Survivor Tweets Rock!

I recently posted about how I rarely watch live TV. I love my DVR for the freedom it’s given me!

Well, the last few weeks Survivor episodes have had the host, Jeff Probst, live tweeting during the show. This is the coolest! To have this kind of access to the host, the guy who’s been there since the beginning, to have his commentary, jokes and insights is a huge value-add to sitting alone on my couch yelling at the TV!

And this resurrects ‘appointment viewing’ for TV. For the last two weeks I’ve been on the couch promptly at 7 with my Blackberry in hand to watch Survivor and follow Jeff’s tweets. I’m watching live so I can’t fast forward through the commercials. This has to make the advertisers happy. It has improved my viewing experience, deepened my loyalty and now I’m telling people about it!

On the flip side, yesterday a group of managers met in our conference room to watch a webinar on coaching. The hosts gave us the hashtag to use so we could comment and submit questions. They failed to manage their time properly and due to all of their extraneous bantering, they ran out of time and couldn’t take advantage of the feedback received via Twitter. Bummer for them!

Marketing and IT BFFs?

Yes, I said Marketing and IT. Really.

With any website or CRM program that has to integrate with a legacy billing system, marketing and IT have to work together and it’s much more fun if you can enjoy the experience. Dealing with data is an exact science. Dealing with data from an old, legacy billing system that was never designed to display the data or use it for customization of any kind, is a big hairy beast of a project that requires patience and collaboration from both Marketing and IT.

I’ve spent much of my career specializing in database marketing strategies. This means I’ve spent hours and hours working with IT and learning about select criteria, data pulls, file layouts, look-up tables, queries, API’s etc. I actually enjoy it. Most data problems are just logic puzzles…kind of like Sudoku. In the words of the very wise Weird Al Yankovic, I’m white and nerdy!

In my current position, one of my biggest projects is managing our replicating websites and shopping cart. I spend alot of my time with the Director of IT. We bonded from day one. He ‘covered’ for me on this project while I was on vacation. How often does IT cover for Marketing?

So yes, the Directors of Marketing and IT are BFFs…he loves soccer, Netherlands is his favorite non-US team, he has a spreadsheet charting all the winners of Survivor, and he drinks Jack and Coke.

A night without TV...

Gasp! Shocking I know. Just the thought. But it happened in the Scherting household!

Monday night, I walked the dogs, a friend stopped by to bring me some Delicious tortilla soup (yum, thank you Fern!) and I went to the gym. Came home around 8:30 and thought to myself, let’s try a night without TV!

I’ve been pondering the idea for awhile. Now I love the water cooler chat over why Russell should have won Survivor. I love the witty banter of my favorite Monday night nerds on Big Bang Theory. I love comparing episodes of the Office to real work-life with my co-workers. A night without TV is blasphemy!

I didn’t stop there! No music, no Internet. It was just quiet time with some old magazines from 2007, working on my new vision board…cutting out words, phrases and pictures. Thinking about what I want this year. (btw, 2010 It’s All About Me!)

So you are a marketer, how do you get your messages to me? No TV, no radio, not online. Hmm. Magazines were out-of-date. The database marketer in me says direct mail! I was actually cutting up some mail pieces and catalogs. With everyone relying on e-mail, e-newsletters, Twitter, Facebook etc. a really good mail piece, with the right message to the right person can still work.

Direct mail isn’t dead yet. But don’t take any lessons from credit card companies. Seriously, how many of those checks are they going to send me? Sometimes I get two of the same mailer on the same day. Don’t they de-dupe their list? What a waste! But the AT&T piece with coupon codes for Video-On-Demand movies…now we’re talking. And B2B…I rarely get a compelling message in my physical inbox on my desk. I get annoying cold call voice mail messages but nothing tangible and relevant to support the message. How hard is that?