The World I Know

Working on the "book behind the book" for the fictional tale that I've been writing for the past year, off and on, that is. You wanna know what my mind looks like... well, this output was transferred to paper in about 30 minutes of my Saturday afternoon...

Uh-huh... well, if you can figure that out, then you will really have a nice chance at understanding me. Meanwhile, if you'd like to read the book excerpt, then go check out the introduction of the two main characters, Promise & Soupy.

Progress on the Best Buy Contest

Pleased to announce that Best Buy is talking about the contest they put out into the world to crowd-source a job description for an Emerging Media Manager. My winning entry is a humorous slant on the industry itself with a tinge of questioning whether you can actually be an expert in an emergent industry...

Barry Judge, CMO of Best Buy, on the winning Emerging Media job description written by Bob Roth:

"Bob Roth was officially the top vote getter as of the time voting was officially closed last Thursday. He was the winner with 18 votes at the time. Also worth mentioning is that last week, according to our analytics, Bob’s idea had the most views of any idea on IdeaX."

"Kudos to Bob for getting the most votes and most views! Thanks also for your idea, the time you spent crafting it, and your overall interest and participation and promotion of the crowd-sourcing experiment."

The job description I wrote can be read here.

I'll be on the lookout for this job posting, to apply, of course. Meanwhile, if you're looking for a creative mind, writer and marketing machine, shout out and let me know!

My resume can be found on LinkedIn.

My Suggestions for Visual Bookshelf

I'd rather you brought something to the picnic instead of moving the picnic... you know what I mean? In other words, I have this huge, fantastic list of friends (real and virtual) that have all identified themselves as being in a particular location, so let's take better advantage of it.

Here are the suggestions that I sent to LivingSocial for their VirtualBookshelf application on Facebook:

• Create a radio button for "Would like to give it away."
• Allow me to see those friends in my area that own a book that's in my "Want to read" list and vice versa.
• If none of my friends want to read a book I'm willing to give away, then allow me to post it to a bulletin board in the area or suggest people I don't know that are local and have that book in their "Want to read" list.
• Allow me to rank my "Want to read" list so that it's easy for me to grab the books at the top of my list when I want to order online or when I'm in the bookstore.

Several of you have suggested BookCrossing, but I have a hard time getting into it... mostly because there don't seem to be many users in the Kansas City area; no critical mass. And, as I said in the beginning, why move the picnic?

Travels w/ #freebook1, Stop 3!

A few weeks ago, I left a book with a note inside of it at Midway airport in Chicago. I felt great when the person that picked it up sent me an email to say that she was thankful for the gift and that the book had made its way to San Antonio, TX. [Read the full story here.] She also said that she'd be sure to leave the book for someone else when she was finished reading it.

LO AND BEHOLD, I got another email this week saying that she'd read it and left it in Reagan National airport in Washington, D.C. And, she'd left it with my same note inside!

AWESOME!

I live close to about 87 coffee shops, so I've thought about leaving books around Kansas City... but I've wondered if too local would equate to less correspondence. Oh, I am prone to over-thinking, in case you didn't know. I'm way overdue to purge the library, so I should have enough books to leave them in coffee shops, airports and anywhere else that seems cool (likely not a bookstore, however).

I've looked at the book trading services and they always come back to the same thing... an eye for an eye, put one in and get one out... I just want to give my book away and there's no service that helps me to do that and make a connection with someone that's thankful to receive them. I've lobbied LivingSocial to help me to match my "own it & finished reading it" list with local friends that "want to read" the same book, but that connection thread doesn't yet exist (and doesn't help them earn affiliate dollars on Amazon).

If anyone else tries this, please be sure to let me know what happens!

2 Great Service Examples This Week

A quick note to thank two companies that did something right this week. In a world where service seems to have gone by the wayside, I appreciate it when an organization does what it can to remind me or help me through a challenging process. As my friends at The Agitator would say, "You deserve a raise!"

• Northwest Airlines: for reminding me that my old WorldPerks number had expired and that I needed to create a new account in order to get credit for my trip (a month ago) from Alaska to Chicago.
• YourOnlineBookstore.com: for taking my word that a book that I sent to a friend via Amazon never arrived and immediately refunding the charges to my credit card.
  

Keep up the great work!

To My Friends Who Hid & Unfollowed

This is a public service announcement to all of my friends on Twitter and Facebook that unfollowed and hid me, respectively, during my time when:

• I was RTing like a zealot for the #hunkalert & #followfriday thing on Twitter.
• I had Twitter auto-updating in my Facebook status.

I'm sure those experiences were annoying and I apologize for filling up your news feeds with gibberish.

Now that I've figured out some things about those tools, namely to take better care of my follows in both places, I invite you to return to my normal programming, unhide and follow me back... I'd love to have your input and comments during my quest to become a successful writer.

Thank you,
bobroth
@zamees

The BestBuy Crowdsourced Contest. Results?

The Best Buy Job Description "contest" closed about four days ago, but we've not heard much from them since. Does that bother me? No, not really, even though I apparently won. I think it serves as a good example for the marketing community; loosely planned social events sink ships.

In his blog post on July 8th, Best Buy CMO Barry Judge stated:

"The winner is the one with the most votes on IdeaX as of Thursday, July 16th at 5pm Central. What does the winner get? Mostly just publicity, some satisfaction maybe. We debated about offering prizes but decided an authentic discussion is more likely to happen when people are interested in the topic without secondary motivations. We’re hoping for a really robust discussion that perhaps will foster clarity for how to craft these types of roles."

Did I enter for the win? Yeah, a little bit, but I really wanted to engage in conversation with the community and the forward-thinking posse at this large brand. One of the greatest, and most apropos, quotes that I've heard in my years as a marketing professional came from the Head Lifeguard of our Yahoo! satellite office, "Companies act their age." When Yahoo! was seven, it was a cantankerous, moody seven-year-old. When the automobile manufacturers were the age of our grandparents, they were set in their ways, immobile and deaf to new thoughts and ideas. So, what was Best Buy doing to alter an aging corporate culture?

Mr. Judge continued:

"Of course the resulting job description that we post is ultimately still up to us, but we plan to incorporate the winning idea’s description and qualifications. It may be that we mash-up the top three, or even other entries. We’re confident that good ideas will come from the discussion, and that we’ll incorporate those ideas."

The key words here, to me, are "discussion" and "incorporate." I've been disappointed in the lack of participation by the Best Buy corporation in the conversation and the missing process of mashing or incorporating from the time that several of us spent participating.

So, where's Best Buy?

I can understand their not being as public about the finality or any learnings from the process. After all, in order to vote or leave comments on the entries, individuals had to register for the IdeaX web site and practically everyone failed to receive the confirmation emails timely enough for their votes to be counted. In fact, most got a flood of confirmation emails yesterday, Monday, four days after the voting period had closed. If nothing else, we helped Best Buy figure out that their confirmation system had a bug that's been squashed.

In this day of social discussion, we want authenticity and disclosure. In fact, we demand it from our brands. Being loyal means that you're always there; you always respond to our concerns and our praise. And, when switching costs are so low--on the Internet we can find the same product from somewhere else where they do respond to us--well, brands should concoct a better plan before just throwing things out into the socialverse, unless they tell us up front that we're just gonna see what happens. We all know how to just go with the flow if that's the expectation that's set.

Deal?

A Puzzle for the Single Ladies

Years--and when I say years, I mean YEARS--ago, I became single. Somehow, as a Yahoo! employee, I was close to all the "attached" ladies who worked for their Personals product. As I'm sure you can fathom, I was a great test case for their product and for others. Unfortunately, I've never really gotten much from Yahoo!, nor Match.com for that matter, but I've been on Match for most of the the last five years and 4 cities that I've lived in.

(Yes, perhaps part of the problem in finding a mate is my nomadic tendency, I know.)

So, when my latest potential love blew up around me, I didn't really want to get back on Match, but I made my profile public again. I also didn't want to pay for it anymore, so I've spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how to circumvent the system. For those that don't know, if you aren't paying for the service, then you can't read the emails nor see who sent them to you.

It took me three submissions to the customer care team to finally get something published where, for a smarty-pants woman (which is a must for me), I could be found without either of us having to pay for the Match.com service.

Check out my profile and see if you can figure out how she'd contact me without either of us paying...

(PS: It helps to have taken some keywords and built a lot of content around them.)