Living on the sun

Anyone who doubts the validity or impact of global warming might be swayed by spending a couple weeks of any August in South Carolina.  This August, for instance, cooked up a record 14 straight days of temps between 100 and 108.  This is your brain; this is your brain on sweet tea.  I swear the mockingbirds were spontaneously combusting and whole fields of Bermuda grass transmogrified to shredded wheat.

What you may learn by spending a fortnight feeling as if you were living on the sun rather than in it is akin to Mark Twain’s observation that “a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.”   Heat and light narrow the eyes but burst open the mind to new possibilities that we can carry home with us; not, however, without singeing some sacred certainties.  Humidity breeds humility.

For what they’re worth, I submit the following observations to other unsuspecting backyard baskers and  barbeque-ers who aspire to slather their brains in solar sauce during a beautiful torrid spell:

1.      Burgers will cook equally fast on the grill whether you turn on the burners or not.  Skip the propane and save your money.

2.      No temperature is sufficient to seal off primary-season politicians who are attracted to voters in heated climes like pigeons to grass seed.

3.      Air conditioning is simply a way to condition people to keel over when they hit the air on the way to their car from the Marble Slab.

4.      You can work up a sweat trying to communicate with consumers when they are in extremis from the heat.  TV is full of re-reruns.  No one’s sitting on the porch reading today’s newspaper, or on the patio tuning the radio.

5.      Even in hellish weather, however, people still take pains to stay connected.  At the pool, they have their cell phone.  In their cars, they have their cell phones.  At the mall, they have their cell phones.  In the chilled movie house, they have their cell phones—turned on all too often.  At their desks, they have their laptops—hey, eventually calls get dropped.

So it turns out that South Carolina in August, or late summer for any of the dozen or so other states that claim a place in—and on—the sun,  can be a hotbed for mobile marketing and online contact.  Knowing where your customers are cooling their heels and how they stay in touch with the world is crucial for every marketer.  Getting them to volunteer their texting info or online shopping preferences can ignite a marketing effort quicker than a petunia shrivels at 3 o’clock in a Carolina window box. 

When the going gets perspiratory, the really cool marketers go mobile, go online and go fishing for prospects.

-- Steve Friedman

Leads2007 - My First “Unconference”

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Leads2007 on behalf of Kaleidico, an Airfoil client operating in the mortgage lead space.  This gathering of lead aggregators, generators and providers was an “unconference.”   What’s that you ask? Well, it’s a traditional gathering of industry leaders and competitors in a given space who come together to learn and share and they set the agenda beforehand.  There are no product pitches or long PowerPoints, just honest opinions that are all on the record (and readily available for anyone to read since various folks were blogging at the event).

Just about everyone in the room was somehow involved in generating mortgage leads, and while I came in with an understanding of the process having worked at Quicken Loans, I learned a lot about the science behind everything from creation of a Web form to loan conversion and application ratios.

This is one complex business.  On the one hand you have the lead generators who work to provide mortgage bankers and brokers with good, actionable leads that come from online advertisements.  It’s not easy to generate good leads, and folks like TARGUSInfo help ensure that the data collected is verifiable (yes, there are lots of folks who fill out forms with fake information).  On the other hand, you have mortgage bankers and brokers who pay for these leads, but they want to ensure they only pay for valid leads.  There’s a lot of back and forth and whether a lead is “good” can be subjective and/or depend on the honesty of a particular mortgage banker or broker.

It’s not uncommon for bankers to call a lead only to find out that the phone number is incorrect, or worse yet, the person didn’t fill out a form to begin with. Likewise, lead providers often have leads returned with a refund requested but find out that all of the information they provided was valid.

Doublepositive talked about “hot transfer” leads.  This is where a company actually has someone on the phone before handing off the lead to a loan officer.  That’s a big deal because it saves loan officers a heck of a lot of time trying to run down a person via phone.

There was a lot to learn at Leads2007.  It’s likely we’ll see a new industry association develop with some recommendations to make sure that people who fill out forms for mortgages online receive a qualified person responding to their query while disreputable lead aggregators and lead generators are left in the dust.  It’s only going to increase in importance as the housing and mortgage industries face an unstable climate.

-- Todd Krieger

So is this what the bubble looked(s) like?

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending TechCrunch 9 at August Capital.  I attended the event on behalf of one of Airfoil’s clients, ProfileBuilder, who launched their new identity aggregator at the event, which by the way, turned out to be hit!

I have to admit right off the bat that I received the invitation last minute and I really didn’t know what the event was about or what to expect.   The event was attended by about 900 people, including Silicon Valley luminaries, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, journalist, bloggers and the like.  They all came to mingle and get a sneak peek at the dozen or so tech start-up companies who were showcasing their products at the event.  I had a chance to meet quite a few of them.  I was delighted to meet people like Dean Takahashi, Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington and Eric Auchard … just to name a few.

In addition to meeting media, I had the chance to meet some very cool people, like Etienne Handman, the chief operating officer of Pandora, a company that generates personalized streaming radio for your computer, mobile phone or home entertainment system.  Etienne played deejay at the event, streaming music all night from his laptop.  I also met Anne Donker, who helps start-ups find venture funding in Silicon Valley.  Anne is a former journalist and gave me quite a few tips on working with journalists.  Although we didn’t have much conversation, I got the chance to introduce myself to Nuttall, technology correspondent for the Financial Times and Charlene Li, vice president and senior analyst at Forrester.  I also got a glimpse of Fred Vogelstein from Wired and Rob Hof of BusinessWeek, but never got a chance to actually speak with them.  Maybe next time.

All in all, it was a great event and a great experience for me as a PR professional.  I not only had the opportunity to meet all these great people but I got a sneak peek at some of the up-and-coming technologies and individuals that are working to change the world. 

The thing that struck me most about the whole program, however, is how very roaring ’90s it all seemed.  Mind you, I wasn’t in the industry for the Internet bubble. I was still in undergrad, as a matter of fact; but as a consumer of media and a PR practitioner, I’m well read on the topic and also quite familiar with the warning bells being rung by the once-bitten and twice-shy tech veterans that lived it the first time around.  Taken as a whole, I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen and if anyone learned any lessons from Web 1.0.

-- Lucia Giacomantonio

From print to Web – a sea of change

The past couple of years have been really interesting to watch in terms of changes in the media world. As the first “Web” employee for a publication in the ’90s, I saw first-hand how hard it was (and is) to convince those in print media that the future is online.

Every day, we continue to see the signs of an evolution (revolution?). Will a print newspaper still exist in 10 years? My wager is probably not. Heck, I’m not even sure about five years.

Our local paper, the Detroit Free Press, has an opening for a “Community Conversation Editor.” The description is described in these not-so-subtle terms: “The job is critical to the Detroit Free Press' future.” Even more revealing is that when the newspaper described itself, it barely mentioned the word “newspaper” but instead called itself the state’s leading news source.

Meanwhile, The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post will shut down at the end of the year. Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine has been adding nails to the newspaper coffin, citing reports from The Wall Street Journal and others.

Becoming more interactive online, sites like USA Today now allow comments on each story and are accepting citizen journalist reports. And The New York Times is becoming more active with its blogs.

Is blogging the answer? Not universally. However, I do feel that people are finally realizing the potential of blogs – not just blogging for the sake of being on top of the next big thing, but using the platform as a way to connect with people and build relationships – something that’s missing in a print newspaper.

-- Tonja Deegan