Emanuel Rosen is a voice many consider the father of buzz marketing and word of mouth for his work way back in 2000 to delve into the trend with his ground breaking book The Anatomy Of Buzz. Listen in as he shares stories of entrepreneurs and business people who manage to use their personalities to get people talking and create buzz with their products and companies. Along the way you’ll get a sense from Emanuel of the techniques for creating buzz that actually work. I’m thrilled he agreed to be part of the project and share some of his thoughts on video!

“You are such an asshole, I can’t believe you did that,” was the response we received after we decided to create a JDate profile for Richard Nouveau and set up 100 simultaneous dates for him (100 Jewish women arrived at the same place at the same time all looking to date Richard Nouveau, a man who doesn’t even exist, though some might argue otherwise).

Richard hasn’t always been friendly and loved, but he has always been our voice.  Pocket Change is an e-publication that reports on the most expensive items in New York and Los Angeles and Richard Nouveau (derivative of Nouveau Riche), our fictitious editor at large, is the captain of our ship.

Online, success is measured by metrics of interaction (clicks, conversions, etc).  Richard has given our audience someone to respond to; someone to hate, someone to blame, someone to love and someone to laugh with.  To some, Richard is a hero, to others a villain, but we have seen that people emotionally respond better to personalities than they respond to institutions, companies, personality-less brands etc.  We quickly saw that the response we received was to Richard the person rather than to Pocket Change, the company.
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Gary Vaynerchuk is the founder of WineLibrary TV and an internationally recognized personality. He has been on the Conan O’Brien show, has over 34,000 followers on Twitter and has succeeded with passion and authenticity. In this interview, Gary shares how he manages his personal brand, the importance of having a personality, why most CEOs don’t give a “rat’s *ss” about their company performance long term, and why people who get social media are at the edge of the future of business while the rest of the world starts to finally catch up:

In the world of marketing, it sometimes seems that there are lots of proclaimed “experts” blowing advice like a hurricane and actually impacting the business world more like a small thunderstorm … with lots of visibility but little actual impact. Standing out in this world of limitless free advice is one site that may be the most useful source of advice for marketers online today: MarketingProfs.  For proof of the value of their content, just look at their business model.  More than 300,000 marketers all pay a subscription fee to access their content.  And behind this content is Ann Handley, the Chief Content Officer of the site.  She brings together marketing voices from the business and academic worlds, and actively uses social media to build her community.  In this interview, she shares what it has taken to grow MarketingProfs, continually offer great content, and some lessons on running a successful marketing campaign and business.

There are two reasons I subscribe to BusinessWeek magazine. The first is because McGraw-Hill owns the magazine and is also the publisher of my book so I feel some professional loyalty to support them. And the second is because of Jon Fine. He writes a brilliant column about the state of media and every week brings a new insight about the world in which many of us work to light. Below is an interview that I had the chance to record with him at the Online Community Summit where he talks about the evolution of media and the growing importance personal branding and personality will take in that future.