Janet Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Did you know you can input a flight number into the Google search bar, and immediately get links to track the flight?  My sweetie is flying home from Denver tonight, and according to FBOWeb.com (the third flight tracking link that came up in Google results) she’s 38,000 feet over Laramie right now, and her flight is going to be about 20 minutes earlier than I thought it might. 

Amazing, when my other option was to go to Alaska Airlines site and try to find the flight tracking area there. Big time saver, and probably easy access from a PDA, too.

You can do the same with a UPS or FedEX tracking number, just paste it into your Google search bar, and you’re off and running.

Since I’m on the road so much now, working with different clients, I’ve started keeping my calendar in Google Calendar, which is saving my bacon. 

We had the same idea at Now Software back in 1994, and I spent lots of time trying to evangelize an Internet-based calendar, but there were too many obstacles back then. 

I love Google.

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I get asked all the time how to find bloggers who cover a particular subject.  One way is to get hip to content malls, which are aggregators of blogs, podcasts, etc.  Robert Scoble writes a great synopsis of the content mall here.

If you’re looking to reach a particular audience with your blog, find out where other bloggers are talking - more and more, they’re likely to be hanging out in a mall.

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“Well, if the crowd *making* the video is any indication of our target
audience (early 30-ish entertainment-addicted urban white males) … the
good news is that a number of shots are laugh-out-loud funny. The
tumbleweed in particular tickled the team.”

The creative process - shooting video, going through post production, even naming a promotion and pulling everything all together - can be a most exhilirating time in a marketer’s work.  Being able to share it with your team across the country as it unfolds is a most amazing experience.  To quote another, way smarter marketer: 

wireless access + digital cameras + accessible applications = priceless 

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Cori Taratoot is a brilliant soul.  She is the project manager for the Intel Software Network campaign I’ve been working on.  She’s been running my butt off this week. Today she’s with a team somewhere in the Portland Area filming a video.  I think she’s born to be a blogger.  I keep getting email from her (first one at 8:05 this morning…) saying things like:

Subject:  “We’re off to a great start!

Hiring the creative team on Tuesday (while it seemed INSANE at the time) was the best thing we did. Our director is amazing, on time (!), and his crew is uber-competent. Now we just need to cross our fingers and hope the actors get here on time @ 8:30am.

I should be blogging. Heh.”

Subject:  “What happens when you microwave a Rubic’s Cube?

Nope, it doesn’t melt.

It explodes!

-cbt”

This is the kind of writer you want if you’re looking to find a great blogger.  Someone who can express herself extremely well, with a sense of their humanity peeking through every word.  I can’t wait to see how the video comes out… based on her initial enthusiasm and the compelling visuals she’s planted in my imagination - in just two short email pings.

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In a story that unfolds every day in conference rooms around the world, the client asks the agency, “How can you help us reach our (insert descriptor here) audience through viral marketing?”

Uh oh…

Sincerely - that phrase strikes fear in my heart.  Not because it’s impossible to create viral campaigns, but because it’s impossible to predict what will become viral. 

(I watched in amazement while a YouTube video of a corgi puppy moved from 25,000 views to over 1 million in a weekend.  I’ll admit, we watched it four or five times in a row, it was so cute.  Who knew?)

And it is especially daunting when a company like Intel says it in the same breath as, “We want to be different and edgy.” 

Uh huh.

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