Quiver & Quill

Grandpa Pettigrew

Originally uploaded by Carla216

It’s cleaning day. It’s discovery day. After sorting through papers for the past coupla hours, I discovered a letter an old mentor of mine wrote.

He’s a world famous author. When I was 10, we lived across the street from him. His wife made us tea, and we watched Ken Burns documentaries and talked about World War II and sailing. He gave me the first book which made me want to read, “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

I moved away a year later. We stayed in touch via email. When I graduated college, five years ago, he wrote me this :

“Zachary—I’d guess you are cut out to be a writer. Think you’d have the talent, brains, etc. Do you have what it takes to go down that long and lonely road which you have somewhat accurately foreseen? Who knows? I don’t. Neither do you. It ain’t an easy trip.

You’ll need to know what sort of writer you will be. Fiction or non-fiction. If non-fiction, a reporter of the world (a fine skill) or someone like George Orwell, and many others, who show us reality filtered through their own value system. If fiction do you pick one of then “genre” and within it, do your thing? Or do you try to appeal to the academics who control the world of literary criticism and sign up for whatever is the current darling of the English Professors?

Whatever you decide, I think you have to decide to write for two people. One is yourself, and one is that worthy reader to whom you wish to deliver your image, your vision of a street scene, your memory of two people getting acquainted. Early one, decide if you want to be published. If so you must face the reality of the world of publishing and aim at an audience large enough to provide some sort of sales…”

If I were to write, I hope to capture those Sunday afternoon of drinking tea and talking about the war with my neighbor.

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Tim’s bachelor party 1

Originally uploaded by erat

I knew I was doomed from the second I saw the word bachelor party in the subject line. It wasn’t spam. It was far worse: the massive group email that you can’t opt out of.

It was sent to my work email. A good friend of my cousin’s sent this particular email inviting the more than 20 guys who received it to help organize a bachelor party. By the time I read the email nearly all twenty guys had responded with a “reply all” to the group. Some messages were essential, like what city to host the party. And others were less so, for example, “LOL Bob.”

The comment threads are just beginning. We’re months away from the bachelor party. As it gets closer, there will be more inside jokes amongst people I don’t yet know arriving like “personal letters” from the Publisher’s Clearinghouse in my inbox.

There is no real way to ask people not to use my work email. If I do, when I arrive at the bachelor party, I’ll be that “jerk” from the email list.

What do you do in a situation like this?

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In a few weeks I’ll be in a small village in Colombia trying to impress my girlfriend’s grandparents. And as impressive as Twitter, Facebook, social media and advertising might be, I think learning Spanish is a far more effective way to go here. So I’ve covered my apartment with Spanish phrases and words, and my friend Karlenis hand selected the phrases (i.e., appliance tagging). I’ve also downloaded a few Spanish books on audible. So as long as they ask me one of 50 or so phrases, I’ll be just fine. Hasta manana.

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The smell of brick, spring flowers and Fenway-

He sits peacefully in the sun, an old man selling plastic birds.
As a young man, did he sell papers on same corner?
I ask him if I could take a picture.
He nods yes.

I do not want a plastic bird.
I want a photo.

“I would like a green one,” I say.
He passes it to me as if bestowing a secret
“You have to fill it with water,” he says filling it with water.

I blow.
Nothing happens.

“You have to pucker your lips,” he says.
I pucker my lips and blow again.
From the plastic bird emerges a beautiful song that floats above the traffic

How many Bostonians own one of his birds?
And if they played at the same time what magic would fill the streets:
Cars would stop
Women would leave their salons, nails wet, to watch
Cats chasing after the sound of his plastic birds

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My friends started a website called Nkd Guru. They are finalist in a competition, and the winner receives a cool million dollars in venture funding. Check out their stuff, and if you like it, vote for them. Even if you don’t like it, their accent and the video is cool enough to earn the vote. And if you love the idea, as I do, help spread the word.

How to vote:
1. Click on this link - http://youbethevc.com/finalists
2. Click the “Join” tab
3. Fill out your info
4. Click the “Finalists” tab
5. And Click 5 GREEN STARS under the nkdguru logo

(NOTE: There is no confirmation per se, the indication is in the form of 5 stars changing color from “white” to “green”)

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More than thirty attended the third Rubber Chicken Social Club dinner at Chang Sho restaurant in Cambridge. We shared great food and conversation. In order to facilitate this, everyone at the dinner received a note card with an assignment. The names of three different people at the dinner and questions to ask them were written on each card. The questions were conversation starters based on people’s areas of expertise or interest.

For example, one question read: “Ask Bob how he uses Second Life in his business.” and another “Ask David what the difference is between filming for the web and filming for TV.”

After each course the ten people at each of the three tables switched places. From what I could tell everyone had the opportunity to get to know each other.

My favorite moment of the evening happened when I looked around the table to see everyone happily eating Chinese food and discussing social media, politics, PR, the Cambridge geek scene, investing and mobile user interface design. It felt like one of those movie moments when the soundtrack kicks in.

Thanks for making the Rubber Chicken Social Club a success. If you’d like at attend the next dinner, email me, or send me a tweet (quiverandquill). Bring a healthy appetite and your sense of humor.

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A creative ad caught my eye on Facebook today. A young man used a Facebook flyer to ask prospective employers to hire him. When you click on his ad, you arrive at his YouTube page with a short pitch (see it below). I love the concept of job seekers targeting prospective employers with creative techniques like these.

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I am speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters next week. The topic of my talk is “How to Activate Listeners Online.” My strategy is to share with the audience that online marketing isn’t just one set of strategies. In fact, there are hundreds of strategies and many critical outcomes which trigger which of those strategies are selected. For example, all of the outcomes below are important to interactive directors of media companies; however, the selection of strategies is contingent on the budget and order of importance of the outcomes. Key outcomes for radio websites:

• How to get more existing listeners to your website
• How to get your competitions listeners to your website
• How to get listeners to affiliate with your station on their point of presence online
• How to get more listeners to spend more time on your site
• How to get more listeners to invite their friends and family to the site
• How to get members of your community to blog about you
• How to win friends and influence listeners in social networks
• How to increase subscriptions and downloads
• How to grow the quality of your online community
• How to grow the size of your online community
• How to get recruit the best interactive talent
• How to get find the best ideas to activate your listener online

I’ll put my slides on slideshare.net after the presentation.

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I received an email from my old accountant. His daughter, and ten other local young ladies, were modeling prom dresses for a local clothing store’s website. The young lady who received the most votes won a prom prize package. This is a simple promotion, and I imagine highly effective. My accountant most have sent this email to a few hundred people, and each model I am sure did the same.  It’s a simple promotion and a good idea. 

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Bulk Bin of Mini Rubber Chickens

Originally uploaded by zoomar

I am starting a social club called “The Rubber Chicken Social Club.”
The name comes from these mini rubber chickens that my business partner gave me years ago.They were a reminder to smile during my presentation at the National Association of Broadcasters in 2006.
Ever since one mini rubber chicken has lived comfortably in my wallet, nestled right behind my license. It’s a daily reminder to bring humor and personality into my work and life.

Right now the Rubber Chicken Social Club throws monthly dinners.
New friends, sales people, tech geeks, bloggers, entrepreneurs, twitter addicts, scholars and old friends all come together to share a meal. About 25 people attend, and I either work with or collaborate with all of them. Everyone who attends has a genuine curiosity, a love of learning and meeting new people.

In the coming months I plan to turn the Rubber Chicken Social Club into an active, inclusive, high-energy group mini rubber chicken lovers. Some things I would like to do are: bowling; breakfasts; lectures; tweet ups; Twitter Olympics (yet to be defined); pecha-kucha’s; Random acts of organized kindness; Trivia night and giving away tons of mini rubber chickens. I am at the brainstorming stage right now. If you would like to be part of this, leave me a comment—or attend one of our events. I am very open to your suggestions. I will give a mini rubber chicken to the first 3 I receive—just tell me where to send them.

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Sandy, aka, @Skalik, is a social media maven. She hails from Oregon, works at Topaz Partners and blogs at Sandying and Tech PR Gems.

1. What’s the number 1 reason you’re on twitter?

Spontaneous, yet meaningful interaction. 

2. Where do you go to find inspiration?

Google, Wikipedia—research is where it all begins.

3. How do you use Facebook?

Mostly to keep in touch with my friends from college and high school that are now all over the country.  What keeps me coming back to Facebook? Scrabulous.

3. Tell me about your dream project:

My dream project would allow me to roll all of my interests into one—perhaps a social media optimized museum exhibit or research into online culture, searching for trends in human existence and understanding from ancient societies to now?

4. What phrase or expression are you tired of hearing?

“Do you have the bandwidth to do X, Y and Z?”

“We can Leverage T and K capabilities…”

Enterprise—this word does little for me but conjure up images of Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

5. Favorite people to follow on Twitter?

@dough –social media guru and colleague at Topaz

@scottpboston –makes me laugh

@jvettorino –proof that you can develop a friendship with someone you’ve never met in person

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I attended to the Social Media Breakfast today in Boston. My favorite part of the breakfast was tagging people who attended. Here’s how it worked: Everyone received little sticky pieces of paper when they signed in. On the sticky paper, you wrote a descriptive word or phrase, a tag, and you affix it to people you meet.
I was tagged with: “making connections”, “blog group”, and “pr guru”. And I tagged other people “firefly”, “chipper”, “video maven”, and “blog group”. Tagging is naming, and there is power in naming as there is power in language. I like what Franz Fanon says,”I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.”

The act of tagging at Social Media Breakfast both defined relationships and people. The power to name is the power to give meaning.

And that was better than the eggs and sausage..

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Take a minute to check out Modernista’s, a Boston agency, website.  I don’t want to give away the surprise. It’s a bold move, and I wonder what will happen if the eyes of the web shine differently on Modernista then they currently do. Specially, if Modernista receives negative online feedback will this change their strategy…

Risky but cool.

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This is one of those blog posts where I am going to confess something to you. Something a little geeky, but nevertheless, something I love. It’s actually a moment, and for me it’s a moment of bliss. You may think I’m over stating this, and you might be accurate. But the moment I love each month happens when I’m working on a project for a client and an idea strikes me, often late at night. I’ll email the client and get a response back instantly at 11:20 pm. The client then adds to the idea. For the next twenty or thirty minutes we back and forth, as if we’re dancing. I don’t really care what time it is at that point. I feel completely, totally in synch with the client, the project, the idea. And that’s pretty blissful.

What’s interesting about this is how it actually brings you closer to people you work with-people who share that ability to step inside of an idea and become completely immersed by the world it presents.

What I love about what I do is the ability to step inside the world of ideas and then step back out to execute them.

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I want the efficiency of online media buying to apply to the offline media buying I am placing for clients. In my dream there is a website that I login into, it’s called, “hyper-local Boston sponsorship opportunities.” There are no sales people in this dream.

I enter some criteria into the site. Like the neighborhoods I want to place my sponsorship dollars in and the type of impact I want to make. For example: 1. Help schools 2. Sponsor a local charity 3. Sponsor a little league 4. Name a dog rescue after my client’s company. You get the drift.

There would be a tool on the site to help me measure the impact sponsorship. The tool might measure things like: local impact; goodwill; visibility; etc.

Then, either I would bid on the sponsorship against other advertisers, or I will pay a flat rate for it. After I won the sponsorship, the people I sponsored /organization would have a set of responsibilities on which my payment to them would be contingent.

They would send pictures and updates about the sponsorship through the online tool. I could use these updates in reports to my clients.

This could be a total win-win. Good causes could enter into the marketplace, fill out a form and be found by the right sponsors. And swamped media planners could quickly look through 100s of totally local ideas to find good fits for their clients.

If the site exists, I’m ready to sponsor it. 

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So I bought the book. The Age of Conversation. I bought the book because I admired its marketing efforts and all the proceeds from today’s purchase go to charity. Crowdsourcing is the equivalent of the social media community winking at each other. And when the wink is for charity, I’m game.

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Rohit Bhargava is one of my favorite bloggers for two reasons. 1. His blog, Influential Marketing, is useful. I have actually printed off several of his blog posts for clients. 2. While he is an A list blogger, and soon to be NY Times best seller, he is completely down to earth. We met at SXSW and talked shop. There are no pretensions there.

I am excited to read his new book, Personality Not Included. This interview is about his book and his social media expertise. Make sure you check out all the interviews, and if you like this one, I would appreciate your vote.

1. What industries typically have personalities that are easiest to market in social media?

I’m not sure that there are industries that stand out as having an easier time developing a personality. I did note while I was writing the book that I tended to find lots of examples from industries that have a very direct customer service function (ie - retail, travel, etc.) so one way to answer this could be that more customer facing companies have an easier time with this … however cable TV and airlines tend to be two of the worst industries so this classification doesn’t really work. Ok, final answer - I’m going with “it’s tough to relate ease of use in social media to industries” because it does vary. Sorry about the non-answer, I hate giving those.

2. 2. If the global business community adopted the practices you recommended in your book as gospel, what business behaviors would you like to see change?

I think the biggest change would be the removal of what I have called in the book the “employee silencing policy.” Keeping employees quiet as opposed to engaged in talking about a brand is a bad idea because it represents a great missed opportunity.

3. 3. Is personality a culturally specific thing—will these ideas work as well in Tokyo as they will in Detroit?

I think the way that it manifests itself will certainly be different from Detroit to Tokyo, but the idea of letting people in so they can connect with your brand is a very universal idea because it is based on the human principle of knowledge. The more we know, the more affinity we can potentially have with something. I see that as a very basic core concept that is global in scope.

4. 4. What book of literature has inspired you the most?

Good question. I used to be a big fan of Shakespeare because of the mastery of language you would find within. And one of my favourite author/playwrights is Steve Martin because of how he captures human dialogue. In terms of business books - I do admire Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki for their writing styles and I think some of the most readable business books come from the word of mouth experts like Andy Sernovitz, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell and Emanuel Rosen. And I’m a big fan of the large body of work from Al Ries and Laura Ries too.

5. 5. What aspect of this book has been the most challenging for you to concisely explain?

Why there are chickens on the cover! Just kidding, actually the book itself is heavily based on stories and the concepts are pretty straightforward so its not a complicated book. I realized early on, though, that the real trick with promoting this book is to get people to understand and believe that personality matters in their business. For that reason, my entire marketing campaign for the book has the tagline of personality matters. It is what I am calling the book blog which I will launch this week, and it’s also what I will likely talk about in many interviews. My thinking is, if you believe that personality matters for your business … my book is the first and only guide on how to do that. Hopefully it works!

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I took the picture on the tape in Colombia a few months ago and hopefully will return there soon.

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I have a dream.

We build a learning experience using history and social networks.
Here’s an example of how it might work with a class of juniors in high school studying WWII:

Each student is matched with a senior citizen.
They survey this mentor, get a copy of a picture from when they were young.
They use the information to build a Facebook page as if the year where 1942.
Their profile, interests, music, friends, groups, wishes and concerns all have to be era appropriate responses.

They partner with their mentor on building the page.
The class creates era appropriate Facebook groups.  
For example, one group might be the “send guns not sons,” group.

Then the simulation would begin.
Everyone in the class would be connected to one another.
The newsfeed would break stories that assigned students would update.
Students and their mentors would react to the stories personally together on their blogs.
Soldiers would update their photo slideshows.Friends would leave comments on each other’s page. Students could update their status via Twitter.

The only rule is that the year is 1942 and you have to be true to your character at all times. I could see this as an awesome partnership between senior citizens on the content side and students who were familiar with social networks.

So the idea needs some development.
What do you think?
Add to it.

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Goodbye Poet4dylan.

Do we ever say goodbye to our old online identities when we grow into new ones?
It’s funny how we discover the online identities of our friends and co-workers.
It  happened recently when I was sending a document to a client whose servers went down.

“Ok, ok, send it to my personal email, but don’t laugh.”

Her personal email was something like, pinkprincess15@aol.com, and she was in her mid-twenties. I laughed and did not comment. But I wanted to hear the story behind pinkprincess15.

Goodbye Poet4Dylan.

That was my online identity, formed when the movie Dangerous Minds came out, and the poets Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan where compared. It was my first screen name on American Online 1.0, my first chat room and the early and strange experiences of going to school having in person conversations at day and by night having online conversations that were very different with the same folks.

Goodbye Poet4dylan.

Do we have an online memory? Can this be a part of who we are—a vivid as trips to Disneyland and Grandma’s house, as distinct as Little League and first steps. I think so.

Hello Quiver&Quill.

Along these lines, I read a blog post that you might enjoy. It’s almost a literary account of what Chelsea, from Chelsea Talks Smack, misses. Give it a read.

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