FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Fizz welcomes Judi Friedman to the team as our Chief Strategy Officer. One of the mostdynamic women in marketing today, Judi has worked with companies from HBO and IBM tostart- ups. As the former VP of One- to- One Marketing at Three and COO of All Points, she hasyears of experience in both digital and Word of Mouth marketing for global players in energy,high tech and consumer products.

Atlanta, Georgia May 10, 2011 – - Fizz welcomes Judi Friedman to the team as Chief StrategyOfficer. Judi is uniquely suited to the task of providing keen strategic insight in the rapidly growing discipline of Word of Mouth Marketing.

“Judi is one of the great marketing 1.0 stars that has fully embraced marketing 2.0 tactics yet brings all the discipline and strategic thinking to the new arena. Fizz could not be any more thrilled than the day she decidedto join the team,” says Ted Wright, Founder and CEO of Fizz.

With experience in both sales and marketing for both B2B and B2C companies, Friedman has developed an exceptional ability to develop actionable strategies that deliver business results. Starting with IBM, shelaunched the first artificial intelligence based sales qualification system, and then moved on to earn top salesawards.

After IBM, Judi started MarketOne, an agency focused on integrating sales and marketing by runningmeasurable campaigns. She then joined Three, an advertising agency, as V.P. of One- to- One Marketingresponsible for integrating innovative marketing tactics such as Word of Mouth and Mobile into clients’campaigns.# # #

It’s official.

Did your company launch something amazing at SXSW 2011?  Did anyone notice? Was your marketing bland, formulaic and otherwise forgettable?

There’s hope.

Your SXSW Marketing SUCKS! Coming soon.

Ted Wright talks about the percentage of WOMM conversations that take place  face-to-face versus online and he probes us to think about what distinguishes a campaign from a movement.

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Fizz is thrilled to welcome Judi Friedman to the team as our Chief Strategy Officer. One of the most dynamic women in marketing today, Judi has worked with everyone from HBO to IBM. As the former VP of One-to-One Marketing at Three she has years of experience in both digital and WOM marketing for global players in energy, high tech and CPG. Judi seems to be everywhere advising a series of tech start ups while also raising a family and contributing to the wider world.

Judi is also a committed environmentalist and lover of fine tequila so she will fit right in at Fizz. Next time you are at the Fizz offices stop by and introduce yourself to Judi. She has her own balcony and a lovely view of the dogwood trees.

This is a new feature for us. It turns out that our previous videos are way more discussed and consumed than our blog posts so we are going to go with this medium over others.  The viewership data will let us know if we are on the right track.

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p.s. We are shooting in Ted’s car because we could take off the roof and there is no other space in the Fizz building that is not being used for at least two other purposes.

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Judge people by their content and not the way they look, this is the crux of Dr. King’s message. To us, nothing is more American than this statement. Today as we celebrate Dr. King, how right he was and how he believed in the power of conversation to change the world, we thought we would share with you the full and unedited version of his 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech. We hope it moves you as much as it does us.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Fizz attended CES this year in support of several clients. We were there for three days and walked the entire show at least once. Here are a couple of 30,000 ft observations we had.

TV is coming back.
As a talkable experience, the act of watching television is coming back with the commercial application of 3D television. How long it stays will depend entirely on the content created to support this tech, but no-glasses 3D is here now and will only get cheaper over time. I can tell you that from start to finish of everyday at CES, the longest lines to “see” things were the lines to see the no-glasses 3D televisions. It’s here. Get ready for appointment TV again as DVRs of all stripes will have a tough time recreating live 3D viewing—at least through their next product cycle.

Photo Credit: CES International

The cord is leaving.
An upshot about the desire for mobility is that the cord, in all its manifestations, has become a PITA that companies are overcoming. Whether it’s the palm-sized Optomo PKA31 cordless projector with 28M of internal memory and 50 lumens projecting power (we are now huge fans) or Verizon promulgating products like cell phones that can be wirelessly recharged, the end of the cord is coming. This revolution will not only affect how much road warriors carry with them, but will have far reaching implications to everything from furniture design (think recharging tech built into your hotel room nightstand) to speed through TSA lines.

Fulton Innovation Booth Demonstrating the Wireless Kitchen

That’s it from here. By way of reminder and disclosure, Fizz clients at CES included Intuit, Intel, Fulton Innovation, Qi, WPC and Mophie.

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/trial-and-error-not-trial-and-anger/ http://fizzcorp.com/blog/trial-and-error-not-trial-and-anger/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:54:46 +0000 Ted http://fizzcorp.com/blog/?p=223

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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