Convenience Is King

Most of the time, simple reasoning makes the most sense. If the entertainment industry would just use this thought process I think they'd be much more successful at marketing their wares.

Make it more convenient. And people will pay for it. Duh!

Arnold King nails it:

It really is simple. If you have the most convenient distribution system, then you do not have to worry about somebody "stealing" your songs, or you movies, or what have you. People will pay for convenience. On the other hand, the more you try to "protect" your content, the less convenient you make it, and the less revenue you are likely to earn from it.

Blogging Defined

If Webster could see us now. I've been helping to put together a quasi-blog panel for DCDOTCOMM, the upcoming online marketing and advertising conference in Washington, DC. It's made me think more about how business, blogs and marketing can work together. And how the general ad industry will react to the idea of blogs in marketing. We (the industry) can be stuck in the ways (especially in stoggy DC) of traditional marketing concepts -- which must remain -- but can sometimes hinder the implementation of new concepts. But this panel should be a big eye-opener and I think Halley Suitt gives us a great start with her definition of "What is a Weblog?" Starting from the very basic to the very contextual ... I think Halley nails it.

More on the panel and the conference later ... it's shaping up to be very a good one!

Marketing Fix

Rick Bruner, Robert Loch, Oliver Travers, John Engler and Steve Hall have launched a new marketing news site, Market Fix -- Independent E-Marketing News (until we sell out). "For busy professionals who need to stay informed about the online marketing and media industry and learn from best/worst practices, we aggregate the most interesting news and analysis from hundreds of sources to one spot every day, with insight, brevity and occasional sarcasm."

This should be a great new site and I already see more potential value in it than eMarketing News, Ad Age and Adweek (being that I read these guys more than I pick up those three pubs combined). Items are categorized into about 40 sections with most recent entries first. Looks like it's powered by blogging tool Moveable Type. What I think is interesting is that the "attitude" of the new site is less blog, more straight-ahead e-marketing news. But there's some great people behind the aggregating. So I bet it will be good.

Drunk Guerilla

Looks like Robert Loch has another blog .... Drunk Guerilla - Marketing Out of the Cage (from which I do have a link). Not sure how it differs from Net Marketing, but it looks to be organized a little better, less blog, more news and commentary, more sophisticated. There's a registration ... which I don't know what it's for ... I think Robert is setting up a multi-user blog. Cool stuff. I just registered.

Is Content Going to the Blogs?

Susan Solomon's latest ClickZ addresses blogging and business. I agree with Susan's sentiment that most blogging is full of blown up egos .... but I think she misses the point that blogging is just a utility to make communicating with customers easier. It's not about easy. It's about engaging in conversations with your customers, and letting them yap away.

Thoughtful P2P resources .... Smart Mobs and OpenP2P.

KaZaA to Utilize P2P Marketing

This is really timely ... my girlfriend, who is getting her MBA at the University of Maryland, just took a final for a technology class. One of the questions on the exam asked what Sony should do in light of file sharing. I recommended they should develop a superior file sharing software utilizing the Gnutella network that would surpass all others. It would permit regular file sharing, but would include collaberative filtering which would make recommendations based on files searched, enable communities for people with similar musical tastes and enable customers to find quality downloads ... better than any other software available. I know, easier said than done. But it looks like KaZaA is starting.

Hello, hello, hello / Is there anybody in there? ...

...yup, still here -- and I won't bore you with where I've been, what I've been doing, who I've been -- nevermind.

Looks like there's been some notable additions.... Rick Bruner has started an email newsletter (actually, looks like he re-started it) and has a new column on MediaPost (maybe I'll start reading it again). Robert Loch has totally redesigned his website and it looks great! (although he's dropped me from his blogodex, but who can blame him?). Not to mention this whole Googlism thing (or is it's 15 minutes up?).

Anyways .... I've read a ton of things that I've wanted to blog about, but haven't had time. I'll try digging them up! Stay tuned!