School's In. Let the Fun Begin. Again.

I'm back at San Francisco State. My own Summer School.

"Branding" has familiar faces. Many of us have zoomed through the Integrated Marketing Certificate program requirements together but we're about to temporarily derail after September waiting for the final class, which is only available in December.

I'll miss it... even when I was younger I'd start counting down the days from July 4th until school started again.

Here's why: Stuff happens at school. Good stuff. Funny stuff. Bad stuff, too.

Summer was a crap shoot.
Sometimes just the lull between endless school story opportunities.

Social Media 101: Choices

Thanks to my current Intergrated Marketing Internet Tools class, I've been tweeting, updating my LinkedIn Profile, and finally accepting Facebook Friend invites. For days.

Fun. But also time consuming. Which begs the question: Who has time to be e-everywhere and still connect with family, friends and work in the non-virtual world?

Surf for advice and it boils down to this: Figure out who needs to hear from you, where they hang out and go there.

Here's social media guru Brian Person on the subject.

So -- when you're not here, where are you hanging out?

You-Tubular Learning

I'm back searching for free software tutorials.




This time it's Wordpress, blogging software with CMS capabilities I'm using to create my Client Driven Marketing website. Check it out and you'll see -- right now my website looks like just a regular blog. When I finish, though, it'll be more website-like, complete with pages and navigation bar. Next generation stuff. But that's still a few tutorials away.

Meanwhile, I've got plenty of choices, starting with the 250-item wordpress resource list Ants Magazine posted back in April.

What's YouTube been teaching you lately?

Marketing Hope One Closet at a Time

TLC's What Not to Wear is the show that gives one style-disaster a free $5000 VISA card shopping spree based on prescribed fashion “rules” in exchange for all her current clothes.

New clothes PLUS fresh haircut PLUS make-up lessons… almost always equals a younger, cuter, slimmer-looking woman who now walks with the confidence of success, someone more in control of her own – !?! now changed !?! – destiny.

We watch. We relate. We learn. And we ask: Could this work for me?

Welcome to Marketing “Hope.”

And our own potentially higher VISA bill.

Alert: Targeting Boomers

Fact: Many aging Boomer women live alone. They have for some time. And they plan to keep doing that, risks be-damned, right?

Enter Life-Alert with a new twist on an old marketing campaign.

Life Alert 50 Plus: Personal and home security, including video surveillance.



Never mind that the video alone is rich fodder for Saturday Night Live.



Welcome to real-world Client Driven Marketing.

Assuming the decision to target Boomer women living alone is based on market research and not just product development hype.

What do you think... research or hype?

Hacker Search, Social Media Style

This morning, my son watched the CSI-New York rerun "Cabby Killer," where the killer takes blogger Reed hostage... and then Reed blogs clues to Mac.

Meanwhile... in real time, Ty, the teenager with the popular Ty's iPhone Help website, is tweeting about the FBI and hackers who took down Ty's website a fews days ago.
The hackers deleted everything on Ty's site, redirected traffic to porn, then tried to access PayPal money.



Hackers beware: Ty's tweets are getting serious:


Social media in action. Are you watching it unfold? I'm betting the hackers are, too.

_{Note: Ty's site has now been forwarded to his Twitter page.}

Social Media in the Stitled Forest

She's fascinating to watch, a silent but mesmerizing pied piper.

The Internet is dotted with "tree lady" sightings, mostly at hotels, casinos and now the San Diego Zoo. Many within the last 8-10 months. Like maybe she's something knew. Perhaps Stilt Circus going "green." I don't know.



What I do know is that Stilt Circus is a Social Media menagerie. Not so silent, web-wise.

Check out the great pics on MySpace
There's more info on Facebook.

Want the Tribe?

Okay -- so stilts aren't your thing.

Perhaps Social Media could be... jump!

Rethinking Pencil Point Marketing

I get it. It’s shopping, the old-fashioned way. A good thing. Something, worth supporting.



But… a pencil -- standard issue # 2?

This is 2009, the era of client-driven marketing.

Does service really matter to customers purchasing a single pencil? More than convenience, price or fighting the impulse purchase as you push the cart down the school supply aisle at Safeway?

Perhaps it's time to update. Switch out “pencil” for something 2009.

Where on the continuum of 2009 office supply needs would "service" trump all for you?

Something between staple remover and laptop?

Sign of the Times Along California Highway 5

As California Highway 5 cuts south from 580 along the aqueduct road, for a time numerous signs became zero signs, leaving a stellar view of hills, cows and blue sky.

Then the creep begins. Some small. Others large. Several clustered.

Disappointing Lady Bird's legacy.

Still -- the signs do offer food for thought.

Today this unsolicited highway wisdom, staked into a field north of Newman, also made me smile:

"All is not lost if something flops."

Until... one blink delivered sign #2:

"We buy houses."

Positioned as if it was somehow a welcomed benefit.

Permission Marketing, Clown-style

It's Seth Godin's Permission Marketing, the Clown-on-BART Edition.

Easy smiles. Free balloons doled out to strangers like Flower Children share marigolds at a rally.

Spreading love.

All the while patient for... the opening.


"What's up?" asks one new friend mid-tunnel, pointing to balloons.


"This is what I do for a living," the clown quickly offers before resuming crowd banter.


He waits until he's exiting BART at Rockridge before zeroing in on new friends-to-new customers conversion:

"I'm Kenny the Clown. kenny-the-clown-dot-com...See me tomorrow at Fisherman's Wharf."

Assignment: Blogging

There are 20 of us in the 6th floor computer lab overlooking the Docker's Store at San Francisco's Westfield Mall. 20 keyboards click-click-clicking blog posts. Ready or not, everyone suddenly immersed into the land of social media.

That's right -- I have been pushed out of my recent 93words silence by Assignment #1 of SFSU's Internet Marketing Now class, the 3rd class I've taken this summer towards earning the SJSU Internet Marketing Certificate, part of my re-entry into the work world plan.

Daily posts. 12 days. Inspired or not.

Are you ready?