Getting in Touch with Your Inner Superstar

A review of "Principles of Applied Stupidity"

well i am very grateful to Robert Huebscher and David Raileanu for doing a review of "Principles of Applied Stupidity" in their newsletter which I guess gets read by a whole lot of people! 

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/newsletters09/How_to_Succeed_Without_Knowing_Anything.php

David makes some very good comments and gives great feedback which i am always eager to hear especially on such an unusual topic . . .  and of course promotion is always appreciated! 

--jl

Music from J.S Bach Superstar-- promo video, itunes link, etc

Well I decided it might be fun to do a little more promotion of my "J.S. Bach Superstar" show (and music for sale on Itunes), and what better way to promote music than with a music video? so I did up this little video on youtube:

And while I was at it, I discovered this very nifty way to link to the music on Itunes: 

This link will open Itunes on your computer and open up the JS Bach Superstar album where you can hear snippets and/or buy the songs. I thought that was very cool. 

also some news, my "Dr. Recommended" Video promo of "Real Men Don't Rehearse is over 1100 youtube views as of today!  --jl

I love waking up to rave reviews

"Real Men Don't Rehearse" got a fab review in bass musician magazine.  love that free promotion!!

review of RMDR in bass musician magazine

 

New video promo!

well after seeing so many ads from oil and coal companies about how they are such great environmental stewards I thought I would toss my 2 cents in, and I actually came up with a solution to global warming in the process.   I am not quite sure myself what to make of this but here it is! 

update from florida

well sorry I have not been blogging much lately.  Been a very busy kickoff to the start of the fall season!  The Charlotte Symphony of Punta Gorda Florida (not to be confused with the other Charlotte Symphony) just did my "Peter VS the Wolf" this morning for about 1500 fourth graders.  Maestro Francis Wada conducted (and was key to my connecting up with the orchestra in the first place).  What a fun production.  All high school kids in the acting roles, and check out this intense wolf costume:

in between the show and rehearsals etc I have been indulged in the fine dining experiences of Punta gorda, including some Kobe Beef today!  also I will be doing 2 speaking appearances while I am here, a cross promotion deal set up by the orchestra management, thanks all for setting that up. 

I am staying at the wyvern hotel, this place got fab reviews on tripadvisor and I can see why, this is one of the best hotels i have ever stayed at.  just everything nice, and staff super helpful and friendly. 

ok signing off for now, au revoir from florida -- jl

crotchets and breves: a musical soap opera

okay, in the realm of the truly silly, a guy out in utah does these musical podcasts and they did a "live" show and he asked me to write a comedy skit for it-- so i came up with this, "crotchets and breves,"  the lives and loves of a local sheet music store.  it starts at 38:40 in the podcast. about 7 minutes.   -- jl

http://khedgecock.podomatic.com/player/web/2009-09-03T14_48_54-07_00

just little updates and some stupidity in the news

Well i am sorry I have not been posting many entries lately-- been a very busy september and it's almost half over, gee whiz.  I have been VERY busy getting ready for my upcoming trip to Punta Gorda (more below), also doing a new video promo for RMDR that has ANIMATION (yeesh! I am not an anima-tor!) and getting the 3rd edition of "Principles" ready . . .

but via my friend ralph, from cartalk and the huffington post, this item:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/24/occidental-college-offers_n_267202.html

Seems Occidental College in LA is offering a critical studies course in Stupidity.  Well I am glad to have some more aficionados of sorts!  the huffington post has the usual snarky sophomoric off-topic your-politcal-party-is-dumb comments, but hopefully my comment post will garner some book sales!  and here's hoping cartalk will mention my book too :-)

okay  other news:  the "doctor recommended" RMDR promo has over 840 views, 900 when totaled with off-site youtube sources!  Not bad! 

Also, the schedule for florida is shaping up, unfortunately not much in terms of public events here . . . Tuesday morning (?) 22nd is the performance of Peter VS the Wolf but it's all for bussed-in kids.  Wed night is a private reception/ dinner party for symphony supporters where I will regale the guests with tales from RMDR, and friday noon I will be speaking to the local rotary club, or perhaps several clubs all at once!  And I am EVER so much looking forward to staying at the Wyvern Hotel, Tripadvisor gives it thru-the-roof top ratings.   

Hopefully I will have lots of envy-inducing pix from the rooftop pool to share in coming weeks. 

best, justin

Punta Gorda, News, New Youtube Promo, etc

Hello all, well my blog has been taking a sort of summer vacation here (sorry) but I wanted to give you some news and updates etc.!

ok, first off, I have a new video promo! 

Assuming you just watched it: I cannot begin to tell you how hard it was to make this thing.  It was based on a chapter of Real Men Don't Rehearse, where I talk about the utterly outrageous (and truly hilarious) change-one-letter-and-make-it-salacious title change game that is played on orchestral sheet music everywhere. sad to say I had to leave out the best ones as they are just too disgusting out of context.  I am pleased at the high traffic this thing is getting even tho i have yet to promote it very much! 

Also fyi, ALL of my Real Men Don't Rehearse promos have now been grouped into one convenient playlist on Youtube.

ALSO on September 22th the Punta Gorda FL Orchestra is doing my "Peter VS the Wolf" AND I will be going down to see it. I will be doing a presentation or two and I will be on the radio and maybe TV as well.  More on that when it happens. 

Also fyi, two more video promo's are on the way !!  including a christmas special!!! :-) 

happy last gasp of summer,  -- jl

On TV again

Well i just found out a few days ago, "Chronicle" is re-running their "I'm With Stupid" episode tonight . . . (thursday July 30th '09) which features . . .  ME!

if you can't wait to see it you can download here

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/chronicle/19076121/detail.html

thanks to the folks at WCVB for the fab press!!  -- jl

Making Viral Marketing Videos and Putting Them on Youtube

Okay everybody, I have a brand new promo video to share with you. This time, instead of promoting one of my books, this promotes my speaking.  Note, the rest of this blog entry assumes that you have watched the show, it’s only 75 seconds:

I always find it interesting when I hear people on the Internet talk about marketing like it’s some bizarre form of alchemy.  Marketing is selling stuff to people.  There are a lot of different ways of doing it, but it really isn’t all that mysterious. 

I am not going to sit here and claim that I’m a marketing expert, but I am going to share my marketing experiences with you.

One of my first marketing experiences and lessons had to do with my children’s concerts.  I got a great idea one day of sending out a one-page color flyer to about 300 or so orchestras.  (A little anti-nostalgia here, in the pre-Internet age, this involved hiring a designer, having the design turned into this pile of color separations, hauling these to a big print shop, waiting weeks to get the finished product.  Then I found a magazine that had all these orchestras’ mailing addresses listed in the back, and I keyed these addresses in all by hand (how did we live without the internet?).  And out went my flyer.

Well as is typical with direct mail flyers, I got about a 2% rate of just informational inquiries.  I think I got one or two sales out of it, enough to cover the printing and design costs.  So I sort of thought that it was largely a failure.

But then I started to discover something else.  Turned out just about everyone on my orchestra list who got this flyer didn’t throw it out; instead, they squirreled it away into a folder in their filing cabinet.  And 2, 4, or 10 months (and in one case, EIGHT YEARS) later, when they finally had the big committee meeting about what children’s concert to do, that’s when they looked at it, and that’s when they bought.

Now if you’re marketing a commodity like broccoli or chewing gum, chances are you’re going to see an immediate reaction to your marketing efforts, as these are things that people tend to buy day-to-day if they use them.  But a lot of things, most notably larger purchases, happen once a year or perhaps once a decade.

The point I’m making is, marketing is not an instantaneous process.  You can be wonderfully successful at marketing your product and not know it for five years or more.

So anyway, I am somewhat in that same state with these little videos I’m making.  Very few people, even professional meeting planners and association executives, hire speakers every day.  So I won’t know if this video is successful for months or even years.  But what I’m hoping and counting on is, when someone sits down to plan their association’s meeting in 2012, and they are racking their brains for something new and unique to offer for a keynote, someone at the meeting will say, “Ya know, I saw this guy on youtube . . . ”  

I think a lot of people who try to do marketing fail at it because they don’t understand the time frame involved.  They’re looking for an instant reaction.  For me, it’s more important to influence someone’s buying patterns over the next few years.  The typical “get out of your chair and go buy this right now” message tends to be forgotten for the simple reason that it’s not pleasant to think about.  A fun video will stick in the mind more easily, as it is pleasant to think about something fun.  Also people will want to repeat the fun experience if they can by hiring me.  I hope. 

Anyway, even though it is not perfect (note the total budget was $3.95, and that was for the audience sound effect), I happen to be very happy with this video for one reason in particular: it’s a video about a speaker, promoting a speaker, but the speaker never says a single word.  This makes it completely different from every single one of all the thousands of other videos made by every other speaker on the planet. 

I’m also very happy that it 1) at least tries to be fun and entertaining for the viewer, and 2) it tries to have empathy for the potential customer’s problems.  If I can demonstrate doing that here and now, that’s worth 20 videos saying that I will do it at some point in future.  

Professional speaking is an intensely competitive vocation.  The only way I’m going to make my presence known is by doing something unusual. 

And if it fails, well, who cares, nothing was lost.  And I have another one coming out in two weeks.

© Justin Locke