It's Steve (now in blog form)

I’ve been in Sundance for the last couple of days with the good folks from HP (they were nice enough to invite me along to one of their events).  It’s a really pretty place if you can get over the whole snow thing.  I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of matter changing states when you get right down to it (sublimation is obviously an exception as it is very cool).  Check out the views from the hotel:

Those of you that have been following my blog for a while can probably imagine why I was excited to get up here…REVERSE PAPARRAZI!  The exciting game of asking famous people to take photos of you (full details here).  I figured I’d be bound to bump into a few famous folks at a boondoggle like this.  Last night it all worked out.

My hosts organized a lovely dinner in town and brought their new spokespeople Michael Phelps and Dara Torres.  Jonny Moseley was also at dinner as there was a ski activity he was involved in the next day.  Oh yeah, three gold medalists on paid to be in attendance.  Time to force them to pretend to be happy to talk to me.

Phelps shot this pic of me and Dara Torres.  Awesome.  Can’t believe that (a) she’s 41 (b) she’s so much freakin’ taller than I am .  Damn it.

Moseley took this one of Chris and me.  He’s a cool dude.  Gave his number to Chris’ wife so she could text him and they could meet up on the mountain for ski tips.  

 

It’s also worth noting that Moseley apparently took ballet for a while.  I don’t think he’d had as much to drink as I’d had, but here he is working through his exercises.

It feels really good to have found a whole new class of celebrity to harass and impose upon.

Update: Just to handle all you naysayers, here’s a pic of Michael Phelps taking my pic.

The other day I wrote up a really positive marketing program I was on the receiving end of on Twitter (again, good job WubbzyJen).  It seems that some of you were interested in the topic so here’s a little follow up.

This is my Twitter account.  After I talked about the Wubbzy encounter I got a couple of new Twitter followers.  The first was TwittMarketing.  His bio:

Name Twit Marketing
Location California
Web http://tweetvirus.com
Bio Want your Tweets to go Viral? Click the link above to learn how.

This stuff makes me sad.  Twitter is a slick communication vehicle.  That always seems to drag in the exploiters.  I don’t want my tweets to go viral.  I certainly don’t want to get followed by random folks with Twitter bots.  This is exactly the sort of behavior that forces folks to move their communications out of the public discourse and lock things down.

Another follower turned up about the same time.  http://twitter.com/socialnetmarket Wow!  Could this be true?!? “Major Web 2.0 training lauches Thrus Jan 22 2009. Private Invitation Only – tweet me up soon to get signed up”  That sounds fantastic!  I’m gonna get in on the ground floor.

Anyway, this is what it looks like when authentic communication starts to get undermined by profiteers.  Believe me, I know a lot about how dangerous these guys can be to a community.  They’re insidious not because they are flooding, but because they are attempting to proliferate the idea that lots of people should engage in this sort of behavior.  Don’t get me wrong, most of the people who will buy and use this stuff are nice people just trying to make some extra cash.  But when enough amateur marketeers get involved, the larger signal to noise ratio of the entire community can skew the wrong way.  

Dang, I really liked Twitter…

It’s Wednesday and I’ve haven’t been posting much lately.  Here are some pics to tide you over.

This makes me unbelievably happy/jealous.

The cow goes moo.  The pig goes oink.  The giraffe goes “This pent up existence, although nutritionally stable and predator free, is no substitute for the endless vistas of the savannah.  Oh how I long for the taste of the mighty acacia once again on my lips or the feel of the wind as it ripples through the seas of long grass.  Alright, time to poop for the tourists.”

I really can’t believe it. Yesterday I was on the receiving end of a marketing ploy on Twitter that was well conceived. I know, it sort of freaked me out too. Most marketeers don’t understand the social space. I don’t want your brand to randomly hassle me. I don’t want a generic friend request from your crispy fried chicken/fancy new car/extreme type soda. If I seek out a brand that’s one thing, but intrusive outreach makes me want to flame them.

Anyway, this is my Twitter. I updated my status to “can’t help but wonder why Wow Wow Wubbzy is so great.” If you haven’t seen Wow Wow Wubbzy I would strongly recommend it. It’s sort of like Japanimation and Rainbow Bright had a kid who takes a tremendous amount of ecstasy. Ben loves it. There’s a good chance I’d watch it after a couple of cocktails even if I didn’t have a kid. Then next morning I had some one new following me on Twitter: WubbzyJen.

The first thing you always do when someone follows you is to check them out. Her bio:

Bio Hi, my name is Jennifer! I work with Wubbzy and would love to talk. Feel free to tweet me with any questions or comments about anything Wubbzy.

Her Twitter profile also had a link to the official Wubbzy blog. Somebody at Nick Jr. in the illustrious Wubbzy division gets how to do this stuff. Some important rules were followed:

1. Social marketing requires laser beams, not shotguns – I got hit up because I’d mentioned Wubbzy already. They pre-qualified that I might be receptive before the targeted me.
2. Take the light touch approach – The wrong thing to do in this scenario would have been to shoot a direct message over with something like “Hey! YOU LIKE WUBBZY! YOU SHOULD FOLLOW US ON TWITTER BECAUSE WE’RE MARKETING AND IT WILL BE COOL AND EXTREME AND [insert additional buzz words here]!!” They only followed me which is as light as it gets on Twitter
3. Use people – The Twitter account was for some staffer named Jen, not for the show itself. That makes me way less likely to get pissed off since people connection is the model that we generally adhere to in the Twitter format.
4. Engage with me, don’t market at me – Clearly they wanted me to end up on the Wubbzy blog. But they resisted the temptation to have every Tweet be a demand to visit. They stuck with the common practice of linking to it only from the home page and focusing the Tweets on actual communication with fans.

So there you go. Marketing on a social platform that doesn’t suck. Now here’s some Wubbzy to soothe your brain.

I was in Vegas for Consumer Electronics Show this week.  Obviously this is very exciting considering my overarching gadget fetish.  It was fun except for the day I spent with food poisoning (special thanks to the IGN crew for what I assume was discount fish in the cocktail party appetizers).  There were a few of highlights to the trip.

The porno convention was in town!- It’s an odd thing to be walking through the casino and have a porn star go walking by in an outfit that can only be described as a creative use of dental floss and postage stamps.  There were a lot of them running around.  It got to the point where I was basically afraid to touch anything (its almost worse to touch it if you do know where it’s been).

Can I pay with PayPal?- I’m not sure if this means that their brand is incredibly strong or if it’s tanking.  

Even to dorky for me- Star Trek fans are an odd breed.  Lacking even the respect of other sci-fi dorks, they wander aimlessly from convention to convention desperately hoping Shatner can fill some sort of hole in their life.  Now in between conventions, they can gamble away the hard earned dollars they would normally spend of models and phasers.  I give you, Star Trek slots.  Well done, gambling industry.

Journalists need a sense of irony, not depth perception- I really really like this poster.  Norm!

I was in Vegas most of the week.  On the second day I got a crazy call from Kim.  She had taken the dog out to pee and the door locked behind her.  Her keys and phone were locked in the house.  So was Ben.  So as she’s freaking out outside, Ben sat in the window grinning and waving.  

About that time Kim’s friend showed up with her 3 year old for a play date.  You may not know this, but a 3 year old has a couple of interesting properties: (1) they can be stuffed through a doggy door, (2) they often can talk enough to understand that you want them to unlock the door once you have stuffed them through said doggy door.  Big thanks to Kim’s friend and her B&E baby for getting us back in.