music – Higher Ed Marketing

Let’s hope he doesn’t ask them to sing their college fight songs or alma mater

Corporate Anthems – theme songs of big, soul-less businesses. An artist-prankster (Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom) checks in with employees of KPMG to see how well they know their corporate song. (Sorry about the annoying BMW ads.) Via Boing Boing.

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Now playing: Devo – Devo Corporate Anthem
via FoxyTunes

Spring mini-break: gone, daddy, gone

It’s spring break this week on campus and things are quiet at the office, so I’m out of here for the rest of the working week. I won’t be blogging until I get back. But if I stumble across any interesting finds while I’m mobile-surfing (as the wife shops), I’ll drop it into my shared items. And I’ll probably drop a note on Twitter from time to time.

So, here’s some music to get me into the vacationing mood. Have a listen if you like. Try not to break anything while I’m gone. Adios!

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Now playing: The Pixies – The Holiday Song
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: The Sex Pistols – Holidays in the Sun
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: Violent Femmes – Gone Daddy Gone
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: The Subways – Holiday
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: The Get Up Kids – Holiday
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: Green Day – Holiday
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)
via FoxyTunes

Validated by Seth Godin

It’s always encouraging to find out that people I admire share some of my tastes in music, books, movies, etc. Especially when they’re famous people whose names I can drop in this blog.

So I was especially happy to read a recent blog post by Seth Godin, in which he quotes a passage from Rock On, a book I’ve mentioned here (scroll to item 2) and on Twitter.

The book, by Dan Kennedy (who also contributes to McSweeneys), chronicles Kennedy’s time working in marketing for a major record label at a time when the record business is struggling to maintain its power position in an era of peer-to-peer file sharing. It’s about how Kennedy was finally going to realize his childhood dream of being a part of the big rock’n’roll machine, how he was going to be in the heart of it all, and the ultimate disillusion of the dream that occurs after an Iggy Pop concert. But I’ve probably told you too much. You should purchase this book and read it, not only for entertainment, but for the cautionary tales it offers all of us in marketing, management and leadership.

I agree with Seth’s view (may I call you Seth, Seth?) that Rock On is a very funny book. It isn’t laugh-out-loud Chuck Klosterman funny, but it’s funny enough, tinged with the kind of hipster irony and aloofness that anyone who’s ever droned their days away in a cubicle wondering what it all means can appreciate. But beyond the humor, Seth and I both appreciate the cautionary tale the book brings to marketers. Go read Seth’s entry about it and you’ll see what I mean. But then come back here and leave me a comment so I’ll feel even more validated about my blogging existence.

While I’m here, I should also say that I’ve been a pretty big Seth Godin fan since Purple Cow came out. In fact, we used the concept of the purple cow with our student design teams, and that helped to build our name recognition among engineering-oriented universities. (Of course, that was before we changed our name from UMR to Missouri S&T. Now we’ve got to do some different things. But our design teams are still our purple cow.) The dude is prolific, insightful, knows how to market, and even when he stumbles (with a book or idea that doesn’t quite wow us like Purple Cow did, knows how to get back up, get out in front of us again and stay there.

I hope Seth feels validated now, too.

P.S. – No Friday Five this week. Unless I decide to do one later. But it’s St. Pat’s Week here on campus, and we’re busy blogging about it and having all sorts of mischievous Irish-inspired fun. Play the Dropkick Murphys link below for some Irish-inspired punk.

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Now playing: Dropkick Murphys – Your Spirit’s Alive
via FoxyTunes

Saturday morning coffee, music, multitasking, social media brain dump

It’s late on a sleep-in Saturday morning. I’m sipping the last of the morning pot of coffee, listening to the mellow, dreamy songs of an indie/electronica band from Osaka called <a

href=”http://www.myspace.com/waterfai”>Water Fai* (which suits my mood perfectly), and casually multitasking — catching up on personal and work email, Twitter, RSS, and various blogs and websites. I’m in no rush. This is one of those rare lazy days when I have nowhere to be.

So, I think I’ll blog about some of the social media stuff on my mind and in my inbox/feeds/etc. For instance:

How Twitter can add value. Yesterday, I and some co-workers from Missouri S&T attended the Missouri Association of Publications conference (where our alumni magazine won an award — huzzah!). One of the sessions I attended was about convergence journalism, led by a faculty member of the Missouri School of Journalism’s convergence program. Co-worker (and co-tweeter) Mindy also attended. She’s our department’s go-to social media person. Anyway, one of the storytelling tools students in that program use is Soundslides, which can be used to create audio slideshows. I made a note to check it out when I got back, but Mindy beat me to it and tweeted about it yesterday. I responded, and Brad Ward joined in on the conversation with a link to a nice presentation he made using Soundslides. Then he referred me to a blog post of his from last October about using the tool, with links to three or four other examples. All of this knowledge-sharing via Twitter, in a matter of minutes. Nice.
ideasonideas relaunches with a redesign. “The new ‘look,'” explains the site’s Eric Karjaluoto in a post about the relaunch, “represents both a change in direction and a bit of a revised mandate.” Eric says he wants the blog “to be a great resource for those who create communications and continually work to do so more effectively. With the volumes of content out there, I hope that you’ll find your time at ideasonideas helpful and worthwhile.” If the first post since the redesign is any indication, this one might be reading from time to time.
There’s a New Conversation is a month-old blog exploring the impact of the book The Cluetrain Manifesto 10 years after its release. (Has it really been 10 years?)
Nominations are now open for the EduStyle Awards. Go there and nominate your favorite educational websites. Winners will be honored at the eduWeb Conference in Atlantic City, N.J., in July.
mixx has a group for social media mavens. So, all you social media mavens out there, check it out. (I did not join, because a.) I’ve got too many social networks as it is and b.) I fear I’m not enough of a maven.) Tweet via @fsmedia.

* Water Fai’s style is along the lines of Blonde Redhead and Asobi Seksu, but mellowed like a good shiraz.

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Now playing: Water Fai – Round Pool
via FoxyTunes

Friday Five: No relevance to higher ed marketing edition: 5 great Pop/Rock Albums I’ve Never Listened to in Their Entirety (or If I Did, I Do Not Recall the Experience)

When I’m tired…

and thinking cold…I hide in my music, forget the day…

Oops. Scratch that. My head was tuned into the oldies station there for a minute. Rewind. What I meant to say was:

When I’m tired of thinking or talking about higher ed or marketing/PR/communication, my thoughts often turn to music. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I just love music — good music, that is — and if I could get away with it and get paid for it, I think that I would blog about music all day long. Anyway, I consider myself somewhat of a musical connoisseur, being the child of musical parents who schooled me early on in show tunes and Gershwin, and as the youngest of five growing up in the glory days of rock’n’roll (the ’60s and ’70s), I learned more than my fair share about the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Cream, Hendrix, et. al., before I had even entered grade school. Still, there are a lot of gaps in my pop music knowledge base. For example: The other day I was thinking about how many great albums are out there that I’ve never listened to completely. (There are also albums filled with wretched music that I’ve listened to more than once. But that’s another story for another time.) Among the certifiably great pop/rock albums, here are five that I’ve never listened to in their entirety (or, as the title says, if I ever did, I sure don’t remember it).

Pet Sounds, by The Beach Boys. Widely regarded as the Beach Boys’ masterpiece, Pet Sounds ranks at No. 2 on Rolling Stone mag’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time (right behind the Beatles’ overrated Sgt. Pepper’s). There are good reasons as to why I’ve never listened to this album in its entirety (or even partially): 1.) I never had the opportunity, as I don’t recall any of my older siblings owning the album; and 2.) even if I had, it’s doubtful I would’ve listened, as I’ve never been a big Beach Boys fan (this despite the fact that sometime in the early ’70s, during my indiscriminate junior high years, when I was just learning to explore pop and rock, I somehow came to possess the 45 for “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” b/w “God Only Knows.” This was one of the singles released from the album. About the only ’60s California surfer music I ever heard when growing up was some Jan and Dean. One of my sisters was a fan. Anyway, I’ve never heard the entire album Pet Sounds.
What’s Going On, by Marvin Gaye. The title track and “Mercy, Mercy Me” are the only tunes I know from this album. To me, both of those songs define soul. Even if they were the only two tracks on this album, I would listen to it all day long. But I’m certain there’s more great stuff where those came from.
Thinking about this album is what started this little exercise. I was reading a section of Dan Kennedy’s book Rock On, about his experience in marketing for a major record label on the wane, and I laughed out loud when I read these lines:

Most insightful thing a white guy has ever said to me about soul music:

“I never could’ve written anything as good as that Marvin Gaye song, because after I wrote down the word brother once, I’d get stuck, I’d be sitting there going, ‘Let’s see … what else can I say here? I just used the word brother so I can’t use that again.'”

I know exactly what he means.
Thriller, by Michael Jackson. Please. It was 1982. I was listening to Combat Rock and watching A Flock of Seagulls on MTV. I really have no desire to listen to this, even if “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'” is an earworm.
Music From Big Pink, by The Band. It’s really embarrassing, how little I know about this band. I work with Tom Shipley, for cryin’ out loud, and Levon Helm is like a god to him. I should get this album and listen to the whole thing.
Axis: Bold As Love, by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. But I listened to Are You Experienced? and Electric Ladyland both more than enough times to make up for this gap in my repertoire. Does that count?

That is all. Rock on.

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Now playing: David Byrne – Marching through the wilderness (Charanga)
via FoxyTunes