A Content Provider's Most Powerful Secret Weapon - Good News - It's Free!
By: Suzanne De Cornelia
To have impact, persuade, entertain or inform--first understand that all human enterprise has emotion at the center. You must know your market, their wants and needs, and how to emotionally connect with them. And not so fast with that hyper, "Yeah, we have that nailed, Bro." Your future is staked on it. Are you sure?
Nothing is more democratic than Web 2.0. Only one thing can stop you here and it isn't your age, gender, race, weight, looks, social or economic status, geographic location or even your educational credentials. Where you have it all on the line is with the consistency of your 'brand' message coupled with the ability to emotionally connect with your audience.
Who's aces at it? Studs Terkel, Charlie Rose, Arianna Huffington, Bill O'Reilly, Daily Kos. Emphatically individual and successful because their personal traits and content has powerfully resonated with a simpatico, wide audience. Consider this perfect match of content provider and audience alongside your media and message:
I observed Pulitzer Prize-winning, long-time San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Herb Caen, up-close and personal in June 1996 when was 80-years-old and dying of lung cancer when San Francisco came to a standstill to throw him a citywide fete. Walter Cronkite was there and marveled, "To love San Francisco is easy. But to have San Francisco love you as San Francisco loves this columnist...is...truly incredible."
The reason Caen was so beloved by San Franciscans is the key to success for content providers everywhere--whether their be Facebook, Youtube, a newspaper column, or an Internationally read blog.
The salute to Caen began with a motorcade of 48 antique convertibles that cruised from his newspaper's headquarters and three miles down Market Street to a bandstand on Herb Caen Way. There, in front of the Embarcadero's Ferry Building, Herb remarked to the ritzy and rabble, which included Robin Williams, Willie Mays, Amy Tan, Bill Walsh, Chinese lion dancers, bike messengers, mounted police, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, jugglers and the cable-car bell-ringing champ: "When I get to heaven, I'm going to say: It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco."
Read those last eight words again, kiddies. Pop-Quiz: Why was Herb Caen so popular in San Francisco? Put on your thinking caps because here was a major International city stopping traffic for the day on a major shopping and traffic artery to stage a grand shebang for a newspaper columnist. And the parade was just the start.
All over town prices on martinis and meatloaf and mashed potatoes--Herb's favorite drink and meal--were dropped to 1916 levels, the year he was born. His fans jammed over 100 bars and restaurant where they share in his favorite repast for just $2.25 and recall a ritual repeated millions of time over nearly 60 years by socialites, worker bees, CEOs, and cabbies alike: reading Caen's San Francisco Chronicle column first thing in the morn.
A few months later, on February 7, 2007, I attended his memorial service at Grace Cathedral. Mayor Willie Brown, actor Robin Williams, his son, Christopher Caen, and Strange de Jim gave eulogies. And San Francisco Symphony conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, played the piano. Then later, friends and I joined tens of thousands for a huge nighttime bash for Herb along the Embarcadero. There were fireworks, dancing to big bands, and more bargain priced martinis and meatloaf.
I never missed reading his column, and saw him often on Fridays at Le Central on Bush Street sitting in the front window playing dice with Mayor Brown, bon vivant Harry de Widt, and haberdasher Wilkes Bashford; presumably for the lunch tab. In fact that was the last place I ever saw him.
He, and the entire city, knew his timecard was nearly punched. I was walking past Le Central's front window and there he was. I tapped. He looked-up and smiled. I blew him a kiss. He 'grabbed' it out of the air and put it on his lips. A true gent.
Herb Caen's power was to connect. In San Francisco this meant he arrived from Sacramento and became the ultimate San Franciscan. His column was a daily ode to what makes this city snazzy and by extension he made us all feel pretty swell that we had the chutzpah to live here.
Long before the Declaration of the Age of Personal Media, Herb Caen had that gig down flat.
So, who is your audience? And who are you and what are you trying to say? What does your audience want/need to hear? How can you affirm their collective values, beliefs, desires, point of view? Back in 800 B.C. Homer reached his audience in such a universally resonating and inherent way that his message rings true today. Ditto with Herb Caen. Whatever your message or medium--Connect, amigo. Connect. Oh, and how'd you do on the Pop-Quiz?