Imagine your newly launched product, one that hundreds of millions of people around the world are aware of, suddenly has safety issues forcing the product out of service with customers and disrupting tens of thousands of people's lives. That's the communications challenge Boeing faced when the 787 Dreamliner encountered battery problems early this year.
My friend Edward Boches is part-time chief innovation officer at Mullen and also Professor of the Practice, Advertising, at Boston University College of Communication. He worked with the super-smart students in his Strategic Creative Development class to write, design, and publish an ebook Get out of your minivan and into our spaceship in just three hours.
At airports, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon illustrating people's lack of rational behavior regarding money. Some airlines now offer passengers the ability to purchase a bypass of the main TSA security line. For example, the JetBlue Even More Speed option costs $10 or $15 per passenger and allows you to use a special premium passenger security lane.
Gamification can be a great way to encourage loyal customers to share on social networks. It is an especially valuable form of marketing in the travel business. Several times this year, I talked about how Ocean Frontiers dive resort in the Cayman Islands uses their Green Short Challenge to get their fans to share images on Facebook.
I had an opportunity to spend a few minutes with Emmy and Grammy award winning actor and entrepreneur LeVar Burton after a taping an episode of Bryan Elliott's Behind the Brand show. It was a fun group that also included Mike Rowe from television's Dirty Jobs.
I frequently speak at conferences and obsess over the details to get things right. I wrote about some of the obsessions in my blog post Top ten tips for incredibly successful public speaking. But I also plan for things to go wrong.
Today, the EDM artist Pretty Lights dropped his newest album A Color Map of the Sun. One way to get it is totally free from his site. If you're a music fan like me, check it out. In fact, many of his label's albums are free using this link.
Today is the official publication date for the 4th edition of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. For authors, "pub date" is exciting because it is when books ship from the online booksellers in the U.S. like Amazon and it is when the book appears on the shelves in American stores like Barnes & Noble.
To the class of 2013: Congratulations on your graduation! As you embark on the world we all share, you will face countless choices. You can be like everybody else and release your balloon on command. You can choose to hang on to your balloon and quietly dispose of it properly.
With the release of the 4th edition of my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR this week, I've been reflecting on the progress we've made as marketers and entrepreneurs in just a few short years. We are lucky to be living in the middle of a communications revolution!
Today, the pre-order of the new 4th edition of The New Rules of Marketing & PR is the "Deal of the Day" at BN.com. As such, if you purchase a copy at Barnes & Noble today or over the next week, it will be 50% off the cover price of $24.00.
My friend Rich Jurek points us to Karim Nafatni, a Dubai-based commercial airline pilot who is also an avid photographer and likes to shoot photos in the cockpit. As Karim says on his site, "being an airline pilot I got fascinated by the way the city looked from high levels."
On the Web, there is very little differentiation between types of content. People don't really care where they get the best content: mainstream media, content created by organizations (what I call brand journalism) or things that people share via social media. Arguing that one is more legitimate (mainstream media) leads to flawed marketing and PR strategic decisions.
Last night, my friend Nick Morgan and I caught the Mick Jagger Show... er, the Rolling Stones... in Boston. It was a terrific show. Nick is my speaker coach, so we used the Stones show as a "field trip" to watch a master performer in action. And boy, is Sir Mick a master.
One of the best parts of being active on the global speaking circuit a chance to learn from marketers working in a wide variety of businesses. Yesterday I delivered a keynote speech at the Oticon Marketing Boot Camp. Oticon is based in Copenhagen and is the oldest hearing aid manufacturer in the world.
I recently finished Mitch Joel's new book Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It and enjoyed it very much, I asked Mitch to answer some questions for us. As I was reading. it struck me how similar Mitch and I think.
On Friday, I presented at BMA Blaze, the Business Marketing Association's annual conference. I delivered a mini-keynote and then led a panel In the Moment: How and Why to Do Real-Time B2B Marketing with: - Matt Petitjean, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, ADP - Rich Jurek, Group CMO, The Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, Inc.
This weekend I got my Open Water Scuba certification at Ocean Frontiers Ltd. in the Cayman Islands. I chose Ocean Frontiers because I connected with them on Facebook at the suggestion of a friend and then wrote about how the Ocean Frontiers Green Short Challenge is a terrific way to get people to share on Facebook.
Last month I delivered my TEDx talk The Need to Explore. Since that time, many people have asked about TEDx talks - how do you book one and how to prepare one. So this is a long post with all sorts of ideas for how to do your own TEDx talk.
If you want to do something worthwhile, you need to work at it. Many people ask me about writing a book. I've written 8 books and each one was a tough slog. If you want to write nonfiction, you've got to research your topic, find an angle nobody else has, do a bunch of drafts, get feedback, do several rounds of edits, and more.
I get pushback from many entrepreneurs and business owners as well as CMOs in larger businesses about the idea of using inbound marketing because they see the investment in people to create content as a barrier. They say things like: "I cannot find money in my budget to spend $5,000 a month (or whatever the number) on content creation."
The video of my talk was just posted to the TEDx YouTube channel. Direct link to The Need to Explore on YouTube. This is a completely new speech for me with no reliance on the material I use in my keynotes.
I get several hundred pitches a week from well-meaning PR people. Conversations with other bloggers suggest this is the norm, so now it is as tough to reach a blogger as it is to reach a mainstream journalist.
Gareth Fairhurst, a local councillor on Wigan Council, has used online communications and social media, including his blog, Twitter @cllrgwfairhurst, and Facebook to communicate with his constituents in Standish, a village in Greater Manchester, England. In 2012 Gareth, an independent, won re-election with twice the number of votes as his nearest major party rival.
I'd like to nominate the English-language edition of the Tokyo 2020 Candidate City website as the worst English-language site in the world. The site is built in support of bringing the 2020 Summer Olympic Games to Tokyo. Where to start. Well anywhere, really. So let's look at content.
