I will be doing the evening keynote at the AdFed in Greenville, SC on January 17.

Then I’ll head down I-26 to speak to the AAF of the Midlands luncheon in Columbia, SC the next day on the 18th.

If you’re anywhere in western South Carolina (or southern North Carolina), make plans to come to one of these events. Click the links above to find the specifics for each event.

I’ll be talking to both groups about branding … from what a real brand is (and is not) to developing a brand strategy that works with my three essential elements of any marketing strategy. I’ll have a few copies of ‘Brand Zeitgeist‘ for sale, but I’ll also be happy to sign any copies that people want to bring in. (Actually, you’ll probably find them cheaper on Amazon anyway.)

And if your group or business needs a corporate business speaker in 2012, I’d love to speak to your group. Please visit shotgunconcepts.com/speaker to find out more.

Someone is making a sales pitch or educational presentation to you. They need your attention. Then as they begin, they say…

but before we get started let me tell you a little about our company. It was founded by Joe Whatsisname back in 1923. We merged with Whatsicallit Corp in 1934. The new company decided…

And on it goes for the next several slides and minutes.

Why lead with this?

It’s the equivalent of pulling out slides of your parent’s trip to the Grand Canyon when visitors enter your front door. It’s only mildly interesting to the person presenting. It’s sheer boredom to the audience and the potential customer.

But you might say they need to know the history of the company so they can see our longevity in the market and make an informed purchase decision…

Okay. Then in the first 5 minutes of your next job interview, tell the interviewer about the writing award you got in 7th grade.

It falls back to one of my fundamental precepts of marketing and communication. Approach all communication from the audience’s perception, not yours.

Tell them things they care about and want to know, not what you (or corporate) want to tell them.

Out there in the cultural zeitgeist, I think there are three commencement addresses that are worth your time. These three are good; not only for recent graduates, but also for anyone who needs some business motivation.

To satisfy the Apple fanboys, I’ll list Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address first. It consists of three stories, and I like the first one best. You never know what connections from the past will come together to create new ideas. Here’s the text of the speech or you can watch it here.

Conan O’Brien’s 2000 Harvard address is mostly jokes and very funny. (naturally) But it actually contains one of the best messages that a twenty-something or anyone can learn: Failure is necessary to succeed.
The quality of the video below is poor so you’ll find the text version is better.

The odd thing about Conan’s speech is that he gave it about ten years before the Leno / Tonight Show fiasco. It’s been his only commencement speech until this year when Conan is scheduled to address the graduates of Dartmouth. It will be interesting if he expands on his theme. (UPDATE: He did.)

“Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” was originally a 1997 column in the Chicago Tribune, but Baz Luhrmann reworked the column as a spoken word / musical track on an album. The track became a worldwide radio hit in the summer of 1999. It became an ear rut for me that year in my radio days. The lyrics contain many truths.

One of the final verses of Sunscreen pretty much captures the essence of all commencement addresses…

Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

These crowdsourced TED talks are MUCH shorter versions of the regular 18 minute TED talks. They are also supposed to utlilize a different type of story telling. For my one minute TED audition, I went with a combination of a few of their suggested ideas and came up with a ‘blizzard of images’ (new slide about every 3 seconds) that are choreographed to my point.

And I do have a point. It’s a kind of a different riff and new take on my “marketing in the collective consciousness” work.

Overall, the basic idea of my TED audition is:

• For the past 75/100 years, society has been “learning” a huge amount of knowledge from the media, marketers, and others.
• You’ve retained more of this meaningless pop culture knowledge than you realize.
• You can quickly communicate a large idea with others in our culture using seemingly meaningless phrases and ideas because you’re both working from this basic pop culture framework.
• The definition of “the media” is changing from “them” to “us”
• Will “we” do a better job than “they” did?

(Think of it as a less musical version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire“)

Obviously, the final version of the talk will be longer than this so I can get the whole point across. I would love to present it in Long Beach at TED2012.

(I could also present it to your event! Contact me)

What many people (including many meeting organizers) don’t understand is that even though a speaker is “only speaking for an hour”, in reality, there are several days of prep, travel, and other efforts expended to produce a good presentation. You wouldn’t ask another professional to work 3 days for free, but people ask speakers to do it all the time.

Speakers should also never say never. I actually will speak for free at things like barcamps or local non-profit and professional meetings because there’s low travel investment and immense value in it for me. That value comes from the opportunity to practice new material in front of a real audience or to help out a group that needs it.

Even when I don’t speak for free, I offer a ridiculously cheap speaking fee to groups like AdFed / AAF chapters, AMA, SMEI, or other similar groups because I want to be in front of those people as those people hire marketing speakers for seminars, conferences, trade shows, and other corporate events. But even with those, I still have a travel reimbursement in the contract.

And, of course, my offer still stands to speak at TED.

But a call for speakers came in my email this morning that I found incredibly amazing and somewhat funny…

Call for Speaker on Negotiating
{redacted} is looking for a speaker for the April 14th lunchtime event on negotiating. You must be willing to donate your time and travel. The RFP can be found here: {redacted}

A few points worth mentioning:

• They want you to fill out an RFP to speak for free and not get travel reimbursement? (I looked at the RFP. It would take at least 30 minutes to fill out properly.)
• They’re looking for a speaker who supposedly knows how to negotiate. The winner of the RFP should be the speaker who negotiates a fee and travel reimbursement from them!

In the end, all meeting planners should remember that you get what you pay for. And speakers should remember that you’re worth what you’re paid.