The following is a transcript of a compelling conversation I had with author, David Meerman Scott.
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MICHAEL:
Hi everybody. This is Michael Port and I am here today with David Meerman Scott. Say hi David.
DAVID:
Hey, how are you Michael? Good to be here.
MICHAEL:
Good, good, good. So, I’m sure you guys know David but, if you don’t, he is an author who has written seven books. A few of his books you probably know, Real-Time marketing and PR, a huge, huge success. Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, love that book. World Wide Rave, I have trouble saying that one.
DAVID:
As do I.
MICHAEL:
And The New Rules of Marketing and PR.
I really like David a lot. I don’t know David as well as I’d like to, I think that we don’t talk enough. I really like him because I like what he stands for. I like the style that he uses in his work and I like his philosophy. So, in a world of charlatans and false idols, I think David is the real deal so I’m happy to be here.
We are going to talk for about twenty minutes and the first thing I would like to know, David, is why you got into this work in the first place?
DAVID:
Wow, it’s really great to be here, Michael. We’ve spoken a number of times. We have yet to meet in person, which I hope we can accomplish.
MICHAEL:
It’s probably going to happen in an airport one day.
DAVID:
Exactly. Or else it will be on Twitter that we will find out that we are in the same place.
MICHAEL:
Exactly.
DAVID:
I got fired, as a matter of fact, which is what brought me into this world.
I was Vice President of Marketing for a company called NewsEdge Corporation in the late 1990’s and early into 2000. In 2001 Thompson Corporation acquired NewsEdge and my bosses brought me into a room and sat me down and said, “Explain to us this new-fangled marketing you’re doing here David. What is the stuff you are doing?”
I said, “Oh, it’s great! We are ranking really high in the search engines and we are creating all of this really great content on the website that people are finding. We are doing press releases in order to get indexed by Google. It’s fantastic stuff.”
They basically said that they don’t do this new-fangled marketing here and they sacked me for it.
Actually it ended up being really great because I got sacked at one of the most difficult times to find a job that has happened in decades, which was immediately after 9/11.
Nobody was hiring after 9/11 so I said to my wife, “Geez, I don’t think I’m going to be a Vice President of Marketing for a publicly traded technology company anytime soon,” which is what I had been doing before that. “Maybe I should strike out on my own.”
Fortunately my wife was very encouraging so, I started doing a little bit of consulting. I started my blog in 2005, I had a couple of books come out in the early 2000’s and then The New Rules of marketing and PR, one of the ones that you mentioned, that one came out in early 2007. So, I was off and running when that book came out and that sort of launched the speaking career.
MICHAEL:
One of the things I think is very important when we choose our teachers is to choose our teachers based on what they stand for and the philosophy that supports the work that they produce because when you are choosing “how-to” teachers, there’s a lot of different people that could offer the “how-to’s.” “How-to’s” are not difficult to produce.
I’d love for you to explain to the folks what your philosophy is behind the work that you do and what you stand for in the work. What really sets it apart?
