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Speaking engagement confirmed.

January 15, 2009

Craig Blackburn is confirmed to speak on January 31, 2009 at the Professional Development Seminar to kick off Business Week for AIESEC Edmonton and the University of Alberta School of Business.

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Your Unlimited Advertising Budget for 2009

January 14, 2009

An unlimited ad budget in a recession probably seems like a pretty ludicrous statement but it is possible to have one.

A couple weeks ago Seth Godin challenged the topic of advertising, or more specifically, how your advertising can be free when marketing does its job. Here is an excerpt from this blog post:

If the local bank were offering a sale on dollar bills, ninety cents each, how many would you buy?

Most rational people would say, “I’ll take them all please.” Especially if you had thirty days to pay for them.

So, why, precisely, do you have an ad budget?

If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don’t work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you’re not sure, that ads are risky, that you can’t tell. And for some sorts of products and some sorts of ads, you’ll get no argument from me.

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that’s positive, buy, buy, buy!”

I couldn’t agree more. I am Craig Blackburn and I approve this message.

For more on Seth, do a You Tube search and you find tons of awesome interviews and key note speeches. He has also written some stellar books: The Big Red Fez, The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable, Free Prize Inside!: The Next Big Marketing Idea, and his latest, Tribes.

Seth is the quintessential marketing rock star and each one of these books is sure to strike a power chord. Why? The marketing swami’s delivery is perfect. He cuts the bullshit with the precision of a surgeon, he masterminds real life examples like a marketing-focused Dane Cook, and in just a few choice words he is able to reveal wonder and awe within the most mundane of subjects. Some would call him a genius but I think he just has common sense…and today common sense isn’t so common.

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