Isaiah, the new Old Spice pitch man, makes the men laugh and the ladies swoon.  His commercials generated so much heat that television could not contain him.  Now Isaiah and Old Spice are social media darlings spreading viral smiles across the globe.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Isaiah is now in the pantheon of commercial celebrities like the “What’s the Beef?” Wendy’s Lady and the Burger King King who most recently showed up on chat roulette giving away coupons in a smart social media play. While Isaiah is at his peak, and after the World Cup domination of Twitter has ended, Old Spice rolled out this campaign that everybody’s talking about.

In a brilliant PR move,  Isaiah has spent the last couple of days responding directly to bloggers, journalists, celebrities and random Twitter followers through well crafted, funny and sensual You Tube videos.  He even asked a woman to marry a man who requested that Isaiah deliver the proposal for him. The “Isaiah Talks to You” social media marketing campaign hits high notes few have seen.

The Old Spice You Tube channel is bursting at the seams with entertaining videos that you can’t help sharing with others.Though you won’t have enough time to watch them all at least check out the Alyssa Milano response above (which will surely get Isaiah a date) and the Justine Bateman response.

Rick Bakas gives a good overview of why this social media marketing campaign is so effective with some points that are worth repeating. The big takeaway for anyone interested in beefing up their social media marketing is to connect with influencers who care about your product or service.

Isaiah’s first videos responded to bloggers and journalists that had written about the Old Spice commercials.  They have huge audiences, and like all people, they like to hear their own name.  If Isaiah responded to you in a You Tube video how many people would you tell?

The main ingredients of the Old Spice social media marketing campaign come together to show how online and offline branding can work amazingly well together with good strategy.  What we can all learn from this, besides the fact that sex still sells (especially when the bare chested man speaks directly to the ladies by name), is that social media marketing has hit the mainstream.

Major corporations are building relationships with their audiences in more and more creative ways.  Social media has moved the needle to being a very powerful tool that any brand can use to generate awareness, interest and more sales.  So who is your Isaiah and when are you rolling out your next campaign?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Somehow I’m guessing that James Arthur Ray didn’t have this or possible jail time and losing his millions on his vision board but somehow it’s in his life anyway. Hmm, how could that happen?  Do things ever happen in your life that aren’t on your vision board?

James Ray’s Twitter bio says “Create Harmonic Wealth in every area of your life: Financial, Relational, Mental, Physical and Spiritual.”  …not this time.

As I wrote awhile back, the biggest secret about The Secret is that the stars of the movie were all proven internet marketing/self help gurus with responsive opt-in lists of well over 100,000 each.

They seeded the marketing campaign for the movie on the internet to well over a million people for a year before it’s DVD release.  Remember that it wasn’t a theatrical release, it was a brilliant online marketing campaign.

The Secret movie and book had a low overhead and a high profit margin mixed with a planned back end of products and services by all of the featured ‘experts’ to offer to all the new people looking to experience “The Secret” in their lives too.

I know a couple of the people who devised the scheme, so this isn’t conjecture.  It was a smart way for them to joint venture their individual successes in order to boost all of their careers by creating a premium brand for self help.

Today they are all multi-millionaires based on how the success of the book and movie allowed them to send their speaking fees, products and course costs through the ceiling.  Self help is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it’s selling false hope at a premium price.

They are all master marketers who fill rooms of people with cheap tickets, and then pitch back of the room offers (their advanced courses and advanced advanced VIP courses with ever-higher dollar price tags) that promise to be THE answer to your problems.

Note the latest internet marketing technology on their Science of Getting Rich website if you don’t believe me.  They have gotten rich by selling the idea that they have the key to YOUR wealth and happiness though most of their customers have not gotten either wealth or happiness as a result of becoming their customers.

Preying on people’s hopes and fears related to their money, careers, relationships, health and death for profit is nothing new.  It’s the backbone and life blood of politics, religions and mainstream media.

Unfortunately, this time selling self-help snake oil resulted in tragic and preventable deaths.  I doubt that participants paying $9,933 to be a ‘spiritual warrior’ thought this would be what they got out of the seminar.

I have a friend who has spent $6,000 a year and used his two weeks of vacation every year for 7 years going to T. Harv Eker, the master of back of the room sales, seminars on how to get rich.  My friend is currently unemployed, but Harv’s doing just fine thank you.

Is positive thinking and visualizing a better life a bad thing? Of course not, but selling people on the fact that it will magically give them everything they want from God and ‘The Universe’ is a flat out sham.

Unfortunately, millions of people will still not wake up, even after this tragedy.  They’ll continue to part with their money to gamble on the hope that someone will deliver a magic book, CD or event to change their lives.

If you want to change your life, it’s pretty simple.  Do something.  Drop the stories and excuses and just take action.  If you do smart things and have luck you’ll have a better chance of succeeding, but there are no guarantees.  As you know and have experienced yourself, both good and bad things happen to both good and bad people.

There is no magic pill, no magic teacher, no magic course and no magic book (including ‘holy’ books written and edited by powerful men with a vested interest in amassing and controlling followers.)

There are helpful tools, but when push comes to shove you have to keep taking action with good intentions and hope for the best.  If there was a magic formula everyone would use it and we would not be in a worldwide recession.  Focus on what you can control, let go of what you can’t and be thankful you did better in the womb lottery than people born in Rwanda.

If you insist on submissively following a guru then I encourage you to follow the wisdom, um, I mean Duhism, of Bob Tzu, Lao Tzu’s long lost American cousin.  His wisdom is encapsulated in three simple, yet life changing steps: 1. Shut up and stop whining. 2. Get off your butt and do something, and 3. Repeat (as necessary.)

I am not making light of this tragic event.  Far beyond that, I’m hoping that it causes more people stop paying money to these charlatans and start creating their own destinies instead.

According to the loud mouths in the media, the birth of TV was supposed to kill radio.  Then cable TV was supposed to kill standard TV.  Then VCR home recording was supposed to kill visits to movie theaters.  Now the internet and video games are supposed to kill TV.  It’s just more ‘look, the sky is falling’ hoo-hah.  (And any opportunity to use the word ‘hoo-hah’ is one I’ll take because it’s fun to say.)

Even newspapers will never die.  The industries of the past are crumbling and newspaper subscriptions will continue declining, but they’ll always be around in some fashion.

That said, the era of participatory media is in full force.  It was a babe when blogs and YouTube hit the scene, but  now it’s how young people get most of their news.

As generation Y is poised to dominate the population in a few years, all communication and business marketing methods are shifting to two-way or multi-channel platforms like blogs and Twitter.  Gone are the days where advertisers could win the day by shouting unwanted messages to an unsuspecting public or when you had to wait until TV told you what was happening in your world.

I’s all about community, transparency, trust agents, authenticity and tribes.  Although, for now the signal to noise ratio is still way off as old school people and companies still try to use new multi-channel platforms to broadcast obnoxious marketing messages no one wants without being genuine contributors to conversations people are looking to have.  If they aren’t helping, they’re hurting.  But they’ll learn, or they’ll die.

On another note, you probably remember the famous “Wassup” superbowl commercial in 2000.  What you may not know is that is was originally a short film done by a college student and then Budweiser hired him to remake it into a commercial with beer.

Watch the original ad below and the follow up to it in 2008 with the same actors.  Note how this user generated content (UGC) powerfully conveys information about how the world changed in eight years.  Then think about how much information you’ve learned in the last week or month from UGC videos, blog posts, Twitter tweets and other sources.  It’s a brave new world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

No wonder the company has yet to make any money, while Facebook, too, has yet to deliver on its financial potential. None of this is to say, of course, that the internet hasn’t had a profound impact on individuals, companies and interactivity – but the fact that typical Twitter users are older than initially believed means that businesses will need to rethink how they use it.

I wrote the following comment to the article and felt it was worth reposting here:

The trouble with this, and so many other articles on Twitter, is that it’s a myopic view. There are so many different valuable ways that social media is being used and opening previously closed doors of connection and collaboration.

Have you watched the latest viral video on what’s happening right now with social media? http://bit.ly/11gDZC

Yes, 40% or more of what’s on Twitter is babble. So follow people who provide the signal you want and unfollow the noise. Isn’t what traditional media gives us arguably 40% or more babble and nonsense? That’s part of why more people choose not to give so much time to traditional media. If you don’t choose your friends and co-workers wisely isn’t 40% of what they talk about just babble? When humans communicate it’s never 100% valuable content.

As far as the ‘tips’ at the end of the article, they’re in the same vein of all ‘tips’ given for social media. They all boil down to ‘don’t be an idiot and use online communication and relationships with the same common sense way you handle your offline relationships.’ ‘Duh.’

Something people miss a lot in trying to cover this space is that it’s a ‘both/and’ proposition to traditional media and offline communication tools. It’s not ‘either the old way or the new way.’ There are times where each is helpful and they compliment each other like allopathic medicine and alternative medicine.

The perspective that social media has to be judged as better or worse than other ways of connecting is a false starting point that leads to more false opinions based on limited information and even less experience using the tools.

I’m guessing that the author of the article and the authors of the negative comments are not daily social media users. When you’re using these tools regularly you tap into their worth and understand as well experience the personal and professional benefits of using social media.

One of the most significant shifts that social media is driving is the spirit of collaboration rather than competition in some business spaces and in intellectual property systems.  These are both driving scalable innovations that will benefit everyone.  What you don’t know won’t hurt you, but it will leave you in the dust as life moves forward with amazing changes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stats from Video (sources listed below by corresponding #)

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
27. Only 14% trust advertisements
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

If you still don’t understand what social media is this will help:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sexy time.  It’s not always at the same habitual time like breakfast or teeth brushing time, right?  Or is it?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Researchers at the University of Texas did a study in 2007 with 2,000 participants that revealed 237 reasons why people have sex.  (Really, they couldn’t stretch it to 250 to get a good round number?)  But, you won’t find much published information on when people have sex …unless you’re a marketer.

We all know that sex sells and subliminal advertising sells.  Therefore one would expect marketers and advertisers to be all over research on sex, and they are.  If you’d like to know when people have sex it’s very easy to find the answer.  Just open a magazine.

If you choose any magazine randomly and flip through the pages you will notice that most, if not all, of the ads for watches feature prominent watch faces set to 10:10.  Why?  Because statistically most people have sex at 10 pm.

Some of us are morning sex people, and some of us prefer sex earlier or later than 10 pm, but the research in marketing circles says that most of us like our sexy time when we turn the lights out at 10 pm.

The question is, “Does it work?”  Well, I’ve never looked at an ad for a watch and become aroused or felt compelled to buy a watch much less look at the one on my wrist.  But maybe I’m the exception.  What happens to you when you see a big, handsome bold-faced watch set to 10:10?

I bet you didn’t know you could learn so much from a watch ad in a magazine.  When they pay that much attention to try make a watch sexy just imagine what goes into trying to sell you a pair of sexy shoes or a brand new car.

…and after you open a magazine and see this, the answer is “Yes, I am psychic and I’m reading your mind.” (It’s a side effect of studying psychology, influence and persuasion.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Simply review the laws passed last year or over the last decade or the last century to see who benefited most from the laws and who sacrificed or suffered as a result of the laws.  While the media pretends that we should focus on the us vs. them B.S. of Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal, the elephant in the room is that it doesn’t matter.

Politics today is all about PR.  Billions of dollars are spent on public relations to frame the way the public views issues and current events.  If you talk to anyone who consumes talk radio or cable news they will regurgitate the repeated talking points drilled into their minds and they will not be able to go deeper on the issues than this.  It’s time for people to wake up, think, listen to their guts and stop swallowing these tactics.  Just say no to being blindly influenced.

George Carlin explains this humorously – but be warned that foul language comes with the medicine.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I accidentally saw the first few minutes of local news recently and noticed that it looked just like it did when I was a kid and my parents watched it.  They have the same formula as always: An intro with visuals that include flashing police car or fire truck lights and an audio track of a reporter talking in that ridiculous reporter-sing-song voice telling you that the content they’re sharing is VERY important and significant.  If they’re lucky they can splice some security camera footage into the piece too for an extra scary effect.

I’m sure they still cover the weather at exactly 17 minutes after the hour too, but for the sake of this post we’ll stick with the intro.  News, whether it is on broadcast or cable television, on the web or in newspapers, generally leads with some story aimed at reminding you that the world is not a safe place.

It’s probably even a little worse since they created the oft-used phrase, “In a post-9/11 world…”  The truth is that we don’t live in a country where suicide bombers are blowing up cafes and you’re more likely to get hit by lightning or win the lottery without a ticket than to be harmed by a terrorist in America.

This truth is exactly the same now as it was 5 years or 50 years before 9/11.  That’s just a fact and it has nothing to do with how much our president has or has not protected us or that you aren’t allowed to carry a regular sized can of shaving cream on to an airplane anymore.

It has to do with the low number of terrorists who have the inclination or means to harm us.  We don’t live in Columbia or Israel where terrorist violence is a reality. We live in America where impoverished drug addicts with guns are actually a bigger threat than terrorists.  And when was the last time you or someone you love was car jacked by a crack addict or directly threatened by a terrorist?  That’s my point.

Back to the media, it’s not that they like to scare people.  (At least I hope not.)  It’s because consumers are reactionary creatures that respond to emotional content.  That’s also why they always ask the asinine question of, “How do you feel?” to the woman whose son got killed an hour ago in a car accident or the guy who made the 3 point shot to win the basketball game.

Have these interviewees ever given a surprising answer even once in the history of the world?  Nope.  Guess what, the guy whose house burned down says “I’m in shock and upset that I lost everything, but I’m grateful that my family made it out in time.”  Surprise!  You never here him say, “I’m excited and going to Disneyland on the insurance money.  It’s a godsend that my shack is gone and I can cash in!”

The fact that many news consumers forget is that the news is a product.  Therefore, if you study advertising you’ll understand why the product of news is sold with the same methods as selling the product of beer or the product of voting for a politician.

Consumers are emotional creatures that unconsciously react to advertising.  Add to this fact that people react more strongly to negative advertising than positive advertising.  If my news program makes you afraid by making you think crime is up it concurrently attracts you to watch my news because you think I’ll give you information on what’s happening that will make you feel safer.

I create the problem that you should be afraid while positioning myself as your answer to feel safer.  It’s the same schtick for self help gurus who tell you they have the answer for your health, relationship and money issues.  The day you feel safe is the day you lose dependence on being a daily news consumer and the day you believe your life is not broken you lose the desire to spend money on books, CDs and seminars to fix yourself.

Ironically, crime in America has consistently been going down for well over a decade even though most people who regularly consume news think it’s always going up.  If you see a petty crime reported as the lead story every night the images of flashing lights repeated daily is what your brain remembers.

Perception is reality when you’re being blindly influenced.  If they want good ratings they need to give you a perceived threat so you’ll tune in to “stay informed.”  It may be worthwhile to question how informed you really become blindly consuming what others determine is “news.”

Tonight is the night of the second presidential debate.  This seems like as good a day as any to launch a blog on how you are marketed to by advertisers, politicians, experts, media, and sometimes even your friends. If you think you might hear at least one lie, fabrication or stretching of the truth by Barack Obama or John McCain tonight raise your hand.  (Wow!  That’s a lot of hands!)

Even better, we’ll sometimes cover ways you influence, sell to and market to your friends and sometimes even to yourself.

You are blindly influenced many times a day and you blindly influence others at least a few times a day.  Have you been told an interesting “fact” from a friend today that fit into your beliefs?  Maybe it was about Barack Obama, or John McCain, or Wall Street or any number of newsworthy topics.  Chances are that the “facts” you heard were somewhat truthful and somewhat dubious.

This isn’t a slam on you or your friends.  It’s simply a result of how the human brain works and how our marketing-saturated culture operates in 2008.

Blind patrotism is an obvious example of this.  The first few years after 9/11 we witnessed blind patriotism on steroids.  Emotions ran high which concurrently made critical thinking run low.  This resulted in Americans swallowing gallons of lies that fortunately became obvious in only a few years instead of a few decades.

Again, this is nothing personal, it’s how the human brain operates. Why do you think Tony Robbins and others using NLP (Neurolinguistic programming) have done so well?

As this blog grows we’ll explore how our minds deceive us and how others can use this against us.  By realizing how this happens you’ll be one of the few who isn’t going to fall for the B.S. – well, at least not as much of it as your neighbors.

So as you watch the debate tonight, and politicians speaking on any night, keep your critical thinking hat on and put on your glasses to see through the blind influence.