Pencast: Alternative posting (embedding) methods

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In advocacy of the “pencast”

Just when it seems you’ve exhausted all possibilities for finding a true unfilfilled need for Pulse Livescribe pen technology, the real value proposition tumbles out.

For meetings and training programs, I’ve been able to find some round-peg-in-square-hole application for my so-called SmartPen. It’s cumbersome to carry, a bit of a challenge for use as a writing implement, and the paper-intended ink seems to run out at just the wrong moment. (Note: In addition to other case shortcomings, add “needs place to store spares for use in field swap-outs, as they’ll be needed.)

But now I think there may actually be a killer-app here. Mind you, not that Livescribe hasn’t seemed to have done its best to hide it! Notwithstanding, I’m talking about its so-called “pencast” capability.

“Think Outside the Bun”

Taco Bell has hit it with this one.

To understand why that’s such a rarity among tag lines, here are my thoughts on why this one not only does what branding should, but excels at doing so.

• It focuses the intended customer on the intended product.
• It makes a commodity of competitive offerings.
• It leverages a cliché without subjecting itself to forgetability.
• It’s seven words or less.

Yeah, if you’re a fast food consumer, you can probably stop and think your way through other menu options at your familiar drive-through that don’t involve a bun. But the immediate image of the place still puts what it offers firmly between two pieces of bread, as Taco Bell argues. They own Mexican fast food, and can afford to risk losing the folks who’ll think-outside their way to Kentucky Fried Chicken or take-out Chinese.

Now outside of the box (as the original cliché directs), the customer is well on his way to increased up-selling by way of the Taco Bell “Fourth Meal” concept. You know, that time when they argue for additional eating, between dinner and breakfast. Forget “midnight snack.”

And stick competitors with the challenge of overcoming an immediate brand association and established preference for the company that coined the term — even if they’ve scampered to schedule accomodating hours accordingly.

“Do you know what you do, or do what you know?”

Clearly too much time has passed since I last pulled out my dog-eared copy of The Marketing Imagination, by Theodore Levitt.

Just where in life, I ask, rheotrically, does marketing, brand management, and communications not apply?

The earliest notes in my copy date to 1997. It’s subtitled, New, Expanded Edition (New York: The Free Press, Macmillan: 1983, 1986) — for any of you all who may feel compelled to follow up on my references here or in the future on this Blog. Following is a foundational, yet too often overlooked starting foundation.

Excellent quality is not enough. Also required is suitability. In pursuit of wrong purposes, excellence is wrong….

My Papa Deaton was simply wise about so much of what fundamentally mattered in life. He wouldn’t have called himself a marketer or a strategist, but I’ve concluded that he was both; I credit him for the way I think and where I am.

“Do you know what you do, or do what you know?” he used to ask me, long before I’d read Levitt. The world is full of folks with hammers, to whom every problem invariably comes down to hitting something like a nail. In other words, people who can do nothing other than what they know, the do-whats in a world that despirately needs the short-in-supply know-whats.

Think about it.

So what is the unique selling proposition of Twitter?

Twitter is obviously different as an Internet communication vehicle in that Posts (“Tweets”) are restricted to a relatively small number of characters.

• Easier for the writer to contribute updates, frequently
• Readers and prospects are more likely to follow them, loyaly

Emotional barriers to entry are small. No formatting concerns, obligation to create elaborate presentation arcs, and need for computer access to make meaningful Posts. Reciprocally, these same attributes benefit and enhance readers’ experiences in Following someone on Twitter. Content can be delivered to their cell phones without frustration for those who’ll read on a small screen or simply don’t want to commit time and attention to perusing lengthy tomes.

Hence, more likely received and processed real-time. A relationship of sorts is more likely to form; hence the phrase “social networking.”

Yet in this simplicity it mustn’t be forgotten that there are both limitation — and special rules to be followed in truly exploiting (a good thing) the media. There are do’s and don’ts.

• Branding is critical. If you think about a powerful message that maximizes impact via quick burst, it is functionally able to do so primarily based on leveraging previously set image and expectations. In other words, one must be primed for the type, value, and direction of your message before it is received.
• Discipline cuts both ways. The immediacy of Twitter updates creates an inferred commitment to frequency that must be maintained. At the same time, the ease with which a Tweet can be launched portends a temptation to generate fluff, which is actually worse that silence.

Stragically, then, what type of relationship do you desire via Twitter? And with whom? (Access to your Tweets is also a consideration, as it may not be practical to “protect” your Tweets, hence the need to write in a way that balances clarity with, say, an approach that avoids compromising privacy needs.)

I think the broadest answer is “educational,” and, if your Twitter presence is to grow, “perpetuating.”

• Scheduler(s). If you are responsible for support groups or department meetings, this can be an ideal way to generate one-way messages regarding availability, ie, “the meeting is on,” content, location, and preperations. Imagine, for example, you are responsible for bi-weekly machine-build meetings: Sometimes your team meets in a conference room, other times in the warehouse or on the shop floor; the customer may or may not be present (wouldn’t you like to know in advance, or if the person attending changes at the last minute?); blueprints, pick-lists to be brought along.
• Educational. The Pastor who has outlined his sermon for the coming weekend can Tweet anticipated Scripture references to help his parishioners prepare. A professor can “reveal” assignment components via Tweets over time, much like he would in a PowerPoint presentation, rather than giving them out all at once. I use one of my Twitter accounts to Post real-time the ways in which I’m investing my time as an adult leader for the Boy Scouts of America: This helps other volunteers track projects for which we may have overlapping responsibilities (typically routed to their computers or Outlook captures) and gives prospective volunteers a current and historical view of what they are signing up for, when asked.

[530]

Don’t read Tweets with sharp knives nearby

A never-going-anywhere actress I knew on Facebook lamented just a few months ago that she didn’t get the value or attraction of Twitter.

Notwithstanding, I noticed the other day that she now has two Twitter accounts and at least one of them is halfway between 1,000 and 2,000 Tweets.

As I glanced at her first screen of blather there, my mind flashed on that early scene in Stripes where the Bill Murray character, depressed and with little to recommend his present life circumstances, asked where he could find a sharp knife.

Actress-wannabe couldn’t see an opportunity to uniquely leverage Twitter because she is the personification of its downside. Narcissistic Tweets unbridled by theme interest nobody of consequence. Sadly, I suspect she’ll attract a chunk of numbers (read, “Followers”) based on the sometimes outrageous and often erotic photographs she frequently Posts of herself. But is that all she wants? No thoughtful decision maker in a position to hire her is likely to sort through her ramblings about the cereal she had for breakfast, the umptenth hangover from a night on the town, and claims of somebody-status based on who she saw last week at a Los Angeles Starbucks.

What a waste. The days of “any press is good press” surely died when Al Ries and Jack Trout published Positioning in 1981, if not earlier.

We’re talking serious business here. The few who see that, who invest the time to learn what it takes to leverage it, they are the ones who will thrive. The ones who do not won’t simply be left behind — they’ll be standing on a baseline that’s actually dropping lower than where it stands today.

Are you Tweeting who you are? How you want others to see you? [286]

So where does Facebook fit into personal branding (strategy)?

Ah, social networking—

Ostensibly, the web-Forum equivalent of device convergence where cell phones promised to deliver PIM, Internet access, camera, file storage, and what-have-you, all in one handy technology.

My BlackBerry Bold is rather stable, thank you very much. And I can quantify its ROI for me, personally, without breaking a sweat. But I wonder how much (strategic) thought folks really give to a singular online presence where their dating, employment, spiritual, shopping, and fetish interests all intersect. Most folks I know won’t even Post their opinions on horology Forums without using a pseudonym.

But on Facebook, they let it all hang out, naming their own names in hopes of finding decades-gone high school chums.

Suddenly the concept of “spin” seems less a pejorative. You know: The notion of turning a different face to present a different side (of one’s self), depending on the audience. Jeans and sneakers to a baseball game, suit and tie for a wedding.

Ironic, isn’t it, that we — known collectively as marketing experts — ever let nincompoops define our own key value proposition in any way?

As I began to point out in my You® concept introduction here yesterday, personal branding is of increasing importance. The Internet provides both an opportunity and a threat in that regard, at once allowing you to get the word out about yourself, and laying out one big bannana peel onto which some will unwittingly step in doing so. Moreover, unlike the newspaper story in which some so proudly made a headline and feature article for high school-level success, the web isn’t gonna disappear someday in a landfill.

So, how much have you thought about your own image before you started sharing all with everyone via Facebook? [289]

You®

Twenty-five years ago when I started D² Enterprises, it never would have occurred to me that using my own name would ultimately turn out to be a better branding strategy.

The University of Michigan was directing receptive students such as myself to think MBA en route to Blue-Chip employment with some global corporate firm. If, God forbid, one did take the entrepreneurial path, then by all means recognize the importance of at least trying to look like a big corporation. Thus my partner and I each contributed the lead initial from our first names, leveraging the A² monikker already associated with Ann Arbor, and became D² Enterprises.

But even then the tide was turning, and it didn’t take long for clients to differentiate between the two Ds and express preference. As I started working and writing more broadly, it soon made little difference what business name I chose: “Dell Deaton” was my brand. Meantime, on the mega-firms front, “Personnel” departments had long since been replaced by “Human Resources,” acting accordingly: People were treated like any other resource in service to the bottom-line.

The folks who were surviving and thriving were those who made their own names for themselves. Created an identity. Promoted it. Leveraged value and exclusivity.

My “You®” concept came of this recognition. (I note here with casual interest that the URL implicit in the aforementioned has already been registered, though for now apparently without meaningful utilization.)

Notwithstanding economic circumstances that I both believe will be around longer than currently promised and have yet to bottom-out, I believe our society has already underdone a watershed change in worker value. That means blue- and white-collar, boys and girls. You may not think yourself an entrepreneur in the sense of hanging out your own shingle to provide market-penetration consulting or dentistry or hourly project labor building fences, but you’re ill-served to think that you’re any more secure as an employee than the supplier of replacement forklift tires.

So what does this mean?

You are your product and service. Define and differentiate that. Be prepared and vigilant at all times in communicating that. Identify and go after the channels most likely to serve your needs in the future. And above all, discipline yourself in all that you do. More details to come—. [385]

Why should someone “explain”?

There are two reasons why you explain — anything.

• To convey a openness to changing your position.
• To develop or perpetuate a relationship with another person.

Either way, the person offering an explanation is expressing a desire for someone to come out different in the end.

Last time here, I wrote about a discussion I’d had with a contractor who’d hired me under what I considered obvious terms of performance. When I approached him about a discrepency in my compensation after I’d delivered, he said that his was the only interpretation of the term on which my payment would be based was the only one that applied. He was not open to changing that point of view, nor was he invested in having an ongoing relationship with me if I chose to terminate our association due to displeasure with his unilateral assessment.

This is a fundamental in negotiation; approaches are clearly communicated here, if you appreciate how they should be read. And you’ll find it applicable not just as someone on the receiving end, but also as the side who’s revealed something about your own sense of resolve. [188]

When I was D² Enterprises

A partner and I started D² Enterprises on August 12, 1983. One of our first major clients was the University of Michigan Panhellenic Association.

They hired us to produce marketing materials and do some re-imaging work.

The impetus for D² Enterprises actually came a year earlier. I was freelancing for a business contracted to photograph sorority rushes. Our contract called for me to be paid for every “salable” image I took, shooting 35mm film with my own camera over the course of six hours or so.

As an aside, I knew an advisor to the program and some of the women independently through a local theater group. They were very pleased with my results, and, based on the orders they shared with me, I anticipated a rather sizeable check from the firm for which I’d done photography. So I was floored when his calculations yielded a payment for less than a third of that. He explained that “salable” was a term subject solely to his interpretation, and that nowhere in our contract did it say that salable was related to actual sales.

In other words, just because an image had, indeed, sold, well — that didn’t mean it was salable. “I don’t care what you think,” he said without further explanation. “If you don’t like it, go start your own business.”

And I did just that. No hard feelings. Within five years, the picture guy was gone, D² Enterprises had become D² Corporation, and I’d bought-out my former partner.

Apart from simple history, there was a fundamental lesson-learned here that makes this a relevant story for current clients. As someone who is personally loyal to a fault, I’m often inclinde to stay in situations much longer than the writing on the wall would objectively merit. It’s important to know when you’re in a situation providing compensation at a detrimentally low fraction of value delivered.

So in my case I’m truly grateful to the shortsighted contractor who delivered that message to me, notwithstanding how he did so. [329]