The Blogospher seminar was profiled today in the Dayton Daily News. The seminar teaches businesses how to use blog software (or content management system software) to manage content on their site and optimize it for search. One of the reasons this site has seen it’s average monthly unique visitor-ship rise over 800% is the use of WordPress to manage this part of the site.
It’s coming- and if you are a middleman in the content delivery system, watch out. To define middlemen: record labels, movie studios, television networks (cable, broadcast, pay-per-view)- the people who come between the content producers - and their audience. The only people who will still be able to profit from this are the quality aggregator distributors like the Apple iTunes store, Amazon and probably Google (who may or may not - own the online world in the near distant future).
Read the link above- to find out how an unknown, small time singer, gave a concert to 70,000 people from her basement. Even if this was a set-up by a label, there are enough nerdy music geeks out there that can figure out how to do this on their own.
Sandi Thom now has a number one UK single- just recently the hip-hop band Gnarls Brakley have a UK number 1 hit purely from downloads.
Music is driven by word-of-mouth and the preferences of the “early adopters/ innovators”- more so than other product or service categories. If you are trying to build a brand quickly- using good webstrategy can get you to the top quicker than conventional media. If you don’t believe it, go ask Sandi Thom.
Advertising you don’t have to pay for is like warm cookies and cold milk before bed, getting a puppy on your birthday, or winning the lottery on the only ticket you ever bought. Well, maybe you bought a bunch of tickets and won the lottery.
It’s been said that the most powerful word in advertising is “Free”- and if you look at the stats for Jud Laipply’s “Evolution of Dance” video on You Tube- you’ll see how powerful even a low quality video can be.
In advertising, marketing, public relations (PR) the idea is to get your message out in front of your audience in the most cost effective way possible- and the Internet is certainly making that possible. Here is a six-minute, single camera production with over 22,623,270 views. It’s got 5191 comments and has been favorited 41210 times (as of 11 June 2006) – all at a minimal cost.
For an unknown motivational speaker, this bit of brilliant marketing has changed his world- opening doors to appearances on national TV morning shows and speaking engagements as well as his own line of merchandise.
Compare the costs of this video to the Burger King Manthem spot- and you quickly see who gets more bang for their buck. However, for all his genius, Jud is getting away with something no ad agency or major corporation can do- he’s using some of the best-known music in the world as his background track- without securing rights or paying royalties.
From reading his site, it is clear that Mr. Laipply is acutely aware of the rights issues- and he is not selling his video or providing the mix for people to download and do their own dance.
Our only hope is that this mix starts getting played at every sporting event in America- so sports fans only have to suffer through a small section of the Village People’s YMCA, Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex, the Macarena by Los Del Rio instead of the whole thing at every game.
What do you think?
We’ve said that the big thing with the video iPod wasn’t the fact that you could watch TV on the iPod- but that you could buy a show for $1.99 that you could have got for free the night before.
The critics were quick to say, “who wants to watch video on that tiny screen”- and blew off the video iPod. Well- these glasses answer their complaints- making the video iPod turn into a 27″ TV- and you will look like Geordi LaForge on Star Trek, The Next Generation. Watch your TV- while you work- or drive (and you thought cell phones were bad)- or drop some iPod porn for that virtual enhanced evening. See more about the myvu personal media viewer here.
While on the subject of TV anywhere: This weeks Advertising Age had a huge article on the Slingbox- which takes your TV feed and sends it over the Internet to remote locations- and how the NFL in particular was unhappy about the prospect of Browns fans being able to “blacked out” game. This is what we call the Henry Ford syndrome- or the head in the mud view- because the Slingbox will be totally useless once we start getting all of our programming direct over IP.
Advertisers- who pay the freight for TV, aren’t interested in broadcasting when they can pick and choose directly who sees their commercials- which is what IPTV or the iTunes store, Google video, etc- deliver.
Everyone can get their 15 minutes of fame, thanks to the Internet. Some pastors have managed to do the same with weekly church sign-board messages (7 days without prayer makes one weak, etc.) but Casa D’Ice has taken their owners political pontificating on his sign board and generated a viral campaign that came into my e-mail box this morning.
You may, or may not agree with his messages- but, you might spend more time reading these political rants than you would watching a low budget local TV spot on cable for his restaurant.
I’ve never been to North Versailles PA, but if I did- I might go to look at his sign- or ask what the locals think about his restaurant.
Guerrilla marketing at work.
What do you think of Mr. Bill Balsamico’s marketing campaign?
Our advice would be to alt tag the images- and change the site to have an RSS feed- but, if you’ve read much of our site- and about our Blogosopher seminar- you already would know that.
Please note- this is story about viral marketing- if you want to contact Mr. Balsamico, his e-mail is [email protected]
We offer the list of “Agencies that aren’t The Next Wave” as a public service- since so many ad agencies still don’t know how to build a web site that indexes in search. Even though we don’t think anyone should use an agency that can’t be found in Google even if you have their name, address and phone number - we figure if we lead you to them- maybe you’ll consider using us instead. PDF of flyer
Yet, when we get right down to it- the ad agencies in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton aren’t our competition - the ones in NYC, LA, Portland OR, Miami FL, Chicago etc- are the ones that The Next Wave would prefer to compete with. We believe we can do a better job than 86.7% of the “big city” firms.
So, today- we decided to go guerrilla and hand out a flyer to attendees of the Dayton Ad Club professional develoment seminar - offering to teach our competition how to build a site that will get their customers to find them- instead of us.
We pulled a list of 300 search terms for other agencies off our webstats- amounting to thousands of searches (many different people used the same term to find the other agencies on our site)- and put “IF YOUR AGENCY IS ON THIS LIST- YOU NEED TO TAKE THIS SEMINAR” for our Blogosopher seminar.
The rest of the copy read:
Customers looking for these agencies came to www.thenextwave.biz this year.
If you want to learn how to build a site that search engines love– and that any idiot can maintain– this seminar is well worth your $99. And if you are using any of these agencies for your site– you should come too (to learn what they are doing wrong).
However, if you want potential customers to keep going to The Next Wave site– that’s fine too.
Either way, we’ll take your money.
As usual- the other agency people still don’t know what to make of us- offering to share our “Trade secrets” - but, we’re firm believers that better competition makes us stronger. If you want to know how to get to the top of Google, and sell a ton of stuff by being the coolest kid on the block- we highly recommend you hire us (or at least come to the Blogosopher seminar) but feel free to check our competition too- it just makes us look better.
We offer the list of “