Joe Chernov’s last day at BzzAgent is tomorrow.

As  our VP of Communications, Joe has had such an incredible impact on this business, it’s hard to put it down on paper.  Joe joined this company to do PR, first as a contractor and then as a full timer.   And PR was his sole focus for 3.5 years – during a stint that the business that was truly a PR juggernaut.  (2008 was especially crazed with hits with CBS, and a book release.)

But when our VP of Marketing left in early 2009, a vacuum was created in marketing and we asked Joe to fill it – which he did, admirably.  But Joe’s career plan was never marketing. It was always PR.  We talked throughout, and ultimately he let me know that he was going to return to his PR roots elsewhere.  As much as I didn’t want to lose a member of the BzzAgent family, Joe’s been such a meaningful contributor that I didn’t want to get in his way.

People who know Joe, know that his capabilities with words are unparalleled.  Daily duties called for him to wear dozens of hats, including writing press releases, copyediting my articles, manage external relationships, and creating clear internal communications.  And often, he would make the most complicated situation clear by his knack for delivering pithy proverbs…or analogies…or allegories…or metaphors…approprisims…or whatever they may be called (Joe would probably know).  A few weeks back I started keeping a list of these so people could get a flavor.  Note that he’d toss these out off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment, without so much blinking an eye.  Here’s a handful.

• Put me in coach, I don’t need a helmet…leads to concussions sometimes
• [a non profit org] are separatists — they are the Montreal of associations
• The shorter the hair, the more frequent the cut.  (to illustrate a counter intuitive outcome)
• Getting ready for the birth of a baby is like Christmas shopping, you are never really done…
• When elephants fight, the grass loses.
• When you let the bull out of the barn, you’re responsible for all the damage the bull does.
• What’s the sound of one hand clapping?

Any staffers have others to add to the list?

Anyway, Joe…thanks for all that you did for BzzAgent.

We’ll truly miss you, and remember – if you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.

At a private CEO event a few weeks back, I had the pleasure of seeing Reed give a powerpoint-less presentation.   His way of looking at business is quite inspirational, and there’s now doubt it’s a major reason why Netflix succeeded where many others have not.  I’ve been thinking about which of these ideas fit for BzzAgent…regardless, every company could add a little bit of his wisdom.  Here’s what I jotted down (note much of this is paraphrased):

1. When outlining a strategy, instead of just articulating what you’re going to do, always add what you’re NOT going to do.   To know what your strategy will force you to not do will make things much clearer.
2. If you can grow within your market by 10x, then stay in that market.  If you can’t grow by 10 times, then expand into other markets where you can.
3. Companies aren’t like families.  Families provide unconditional love and are highly dysfunctional.  Companies, rather, are high performance teams.  Sports teams make their players try out for their job every year.  If you need a great left tackle, you shouldn’t just keep someone because they were there last year.
4. A great company is not sushi at lunch; it’s working with incredible people.
5. Don’t optimize for people who follow process, optimize for people who think and are mavericks.  Flexibility is more important than efficiency.
6. Coordinate team on strategy but avoid buy0in on tactics.  Think: Highly aligned, loosely coupled.   Occasionally stuff goes wrong, but this allows for much better speed to execution.
7. Managers need to ween selves from crutch of an employee’s time in seat vs how they’re succeeding.
8. If a smart person does something dumb, figure out the problem in the context that you set, not the tactic that they failed at.
9. Value is what you hire and fire on.  Forget the bs flowery stuff.  Your values are based on what makes you decide to hire someone.

When I caught up with Reed after his speaking gig, we talked a little bit about some of his other ideas on compensation.  I’m not sure I buy into those yet, but he’s got me thinking…

Brian and his Hubspot co-founder Dharmesh, wrote a great book called Inbound Marketing…it’s well worth the read.

Hubspot is one of the hottest companies floating around Boston right now,  and are helping define the future of social media (in some ways, they remind me of BzzAgent circa 2005-2006 — they’ve got that mad type of mojo right now).

As one of Brian’s buddies, I figured I’d ask him a few questions to provide some Inbound Marketing-like exposure – and help him move a few units.

1. What is Inbound Marketing and why should anyone pay attention to it?

It used to be that you could efficiently grow your businesses by interrupting potential customers with outbound marketing methods like cold calls, email spam, advertising, etc.  Today, people and businesses are tired of being marketed to and are getting better and better at blocking marketing interruptions out.  At the same time, people and businesses have fundamentally changed the way they shop and learn turning more and more to Google, social media sites, and blogs to find what they want.  Inbound Marketing helps companies take advantage of these shifts to help companies get found by customers in the natural way in which they shop and learn

2. You built a nifty tool to track amazon sales of the book.  Why and how is it representative of what Inbound Marketing is all about?

It turns out that for an author, Amazon is a killer application and is the target of deep obsession.  There are two things in particular that are interesting to authors on their Amazon page.  First, Amazon tracks your “ranking” relative to the millions of other authors who have books for sale with folks like Dan Brown holding positions near the top.  The better your book is selling, the lower your ranking.  It is a little hard to figure the ranking out and how often the update it, so it is tempting to go to Amazon every 30 seconds and hit refresh.  Rather than do that, we build book.grader.com which tells you what your ranking is at all times, sends you an email alert when your ranking breaks a new record, lets you track your ranking via graph over time for your book and other books side-by-side.  Second, you want to see how many and know when you you got a new review of your book.  If you poured your soul into your book over gallons of hot cocoa, you hope/pray that people actually like the thing.  So, BookGrader tracks how many reviews you got and alerts you via email when you get a new one.At HubSpot, we help people “get found” in Google, blog, and social media.  BookGrader is a toe in the water of helping folks “get found” in Amazon.  If you are an author, check it out — its free!

3. Tell us about the writing process – what worked, what didn’t and is it true you wrote the whole thing in your boxers?

I wrote the book with my co-founder, Dharmesh Shah.  We put together an outline and split it up 50-50.  Despite the fact that we had most of the book in our heads from our work at HubSpot, it still was a huge amount of work on top of our day jobs.  My first step into the process was on a weekend away in Stowe where I locked myself inside at the Topnotch resort by the fireplace downing cup after cup of hot cocoa and cranked out about a third of it that weekend.  The rest was done in spurts over nights and weekends.  It turns out writing a book is hard to do in little bites — you need to get the whole thing straight in your head before you write, so you need some quality time.  Wrt boxers, yes I am a boxers man (as opposed to briefs), but I wrote most of it in sweatpants.

Kottke says it all

In full disclosure, I read Jason’s blog.  Your reactions to his blog may not be the same as my reactions.  Make sure you tell people that if you tell them about this post about Jason’s blog.

The big news these days in the world of marketing is that social media is the “next big thing” and it’s growing fast. But how big? How fast?

Enter this simple flash app that I came across recently that provides an active and dynamic representation of just how big and fast the social media world is growing. The general story is that social media, and everything that goes along with it like spending, is growing so fast that it’s now impossible to dismiss the power of it. It’s clear the days of thinking that this is a fad are over and social media is here to stay. For a long, long time.

So how does a company like BzzAgent fit in? Well, the super simple answer is this: we adapt. Notice I didn’t say we change. What BzzAgent is and has been is a powerful and effective tool that has shown it’s viability in the marketing world. Now we just need to move forward so we evolve what we you do to ensure that BzzAgent remains a leader. In the coming weeks we’ll discuss more about what I’m talking about.

Oh and here’s the tool to see how fast social media is growing.

Jono

Ok, so here’s how this went down.

Last Summer our communications group worked with Cannes to set up a social media panel at their International Advertising Festival in June.  Part of the gig was that the BzzAgent CEO would sit on the panel (me) and we’d help find other participants to join.   We rallied a few folks from places like MySpace, Ford — and Justin Siegel at Mocospace.

I ran into Justin shortly thereafter and we talked about the panel.  We were both griping that the folks at Cannes weren’t paying for speaker’s fees, or even travel, and to make matters worse, were charging us a few thousand bucks to attend the conference.  They also assigned our panel on a Sunday, meaning we’d have to fly out on a Saturday, ruining our weekends, etc.  We figured we’d at least have a good time together in France…

Then, I had to cancel for family reasons.  This happened shortly after Ford bailed, and then MySpace changed up their attendee from a big heavy hitter to someone out of Europe we’d never heard of.  I never spoke to Justin about it, but always wondered if he was cursing my name for signing him up for this boondoggle without the boon or the doggle.

Fast forward to last month – I was asked by the AdClub to arrange a panel on community, and invited Justin to be a part of it.  Other attendees included Jason Jacobs CEO of RunKeeper (awesome guy) and Ben Fischman CEO of Rue-La-La (also an awesome guy), moderated by Paul Gillin (social media guru, solid dude all around); I figured with the group we’d collected, this was a solid makeup for the Cannes issue.

This morning, as attendees munched bacon and slurped orange juice, we waited for Justin to show.  We neared launch time, and reached out to him via email – he wrote back something vague about waking up late.  We, of course, thought that was weird — for the CEO of a company to just not show for a panel that he was heavily promoted for.

Then it struck me: maybe, just maybe, this was Justin’s payback.  I mentioned it to Ben and Jason, and we all got an incredible kick out of it. Ben and I giggled about it through the panel.   It was something straight of Seinfeld, or even Curb Your Enthusaism.  Pure Genius.  I wish I’d thought of doing this…

To Justin, if you truly overslept, don’t tell me.  Let me live with the joy of knowing you maybe had the last laugh at my expense.  I would respect you even more for it.

Every week, dozens of vendors call or email me to try to sell me something I just can’t do without.  This year, more than 50% of my time is put into selling either directly to clients, or as wing to our own salesforce, analysts and media planners.  All of this serves as a reminder that sales is an instinctual profession: you either have it or you don’t.  Here’s what my instincts tell me:

1. Respond With Stunning Speed (RWSS).  Be superhuman in your timing. When you get an email, write back within seconds; a call should be answered on the first ring. This isn’t high school, so forget about playing too busy and ‘hard to get’.
2. Always Set a Schedule (ASS!).  When you want to talk with someone, suggest a firm time. Don’t say, “whenever is good for you,” or “how about we talk next week.”  Lead! Every time you make the client do the work, you slow down progress.
3. Talk Short. Like this.
4. Write for Handheld. You have to assume what you’re writing is being read on a tiny screen while multi-tasking. Get to the point fast and try to limit the need for scrolling.
5. Always Go Up. The more senior the contact, the more real the deal. It doesn’t always make it more likely to close (although it helps), but it certainly limits being blindsided by information you weren’t aware of or the inability to get senior signoff.
6. Never Stop Hunting.  Sales is not a downtime business.   If you’re sitting at your desk waiting for the next move from a client, you’re wasting time.   Do some research, find someone to call, make a connection.
7. Pause.  If you keep talking, many people won’t interrupt you, even if they have a question.  One question unanswered could be the insurmountable hurdle for a deal.
8. Don’t Be Annoying.  If you have a sales rep who is annoying, get rid of them.  If you are annoying, go get a life coach – being in sales is not for you.

This came in last night from a (soon-to-be-ex) editor at a major media industry publication.  Make sure you read to the signoff…

************

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye I’m glad to go, I cannot tell a lie…

That was little Brigitta Von Trapp’s line from the song “So Long, Farewell in The Sound of Music, right? I’m Austrian, you see, or maybe German. Then again, my last name could be Dutch, for all I know. I come from a family that refuses to learn to communicate, so I felt an odd compulsion to enter a Communications-related profession…

Technically, as of Oct. 23, I will no longer be employed by The XXX Company due to, let me grab the paperwork, “a reduction in force.” I am not sure if West Coast ad agencies, marketers or assorted people that I speak to and cover for the magazines below will be assigned to another reporter. God, there’s hardly anyone left here to write! This note is just to inform you that I am leaving, that I’ve enjoyed working with you and to pass along my personal e-mail address. It is:

XXXX@aol.com  Write me there and I’ll pass along other pertinent information.

(Yes, I still use AOL. I got the account in 1996, when I started as an intern. I heard at the time from marketers it was important to “establish a brand name” and to “be consistent,” so I kept it. Also, the account was free.)

Again, I’ve enjoyed knowing and working with so many of you and I’m sure we’ll be speaking soon, whether I land a gig as a journalist, marketer, designer or roustabout.

Until then, keep fuckin’ that chicken!
B.

—–Original Message—–
From:  (client)
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 2:24 PM
To: Dave Balter
Subject: RE: The FTC and Your Word of Mouth Campaigns

Hey Dave

Hope everything is going well for you and the hive.

Picture from Magnetic Heart

I actually have a lot of issues with this ruling–not the least of which
is how it possibly could be executed and implemented fairly.  I think it
may be beneficial for WOM companies like yours but raises far too many
questions for the rest of the blogging world.

So if you guys really do have a line to the FTC, please convey the
concerns of the ‘advertisers’ of the world who do not want to be
policing bloggers to make sure that every statement they make about our
books is true (whatever that actually refers to, btw, since most reviews
are opinions).  Nor do we want to cease sending out review copies lest
they’re going to only large media companies whose business models the
FTC claims to understand–and thus aren’t bound by this ruling.

I know transparency is key to you and the agents–and this ruling makes
sense for those purposes.  Perhaps you’ve been involved in this
discussion for a while, but it sure seems as if it was drawn up very
hastily, without enough knowledge of how blogging (specifically around
books) actually works.

—–Original Message—–
From: Dave Balter
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 2:00 PM
To: (client)
Subject: The FTC and Your Word of Mouth Campaigns

Dear Rick,

As you may have heard, the FTC published its updated “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” yesterday.*

Some portions of the Guides relate to the word-of-mouth and social media marketing, and that’s why I am writing you.  The substance of the Guides is very good news for marketers and agencies who adhere to responsible ethical policies, such as BzzAgent’s industry-first Code of Conduct – and we welcome the FTC’s clarifications of their approach to the market.

The FTC is clearly demanding greater transparency on blogs and throughout social networks, and “transparency” has been the BzzAgent battle-cry for the past five years.  We were the first company to require full disclosure, we were the first company to monitor for disclosure, and we were the first company to enforce this policy in the social media / word-of-mouth world.

I personally co-founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association in 2004 to help set the right path for authentic and transparent dialogues, and to clarify issues such as this – I remain an observer on the Board, and Joe Chernov, our head of Communications, chairs the Association’s member ethics panel.  We are front-and-center on this issue (in fact we volunteered input to the FTC to help educate the commission about best practices in the industry), and we are here to answer your questions and continue to provide you with services that anticipate and comply with the government’s response.

If you have any questions whatsoever about the FTC’s announcement, I’d be happy to discuss directly.  Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Thanks -

Dave

*You can view the 81-page document here

————-
Dave Balter
CEO
BzzAgent
+1-617-451-2280
Bzz Like You Read About: http://www.bzzscapes.com