Check out the blog at survey.cvent.com — I’ve been busy writing for work so I haven’t kept up with my personal blog.

Make sure to visit the blog!

Here’s the slideshow from Garr Reynolds:

Have you read Dr. Medina’s “Brain Rules” yet? I’m hoping to buy it soon–my favorite class in college, other than physics (I love physics… don’t get me started) was neuropsychology. It’s intriguing to see the bio-scientific connection between business skills (presentation) and the brain.

Garr Reynolds, who I keep evangelizing as of late (for his presentation style–his blog is linked), put together a nice slideshow that talks about some of these “Brain Rules.” Better yet, go to John Medina’s website — his audio accompanied flash presentations are short (30s-1m each), and very educational/entertaining.

John Medina’s website:

http://www.brainrules.net

Slide Show:

A miserable first attempt at creating a video using Camtasia Studio 5.1.

I blame this solely on Garr Reynolds and Guy Kawasaki. They have me wanting to buy an iMac right now too. What’s next? A Prius?

coincide

6:22 PM, July 13, 2008

Waiting to catch bus #22 on the Möbius highway.

Marketers tend to make things up…

Or exaggerate.

A lot.

MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

There’s no need to restate this with much emphasis; it’s an obvious given of human nature. We are drawn toward what looks good, sounds good, smells good… I mean sure, we can get all Maslow-ian and talk about the basic human needs theory and such…

But, it’s true — the fundamental tenets of advertising and marketing revolve around appealing to those needs:

Let’s take email deliverability as an example. Sure technology’s great, but it really hingest on Maslow’s basic needs theory (it’s a stretch):

Email Open Rates

Marketing 101 tells us that sender name is the biggest determinant of an email’s likelihood to be opened. Why? Well if it comes from your wife, it’s probably offering you love and belonging (or fear of losing it if you messed up the night before). If you get an email with your boss’s name, it’s likely something that will affect your job safety (and perhaps even a commendation to boost your esteem).

Everything from the technology, to the packaging of a product, the communication of value, and the consumer experience all rely on certain human givens that help us to “create demand” — I laughed here as I typed this unknowingly. We talk about demand generation so much in our day to day work when there’s no demand greater than basic human needs… (again, yes… a big stretch here)…

Now to my point about historians and marketers

I didn’t mean to go off on a review of psychology’s history and systems… Dr. Pickren must’ve done something right in college if I still remember this… but since I’m sure most of you don’t care for this, here’s something interesting that I heard today while listening to a re-run of comedian Robert Wuhl’s “Assume the Position” lecture on American history. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it — it’s a good piece, very funny, is historically relevant and accurate for the most part, and might teach you a lesson or two in the power of buzz marketing.

He has a lot of good ones, but here’s one of his little pieces, where we can relate to as marketers.

Who rode by horseback two, three hundred miles to warn the Minutemen that the British were invading?

We all think it’s Paul Revere of course. According to the books, it’s Ishmael Bissell who did the real legwork. Paul Revere… well he only rode a few miles, but HIS STORY WAS MORE COMPELLING TO THE MASSES (watch the video if you want to know why) ….

And so it became history.

Lesson to be learned here, market what’s compelling, not what’s true. Stretch the truth as far as possible, and border on lies when you need to. After all, in a few hundred years, if you did a good job, nobody will know the truth. They’ll only know what sounded good… what looked good… (maybe what smelled good).

Watch this video if you haven’t seen it before on HBO.

ROBERT WUHL’S “ASSUME THE POSITION”

In 1873, the word “upgrade” still meant an actual incline. You would only say “2.0″ (and this is a stretch) if someone asked what is three point oh minus one point oh…

And here we are, in the year of 2.0(08), and everything’s something point something, and I say something only because that something will probably be something plus one or something point something before too long. If that sentence confused you, good for you!

I will be the first to admit — when Apple released the updated firmware for the iPhone, I was the first one to go home and bump my phone from 1.1.3 to 1.1.4.  Yes, 2 “points” in each–supposedly implying that this “upgrade” wasn’t essential. Yeah, I still did it. And I continue to read RSS feeds every day about new versions of every piece of free/shareware I have. If I don’t have it, I feel empty. It’s quite sad actually. I’ll end up spending 4 hours upgrading my system to do a 30 minute project because some weird OCD-demon keeps whispering in my ear, “If it’s not 3.8.6.4, it’s not the real thing….” “If it’s not Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 with the top ten add-ons, then you’re not a man… real men use version 3.0″

Yes, that’s my pathetic life. I spend hours tweaking my computer (that’s geek vernacular for adjusting settings in Windows, for example) to see if I can get my download speeds from 13,534 kbps to 15,000 or higher. I’m paying Cox an extra 15 bucks a month for their legendary powerboost. I want my 15MBPS darn it.

This obsession with tweaking isn’t always so bad.

Put a tweaker in front of a computer, give them a budget on AdWords, and watch miracles happen. That’s all PPC is about… test, tweak, test, adjust, tweak, adjust, test, test….

Web 2.0 is making this obsession possible, putting all the tools in front of one person. He can create buzz on a blog, comment on another, link John in, book Jenny’s face, step in my space, and flicker on my screen. He can run a multi-million dollar advertising campaign from his desk, get real time analytics, and tweak to his heart’s content with unlimited permutations of keyword/content selection… and since Google will never tell us the real secret to their madness… we’ll keep tweaking and tweaking on.

And since everyone can do everything now… (and everyone knows everything now too, thanks Google)…

Great.

It’s an endless cycle.

I had a wall, but now I need a super wall. Oh wait, now you can draw on walls too?

Doesn’t really matter though… I’m still not as popular as Johnny. He has 15,345 friends. And 20 thousand posts on his wall (not counting the graffiti)…

I knew I should’ve upgraded. I hear you can super poke now too.

“That’s not knowledge… you are merely being logical.”

- Niels Bohr, to Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein and his close friend Niels Bohr “debated” for years, by letter and in person about an “uncertainty principle” in quantum theory.

Einstein never accepted this “uncertainty principle” — the moniker itself says all. It was uncertain.

The math couldn’t prove it.

Bohr was quantum theory’s disciple by all counts. He tried swaying his friend for years:

Some things are beyond human reason.

It was acceptable just to know that something was true, not necessarily knowing why and how.

Einstein never budged. There was nothing beyond reason. He was convinced that even “God does not play dice.”

Einstein didn’t give me e=mc². This man of science offered rational philosophy… oxymoron?

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”

It’s interesting to look back at the lives of these two brilliant men and the words shared amongst them.

Now, their debate wasn’t new by any means. It goes back as long as we can remember.

It’s the classic question of epistemology – “What is knowledge?”

Long before quantum physics, Plato postulated that knowledge is a subset of that which is both true and believed.

I don’t know about you, but that looks frighteningly like a good common keyword in an AB test.

There you go folks. I’m no Einstein, but I think I’ve figured out the real secret of B2B marketing…

You want to know what’s going to get more clicks, higher conversions, more ROI?

The next time your CMO or manager asks… tell him the secret is knowledge. If he gives you that look (the one where you’ve obviously taken creative license a bit too far)… you can say, “It’s the classic question of epistemology… your perfect subject line (or keyword) lies somewhere between truth and belief… ask Aristotle.”

Or Einstein.

Sure it’s been discussed, dissected, web-pod-(fore?)-casted, reviewed, renewed, retuned, revamped, researched…

…but it’s not getting a second older.

I would never believe someone in sales who says they have too many good leads. It’s probably a passive-aggressive implication of ”appreciation” for marketing…. If I believed him, that would probably make him the best salesperson in the world, which now completes the mythical Mobius loop of skip and branch logic that… never mind — skip to #16.

[Insert Fodder]

#16

It’s a good thing you skipped over here. No more reading, no more listening to the rants vis-a-vis-a-la-per-se-quintessential-plethora-of-robust-sophisticated-cutting-edge…

Yeah. It’s BS. But hey, half of what you tell me is BS too right?

Welcome to my world. It seems we left 2 S’s out of B2B.

Til next time,

DC