Nothing excites your community more than a meaningless promotion

As I posted about last week I recently joined MySpace, and added several musical artists as friends. One feature I do like is that when you add a user as a 'friend', they have the ability to send you bulletins. For musical artists, this normally means they will post bulletins alerting you to their upcoming media appearances, or perhaps a new promotion they are running.

Last Friday, the following bulletin arrived on my page from Jewel:

From: JEWEL
Date: May 12, 2006 1:53 PM

We are giving away 8 GOODBYE ALICE IN WONDERLAND Jewel posters to 8 lucky fans! To enter, Put Jewel in your Top 8 and send a message to her myspace inbox by 12 PM EST on Monday! Please put 'JEWEL POSTER' as the subject along with your name and COMPLETE mailing address. One winner will be selected by random from all eligible entries at 12 PM EST Monday! A few lucky winners will also get to be featured in her top 8!

Feeling totally uninspired by this 'promotion', I fired off the following reply:

To whoever is reading these from Jewel's camp:

Instead of offering $2 posters(eight!), why not give away 100 copies of GAIW to 100 bloggers? And as an added bonus, when those CDs arrive to those 100 bloggers, have them all be SIGNED and INSCRIBED to the person.

How much positive publicity to you think that move would get Jewel and GAIW in the blogosphere? A ton and a half.

How much positive publicity do you think giving away 8 $2 posters is going to get Jewel? Most if not ALL of the people that will go to the trouble to apply for the poster, already have Jewel in their Top 8 anyway.

Which move, giving away 100 signed copies of GAIW to 100 bloggers, or giving away 8 $2 posters on MySpace, is going to generate more publicity for Jewel and GAIW...and ultimately more sales of GAIW?

We both know which will cost more, giving away 100 CDs. It will also require Jewel to set aside 10 mins or so to sign them.

But it, unlike giving away 8 posters, will lead to sales.

Isn't that the name of the marketing game here?

Everyone will be SHOCKED to note that my above email still sits in Jewel's box 6 days later, unread.

Trust can remove the need for marketing

If ever there was an example of why you need to read a blog's comments, check out this gem I found on HorsePigCow in reply to one of Tara's posts:

J. Botter said...

I constantly get messages and calls from other bands, wondering how we've been able to successfully "market" the band to a huge audience, score 3,000 downloads of our new EP, and have a MySpace audience that ranges all ages across the entire world.

The truth is, we're not marketing. When we first started doing this thing and were making decisions about how we wanted to get our music out there, I knew that we wanted to use alternative distribution methods. Yes, we want to get a record deal, but the record deal is not the be-all-end-all for us.

Instead of "marketing" to "fans", we just stayed in contact and tried to turn each listener into a friend, a friend that could then join our little community and give us feedback on our music. We created a band policy to personally respond to each email and MySpace message that is sent to us, no matter how many we recieve per day and no matter how childish the message may be. My view is that if we listen to the community, then we can better understand what our community as a whole likes to hear, what they like to see, and then we can tailor ourselves to that a little bit. It's not about creating more fans or holding market shares; it's about a love of music and a connection via that love of music with people who will support you no matter what the cost.

We started doing the community thing about six months ago, and the "results" have been fabulous. We've yet to play a single show under our new band name and haven't played a show together at all in almost five years, but we're still on the top ten of unsigned artists every single day on MySpace. I truly believe it's because we've applied these Pinko techniques that you talk about so much; the band is living proof that creating a community is so much better than treating people like you're above them just because you play in a band that they happen to enjoy.

Almost by default, musicians are members of the same community that their music is sold to. And as Jeremy says above, it's about sharing a love and passion for the same music. Practically every artist and their fans have this bond.

Think of how rare this connection is in other businesses. How many companies can you think of that have customers that are as devoted to their products as the company itself is? Apple with the iPod comes to mind, maybe Harley Davidson, but the examples are few and far between.

This is why music marketing has always intrigued me, because really there is a totally different dynamic at work than with 'conventional' marketing in a 'conventional' marketplace. Musicians being in the same community with their fans changes everything. Both parties share a passion for the artist's music. A connection is made and trust is developed. Trust greatly lessens and can even eliminate the need for marketing. Trust happens in a place where there is communication, which leads to understanding. That place is the community.

But first you have to create that community. Jeremy and his band are well on their way to doing this, and as you can see above, the community is embracing what they are building.

Jeremy's band is called The Favorites, and here's their MySpace page. You can download their entire debut CD for free between now and June 1, there's info on how to do this at their website.

Pic via MetLinkMelbourne

The Viral Garden's Top 25 Marketing blogs - Week 4

Here's the standings for Week 4, and these will be updated again next Monday.

1 - Seth's Blog - 9,653 (LW - 1)(+502)
2 - Guy Kawasaki - 12,475 (LW - 2)(+573)
3 - Creating Passionate Users - 17,396 (LW - 3)(+1,049)
4 - Gaping Void - 18,295 (LW - 4)(+261)
5 - Duct Tape Marketing - 18,987 (LW - 5)(-330)
6 - Marketing Shift - 47,215 (LW - 6)(+165)
7 - HorsePigCow - 51,509 (LW - 7)(+401)
8 - What's Next - 88,221 (LW - 9)(+2,059)
9 - Church of the Customer - 88,895 (LW - 8)(+261)
10 - Coolzor - 91,107 (LW - 11)(+1,550)
11 - Brand Autopsy - 91,896 (LW - 10)(-1,293)
12 - Emergence Marketing - 113,007 (LW - 12)(+433)
13 - Jaffe Juice - 133,732 (LW - 13)(+2,162)
14 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 134,743 (LW - 14)(+2,290)
15 - Marketing Roadmaps - 143,557 (LW - 15)(+1,009)
16 - Diva Marketing - 155,259 (LW - 16)(+8,951)
17 - Marketing Headhunter - 189,522 (LW - 18)(+7,687)
18 - What's Your Brand Mantra - 190,948 (LW - 17)(-4,859)
19 - The Viral Garden - 219,611 (LW - 24)(+32,888)
20 - Marketing Begins At Home - 224,700 (LW - 21)(+16,980)
21 - Jack Yan - 238,580 (LW - 19)(-24,305)
22 - Pro Hip-Hip - Hip-Hop Marketing - 252,441 (LW- 23)(+2,199)
23 - Johnnie Moore's Weblog - 256,588 (LW - 20)(-14,908)
24 - B2Blog - 259,379 (LW - 22)(-16,642)
25 - FutureLab's Blog - 279,428 (LW - UR)


Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users had another strong week, will be interesting to see if she can pull away from Gaping Void and Duct Tape Marketing, or if John and Hugh can keep the pace. Coolzor has been quietly moving up, and this week cracks the Top 10. Diva Marketing had a nice rebound week, and Marketing Headhunter has another big move. The Viral Garden has the week's biggest jump, and FutureLab's Blog is the week's new entry at #25. The 'Hard Luck' award has to go to Michelle Miller's WonderBranding blog, which was #26 for the 2nd week in a row.

And a shameless plug for my new gig at MarketingProfs, writers from 5 of the Top 25 Marketing blogs are now writing for Daily Fix, so it must be good stuff ;)

Template tinkering

I'm still playing around with the layout of the Garden, as you can see. If you haven't noticed, I've added an 'Email me' link on the sidebar to the right. If you need to get in touch with me, just click there and fire off an email to me.

Also, I added a 'Marketing With the Community By Joining Them' section as well. This is a 4-part series of posts that I wrote during the week before the blog actually went 'live', at the end of March. At the time, my thinking was get plenty of content up on the blog before I 'announced' it on BMA, so that everyone would come flooding over here from the link at BMA. Well that didn't happen, and as a result, most readers likely missed what is probably some of the best stuff I've written here so far (I think). So I made a special section with all 4 parts right there for you nice and neat ;)

That's it for now. I will continue tinkering, I'm going to get up a section for the Top 25 list, with each weeks' post there, and once I get that squared away, I will add each new week's poll there. If you have any other suggestions for how I could change the format, let me know.

If you don't want to join the community....

...for the love of Tuesday don't piss-off the community!

Jason says that Joystiq, the wildly popular video-game blog/website, was BANNED by Konami at their E3 press conference, because Joystiq posted some pre-show pictures, and refused to take them down.

Love these quotes from Jason:

These simple minded PR idiots had better get their houses in order. You can't tell our bloggers what to do--I can't even tell them what to do!

My best advice: Be honest and fair with our bloggers because they are always honest and fair with you. This heavy-handed banning of bloggers makes you look like idiots. Bloggers are you customers... everyone who works at Joystiq is huge video game fan--they're not there as journalists, they are at e3 because they love gaming.

Want the punchline? Since we're all getting hip to the Alexa rankings....

www.konami.com - 34408
www.joystiq.com - 4464

That's right! An industry website, run by video-game fans and FOR video-game fans, that gets TEN TIMES Konami's traffic, tried to attend their PC and got thrown out.

Amazing how companies will spend boatloads of money on advertising and marketing their products, and one PR blunder like this flushes it all down the drain.

Gonna be in Vancouver next Thurs?

Crap, crap, crap...

MARKETING IN MUSIC - A Nettwerk Speakers Series
Thursday May 18th 6-8pm
F-R-E-E!!

The SYNC @ Nettwerk Music Group
1648 West 2nd Ave Vancouver
http://www.nettwerk.com/sync

RSVP to syncseries@nettwerk.com

Join us for the third installment in our educational speakers series, this time focusing on Marketing In Music. Be involved as Nettwerk professionals discuss:

* developing media plans
* considerations when marketing your music
* digital delivery of music
* finding money to market yourself

Panelists (bios can be found @ nettwerk.com/sync)
Erin Kinghorn
Richard Adams
Chantal Olsson
Carter Marshall
Craig Horton (Moderator)

Wish I could go, Jordan or Ryan, one or both of you definitely need to live-blog this ;) If you go, tell Erin they need to do the next one in their Nashville office.

Barely in the game and already causing a stink

Seems like my first post on Marketing Profs: Daily Fix, is already causing a stir. My post was about how marketers need to learn to join the community they are targetting, and I used Phil Angelides creating a MySpace page to aid in his quest to be elected governor of California as my example. I offered that Angelides joining MySpace was a great move, because he is now connecting to the young voters of his state in THEIR space. He's joined their community, and as a result they are responding very positively, at least if you read the comments from his 1200+ friends.

But....it seems not everyone is buying what I am selling. Which is great, because I *love* it when people smarter than I am challenge me to re-think and justify my opinions. ( A lesson Tara found out the hard way after I left a few 5-page comments on HorsePigCow ;))

Since we have some new, and veteran MySpacers here, thought JD, Jordan, and Chris might want to stop by and put in your 2 cents here.

Marketing bloggers care more than advertising bloggers?

I thought this was interesting: As everyone knows, I've been doing the Top 25 Marketing blogs list here for 3 weeks, but I've also been doing a Top 25 Advertising blogs list for BMA during those same 3 weeks.

Last night TVG had a visitor that found this blog by doing a Google search for 'Top 25 marketing blogs'. Of course that simply blew my mind, so I decided to Google 'Top 25 blogs'. Here's the results, as you can see, the first Top 25 marketing blogs list I did last month is the #4 result.

But the list I did of advertising blogs for BMA was no where to be found. I stopped looking when I reached page 15 of the search results and still hadn't seen it.(Did see several links to the Top 25 Marketing Blogs list from other blogs, thanks guys!).

Again, when I decided to do the lists, they were really just a fun thing for me to do every week. I was hoping a couple of the bloggers that I linked to would check TVG and BMA out from the list, but really they were done for my benefit. Of course I had no idea they would be so popular here. But the fact that they are popular here, but almost go unnoticed at BMA, a blog that currently gets 10X the traffic TVG does, is perplexing. So far the 3 Top 25 lists I have done for BMA have garnered a combined 4 comments (2 from me), while here the 3 Top 25 lists have so far gotten a combined 27 comments.

Very odd. Anyone have a possible explanation?

And then there were 3...

If you'll check the sidebar, you'll see I've added a new section 'Other Places You Can Find Me'. I've added BMA, my MySpace page, and my newest home, MarketingProfs: Daily Fix. I'm pretty sure that everyone here is familiar with the MarketingProfs website, well recently they added a blog. The contributor list reads like a who's who of top marketers and business minds. Ann Handley, Seth Godin, Eric Kintz, Tom Peters, Harry Joiner, Tig Tillinghast, every one of them are TRUE A-Listers.

So when Ann offered me the chance to join this illustrious group, I accepted immediately before she could change her mind ;) You can view my first post here.

To say I am honored somehow doesn't cover it.

Thanks again to Ann for this opportunity. Please add Daily Fix to your daily reads, if you haven't already!

Alexa, the Top 25, and what the hell's the deal anyway?

This is what happens when you assume. A big reason why I wanted to do the Top 25 ranking for Marketing blogs here (and Advertising blogs at BMA), is because I assumed that most bloggers were familiar with Alexa, and their traffic rankings according to Alexa.

Seems that's not the case.

So for anyone that I have tee-totally confused with this Top 25 rankings, let me back up and give a poor-man's primer on how Alexa determines your traffic-ranking.

First, Alexa uses your 'actual traffic', as well as your page views in some secret formula to determine your traffic ranking. This is different, and IMO more accurate, than link aggregators such as Technorati, because it does attempt to measure actual traffic. All Technorati does is count links, and anyone can pass around links.

Now for the 'bad' news. Alexa only tracks the traffic of your blog's visitors that have the 'Alexa toolbar' installed, and this toolbar only works currently with Internet Explorer. So if someone visits your blog and doesn't have the toolbar, then they aren't counted. Likewise, if you add the toolbar, every visit you make to every blog/website is now counted.

Disclaimer: I do have the Alexa Toolbar installed on IE, but I use Firefox for my browsing. I do use the toolbar when I want to see what a blog's Alexa rankings are, because it instantly gives you that ranking when you visit the site. The Firefox extension I have that gives the Alexa ranking sometimes lags.

So in the end, Alexa isn't perfect, but I do think it's more reliable than Technorati. If there's something else you don't understand about Alexa, leave a comment here.

Another MySpace confessional

Jordan and Chris coming forward to admit their MySpace pages has given me the courage to do the same. Actually I created a page a couple of months ago, but never really did anything with it till this weekend.

I was busy tinkering with it, and remembering the Women of Rock: MySpace Smackdown! post I did, I decided to send friend requests to The Donnas, Sarah McLachlan, Alanis, Jewel, Avril, and Tori Amos to see how quickly they would respond.

The Donnas easily won the Smackdown for best MySpace page, and they were the winners here, they answered my request and added me in less than 30 minutes(the first time I checked was 30 mins after sending the requests, and The Donnas had already added me). Sarah added me 30 mins later, Avril added me after about 6 hours, and Jewel did so after about 9 hours. Alanis has apparently closed her page, making Tori, who I am still waiting on, the default last-place finisher.

The Viral Garden's Top 25 Marketing blogs - Week 3

Another week, another update! Alexa co-operated this week and actually updated everyone's rankings, so we'll get a much better sense of how the blogs are moving. The 'LW' in parentheses refers to the blog's ranking in Last Week's Top 25, and in the parentheses after that, the number refers to how many spots up or down the blog moved in Alexa's rankings.

So here's the standings for Week 3, and these will be updated again next Monday.

1 - Seth's Blog - 10,155 (LW - 1)(+863)
2 - Guy Kawasaki - 13,048 (LW - 2)(+1,745)
3 - Creating Passionate Users - 18,445 (LW - 5)(+3,642)
4 - Gaping Void - 18,556 (LW - 3)(-497)
5 - Duct Tape Marketing - 18,657 (LW - 4)(-95)
6 - Marketing Shift - 47,380 (LW - 6)(+6,436)
7 - HorsePigCow - 51,910 (LW - 7)(+2,076)
8 - Church of the Customer - 89,156 (LW - 9)(-1,471)
9 - What's Next - 90,280 (LW - 10)(-22)
10 - Brand Autopsy - 90,603 (LW - 8)(-5,218)
11 - Coolzor - 92,657 (LW - 11)(+15,369)
12 - Emergence Marketing - 113,440 (LW - 12)(+5,333)
13 - Jaffe Juice - 135,894 (LW - 13)(-9,215)
14 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 137,033 (LW - 15)(+10,486)
15 - Marketing Roadmaps - 144,566 (LW - 14)(-7,056)
16 - Diva Marketing - 164,210 (LW - 16)(-11,185)
17 - What's Your Brand Mantra - 186,089 (LW - 19)(-2,210)
18 - Marketing Headhunter - 197,209 (LW - 23)(+77,397)
19 - Jack Yan - 214,275 (LW - 17)(-51,032)
20 - Johnnie Moore's Weblog - 241,504 (LW - 18)(-76,217)
21 - Marketing Begins At Home - 241,680 (LW - 20)(+17,334)
22 - B2Blog - 242,737 (LW-UR)
23 - Pro Hip-Hip - Hip-Hop Marketing - 252,441 (LW- UR)
24 - The Viral Garden - 252,499 (LW - UR)
25 - The Origin of Brands - 284,432 (LW - 24)(-2,382)



The Top 5 continues to enjoy solid separation from the rest of the pack. Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users had a huge week, polevaulting into the Top 3. Marketing Headhunter easily had the biggest gain of the week, jumping 3 spots in the poll, and 77,397 spots in Alexa's rankings. Pro Hip-Hop, B2Blog and The Viral Garden were the week's 3 new entries.

If your blog fell out of the Top 25, don't worry, I will keep tracking it, and if its Alexa ranking rises enough, I will put it back in the rankings. Have a blog you want me to check out for the list? Keep emailing me or leaving comments, I will give all of them a look.

Next update is next Monday!

This is why companies should blog

Recently, BL wrote a post about companies that are 'hiding' their blogs, and one of the companies she mentioned was that HP was 'hiding' the fact that Eric Kintz is blogging. She adds: "My guess is that lawyers or PR departments are a more than a little nervous about this whole new media, "listen to your customers" thing, so they said "Well, ok, we can try it, but don't make the damn blog too easy to find."".

If HP is trying to hide the fact that Eric blogs, apparently Eric never got the memo. In fact, I had no idea that Eric was blogging until he came here and left a comment giving his blog addy. Since then I've seen him commenting on other blogs, including the nice write-up that Toby did recently on HP's blogging efforts.

So if Eric WAS hiding, he would have likely never read about BL's claims that he was 'hiding', but he found her post on the Marketing Profs blog, where she reposted a post she had made on WhatsNext.

But by joining the community, Eric is in a position to point out to BL that he's quite active on other blogs, as well as mention when other bloggers write about HP's blogging efforts.

If Eric was hiding, he would have no idea what BL or any other blogger was saying about him. Instead, he can not only address their concerns, but point them to examples of his involvement in the blogging community.

Is there a point to be made that HP needs to make it easier to find their blogs on HP's landing page? Yep and it's my guess that Eric will mention this to the right people at HP. But it's hard to claim that Eric is 'hiding' when he is going out to other blogs and actively attempting to engage with bloggers on their turf.

A graph tells a thousand words

This is an Alexa graph representing radio station WFMU's traffic since late 2001.(Click on the '5Y' tab)

Question: By looking at the graph, can anyone guess when WFMU added a blog to their website?

Answer: December 28, 2004. As you can see from the graph, the radio station's traffic starts a nice upward arch right at the end of 2004.

I was going through my browser bookmarks, and decided to visit the website for a radio station I had marked years ago. I checked it out, saw a mish-mash of flashing banner ads, pics of artists, and ads for upcoming concerts, and immediately wondered why this station had no blog? How hard would it be to get a couple of interns to post some music/celeb related gossip/news/gossip, and live-blog the station's concerts? I figured that adding a blog to this, or any radio station's website would likely be a boon for traffic, and the graph above proves this point.

If Alexa's graph is accurate, WFMU effectively quadrupled their website traffic by adding a blog. Is there anyone that works in radio that can give me an idea of what type of affect a 4X increase in traffic would have on a station's ad rates? (JD?)

The end is the beginning is the end

I'll be out of town tomorrow, so I wanted to leave everyone with some stories/posts that caught my eye...


Toby has a great recap of HP's blogging initiative, and also talks to Eric Kintz, who has already been kind enough to comment here. Susan was kind enough to tell us about HP's live-blogging of the Sundance Film Festival back in January. Good to see companies like HP taking the lead in embracing the blogosphere.


After taking a few weeks to settle into his new Regional Marketing Manager position with Canada's Boston Pizza, Ryan is back in the saddle at Ashton Media. Add AM to your bloglines feeds and you'll thank me for it later.


Love this story of what happened when the city of Austin embraced its musical community. The city works with local venues and musicians to make the live music scene as vibrant as possible. The results of the city working with their community of musicians has resulted in the music scene pumping over $600 million a year into Austin's economy, and feeding the city another $11 million in taxes. Here's another more detailed account of what the city does to cater to the musical community. Amazing things happen when you market WITH your community, not TO them. Makes you wonder why other companies/people/cities can't figure this out.


The always interesting Andrea writes about the 'Online Disinhibition Effect'. I think she's onto something here.


Chris, as usual, has way too much cool stuff to comment on. But I did want to point out his post on how the director of the movie Stick It turned to MySpace to build buzz for the movie, mainly because Disney was giving her little traditional marketing support. This was a perfect way to appeal to the movie's core target community of teenage girls.

UPDATE: I posted too soon, just came across Clyde's recap of several examples of marketing successes with MySpace on his blog ProHipHop - Hip Hop Marketing. Clyde also mentions MC Lars, who I blogged about as part of the Nettwerk/RIAA file-sharing flap on BMA last month.

Do you know who your community is?

Some quotes concerning Ford's new 'Bold Moves' marketing campaign:

"The strategy targets values, attitudes and emotion rather than age and other demographics, and it features conventional media as well as the Internet." - Modbee

"It happens every day. Someone, somewhere makes a bold move. There's a car company for people like that. Ford" - Ford's new 'Bold Moves' spot

"The focus here, across the board, is on this customer that we feel is really the target customer for Ford," Dan Bedore, a Ford spokesperson, told ClickZ. "It's not just a demographic. It's more of a mindset and lifestyle." - ClickZ

"Key elements of the Bold Moves launch include:

* The Bold Moves Anthem - Bold Moves debuts in a 60-second commercial on "American Idol" featuring people in real life situations that require a bold move. The scenes range from a teenager getting his driver's license to a woman with breast cancer entering the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation's Race for the Cure® - a cause Ford has long supported. The song "Go," newly-recorded by two-time Grammy®-winning RCA Records recording artist Kelly Clarkson, provides the musical backdrop.

* Bold Product Commercials - Throughout the year, Ford will use high profile television properties, including "American Idol" (FOX), NASCAR Nextel Cup racing (FOX and NBC), "Monday Night Football" (ESPN) and the "Bowl Championship Series" (ABC), to air 30- and 60-second commercials for individual products ranging from the Ford Escape to the Ford Fusion that all will feature customers making bold moves in their lives. These will be integrated with print and digital executions.

* Kelly Clarkson Summer Tour - Ford will be the exclusive automotive sponsor of Clarkson's 24-city summer concert tour, which begins in West Palm Beach, Fla., on June 30. At each stop on the tour, a fan will win a new Ford.

* Warriors in Pink - Ford has long supported the Susan G. Komen Foundation's Race for the Cure, which benefits breast cancer research, and plans to step up support to increase visibility of the cause. For example, a portion of tickets sold for Kelly Clarkson's summer concert tour will be donated to Ford's Warriors in Pink effort supporting the Susan G. Komen Foundation Race for the Cure." - Ford's Press Release

"In conjunction with the debut of the TV spot, Ford is re-launching its FordVehicles.com Web presence to reflect the "Bold Moves" messaging. To drive traffic to the site, the company will place roadblocks, beginning May 4, on AOL, Yahoo! and MSN." - ClickZ



Hmmmmm........2 questions:

1 - Who is Ford's target community here? From what I can tell, it is 'anyone that is bold, living a bold lifestyle'.
2 - How is sponsoring Kelly Clarkson's concert series, and buying a buncha TV ads and roadblocking on such mainstream sites as AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!, a 'bold move'?

My guess is that Ford is going after Gen Yers and Gen Xers, but doesn't want to 'label' them via demographics because they are 'dehumanizing'. So instead of 18-34, they say they are targetting a 'lifestyle'.

Ok fine, then tell the people living that lifestyle how owning a Ford will benefit them. Don't throw wads of cash at AI spots, give them the ability to get more enjoyment out of their lifestyle. Why buy ads on AOL, Yahoo! and MSN, when you should be going after partnerships with iTunes, YouTube, and MySpace?

The problem is, Ford seems to be targetting a specific community, while giving them no real reason to buy their product. This is why you have to join the community you are targetting. If Ford had, they would know what features the 'bold lifestyle' looks for in a vehicle, and they would be offering them. They would understand how to COMPLIMENT the person's lifestyle, instead of attempting to dominate it.

As it is, I have no idea who the 'bold lifestyle' includes (anyone that can be bold?), and I doubt Ford does either.

Still scared about joining the community?

Then check out this quote from the movie marketing master, Chris Thilk:

"...ceding control can be a good thing, when it's part of an organized plan. It's scary, but trust me, it will be okay. Letting people talk about your content will actually help."

Read the entire column here. Here's another gem: "The use of content that's created for expressly promotional purposes on a viral video site is something marketers should embrace and encourage."

You ARE reading Chris everyday on MMM, right?

But what if your passion WAS the community?

I was shuffling through my MP3s earlier and Sarah McLachlan's song World on Fire started playing. Hopefully when I mention 'World on Fire', your first response is 'Ah yes, great video!'. If you've never seen the video, please stop reading this post and click on the image to right.

As I talked about back in February, this is simply brilliant marketing. If you've never seen the video, Sarah took the $150,000 that was set aside for the shooting of the video(which is an absurdly low figure) for World on Fire, and spent only $15 of that amount on the video, for a video tape. Almost all of the remaining $149,985 was donated to 11 different charities, and the combined charitiable efforts bettered the lives of over a million people.

The video itself is amazing. Sarah shows what the normal expenses are for a video, and instead what she spent the money on. $200 that would normally go to a production assistant for a day, instead paid for a term's worth of schooling for 100 Ethiopian children. $480 is usually set aside for phones, but in this case the money went to equip 10 schoolhouses in Afghanistan. Nepal was given 5 bicycle ambulances, after Sarah donated the $1,150 that would normally go to filming equipment. Normally $3,000 would be spent on one day's worth of catering during the video shoot. This time, it fed 10,950 children in Calcutta. Here is a breakdown of exactly which charities received donations, and exactly what the money was spent on.

But why did she do this?

The inspiration for this video came from Sarah visiting the website for Engineers Without Borders, a Canadian company that tries to bring technology to poorer countries in an effort to help relieve their poverty. One of their workers, Mike Quinn, would post updates 'from the field', detailing the conditions and people he came in contact with. Here is a portion of one of his updates:

I visit a woman with a stunning smile every night to buy oranges. Her name is Christy Yaa and she never lets me pay for my oranges because she wants me to take them as a gift. She works everyday from 6am until 2pm as a cleaner, and then from 4pm until midnight selling oranges. She does this seven days a week. She is a single mother and every penny she earns goes towards putting her 20-year-old son through secondary school near her home village, far from Accra. When she saves enough money for a bus ticket, she'll travel to see him.

As an engineer in Canada I would have made more in a day than she does in a year.

And still, she does not let me pay for my oranges.

When you watched the video for World on Fire, you no doubt remember seeing a woman selling oranges. That was the same Christy Yaa.

A music video is simply a marketing tool. In almost every case, it is used to help promote the single, and ultimately the artist. And this is how Sarah used the video for World on Fire, as a promotional tool.

But she wasn't promoting herself, she was promoting others. She was not only promoting the plight of poor, the tired, and the sick, she was explaining how easily these people can be helped.

Sarah took the $150,000 that Arista had given her to create a great video for World on Fire, and instead she helped over a million people. And quite fittingly, Sarah got one of the most remarkable music videos ever created in the process.

The moral? When you make the community your passion, you get what you deserve.

The Viral Garden's Top 25 Marketing Blogs - Week 2

Here's the first update to our weekly look at the Top 25 Marketing Blogs. Unfortunately, Alexa has decided to not update their rankings since the 20th of April, but since there was at least one marketing blog that I missed last week, we can still update the rankings.

The 'LW' in paratheses refers to the blog's ranking in Last Week's Top 25.

So here's the standings for Week 2, and these will be updated again next Monday.

1 - Seth's Blog - 11018 (LW - 1)
2 - Guy Kawasaki - 14793 (LW - 2)
3 - Gaping Void - 18059 (LW - 3)
4 - Duct Tape Marketing - 18562 (LW - 4)
5 - Creating Passionate Users - 22087 (LW - 5)
6 - Marketing Shift - 53816 (LW - 6)
7 - HorsePigCow - 53986 (LW - 7)
8 - Brand Autopsy - 85385 (LW - 8)
9 - Church of the Customer - 87685 (LW - 9)
10 - What's Next - 90302 (LW - 10)
11 - Coolzor - 108026 (LW - 11)
12 - Emergence Marketing - 118773 (LW - 12)
13 - Jaffe Juice - 126679 (LW - 13)
14 - Marketing Roadmaps - 137510 (LW - 14)
15 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 147519 (LW - 15)
16 - Diva Marketing - 153025 (LW - 16)
17 - Jack Yan - 163243 (LW - 17)
18 - Johnnie Moore's Weblog - 165287 (LW - 18)
19 - What's Your Brand Mantra - 183879 (LW - 19)
20 - Marketing Begins At Home - 259014 (LW - 20)
21 - Decker Marketing - 260171 (LW - 21)
22 - Being Reasonable - 268503 (LW - 22)
23 - Marketing Headhunter - 274606 (LW - UR)
24 - The Origin of Brands - 282050 (LW - 23)
25 - Crossroads Dispatches - 294041 (LW - 24)



If your blog fell out of the Top 25, don't worry, I will keep tracking it, and if its Alexa ranking rises enough, I will put it back in the rankings. And keep emailing me the links to your blogs, I'll keep tracking them as well.

Next update is next Monday!

Do you want to lead the parade, or get run over by the crowd?

If you've read BMA for any amount of time, you know that Jewel's music, and marketing, are frequent topics of mine. What I find so fascinating about both is that in the mid to late 90s, when Jewel's career was beginning to take off, both her music and her promotional efforts were exceptional. This story remains one of the best examples I have ever seen of a grassroots internet-based marketing campaign. And the fact that it happened in 1996 makes the event even more amazing.

But in recent years, it seems that Jewel's interaction and involvement with her EDAs(the mailing list members that Jewel worked with in 1996 to create and execute the Jewelstock concerts) has waned. Remembering that the release of her new CD, Goodbye To Alice in Wonderland was this Tuesday, I wanted to read the recent posts from the EDAs to see what their feelings were on the eve of the album's release. Here are some comments I found interesting:

Hey, I uploaded the Yahoo! performances onto Youtube so you all can put them o your blogs, Myspaces, and Friendsters. Let's promote this album; I think, all in all, it will be one of her best.

I know I mentioned this before, but I am so disappointed in the level
of promotion being one for this new album.

Since I haven't seen ANY and Jewelink hasn't had any missions, I made a banner. You can put it on websites or you're myspace or whatever. You can also use it as an image on certain message boards.

Actually JewelLink did send out a banner with some interactive code in mid-March to webmasters (Jewel online team), but I didn't bother adding it since it seemed like too much work at the time to get it running. Plus it had a corner of it dedicated to advertising other musical artists (looks like it would change periodically) and I didn't much care for that aspect of it. Must be others felt the same way since you said you haven't seen one anywhere.

I think there's a banner on myspace for people to use too. Though, I think they should have advertised that fact more. Also, where are the AOL Instant Messenger buddy icons?!

I just saw on iTunes that if you pre-order Jewel's CD before next Tuesday you will also receive the exclusive track "Satellite (Acoustic Live)".

The members also linked to several articles featuring Jewel, tour updates, television appearances, etc. It should be noted that these are truly 'hardcore' fans, some of which have been members of this mailing list for over a decade, no small feat, considering that Jewel's first album was released 11 years ago.

Notice that these fans are already doing Jewel's marketing for her. They are linking to every article/television appearance that they come across. They are uploading music videos to YouTube. They are lamenting the lack of good Jewel banners to add to their websites/blogs, and then CREATING ones to share with each other!

This is the perfect example of how a marketer's main function is to help a community get from point A to point B as effectively as possible.

The EDAs are huge fans of Jewel, so they are going to promote her new album. Jewel can either leave them alone and let them do the best they can, or she can give them the tools to reach their destination more effectively. As I said last month on BMA, I think it's about being smart enough to understand where the community is headed, and then clearing a path for them.

Also, many of the members of the mailing list had remarked that they had already heard most if not all of her album. Why not contact the mailing list owner and get the email addys for all the members, and email them asking for their address so Jewel can mail them a copy of the CD? And when it arrives, have them open the package to find the CD as promised, but SIGNED and INSCRIBED to the person? Why not give the list their own Jewel banner with an EDA logo? My guess is that these very simple acts of interaction with the community of Jewel's fans would result in an explosion of positive promotion for the artist. Promotion that would spread far beyond the boundaries of a simple mailing list.

If the community is doing your job for you, shouldn't you at least be smart enough to give them the tools to do so more effectively?