Marketing

(Side note: It was a beautiful summer in Seattle (and my consulting business has been exploding). That dual dynamic has meant that my interview rate has slowed a lot and not many of the interviews I actually did this summer have been put up here on the site. But the days are getting shorter, the rain has a hint of fall in it and it's time to get back on the horse.)

Occasionally I'm lucky enough to connect to someone who shares a lot of similar interests (marketing, podcasting, entrepreneurship) for one of my interviews. For this podcast, I found just such a kindred soul in Marcus Couch, the Director of Online Marketing for Entrepreneur Media, the publishing company behind Entrepreneur.com, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Entrepreneur Press.

One of the fascinating challenges of facing marketers today is how to use technology to enable true personalized/1to1 communications. But in order to reach that advertising nirvana marketers are going to need customers and prospects to give up a lot of information repeatedly with only a vague promise of a better experience. Not exactly a great sales pitch!

As social media and word of mouth marketing slowly mature as disciplines, I'm glad that more and more people are writing books on the subject. Because as much as I love the stream of consciousness info flood that I get through my blog reader every morning, it's also nice to explore a subject in a more deliberate way.

It seems to me that the only thing better than being a toy maker might be being a toy marketer. For this podcast, I decided to test this theory by chatting with an expert in toy marketing, Ted Mininni, the President of Design Force Inc, a branding and design agency that specializes in the toy/entertainment industry.

Two of the subjects that I spend a lot of time (and passion) dealing with in my consulting activities are marketing and strategic management. So I was excited to connect with Tom Laughon (pronounced "Lon"), founder of Catch Your Limit, a Florida-based firm that specializes in both those subjects.

Pitching, proposals, business development and, even, gasp, sales are part of every surviving agency or consultant's life. We all accept that it must be done but, if you're like most, you have a major love/hate relationship with it. In this podcast, I chat with Blair Enns, a consultant who has built his business around teaching agencies to WIN WITHOUT PITCHING. That's potentially a little slice of heaven if you ask me.

XBOX is one of the amazing launch stories of the last five years. From a standing start, Microsoft, has launched a gaming platform with amazing market share and brand awareness worldwide. For this podcast interview, I connected with Eli Friedman, one of the smart marketers driving the XBOX brand.

Listen in as Eli discusses the challenge of global branding, how he manages that complexity, one of the most innovative branding efforts the XBOX team implemented and more.

Enjoy!

Marketing with widgets is receiving a lot of attention these days. From MyBlogLog to Feedburner to Yahoo's Widget Gallery to Fox Interactive's new Spring Widgets Platform, every company is looking to use this new technology concept to add value for their users, market themselves on the cheap and build competitive advantage online.

For this Jenerous podcast interview, I connected with the resident WOM guru, Geno Church, of Brains on Fire, a leading identity agency from Greenville, SC. Geno Church was nice enough to chat with me about how BoF views branding and identity, the current state of WOM, the biggest misconceptions companies have about word of mouth marketing and more.

Great stuff!

Enjoy:

Geno Church