The Education Business Blog

Today's hotlinks include Pearson's take on publishing for the iPad, designing playful experiences, the coolest marketing program I've seen in a while, a new augmented reality game to promote social change in Africa, and Photoshop disasters.

John Makinson of Pearson Penguin gave an interesting talk on the future of publishing in an iPad world. Textbook publishers take note - he specifically cites one as part of his examples. This isn't just for Penguin.

Pearson gets it - mostly. But they can't escape the book metaphor. Essentially this is the sidescroller stage of evolution. Beyond Pong, but no further than Mario Brothers. Do something interactive, flip a "page." 3D, embedded social connections ("who else in the world is looking at this page that i could talk too...") etc. is still in the future and will require some radically different ways of constructing and navigating content. Hopefully they are working on that in the back of the back room. Hat tip to personanondata.

Katie Piatt: The Process of Play - shares a solid framework for designing playful experiences in educational settings. The emphasis is on playful not on games. It could be used in a wide variety of products.

ISU study shows that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids. This broad study confirms common sense. What the headline writers miss are two key points. First only a small portion of games are violent, this is not a blanket indictment of games. Second, the effect sizes while real are not particularly large. So lets build some more cool non-violent games like:

Portal 2. I. Can't. Wait. If you missed the original Portal go get it. This is also one of the coolest product sneaks I've ever heard of - marketers take note.

OR - play Susan McGonigal's new game Urgent Evoke designed to politically empower people in Africa. She did great work with World Without Oil - this one looks even more interesting.

And for your amusement go visit PhotoshopDisasters. Warning: you will waste at least 5 perfectly good minutes chortling over this site. You must read the captions - hot piping snark.

Have a great weekend.

OK - admit it, trade shows are fun. Sometimes traveling to a distant city, circulating with your peers, and dining out on the company can be a kick. You are learning too - about competitors and about your customers. The deadlines around a trade show can produce drama and tension, and some people thrive on that.

By comparison web marketing can be a daily slog and there isn't much direct contact with the customer. Web marketing requires persistence and patience. Success is metered in small steps and delivered incremental improvements over time.

In this article I explore who should prioritize shows and who should focus on web marketing and I share some ideas about how to compare the two.

I focus on these two activities because in most cases the best source of funds to drive growth in web presence is a bloated show budget. The palette of marketers is much broader - and the metrics used here can be used to compare the full range of options.

What's a marketeer to do?

Big companies are answering this question in different ways. Apple is shunning trade shows in education pretty much altogether (zero presence at FETC last week). Promethean had a campus sized booth, cheerleaders, and free gourmet cupcakes for all.

Who is right? As always the most important question to ask about marketing spending is "compared to what?"

In order to influence customers you need to be present in different media and locations (print, web, trade shows, catalogs, peer to peer, PR etc.). Customers lend credibility to companies they see popping up in different places.

A marketing budget is a series of compromises that should maximize visibility and revenue. One of the challenges in marketing is justifying visibility when there isn't a direct tie to revenue (i.e. when your CRM can't make a direct link). Depending on your circumstances both trade shows and the web can fall into this category.

I believe the relative value of trade shows has declined precipitously in recent years when compared to web marketing. That doesn't mean you should abandon shows, you just need to think very carefully about using them in the right way. At the end of the day what really matters is profitable revenue.

Lets dive into a pool of numbers to look deeper at this question.

Trade Show Economics

Lets make some rough comparisons to get a sense of the relative worth of the two channels.

Consider a trade show with 5,000 attendees.

• A company with a decent presence (a 20x10 space) might get 100 leads a day requiring follow up.
• If the show goes 3 days this equates to 300 leads.
• These leads will require sales time and energy to further qualify and in the end might be whittled down to 50 sales (1% of the attendees at the show).
• The cost of attending the event will probably be somewhere around $20,000 (booth space, shipping, travel costs, entertainment, signage, drayage) with another $15,000 or so staff time in setting up the show, manning the booth, and then qualifying the leads and closing the business after the show.
• Total outlay $35,000 and a cost per lead of $116.

Go to 10 shows and your annual show budget is $350,000.

With a gross margin target of 70% you need to make $1,000 per sale, or $500,000 to make these events revenue neutral. You should be promoting expensive products or reaching decision makers who buy in large lots to make these economics work. If your average order size is less than $1,000 you are losing money on the trade shows (using the lead/order flow assumptions above).

Scale this up or down - the basic economics remain the same. Go cheap and end up in the back corner in a 10x10 and your leads will drop and be lower quality. Glitz it up with rock star lighting and your cost per lead skyrockets along with the required revenue.

Non-Economic Benefits of Trade Shows

There are also non-revenue benefits to being at a trade show and these shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. You build brand awareness, network with other providers in the market, and provide support to current customers.

The most compelling benefit is that full fledged sales conversations can take place at the event itself. If decision makers (larger budgets, more influence) are present at a show then a low number of leads may not be as much of a concern, in fact the show may be an extremely efficient of way of meeting with large number of these folks in a short time.

In education this would argue for attending AASA but not IRA. The attendees do need to be walking the floor not playing golf, so your mileage will vary.

Another valid reason to attend a trade show is influence with the sponsoring organization. If the membership are important customers of yours it is good form to show up and support their professional association.

Brand impressions are less - well - impressive. Assume that 30% of the show attendees are paying enough attention when they walk by your booth that they get an impression. You will reach 15,000 people over the course of a year at a cost of $23 per. Yawn. At the end of the day (or fiscal year) top and bottom line results are all that count - impressions won't buy a cup of coffee.

One other thing - trade shows are moon shots. It is almost impossible to learn and modify on the fly - the event passes so quickly that if your show promotion or materials fall flat you have no chance to recover - until next year.

Internet Marketing Economics

Now lets look at a comparable example for web site.

• The company has invested a significant amount in building out their web presence using an outside contractor to do the heavy lifting which cost $200,000.
• Amortize this over three years and your annual expense is $66,000.
• In addition to this they have three people dedicated to managing the web presence for both content and technical infrastructure at an annual cost of $150,000.
• Ongoing SEO and on-line marketing might cost another $15,000 a year.
• Coding and contract design to tweak and extend the site might cost another $40,000 a year.
• Total annual expense is $271,000.
• Average daily traffic for the site is 700 visits with a 2% conversion rate to leads and 1% purchases.
• On an annual basis this translates into 255,000 impressions, 12,775 leads, and about 6,300 purchases.

The cost per impression is $1.06, cost per lead is $21.31 and the cost per sale is $43.01. The breakeven cost per sale (using the same 70% gross margin) is $61.44 and annually $387,000.

Non-Economic Benefits of Web Marketing

The brand impression argument is much more compelling for the website - the cost per impression is a fraction of a tradeshow's ($1 vs $23) and the volume is higher.

Even better - the quality of the raw leads you get on the web are often the highest short of personal contacts from your sales force. I carefully chose the phrase "raw leads" because the downside of web leads vs. show leads is that they are unqualified - no one has talked to them yet to get a sense of how truly interested they are.

But - these customers are actively seeking you out when they search on the web and then put their hand up for attention. At a trade show most of the people who stop are just chatting - they were walking down the aisle and needed a break. This is one of the fundamental differences in on-line lead generation and all other forms (here is an extended post on this subject).

While websites generate leads at a slower pace, over time they greatly surpass tradeshows in high quality leads because the volume is so much higher. It isn't even a tortoise and hare story since the leads from a 3 day trade show are equaled on the web in 10 days (100/day vs. 31/day).

The Bottom Line

So lets break it down. The following chart maps out the examples I gave above.

From a marketing investment standpoint these are equal - the return to the company after the cost of goods and cost of sales is zero. But this isn't realistic for a specific company - it merely shows the price points at which each option starts making a net contribution to the larger business. Between $61 and $1,000 the web is going to be a much better deal for you.

Get Real

The key is to make this specific to your company. You do that by applying your average order sizes and gross margins for shows and the web and your specific metrics (costs, response rates etc).

Here is an example from an average of a few supplemental companies that I have familiarity with. Their trade show related sales are typically double what they earn on the web largely because a Rep is actively working them. BUT - even with the benefit of this difference they are losing money on trade shows and are wildly profitable on the web.

To get to parity on the contribution margin if we hold the web order size at $250 the comparable trade show revenues need to be $4,000 per sale.

But what about gross margins - won't they affect this result? Somewhat - but order size has a bigger impact on this decision. If your gross margins are 90% you have a breakeven of $778 on trade shows and $48 on the web. If they are 40% breakeven is $1750 for shows and $108 for the web. The essential story doesn't change.

This example makes clear why Apple is shunning shows and Promethean is investing heavily. Apple sells tons of individual computers at something less than $4k with moderate gross margins while Promethean is mostly doing building or district level deals that bring in orders in six and seven figures with higher gross margins. The gearing all works in Promethean's favor for shows and in Apple's favor for the web.

In Conclusion

The conclusion is pretty clear - if your average order size is modest you probably should not be prioritizing trade shows (or you should be focused on dramatically increasing your average order size). Most companies should go to a handful of shows for the non-economic benefits - but choose carefully and scale your presence appropriately.

Don't be seduced by the work and "prestige" involved in trade shows - its easy to think that because you are busy and talking to customers that you are doing the most productive thing. Dig deeper - challenge your comfort zone on this.

Do you think about your web presence as a 24/7/365 trade show booth or is it something you feel like you have to do? Is it getting the same level of sustained attention that major events get?

Shouldn't it?

Bambi Meets Godzilla is the best 90 seconds of student film - ever. This classic came up at dinner tonight and it warmed my heart the same way it did 30 years ago.

Thank you Marv Newland, a man of many talents.

[This post has nothing to do with Educational Publishing. Really. Next post - So You Are The Startup That Is Going To Take Pearson Down...]

Humor and marketing have a tricky relationship. Many marketers use humor in ways that actually undercut their objectives - people remember the joke but forget the company or the product. Here is an example that caught my interest and which I thought did a nice job of making an impersonal situation feel a bit more genuine.

The breakfast bar in most hotels is a spread of slightly stale bagels, over processed cereal, and a mound of melon chunks. Personally I'm not aware of anyone who actually likes this experience for anything but the perceived savings of a "free" breakfast.

At the Fairfield Inn they have found a way to have a little fun with this routine - but one that produces a subtle chuckle and a feeling that "hey, there are real people behind this."

See for yourself.

Don't see the joke at this level? Look a bit closer at the graphics they used...

They took the off hand joke we tell each other about coffee - unleaded equals decaf etc. - and used the image to bring a smile to your morning.

It's a small detail done extremely well. Put a bunch of these together and you have a brand that connects with people far better than the usual faceless, nameless, humorless, no risk road that most marketers take.

Related Posts:

Heart Attack Grill

Simpsonize Me
Bad Marketing - The Phony Voice

In this second of a two part series, guest blogger James Mayfield Smith responds to my post on Storyline in Textbooks and Video Games. James is an educational consultant, sales executive, and trained applied mythologist.

Part 1 can be found here.


Part 2 of 2: The Tactical Use of Story to Sell

By James Mayfield Smith

When done well, story can be an effective tactical approach for facilitating the buy cycle of a teacher or administrator. It can engage customers, humanize the sales process, build strong emotional connections, and stimulate passionate customer evangelists.

Lucky for us, the teachers and administrators who are our customers long to hear stories and share them with others. We can engage them with the power of business narrative as we architect conversations about our educational solutions. Far more than simply telling the right story at the right time, such a process involves.

• Getting clear about our own story of who we are as a company (and as an executive, regional manager, sales rep, etc.) and the value we bring so that we can be remarkable, as Seth Godin puts it.
• Utilizing data to follow the breadcrumbs to the story that districts are likely to be telling themselves. This allows us to ask the right questions when engaging administrators.
• Listening deeply to the needs of administrators and teachers, with the intent of discovering their deeper story of who they are and the underlying values that drive their decision-making. Such values are often very different, even for those who share a similar role across districts.
• Asking the right questions to find the polarities that plague them. For example, do they need to boost test scores with students who are on the cusp of proficiency, but lack dedicated staff to implement an intervention? Identifying the duality of where they are being squeezed is one effective approach to finding the precise lever that will close a sale, especially during tough budget times.
• Engaging our customers in genuinely relevant dialogue at each stage of their buying cycle. It’s the district’s buying cycle that determines the timing and outcome of the deal. We can facilitate targeted decisions at each stage to keep the purchase moving forward. In contrast, when a sales rep has entered “Presentation made. Awaiting decision.” into the CRM system and doesn’t continue to facilitate the buying cycle, odds are that the purchase may stall with a key contact who is overburdened with other decisions. We can bet that a competitor is moving their own deal forward to take the zero-sum dollars from the budget that might otherwise fund our solution.
• Using business narrative techniques (a.k.a. stories and conversations) to facilitate and co-create a shared future story featuring our customer as the central character and our company as a solution provider that meets their specific needs.

Find The Right Tool For the Job At Hand

At different stages of the buying cycle, such stories will look very different. Some stories are simply brief conversations. Others are facilitated by the salesperson and told by the customer, with a focus on the administrator or teacher feeling heard and important information being discovered. The intent of the conversations and stories are to move the buying cycle forward towards a solution that meets the need of the district and provides lasting value.

These types of stories might include:

• The Expectations for This Meeting story
• The Curiosity Arousal`story
• The Company Founding story
• The Why I’m Different Now (Transformational) story
• The Who Are You and What is Your Pain story
• The Consequences of Not Changing story
• The Greater Possibility story
• The Why I Care about This and Can Serve You Well story
• The Fostering Safety and Managing Risk story
• The How to Move Forward story
• The Cost and Benefits of the Solving this Problem (Price) story
• The Winning over Other Key Decision Makers story

Although a seasoned sales professional will immediately recognize the conversational value of such stories, each of these uses of story deserves an entire blog post of its own. For more information, the innovative financial planner and author Scott Farnsworth has done some excellent work in this area and provides a good explanation of how to use such stories for sales.

In Conclusion

As educational publishing professionals, we can harness the power that story offers as a vehicle for change. We can utilize story to help us serve educators, students, and our own organizations, and we can do so in ways that our minds and hearts are designed to do and even long for.

On a tactical level, you don’t have to be an applied mythologist to appreciate the benefits of utilizing story to generate revenue. Using powerful conversations and stories to help sell is an ideal approach for educational publishers.

Part 1 The Strategic Use of Story to Sell of this two part series is here.
Lee’s original post Storyline in Textbooks and Video Games is here.

Posted by Lee Wilson | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Culture , Data Driven Selling , Good Marketing , K12 Publishing , Sales Management

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In this first of a two part series, guest blogger James Mayfield Smith responds to my post on Storyline in Textbooks and Video Games. James has the coolest job title I think I’ve ever seen – Applied Mythologist. We worked together at Pearson several years ago, he speaks about Education Publishing from direct experience on the front lines of selling and authoring.

Part 1 of 2: The Strategic Use of Story to Sell

By James Mayfield Smith


I’ve enjoyed your posts on the potential of storyline for instruction. As a former teacher, educational sales consultant, and reading program designer, I’ve had many opportunities to see how a good tale told well can engage both students and adults in genuine conversation. Yet teachers are often left to work around their story-averse textbooks. Your analysis of why publishers in our industry are wary of strong storylines when designing instructional materials is insightful.

Story in Sales?

Many publishers also miss the boat by failing to see how the power of story utilized well can impact their sales revenue. Much of my consulting involves training executives to appreciate how humans respond to stories, imagery, and metaphor. By examining how we have told stories about ourselves for thousands of years, we gain valuable clues about the impact that telling and living into our stories has on us. With this information, we can begin to harness the power of story to teach, to create, to market, and to sell.

I discuss story-savvy selling in particular with sales training analyst Dave Stein in his Commentary on Sales Leadership blog. While Dave is quick to point out that story-savvy selling is an advanced selling skill, the five sales trainers who comment on the post enthusiastically share how they bring the power of story to bear with their own clients. Educational publishing executives may be interested in tapping into this power for their own marketing and sales force efforts.

On a strategic level, leveraging the power of story can be seen as a framework for the selling process in general. We all live out and perpetuate stories in our lives. For any sale to close, a buyer must let go of an old story of how to do something. The buyer must then embrace a new story that involves a different solution and a new way of accomplishing an objective. From a mythological perspective, trying to force a behavioral change while continuing to live an old story is rarely successful.

Most of us know a friend or relative trapped in an old story that they just can’t seem to shake behaviorally. When the old story is released, however, and a new story is fully embraced, the behaviors that result naturally from living into this story support a successful implementation. Applied to sales, the sale simply makes more sense and becomes more compelling within the new story than it would from the old perspective.

This change management aspect of sales is critical. Intelligent use of story is a powerful driver for facilitating change, particularly on the emotional and behavioral levels. Buyers usually make decisions on the emotional level, justify them with logic, and act on them behaviorally. Any long-time sales executive can regale you with stories of buyers who bought a product based on emotion rather than on the best fit for their circumstances.

An Example

As a young teacher, I once set out to buy a used Volvo, and then became emotionally enamored of a great deal on an “inexpensive” high mileage Mercedes. I bought the car and for the next two years, used a credit card to pay far more than my teacher salary allowed for the expensive maintenance. I had even heard that Mercedes vehicles were expensive to maintain. Yet this data was impersonal to me, and I had no emotional connection to it, so it didn’t even factor into my decision. I made an emotional decision based on my story that successful people drove a Mercedes rather than finding out all the facts about Mercedes ownership.

A good story that personalized the possible consequences of my decision might have curbed my romanticized story. This could have encouraged me to make a better decision for my circumstances. Telling the right story at the right time humanizes the sales process and accesses this emotional region, so that a seller can help a buyer make a more informed decision from the place where such decisions are actually made.

Three Reasons to Use Stories to Sell

But why the focus on stories, you might ask, rather than the emphasis on questions and conversations found in many sales training methodologies? Of course those are essential, as are other selling basics. But understanding the power of story is oft-neglected, so we’ll address this in particular here.

First, naturally talented salespeople are already (often unconsciously) using the power of story to sell. These naturals engage buyers with stories and tell key stories about other buyers to leverage a sale. Yet they are usually unable to articulate or teach what they are doing. Companies often joke about cloning their top sales reps – compelling storytelling is often one of their defining traits you should consider teaching it reps who are not using it.

Second, the selling power of story is a direct result of how our psycho-emotional-behavioral system responds to stories. After thousands of years of an oral storytelling tradition, we are hard-wired to respond to story in specific ways. After millions of collective bedtime stories and many millions more stories told for entertainment, humans have developed both a longing to hear stories (which supports the Hollywood film industry), as well as a calming and accepting approach to story. One effect of this conditioning is that stories allow buyers to bypass the somewhat irrational emotional defenses often triggered during a sales interaction.

Instead of reacting to a salesperson in a guarded way, buyers have the opportunity to relax into a story about a student whose life was changed or an administrator who successfully increased achievement in her district. Buyers are given the freedom to identify with any character whose wants, needs, and values match their own. This identification with characters process usually happens during a story. This self-selection dynamic draws our customers toward us and facilitates trust, like we are drawn to the heroes and heroines of a good novel. By allowing our customers to build emotional connections to characters and scenarios that are meaningful to them, we also build valuable bridges to ourselves as solution providers.

Third, and paradoxically, while stories relax our customers on one level, it stimulates them on another level by heightening attention and memory recall. The myths, legends, and stories of the tribe usually conveyed key data about where to go and not go, how to get home, what to eat or not eat, and other life-preserving information that was critical to remember. Thus, thousands of years of using story to convey important survival information has conditioned our brains to remember story well. Thus teachers and administrators will leave a conference and forget much of the data they took in, while remembering the stories they heard. By embedding sales calls within a story-rich framework, we provide our customers with anchors for retaining the key information about our company, our products, and the solutions we provide.

Coming in Part 2

Our next post in this 2 part series will address the tactical use of story to sell. We’ll discuss how to use the power of stories and business narrative to architect conversations about our educational solutions. We’ll also identify the different types of stories that are useful at different stages of the buying cycle.

James Mayfield Smith is an educational consultant, sales executive, and trained mythologist who applies the principles of depth mythology and the power of business narrative and story-savvy messaging to sales, marketing, and educational product development projects.

Lee's original post Storyline in Textbooks and Video Games is here.

We are collectively discovering the value of social media tools like Twitter. As we do this we wander blind alleys and make surprising discoveries. Forthwith a peeve and a rave about micro-blogging.

Peeve - People who tweet that they are about to do something. So what? How about you tweet after you have done it and have something interesting to say. "I'm off to the mall" Fascinating - yawn.

Rave - Genuine kudos handed out freely. Yesterday a friend (@perludus) had to return a pair of shoes. He tweeted "Three cheers for @Footwise! Returned my shoes that wore through the sole in 2 months w/no questions asked!" Positive energy put into the system always comes back to you. It also makes others feel positive about the world. All that in 140 characters - cool.

Bonus Round

Peeve - Overposting. I now routinely check the tweet thread of people I might follow to see how frequently they post. Any more than a couple of times a day and forget it. Sorry - no one is that interesting. (An occasional burst when you are live tweeting an event is fine.)

Rave - Breaking News (@breakingnews). Get headlines long before they show up on mainstream web news sites.

Productivity Tip - Treat twitter like a room with friends in it. When you are busy elsewhere you don't hear the conversation and that is just fine. When you can drop by you get to hear what is going on and chime in. If you try to experience it like email where you have to see every tweet you will develop the twitter twitch (twittcher?).

Great marketing infuses a brand promise into everything a company does. It isn't about the slogan - it is making the promise come alive for your customers in every small detail.

In honor of a Thanksgiving traipse down the tryptophan trail enjoy the images below from the Heart Attack Grill. They make a very simple promise and then drive it into every single thing the company does with quality and humor. They are also unabashedly politically incorrect.

They have done something remark-able - people will talk about it. TV news has covered it, blogs have been covering it, and radio is in on the act.

In education - where at least 50% of everyone's sales come from referrals - this ability to be remark-able is essential. Yet we are saddled again and again with conservative copycat sample brochures and catalogs that could have been printed 15 or 20 years ago. What are you doing to make your products, services, and company remark-able?

I'm not suggesting that you mock 50 years of public health announcements - but just look at how they made a big promise and then delivered on it.

I don't think this translates directly into the education publishing market - institutional sales have to be politically correct as anyone who has tangled with the California Legal and Social Compliance guidelines can attest to. The reason I'm highlighting it is that it is a stark example of driving the brand promise into the operations - taking messaging beyond empty slogans that no one believes or pays attention to.

First the menu:

When you are done get wheeled out to your car by a "nurse"

Follow below the fold for more hilarity.

Continue reading "Heart Attack Grill - Great Marketing" »

Powerpoint slides are "glance media" just like billboards. Today's post by Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen is an excellent synopsis of how billboards can inform slide design.

His post builds on Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology where she sets the standard for glance media - "Ask yourself whether your message can be processed effectively within three seconds."

In a marginally related segue I've been reading Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". Today's best insight:

"My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it."

In this spirit Garr provides 8 tips for how to put the billboard insights into practice with your slides.

1. Make it visual - "vision trumps all other senses"

2. One slide, one idea

3. Make type big

4. Contrast rules

5. Don't be afraid of bleed[ing off the page]

6. Rule of Thirds

7. Empty space

8. Have a visual theme

Whether you are in sales, marketing, raising money, or making an internal pitch your presentation can benefit enormously from following these guidelines. You will increase the odds of communicating the message you intend to share ("we need to buy that thing") vs. the message that you actually communicate ("this guy is confusing me").

I love his mock up of a billboard as designed by the average Powerpoint user - its funny and informative.

The world would be a better place if people applied these rules to their slide decks. All too often they do exactly the opposite - ugh.

Sundance/Newbridge deserves kudos for their catalog cover contest. It embodies some of the elements of the Web 2.0 aesthetic in a traditional marketing vehicle and shows that you don't have to reinvent the world to harness the power of user generated content.

I found this because the Austin American Statesman reported the winner in this morning's paper (sorry no link on their site). If you think that won't do much for them from a marketing standpoint you would be correct. Yes, it was very cool to see local 6th Grade Nicolette T. win for her work Metamorphosis and I hope local educators will think warmly of Sundance this fall.

But, the real impact is that over 400 other kids submitted entries and their schools were all paying attention to this. Those kids had fun (we assume), enaged their creative faculties, and got their competitive juices going. Sundance got some great ideas from their most important constituency, the kids who learn from their materials. Everyone gets to look at a cool cover for the next 6 months. It was a win all around.

Too often we sit in meetings where an important topic is hotly debated (cover design anyone....). Usually the simplest and best answer to all the hot air is actually a question "Have we asked our customers about this?"

For a related article please visit Web 2.0 Tradeshow Booth at NECC.

Anyway, big GRATZ to Nicolette. Texas rules!

Burger King and the Simpsons producers have teamed up in a brilliant marketing campaign - you can upload a photo of yourself (or victim) and create a Simpsonized image.

Thats me to the left there, d'oh.

If you need to waste 15 minutes today I recommend this activity!

Its got humor (a rotating donut for the processing icon), personalization, and active involvement. The details are right too - obvious links to the promotional partners, a good solid URL, easy export, etc. Someone thought this through carefully and had a lot of fun with it at the same time. Not an easy trick to pull off.

When was the last time we saw humor used well in education marketing? Playful is engaging, but we are all caught up on meeting standards and aligning to correlations. Something to think about as we all head back to school.

Blackboard's booth at NECC in Atlanta was one of the best examples I've seen recently of Socratic Marketing. They asked teachers to write a brief paragraph on how they intended to use a free trial of the product in their classrooms. Then they took a polaroid of them and pasted several hundred of them all over the booth. In an inversion of current trends they created a real version of a virtual community. It was fun and interesting to browse the cards and it made a strong visual statement.

Blackboard started a real dialog and also provided the foundation for a series of ongoing conversations. Shana Glenzer, Sr. K-12 Marketing Manager at Blackboard, told me that they were getting ideas for uses of the product that they hadn't thought of, like connecting pregnant teens to classroom resources. They also intend to use the ideas in conversations with senior administrators at districts - "6 of your teachers visited with us and here are some of the ideas they had..."

It was arresting in its simplicity and represented a validation of the products in the words of end users. It also showed that great marketing doesn't have to cost a lot.

Brilliant.