I just went looking for the origin of the phrase “lightning in a bottle,” which is sadly lost in the mists of time. This post has a stamp of authority on it so particular to the British that I’ll consider the matter closed.
Which is a tangential side note to the major point of this blog post.
The whole notion of “viral” marketing - putting something out to the world that catches fire, gets shared millions of times over and elevates a product, brand, or idea to rock star status, has been likened to that “catching lightning in a bottle” idea.
It’s miraculous, unexpected, and utterly captivating, and the story of how it happened is often as compelling as the happening itself.
Our friend and uber-talented producer/sound supervisor Rick Sanchez of Post Haste Media just sent me this little note:
A story from the social media trenches. An ex-coworker writes a song, makes a video, posts it on YouTube on Jan. 1. It’s seen by Ashton Kutcher who then tweets about it to his million+ followers and in 4 days has over 20,000 views.
It’s early days yet in this story, but we’re going to be keeping an eye on how it progresses.
In the meantime, here’s the lesson for all of us, no matter what our business, passion, message, mission, or vision. It’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, no matter how rare or random it might seem. Even if you’re not Ben Franklin. Or Ashton Kutcher.
From the mindset standpoint, here’s “all” you have to do:
1. Keep going out into the storm.
2. Stay consistent with your efforts.
3. Be open to trying new ways of making that magic happen.
Think it’s hard boiling your biz message, mission, and vision down to its core essence? Think it would be even harder to turn your value proposition into a Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-esque musical?
Try doing just that with the whole Prop 8 gay marriage conundrum. Just 3 minutes and 16 seconds. Wow.
No matter where you stand on the issue, you have to admit this “Funny or Die” Exclusive is a shining beacon in the world of stellar content creation.
Sure, they’ve got folks like Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Neil Patrick Harris, Margaret Cho, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph, and satirical musical genius Marc Shaiman on their creative team (not to mention access to A-List editors, producers, promoters, and equipment). But when you get past that teensy, weensy detail, here’s what they’ve got:
A Big Idea (i.e. message, mission, and vision - Jesus says: “choose Love instead of Hate”)
A short, 3-minute script sharing the Big Idea with humor, wit, and levity
A well-selected Content Catapult (i.e. viral video) to get that Big Idea OUT THERE to its Ideal Audience
The Burning Desire to share it — which supercedes all reservations and fear
That’s a winner of a formula right there, kids. Use it for any (or all) of your products, services, or brands in 2009, and revel in the results.
Okay, so Allen and I have been proudly calling ourselves “The Content Lovers” of Epiphanies, Inc. for a couple of years now. Which is to say…
We love content (duh, right?)
We believe in the power of great content to build businesses and skyrocket profits
We champion its vital role in all marcom for ALL ventures - from the solo pro’s email signature or website to corporate white papers, CEO podcasts, social networking pages, tweets, text messages, YouTube clips…the works.
Then this Joe Pulizzidude of Junta42.com strolls into the picture, and all I want to do is build him a monument, declare him the King of Content, and bow down to his passion and commitment to everything content-related until the end of my days.
I can only imagine he’s got an army of brilliant content trolls working underground 24/7 to pull off what he’s been doing over the last year or so. Not only has he launched and declared a CONTENT REVOLUTION(and explained it in quick, rock-n-roll powered 2-minute videos!), but he’s created Junta42 Match – the eHarmony for Publishers and Content Providers — a place they can flirt, assess needs and expectations, and go all the way with their missions and visions, if that’s the way the relationship plays out.
Jeez, Joe. Do you sleep? How are you doing this all so well?
Here’s the quick YouTube vid, if you’d like to find out more about how you can use Junta42 Match to help take your message, mission, and vision to the next level. It’s a killer idea, and it sure looks like Joe has executed the idea like a rockstar. Hope you can use this resource to drive your profits and build your business with stellar content! (Which, of course, is a KILLER way to “A-Ha Yourself!”)
And, if you end up using Junta42 Match, please let us know how it goes for ya.
Carlin, a #$%@*^’ primo example of how to “A-Ha Yourself!” because he grabbed hold of his authentic innards and threw ‘em out on the buffet table of life for all to feast and gorge, if they could handle his wicked, wonderful, wacked-out flavor.
Muther-#$%@*^’ Carlin. One of the top 10 Content Anarchists of all time (and right now I have no idea who the other nine might be - everyone else I think of is paling in comparison).
George muther-#$%@*^’ Carlin. A fearless philosopher, thinker, commentator, observer, comedian, and truth sayer. Genius behind (and star of) 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, and three books. Showstealer of dozens of movies and TV shows. Five-time Grammy winner, nominated for four Emmys, and 2008 recipient of the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.
“I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.”
Thank you for doing your civic duty, Mr. Carlin — for crossing that line, over and over again, showing us how silly we all can be, and calling us all on our *#@$ %^&* whenever we needed it. Your scathing wit and infinite wisdom will be missed. Luckily, I know you’re not too torn up about your own demise, cuz you even riffed on the ridiculousness of death:
“I’m getting old. And it’s OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to die — I’ll ‘pass away.’ Or I’ll ‘expire,’ like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they’ll call it a ‘terminal episode.’ The insurance company will refer to it as ‘negative patient care outcome.’ And if it’s the result of malpractice they’ll say it was a ‘therapeutic misadventure.’”
Peace be with you, you ol’ %$&*#@%^*& you. And I mean that in the most loving, respectful, reverent way a nice girl can say it these days without being censored, fined, or dismissed as unprofessional.
(Maybe some day I’ll have the %^**@ you did to just come out with it, without worrying about the consequences.)
Ever heard of Judson Laipply? No? Well this guy may be one of the smartest, savviest, and/or LUCKIEST marketers of all time.
Why?
He managed to:
Package his talents in a six-minute window
Spend nothing on marketing and advertising and get TONS of free media coverage by the biggies - like The Today Show, Good Morning America, Rolling Stone mag, and Oprah - by leveraging a FREE tool
Get more than 77 million people to watch him shake what his mama gave him…AND share it with millions of others voluntarily!
In fact, whether you recognize his name or not, chances are you’ve seen Judson strut his stuff (or rather, dance his butt off). According to Wikipedia and his website, Judson (Jud) Laipply is an inspirational comedian “best known for his performance in the Evolution of Dance clip [below], which is currently the #1 Most Viewed (All Time) Video, #1 Most Favorited (All Time) Video, and #9 Most Discussed (All Time) Video on YouTube.”
I don’t know what kind of revenue streams Mr. Laipply has enjoyed because of his decision to follow INSIGHT with ACTION, but I have a hunch his decision to upload a six-minute video to YouTube has paid off handsomely.
He didn’t wait for a team of experienced video professionals to capture his routine. He didn’t need the audio to be “just right,” or hours and hours of footage to communicate his vision.
Instead, he used other people’s content (i.e. the songs!), mashed ‘em up in an entertaining way, and took his audiences on a journey of nostalgia, pop culture, and abject silliness.
What are you doing these days to connect with your peeps in a fun, bold, fearless, and effective way?
You don’t need million-dollar marketing budgets or fancy technological know-how or everything perfectly poised, plucked, and polished before you GET OUT THERE in front of your Ideal Audience.
What you DO need is a good idea, a little creativity, and the determination to “A-Ha Yourself!” - which is to put a little JOY-FILLED ACTION into your BOLDEST INSIGHTS.
Got it?
Now, here’s Judson’s perfectly imperfect masterpiece, to inspire you to take some chances and do your thang, in case you somehow missed it.
In working with Kevin Skarritt of Acorn Creative on the “Go Nuts!” special report a while back, he came up with an incredible list of marketing tools and tactics - Content Catapults, if you will - which has expanded over time to be a 3-page, single-spaced list of ways a business could get their message, mission, and vision OUT there to their Ideal Audience.
And amazing as it may sound, “cartooning” isn’t even on the list.
It isn’t on our own shortlist of Content Catapults, either (which we chose on the basis of being the easiest, most cost-effective, and having the biggest bang for the smallest buck). But we DID include the “Create Your Own Content Catapult” catch-all, and here’s one example of someone who used cartooning as a Content Catapult - despite being very bad at it.
I remember telling my friends and family that I was going to submit some comics to become a syndicated cartoonist. I don’t remember even one person predicting I would succeed. Thousands of wannabes submit comics for syndication every year and only a few get contracts. And most of those comics fizzle after a few years. My entire art experience included frequent doodling plus getting the well-deserved lowest grade in art class in college. That was my total preparation for my new career.
I sent my samples to several comic syndication companies. One syndicate helpfully suggested that I find an actual artist to do the drawings for me. United Media had lower standards and offered me a contract for Dilbert. That turned out to be a good move on their part.
The related thing, which he mentions in one of his other books, is that it took something like nine years of doing Dilbert before he finally quit his “day job” at SBC Communications and became a “full-time” cartoonist, so to speak. Nine years!
He may not have been a great (or even good) cartoonist, but what he did have going for him was fabulous content. So when it came to his drawing skills, “good enough” really was “good enough.”
And if you have great content, don’t hold yourself back with perfectionist thoughts, like “I need good recording equipment to do a podcast” or “I’ll start blogging after I get my website’s look and feel updated.” Just go for it!
Our friend Lou Esposito, who’s the Producer at Mattel Brands Online for the BarbieCollector.com website, is awesome. (That’s him with Lani during her October 2006 visit to the old El Segundo campus she used to call “work” for three years.)
He’s wicked talented, as an avid blogger and member of the highly-regarded Shakespeare at Play theater company. (Check out a review, with him in the accompanying photo, of their recent Twelfth Night production.)
It’s the latter talent which inspired this blog post. Lou sent this email to some friends the other day:
Years ago (we’re talking decades here), my friend Anne’s boyfriend was working on a book on artists… interviews with struggling artists and performers and how they cope with the day to day survival while pursuing their craft. In the course of working on his book, he sent me a set of interview questions, which I was only too glad to reply to. And promptly forget.
Fast forward 20 years to learn that the book was published in ‘04, and I’m one of the ’struggling artists’ included … It is truly surreal reading my responses from 20 years ago and comparing them to who I am today, as I get back into acting after so many years away from it.
The book is “Artists on the Art of Survival: Observations on Frustration, Perspiration, and Inspiration for the Young Artist” by Bill Mesce. I’ve read through the parts you can see at Google Books, and I’m just amazed by how the things about which we’re passionate never truly leave us.
One way or another, you WILL “A-Ha Yourself!” in this life.
In his blog post on January 7th, good friend and social networking thought leader Kevin Skarritt flagged an all-important list for me, hubby Allen, and anyone else in the trenches of the Internet Marketing Revolution. This list is Tamar Weinberg’s “Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007,” which is a super-rad collection of Tamar’s “favorite timeless posts of 2007, complete with descriptions about each blog post (which more than quadrupled the workload for me this time around, especially because I tripled the amount of links, but I had fun!).”
This amazing, exhaustive, well-though-out list has earned Tamar more than 180 comments and trackbacks (which means more attention to her site by people AND search engines!), not to mention the GRATITUDE of peers, bloggers, and professionals in the internet marketing community who love the idea of a fully-loaded resource of information and inspiration like this, all in one place.
What a fab way to “A-Ha Yourself!” - take the initiative to collect, order, and share information you know will help you and countless others down the road. Smart, efficient, considerate, pragmatic…basically, ultra keen all around.
Did I mention the list contains more than 250 well-considered and laser-summarized links to top-notch articles and resources around the World Wide Web? Here are the categories Tamar covered:
Social Media Sites: General
Facebook
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
LinkedIn
Twitter
Mixx
del.icio.us
Sphinn
Social Media and Social Media Marketing
General Internet Marketing
Viral Strategies
Link Resources
Blogging: General
Blogging: Inspiration
Blogging: Promotion
Content Generation
Reputation Management
Video Articles
BusinessSearch Engine Optimization
Search Engine Stuff
Web Development
Search Marketing Tools
Paid Search
Recommended Books
Affiliate Sites
Domaining
And finally, Techipedia’s Best Posts for 2007
Look, I’m exhausted just PASTING the names of the categories. Tamar’s devotion to sharing the articles within these categories - AND commenting about each one! - is truly a feat of Herculean proportions. If I’m lucky and honest, I’ll get around to scanning a dozen or so of the articles she recommends. Still, the fact that they’re all in one place - and now I’ve got ‘em on OUR blog for super easy reference! - this makes me so happy I could spit like a teething llama.
(Oh, and what a great example of the power of ARTICLE MARKETING, eh? Each one of these authors is now being celebrated as a “best of 2007″ expert by an industry insider. Bingo!)
Kevin Skarritt. Archetype branding guru. Social media revolutionary. Former world record holder in pogo-sticking. Web design prophet. The Grand Poobah of user interfaces. A classically trained mime. Marketing uber-maven. Radical public speaker and fearless thought leader. Proud member of the Rotary Club, the Laconia-Weirs Chamber of Commerce, and multiple Real Estate Investor Associations.
These little bullet points may sketch out for you the kind of modern-day Renaissance man our good friend and strategic business ally Kevin Skarritt is. So perhaps it shouldn’t have been too surprising to go to a local parade on a lovely Sunday afternoon, and what to our wondering eyes should appear?
Yes, that’s right: Boy Scout leader Kevin Skarritt. On four-foot stilts. That he learned how to use just an hour before these photos were taken.
Kevin Skarritt. He’s not only a brand expert, he’s an expert in learning how to “A-Ha Yourself!” in myriad ways!
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 11:07 am and is filed under How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
So Brand Maven Kevin Skarritt and I sat in on two final sessions at PodCamp Boston 2, and both were about how to “monetize” new media - specifically, web series, podcasts, and video online.
The answers, according to Paul Kontonis, Chief Executive of For Your Imagination, are:
1. Advertising
2. Sponsorship
3. Licensing
4. Merchandising
5. Franchising
And according to John Federico of On Digital Media, the answer is advertising, but not really, because of a technical issue with iTunes that would make it hard for advertisers to trust any listener stats you report.
I respectfully submit that they’ve both missed a vital way to monetize audio and video - one that has nothing to do with advertising.
With a strong Content Strategy in place, any podcaster could structure a series of audio episodes with the intention of collecting and compiling a series of podcasts into an information product.
The podcaster could have the episodes transcribed to package with the audio, and after reviewing the whole series, it’s likely the podcaster would be inspired to create a few bonus items to naturally supplement the material he or she patiently created over the course of weeks, months, or years.
This awesome and highly useful package could be sold:
1. By the podcaster
2. By anyone else through an affiliate program
3. By any strategic partners of the podcaster (I’m looking forward to a session along this vein in tomorrow’s sessions)
And more ways I’m sure I could think of, had my sweet 21-day-old son not kept me up all last night.
How did Kontonis and Federico miss this one? Well, Kontonis’ clients are more entertainment-based by all appearances, and Federico is focused on metrics, an issue that’s bedeviled a lot of people trying to analyze the ROI of things like blogs, podcasts, and other non-traditional website offerings.
The way to monetize with information products relies on the concept of what we call “Dignity Marketing” - sharing your passion, knowledge, experience, and personality in a natural, educational, entertaining, and relationship-building way.
You, as the source of reliable information in your niche, are then top of mind when the buyer’s wallet comes out. Because the stark truth is that people don’t buy when you’re ready to sell - they only buy when they’re ready to buy.
If you’re thinking about starting a podcast, please take a moment to think a year ahead, and ask yourself: How can I create a Content Plan that multi-tasks the effort I put into doing these podcasts?
Scott Adams’ latest book, 
Our friend Lou Esposito, who’s the Producer at Mattel Brands Online for the BarbieCollector.com website, is awesome. (That’s him with Lani during her October 2006 visit to the old El Segundo campus she used to call “work” for three years.)
