Alpha Mind Blog

If a public apology to Christopher Penn and John Wall is necessary, this is it.

Chris Penn has written a good response to my last post. John Wall (in a comment on both Chris’s post and mine—same comment both places), has gotten a little defensive, but then perhaps I was a little offensive.

Look, folks, these guys are not Nazis, or neo-Nazis, or Nazi sympathizers, or anything of the kind. They’re marketing gurus of the first rank. And one of them got a little careless in how he worded a recommendation—the same recommendation I would make—that we understand fear-mongering in its worst form.

Most of the impetus for my post was simply how weird it was that Chris Penn mentioned Goebbels the same day I recorded a podcast that talked about both Chris Penn and Nazism.  (Not to mention that I listened to his podcast within 24 hours of reading Drucker’s scary book on totalitarianism.)

In addition to Chris’s post, he and John devote a goodly chunk of this week’s Marketing Over Coffee podcast to discussing the importance of understanding Goebbels, not so we can emulate him, but so we can see through those who do. Chris definitely gets it.

It’s almost as if some spy went and told Seth Godin and Christopher Penn what I was saying about them when I recorded Episode -2 last week. Each of them seems to have gone out of their way to underscore my point.

Seth talks about the importance of standing for something.

And Chris recommends Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels as a marketing guru.

In Seth’s case… his post aligns with what I said fairly neatly. When he writes about standing for something, he doesn’t talk about being ethically upstanding, merely consistent. But the simple fact is that the kind of consistency he recommends is a hallmark of the ethically mature. And the extreme of inconsistency is the mark of the shyster.

And as I said in the podcast, Seth doesn’t make his point as if from a position atop some “Mr. Ethics” pedestal. But this particular post is perfectly consistent with the theme of respect for the customer, a leitmotif running through all Seth’s work.

Then there’s Chris Penn.

Oy!

My point about Chris in the podcast was that I don’t see in him the sort of broad concern for the human condition that I detect in Godin and see epitomized in Drucker.

And Chris didn’t merely reinforce my point, but almost parodied it, recommending Goebbels as “your go-to guy” for how to do fear marketing.

Here are Chris and John Wall in last week’s Marketing Over Coffee:

Chris: …it’s one of those things in the marketing world people really really really don’t like to talk about, because it’s almost taboo, but if you go and read the works of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, and stuff like that and stuff like that, and go back and read what he did and how he did it and stuff like that, he’s basically the almost the father of fear marketing. In the sense that you know you need to pick, you need to artificially divide people into groups, you need to pit those groups against each other, you need to have a villain and a scapegoat of some kind so that you get these archetypes of drama that work incredibly well for motivating people to do what you want them to do. And if you’ve decided that’s part of your marketing strategy, Goebbels is the go-to guy if you really want to take those tactics on. If you obviously if it comes out that you’ve been using Nazi propaganda books as the—

John: —foundation of your marketing strategy—

Chris: —exactly, you may have some backlash there. But—

John: —that’s the kind of information your competitors will get about you and so—

Chris: Exactly.

John: —as part of their campaign.

Chris: Best to keep those books at home, guys.

John: Or read them at the library when, and don’t check them out. These days I think there’s no security left on that… once it makes your list it’s on the list.

Chris: exactly…

To his credit, Chris has responded to an email he received from someone who had the same concern about all this that I have. But sadly, his response doesn’t convince me he understands the gravity of recommending Goebbels. In particular, both the podcast and Chris’s response suggest that John and Chris fail to see the distinction between marketing segmentation and the “artificially dividing people into groups” that was the linchpin of Goebbels’s work. Distinguishing between cost-conscious and style-conscious consumers is hardly the same as dividing humankind into a master race and a people worthy to be stuffed into ovens.

Somehow four or five days elapsed between recording last week’s episode and uploading it, which happened only a few minutes ago. (The delay was mostly due to a lot of experimentation with post-production techniques, and some Vista hassles.)

In Episode minus 2, I introduce Peter Drucker as a guiding light of the Alpha Mind Podcast. I also introduce the alternating-episodes approach I’ll be taking in the ‘cast, modeled after Drucker’s career-long alternation of management books with ones on broader social issues.

I also compare Seth Godin and Christopher Penn to Drucker, and one of them comes out looking pretty good.

Drucker was passionate about management because he cared deeply about the human family. He had also seen (up close, very close) that perfectionist political systems were deadly. He believed that the organizations that make up a free and pluralist society can do much to further human happiness—if run well. And so he loved teaching us how to run them well.

When I started the Alpha Mind blog over three years ago, my goal was to have a podcast join the blog within a few months. In reality, my service to the church and some other constraints kept me from launching the podcast.

Now, I find myself ready to do it, and am counting down the 4 weeks until launch.

I’m not just counting, though. I’m making preliminary and somewhat experimental episodes. There will be 4 of them, numbered from -3 (minus 3) up to 0 (zero). After that, of course, comes Ep. 1 and the real launch of the podcast.

Episode -3 is about the Galveston Flood of 1900, and about how the city got its present seawall, but got it a bit late, after 6 to 8 thousand people died in the 1900 hurricane.

The episode also mentions the Pig War, the last armed conflict between the U.S.A and Great Britain, and without doubt the jolliest, happiest, shiniest war in American history.

And amid all that compulsive story-telling, there really is a how-to lesson in being a thought leader, which goes something like this:

If you’re going to influence people, and they’re going to make important decisions, it helps to be right. History will be nicer to you that way.

Hey folks. A recent inbound link from Lee Hopkins gave me my 41st inbound link.

That is a pathetic number. So I’m here to let you in on a little secret.

C’mon a little closer so I can whisper it.

[puts mouth near ear, cups hand]

My blog is a lot more interesting than 41 links indicate. Pass it on.

So, ahem [away from ear, speaking aloud now]… my count of feedburner subscribers is also pathetic.

Even more pathetic is the count of subscribers to my Comment Feed.

And that’s the little secret I want to share with you.

My own writing may be drab or daft or vacuous. But in just the last week, the following august personages have left comments here at The Alpha Mind:

• Kami Watson Huyse
• Seth Godin
• Shel Israel
• Shel Holtz (of FIR fame)
• Chris Carfi
• Bryan Person
• B. L. Ochman
• Martin Kelley

Even if I’m not worth reading, those folks are!

So, to get the real juice out of the Alpha Mind Blog, all you have to do is subscribe to both my feeds, but especially the Comments Feed. It’s an undiscovered gem, just waiting for you to be the first non-Max-Hansen to unearth it.

It’s right up there at the top of the sidebar. There on the right.

Unless you’re on the permalink page, so just in case, it’s also right here:

Click it, go ahead.

You know you want to…

Seth Godin in an unusually arch rant about an editor’s work on his manuscript:

Just got some work back from a new copyeditor hired by my publisher. She did a flawless job. She also wrecked my work. Totally wrecked it.

By sanding off every edge, removing every idiom, making each and every fact literally correct, she made it boring and dry and mechanical.

It reminds me of Kathy Sierra’s excellent post—one of her classics, I think—called “Keep the sharp edges!” Kathy’s post focuses mostly on how committees are incapable of producing the remarkable, because groupthink is naturally a process by which rough edges and sharp corners are sanded smooth. In product markets, she goes on to say, product become more and more alike through this process.

Seth is writing about a single person’s effect on his work, but he acknowledges it’s a matter of corporate (i.e. shared) responsibility.

I need to be really clear. She’s not at fault. She did exactly what she was supposed to do. The fault lies in the job description, not the job.

When I buy a book by Seth Godin, I want it to sound like Seth Godin, not like Seth strained through several layers of bleached muslin.

It’s a lesson that is hard-won in my own life. I’m a reasonably facile writer, but a long period of my life, my first 30 years in fact, was one great writer’s block. What broke me out of it was to learn that while knowing proper English is a very good thing, when one writes, propriety had better not be the goal, you need to go for effectiveness.

I can be more concrete. I used to fuss over poetry manuscripts, because I couldn’t find a way to say what I wanted to say in a way that was both stylistically powerful and grammatically perfect. The revelation for me was when I was listening for the zillionth time to “Fun Fun Fun” by the beach boys. And I suddenly realized that the first two lines are both abominable English and a work of rare genius.

Let me remind you.

Well she got her daddy’s car and she cruised to the hamburger stand now.

See she forgot all about the library like she told her old man now.

That second line is purt-near unparseable. It’s also perfect, absolutely perfect. A gem, a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It captures the late 50s in a drop of clearest amber.

A dear friend of mine in Berkeley recently pointed out that I’m the only person she’s heard use the word “bodacious” since 1982 or so. I think she might have meant it as a criticism. I can only smile. I don’t use the word often, but when I think about excising it from my vocabulary, the prospect strikes me much the same as if somebody at Coke pointed out they could use a tiny bit less syrup in the drink and nobody would notice. Brand dilution.

Dowsing for clients: Seth, B. L. Ochman, and my business card

Seth Godin has everything to do with why I spent almost 50 hours creating my latest business card.

In case you went and looked at that post but didn’t read B.L. Ochman’s comment, I’ll repeat it here:

…when I had my own PR firm, in another life, I used to do something very similar to your new card. But frankly, i think there are more simple ways to make the point.

B. L. misses something important: My card is not just a way for me to tell something, but, and just as importantly, to learn.

When somebody phones me on the basis of that card, I know they’re already, in a very important way, a qualified prospect. They’re somebody I’ll be able to work with.

That card puts me on probation before I ever even talk to the prospect. And if I’ve passed that probation, the prospect has as well. Lots of people will toss that card, seeing me as a weirdo. The ones who call will be see me as their kind of weirdo. And in working together, that will make all the difference.

I’m dowsing not for clients but for the kind of clients I want to work for. If I don’t find them, I’ll just keep writing what I want to write, record some podcasts and preach the gospel, and earn the right to do those things by digging ditches if that’s what it takes.

Shel Israel, discussing how BuzzLogic Calculates Influence, says:

What I liked was that this was a simple, straightforward measurement designed to see a monetary return on a hard dollar investment.

But, much of social media’s goals is less tangible.

(emphasis mine)

What he’s referring to at the start of the quote is Kami Huyse’s wonderful work calculating the ROI of the Sea World San Antonio campaign that launched their new roller coaster. It was a great case study by a fast-rising star of social PR.

But I’m struck by that last sentence of Shel’s quote (and not only by the grammatical gaffe.) When I heard Shel Holtz discussing Kami’s work on For Immediate Release, as soon as he mentioned measurement of ROI, and before he got into the meat of the segment, I remember thinking “Who measures the ROI of having a desk or wearing decent clothes?”

Yes, when you launch a social media campaign, you ought to think about how you’ll define and measure success. But if you’re still on the fence about using social media at all, I believe it’s time you started thinking about having a presence (on Twitter and a blog at minimum) in much the same way you think about basic office equipment and your business wardrobe. No, a social media presence isn’t a minimum requirement of doing business, not just yet, but that corner will be turned so soon, so suddenly, and so quietly, that you’re safest–by far–turning the corner yourself as soon as you can.

A fine, quick lesson in persuasion from Andrew Cline at Rhetorica. Worth checking out even if only to learn the spiffy word “enthymeme.” Say it over and over. What a great word!

Chris Carfi would have gotten a write-up here on The Alpha Mind in December except that my blog was so badly beaten up by hackers it took me well into the new year to get it cleaned up.

If I’d written about Chris, it would have been because he was in a tie for Best Conversationalist at a geek dinner in San Francisco. (No mean distinction, considering the tie was with Shel Israel.)

But the man doesn’t need me to help make him a star… cuz Chris Carfi was featured in some footage on CNN yesterday.

Congrats, Chris. Alas, the clip says nothing about Cerado and what it does. But hey, any publicity is good publicity, right?

And yet… and yet…

if you had just acted psychotic, you could have gotten a million views on YouTube, where that seems to be what passes for funny.

Mike Masnick asks: Is Copyright Law Killing The Documentary? The answer is in this video on YouTube. Titled “Eyes On the Fair Use of the Prize,” it tells how an outstanding documentary from the 1980s has been effectively disappeared by copyright burdens: