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P.S. the facebook t-shirt is ironic

Nifty fella, Ben Hunt. He wrote the excellent web design book “Save the Pixel”. We first met a couple of years ago when he had his epiphany about building websites designed to convert higher, rather than just looking splendid. We share a love of internet marketing, English comedy and a plethora of children. He was a guest speaker at my Art of Blogging seminar in 2009 and he was brilliant. A lovelier man you could not wish to meet.

I have been following his progress with this book since he got commissioned to write it. Ben is extremely thorough and very entertaining. I haven’t read the book yet, but I have seen a few preview chapters. Bottom line: if you have any interest in IM, treat yerself this Christmas and get it.

Only question I’ve got for Ben now is why he styled the title after a 1980s musical. “Convert!” reminds me of the excellent parody “Elephant!” – the musical version of the Elephant Man in the underated film, The Tall Guy with Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson. In fact, here’s a clip to amuse you (and Ben)…

I’ve just seen a guy called Alex Bellos on BBC Breakfast talking about his new book: “Alex’s Adventures in Numberland“.

And what a marvelous book it looks. It’s all about the beauty of maths and numbers and I’m chomping at the bit to read it after Alex talked with such passion about numbers, the Golden Ratio (it’s 1.61803399 – google it; it’s mind blowing), the fibonacci sequence, numerate Japanese monkeys..his demonstration of a multiplication sum using a diagram to get the answer was fantastic – I just have to learn this and teach it to my kids.

What really resonated with me was his point about the way in which Maths is taught in schools is uninspiring and puts a huge amount of us off the subject. I know first hand because of the work I had to put in following being relegated to CSE class when I was 13 by a moronic teacher who had written me off mathematically. I went on to GCE success at O and AS Level success and found a lot of inspiring mathematics in my Economics degree.

Maths is really the stuff of life. It holds the key, in my opinion, to the structure of the universe, the Earth and ultimately us. Anything, like Alex’s book, that brings it to life like this should be applauded. I’m off to buy my copy now

Reading this made me cry this morning…

“To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one’s self; to leave the world a little better whether by a healthy child, a garden path or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exaltation; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived..that is to succeed.”

This is credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson by Alexander Waugh in his book “Fathers and Sons”.

‘Nuff said.

How does one review this book?

If you are in business, my message is simply this: take your finger out of your backside, buy this book, read it, implement what you learn as fast as you can.

Drayton is the dog’s bollocks. He’s erudite, funny, brilliant.

David Ogilvy said Drayton knows more about DM than anyone else on Earth.

Ogilvy knew his onions (literally, as he used to peel them for a living in a Parisian Restaurant in the 1930s before he became the “King of Madison Avenue”).

This book is about as definitive as you can get on the subject of direct marketing. You know, the kind of marketing where results and profits are actually measured. The kind of marketing that does not get taught at Universities. The principles of which form the basis of all successful internet marketing.

I first met Drayton when we both spoke at The System Intensive in London in 2008. We met again in 2009 and regularly exchange jokes and advice by email. You can see how good the old goat is here (in fact, that’s my developing bald spot you can see in the foreground):

So, go and get “Commonsense”, then whilst you’re at it, get this as well:

Then follow one of the best blogs on the whole t’internet here:

I’ve had a lovely afternoon having my ego buttered by the international best-selling author of the Kogan Page published, Sunday Times Business Enterprise Series book “Branding Your Business”.

James came to me thanks to a referral from Drayton Bird, and we’ve had a lot of fun today belting through an online strategy to help James get his very powerful message across to entrepreneurs and SME business owners.

Here’s a quick video interview I thought I’d throw up so you can meet the man himself (he’s doing a longer audio one with me later you’ll be able to get from his blog – once we’ve built it!)

At dinner with Ken McCarthy the other week, we got around to talking about our experiences with people we had met in business that had left us, shall we say, a little worse for wear.

We compared notes on certain characters that had charmed their way into our lives and subsequently attempted to rip the guts out of our businesses. It was refreshing to know that I was not the only one who had experienced this kind of thing a number of times, but even better to know that it is such a problem in business that there has been a book written on the subject! It’s called “Snakes in Suits”.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you’ve ever had a business relationship with someone that promises a lot, butters up your ego, manipulates you to such an extent you don’t realise it until it’s too late, brings in their own “people”, undermines you consistently behind your back, steals from you (ideas, money, shares and clients), lies to your friends – you will recognise the characters in this book.

If this has not happened to you, get this book now! It is far better to be forewarned.

The book itself describes itself as “A revealing look at psychopaths in the workplace – how to spot their destructive behaviour and stop them from creating choas”.

It is written by Paul Babiak, PH.D. and Robert D Hare, PH.D and gets right into the detail of how to become aware of the subtle warning signs of psycopathic behaviour – before it’s too late.

Former Dragons Den judge, Rachel Elnaugh uncovers the moments when she and other business personalities hit crisis point. This contains Rachel’s truthful account of the much-publicised crash of Red Letter Days. She then boldly interviews business celebrities such as Jeffery Archer, Donald Trump, Stelios, Karan Billamoria, the Innocent boys, Ivan Massow and many more, about their darkest times in business.

This business book exposes, through detailed and insightful profiles how even the mightiest business people were fallible and did not make it plain sailing; that all business go through bad times but can still come out the other side and be hugely successful.

The author, Rachel Elnaugh is the epitome of a successful failure in that she was running the hugely profitable Red Letter Days, and lost it. Highly exposed in the media due to her celebrity status on the Dragons Den, Rachel became the scapegoat for the crash of this business. For the first time, you can hear Rachel’s side of the story, exclusively and honestly, in this book. It is written in a series of revealing interviews and delves into the darkest business moments of many massive business personalities, divulging what really went wrong, how the events unfolded, how they felt and how they emerged from the crisis and what they learned from their experience.

In a world where most business books bang on about “how to make millions in minutes” and “being a millionaire is easy”, Business Nightmares is a refreshing change in this market. Businesses fail for all sorts of reasons, and it’s usually the captain of the ship that takes all the flack.

A must read for any entrepreneur. Get it here:

I watched a video last night of a talk given in April 2008 by Professor Jonathan Zittrain. Prof Zittrain is a compelling speaker and he was talking about the contents of his book “The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It”…

I have been pondering where the internet is going for a number of years myself, whenever tearing myself away from working on it has given me the time to truly ponder what is going to happen to it.

I have myself been concerned recently about the Berlin-wall that is building up around Facebook and how an ever growing number of people enter the net through it. Those people aren’t freewheeling through the internet like I was when I first got on board in ’93 (although I sent my first email in 1984) – they’re unknowingly inside a closed community, like one of those god-awful gated communities you find in Noth America. I’d actually liken it to being inside a prison. Not that they’re not free to communicate with people who are also on the inside, but that their freedoms are severely limited inside Facebook compared to the freedoms available on the old wild world wide web. Just look at how they are preserving their legal rights to so much of our private information. And we just willingly give it up because we can’t imagine what could possibly be malevolent about this.

Because so many of the newbies (who are really oldies) joining the internet don’t know of any other kind of online world, they are blissful in their ignorance. It not only frightens me, but appalls me in terms of the potential for compliant censorship of ideas, and therefore potentially another massive slowdown in the development of human potential, not dissimilar to the Dark Ages. I say this in context of the massively exciting period we lived through ’95-’07 when all things online were possible (i.e there were no “Terms and Conditions” for putting up a music app online. Try creating one for the iPhone now. And no-one could stop you producing anything on the grounds of ‘taste and decency’. Who decides what’s tasteful and decent for fuck’s sake?)

Admittedly, I have spent most of my time thinking about how this would factor in on the niche world of internet marketing. I have seen other marketers dive in headfirst with Facebook and Twitter and the like. I have dabbled myself. I even managed a 100% click-through-rate with a Facebook advert, against the average of 0.04%. They sent me a T-shirt.

Professor Zittrain has been thinking about this too, but he goes much deeper and places the development of the internet, which is a fascinating story in itself, within the context of sterile and generative technologies developed throughout the 20th century. If you’ve never heard of him, he’s been a fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and is currently (I think) at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. He’s internet royalty as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve also been interested about the way that coders are being tempted to create programmes (or applications, or “apps” as you probably know them as now) within the constraints of Facebook and the iPhone because of the fact that these are “cool” and “killer” and because of the massive income potential they offer. In the old days, coders created apps for the fun of it. You could create anything and anyone could download it from anywhere. Good stuff went viral and made a name for the coder. They often went on to monetise these ideas in massive ways (skype, anyone?). But now, when you create an app for Facebook or the iPhone, you’re writing it for “The Man”. Don’t take my word for it (I’m not a coder) – take a look at this interesting blog entry by coder Brian Webster.

The Prof also makes the point about how it is the generative nature of the internet as an open network based on IP that is both the basis of it’s brilliance, but also it’s downfall because of the pure ease in which a malicious piece of software can be placed on any computer in the world at any time. It’s the security fears that lead to the gated community. It is not an easy dilemma to solve, and the direction it goes in will have profound effects on us all.

The reason why I urge you to make a cup of tea and spend an hour in a quiet room watching this video is because of the message behind Professor Zittrain’s ideas – it’s up to all of use to collectively be aware of what’s happening in order for us to collectively help shape the future of that most wonderful of human inventions, the internet…

You can get his book from here: The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It

There’s another interesting article by Professor Zittrain in the Boston Review, and an excellent appraisal from Tony Curzon-Price called “From Zittrain to Aristotle in 600 Words“

If you’ve ever seen me talk live, you will know that one of my opening gags is that you can find all you’ll ever need to know about internet marketing in a book written by Claude Hopkins called “Scientific Advertising”.

In 1923.

Seriously, this book was first recommended to me by Ken McCarthy and I love it. It’s a bit dry, but the principles of direct marketing are all in there. Most of these principles are still sound for the modern day direct marketer on the internet. The only difference is that we can change things in a heartbeat, whereas in Claude’s day changing a headline, or the position of a picture on a direct mailshot took ages and cost lots of money – Claude would’ve been a zillionaire if he’d had the tools available that we do now.

If you’re serious about learning about marketing that really works, get this book..

(this version also has “My Life In Advertising” so it’s 2 for 1 and well worth the read).