I had the chance to catch up with Phil Gerbyshak (@philgerb) last month during a trip to Chicago.  Phil had contributed a few examples to the Purple Goldfish Project.  One of those was AJ Bombers who became #152 in the list.

Here is my interview with Phil.   We talk about PhilGerbyshak.com, AJ Bombers and #twitterworks:

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra) – Check out the new book #twitterworks

The story of how social media built a restaurant, a pizza truck and thousands of relationships.

What are you working on?  What are you doing? What’s on your mind?

These are the respective questions asked by LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Brian Solis of PR 2.0 is a thought leader that is constantly evaluating PR’s role in shifting marketing landscape.  I absolutely have fallen in love with a term that Brian has coined.  It’s called the ‘STATUSPHERE’.

In Brian’s words with my thoughts in BOLD:

We’re shifting into a rapid-fire culture that moves at Twitter time. Attention is a precious commodity and requires a personalized engagement strategy in order to consistently vie for it [How are you engaging your best marketing resource - YOUR CUSTOMER?]. The laws of attraction and relationships management are driven by the ability to create compelling content and transparently connect it to the people whom you believe benefit. [What is your distinctive 'PURPLE GOLDFISH' and is it relevant to your customer?]

The Statusphere is the new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content that reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of activity. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process. [Getting into the status updates of your consumer exposes you to their vast network]

Twitter, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed and other micro communities that define the Statusphere, are driving action and determining the direction and course of individual attention.

So – what does this mean to me as a brand manager, CMO or a business owner???

The statusphere (people updating their status on social networks) has become the new digital watercooler.  It’s increasingly how people are sharing content via word of mouse.  It’s how a vast majority of folks are getting their news.  Your goal is to get your brand into that ’statusphere’. How do you WOW your customer to the point that they want to share their experience?    You need a PURPLE GOLDFISH or three.  You need to give your best marketing resource something to post, blog, tweet or Facebook about.

Need some thought starters?

Head over to the Purple Goldfish Project where you’ll find how hundreds of brands are leveraging the power of marketing lagniappe.

Today’s Lagniappe – Brian Solis talking about the ‘Statusphere’ at the CLIO awards:

If the Customer Service Dept. is Your Defense . . . then Your Purple Goldfish is Offense

Christopher S. Penn wrote an inspiring post to kick off the new decade on Jan.1.  It turns out he is rededicating his focus in 2010 to stay true to the moniker of his blog, ‘Awaken Your Superhero’.

[I highly recommend a podcast that Chris does with partner John Wall called 'Marketing Over Coffee'.  Roughly 20 minutes of the duo kibitzing about marketing with a focus on SEO, e-mail and social media.  I always walk away with a nugget or two]

Here is the strong marketing takeaway from Chris’ post:

Play to your strengths. Deploy your offense. Look for opportunities to do more of what you know you’re really good at. Find ways to work your powers into more of what you do every day. Give your defensive linemen a breather and score a touchdown or two this year.

I started thinking about the points Chris was making as I was working on my manuscript last night.

I starting thinking about defense.  I always get a chuckle when I hear Boomer Esiason rant about a ‘prevent defense’ in football.  Boomer absolutely hates it.  He says it only prevents you from doing one thing . . .it prevents you from winning.  Then I thought about the idea of customers using social media to vent about their bad customer experiences.  Too often this puts companies on the defensive. As Rick Liebling referenced in a recent post on EYECUBE, it ends up looking like the company is apologizing a lot.

After all – no one is going to go on Facebook, Twitter or blog about a mere satisfactory experience.  Too often companies settle for what an old boss of mine used to call “The New Jersey Compliment”.  Simply defined, “When your customers don’t tell you you’re fu*king up, then you know you are doing a good job.”

The problem with laying back with the Jersey Compliment strategy is that Google has changed the rules.  Now those same customer complaints can show up on the first page of the search results for your company.

The Solution:

Develop some branded acts of kindness, i.e. ‘purple goldfish’.  Figure out a few signature ways you can surprise and delight your customers by giving that ‘little unexpected extra’.  Do it correctly by sticking to the R.U.L.E.S and you’ll tap into the vital 10% of the general public.  I’m talking about the 9% who share comments about brands and the holy grail, the 1% who actually create content on the web.  Give them something to talk, tweet, Facebook and post about.  You need to fight those inevitable bad comments by going on the offensive in 2010.  Gets some ‘attaboys’ on the first page of your Google results.

Could 2010 be the Year of the Purple Goldfish? (#purplegoldfishproject)

Marketing Lagniappe is the Original Social Media Stimulant

I was reading a post this week from Rick Liebling over at EYECUBE.

Rick made an interesting observations about how brands want to utilize social media with the following agenda:

“Let’s get people talking about our brand”

He pointed out the fact that little thought is given to the following issues:

• Who do we want talking?
• What do we want them saying?
• How do we keep the conversation going?
• Is our voice unique?
• How can we add value?

Here is my take on how ‘marketing lagniappe’ addresses those issues:

• The best marketing is 1st person word of mouth, i.e. your customers
• Control the things you can control . . . how you treat your existing customers
• Deliver value with your product or service and exceed customer expectations
• Provide that ‘little signature something extra’ . . . a purple goldfish

I’m not a big fan of Bonnie Raitt (in fact I generally loathe only two types of music . . . ‘country and western’). That said – – I think her song, “Let’s give them something to talk about” speaks volumes about Rick’s issues.

Using a little artistic license (apologies Bonnie) on the song lyrics:

Let’s give them something to talk about
A little purple goldfish as they wonder out
Let’s give them something to talk, blog, Facebook and tweet about . . .

We’re almost at 150.  HELP me catch another 857 purple goldfish for a great cause.  Click here to send me your example.