I recently wrote an article on startupnation.com that stirred up some emotions and created a lot of feedback.

Read the original article Passive and Active or use this link.
http://www.startupnation.com/forums/13952/1/1#PID112031

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Active and Passive Marketing Part 2

(The Reckoning)

Consider the title "Is your marketing Active or Passive" but remove the
"marketing" and substitute a word of your choice. Here are a few to
consider.



Is your "Fitness" Active or Passive"

Do you own some workout equipment but never use it? - Passive

Do you go to the gym and workout? - Active

Do you have a personal trainer? - Active
Do you have a Gym membership but never go? - Passive

-----
Is your "Volunteering" Active or Passive?
Do you write a check - Passive
Do you deliver groceries to the poor - Active

-----
Is your "Job Search" Active or Passive
Do you view popular job boards for openings - Passive
Do you participate in groups and forums about open positions - Active


Passive means being involved at the surface level.
Active means diving in head first and probing the depths.

Passive is "Us and Them"
Active looks for what we have in common.

Passive is "Giving Directions"
Active is a Co-Pilot

If your marketing is active, you will know every plus and minus about your product or service.

If your marketing is active, it won't be defined as directional, creative, interactive, pushed, pulled, contextual or any other industry buzzwords.

If your marketing is active, you will have a hard time distinguishing your ad copy from a customer review.

Active marketing means enrolling everyone into your vision.
It means creating Fans, evangelist, enthusiast and supporters.


Of course all of this assumes you truly believe in your product or service.

Feedback, Karma, Props.

"Givers Get", "Givers Gain", "Give to Live", "Live to Give"

Cliches? Yes.

Truth? For Certain.

Many companies, large and small are starting to outsource their customer service to their customers. Yea, to the customers themselves.

Online services like Get Satisfaction and UserVoice make it simple for any one who provides a product or service to also provide a smooth line of communication with their customers or potential customers.

People are talking about products and services. They are reporting problems, making suggestions, giving advice and giving praise.

Notice I did not say complaining. Yes you might consider reporting a problem as a complaint but that is really a matter of perspective. Truth is, most feedback is not white hot flames or even really angry people. Most feedback is sincere and appreciative from the " please help me, I want to love your product" point of view. A huge percentage of feedback is praise. Some call it evangelism.

Whatever you call it, I love it.
It's the kind of thing that blurs the line between bought and sold, company and customer, business and client. These roles become less and less distinguishable everyday.

• Customers are making great suggestions to enhance the product or service.
• Companies are listening (not monitoring for complaints) and interacting with the customers.
  
• People who have bought and love what they bought are becoming marketers for the companies they bought from. In effect they are selling it to others.
  

So get on it, start right now. If your a buyer/customer, start creating some karma.
If your a seller/company, start listening.

www.getsatisfaction.com
www.uservoice.com


------------------------------
A few thoughts.

Positive
Think contribution, think feedback, think genuine.

What you give.

* Honest, unedited, unplugged, uncoerced feedback.
* Perspective from the user point of view.
* Ideas, tips, wants, feature request.
* Praise and encouragement.
* Simple gratitude.


What you get.

* Acknowledgment - Your feedback, praise, report, etc... will be viewed and commented on by the company, employees and other reviewers.
* Karmic returns - It's a come around go around sort of thing.
* Free stuff - Companies love to hear from you and value your feedback. Sometimes they will give you free trials, membership, etc... (probably not for idle praise or suck ups though)
* Self promotion - A great way to indirectly promote yourself or your company in a non-offensive, unobtrusive manner. Link to your page or blog where you use the service you are reviewing. (if this is possible)
* Satisfaction (The thing we all want in most in life)


Start giving your feedback, check out
www.getsatisfaction.com
www.uservoice.com

Wow! It's hard to imagine a worse ad than the Seinfeld, Gates abortions, but this one beats it.

As a rule, I generally avoid posting negative but this moved me.
I have never seen the level of negative postings as I have on this one.

Here are a sample of some of my favorites.

"Wow. That almost made me kill myself. Thanks Microsoft :)"
"Everyone involved should be beaten, starting with that shrill Little Orphan Annie-voiced girl."
"Excuse me. I have to go take a fork to my ears and eyes."
"I’m pretty sure Eric Holder would put forced watching of that commercial somewhere between Waterboarding and Branding With Hot Irons on the Torture Scale."



Watch it if you dare!




To top it off they are using an Apple Macbook Pro.
The ad agency that created this horrific and unwatchable video had to be aware of this. They covered the Apple logo with a flower sticker?!! WTF. Did they think no one would notice? Yes, I know that you can run windows on Mac.

I officially nominate this ad as "The worst ad ever"
If I owned stock in Microsoft, I would sell it.
As for the product, Songsmith, I can never buy it after watching this ad. Even it it cured cancer.


On the positive side.
Microsoft's advertising direction and methodologies are a great example of what not do to.
The overwhelming postings and comments on this ad demonstrate the power of social media and social community.
This ad provides absolute proof that tons of money can't buy great marketing.



Links
http://i.gizmodo.com/5128182/microsoft-songsmiths-corny-musical-infomercial
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/16/video-the-horrifically-bad-microsoft-songsmith-commercial/

Flock is a browser based on the Mozilla Platform. It is available for Mac, PC, Linux, Ubuntu, etc...

Video is not quite as cool as it wont embed on most blogs.

Example below.

Flock & Digg:
http://www.youtube.com/?v=pBaNnBrRg-s

Shared with Flock - The Social Web Browser
http://flock.com


There are a number of other really cool features but I will let you discover them after you download the Flock.

It's most likely you have never seen a presentation like a Prezi presentation. Interact with a presentation designed in Prezi for the first time and you will quickly see the advantages, uses, opportunities, applications and so forth.




It's new.
It's very different.
it's truly interactive.
It's incredible.

Surprisingly (and remarkably) its very easy to use and easy to create your own presentations.

Attempting to describe Prezi in more detail is pointless as I have to use old school, 2D, linear tools like text on the blog you are reading now.

Think about it.
It's still just text on a page, typically in black and white, presented to you in a window, paragraphed, bulleted, maybe a pic or two. Basically a sheet of typed paper delivered on a computer screen. Not a lot different than it was 100 years ago or even 400 years ago for that matter. 

Speech gave us communication.
Language gave us structure and identification.
Writing gave us a the ability to transfer knowledge through time.
Printing made the whole thing faster and easier.
Computers gave us non tangible data.
The Internet gave us distribution.
Mobile gave us easy data collection and retrieval.
Social networking gave us community.

And yet, we still have the same structure. The same basic book type layout we have used since we first started writing on paper.

Prezi changes that. Yea, it's that big of a deal.

Prezi is non linear, 3D, open perspective and total freedom and thus it requires a small paradigm shift when viewing and a medium paradigm shift when creating presentations.

It's not "think outside the box" but rather "box out side the think"

Make the shift and the editor takes about 5 minutes to learn. The controls are amazingly intuitive. It's all online with no software to download. PNG's are preferred. Videos can be added to the presentation as well as pdf's, images, etc...

It's still kind of pre-release.
I don't know when they will start charging.
I don't know how much it will cost.
I DO know that I will probably pay it.



Want to see it in action? Check out my Resume at
http://www.stevergibson.com/images/stories/prez/




Check out the main site at http://www.prezi.com


Notes:

• "Prezi" is the Hungarian diminutive translation of "presentation".
• PNG files are the best option. 
• I have not tested it but I bet multi touch rocks with Prezi. Good news for New Apple owners.
  
• Youtube plugins are coming soon. for now just convert to flv.
• For links to show, you must use the full URL with the HTTP
  
  • Like this "http://www.stevergibson.com/images/stories/prez"
  • Not like this " www.stevergibson.com"
    
• No bugs to report yet, everything worked very well. I have not tested n Ubuntu or Linux yet.
  
• Creates a flash file (swf)
  
• You can download your presentation and easily add it to your site with FTP.
  
• Not very strong on embedding or social spacing yet but it's only a matter of time.