I first met BlogBusinessSummit organizer Steve Brobeck when he was performing a magic show to party-goers assembled around Robert and MaryAnne Scoble's living room in January. I suppose the infamous red couch was there, but I was focused on not missing a beat in any of the tricks.
I just read a remarkable story in BuzzMarketing by Mark Hughes of a chiropractor who built a multi-million dollar business from word-of-mouth. (And I was touched he treated millionaires and homeless persons without any ability to pay alike.) In his youth, chiropractor Jeff Greenfield was a whiz magician and that's where he honed his fundamental marketing skills:
Jeff Greenfield grew up in a small Florida suburb. He took a liking to magic and began performing his first magic tricks at age five. By age ten, he was regularly performing at parties and events, and making more money than his mother, a registered nurse.
His specialty was close-up magic. When Uri Geller became famous for his spoon-bending trick in the 1970s, Jeff Greenfield began performing the same trick, though still a teen, and was written up in the preeminent trade publication Magical Arts Journal...
Great magicians are often great marketers. And why is that? One guess could be that magicians have well-developed skills in sleight of hand, manipulation, and misdirection - just like a lot of today's marketing. Good guess, but that's not the reason. Great magicians have two keen abilities: They understand consumer behavior - how to influence people to look in one direction, and how to communicate with people one-on-one in setting up a trick and explaining what's about to happen.
Understanding consumer behavior and communicating extremely well one-on-one are two valuable skills in business. Most marketing gets discombobulated right here, because most marketers think in terms of their messages going out to thousands. That's the stage they are given: a mass-market stage.
The traditional marketing model sends each message out to people via a one-way vehicle (even when sending one message to those watching VH1 and another one to those watching Comedy Central). The marketing industry has grown up taking one-way communication for granted since the 1940s.
Magicians, however, start with a two-way communication model. If people don't gasp in wonder at their trick, it's like a stand-up comedian not getting a laugh. Magicians live for interaction and two-way communication, and have to be able to understand consumer expectations, exceed them, and communicate well to get the applause. And when the audience members reward a magician with that applause, what happens? They come back from their evening [and spread the word to all their friends.]
Thanks to Steve, DL Bryon, Toby Molina and the whole crew for a terrific show. From first-hand experience, I know that throwing together a successful conference is pretty much akin to magic.
And successful blog is a bit akin to magic, too. I chuckled when I read The Washington Post's business blogging advice (it's not a coincidence it's adjacent to a story on phishing). The piece is titled, Blog-Oil Salesmen:
It's pathetic -- as well as amusing -- to watch representatives of multimillion-dollar corporations shell out their hard-earned cash to buy what amounts to bottles of freshly packaged air. The concepts behind blogging are not difficult to understand, nor is it difficult to throw one onto the Internet. I'd be ashamed to charge for my services so I'll offer them for free. Want a blog? Go read some. Do what they do. There's your Blog Business Summit.
Of course it is not difficult to throw up a blog. Anyone can do it. That's the point. However, the barrier to entry isn't technical. Publishing is a piece of cake.
I've read blogs since 2001. I attempted publishing my first one in 2003. Bomb.
It wasn't until I heard Robert Scoble speak about 18 months ago to a small crowd of folks in a Lafayette, CA restaurant that the light bulb finally went on: Aha! This was a two-way conversational media.
I was consulting to a start-up last year. They wanted to throw up a blog too. I didn't have control of the project. Until the CEO noticed that my second blog (only two months older than our corporate blog) was gaining traction. It was five months into the corporate blog project and immediately after he noted my blog on Tom Peter's blogroll that he turned the reins over.
I'd take a close-up magician's advice over a print mass media journalist on conversational media any day. We haven't had a two-way marketing model since the days of public marketplaces. Try talking back to your newspaper in 1969. Or having a conversation with your TV set in 1989. Heck, try it today.
Throwing up a blog is one thing. Having a relationship with your customers, stakeholders, and general public is quite another.
Technorati tags: blogbusinesssummit, bbs05, business blogging, marketing
Credits: Flickr photo by platinum
Thanks for the great post!
I love the graphic -- it brings back a lot of memories .. especially the name on the card .. there's a trick I used to do where a person would put their name and phone number on a card ... and that's how I met my wife!
Jeff Greenfield
Posted by: Jeff Greenfield | Sep 16, 2005 at 10:41 AM