Transcript for Managing the Gray #36

Transcript for Managing the Gray #36 “Playboy Comes to Second Life”
Originally posted on June 12, 2007

C.C. Chapman: Hey, today, we’ve got a special Managing the Gray. I am on the phone with my good buddy Marc from Green Grotto. How’s it going, man?

Marc Girolimetti: I am doing fantastic, although I need to tell you that by next Tuesday, or actually by the end of this week, Green Grotto will go through a name change.

C.C. Chapman: Yes, so tell me and my listeners about — I mean there is a reason. We first connected at a Second Life event here in Boston. Tell people what, well, I know you’re going through a name change and all that, so tell me who you are and who you’re with and who it’s going to become and all that jazz.

Marc Girolimetti: That’s awesome. Yeah. Let me just back the history up a little, back it up like we’re a dump truck right here, so get the sound effect of the backup beep ready, toot, toot. Green Grotto basically really was founded as almost you could purely say a Flash production studio/interactive strategy firm. So, basically, that interactive strategy, we work with our clients, how do we most effectively slot into their interactive campaigns. We weren’t the company going out searching for the all-encompassing sort of agency of record campaign. We were just trying to get in and do really cool stuff because in reality, we didn’t want to do the boring stuff. We felt like doing websites had become a commodity and since we were experts in Flash, we would try to find solutions for our clients leveraging the technology. Even though we were positioned as an interactive agency, it was interactively Flash. It’s funny because then everyone was like, “Well, what about AJAX?” I’m like, “Well, we know Flash.” We’ll just avoid AJAX for a while and leave that for the hardcore open source folks.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: But, in reality and all kidding aside, you know it worked out for us where we were able to get into some pretty decent firms and do some really cool stuff with that expertise. We can do everything from like a Flash movie regarding a product presentation to sales. We did a prototype sales tool for the Alienware corporate sales team, which was really neat. It never got off the ground, unfortunately, but it was basically where it was sort of customized for each salesperson and there’s a little CMS on the backend where the salesperson could plug in all the content that they wanted to present to their potential client and the ActionScript, they just go out and call it in, so there might be a custom movie, there might be custom imagery, custom navigable content and whatnot. It was really a neat thing. Then we moving forward have done a few projects. We were subbed for this, but every small agency gets subbed.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: To build games for FedEx and so we worked with their sort of branding and design agency and then we kind of came in with the expertise to make that thing live and breathe and work and be fun. That’s the stuff that was just so super cool. It was in conjunction with like the NBA and we did a golf game for the PGA and a racing game with NASCAR and FedEx to push their whole Gibbs Racing that they sponsor. That’s a lot of fun stuff, at the same time that’s sort of a growing firm. Even though there is plenty of money in the Flash world, we kind of, I wouldn’t say got bored, we were just looking for a new challenge.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: It just happened to be in conjunction with a potential client had come to us and they were shopping around a pretty cool idea to build their own sort of 3D virtual environment, but specifically catered to retail and essentially creating virtual malls, really niche, now that’s obviously wide open, a Second Life would-be or Kaneva would-be, which kind of encompasses everything as in a real replica of life. This would just be the part of you that goes to the mall on Saturday and it’s obviously Macy’s or, in your case, the Apple store. What happened was, as the business plan was being shopped around, we were researching sort of costs and timelines and gaming engines and everything that would take to sort of get this at least a working prototype up and off the ground and in that research came across Second Life and all of a sudden… I am personally looking at it almost via the goggles, let’s say goggles, let’s go back to my college days, the beer goggles, the goggles of a competitive analysis. It’s funny just kind of looking at Linden in Second Life as competitors. I signed up for those. If anything, even though I might look at them as competition, it’s pretty cool. Part of the competitive analysis is just to get in and get a feel for it. The other part of it was this is really neat and I kind of started to fall in love with it. I’m playing around and whatnot and then all of a sudden it feels like within a week, American Apparel happened. All of a sudden it just completely put my thinking at a 180-degree turn and so I’m like, “Damn! We could use this. Second Life, even though it’s a sort of gaming-like environment, social network and whatnot, this is really a platform.” Since they have this sort of low barrier to entry building tool, it was kind of a short learning curve. For a firm like us who work with Maya and Max, we understand 3D modeling tools. “We could use this for our clients.” Man, look at American Apparel. Heck, I have an entire drawer dedicated to American Apparel products. I’m like a huge fan actually. You should see my baby’s drawer. She has more American Apparel stuff than I have ever seen in any one life, which is actually good. If you have a kid, get them the good cotton from America.

C.C. Chapman: There you go.

Marc Girolimetti: But, anyway, the bottom line is, it’s just super cool and we just started talking internally like, “Maybe we should approach our clients with this.” The media just took it and ran with it and just made it so easy for us. I’d like to say we really busted our humps and you do have to knock on the doors of these essentially Fortune 1000 companies, but the reality is, they’re smart people, they’re reading the press, they know what is going on, and so you can drop those two magic words, Second and Life. It’s like getting off the plane at Fantasy Island and t.A.T.u. is there, just saying, “Come vir, come meet vi boss.” It’s pretty fantastic and, man, now I really want to create a Roberto Montalban avatar.

C.C. Chapman: You need to work on that, man. Get on that.

Marc Girolimetti: Yeah. God, let me keep that in mind. I won’t tell you what celebrity we recently did because I want to land the gig first.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, okay.

Marc Girolimetti: But it came out pretty well considering we kind of had to whip it up in a flash. It just sort of took off, just took off internally, it took off with sort of enthusiasm, and it took off for who we were talking to and just really opened the doors. The neat thing for us as coming from the sort of interactive strategy background and production background, we were able to approach deals totally differently beyond just being builders and that’s really what got me so excited because we could apply all these theories and lessons learned over the past 10+ years that I’ve been in this space to what we’re offering our clients and so it ends up becoming this really cool service offering where, “Yeah, we can do this build out for you, but guess what, we can do all these other marketing strategies and we can sort of do cross marketing across other channels that you have or currently utilizing whether your corporate MySpace page or if it’s a blog or a podcast or anything,” or if you have, let’s say in the case of Playboy, you have a magazine that goes to a lot of people and say, “Let’s do some cross promotion there.” Being smart enough to leverage all of those channels is just really the way to do it. Of course, now, I’m giving away all the secrets to our competition, but of course…

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. That’s one of the things why I connected with you right away when we first met because we’re both Boston guys. When I saw you give a presentation, you were talking about Second Life and you were saying things that I’m always saying as well, the fact that it’s just an extension. It’s another place for you to be. It’s not the end-all, be-all for your brand no matter what the brand is. We just talked about integrating blogs and podcasts and everything, which is what I’m always preaching and I’m like, “Yeah, I get this. This guy gets it.” I know we’ve had some great conversations over lunch whenever we can actually get it scheduled to work. It’s just been fun. I think there needs to be more people out there and you guys were an interesting mix, the fact that you could build and you did. I also like the fact that you grew out of being Flash and went into Second Life. You still do the Flash stuff but the fact that it wasn’t like, “Oh, let’s do the Second Life stuff and Second Life is the only option for everything.”

Marc Girolimetti: Right, right, exactly. That’s the best part about it is that we sometimes will approach with Second Life and we’ll walk out with, “Maybe this isn’t right for the client, but look at these three other options as far as interactive in general is concerned that we could jump on.” You establish a relationship and as long as they like you and you sort of have proven the quality that you are trying to sell, then they are way more open to discuss it, which is fantastic. It’s really funny like I’ve done enough speaking engagements regarding this stuff, the Boston thing. I actually kind of got invited to a New York event even though I wasn’t on the panel, but I really shut my mouth off. I will keep everyone nameless but there was what’s considered competition there speaking and they were just going down the wrong path and they just didn’t recognize the people in the room. They really kind of came out from the buildings approach and the people in the room are all ad people and ad people don’t want to hear how the heck it’s built. They just want to know how it makes their clients look good.

C.C. Chapman: Exactly.

Marc Girolimetti: I piped up a lot and just started talking to that and afterwards you have a lot of people start just coming up to you and asking for the proverbial business card and just saying, “Man, you really are speaking to us.” To tell you the truth, sometimes we can get indirectly to a client and then sometimes we have to go like do a Crispin if we want to get to a Volkswagen or Burger King or somebody and that’s perfectly fine for us. It’s good to be able to educate the people who are landing the multimillion dollar agency record account. It’s always good to get them on your side and to educate them and have them understand it. I got invited to speak to Disney out in Burbank and same thing. There were 40+ Disney execs in this room and a lot of people were kind of talking just about specific environments. We went across the gamut of virtual space. We even talked about, Disney Toontown, Virtual Magic Kingdom, and even World of Warcraft. I was sort of there to kind of talk Second Life, but I really just kind of talked about how to leverage virtual space and if it’s the right choice for you. Again, afterwards, that’s when everyone came up to me and just said, “You were the one person who spoke to how to actually take advantage of this.” I get what it is. I get that wow of the game, you got a battle and it’s like little Lord of the Rings. I’m sure I probably just insulted a million World of Warcraft people.

C.C. Chapman: You probably did, yeah.

Marc Girolimetti: I really can’t say Lord of the Rings because now they have their own virtual online game now.

C.C. Chapman: That’s right, yeah.

Marc Girolimetti: It’s just that you got to figure it out. You got to look at it as a medium to communicate a message and whatever that message is whether it’s branding or sales or survey, Flash interaction, you just got to figure that out and then how to leverage the platform and discuss with the community. The bottom line is the entire web has been flipped on its head and it’s not at all about content push anymore. It’s all about content creation, which means people feel totally empowered. I mean, literally, since that last presidential election when the bloggers just exploded onto the scene, that’s how bloggers really came to the national attention and became part of our lingo. It really kind of made everyone feel like, “Hey, I actually do have a choice here and I really can influence something and I can really speak intelligently and not have to worry about getting them crying, get out for 10 years gig at the Globe.”

C.C. Chapman: Exactly.

Marc Girolimetti: Doing the local beat until X columnist either plagiarizes or gets fired or gets too old and just die.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, it’s amazing. I love the fact — it’s weird that it took up political election, but I think you’re totally right that people’s minds have begun to change and they realized people could say things. When you saw bloggers getting quoted on the news and stuff, it was like, “Wait a minute, what just happened?” It’s very cool and it’s going to be interesting to see this next election, I think you’re going to see tons more video content, some bloggers are going to video tape something they are not supposed to and post it and all hell is going to break loose. It’s going to be a blast to watch.

Marc Girolimetti: Right. Actually, I almost lost my mind yesterday. I think it was like something on CNN and they essentially cited a Wikipedia post.

C.C. Chapman: Oh no.

Marc Girolimetti: I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” I was like, “It’s okay to like look at it, but you should never ever in a million years cite it.” All of a sudden I felt like I was watching that episode of The Office.

C.C. Chapman: That is just wrong.

Marc Girolimetti: Yeah. I was like, “Okay, that’s going a little too far, guys,” especially when you have a sister who used to work with Encyclopedia Britannica.

C.C. Chapman: Oh no.

Marc Girolimetti: Talk about investing and making sure the facts are correct.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, no kidding.

Marc Girolimetti: Oh, man, but it’s funny. It was absolutely funny, but it proves, again, that mainstream media, not even America, just mainstream everywhere is sort of understanding the power of the people and really [unintelligible] back to us and it’s really neat that that can happen. It’s funny because you’ll see that the traditionalists get really mad that it’s happening. I know, C.C., you’re not a big sports fan, but I’m sure you know the name Curt Schilling because he lives about two miles from your house.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Marc Girolimetti: He blogs now and he has a pretty good blog.

C.C. Chapman: Wait! I’m a sports fan. What are you talking about? I’m just not a big baseball fan.

Marc Girolimetti: Well, all right. See, you live in Boston, buddy. It’s like a sports fan means you better be a baseball fan.

C.C. Chapman: Sorry. Hey, dude. I grew up rooting for the Orioles, I’m sorry.

Marc Girolimetti: Oh man. That’s okay.

C.C. Chapman: The only New England team I root for — oh, I root for the Red Sox when I’m rooting for baseball sometimes, but I’m a Miami Dolphins football fan die hard. I root for the Bruins when they’re actually playing halfway.

Marc Girolimetti: Oh God. Let’s not talk about hockey. It’s the greatest sport to ever watch on television and it’s horrible now. I can’t even go there. Anyway, Schilling blogs and he is an intelligent dude and he can write some really insightful things. Dan Shaughnessy, old guard from the Boston Globe and his nasty attitude, he hates Schilling, everyone knows it, Schilling hates him back, and then goes and like rips the Blogger community in a column and generalizes it to the point where, “Oh, every guy who reads a blog or everyone who blogs is just some sad, out of work bum living in his parents’ basement.” That’s how out of tune he was in kind of really playing their personal cultural stereotypes. It’s just ridiculous because that whole living in your parents’ basement joke for Internet people is like 10 years old and it’s like, “Okay, buddy. Let’s step up to at least 1999 for me.” That’s the kind of stuff that just amazes me. There will always be some sort of backlash and resistance to things like what we’re involved in, but the bottom line is, it’s here, it’s happening, it’s everywhere.

C.C. Chapman: Exactly.

Marc Girolimetti: The cool thing is you go to ESPN’s website now, they are podcasting, the Boston Globe, Bob Ryan, Jackie MacMullan; they’re some of the old guards. They did a podcast. Bob Ryan is blogging now and one of my favorite podcast in the world, aside from yours of course, is Bill Simmons, the Boston Sports guy who writes for ESPN. I have known Bill since he worked at, what was that, whatever that AOL property, Boston Virtual City or whatever.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, I remember. City Search? No. I know what you are talking about. I can’t think what it was either.

Marc Girolimetti: Yeah. He had this tiny little column on a small AOL property that he was writing out of his apartment in Charlestown and the guy in a few short years parlays that into a writing gig for ESPN.com, ESPN the magazine, he got a book out of them. Now, he does a podcast and he loves it. The opening line to his podcast is fantastic. He said, “I love this because I don’t have to leave my house.”

C.C. Chapman: Exactly. It’s what it’s all about.

Marc Girolimetti: Right. He talks to some really cool people. He had one with Marv Albert, the great basketball announcer. Last week was one of my personal favorites. Alton from The Real World: Las Vegas was one of his guests. He is buddies with Adam Carolla now. It’s really cool that a kid like that who just loves to write, hated working at The Herald, turned what was essentially blogging before blogging, and has really kind of embraced this technology, which is fantastic. It is nice ABC Properties and Disney eventually are getting involved at this level. It’s encouraging to see because then agencies like us, when we go into those terms trying to sell them on something, they get what we’re talking about and then they have living examples that we can cite.

C.C. Chapman: Now, I want to shift gears. We can talk about this all day, but we’ll never get to — well, the reason I really wanted you on today and you already let it slip a little bit, but I want to go in the direction of you got a very cool client that you’re bringing into Second Life. When this goes live, it will be up and it won’t be a secret anymore. I want to talk about, first off, who is the client that we’re talking about?

Marc Girolimetti: First of all, actually, let’s take it a step back because we’re missing question two; that’s question three. I want to quickly answer the name change.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Marc Girolimetti: Green Grotto has agreed to merge with agency that is often called Sentient Services. We’re actually going to retain the name Sentient. Basically, Sentient is really kind of a knowledge research branding advertising agency, not heavy strength on production and toward new media work and that’s where we really come in. We’ve been talking for a couple of months about trying to figure out a partnership and it just wasn’t clicking and someone finally suggested, “Why don’t we just band together and make this happen?” I sat on it for a while and kind of weighed the pros and cons and then eventually I woke up one day, after like a month load of sort of weighing in all these conversations we’ve had, it just clicked in my head. I really figured that it could benefit both of us, both of our growth plans, better service to our clients, more creative and talented people on staff, and could be a real powerhouse. One of Sentient’s biggest clients that they bring to the table is Dell. Dell is a famous company that kind of made the Second Life explosion so it’s good to work with these firms and so this is the good lead in. Here’s what I think salivated the deal for them is the Big Kahuna client of Playboy. It actually started with — it’s funny because Playboy is Playboy is Playboy. They have a ton of brands and they have corporations under the umbrella and we kind of went in with the dotcom folks and that’s who we sort of really started everything with, but now, even prior to launch… They’ve seen all the progress that we’ve done and we’ve had millions upon millions of conversations. They are already sort of going across the entire corporate umbrella and trying to figure out how we can make this virtual experience work for them and really from next week when it launches to 12 months from next week have it look totally different than what the first impression will be to what the next series of impressions will be because it’s definitely going to be cool, it’s definitely not going to be these one-off splashes, one press release, one event, and see you later, we’re going to let our sim collect some cobwebs. Everyone will find out — by the time this podcast is up, a lot of people will probably see this, the neat thing about it is we really approached it as a way for people to connect with the brand, celebrate the brand, and experience the brand.

C.C. Chapman: I know I can hear people right now who are listening to this going, “Oh, great. Second Life is already deemed as nothing but sex and gambling and now we’re gonna have a whole sim of nothing but bunnies walking around and sex.” I just want to make sure because I know people are thinking that right now. They are going to Playboy and they’re like, “Oh, furries! I got to get a bunny suit, and now I’m like, “No, no. You guys don’t really know the brand of Playboy,” and I know from talking with you guys, I mean that was really important to Playboy that this wasn’t about sex and naked women. The brand is so much more than that.

Marc Girolimetti: You’re absolutely right. Actually, to tell you the truth, that’s how we approached it. We approached them and said, “Look, we can do…” Let me just get on my dirty trucker ranting mouth language, women in a bar kind of thing. We said to them, “We don’t want it to be all tits and ass,” because that’s going to be the expectation and we want to surprise people. To me, as a fan of Playboy, I always envied the — to me, the number one thing that I think of and this is like sort of like how well they’ve done a job of creating some mystery around the brand, is that it’s such an inclusive property that you see these pictures of mansion parties and aside from David Spade and James Caan who are at every single one because they have nothing better to do, you see all these super celebrities, you see all these beautiful people, you see Hef, you just see people having a good time and it’s not just like a giant orgy, it’s not like a scene out of Caligula, it really just is fun, it’s celebration, it’s relaxation, having a good time. It’s kind of hanging out with like-minded people because the one cool thing that they’ve done with the brand is really make — at the end of the day, sex is the most natural thing for any living organism on the face of the planet and somewhere along the line, humans really screwed up the ability to talk about it in a real comfortable setting. They really just kind of throw things out there that are very common, very natural and it just happens to be that they have become absolutely 1 million percent famous for these pictorials. You can’t blame them. They’re some of the world’s most beautiful women and at the same time some of the best photographers who have ever walked the face of this planet are doing these gigs for them and it makes it so much more than hot women over 60 that you see at your local triple X store.

C.C. Chapman: You know what you need too do? It’s funny. You just gave me a dangerous idea when you were talking about the photographer. I’m sorry, this is how my brain works. A while back, I’ll admit, I’m not a Playboy subscriber, but I know that they…

Marc Girolimetti: You really should be.

C.C. Chapman: I know I should be, work on that. They have I know like Kevin Smith did a pictorial. He shot the pictures and other…

Marc Girolimetti: Right. André 3000 from OutKast did one too.

C.C. Chapman: I think they need to do an influencer outreach and get those of us who are Flickr addicts to shoot photography for them. I think that would be a cool idea.

Marc Girolimetti: Yeah, it actually would. That is a great way to kind of reach out to the people and via a new media channel. That’s really everything that we’ve been talking about and, God forbid, think of how many thousands of men and women would kind of kill for that gig.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, that would be amazing to actually have — I would love to shoot in one of their sets with real cameras and stuff. That would be amazing. Never mind the naked women angle.

Marc Girolimetti: Right, right, you know you’re absolutely right. That’s the cool thing about it, but that’s what people think about and that’s how you change some brand perception and, yes, when we did the hype banners three or four weeks ago, the entire blogosphere and all the mainstream media like everyone was a chatter and everyone was so ticked off that they didn’t know what was going on, which let me just tell you it was just genius and I will not pat myself on the back for that one.

C.C. Chapman: I remember. I was actually in New York at Crayon’s offices and all of a sudden, our chief creative officer, Steve Coulson, turns to me, also known as Gideon Television, he’s like, “Dude, have you seen this?” I’m like, “What?” I looked over and it’s one of what you just called the hype banner, which I think is a great name. I looked and I laughed. He goes “What?” I said, “Uh, I know the team behind that.” I didn’t say anything and he was like, “What?” but, yeah, you’re exactly right because all you did was — which I think was a great marketing gimmick or a tactic, if it’s a better word, where you put out all these banners that said Playboy is coming to Second Life. You said nothing, nothing at all, which I thought was genius.

Marc Girolimetti: Right, right. The only thing that we did beyond that was link it to a splash page that collected an email address and we have collected thousands. I don’t know. I’d love to just sort of throw it out there with some of the other agencies that have brought [unintelligible] in and see like what kind of customer gross they’ve done on sort of an email marketing level because that’s what we’re doing, collecting email addresses so you can start communicating with these people on a regular basis. We had within three days, the number kicked 1500. It’s incredible.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Marc Girolimetti: It’s been three weeks and that number just keeps going up and up and up. That means there are real fans out there. There are people who are really interested in it and they really want to participate. Of course, that makes me nervous because when the numbers are in the thousands that means we’re going to crash our sim. Come on, Second Life. Let’s get some technical limitations taken cared of, but actually, no, the neat thing is we’ve got some really great people constructing this and we have some lowdown things on that sim. This is what I’m calling it because this is what it’s like, it’s the virtual velvet rope. We’ve got a virtual velvet rope out and we’re kind of limiting how many people can be on at one time and then as one gets off then you come in. The one way I want to kind of — we have to re-script it and set it up like real life club, so if you’re one dude and then there are five beautiful women who are trying to get in, that one dude goes to the back of the line and the five ladies come in. We got to figure how we pull that off because I’ve been on the short end of that stick before.

C.C. Chapman: I think Managing the Gray listeners would love to hear. Obviously, one of the biggest problems that gets mentioned about Second Life is, “Oh, I can only have 50 people on the sim,” the numbers, how many people, blah, blah, blah. How did you talk to someone like Playboy about that topic? I know it came up at some point. I’m sure it comes up with all your clients.

Marc Girolimetti: Of course it did and you know what? I have been on the soapbox for a while at least until late last year. Because Second Life is delivered over the Internet, a lot of marketers look at it with traditional Internet metrics and this is like sort of compare all your ROI analysis comes into play here, so when someone goes out and drops $100,000 on sort of a 10-site media campaign and has 40 million page views and a CPM rate of $1.25 because they’re serving up 1.2 million ads in this tie-in and another 500,000 over here, everyone looks at it with those mass numbers and the stake it made, you can kind of fault Linden for this and you can fault us too as agencies because we need to use some numbers to get people all fired up, right? It’s that damn total registered user number.

C.C. Chapman: Yup.

Marc Girolimetti: That thing as it pushes higher and higher and higher, people just assume in their heads that 7.5 million people are at my disposal.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: They think that they’re all going to come and they’re all going to hang out. They’re all going to show up. It’s just not the case. You have to educate them fast or you’re really going to screw the pooch as far as your relationship is concerned and so we completely just tell our clients, “Do not think in terms of numbers. Do think of numbers, but you have to think of them in a different way.” A thousand people is a lot different than a million people on Yahoo! where you ran your banners, but to tell you the truth, people who are on Yahoo! are searching, they’re shopping, they’re using their mails. They’re not 100% dedicated to your banner. This is a dedicated space, which means you have their undivided attention. Your responsibility, once you get their undivided attention, is to lock them in and keep them there and your metrics really need to be measured by how much time is spent with your brand. With all the work we’ve done, we haven’t done nearly as much work as the sheep and the moos and everyone else out there, but the clients that we have brought in to SL or have helped promote in SL, they’re averaging over 30 minutes per user with their brand, and that’s an insane number. I mean that is a sitcom on television and NBC, they only have 20 minutes out of that 30-minute time slot to revolve around their brand on TV and then there is 10 minutes of 30- to 60-second ads that a marketer has to connect to you and that’s television. It’s much less time on the Internet. If you have 30 minutes, in some cases 45 minutes, in some cases an hour, of someone’s undivided attention with your brand, I don’t even know how to put a number on that because it’s so new and it’s unbelievable. I’m about to swear, I’m about to drop the S bomb and I just bit my tongue, but it really is. It blows my mind every time I see it and I absolutely think that is really the key and that’s like what’s going to shift the mindset because once you realize you have people dedicated to that amount of time, you can get in there and you can talk to them. If you just want to push content, you can give the right content to them, but you can also show up and start having a conversation and start getting some real serious input from obvious fans of your brand. To me, those 1000 people that spend so much time with your brand are the 1000 most important people for the rest of your brand for the rest of your life and that’s it because they’re going to help guide it, they’re the ones who love it, they want to be around it, they want to celebrate it. That is how you win. At the end of the day, that’s how you win. At the same time, that’s how a small client of ours, RatePoint, which is a five- to six-person start up just outside the city here, they built a really cool toolbar that kind of ties the best of ratings along with social networking on the web and came in and we built a really cool little avatar to avatar ratings application for them. Instead of building that and just leaving it as is, they asked us like, “Well, how do we get our name up there? We’re not GM. We’re not AOL. We’re not Reebok. We need help. We’re the little guy.” I just figured out there, I said, “It means absolutely nothing to your brand and what you do, but let’s build a little café and let’s have some live music events just for the sake of getting people to hang out with your brand.”

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: All you have the opportunity is you can start delivering your HUD to these people while they are there at the show and then the artists are going to get really fired up for it because they want people to give them real time feedback vis-a-vis the ratings application. The artists start chatting up about it during their live performances saying, “Hey, please give me a rating after the show. I’d love to hear what you think.” All of a sudden, they’ve got live performances six nights a week, every night at 7:00 Eastern Time or 4:00 p.m. SL Time. The smallest crowd I ever saw there was about 30; the largest crowd I ever saw there was about 73. They’re there for an hour, an entire hour to hang out and watch this new addition. It’s really neat. They’re engaging the community. They have given back to the community. The musicians are allowed to build their fan base. They’re allowed to get more gigs out of it. Some of the people who have played at their café were booking for the Playboy launch. It’s a really nice circle of investing in the community. My point being is that RatePoint for a while literally look at the SL traffic numbers and how they have that wacky system and because they had so many people spending so much time with their brand, they were crushing every single corporate sim in Second Life as far as traffic was concerned and it was amazing. GM and Pontiac are considered one of the more successful ones and they were killing them and they were killing AOL right when AOL launched. AOL has a pretty cool content consumption heavy area and they just weren’t getting the traffic. When I was there, they didn’t have nearly as much traffic. It’s just really a cool thing to have like David and Goliath’s story to share with future clients whether they are big ones or small ones. It’s just sort of, here’s an approach, here’s how you engage these folks, and here’s how you grow and sustain.

C.C. Chapman: Back to Playboy for a second. I’m just curious because by the time this goes out, it will be live. What can people expect when they go to Playboy? Is it an island? Is it a location?

Marc Girolimetti: Let’s talk more what’s not to expect. What not to expect is tons of tits and ass and tons of sex and sexual content, anything that the mind instantly goes to when you think Playboy. This is really an opportunity for people to just hang out and connect with the brand and really meet some cool people and have a good time. The first thing we did, and this is actually I think is a really cool, a big cool, for like a company like us bringing in a large corporation in, is we shaped the island in the form of their bunny head logo.

C.C. Chapman: Nice.

Marc Girolimetti: That’s not a pretty little image you see on the map. That is literally how the island is shaped. We made it all white fence because everyone thinks the rabbit head is — you can see the black and white pretty much so. We really played up to the ultimate image in their brand is that rabbit head and there was no way we weren’t doing it. When we figured out a really cool way to make it happen technologically wise, it just made everyone’s life just so much better because just to be able to pull it off was something great. You get there and it just varies experiential. There is a centerpiece to it and the centerpiece really is — this is one of the big things that you may not know about Playboy. They have a huge online store. They actually have two. Thy have Playboy store which is at Playboy.com is really kind of targeted to the men and it’s not necessarily men’s products. It’s products for men who are typically buying for their girlfriends and wives. Then there is a new store that they have that we’re helping the brand is called Shop the Bunny and Shop the Bunny is all Playboy products for women. It’s really deep that they have kind of over the years, especially in the last 10 years or so, there’s just such an acceptance of that brand, especially with females and so let’s target them, let’s give them some products. There is a huge array of products and you think it is obvious it is lingerie. Well, that was the one thing because it’s just been beaten to death inside Second Life. It’s like, what’s the point? At the end of the day, unless there is like some really cool custom design that you can only get at the Playboy store, it all looks like Victoria’s Secret or Frederick’s of Hollywood or a lingerie boutique at your favorite street in any city. It was sort of pointless. At the same time, I was like why compete on that level because then the community is going to complain that we’re just coming in and trying to crush the competition.

C.C. Chapman: Exactly.

Marc Girolimetti: They have all kinds of neat stuff, jeans, they have T-shirts, they have polo shirts, they have really cool cami tops, everything that you can get anywhere at any store and anywhere in the world, but with the bunny head logo on it. They have these Capri pants that have bunny head stitching on the back pocket, so neat little things that are totally exclusive to them and their brand. What we’re doing is we have a virtual version of the product and you can dress up our avatar in some really cool cute outfits.

C.C. Chapman: Can you buy the bunny outfit?

Marc Girolimetti: No. We’re keeping that special.

C.C. Chapman: I thought you would. I wasn’t sure, but I had to ask.

Marc Girolimetti: Let me just answer this and then we’ll go to that. There are accessories like jewelry and belts and all that neat stuff and then there are some shoes and there are even items for men as well. The neat thing is the store has been set up like a boutique. We didn’t base it on any design. Actually, Playboy does have physical stores and one recently launched in London, but we said we do not want to copy the store kind of like American Apparel did their Tokyo store over. We figured it was just, “Why?” We have all of this freedom to do what we want.

C.C. Chapman: Exactly.

Marc Girolimetti: We just kind of put our heads together and just came up with a really neat design. It’s actually an open air store and there are basically sections like if you walk into like cooler Macy’s stores where Ben Sherman has a section and Lacoste has section and Calvin Klein has a section. We set it up almost like that, but it’s really men’s, it’s accessories, it is women’s tops, women’s bottoms, things like that. At the same time, kind of like the American Apparel store, you can link off to their website to the buy product for yourself.

C.C. Chapman: Good, good, good.

Marc Girolimetti: We’re really tying it all together. At the same time, we just didn’t want to stop at the store so what we’re doing in the center of the store is actually this. It’s a bunch kind of lounge couches and there’s a little water fountain, but there is a multi promotion space. One of the cooler things, and I do not know if you remember this and I only know this because my parent were telling me about it, back in the day Hef used to have a TV show called Playboy After Dark. It was filmed in the Playboy clubs that were in a bunch of cities around the country including here in Boston. It was almost like Hef’s version of the Johnny Carson show without all the comedy and variety stuff, but his guests would be Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, classic icons who were part of his network and it was a really cool way to talk about after dark lifestyle, hanging out, going to jazz clubs, listening to cool music, hanging out with beautiful women. They recently re-release a boxed set of that TV show and to me it’s like the coolest thing and it just brings back a ton of memories, not really. I’ve never been to the clubs or seen the show, but older people in my family have spoken about it and they have neat vivid memories they had about it. I can remember my dad telling me once, he was like, “You might think Playboy is all just a bunch of naked women, but there used to be this TV show and I used to watch it and it was really great.” I only knew Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin from Cannonball Run when they were older and washed up.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, my God.

Marc Girolimetti: He kind of explained it all to me. He said, “It was really neat.” We are helping push that boxed set for them and keeping with that open air spirit, and this is actually one of my favorite things, I don’t like to make people wait a long time to sort of maneuver around Second Life, but we built these sort of air tubes that serve as elevators and it takes you to the upstairs lounge and it takes only a few seconds to get up there, but it’s a really neat thing to see because your avatar gets placed in this glass tube and so everyone can see you kind of get risen up and it automatically takes you up. It is just a neat little piece of user experience that really serves no purpose.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: But to make people say, “Oh, cool!” It just makes them happy and they know it’s like something special and something unique.

C.C. Chapman: Cool.

Marc Girolimetti: Upstairs is really a lounge area. There are sort of floor multi media areas so there are going to be some Girl’s Next Door stuff. Actually, there is one really cool thing that I think a lot of people will be into. There is going to be one video screen dedicated to Ask Hef and it is something that is kind of buried on their website and I’m like, “No way, man. This thing is the coolest.” Basically, we’ll have a link off from the site, it’s basically an email address, and you can ask Hugh Hefner anything.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, cool.

Marc Girolimetti: They basically pick the best of the best and film his answers, so we’re going to stream his answers and so we’re trying to work on, “Hey Hef. Maybe you can do one question that came from Second Life.”

C.C. Chapman: That would be cool, yeah.

Marc Girolimetti: Just to let people know that they are totally included in this process. It’s really neat things like that. Again, Hef is the icon of the Playboy empire.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, by far.

Marc Girolimetti: To have this ability to learn more about him is really important and it is important to me as a fan and it is important to them as an organization because it just puts a different side to what people might think he is.

C.C. Chapman: I’m curious because one of those things, once people get beyond the naked women, one of the things I think of when I think of the Playboy Magazine specifically is they have some of the best interviews on the planet, bar none.

Marc Girolimetti: Absolutely.

C.C. Chapman: Are you guys leveraging that?

Marc Girolimetti: Oh, they are THE best interviews.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. Are you going to leverage that at all somehow?

Marc Girolimetti: See, this is part of like the phase-in approach. It’s not going to be the “there now,” but we will definitely be kind of taking advantage of that in the future.

C.C. Chapman: Cool. That’s what is interesting too when you and I talked about this before over lunch, I was really happy to hear that this wasn’t a PR thing, this wasn’t a “let’s have a big bang and then hope it all goes well and then we’ll let it fall apart.” You guys were actually up front thinking about phases, thinking about “we’ll do this and then this will happen.” You were thinking long term, which is the way I wish more people thought about this from clients.

Marc Girolimetti: Right. This is the thing. There are going to be two different reactions to this approach because there are going to be people who are going to be pissed that we didn’t blow our wads with it.

C.C. Chapman: Exactly.

Marc Girolimetti: There will probably be another small group that will be pissed because there’s not a lot of porn. Let’s just throw the P word out there for them to consume. Well, there are a million other places in SL where you can enjoy that.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. If you can’t find that, you’re not looking hard enough.

Marc Girolimetti: Yeah, go buy your XCite HUD and have a good time with it. The bottom line is I think some people will be mad because of that and then some people are going to be so hyped because it’s almost like we’re giving them a taste and instead of the law of diminishing returns of like the more licks you get on an ice cream cone, the less you like it. Well, it’s true.

C.C. Chapman: I guess I’ve never heard that before.

Marc Girolimetti: Hey, you know where I got that from? Babson College, buddy.

C.C. Chapman: I was waiting. I’m like, “He’s going to say Babson. I know he is.”

Marc Girolimetti: I got to plug my alma mater and I got to plug your former employer.

C.C. Chapman: What class were you?

Marc Girolimetti: What was that?

C.C. Chapman: What year were you for all the Babson people listening?

Marc Girolimetti: Oh, man. I’m a 1996 baby. Let’s go mid-1990s, Netscape 1.0, that’s when I became an Internet geek.

C.C. Chapman: Nice.

Marc Girolimetti: What we’re going to do is consistently add flavor to it. The neat thing is and I can’t confirm or deny anything, but we’re going to allow people inside a lot of exclusivity that they’re known for like Halloween parties, Mardi Gras parties, Super Bowl parties, things like that, do a mixed reality event. Who doesn’t want to see what the heck goes on inside maybe at the Mansion or in fact just a party or at The Palms in Vegas where they just reopened the Playboy Club and things like that? People are going to be so fired up to be able to participate. I think the demand is going to be there. We’ll have to make it VIP only and really make it special for people that they’re going to fight and scratch and claw their way into it and try to bribe people to giving them their ticket, you know? It’s really going to be so much fun over the course of the next 12 months. They have made a hard 12-month commitment to this and so they are sort of going [unintelligible] internally to really figure out how we’re going to make this work. The neat thing is we know some things that are coming down the road and some things we don’t because we just want to shift and plan on the fly and figure out what might be working and what might not be working. The other thing is like what is going to be launching next week will be ever changing once a month. We’re going to treat it like a real retail store. We’re going to roll in new products as they come online. We’re going to take things up that aren’t selling well. We might pick things out that are selling well just to add some exclusivity to that product. We’re thinking of having maybe some custom designs made, one month only get this product, and things like that to just get people back into the store, back buying and kind of getting these really cool unique products that otherwise they have no other opportunity to obtain.

C.C. Chapman: I love it, I love it. Just so people know — some people who are listening are going to be like, “Wait a minute. These guys are competitors to Crayon. Why is C.C. having them on here?” I’m just like, “No. We sat down and talked and I’m like ‘I got to get you on Managing the Gray because you get it and it’s obvious Playboy gets it,’ which is great.” I am a firm believer that there is plenty of business for everybody out there, especially for people who get it, who aren’t just out there, “Oh we’re going to build this four-sim huge thing.” Then you are going to abandon it after a month. That’s pointless.

Marc Girolimetti: Well, right. The biggest thing, I actually had a conversation with someone today and like his approach was, “Well, how do we deal with all this backlash?” I’m like, “What backlash?” He’s like, “Well, there’s all these companies complaining about negative experiences.” I go, “The only two people who are to blame for that are their agency who screwed up and them who maybe didn’t ask the right questions.” I go, “No one else is at fault.” I was like, “How does anyone know to show up at Reebok or Adidas when they didn’t even put as much as a press release out?”

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: “What am I going to do? Use a search engine? ‘Oh, I wonder if Reebok is around here?’” No, it doesn’t work that way. It’s totally the agency’s fault for not understanding what they need to do. I’m going to stroke your ego a little, but you guys did a fantastic job at Coca-Cola and you did it because you just came at it from a way that I think caught people off guard with how they thought Coke should interact in Second Life.

C.C. Chapman: Right, right.

Marc Girolimetti: But when you think about it, it’s so freaking logical. It’s like, “Well, what do you think about when you think about Coke?” You think about vending machines. It really is so iconic.

C.C. Chapman: Thank you for that. It was a lot of fun watching the reactions we were ready for the given brand backlash that we prepped Coke for like, “You’re a big brand. You’re gonna have a huge target on your heads coming in.” I got to tell you. It was a lot of fun to see blog posts from people that we expected would slam it. You can see them trying to type and go, “I want to hate this, but I can’t because they’re not being jerks about it.” It was so much fun to watch. Yeah, there were questions and whatnot, but I agree with you that the brand itself should not be blamed for these things, it’s whoever brings it in. It’s not like Coke or Playboy is just going to open up shop in Second Life on their own without talking to anybody. It doesn’t work that way. There’s always somebody in between.

Marc Girolimetti: Right, and we’re supposed to be an expert.

C.C. Chapman: Supposed to be, right or at least fake it pretty good.

Marc Girolimetti: Right. That’s the thing, just so many funny things I see. Microsoft came out. Everyone knows who probably did this and I’m not trying to slam them by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m just trying to make a point here. When Microsoft came out with that Visual Studio event and whatnot and there were some actual ad banners that were posted, at least on New World Notes for that. Thank the Lord because that’s like the first step you should make and that’s really cool and I’m glad that you get it, plus you’re supporting people who are making a living off of the success of Second Life in general. Kind of like the eBay [unintelligible] going on where all this kind of spinoff companies that are like little remoras on the whale shark that is Second Life and they’re just feeding on it and it’s great and that’s what should happen. That’s the beauty of the Internet, but here’s someone who in past agency experience has done over 100 projects with Microsoft Corporation. I know their design guidelines like the back of my head and at the same I always make a joke that Microsoft owns 80% of my house because that’s how much work I’ve done for them. I looked at it and their logo, the Microsoft logo in that ad banner was in violation. The first thing I saw and the first thing I noticed, anyone who has ever worked with Microsoft and their logo knows exactly how that thing has to be placed and how much distance it needs from the top edge and the side edge and the bottom edge, wherever you are placing that damn thing and it was totally in violation. I actually from the kindness of my heart shot a note over to them to let them know that, but to me it’s like I don’t expect you guys because you didn’t really start off with an agency background and so you may not have ever worked on projects where you’re asking for branding and design guidelines because Second Life is almost free and independent of that.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: It’s not like working with print and the web and whatnot and so you just may not have thought to ask, so I figured I’d try to be helpful. The bottom line is, you got to know this stuff. There are certain levels to like the relationship with these clients that if you really want to get entrenched and you really want to do a lot more work for them, you really have to get them as well and getting them allows you to properly execute on these campaigns, to communicate them and introduce them to this community and then build an audience around it.

C.C. Chapman: Oh yeah, man. Oh yeah. Listen, we’re coming up on an hour. We’ve been yapping.

Marc Girolimetti: I know. This is like the longest podcast ever.

C.C. Chapman: It is going to be by far the longest Managing the Gray ever recorded.

Marc Girolimetti: That’s so awesome.

C.C. Chapman: Is this your first podcast you’ve been on?

Marc Girolimetti: No. Actually, you know what? The first time we ever met at that Boston event?

C.C. Chapman: Yup.

Marc Girolimetti: When Linden showed up, some audience member had a portable recorder on him. He’s like, “Can I interview you for my podcast?” That was actually my first one.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, that’s funny. I wonder if it was Bryan.

Marc Girolimetti: The kid from Monster?

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, Bryan Person, yeah.

Marc Girolimetti: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, right.

C.C. Chapman: That’s funny. I’m just trying to think what podcasters that I knew were there. Bryan, that’s funny. Bryan’s good like that.

Marc Girolimetti: No, it was good. Being my first one, I was breaking the cherry and I was a little — actually, in your case, let me just say breaking the Cherry Coke. I was totally caught off guard. I had just spoken for an hour so I’m like, “Ah, whatever.” but it was good. It definitely wasn’t my best, but this is definitely — I love this stuff. The bottom line is I just like talking to you. We have a really good rapport.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, we do. Yeah.

Marc Girolimetti: Really easy and that’s why we can go on for hours when we open our mouth.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, I know. Well, man, I thank you for coming on today. I have a feeling you’re going to be back because I know you are itching to do this and this was definitely a lot of fun. We got to do next time in person over beers or something.

Marc Girolimetti: Oh, that would be cool, the drunken podcast.

C.C. Chapman: That would be dangerous.

Marc Girolimetti: You know what’s awesome and you probably have the same problem that I do? Ever since we started having children, our [unintelligible] alcohol was like absolutely through the basement.

C.C. Chapman: Yes.

Marc Girolimetti: It’s going to be like a three drink minimum and we’re going to be completely flaming, [unintelligible] people and getting ourselves fired.

C.C. Chapman: But those are kind of fun sometimes.

Marc Girolimetti: That’s true. It would be awesome. It’s recorded history.

C.C. Chapman: All right. Before you go, because I actually don’t know the answer, where can people find out more about you and your company? I’m not sure what the URL is anymore.

Marc Girolimetti: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, the new company name is Sentient Services, so you can go to sentientservices.com. We’re starting to make some changes. I think they’re going to put my bio up there and Eric’s bio, so we’re going to start adding like the Green Grotto client roster to their roster list.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, yeah. What’s your title going to be now?

Marc Girolimetti: I stepped down as CEO, which is fine. It’s kind of a really rough job to tell you the truth, but I’ve been doing it for two years. I mean it’s two years of blood, sweat and tears.

C.C. Chapman: Right.

Marc Girolimetti: As a CEO of a startup, you got to think about everything right down to payroll and finances and banking and credit and all that crap. It can get crazy. I’m going to be the head of creative, so Director of Creative, Creative Director, I like to call myself…

C.C. Chapman: Oh, come on. What you have been putting in your emails?

Marc Girolimetti: Chief Creative Monkey.

C.C. Chapman: Yes, there you go. That’s what I like. I want to see that on a business card. I think that would be great.

Marc Girolimetti: I’m going to push for that. I think maybe they will rename the podcast, C.C. and the Creative Monkey.

C.C. Chapman: Ooh. Uh-oh, there goes the rumors. “They’re starting a new podcast!”

Marc Girolimetti: I know exactly and you know what? That totally brings back, we’re going to be an animated cartoon from the 1970s. We’re going to have our own crazy shaggin wagon.

C.C. Chapman: Nice.

Marc Girolimetti: I’m going to be saying “Doinks!” all the time.

C.C. Chapman: We need a mascot to go with that. Oh wait, we got the monkey. What am I saying?

Marc Girolimetti: Yeah, exactly.

C.C. Chapman: Is it going to be like Great Ape or something?

Marc Girolimetti: As long as I can be like Gleek, I will be totally psyched.

C.C. Chapman: Nice, nice, a little pop culture reference there.

Marc Girolimetti: There you go. I’m full of them. That’s what happens when you’re in your young 30s.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. I hear you, man. Hey, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on Managing the Gray. Everybody, definitely go check out these guys. I’ll be honest. As of this recording, I have not seen the Playboy sim yet, so I’m looking forward to it, so check it out in Second Life and thanks for being on the show, man.

Marc Girolimetti: All right. Thank you sir.

C.C. Chapman: All right. I will talk to you later.

Marc Girolimetti: All right, take care.

PodCamp NYC Presentation Transcript

PodCamp NYC Presentation Transcript -
The New Media Playground
Given on May 4, 2007

Audio from the presentation here.
PDF & Video here.

C.C. Chapman: Hey folks. I am back again really quick from Managing the Gray #33. Now, I will tell you something a little different, just a little quick intro, then we are going to jump right into the content because what today is, this is my PodCamp NYC presentation I did. PodCamp New York happened a few weeks back and I gave a presentation that I call the New Media Playground. It was a lot of fun. I had a good time. It was a big packed room, lots of fresh faces, which I love to see. I love to see all these people I did not know in the crowd. It very much excited me and I have to give a huge props because I got hooked up with this audio because I did not get a chance to record it myself, Chris Cavallari go out to filmosity.com. Chris Cavallari recorded it all, videotaped it, and that is coming soon. He will be sharing that. He heard me talk about the other day that I wish I had an audio recording and he said, “Dude, I’ve got it on the computer. I can spit it out for you,” so he spit it out.

Let me tell you, Chris is a great guy. We have finally got to meet at PodCamp NYC, but we have been talking for a long time. If you are looking for someone, a videographer, someone to film your commercial or maybe to film an interview with you or anything where you need a camera and some great video and story telling, please contact Chris. Christ is a great guy, he does amazing work, has great equipment, has a super attitude, and he gets new media. Let us face it. Video is a very, very powerful medium right now across the board and it always has been. So, I will put the links in the show notes to his site, but it is filmosity.com. There goes my cell phone beeping. It must mean I have email. So, anyways, please check him out. Chris, thank you very much. Listen to the presentation. It is a big room so the acoustics here are a little strange. It is 45 minutes because I am so happy I wanted to keep it 45 minutes. It is how long it was supposed to last and I hit it, which is good, because usually I am way under or way over. So, here we go.

When I am in presentations, there are a couple of things. I talk really fast because I am excited about what I am talking about and I really hate saving questions until the end, so please just spit them, “C.C., shut up. I got a question for you.” Please ask them. I was not even going to have slides because I really want to just kind of have a conversation about what is going on in the world, but then they said — this was a couple of weeks ago, they said, “C.C., you’re the only one that has a projector. You better have slides.” What is cool, you will see them in a minute, I put out a call on Twitter and — yeah, nothing has to be said, but please feel free to record and do whatever you want. I do not care. Some people get touchy about that.

Audience Member:
[Unintelligible].

C.C. Chapman: No, feel free to Twitter whatever you want. I will read it later because I cannot Twitter right now. I did just Twitter a minute ago so I am all good for the hour. I lost what I was going to say. Oh, I put a call out on my blog, on my podcast, on Twitter, saying, “Guys, I got to do slides at PodCamp New York and my whole topic is this new media playground. Take pictures of yourself on the playground and send them to me. I’ll stick them in the slideshow.” So, everybody you are going to see in this is, they are podcasters, they are bloggers, they might be a listener, they might be just a reader, but they took a time and take a quick snapshot and send it in. That is kind of proof of what I am talking about is the fact that it is not about the monetization. It is not about the ads. It is not about the number of listeners, viewers, users, or whatever you have got. It is about the community around it and the fact that we are all here. “Yeah, right.” That is my thing. It is going to be fun because this is a new presentation that I have not done. It is actually kind of a prototype for the book I am writing. I kind of get it out there and see if it works. So, this is me. I am C.C. Chapman. I am the vice-president of new marketing for a company called Crayon. We are a new marketing agency here in New York, in Boston, London, San Francisco, Second Life and we have nine employees. We work wherever we want. I am also the host of several podcasts, Accident Hash, the music podcast, Managing the Gray…

Audience Member: Woohoo!

C.C. Chapman:
I love it. Do we have home fries?

Audience Member:
Yeah!

C.C. Chapman:
There are home fries? All right, my listeners are called home fries. I saw some strange looks. “What? What’s he talking about?” Managing the Gray is a new marketing podcast. It talks about new media, everything I talk about here. U-Turn Café happens once in a while. It is an acoustic coffeehouse podcast. One Guy’s Thoughts is something new. It is a video podcast that I have threatened to do a lot more of, so I am looking forward to doing that. I am also the owner of the Dirty U-Turn Café on Second Life. If you are ever looking for music, there is a concert tonight. If you are not here like you should be, partying tonight, hanging out, meeting more people, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, dirtyuturn.com. There are three great artists from around the world playing at the U-Turn Café tonight, live music, lots of fun. Please go. Oh, and speaking of that, before I forget, tonight the party is at 7:00 at Slate. They asked me to make this announcement. They have got some really cool raffles they are giving away. I have seen copies of audio programs, wine, autographed Scott Sigler books, copies of Ancestor autographed by Scott Sigler. They are not out yet. You cannot get them. I want one, but I will not be there. They are going to be giving you raffle tickets at the door. If you are interested, show up at Slate, raffle tickets. It will be a good time. Slate is a good time. Just do not stand at the top of the stairs or they will yell at you. They are kind of mean about that. We learned that last time.

One of the things I do on my presentations is I am a firm believer that if you cannot put your whole presentation in one slide, you do not know what you are talking about. It is pointless. You are going to be rambling about stuff. So, when I tried to sum up what I want to get to you guys is new media is open to everyone, so have as much fun as possible, always help others, and if you make money doing it that is okay too and that is cool. There is my under 140-character Twitter version. I had to count. The guy sitting next to me on the train was going, “Dude…” He was looking at me, “One, two, three…” PowerPoint does not have a word count function, Word does. If you are not familiar with what Twitter is, it is a little SMS or micro-blogging community that has kind of taken way too many of us to a level of addiction. If I say a technology or anything, please stop me and ask me what I am talking about. I had to get down off the stage, too. I hate being behind the podium.

So, what the heck is the new media playground? It is the concept of this community that I think. Remember when we were all kids, we go to playground. We play. We make best friends within five minutes. That little kid next to you like, “Oh, he’s my best friend, mommy.” You go home and you play and you just met him. That is the world as we live in right now. Hopefully, you have done this today. You have met somebody completely brand new and you have talked things like, “Oh, we got to follow up,” or exchanging business cards, your emails, maybe online. I am meeting people today that I have never met face to face. Mark Wallace and I email and Second Life for months and I feel like I know them. It was not until today that I met them face to face. It is all about the community.

I love this picture. This is John Wall from The M Show. He is around. He is not here so I can ridicule him. He was the first guy — [unintelligible] giving him a call out because he was the first guy who sent me one of his photos. Everybody had sent me pictures of their kids and I was like, “No, no. I want you playing on the playground.” John hooked me up. This is about the community and it is your community. Are people in this room here who have never blogged or podcasted ever? Oh, wow. I thought there would be more. This is your community too. Do not think because you have not done these things yet that you are not part of the community. The fact that you are here in an event like this, you are part of the community. You are officially now. You are members. You are stuck. It is addictive. I will warn you, so be careful. Your time is gone. The most expensive thing about any of these technologies is time. Forget how much money audio equipment cost with community podcasting or Second Life, all that stuff, uh-uh. It is time. You have none of it. It is gone because you are going to get so passionate about whatever it is you are doing, you are screwed, but it is great.

Also, please keep in mind. This weekend is a perfect example. There are a lot of big company people here. This is exposure. Every time you go out, you are representing the community, that whole thing about one bad apple ruins the cart, it is so true. Someone interviews you, someone talks to you in the street, “Oh, you’re a podcaster,” and you do something wrong or you are in Second Life or you are twittering, I love saying that, you can ruin it for everybody. Just keep that in mind. It is a big thing, but it is true. You can go from being nobody to being interviewed by a major publication just overnight. Just keep that in mind. It is kind of weird sometimes for people.

This, I love saying, this is my new tagline, Burn the Suit & Buy a Laptop. People always ask, “How can I get in this community? How can I start doing this stuff?” You do not have to burn the suit. I hate suits, so go for it, but the fact is it is a mentality. If you are going to play in new media, you have got to get out of your “this is the way it has always been done so I have to do it this way.” You cannot. There are no rules right now. People think there are. Things are changing so fast. Two months ago, nobody was using Twitter. Right now, I guarantee you there is some new tool out there that we are all going to be raving about in a couple of weeks. I saw stuff out there that made me excited. It happens so fast. I have not figured it out. You have not figured it out. Nobody has. It is evolving so rapidly so you got to get out of that mentality that big corporations know the right way and I know the right way, no, no. The laptop mentality is just a fact that if you are really going to be in new media, you can work from anywhere, anything, wherever you are in the world. That is a powerful thing and dangerous thing because then unplugging is difficult. I work from home. My commute is walking from my coffeepot to my office, 100 yards. When do I ever unplug? That is a hard thing.

Audience Member: That is a big house.

Audience Member: There is a football.

Audience Member: 100 yards.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, shit. New media [unintelligible].

Audience Member:
[Unintelligible]?

C.C. Chapman:
Yeah. Mike works with me at Crayon. He is like, “Dude, you’re getting paid way too much.” Speaking of that, I did not think about it, but you are here. Sorry, Mike. I am going to call you out. One of the things that is really important about new media is your passion, your drive is what drives everything. Mike here works with us at Crayon. He has zero experience, real world experience, but he came up to Joseph Jaffe at a conference and said, “Dude, I want to do this. I got no experience, but I want to do this.” He was passionate, he was persistent, and he works for us now. He is learning as he goes. I will take street smart over book smart any day. I used to get in trouble with my HR department because I would say, “Anybody who has a GPA on their resume, I don’t want it,” and I meant it because I never got good GPA and I did not care about it and I do not.

So, what are some of the toys? Because new media — this may be called PodCamp. It is kind of a misleading thing. This is not about podcasting. It is about new media in general. It is about crazy people playing — Whitney is not in here. Where is she? There she goes. Whitney is in the back hanging off the — I love this picture. Some of the tools, podcasting, blogging, virtual worlds. It is not just Second Life. There are other ones out there. There will be more tomorrow. IM’ing, Twitter, ARGs, which are alternative reality games. Nine Inch Nails is doing one right now where you do not know the lines between reality like I might give a clue right now for one of those games and you would actually go find that website that would take you to something else. They are kind of cool, they are kind of weird, but they are very exciting. Mobile of course is huge. All you guys have PDAs and phones. They do everything. It is going to get more and more. You can create content. What I am trying to get out here is whatever content you can create, then go across all these platforms. You can create a blog. You can create a podcast. You can put it through every one of these. Just think about that when you are creating your content, whatever it is. The fact that there is more out there than just probably whatever you are creating. I make a video. It has to only go on my video podcast. No. you can play in virtual worlds. I mean I have a moving theater on my island.

We have had one video podcaster. I know, I am opening up the door. We had one video podcaster ever asked if they could play their stuff in our theater. Why has not anybody else approached us? It is kind of weird.

Audience Member:
On our island?

C.C. Chapman:
On our island?

Audience Member: Over at Crayon?

C.C. Chapman:
Yeah.

Audience Member: It is not on Dirty?

C.C. Chapman: It is not on Dirty. In Second Life, our company Crayon has an island, Crayonville. I am also part-owner with Mark Wallace, John Swords, Mark Barrett, and Jeremy Vaught. We own this thing called Dirty. Come by. It is fun. It is not what it sounds like most days. What?

Audience Member: [Unintelligible]?

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. No dropping vowels. I hate that. Yeah, Dirty. Go to poddirty.com. It will bounce over to a SLurl. It will take you to our landing area. We have all kinds of random people. That is great.

Be yourself. This, I cannot stress enough. I had this conversation with somebody the other day. She said, “Listen. I want to do a podcast about Second Life.” I said, “All right, cool.” She goes, “Yeah, but there is already SecondCast and there is already Second Life Podcast.” Who cares? I said, “Have you seen how many music podcasters are on lately? I still do one.” That is important. The fact that you each have a unique voice no matter what content you are producing. It is really, really important to just be yourself. If you are going to do a fake self — so many comes in mind who is doing a lot of things under a different personality, but they are consistent like that. Good or bad, I do not know. Be yourself, be passionate, and be honest out there. Figure out to yourself what is your level of okay. People always ask me, “How are you okay giving away so much information about yourself, your family?” There are boundaries that I do not share and I keep those in my head, but I also think it is fun when I get comments from people saying, “C.C., I’m watching your kids grow up on Flickr.” I love that. Do I worry about them? Yeah. I mean, I do, but you also are never going to hear me talk about what town I live in. I am kind of vague about certain things. There is room for every voice. Nobody should ever, ever say, “I can’t do this because someone else is already doing it.” It is ridiculous.

There is another whole problem — there is. I mean, how many music podcasters are there. There has got to be, I do not know, 10,000? 5000? There is a lot.

Audience Member:
More than 21.

C.C. Chapman:
Is it 21? Okay. So, it is 21,000+ music podcasts. People are saying, “How do I get through the clutter? How do I get noticed?” You just answered the question. You get noticed. Not the music, you. You are the host. You are the person running that content. This whole term A-lister, I frigging hate. I hate it. I read people because I connect to them. I listen to their podcast because I connect to them and what they are saying and what they are doing. Whatever it is that you are passionate about, just do it. Do not get caught up in the fact there is other people doing it because let us face it, there is always going to be somebody else doing it. Whenever I talk to you about podcast, they are like, “I have nothing to say. What would I ever talk about?” I always ask, “What are you passionate about?” On a weekend, if you could anything, what do you do? What is your hobby? Everybody has got something. I say, “All right. Do that because either no one else has done it or there are other people out there who are going to like your spin on what this is, your model airplanes or cooking.”

I just heard a great new podcast and I cannot wait to watch it. She is not here, but she asks people to send in dishes to make and she cooks them. They always think she does not how to cook. People are always trying to give her something she will burn. It is a video podcast. Fearless Cooking I think it was called. I cannot wait to watch that. There are a million cooking shows, but she has got a different slant on it. Plus, she was too nice. I got to watch. This is fun. You are unique. Everybody in this room is unique. Yeah?

Audience Member: [Inaudible] if you have multiple interests and wants to do a podcast [inaudible], how do you broadcast that? Do you use the same ones just because it is you and they are all [inaudible]?

C.C. Chapman: Wow. No. I was talking about [unintelligible] building yourselves brand is something that is really big to me. It depends. I hate saying that as an answer because it is a cop out, but what I am getting at is you need to decide. I have four podcasts, right? Do I publicize them individually or do I publicize them under me, is that what you are saying?

Audience Member: Right.

C.C. Chapman: I personally recommend, most of the time, I like the fact of building around you. If you go to my website, I have a blog, it is kind of my personal blog. I have had it for six years, but right there are buttons for everything I do. I try not to add too many of them, but they are right there so everybody knows. You will also see, look at my album art, it always says “hosted by C.C. Chapman” or “brought to you by” or whatever. It is always built around my name. If I blew my reputation, those shows are dead. That is the way I think about it. I like it because I am building myself and I am myself and I am comfortable with that. I think companies can do the same thing. You see this a lot with production companies like movies. Sony does it all the time. They never have a separate website. Everything always redirects to sony.com/whatever and that is a conscious decision they have made. There is good and there is bad and I could talk for hours about this self-branding. I personally like watching a brand be built around a person. People get kind of freaked out about brand. I am not a brand. Well, you are. There is a great — I do not know if it has happened already yet — the social economy speech. I know it is one of the panels. If it is this afternoon, I highly suggest seeing it or go out to PodCamp Toronto’s website. Julien Smith and Chris Brogan did an amazing speech on social economy and the fact of how you and who you link to, what you write about, the content you create, how that is the new economy. It has nothing to do with money. I highly suggest checking out…

Audience Member: Sunday, 10:30, PodCamp Toronto. We have got archives.

C.C. Chapman: There you go. They videotaped and audiotaped everything at PodCamp Toronto. It is such a good speech because it is kind of changes the way you think about things, the fact that everybody you are making — it is an economy just by what you are doing and what you are talking about and what you are creating. I do not know if I answered that totally.

Audience Member: You did good.

C.C. Chapman: Okay. So, something else. For people who — because I was not sure if it is going to be a room of newbies or not, one of the things I always tell people, they are like, “How do I get noticed? How do I get it outside of the clutter?” The easiest thing I say is make it easy for you to be found. Do not be invisible. Part of that is the web stuff. Be on every search engine imaginable. Put yourself in a social network. Is MySpace going to bring you a lot of viewers or listeners? Probably not, but you should be there. What I always tell people is social networks take — how long does it take to sign up for a MySpace account? Nothing. It takes you a few minutes, but what if that one person goes to MySpace and goes looking for you and cannot find you and you are not there, you did not take the two minutes to set up a webpage. I mean, come on. It does not take that long.

Do I use MySpace a lot? No, but do I have an account out there? Yeah. Actually, I have one for myself and one for every one of my shows. I do not care about how many friends — I do not care about that stuff. I just care that if someone goes looking for me, they can find me. Also, it protects your brand whether it is your personal brand, your company brand. Try this some time. Go out to Twitter. Twitter is a perfect example because people have not touched it yet. Start putting in some brand names. See how many of them are actually the brand or if there is somebody else or if they do not exist yet. I know I have registered what I wanted to protect because I did not want somebody else to take it on them. You need to do that wherever you are because everyday something new is happening. Christopher Penn, he is speaking five times today. Go see anything he talks about because if Chris is paying attention to it, you have to pay attention. That is my rule. If Chris says, “Dude, check this out. It’s where I go.” It is usually a new social network.

Get yourself out there. Make yourself easy to be found. There is someone else in the audience who is in this picture, comedy4cast.com, great comedy podcast, one of the guys hiding in the barrel. It is good to see somebody else here. So, walk the talk. I knew I would get at least one [unintelligible] in here. It is Britney Mason, by the way, if anybody does not know who she is. She will appreciate that.

So, walk the talk. The community, we are a fickle bunch. We will you call you out in a heartbeat. If you are just talking about, “Oh, I’m doing this,” or “I’m doing that,” or “I’m working with the community,” I love that phrase, “We’re working with the community to do it right and not screw people over,” you have got to really do it no matter what you are doing. Get in there. Be active. Be vocal. This is the biggest thing when people ask “how can I break out,” it is going to an event like this or going out to a discussion forum, being active. You cannot just come out and say, “Here I am, listen to me.” That does not work. You got to connect with people. That is why I love getting business cards at these things because it takes up my train ride home listening to new stuff. I cannot wait to see all these new people. It is events like these where you go out and you meet the people in the community. I look out in this room. I love the fact that I am looking out in this room and I will not recognize a whole lot of people. That excites me because if you are only seeing the same people all the time, you are not getting more exposure, you are not getting more listeners, people are not knowing who you are. You are not expanding on community. Go out, play, meet. I was going to say play with people, that was not going to sound right. Socialize.

Last night, I was ready to go to bed, but I was like, “Nah, I got to go over to Brooklyn and see this amazing indie singer play.” I am sucker for music and I knew there is going to be at least one other person there who I will want to meet. That was a long cab ride, but it was worth it. She is out here now. Natalie Gelman, she is walking around. Oh! Natalie Gelman! I did not know she was back there. If you want hear great music, Natalie Gelman was amazing. I had never heard her play before last night, but somebody recommended her. He said, “C.C., you would love her. You would love to hear her music.” I went, “Okay,” because it was somebody I trusted in the community. That is all it takes. You get that personal recommendation and that will happen. You will blog about something. You will create video content about something and people are going to trust you. On the flip side of that, I did not put this on my presentation, you have to really be responsible about that. I have learned that where I had a guy recently come up to me when I was in Nashville and he said, “C.C., I have to thank you. You made me quit my job.” This guy is probably 45 and I said, “Okay. What were you doing?” He said, “I was a VP of a big company making a lot of money and they just didn’t get new media. I kept listening to you every week and I decided screw this. I’m quitting and doing my own thing. I’m gonna start consulting. I’m going to school.” I just stopped. My wife nudges me afterwards and says, “That blow your mind?” Yeah, it did blow my mind. If you do not think you have that power, too, you do. People are going to connect to you. Here, you talk about a product. Here, you talk about a band or a venue. All of you are hopefully going to leave and share your thoughts about PodCamp New York. One thing you say or do a post could effect if someone else comes to another PodCamp ever or checks out podcasting. Some advertiser could read your blog. Just think about that. If you are saying you do not have a voice, you do. You all have a voice. Do not ever think, “I only have 100 readers. I only have 50 subscribers.” It does not matter.

I give props to my buddy, Eric Rice. I am paraphrasing. I still do not know who said it first, but he is where I hear it from. He says, “Learn everything you can and then share it with everybody who asks for help. Don’t ever say no.” It is funny. I do this a lot. If someone emails me and says, “C.C., how do I do this?” I will stop and help because you have to. You have to help people because let us face it. We all were new at something and it took somebody helping us to do it. Second Life is the perfect example. You go in there and you are lost. You have someone show you around, it makes a world of different. Same thing with anything else in new media. You have got to help the other people. Please, please do it. I always give Eric props. He loves that.

It is. It is all about the people. It is about everybody in this room. You never know when a simple conversation is going to lead to something bigger and better. The guy in the coffee shop, the girl in a coffee shop could be a client, could be a sponsor, could be an advertiser. You do not know. I got my job in my new company for meeting one person, meeting a person once at a conference. He liked my music podcast. I liked his marketing podcast. Six months later, I am working for him. That is all it took.


Audience Member:
[Unintelligible].

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. What he said is share your information about yourself. You do not know who you are going to meet. It is very true. We were at the Podcasting Expo in California, which happens in end of September. Great, great conference, podcastexpo.com or newmediaexpo.com. We did this experiment. We walked into everybody we saw with ear buds and asked, “Hey, have you heard of podcasting?” This was away from the conference area obviously. We talked only to random strangers about podcasting. We were shocked, too. We met one person and probably at 20 we stopped. It was two years ago. If I did that now, I would be really sad if that happens. Talk to people and say, “Hey, I do this.” If you are a cooking show and you see someone shopping in the grocery store buying something you are buying, talk to them. Do not be afraid to talk to people. I know people always take podcasters and bloggers as introverts, scared of the world, you guys are all out here. Talk to people. Do not just go to sessions and then scurry away. I mean you see someone you do not know, talk to them. Does everyone know who is sitting near them right now? Probably not.

Audience Member: Is it for the name game?

C.C. Chapman: You play the name game, exactly. I have homework for you all later. Do not worry. There is a homework slide. We will get to that. Get out and meet people. Do not just stay in your comfort zone. If you only go to podcasting conferences, no. Go outside. Talk to people. Interact with people. I love talking about this stuff when I go to my kids’ school and I get all these blank stares, “What are you talking about? You work at your house in pajamas? What?” and I do. I mean they do not get it. Talk to people. Get outside and talk to people. I do. If I am in line at a Starbucks, I talk to the person next to me always. It freaks them out. Except if I am on a plane, I hate talking to people on the plane. I do not know, that is just me, or on the train. That is a great way, too. Watch Ask a Ninja on a train, you get the best looks. I scared this little old lady last time. I was watching Ask a Ninja and I was laughing out loud. She looked over and I turned it and — is there anyone not know what Ask a Ninja is about? Do you ever watch Ask a Ninja, askaninja.com? Hysterical video podcast. Just crazy stuff.

All right. Monetization happens. We have all seen the other shirts of Shit Happens. That is what some people feel about monetization. There is nothing wrong with getting money for what you love to do. What I always tell people and I am adamant about this, think of something that you are really passionate about, an organization that you support, a charity you support, or a product you really, really love genuinely. If they came to you and said, “I want to pay you to talk about us and you do it your way,” there is not a single person who would say no. If you say no, I think you are lying. If they say, “You can say it how you want, be honest about it.” There are advertisers doing that, who says, “Hey, can I send you this product and you review it?” or “Here, make a commercial for me. Do it the way you want.” I have an advertiser right now and I have no rules except that I have to say I am sponsored by them once a show. That is the only rule. I have turned down sponsorships that I do not believe in. I had a really nice opportunity from a car manufacturer who is SUV and I said, “No, thanks. I don’t want to promote SUVs.” It was a personal choice, but maybe if it was like a hybrid or something I would have done. I would have probably talked about it for free, but they are going to give me money to do it, I mean… I love podcasting. I love talking about music. Will I get paid to play music? Hell, no. That is another whole conversation we will not get into.

I am not opposed to making money doing something I love doing and you should not either. I know it is a really, really touchy topic and the money will come maybe, if not there yet. I am not going to lie to you. All these people talking about these big, big deals, it is a little exclusive right now. It is not working to the level that it should be working I do not think. I do not think the advertisers, we will get to them, I do not think they get it yet. There are companies out there — I mean I am sponsored so I know they are out there, but am I sponsored to the level that I think it should be? No, and I think that goes for a lot of stuff the key being, you choose. If you are not comfortable with it and you are doing it just for the money, I would not do that, but that is part about being real honest. I hope the advertisers wake the f*** up. Why would not an advertiser want to do that? Unfortunately, they do not realize that yet. They also seem to realize when they do want to sponsor something, they seem to way too often go, “Oh, I’ll give them a couple hundred bucks because they are just a podcaster,” or “It’s just a blog ad.” I really hope that if you ever get the position where someone wants to advertise on you, really stop them and figure out what your worth is. Is it worth a couple hundred bucks? It depends. It depends who you are. Each of us have to make that own decision, but really think about it. If a huge brand comes to you, you do not want to know how much it costs. I thin it is about, what, $2.5 million this year for Super Bowl ads to get aired? Let alone how much it costs to actually produce it. We talk to people about Second Life sometimes and they are like, “Oh, I got $1000. I want an island built.” They think because it is virtual that it costs less. It does not. The same goes for everything else.

Audience Member:
C.C., what are the advertising success stories besides you? Do you think MommyCast is a success story?

C.C. Chapman:
MommyCast was a huge success story. MommyCast are these two — Paige and Gretchen, they are down in Virginia. They have got sponsorship from Dixie Paper Products for $100 grand for a year. The thing I love about Dixie, I actually met the guy who did the media buy so I got to ask him. They told him, they said, “We don’t want you to ever do 30-second spots. We don’t want you to go ‘and I’ll use Dixie.’” They did not want that. They branded their website. So, it said “brought to you by Dixie” and then Dixie kept sending them products nonstop, papers and cups and what-not. Some shows, you will hear them talk about something. “We tried out this new cup or this new plate,” and they honestly talk about it whether they like it or not. Dixie knows that it is their demographic. The major people who listen to MommyCast are mothers, paper plates, cups for birthday parties. They did a cross commercial where they did a birthday pack. They were doing a contest. I think it is great. I think they are a success story. I think when Rocketboom did the auction I think that was a huge success story. Rocketboom is a video podcast and they auctioned off their first ever advertising. They had not taken advertising yet. They put an auction up on eBay and I forget how much. Is it $80,000? $40,000? All right. For a week of advertising. I thought that was a great first step. I know they have done more since that. They are an interesting one to watch because they have gotten so much exposure and mainstream knows and everybody is watching them. They have been really good at it. They could just plaster their thing. I am sure they can take advertising with the snap of their fingers, but they are being good and they are only taking ones they want and people who value their brand. I think that is very good of them to do that. Yeah?

Audience Member: Plus, you have to add the residual nature of podcasting, which advertisers do not seem to get at all.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, if you fit the — she is talking about the residual data, not data, it is the wrong word.

Audience Member:
Yeah, it is the residual data. I can pick up a podcast from MommyCast that was done three months ago.

C.C. Chapman:
Yeah. My most downloaded podcast of Managing the Gray is six months old because people keep finding it and discovering it and downloading it. I did not have an ad in that, but if I did, it keeps being told about and people keep hearing it. Advertisers do not get that. They think print magazine it is gone, 30-second spot on television, it is gone. It is much bigger than that, podcasting specifically is very different. Same with blog posts. They do not seem to get the fact that if I wrote about a product or you wrote about a product that Google picks that up. It is funny. Full disclosure. Coca-Cola is a client of mine. I love Cherry Coke. I have loved Cherry Coke forever and Cherry Coke Zero came out and I was like a kid in the candy store, “This stuff is great,” and I blogged about it. Just out of excitement, I took a picture and a couple of weeks ago somebody twittered it that if you search on Cherry Coke Zero, my blog post came out number four in Google. I love it because I sent it to Coke. I am like, “Guys, you are not doing very good search engine optimization. Come on. I’m number four.” It is funny because they passed it on to the brand manager. The guy I sent it to was [unintelligible]. I would love to get an email from Cherry… If they sent me free Cherry Coke, I would talk about it all the time, but it is a perfect example of the fact that I just blog posted and took a Flickr picture because they finally had it in Boston. They did not have it yet. It is out there when people search on Cherry Coke, they find it. That is a really simple example that a simple blog post can help a brand. I am not saying it is pay-per-post. God, do not think that is what I am talking about.

If you do not know what pay-per-post is, there are companies out there who will pay you to talk about their product. You want to make some real easy money? They will say, “Here, write about my product and I will give you X number of dollars.” I hate it. I think it is wrong. Do not do it. I am just saying it is out there. There are other companies who say full disclosure. BzzAgent is a big one where they are all about word of mouth. I actually really like their company because they bring you in for campaigns to promote a product. They want you to buzz it on. They do not care. Starbucks is one of them. They would say, “Talk about it in your speech or whatever you do.” They will also say, “Make sure you say it right up front you are doing this as part of a campaign,” full disclosure. I think there is a big difference between saying, “I am talking about this because they sent me free product,” as opposed to just going “I love this stuff,” and it is just not genuine. Part about being honest, it is your reputation and it is your brand, so keep it in mind. Yeah?

Audience Member: C.C., in my day job I work in a heavily regulated industry. I work in pharmaceuticals.

C.C. Chapman: Drug dealing.

Audience Member: There is a heavy resistance to go into this because there is that disclosure that usually happens at the end of the ad that is not willing to be taken by all podcasters. They do not pre-roll, they do not post-role. Have you found that at Crayon? Is that something that you guys are up against?

C.C. Chapman:
Oh yeah. We are against their all regime of being strict. It is funny you mentioned that because I had not thought of this. I just saw a drug company doing a podcast. Tylenol PM is sponsoring, oh crap, what is it? It is Anji Bee.

Audience Member:
Chillcast.

C.C. Chapman: What?

Audience Member: Chillcast.

C.C. Chapman:
No, it is not the Chillcast. It is her other one. Unwind? Is that what it is?

Audience Member: Yes.

C.C. Chapman: I never thought about it. She is talking about Tylenol PM in her own voice and there is no “Tylenol’s danger.” There is none of that.

Audience Member: It is over the counter.

C.C. Chapman:
Oh, that is true. It is over the counter. Okay. Still, when you run into this no matter what company you are in, the fact that they are scared to do this, they are scared to let go of their brands, they are scared to, “What do you mean you want to actually ask people how they feel about our product? We’re gonna tell them how they feel about our product.” That is the way the world has worked for so long. It is not just pharmaceuticals. It is everybody. People are starting to wake up. Let us face it. What I am finding a lot in my day job is — what is happening in a lot of companies you see is you see a champion like yourself. You know darn well that if you sniff even a little bit what someone was thinking about, “Oh, advertising in new media?” you jump all over. You would go, “Yes!” There are those people in every company. That is how a lot of people we interact with from our company, someone who is really passionate about this and wants to do it. They are like, “How can I do this?”

You are starting to see those little cracks. The more senior the person, the better because they can make stuff happen, they control budgets, but companies are coming around. They are seeing this. I do not think I am turning a blind eye to it, but at the same I do not think they totally get it and that is kind of what I am talking about. Go back to your company, wherever you work and talk about new media. That [unintelligible] blogging and podcasting and all that, I guarantee you, one of those can help your company, whatever you are doing. There are lots of creative ways to do it. I worked for a college before I did this and they could not understand why having students — it is a college where your first year is one class, one big class. It is really kind of cool. It is a business school. You start your own company. You learn finance and marketing through having a real company. I was thinking, “Oh, you should have students blog their experience through that.” They would not do it because they were worried about the honest voice. What if they said this part sucked? That is honesty. It is okay.

Audience Member: C.C., I probably saw some of this, but what are your feelings about political campaigns and there are sections with sort of more grassroots media that is made about their campaign? They are thinking about the Obama appearance in Second Life where someone connected to the real campaign. There was also a grassroots effort to bring together Second Life where you just support Obama with no association with the official campaign. I think we are going to see more of that as you get closer to the elections where they are going to want to use new media to put out the brand of their candidate. Meanwhile, there are going to be a lot of grassroots efforts that are going to be creating media around the messaging of John Edwards or Hilary or whatever and at a certain point, the campaigners are going to be wanting to control or lock down how your messaging, once getting out and about, Hilary’s package on foreign assistance or something.

C.C. Chapman:
I think it is a really good question. We saw at the last big campaign, blogging was like the hot thing, Howard Dean with his blog and what-not. I think you are going to see a lot more candidates embrace new media like Obama when the whole 1984 parody. I never saw Obama say anything about it. He let it happen, which I liked. The fact that Senator Edwards or his staff, I do not care which it is, twittered back to me a response to a question I asked in under a minute blew my mind. I had to go blog about it. I think they are going to start being more hands off and let it happen. I hope they are. I think the smart ones are going to realize that they are not going to be able to control it no matter what they do. I think it is what you saw this year. I will pull Jeff Pulver who said it is the year of the YouTube president. They did not have a press conference. They did it on the web first. It is going to be really interesting to see if candidates figure out how to leverage Second Life and virtual worlds in general besides having a box with posters and stuff. I really want to see someone who can really do it like a true town hall I would love to see and do it around it. I do not know if they do it. I hope some of them are thinking enough to do it. I like to think they are. I am sure they are. The same thing with podcasting, I mean Obama and Edwards have been podcasting for long, long times. I do not know if any other candidates are podcasting or not. I know those two are.

Audience Member
: The Governor of Massachusetts has a podcast.

Audience Member:
In UK, David Cameron who is the leader of the opposition has a video blog and his followers basically vote questions that he answers every week and he answers the top five questions every week through a video blog.

C.C. Chapman:
I do not know if everyone heard. She is talking about in the UK, there is this — I forget it, sorry.

Audience Member:
David Cameron.

C.C. Chapman: David Cameron does a video podcast and he has people basically via something like Digg or Pop, “What are the top five questions you want answered this week?” and he answers them. That is awesome. That would be great. That is something that needs to happen more. The Obama thing that just happened, it was a disappointment. The grassroots thing was better. People just talk about the candidate. It is funny when you see like they all have MySpace pages now, but I think part of that is the same thing. Why would not they? I have said this earlier. Why would not they sign up for a MySpace page? Have it every way they can. I think you are going to see also lots of things like Meetup. I am in this area, let us get together. I would love to see things like Twitter, when Twitter starts getting proximity like Dodgeball. “I am in this area and I am a support of candidate X.” What Dodgeball is, is you can actually get profiles and it knows based on where I am right now with my phone and what-not, you can connect with people around you or similar tastes or profiles. So, why not do it around a candidate?

Am I getting close to [unintelligible]? I feel like — ah, yeah. 1:45. Thank you for all the paid questions. No, your homework. All right? Talk to strangers. No matter what your mother told you, go talk to strangers. Follow up with every one you meet today. Every single person you get a card from, a minimum, drop them an email. This is true of anybody you meet outside of the conference, too. Follow up with whoever it is. Just send a quick note and do not do a BCC to everybody. Do not do that. Worse yet, do not put them in the To: line, that is even worse. Follow them up and say, “Hey, it was cool.” I always recommend writing notes on the business card where if you talked about something specific, you can reference it. Write back to everybody. Try something new. It does not have to be a full-blown podcast. Try just videotaping yourself and talking to a microphone. It does not have to cost you a lot of money either. Do not ever think that. I forgot to put that in here. Everyone is always going to go, “C.C., what do you use for your podcast, man?” I am like, “I picked a microphone that looked cool and the mixer that everybody else was buying and it cost me $200 and I use my desktop PC.” That is what I still use.

I did not know if I was going to be doing podcasting for a long time and I still use that. So, try something new, maybe something just reading a blog or commenting on a blog. You can comment on a blog. A lot of people do not. Go out to YouTube and watch some random stuff. Go to Blip.TV or Network2 or any of the service, watch something new. They all have recommendations and see what people are checking out and check it out and then email me and let me know what you did. “C.C., I tried to podcast,” or “I have an avatar on Second Life and I lost one of my clothes and I have a box on my head. What do I do?” Seriously, I would love to hear back from you. I am on the web. I make it really easy to find me. I am everywhere. I will post this. If you want a copy of this presentation, give me a card, I will follow up with you. This will also be on my website. I always put up presentations afterwards in case people want them for whatever reason. Please, do not ever, ever, ever, ever, and this goes true for anybody, do not ever say, “Man, I wished I had talked to that person. I saw them and I didn’t.” Go talk to the person especially on an event like this. Just walk up and say, “Hey, what’s up?” Just start the conversation, get talking, have fun, and get playing. Enjoy the playground. It is a playground on purpose, at least on my mind, so have fun. All right. That is my presentation.

Originally posted on Managing the Gray in case you are reading this somewhere else.

Social Network Burnout

listen to managing the gray

Today we are talking about social network burn out. I got a call on the comment line (206-309-4729) about this topic and it felt like a good one since so many people have been asking about it. Yes, I use MySpace, LinkedIn and FaceBook. I use them all and I use them all differently and that is what I talked about today.

Links from the show

Also, as you will hear on this episode, PodShow listened to your comments and the SuckLess promo at the opening has been updated. Thank you for all the concerned e-mails and comments. They did not go unheard. If you want to help more, take the SuckLess Survey and give your honest feedback directly to them.

New Media: Jump In!

Ron Ploof is a long time listener and just sent me in his homework of trying something new by his first video ever submitted to YouTube. It’s a great little piece about New Media. I KNOW this is going to be in future presentations.

Thanks for being a friend Ron and for sharing this.

Twitter Making Me Happy

I love any tool that helps build a community and helps me connect with people. Twitter has become a very active tool in my superhero belt. Every day I can check in at any time and see what people are up to and what is sparking their interest. It’s my #1 way I discover hot new videos, links to important articles and even breaking news from time to time.

Here is a picture of the people I follow that I took the other day.

The People I Follow On Twitter

Now, I have more people following me then I follow. I’ve talked about this before and the reason is that I only follow people who:

  1. I know personally
  2. I have some sort of connection with
  3. That post continual good links, content and other pieces of information that I want to know about
  4. Is someone that I want to see what they are using Twitter for

But, when I look at this picture of little avatars faces pop out at me. I recognize them. I know them. It makes me wonder what they are up to and the great thing is that I can find out.

Twitter can be time consuming. Many times I won’t leave it up while I do other things because it distracts me. I will pop in every so often and see what is up. I don’t worry about missing things. If it is truly important then someone will either direct message me, use the @cc_chapman prefix so I see it in my replies tab (a huge thanks for that one twitter!) or drop me an e-mail. The fire hose of information that I miss I don’t worry about. If I miss a link that is really cool you can bet I’ll see it somewhere else later in the day from another Twitter or on someone’s blog.

Between Bloglines and Twitter I get all the information I need in one day.It’s a constant stream of information that I can consume and react to when I need to. I like the passive approach very much.

I also love that I can throw out a question like I did the other night of “what is the best desktop cooling stand option for my MacBook Pro” and within minutes get tons of answers to the question. Sure, I was out using Google looking for the same answer, but I like real world recommendations better when I can get them. I also love that I can passively “watch” the Red Sox game through their Twitter as well.

The concept behind Twitter, Jaiku and all the other applications like this is a powerful one and I’m looking forward

Transcript for Managing the Gray #35

Transcript for Managing the Gray #35 “Every Day is a Good Day”
Originally posted on June 6, 2007

C.C. Chapman: Hey everybody. Welcome to Managing the Gray. Today, it is a little different. I have missed you guys. I have missed talking to you all out there, so today there are no show notes. Literally, there is nothing written down, just some topics in my head, some things I have been thinking about. I have got some great audio comments, just a whole bunch of random things that I want to talk to you here at Managing the Gray because one of the neat things about new media, I talk about this all the time, one of the neat things about new media is that there are not any rules. It is not like a 30-minute sitcom where we have to follow some formula and everybody has to agree with you. You do not have to. That is what is awesome about what we are doing here. You make the rules. So, one day I want to do a 5-minute show. That is awesome. The next, I want to do 30. That is cool. You want to try video? You are cool when you do it. All that stuff is great. You want to call in the comment line? You can do that too. It is 206-309-4729. You can call on in and ask me anything you want.

We have got some cool audio comments today all over the map. It has been a busy — quick update on what is going on in ccville. It has been very busy. Crayon is rocking along. We have hired some new staff, which is great. I am very excited. I am actually headed to New York tomorrow with Scott Monty who is our newest crayonist. We are actually taking the train out, which would be cool. We actually hung out yesterday. He is here in the Boston area, which is great as well. He is out in MetroWest. He is brought on board as sort of an account director relationships manager. I do not know what his official title is. I personally do not care what his title is, but I just know he is going to be doing some great things for us. I am psyched to have him on board. It will be fun to ride out on the train tomorrow with him. We are getting to know each other more, which is great. That is part of the fun. I always talk about you make friends online, you meet them in Twitter and Second Life or not, but when you get to meet them face to face, it is always better when you get to that point. Now, I am to that point with Scott, which is great. Big meeting tomorrow in New York City for Crayon, good stuff. I actually got a great interview for the next Managing the Gray that I am doing this afternoon. At least I hope it goes great, let us word it that way, which should be very cool. That is only reason I had to get one of these out is because I wanted to record — because the interview that I am doing, it is time stamped, not barcode, that is the wrong word, but I am just going to push it out next week. I wanted to get something out before then to you guys and girls because I miss you all. So, all is well, still doing One Guy’s Thoughts, which is my video podcast. It has been kind of my new media playing now.

One of the things I wanted to talk about to you [unintelligible] I did get my Mac. I got a MacBook Pro and thank you to everybody who chipped in and gave me feedback. What was great was, I talked about this on crayonCast last week, Apple dropped the ball. You got to apple.com. They will sell you the Mac, they will sell you the MackBook Pro, but what they will not let you do is really compare which one you need. Now, sure, they give you specs side by side, which I love. I hate it when sites do not do that. You cannot actually get the tech specs right side by side and compare them. They do that great, but I was not sure which one I needed. I had no sell for me to know which one I wanted. So, I went to managingthegray.com. I posted a blog post, I Twittered about it, and then all of a sudden all these people gave all this great feedback. I know this one mom, her daughter is graduating from high school and wanted to get her a Mac and she had the same question. She came and she was reading all the comments. I love that my question helped somebody else get their question answered too.

That is where the power of the Internet and Google or whatever search engine you want. I am not just pimping Google, it is my personal choice, but what I mean is like last night I was working on the book and I am writing and I am like, “Wait a minute. Macs don’t have a delete key.” Yes, they have delete, but the delete key on the Mac is the same thing as backspace on a PC. I am like, “Where is the delete key? The one that takes the cursor and deletes things forward, kind of sucks it back, couldn’t find it.” What did I do? I went to Google. I am like Mac, delete, key, backspace, Windows, or something, some random keywords and I found it with one click, which was great. It is function delete, by the way, does it. Two buttons, whatever. That is pretty neat. All these connections. It was on a blog post that I found that out, by the way.

All these posts, people are sharing information. Sometimes when you are posting information or you are doing a video, whether it is audio, when you are putting these things out there, it is for people to find to discover and to get your questions answered months, years, and millenniums after you post it. Who knows? Think about it. All this audio that we are creating and this video that we are creating, our kids are going to see this. Our grandkids could see this. I laugh to think what my kids are going to think about when they go watch something I made with Random Foo Pictures when they are teenagers, when they can actually watch it because it is rather violent, some of the stuff. I wonder what they are going to think of their dad, but I am okay with that. That is what I am getting at is the fact — it is one of the reasons I do transcripts of all my podcasts is because that gets the information out there. Google finds it. It indexes it. It is a lot better than my show notes usually are.

So, think about that. Whenever you are creating content, it is going to last. It is going to be out there for a while. Yes, the Mac, I am liking it. I am getting used to it. It is very different. The keyboard, I am not used to it. I did get the MacBook Pro if I did not say that. My main decision? My main decision was because some people that I trusted their opinion said, “C.C., you’re gonna be running Second Life a lot, I know you are, and thus the upgraded video card that’s in the MacBook Pro is the way to go.” No, I am not mad that yesterday Apple released new MacBook Pros. You knew it was coming. I knew it was coming at some point, but I kept getting sick of waiting. Let us face it. Any computer, it is out of date the minute you get it out of the box and plug it in. This MacBook Pro has got more than enough juice for me. It has got 3 gig of RAM. It is wired. It is more than I need so I am good to go.

I am very proud. I got another homework assignment came in.

Bobby Hewitt: Hi, C.C. This is Bobby Hewitt from creativethirst.com in New Jersey. I would like to follow Jerry’s call with my homework assignment submission for you. I am in New Jersey and I did not get over to the New York PodCamp. I am so sorry. I really did want to go, but I do have a good excuse. I was on a family trip in Memphis with my wife and her family. I am calling you from Skype. This is my first Skype call and it is you. So, that says something then and that is my homework assignment, but I did also blog about my trip to Memphis, Tennessee, a little bit about branding, a little bit about marketing. You could check out my blog at creativethirst.blogspot.com. Bye-bye.

C.C. Chapman: That is awesome. See what I mean? Trying new media, it is not painful. Of course, what blew me away was at first I thought he was in the car. It sounded like you were in the car, but then to find out it was a Skype call and that that was your homework assignment… Let us face it, people. That is great! I know some people out there are going, “A Skype call?” but for that individual, a Skype call was a big step. It was something new. It does not have to be groundbreaking or earth-shattering. Business is same thing. You guys can try it. How many businesses out there have a Skype-in phone number, a voice mailbox that people can use to Skype to call, or a regular phone call? My office number is a Skype number. Nobody knows that. It does not matter. It answers with voicemail. Skype can be your thing. Congratulations for your first Skype call. I hope it was not too painful. It was good quality. That was good. Skype can barf sometimes. Who knows? That is very cool.

One thing I also want to talk about today is blogger influence or influencer outreach, whatever you want to call it. There is a right and wrong way to do it. There have been all kinds of flak happening about the Nikon D80 campaign and blah, blah, blah. I am not going to focus on the campaigns, but I am just going to focus on a couple little — it goes beyond giving gifts. I just want to give a tip to you out there listening or your business or whoever you might be who is thinking about reaching out to bloggers and podcasters because this goes beyond the Nikon thing. It goes beyond the Edwards campaign thing that happened. Make sure you know who you are writing to. That is all I am going to say. It happened this morning as a matter of fact. I got an email to the Managing the Gray account, which it was the totally wrong email to get me at because it was about music.

What bothered me about it was the fact that this was a management agency that an artist that I know very well had connected with and the management firm was sending out the email. The problem was it talked to me like, it tried to be personal, but it was totally form letter and the fact that I read the artist, I am like, all I wrote back, I did not want to slam, I just said, “Hey, man. Say hi to so and so for me,” because I know when he finds out, he is going to be like, “Wassup?” Know who you are reaching out to. Take the five minutes to do the research. If you are going to do a blanket, I am not going to call it spam, but if you are going to do a blanket outreach to bloggers you do not know, that is fine. It is okay. Sometimes you need to do that. Do not do it [unintelligible], be very good about it, be very cool about it, but know this. You are probably not going to get very good results. If you take five minutes per person you are reaching out to, to at least research them, find out where they are in the world, read some of their blog posts, listen to a podcast perhaps. Most bloggers out there have an About page, so you can get what you need in that first five minutes. Find out who you are talking to and make sure when you are reaching out to them, you are reaching out to the right person.

Between that, between what happened with the — I realize I am talking at the podcast so you may not read the blog. The Edwards campaign reached out to me and talked to me like I had no clue what was going on in new media. Maybe it was my bad for assuming that they are reaching out to me because I talked about the Edwards campaign. I have blogged it. I have Twittered it. I have podcast and talked about them left and right, so when they contact me and say, “Hey, we’d like to talk to you about doing more stuff online.” I just assumed they had read, heard or someone had pointed it out to them, so they knew who they were talking to, but the minute I got on the phone with them, they did not have a clue. I was just another warm body to them to talk to and that was it and that pissed me off. I blogged about it, but I blogged about it constructively and the great thing is the Edwards campaign read it, stepped up to the plate, and became part of the conversation.

I hate when companies, big, small or individual do not get involved in the conversation. If people are talking about you, you need to get in there and talk back. If you do not, you will be viewed as elitist or stupid. You pick. I do not care which, but you will be viewed as one or the other. You have got to monitor the conversation. You have got to get involved. Make it personal. Make it professional, both ends of the conversation. When you first contact the person via email and when people are talking about you, you got to get involved in the conversation in all the spaces. Yes, it is going to take time. Yes, it takes commitment. Yes, sometimes there are loopholes. You got to get approval for saying certain things. I do not care. The point is you have got to get involved. If you are not involved, it is bad. It makes you look bad. It makes your company look bad. There is a ton of companies out there that I respect that just dropped the ball on this, dropped it horribly. I was psyched to see people behind the Nikon campaign and people behind the Edwards campaign getting out there and getting involved in the conversation. Some other companies, I cannot say that about because they have not. There are huge conversations happening and they are just not paying attention to them. They are just ignoring them. That is stupid. I know sometimes that is an approach for a company or an individual. I just do not agree with it.

Well, I just kind of went tangent in there, didn’t I? But here, one of the things I am a sucker for is productivity. I love any tool, resource, technique that gets me to be more productive. I am not a big Getting Things Done type of guy. I have read it. That structure does not work for me. It works for other people, but I love hearing about new tools or techniques. So, if you ever have any, send them in. This is one that I have had on my radar and I have checked it out, but I am psyched that a Managing the Gray listener both is sharing it and using it to get in touch with me.

Dave Delaney: C.C. Chapman, it is Dave Delaney calling, loving the show as always. My website is davemadethis.com. You can find all my little things, my projects there. I am just calling with a very, very, very cool tool that I cannot live without now. A friend of mine told me about it at work and I am hooked. It is called Jott.com and what it is it is a free service, and I love free things, where you get a phone number. You just sign up, you fill in the blanks, sign up for it online at jott.com and then they give you a phone number, it is like 1-800 or whatever, and you call that number and leave a message to me or myself or somebody else in your book. I only have myself. I leave myself a message and then that message gets automatically transcribed into an email and then sent to me with the built-in audio player within the email so I can hear my message again. The transcriptions are not always perfect, but it is a message you left, so hopefully you can understand what you are saying. Again, you can play it back if you totally cannot recognize what it transcribed. So, very, very cool tool. I actually just used it listening to Managing the Gray where I called myself because I am driving. I called myself and jotted a couple of notes from the episode. Yeah, it is a perfect way to remember things. I hope that is handy and it is also handy for career professionals if you just met with somebody and you want to leave yourself a note about that person that you met, another perfect way. Anyway, keep up the great work, buddy. I love your show. Talk to you later and I will see you in Second Life one of these days. I am in there now. I just got to figure out my way around, still flying naked. It is a little embarrassing. Okay, later.

C.C. Chapman: Okay. Quick Second Life and then I will get back to Jott. Go to your Inventory. Go to Clothing. Then you can right click or open Apple click on any piece of cloth and choose where. There. Now, you will not be naked. Get some clothes on, my boy. You fly around naked, you are going to get in trouble. Nothing screams noob like a flying naked man. That is a bumper sticker. All right. Jott. Jott is pretty cool. I checked that out awhile ago. For me, I am not a phone guy. I am just not. I do not know what it is. I am not a phone guy. Ask anybody who does business with me. If you want a quick response from me, email me at cc.chapman@gmail.com. I will respond faster than a phone call ever will.

Yes, my inbox is getting cleaner, but still a little backed up. Do not take it personally. There is nothing wrong by the way. I will publicly say it. There is nothing with you sending up a follow-up posting, “Hey, C.C. Did you get this message?” and put the text in again. Nothing wrong with that at all. That often jars me to go, “You idiot. You blew responding. Get on it.” Jott though, I think it is very cool what he was talking about. It does work very well. Literally, you get a phone number, you call in, and then it emails you. I think the little thing he mentioned there in passing was the fact if you just met with somebody, you could call and leave notes. That I think is a cool idea. Or you just interviewed someone or you met someone at a conference. There are lots of possibilities there. Personally, I am a notebook guy. I always have a notebook with me. I am not a hipster PDA type of guy. I am a notebook type of guy, paper notebook is what I am talking about, not my Mac, a paper notebook that I just write things down in all the time. I was showing Scott Monty yesterday and he was cracking up. It was funny because I was actually showing him the first page of this current notebook I have was January 9th this year. I have a checklist of things I needed to do and I put them in pink, I must have had a pink highlighter that day, and none of them are done yet. They are not “me things.” Whatever. I write things down.

What productivity things do you use? What tools can you not live without? I still have not found a really good to-do list. I would love a little applet or something that sits on my desktop that I could just — I have seen tons of them, but none of them do what I want. I just want a little to-do list that I could have as a little window or widget, whatever, on my desktop that I can just type things in, but then it also syncs on the web so when I am on the road, I can get that to-do list. Better yet, you really want to make me happy? That I could have this widget on three computers or however many computers and it is syncing up via the web or I can get to it via the web and see my to-do list. That is the dream widget. Is it out there? I have not found it, but I am thinking people would want it. There are so many possibilities there, but I am curious what your productivity tips are. If you have got them or there are tools you love, put them in the comments. This will be up on managingthegray.com. Put it in the comments, tools and links, because that way you can put the links in right there or call the comment line, 206-309-4729, and tell me what you are into right now because I always am looking for new tools that help me and a Facebook group is not going to help me.

Daniel Johnson Jr.: Hey, C.C. Chapman, this Daniel Johnson Jr. calling you from Cincinnati, Ohio. I just finished listening to your recent Managing the Gray where played a lot of listener comments and I definitely appreciated hearing everything. Also, about the — I am walking the dog here. The dog just found another dog. [It wants to run loose]. Sorry about that. One of the things I love about Managing the Gray and what Cali Lewis talks about at the voiceover at the intro, what you talk about in the show, is there are no mistakes. Actually, it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes that I have on my blog at journeyinsidemymind.com, “Do not fear mistakes; there are none.” It is attributed to Miles Davis, legendary jazz trumpeter. It is interesting because I can actually feel a lot of parallels to my attractions to jazz, specifically as it relates to improvisation and also with new media. See, in jazz, you have a melody, but a lot of it has to do with chord and chord progression. You do have some boundaries that you try out, kind of in traditional jazz I suppose, and you are able to do whatever you want to do within those boundaries, but Miles Davis was one of these cats that tested those boundaries, pushed them, tried to see where else he could go and I think that is one of the things that made him a legendary influencer in jazz music as well as music culture in general and also to me as an individual. [Unintelligible] I just want to say thanks for Managing the Gray, the podcast, and for helping us to understand more how we can manage the gray. Make it a great day, my friend.

C.C. Chapman: Miles Davis, teaching us about new media, of course, and Daniel Johnson, Jr., long time home fry and Managing the Gray listener. I appreciate it. Walking the dog. See? That is what is cool about new media. I was actually working on a chapter last night called Burn the Suit & Buy a Laptop, that is the name of the chapter, and one of the things I was talking about is the fact that that phrase is part mental and part physical. The mental part is you can create and consume new media from anywhere in the world, anywhere you might be. It is getting easier and easier as phones pick up podcasts and download music and all this stuff. Have you seen the new Verizon — of course, it got my attention because it involves Prince who I am a huge fan of. I kind of laughed about it and then I went, “That’s cool,” where there is this new Verizon service called Song ID where you hear a song on the radio or in a television commercial, you hear a song somewhere and you are like, “Oh, that’s cool. What is that song?” You hold up your phone — I have not used this service yet. I am assuming it is an application you run or you call a number or something, but what you do is you hold it up and basically your phone hears the song and it IDs the song and tells you, “Oh, this is so and so.” What is cool is, the way they are using it is Prince’s new single. You could hear it on the website, hear part of it, and then buy using the service to ID it, of course, what you can do, you can buy the tracks, but in this case you get it for free. You get the new Prince tracks. I thought that was really cool. There is another example of where — what would be really cool is you could be like, “Oh, what’s that theme song they’re playing on that podcast?” or “What’s C.C. playing on Accident Hash?” Would that not be cool? I bet you they do not have podsafe artists yet in the database, but you are getting there where the fact that we are consuming and creating everywhere we go.

You do not think I am serious? You go on vacation. You are taking photos, right? You are uploading those photos. Maybe you are uploading them right away. I saw a guy the other day, a friend, a guy I met at PodCamp New York. He was uploading photos from Jamaica and I think he happen to just take all the photos off his card and just upload without editing them first because there was someone there I do not think he wanted public and they disappeared later, some very nice pictures of his beautiful girlfriend. I do not think they were supposed to be on the web, but that is what I mean. Media was being created. He was in this little hut in the ocean that obviously had an Internet connection. Maybe he was doing it via his phone. Who knows? But you can create media wherever you are.

It looks like microphone boom has decided that it wants to start letting the microphone drop. Maybe it is getting a little old. Anyways, that is what is on my mind today. This has been Managing the Gray and I would really want to thank you guys for tuning in, wherever you are. That is a question I have not asked a lot. I asked it on Accident Hash awhile ago. I am curious where you listen to Managing the Gray. Is it a gym thing? Is it in the car commute thing? The three places I assume people listen to podcast the most is exercising in some form whether it is walking the dog like Daniel Johnson or the bike or something like Mitch Joel, either exercising, at your desk on the computer, or in the car. Those are probably the three most prominent places people listen to podcast, but where else are you listening? Is there some place? On a plane? Any type of commuting? Any sort of traveling? Let us word it that way rather than just a car. Exercising, traveling, working, desk, sitting, sitting at desk, maybe you are not working, maybe you are goofing off. I am curious where else you are listening to Managing the Gray. If you are really determined, take a picture of your iPod or wherever you are listening to. I love getting pictures of where people are listening to stuff. It is always fun to see. I will put it up on the blog or I will put it on Flickr, all that stuff.

Until next time. I am C.C. Chapman. The call-in line is 206-309-4729. I have been told I do not say that enough so I am saying it more, Mr. Rutter, there you go. Things are going good and I hope they are going for you too. If they are not, listen. I woke up this morning kind of in a grumpy mood. I will leave you with some wise words that the medicine man from the Crow Nation out in Montana said to me once, said to our class in college. He said, “Any day you wake up that you’re not sick is a good day,” and whenever I get up and I am having a bad day, [right off the bat] I say that, I think about — literally, this morning, that popped in my head. I went, “You’re right. There’s no reason to be mad today or be grumpy. It ain’t worth it.” Get out there. Create media. Have fun. Try new things. Interact with people and help build this community. Make the new media playground full of more toys and I will talk to you next time. See you soon and have a good one.

Working Remote and The First Few Weeks

As you may of heard by now, crayon has some new faces among us. In fact there are several more people then were mentioned in the release.

Now, I’ve found working remotely to work quite well, but the first few weeks that there are new team members seem to be the hardest ones. For me personally this is because I don’t know the people yet. I haven’t sat down over coffee with them and talked about anything and everything. We haven’t figured out how to work together just yet. Sure, some of these problems would be there even in a traditional “gray place” (coffee tip to Brogan) type of office environment but in a remote sense it is even harder.

Thankfully with webcams the distance isn’t felt as much. Getting on Skype with someone and being able to see them is a huge help. At first I didn’t think ti would be, but you’d be amazed how much it helps. As software gets better and you can have more then just one on one video conversations it is going to raise the benefit exponentially.

I’m curious what other people out there have found about working remotely and for you what is the hardest thing?

I really can’t wait to get to NYC again soon so that I can sit down and talk to my new crayonistas. Sure, we are talking a lot about work and such lately, but I want to socially hang out with them. That is when a team really gels and comes together and that is an area where any form of virtual doesn’t come close to reality.

Playboy Comes to Second Life

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Playboy IslandI first met Marc Girolimetti at a Second Life event in Boston and we instantly clicked. We are certainly kindred spirits and are developing a great friendship. So many months ago when we had lunch at China Sky in Wellesley and he told me the secret about bringing Playboy into Second Life I couldn’t wait to tell everyone. But, as a good friend I kept the news to myself. Even when I saw the teaser banners recently I didn’t say anything.

At our last lunch he mentioned how he’d LOVE to be on a podcast sometime and of course I’m not going to miss an opportunity like that!

So last week we got on the phone to talk about the changes his company Green Grotto Studios is going through, how they got Playboy , New England sports, Curt Schilling’s Blog, Babson and new media in general. It’s about an hour long, but a great conversation about a variety of topics.

The island opens today at 4 pm SLT and there will be some fun events to kick it all off. Enjoy!

Call anytime into the comment line at 206-309-4729 and leave a message or e-mailing me an MP3 works as well.

More goodness at Managing the Gray if this gets scraped or you find it somewhere else.

iPhone on the Mind

I’ve been thinking a lot about the iPhone lately. Not in a geek lust sort of way but more as a thinking forward and thinking creatively sort of way.

The information is sketchy on what can and can’t be done on it. But, the hype is there. Heck, my good buddy Rob Walch even has a Today in iPhone Podcast going but doesn’t have the scoop on all the features yet. Even gadget spy Cali Lewis didn’t get the scoop yet.

I won’t be buying one when they first come out. Main reason is I’m on Verizon and not in the mood to switch. I certainly want to get my hands on one to try out. As a usability guy the interface intrigues me and I’m curious if the “keyboard” is going to be any good or not. I’m the type of guy that likes tactile feedback when I’m typing and without this I’m wondering how good it will be.

But, what kind of doors does this open from a new media perspective? Will we finally be able to subscribe and download content on the fly? Can I instantly get the latest episode of JetSet or Ask a Ninja anywhere I am right to my phone? Will it have the ability to surf the iTunes Store and make purchases?

We are all just waiting and seeing. How long do you think it will be before the next generation of iPods? I can’t imagine it will be too long since they already have the interface built and everyone would love to have all the features shown minus the phone if they could get it. I know I’ll be the first in line for one of those! Perhaps we’ll even see them this week? I doubt it because it would distract from the iPhone hype but by the holidays I’m sure.

Every Day is a Good Day

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I needed to podcast today. I had to brain dump and get some thoughts out there. No notes. No prep. Just me, a cup of coffee, the microphone and CastBlaster. Some great call ins and topics including influencer outreach, productivity and how I’m liking my new Mac. Even a mini rant on how important it is for companies and individuals to be involved in the conversation rather then just monitoring it.

Links from the show

Call anytime into the comment line at 206-309-4729 and leave a message or e-mailing me an MP3 works as well.

See ya on the new media playground!

Learning by Doing

My friend Kate once rightfully gave me a hard time after a presentation in which I slammed a company for their poor execution of a podcast. She gave me a hard time because as she said, “at least they tried.”

I have to agree with her. I’d much rather see companies, campaigns and individuals try out new media and fail then not try at all. That was the point of talking about what happened yesterday with me and the Edwards campaign. I could have been angry and pissy about it, but instead I wanted to share some constructive criticism with them so that they could continue trying out this space, but also get better at utilizing it.

I was happy to see that the campaign understood the reason for my post and joined right into the conversation. We are continuing it off line as well and they are eager to hear input from everyone who has some! That’s great. More companies should be so open to feedback.

Something I will say over and over is that none of us are experts on new media. Sure, lots of us are very familiar with the space and can offer great advice and guidance, but we are ALL figuring it out every day. When we all first learned to ride a bike we fell down and crashed over and over. If we gave up we would never had learned. If we never fell down we wouldn’t have had a reason to figure out how to balance. It’s all important.

Don’t think I’m going after anyone. I’m just trying to help everyone take it to the next level. To work together to figure out this fun filled new media space.

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