Why Digital Marketing Is Like Trying To Lose 10lbs.....

Over a year ago my brother David asked me to help him with some marketing. He's been in the vintage clothing business a long time and could see that with the market changes and the high Canadian dollar he was going to have to reinvent himself. He wasn't sure what direction he wanted to take his business in but he knew that for any venture he was going to consider, be it his own clothing company, a consultant in the vintage business, that building his personal brand was going to be key.


That's when he started his blog, "The Art of Vintage Leather Jackets". The blog focuses on the historical and cultural role of vintage leather. It's a pretty interesting blog and Dave always has unique and original takes on stuff.

This morning, I wanted to find read his latest post and went to Google and typed in "vintage leather jackets". And guess what? Dave's blog is now third in the Google search results. THIRD! I mean, how amazing is that? And what's even more amazing is the fact that there are all these companies who are not Dave, that presumably have more resources in people and money than him, ADVERTISING based on the key words 'VINTAGE LEATHER JACKETS'.



This leads me to the very simple question, why the hell aren't all of those companies blogging? I mean, it's free. It's not like it's a full time job although there is some effort involved. And that's when it struck me.

Things like blogging are a discipline. You can't just sluff it off to your ad agency (not if you want it to be successful). It's not a money thing, it's a time and effort thing. It's a determination thing. It's a focus thing.

That goes for community building, engagement, connection - you name it, digital marketing is often about effort.


That's why I think it's like losing 10lbs. It should be the easiest thing in the world to do. Eat less (Nicole tells me 1500 calories a day) and exercise more. That's it. But wouldn't you rather just buy a little blue "lose 10lbs" pill?

Sure you would.

Just as you probably prefer to buy a little blue "traditional advertising" pill for community engagement.



Only one problem with the little blue pills. They never work.

Just remember this, if Dave can do it, so can you. Ok, gotta go. I've got 10lbs of post baby birth weight to lose. ;-)


Photos credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/

Variations On The Word Change

HP did a great commercial a few years back that had every moment in the world shown as a digital photograph. I thought it was brilliant because it captured how my daughter uses her camera perfectly. When Cee has her camera in her hand, her memories are extended into the digital space frame by frame. Her childhood point of view as a part of a memory stream captured in screen after screen.

And now more than ever, those memory streams are becoming part of a greater collective.



It struck me as I was watching both the inauguration ceremony with my children (one of whom feel asleep in my arms as Obama was being sworn in), on the TV and through CNN/Facebook as well as Twitter and the many services that were used to connect the disparate points on the Globe, that we were not only witnesses to an important moment in history but somehow differently than I have ever experienced, actually part of it. No longer just the observers but also living historians as participants that will significantly contribute to how these type of events will be remembered hundreds of years from now.

Whenever I think that the networked world I live in can't surprise me anymore...that I am immune to all the change, something comes along and knocks me on my ass in a way that makes me reevaluate everything. Yesterday, was one of those days. And i loved it.

Good Blogs Make Fart Noises

I have nothing really to say in this post - but I needed something to stop my prediction series because I've run out of ideas - and i liked the idea of a blog header that said something about farts (must be the new baby in the house - we are all about poos and farts)....

Quote of the Day:

"Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s. If this isn’t happening every few weeks, the blogger is either bored, half-assing, or taking new medication."

- Merlin Mann

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Prediction For 2009 #5: The New Networked Home

My friend Dave Chant is a major geek. Peter always calls him 'King of the Kids'. Daves just one of those guys - Mr. ahead of the curve and for no other reason then he loves figuring out how to do things better, faster, smarter. Dave's home has always been networked. I remember when the Xbox came out, Dave was the first in line to figure out how to use it with his TV, Computer, Stereo system yada yada.

But it isn't just the Dave's of the world that are doing this now. In my own home, we most recently got ourselves a Mac Mini and hooked it up in the living room. We haven't quite figured out yet how to get all the computers networked the same way Dave does but we'll get around to it.

What amazes me the most about it is how it's changed our media habits. We are just as likely to watch videos and TV content through the computer now as we are from the Cable or the DVD player. And i have to tell you, every time I get a new 'we've raised your rates again for no good reason' letters from Rogers Cable, it makes me that much more committed to networking my home and completely cutting them out of my content watching loop.

It's just a simple change but the implications could be profound - Not only will it change how we consume media content, but also influence what we are willing to pay for and spawn the proliferation of new services we will be looking for.

2009. The year of the new networked home.

update: A couple good links that are related to what I said above just out today

TV.com content site

And an article on Boxee "Web TV That Makes Sense" (for anyone that didn't read it I also talked about Boxee in my first prediction for 2009, "The Rise Of The Presentation Layer"