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.
