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Influential Interactive Marketing

Reflections on creating compelling marketing, advertising and public relations

The 30 Day Blog Makeover ProjectYesterday

Every blogger has the same list I do. A list of things they want to fix on their blogs, if only they had the time (or technical ability). For me, they range from small things like wanting the titles of my blog posts to be clickable, to bigger things like finally getting a real logo and brand for my blog. So today I'm launching a new experiment. By January 1st, exactly one month from now, I'm planning to relaunch this blog.

Over the next 30 days I'm going to tackle the small things and big things that I have wanted to change on my blog for months (and sometimes even years) since I launched it. More importantly, I'm going to share the results of the project here, in case some of you readers are comtemplating doing the same thing with your blogs, or just interested in seeing how this experiment turns out. 

To start, here are the simple steps that I'll be taking - including a few opportunities for you to participate as well:

Step 1: Launch an open call for design help to develop a new brand identity.
Step 2: Create a survey for readers asking for feedback on what to change.
Step 3: Make a list of desired changes and categorize them high or low priority.
Step 4: Implement all the high priority changes and relaunch

SAJA Covering The Mumbai Tourist Attacks With Social Media TonightNovember 26

My good friend and colleague Sree Sreenivasan sent out a note earlier today to members of SAJA (the South Asian Journalist Association) about a live webcast that SAJA will be hosting with several thought leaders in response to today's tragic terrorist attacks in the heart of Mumbai. If you happen to be near a computer tonight between 10pm and 11:30pm EST (8:30am to 10am India time), please use the following links to listen in on the conversation. The guests on the call include Benjamin Piven, former Fulbright Scholar in Mumbai and Suketu Mehta, author, "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found." Mehta's book, in particular, was a stunning portrait of the city that I remember reading a few years ago and many of the things he talked about have stayed with me (both good and bad).

Regardless the call should not only be an illuminating discussion of the attacks and reactions from India and abroad, but also a significant example of how social media can be used to bring people together in a moment like this to learn and discuss. Combined with looking at the conversations tagged "#mumbai" on Twitter, it's amazing what sort of real time updates you can get. Here are the deta

Underwear Brand Gives Thanks For Great ButtsNovember 26

As much of the US gears up for an abbreviated day of work leading up to the Thanksgiving Weekend, I thought I'd share a great marketing idea from our cousins across the pond that never quite made it to the US. It's for an underwear brand called Sloggi - who decided to launch a Miss Universe style pageant search around the world (in the markets they sell, primarily) for the world's greatest butts called "Show me your Sloggis." Men and women sent in their photos from around the world (in Sloggi brand underwear, of course) and the brand had a vote online in every market.

The winners in each market travelled to Paris last week to compete in the live competition, where they crowned two winners (pictured on the left): a girl from Brazil and a guy from France. It's not the Olympics, but having the best butt surely must inspire some national pride, right? More importantly, it's a great way to get people talking (and blogging) about Sloggi underwear. Here are some more photos from the event:

3 Ways To Give Away Content Online (And Still Make Money)November 24

There was a great billboard that the agency I used to work for in Sydney several years ago had created for the launch of Virgin Mobile in Australia. At the time, the other telcos were starting to charge for every feature, so the billboard promoted Virgin's new offering with the declaration - "Voicemail is like sex, you shouldn't have to pay for it." Today, that joke/truth could be equally applied to how people feel about online content. In the age of peer to peer music sharing and ease of cutting and pasting, getting people to actually pay for content is a tough challenge.

There are, however, three models that I've seen used on various sites that do work. To be clear, I'm not talking about monetizing content. There are lots of ways to fund content creation through selling advertising or capturing profile data for a sales cycle. This post is about getting some to pay directly for content that you're creating. In fact, having this arrangement means that you can be more selective about the advertising you accept, or choose to forego it altogether. So here they are:

1. Partial Access | Full Access. The simplest example of this is music download sites that let you get a 30 second sample of a song, but not the entire thing. I'm using a similar technique to market Personality Not Included by offering several sample excerpts in various spots online. Ess

The Making Of Personality Not IncludedNovember 21

I recently release two things that I have never before put online and wanted to share them with all of you who read my blog on this Friday post.  The first is a presentation on Slideshare that takes you inside the story of how I sold and wrote my book in a visual presentation inspired by some of the work by folks like Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte.  The second is an exclusive link to download the entire Chapter 6 from Personality Not Included, which also has never before been available online.  Hopefully Chapter 6 gives you some nice train reading for your commute home this Friday evening in case you haven't already picked up a copy of PNI, and I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts/feedback on the presentation below. 

*Based on a comment I already have, I'm planning to release another version of this presentation solely focused on what the book is about instead of the "making of" and will likely share that on Sunday before getting back to my regular blogging schedule (which is thankfully unrelated to pushing the book) on Monday.