Archive for November, 2008

Well, campers, the readership of the grokmedia | mediablog is growing by leaps and bounds. That’s good. Unfortunately, along with that growth comes a bunch of associated problems – mostly of the spam variety. At first, it was enough to simply delete entries that were obviously spam. That worked for a while, but as you would expect, spammers have gotten increasingly more aggressive, not to mention crafty. Whereas before, I’d get a comment that was obviously spam (my favorite had to be the Viagra ad that was posted in reply to a piece I wrote about the Episcopal schism). But recently, the spammers have gotten sneaky – they’ll actually reply with some text that looks as if it’s a real comment…but then link back to a bogus website that either attempts to sell you the latest in sexual dysfunction products, or (even worse in my book) attempts to infect your computer with a variety of virus code. Not fun.

So with something of a deep breath and a great deal of trepidation, I’ve reconfigured the blog to require everyone to register before commenting. Furthermore, I’ve implemented a WordPress plugin that is designed to detect bots and gently discourage them from registering…or posting.

Frankly, I’m a bit fed up with idiots trying to spam this blog. I’m trying to share what I know with a larger audience. It’s a lot of work to post on a daily basis. While I enjoy all the “real” feedback I get, having to deal with a bunch of second-raters who parasitically glom onto creative work and then use it to spread their useless snake oil wares is a colossal waste of time. I’m in hopes that I can eliminate the spammers from the site, and get back to spending my time talking about marketing.

If you have any problems with the registration process, please let me know.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. No cards. No gifts. No rampant commercialism. Just good food, good fellowship, and your family.

This year, I’d like to give thanks for a  lot of things.

• My wife
• My daughter
• My family
• My home
• My job
• My country
• My faith
• My church
• Our friends
• Our customers
• My readers (that would be you)
• Our military

I’m sure there are a bunch of things I’m thankful for that I didn’t list here, but I’ve got to go wolf down some pumpkin pie.

Godspeed.

I’m curious…Are you seeing any of your customers cancelling or delaying plans for marketing efforts, in light of the current economic reality?

So far (cross my fingers) I’ve not seen any cancellations, but today I was told that one of my clients was delaying plans to start a new marketing push, at least until the new year.

That’s not unexpected, but it is a little scary.

So…rather than expound on the economy, and how I believe we’d all be better off to just take our medicines, let the companies fail that are unsound, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get the economy moving again…I’d rather hear what YOU have to say. If you’d rather not have your remarks exposed on the blog, write me (bkozak@grokmedia.com) and I’ll keep your comments anonymous. I’m particularly interested in personal stories regarding how the economic downturn is affecting your company – and your marketing.

More details soon.

If nothing else, this blog exists so that I can both talk about marketing – and put my marketing knowledge and theories into practice. I’m happy to say that we’re now averaging about 250 readers per week, and that’s enough visitors to start thinking towards ways I can monetize the blog. 

Why monetize? Frankly, I don’t expect to make a lot of money on this puppy…but I wouldn’t complain if I did. I’ve had friends suggest that I start charging for content. I’m convinced that charging for content would be the fastest way to kill this blog. Hey – if the Wall Street Journal can’t make a pay-for-access model work, how successful do you think I’d be?

That leaves underwriting and advertising. Since I’ve yet to find a corporate sugar daddy that is interesting in paying me to ramble, all that’s left is advertising. Read the rest of this entry »

The wave of the future.

Dropped by our local Mall today, with my daughter and her friend. Going to the mall here in Amarillo (Centrally Located Between Two Oceans!™) is a little different experience (by several orders of magnitude) than it is in Dallas, Atlanta, or any other major metro area. To start with, when you’re the only game in town (Amarillo’s Westgate Mall is the only shopping mall for 180 miles) you’re left with not a lot of competition, save from strip centers. When you’re “it” you don’t get the variety in stores – and in demographics – the way you do in a place like Dallas. In the Metroplex, you have your old money mall (Northpark), your neuveau riche mall (The Shops at Willow Bend), your upscale suburban mall (Frisco’s Stonebriar Mall), the upper-middle class mall (Valley View), a blue-collar mall (Town East), a tourist attraction mall (The Galleria) and so forth. Here, it’s one mall to fit all. In a way, that makes Westgate Mall both a cliché, and simultaneously a microcosm of mall life. Read the rest of this entry »

Got your attention? That might be a stretch, but one thing is for certain, figures might not lie, but liars figure (at least according to Mark Twain). The problem is, it’s remarkably easy to take legitimate numbers and spin them to mean whatever you want them to mean. It’s even easier to pose poll questions in such a way as to push the subjects to give answer that you want.  That makes surveys, polls, and questionnaires…well…questionable. Think about it. How many times have you been asked a question, and you gave a less than truthful answer? If you’re like most people, the answer is “a bunch.” Turns out, most people answer survey questions with an eye to what they think the people running the survey want to hear. Others simply don’t care. Some like to attempt to skew the results, just for fun. Then again, some take surveys seriously. Problem is, it’s almost impossible to tell the accurate data from the bad. Oh, sure, you can try making the surveys double-blind, expand your sample to eliminate statistical aberrations, even try and cloak the party who’s commissioned the survey. Those techniques can help – a little – but they cannot overcome the central reason that surveys are inaccurate. 

Everybody lies. Read the rest of this entry »

[Editor's Note: this blog post first appeared in our sister blog, Captain Digital Speaks! on November 11.

One of my favorite stories involves a blind street vendor of hot dogs. One day, one his customers suggested that if business was good, he should consider expanding. The customer offered to help the blind vendor with introductions to a banker, and so the vendor ended up buying a second cart, and hiring someone to work for him. That worked out so well, that he was able to buy more carts, and hire more people. This gave him enough discretionary income that he was able to send his son to college. The son majored in business administration. When the kid graduated, he returned home to see that his dad had purchased a corner lot and an old diner trailer that he rennovated and opened as a freestanding restaurant. The son was horrified. “Dad…don’t you know the economy is lousy! You shouldn’t be expanding right now…you need to pull in your horns and hunker down for a long recessionary period. This has got “Depression” written all over it! You’d better be careful, or you’ll lose everything!”

The father thought, “Well…my son did go to college, which I’ve never done, and he did major in business, and he did get a degree. Maybe he’s right.” So he sold the restaurant, sold off the other carts, and went back to working a single street corner, selling hot dogs. He thought, “Boy, my son was right. The economy is lousy.” Read the rest of this entry »

Cars have been much on my mind for the last few days, much like in the halls of Congress and across our great land. (For my take on what ails Detroit, please visit www.captaindigital.net and read today’s post, Motor City Madness.) But from a marketing perspective, this epic battle between Detroit’s finest and the lame duck Congress is…interesting.

What we’ve got here (with apologies to Strother Martin) is a failure to communicate…the truth.

And it’s that failure – and the framing/spin/mendacity that’s going on that is so bloody fascinating. To wit… Read the rest of this entry »

Are you hip to “framing”? If not, let me give you a crash course in the latest marketing jargon:

Framing is the term used to describe the coining of phrases and the spin used to focus the discussion on a specific issue from the point of view of a partisan position.

Framing is a term born from the idea of “framing a discussion,” or using subtle words and phrases to cast a discussion in a particular light. Think about the ongoing argument over gun rights in this country. Those that want to ban possession of certain types of guns (or for that matter, all guns)  by all save the police and military want to frame the discussion in their own terms: “assault weapons,” “gun control,” “Saturday Night Specials,” “Cop Killer bullets” and the like. These terms have helped the Left set the terms of the discussion on their turf, forcing the NRA and those that seek to preserve the rights of individuals to own guns to play defense.

Well, campers, the Episcopal Church has been framed – and those that disagree with that framing are fighting back. Read the rest of this entry »