Podonomics

Just got wind that my pal John C. Havens is joining the BlogTalkRadio team as the VP of Business Development. Havens was the lead organizer behind Podcamp NY, an unconference which drew over 850 attendees, a couple dozen exhibitors and criticism from some saying that Havens was running a regular conference. Havens is also the Guide for About.com’s Podcasting section.

This is awesome, so congratulations John!

Very interesting survey I stumbled upon. HRmarketer.com surveyed Human Resources (HR) managers to ask what influences their decision to buy HR products from suppliers and vendors. They found that:

• 42.9% will ask a peer and 26.1% will use Google or another search engine when searching for suppliers and vendors. Not surprisingly, only 1% of those surveyed use ads or printed material they received from a vendor or supplier.
• More than half of those who buy from suppliers of HR products and services had visited a blog (52%) and 43% have listened to a podcast.

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The government owned liquor stores here in Ontario, the LCBO, has launched a summer video podcast series. I took a look at the 2 that are available and I give it my thumbs up. It’s nice to see when corporations get it and do podcasting so well.

What I Liked:

• They chose the right format to show how to mix drinks - a video.
• The hosts are comfortable with the subject matter and are not reading from a script.
• The hosts also have great chemistry together.
• Great call to action at the end. They encourage people to go to their stores to buy products to mix their own featured drink.
• The production quality looks great, but isn’t too slick. Too many corporations believe that they have to hire a Hollywood production team to get it just right, however, the LCBO video podcasts has the right quality.

What Could Be Improved:

• Only one thing - Make the podcast link more prominent. Took about 4 clicks for me to get there. And it wasn’t until I went back this morning that I saw the blue area in the top right corner with “podcasts” listed. Fine, I’m a ditz, but then again, a confused mind always say no. Make it less confusing so your audience doesn’t get lost.

Well done LCBO.

I was on a client website this morning and saw the following sentence on their contact us page:

“Our Down-to-Earth Team Operates as a Partner, Not a Vendor.”

I thought about this after getting off the phone with a client (not the one related to the website mentioned above) who’s not happy with my service. It’s the first complaint I’ve had to deal with in 12-months. She was unhappy that she didn’t get any responses to her podcast and she felt that the podcast wasn’t a good use of her time or money.

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Jason Van Orden provides an excellent summary of the benefits and drawbacks of corporate podcasting based on what he saw and heard at the Corporate Podcasting Summit.

One thing he didn’t mention - Most of the case studies presented at the Summit reported their success as if it were an accident or a freak of nature. I wasn’t happy with that. It bugged me to hear people say:

“Wow, and that was totally unexpected.”

I interviewed the manager of the Butterball Turkey Talk account as to why Butterball chose to publish only 6 episodes. When I asked her what were the results, she gave me concrete numbers. She said they were expecting 5000 downloads and got just under 10,000. There was no apologetic tone in her voice, no hint of surprise. Butterball put together some numbers and evaluated the outcome based on their initial projections.

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I got in around 12:09pm Toronto time. I didn’t know what time it was until I got to the baggage claim area (why don’t airports have big neon clocks all over the place). The flight was uneventful, however, it was a smaller plane so the seats were a bit more cramped.

I typically blog about the sessions when I attend conferences, but decided that offering my thoughts on London culture would prove to be more interesting. Plus, Jason, Paul, Karin and the team at Podcasting News are doing some awesome summaries, so you can just visit their blogs.

Which brings me to my laundry list of the things I liked and didn’t like about London. It’s quite long as I had time on the 8-hour flight to scratch together 4 pages of notes, so skim through now, digest later.

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On the 7-hour flight over the pond on Sunday morning, they showed Goldfinger. I’ve seen the movie a dozen times (who hasn’t) and it helps having my most favourite James Bond starring in the movie - Sean Connery. And I just love the female protagonist’s name - Pussy Galore. The way Connery says her name in the entire movie is just hilarious.

I woke up in time to see the last 20-minutes of the film. If you want to learn how not to design a fight scene for your video podcast, watch the fight scene between Bond and Mr. Hat (don’t remember his character’s name). It’s the most inelegant, unsophisticated and poorly choreographed fight scene I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the reasons it’s so poor:

• There’s no muscial score. Therefore, there’s no clash of cymbals or the croon of violins to set the mood.
• You can hear their patent leather shoes slapping against the wax floor throughout the entire scene.
• The black top hat that Mr. Hat flings off his head towards Bond bounces off the gold bars at one point, however, when Bond throws it towards Mr. Hat, it then sticks in the marble wall.
• The punches looked so pansie.
• When Bond is thrown against the wall by Mr. Hat, he barely gets off the floor.

As for the conference, there was a “fight scene” that took place at the Corporate Podcasting Summit that was actually really good. It was between the guy from Podshow UK who was sitting on a panel and a guy from Podcast User Magazine who was in the audience. I think Paul or Jason will be blogging about it, so keep your eyes peeled on their blogs.

Update - Jason provided an excellent summary.

Tags: corporate podcasting, james bond, goldfinger, 007, sean connery, podshow, paul colligan, jason van orden, podcast user magazine

Just read that Scott McNealy totally skipped over the blogging thing and launched a podcast instead.

I’m not surprised. I don’t think his strength is in writing. In the 5-years I worked at Sun Microsystems, I sent 2 emails to Scott. He always replied, usually the same day, however, I can count on my 2 hands the number of words he typed up in his email responses to me.

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Liz Dreesen (seen on left), a surgeon and student at University of North Carolina in the United States recently wrote that she doesn’t support podcasting of her anatomy lectures because it means that students will no longer attend her class.

I hear this argument alot from educators. They’re worried that the podcast will come to replace the in-class experience, with students relying on them to get their information as opposed to physically being in class.

While I can appreciate Liz’s arguments, I also want to remind her that the goal should be to avail herself to the changing needs of her students. Inconvenience to a student can mean having to miss class due to illness, childcare, a death in the family or even stress. A video recording of Liz’s lecture will aid these students so that they don’t have to rely on 2nd hand information to still stay on top of the lessons.

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I’ve been through an acquisition. Four managers in three years. Name of the division changing every 6-months. Layoffs happening every quarter. Talk about feeling like the bastard child.

Well, if you’re a corporate type and you want to encourage your employees that everything’s going to be alright after a merger or acquisition, check out what Bank of America did.

I won’t spoil it for you, so just click here to view it on the AdFreak blog. All I will say is that it’s one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite rock bands. And it’s a darn clever idea.

Technorati: corporate podcasting, retention, social media