A friend pointed me to a great article on “How the journalist prom got out of control” by Dana Milbank. He recounts the state of corporate, political and entertainment orgy around the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and related events.

My late colleague David Broder once recalled how, when he began newspapering in mid-century, journalists embraced the credo that “the only way a reporter should ever look at a politician is down.” He said they “prided themselves on their independence, their skepticism, and they relished their role in exposing the follies and the larceny of public officials.”

For PR and journalism professionals to create such an air of collusion certainly doesn’t help engender trust in the public’s eye. What are your thoughts? Harmless celebration or poor professionalism?

Some interesting excerpts from 3 different posts/quotes on what it means to be truly experienced as a “startup founder”. I share it because I admire the action, drive and tenacity of “people that make it happen”.  I love this quote from Theodore Roosevelt in a 1910 speech about “The Man In The Arena“, mainly because it’s more about “making it happen” versus exalting startup vets over others… as I think that you can make-it-happen in many different arenas.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

What are your favorite quotes or philosphies on action, execution and making-things-happen?

It was nice speaking with Ricardo Jimenez of Microsoft Cafe TV at the Arroba de Oro conference in El Salvador (more on the conference soon!). The intro is in Spanish, but I speak in English about the importance of social media tools and processes to facilitate collaboration INSIDE companies.

Here’s Ricardo’s MSDN blog and Twitter feed, and the Microsoft Cafe TV Facebook page.

What does your company use for internal collaboration?

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A few good links I’ve seen over the past few days:

10 Tips to Build Trust with Social Media
An excellent and super-simple list of tips to build trust and be authentic in corporate social media. We all know how to not be “that guy” that crosses the line at the company party (well most of us do), but we could all use the reminder of how to keep in touch online, especially when we are representatives of our companies in social media.

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Enterprise: List of 40 Social Media Staff Guidelines
A great list of links from large companies and a few interesting info graphics from the US Air Force on setting internal guidelines on social media participation. This is a great resource to bookmark or use as a research guide for setting up your own corporate guidelines.

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The Rise of the C-Tweet: Points to Consider for Twitter-Friendly CEOs and CMOs
The article helps us consider some good questions like

“And herein lies the greatest challenge of the C-Tweet: Where does the voice of the brand end and the voice of the individual begin?”

and gives a few good guidelines for leaders to consider before jumping off into a twitter account. But it doesn’t really go much into one of the best reasons for company leaders to engage with Twitter and social media: “To get better in touch with their customers and their needs.” It’s a mantra of so many business books and successful companies, maybe it’s just obvious. If you don’t have an AdAge account you can see the article here.

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Yahoo Search Marketing Blog has a good post (refresher) on choosing keywords. Good overview of choosing general/broad AND specific/narrow keywords. Example: “toyota” is general, “toyota camry” and “camry hatchback” are more specific. Make sure to have both.

There are lots of good posts on Yahoo’s Search Blog, make sure to read more.

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Social Media in Pharma and Medical fields
Here’s a great list of leaders in the pharma and medical device fields that blog and/or twitter. Some of my medical clients have been very cautious with social media because of the regulatory issues that could come up. Clearly you can engage with peers and customers as this great list shows. Good to see my pal Greg Rust on the list!

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Email and Analytics
Bronto Blog has a good post, although pretty technical, on setting up Google Analytics to measure your email campaigns. Google Analytics has a great tool called URL builder that you can compose to measure the source of the click, label different mediums and campaigns to give you full insight into where clicks are coming from. If you set up all your email links with these, you can A/B test different email or promotion versions, see trends in clicks/purchases over time or start to get insights into your customer segments and improve targeting.

Have a GREAT week!

Just finished reading an interesting post from Douglas Bowman of StopDesign, he’s just left his role as Visual Design Lead of Google. He talks about his experiences of pure quantitative research overtaking visual design principles and creativity at Google. He confirms that:

“Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. “

He goes on to say that he understands why Google needs to approach decisions this way, but he also feels like they don’t balance the quantitative with other research or best practices in design. (There is an interesting related article on Marissa Mayer’s role in this on the New York Times site.)

I have three quick thoughts on this:
1. Although as a designer, Douglas has trouble with this extreme strategy, knowing who Google is and who their products target, i.e. everyone, I think it’s a pretty good idea to approach their user experience this way for them. BUT, testing 41 shades of a color doesn’t seem like the best use of anyone’s time.
2. Any idealistic, enthusiastic professional in their field has specialty backgrounds and expertise that make them good at their job… but it also can bring them further away from the perspective of their users. This is part of the ongoing conflict between “usability” professionals and “visual design” professionals. One wants “pure” usability with nothing extraneous to get in the way, the other wants style, panache, and a “wow” factor for the work. Who’s right? Both of them… that’s the fun part, the negotiation, part of the constraints and collaboration on teams that drive successful products.

3. More companies could learn from Google’s approach. Quantitative analysis doesn’t have to be 100% of the decision, but it should approach half of the input for many decisions. In my experience, most companies suffer from the opposite problem. Too few companies do any testing of designs for their website, their messaging or even their products. The only testing many have done is some vaporous “focus groups” recruited and paid for poorly thought out opinions. Too often the designs are based on what executives or the production team “think,” or “like” as the priority input over real users and actual data.

Any company with a significant part of their business on the web should have these efforts as core to their website or application marketing strategy and internal or external staffing: (No, this is not a complete list.

• Web analytics that are set up correctly and constantly monitored
• A/B testing or even multivariate testing, especially for ecommerce and applications
• Social media monitoring, WOM, user comments, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs
• Use of paid search or media buys to test messaging, (yes, marketing/branding messages can be tested effectively via PPC!), ads and landing pages
• Frequent direct contact with customers and users (yes, this is qualitative too!)

What areas of input and research is your company missing in gathering for your marketing, website or application? What can you jump into *today* to move more in that direction?

Kudos to the struggling US auto industry for putting a great social media face on their image issues.

Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford has a great post on how Ford has and is making changes. From leadership, vehicle mixes, green focus, manufacturing technology and new product offerings, he makes great points on exactly what Ford is doing to change. These more specific messages that leave me with a much better impression of Ford than I’ve had. (I own Toyota and Honda cars, but some of the fuel efficiency, green focus and Sync technology may swing me over to a Ford in the future… if they work on their design a bit more.
Follow Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford, here on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/scottmonty

I’m looking for any official Ford blogs, but haven’t found them yet. (Scott?)

GM has a corporate blog with posts by several VPs, and Bob Lutz the GM vice chairman. With so much ongoing controversy around their offerings and the recent financial issues, I think this more direct route to customers, media and pundits is a great way to get their messages out, without relying on the “spin” of press. They also have some VERY actively engaged readers, with over a hundred comments on several posts… Many of the comments are several paragraphs too.

There are several other GM blogs are here, with Saturn, Opel, Tuner enthusiasts, European focused and Cadillac blogs. Overall, it’s a pretty good effort from GM in the social media and customer conversation/PR space.

Follow GM Blogs Twitter with news and updates across their blogs:
http://twitter.com/GMblogs

Do you know of others in the auto industry with dedicated social media staff or efforts?

Between 1990 and 2003, the U.S. Hispanic population grew by 61 percent, encompassing 35.3 million people, the fastest-growing minority group in the country and one with the astonishing purchasing power of $650 billion, according to prevailing estimates. Today, savvy businesses recognize the importance of this huge market, yet this segment continues to be underserved in terms of the amount of advertising and marketing dollars spent on it.
(from Marketing Y Medios website)

This is a quick list of resources, email me with your favorite!

HispanicTrending.net – A Latino Advertising and Marketing Blog. A great blog with links to TONS of resources.

Hispanic Entrepreneur Blog – We profile Hispanic and Latin American entrepreneurs, companies and investors which provide them with start-up funds and capital.

Hispanic Digital Media – Member-powered Hispanic and Latin America Digital News

LatinVision.com – US Hispanic Business and Media News Network Site – A GREAT resource.

Think Multicultural – Multicultural Advertising and Marketing Blog

HispanicSMB.com Hispanic Small Business Marketing Resources and Community

AdAge’s “Hispanic Fact Pack – Annual Guide to Hispanic Marketing and Media (5.7 mg PDF) 2006 Edition

Marketing Y Medios.com Monthly News

HispanicAd.com Tool for Hispanic Advertising and Media Professional

HMWeekly.com – Hispanic Market Weekly

HispanSource.org “Your Source for Hispanic Market Information”

AHAA.org – Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies Trade Organization

HMCA.org – Hispanic Marketing & Communication Association

Multicultural.com – Multicultural Marketing Resources

HispanicOnline.com – Hispanic Magazine and Hispanic Trends

HispanicBusiness.com

Advertising Age – Hispanic Marketing

Hispanic Marketing: A Critical Market Segment

LatPro.com – Job Board for Hispanic & Bilingual Professionals

BizJournal Article: Hispanic marketing: ‘Se habla dinero!’

Direct Marketing Association – Hispanic Marketing Council

MarketingProfs.com – The Top Three Mistakes in Hispanic Marketing

The second ever ProductCamp started in Austin at 8am this morning. I had never been to any BarCamp-style “un-conference” before, but I must say I really enjoyed it. It was active, informative and agile, in the sense that we the participants, voted on the sessions at the beginning of the day, we were expected to actively discuss, interupt and add our own value to the proceedings. Open sessions were guided and moderated, some a bit more successfully than others, but all that I attended had value to me as a marketer and professional. They had a Twitter account open and many of us Twittered about it, and posted photos to Flickr in this group. My Twitter here at CharlieNB.

I enjoyed a session on general Agile/Scrum and roles, another on Agile best practices and horror stories with Ross Hobbie. I was interested in others managing content and/or marketing via Scrum processes, but no others were. After the session though, I spoke with several people that had great product marketing teams and development teams, but no user-centered design or UX resources. They were interested in how UX could help with their prototyping and products, several good discussions!

The Global Product Mgmt session was a little too open and unfocused, but to be fair, it’s a REALLY broad and complex topic, it could have been broken into 3-4 different sessions.

I jumped into UX 101 with Ben Phenix late, but it was well recieved by all, clear, simple concepts that were easy to apply. I’ve been through and given a lot of UX presos, and this one was good.

Pat Scherer gave more of a presentation rather than a discussion, but her detailed points on Priorities and Roadmaps was very complete and clearly well proven in the real world.

Next up was a Product Management Tools roundtable… very well moderated by (I think) Cindy Phillips. We covered a lot, from requirements gathering, to basic excel templates, into productivity tools. Here are the ones I captured: Blackblot, xcelsius, devonthink, xmind, “montecarlo analysis” excel plug-ins, Mindmap, MindMeister, Google Trends, search volume, surveys with Survey Monkey and QuestionPro, customer wiki’s and communities, Salesforce QA (? not sure of the name), Markettools, Passenger, PHPBB communities, BasecampHQ, fogbugs (tracks accuracy of estimates), Jira, JOTT, Rally, Webex, Breeze, Camtasia, Snagit, Yugma, Netmeeting, Lifehacker. Whew!!!

My last session was with Charlie Ray on navigating political minefields. Charlie was very entertaining, and also shared many good insights… management styles aside, there was a lot of good info to bring to daily life. My favorite quote is “Nip the G.M.O.O.T” meaning stop CEO’s from saying “Get Me One Of Those” when seeing features and adding them willy-nilly to products. Charlie also won the award for best session at the end of the day. Good job Charlie!!!

Throughout several of the sessions, the differences between startups with scarce time, personnel and financial resources versus larger, mature companies with sometimes too many resources and plenty of budget were apparent. Some of us discussed the idea of a StartupCamp, either a seperate BarCamp, or as a track at the next Product or BarCamp. We’ll be gathering thoughts and discuss further, so contact me if you are interested.

I really want to thank the organizers of the event, Paul Young and John Milburn, they did a great job.

Sponsors took care of the space, coffee/snacks, lunch, tshirts and mugs, thanks!

I certainly recommend the BarCamp concept and certainly will participate in the next Product or any other Camp. (Full world wide list here.)

Hope to see you at the next BarCamp event!

[tag]ProductCamp, BarCamp, UX, product management, product marketing, Austin, agile, global products, StartupCamp[/tag]

Social media demands interaction… because its a conversation, not a campaign.

Nice quick report from B2B’s NetMarketing Breakfast in NY this week.

Paul Dunay, global director of integrated marketing at BearingPoint, said he actively reuses and retargets existing content in ways that make sense to provide value to customers.

Dunay said there is no “campaign” in social media: “It’s a state of being your company has to take on, and marketing has to lead the charge for that. You can’t be social this week and decide to be antisocial next week. It’s an ongoing process.”

Good stuff Paul, let’s get that message out there to the marketers and management that still think they can start a social network presence, forum or blog and not dedicate people to work/participate on it.

Loved this bit from an IBM social media manager Pauline Ores too. There is a LOT to be gained by keeping an eye on what your users are searching for and talking about online.

Ores said search and social media go hand in hand, and that by interacting with its community of customers, social media informs IBM’s search strategy. By “listening to social media” to learn what people are talking about, IBM is able to buy relevant keywords against those conversations.

Is your organization conversing and listening to what your customers are talking about online?

Scientific American has a great article “Why things cost $19.95″, focused on pricing of products and more specifically, our brain’s negotiations mechanisms.

University of Florida marketing professors Chris Janiszewski and Dan Uy suspected that something fundamental might be going on, that some characteristic of the opening bid itself might influence the way the brain thinks about value and shapes bidding behavior. In particular, they wanted to see if the degree of precision of the opening bid might be important to how the brain acts at an auction. Or, to put it in more familiar terms: Are we really fooled when storekeepers price something at $19.95 instead of a round 20 bucks?

They present some interesting data from home sales, initial pricing points vs. actual negotiated sale prices… and found that rounded initial prices such as $500,000 flexed more to sell, while more specific prices such as $494,500, had sales closer to that number.

What I got out of the article is “the more specific the price is the less flexible it seems to a buyer.” By “specific” I mean not rounded, but precise… I think it looks more “computed” and calculated, vs. someone “ballparking” it and making up a price. To me, it says they’ve spent time reasoning through the price, and there may be less flexibility in it.

The other side of “$19.95″ though is the experienced and critical consumer… ask someone how much something costs, and they’ll never say $19.95, they’ll always round to $20. Maybe we’ve just seen that “trick” to make it seem like a lower price too often.
Do you consciously make an effort to have your pricing be “precise” versus rounded? Why or why not?