Jaffe Juice

I'm the 9th biggest Marketing twit...

Awesome - a Power 150 list for marketing Twits. Love it. I'm #9. I've taken a snapshot, so I can savor the moment before @chrisbrogan begins his inevitable meteoric rise and displaces me :) Nice also to see fellow crayonista, @gregverdino represented.

Nice work, @ArmandoAlves.

PS Have you received your C+D letter yet or are you playing Adweek vs Ad Age in a winner-take all M&A Deathmatch? :)

Dear C.E.O., all I want for Xmas is competance...

A man is stranded on a desert island and stumbles upon a magic lamp. He rubs it and a genie pops out granting him any one wish.

He immediately wishes for World Peace; no war, famine, hatred, poverty or evil in the world.

Genie say, "dude, I know I said any wish you want, but c'mon...isn't that a little over the top?"

He agrees and immediately changes his wish to the Jets winning the Super Bowl.

...to which the genie says, "...what was that wish about World Peace again?"

That joke reminds me of what it is to be a C.E.O. or any member of the C-suite today. It's an unforgiving job, where all the leader of a company wants are 3 simple wishes: business growth, competitive advantage/differentiation and customer intimacy. Instead, they have to settle for 30-second spots.

Well, hopefully these insights will help them with their quest.

I had the pleasure of contributing to a document championed by the fine folks over at ExactTarget, titled "Letters to the C-Suite," along with:

• Rohit Bhargava, Author of “Personality Not Included”
• Pete Blackshaw, Executive Vice President of Digital Strategic Services, Nielsen Online
• Hunter Boyle, Managing Editor, MarketingExperiments Journal
• Rex Briggs, Chief Executive Officer, Marketing Evolution and Author of "What Sticks"
• Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
• Joseph Jaffe, President, crayon and Author of "Join the Conversation" (that would be me)
• Jeanne Jennings, Author of “The Email Marketing Kit”
• Aaron Kahlow, Founder of the Online Marketing Summit
• Kelly Mooney, President and Chief Experience Officer, Resource Interactive
• Jeanniey Mullen, CMO, Zinio and VIVmag, Founder of The Email Experience Council
• Andy Sernovitz, Chief Executive Officer, GasPedal and Author of "Word of Mouth Marketing"
• Stefan Tornquist, Research Director, MarketingSherpa Inc.
• Steve Yastrow, Author of “Brand Harmony”

My contribution is available right here for your reading pleasure (Download ExecAlert2_Letters_Jaffe) , however if you want the entire compendium of C-suite pearls of wisdom, you'll have to visit their site yourselves. Oh and while, you're there subscribe to their marketing insights newsletter or visit their blog...they're an incredible smart bunch of folk doing fine, fine work in the e-mail (and related areas) space.

Enjoy and would love your thoughts. What would you say to the C-suite if given the opportunity?

Jaffe Juice #122 - Chatting with Geoff Livingston and Allyn Brooks about Social Philanthropy and Save Darfur

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Geoff Livingston and Save Darfur's Allyn Brooks about Social Philanthropy and the Darfur crisis. What are you waiting for? Add your voice now: http://www.addyourvoice.org/ - send President Obama a postcard and play your part. Audio comments to +1 206 203-3255. Follow me on Twitter.

Direct download here

iTunes subscription here

Additional links:

• Darfur Add Your Voice
• Armano Effort
• Marketplace discussion of Armano effort
• Geoff Livingston's Blog, The Buzz Bin
• Geoff's Book, Now is Gone

CES La Vie in HD!

I'm back from my first CES and besides the side effects of acute lack of sleep and the looooong road to recovery ahead, the buzzing in my head is the best kind possible.

If you've been following my blog or my tweets, you'll know that I went to CES as Panasonic's guest, but also as their partner. With regards to the former, I had the pleasure of participating in a Spotlight presentation to talk about the future of Web Marketing. With regards to the latter, my company - crayon - worked with Panasonic to bring along a diverse and talented group of individuals to the show.

Going into the show, one might have referred to them as blogger, podcasters, vloggers, content creators, or even the slightly cruder but industry appropriate, influencers. However, having been a part of the experience, I would most certainly replace all of those terms with these descriptors: Humans, consumers, customers, Moms and Dads.

(photo courtesy of Steve Garfield of SteveGarfield.com)

Pansonic's whole positioning centers around the harmonious balance and interconnectedness between technology and humanity (ideas from life; ideas for life) and no where was this more prevalent than at CES.

If you think about it, every day we are forced to be schizophrenic - separating our personal lives from our professional lives. In business, we fight every day for integration - but what is integration really? Is it print, TV and online playing nice with one another? Or is it something a lot more profound, namely the ability to join forces with our customers - as partners; the gift of being able to participate in their lives and communities (and to be welcome); the propensity to engage in meaty, healthy discourse and dialogue with them?

...'er yes. That's it. That's what Living in High Definition is all about.

For me, the highlights (if video isn't available yet, it soon will be) of CES and this program were plentiful. They included (from the sublime to the ridiculous):

1. Making 6 new friends (or extending existing friendships) in the form of Chris, Steve, Stacy, Ponzi, Melissa and Vicki and in particular the time when we sat down and talked about this experience together. It's not often you'll get to see video like this that gives you a look inside the Kimono, but then again, there was pretty much no restriction in terms of what was on and off the record. All I can tell you is that this was 100% unprepared and unscripted...and there was some additional conversation once the camera was turned off (not intentionally) that I will remember for the rest of my life.
2. Meeting the Calandro's (yeah, thanks for that!) and the Pollak's
3. The dinner we had with the 6, together with our Panasonic clients - and in particular the moment when we got to share birthday cake with 6-year old Matthew Calandro. This is probably one of the seminal moments in my career....where everything I wrote in "Join the Conversation" came to fruition. Indeed, marketing can be a conversation. I saw it with my own two eyes. Cluetrain was wrong, only limiting this to markets. We - the marketers - are as much a part of the equation as our customers are.
4. The time we spent with Panasonic North America's Chairman, Yoshi Yamada. There will be some video of this soon to share. Mr Yamada was amazing...his empathy, genuine interest and care is something that you just can't fake.
5. My spotlight presentation
6. Meeting Tom Dickson, CEO of Blendtec and the face behind, "Will it Blend?"
7. Meeting Mario (of the Mario + Luigi duo) and coming back to a framed photo of us in my son's room
8. Meeting Philip Scoble. It's a long story :)

I'm very honored that people are embracing this program so much. Brian Morrissey wrote this piece in Adweek, although I'm not sure I agree with him that this is "Advertorial 2.0." The content creation component was just one aspect of this program and I'm pretty certain that everyone who participated - directly or indirectly would vehemently agree that - even with a 2.0 slapped on it - the crude description of advertorial doesn't come close to capturing the genuine emotion and relationship component associated with this effort.

My full Flickr set is here, but if you want more....just search for the LiHD tag (on Flickr; on Twitter; on YouTube etc)

Additional posts/recaps from Greg Verdino, Chris Brogan and the Calandros.

Only poor people watch 30-second spots

A while back I noted what I thought was a earth shattering observation, at least 50% of American Idol's audience were over 50 years old. Put differently, not only were audience numbers in a nosedive, they (the audience) were also getting older...

Now it appears that they're also poorer (relatively speaking)

A new survey suggests that upscale households account for a disproportionate slice of the DVR distribution pie, as more than half of all U.S. homes with incomes of $100,000+ subscribe to some form of time-shifting device.

Old + Poor. Not exactly the 1-2 punch marketers were looking for.

The beginning of the end...

My latest Adweek column is up. In it, I basically ask whether the recent spate of layoffs in the agency world will be the tangible "tipping point" that forever changes/transforms the business.

In marketing they called it the just noticeable difference, the combination or culmination of a series of smaller events that, over time, presents a watershed moment. For fatties, it's the day your pants split or the chair breaks. For network television, it could have been the writers' strike. For advertising, it's arguably the embarrassment of layoffs.

Ultimately the advertising game will always come back to one word...and one word only: talent. And yet, it also sucks the most at managing it - attracting it; nurturing it; retaining it.

And then there's the exodus hangover. Do you really think all this talent will giddily flock back to cubicle city with open arms and an all-is-forgiven attitude? Where do you think the explosion of millennials is going to hang its hats (if it even wears hats anymore) and call home-an ad or media agency, or a new breed or brand of service provider?

Perhaps it is somewhat alarmist, but I honestly wonder whether the ad biz will be able to recover from this lethal shock to the system. On the flipside, it is possible that this could be a cathartic kick in the touches and this serves as a call-to-action to radically transform the industry.

Thoughts and arguments welcome...as are Retweets and podcast audio comments to +1 206 203-3255.

CES Here I am!!!

So I'm in my room with about 45 minutes to spare before I head to the Convention Center for the first time to see the wonder and awe that is CES. I'm also going to be giving a Spotlight Presentation at the Panasonic Booth talking about the future/benefits/trends of Web Marketing.

As an fyi, I'll be sharing the stage with people like Paul Tagliabue, Jon Landau and others.

Tonight we have the Tweet-up from 6.30-8pm at the Panasonic booth. If you're in town, I hope you can make it. More information here.

 I'm a little apprehensive about the ENORMITY of a typical Las Vegas Convention - it's all a little intimidating at the best of times, but fortunately I'm sharing this experience with a great group of folk - from fellow crayonista, Greg Verdino, to the participating "influencers" including Chris Brogan, Steve Garfield, Melissa Pierce, Stacy DeBroff and Ponzi Pirillo (sadly Cliff Ravenscraft had to pull out for medical reasons...we all wish him a speedy recovery) and last, but not least, our Panasonic clients.

I arrived in Vegas yesterday just in time for the Panasonic Press Conference at the Venetian Hotel. It was a pretty cool experience and if you want to see some pics from the event, just visit my Flickr set here. Highlights included a portable Blu-Ray DVD player from Panasonic, a lot of news about 3DHD (yes, 3D as in abra abra cadabra....I want to reach out and grab ya), a Viera HD TV that is thinner than my fat finger and/or an iPhone and much more.

Here's a video from Steve Garfield which tells the tale of the tape.

After the press conference, we relaxed a little until dinner, which was a semi (I say semi, because we'll have some video to share within the next week or so) private intimate opportunity to hang out and to get to know one another.

One thing you're going to start hearing a lot about is this notion of "Living in High Definition" or LiHD for short. It's part of a much larger initiative that crayon has been fortunate to work with Panasonic on. You can see some of the initial work here. For now, let me just say that one of the highlights of  the event so far was meeting the Polak's and Colandro's - two of the participating families in the LiHD program. We actually got to share birthday cake with Matthew on his 6th party and I have to say, that if ever there was validation behind "Join the Conversation" and specifically, marketing as a conversation...this was it!

After dinner, I cannot confirm or deny that I won a whopping $60 playing Texas Hold 'em and Wheel of Fortune.

If you want to continue to follow our journey at CES, there are a few ways of doing so:

• The uber-Sweetcron aggrgated hub
• My Flickr Set
• Our tweets (search for hashtag #LiHD)
• Any of our individual feeds

High Definition Tweet up at CES?

Just 3 days away from my first CES, thanks to crayon client, Panasonic. I'll be doing my best to update you all regularly.

If you are going to be in Vegas, don't forget to swing by the Panasonic-flavored tweet-up, which will be taking place on Thursday night, January 8th from 6.30-8pm at the Panasonic Booth (#9405 in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center)

If you are planning on attending, you can "register' here.

Oh and feel free to spread the word, the more the tweetier.

Jaffe Juice #121 - The future of podcasting with Jaffe, Curry, Joel, Holtz, Mignon, Ravenscraft, Fallis and Hopkins (oh my!)

What a way to begin the year! An open and engaging conversation about the state and future of podcasting. Audio comments to +1 206 203-3255. Thanks so much to Adam Curry, Mitch Joel, Cliff Ravenscraft, Shel Holtz, Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl), Terry Fallis, Lee Hopkins as well as Jay Berkowitz, Dave Guerra, Jay Moonah and much much more. Booyah!

Direct download here

iTunes subscription here

What are *your* 2009 Marketing Resolutions?

Come on now....we all have New Year's Resolutions...so what are *your* New Year's MARKETING resolutions?

• If you work on the more established side of the business, perhaps you want to get more comfortable on the emerging side (the "93 colors")
• If you're on the social side, perhaps you want to understand the bigger picture side of the business...
• Maybe this is the year you start a blog

Why not share your resolutions here with a comment, tweet or better yet, send in an audio comment to +1 206 203-3255.

Even though it's slightly hokey, it's a pretty sound and disciplined process i.e. taking the time to do one thing you've never done before or taking direct steps to improve/get better.

Hmmmm....is the equivalent of marketing weight loss eliminating the "fat" of media dollars wastage???