Critics are panning it. Ad Age says it’s “too good”. Which makes it bad.

Walt Whitman selling Levi’s jeans.

What do you think?

Just saw a news bulletin that says that Walter Cronkite is not well so I just wanted to give him a salute as a sign of respect. We talk about personal branding–This man is an icon.
Here’s Walter Cronkite showing some vulnerability–fast forward to about 5 minutes in…

Raz Chorev has been randomly selected from a recent flood of commenters to receive Drew McLellan’s marketing book, 99.3 Random Acts of Marketing. Congrats Raz The book will be sent to you by a randomly selected kangaroo.

Kinda seems lame or maybe just premature to trot out an “I-told-you-so” to the Colonel when he hasn’t even had a chance to botch it up of his own devices. The whole Oprah’s Book Chicken Club “We-can’t-keep-up-with-the- coupons” disaster has taken the focus off the main point–Kentucky Grilled Chicken is a bad idea which wouldn’t have worked anyway!

McPizza anyone?

Have you ever sat down and put together a huge honkin’ marketing plan? One with made-up numbers to go with it? If you’re an author, a recording artist, a business owner looking for funding, you probably have. And yet, as Drew McLellan points out, much of what we actually do in marketing is actually random.

I love the cover of this book and the fact that each of the 99.3 Random Acts of Marketing described here is bite sized for quick consumption. A perfect “keep it in the car” book for when your 3 o’clock client shows up 15 minutes late. And there are some great ideas here. Like Drew’s recommendation on page 127 that we pick up a Lands’ End catalog for ideas about how to describe our products and then proudly state our price.

And that we think about our brand and whether our customers would be more likely to buy their jewelry at Tiffany or at Kmart.

My favorite part of the book is the closing (in fact it ends very much like I ended Step Into The Spotlight!, but his ending is even more clever)–after recommending that we “leave them wanting more”, he does just that…Fun!

And the best part is, Drew sent me an extra copy to give away! So, in keeping with the random theme of the book, I’m going to choose a random commenter (you gotta also put your name and email in the boxes on the right so I can get hold of you) and send that person a copy of Random Acts of Marketing.

What’s your most random act of marketing?

Kentucky Grilled Chicken? Really?

OK, so you’ve got our attention. Free coupons downloadable on Oprah.com

But long term?

Moving to KFC seemed to work for a while. Made us forget what we were really eating–and then the nostalgia of the bucket kicked in… But it seems to me that if you’re going to go all healthy on us now Colonel, you’ll have to launch it under a different brand name.

My personal opinion? Once the hoopla of free Oprah endorsed chicken wears off, you’ll be fried…

Just my 2 cents. What do you think?

I inhale books. I buy them, pile them up and read them 8-10 at a time. I have more books than the average metropolitan library. Especially business books. And now, I’m being sent even more books for review on this blog. And I read every single one…OK, almost…

The sad truth is that some of them are boring! Some just state the obvious. (Not as bad as it sounds, ’cause it’s easy nowadays to forget the obvious especially with so many–gotta send a tweet–distractions…) Many lack focus and leave you wondering why a tree had to die.

Personality not included was a refreshing break from all that. (Why so skimpy on the capital letters Rohit?)

I loved this book. Cool cover. One central idea. Marketing--it's all about personality. That's what my book, Step Into The Spotlight! was all about and I love all the different ways that Rohit’s book gave life to his premise. From the humor in the copyright section after the usual prohibitions…

“Memorization of the full text in any language is permissible…”

to the invitation to skip the first half of the book and cut to the chase on page 185. The book even has an Intermission! (Wish I’d thought of that for my book!)

I don’t recommend that you jump to Part 2 although Rohit admits that he would, ’cause for me Part 1 was the best part. I love all the stories of bananas with stickers that lead you to a back story about the farm where they were grown (not sure I’d notice the stickers, and I’m a Chiquita girl, but love the behind the scenes at the farm idea). On page 113 Rohit gives us a chart to help us figure out how to find our own back story. Part 2 is more of the “how to” portion of the show, but if you’re like me, you’ll get plenty o’ ideas from Part 1. (I guess the beauty of this book is that it’ll appeal both to the right brain and left brain people out there the way Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen did in The One Minute Millionaire.)

Once you put the book down, you’ll go out there looking for your “Accidental Spokesperson”, someone like Jared from Subway who’ll sing your praises and keep your eyes peeled for your “Personality Moments”. Highly Recommended.

Watch for Rohit’s Top Marketing Blogger Guest Post, coming soon to a theatre near you…

There’s a very insightful article by Simon Dumenco over at Ad Age about the significance of the fact that Ashton Kutcher won the race with CNN to be the first with 1 million followers on Twitter. Go read the article but here’s the bottom line. Social media was supposed to level the playing field (which it has in many ways) and facilitate real “one on one” contact. Instead Twitter has become another “one on many” broadcasting medium. Cheaper than traditional advertising.

Yeah, it was a publicity stunt. Yeah, Ashton raised funds for charity. But the real significance here is, in Dumenco’s words, we’re “reverting to a rather pre-Web 2.0 paradigm: broadcasting. The Few speaking to The Many.” Holy Public Speaking Batman!

Kutcher aka aplusk is no twit.

Not sure if I can say the same for his followers…What do you think?

So is this a World Wide Rave, David? I played Liesl in an off off off Broadway version of this show (ie Illinois) AND I’ve been to Belgium, so I have a special affection for it.Thanks for sending it Maxine!

A Twitter Ad Agency? Twitter Awards?

It’s a rare day when I wake up and DON’T hear something surprising and new. Things are changing SO fast nowadays that even if you think you sort of get it when you go to bed, you wake up the next day and everything has changed. The exponential growth of Twitter thing is just one example.

I knew when I wrote Chapter 5 in Step Into The Spotlight! about publicity that it would be out of date before the ink dries, which is why I cut out 3/4 of the chapter and focused only on fundamentals, ideas, not the tactics ’cause they’re changing by the second. You gotta hear how Carri Bugbee of Big Deal PR has used Twitter to get noticed. Considering how noisy the world has become that’s no mean feat. We can all learn a lot from this chick. She’s even won a — get this– Shorty Award (the very existence of such an award baffles the mind) for her work on Twitter! Check out her Ad Age interview here. The Twitter Ad Agency idea is brilliant! Many of us have no clue how to use twitter effectively. And it’s worth learning, until–tomorrow morning when something new shakes up our world again. Don’t you sometimes wish you could sit on a porch swing and shuck peas?