In 1985 when the original “We are the World” was first released, my friends, co-workers, and I were big fans of the song. It ended up being a huge hit.
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Earlier this year, when Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones decided to do a 25th anniversary remake of “We are the World”, I was curious as to who would be singing in the updated version. There were many artists that participated I was quite happy with. They included Barbra Streisand, Josh Groban, Celine Dion, and Fergie to name a few. However, I will say that I did NOT care for the rap and hip-hop singers toward the end of the song. I also thought Jamie Foxx did a terrible job on the introduction. For an actor, he could have delivered the scripted lines much better. Nevertheless, I did buy a copy of the song from iTunes.
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Since then, there have been a number of impressive “We are the World” remakes by “amateurs”. The first one I saw out of the gates is the version by Tyler Ward and his group. Tyler’s version has a very nice look and even has a humorous bit at the end. The audio quality for this YouTube video is quite good albeit a shortened version of the original’s 7-minute song.
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The next “We are the World” remake that I learned about was the version by Lisa Lavie and her group that CNN reported on. This one tries very hard to give everyone a bit of spotlight time and goes the full 7 minutes unlike Tyler Ward’s shortened version.
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As you can tell, I am a fan of this song and the creativity it has inspired on YouTube. If I find some really great remake versions of “We are the World”, I will add them to this post.
When I attended Webster University for my MBA well over a decade ago, I did the academic work at the Orlando campus. I have never been to St. Louis and looking forward to finally visiting the city and the Main Campus being at the heart of the academic action.
I will be bringing out my digital camera and camcorder to capture some memories of the experience.
On Friday, September 25 at 2:30pm EST, I will be interviewed by publicist Joanne McCall on her Internet radio show about my publishing experiences and the TurnKey Publishing brand philosophy. The program will be 30-minutes long. I am looking forward to this fun experience.
As the names implies, educational marketing is a specific type of marketing where you engage potential customers and clients through education and consultation. It is about taking a leadership but also an expert, instructional, and training role in engaging customers and clients.
Done well, it is a collaborative well and there is goodwill on both parties. Done poorly, customers and clients feel that the power of knowledge and expertise is being used against them as an unfair advantage leaving them feeling dissatisfied from the experience.
Educational marketing is often used in large businesses where a high degree of technical understanding is part of the customer-buying process. The computer hardware, computer software, Internet, medical, and pharmaceutical industry are large-scale examples of businesses that engage in educational marketing efforts. Even late-night infomercials engage in educational marketing when they demonstrate how to use new, innovative products.
In smaller businesses, doctors, attorneys, accountants, electricians, plumbers, and auto mechanics also actively engage in a form of educational marketing. They have to educate their customers and clients as they market and sell to them. Done well, everyone is happy. Done poorly, it becomes a distasteful experience especially for the customer and client.
Educational marketing is quite pervasive in many businesses even though business owners and managers do not necessarily use the term educational marketing. They simply know they have to teach their potential customers and clients.
In this article, I focus on discussing educational marketing as it relates to consultants, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other high-achieving business professionals. Doctors, attorneys, accountants, small business owners, and entrepreneurs all fall into the group of people I focused on and work with.
These are people who often represent the human face of businesses they own or work for. How they perform as individuals is a direct reflection of their business. The individual-company relationship cannot easily be separated with the business.
Fundamentally, there are four basic ways potential customers and clients learn during the educational marketing process. They can read, listen, see, or do. They can read text information such as books, brochures, newspapers, ads, and other media. They can listen to a live or recorded audio program such as a speech, training, or presentation. They can see (watch) a video (such as instructional tapes, videos, and DVDs) or a live demonstration through a class, workshop, or seminar. Or they can practice on or work with the product itself such as product and software trial periods.
I believe powerful educational marketing tools include published books, audio programs, and videos. They are powerful because they are also the same tools used in credibility marketing. In fact, successful educational marketing efforts result in a dual benefit. Good educational marketing also translates to good credibility marketing. (You can read more about Credibility Marketing in another article I wrote.)
Even in a seemingly irrelevant business such as leasing single-family homes, we have had great success with ongoing educational marketing efforts using our website. Everyday, we “teach” our applicants through our website using text information and videos and our dedicated telephone information hotline through pre-recorded audios. We expend relatively little information on a personal level but we “teach” our potential customers 24-hours a day, 7-days a week.
We actively use publishing principles in the real estate side of our business. We don’t publish books per se for our potential customers but we do publish information on our web pages. We don’t publish formal audio programs for our potential customers but we do create audio recordings on our dedicated telephone information hotline.
However, if I were to actually sell our homes for commissions as real estate brokers do, I would not hesitate to write and publish a book and audio program on the subject. They are great business calling cards, symbols of my expertise and credibility, and they would teach my potential clients what they need to know to buy, negotiate, inspect, and finance a home.
I am an advocate of using published products as part of any educational marketing strategy. Even if books don’t get read, they command the highest respect out of all the media available including newspaper ads, brochures, radio, CDs, videos, and TV. This stems from the academic and scholarly symbolism we attach to books to this day.
An author is often bestowed by the public with expert status on the subject they have written and published on. I often say, writing and publishing a book is like getting a GED for the college degree. Depending on the subject and quality of your book, it may be like you getting a Bachelor’s, Master’s or even a PhD degree. The difference is that it takes far less time, money, and effort to write a book than to earn an academic degree. Becoming an author is a worthwhile investment for any high-achieving business professional, entrepreneur, consultant, and CEO.
Publishing a book or an audio program are excellent ways to engage in educational marketing. In addition to being great business symbols and calling cards, they help teach and spread your message. They empower your potential customers and clients with your expertise, knowledge, and wisdom.
In closing, I am a huge advocate of Educational Marketing. Large or small business, you will have to educate your customers and clients about your business, product, and service before you can sell them. Educational marketing should be part of your overall marketing strategy.
Despite what you might have heard, credibility marketing is about marketing your brand, company, mission, and yourself. Credibility marketing is not about directly promoting your products and services. And it is certainly not about the hard and quick sell. Credibility marketing is about investing and reinvesting in your company brand, message, and mission.
Credibility marketing is about developing and enhancing your presence, stature, authenticity, and respectability so that when you (or your company) has something to say, potential customers and clients will not only listen, they will believe you with minimal skepticism.
Often, this is about sharing information about your mission and what values you stand for. You are also measured by the authenticity (believability/honesty) of the message you convey and portray. Authenticity can sometimes be hard to determine but listeners look to their gut to determine if someone is authentic. However, it is true that good acting can deceive others into thinking that you are authentic when you are not.
Closely aligned with authenticity is congruency. You will also be measured by your congruency. Congruency is the measure and appearance of how you (and your company) behave, act, and respond as it relates to your public message. Are you company actions and responses always consistent with your company’s mission, brand, and messaging? If not, how often are you inconsistent? If your congruency factor is low (less than 70%), your company may be perceived as inconsistent or, even worse, hypocritical. The polar opposite of congruency is hypocrisy. Many have a high distaste for hypocrisy. It is the fastest away to kill credibility marketing efforts.
I believe a powerful way of enhancing and building credibility is the willingness to acknowledge imperfect aspects of yourself and your company. A willingness to express humility, self-deprecation, and imperfections can greatly enhance your credibility. It humanizes your company in the face of other marketing campaigns that say they are “perfect, flawless, the best, the greatest, etc.”
I am not subscribing to openly sharing your critical weaknesses and Achilles Heel so that competitors and others can take advantage of you but showing that you have an ongoing philosophy to self-improve can be an asset to building credibility.
Another powerful way of building your credibility is through education. Educating others is about sharing expertise, knowledge, wisdom, and empowering others with valuable information so they can make an informed decision even if that decision means not buying your company product or services. Short-term, you may lose a sale but in the long-term, you will create goodwill and be remembered favorably for the next buying opportunity.
People who educate place themselves as an authority and expert figure when they teach, train, and instruct others. As a teacher, trainer, instructor, and expert figure, your credibility is almost automatically enhanced. People are listening and learning from you. They are opening their minds to you. They are more receptive to you.
One reason I am a huge proponent of publishing books and audio programs is that authors are often considered experts and teachers in what they write and speak about. Of course, that is not true in every case and every person. But in the professional and business world, authors are still much fewer in number than college graduates. In fact, for most “average” people, their chances of personally knowing someone who is an author (even an unknown one) is much lower than they knowing someone who is a college graduate.
Becoming an author is one of the best ways to build, enhance, and even jump-start your credibility. Holding a book you authored and published in your hands is a powerful symbol that shows your expertise in a subject matter or field.
As I often say, writing and publishing a book is like getting a GED for the college degree. Depending on the subject and quality of your book, it may be like you getting a Bachelor’s, Master’s or even a PhD degree. The difference is that it takes far less time, money, and effort to write a book than to earn an academic degree. Becoming an author is a worthwhile investment for any high-achieving business professional, entrepreneur, consultant, and CEO.
In closing, I am a huge advocate of Credibility Marketing. Large or small business, if you don’t have credibility, people will not believe what you have to say or sell.
A recent incident made me think of how people live their lives. There are those who try to live an open life and reach out to others. And there are many who say they do the same but when you find out more about them, listen to their words, and watch their actions, they really live in darkness and fear.
For people who really know me, I am actually a somewhat shy, quiet, introvert. And yet, my public persona and outward personality is very much opposite of who I am inside. I have learned to improve my personal skills. I travel, speak, socialize, publish, write books, and have several websites that I manage. Essentially, anyone that wants to find me or learn more about me can easily do so simply by Googling my name.
Interestingly, I generally get two general reactions. There are those who find it interesting and fascinating that I have this semi-public, online life. They are attracted to it and follow it. And then there are others who are repelled by and find it offensive. These people generally do a hit-and-run. They say something nasty and I don’t hear from them again.
What I have learned is that “like people attract other like people” or “people are attracted to other people they aspire to be”.
I have chosen to live this semi-public life for many reasons.
#1, I am held accountable to a higher standard in both my personal and professional life if I know people are watching. After all, many of us can get sloppy, lazy, and fat in the privacy of our homes.
#2, I found that living in quiet, obscurity being an unknown actually hinders the goals I want to achieve in life. The fact is the more people you know (or those who know you) can make your life much easier. If you do things right and stick to your convictions, people know who you are and what you stand for. They learn to believe you, respect you, and trust you.
#3, I attract those people and business opportunities that I would not have otherwise if I had not put myself out there. It is amazing how many personal friends, business associates, and customers that have come into my life as a result of putting myself out in the light.
#4, I can better affect positive change within my life, other people’s lives, and the communities I participate in as a result of the influence a sustained personal online presence has.
To be sure, I like my privacy just like anyone else but I believe there is a such thing as living in the underground. Most of us have some kind of skeletons in our past lives. We must all come to terms with them in our own way. Many times, those skeletons we assume that are so bad turns out to be quite common. Sometimes, we are our own worst critic and judges when it comes to those skeletons.
As I said earlier, I can quickly determine the true nature of a person by what they say, what they do, and how they respond to things. When I encounter someone who chooses to live in the dark and underground, I respect their decision but I know I will have to go another direction that is more empowering and inspiring.
And when you meet confident, powerful people who put themselves out in the light, taking risks, living life fully, who have made peace with themselves, that is extremely invigorating and inspiring.
I make it a policy to stand my ground and not let toxic and dark people impact my life. Normally, I will do my best to avoid the person or situation but if they get into my face or otherwise try to negatively impact my life, then I will not hesitate to stand my ground and assert yourself.
Unfortunately, I have learned in life that sometimes “being nice” is taken as a sign of weakness. Some people will only respond and respect you when you take a more assertive and even aggressive stand. To me, it is strange but true.
In any case, in the months to come, I will be ramping things up even more in a big way. I am excited by what I have planned and will soon be implementing. I am intentionally being vague because I want more time to formulate my thoughts.
People who want to live in darkness and obscurity will run like roaches into the night when the upcoming light shines even brighter. And those people who have been interested and excited by what I have done thus far, will have even greater reason to come back and find out more.
In my prior post on my attendance of the Poverty Symposium, I mention the Culture of Poverty and the Poverty Mindset. I did not want to get too side-tracked by getting to deep a discussion of the Culture of Poverty and the Poverty Mindset.
Danny Bivins of the Fanning Institute said that in looking at the “root causes”, they also wanted to be able to measure it and collect data on it. That is fine as a statistical exercise but I am not going to absolve common sense and my personal encounters with people who come from a culture of poverty and have the poverty mindset. It is all around us. The Culture of Poverty and the Poverty Mindset IS a root cause because it is a belief and life system that must be changed for all the other social programs to work. Otherwise, the symptoms of poverty will continue to persist.
People have to believe, be driven to get out of poverty, and become self-sufficient not just talk about it and assume money will solve all their problems.
Instead of a textbook discussion, I am going to make give some pointed examples of how I know it exists and reasonably prevalent. Let me preface my statements by saying there are always exceptions to the rule and some rise above it all. But many do not.
1. As a property manager and landlord, I am accustomed to dealing with tenants of all types. Many are good tenants but many are not so good either. I tell everyone the same thing, if you get into trouble, call me, and send in what you have. Some call, many do not. It has nothing to do with money, it has everything to do with the willingness to communicate and face a problem and not putting their head in the sand.
2. Each year, there are some tenants that put Christmas gifts and the top of the list and rent at the bottom of the priority list.
3. There are many poorer people who have much nicer and larger TV’s than I do. Many also have nicer tire rims than I do on my car.
4. How many lottery winners have we heard from over the years that said the money ruined them and that they were worse off than if they had not won the money? It wasn’t the money. It was their inability to become financially knowledgeable or responsible. They were too worried about spending and impressing others with their new-found wealth than to learn to save or invest. Boxing champion Mike Tyson is fundamentally poverty-conscious despite the many millions he made over the years. Yet, he went bankrupt years ago.
5. I know tenants who intentionally keep their income low so that they can continue to get government assistance in their housing and food stamps. Most people I know would do it as a very last resort, it it even came to that. And if they did resort to that, they would do everything they could to get off government assistance.
6. Poor people put a high priority in having cash on hand. They do pocket accounting. What cash they have in their pocket is often how they manage their money. They also seem to do better with cell phones with pre-paid minutes. It seems they cannot self-control the minutes they use and so a billing system does not work for them. They do not like checking accounts because it requires financial management. The credit system is foreign to poor people.
7. The Internet and the digital world is entirely foreign to most poor people. It is simply too abstract and non-tangible for them. No one has shown them or educated them. The digital divide is alive and well. Anyone who can find and read this blog mostly likely did not come from the culture of poverty. But that does not mean poor people couldn’t. After all most public libraries have computers with Internet access.
These are some real-life examples that the Poverty Mindset exists and that the cycle of poverty can be very difficult to break because the value system is passed on from one generation to the next. Also, people have a tendency to be friends and associate with others that have a similar value system. Thus, the poor have other poor friends who have a similar poverty mindset.
Instead of just throwing money and offering more services, we need to provide more educational and mentorship programs that teach people how to adopt a new set of life values, life skills, and an entrepreneurial work ethic. Hard work is not enough. Working smart with leverage are concepts have to be introduced.
I may update this article as I learn more about the issue and culture of poverty.
I was pondering what I was going to write for my first post of 2009. I didn’t want to post anything relating to the onslaught of negative news everyone has been getting.
So, I was casually watching a recorded episode of Oprah thinking I was going to fast forward through the episode as I often do. Then Oprah talks about this young singer named Charice that she had brought on months earlier and plays a clip of it. I was intrigued because there was this clip where this young, petite teen-age girl is belting out her rendition of Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” song.
After watching that clip, I was hooked. She went on to sing one of my favorite songs, Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”. Like Oprah and her audience, I was just blown away by this girl’s performance.
As if her talent wasn’t enough, her life story was very inspiring coming from very humble beginnings in the Philippines. Very moving indeed.
Normally, I would not write a post about some teen-age singer but I have to admit to being stunned and incredulous. I truly believe that Charice Pempengco will one day take up the mantle now held by vocal sensations Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey. With producer David Foster’s backing, I believe her inevitable first album will be a hit.
All I can say is go to Charice’s website at http://charicepempengco.com and treat yourself to the linked videos of her performance on the Oprah and Ellen Degeneres websites.
After that, drop by YouTube and do a search on “Charice Pempengco”. Pick your favorite song that she has sung recorded on video. I challenge anyone NOT to be inspired and moved by this young girl.
Simply incredible that voice on that girl. You could swear it was actually Whitney Houston or Celine Dion actually singing themselves.
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