One Size Fits Most from Gregory Ng on Vimeo.

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs.

When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 dollars to drop that towel.”

After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob. After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 dollars and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes
back upstairs. When she get to the bathroom, her husband asks, “Who was that?”

“It was Bob the next door neighbor” she replies. Read more…

It’s really fun to think about your marketing plan on a global scale. It’s big time with a potential to reach billions of people. But like any great marketing plan, its quality, not quanitity to brings paying customers to your door.

I am very interested in the idea of hyper-local marketing that Michael Lefebvre, The Uncommon Agent is doing in Norfolk, MA. Mike is a real estate agent in metrowest Boston that has begun doing feature videos of local town businesses. Take this one for example of Joe’s Barber Shop.

This video is successful in many ways: you get to know a town business and some history of the town, you get to know Mike and his “giving back” to support local businesses, and you are entertained by the story. This is a perfect vehicle for someone like Mike who is in the business of making connections and convincing people about hisknowledge of the area.

But this could work for corporations as well. Imagine a company like Comcast (who tries to be involved in a local level) highlighting local businesses like this. It would do wonders for their brand.

What do you think about hyper-local marketing?

Today I read a blog post by Dave Rosenberg on Facebook and how much money they are making from the sale of virtual goods. Some estimates have come in at $34.5 million of how much Facebook users have sent on virtual goods.

Virtual goods. That’s right, fake goods that you can buy for people and post in their profiles. But this line is what caught my attention:

“The vast majority of Facebook gifts are bought from the first screen of gifts in the directory–almost 80 percent of the total sales come from the group of the first 20 gifts. This points to the self-reinforcing nature of popularity (the crowdiness of crowds rather than the wisdom of crowds) when popularity data is made public.”

This “crowdiness of crowds versus the wisdom of crowds” is a very important concept to think about as it pertains to e-commerce, blogging, and establishing power users in social networks.

People like to follow the crowd. In the Facebook example, the most popular products rise to the front and this prequalifies the selections for those who are not as decisive. The thinking may be, “well others like these products so I should too.” When strategic levers are in place, marketers can leverage this phenomenon to create great results. Read more…

You know who took a major beatdown yesterday was Richard Cheese. You know Richard Cheese, the performer who takes popular hard rock songs and performs them as lounge numbers? Well, I didn’t know about Mr. Cheese until yesterday and what I heard about him damaged his reputation for me for life.

It all started for me yesterday when I received this post from Chris Brogan in my Twitterstream: “Wow, what a Dick: http://tinyurl.com/5ukavm (One less fan here.)”

Now I’m not going to talk about whether or not Chris Brogan cheapened his brand by calling someone a “dick” but what I am going to say is for a well-respected leader in the social media space, this name calling is sure to influence.

Like I said before, I had never heard of Richard Cheese before but even before I clicked the link, I was pre-disposed (based on my respect for Mr. Brogan) to making judgement. Read more…