Managing the Gray #29 Transcript – Music, Brands & Getting a Job in New Media
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, good morning everybody. Welcome to Managing the Gray #29. I am C.C. Chapman from a very gray overcast MetroWest Boston. We got a storm brewing. I do not know where you are in the world, but if you have winter, you know that feeling where you go outside and you can just feel the impending storm? It has got that vibe. There is a Christmas flavor in the air? That is the way it feels right now. Forecasting 10 plus inches of snow tonight or this afternoon. It is going to make for an interesting drive up to New Hampshire if I do it today. We will see what happens, but because I am up so early, the world is a ghost town this morning, it is the perfect time to just kickback on my coffee and do a Managing the Gray especially because I spent Wednesday at the Boston Ad Club Symposium.
It was a year ago at that symposium that my world changed and things like Managing the Gray were first hatched, first planned, where I sat in this room a year ago surrounded by people who I thought were the crème de la crème of the ad agency world. I did not know anything about this. I just officially with a title begot into marketing. I sat in this room going, “These people don’t have a clue.” It blew me away. They had not seen things like current.tv and the concept of YouTube, they were laughing at. Hah! Shame on you guys.
I said, “My God.” I have got these thoughts in my head, “If these people don’t know maybe there are other people and I’ll start a podcast and I’ll do it.” Then I met Joseph Jaffe and all the rest is history and here we are now with Crayon and everything. So, going back to the Ad Club this year was a lot of fun. It was really fun.
Kathy Kiely, the president, actually talked about my story to kick it off, which is kind of interesting. I did not know that was going to happen and then Jaffe spoke in the afternoon. It was just good to see him, actually seeing him face to face is a good thing. It was a very cool symposium. Adclub.org, if you want to find out more about the Boston Ad Club. Just to dispel the rumors and make sure you know they are true. Yes, I got kicked out of the Harvard Club because I had jeans on. They would not let me have a drink. Oh, well, that is why I did not go to Harvard. I went to Bentley and I am proud of it.
So, today, I have got three audio comments that are completely different angles. All sorts of different stuff and I thought, “You know what? This will make a good show, some variety, some different things.” So, let us get right into the first one from my good friend, Anji Bee.
Anji Bee: Hi, C.C. It’s Anji. I just want to call to let you know that one of my fans left a message over in anjibee.com on one of my vidcasts saying he just listened to your Building Your Brand episode and thought of me. He thought I have successfully built a brand around myself with my new podcast and vidcast and such. So, yeah, I took a listen to it myself and thought it was a very, very cool episode. It definitely speaks to the issue that I have been dealing with for the last year and a half trying to pull together my various identities, my band, podcast, vidcast, all the different things I am dealing with. Yeah, it is very cool to see you addressing that issue. Thank you for all of your insights and yeah, hopefully I will see you in Second Life again soon.
C.C. Chapman: I am not sure what she was calling on because she has a much better voice than that, but Anji thank you for calling in to Managing the Gray. Anji is great when you talk about a branding person and she just launched a new podcast called Unwind with Anji Bee. It is actually a brand cast. Tylenol PM is sponsoring it, which I think is neat. Yeah, you get a little bit of promo in there for them, but it is just totally chilled, laid back music. It is unwind.podshow.com.
Anji, once again, she is launching another podcast, but it is all tied to Anji Bee. That is why I listen to it. It shows that one person with the desire and the passion can do anything in this world and that your brand comes back to you more than anything. Calling it a brand is weird. Saying that you are a brand or “my thoughts are a brand” is a weird thing, but it is the truth of the matter. It is. People will resonate to what you do if you make you the brand rather than your company.
There is something else. We have talked about this at Crayon a lot. I am not sharing any secrets here or anything, but you bring things like For Immediate Release, Managing the Gray, Across the Sound, Jaffe Juice, all this stuff and you bring them together, all these different individual brands, it brings something to the company brand because of these individual brands. It is an interesting mishmash, a mesh up if you will. It is an interesting thing where it comes together and it affects companies. Wherever you work, if you are a brand, it does affect the company. You know what I am saying? It is kind of different, but it is kind of the same.
Here is another comment that is definitely something near and dear to my heart.
Dan Johnson: Hey, C. C. and the rest of the Managing the Gray community. This is Dan Johnson from danieljohnsonjr.com and the Journey Inside My Mind. I was calling because here in Cincinnati, Ohio, I have seen this a number of times for national brands and also for local brands where in the marketing campaign, they take a popular song and then they change the wording around to promote their brand. So, it is almost like a cover of the song, but they change it to say — okay, like I know Applebee’s has done that for example with some popular songs, “It takes two…” I think that was one that comes readily to mind, but some of that stuff, I find it really annoying and some of that other stuff.
I was just wondering what you as a music connoisseur, aficionado, if you have any thoughts about that both on if any of those stuff irritates you as well and also what do you think about the effectiveness of it. I guess in one sense, it is effective because I am able to remember the brand, but also it is annoying as hell. Anyhow, take care. I love Managing the Gray and I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I did not mean for that to rhyme. Okay, I am out of time. Bye.
C.C. Chapman: So, there is a good question, music and advertising and using songs to evoke emotion. Now, as a music guy, I hate this. I hate it. I hate it when I hear — I would rather hear the original song. I am not one of those guys that say, “Oh, Band X sold out. Zeppelin sold out the Cadillac.” No, forget that. They got paid. Nothing wrong with that.
What I do hate is exactly what you are talking about. When they take a song or take a catchy lyric, the chorus or a familiar guitar rift and then they add something else to it. That drives me nuts, but I am a music guy. It drives me nuts, but it is genius from a marketing campaign because let us face it, pop music exists for a reason. It is there to drill and wheedle away your brain mindlessly just to get you attached and it has a hook to get you going. That is perfect for advertising because it does have a hook that you remember. Now, you got to remember, man, that we are the minority, not the minority, but the hardcore music fans that get ticked off at things like this. We are the minority when you really compare to the larger scale of where this advertisings are heading.
So, using music is a very powerful, powerful way to connect with people. I do not have a problem when they do it from a professional standpoint. From a personal standpoint, sometimes it does bug me a little bit, but it is the way it goes. It is the nature of the biz. It has worked for 100 years and it will work for 100 more. Would I like to see them be more creative with it? Of course, I would.
What I would rather see because of the music person in me, I would much rather see them reach out and get new music written because I have seen music like Matthew Ebel and Munk, coming to the top of my head, they have written for corporations and it is amazing. It is better than the stuff they play in the commercials and I have yet to see any of these songs in the commercial and it is ridiculous and I do. To anybody out there who is thinking about doing an ad campaign or pitching an ad campaign to any company out there, if you are going to put music in it, why not get some independent music written for it? The cost will be much lower than if you license some song.
This happened recently. Another funny story about the Ad Club is that I was helping them put together some promos for the event. There were little interviews with the people who were speaking and I said, “Can we have some music in there?” “Of course, we’re gonna put music in there.” They said, “What about Revolution from the Beatles?” I said, “Okay.” I said, “Take your whole annual budget for your entire organization and give it to me and then maybe you’ll get the Beatles,” and even then you probably will not get the permission.
I said, “Hold on a minute,” and I gave them some rifts from different songs of independent artists. They said, “That one’s perfect.” I said, “Yeah,” and it was from an independent artist Now is Now if you are curious up in Maine and they got paid. It was much cheaper than spending bazillion of dollars to license a Beatles track and it still evoked the same emotion. So, think about that. Music is a very powerful thing, use it wisely. Live music is even a more powerful emotion. Use that extremely wisely, but do not be afraid to use music in your campaigns. It is a great thing.
Speaking of music, I am going to play a promo. It is something I do not do on Managing the Gray, but it is for something that I am very, very passionate about. Something that I want the Managing the Gray listeners to embrace and I hope other podcasters will share this as well. So, please take a moment and listen to a promo for Bum Rush the Charts.
On March 22nd, you can make history. Yes, you. On March 22nd, you and your fellow podcast listeners will be working together to Bum Rush the Charts. What is that? On March 22nd, we are all going to buy a song from the iTunes music store from a podsafe musician, Mine Again by Black Lab, to put a podsafe musician at the top of the iTunes charts, but there is more than just that. We will all be buying through an affiliate program to raise money for college scholarships and the band has agreed to donate 50% of their earnings to the scholarship fund to help needy families make college affordable. Make history. Show the world that you are in-charge of media, not corporate radio and record labels. Bum Rush the Charts on March 22nd. Learn more about how to bum rush at www.bumrushthecharts.com.
C.C. Chapman: So, I am very passionate about it. It was an idea that some friends of mine hatched and said, “Dude, what do you think of this?” and I said, “I love it.” So, put it on your calendar, right now, March 22nd. Just go out to iTunes and buy this track from Black Lab. If you do it, if you go to bumrushthecharts.com, click on the affiliate link, all the money from the affiliate link is going towards a scholarship program. Fifty percent of the profits from Black Lab, the band, is going to this fund.
I think this is really cool. I was just excited about the fact that we are going to help prove a point through new media. That gets me excited more than anything, but then when the Student Loan Network and the Financial Aid Podcast stepped up to the plate and said, “You know what? We wanna turn this into something more powerful.” I said, “I am so with you.” Seriously, put it in your calendars, March 22nd, go to iTunes and buy Mine Again from Black Lab. It is a great track, trust me. Black Lab is an amazing band. I am a huge, huge fan of them.
We are also going to do something where it is not in that promo, but then on April 1st, I am working with a friend of mine, Scott Sigler. He is trying to do basically the same thing, Bum Rush the Charts, but he wants to bum rush the Amazon. His book, he is right up there. He is up there with Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, that type of writing. He has got his second book coming out in print. He has been doing these podiobooks and they have been great and Ancestor hits print on April 1st on Amazon.com.
I am going to encourage everybody to go buy a copy. If it is not your type of thing, buy it and give it to someone who it is. It is a very action-packed experiment gone wrong. They are trying to create these ancestors for organ harvesting and they kind of go bad. Think Jurassic Park with cooler monsters, sort of. I do not know if Sigler will like that comparison, but anyways, please, put it in your calendars. They will be on the show notes at managingthegray.com. Please take part in both of these because they are very, very important to me and I think it is very important to new media. Now, to the meat of the show.
Adam Dufresne: Hey, C.C. Chapman! This is Adam calling from beautiful Ottawa, Ontario. Thanks for the frigid morning [unintelligible] up here. First off, I would like to say thank you very much for the Managing the Gray podcast. It has actually revitalized the passion that I had for marketing that I discovered in college. I actually have a quick question for you. My question is in regards to starting a career.
I am a young man, 24 years old. I have my college diploma in marketing from Algonquin College here in Ottawa. Currently, I am sort of trying to seek out a marketing position. I have been taking sort of menial jobs doing procurement in the government just to pay the bills for now and jobs that I really enjoy like being a sales rep for Rogers, which is a wireless service provider here in Ottawa. They do not pay enough to pay the bills, but I have a lot of fun doing them so I keep it around.
Anyway, I guess my question is how do you find yourself in this sea of information that you are provided with? I cannot seem to find a foothold, a place to start out, so I was just wondering if you have any advice, tips or tricks on how I can get started. Anyways, that is my question and keep doing the show. Congratulations to you and all the folks over at Crayon. It seems to be a great website and keep up the great work. It has been a big help to me. Thank you very much. Bye.
C.C. Chapman: This is a question I get asked a lot and I do have an email from someone, too, that I need to respond to who is in a job right now that they are not happy with. They are asking the same exact question, “How do I move? How do I get noticed? How do I get into the new media field?” Well, let me tell you. You just did the first step. I have got listeners in Canada at some very prominent companies and you just came out and said, “Hey, I’m looking for a job.” You took the first step. You sent in an audio comment to a podcast. It shows that you are starting to get the new media thing. Hey, if you are a company in Canada looking to hire this kid, go to managingthegray.com, leave a comment. If he is smart, he will see the comment and then they will start this conversation.
In today’s world, in new media, this is how things work. It is serendipity. It is magic. It is just good old fashioned relationship building. The other day, we had a conversation around us where someone was talking about updating their resume and I said, “People still do resumes?” Yeah, I was being snarky and sarcastic and they were all like, “Oh, C.C., not all of us can be you.” I said, “No, no, no. You’re missing the point.”
Okay, I am going to be very blunt and these are my opinions because it is my show. If you want to work in new media and the company you are interviewing with is going to judge you based on a piece of paper, you do not want to work for that company because that is not new media. Yeah, that is a bold statement and I am sorry, but it is true. If they are asking you, “Whoa, I see here you had a 3.4 GPA,” who cares? I do not care. I always hate it when people put their GPAs on resumes. It bugs me. What I am getting at is the fact that new media is all about the new media space. It is about being creative. If you want to get noticed, you have got to be creative. Now, when I say creative, seriously, it is something as simple as get a blog.
Okay, here is a question I would ask if I was interviewing somebody right now to work for me for Crayon, I do not care what the position is, I would ask him things like, “Do you have a blog? Do you have a podcast? Do you have MySpace? Where do you hang out on the web? Where do you socialize with people on the web?”
One question I have always asked people, my entire life of interviewing people, I always said, “So, what’s the last cool thing you saw on the web?” It is a great question to ask because the person who is really tied into new media will not even think about it. They are like, “Oh, last time I saw…” It might be something as simple as an article that caught your attention on some random site, but the fact is that if they come right back with an answer, you know they are out there. They are living. They are breathing. They are swimming in the big new media pool. They are having fun.
If they go, “Well, on Yahoo! News last week…” slap them, kick them out the door. I am serious. Get rid of them. I had a web designer interview with me a couple of years ago. I said, “What was the last really cool website you saw?” and she said,” I don’t surf the web much.” I continued the interview, but she was done. There was not a prayer for her.
You cannot, you have to live and breathe in this space. If you want to get into this world of new media, you have got to shine. You have got to step out and do something whether it is commenting on blogs, whether it is audio comments in the podcast, be part of the conversation. It is what it is all about. Go to conferences. Yes, conferences cost money, but there are plenty of these things like PodCamps and BarCamps and unconferences happening around the world that you can go. They do not cost money. You can just show up and meet people. Interact and say, “Oh, hey, C.C!” or “Hey, whoever.” That is where the power is and you start talking about people and you get conversations. They happen. It sounds so simple and maybe I am making it simple because it worked for me, but it is true.
A year ago, I was doing stuff on intranets and I was the usability specialist and stuff like that. I said, “Man, I got to get a new job.” I was looking and all of a sudden there was this position in marketing. I had to sell myself because I have no marketing experience. I did not major in marketing. I do not have any formal marketing job experience before this, but I went in and I told them, I said, “Here’s what you’re doing.” This was at Babson. I said, “Here’s what I think you’re doing wrong and here’s where I think the future is gonna go.” I took the time to really analyze what they were doing.
If you want to work for a company, if you see they are doing something, just attack it. Figure out what they are doing wrong. Contact them, drop an email to the CEO and say, “Hey, I noticed you are doing this campaign. I think this is great, but here’s how it could have been better.” What have you got to lose, especially a student, what do you have to lose? Tying into this as well and here is the problem with most of the students is schools are not teaching you new media stuff. They are not.
I know I talk to my friend, Kroosh all the time and she is always complaining about the fact they are not being taught social media. Most colleges, most and I will say most, they are not teaching this stuff. I know I have at least a couple of professors listening to the show and I would love your thoughts on why academia is so slow to do this. My theory is because everybody gets set in their ways, that is it, and the fact that new media is not set in its ways. It is very pliable. It is like that drop of mercury that you drop on the table. It is flowing around. It is changing. It is fluid. It is not stuck on one thing. I think that scares people.
A school is not going to teach you what you need to know in new media and if you are already out of the school, it is the same thing. You have got to get it. You have got to want it yourself. It is about a passion. It is about a lifestyle. This is not about getting into Second Life. This is not about playing with Twitter. It is about all of it. It is about just living and breathing it. It is about getting up every morning and just going, “What’s gonna happen today? Oh, cool!” My wife does not understand why if I walk by the computer, I look at email, whether I read it or not is another matter, but I look because it is not that I want to be connected all the time, it is the fact that I have to be. I just am. I am connected.
Right now, I have got Twitter open in a window. I have got a big enough monitor that CastBlaster is up and Twitter is up and I am watching the conversation happening. Steve Rubel just woke up and is attacking people who are attacking Twitter and Chris Brogan is talking about peace and there is a guy playing at SAVVIS welcoming new users and Odeo and Chris Hambly is there. He is on the waiting list to go to PodCamp New York. Chris, get over to PodCamp New York. Kick down the doors. Come on, come on over. I love this community.
I love being in this world and if you want to be in it, you can be part of it. The door is always open. It is not like some old boys’ club where only certain people get invited. Everybody is invited. New media is an open invitation for you to come on in and party, jump in the pool. I talked about the new media playground. There are enough toys for everybody. If you want to bring your own toys, that is even better because we like finding out about new toys and that is what is cool about what we are doing.
So, I do not know if that answered your question, but what I am really telling you is it is a passion. It is not like I can give you a checklist of the top 10 things you have to do to break out in new media and to get a job in media. You have taken the first step. You have called into a podcast and you put your name out and said, “Hey, I’m looking for a job.” Now, if there is a smart company out there, which I know there are some listening to this, I hope they call you and say, “What kind of job are you looking for?” If that connection got made through Managing the Gray, it would make my day. So, let us have some new media magic happen, baby.
Can you tell it is March madness? I have not watched any basketball yet. I am looking at the window and the storm is officially coming. The trees are blowing insanely. It is kind of nuts. So, we are going to wrap up Managing the Gray for the day.
I forgot to give it out at the top of the call, 206-309-4729, that is the comment line. Questions, answers… Chris Cavs on Twitter just got excited. “Woohoo! I might get to meet you in person.” Of course, we are going to meet in person, dude, in PodCamp New York. He is filming some stuff. If you want to call in the comment line, react to anything, all that stuff, please, 206-309-4729. In managingthegray.com, there is a lot more content there, blog posts and everything, all kinds of conversations are going on about Twitter and all of that. It is fun. There is a lot of good stuff going on. I am very, very excited about new media. I really am. I get invigorated. Every time I do Managing the Gray, I get invigorated as well. I do not get to do it nearly as much as I wish I did, maybe I should start doing it more, maybe some small quick ones.
So, remember, March 22nd, bumrushthecharts.com. April 1st, Ancestor on Amazon. What else is going on? Oh, April 22nd, I have not talked about it, helpingthecause.com. I am doing the MS Walk in New York City along with Team Biddy from The Lascivious Biddies. We are trying to raise $50,000 for MS research, so please, helpingthecause.com. You can donate. You can make a difference. All the money goes to research, which is one of the things I love about this because it is not one of those where all the money is going to pay people to go to dinners and stuff. No, it is paying for research and that excites me. I will play the promo in the next show for that, but helpingthecause.com. You, your company, every dollar — I have had donations from — the biggest I have had so far is $100. Someone else, come on, beat that, but I have also had as small as $5 and every donation makes me happy. I really hope you can take the time and find it in your heart to help out because that is another thing about the new media space is we are all here to help out each other and that would be very cool if you could and… big pause.
Anyways, we are going to wrap up Managing the Gray. Thank you for listening. Thank you for all the comments, all the feedback, all the love I have been getting lately. Managingthegray@gmail.com, if you want to contact me. I would love to talk to you about whatever it is and we would keep the conversation going. All right. I will see you next time on Managing the Gray #30. That is kind of interesting, a little milestone. I cannot believe we took this long to get there, but we will keep on chugging. You guys take care. Have a great day and enjoy playing in the playground, please.
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