Team Ciceron keeping warm on the Budweiser Deck at Target Field this Thursday afternoon. Left to right: Jody, Amber, Andrew, Phil, Scott, Dawn, Julie, Becky, Kristina, jMatt, and Karl . Not pictured: Kraig and his new Twins hat.

It was at best “balmy” on Thursday as the team walked from Ciceron Headquarters to take in a rowdy game of Minnesota Twins baseball.

We were optimistic for a Twins win. But we knew the Twins might need a little extra “something something” for this game, so we bought Ciceron COO Kraig Larson a new lucky Twins fleece hat. Well, his ears were cold too, so unlike many good luck charms Kraig’s new hat was 75% “Guaranteed Twins Win” and 25% “Keep My Ears Warm.”

And it worked!

The game was tied 2-2 at the bottom of the 9th inning with Trevor Plouffe ready to score from first base. Rene Tosoni pops a double into the outfield, pushing Plouffe in to score! Game over. Time to celebrate!

Here’s some video I shot of the Twins mobbing Tosoni at second base after Plouffe hit home plate. And you can see Kraig’s new lucky Twins hat, too. Good times!

Disclaimer: The Minnesota Twins are an awesome new client for Ciceron.

Over the past several weeks I have been caught in a strange vortex of slogging through the budget process for my clients’ 2010 marketing plans and keeping an eye on the saga of Tiger Woods. This has proven to be quite a mess. On the one hand, I’m attempting to help a few clients thrive in a world where they no longer have a rather tight grip on the message through their advertising and media relations efforts. On the other hand, well, there’s Tiger.

Full Article

This reminds me that we’re in the middle of two seasons: deer hunting and marketing budgeting.

Read the full article on Minnesota Business.

View the video here.

Point is: marketing has become really hard, and if it’s not, then you’re probably oversimplifying things. Why has marketing become so complex? Because consumers are entirely fragmented in their use of media, and the brand experience now needs to not only be consistent across all media, but each media serves a unique purpose on the brand experience.

ClickZ had a great article today on the Fundamental of Integrating Marketing that digs a little deeper into our modern marketing complexities.

I can’t tell you how happy I am. Sure, I feel a little strange going into business meetings or presentations and whipping out my MacBook Pro with the cute little Apple logo glowing luminous upon my Windows-bearing clientele. I often say a little prayer begging for intelligent oration to emit from my mouth to make up for the cute psychological baggage that flat piece of technology weighs down upon me. Hey, I might look like a flake but I don’t sound like one, I hope.

With Windows Vista now raining down upon the Earth like swarms of digital unicorns, it’s time you seriously say to yourself, “I might as well buy a Mac.” At this point there’s no difference, oh, except for the fact that the Apple is better (again) and this time Microsoft is so clearly attempting to copy the technology that you might as well just do it, and buy one of those cute little guys.

I’m telling you. It’s a wonderful experience, that Mac OS X is. I had been using Macs from 1988 until 2000. I went to the side of Hades. But I’m back. And I’m a better person for it. And if you’re a Windows user all excited about Vista, then I’m just plain better than you.

See, now I’m a damn snarky Apple user too. Pppphhhhlllt.

But I have an opinion!

This is a damn good idea for Google.

YouTube is not about its content — YouTube represents the future of television viewing behavior. So think less about videos of people falling on their collective asses or attempting to skateboard down a metal railing into the Grand Canyon. (Don’t get me wrong. That’s good stuff.) Think more along the lines of being able to craft your own “television” program comprised of content from a variety of sources in shorter formats that when assembled gives you your own custom 30-minute experience. Say, today you want to spend a half an hour watching all of Michele Bachmann’s displays of public embarassment, you can. Tomorrow, you want to spend a half an hour watching all of the best goals of this past world cup, you can. And finally, the next day you want to burn up an entire hour watching your favorite comedic heroics of Will Ferrell, well, have at it.

All of this happens on your time, at your controls, laser focused on the whimsical meanderings of your current state of mind. Kind of like channel surfing TV.

People used to call that cable t.v. It’s not. It’s your own television. It’s Your Tube. Of all the hype surrounding the acquisition, I have heard very little about what YouTube’s namesake really represents: the total and complete control over your own personalized television experience assembled from an unbelievably diverse set of content sources — amateur to semi-professionally produced to, yes, illegally stolen copyrighted material. From the outrageously disturbed to the absolute sublime, the 100 million(!) videos pulled down each day are truly representative of the diversity of human content desires that modern day television cannot whatsoever replicate.

Google understands this. They understand that this format only works in the long haul if there is a robust search overlay on top of YouTube that continues people’s ability to create custom visual experiences. YouTube without Google would have died under its own weight of uncategorized content. Pretty soon, that unique personalized experience you enjoy would have become a tedious and decidedly unfavorable experience.

The timing is right. Google wants to own search. Period. Text, images, and video. YouTube has mass. Content, people, and a proven user experience. Google may have just purchased the future of casual entertainment.

At Ciceron, we’ve been investigating this social group: the nomads. They take great pride in their abilities to be untethered to a place and time. “Time shifting” and “place shifting” are the tenets of the emerging nomadic marketplace.

To put this in practical sense, we are helping a really great bunch of folks at Digital Cyclone grow their subscribership for their MyCast product, a wireless app that sits on your cell carriers’ decks for weather updates. (The company’s co-founder is Paul Douglas, meteorologist at WCCO.) At first, the app’s just kind of cool, until you realize what it really accomplishes: it frees you and provides peace of mind or preparation from real-world realities of the weather. It’s actually unbelievably un-sexy. But it’s entirely practical and grounded in reality. Say you’re a landscaper or a foreman on a construction crew. You live and die by the weather. A quick snap of your cell phone and you know whether to wrap it up or keep going. You’re a baseball fan or soccer mom out on the field and you see an ominous cloud heading your way. Fire up the app and you have the opportunity to make an informed decision as to your next move.

Toshiba is apparently launching a cell phone that includes a bar code scanner. Say you’re standing in front of a Sony flatscreen TV at Best Buy, and you’re on the fence. With this phone, you scan the bar code, and it immediately pulls down the top 100 consumer reviews of that particular television.

Powerful? Damn right. It’s about the content, not the screen. The screen is not our medium. It’s our option. I’m jacked up about wireless…once again.

Remember the Apple Newton?

Over and out…

Read on for coverage of the remaining sessions…

New…Integrated…Rich

This session was more about “what’s cool that Flashes.” Kicking off the speaking from the podium was the ever-entertaining shock-jock of the Internet world Phillip Kaplan, founder of such illuminary sites as FuckedCompany and Mobog. Oh, and he’s also the founder of AdBrite, an ad network that feels more like an eBay for ad impressions than a formal network. I’m intrigued.

Local ad guy Tom Kunau from Fallon showed off several new interactive campaigns that prove that Fallon is more than just their BMW Films work. Recent campaigns for Brawny and Travelers were both engaging and entertaining. We’ll see if they bring in the kudos like the BMW work did.

The final presenter was Brett Hurt, founder of a company that’s been on my radar for some time — BazaarVoice. The company provides integrated customer reviews directly into branded web sites. Think “testimonials” but, well, they’re real. So along side that picture of the Sony LCD TV will be an RSS feed of reviews — both positive and negative (though a strong majority naturally tend to flow positive) — from actual owners and buyers of that product.

The metrics are strong. PETCO as an example saw a 5X improvement in email click-through and conversion rates when they included reviews. Burpee saw a 43% higher click-through rate on product pages. Good stuff.

Mobile Marketing Ecosystem

This session was the one I had been waiting for since I’m personally involved in some fairly out-there wireless campaigns right now. Fortunately, the presentation from Courtney Acuff of Denuo and Peter Fuller of i-Jump was more open ended and open to questions.

To set the stage, they reiterated a common theme at Ad:Tech: we are experiencing massive time shifting (TiVO), place shifting (wireless, international) and power shifting (consumer control, consumer generated media). That points to the cell phone as a powerful new medium since all three of these shifts can be empowered by the phone and powerful apps. They also mentioned that TXT messaging now is pretty much where email was ten years ago, so imagine the growth potential.

As advertisers and marketers, we have the opportunity to either screw it up, as happened largely with email or do it right by leading in standard making and best practices bodies such as the Mobile Marketing Association. Also, we need to remember that wireless is controlled by the carrier and simply isn’t as freewheeling as the bodiless Internet. If you screw around, the carriers will shut you down. Apparently this has just occurred with an SMS provider in the Bay Area who inadvertently sent a message about an upcoming horror movie to its audience at 2 AM rather than 2 PM, sending families throughout the area into a fearful frenzy as their phones all rang in the middle of the night. The carriers essentially locked out the service provider.

Some interesting wireless items on the horizon:

- Phones will be broadband by 2008
- the new StarStar program offered by Zoove.com offers a less painful Premium SMS interface. Others should be on the way.
- Content such as “mobisodes” will become more prevelant
- mobile needs some sort of ad network

Wireless is the current wild west. It’s absolutely HUGE in numbers and is truly multicultural and international. I still think it may dwarf the challenges the web has presented in its short 15 year lifespan. Stay buckled up.

Local Media Strategies

For the first time in Ad:Tech history a session was dedicated to local marketing. The verdict is still out, in my mind, as to how we research local audiences. Companies such as Centro seem very compelling since they aggregate inventory and other marketing opportunities from very local sources such as newspapers and radio. For example, if you want to know what happened to your local sports teams, you wouldn’t go to Google, you’d go to your newspaper. And yet advertisers continue to pour money into the major portals. Companies like Centro offer efficiencies in the market to allow us to reach people in local markets. I like ‘em.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, presentation by Bryan Eisenberg

If you’ve been in the online marketing business for longer than a month, you probably know about Bryan Eisenberg, one of the great minds of web usability and, as he’s coined, the “persuasion architecture.” He’s just written a new book called Waiting for Your Cat to Bark. (Taking a cue from Seth Godin I’m sure, the book was handed out to everyone here…good word-of-mouth, eh?) It follows along the persuasion architecture model that forces us to quick thinking of a web site as a series of static pages, but ways that people of varying motivations and behaviors attempt to solve a problem. Hopefully that problem is solved when they complete some sort of interaction or transaction. If not, maybe it’s because you were trying to tell your story rather than solve their problem. Again, one mouth, two eyes (ears???) comes to mind.

I won’t go into detail. Might as well buy the book from the source.

Overall…

…I’d say Ad:Tech was well worth the trip. The crowd seems to be greying which tells me a lot about the state of online marketing. It’s maturing. It’s hungry for knowledge. It’s becoming very practical. It’s very, very real.

I hope you found this useful. If you have any questions for me, please contact me any time. I’d love your feedback.

Go forth and enjoy!

Andrew

PS – This is raw blogging…I’ll go in later when I have more time to clean it up. Until then, forgive me for typos and misssspellins.

Ok, so this morning came a little early after a great night in South Chicago.

Today’s morning keynote was presented by Hunter Hastings, CEO, EMM Group. They’ve designed a methodology and process for organizations to quantify customer engagement. It’s based upon a point system. Email touch might be one point, a web visit another point, an in-person sales sall 10 points, and so on. Their research has shown a correlation between a higher engagement level to actual marketshare.

What the company is essentially attempting to do is build a standard of measurement for engagement that the field of marketing and advertising can agree upon in this digital age. A mature field has standards, and frankly, the digital marketing one has very few.

In his presentation, he substantiated a call I made in last week’s blog for a Department of the Customer, which would be a highly integrated, cross-functional, and collaborative team that bases itself in metrics. (I got a little goose-bumply when said essentially the exact same words as I wrote last week. So I bought a lottery ticket this morning just in case I’m on a lucky streak.)

Hunter explained what many of us in the field have known forever, that “managerialsm” that is dependent upon virtical, siloed organizations really does prevent innovation, slows marketing cycles, and disengages customers. Essentially everything that management wants it prevents by continuing to create and foster organizations that can’t deliver because of legacy org charts and ridiculous interpersonal power plays.

In Hunter’s words, he says that marketing needs to become a “process based organization” rather that an ad hoc, “whimsical” one. There’s a large place for creativity, but not in the place of real metrics, measurement, and accountability.

The winners in this type of market are the following:

- Software companies like Google who has boatloads of customer interaction data.
- New media planning and analytics firms (like Ciceron…nice he thinks we’re in the winning category!)
- Enterprise Marketing Management firms (like EMM Group, I assume)
- Consumers…we’ll have more relevant, personalized relationships with brands, and experience less clutter in the process of consuming media.

I think there’s a long, hard slog ahead of us because we’re talking about gigantic plate shifts in the culture of advertising and brands. At the same time, there’s no time to wait. As I’ve mentioned before, these are organizational development hurdles, not marketing ones. In my opinion, the best place to start is to pull all web site activities out of either marketing or IT, and give the web it’s own integrated department filled with enthusiastic team members who want to know the customer and deliver value to them each and every day.

More in a while…

I did spend the morning with our good friend Stepheny Lauer, VP of Marketing for Coldwell Banker Chicago. Steph’s been a client for over five years, and she also has some great dot com war stories to tell from a previous career.

The Trade Show

I skipped a session this afternoon to walk through the exhibit area here at the Sheraton Towers. Pretty good showing, but I’ll you: the ad networks are ablaze. I don’t know for certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if half the technology vendors are ad networks. I’d hate to be a start-up in this field. Seems like the shake out has already occurred and there are a few winners, from companies like ValueClick, DRIVE, and Advertising.com. Of course, there are others, but when you’re sitting on years of historical data like the big guys are you retain a knowledge of online customer behaviors that’s probably unparalleled.

There’s a lot of snake oil in this business right now, so be careful. Only trust what Ciceron tells you.

Tonight’s the HitWise event, and, as of two minutes ago, Steph at Coldwell just scored behind home-plate seats for tonight’s White Sox/Twins game in the corporate box. Had I said “no” you all would no longer consider me sane, nor would you continue to read this blog.

Go Twins!

While waiting for my car to be rendered safe again, I’m sitting here in the showroom along pit row for the sales team. I’m listening to each of their phone calls. (nosy damn market research guy that I am.) In half the calls, I hear some reference to the Internet. In fact the new guy — a recent Chicago transplant — just said, “So did the Internet tell you about our new financing options” as though Ms. Internet just sat down next to Ms. Prospect, poured her a nice cup of Starbucks, and negotiated her new sale.

Oh, wait a second! Ms. Prospect just hung up on Chicago Sales Guy! (No lie. It just happened.)

It’s taking everything in my power not to jump out of my chair and yell, “Hey, Chicago-boy! You’ve just been punked by Ms. Self-Informed-Due-Diligence-Prospect. And you didn’t know it because you were taught how to sell cars old school. You thought you were in the business of selling cars. You’re not. To that self-informed prospect, you’re in the business of negotiating a pre-sold deal. You’re in the business of providing Ms. Prospect a few other options that may fit with her lifestyle. You’re in the business of showing her how easy it is to bring your car in for routine maintenance or getting into a new car once her lease has expired.

Chicago-boy, you needed to ask Ms. Prospect a lot of questions about her lifestyle and what she values. You needed to reinforce that the car she selected online is the perfect car for her — and I bet she just can’t wait to come in and take a look at her new car.”

But Chicago-boy didn’t do any of those things. And I’m not his boss, so I’m going to blog about him. Sucker!

In Freakanomics, author Steven Levitt would call this situation, where the Internet flip flopped the power position, a mistaken assumption of “asymmetrical information.” In the case of Chicago-boy, he made the incorrect assumption that only he had access to some very special information about the Ms. Prospect’s new car that she did not. He assumed that at some point he’d have the opportunity to throw out that ethereal zinger that closes the deal. Here are the facts of the transaction: Ms. Prospect most likely utilized better information than the sales guy because she tapped into an entire realm of persuasive content that was non-branded, non-salesy, and thoroughly authentic. The content that persuaded Ms. Prospect to pick up the phone was most likely generated by a consumer like her in the form of a product review, evangelist blog, or online message board.

Chicago-boy and countless other sales people like him failed to recognize this reality. In fact, sales people are too often detatched from the reality of their prospects’ buying decisions. In this case, Ms. Prospect had already envisioned herself driving that car to her office, to her cabin hauling weekend supplies, to her child’s baseball game. So when it was time to do the deal, Chicago-boy didn’t listen, didn’t ask questions, or interpret what his role was.

This scene plays itself out every single business day. And not only in consumer goods like cars. In fact — and I’m researching this right now — it may be that in most business-to-business sales processes, where decision timeframes are longer and more expensive, B2B consumers are more deeply engaged than B2C consumers with non-branded yet highly persuasive consumer generated content. Recent research studies have indicated that the higher the pricetag, the more online research is conducted during the consideration phase of a purchase. If this proves true — which I expect — then if your sales people aren’t talking less and listening more for these subtle yet incredibly powerful signals, there’s a better than likely chance that they might be hearing a dialtone rather than enthusiastic buyer on the other end of the line.

What’s interesting about earthquakes is that they rumble not along the entire distance of a particular faultine but in relatively discreet areas. While LA is rumbling, cultured San Franciscans might be sipping their lattes after a tasty fois gras with what-me-worry non-chalance. Yet the effects of an earthquake can be felt for hundreds of miles without residents making the conscious connection to a seismic event.

Trying to make a living in today’s media landscape is like living on a hotspot along the San Andreas fault. In one area the very essense of media is experiencing a transformative existance, as though entire new mountain ranges are lifting themselves out of the earth, cutting off life support like the Colorado River, and forcing some species to die off and the more resiliant to flourish. We are currently in one of those media earthquakes with the rise of Consumer Control of their media experiences. From TiVO and other DVRs to the Internet, the consumer has rocked a hotspot along the faultline. Others living farther up or down the faultline were picking daisies wondering what all the fuss is about. “Nothing’s rocking here,” they said. “Sure we get a few tremors now and then but nothing serious.” Today, companies and their agencies who continue to pour millions into major network advertising are sitting on the next faultline hotspot — the effects of the earthquake elsewhere are already being felt, but they don’t seem to know it…

Until a few weeks ago when the Association of National Advertisers met at the Biltmore in Scottsdale. There, advertising heavyweights such as Proctor & Gable, Coca-Cola, and Nike all said the obvious — we live on a fault line and it’s time to wake up. All the seismic indicators are there. The viewers they pay big money for aren’t there anymore and when they are they’re in control. I imagine there were a few major agencies in the room giving subtle hand signals to the wait staff for another glass of Chardonney or three.

Using a faultline analogy is obviously a convenient opportunity for me at this moment and its relevance is limiting because along this faultline isn’t just devastation but new life. The beautiful mountain ranges of Southern California are some of the most stunning scenary in the world. They were all produced by violent earthly outbursts. So too the consumer grabbing control over media is opening new, more meaningful dialogues in marketing and advertising.

Those who want to engage with their consumers have no better opportunity to do so than right now — and it’s only going to open up more fully. Advertising, remember, really isn’t a conversation, it’s a blowhorn. A web site, on the other hand, is a conversation. An email communications plan that listens to what people want in terms of content and then responds by segmenting consumers into richer groupings and offering content with deeper insights is a conversation. Search engine campaigns that tie information-rich web pages to search terms is a conversation. And communications plans that integrate all of the above envelop the consumer in the most highly relevant and meaningful brand experience.

Harnessing the power of this earth moving change takes courage, excellent engineering, sound science, and abundant creativity. We all live along this faultline — it’s up to you whether you hope and pray for a quiet earth beneath you or plan for the inevitable. Then again, you could get out and move to Florida.

Hurricane analogies next month.

That also brings up a question I have. If you have seen Hugh McCloud’s Corporate Blogging diagram, it’s an interesting fit in the travel business too. If organizations wish to put forth a standard public relations front (the y circle) leaving te customer wondering where the real story is (the inside x circle), what’s not to prevent consumers from going to a whole new circle called “The C Circle” where customers tell the story? I haven’t looked into the theory again in a while, but I’m wondering if the diagram needs to be modified to create another loop outside of both the standard corporate “face” and the inside story.

In the travel business I think this is the case. Consumers are increasingly looking to tap the collective experiences of other travellers. In fact, being in NYC right now, I could use a good restaurant tip about now!

I seem to vaguely remember something about a dinosaur or an elephant – hell, it could have been a milk-truck for all I can muster – eerily hovering a “few inches” above the background scenery like a poorly executed drop shadow in Photoshop.

The point was that the “whole new experience” wasn’t all that memorable. And that’s how I often feel about web sites I visit.

What’s missing from most web sites is that third dimension: reality. Reality isn’t created within the hallowed walls of corporate marketing departments or their meritorious agencies (thank you very much). Traditional marketing professionals are in the business of presenting a desired view of reality. In fact, more often than not, we’ve been asked not to present reality at all. Reality is blemished. Reality is awkward. Reality accidentally gives public presentations with its fly down.

But reality sells. I know it personally. When I review our own web site’s statistics each month, I notice the same thing time and time again. The pages we provide for our staff get the greatest traffic. Visitors aren’t nearly as interested in what we do as who does the work. They spend three times as much time reading about our people than our services.

The people at Ciceron are our third dimension. The human element of Ciceron provides the value and meaning behind the words and graphics of our site.

As marketers, how do we tap that third dimension? I believe that there needs to be an area of each and every web site that’s like a coffee shop. A successful coffee shop isn’t about the quality of its coffee. Rather, the most successful coffee shops are those which are designed to enhance the experience of drinking coffee with others. The brand essence is the congregation of customers not the coffee that’s being poured.

Like a good coffee shop, a successful web site is one in which those who visit participate and contribute to the overall experience. They provide content in the form of product reviews, commentary, pictures, video, conversation, and other evidence that the brand is alive with real people doing real things.

This content is officially called “User Generated Content”. The concept is on fire in marketing circles these days because user content has proven to be most successful in grabbing attention and loyalty from web visitors. User generated content provides a reality that marketing departments can’t provide or honestly emulate.

Think of it this way: Amazon doesn’t sell books, book reviewers like you do. The internet brings like-minded people together with an unprecedented efficiency. We have unlimited opportunities to quickly, easily, and anonymously share thoughts, ideas, and opinions on topics we are passionate about, from musicians to worldly causes to high-end manufacturing equipment. The internet makes it easy to tell the rest of the world what we think without having to reveal much about who or what we are. That’s why we freely generate content.

In a previous article, we spoke of the emerging Shadow Markets that each and every one of you competes within everyday. These markets are undeniably real, undeniably measurable, and ultimately attainable. People — whether fickle B2C or discriminating B2B customers — will dodge and weave all over creation to find truth. Make it easy for them. Provide them the tools to connect and communicate. Strengthen your market position not just by owning the products and services you provide but the environment in which those offerings are considered too.

How do you start? There are many good resources available, and on May 24th Ciceron is hosting a half-day seminar to get you jump-started. It’s called “The New Shadow Markets: Blogs, Online Communities, and Word of Mouth Marketing Campaigns”. We’ll explore how to find, participate, and thrive in these markets armed with rules of etiquette, measurements tools, and concepts that work. Please consider attending–more information and registration is available at www.ciceron.com/seminar.

The first two pieces were consistent: advertisers, agencies, and publishers are all scratching their heads wondering a) how to reach audiences, b) how to perform and make money, and c) how to deliver audiences, in that order. The Tipping Point is a book that reveals how, when situations are ripe for upheaval, it’s often the little things that create change, not gigantic or deliberate forces. In the author’s own words:

It’s a book about change. In particular, it’s a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does.

Having spent my “youthful indiscretion” (Bush’s words) years under the watchful eye of Nancy Reagan, for me personally it was reading Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” that squarely kept advanced narcotics out of my regimen.

Thought to be the birth of “gonzo” journalism, “Fear and Loathing” was the drug-fueled odyssey of Thompson and his “300-lb. Samoan attorney” (he was actually a 250-lb. Chicago legal-aid lawyer) covering a district attorneys convention in Las Vegas. By the end of page one, you’re pretty well convinced that if 1972 was manic because it was emerging from the craziness of the 1960s but still entrenched in an escalating war in Vietnam, then being there having ingested a grocery cart of narcotics was no less terrifying.

The Truth, nevertheless, was that both serious narcotics and corrupt governments were not for me. It’s just that Thompson’s embedded reporting from the front lines hit a nerve with me — on both fronts.

“Gonzo journalism” has many definitions. In CNN’s obituary to Thompson, gonzo journalism is the act of embedding oneself in a sort of novelistic way into the subject matter.

As I ponder the crazy life of Hunter, I recognize that we live in the early post-gonzo years of journalism and public relations. From insider business blogs to embedded reporters in Iraq, CBS “news” stories on Bush’s National Guard service to Reggie Fowler’s personal history, a nouveau gonzo journalism is making waves again. (For those out state, Reggie Fowler is the heir apparent of the Minnesota Vikings who, having to publicly contradict his official public relations cheat sheet, apparently did not play for the Cincinnati Bengals, did not play in the kids World Series, and was not the owner of the 11th largest African-American owned business. And because he’s now come clean personally in front of the camera, we all like him again.)

To equate “gonzo” with “being under the influence of narcotics” is to cheat yourself from an intriguing phenomenon occurring in the world of professional message-crafting. Today, professional journalism and public relations people are struggling as they wrestle with their own objective filtering of instant news and opinion from the blogs and online message boards. The bloggers are to mainstream news as Hunter S. Thompson was to his editors at Rolling Stone: a stream of consciousness that often contains truth but the paths getting there can often be ridiculous. And too often the ridiculousness of it all prevents mainstream news from finding the truth within the stream of information.

But on the other hand, professional PR people struggle with the oft-thought ridiculousness of having business leaders show their real side in personal blogs. Why? Because what if the leader’s thoughts are “off message,” they’ll warn. What if they exhibit fearfulness or weakness or vulnerability? What if, gasp, they show they’re human?

But as readers and consumers we ask, “Is this person human?” What is the gestalt of this leader and their business? The Reggie Fowler incident last week proves to me that putting the man in front of the mic far surpasses the effectiveness of planting the sifted story to the mainstream news. When half-truths are told, we now have the means to debunk them — quickly.

Inundated with messaging, we as consumers increasingly desire transparency in the brands we support. Or put another way we’re looking for truer meaning. We want to know for ourselves the truth behind the message. Buying a digital camera — or a high-end piece of industrial equipment for that matter — no longer means turning the pages of Newsweek, viewing an ad for a Canon, and heading to your local Best Buy to purchase one. No. It entails reading the ad, going online, reading the message boards and blogs from other people who own that Canon, and making an informed decision about the investment.

Don’t think Canon might think of this as a little gonzo? Think again.

In Hunter S. Thompson?s own words in The Great Shark Hunt: “the writer must be a participant in the scene…like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character”.

Strip out the narcotics (but keeping a good cabernet in the mix), and the contemporary public relations market is emerging into its gonzo era, where readers and storytellers are immersed into the same environment of the subject. There, in the thick of things, is often the truth. And who better to be the pundit than the subject matter himself.

Ask Reggie Fowler. He knows about immersion.

Ask Dan Rather. He wishes he had.

(Thanks to Michelle for the heads up!)

“The Market be damned!” they’d say. “This is the Internet economy!”

“The old paradigm is OVER,” they’d drool between sips of Sierra Nevada. “Wells Fargo. Wall-Mart. Berkshire Hathaway. O-V-E-R. Like Pearl Jam.” (Remember, this is ’95.)

Drunk on power and visions of world domination I raced home to Minneapolis to start Ciceron.

We all know how the California version of the Internet bubble ended. You probably know an ex-CEO who now mixes martinis for hire south of Market Street.

Recently, I revisited one of the Old New Paradigms: “Internet Time.” You remember that one? The one where everything happens faster on the Internet. Is it still true? Does this dusty ol’ ditty still play well on the e-jukebox of time?

I’m going to make the argument that, of all the paradigm-shifting, new age, margon-jargon (that’s modern for “mumbo-jumbo”), geek-speak of the ’90s, “Internet time” is the one that still stands for something.

That “something” is the speed in which we can gain empirical knowledge about how consumers behave in the marketplace, as represented on the Internet. Customer research is the next Big Boom on the Internet. Right now, as you’re reading this, perhaps tens if not hundreds or thousands of people (depending upon the size of your online marketplace) are online, at your site, creating data. They’re “behaving” in some form or fashion, either in a way that you want or in a way that you should know about. Either they’re “getting it” or they’re not. They’ve either bought something from you, signed up for that newsletter, filled out that form, downloaded that document, or forwarded that page to their boss, or they haven’t.

So. Have they? Do you know? It’s happening right now. THERE! Oops. It’s gone. Did you see it?

What if you knew everything that was happening on your Web site right now and could act on it? Or at least make some simple changes that made their next visit more relevant to them. C’mon. What I’m talking about isn’t evil or intrusive. You love it! It’s Amazon!

The Internet and web in particular can give us a real-time glimpse into reality — now. Tracking that information and translating it into actionable steps in both our online and offline experiences can — and will — have a huge impact on commerce in general. How much money can you save by simply using the Web to test new products, for example. Or a new message. Or a tag line. Or a seminar topic.

Web analytics is just a fancy term for customer research. Use it for that. Use all of that data to educate yourselves. It’s just sitting there, waiting. Waiting for you to take it, learn from it, and make your visitors happier, you wiser, and your fanny pack bursting with greenbacks.

If you need guidance on tools to help, contact us. Depending upon how far you want to go with analytics, there are tools available for everyone. It’s not just for the big companies. Any size organization can get visibility into their customers’ behaviors. Just ask.

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But what if I told you that people spend nearly as much time on the web as they do in front of the television?

Did you know that TV commands almost 40% of all ad spending, while the web gets only 3%? How about newspapers? Businesses spend almost as much on newspaper ads as television, but guess what? Consumers spend less than 10% of their time reading newspapers.

Clearly, if you judge just by the numbers, the web is underfunded. Why?

I have a theory: to most business decision-makers, the people who sell the web channel are geeks. They talk in web jargon and acronyms. For example, if I was a business owner (which I am) and had an inkling that email marketing might be successful for my business (which I do) and called an Internet marketing consultant to meet with me, here’s what I might hear:

“Thank you for calling me in. What we provide is an ASP email solution that has easy-to-use WYSIWYG tools which, in addition to providing you outstanding content management, tracks click-throughs, white list status, and user conversions in real-time.”

As a business decision-maker, I think: What did that geek just say to me?

Or let’s take search marketing: “Sir, I’d like to talk to you about how we can dynamically measure your keyword PPC programs within the Google AdWords or Overture network to, again, track real-time user conversions using state-of-the-art web analytics systems, which, by the way, are an ASP model so your IT guys don’t have to get involved. Isn’t that great!?!?!”

Yeah. Not so great, pal, because YOU’RE NOT TALKING TO ME!

And we wonder why web marketing might be underfunded? The fledgling field is so proud of itself for its snazzy lingo and sizzling software that it’s forgotten that this is just marketing — only possibly a whole lot better in many ways than traditional marketing.

To get decision-makers fired up about investing in the Internet marketing channel, strip out the jargon and the acronyms and get down to business. If you do so, then you’ve finally got what everyone wants to buy: better marketing. Instead of selling “conversions” and “ASPs” — which have no language connections to traditional advertising and marketing — talk in real business language. A conversion is a sale or a lead. A user is a customer. Keywords are just words and language. Every Internet term has a seasoned business equivalent. Use them.

If we want to justify more than a 3% budget allocation for our web marketing efforts (which we can and should), then we need to talk about business in language that decision-makers use everyday. And whatever you do, if you say “it’s just marketing” then don’t make it sound like IT.

Until next month,

Andrew Eklund
CEO