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Category Business News

Marketing Judo”: Turning Negative into Positive in the Blogosphere

Recently, Terri Kay of the PR Web PodTeam sat down with our speaker John Battelle for an interview about how blogging and search are affecting marketing and media.

If you’re looking for a taste of what John’s keynote will look like, the resulting podcast will give you a pretty good idea. Here’s a rough breakdown of what he covered in just eight short minutes:

* The message to businesses about blogging (:51)
* How search is behind the shift in business communications (2:05)
* How “Marketing Judo” can help you turn a negative into a positive (3:00)
* What happens if you don’t respond when people comment: “It’s kinda rude” (4:00)
* Symantec “Macs don’t get a lot of viruses” (4:29)
* GM blogging about environmental issues with the Chevy Tahoe (5:29)
* Businesses are used to hiding behind a brand, letting your audience judge you in real time is scary (6:30)

I think the big message here is that businesses are used to a level of control that is no longer possible, and that’s scary. The sooner you get over that paralyzing fear, the better. But don’t take my word for it. Come to the conference and hear John.

Our Legal Panel Sounds Off on Cease and Desist Letters, Intellectual Property Issues and More

Our law panel truly has a lot to say. Kevin O’Keefe, Buzz Bruggeman and Phil Mann recently sat down for a podcast interview with (Blog Business Summit sponsor) PR Web’s Terri Kay was a terrific showcase of the larger issues they’ll be covering in their panel at the end of day one of our upcoming conference.

And here’s some more interesting legal commentary from our speakers. Not to rehash old news with regard to the Apple/PodcastReady cease and desist letter, but I thought this was worth posting as it gives a good sense of the kind of legal expertise we’ll be featuring on the legal panel.

For those of you who didn’t hear about it, about a month ago Apple sent what Wired called a “nastygram” to PodcastReady asserting that they held a trademark on the term “pod”. The letter called on them to cease and desist use of the term immediately.

“This is a classic example of why business people ‘love’ their lawyers,” wrote our legal panelist Phil Mann. “The lawyers here may be legally right, but do their actions really make business sense?”

The enhanced communications platform of the blogosphere inhibits the old top-down control over a brand. People use the term “google” as a verb in the same way that they used to refer to tissues as “kleenex,” adhesive first aid strips as “band-aids” and copies as “xerox.”

“Let’s assume ‘pod’ and ‘podcast’ are legally protected and Apple can indeed prohibit their unauthorized use,” continued Mann. “Great. The rest of the world then stops referring to ‘pods’, ‘podcast’ and ‘podcast ready.’ And what happens next? Some competitor without the same name recognition steps up and says, ‘I’ll be happy to let you use MY name without any complaint from me,’ and a small, unknown player gets far better free advertising than it could ever hope to buy. This isn’t that far-fetched. Many companies have stupidly handed incredibly lucrative gifts to their competitors through short-sighted emphasis on ‘protecting’ their legal rights.”

The lesson here seems to be that companies have to be careful to tread the line between keeping traditional control over their brand and opening a door for their competitors to use the social media echo chamber to amplify their own brand.

Why the Old Blog Business Summit is Dead, Long Live the New BBS

Thankfully, blogging gurus such as Des Walsh have posted and emailed me about the mixed signals we’ve been sending about the status of the BBS conference. After reading the commentary, it’s obvious that our position needs to be better communicated.

A little background info may help. Since 1991, I’ve been hosting conferences on a myriad of publishing and Web topics. The last company I owned — Thunder Lizard Productions, hosted the following events in a single year: Photoshop Conference (2,) Dreamweaver Conference (1,) Web Advertising Conference (1,) Web Marketing Conference (1,) Macromedia Web World (1,) and probably two or three others that escape me. So, my being a host of multiple unique shows at one time is not unusual.

In the past I have relied on “disruptive” technology changes and the flocking of businesses to embrace them as central to the events we host. The idea was to find something that will likely transform how businesses operate and create an event that that teaches them how to get on top of this shift. This was the original model behind the BBS. Sometimes it works well (Web Advertising Conference 1996) sometimes it tanks (My “Push” conference in 1997.)

Like the Lambada, I don’t believe my original, 1990’s era event model is nearly as viable as it used to be, and certainly not so for the BBS. The BBS really never attracted the huge numbers of marketing and PR types that clearly *needed* to learn this stuff. I tried very hard with the Chicago event to attract that demographic and our efforts washed up on shore like a dead fish.

In addition, we emailed, snail mailed, and telephoned 250 CTOs and CIOs and invited them to come and learn how Wikis and blogs can enable internal knowledge sharing. They were terrified, and only 3 signed up. A couple even said they were “too busy” with their current efforts to reign in email overload to take the time to attend(!)

What we learned is that (at least in Chicago) most corporate types that don’t get it (or are scared) just aren’t going to come. The ones that were already blogging seemed mostly interested in speaking.

On the other hand our event has always been strong at bringing in the *community* of existing business bloggers. Much of that Chicago community IMHO was already served this summer by SOBcon and BlogHer. I believe this arena is where we have a real opportunity for the future. I believe the enthusiasm and desire to commune that existing business bloggers have is what’s important now. Sharing knowledge and socializing is the powerful force — not the “disruptive-ness.” The feedback I have received from previous attendees and partners lately confirms this.

So, yes — the Blog Business Summit as a change enabler for corporate slowpokes may indeed be dead. The BBS as a place where dedicated business bloggers can come together is the future. We are excited about reinventing this show and focusing on what the community wants, not on what we think corporations “need.”

To all our attendees, speakers, readers, and sponsors. Please keep the comments and criticisms coming, we’ll need them to create a blogger gathering that truly resonates.