Archive for March, 2011

This morning, my focus is on a stack of books staring at me that fall into one of the following categories: read, somewhat-read, half-read or not read.

So rather than spending my time reading new found goodies on the Internet, I thought I would sharing my reading list (in no particular order). I don’t know about most people, but for me it’s normal that I read 2-3 books at a time or I poke around in a book until I find what I need (usually a proof point of some sort).

What’s on your reading list?

• Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders – Adam Morgan
• Think Two Products Ahead: Secrets the Big Advertising Agencies Don’t Want You to Know and How to Use Them for Bigger Profits – Ben Mack
• Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry – Stephen Denny
• Ethics in Public Relations – Patricia Parsons
• Strategy from the Outside In: Profiting from Customer Value – George Day, Christine Moorman
• Marketing 3.0: From Products to Customers to the Human Spirit – Philip Kotler, Hermawan Kartajaya, Iwan Setiawan
• A Sense of Urgency – John Kotter
• The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind – A. K. Pradeep
• Gimme! The Human Nature of Successful Marketing – John Hallward
• The Hyper-Social Organization – Francois Gossieaux, Ed Moran
• Measure What Matters: Online Tools For Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships – Katie Paine
• Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead – Charlene Li
• Chief Customer Officer : Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action – Jeanne Bliss
• Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business – Josh Bernoff, Ted Schadler
• Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation – Grant McCraken
• WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace – Sean Moffitt, Mike Dover
• Building Customer-Brand Relationships – Don E.Schultz, et. al.
• Content Rules – Ann Handley, CC Chapman
• The Cult of the Customer: Create an Amazing Customer Experience That Turns Satisfied Customers Into Customer Evangelists – Shep Hyken
• The Dentsu Way – Kotaro Sugiyama, Tim Andree
• Real-Time Marketing and PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now – David Meerman Scott
• Social Marketing to the Business Customer: Listen to Your B2B Market, Generate Major Account Leads, and Build Client Relationships – Paul Gillin, Eric Schwartzman

[Disclaimer: This list is not an endorsement for any of these books, it is just a list of what I read or plan on reading. All endorsements on this blog come in a shape of a blog post solely focused on said book with further appropriate disclaimers.]

Happy Reading!

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I just finished reading Ernan Roman’s latest book, Voice-of-the-Customer Marketing: A Revolutionary 5-Step Process to Create Customers Who Care, Spend, and Stay and I must say, this book is a gift to marketers, management and any business owners who truly cares about their customers.

I first learned about Ernan’s new book when Denise Lee Yohn interviewed him on her blog. (If you don’t read Denise’s blog, Brand as Business Bites, you should. It’s full of great branding insights!)

After reading the interview, I knew that I had to put this book on the top of my reading list because it not only embodies my beliefs on customer-centric business—it provides a process to bring the customer closer to the center of the organization.

While “voice of the customer ” research has been around for a while, Ernan shares his five-step process so that companies can put VOC research into practice. For those who might be speculative, the process is backed with solid case studies.

Listening Versus Understanding

The foundation to any well thought out social media strategy is listening. If you are familiar with social media, you know listening means using tools like Radian6, SM2 or Google Alerts to capture what people are saying about your brand on the Internet.

However, there is a lot of work that needs to take place between listening, understanding and implementing change. Listening online alone often leads to a misunderstanding of context and nuance.

Scott Rogers captures that best in his post, Listening Versus Understanding: There is a Difference.

Keep Reading…

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I would be completely remiss if I didn’t put a spotlight on SXSW Cares this weekend.

If you aren’t familiar with South by Southwest (SXSW), it’s one of the largest conferences and festivals in the world that brings music, film and interactive together every year in Austin, Texas. On the eve of this year’s Interactive portion, an unthinkable act of nature hit Japan and devastated a country and its people.

I wasn’t able to attend SXSW this year and while I missed seeing my friends and connecting with new ones, I’ll be honest—I didn’t miss the often narcissistic ‘see and be seen’ party atmosphere. That said, the beauty of SXSW is that it is what YOU make of it.

That is why I was so proud when I started hearing the news about SXSW Cares, which was started by my friends Leigh Durst and Deb Ng (along with Rob Wu of CauseVox, Jess Lin and The American Red Cross). It would have been so easy to get swept up in panels, book signings, parties, socializing and photo ops, but this team was heads down in trying to make a difference and trying to help those who needed it most.

Keep Reading…

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I am not sure what triggered me to think about the music industry today. When it comes to music technology, I am a late adopter. I got my first iPod in 2009 and it was only because it came with my iPhone. Next was the discovery of music identification apps like Shazam and SoundHound and Internet radio services like Pandora.

Today, how I find, purchase and create my own music experiences has completed changed. That said, I would be remiss if I did not mention that 90% of my day is still listening to a favorite local radio station—WXPN. Now, however, I don’t just listen, I  actively identify new songs with an app and purchase them right from iTunes within 30 seconds.

Perhaps these experiences provoked a curiosity to find out how music aficionados continually drove major shifts in the music industry—the shifts that fans now enjoy every day—and how executives have had to cope with becoming fan-centric.

In Forrester’s 2009 report, Music Product Manifesto: The Product Features That Will Save Recorded Music, they propose six basic consumer music rights:

1. The right to great customer experiences first (and business models second).
2. The right to unique music experiences.
3. The right to share in the creation process.
4. The right to share [music].
5. The right to fair use of technology.
6. The right to be social.

The music industry is over 100-years old. One would think that it would be difficult to change its business culture and practices. Yet, tectonic shifts have occurred in a relatively short time.

Those shifts have allowed fans to get closer to artists, artists to become successful without music labels, and fans to create their own experiences. It makes this marketer wonder if other industries could live up to this type of pressure and—more importantly—what will it take to understand that they are no longer in control.

Keep Reading…

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I was originally going to write a post about a business owner who has recently written two blog posts in the New York Times about what is wrong with PR (You know who I am referring to. If not, click through the some of the links included in this post to find out. I do not want to give him anymore “publicity”).

I promised Kellye Crane that I would write a post about what’s wrong with said person’s ideas of PR, but then I read a post by Heidi Cohen, 31 Public Relations Definitions, and was once again reminded that there is a larger issue within our industry.

It is not the first time we will be having this conversation, nor will it be the last. Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson discussed the issue of defining PR in regards to the relationship between PR marketing back in January 2010. (If you haven’t listened to this podcast, I promise it will be worth your time. Included in the debate is Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Valeria Maltoni, Bill Sledzik, Deirdre Breakenridge, Mitch Joel and me.)

What The Heck Is PR?

31 Definitions. Really! 31.

Does anyone else see anything wrong with that?

Keep Reading…

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