A Great Marketer Shares a Great Presentation

Seth Godin has a new book out named /Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us. /He has posted a presentation about the book at slideshare, another very cool resource. This is how captivating presentations are done.

I know...you are thinking, I work in a very corporate (read as stuffy, conservative, etc) environment. You won't be able to get away with an entire presentation like this, but look at the impact of the images he uses and how little text there is.

What will people remember from your presentation? 84 bullet points in 12 point font?

Polls: Exact Science or Fuzzy Math?

Polling is either an exact science or fuzzy math depending upon with whom you talk. The major polls got it mostly right this time around. And how addicting was Real Clear Politics?

There is a good article in the Wilson Quarterly, which is by the way, a great magazine. It is called, "Poll Power" by Scott Keeter.

It is funny how the Founding Father's feared direct democracy....

"It is doubtful that the Founding Fathers would have taken much comfort in the reliability of survey research. They were skeptical of public opinion and fearful of direct democracy, believing, as James Madison artfully declared, that the public’s views should be 'refine[d] and enlarge[d] . . . by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.'"

The Sound of Democracy

So I am reading an interesting book, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution, by David O. Stewart. On the heels of the most exciting Presidential election in a generation, it is interesting to see how we ended up with the electoral college.

It is funny how the Founding Father's feared direct democracy....they were democrats, small d, and elitists in the kindest sense of the word. They didn't really believe that everyone had a voice. How different we are now. Now any idiot with access to a computer can make their voice heard with blog or comment box.
And yet, the noise of it all is the sound of democracy.

I wonder how many of those guys failed to vote......

Worst Advertising of the Week

Prilosec OTC

They have a new commercial, or at least it is the first time I have seen
it. And I hope it is the last. It features a 40 something year old
white woman, dancing at what looks like a 25th high school reunion. She
is dancing like Elaine from Seinfeld, but it is not meant to be a joke.
Wow. What a bad ad.

Obama Campaign = World Class Marketing

There is a great article in Ad Age 'What Marketers Can Learn From Obama
<http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=132237>' which says, "Nov.
4, 2008, will go down in history as the biggest day ever in the history
of marketing. " This is not an exaggeration.

The Obama campaign was pure marketing genius, from strategy to
execution. They positioned their product perfectly. Built an
unprecedented distribution network, changed consumer behavior and made
purchase of their product about far more than the product itself.

The genius of Obama's campaign is that it tapped into that truly
American desire to dream big dreams. He created a movement that at its
core was about redeeming this ability to dream. It only became clear to
me last night. I knew it was about change, and I knew he had created a
movement in this country to create change, but I didn't appreciate that
the lifeblood of the movement was this desire to dream.......amazing.

Thoughts on Voting for a President

Great article from Leon Wieseletier at the New Republic about voting for a president. In marketing you learn, people are complex and as much as we desire to put them in a box and describe them as a means to understand them, most people defy strict categorization. So when we go to vote, how could any candidate accurately embrace or reflect all our contradictions? No wonder people always feel they are choosing between the lesser of two evils>

My favorite part of his article: "McCain feels with his heart, but he thinks with his base. And when he picked Sarah Palin, he told the United States of America to go fuck itself."

Comment Crazies

When Comment Boxes were created on the web so readers could leave comments, I am sure everyone thought it was brilliant, a democratization of the web, give everyone a voice.

Here's the problem, the only people who seem to comment are the same people in your (school, business, church) who are the first to complain, blame, criticize, mock or dismiss. And they are usually the most ignorant. Now, not only do they annoy you, they have the ability to annoy the entire world. I call them the Comment Crazies.

Think I am exaggerating? Go find a news story with a number of comments posted. Any story will do. The more important the better. Then look at the comments. My guess is that 80 percent of comments are angry or ridicule, 10 percent seek to clarify a point and 10 percent are too strange to classify. On rare occasion you may have someone defending a position.

It is easy to be against something. It takes knowledge and conviction to be for something. If you have an opinion and you want to post a comment on line, please ask yourself first, "Will my opinion enhance this conversation?" Or is it just mindless, grammatically incorrect, hate-laced drivel?

Think before you post! For the rest of us....