What marketers can learn from showbiz
There’s no business like show business… apart from maybe marketing.
Before I fell head first into the world of marketing, I used to work in the entertainment industry. Recently, after reading a post about sales and marketing tricks one can learn from strippers, it struck me that much of my own marketing knowledge has come with me from showbiz. I decided to write my own piece and put my 2p’s worth in too.
Here are my favourite showbiz lessons:
Scrape me, my friend!
Technorati tells you the most interesting things sometimes. Something called “dailydatingnews” has apparently scraped my other blog for content (giving me a “read more” link, though somehow I don’t think it will count for much). Also, it would seem that Todd’s SMX post ended up somewhere in Mumbai. Gotta love the Internet.
Seattle followup
Just going through some of my past posts. Two random things I learned in Seattle:
- The original Starbucks really does have the original mermaid on the sign, just like
- Mathew said (nipples and everything!).
- The Moore Hotel I stayed at while at SMX is actually the best deal in Seattle. It was cheap ($70 a night or so), not too glitzy (more shabby-chic decor-wise but perfectly clean) and pretty no frills, except there actually were some frills, they were just really odd ones.
Here is a picture of my bath:
And here’s one of the hand towels folded into a swan:
If that’s not frilly, I don’t know what is.
My room was huge, the people were friendly and I even had free wireless in my room (which never happens in the US) and my own bathroom. A private room with a shared bathroom at the hostel would have cost me $7 more (and wasn’t available anyway).
SMX photos!
Freshly back from SMX. What an epic journey that turned out to be!
A combination of sleeping pills, jetlag and the remnants of my nasty flu I carried with me throughout my entire US trip has meant that I just slept for 12 hours straight. Maybe going out and drinking huge amounts of booze 4 days in a row, getting almost zero sleep and then waking up early and trying to do things like think and attend sessions and walk around and see things was not really the best way forward? I think I managed to squeeze every little bit of usefulness and fun out of the conference, even though my Seattle friends I was visiting afterwards had to deal with the consequences in the form of a very sick house guest for a few days.
Is there anyone in the SEO world who still doesn’t know the story about the 36 hours Dixon and I spent trying to get to Seattle? It was really fun telling it to people at the MSN party on the first night when everyone was drunk and jolly and I was so happy to actually be in Seattle, I could almost cry. By the next day when I’ve told the story 20 or so times at least, the novelty had somewhat worn off.
Luckily, the way back was much more straightforward.
I’m really glad I went. I’ve learnt a lot and got to hang out with some really cool people I don’t see nearly often enough. Now I have a few months of hard work ahead, putting to use all the stuff I picked up.
Here are some of my conference pictures:
Rob Kerry & Jay Young at the MSN party
I don’t know who that guy was, but he sure liked playing with the boats
Jay Young, eco warrior
Jay Young (aka raver boy) and a rather blurry Rob
Dixon makes up for lost time with the other frat boys
