Sideshow Marketing

So, sometime last summer, I see an offer from Missy Ward and Shawn Collins at Affiliate Summit East, for a free pass to the Audience Conference @ Caroline’s Comedy Club in NYC.

Happily, I had that Saturday free and Caroline’s is only 40 minutes from home, so off I went to breathe the same air as CC Chapman, Jason Calacanis and Chris Brogan.  Online grandees all, whom  I knew from the web as well I had known Big John & Sparky on the radio in the ’50s, but had never met.

During a break in the action I popped over to say hi to Chris Brogan, who was sitting smiling and approachable in the back of the room.   When I mentioned that I had been trying to get The Fabulous Thunderbirds to develop their community online, Chris told me about an old dream where he sat in on guitar with the T-Birds.  Not his kind of music, not a favorite band, but hey - it was in a dream.

Meanwhile, I see Chris’ stuff most days in my Google Reader, and, you know, it’s usually pretty good stuff.

So, when I saw that the T-Birds were headed to Lowell, and remembered from somewhere that Chris lived in Northeastern Mass., it seemed natural to try to put him and the T-Birds together.  Steven Thomas, Tour Manager, stepped up and made the arrangements at the show; Anne Bryant, guru-wrangler without peer, handled the arrangements on Chris’ end, and the rest is Texas Roadhouse Blues history.

And now that Chris has shared the story and videos and pictures via blog and twitter, a zillion billion people know about his dream come to life.

Some folks say that you don’t really have friends on the net.  It’s all too shallow and  lacking substance. Well, that doesn’t mean you can’t try to do friendly things, when you can.  Share the love and watch it spread.

A traveler walking down a path sees a sparrow on its back with its legs in the air and asks, “what are you doing little sparrow?” The sparrow replies, “the sky is going to fall and I am holding it up”. “But your feet are too small and weak to hold up the sky,” replied the traveler. “I may be small and weak,” said the sparrow, “but we each must do what we can.”

but you just might help it along.  Switching to a quick shower with a low-flow shower head will save you enough cash in the next 12 months to give clean safe water to a family in a developing country for the next 20 years.

Check this out:

“Almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean drinking water.”

charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Since the
inception in August 2006, charity: water has funded more than 2,321 freshwater projects in 16 different countries, serving over 1,048,309 people.

Just $20 can give one person clean, safe drinking water for 20 years.

http://www.charitywater.org/

Click on the link now and give a family clean water.

And when you’re done there, please visit Blog Action Day to see what else you can do today.

http://blogactionday.change.org/

Warning!  Some pretty rough stuff in here.While scanning my google reader this afternoon, I made the mandatory stop & read Seth Godin’s post.“The problem with enormity in marketing is that it doesn’t work. Enormity should pull at our heartstrings, but it usually shuts us down.”Nodded head - duly noted.A few minutes later, saw this in Bob Garfield’s blog.“Ordinarily, graphic displays of trauma and death have an effect opposite of what is intended. It’s too horrible to deal with, and we shut down.”Wow.  What a coincidence - even similar language.And then I watched the video.  Please do the same.It certainly worked for me.  I see no reason to have my phone even turned on, when I’m behind the wheel now.  I’ve never texted while driving, but admit to “hands free” important conversations, to use all that extra attention I was wasting while merely aiming the car down the road.This visual and lesson of the PSA shouldn’t shut us down - just our phones, when our attention need be elsewhere

But, ain’t we got fun?

Interesting take on the carney’s slick persuasion and manipulation skills as “a true education in marketing for freelancers.”

Wholesome lessons like:

You’d Better Know How to Hustle

You’d Better Be Wise to People

You’d Better Be Willing to Give and Take

You’d Better Be Able To Sell

You’d Better Be Okay with Persuasion

Man, that’s a Ph.D.

But demonstrating these lessons in rigged games, wheeling and dealing and over-priced prizes?  All justified because “happy (but broke) people walk away hugging some prize”.

Isn’t that the standard rap against salesmen and pushy advertisers?

It’s ok, you freelancers.  Lie, cheat and manipulate (but call it influence and persuasion). “Every one wins. No one loses.”  Not even the “People (who) leave broke, tired and dirty.”

What’s next?   The John Dillinger School of Fund Raising?

In this year’s US presidential election campaign, we’ve heard endless speeches about saving the middle class .. middle-class tax-cuts … helping home-owners.  Both sides - Republican and Democrat.

I don’ recall any speeches or advertising about reducing poverty, programs for the poor, etc.  Now I certainly don’t expect concern for the poor from the Republican side, but I remember a strong Democratic concern for the American poor and reducing poverty.  From the sixties until the nineties.

Suddenly, it seemed, Clinton and friends discovered Hollywood and big money and concern for the middle-class.  Overnight, poverty had been eliminated - at least as a matter of concern.

Growing up Catholic in the fifties, the poor were part of the conversation, if not part of the family:  our relatives in post-war Eastern Europe; the children in the mission territories of Africa and the South Pacific, among others.

In the sixties, brave politicians created the Great Society and the War on Poverty to help the poor in this country.  The Peace Corps spread abroad to work in developing nations.  We heard the words poor and poverty as part of the national conversation.

Today, it seems, we have a battle betwwen the middle-class and the super-rich.  Who gets what and who gets to pay for it.  Certainly no headlines on poverty or the poor.

And that’s just about poverty here in the US.  Around the world, more than a billion people subsist on less than a dollar a day.  We hear almost nothing about them - unless there’s an explosion or tsunami.  The US sends about $25 billion each year to developing countries.  That’s a buck a day for 25 days for a billion people.

So what do we do now?

First, check the action at www.blogactionday.org

Then take one action, today, to help.  Write a post.  Send a check.  Tell a friend.

Thanks.

Love to all.

http://blogactionday.org/js/99adc9f576edeb9115137b7b0e0445b6ebb3fa7f

Is it just me or are the presidential candidates playing the Midway instead of the Big Tent? Shouldn’t Paris be in the Sideshow while McCain and Obama tame the terrorist tigers and master international tightrope walking in the Center Ring?

Jeez! Tire gauges and Miss Cowchip, I’ll give you $5,000 - No, I’ll give you $7,000. Drill here, drill there.

We’re talking about being arrogant enough to think we can be the leader of the free world - that kind of arrogance is a good thing. We’re looking for someone who’s the best and the brightest - that’s not elitist, that’s smart. We need a leader who’s looking down the road 20 or 30 years and not just to the next congressional election.

Either we’re all grown-ups here or this kind of lowest-common-denominator high-school-gotcha campaigning will determine who leads us further down the road in the same handbasket we’ve been in for the last generation.

After waiting for 10 or 15,000 emails to arrive flogging Traffic Secrets 2.0,  Voice of Reason Rick Butts takes on the super-affiliate army pitching legend John Reese’s latest bag of tricks.

Rick seems to think that affiliates are just whores for promoting a product that returns them a commission … if they compromise their principles for personal gain.  Somehow he can tell who’s sincere and who’s not.

He admits that John Reese 1.0 had something good to offer in 2005.  “It was a seminal work of great value.”  Rick doesn’t seem to know or care about what’s in TS2.0.  He “simply cannot imagine a “course” being worth more than a couple hundred bucks”.

OK.  I get it … I guess.  It’s not ok to sell a load of crap - unless it’s only a couple of hundred bucks.

Does it make sense to pay for something that saves the business owner time and trouble enough to justify the $ outlay?  Or is the Free University of the Web with its massive time investment the only way to go?

In less enlightened business universes, one doesn’t expect to purchase a million dollar business for free or $47 or $4997.  But then I guess there aren’t as many magical beans available outside IM.

Dr. Mani weighs in with a prescription for his friend John Reese and fellow gurus.  Child-like is good and childish is bad.  So “man up” if you’re a pro.

It would seem that working at the controversial edge gets response, while playing nice and polite gets lost in the noise. Is John really that thin-skinned, or is this all part of marketing the message?

Read the good doctor’s  Rx at  Blogging for Influence and Attention.

Don’t take my word for it folks.  Read John Reese’s grilling of Mark’s canard about Apocalypse 2.0.

The Death of Twitter joins the ever-lengthening obit list on the www.

So stop spamming for fun and profit, and follow the gladiators in their fight to the death of (your choice here).