Life After The 30-Second Spot

I had a chat this morning with Joseph Jaffe who I met at BlogOn2005. He's recently written a book and it using his own marketing philosophy to promote it. Check out this post on his blog:

So here's my idea...make "Life after the 30-second spot" a Bestseller. Here's how:

• I will issue a free copy of Life after the 30-second spot to any business/marketing/advertising-related blogger that agrees to review the book.
• They will post their review of the book - good, bad or ugly - and e-mail me to let me know that it's up. I don't care what they say as long as its genuine and from the heart. This is about passion. Period.
• I will collect the reviews and update the progress periodically.
• I will also add any reviews from anyone else who has read the book to the list. This is not just for bloggers to review. All reviews are just as valuable to me.
• If you want to purchase the book you can do so on Amazon.com or any bookstore.

I will pledge the following:

1. I will accommodate as many bloggers as I can...bear with me if I take a while to respond
2. I will do my best to keep this up based on expenses regarding ordering books (yes I have to pay fairly close to what you do) and shipping costs
3. I will make this an open source project. I will share as many statistics as possible as a direct result of this exercise. I want this to be a case study and success story that we can all benefit from.

That's pretty much it.

The goal here is not to make money...it's designed to show:

• That there's a new way to work
• That there's a new way to promote books (who needs the media, when we have each other; this is citizen journalism as it could and should be)
• That new marketing works
• That the blogosphere is profoundly good, powerful, effective and constructive
• That change is good...and if embraced, can transform businesses, brands and create tipping points. Yes, create. Not stumble upon...but create.

So if you want to get a free book, just drop him a comment.

He's also doing a regular podcast now with Steve Rubel called ACROSS THE SOUND on marketing and PR. He mentioned to me that they record it over Skype which prompted me to mention that Mick and I did the FIRST EVER SKYPE PODCAST almost 12 months ago. God, what a nightmare it was to record and post-produce. I remember how we did it - I recorded my voice, Mick recorded his voice, then he ftp'd his voice to a server, I downloaded it, edited them together, then re-uploaded it to the server, and Mick published it.

It took four hours.

Today I record Skype podcasts using Skylook and spend about ten minutes post-producing it, then upload it to the server and publish the blog. It takes me probably 20 minutes all up. That's not bad progress.