Back from the Revolut!on Forum. Tired. Apprehensive (probably because of the tiredness). Facing a reasonably big car repair bill for a busted water pump (probably).
So an eventful two days indeed. My first real go at anything sales oriented, although to be sure I did very little salesmanship. Salesmanship is about making the other guy want your product enough to sell his grandmother to buy it. That means luring him in like a fish hunting a tied fly.
Me, however, will give away all the family silver just because people seem interested. Left to my own devices I will give them enough inside information that they can then do it at home for nothing.
One of the whackier marketing strategies observed over the past couple of days is that of wearefolk.com, who launched their company at RF. They used to be Chillifish, apparently.
Their gimmick was to recast themselves as weird “voodoo” dolls: Maddie Mass, Seb Silo, Osca Bodge and Colin Conventional. Each character has its own Facebook page too. Tim Burton would be proud.
The digital world is rife with companies all playing the corporate card, with tight Powerpoint presentations and even tighter underwear, so it’s nice to see these guys in Poole doing something different.
Anyway, I managed to get one of the dolls in return for a mention. Which is what this is. Hi guys (and gal).
Meanwhile, I’ve had an email from Mike Gunn, the bald stand-up comedian who capped off dinner on Monday night. I did a brief appraisal on his site MikeGunn.co.uk and sent him the reults. His verdict? “It’s all geek to me”.
Whether we’ll ever get past the polite email stage, I don’t know. What I do know is that many stand-ups now have a great online presence. There is that “national institution” (Lord) Stephen Fry of Norfolk whose StephenFry.com is somewhat of a major portal, but I fear Stephen’s actual day-to-day involvement is probably down to the odd blog or podcast.
Even his tweets now seem to resemble major co-ordinated productions rather than off-the-cuff remarks.
Another fan of online is Richard Herring, who not only produces two versions of his blog (iPhone-friendly or everything else), he also records his own comedy podcast apparently because he got fed up with waiting for Radio 4 to commission another series of programmes from him.
Stand-up and digital go well together. It would be nice to see Mike be able to exploit his opportunity.
Related articles
- Stephen Fry’s truly terrible mistake (go.theregister.com)
- Best of Female Standup (guardian.co.uk)
