Cameras flashed and champagne flowed as independent publishing’s finest were honored in New York Tuesday night at the IPPY Awards.

Bob Garfield, Greg Stielstra and Amy Stielstra at the 2010 IPPY Awards

Among 3600 entries, The Chaos Scenario by Bob Garfield (Stielstra Publishing, August 2009) was one of just two books to win dual awards.  It won Gold in the Current Events category and Silver for best book marketing.

Bob Garfield addresses IPPY Award attendees as Jim Barnes looks on

Recognizing how the digital revolution had disrupted traditional publishing but had also created great opportunity for independent publishers, IPPY Awards organizer Jim Barnes asked Bob Garfield to say a few words on the topic.

Greg Stielstra accepts Best Book Marketing award

The Best Book Marketing award is a tribute to the remarkable contributions of Team Chaos, the various companies who applied their talents and technology to promoting The Chaos Scenario.  The list includes: AY Digital (formerly Adyatra), Buddy Media, Magnify.net, CREO Productions, Ethos3, Advertising Age, Fabian Baber, and Email marketer Emma, The American Marketing Association, the Public Relations Society of America, the Direct Marketing Association and the American Advertising Federation.

The Chaos Scenario by Bob Garfield (Stielstra Publishing) won two IPPY Awards in the 2010 competition. the book was awarded Gold in the category Current Events I (Political/Economic/Legal/Media) and its promotion won Silver for Best Book Marketing.

Congratulations to Bob Garfield.  This honor is well-deserved.

Congratulations as well and thank you to the members of Team Chaos whose contributions to the book’s promotion made the Best Book Marketing honor possible.

Medals will be awarded at a gala awards ceremony in New York on May 25.

Greg Stielstra

A big beer executive posed a very good question the other day to my pal Ted Wright of Fizz Corp., the word-of-mouth consultancy.

“If all of this is true, why aren’t the big ad agencies doing word-of-mouth marketing?”
That’s how you get to be a CEO. You ask incisive questions, and this guy asked a word-of-mouthful. But the answer is disturbingly simple:

Agencies don’t employ WOM marketing because they don’t know how to make enough money doing it. No matter how nominally “fee based” their client relationships are, their revenue is still correlated to the size of their media buys. The straight 15% commission is long gone, but agency compensation still tracks parallel to media tonnage. And, because they are owned by publicly traded holding companies, they have to make their numbers. WOM, like other digital-marketing disciplines, is too piddling in cost for them to bother with. In other words, they have a structural conflict of interest.

They’re not stupid. The know they have to change their business models (if they can locate one) to survive in a digital world, but they can’t do so without euthanizing the cash cow.
Mooooooo.
–
Bob Garfield

Editor at Large, “Advertising Age”
Co-host, NPR’s “On the Media”
Author, “The Chaos Scenario”

In honor of Bob’s talk at SXSW last Tuesday, we are offering The Chaos Scenario at half price when you buy a case (32). Educate your team and enlighten your clients on the end of mass media and the rise of the digital post-advertising age. Just click the “Buy” link at the top of the page. GS

Check out Bob’s take on the post advertising age and admire his avatar on Second Life right this minute. http://www.metaversebooks.com/

From The Chaos Scenario

Garfield is ready to rock SXSW and there’s still time for you to sign up and join him. The apocalypse begins on Tuesday March 16 on the Day Stage.

Already attending? Then be sure to light up the back channel with your thoughts during Bob’s talk and make sure to introduce yourself afterward.

Here are the details of Bob’s appearance.

My son Dominic is a high school senior and so we have been visiting various universities as he prepares for his secondary education.  Nearly every one has a building on campus with the following words chiseled into its stone facade, “Mass Communications.”

During each tour I make it a point to ask the department head if he or she is aware of the changes occurring to “Mass Media” in light of the digital revolution.  How are they adjusting their curriculum, I ask?  How are they preparing students to succeed in a world that may look very different when they graduate in four years, I queary?  Will they be sanding the words “Mass Media” from the facade or chiseling the word “Formerly” in front of them?

Sadly, many mutter something like, “Yes, well, something does appear to be happening and sooner or later we mean to do something about it.”

I am pleased, therefore, to say that three more universities can be added to the list of those who “get it” since they have recently adopted The Chaos Scenario as a textbook.  They are…

Adjunct professor Aaron Cohen at NYU

Adjunct professor John Durham at the University of San Franciso and

Professor Harold Wood at UT Dallas.

Congratulations to you for recognizing the changes that are occurring and for preparing your students to understand them so that they may thrive in the post-advertising age.  The words on the outside of the building may not have changed, but the words they are teaching on the inside surely have.  GS

Last week we submitted The Chaos Scenario to the IPPY Awards.  The IPPY’s honor the year’s best independently published books.  We entered The Chaos Scenario in three categories; Business, Current Events and Best Book Marketing.  Winners will be announced in May at an awards banquet in New York, just prior to the American Booksellers Convention.

For the Business and Current Events categories judges will consider the book itself.  For Best Book Marketing, however, we had to submit support materials highlighting what we had done and why those efforts might deserve the honor.

Since we have tried to employ “Listenomics”  in almost every aspect of the book’s creation, we thought it appropriate to share the document we submitted to summarize the book’s marketing.  So, here’s a pdf of the The Chaos Scenario Marketing Overview.

As you review it, please pay special attention to the members of Team Chaos and consider using them for your next project.  They really are the best and brightest in their fields and can help your business as much or more than they’ve helped the book.  Spread the fire.  Greg Stielstra, PyroMarketing

By James Cherkoff from Collaborate Marketing.

With the mind-boggling degree of innovation occurring in digital technology and networked media, it’s very easy to forget that, in commercial terms, we are still only talking about markets. And markets are still just made up of people. The other commercial task that hasn’t changed is the need to deploy resources to work within the marketplace to realise specific aims effectively. Such as building sales and keeping shareholders content. What is changing, as every marketeer worth his Cluetrain now knows, is the nature of that marketplace. However, these changes are still yet to be fully reflected in the marketing industry because the most important cog of the business - media finance - continues to lag the trends driving networked markets.

Big marketing shekels remain driven by two words – reach and frequency. An approach akin to asking as many people as possible out on a date until one or more of them falls for the smooth new chat-up line. And this view of the world is all about size. Bigger. Louder. Harder. The problem is that in the new marketplace this approach doesn’t build relationships - it wrecks them. Of course, awareness is absolutely vital for any brand, particularly a new one. And there’s always going to be a need to get out the big guns out and fire away at the marketplace to remind the world that a brand still means business. But consumers (aka people) are fed up with brands only offering them a one-night stand, time after time.

Just think about the financial services industry where enticing offers are sprayed around, only for the love to be slowly withdrawn once the deal is done. The bank’s rate of interest gets lower and lower until it just fizzles away and the corporate desire for new accounts on the bedpost grows. Which leaves consumers more cynical and determined to stay footloose. Or to become ‘rate tarts’ as they are tellingly known by the industry.

For brands to break this Tiger Woods lifestyle, they have to change not only their ways but also, crucially, their means. And that means a very serious redistribution of their cash. For if a corporate or brand is only in town occasionally for a night out on the campaigning tiles its long-term reputation suffers. These days consumers see reliable brands as being there for them 24×7 - when they need the help and support. And how can a brand do that if it spends its marketing wad on the first night?

It’s not easy changing long-standing behaviour. But unless brands spread their love, attention and cash throughout the year, and are able to hold some back to respond to people’s demands, no one will believe their clever words and lovely promises. In the world of marketing and brands, the size of your wad still counts. But in marketplaces driven by networked media, people are more interested than ever before in how you use it.

Bob Garfield is confirmed to speak and participate in a panel on The Chaos Scenario at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX in March.

He’ll be preaching to the choir, we realize, but the SXSW crowd may find The Chaos Scenario an ideal apologetic for the message they’ve been trying to share with others for years.

We are also excited to see what impact such a forward-thinking audience has on social media buzz about the book.

Are you going? Will you be attending Bob’s talk?  We’d like to know.  Tell us your plans in the comments section.  Bob looks forward to meeting you at the conference.  GS