Adam Schultz

Alanis Morisette just got more web cred than ever previously possible for a mainstream artist.

I already liked her, she was a cool artist, cut some good tunes that make me think of those wonderfully aquard years of my life where her anger was so much representative of my frustration with the world.

But now, now she has really gone and done something wonderful. She did it by publishing a cover of every cover published of My Humps on YouTube (Below). My Humps was already one of the most covered videos in YouTube by high school and college kids drunk in their rooms. Now, Alanis has gone and covered the coverers.
The video is friggin hilarious, not so much for the content, but the level of disbelief that you feel while you watch it. the whole time your like, “Is that really her, did she just do that, did she go there.” Well it is, she did, she did, and I love her for it. The video got 1.8M views on day one.

Keep your eyes peeled for covers of this cover of covers popping up all over the internet.

There is a marketing lesson here:

Pay attention to your customers, interact with their communities, get down on their level and play by their rules. If you can do all of this in a way that adds value to the community, you will be rewarded greatly.

PS. Does anyone know who directed it? I’m thinking Kevin Smith.

If you have a website and are looking to build links to your site so you can get better rankings in search engines here is an example of what not to do. (Or in this case, what not to pay a company to do for you)

Hello,

I would like to propose a link exchange between your site www.adamschultz.com and RandomIndustrialSupplyCompany.com. RandomIndustrialSupplyCompany.com supplies (random material) used in jewelry, sports equipment, automotive performance parts, aerospace and much more.

Please consider adding our link to a page on your site:

Title: Random Industrial Supply

Description: Random Industrial Supply Inc, supplies metal mill products to the metal finishing industries including aerospace, architectural, automotive, biomedical, chemical processing, industrial, marine, oil, and others. We are a stocking distributor, and full service source of metal mill products

URL: http://www.RandomIndustrialSupplyCompany.com

Let us know when our link is placed and we will post your link in the proper category of our resources page listed here: http://www.RandomIndustrialSupplyCompany.com/linkpage/index.html

Your link will be posted within hours, however, in some rare cases it could take up to one business day. Please be sure to include your desired title and description.

Thank you for your consideration.

Tool
Tool@TotalCyberMarketingTool.com

I have been getting alot more of these lately. The funny thing about reciprocal linking is that not only has Google specifically identified it as a non-valuable tactic, any company willing to link share with you isn’t worth link sharing with. Reciprocal linking adds no value to the linked and no value to the linker.

Part of me wants to call the represented company personally and tell them to stop wasting their money on the CyberMarketingTools that are running their link building campaign.

They could be much better off actually spending their money on creating value for their customers. through blog marketing, forum participation, site improvement, contests, sponsorships or any other tactic that would bring both long and short term value without spamming the in boxes of bloggers who have absolutely to do with Industrial Metal Supply.

So, recently I wrote a couple of posts about on-line TV and my frustration with the current options available to us lowly consumers. I mentioned that while there was alot of great content out there, and that there was some solid technology to view it, both need to come up a notch as the tech still needs work and there still isn’t A+ content available free and legally for online watchers through the existing chanels.

Enter this months issue of Wired.

Did you know that the founders of Kazaa and Skype have formed a new company to compete with the archaic broadcast televison world in the same way they used Skype to upend the traditional telcoms. Well, you do now.

Ladies and Gentelman, I give you, Joost.

(more screenshots)

< wait for applause >

Think YouTube, Kazaa, Skype, Firefox, Democracy Player, and MySpace all wrapped into one killer entertainment app.

Complete with buddies, ratings, p2p distribution.

The kicker, targeted ads. That’s right, think adsense for TV.

Because the ads are more targeted, 2 things will happen.

1. Ads will be more impact-full and we will watch fewer of them with more value to our selves and to advertisers.
2. Becuase the programing is ad supported, it will be free.

Sense Wired doesn’t publish it’s offline content on-line I can’t link to the article but I will summarize it in a follow up post with some of the juicy tidbits.

I have already signed up for the Beta and will let you know once I have a chance to give it a spin.

So now we have to wonder if they will use the new Adwords post and pre roll system for their ads or create their own.

If you are a professional with a pencent for personal improvement in the realm of time management and personal productivity have I got a great blog for you.

The ADD Executive.

You will find some great resources, success stories, life hacks and most importantly, a place to share your experiences.

Full disclosure: I am helping to put this blog together and if all goes well, I and my partners on this project will share ad and affiliate revenues.

The other day, I realized that George W. Bush is now directly responsible for killing more US citizens in Iraq than were killed on 9-11. (with Afganastan, that # was surpassed months ago)

That is to say, that over the past 5 years, Bush has killed more Americans than Terrorists.

If someone wanted to do the math, I would go out on a limb and say that very soon, George W. Bush will be directly responsible for the deaths and injuries of more Americans with his un-just, un-warranted, un-necessary war in Iraq than all of the US terrorist attacks, ever.

Now, even more astounding is the realization that as of a couple of months ago, over half a million Iraqis have been killed since major combat in Iraq.

Moreover, this President is un-willing to release research funding to harvest even one frozen, never going to be used for anything else, embryo, that could lead to life saving research for countless people plagued by countless diseases because he values human life too much to permit government funding for the research.

Like many of you, until now, I felt that this whole war was such a magnificent mess that no matter what we did it wouldn’t make a difference. Sometimes I feel like we just need to get the hell out, split the country into 3 and grovel for forgiveness to the international community to bring in international peacekeepers in to protect the new borders. Then, sometimes, I feel that more troops could help stabilize the country and help to slow the progress of civil war, and that we need to be there because its our mess to clean up.

But then I realized something. We are spending billions of dollars on this god damned war. Billions of dollars. To kill people, who are only killing us to get us out of the way for them to kill each other. spree that we are responsible for and kick started with our glorious SHOCK AND AWE. As long as we are there, killing is going to be the only thing that happens.

We must leave in order for any progress to take hold. Furthermore, for every father, mother , son or daughter we kill, out grows more people who will blame the US for their loss and radicalize in order to enact revenge. The implications will haunt us for generations. Just ask the Germans or the Japanese still living in the shadows of their awry past leaders.

More troops only mean more killing and that can’t be the proper path. If bush has his way, I am sure that over 10,000 us personnel and over 1,000,000 Iraqis will have died in this mess since the beginning. WTF!

If you just think of the lifetime potential and global contribution of over a million people. The lost accomplishments of these people, their children, their grandchildren and so on, it’s staggering.

Then we have Katrina. The city still sits. Still festers. Because the rest of this country and it’s President as written it off. Even in his State Of The Union Address, The gulf cost reconstruction was never even mentioned. Not a single utterance. Murder and suicide rate continue to climb and the news media has stopped talking about Katrina all together.

What are we doing spending Billions of Dollars on destroying Iraq, when that money could be spent rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

So that brings me to the title of this post.

I have a family to support, a business to build, and between the 2, that doesn’t leave much time for anything else save for the occasional blog post. I would like to do more but not only do I not know what to do to make a difference, I’m not sure I could commit time. All I have is a love for my country, my family and my friends.

I could wait for the presidential election, but I don’t think we can wait that long. The longer Bush is in power, the more exponential damage he is capable of. I am a member of MoveOn.org. I sign petitions and write letters they ask me to when I believe the cause is just.

But what else can we do. What else are we capable of doing that can actually make a difference. What can we do so that we no longer feel like ants being slowly burned by some big eared, thin lipped kid with a magnifying glass.

What the f–k should we do?

Leave your ideas in the comments and send this post to others for their input.

I will ask for feedback on some of the best ideas in follow up posts and I will personally head up an action commity for a chosen course.

If you ever wanted to watch, listen to or read the original “I have a dream” speach form Dr. Martin Luther King.

Now is your chance.

Watch, Listen, Read it here.

Here are my 2 cents as to how and why MarketSmart Interactive Failed. I know I’m a little late on this, but for some reason, I still feel compelled to get it out.

Until 2004, when the company reached its pinnacle of success its primary focus was on meting customer demand. They were identifying needs, creating solutions and delivering on what was promised most of the time. The people in charge of delivering solutions as this point were knowledgeable and flexible.

Then, two movements converged. The industry changed and so did the focus of MSI.
1. SEO became SEM and tips and tricks could no longer bring the kind of results that a concerted and organized creative marketing effort did.
2. Websourced started answering to shareholders before answering to clients.

Continued attempts to deliver what needed to be creative marketing efforts as engineered solutions over promised and under-delivered on a mass scale leading to 1.4M in bad debt from contracts canceled before their natural terminations.

Now, the upper management at CGIH/THK had to come to terms with a very difficult truth. The cash tree was dying. They could no longer fund the growth of a diversified but not all profitable group of companies with a single cash cow. They also had no clue how to effectively synergize their companies due to, amoung other things, acquisition deals that did not make it profitable for the principals of each silo’d company to want to work with the others.

I think that at this point the decision was made to let the company bleed until it was small enough to absorb into MSA. MSA had a smaller, more boutique clientele with a completely different organizational structure and business strategy. They changed the name of the company to MarketSmart Interactive to both shake the bad press and to better align the the companies. MSI was only given as much rope and they could weave on their own. That wasn’t even enough to hang them selves with. It wasn’t enough to do much of anything.

This left them with the business equivalent of a bag of rocks. So they moved rocks the rocks around, brought in middle management and moved the rocks again. They let some rocks out of the bag, moved them around again, let some more out, moved them, spilled a few more. Finally, last Friday, they dumped the rest out and threw away the bag.

This is all just my opinion. I had no inside information leading me to this conclusion, no seat close to the door of management. It’s the only scenario that makes sense to me based on the behavior of upper management during the eventfull rise and fall.

Here are some links to other XMSI employees and their thoughts about the final resting of MSI/KWR/WBS: Evan, Garret, Cord, JP, Stephen, Andy.

What do you think?

UPDATE 06-08-07 - Click here for an updated explanation.