Austin-based interactive ad agency Tocquigny
embarrassed itself with a video meant to show prospective interns how fun it is to work at the company over the summer. Instead of showing how quirky and Internet-savvy Tocquigny was, it proved to be a turnoff — and
a ripoff. Besides not copying someone else's work, what could Tocquigny have done differently? Using five examples the agency should have followed, we'll explain how to do a self-promotional corporate video right:
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politics
Self-appointed "geeks" are
nominating their blogosphere heroes to become America's CTO under presumptive President Barack Obama. The roster reads like the speaker list at any old emerging-technology conference: Larry Lessig. Tim O'Reilly. Dave Winer. Would any of these guys know a data governance strategy if it bit them on the face? Obviously, what their fans really want isn't a chief technology officer, it's someone to be Obama's Web 2.0 point man — a Social Media Czar. Guess who that should be?
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self-promotion
It's a given among most blue-state intellectuals that Barack Obama will take office as president in January. That means looking past November's election to next year's Obama-tunities in Washington, D.C. The most obvious slot for aspiring Valley vets would be Obama's promised new position of national chief technology officer. A CTO slot has been one of Obama's
talking points for months, but today reliable pot-stirrer Robert Scoble cracked the worm can open by
throwing a list of names onto his blog:
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geeks gone plastic
It's not every day that a Silicon Valley titan is cast into 5.375" of plastic. Marketing guru Seth Godin unearthed the real secret to
self-evangelist success: Get yourself turned into an action figure. There's no better way to promote your name than to
sell yourself for a mere $8.95 to every wannabe entrepreneur looking for a false idol to consult. Oddball toy store Archie McPhee has recreated Godin's baldpated goodness, complete with mismatched socks and a Little Book of Marketing Secrets. If only it carried the full line of self-promotional cultmongers, we'd finally be able to pit Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis, and Robert Scoble against one another in a battle for biggest ego — right before Megatron decapitates them.
self-promotion
Connected Ventures cofounder Jakob Lodwick and notorious New York nobody Julia Allison now plan to more efficiently whore their relationship in a joint
blog venture. Consider it the Hulu of self-promotion. If only you people would stop paying attention, this could all just go away. Sure, Lodwick's Vimeo, an online video-sharing site, is so pretty that rumor has it
MySpace wants to poach its designer. But that doesn't explain why you're transfixed by the man himself, or his geek-seeking missile of a girlfriend. You people need to stop. In fact, don't read any further. Look away from the following image of Jakob and Julia, sprawled on the beach. It's for your own good.
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social networks
It was all in good fun, I thought, to
tease my former boss Jason Pontin, now editor of MIT's
Technology Review, about using Facebook, of all things, to hunt for interesting startup ideas. But the well-meant mockery soon uncovered a deeper issue: My friend misunderstands how one is meant to use Facebook. Pontin, ever the technoliteralist, takes Facebook at its word, thinking of it as a tool to replicate real-world relationships. He misses the real use that self-promoters like Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble have discovered: Spamming the less-important people who have volunteered to be your "friends" — people who are really just fans, to whom you have no meaningful relationship.
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