Day 7: The Neon Man (Slash Coleman & PBS): Gross Impressions

So, today my meetings continued. 

I spent most of my day thrift store shopping with my cousin, stylist, Josh Coleman, who gave me some advice about my wardrobe/storytelling costume. I confessed to him that although I'd chosen one outfit to wear when I performed from now on, during my last two unpublicized shows, I rebelled against myself and chose not to wear my outfit. It seemed like I was putting myself into a box  - like a 9 to 5 job. He said a lot of time that happens to him as well and situations, and emotions should dictate the wardrobe. He said if I settled on a tie, a vest and a shirt, then I could choose amongst many styles and colors of tie and vest and shirt to wear.


In the late afternoon, I met with Greg Kontos. This is a guy who writes about Lunar Radiation, Paranal Observatories in Chile, and Technovelgy on his blog www.aceize.com. Let's just say whenever we get together and talk our conversations are profound and world shaking. (Perhaps you felt the tremors move the sidewalks outside Ellwood Coffee Shop at 3:45 pm) We discussed my viral marketing campaign and more specifically the the idea of "gross impressions," and how to create them. 

Greg was trying to help me come up with ideas of what specifically I should send to each PBS station under certain conditions. Knowing that I needed to send things to 300 stations across the country and knowing that I didn't have much money - these things needed to be flat, cheap and small enough to put in an envelope. 

In the end, we decided on a couple things that I have yet to research:
1) I would spend the extra money on a priority mail envelope which would be more likely to get opened.


2) I would put a plastic, flat, neon colored, ginger-bread type man in the envelope with my contact info and "The Neon Man and Me," printed on it.


3) We tossed around the idea of including a saxophone reed since the show is about my late friend who played the saxophone, but we thought it might gross some people out with germs and stuff if they thought it was a used reed.

4) I would include a miniature version of my press kit  - maybe index card sized, so it wouldn't look like I was trying to pitch something traditional, but I would still be able to pass along important contact information to them.





5) I would write a very specific letter. I will reveal this on my  blog after the viral marketing campaign is complete so you can see how it worked. 

I'm shooting for my campaign to win over the support of at least 80% of the PBS stations nationwide.


For more info about "The Neon Man and Me" and other storytelling projects by me - Slash Coleman  - please visit slashcoleman.com

Day 5: The Neon Man and Me (Slash & PBS)

If you ever need a reality check on the state of the world economy, I suggest putting an ad up on Craigslist advertising a job opening. This summer when I was searching for a personal assistant I put an ad out and received about 20 ga-zillion responses. After that, I knew I needed to hire a personal assistant just to read all the responses.

In the ad I asked potential assistants to e-mail me 2-3 sentences about themselves and why they wanted the job in 150 words or less, that was it. I got some whacked out responses (one person wrote to me from the "mothership" and sad responses (mis-spelled woes of job loss and needing to make ends meet - a couple that actually made me cry) and a lot of resumes with form letters that my potential worked bees had probably sent to the last 50,000 job openings they'd applied for. I even got someone who stalked me for a while and kept showing up at all my shows and cornering me and asking me about the job.


When I put the Craiglist ad out last night I was expecting the same thing. Although only time will tell it was actually refreshing to wake up this morning and only see one reponse in my box.

* In my on going quest to go viral I set up some more appointments today. Later this week I'll be meeting with Greg Kontos, who I met in 2006 when we each won Style Weekly's Top 40 under 40 award. He invented some kind of plastic tube that converts salt water into fresh water.


* I downloaded a program called Fast Blog Finder that I found on Kim Komando's website. It's supposed to search the internet ether and bring me back blogs that I specifiy according to key words. For instance, I can type in the words PBS and FBF will show me all the blogs where PBS is a topic. This will allow me to leave comments on these blogs, which is supposedly a great way to get "back links" which drives traffic to your won blog.

I thought this was kind of bogus when I first read it, but if you look at a comment that was made on my blog two days ago, you'll see what I'm talking about. Some guy named Jeff Anderson commenting on my tenacity and then talked about how it reminded him of his own marketing prowess in trying to get his product into stores. He sells a little toy cricket called the Cricket Toy that makes a cricket sound. The thing is pretty dang cool. I plan on buying one, telling my aunt to carry them in our store and heck.... look at this I'm even writing about the things on my blog, so that tells you the power of blog comments. Thanks Jeff for the lesson.