Several years ago, I had a friend, a curious person. She was deathly afraid of squirrels. Sitting a on a park bench on a college campus, she would bark out obscenities mid-conversation when one came anywhere near us. And seeing that this particular campus had a healthy legacy of glorious trees, we never finished our conversations. I did, however, learn some interesting new words that require a lot of soap if you're going to use them.
Leah felt very different from me. I learned she was highly analytical whereas I am highly intutive. I once told her, "I go through my entire day living and making decisions intuitively." She said she did the exact opposite, and we were both fascinated that any other way than what he had known was possible. She was also a supremely gifted athlete. I had suffered some serious burn injuries in the recent past and was just finding my healthful stride, proud that I had built up to running five miles in the mountains three or four times a week. We discovered one day that we ran the same trail for exercise and decided to tackle it together one Saturday morning.
On that particular Saturday, it had snowed more than a foot overnight. Fresh powder is harder to run on than sand, and my usual five mile loop was more exhausting than ever. Once we reached the first plateau of the run's initial uphile climb, I was winded and considering a change of plans to a nearby coffeeshop. But Leah, she was breathing as normally as if she'd been relaxing in a sauna.
The man in me, and the competitor . . . but more the man, couldn't tag out when running with a girl. The whole time I struggled to keep pace, throwing out my half of the conversation between labored breaths. "No__I__haven't__read__that__yet." And in an effort to buy some time I volleyed, "Tell__me__your__life__story."
When we finally made it back to the trailhead beautifully situated on the foothills of the Rockies, we sat down at a picnic table. Thinking this was more of a friendship building exercise than a calf-building one, I brought some high-fat-content pastries to undo whatever physical good had just been done. (While eating I learned she was recently a nationally ranked distance runner and did triathlons for fun in her spare time. That information would have been nice beforehand to coddle my dwindling ego. But I could rebuild it, nonetheless, retroactively.)
Lounging in a sea of freshly fallen snow under full sunlight is hard on the eyes, like sitting on a blanket of tinfoil, mirrors, or halogen lamps. Even with my sunglasses my eyes were still straining. But Leah, she was bright-eyed with no glasses at all. "Would you like my sunglasses?" I ask gentlemanly, hoping she declines because squinting makes me sleepy. She says no explaining that she never wears sunglasses, no matter what. As any regular person would, I asked why. And her answer fascinated me: "I want to see the world as it is."
I didn't take this comment to mean she judgmental of all the sunglass-wearers the world over. To my mind, she was making an incredible comment on her own values about life. Her comment translated: I don't want anything to come between me and what's really out there.
I've oftened wondered since that conversation if there are ways that I try to filter the world as it is to make it more manageable for my feeble self. Of course I do. I put all kinds of things between me and reality. Smoking, sometimes. Drinking, sometimes. Food, nearly always. Entertainment, company, chores, work. Any of the things that fill up the hours in a day that keep you from forthrightly facing deeper issues, both the good and the troublesome. All of my little devils are enjoyed, mind you, with restraint and control, and in socially acceptable quanities. I feel like they're flying just below everyone's radar--even my own sometimes--so they don't seem like problems. They're very clever like that. For instance, I don't curl up with Little Debbies and Bourbon for a pre-breakfast snack. I just space them out and enjoy them "when I should" so as not to seem like a problem, Little Debbies right after breakfast and Bourbon after work. But in my soul I know something is coming between me and the way the world is, like I need a buffer to manage the disappointments, insecurities, and fear.
But more and more, by the grace of God, I'm trying to take my sunglasses off. I'm paying closer attention to those slight tugs of self-preservation that smack of reliance on anything but him. As a saved Christian, I imagine standing before my God, the brightest thing beyond imagining, with all of my failures laid bare. I won't need sunglasses then, and I'm deeply thankful and at peace with that assurance. Heartened by that reality, I'm trying to live more honestly with myself, my wife, with God, and the world, no matter how bright.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Fever-Pitch Marketing
I just read a fascinating book titled The Word of Mouth Manual, Vol. II by Dave Balter (a free download is available). For such a bland title, it packs a wallop of entertainment, practical tips, and innovative marketing theories.
What I loved about this read (other than the aforementioned entertainment and information) are author Dave Balter’s fervent beliefs about long-term marketing strategies. In a world of quarterly earnings reports and ROI, it’s tempting to put a measurable façade on marketing campaigns. Heck, someone has to sit in front of a boss and ease the anxiety of capital pool monitors. Every business needs that, desperately, or you get lack of accountability and decreased pressure to perform. But I’ve always had the nagging sense that ad buys, compensated blogging, anything in the standard bag of tricks that riddle many a campaign simply put our book marketing in the same category of “Noise” that Balter states “99.999 percent” of companies’ marketing efforts live in.
How do we break out and make our authors top-of-mind for their audiences (and new readers!)? Even more, how do develop a strategy that translates into a burst of sales, bursts that drive the bestseller lists, bring smiles to our accounts, make authors feel like king or queen of the world, and add beautiful profit to the bottom line?
Balter has an idea how: intentionally build a long-term word of mouth strategy that includes exclusive “invitations to the elite,” freebies of high perceived value (i.e. not a sample chapter but a custom book “just to say thanks for being such a dedicated fan of Author X”), and many other things that contribute to a slow build.
What if Thomas Nelson implemented a dual strategy that allowed brand investment in an author even if he or she doesn’t have a book forthcoming in a particular quarter, or even a fiscal year? It would take disciplined planning along with some tweaking of our financial models and reporting, which may be painful for some and seem ludicrous to others. But I think it would ease the release-by-release sprint that ensues when marketers try to defend their use of dollars, anxiously watching any and every bestseller list, the gold standard that proves their worth. Instead, it could keep customer awareness at a constant, healthy level that could be easily ramped up when products do release.
Could we have a dedicated pool of “off season” spending? According to Balter, this would do more for the long-term health of an author brand, more than flash-in-the-pan viral strategies. Balter consents that traditional marketing is essential to any products’ entry to the marketplace. But it’s not enough to generate the kind of craze we hope every book initiates with consumers. No, we need more.
An example to Balter’s ideas is Don Miller’s recent trek across the country for Blood:Water Mission. The effort was dubbed “Ride:Well,” and Thomas Nelson funded a PR campaign managed by an outside firm. On the front end, the dominating question coming from the ROI mindset was: What will this do for us? Which is fair. Miller doesn’t have a book this year. Accounting didn’t have a way to tag the marketing cost to existing product. How could we follow and monitor spending? Are there any monetized results? Stepping outside the bounds of these questions felt a lot like Indiana Jones stepping from the lion’s mouth onto the invisible bridge. But we landed on something.
The campaign included blog posts from Don on the road, a twittercast that he could update from his cell phone at any time, and a donation drive that delivered a sneak peak of his next book along with a brief, quirky interview. Here are some stats from that effort:
• 244 Twitters from Don and 420 followers.
• Over 21,000 unique people viewed the Ride:Well site and those people visited 122,000 pages.
• Just over 50% of all visitors were new.
• The most loyal fans came back to the site ranging from 9 visits to 100 visits over this campaign.
Look at the substance there. Hundreds of dedicated fans who will happily mobilize at a book launch. Tens of thousands of visitors and page views of readers actively seeking Don. And, because it’s been so long since a Don Miller book has been released, it brought him top-of-mind for those who we believe will be sure book buyers once A Million Miles in a Thousand Years hits the shelves. Next fiscal year.
If my team and my company intend to have truly breakthrough results we’ll have to bash and rebuild old models, old ways. We’ll have to take risks—true risks—that could result in dismal failure. But the bravery to try, to keep cynicism suspended while we do crazy things like spend marketing dollars on something that isn’t even a book, is just one of a million ways we can build long-term strategies that can translate into fever-pitch demand for our books when the time is right.
What I loved about this read (other than the aforementioned entertainment and information) are author Dave Balter’s fervent beliefs about long-term marketing strategies. In a world of quarterly earnings reports and ROI, it’s tempting to put a measurable façade on marketing campaigns. Heck, someone has to sit in front of a boss and ease the anxiety of capital pool monitors. Every business needs that, desperately, or you get lack of accountability and decreased pressure to perform. But I’ve always had the nagging sense that ad buys, compensated blogging, anything in the standard bag of tricks that riddle many a campaign simply put our book marketing in the same category of “Noise” that Balter states “99.999 percent” of companies’ marketing efforts live in.
How do we break out and make our authors top-of-mind for their audiences (and new readers!)? Even more, how do develop a strategy that translates into a burst of sales, bursts that drive the bestseller lists, bring smiles to our accounts, make authors feel like king or queen of the world, and add beautiful profit to the bottom line?
Balter has an idea how: intentionally build a long-term word of mouth strategy that includes exclusive “invitations to the elite,” freebies of high perceived value (i.e. not a sample chapter but a custom book “just to say thanks for being such a dedicated fan of Author X”), and many other things that contribute to a slow build.
What if Thomas Nelson implemented a dual strategy that allowed brand investment in an author even if he or she doesn’t have a book forthcoming in a particular quarter, or even a fiscal year? It would take disciplined planning along with some tweaking of our financial models and reporting, which may be painful for some and seem ludicrous to others. But I think it would ease the release-by-release sprint that ensues when marketers try to defend their use of dollars, anxiously watching any and every bestseller list, the gold standard that proves their worth. Instead, it could keep customer awareness at a constant, healthy level that could be easily ramped up when products do release.
Could we have a dedicated pool of “off season” spending? According to Balter, this would do more for the long-term health of an author brand, more than flash-in-the-pan viral strategies. Balter consents that traditional marketing is essential to any products’ entry to the marketplace. But it’s not enough to generate the kind of craze we hope every book initiates with consumers. No, we need more.
An example to Balter’s ideas is Don Miller’s recent trek across the country for Blood:Water Mission. The effort was dubbed “Ride:Well,” and Thomas Nelson funded a PR campaign managed by an outside firm. On the front end, the dominating question coming from the ROI mindset was: What will this do for us? Which is fair. Miller doesn’t have a book this year. Accounting didn’t have a way to tag the marketing cost to existing product. How could we follow and monitor spending? Are there any monetized results? Stepping outside the bounds of these questions felt a lot like Indiana Jones stepping from the lion’s mouth onto the invisible bridge. But we landed on something.
The campaign included blog posts from Don on the road, a twittercast that he could update from his cell phone at any time, and a donation drive that delivered a sneak peak of his next book along with a brief, quirky interview. Here are some stats from that effort:
• 244 Twitters from Don and 420 followers.
• Over 21,000 unique people viewed the Ride:Well site and those people visited 122,000 pages.
• Just over 50% of all visitors were new.
• The most loyal fans came back to the site ranging from 9 visits to 100 visits over this campaign.
Look at the substance there. Hundreds of dedicated fans who will happily mobilize at a book launch. Tens of thousands of visitors and page views of readers actively seeking Don. And, because it’s been so long since a Don Miller book has been released, it brought him top-of-mind for those who we believe will be sure book buyers once A Million Miles in a Thousand Years hits the shelves. Next fiscal year.
If my team and my company intend to have truly breakthrough results we’ll have to bash and rebuild old models, old ways. We’ll have to take risks—true risks—that could result in dismal failure. But the bravery to try, to keep cynicism suspended while we do crazy things like spend marketing dollars on something that isn’t even a book, is just one of a million ways we can build long-term strategies that can translate into fever-pitch demand for our books when the time is right.
Friday, August 1, 2008
New Yorker Animated Cartoons
Addicted to podcasts?
I love content. I listen to tips about productivity. Hear authors read from their newly released fiction. Take notes while Grammar Girl explains language. Relax while Keiler reads me poetry and tells me about notable moments in literature.
But it's all so stinkin' serious, really because it reflects my interests. But I've discovered one podcast staple that you've got to have in your mix: New Yorker Animated Cartoons. They are hysterical, clever, and give me the humor that levels my scales, keeping me balanced, thinking better thoughts, making me more enjoyable to be around. Go get your fourty-five seconds of fun for free. It's just as important.
I love content. I listen to tips about productivity. Hear authors read from their newly released fiction. Take notes while Grammar Girl explains language. Relax while Keiler reads me poetry and tells me about notable moments in literature.
But it's all so stinkin' serious, really because it reflects my interests. But I've discovered one podcast staple that you've got to have in your mix: New Yorker Animated Cartoons. They are hysterical, clever, and give me the humor that levels my scales, keeping me balanced, thinking better thoughts, making me more enjoyable to be around. Go get your fourty-five seconds of fun for free. It's just as important.
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