Monday, June 28, 2010

It's All About Video at Cisco - Rap Video

This is a response video to The Coolest Intern at Cisco - Greg, check it out:



Lyric credits to @ShanaDanekari for spending 3-hours on Friday night getting it just right! =)

Soundtrack: Puff Daddy - It's All About The Benjamins (Instrumental)

Uh, oh huh, yeah
It's all about Video baby
uh
It's all about Video baby

Now, what y'all wanna do?
Wanna be ballers, shot-callers
Speakers -- who be beamin on stage wit the hologram
Or on the TP spitin’ my jam

Cisco intern, your rap is cool
But don’t forget, you gotta finish school
I be working that 8 to 5 but without the drive
using WebEx, to teleconference live
President of Russia, I haven’t seen
But for me it’s all about Guy Kawasaki…that’s right Guy Kawasaki

Yeah you know you wanna be like me

Forget the ThinkPad, move to a Mac
And get an intern that’s got your back
Keep bloggin’ and tweetin’ and you will see
You’ll fit right in, to the Cisco family
Social Media Marketing is where it’s at
Yeah, you know, we got it like that
Like your ergonomic desk chair, well make it yours
Stay with Cisco and there’s nothing but doors
Doors of opportunity
social network wizardry
tons of creativity
Get a fatty paycheck, stocks and all
So come on...step up to the plate and take the ball

Yeah…You down with the Cisco crew?

It's all about Video baby
It's all about Video baby

Monday, June 7, 2010

Ghetto Technographics

Sure, you can get your Technographics Marketing Research from some firm like Forrester, or you can take that budget and bring a bunch of non-techy friends to the beach like Nicholas Carlson in this hilarious piece from SAI.  My favorite of his invaluable market research from this focus group of “normals”:

  • Groupon is absolutely the greatest thing ever. Normals ask each other all the time if others have heard about Groupon and the amazing deals it provides – at restaurants, at gyms, and golf courses. Living Social is great too, and even a perhaps a little bit more upscale.
  • Twitter, which used to be just a weird thing, is now recognized as having some value for people obsessed with the news, narcissists, and the overly-plugged-in, but no, it's still not for me, thank you. 
Although most marketers know the cardinal rule of not mistaking the market’s impression for yours, most marketers are still expected to have a “nose” for sniffing out what their demographic is looking for.  The danger comes from being trapped in the “echo chamber” of a social network that both affirms and perpetuates one’s own perspective.  For example, now that I can build virtual social networks in several domains that quite literally care about all the things I care about, it’s reducing any exposure I have to people who don’t think the same way I do.  For a marketer whose demographic is literally everybody in the world, this is less than optimal.  I’ve found close friends and family to be a refreshing exception, but that’s not nearly enough.  I’m interested to hear how other marketers are dealing with this or even whether its considered a problem.  Are you concerned at all that your reliance on “birds of a feather” social networks are insulating you from broader market perspectives?