Hate to Say It….
As much as I like the theme here on troyrutter.com by Justin, its VERY confusing for the casual visitor. New posts aren’t “first” like you would expect, and I have to add them to a feature category in order to get them to appear in that first block.
All in all - its a magazine layout, not a typical blog layout.
back to the drawing board.
User Created Tide Commercial (repost)
(reposted from one of my other sites)
My previous posts was about Joseph Jaffe’s new book, so it is only fitting that today I post a request that almost seems to be ripped from the pages of that book.
In his book, Jaffe encourages so called “marketing gurus” at major companies to take a hard look around them and embrace social media. In it, he also gives a case study where a company “almost” gets it, but their “new way” or marketing is to ask their community to produce a commercial, and the winner will air on national TV. The result? While some people did as the brand wanted and produced a commercial in favor of the truck (Note: I can’t remember the name of the actual truck manufacturer at this time, my bad) there were even MORE entries about how much the truck “sucks.”
Enter last week’s forray into almost the same thing - Tide. Using YouTube, Tide invited people from around the country to film their own “talking stain” commercial, upload it to YouTube, and the winner will be shown on National TV. Fair enough, right? Well, out of hundreds of entries, the final 10 have been announced - and a studio I am loosely affiliated with has been chosen in that top 10.
Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/mytalkingstain?utm_source=gatorade_OLAfame
So, if you have time, and want to help, please click on the link above, and go vote for the video produced by “diepart” - which is a young man asking a young woman’s father if he can marry his daughter. You will recognize it by the higher production values than some of the rest. I think you have to click the green “thumbs up” button and actually hit the “next video” button to record a vote.
Erosion Control With a Silt Fence
One of the things I like about working for a company where you deal with different kinds of businesses every day, is that no two businesses are alike. You could be dealing with a company that sells scented soap one day, and another one who does work with cattle sperm the next. (Don’t you love, Iowa?)
Today I learned about silt fences and what they do for erosion control.
From what I gather, silt fences are made from a “filter fabric” that has been half-inserted into the ground by a machine sometimes called a silt fence plow or sometimes just called a “silt fence machine.” The fence sends up stopping sediment-filled water, which then promotes the sediment to deposit before the fence. This helps erosion control by helping the water pass through the underlying soil without taking the soil/rocks with it.
The machines that lay down the filter fence are pretty nifty, and slice open the ground while laying the fence down into it. There is a fair amount of fence (sometimes 1/2 the width of the overall fence) that sticks above ground - so you might have seen a silt-fence and not even known about it.
Anyway, just a little “And now you know” moment from me today. I thought it was interesting, especially since erosion control and other “earth shattering” events are all the rage. (Thanks to Al Gore.) 
Technorati Tags: erosion control, silt fence plow, erosion control products
Send me to SOBcon 2008!
SOBCon 2008 takes place in May in Downtown Chicago and features such speakers as Liza Strauss and Chris Brogan.
Help me go for free by visiting the SOBCon page by clicking here.
Although chances are low (I need over 200 referrals to their site) - the number one referral gets to attend for free, and gets a hotel room for free that weekend. (The conference alone is $400)
Call the neighbors, wake the kids and help me out. If you do, I’ll be your best friend. 
Join the Conversation Book Review
I realize that I am a tad bit “late” on my review of the book “Join the Conversation” by Joseph Jaffe, but as the saying goes - better late than never. OK, I really hate cliche sayings, but I can’t seem to think of a better one right now.
After Reading Joseph Jaffe’s first book, “Life after the 30 Second Spot” and subsequently subscribing to his blog at www.jaffejuice.com, I jumped on the chance to review his latest book “Join the Conversation” under a system called UNMTPNM, or “Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing.” In the experiment, Jaffe sent out review copies of his book to several bloggers in turn for a review… and also a promise to pay the book forward when they were done.
Like his first book, Jaffe writes a lot like I think… with parentheticals and sometimes off-the wall references. In addition, many of the references are “in your face” such as when he talks about getting a “rod shoved up” a certain part of the anatomy. All in good fun of course.
The main question I had throughout the book is for whom it was written. It contains numerous examples of ways corporations have “missed the conversation” and in turn had public relations nightmares. An example being a man who built his entire living room furniture out of FedEx boxes, and was consequently sued by FedEx instead of supported. If I were take a guess, I would say the book is directed towards advertising/marketing/promotions CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, rather than new media people such as myself.
I was particular interested in the case studies since I had sort of a “join the conversation” moment myself 2 years ago with Adam Curry of PodShow. I had a problem - I wanted an iPod. I had a second problem - I didn’t want to pay the $300 for the video iPod. Now most people would have just sucked it up and saved up to buy something they wanted, but through a series of events, a web site called troyneedsanipod.com was born. When Adam Curry heard of it through a podcast comment to his show, The Daily Source Code, he immediately saw the opportunity to plug GoDaddy’s domain registration company, and launched a contest of his own “Who needs an iPod more than Troy?” The catch - you head to register a domain name through GoDaddy. The promotion was a success. (Plus I got an iPod!)
Jaffe’s book is full of the opposite kind of story - the companies who missed the boat. The points he brings up help the reader learn to recognize opportunities to leverage new media into good PR, based on oftentimes negative reviews or customer comments.
The book’s chapters stand alone nicely, so it is easy to pick up, read a chapter, and then pick it up again in a couple of days. One of the things that I think could have used a little more consideration is starting a conversation. Too many of the examples mentioned were reactionary stories. ie: Joe Blow posts a blog post and Youtube video about company X and company X does (or in most case doesn’t) respond. In this case the consumer/user (sorry Joseph) initiates the communication. But there has to be example of corporate initiated conversation out there, someplace. (besides the make your own commercials)
One place I felt myself slump at was when he talks about the 6 C’s. Long ago, when the Internet started, my friend and mentor Jim Moloshok of Warner Bros. Online would talk to me about Content, Community and Commerce. This was ingrained in my so much that I even just started a blog called contentcommunitycommerce.com .
Oh great, there goes all of my credibility, Jaffe says it is no longer completely accurate. Is my blog done before it even began? I don’t think so. No matter how many more C’s you add on, Content, Community and Commerce will continue to be the “ring leaders” in successful web sites and media.
Would I recommend this book? Definitely. There are a lot of great ideas on how to take a potentially bad situation and turn it around. I intend to “pay it forward” to a member of the Des Moines Bloganostra at the next meeting.
Technorati Tags: joseph jaffe, join the conversation, book review, Troy Rutter, Jaffe Juice, bloganostra
