I was lucky enough to be be asked to guest post on the PSAMA website this week. Here’s the first part, then head over to their site to read the rest:

I’ve just finished reading ‘Start with Why’ by Simon Sinek, which dovetails nicely with Don’s recent post about ‘The Power of Habit’. This is an especially relevant book as well, as it explores what it means to be alive and create transformation both in your personal life and in business.

The premise is clear: we must discover and communicate the WHY behind what we do to be effective and successful.
WHY is the looking glass we should all be holding up to the world to determine next choices and next steps, especially if we’re stuck on a project or need a massive dose of inspiration. People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

Most people know WHAT they do and HOW they do it. But only the major players, the luminaries, understand the critical value of the WHY. Southwest Airlines, for example, knows WHAT their company is – an inexpensive airline. It knows HOW they do it: quick simple flights with very little frills. But in order to really move the needle, they started with the WHY: To be a travel champion for the masses. To empower average people with possibility. To live and breathe this cause day after day, year after year, decade after decade.

The result? They’ve turned a profit every year, while other airlines have been brought to their knees.

Read the rest here….

Seattle Video Production - Hand Crank Films

If I were to log the number of hours I spend in front of the keyboard doing whatever it is I do, I’d be amazed. And maybe a little discouraged. My kids, for example, think my job is ‘sitting in front of the computer’. Which I’m sure makes my mother proud.

So I was inspired to hear Ted Rubin (@TedRubin) a few weeks ago at MarketMix talking about an often forgotten tool in our toolkit: the phone. Phones have become so tricked out as rocket launchers, movie makers, and game players that we’ve glossed over their initial purpose, which is to talk. Create voice. And listen.

Ted’s challenge was simple: call someone everyday to touch base and reconnect. An old friend to catch up. A client or employee to check the pulse. Someone in the Rolodex to just brighten their day and say hello.

I’m guilty of getting caught up in what I think is easy: email. But email has very little soul. And soul is what we need more of these days.

So I’m going to give it a go. My first call on Monday will be to Ted Rubin himself – then I’ll rock it from there.  And who knows, you might be next. And if you want to return the favor, my digits are 360.383-6376.

Make it ring.

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Seattle Video Production - Hand Crank Films

I had the good fortune of hanging out at #MarketMix here in Seattle, an event that brings together some of the best marketing minds in the PNW. There were a ton of good talks and generally a nice buzz to the event – and overall I was reminded of how vibrant our community is.

But the highpoint of the day for me was remembering something I can sometimes forget in my rush to make things happen. All this content marketing, all the planning, all the video production, all the blogposts and outreach to drive SEO? All the rest of that stuff we’re supposed to be doing to feed the insatiable maw of social media?

It’s supposed to be fun. We’re supposed to be getting a kick out of it.

Enjoy and Share. No spreadsheet can replace that.

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Seattle Video Production - Hand Crank Films

Last week brought us two of the most popular viral videos ever. The first, Kony 2012, has over 74 million views since it launched on March 5. It’s the fastest spreading video of all time. It’s engaging, stimulating, and provocative. It hopes to change the world through discussion and revelation.  It’s  very good.

Its also a major anomaly.  It would be a mistake to think that everyone can rush out, follow this ‘formula’, and instantly bag this sort of audience. The flint hits the steel like this very rarely.

The second video is from DollarShaveClub.com  – and this one deserves a look not just because it’s funny – but because it’s a business model.

Here’s how:

• Create a brilliant video that makes razors fun, exciting, and something you want to be a part of.
• Point your audience to a fun, easy to use website that leads to conversion. This approach wasn’t just about the video.
• Present a real problem: getting razors is a drag and expensive.
• Provide a real solution: for a few bucks a month, we’ll send you high quality razors and remove this drag from your life forever.
• Begin building repeat customers that you can communicate with forever.

My guess is the conversion was pretty substantial. Every time I tried to go to the site for the first few days, the traffic had crashed the servers. And I’m betting the good natured spirit of the video combined with the expert website resulted in a healthy number of sign-ups, me being one of them. Not to mention the press and blogosphere buzz for substantial Earned Media bonus points.

The takeaway: great video that speaks to brand is an important key. But only in the context of the big picture business plan. Whether a non-profit organization looking to raise money or a business looking to drive more sales, you have to know what success looks like to you before deciding on the best way to get there.

DollarShaveClub.com is certainly one great approach.

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Seattle Video Production - Hand Crank Films

In the movie biz, all the studios have their ‘tent-pole’ releases. These are usually the big-budget films like Mission Impossible 4 or Harry Potter. The movies that the studios bank on to provide a lion’s share of the year’s profits.

The question is, how do we take a tent-pole mentality and roll it into all our marketing initiatives? What are those things happening throughout the course of the calendar year that you could really blow the doors off and move the needle on?

For one of our clients, Superfeet Worldwide, one tent pole event is Outdoor Retailer – one of the biggest trade shows around. This is where retail partners, distributors, competitors and consumers all mix, showing off the best of the best for next year’s market and beyond. It’s a place where you can either make a big splash, or be buried under all the noise.

So although this show doesn’t happen until summer, the planning starts now. They begin planning what success looks like to them, what metrics they want to reach, what products they want to highlight in market.

Last year, for example, they decided they wanted to produce a ‘major motion picture’ quality short film announcing their new Superfeet Sandal. They wanted something new, something fresh, something that spoke directly to the lifestyle of the product and could be shown prominently at the show. We added the seaplane as an extra bonus.

View the project here:

What are your tent-pole events? What are some things that you can do to really shake things up? Do they revolve around holidays, summer, the end of a quarter?

Sure, Superfeet picked video production as one way to rise above the noise with great success, but what are your plans? What are those three or four moments in the year you can fully wrap your arms around, embrace, and use to spread the word. Understanding that can lead to your own personal box office success.

Want more? Let’s share some ideas.

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I had the good fortune of attending the Puget Sound American Marketing Association lunch yesterday (@PS_AMA), where the speakers were the Canlis brothers. If you don’t know about these guys, here’s the quick low-down -

Canlis is one of Seattle’s premiere restaurants. It’ been around for over 60+ years. It’s got a legacy and menu that is second to none. It’s been nominated again and again as one of America’s best restaurants. But it also has something else in its wheelhouse: A huge branding problem.

Both the brothers Canlis inherited the restaurant from their father, who inherited it from his father before that. As a result of such longevity, the restaurant has a few baked in perceptions. When Mark and Brian went around the room to ask people to describe Canlis in one word, answers like ‘Excellence’ were offset by ‘Stuffy’ and ‘Exclusive’. Not words you want to hear when you’re in a less than welcoming economy.

So the brothers set out on a quest to rediscover themselves from the ground up. Wiping the slate clean, they searched for the soul of their brand and landed on three words they wanted people to associate with Canlis –   “trustworthy, generous, other-centered”. A restaurant that served great food, of course, but also understood that customers were trusting them with most valuable asset: time. A restaurant that gave more than it received. A restaurant that revolved around the people it served.

This quest coincided with the immense rise of social media, and they smartly used this to communicate their new spirit to the community. You can read all about their expert use of this here, which is well worth the price of admission (and ties into the the above photograph).

This whole story dovetails nicely with a book that’s been kicking around the Hand Crank office, The Thank You Economy by the one and only Gary Vaynerchuck. In it, he points out this astounding fact from Eric Schmidt of Google: Every two days, we now produce as much content as was produced since the beginning of time until 2003. Read that again. Our culture has become a content creating machine.

So Gary asks the question: With so much content being made, how do we differentiate ourselves? What really makes a great company?  In his opinion, one thing.

Good intent.The Thank You Economy.

That’s what Canlis has discovered and solidified over the course of 60+ years. It has to be foundational in every company, in every person, in every experience.

Now that’s something to chew on.

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Seattle Video Production - Hand Crank Films

Tonight we’re sponsoring a pretty cool event in Seattle, Chalk Talk 2012. Chalk Talk reviews all the Superbowl spots with a panel of agency experts, including Eric Baumgartner from Wunderman and Ian Cohen from the Wexley School for Girls. Promises to be both informative and a good time – and we’ll be interested to see what their perspective is.

One potential dark horse of the night might be Apple. Missed their spot? So did we, until the very end during the presentation of the Lombardi Trophy and about a dozen iPhones were whipped out to capture the event. The Street’s Jim Cramer called this the biggest advertising coup of them all – free exposure by professional athletes on the biggest stage in television history.

And a media buy that wasn’t a media buy at all.

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This is a quick video book review of Designed by Adventure, about the founding of gear maker Outdoor Research.

Want a free copy of the book? Be the first to comment and I’ll send you my copy. Otherwise, you can buy it here.

Enjoy the weekend.

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Seattle Video Production - Hand Crank Films

I had the real pleasure of hanging out with Bryan Hintz last week, the lead designer for SPIE. SPIE is a leader in advancing the scientific research and engineering applications of optics – namely light. They also hold one of the biggest tradeshows in San Francisco, Photonics West, which is a crazy collection of over 20,000 attendees and over 1,200 exhibitors in Moscone Hall, most of them world-renown scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists looking for the Next Big Thing. It’s bigger than MacWorld.

Bryan’s job? To design everything from the 20 foot tall entrance graphics to the exhibition guides to the video production we worked on for him – just about everything that someone would look at to get an impression. But although he’s expert at creating clean graphics, logos and things that draw people in, his attention to detail went beyond that. For him, colors were important. But experience was everything.

Bryan said it best: the SPIE brand was the totality of the experience people had at the event. The way the crowds interacted with kiosks, got their tickets, walked the floor. The mood they were in when they left to get dinner.

So whether you’re providing video production services like we are, or selling books, or selling insurance – don’t relegate your brand to the logo on your business card. Sure, it’s important. It can set a tone. But then the real work begins.

One idea? Do a touchpoint analysis of every place a customer or potential customer comes into contact with what you offer – from the way people pick up the phone to your email signature. Then ask yourself, is that the brand I want my audience to experience?

Judging by the success of Photonics West, Bryan and everyone else at SPIE pretty much nailed it. But he was already planning for ways to improve next year.

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Seattle Video Production - Hand Crank Films

I couldn’t wait to get home last night to fool around with iBooks Author, the new tool released yesterday by Apple that allows anyone to create interactive iPad books that can be sold or given away online.

Why is this important? Because now it’s relatively easy for you to create an interactive book with graphics, video content, quizzes, 3-D images, and much more. So if you own a company that sources the best fish in the world like our client Vital Choice, you’ll be able to create cookbooks with how-to videos, links to the nearest supermarkets that have your product, and surveys that let you get instant feedback from your readers. And this is only scratching the surface.

This is jaw-dropping stuff, and I imagine this will blow up similar to the whole app space. But the question is, how will all of us take advantage of it? Here’s some ideas:

1. Can you take one of your brochures and turn it into an iPad book as a test? The software is easy to use and I had a rudimentary book ready to publish in about an hour.
2. How can you help your audience?  Think about how you can use this platform to spread your expertise. Then give it away for free, at least at first. You gain a lot of instant credibility when you say ‘You should read my book on the subject. Let me send you a link.’ Now it’s easier than ever.
3. What other content can you include in your book? What videos or graphics do you have that would make this book truly interactive and engaging?
4. Think of a good title that will grab people.
5. Do it. If you’re interested at all in getting in front of people, this has immense potential. Limited really only by your imagination.

Yeah, I’m very bullish on the whole thing and I’m often susceptible to the Steve Jobs ‘Reality Distortion’ field. I believe there is tons of opportunity here for anyone with something important to say (which is most of us).  Think about it as another huge gateway to what you offer.

But the future is not without it’s downside. The barrier to entry is so low (unlike the app space, where you at least need to have access to technical skill), that I’m sure the space will get flooded. So getting in and differentiating yourself now is more imperative than ever.

Plus it appears that books you create for iPads using Author can only be sold in the iBookstore. So Apple is, in fact, locking you in.

Beyond that – there will be a whole generation behind us that may never pick up a real book ever again. Paper is planned obsolescence, and interactive books full of everything may make imagination a casualty. But it’s also inevitable.

The other downside? I uploaded my eBook ‘The Power of Video’ to the iBookstore last night but can’t find it listed anywhere yet. My guess is that it’s going through the Apple approval process so there isn’t any immediate gratification.  I’ll keep you posted.

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Seattle Video Production - Hand Crank Films