David Meerman Scott, Worldwide Rave

I really like talking with people who blaze new trails. Who says you need to follow the rules others created if something else works better for you and your customers?

David Meerman Scott wrote about The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly, which I recommend to any business owner willing to have a direct conversation with customers.

He recently released World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories, which is one of the books in my Amazon shopping cart.

David has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong and now also lives digitally, like many of us. Our conversation is about things digital, influence, and his work.

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A while back we talked about thought leadership at Conversation Agent. The main question was are blogs the new thought leadership? What do you think?

David: No way! A blog is just technology. That's like saying your television set is entertainment. Thought leadership is when you know your marketplace (I call them your buyer personas) really, really well and you create information especially for them.

When you know what problems your buyer personas have that you can help solve, then you can create some interesting content that brands you as a thought leader. There is no better marketing out there.

Of course, a blog is one way to deliver thought leadership information but there are many more -- a YouTube video, an eBook, charts, graphs, research reports, a set of photographs are just a few. Many have been talking about time and attention.

Your work focuses around the new rules of marketing and PR. Is it easier to break the old rules today with the proliferation of information about social media or is it just as challenging?

David: In thinking about attention, there seem to be four main ways to generate it today. What's interesting to me, is that three of them have been around for many decades as tools of business, but one of them is new because of the Web. As I evaluate companies on a regular basis it seems that they are spending too much time, money, and effort on three ways of generating attention, and not enough on a fourth way, which is to earn attention by publishing great information online that people will find.

You can BUY attention. (This is called advertising). You buy access to people through television commercials, magazine and newspaper ads, the Yellow Pages, billboards, trade show floor space, direct mail lists, and the like. Advertising agency staffers are really good at buying attention.

You can BEG for attention. (This is called Public Relations). You beg for access via the editorial gatekeepers at radio and TV stations, magazines, newspapers, trade journals, and more and more these days, bloggers, podcasters and other social networking sites.

I realize that the word "beg" is a little extreme, but in my former life as VP of corporate communications for several public companies I did feel a bit like a beggar. And these days I get hundreds of pitches a month from people (usually PR agency staffers) who want me to write about something in the magazine articles I write or my blog or books and many of these pitches have a whiff of desperation about them.

You can BUG people one at a time to get attention. (This is called sales). You knock on doors, call people on the telephone, send personal emails, or wait for individuals to walk into your showroom. Again, sorry about the extreme nature of the word "bug" but that's what I feel when the confronted with pushy sales tactics.

You can EARN attention online. The idea is creating something interesting and publishing it online for free: A YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, twitter stream, ebook, Facebook fan page and the like.

Most organizations have a corporate culture around one of these approaches to generating attention. (Examples: P&G primarily generates attention through advertising, Apple via PR, EMC via sales, and Zappos via social media). Often the defining organizational culture is because the founder or the CEO has a strong point of view. When the CEO comes up through the sales track, all attention problems are likely to become sales problems.

Chances are that your CEO did not come up via the social media track. So you’ll have to convince your boss to invest in social media. Most organizations over spend on advertising and sales and under-invest in social media, but nearly all organizations should be doing some combination of all four ways of generating attention.

Tell us a little bit of how you got here. What are the ideas and people that influenced you? Why?

David: I worked as a marketing executive for information companies most of my career. I was Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world's largest information companies and then I was VP marketing for NewsEdge (which was sold to Thomson in 2001). I was lucky to have been working in the electronic information business way before the public Web started to gain traction in the mid-1990s. This experience was unique in that it gave me a way to think about information as a marketing tool.

When I first started talking about the ideas of reaching buyers directly with Web-based information, I was treated as a nutcase. In 2002 and 2003 these ideas were radical. PR people and advertising people were resistant. Company executives were unwilling to listen.

However, in 2004 I started my blog. One of the biggest influences on me and my ideas was (and still is) Seth Godin. His ideas about Permission Marketing were like a dose of adrenaline when I first read them. And he was one of the first marketing bloggers. I was excited that in 2006 he noticed some of my ideas and wrote about them on his blog. It was exciting for me and charged me up. He also showed me that you can make a career by being a radical.

I know that many who are making a difference today are there because they want to change the world. In a way, the tools have made it easier to spread the word, but it is really about intent. When did you first realize you were going to step forward to help transform public relations? Was there a specific event or conversation that inspired you?

David: I was fired from Thomson Corporation (now Thomson Reuters) in 2002 which was one of the best career moments I've had (although I didn't realize it at the time). My ideas around Web marketing and online PR were too radical for my former employer. So I decided to start my own business to spread what I had learned about marketing & PR on the Web.

It was tough going at first because 2002 and 2003 were very early for these ideas. Luckily, some foreword thinking companies agreed with me an I was able to grow my business.

Who do you consider part of your team? If you were to share one word of advice with them, what would it be?

David: I am fiercely independent. I don't have any employees. However I have a huge virtual team including my publisher John Wiley & Sons, my designer Doug Eymer, my SEO guru StewArt Media, my speaking coach Nick Morgan, and my family. My virtual team also includes all my blog readers, Twitter followers, and Facebook friends because I test ideas on my blog before I put them into books and my speeches.

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What about you? What are you helping transform? How do you feel you contribute? Feel free to ask any questions of David as well.

Comments

[Mary Ann Halford]

Valeria, great interview. I am a fan of David's work. I very much liked how he broke out the four ways of generating attention.

[Michael Zipursky]

Love hearing stories of how people get knocked down and stand right back up. Many people might see the success of someone like David and think that's the way it's always been. But as most entrepreneurs and business owners come to see sooner or later, it's the failures that make the successes. Great interview Valeria.

[Laurens Van den Wijngaert]

Dear Valeria,

Great post (interview), really!

Kindest regards,
Laurens

[Kyle Hansen]

Valeria:
I just read his book, thought it was excellent. Your interview with him added some good new insight. I am working to transform my business and industry as a result!

[David Meerman Scott]

Valeria - Thanks for this. It was really fun to connect and you are a terrific interviewer. I like the way I answered some of these questions so I'm going to point people here. All the best, David

[Tiffany Monhollon]

Thanks for sharing this. Think I'll have to share his four models for attention around the office. Maybe make it into a poster. Or a t-shirt. :)

[Doug Eymer]

I have worked with David since he wore a shirt and tie to his corporate office.

He is a great client because not only is he easy to work with (and allows me to do my best work), he is always cooking up some crazy scheme – which end up being extremely forward-thinking and successful!

[Paula Farrington]

Thanks for a great article, Valeria! David explains things in a way that is easy to remember -- a conversation lesson in itself! Will look forward to picking up David's book.

Many thanks!

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Mary Ann - I'm starting to see how many love David's work. I'm so glad you started a blog. It will give you a lot of satisfaction.

@Michael - thank you, and thank you for participating to #kaizenblog. We enjoyed your comments and contribution.

@Laurens - thank you for stopping by.

@Kyle - can't wait to see what you come up with. I really enjoyed your site.

@David - they do call me Conversation Agent for a reason. I love learning about what makes people who they are because it is such a great foundation for understanding how they work and interact.

@Tiffany - glad you could stop by. I have already embedded this model in a presentation. Had a few days with the content before everyone else saw it :)

@Doug - I liked that he mentioned all of the people who work with him. It was fun finding all of you and looking at your portfolios and body of work.

@Paula - glad this inspired you to buy the book. I still learn so much from a quiet reading and thinking...

[Jamie Favreau]

I too am a huge fan of both David and Seth. They share the same principles and I could listen to both of them speak for hours and always learn something new.

[Alec]

This is the best interview of David that I've read. I'm a great fan of his books as well.

He is a very clear and open thinker: it's nice to hear from someone who really wants to share and impart his ideas.

I like his approach: encouraging some of all four ways to bring attention to your business. So many experts encourage only their own special area of experties.

If you ever interview him again, I'd love to hear more about how he runs his business sometime. No employees is a very ascetic policy.

[Des Walsh]

This is great. I had the privilege of hearing David speak in Sydney this week and this post helps me refresh on some key points. The buy, beg, bug, or earn list is brilliant - although some PR people in the rather boisterous crowd got cranky about the "beg" element the other night: David handled that with humor, courtesy and aplomb.