Author Archives: Steve Mays

Leveraging your customers (fans)

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One of the ideas Seth Godin talks about (on his blog, in his speeches and in his new book) is turning your best customers into marketers. Make it easy for them to tell your story. One of the examples: The Beastie Boys gave digital cameras to fifty of their fans and invited them to film one of their concerts. They edited the best of these into a film.

I’m only remotely aware of who the Beastie Boys are but I love the idea. I’d love to try this with one of our sports properties. Some big rivalry might be fun (Missouri vs. Kansas?). The idea isn’t to get great play-by-play shots, but tail-gate fun, etc. I don’t know what you’d get but you announce that the resulting video will be on the Mizzou website (brought to you by Sponsor To Be Named?).

A lot of work? Sure. Big money maker? Maybe not. Lot of fun? Maybe.

Blipvert update

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Clear Channel Radio has found its first buyer for blinks, its new one- to three-second radio spots. Fox Broadcasting Co. is the first to purchase and use two-second radio spots in an effort to promote the fall season premiers of “Prison Break,” “House” and “The Simpsons.” [AdAge]

Tod Maffin calls these “pop-up’s for radio.”

Early adopters and the masses (Hugh MacLeod)

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“I’m astonished at how long it takes an idea to filter from the early adopters to the masses. What sort of person just read the Da Vinci Code or just discovered the iPod? I was standing in a nice store in a nice suburb and heard one 25 year old explain to a 30 year old what gmail was… it’s so easy to assume that everyone already gets it.”

— Part of the answer to one of ten questions Hugh Macleod posed to Seth Godin

Podcast bread upon the water

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PodcasterWe have a lot of talented, experienced radio people where I work. What if one of the honchos called us (I’m including myself based on experience, not talent) all together and said, “I’ve been reading about these podcast things and I think we should have one. Money is no object, but I want a show that delivers 100,000 downloads a week and you have one year to deliver. Go get ’em.”

Could we do it? Where would we start?

Topic. Do we pick a topic in which we know there’s a lot of interest? Or is that space already too crowded? Does it matter if the people on our team know anything about the topic? Must we be passionate about it or will our “professionalism” carry us through?

Talent. Do we want a veteran broadcaster? Or a fresh, undiscovered talent? Should they be funny? Young? Old? Do we go with co-hosts?

Format. Do we make it slick with lots of production values? Or do we go for from-the-basement, hand-held camera realism? What about frequency/length? Daily five minute update or weekly half-hour magazine?

Promotion. Okay, we’ll submit our feed to iTunes and all the podcast directories… what else? We’ll pester all the A-list podcasters in hopes of a link or a mention. Should we buy some spots on MSM outlets?

Sheesh! So many questions. And probably not that different from what radio and TV programmers do all the time. If they can’t deliver the ratings within a reasonable time period, the show gets yanked. But they’re starting with an audience. What does it mean when you have zero listeners on Day One?

And every day there is more competition for attention. The potential audience is ever more fragmented. And if they try you once and don’t like what they hear, they never come back. In the Old Days, you listened to your local radio stations… or you didn’t listen. So we get ONE SHOT with each listener, who has HOURS of podcasts on her nano. She can’t listen to what she has, so why will she listen to our new podcast?

If I were a honcho, I think I’d approach this differently. I’d put out an open call to everyone one in the company (not just the reporters and producers and writers and “talent.”) Anyone wants to produce a podcast… we’ll provide the equipment, technical support (hosting, bandwidth, etc), and give everyone half a day every week to produce their podcast. You pick the topic but you must produce a show every week or it’s back to the cube. Then we sit back and watch what happens.

Many (most?) will give up after the first few weeks. Too much work, not as much fun as they thought it would be. Would we get any break-out hits? Don’t know. What I do know, you’d wind up with something very different than from the first model. Instead of a podcast with 100,000 downloads… maybe we wind up with 100 podcasts, with 1,000 downloads.

Seth Godin: “small is the new big”

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Just received my copy of Seth Godin’s new book, small is the new big and flipped it open to page 155:

“The number of channels of communication is going to continue to increase. And either you’ll have a channel or you won’t. Either you’ll have access to the attention of the people you need to talk with (notice I didn’t say “talk at”), or you won’t. So the real question to ask isn’t, “How much will I get paid to talk with these people?” The real question is, “How much will I pay to talk with these people.”

The title of the book refers to a blog post from June, 2005. Godin talks about the new book in a half-hour, moderated Skypecast this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. CDT.

Update: Poor old Seth had to introduce himself because the moderator has tech issues and was late getting into the Skype call. Looked like about 25 or 30 folks on the call and they never got around to taking questions. Typepad — which sponsored the Skypecast– plans to post portions of the audio on their blog.

Robert Scoble: The value of “influencers”

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“I’ll tell you what executives from big companies (like Kraft, Procter and Gamble, GM, and others) who were at MSN’s OWN ADVERTISING CONFERENCE told me. An influencer is worth THOUSANDS of times more than a non-influencer (influencer is someone who tells other people stuff, which is why blogging is getting so much advertising attention lately). That’s why Google is charging more per click than MSN is (Google has more influential users).”

— Robert Scoble via Gaping Void

(Almost) End of Deadwood

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Since the beginning of this season of Deadwood, I’ve been wondering if this is the end. Scott points us to the answer at TVseriesFinale.com.

When it was announced that HBO would we cutting the series short after three seasons, fans signed petitions, took out an ad in Variety, sent letters and made calls indicating that they would cancel their HBO subscriptions at the end of Deadwood’s third season (next week). http://www.savedeadwood.net/

As a result, Deadwood will return next season, but instead of a full-blown 12-episode season to complete the series, HBO and (creator) Milch will instead produce a pair of two-hour movies.

Milch has said that he wasn’t in favor of doing a six-episode season because each episode of Deadwood has typically represented one day in the lives of the characters and South Dakota area. Shifting to two-hour movies will allow him to break that format and to be able to complete the storytelling he had for the final season.