Has anyone had the privilege displeasure of using an antique water hand pump?

To start the water flowing, you must first ‘prime the pump’.  You need to ‘put something in before you can get anything out’. 

Based on the laws of physics you must create suction.  It can take a considerable amount of effort initially to begin the flow of water. But the payoff is that once the water is flowing it only takes a gentle pumping motion to keep the water flowing.

9 INCH AXIOM – User Generated Content

“In order to get something going with user generated content, you must first put effort in to prime the pump”

Case Study: ‘TASTE THE MADNESS’

This past year Coke Zero encouraged fans to upload “their most animated and fanatical videos and photos” supporting their favorite NCAA college basketball team.  The contest was called ‘Taste the Madness’.  Over 1,000 videos were uploaded during the short contest period.  How did they drive such a high number?  

The answer lies in the grassroots outreach they did in preparation for launching the contest. According to Mediapost:

The brand is promoting awareness of the contest and the site by having a group of students known as school spirit leaders whose teams are in the NCAA post their own videos and photos on tastethemadness.com.  The first two vignettes in the series featured Duke University’s “Cameron Crazies” and the University of Kansas’ “Rock Chalk, Jayhawk” chant.

Credit to the folks at Coke Zero and their agencies on leveraging the NCAA sponsorship and building a strong integrated platform.  They understood the importance of ‘priming the pump’.

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra) – A video and some trivia

A video on ‘priming the pump’ of life from the legendary motivational speaker Zig Ziglar

Some trivia on Zig Ziglar – what is Zig’s real first name?  The answer is in the first comment.

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‘Word of mouth has the ability to go from one to one to being exponential by embracing the internet or ‘word of mouse’

[Image adapted from an original image by Karen Rustad]

To take some political license with a famous quote from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ …

“One Click to Connect Them All”

Here is a great story involving Universal Studios and the launch of a new theme park courtesy of David Meerman Scott:

Cindy Gordon, the VP of New Media and Marketing Partnerships at Universal, was charged with launching the new ‘Wizarding World of Harry Potter’ Theme Park.  Gordon was given access to an immense budget, after all this was momentous undertaking by Universal.  How did Cindy spread the world?  Was there a 7 figure ad buy?  A huge press conference and media event?  Nope – she told just 7 people.  She conducted a secret midnight webcast with 7 of the top Harry Potter bloggers.  Those 7 bloggers posted about the new theme park which then created a ripple effect.  Mainstream media picked up on the story and the news spread like wildfire.  Within 24 hours over 350 million people were alerted to the news.  

The Harry Potter example (which by the way happened exactly two years ago to the minute) and its success was possible via ‘word of mouse’.  The ability for standard ‘word of mouth’ to travel at lightning speed electronically.

Let’s look at what I call the Triple A’s of ‘Word of Mouse’:

1. Alert – The internet has the ability to communicate ‘instantaneously’.  Twitter is a great tool for immediate updates or the sharing of news and images whether its a plane going down in the Hudson River or an NBA player tweeting from the locker room at half time.

2. Amplifiy – Call it the Susan Boyle effect, but tools like YouTube allow for tens of millions of people to click on a link and absorb information in a short period.  

3. Archive – The web creates a ‘long tail’ whereby information remains readily accessible. Monitoring those conversations and managing your online reputation is vital.

Conclusion:  Embrace the power of ‘Word of Mouse’.  Create and share content that is both sticky (interesting and relevant) and easy to spread.

 Today’s Lagniappe  (a little something extra)  - A couple of interesting etymologies:

According to WordSpy, here is the earliest citation for ‘word of mouse’:

You really need to look beyond the mice to decide which product is best for you. And although we sometimes like to feel that we’re the last word on the subject, we encourage you to check out other sources of information about the products you’re interested in; seek out word of mouth to complement word of mouse.
—Jon Zilber, “Of mice and menaces,” MacUser, January, 1991

Chris Anderson originated the idea/concept of the ‘Long Tail’

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‘God gave us two ears and one mouth.  Social media allows brands to tap into the conversation.  Before jumping in it’s important to first listen with both ears.’

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on developing an Advanced Social Media strategy. One of companies represented was Graco.  Graco is a leading manufacturer of baby products. Graco mentioned that they enlisted Converseon to assist with developing their social media strategy.  The first thing Converseon did was to listen via a proprietary tool called the Conversation Miner.  It jogged my memory of a graphic I had seen in a presentation last year from Converseon’s Rob Key:

[Graphic modified from Converseon's website.  I added the 'real' iceberg and some comments]

I can remember being blown away when I saw the iceberg graphic.  It broke down the types of online content into 3 buckets and segmented them by the degree they can be controlled.  It further referenced the power of search as a determining factor with regard to what becomes visible.  

Iceberg . . . Dead Ahead.  90% of an iceberg is unseen below the waterline.  This is what you need to tap into when setting up your listening post.

 Today’s Lagniappe  (a little something extra) -  A piece of trivia and a great link:

Trivia – The most infamous ship in the White Star Line was the Titanic.  The Titanic had two sister ships.  What were their names?

Link – Here is a great list of social media listening tools compiled by Clay McDaniel on the MarketingProfs site.

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Answer to the Trivia question:  Titanic’s sister ships were the Olympic and the Brittanic (originally named the Gigantic).  Here is the backstory.

Here is a further definition from Brian:

I define the statusphere as the new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content that reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of movement and response. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process.

Brilliant catchphrase by Brian.  In my humble opinion I believe the ‘statusphere’ isn’t a fad.  Twitter and the update options on other social networking sites are here to stay.  Figure how to leverage them to your benefit.  

Today’s Lagniappe  (a little something extra) – I had an opportunity to catch up briefly with Brian.  He could not have been nicer.  Brian is at the forefront of social media and in particular how it can be leveraged in Public Relations.  His blog is a must read at PR 2.0 and he just released a book called Putting the Public Back into Public Relations.

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33 posts.  I’ve settled into a Sunday / Wednesday routine.  It generally takes me between 3-5 hours to write a post.  So far I’ve put forth 25 axioms.  Axioms are self evident propositions and they serve as the basis for my posts.  

64 comments.  Not bad, but I really hoped my posts would elicit more feedback and ultimately conversation.  I’ve learned that 95% of folks are lurkers in the sense they look, but are reluctant to write. My hope going forward is to do a better job of engaging the 5%.

70 subscribers (60 e-mail, 10 RSS).  I use a service called Feedburner.  It mails new posts to my e-mail subscribers only on the days I post.  About 10 people access the blog via RSS (really simple syndication).  If your not familiar with RSS, it’s a great tool for blogs and news content via a reader.  Here is a tutorial on how to use it.  

3616 page views.  The new math tells me that averages to roughly 36 per day.   It’s been trending upward each month.  My biggest hit so far was my launch day with 152 hits.  Weekends are light and the busiest days tend to be Tuesday and Thursday.

So – why do I blog?  It comes down to 3 main reasons:

1.  Walk the talk – Marketing is transforming and we are in the midst of a sea of change.  You can’t be half pregnant.  If you are going to preach, you better practice.  If you are going to educate, then you need to be informed.

2. Thought leader – I want to be seen as credible and forward thinking when it comes to a sensory approach to integrated marketing communications.  Writing the blog challenges me to research and develop my thinking.  My hope is that it will lead to further speaking and writing opportunities.  Need a speaker?

3.  Visibility – My main role at Synergy is in business development.  My hope is two-fold in that I’d like to stay top of mind with our current clients and ideally generate new leads for the agency.

Issue:  Should you or your company be blogging?

Blogging is not for everyone.  But within the realm of social media, the ability to create strong content via a blog is an invaluable tool.

Here is an excerpt from a great post by Newt Barrett of the blog ‘Content Marketing Today’: 6 reasons  your blog must be the core of your social media strategy:

1. To have meaningful social media impact, you must provide a critical mass of content that will position you and your organization as thought leaders within your market niche. Nothing works better than a blog to achieve that objective.  Over time, your blog will contain an increasingly rich and relevant reservoir of information that serves as a Google magnet.  Thus, you will become more and more findable by those customers you need to attract.
2. You can provide an unlimited amount of vital information in a single location. Because Web visitors are desperately seeking answers to their most pressing questions, you have the opportunity to provide just the right answers for your ideal target customers. The best blogs can provide the vast majority of targeted information that there ideal visitors require in their search for solutions.
3. Content aside, the structure of a blog enables you to organize your information almost effortlessly to the benefit of your visitors. By defining the most important areas of information that you will cover and translating them into ‘categories,’ you enable your visitors to find exactly what they want with minimal effort.
4. Unlike other social media tools, such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, your blog is open to the entire world.  This enables you to achieve potentially infinite reach for your critical mass of content.  Although you may request visitors to register and offer them enticements such as a free e-book or eNewsletter, they don’t have to join a special club to benefit from your information.
5. You can be both timely and comprehensive.  Although Twitter couldn’t be more timely, the information, opinions, and advice you tweet can never be comprehensive.  Your blog can be just as timely as Twitter because you can post information instantaneously.  But you can also make each post as comprehensive as necessary and integrate that post with lots of other relevant information on your blog.
6. Your blog posts, far from being isolated from other great tools such as Facebook and Twitter, can be automatically pulled into each one.  Thus, those two powerhouses can enhance your online presence every time you post an article on your blog.  That’s three for the price of one.  Not bad.

The bottom line: Start your blog today.  It’s that important.

(Click here for the full post)

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra) – A true story and some trivia:

Story – The concept of the ‘First 100 Days’ dates back to FDR’s first term in 1933.  Roosevelt passed 15 large pieces of legislation through Congress in a swift and unprecedented fashion.  All subsequent Presidents have been graded (probably unfairly) on this 100 day standard.  One of our earlier Presidents would have struggled in this department.  William Henry Harrison contracted pneumonia during his inauguration.  His presidency lasted for just about a month before he succumbed to his illness.  

Trivia – There are 8 of our Presidents that have last names which are one syllable.  Can you name all 8?  For extra points . . . only one of the 50 states is one syllable?  Which one?

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‘IF you can appeal to logic and emotion and treat them equally the same’

They say (whoever ‘they’ are) that “IF” is the middle word of LIFE.  IF is also by far my favorite poem. Written by ‘Joseph’ Rudyard Kipling in 1895 in it remains something I reread from time to time.  Average ‘Joe’ Kipling won the Nobel Prize in 1907.  If (no pun intended) you are not familiar with the poem, click here for a recital by Dennis Hopper.  It was my inspiration for the following 2 minute video to officially launch the 9 INCH MARKETING blog.  Click on the book below:

Be interested to hear your comments on the video.  

Today’s Lagniappe:  Kipling is also the author of a short story that was adapted for the screen. If you have never checked out ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ put it on your Netflix.  It is set in India and stars Sean Connery & Michael Caine.  Pure genius.

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‘The brain is only the starting point . . .  engage and win the battle for the heart’

Fact: The average distance between the brain and the heart is 9 inches . . . or roughly 23 centimeters (for the 98% of countries who use the metric system). 

In marketing these 9 inches represent the long and arduous journey from the mind to the heart of the consumer.   Make no mistake, brands who only compete for awareness and share of mind are in for a rude awakening in today’s landscape.  The brain is the starting point.  Today’s consumer wants to be engaged on their own level and on their own terms.  You need to win the battle for their heart.  You need to be relevant and you need to make a meaningful impact.  You need to engage all of their senses. 

Conclusion:  In order to survive today’s marketer will need to take an integrated approach to connecting with their target consumer. 

This blog aims to explore how brands begin to bridge the gap between traditional and social media. It will examine the battle between the right (passion /emotion) and the left side (logic / reason) of the brain.   

Bonus Plan:  In order to try to keep my posts interesting I’ve decided to add a bonus section called Lagniappe.  The plan is for a potpourri of entertaining trivia, stories, jokes, tricks, riddles and quotes.

Today’s Lagniappe – Since we’re on the subject of 9′s I thought I provide some background for the popular saying, “The Whole Nine Yards”.  We’ve all said it many times and the exact origin of the phrase is open to debate.  My favorite version dates back to World War II. 

The whole nine yards refers to the length of one ammunition belt from a belly-gunner’s machine gun. When a target was overly resilient and the gunner was forced to expend all his ammunition to bring it down, it was said to have taken the “whole nine yards.”

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