Voice Mail Archives

One of the reasons I love academia is the crazy talented people you come across. Naturally, everyone has their own area of hyper-specialization, which is what we think describes that person's particular arena of knowledge and skill. But academics are complex people, often with complicated, varied and quirky pasts.

Tonight I came home starving. I opened all the cabinets, peered into the fridge, looked out on the porch for any forgotten, orphaned root vegetables, and eventually came up with a delicious meal that mainly involved left-over chicken tenderloins and egg noodles.

Now, I used to be a professional chef. I can do the Iron Chef thing with the best of them. But I'll admit that I usually would prefer to be able to buy the freshest produce, the best cut of meat, the obscure fresh herb or seasoning that makes a dish really rock -- and often makes it an official "secret" recipe.

But in hard times, I can't. I need to rely more on noodles and ramen, less on nori and rabe.

When I put together a marketing plan, especially under restricted financial circumstances, it's the same issue. How can I best allocate these (extremely) limited resources to achieve the best possible result?

That's why social media marketing is something that can really shine in a recession. Done right, done thoughtfully, it can wring more value out of a marketing dollar than traditional means can.

Better yet, it can be done with assets that you may already have in your kitchen organization.

Look in your cupboards: what do you find?

• An employee knowledgeable about how to engage your customers on Twitter?
• An employee who can write a blog on a consistent basis?
• Awareness that your market segment is active on one or more social networks?
• A little bit of time?
• A little bit of willingness?

Sounds like soup to me.

I've written about this before, back in February, when things didn't look nearly as grim as they do today, and when the Interactive Marketing team at Forrester Research published a free report titled Strategies for Interactive Marketing in a Recession.

In short, the report maintains that interactive marketing:

• Provides measurable results
• Costs little to maintain and use
• Keeps customers engaged, even when they’re not buying

Check it out. It still stands up, even all these horrific months later.

Give it some thought.

What ingredients do you have on hand?

What flavors will work magic for you?

What kind of soup can YOU make?

The New York Times reporting on a study just released by the MacArthur Foundation that found that internet socializing by teens is not quite as harmful or dangerous as it was previously held to be:

(TOTH to David Brazeal.)

I'm working on a project right now, compiling a case study that involves a look back at the One Laptop Per Child campaign of last holiday season, and it's jogged my memory and made me wonder: what ever happened to all that?

So after not quite 24 hours of Motrin's Twitter Moment (Hat Tip to @Pistachio), some more in-depth analysis of the offending ads and the online response is starting to roll in.

I asked Geoff Livingston (@geoffliving), CEO of Livingston Communications, what he thought of the MotrinMoms uproar, and he confirmed what many on the #MotrinMoms Twitterstream have suspected, namely that

If Twitter is social media's living room, then the conversation and uproar over the new Motrin ad is now spilling out into the streets -- moms upset by the ad have created YouTube video responses, Flickr groups, a CafePress Shop, and many, many, many, many blog posts in response to the ad.

I just noticed there's a growing uproar over on Twitter about this ad hosted on the Motrin homepage. (If the Motrin team is listening to social media at all, that link won't work for long. I wonder how long the ad will actually live on its homepage?)

Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Swami at Network Solutions, accepting the 2008 Excellence in New Communications Award given to him and Livingston Communications at the Society for New Communications Research Awards Gala: