It was a fun, short interview about the issues that the restaurant faced when I jumped in as a partner to help my best friend. We discuss some of the specific actions that we took and how that helped lead us to becoming the #1 steakhouse in the Pioneer Valley.

If you can’t see the video, you can watch it over on PepsiCo’s YouTube channel.

If we managed to peak your interest and you wanted to read more about what we’ve down as a small business to build our community and increase sales at the restaurant using social media, you can find more here and here.

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Well, that is exactly what Coca-Cola has done as part of their “Open Happiness” global marketing campaign.

As MediaPost explains:

Coke set up a special vending machine on a real college campus and rolled footage of students’ surprised and delighted reactions as the machine proceeded to dispense everything from free bottles of Coke to flowers, a whole pizza, a six-foot sub and balloon animals.

Coke couldn’t have scripted better responses: Students laugh and jump, pass the Cokes and gifts around, and even thank Coke as they hug the vending machine. But the footage is “all real students and real reactions,” according to Christy Amador, digital marketing manager, Coca-Cola global interactive marketing.

The video is the first video that Coca-Cola has released that was created solely for digital distribution without use in TV ads.  Want to know if it was a success for Coca-Cola?  Well, in the week since the video has gone live on YouTube, it has received over 700,000+ views.

Without further ado, here is the hilarious video from St. John’s University.  If you can’t view this video, head over to YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Coca-Cola has been garnering a lot of applause from the social media community as of late, first, with the release of their 3 page social media policy and now with this.

Do you like the concept?  How could other brands learn from what Coca-Cola has been doing?

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I definitely think it’s worth picking up, especially if you’re new to Twitter or still don’t quite get what everyone gets so excited over it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

I think this is a great example of a brand thinking outside the box.  Most commercials, especially for upcoming music albums, are sheer promotion for the album.  This commercial takes you back to all of the fantastic albums that Jay-Z has released over his career.  While showing you the previous album covers, the new single, Run This Town, from The Blueprint 3 is playing in the background thus hyping you for the new album.

The commercial ends with a call-to-action to head over to the specially designed section of the Rhapsody site dedicated to the album release.  There you can listen to the album, send updates to Twitter and Facebook of your favorite songs from the album, comment on the commercial, sign up for a subscription to Rhapsody and a whole bunch more.

There is so much that I think is cool about this but I want to know what you think about it.  If this was a commercial for an artist you really liked, would the commercial and landing page make you any more likely to try Rhapsody and/or buy the album?

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Check out Gary explain what he means by that statement and why YOU should be treating everyone like a goldfish as well.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I completely agree with Gary and think that his analogy is perfect.  This is what Gary lives by each and every day and one of the reasons why he has such a dedicated group of friends, fans, and supporters.  Sure, it’s hard to scale that as an individual but as long as you’re connecting as often as possible with as many people as possible, others notice and are appreciative.  Also, it doesn’t have to be long connections.  Just a simple “congrats” can make someone’s day (trust me, I know)

But, I think you can and should take it one step past Gary’s concept.  Instead of just connecting with someone like they were a goldfish in a bowl by themselves, how about connect with them and if possible, help them jump into a fish tank where they might have an opportunity with other fish that they may not already know.  Be that connector and help others with no selfish reasons behind it.

You know who does this really, really well?  Gary definitely does.  But, also, others like Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Amber Naslund, Brian Solis (all of whom YOU can connect with at the Inbound Marketing Summit) and many, many others, who spend most of their time connecting and helping others just because.

Are you treating everyone that you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to connect with like a goldfish?  Are you connecting with and helping your network as often as possible?  Know someone that is doing it really well and want to recognize them for it?

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Photo by: a_trotskyite

Recently I mailed out hand-written thank-you cards to every single sponsor of our Inbound Marketing Summits and Inbound Marketing Bootcamps, all of our clients and a handful of other people who have helped us at New Marketing Labs over the past few months. I figured that a personalized, hand-written thank-you card would mean a lot more than a standard email.

Plus, who needs another email? I know I sure don’t. As I continue to see the amount of physical mail I receive decrease due to paying bills online, receiving email newsletters, and communicating mainly via email and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, when a card or note from someone arrives, it means so much more. I actually take time to sit down and read it. I save it. It means more to me because I know that everyone in my circles run their lives from digital dashboards.

When I sent the thank-you cards I didn’t expect anything to come of it. I mean, all of these people have given us money or donated their time has a cost to it as well. The least I could do is take 2 minutes out of my life to send them a thank-you. Granted, I could’ve still sent everyone a piece of physical mail but made it a lot easier by typing a standard letter, printing 120 copies, signing them and then having them mailed out. But I chose not to. Why? Because that takes away the personal nature of the thank you. As great as standardization is for effectiveness, it does not translate to being more personal.

Right after I had mailed out all of the cards I had watched a MSNBC special about President Obama and the White House. While there were many things that I found fascinating during the 2 hour special, one thing that kept sticking with me was the fact that President Obama reads 10 letters from the public every single day. Now, I know that 10 letters doesn’t seem like a lot. Especially seeing that the White House receives over 100,000 emails, 1,000 faxes, and 2,500-3,500 phone calls every single day and over 65,000 physical letters every week (real numbers, not just estimations). A mere 10 letters per day isn’t even a drop in the bucket. But, before looking at it through that lens, stop and think about this for a minute.

The President of the United States is personally reading 70 letters from the American public every week. These letters aren’t being digested for him into a quick one-pager. These letters aren’t being scrubbed (except for security reasons) before the President sees them. Here’s the real win, not only is the President reading these letters every day but he personally responds to about 15 of those letters every week. No, not his secretary, not his Director of Communications, not his personal aide, or an intern, but the President is responding to them personally. Guess what? He hand writes every single response!

Check out this video of the President talking about why it is so important to him to stay in touch with the public:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Love him, hate him, you have to respect him for it. This is not a political debate but instead a look into a powerful tool that you can and should be employing into your businesses. Whether you’re an account executive, sales representative, manager, Director, VP or further up the structure, are you reaching out like this to your customers? I’m not talking about the obligatory holiday card or “thank you for your business” type stuff. I mean personalized, thought out, responses. How do you think a customer would feel if after calling into customer service or tech support, a few days later they received a hand-written note from that team member? Think you would win them over? Think you would create brand loyalty?  I think your chances are pretty high.

Need some other examples of people who are keeping their ear to the ground and listening to their customers?

*Tony Hsieh of Zappos is a perfect example. Tony is behind the company’s main Twitter account, currently hovering around 1.1 million followers. Tony responds to as many people as possible given the crazy schedule of a CEO of a $1.2 billion company, an in-demand public speaker and someone who has been featured in 2009 in every major business magazine. While I’m not sure whether Zappos reps send hand-written notes, they are empowered to help the customer in any way possible and they believe very strongly in building culture.

*Fritz Henderson. Fritz is the recently minted CEO of General Motors. Fritz has just a few things on his plate if you ask me. But, Fritz actively listens to customers by reading and responding to blogs, monitoring what’s being talked about in the media, and taking time to learn from people like Chris Brogan.  Fritz has even launched an online community called “Tell Fritz”.  Yes, I’m sure that Fritz has a substantially sized PR and communications teams as well as multiple agencies that work with those teams. Fritz also has my friend Chris Barger working social media for GM. But, besides all of those reports that he can call upon, Fritz takes an active role in listening and responding directly to his customers.

Want to listen like Tony, Fritz or many other executives now are?  Start by growing bigger ears!

Imagine how you would feel if Tony, Fritz or the President of the United States responded directly to you whether it be digital or hand-written (more points for the hand-written!). Now take that feeling and imagine how you could provide that same feeling for YOUR customers, business partners or your employees.

It’s not always the flashy things that make the biggest impacts. Something as simple as hand-written notes or a simple message to let them know you’re listening can win you a customer for life.

Are you doing this within your company? Do you know someone who is doing this and you want to recognize them for their efforts?

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Photo by: athena

Click here to view the embedded video.

Note: Sorry for some of the lighting issues. It was my first time playing with iMovie since get my MacBook

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The official description of the Federal IT dashboard is:

The IT Dashboard provides the public with an online window into the details of Federal information technology investments and provides users with the ability to track the progress of investments over time. The IT Dashboard displays data received from agency reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including general information on over 7,000 Federal IT investments and detailed data for nearly 800 of those investments that agencies classify as “major.” The performance data used to track the 800 major IT investments is based on milestone information displayed in agency reports to OMB called “Exhibit 300s.” Agency CIOs are responsible for evaluating and updating select data on a monthly basis, which is accomplished through interfaces provided on the website.

A complete overview of the Federal IT Dashboard, you can check out this video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

For anyone that loves to play with graphs, you’ll get lost on this site for hours.  Sometimes I had to remind myself that I was “playing” on a government website responsible for tracking Federal IT investments and projects.

Not only does the website offer the ability to look at an overview of all Federal IT investments and projects, it allows you to drill down by department as well.  Another interesting feature of the site are the interactive trend graphs.  Check out this video as an example.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The site has been designed to allow visitors to share all of this information via embeds, Twitter, Facebook, and Delicious.  You can also grab the CSV files or pull in the RSS feeds.

Of course, one of the first questions that comes to mind is whether or not these tools are actually being used or if they were just created to look pretty.  According to a July 17th blog post by Vivek Kundra, our Nation’s first Federal CIO, the Department of Vetern Affairs has halted 45 IT projects which were either behind schedule or over budget.  The total budget for these projects during Fiscal Year 2009 is approximately $200 million.  VA CIO Roger Baker credits the IT Dashboard with providing him the analysis needed to pinpoint these 45 IT projects.

It will be nice to see if other departments are able to use the available data in the same way that the Department of Vetern Affairs was able to.  A tool such as this would be useful to implement across other Federal budget expenditures as well as being designed for State and local government to use as well.  Understandably, this is a first step to hopefully more widespread implementation.  But, in it’s short history of being launched, I’d say that halting $200 million in over budget or behind schedule projects is a great accomplishment.

Have you checked out the Federal IT Dashboard yet?  What do you think about it?

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a personal assistant to a politician or political candidate. A body man accompanies the politician or candidate virtually everywhere, often arranging lodging, transportation or meals, and providing companionship, snacks, a cellphone, and any other necessary assistance.

After learning about Reggie after watching a MSNBC special on an inside look at the working White House, I did some more research.  Reggie has become one of the most well-known body men in political history, due in part to his role as a basketball player with the championship Duke University team and his try-outs with two NFL teams.  There have been some very interesting articles on Reggie and surrounding him considering himself the “Chief of Stuff”.

When President Obama was on the campaign trail, ESPN caught up with, then, Senator Obama and Reggie to profile the Chief of Stuff.  It’s a fun video to watch, in my opinion, since it’s another look behind-the-scenes.

If you can’t view this video in your browser, you can also find it here…

Not only do I find motivation watching people like Reggie Love do whatever it takes, working 18-20 hours or more per day, when I first heard Reggie describe himself as the “Chief of Stuff” it resonated with me.  As General Manager at both New Marketing Labs and at my steakhouse, I tend to focus on operations, processes, and doing my best to ensure everything runs smoothly.  Along the way there are tons of “stuff” that needs to be dealt with on a daily basis.

Also, there a lot of things that I help Chris Brogan with throughout the course of the week.  Now, Chris never asked me to take on a role as his personal aide, though I am his right-hand man with a lot of things.  He does after all have a personal assistant in Kathryn Jennex.  However, I’m always concerned with ensuring that Chris is taken care of and that his other obligations outside of NML are taken care of.

So, why do I do this?  Because first, foremost and most importantly, Chris is a close friend of mine who I want to see continue to succeed.  He doesn’t like doing paperwork, organizing or worry about the detail stuff.  That’s not what he’s best at.  I, on the other hand, enjoy doing that and actually need to be organized to function properly.  So, as much as I can, I work with Chris to make sure he doesn’t have to worry about all that “stuff” that would slow him down.  I also work with our internal team to ensure that we’re aligned on processes, staying organized and always moving things like side projects along.  With how busy everything gets, it is very easy to let certain things go astray.  I try my best to ensure that doesn’t happen.

That role doesn’t stop with NML or Chris though.  I function in this role at the steakhouse and at home too.  Joe, my best friend and business partner at Caminito, is just like Chris in how he feels about “stuff”.  Joe is best at being our Executive Chef, not at organizing, planning, logistics (except as it relates directly to the functioning of service).  At home, I naturally fall into this role because of how much I do it by day.  I handle the bills, the scheduling of maintenance, logistics, and anything else that will help Laura and I out.  That’s not to say that Laura doesn’t do a ton of “stuff” that keeps us functioning.  Things like laundry, dirty dishes and tons more seem to always escape me.  She keeps me in line with that stuff.

I guess that makes me a “Chief of Stuff” kinda too, huh?  I’m okay with that and actually enjoy it.  So, my official title may be “General Manager” but I thing “Chief of Stuff” is a little more fun

What are you the Chief of?  How do you handle all of the “stuff” that needs to be taken care of on a daily, weekly or monthly basis?

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]]> http://justinrlevy.com/2009/07/being-the-chief-of-stuff/feed/ 11 http://justinrlevy.com/2009/07/incipio-laptop-blackberry-and-iphone-cases-video-review/ http://justinrlevy.com/2009/07/incipio-laptop-blackberry-and-iphone-cases-video-review/#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:43:00 +0000 Justin Levy http://justinrlevy.com/?p=1366 Thanks to my friend Jason Moore-Brown (@mobomedia) I got a chance to test out a few products from Incipio.  Incipio makes all kinds of awesome cases and other accessories for your favorite electronics such as laptops, BlackBerry, iPhone, Kindle, and many many more.  I really enjoyed the laptop and iPhone cases that I’ve been testing out.  If you’re looking for some new accessories for your tech gear, definitely make sure to check out Incipio.

If you can’t view the video in the browser, you can also find this video review on YouTube, Viddler or Blip.tv…

Click here to view the embedded video.

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