Fizz hosted a Linchpin meeting this summer in Atlanta. Our getting to know you activity was to make Seth Godin masks then take pictures of ourselves. Here are the funnest. We are all looking forward to Seth’s upcoming speaking gig in Atlanta.

]]> http://fizzcorp.com/blog/look-mom-seth-godin/feed/ 2 http://fizzcorp.com/blog/jobs-ya-we-got-%e2%80%98em/ http://fizzcorp.com/blog/jobs-ya-we-got-%e2%80%98em/#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:08:17 +0000 Ted http://fizzcorp.com/blog/?p=229

Client side CMO – Bev alch, leader in their category. Chairman of the company has asked us if we know any “incredibly capable, non conventional, disciplined but out of the box people we would recommend.” If you are reading this than you probably fit that description or know someone who does. Contact Ted Wright directly if you want to know more.

Fizz LA – Looking for two field people. Contract position. 12 month gigs.

Fizz Seattle – Looking for a field person. Contract position. 12 month gig.

Fizz various West Coast locations – Looking for up to four field people. Contract position. 12 month gig.

Fizz West Coast – WOMM hire. Employee. Regional field manager.

Fizz Atlanta – WOMM hire. Employee. Strategy and creative focus.

Fizz Atlanta – WOMM hire. Employee. Sales and client management focus.

Field people need to have between two and five years experience. Experience in beverage, tobacco, automotive, gaming and national tours all pluses.

WOMM applicants get extra points for previous WOMM experience, ability to quote from the WOMM cannon, existing client side contacts and biz dev skills.

As a company, we are impressed by smart and an ability to get things done. We have a very tight team that trusts each other.  We think we have some of the best jobs in American marketing today. We’ll get 2,000 resumes sent to jobs@fizzcorp.com after we post this and probably call 15 people back. If you’re one of those fifteen then thanks in advance for making our day.

Now that we are a couple of days out, I’d like to say that headline phrases like “Incredibly Stupid” (Estaban Kolsky) and “Pyramid Scheme” (TechCrunch) were overly harsh and unproductive in reference to Fast Company’s recent jump into the pond of word of mouth/Influencer measurement.

Was it a poorly designed experiment? Yep. Was it evil, mean spirited or otherwise worthy of snarky and angry writing? I don’t think so.  When you read Fast Company’s further comments they are trying to answer some really interesting questions. Given all of the vitriol spewed out in other places, are smart people going to be less inclined to put forth experiments to probe this idea of what is an Influencer and how valuable are they? If so, this would be bad as the questions that Fast Company is trying to explore are very interesting and need to be examined with rigor.

I really liked the comments of Dr. Michael Wu at Lithium as well as the other people that have chimed in on their site.  They are constructive and engaged in the question rather that ripping on the faults of the questioner, his company or the experiment.

As someone who has been working with Influencers for that last ten years, I think Fast Company asked great questions. Let’s not all beat the crap out of them just because their first attempt to answer their questions sucked. Experiments are about trial and error not trial and anger.

We’re not the only one’s who want you to come Tales this year!  Carter Reum from Veev and Batiste’s Nicholas O’Neill are strong believers in WOMM’s efficacy and have had tremendous success.  They’ll be at Ted’s Word of Mouth Marketing Seminar at Tales of the Cocktail 2010 and  want you to come too!

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Recently there was some hating on Guy re: his tweets. The angst was over questions of ownership of content and value of retweeting mass amounts of info. I’m a busy guy with employees, clients and responsibilities at home so I don’t have time to wtirie about hypothetical ‘net ethics. I’ll leave that to the smarties at EFF, Salon and other cool places.
What I will tell you about is that Guy just tweeted out an article by Ken Yeung on finding Influencers. I would have never read this article unless someone took the time to scour the ‘net for cool stuff because I don’t read Network Solutions blog (where the article was originally published). I liked the article so much that I clicked on Ken’s hyperlink and up came a piece from him written today that he is on some junket with Virgin America. It turns out that my buddy Carter FB’ed this morning that he was going to be on the same flight. I e-mailed Carter and told him I thought Ken was an interesting writer and there should talk on the flight. Now they are winging their way from LA to Toronto having a great conversation that they would not have had without Guy’s tweet and my clicking around. The people who built the ‘net did so to enhance communication. Here’s just another case in point. Thanks for the tweets Guy. They don’t suck.

We’re speaking at Tales of the Cocktails in July. Topic: Word of Mouth Marketing. Quality: Awesome. Drinks: VeeV cocktails AND traditional Hurricanes from our good friends at Batiste. Come one, come all.

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We recently produced what turned out to be the #1 Vuvuzlea (South African soccer horn) instructional video in the world, or at least on YouTube which IS the global clearing house for videos. We had a Vuvuzela in the office because my mother came back from Jo’burg the week before the World Cup started and brought me one. We did the video just for fun because it turned out that I could make a long and sustained note on the horn. I’m also a huge soccer fan and knew about the horns from last year’s tourney in SA. Here’s what we learned from our efforts.

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Headlines matter
“How to Blow a Vuvuzela” was ours. Straight forward, to the point and with no adjective flourishes. After people start sharing the video then headlines count for less but getting those first 200-300 eyeballs is critical. This is where headlines matter the most.

Quality rules
The truth is that our video is only OK. It has a strong start, the points are straight forward and the sound/video is good but the end lacks pop because we didn’t plan out the end. However, the video delivers on it’s headline promise and people were able to use the video to learn how to blow a Vuvuzela. Strong quality all the way through is key to maximizing pass along rates

Have a point of view
At this writing, our video had 8,300 views. Videos that professed hate or love for the Vuvuzela have between 50,000 and 125,000 views at this writing. We did not do our video to gain views. We just did it to watch what would happen. If we were to do another one and we wanted to maximize views, we’d start with a singular premise like “We love to Vuvuzela” or “We hate the Vuvuzela” and let the creative process flow from a more specific and direct POV.

Basic story telling counts
Great stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. Your video should as well.

Be relevant to current events
When all the world is interested in X then a way to maximize the number of times your video is discovered in search results is to be relevant to X.

Finally, you must pass the “dinner party” test

To pass the “dinner party” test (i.e. a story that would interest others at a dinner party) your video has to have three elements. It must be interesting to those cutting edge influencers that are always seeking out stories to share with their friends. It must be relevant to your influencer’s audience and it must be authentic to how your audience currently understands your brand or the category it competes in.

These are Fizz’s notes on the subject. Let us know if you have any additional thoughts.

How to Blow the Vuvuzela

Friends and clients -

Fizz will be closed for business during all US World Cup matches. This includes the 30 minutes prior to the match and the 30 minutes afterwards.

We will also be closed for the following group matches
Japan v. Camaroon
France v. Mexico
Brasil v. Portugal

Should you find yourself in Atlanta during these times, please feel free to join us in our offices for the matches and Fizztastic refreshments.

Thank you for your understanding of our soccer lunacy. “USA for the Cup!”

So I was watching the movie 2012 the other day. The plot of this movie is that, except for Africa, the habitable parts of the world are destroyed by the chaos of a natural disaster. The heroes of the movie and a bunch of rich and powerful people ride on an ark to Africa and live happily ever after. I’ve also been rereading Bob Garfield’s Chaos Scenario so all of this recent media input was swirling in my brain when it was announced that Anheuser-Busch was buying the rights to the NFL for $50,000,000.

AB is not stupid.
So there was a time in the recent past when, if asked, I would have categorized AB’s marketing as out of date, stuck in it’s own inertia or maybe even sucktastic. The days of “better creative” and “more TV” as the answer to selling more beer were gone and AB had not kept up with the times. No more. Those that followed the old path are gone. AB is back and making what I consider very good decisions. From the most senior levels on down, AB not only “gets it” but is acting on that knowledge.

So why did AB buy the NFL rights?
Globally, land in Africa is really cheap now because there are lots of other places for people to live that are more politically stable, less war ravaged, more developed, just better for a variety of reasons. Not always the case but, in many places, very true. Thinking back to the movie 2012, it stands to reason that with the rest of the world underwater or destroyed, African land just got a whole lot more valuable. I was wondering if the same thing is true for TV.
The television landscape in North America has been destroyed compared to what is was just 20 years ago. Pick your data point – NBC being sold off because of drastically reduced profit margins, CBS seeking to pay ESPN half a billion dollars to take the March Madness, the dramatic drop in average viewer or whatever else you like but TV is dying quickly. Just like Africa in the movie 2012, football and American Idol are the only two places in the North American TV landscape that are still viable and sustainable options. Americans can still be counted on to show up consistently and in large numbers for the NFL and Idol. That is not true for anything else on TV. The point I am making is that in a television world gone mad, football is probably the safest and more reliable harbor. Is it worth $50,000,000 to be safe? Just ask everyone else who is drowning out at sea and perhaps that is your answer.

What about the data?
Those of you that read my pieces or work with Fizz know that we are very data driven. I don’t know what AB’s net margin per case is and neither do you (unless you are reading this and work at AB, then I say “Hi”). I have an idea what the net margin might be because we do a lot of work in the beer business, but I don’t know. What I do know is that AB does have that data and they crunched the numbers and it worked for them. We know that it worked because they bought the rights AND they are now a very numbers driven culture over there. Whether their assumptions about additional sales generated, increase brand value or other metrics are right, we’ll have to wait and see when their profit announcements come out. What we do know is that they bought the exclusive rights to the last viable piece of TV real estate in the North American market. Now we’ll find out what they will do with that advantage. It will be interesting to watch.