BrandingBlog by Dave Young

Have you met Ray Seggern?

He’s been one of our Wizard of Ads partners since about 2006. He’s stepping into a role as a sort of ringmaster for many of our partners.

By ringmaster, I mean that he’s making an effort to herd our posse of cats onto a flatbed truck and getting them moving in the same direction.

He’s filling a Colonel Parker role by finding speaking gigs for us and he’s creating events where he can sell our services.

He’s got an event planned for May 16, 2012 in St. Louis and we had a chance to talk about it and he spills all the details in this interview.

I always enjoy talking to Ray, when I can get him to sit still long enough. He’s full of energy and I’m sure that a 25-minute podcast felt like an eternity to him.

BUSINESS OWNERS…you really ought to head to St. Louis for this. It’s a measly $67. Get on an airplane. Make a reservation. Go learn something.

Have you ever poured your time and energy into an ad, or an email, or a blog post, video, phone message, sales pitch, or, or, or….?

Sometimes you are just too close to the issue to realize what may be wrong with your approach, the words you’ve choosen or the the fact that you might be leaving out something critical. TestMyMarketing.com is a place where you can upload your marketing message and have it critiqued by at least 3 marketing professionals who promise not to hold back. If you can take the heat, you’re message will be tempered by fire.

Back in August of 2011, the Awesome Sauce class at Wizard Academy birthed this baby business that was adopted by a couple of students. Brian Schmitt and Matt Lenhart decided that this was an idea that they could get behind and nurse into a full-grown enterprise. Now, more than half-a-year later, they’ve added another partner, changed the name and are in the middle of another launch mode.

I had a chance to catch up with Brian Schmitt last week to discuss how things are going. You’ll like what you hear…or your money back!

These guys rock. David Lively and Raffy Pendery are the brains behind Greysuit Retail and now Greysuit Apps.

Their mission is to make the techie side of the web easier for retailers. They’ve built a platform for managing a small retailer’s ecommerce, blog, web, craigslist, email and more. Now, with Greysuit Apps they can help you manage the ever-growing complexity of marketing on Facebook.

In the middle of the podcast, I asked how they came up with the name Greysuit. They went into a story about how laid-back they are and how they hardly ever even wear shoes. So, I thought I’d go swipe a photo of them from Facebook to use in this post. What did I find? David Lively in a dark suit-coat and Raffy in a tux. Sigh. So, I grabbed this image off of their web site instead.

Here are the links we talked about in the podcast:

UPDATE:  Regarding the amazing Paul Boomer. A few months ago, I got a nibble from a business owner with a carpet cleaning business who had a gawd-awful web site. I could tell that her crap-o-la site was the sole reason that she wasn’t getting much business through the interwebs. It looked like someone had bedazzled an old pair of boxer shorts and called it a web site. Well, maybe not quite like that, but you get the idea.

She didn’t have enough budget to hire both Paul and I for a full-on web overhaul, SEO and copywriting gig. I looked over the site pretty well. It had some decent copy…buried where nobody could find it. They had a nice pic of their van. Their phone number was almost impossible to find.

I told her that I would try to cash in a favor from my WordPress wizard partner, but that I doubted he would do it. I asked her for a little more budget than she had available and called Paul. I convinced him to create a new site for her and severely limit the scope of client involvement and interaction. I knew Paul could do this one blindfolded and with earplugs in, if needed. He knocked it out of the park, just like he usually does.

He followed up with an email a week or two ago and she finally emailed back with this:

“It’s good to hear from you! I have been meaning to send you an update to tell you how amazing you are. But because you’re so amazing I haven’t had time!

Our website is working just like you said! We’ve been getting quotes and testimonies through the website. Just the other day a gal called to schedule a cleaning and I was taken back because she was talking to me in a tone and as if we had been best friends for many years. She then told me that she reviewed the website and is so happy she was only going to use us!

I know that I still have much to do to get this company functioning properly. But I am so thankful for you and what you have done for us. You have changed the direction of this company and I’m starting to feel the wind in our sails.

I hope all is well with you!”

It was the perfect alignment of project and available time for Paul. He had a brief lull in his pipeline and knocked it out in a day or two. I doubt if I could get him to do it again because he was paid way too little for what he delivered. But, boy did he deliver. He can do it for you too. Let me know if you want to meet The Boom.

This week, I’m busy trying to move BrandingBlog to a new hosting company. So…I recorded a conversation with Paul Boomer about what kinds of things a site owner should consider as they contemplate a move.

As we discussed how you should package up your content into boxes and cartons, I inadvertently gave one of my very best lessons on Microsoft Excel as well. I hope you enjoy it.

We mentioned a couple of sites…one being my new host MediaTemple. Check them out.

Another was www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com which is a good place to check first when you can’t get to a web site.

Sometimes it’s just you.

NOTE: That is NOT an editing mistake at the beginning of the podcast. It’s a blooper. I left it in. On purpose.

This week I got to spend about a half hour interviewing Ari Meisel. We connected a couple weeks ago when I found his “Less Doing” productivity blog and he asked me to be a guest on his podcast to discuss Shortcut Blogging and how we are making it easier for CEOs to blog.

I was fascinated with his approach to productivity and how it sprang from his battle with Crohn’s disease. His victory over his disease and how he approached the battle is the basis of Ari Meisel’s TEDx talk from May, 2011.

In this podcast, Ari tells his story and shares some of his favorite and most effective productivity tools. He is an advocate of doing away with your To Do List and using systems that simply make your tasks appear at the moment you need to work on them. He is also a big advocate of using virtual assistants to take your focus off of your more mundane tasks. Pretty cool stuff.

All of the links we mentioned can be found on Ari’s site in the description of his Achievement Architecture coaching program.

I really like his approach and enjoyed talking about all of these geeky tools with him.

Confession: I never feel more out of my element than when I’m hanging out with athletes.

I met Shawn Phillips a few years ago and have slowly gotten to know him a bit in the last 6 months. I’m one of those “unfit” clueless people who never heard of his brother Bill’s book “Body for Life” back when it was changing the world. I managed to be totally clueless while they grew their EAS supplement company and sold it. I

Yep, that was me, sitting on my ass watching TV while Shawn was changing the shape of the world.

So, why am I interviewing Shawn? Hey, it’s never too late to start paying attention to getting stronger and eating better and growing older with a bit of grace. Is it?

It’s an admittedly awkward interview on my part. It’s half confession, half therapy session.

Shawn’s passion is men’s health in those “middle” years. We’re not young guys any more and we’re not old-timers.

I like his idea of sustainable fitness. I like his Full Strength protein shakes. I like Shawn’s passion for education and his concern for the state of men’s health.

Here’s a chart from his book, Strength For Life, that will help you understand the phases of fitness that he and I discussed. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Wow. I told Roy Williams that I wanted to hear the scary bits about his new book, Pendulum: Where We’ve Been, How We Got There, Where We’re Headed, he reluctantly agreed. He’s traced back the trends of societal change 3,000 years. What he’s found will give you a few reasons for apprehension the next 20 years or so.

Don’t expect many direct applications to advertising and marketing. You won’t find them in this book.

However, he doesn’t want to be known for just ringing the alarm bell and sending us all into hiding. So, he will be following the Pendulum with a new book called Invisible Heros. These are the type of people who can lead us out of whatever mess we find ourselves mired in for the next two decades.

If I were you, I’d have a happy movie ready to play after you listen to this one. You’ll need it.

Brett Feinstein - no doubt going negative

Brett Feinstein is a partner in the political advertising agency Pound & Feinstein.

He’s one of those guys that you have to get to know to understand. He’s loved and admired by those who take the time. If you know Brett Feinstein only superficially through Facebook or another near anonymous web arena, you probably only think you know him. That’s because he treats Facebook as his own psychology lab; questioning, pushing, shocking and provoking to see what kind of reaction he can get. It can be alarming…if you don’t know Brett.

I’ve known him for almost 10 years now and I always enjoy getting together for a meal when I can catch up with him or on Skype for a podcast interview. We talked for almost 4 hours. Most of it after I shut down the recorder.

I still ended up cutting about 30 minutes out of our official podcast interview just to get it close to an hour.

If you’re a student of marketing and advertising, you’re gonna like this one. We compare and contrast the various strategies used by retailers and candidates. I was surprised, enlightened and entertained through the entire conversation and I hope you will be too.

What I left on the cutting room floor was mostly a conversation about Facebook that got a little personal for a few third parties. So, I decided not to share it.

We did cover campaign strategy, messaging, research, direct mail and the life of a political campaign staffer.

NOTE FROM DAVE:  The “SoundBites” podcasts are usually re-written in an article style (via Shortcut Blogging), but this one was such an interactive conversation that I decided to simply use the transcript. Enjoy the game!

So far…in these pre-game days, this is my fave: Beuller? Beuller?

Want to read the transcript?

Chris Loghry: Welcome to BrandingBlog SoundBites with Wizard of Ads partner Dave Young. Dave wants to talk Super Bowl. I didn’t know you were into football.

Dave Young: I’m not into football, Chris.

Chris: Oh, you’re into advertising.

Dave: Yeah, that’s right. [laughs] That’s right. Everybody gets focused on the Super Bowl ads every year, don’t they? I mean…

Chris: Oh, they do.

Dave: The die-hard sports fans, of course, want to watch the game. And there are some of us that would just rather see the ad reel at the end of it.

Chris: And there are a lot of people that just watch it for the ads. Of course, now with You Tube and other sources you don’t really have to sit through the whole thing, but…

Dave: That’s true. And sometimes those ads are released on YouTube even before the game.

Chris: So, what’s been your thoughts on Super Bowl advertising? I haven’t even looked to see what kind of rates they’re getting this year. It always seems to go up no matter what the audience, doesn’t it?

Dave: It really does, and last time I paid attention, wasn’t it about a million dollars a second, something like that?

Chris: Something like that. It’s, you know… it’s crazy expensive.

Dave: And, you know the big selling point is the huge reach…

Chris: The captive audience worldwide.

Dave: Yeah, it’s a gigantic audience. And so, if you remember conversations we’ve had about the advertising performance equation and reach versus frequency, what the Super Bowl offers is this huge, huge reach. And reach is just the number of people that an ad reaches. Frequency is how many you’re reaching and you measure frequency over, you know… yearly, weekly, monthly, whatever. And so when we buy radio, for example, our goal is to try to reach people three times in a week. And it usually takes 20 or 30 ads, depending on the station—sometimes more, sometimes less—to accomplish that.

Chris: Super Bowl advertisers aren’t getting much of that then, aren’t they?

Dave: No, no

Chris: With one ad.

Dave: For the most part, yeah. There may be a few companies that buy several ads.

Chris: True

Dave: But yeah, you’re getting a frequency of one with however many gazillion people you have. It’s extra large reach with minimal frequency. The only problem with it… it can be a good thing, depending on the business, right? So, if you’re a big brand that does business with people year-round, all the time, day in, day out, You’re Coca Cola. You’re Chevrolet. You’re just a giant corporation that it can be a good exposure for you, I guess is the thing. If you’re just trying to sell something… it can be a little weird and it can be strange to try to figure out if it’s a good buy or not.

Chris: It can all also backfire, can it not?

Dave: Well it can, because you’re putting all your eggs in one basket.

Chris: Right.

Dave: So if you’re a company that has to save up all year so you can buy your Super Bowl ad… I think it can be either a waste of money or really harmful to your business.

Chris: You would advise against it in most cases, I’m guessing.

Dave: In most cases, sure. And there are some companies that just have money to burn and they want to be on the Super Bowl and it’s important to them… I think of Go Daddy, for example. They always have some Super Bowl ad that’s just got racecar drivers and hot chicks in it.

Chris: Right. And you wonder, “What’s the point?”

Dave: Yeah, the funny thing is, they’re not relevant to the business they have.

Chris: Right

Dave: Right. They try to get you to their Web site and, “Hey, you’ll see more by going to our blog,” or whatever but they don’t talk about what it is the company does. So, strangely enough, if you remember some of those Super Bowl ads from before the dot-com bubble… do you remember that? When all these Internet companies…

Chris: Before the bubble burst?

Dave: Before the bubble burst, yeah. The Super Bowl was full of these bizarre ads from these companies that are no longer around.

Chris: I was just going to say… companies that don’t exist anymore. [laughs]

Dave: And it was just a monumental waste of money buying these ads because they weren’t relevant to what the company did. Go Daddy survived despite that because they offer a valuable service and they do it pretty well… they just have this bizarre kind of marketing concept that I’ve never quite figured out because it’s just not relevant to the services that they offer. They’re an Internet registrar and they offer [laughs] those kinds of services. They don’t have anything to do with racing. They don’t have anything to do with models. That seems to be…

Chris: And up to this point, it seems to work. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Dave: I don’t think they’re successful because they’re super bowl ads.

Chris: Okay.

Dave: I think they successful despite their super bowl ads. They’re spending money on Super Bowl because Bob Parsons wants to spend money on the Super Bowl. The owner of Go Daddy thinks it’s fun to spend money that way. And they’ve got loads of money.

Chris: Sure.

Dave: And that’s what they do with it. I don’t think the super bowl ads are driving business for them, but I couldn’t tell you…

Chris: What about recall? What about two months down the road when someone’s thinking, “I’ve got to register a domain name. How about that [laughs] what was it? Go Something?” Any of that?

Dave: I think you’re more likely to think, “Where can I find a video with Danica Patrick in it?”

Chris: You think it’s more of that?

Dave: Well, what else are you going to remember form those ads?

Chris: Well, that’s true

Dave: If they don’t talk about domain name registration, I guess they’re assuming that males are going to go there looking for more pictures of these girls and if they don’t know what Go Daddy is, come to the realization that, “Oh, Go Daddy is where I can register domain names.” And maybe some day they’re going to need to register a domain name. I don’t know. I think it’s a line item in Go Daddy’s marketing budget just called, “Ego.” And that’s… [laughs]

Chris: You and I are agreed that we don’t get it.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Okay.

Dave: I think an extra large reach is like, if you decided… here’s where it works, here’s where it doesn’t. If you go to Costco or Sam’s and you decide, “You know what, I’m going to finally buy all the cheese I’m ever going to eat. I’m going to do it all at once.” [laughs] Does that make sense? Does that seem like a good buy?

Chris: No, not at all.

Dave: It seems kind of stupid even saying it. It feels stupid to say it. Now if you have… there’s probably other products that you can say, “You know, I think that I’ve got this big garage and I don’t want to put anything else in it. Mice can’t get in it. Maybe I’ll buy all the toilet paper I think I’ll ever need in my life.” Maybe that’s a good idea. I don’t know if it’s a good use of space or not, but it’s certainly something you could do. It just doesn’t make sense to most people. And I think in advertising you have to do what makes sense, and in order to do what makes sense, you‘ve got to study it a little bit more than just saying, “Oh, the Super Bowl is here. They offered me an ad for X-million dollars.” Or, my local whatever just called me up and said, “Hey, we’ve got this magazine. Would you like to buy a full-page ad for X amount of dollars. It reaches this many people.” And if your budget… if you don’t take frequency into account, it may not be a good buy for you. You’re buying reach without thinking about the long-term consequences. You’re marketing plan should be as long as your business plan is. You should look forward in your marketing, just as long as you plan on being around.

Chris: Because there’s plenty of ways to throw your money away.

Dave: There’s plenty of them.

Chris: But you want to spend…

Dave: People are not going to endure all the time. You’ve got to think about your buying cycle. You’ve got to think about frequency, you’ve got to think about what your competitors are doing. And not just look at large reach, no matter how much it costs.

Chris: Who are you picking in the Super Bowl, then?

Dave: I don’t even know who’s playing.

Chris: [laughs]

Dave: I’ll probably watch some of the ads.

Chris: How about we’ll get back together after the Super Bowl and talk about what happened.

Dave: Sounds good.

Chris: Well, we can talk about the Super bowl ads, maybe. All right… thanks Dave. You’ve been listening to BrandingBlog SoundBites with Wizard of Ads partner Dave Young. For more information visit Dave Young’s BrandingBlog.com. Please feel free to share this broadcast by sending the link or this mp3 to someone who can benefit from the information. And thank you for listing to BrandingBlog SoundBites with Dave Young.

Roy Williams has more to say on the subject of Reach and Gross Rating Points.

Remember the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) accidentally create a serious mess of their car by shooting the guy in the back seat? The only solution is to call in an expert…a cleanup guy. Winston Wolfe (brilliantly played by Harvey Keitel) to the rescue. I love the Winston Wolfe character. He knows how to fix a bad situation.

When you’ve got a writing mess (a dog’s breakfast, as my Aussie friends would call it) you need to call in an expert. Scribendi is to bad writing as Winston Wolf is to Jules and Vince.

Scribendi is a professional editing and proofreading company. I did some copywriting work for them a few years ago and reconnected with CEO Chandra Clarke for this podcast.

Chandra and I had a nice rolling conversation about how businesses can utilize her editing and proofreading services and why. I learned that her company has employees in every time zone on the planet and is available for projects 24/7, year round.

A couple of sites that I mentioned in the podcast were www.duhcorp.com and www.huhcorp.com which are fictitious companies on real websites with very creative tongue-in-cheek copy.

In case you’re wondering what kind of mess Vince and Jules have in their car… (If the bad words bother you, don’t play it. Seriously.)