Hey Fans.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. Been working on a couple amazing projects and making people rich. Some new posts are coming soon based on my new experiences so please come back soon.

Miss you all

s!

When I was younger I was fascinated by Hypnotism, Girls and Music. So in high school to combine all my passions at the time I used to make mix tapes for girls with subliminal messages in the music for girls to fall in love with me.

Not sure if I did it right cause while there was no love created I sure did help a lot of girls quit smoking and have better body image.

Seeing that I never quit anything I’m giving it another try. I’m teaching myself how to DJ from my iPad/Laptop and am sharing with you my first real dj set. I admit it is rough and some parts are down right sloppy (trying to scratch a record with a mouse is just weird) but all you need to do is sit back and enjoy almost two hours of Disco, Funk, Hip Hop and Rock and if you pay real close attention you will either lose your urge to smoke or maybe just maybe fall in love with me.

Click the turntable below to download or just click here.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think and more marketing like posts will resume Jan 1st.

oh ya…and if you like this, share it with a friend.

Startup Life is romaticized by many. Seems very glamourous and fun and I will be the first to say there are times when it’s pretty awesome, if you have a strong stomach and are ok with doing anything to get some attention.

As you may or may not know, I am an advisor for Urbandig.com, Urbandig is an iphone app that delivers off the beaten path guides right to your phone and lets you be a local or act like one in a slew of cities in the US and Canada.

Below are a few of the steps we took to get the word out about our app pre and post launch.

*Disclaimer* Nothing can replace having a great product so before you get all excited and try to copy any of this make sure your product or service is even worth looking at! Also I am only going to highlight the most interesting non-traditional steps we took to cause a spectacle. Like all good plans there was a good mix of traditional (Launch Rock pages, emails, back channel outreach, media outreach, social media etc) marketing with the following not so traditional ideas.

Pre Launch Head Scratching:  Teaser Campaigns can be interesting and fun but teaser stuff is only really effective if you can get people guessing…and if they have no idea who you are the guessing wont last too long. Unless you re-invent the idea of a teaser campaign.

Since Urbandig is about people finding places in their city (or a city they are traveling to) it seemed perfectly logical (to me at least) to start writing Missed Connections. As you can see from above each Missed Connection mentions a location on Urbandig as well as an interesting story to get lost in. These listings where free (may not be after this post) and while you are probably saying “Big Deal, One Missed Connection wont convert anyone”. To that I would say you are right but 300+ different MC’s is a different story

Another Pre-launch attention was to instigate an organization to try to stop our launch all together.

@Petaforrabbits is militantly against the use of Rabbits for testing, food or experiments. They took offence to Urbandig using a rabbit as their logo and tried their best to stop Urbandig from launching.

You are probably asking yourself how we got so lucky to get an organization to take such a shine to us, tweet about us and even physically protest our launch event causing a disturbance to everyone who tried to enter the building and resulting with the protesters getting physically removed from the property by security…well the answer is we made them up.

Yep. We created the twitter account. Sent out a slew of tweets days before, crazy tweets, engaged people in conversations and targeted a lot of the people attending the event with crazy banter and I am sure made more than a few people uncomfortable. Then hired people off craigslist to pretend to be protestors so that people would not forget attending this event because it is never fun to be yelled at as you enter an event.

The point was to stand out at a launch featuring 20+ other startup launching as well. Inside the building was going to be (and was) noisy so by creating the first touch, and a bad one at that we had people thinking about and scratching their heads about the whole protest/launch and that was time not spent thinking about the other 20 companies in the room.

Week One: Sprinkle a little traditional marketing with the still fresh memory of our launch and we found ourselves in the very fortunate and enviable position of being featured on the home page of the iTunes store as a Hot Pick, Staff Pick and New and Notable (see above about having a great product first and foremost)  and while we could have sat back with our feet up and soaked in our good fortune, we didn’t.

Why?

Because it is all about momentum.

So as a follow up to the Protests and the iTunes recognition we did the only other obvious thing to grab some attention.

We tried to sell a Grilled Cheese on eBay with a Spiritual Image on it. The image happened to be the Urbandig logo and not Jesus but that didn’t seem to matter to people since it was viewed over 2000 times in the first day resulting in the auction being made a “Hot Auction” and finishing with over 14,000 views on eBay and a big chunk of those people following the links to our site to investigate further.

Influencer Program –  I wish I could share this but it is kinda propriatary. I will say that chasing down Robert Scoble and other 2.0 darlings is the old way to do this. Sure I asked these folks to look at us but it was about 1 egg in a basket of 100. Who the influencers are has changed and if you can figure out how and why we did what we did you are probably thinking like us.

Create a Myth- A myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning attached to it other than it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being extraordinary” I love to talk and tell stories. My stories are true and sometimes fantastical. An example that fits here involves the canceled TV show The PlayBoy Club and Urbandig. You see the day the PlayBoy Club show was canceled I asked some street art folks to do some work on a high profile billboard and give it a makeover if you will.

This is funny to me because of the bunny connection etc. Did it really happen? I have no idea. I asked someone to look after it but I never saw it first hand. I still tell lots of folks about it though cause its cool and when I do I say it “allegedly” happened…because it is never smart to admit to something like this. That is not only true but it allows the person hearing the story fill in the blanks and make it whatever they want it to be…hence a myth.

I could go on and on with more examples but I think this may be a good place to stop for now. Obviously this isn’t a plan or a roadmap but I do hope you will find some inspiration from the ideas here or at the very least realize I’m awesome.

I also invite you to check out and download the Urbandig App. (talk about burying the lead)

When I was a kid growing up I clearly remember my Dad spending most nights circling job postings (or want ads for the older readers) from the newspaper. My Dad had a job, in fact he has his own business so he wasn’t circling the ads to look for a new career but rather for addresses of business to send the company catalog to.

I’ve noticed that I share a lot of my Dad’s quirks and like him I am constanly reading job postings. I do it online so that is a little different and I am not doing it for addresses to send mail to but I do like to know what people are hiring for so I can send postings to people I know looking for work etc as well keep an idea of what kind of roles are becoming popular etc.

Recently I’ve noticed a new role popping up a lot.

Marketing Scientist.

When I first say this I assumed  it was a (not so) cute startup job description similar to the ones with Ninja, Guru in them but this is an actual job that people are racing to staff. I wont bore you with the details but it did get me thinking….

Is Marketing an Art or a Science? 

[I wonder if people realize that when I ask a question like that in my posts I actually say it out loud as I am typing the way Carrie used to on Sex in the City -ed.]

I am asking this question because I think the idea of Marketing as an art form is getting lost in this new world of big data. My opinion (agree or disagree) is that art is the meal and science is the dessert.

There are a time and place for both but you should always start with the meal and here is why. I would never use a spreadsheet to tell me the sentiment of a market or a community but I would use a spreadsheet to figure out what programs I dreamt up while day dreaming worked best, connected and be optimized.

Quick Example: It is popular to use auto follows and automated twitter collection to gather up followers but if all you are collecting are bots and not engaging with anyone what good are you really doing?

Science will tell you tonnes of data as to how people responded to an idea but it wont tell you how people will react to an idea and tell you where the line of good taste or what people will put up with is. Art is about finesse and so should be marketing during certain stages.

As long as you are dealing with humans (and not something else) it needs to be Art than Science, and it’s pretty difficult to do just one or the other. Both have a place and both are necessary but if you were to try just one I say Art….because I am better at that.

Who’s with me ladies? (also said out loud just like Carrie would on Sex in the City)

In the last post I talked about Steve Jobs, Jelly Helm and vision. I am still on a bit of Jelly Helm kick so I am going to keep on him a little longer. A few months back when I was introduced to Jelly I was fascinated (and still am) by something he said.

I am paraphrasing here but he said before he works with people he asks them to answer 3 questions.

1-What do I love?

2-What do I see that no one else does?

3- What do I do?

I’ve walked around with these questions in my head for a while after I heard them because while it seems silly and easy, they are actually pretty difficult to answer if you are going to be honest with yourself but I am going to try because I had an experience this past week that taught me a little about myself and gave me the breakthrough on the answers.

So here goes:

1: I love creating experiences that people will never forget and talk about over and over.

2: I see as clear as day what “you can get away with” and am able to make decisions if it is worth going over the line or staying inside of it.

3: I execute, follow through and never fail.

Sure this all sounds very “look at me, i’m awesome” but I urge you to try to answer these questions for yourself. Leave me a comment and let me how it went because this process and my “breakthrough” experience opened my eyes to something very important about myself and now I realize that the thing that makes me different than most (if not everyone) is that I am not afraid to get hurt personally or professionally if I know I am right about something. I will always put myself out there to make something work or to make something better because to be different or visionary you need to take some risks and sometimes risk makes people uncomfortable.

In 2008 I wrote a blog post for a now defunct AOL owned property about how Twitter was going to ruin long form conversation. The post was pseudo tounge in cheek and when it got a series of negative comments I was told I could never contribute to the site again, ever. Well guess what. Read the post now and a lot of what I said came true (sorta). This is why standing up for what you know is right is important…because there is probably something you see that no one else does.

So what is it that you love, see and do?

Originally written for the FreshBooks Blog. If you like this sort of content please check out FreshBooks.com/blog. I’ve reposted it here because I think it is a good post.

Most of the world heard the news of Steve Jobs passing yesterday and as expected when someone as beloved and historically significant as Mr. Jobs passes there will be tributes. Instead of repeating what hundreds have already said I would like to offer a different take and actually attempt to describe what made Mr. Jobs different by not talking about him at all but rather to share an experience I had recently.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear Jelly Helm speak. For those not familiar, Jelly Helm is formerly Executive Creative Director of Wieden+Kennedy in Portland and Amsterdam, and Founder/Director of W+K 12, Wieden+Kennedy’s experimental in-house school. I speak at a lot of conferences and am exposed to a lot of great people so I am a little jaded but knew right away that this talk was going to be different.

For starters, Jelly didn’t speak to the crowd, he welcomed us into his mind and explained Branding and Storytelling with a “Show, Don’t Tell” point of view [side note: Show, Don’t tell will be the name of my Marketing book if I ever find the time to write it] and introduced concepts and ideas that on first glance were probably out of the norm but upon further thought made perfect sense.

Jelly introduced the concept of how some of us see a tragic gap between the world as we know it and the place we know it could be. He referenced Parker Palmer by calling it a tension between corrosive cynicism and irrelevant optimism (a place of no shadows) and stated that this is really a creative tension and where the growth actually occurs.

Think about that for a second. Everything has two sides and needs a little of both to be great.

The other thing that every great idea/company needs is the following:

• Vision: What you see
• Purpose: What you do different, do it
• Presence: Let people see purpose by what you do – present expression, the experience of you
• Roots: What do you come from, how you see the world, pull everything into your story. Deep roots are fed by a vision

Have you ever asked yourself what’s your deep story that connects vision to roots?

If you can answer that question and have a real passion for something, I, Jelly and Steve would tell you to follow your passion because very few people get to say that they are doing what they really love.

I never had the chance to meet Steve Jobs but I was certainly touched by his vision. Jelly reminds me a lot of Steve Jobs because of the way they both look at the world and see an opening to really impact it for future people.

I recently read Buckminster Fuller say before his passing that he has no feeling about death because while there will soon be a time when no one can see him anymore, his stories and the emotions of his experiences won’t leave people and can’t be erased.

I feel that way about Steve Jobs and I am grateful that Jelly Helm reminded me of this.

When I was a kid and asked a question I should have known the answer to my Dad would occasionally ask me “Are You New?”

Don’t judge. It was a different time and he really didn’t mean anything mean by it and trust me I’m not scarred or anything but until today I never really liked the expression.

So why the sudden change of heart on my side? Well, Steve Jobs’ final act as outgoing CEO of Apple was to make Urbandig’s iPhone app (<—please download it now) a New and Noteworthy pick and a Staff Pick at the same time.

For those not paying attention, Urbandig.com is a company I co-founded with some friends and is my 8pm to 1am project. Urbandig is designed for locals, travelers and voyeurs, this app will uncover the unexpected, off the beaten path and highly interesting places that only a few people know about.

History may show that it wasn’t Steve himself but until then I choose to believe my version of the story…and yes, finally I am proud to be called “NEW”

So I assume you have all been sitting on Schpilkas wondering when I would write another blog post and as luck would have it, today I am.

So where have I been and what have I been up to?

Well as I am sure you all know or assume my days have been filled with FreshBooks.com, Speaking all over the place (in the last few months I have been in Florida, Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Saskatoon, New York, Portland and probably somewhere I can’t remember), acting as an advisor to an education program on Social Media and as if that wasn’t enough I have a couple new things to share.

Im pretty excited to announce that I was named as a mentor of PIE – Portland Incubator Experiment. The Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) is a partnership among leading brands, technology innovators, and Wieden+Kennedy-the largest privately held adv

ertising and communications company in the world. It serves as a hub for community, entrepreneurship, and creative thinking.

There are a couple days left to submit an application for your company to join so get on that is you are interested because if you’re selected, you’ll get $18,000, office space, and mentorship from Google, Target, Coca-Cola, Nike, Wieden+Kennedy, and well, me.

So what are you waiting for? Please apply today.

Finally, as excited as I am about PIE (yes, I know how that sounds out of context) I am even more jazzed to be working with some friends to get Urbandig off the ground. Urbandig is handcrafted, by experts, “off the beaten path” city tours delivered delivered right to your phone. You’ll never have to wonder where the best corn dog, cougar den, or juke box are in a new city again!

Urbandig launches very soon so please go sign up (and tell your friends to do the same) to be one of the first to experience it!

I’ll be back in a few days with a thoughtful blog post but until then I hope you liked the update.

Influence is a real hot topic right now and the most interesting part about it is how everyone is trying to either measure it or justify it but like the title of this post hints, Influence is just like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus…a lie people tell kids who want to believe in something they can’t explain.

Yep, I’m here to lay claim to the theory that “influence” as we think of it doesn’t exist.

You see what we all think is “Influence” is nothing more then “Audience”. Let me explain, with a few examples.

Last week I was at Canada’s best Tech conference MESH and sat in on a panel on influence with David Armano. David gave an example of his own influence by sharing a story of how he took a woman and her family into his house during an “at risk” time for them and gave them a hand by providing shelter as well as raising some money for her (over 16k, 3x the hoped for goal).

Before I say anything else it is worth mentioning that his act of generosity and unselfishness is pretty incredible and the world would be a better place if more people did what David here.

So yes this is an amazing thing but is it influence? I say no because it wasn’t the “ask” from David that moved people to donate but rather the cause, so it really wasn’t David changing people’s mind or opinion (my definition of influence) but rather broadcasting the situation and introducing it to people so they could decide on their own if they wanted to help.

Not influence but audience.

Taking the idea further, when Pop Chips or Tasimo Coffee, or whoever sends a case of their product to an “influencer” would they be satisfied if they locked themselves in their basement and binged ate the product and didn’t tell any friends or do they send cases so that the influencer will share within his/her peer group. They probably want them to share.

Again not influence but audience.

So final thought on this (for this post at least) is a little something about Klout Scores. I noticed today that Klout has added context to their scores by saying a person is Influential in certain areas ie: marketing, social media, and in my case “Prince” (not sure if it is the Singer or the Boy who would be King) but the one thing they don’t mention in their rankings is that whatever score I have and whatever verticals I am influential in still is only in the sphere of my social graph.

SO acording to Klout,  I am inflential on the subject of Prince (and for the record I am way more a fan of Morris Day and the Time)  to the people who follow me on Twitter/FaceBook and only those people.

Again not influence but audience.

Real influence is getting people to change their mind or opinion on something…not introducing something to you…and all I see with most “influencers” is a lot of introducing you to things.

What says you?

This isn’t exactly Breaking News but I am sure by now you have heard that Gilbert Gottfried was fired as the Aflac SpokesDuck (or rather the voice of the Aflac Duck) for a series of tweets he made about the recent Tsunami in Japan.

A lot has been written about this and I think I have a new angle so please bear with me here.

1- I should state that I am a huge Gilbert fan. His appearances on Howard Stern to me are appointment radio and I think he is truly one of the original voices in Comedy today.

and

B- Shame on Aflec for reacting the way they did and for the firing.

The reason Aflec is wrong here is to be upset about Gilbert’s Japan Comments “Japan is really advanced. People don’t go to the Beach. The beach comes to them” would not come in on a lost of top 100 shocking things Gilbert has said in his tenure as the Duck. Gilbert (and yes I am using his first name like we are friends) is a regular fixture on the Comedy Central Celebrity Roasts, has a concert cd called Dirty Jokes, released a book called Rubber Balls and Liquor and is arguably most famous for being the current king of the Aristocrats Joke which includes such subject matter of incest, fecal matter and how hard it is to impress a talent scout. You can’t pick and choose what you are offended by in these situations because you will alienate more people by saying 9-11 Jokes are ok but [blank] isnt.

Part of the Gilbert Gottfried charm is that he is unapologetic about his personal brand as well as his brand of humor. He has never back-pedalled from his “act/persona” therefore non of this should be a surprise to Aflec and like the way Groupon distanced itself from its Super Bowl ads, they should not have the right for fake outrage.

…and to add a little weirdness to the story…

In wake of the firing Aflec and Monster.com teamed up to launch a contest to find the new voice of Aflec.  Why is it that so few people are pointing out the fact that turning the attention they received from their over-reaction and making it a hiring contest is still capitalizing on a tragedy and doing the same thing that Gilbert was doing with his tweets.

I’ve always admired Aflec for their decade long choice of using Gilbert in their commercials…and for no other reason that it was (to me at least) a quiet acknowledgement that they had a sense of humor and didn’t care what others thought. That was my perception of their brand and in every way possible, perception is reality. That is until reality is reality.

[please note: I recognize that this post is a little scattered in focus but I really was just looking for a good reason to post the Aristocrats Joke. It is salty and may offend folks so please watch at your own risk]

SFW

NSFW