Archive for April, 2010

Remembering Maka

Sometimes you write a blog for personal reasons.  I shot this video last week on a drive back from Lakeview, Ohio.  I shot it because I wasn’t sure how to process what was going on – and because I remembered something important. P.S. Don’t make a habit of shooting video while driving.  Definitely not my best idea, in terms of safety. Maka (Dorothy Riggs) passed away late Tuesday afternoon after a year-long battle with a bad heart valve.  She fought like hell.  My Maka always did.  But in the end, God decided to call her to come home. I miss her.  I wish I would have made more time to spend with her in the recent years.  I wish I would have done so many things differently.  I think that after someone you love is gone, that’s probably always one of the feelings you’re left with. About Maka Maka loved music and people.  She spent the majority of her adult life directing the church choir at Epworth United Methodist Church in Massillon, Ohio.  She was never paid a wage for her time and she probably wouldn’t have taken it anyway.  Teaching and leading people in worship music was her gift to to the people she so loved and, I think, her way of giving a small gift back to God.  When we say goodbye to her on Saturday, the choir she so loved – along with the choir my Aunt Jane conducts – will send her off with serenades of her favorite songs. That makes me feel good. My brother and I come from a split home.  We went through tough times as kids.  Any of you who lived that scenario know exactly what I’m talking about.  We used to look forward to every time Maka would pick us up [...]

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Building a Social Media Strategy at Fort Hays State University

Sometimes a wonderful opportunity just happens to fall in your lap. When Mike Brown from Brainzooming called me last month, I immediately knew that the chance to work with him, Keith Prather and Barrett Sydnor on facilitating the Brainzooming process at Fort Hays State University was one of those opportunities. Mike is a Hays Alumni and someone who I’ve highly respected as a strategist and speaker for a few years now. I met Mike in 2007 at the TMCA Annual Conference, where he presented on some of the work he did with YRC Worldwide on building out their NASCAR Sponsorship program, and have been following his work ever since. Go Big As we were preparing, I asked Mike, “How many people will be in the room?” Mike answered, “About 30 to 35 people from across university.” [Scared pause.] I asked again, “No, really.  How many people will we be facilitating?” Mike answered again, “It’s going to be a big group.  Up to 35 people between you, me and two facilitators.” Have you ever seen the commercial, from a few Super Bowl’s back, where the cowboys ride around on horses herding hundreds of cats?  That was the image that went through my mind as we talked on that call. But, I trust Mike.  And I knew he had a plan worked out. The Brainzooming Process Driven by the necessity of working with large corporate teams, Mike and friends knew they had to beat the system.  They knew that in that environment, they needed to come up with a process that would help large corporate teams develop not only a strategy, but also an action plan in a very short period of time. The result of years of work was Brainzooming, a strategy and ideation process that captures months’ worth of ideas [...]

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Strategy & Action For When The Audience Talks Back

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.” – As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII) Have you ever been to a cast talkback at the end of a play? A talkback, in theater terms, is simply when the cast takes time after the final bows to have a conversation with the audience about the show they performed, the cast of characters and their motivations.  In simplest terms, the audience asks questions and the cast answers them. Audiences are Different Now Marketers love the word audience.  Mike and I both spend time reviewing a client’s audience (or audiences, in some cases) in each of our strategic processes. In marketing, an audience is what we call the receivers of the messages we are trying to communicate.  It’s critical to for marketers to understand how each audience works and what they care about. Yet, in today’s world – the one rampant with users of social media like you and I – audiences have the ability to talk back, much like in the setting of a theater.  Today, being part of the audience is simply being on the other end of a public conversation. Wikipedia’s definition of audience seems to illustrates this: “An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called the “reader”), theater, music or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art; some events invite overt audience participation and others allowing only modest clapping and criticism and reception.” Audience Talkback Strategy What’s yours?  Do you have one? My friend, Jessica Manna, always has [...]

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