Waiting For Your Cat To Bark
The TSA’s 5 Book Travel Restriction
The TSA’s restrictions keep getting tighter, and as Mitch Joel ponders, what would happen if you planned a long trip and were limited to 5 marketing books. Mitch was kind enough to include our book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, even though it wouldn’t be on my list for obvious reasons 
Mitch points out that this restriction isn’t entirely unprecedented. I just hope it doesn’t become a permanent reality.
If I could only travel with 5 books, I’d have to choose…
Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads: Turning Paupers into Princes and Lead into Gold by Roy H. Williams
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath
Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping by Paco Underhill
I found it difficult choosing just 5. I imagine you will too.
What 5 books would you bring along?
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Now Available: Turkish Edition of “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark”
Now that the mass marketing era is over and people have unparalleled access to information, in an age where word-of-mouth travels around the world in 80 nanoseconds, how do you persuade finicky customers to take action?
That was the question Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg sought to answer in their most recent book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing. After hitting the major North American bestseller lists — including The New York Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek, and #1 on The Wall Street Journal and Amazon lists — and even being named by AdvertisingAge as one of the “10 books you should have read” for 2006, there’s a new cause for celebration: Our Turkish friends can now enjoy the book in their native language (a good thing, considering it teaches marketers how to use Persuasion Architecture™ methodology to speak to customers in their own language).
When asked about the significance of this trip and the new translation, Future Now co-founder & CEO, and co-author of Waiting for Your Cat, Jeffrey had this to share:
We’re excited anytime somebody enjoys our book, but when they enjoy it enough to translate it into Turkish, publish it, then pay us to come speak about it in Istanbul, we’re ecstatic. Bryan and I have always wanted to visit Istanbul — our maternal grandparents are from here, so it’s especially meaningful to be in this gorgeous and fascinating place.
While Jeffrey’s had a few days to take in the atmosphere, Bryan just arrived in Istanbul early this morning. The two are looking forward to tomorrow’s speaking engagement, and asked that we thank their hosts at MediaCat Communications Institute for their kind hospitality.
Have you read the book yet? What are you waiting for? Buy the Turkish version from Kapital Market. Bulk order the English-language version from Barnes & Noble, or get it shipped from Amazon (where you can read the reviews instead of taking our word for it).
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Written by:The Grok
Want to Be a Bestselling Author?
Here’s what you do:
1.) Build a marketing platform.
2.) Write a book people want to read.
3.) Contact Michael Drew.
We’re often asked how Waiting for Your Cat to Bark hit #1 on the Wall Street Journal list, while reaching bestseller status on the New York Times, USA Today, Amazon, and BusinessWeek lists. (AdvertisingAge even called it one of the “10 books you should have read” for 2006.) How is it, they wonder, that Call to Action became a bestseller, despite being sold exclusively online. Well, we had a secret weapon: A marketer who knows book publishing and promotion better than anyone else in the business, and has the track record to prove it. His name, one more, is Mike Drew — and he’s struck again.
On the American Small Business blog, Michele Miller points out that Drew turned three separate books into bestsellers in just this past weekend alone.
A lot of authors make the mistake of thinking that signing with the right publisher will all but guarantee a book’s success. Think again. Unless you’re uncannily blessed by the word-of-mouth gods, even a well-reviewed book can have a hard time making the bestseller lists. Authors need their books to be properly marketed and promoted. That’s where Michael Drew comes in.
If you or someone you know is an author with bestseller ambitions, take a moment to watch this video or subscribe to Drew’s blog, Beneath the Cover.
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Written by:The Grok
AdAge: Waiting for Your Cat… is #5 in ‘06
What a great end to 2006! Not only did Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing reach #1 on the Wall Street Journal list, as well as charting big on the New York Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek, and Amazon bestsellers lists, but now Advertising Age is chiming in with a meowing high-five.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot? We’re still not sure if that’s rhetorical. One thing’s certain, though: if 2007 shapes up any better than this year, we’ll be entirely bored with congratulating Lisa T. Davis and Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg for their fantastic work.
So, for those who haven’t gotten around to reading the book, what are you waiting for?
10 books you should have read
18 December 2006 (Volume 77; Number 51)
(c) 2006 Crain Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart: “What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds” (Kaplan Business)Uses data from experiments by real marketers to cut through the doomsday hype and cynical opportunism that surround the slow death of conventional advertising.
- Charles Hughes and William Jeanes: “Branding Iron: Branding Lessons from the Meltdown of the U.S. Auto Industry” (Racom Books)Uses lessons from the car business to hammer away at the importance of creating world-class brands, chastising the industry for going “safe, soft and somnolent.”
- Chris Anderson: “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More” (Hyperion)One of the most-discussed concepts and most-used catchphrases of the year, the “long tail” theory has its fair share of lovers and haters.
- Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton: “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management” (Harvard Business School Press)Denounces many modern management practices based on hype and conventional wisdom.
- Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg and Lisa T. Davis “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing” (Nelson Business) - Breaks down tools such as consumer-generated media and word-of-mouth marketing to help marketers reach today’s aloof, independent customer.
- Seth Godin: “Small Is the New Big, and 183 Other Riffs, Rants and Remarkable Business Ideas” (Portfolio Hardcover)Tips and ideas culled from Godin’s blog and Fast Company column for everyone from McDonald’s to business schools. The, er, big idea: Act small if you want to be big.
- Robert Gordman and Armin Brott: “The Must-Have Customer: Seven Steps to Winning the Customer You Haven’t Got” (Truman Talley Books)For companies looking to expand, this book lays out the steps to not just retaining core customers but winning over those who are more elusive.
- Glenn Reynolds: “An Army of Davids” (Nelson Current)How advances in technology “empower ordinary people to beat big media, big government and other goliaths.” Podcasts and blogs are the least of your worries.
- Pat Fallon and Fred Senn: “Juicing the Orange” (Harvard Business School Press)Unlike many advertising books, this is smartly written and fun to read. But it must be said that the “aha” moments are evened out by the number of businesses no longer making juice with Fallon.
- Fred Reichheld: “The Ultimate Question” (Harvard Business School Press)Reduces customer-loyalty quandaries to a breathtakingly simple question: “Would you recommend us to a friend?” Of course, after that, things get more complicated after that.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Bryan Eisenberg on Blogs, Brands, and Persuasion Architecture
Yet another fine interview with Bryan Eisenberg…
In our Total Picture Radio interview, Bryan Eisenberg, co-founder of Future Now, explains why most online marketing fails to convert traffic to customers, and how companies can use "Persuasion Architecture" to begin achieving success. We discuss how individuals can best use blogs to build their "personal brand" on the Internet.
Hear the whole interview from totalpicture.com.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
The Cat Whisperers
You’ve seen Cesar Millan, the infamous ‘dog psychology’ dude. Cesar works miracles with unruly canines in 24 short minutes on the National Geographic Channel show "The Dog Whisperer".
Now meet Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, the Cat Whisperers.
The authors of "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing" have set forth an intriguing set of principles which they call Persuasion Architecture. The formula is not for the faint-hearted — it involves hard work to navigate a complicated matrix of psychological, technical and demographic approaches in order to develop a customer-centric marketing focus. In the process, it requires a business to be willing to relinquish control of information about its product or service; indeed, transparency is key to the entire process. But the authors guarantee results, whether your target clients are individuals or other businesses. Read the entire review over at Wharton School Knowledge @ W.P. Carey.
Have an unruly marketing situation? Will travel.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Utterings of the Truly Desperate
From USA Today "Product Placement - You Can’t Escape It"….
"Marketers are saying, ‘We must be more innovative — to zig when others zag,’ " says Richard Notarianni, executive creative director of media at ad firm Euro RSCG.
"The industry is desperate to find clever ways to reach people, whether or not it has any legitimate value. … When someone says, ‘Let’s put advertising in bathroom stalls,’ another says ‘That’s great. It’s a captive audience.’ "
More…
No space is too odd. US Airways (LCC) is in talks to sell ads on airsickness bags, spokeswoman Valerie Wunder says. It already makes about $10 million a year from ads on tray tables and napkins, she says.
"The game has become one of finding the next blank space that hasn’t been covered," says Yankelovich’s Smith.
And more…
"I’ve never seen things changing as much as they are now," says Rance Crain, editor-in-chief of trade magazine Advertising Age and a 40-plus-year observer of marketing. "Advertisers will not be satisfied until they put their mark on every blade of grass."
And finally…
The more consumers ignore ads, the more ads marketers spew back at them, says Max Kalehoff of marketing research firm Nielsen BuzzMetrics. "It’s like a drug addiction. Advertisers just keep buying more and more just to try to achieve prior levels of impact. In other words, they’re hooked."
This year, marketers will spend a record $175 billion on ads in major media, such as TV, radio, print, outdoor, movie theaters and the Internet, says ad-buying firm ZenithOptimedia. That’s up 5% over 2005. Add direct mail and other direct-response ads, and the total will hit $269 billion.
Advertisers are becoming that loud mouth annoying guy at the bar who’s flashing his expensive watch, bragging about his job, and buying every prospective girl a drink. Sorry bud, buying even more drinks, or putting your picture up in a lady’s stall isn’t gonna increase your chances, you are probably going home alone…again.
$269 billion can buy you alot of stuff, but it can no longer buy you a desirable magnetic personality that people want to buy. It won’t buy you a barking cat. If you think it will, then I have a 41,723 blades of grass in my front lawn that I will be happy to whore out to a desperate advertiser.
Buy one blade get one free, captive audience for canines and occasional jack rabbits, 25% more traffic in growing subdivision, this offer won’t last long, call now.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Step right up! We can guess your Conversion Rate
The Shop.org Annual Summit is now underway.
Bryan Eisenberg will be presenting “Waiting for your Cat to Bark” on Thursday at 3:15. He will also be at the BazaarVoice booth Thursday at 1pm and again 4:15 signing books and kissing babies.
The folks over at BazaarVoice will be guessing conversion rates at their booth, if they can’t guess yours, you get a prize.
Maybe they will get Bryan to get in on the guessing as well. But don’t count on getting a prize if he guesses yours. 
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Barking Cats in Time Square
Thought you had travel far and wide, wait in long lines at Barnes & Noble book signings, or spend 6 figures in consulting fees to have breakfast with the Brothers Eisenberg? Think again… or rather, just pop on over to the Crowne Plaza in Times Square NYC next Thursday @ 7 AM. Bagels are on us (and our good friends at WebSideStory and Responsys too) but seats around the table are limited, so please do register in advance at: http://www.websidestory.com/promotions/eisenberg/register.html
For those of you outside of NYC, I guess I lied (sue me you do have to travel far and wide… unless of course we’re coming to a neighborhood nearby.
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
Bryan Eisenberg on the Twist Image Podcast
Our very own warm, fuzzy, and lovable Bryan Eisenberg was recently interviewed on the Twist Image Podcast - Six Pixels of Separation
Mitch Joel interviews Bryan about the book, and Bryan shares some recent insights on current events as well as today’s morphing marketing biosphere. The interview is 35 minutes of savory goodness in MP3 format. Find it here.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
