Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

One might think - due to my absence here - that I’ve just returned from some exotic trip over the holidays. Only in my mind. Although the view from my office was transported from a neighborhood of Portland to that of a Alpine ski village for about 10 days.  The holidays were delightful for me and mine… and I’m just now back to blogging.

I have been working away through the holidays, and am proud to say one of my recent client projects has just come into fruition: the delight of bringing Ellen Hoenig Carlson’s voice into the blogosphere.

Ellen is a long-time pharma marketing executive, and today consults with some of the most visible brands in the healthcare space. I’ve been lucky enough to be her Sherpa as she’s pointed her enthusiastic intelligence into the social media space.

Her post today is especially relevant to those of us who are contemplating 2009 with a mixture of excitement and fear. (Who isn’t, in this world climate?) One of five marketing points in her post today, “Stepping Up to Change in 2009” rang especially true to me:

“Breaking through fear. The brain is highly responsive to fear, and doesn’t allow for learning or new thinking when people feel afraid. Fear is one kind of stress that disables the very kind of thinking that we need most. “

Amen.

Just as we’re watching banks latch on to the money we’ve recently injected into the financial systems in this country, we must pay attention to how our brains latch on to fear - playing with it, allowing it to morph throughout the conscious and unconscious patterns as we go through our days (and nights).

Who’s been waking up at 3:00 a.m. and thinking anything but negative thoughts lately? Can we train our brains to focus on the positives (even in the middle of the night), or is it just best to turn on the light and read? (Note: a colleague of Ellen’s is launching a blog that will cover that very soon… stay tuned!)

Anyway, welcome to the blogosphere, Ellen. Your five imperatives for marketers in 2009 comes at just the right time for me. Thank you for lending a sane voice into an increasingly complex world. Perhaps in listening and learning, we’ll not only be better marketers for it, we may also sleep more soundly through the night.

I just stumbled a post by Dwayne Melancon over at Genuine Curiosity called “Picture of the Day” that had a great graphic of how to be productive every day. Ironically, a picture popped up on my screen that I really didn’t like at all - my profile, according to StumbleUpon:

Do I really want to simply be described as a 51 year old woman from Oregon, USA in my profile? (Hint: check the headline of this post.)

I’ll fill out profile information for just about any social network site I subscribe to… but never have I had one “mix” my profile information quite like StumbleUpon does. Sure, it’s truthful and transparent. I am a 51 year old woman who lives in Oregon.

But I would never describe myself that way to virtual strangers, would I?

Believe me, I’m not ashamed of my age or where I live. I love my life, my age, my home, my sweetheart, our dog, family and friends… pretty much most things about me, with the exception of my muffin top, which I’m really trying to control through yoga and my eating habits; and a few long-held beliefs that still hamper me. (TMI, perhaps but I’m really not afraid to share. It’s true. Just ask me!)

Just Ask Me

As more people find their ways into social networks, those who develop them must begin to think more about helping their users profile themselves, and create the best possible scenarios for them to do so.

Give me an option as I sign up (e.g. prompt me through a wizard), and I’d describe myself in a much more compelling manner.

• In StumbleUpon, I have to search to find my bio preferences. No. I should be prompted through them as I register.
• In StumbleUpon, the “Display my age” box is automatically checked. No. I should be able to “opt in” to show my age.

My fault for not setting myself up properly in the first place? You bet. I wonder how many others have just gone through the minimums there until they’re hit with their very own “picture of the day?”

Walking away from a wonderfully hilarious David Sedaris show last night, my sweetie said, “It’s Halloween, and all I want is a few peanut M&Ms…”

It was 10:00 p.m. We stood in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square waiting for our MAX train to take us home, trying to figure out where we might get a bag of peanut M&Ms.

Unwilling to pop into one of the (fairly seedy) convenience stores downtown late on a pretty crazy Friday night, we decided we’d be quite happy with the delicious dark chocolate marshmallows we’d gotten for Halloween from Alma Chocolates.

As we walked the fifteen minutes down the hill from the train, though, her craving became mine, and my craving became almost obsessive.

Just a few peanut M&Ms…

We laughed at ourselves - frustrated and craving peanut M&Ms on the biggest candy night of the year - as an Audi station wagon drove by, windows down, occupants yelling “Happy Halloween!”

Thunk, thunk. They had thrown something out the window toward us.

I looked in the street, and lo and behold, right next to the curb were two little yellow packets of peanut M&Ms.

Turns out it was a miraculously Happy Halloween.

I got an email two days ago from someone I didn’t recognize - Lauren Cook. It started like this:

Hi Janet,

My name is Lauren and I’m the Editor at BeThree.com….

And I thought to myself - wow. How cool is that? I blog about one of my favorite newsletter articles, and the person who wrote it actually reached out to thank me…

…thank god you liked the “poop smoothie” description (because when writing it, I second-guessed myself about a million times… “am I REALLY saying this????”).

People wonder whether they’ll be able to spend the necessary time a blog really takes in order to thrive. It’s things like this - connecting with someone you’d never imagine you could - that has kept me firmly in the game blogging for more than 4.5 years.

And I’m not alone. According to a Universal McCann study published recently (via MediaPost), among adults 18-34, social media now is the dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others.

“Although age is the driving force behind usage patterns of these technologies, it is clear that a fundamental shift has taken place in all of our lives about what it means to communicate in the 21st Century.”

This fundamental shift has happened, in large part, because of what I’ve just experienced. Surprising connections, enabled by social media (and those people who are smart enough to watch the web for mentions of their brand via RSS).

I love SmartBriefs. Extremely smart newsletters on various industries - from consumer electronics to construction and real estate, from telecommunications to travel and hospitality - there’s likely a newsletter for your industry.

I subscribe to, and read (almost every day), IAB’s SmartBrief (see example here) on the interactive industry.

Dosage: delivered daily.

Cost: Free