.  Of course, there is going to be some exaggeration, some hagiography to make the story more compelling.  Seven herbs and spices held in secret make Kentucky Fried Chicken better.  PodCamp breaks the mold of traditional conferences and lets everyone participate regardless of background.  Take these thoughts and extend them.  Fill in the back story.  Imagine what your story would look like if it were a feature film.  Here is a good question to ask yourself:  Would you pay money to see the story if it was not your own?  Work on that until the answer is yes.  Have you got your story?  Have you got something that you could tell around the campfire and a couple of beers and people would be interested in hearing more?  You know when you got a good story because you are passionate, you are eager to tell other people about it.

So, next let us develop the mechanisms around the story.  The story needs to be compelling and also instantly understandable in just a few words.  Seven herbs and spices.  Reach out and touch someone.  Good to the last drop.  Do not be evil.  The ultimate drive machine.  Condense your story down to a tagline, the kind of thing that you would see in the preview of the movie about your brand.  What are the criteria for a brand and new media, a brand that can cross channel easily?

First and foremost, we have established that the story has to be worth telling.  No marketing tricks, old or new, can change a story.  That is essentially lipstick on a paper.  Once you have got the story and the tagline, it is time to start establishing your new media presence with a sharable brand.  Your brand has to be one that hits on all the learning channels.  By this, I am talking about the ways in which human beings learn because fundamentally, when you are sharing a story, you are teaching it to someone else.  You are helping them learn so that they can share it with someone else.  Your brand has to be translated into three primary channels of information gathering, visual, auditory and kinesthetic.  This comes from a discipline called neural linguistic programming.  For example, a strong visual identity is used for people who learn visually.  They see that distinctive symbol and instantly understand that it is your brand, maybe even instantly understand what it is you are all about.  It should be recognizable and easy to transmit by written word.  How many people, for example, have misspelled a web 2.0 service that is missing one or more of its vowels?  Flickr could get away with it by being an early adapter, but I challenge you to remember the many other photo sharing services with dropped letters in their names.  Your brand has to be auditorily sharable.  For a lot of people, podcasting is audio.  Not everybody uses iTunes and certainly not everybody has a video iPod.  If I say to you go find like my show, for example, the Financial Aid Podcast.  Chances are you can type that out successfully and find my site.  If I say go find Accident Hash or Managing the Gray, you will be equally successful.  Now, if I say go find Blueberry but leave out the E, it is a little harder to share.  Go to Delicious, but spell it del.icio.us.  Do you see where this is going?  Go to Marvelous, but spell it with 4 M’s and [unintelligible].  You get where I am going.  Unless you are the market creator or one of the earliest adapters who can get away with it because there is nobody else in that space, you absolutely must make your brand easy to share by ear.  If you have to spell it, if you have to explain it, then it is not sharable.  Remember we are talking word of mouth, audio words [unintelligible] 30 introductory seconds are spent explaining how to spell the brand, that is time not telling your brand story.

Your brand needs to be visible too.  What is a kinesthetic brand?  It is a brand that inspires a feeling, an emotion that when you experience it, you feel it in your bones and in your blood.  Think about Kentucky Fried Chicken.  If you like the brand, if you associate with the brand, chances are your mouth just start watering thinking about, you know, hot, crispy chicken, a little salty, spicy, crunchy breading, warm and tender on the inside, delicious mashed potatoes with that gravy.  Are you hungry yet?  That is a kinesthetic response.  Here is another brand that creates an instant response so much so that I only need to say the name and if you are a heterosexual male, you are going to have response.  Victoria’s Secret.  Yes, of course, it is a visually appealing brand, too, but it conveys a physical reaction, doesn’t it?  Here is another brand that you have a physical reaction to.  Osama Bin Laden.  That conjures up a different physical response, didn’t it?

Now, most brands don’t cross well into all three channels, but if you can nail two out of three, that is good enough.  So, how do you explain and apply these ideas in new media and new marketing?  First, establish a brand strongly on your website and your promotional materials.  Get that logo, that graphic that says what you are all about.  Get a domain name that you do not have to spell out.  You say it and people can get there immediately.  When you make business cards, make them look and feel different than the run-on-the-mill business card, but make sure that the call to action is clear.  Have a brand name there, have a website there that you can send people to, to get them engaged.  Think of your business card as like a key to a door, okay?  If it is not even obvious which end of the key to insert, then people are not going to use it, but if you make it real easy, say, “Hi, I’m C.C. Chapman.  I’m a new media specialist,” and right there on the card in big letters it says managingthegray.com, people will understand what to do.

Next, start heading up the major hubs.  Even though channels are fragmenting, there is still and always will be commons, places people go to check in before they head out to their own respective niche areas of content.  Those hubs are places like yesterday, it were Friendster and Tribe, today MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Bebo, and the million other sites online.  Are they the be-all and end-all of new media?  Of course not.  They are the intersections on the highways that the majority of people pass through on the way to their destinations and if you want to get people’s attention to at least have a shot and showing them your brand, you have to have at least a placeholder at these sites.  Have you got that trailer that tagline that movie plot summer from earlier?  Good.  Load it up on your text editor and begin signing up for as many of the social hub sites as possible within reason.  When it comes to choosing your account name and identity, be sure to reuse your brand name, which ideally should also be your domain name.  For example, if I run financialaidpodcast.com, then you should be able to find me at myspace.com/financialaidpodcast.  If I am on Flickr, you should be able to find my brand by typing in flickr.com/profile/financialaidpodcast.  You get the idea.

So, now that you have got the major hubs taken care of, at least in terms of placeholders, you want to establish a flag on foreign soil and then pick a couple of networks that have the most of your target demographic on them and aggressively market your brand and identity on those networks.  For example, if I ran a new music podcast, gather.com might not be the best place for me to focus my time.  MySpace would be a better choice.  Who has the most of the audience you want to reach?  Once you figure out where you want to have your focus, get the tools, get the knowledge and things that you need to leverage that network.  It is a network that loves you.  Add friends, start adding friends like crazy.  If it is a network that lets you really customize your personal page on there, make sure that it is tricked out so that it reflects the brand and a clear call to action for what you want people to do.  With these sites, you do not want to make the sites themselves the hub of people attention.  You want to make that ideally your website or your podcast or your blog or your Second Life SIM, so make sure that everything that is on these hub sites points back to your primary focus and the call to action is so clear that it is obvious.

The next step by far is the hardest.  Live your story.  If your brand is all about secret herbs and spices, then do not breathe a word of what they are.  If anything, play out their secretiveness.  If your brand is all about fanatical customer service, then whenever anyone messages you on MySpace, be fanatical about getting back to them.  You have an exceptionally short amount of time to reinforce your brand with action that is congruent with your brand, so be fanatical about it.  Live your brand.

Lastly, and most importantly, once you have a following no matter how small, show them lots of love and ask for their help.  Chances are if your story is compelling enough, if your brand is compelling enough, they will share it anyway.  Make sure you reward those people who are most loyal to you.  If you have something to sell, make sure your loyalists are the front of the line for freebies.  If you have a service offered, make sure the loyalists know about it before anyone else.  For example, on my show, I release an eBook with updates from time to time and loyalists who listen to my show get advance notice well before anyone else.  If you know you are running into tough times, share that story with your loyalists first because they know more about your brand than you do.  Listen to your loyalists.  Accept input from them no matter how painful it is and reward them liberally for sticking with you especially the old-timers who have been there for you since the beginning.  They know your story and they will share it unhesitatingly and making sure that you listen to what they have to say.

Okay, so to recap.  New media is fragmenting.  The way to combat that is with brand and brand is a [unintelligible] for story.  A compelling story is easily shared so make yours compelling.  Make it a movie worth paying to enjoy.  Develop your tagline and your trailer for your movie then aggressively establish your new media properties with easily remembered and easily recalled and easily shared addresses.  Live your story.  Reinforce your story.  Tell it every opportunity and reward the early adapters and the loyalists who make your story their own.  Ultimately, it is the sharing of the story that will make your business products and services cross all the different fragmented channels out there that are multiplying by the day.  When you strip away all the technology, all the buzz words, new media really is nothing more than sitting on the digital campfire sharing stories.  The same thing we as human beings have been doing for 10,000 years.  If yours is a story worth retelling, it will be no matter who is sitting on that fire.

Let me know what you think of this story.  My name is Christopher Penn and you can reach me at financialaidpodcast@gmail.com and at financialaidpodcast.com where the story is going to be cross-posted.  Please also leave your comments at managingthegray.com.

Thanks for having me around at your campfire here at Managing the Gray.  C.C. Chapman will be back next time with more new great marketing and new media tips to help you succeed.  Until then, goodnight and remember to turn the marshmallows.

Closing:  Thanks for listening to Managing the Gray.  Tell your coworkers.  Tell your friends and tell us what you think by leaving a comment at managingthegray.com.

Posted in Transcript | Comments(3)

The picture below is of this website on my new Nintendo Wii. It’s got Opera installed and works really well. I was impressed to see it play an embedded YouTube video right there on my TV. So now I can pause from playing a game to watch videos on the web. Very interesting…

What also has my attention is this whole concept of a Mii that Nintendo has. Think of it as another avatar of your self. Everyone in my family has one except for the pets which the kids were not all that happy about.

When I play certain games it keeps stats with my Mii. I can even embed a Mii into a controller, take that over to a friends house and now my Mii is playing games on their system. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could bring my games that I’ve downloaded (Super Mario Brothers last night for that retro feel on the HD TV *laugh*), web favorites and other goodies along as well?

There is a social area called the Mii Parade. I still don’t know what it does, but I’ve told the network that others can come and visit. Again, I’m not sure what that is about and how it will work, but the concept that my Wii is attached to the net 24/7 through my wireless network excites me. Will I wake up one morning to see new features, goodies or other things waiting for me? Will I wake up some day to an ad that I didn’t want? Since the Wii knows what games I play (It keeps a daily log for you) will Nintendo harvest that data and let me know when similar games that I might like will be coming out and provide me a demo right there instead of sending a disc through the mail?

All of this seems like a lot of potential. Brand new ground that will tie everything back to the TV, but not through the networks control that we’ve become use to. Or is it now just a bigger and better network?

I’m still not sure, but all these possibilities certainly have me excited. What about you?

Posted in Gaming, New Media | Comments(5)

A little something special for the holidays as my good buddy Christopher Penn from The Financial Aid Podcast takes part in the holiday show exchange idea by hosting Managing the Gray.

There are very few people that I’d allow to host this show, but Chris is my personal marketing ninja on multiple levels and thus he is one of the few.

Today he discusses channel fragmentation and the concept of “brand.” As always, good solid advice on new marketing and new media that everyone can use.

Thanks again Chris for this great idea of hosting other shows.

The comment line is always open at 206-309-4729.

Posted in Podcast | Comments(6)

What follows is a transcription of Managing the Gray #19 which was originally posted on October 19, 2006. Full show notes and the audio file can be found here.

[00:00:00] [Music]

[00:00:02] Opening: Welcome to the brand new World of Digital Marketing Consumer Generated Media and No-Control PR. The worlds of engagement are no longer black and white, you need to change to evolve, to manage the gray. And how do you do that? You let C.C. Chapman help you.

[00:00:00] C.C. Chapman: Hey, welcome back everybody, welcome to Managing the Gray, number - 19, how is it going? By the time you listen this I will be in Toronto at the Canadian Marketing Association’s “Annual Digital Marketing Conference,” but on recording of the Managing the Gray get it out there, because I had some other raise a question to me about the big announcement yesterday. Thank you for all the great emails, the phone calls, the personal notes saying congratulations on the new company and a new partnership. I couldn’t be more excited and everybody, for more than one person has said, “C.C. your passion is really coming through, how excited are you about this company” and I am excited, I am genuinely excited.

It’s unlike anything I have ever done before, in any adventure I’ve ever undertaken. And I tell you, back in May when I started Managing the Gray, I had no idea it would lead to something like this.

I am going to tell a story about that, there are opportunity about looking things in the face and just jumping for it. But, first I got an audio comment that I need to address, it’s from my good friend P.W. Fenton. If you are not familiar with P.W. Fenton (PDUB), PDUB is one of the most talented producers in the podosphere, he is also a genuine story teller, a good man and a good friend of mine. Now. Check out digitalflotsam.org, I will link to it in the Shownotes, digitalflotsam is one of the premier podcast on the internet bar none.

Story telling in its finest, just an old guy in Florida telling stories from his life and it’s beautiful. “God” PDUB did scold me a little bit, he is an old wise man and definitely a mentor someone I look up to and he send me this comment.

[00:02:00] PDUB: “Dude, I just listened to your show, where you let us know finally what was going on, but as I listened I realize you aren’t identifying anyone. I assume that everybody knows you and you do introduce a guy name Joseph Jaffe, but then we only hear the first names of somebody name Neville, and somebody name Shel, who are these people including Joseph Jaffe. Why are they so important to your new company? Now I personally have reason to know one of those people, he gave me the best review quote I could ever have received from anyone. So, his first name is like Share or Frank to me, no need of a second name, but seriously you need to introduce these guys, all the members of this new endeavor.”

Thank you PDUB, share them? Common, one name and you give Share, oh that’s bad. Anyway, PDUB is right, I realize this that new listener of Managing the Gray, people not in the marketing space may not know how cool these individuals are that I am working with. I also realize I went back and listen to our little interview, you are right we never did say last names, very foe part of us.

[00:03:16] So, who is Joseph Jaffe? Joseph Jaffe is this crazy wacky South African that I love to death. He hosts a podcast called the “Across the Sound”, new marketing to its fullest. He also wrote a book that if you haven’t read it, shame on you, this is a must read for anybody, anybody interested in this whole new marketing space. If you want to know what type of stuff my new company is gonna be doing, read this book, its all in there. The book is called “Life After the 30-Second Spot” I will link to it the shownotes, seriously, it’s a book that changed my life, changed my way of thinking and you should read it.

Shel Holtz, he is one of the co-host of “For Immediate Release”, which is another great podcast. He is a PR in Corporate Communication Specialist. Shel is a nice guy, I remember meeting him in San Francisco, when I spoke at the San Francisco podcasters meet-up and he came up to me and said, “Dude the [inaudible] has changed my life”. Thank you. He was such a nice guy and he is such a good guy. He has written books, the other one comes top of my head is “Blogging For Business”, because I am looking at it right now in my shelf, I’ve read it, it’s a great book. Great, great guy, almost always has a cup of coffee, the same way I have seen him, great guy.

Neville Hobson is the other half of “For Immediate Release”. He is a PR in Corporate Communication Specialist as well. He was based in Amsterdam, is now based in the UK. Great, great guy, super nice, speaks his mind, which I love. He doesn’t bit his tongue very often, I love that.

So, those are the three people that who were on the podcast, PDUB and rest of world who don’t know whom talking about. I am going to tell you what’s cool about this, this is what I have been dying to tell to everybody is the circumstances how this company came about. This is the story about the opportunity, about the randomness, about the Six Pixels Of Separation that Mitch Joel talks about all the time.

You got to realize, I took this job, I didn’t know Neville and Shel on board yet, but I also took the job, I had met Joseph once face to face, I actually had met Shel and Neville once as well. I met Shel at the San Francisco meet that I have talked about and I met Neville this past summer when I was in Germany, he was also speaking, so we met there had some drinks, had a good time.

I came home from Babson one day and I was frustrated. Something has just happened, it’s the things have been happening. I get to the point, when I said, I came home I was talking to Laura and I said “listen this weekend I have got to start looking for a new job. It’s not going the way I wanted to, there is bigger thing out there, I don’t know what it is? But, I want to start looking”. This was a big deal, because I love my job there, loved it stable, great people, great opportunity, great stuff going on.

So, she knows it was a big deal, if I actually said I am done, I got to start looking. That night I sent email to couple of friends, colleagues, people I talked to you about in possible consulting gigs, just to see what was going on, see if they thought anything more about it and then in a random email, I had nothing to do with those, to Joseph, I didn’t remember what we were talking about, I got to go find his email, somewhere in it I said, yeah I am thinking gonna start looking for new job as we can do, or mentioning passing, later that night. I am in second life with Mitch Joel, we are just hanging out, Jaffe gets in, we are just hanging out, we are just shooting the [inaudible] and having a good time, I actually in gear, interacting with some other people, the next thing I know, I get this IM from Joseph, he says “call me now”. Like what?

So, I said lets get out second life and talk, so we are not distracted. So, picture this, Laura goes to bed, I am talking about getting new job. Joseph and I had long conversation, he said listen, I have got this opportunity, I got this, here is what I am talking about, here what I am doing and it excited me beyond belief. Everything I heard was everything I wanted in the position. We were talking and he said “listen CC I was going to come after you down the road at some point, but you were so happy I didn’t know you were available”.

So, there are two lessons there. One of them is, you never know when something is going bloom, remember how I talk about, I said “you know the guy you meet in line, the guy or girl you meet in line at the coffee shop might be your future boss, or might be the best partner you could ever find? You never know who you are going to cross, so random email to Joseph, let to this, but the other thing is, for employers or anybody in the other side, this goes for anybody, don’t ever assume someone not interested in whatever it is you are offering them. I have this happened before too, so it might be a job offer, it might be an advertising opportunity, it might be a speaking opportunity. Don’t ever think, I shouldn’t ask him, I learned that recently too with someone who want to help me with some music. I didn’t reach out to this person, because I didn’t wanna call on a favor, I didn’t wanna abuse our friendship that’s what I said, and he said “what are you talking about, always ask”, so don’t ever be afraid to ask and that works up and down the food chain as well. If you got a small little conference, may be you don’t have any money for sponsorship, I have had this happened. I didn’t know if I could ask to speak in my conference, you are kidding me, ask. Ask always ask, do not be afraid to ask, I am tried stressing this to my kids as well, its an early thing you know, what’s the worse could ever happen, they can say “no” and this applies to every level of business. See it all comes back.

So, back to the story. Joseph, we were on the phone and at the end of the phone conversation, it was like 1 O’clock in the morning, it was 2 hour phone call or whatever. I remember I am sitting on my sun porch and he goes I am sorry. I said, “what are you sorry for, you just talked about the greatest opportunity ever”. He said, “No, I am sorry, because I know you are not gonna sleep tonight, because I know you and you are gonna be wired about this”, he was right. I couldn’t sleep, I remember waking up in the morning and babbling. All I remember is being so excited and like 20 minutes later, Laura going “Do you remember anything that you just said” because I wasn’t really awake totally yet, I said “No” and she was waking me, “you got an offer what? What’s going on” and that’s how the social media thing works.

Joseph and I negotiated, nothing too much of negotiation, but we negotiated in second, I said “let do this right, let’s have some fun, let’s push these boundaries”. We all connected and then it was funny, because what I didn’t know was he was conversation with Shel and Neville. He said, “Hey, can I tell them that you are coming onboard” and I said, “Yeah” and then “Wait a minute, Shel and Neville might come onboard” and this just got even cooler, because I had no idea.

So, the idea is what drove me. It was funny because Laura, we were 2 weeks into the conversation, and Laura goes, “So, what how much you are going to be paid”, I said, “I don’t know, haven’t asked”. I didn’t’ ask, I didn’t care, it was the opportunity, it was the excitement, it was the passion, it was the spark. You guys got to find that spark what every it is and when you find that spark, attack it, get it, capture, turn it into a flame, make it something bigger, because you can, you control your destiny. That’s what I want to get an opportunity is out there, it’s ready. Is this a risk for me to take this job from nice stable company, yeah it is, but you know what? As my wife said, she goes, “CC, I love her to death, I said “are you okay” then she said “listen I know you, if you are so excited about this and you pass this up, you would never ever forgive yourself and I trust you” and that made it easiest thing in the world.

So, find those opportunities, grasp them, get them do not let them pass you by. This world changes way too fast, social media in new marketing is changing the world we live in. I talked to a client yesterday and I brain dumped all these ideas something I could do and then next thing I know, as one person said, “Oh can we do this?” and it was the best idea in the room. I am so glad she brought it up, because it was amazing and that’s what it is. Everybody has got ideas, everybody has got passions, find yours, embrace it, turn it into something bigger.

Everybody always talks about CC, you found your dream job, yeah I think I have found my dream job. Great, my dream job is really sitting in a cabin in the woods, with a glass of scotch writing a novel, but we will get there, writing a book, I wanna write a book so bad. I gonna find a way, because I want to. I will also publish if I have to, what I am saying is just do.

So, I guess some points to remember. You never know when often you gonna pose itself, don’t ever be afraid to ask, find your passion and attack it, make it happen, make it reality, that’s what it’s all about. Yes, I am living that now, I can actually say that. I was comfortable for too long, looking “Man I wish I could do something different, Man I wish I could just attack this space and really do it all the time” and I am doing it now, that’s exciting. And you can do it too. Something like self help guru, I don’t mean to, but I am just very excited, very passionate about this and I want you to be passionate about it too.

So, there are some more details about the new company and yes, you will be hearing more. I think number the one comment was “CC you forgot to tell us the name,” no I didn’t forget anything people, it’s coming very, very soon. I am very, very excited about it. Very excited about everything that’s happening and it’s all happening very, very quick. You are gonna see stuff before you know it, it’s gonna be everywhere.

So, guys/girls everybody in between, I will be back very, very soon, keep the comments coming managingthegray.com or email me at cc.chapman@gmail.com. Keep everything coming guys, you guys stay safe, have a great one and I will talk to you very, very soon.

[00:12:16] [Music]

[00:12:19] Ending – 1: Thanks for listening to Managing the Gray. Tell your co-workers, tell your friends and tell us what you think by leaving a comment at managingthegray.com.

[00:12:28] [Music]

[00:12:38] [Commercial]: Get this podcast and more great ones like it or the high performance podcast delivery network from PodShow and Limelight Networks. I love it!

Posted in Transcript | Comments(0)

I hate predictions. I really do.

But based on conversations I’ve had with different people and then reading the news this morning about Abbey Corps I’m convinced that we are going to see a huge influx of new video content in the coming year.

This isn’t about podcasting, it’s about content that people will consume, be entertained by, shocked by and share with their friends. The good old “have you seen ________” will continue and people will stop caring if it was on television, the web, phone, iPod or virtual world. The point will be that they SAW it.

What I’m interested in seeing is how all these networks (both traditional and new) handle it. How they make themselves stand out from the others. What is going to make someone go to their computer to watch something as opposed to flopping down on the couch and watching? What about when the lines between where the content is actually coming from completly blur? What then?

I’d say that the rules have changed, but right now there are no rules. If you think there are some then you need to really stop and think about it, because there really isn’t and th ones you might think are in place are made of silly putty and thus we can all change them whenever we want.

I’m excited.

Posted in Video, New Media | Comments(4)

If you have a moment I’d greatly appreciate any and all listeners to go here and click on the Digg button.

Another fun filled trial in new marketing to see if it opens any new doors to new listeners.

Posted in New Media | Comments(0)

I already knew my buddy Chris Brogan was a smart guy, but his post today on making money in new media really drove it all home.

Yes, for some people out there you’ll read his post and think, “yeah….no kidding I knew that.” But, guess what? Lots of people don’t and the more people talk about this the better!

Kudos Chris! Get on with your bad self! *grin*

Posted in New Media | Comments(2)

I think this is yet another example of the power individuals have. Not that long ago we’d be lucky if anyone outside of the local papers would have seen this. But, thanks to the web the world can see it by uploading a file to one site. THAT is power!

And I will say right up front that I am not well enough versed in the coffee trade to know how I personally feel about this issue. I don’t know enough of the facts to form an opinion. I’m just captivated by the level of professionalism and directness without attacking in this video.

Now what would be truly amazing is if someone from Starbucks actually posts a video response to this directly through YouTube. Good or bad, change of policy or continuation of the current it would be the way I personally would recommend they react to it. Use the medium that it was given to them in.

Tip of the coffee mug to BusinessWeek’s Blogspotting for the tip. They mentioned a video of an official defending the actions but I can’t find it either so who knows.

Interesting times we live in.

Posted in Video | Comments(5)

When I was at the WOMMA Summit a few weeks ago the team from coBRANDiT asked if they could interview me. I had met their team at PodCamp Boston earlier in the year so of course I agreed.

You can watch the video here.

I like their editing style and camera work. I’m sure it freaks out some people to have a camera man moving around you constantly throughout the Q&A, but from all the work with Foo I just kept thinking “wow I wonder what this is going to look like.”

I will say that I think it’s one of the less then stellar interviews I’ve ever given. Not sure why, but something about it bugs me. My own worse critic right? *grin*

Posted in Video | Comments(2)

Last week I flew down to Washington, DC for the WOMMA summit and promised that I’d post my presentation for people to download. It’s called “Marketing in Second Life: Embrace the Community Rather Than Ignore It.” I should say that it was given on December 12, 2006 since the numbers were outdated the moment I shared them. *grin*

Sorry for the delay. I was in San Francisco and realized I didn’t have my FTP information on my laptop! How bad is that?

Posted in Presentations, second life | Comments(2)

I’m not big on cross posting, but I just wrote up something on my personal blog that I’m very curious about. Focused on how weird it was that it seemed most of the people involved in “word of mouth marketing” have forgotten about podcasting. How did that happen?

Read it all here.

Posted in Rambles | Comments(1)

• Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Amazon Askville Launches With Dungeons & Dragons Angle
  I can’t tell if this is genius or insanity. It is interesting though for sure.
  (tags: amazon web questions crayonville social)
• SPOS #29 - Six Pixels Of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast – New Media LunchCast
  A really good listen during the train ride yesterday. Worth the time to hear from so many different voices.
  (tags: podcast)
• YouTube - New Orleans Jazz — “O Holy Night”
  A VERY touching moment on television and amazingly good holiday jazz
  (tags: youtube)

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A package arrived today and I couldn’t figure out what it was. When I opened it this is what I found:

It also had a note from Ben at Ten Golden Rules.com wishing me success on crayon.

I noticed before opening the box that it was a customized color box from Crayola. I thought I might find a full box of gray crayons for the podcast, but what I found was all gold which makes even more sense for where it came from.

Thank you Ben for the very cool surprise and the warm wishes. Of course, my kids don’t understand why I don’t want to color with them. *grin*

Posted in Rambles | Comments(2)

• Music Labels Smell Money in Second Life · MarketingVOX
  No kidding!! Just swing on by www.dirtyuturn.com to see some indie music in SL as well as a bunch of other great locations
  (tags: music secondlife)

Posted in Links | Comments(1)

• LunchMeet: Exploring Virtual Brands With Millions of Us
  A great sit down interview with the CEO of Millions of Us. I’m jealous of this podcast as well. It’s such a great idea. Casual interviews rather then stuffy formal ones!
  (tags: second millionsofus podtech)

Posted in Links | Comments(1)

They are in the house. They are building away. Stripper poles and hot tubs abound and everyone seems to be having a good time for the most part. Yup, Big Brother has invaded Second Life.

If your a resident you can jump right there through this Big Brother SLurl.

I actually know two people in the house right now. TheDiva Rockin and Gideon Television.

I love watching “reality” television, but never got into this show very much. It is interesting swinging by the island and seeing what is going on. It’s great to see it totally leveraging SL and what makes it fun while still keeping the basics of the show.

When I first saw the build I thought it was horrible, boring and not imaginative at all. Now, I get why it was so simple. The particpants have to build everything. That makes sense.

Good luck to all of the contestants. I’ve got my favorites I’m pulling for.

Posted in second life | Comments(0)

• The Daily Graze » Blog Archive » 10 Reasons To Go Long on Second Life
  A must read for anyone questioning Second Life
  (tags: secondlife)

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