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BadBanana’s book: Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras

November 9, 2010 By Joe Hage 4 Comments

I was a @badbanana fan back when we was still ripe. What? Wait. No. That didn’t come out right.

That wasn’t so funny.

But Tim Siedell, known to more than 400,000 Twitter followers as “Bad Banana,” genuinely and consistently is. Tim won me over in 2008 with his witticisms including (my favorite), “India, your food is delicious. Congratulations.” I’m genuinely honored Tim’s giving us the scoop on his new book “Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras,” due out this November. Pre-order “Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras” today!

Joe Hage: Hey, Tim, I’ve got to say, I’m really excited about this interview. I remember when I found you back in 2008 and (as I recall) you were just crossing the 5,000 follower mark. Now, look at you: 400,000 followers and counting! You’re a Welebrity! What’s it like having so many people count on you for a daily chuckle? Do you feel a “pressure to be funny”?

Tim Siedell: Any Twitter anxiety is pretty much indistinguishable from my normal, everyday anxiety. On my Big List of Worries (updated daily), Twitter currently comes in at 748, right behind flying squirrels.

Joe Hage: See? Funny! Are you always funny? Were you the class clown at school?

Tim Siedell: Well, I grew up in a family that valued good comedy. Smart comedy. I used to sneak over to my uncle’s house and listen to his Steve Martin records, which were a little too blue for my parents. My dad had Bob and Ray records. Old radio shows on tape. Bob Newhart records. Classic early television shows like Ernie Kovacs (which seemed ancient when I was a kid). Abbott and Costello. The Marx Brothers. Monty Python. Johnny Carson. This is what I grew up with. I learned early on that good comedy could be powerful. So, of course, I tried to harness that power to score chicks in school.

Joe Hage: So did you, in fact, “score” lots of chicks? Did you compete in speech and debate or join theater in high school or college? Have you ever tried stand-up or improv?

Tim Siedell: No. No, no, no, no. No and no. By the way, the first one should be a resounding no.

Joe Hage: Perhaps we should change subjects, then. So, as an advertising aficionado, I recognize your avatar is famed pitchman David Ogilvy. How did you come to select David to represent your online brand?

Tim Siedell: I signed up for Twitter just to check it out. I sure as heck wasn’t going to use my real picture or a real name. So I quickly chose @badbanana and a photo I already had on my desktop (Ogilvy is one of my professional heroes). I figured I’d sign in, look around, and delete my account. That was almost four years ago. There certainly wasn’t a master plan. I do think my quips are a little funnier coming out of that face. And whenever I play around with a different avatar, I get a lot of complaints.

Joe Hage: I agree, there is something funnier about your quips coming out of a “handsome billionaire’s” face. What about the Bad Banana handle? Any story there?

Tim Siedell: Nothing profound. I had doodled a frowning banana during a meeting and wrote “Bad Banana” under it. I kinda liked the drawing, so it sat on my desk a while. Then it was the first thing I thought of when I went for a name. Like I said, no master plan. If I’d known that I would be introduced to people in real life as Bad Banana, I probably would have chosen something else.

Click to preview an inside page

Joe Hage: That’s funny. I remember emailing you about a year ago, saying, “You really should write a book.” You weren’t sure back then. How did “Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras” come about?

Tim Siedell: I didn’t want to write a traditional book. And I didn’t just want a rehash of old tweets. A lot of the people who approached me about a book didn’t know anything about my type of humor. Brian Andreas, the illustrator of the book, was different. He’d been following my tweets for quite some time before he reached out to me. We have a very similar sense of humor and I liked the books he had done on his own. We started talking and we had a very similar vision for how this book could look and feel. I’m in love with his quirky drawing style. I think it will appeal to my fans who may have seen some of these quips before. And I think it will appeal to someone who has never even heard of Twitter.

Joe Hage: Tell us a bit about Brian.

Tim Siedell: Brian’s one of the most creative people I have ever met. Used to live in the Midwest. Now lives in California. A painter, a writer, a sculptor, a doodler. He believes in the power of telling stories through words and art. Gotta love a guy like that. Plus, he loves wine and chocolate.

Joe Hage: I got my hands on the back cover of the book. It says MSNBC, Mashable, Maxim, and others name you as one of the top ten funniest people on Twitter. I said “Wow!” aloud when I saw Rob Reiner on your back cover: “Tim Siedell clearly has no life, but he’s extremely funny while not having one.” What is it like for you, personally, to be a Web celebrity?

Tim Siedell: Maybe I shouldn’t divulge this secret, but if you show your Web Celebrity card at any participating Dairy Queen, you get 5 percent off the price of a Blizzard (large size only, one per month). I’ve seen Gary Vaynerchuk in there.

I’m just happy more people get to see my little thoughts. I built an audience one tweet at a time and it took a lot of effort before anyone took notice. I had 5,000 followers after 10,000 tweets. There’s probably a lesson in there about patience, but I’m not willing to spend the time to figure it out.

Joe Hage: You’ve made me laugh a number of times in this interview. It comes so naturally to you. When will “Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras” be available for shipment?

Tim Siedell: The official release date is November 22, although you can pre-order “Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras, Half-Empty Thoughts, Volume 1” right now on Amazon or at storypeople.com. Just in time for all of your holiday shopping.

Joe Hage: OK, you heard him, readers! Waste no time, pre-order “Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras” today. Tim, this was one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever conducted. Lots of luck with the book and I’ll check in with you in six months to see how it’s going!

Tim Siedell: Thanks, Joe. I enjoyed it, too. It was a nice change of pace to be asked questions from someone who isn’t a police officer.

MOVIECLIPS.com – Short clips of your favorites [VIDEO]

September 18, 2010 By Joe Hage Leave a Comment

MOVIECLIPS.com is a fun and easy way to find and embed your favorite clips. A great and easy way to relive your favorite scenes or license a clip to spruce up your presentation.

I started this post thinking I’ll share one of my all-time favorites, when Dean Farber lets “Mr. Blutarsky” know his average is a “zero-point-zero.” But then I got carried away (you will too) and I had to post memorable scenes from The Princess Bride, Fargo, The Blues Brothers, Taxi Driver, The Bad News Bears, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Airplane!, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Wall Street, Moulin Rouge, Cocoon, and still I wasn’t satisfied (but had to go to bed).

In the comments, confess how long you stayed on this post. Which was your favorite? Which was missing?

Enjoy the next half hour of your life!

From MOVIECLIPS.com:
We at MOVIECLIPS.com are movie fans – no, we are movie freaks! We love movies. We love to see movies. We love to talk about movies. We love to discover, rediscover and relive movies. For this reason, we have created movieclips.com – to bottle that insane, enthusiastic energy and share it with the world. With over 12,000 movie clips, you can search, find, view, discuss and share scenes from your favorite movies.

For a year, the team at MOVIECLIPS has worked tirelessly to collect clips and make them completely searchable by actor, title, genre, occasion, action, mood, character, theme, setting, prop, and even dialogue. This makes it simple to find a scene fast. We are hopeful that you’ll use this powerful search to discover new movies. For that reason, we’ve included links with each clip to easily buy or rent the feature-length movie.

We want to thank the Hollywood studios who’ve worked closely with us to turn this dream into a reality. No longer do we as fans have to resort to piracy in order to find, view, and share one’s favorite scenes. No longer do we as fans have to wade through mismarked user-generated crap to find the “real” scene. No longer do we as fans have to put up with low quality, lame viewing experiences that have been our only option.

MOVIECLIPS beta is here now! We are legal and free to every user. As beta users, we are counting on your participation: spread the word, give us feedback, and recommend more of your favorite scenes. The uploading process takes time, but we wanted to give everyone a taste of what we have before the holidays, and we will be uploading thousands of scenes over the next couple of months.

MOVIECLIPS.com – a site for movie fans made by movie fans.

Are you maximizing your thank you page?

April 20, 2010 By Joe Hage Leave a Comment

How do you say, “Thank you” when someone downloads a white paper or some other give-me-your-contact-info and I’ll give you something of value?

I found this simple thank you page on Jay Baer’s Convince and Convert site after I downloaded “Does Your Blog Have a Long Tail?” It was enough to inspire me to write this post for your consideration.

Do you have a thank you page on your site? If not, you should (so should I). If you do, how do you say, “Thank you”?

Text-to-movie: XtraNormal makes it easy – if they survive [VIDEO]

February 28, 2010 By Joe Hage 10 Comments

Text-to-movie-making is easy with XtraNormal.com. “How to text-to-movie” below.

Xtranormal allows users to create 3D animated scenes using a drag and drop interface. I played around on the site for 10 minutes before I was hooked.

Here is a commercial I made for XtraNormal.com and for #blogchat, @MackCollier‘s weekly chat on Twitter about blogging. (If you haven’t checked that out, you have two things to do after reading this post!) “How to text-to-movie” right after the video.

How to Text-To-Movie
Once at XtraNormal.com, click on “Make Movies” and you’ll be able to choose among nine “text-to-movie showpaks.” Click around. Pick your favorite.

Nine Text-to-Movie Showpaks to choose among

You can choose among a number of characters. Then add dialogue to the boxes. Below, I show you how to drag one of the icons from the left (camera angles, animated gestures, facial expressions, looks, pointing, pauses, and sounds) directly into the dialogue box. Where you put them in the box matters.

Text-to-movie-making with text and drag and click animations

You can, for example, have multiple camera angles in the same dialogue box.

If you have any trouble, there is a “Quick Tips” box to guide you through. There is an “Action” button to save your work for preview and an “It’s a Wrap!” button to create a higher resolution to share with friends. It is easy to upload to a YouTube account.

XtraNormal, the company
XtraNormal (xtranormal.com) is based out of Montreal, Canada and was founded in 2006. It seems as though it has been in beta for four years now and they’ve raised $14-million in venture capital funding.

According to October content on “Demo 08,” they said, “Online communications and near life communities are booming. Our content creation platform empowers consumers to create/publish their ideas and companies to extend their brands. According to PEW, more than 57% of teenagers make their own content on the Web, 35% of adults create content online and 57% of Internet users watched /shared videos.”

They stated they had no competitors.

In November, 2008, Montreal Tech Watch reported Xtranormal cut 50% of its staff:

Xtranormal which launched with much fanfare a little over a month ago has laid off today 36, which is half of its staff.

Xtranormal invested heavily in research & development efforts in the past year, understandable since they were tackling a new challenge, user-produced videos, but this mass layoff shows lack of planning, focus & guidance from its CEO & founder, Richard Szalwinski … many at xtranormal expected him to lead product development but he didn’t.

As sources of money & funding disappear, Xtranormal is now forced to downsize its staff. I guess xtranormal’s investors are defaulting on committed payments due to markets crashing left & right….

A commenter on another blog said xtranormal laid off another 20 in January 2009, leaving 17 employees.

And a cursory look at their “About Us” section (there doesn’t seem to be any other company content on the site) gives the impression the company is left for dead.

Xtranormal videos are fun - when they work!

Too bad, too. Really a cool technology.

XtraNormal.com user feedback

From the limited amount I could find, most comments were positive: “Cool.” “Awesome.” “Addictive.”

Some groused about the tedium of setting up the camera angles. (I thought it was fun.) I did have some bad experiences with xtranormal.com though. I lost my work after an hour when the unhelpful message told me I lost my work. xtranormal didn’t get back to me on Twitter in a timely way, either.

At least, I was able to copy + paste my content (including action icons) into a new template when I tried xtranormal on a different computer later on.

It’s free. It’s fun. It may be on shaky ground and I don’t expect innovations out of it from here – but I also don’t expect them to take down what they presently have.

If you give it a try because of this article, come back and post a link to your creation for all to see!

Thanks for reading.
Joe Hage

2011 postscript: Things seem to have turned around for XtraNormal. They charge for all videos now and XtraNormal videos have a “meme” cache now for ranting. There are new “actors,” settings, etc. Maybe they’ll make it after all.

The Best Super Bowl Commercial 2010

February 7, 2010 By Joe Hage Leave a Comment

I just love anything Betty White does. Add in Abe Vigoda as a punchline and you have the perfect commercial.

LinkedIn Answers: Valuable Insight for the Fearless

January 16, 2010 By Joe Hage 4 Comments

Do you still think of LinkedIn as “the Web site for networking when you want to find a job”?

If so, you are missing a big opportunity. LinkedIn Answers is a free service for even non-paying LinkedIn members. Other members are motivated to answer your question because it lets them showcase their expertise, which could lead to introductions and opportunities.

Why “For the Fearless”?
I asked a question about why my promotion wasn’t working. Well, I got answers. I lot of them. About how I got it wrong … available for the public to see.

I like to say, “Marketers don’t have failures. They have learning opportunities.” Still, make sure you’re ready for some public criticism in exchange for the insight.

My Experiment
A few months ago I took a PHP copywriting class with Jason Fladlein and Robert Plank. (PHP scripts allow the page to be dynamic: such as “only x minus one left” after each sale and “time’s running out” for a limited time offer.) As a big fan of Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, I was intrigued to build scarcity into my offer.

I created a long-form sales letter in the spirit of Fladlein’s successful 48-hour report. As a test, I wanted to motivate parents to buy a defibrillator for their children’s schools. If it worked, I would consider other sales letters for other products my company sells.

It didn’t work.

Asking my question on LinkedIn Answers
Within 18 hours , I received 10 points of view about why the promotion missed the mark.

I asked, “At what asking price does a squeeze page cease to be effective?” Here’s a summary of the feedback:

From Merrill Clark: “It comes across as being desperate with 10 “buy a defibrillator now” buttons. The copy and focuses on you, not necessarily as much as to benefits of your reader. Are you using the right keywords? You are trying and testing – so that’s a good thing! Don’t give up. Sales pages do work.”

Merrill, noted on the buttons. Guess I went too far personalizing, thought that made it more real. Thanks for the feedback + encouragement.

From Elge Premeau: “Here’s a good example of a squeeze page: http://www.beginnersphotographyblog.com/choosingadigitalcamera.html. I would tweak this sales letter to speak more to potential buyers self interest. Why is $1500 a deal? Do other portable defibrillators cost $3000?”

Elge, you’re always on the mark. You gave more insight than I could post here. All good points.

Peter Netri: “Why should I (1) trust a guy called Joe AND in a product which I even cannot check out (2) feedback on other websites AND (3) compare prices. ‘I have only 19 left’ and TV news snapshots are ridiculous.”

Peter, yours was the most pointed feedback and the inspiration for the title of this post. Still, you make good points. Re: 19 left, was trying a scarcity angle. TV news, was trying to show it is quite real.

Danielle Clark: “Hit the PTA’s state-by-state with some communication and inquiry into safety committees. I believe they have pretty effective email networks.”

Danielle, it’s a good idea. Here, I wondered if an open sales letter could work. Perhaps it can, just not this one.

Sheryl Sacchitelli: “The page you set up is not an appropriate medium for selling that product. That style of writing and marketing seems to cheapen the product. I feel like I’m about to buy a self-help book or a free cruise (on which I’ll then be sold a timeshare), not a life-saving medical device.”

Yes, Sheryl, the feedback is overwhelmingly in agreement with you. Was experimenting with the very hard sell I’ve seen work in other categories. Perhaps that tone is wrong for Class III medical devices.

Daphne Taylor: “The letter is too strong. I think the message is good, but at the end, it just feels like a sales pitch.”

Daphne, I wonder if a “softer” letter would have had a different outcome. Seems doubtful at the moment.

Andrew Trickett: “That is a huge donation to a school! And I believe that the odds are heavily against my son having a SCA.”

Andrew, you’re right, that is a big donation. Re: the odds, the statistical argument wouldn’t save hundreds (thousands?) of lives each year in North America. The AHA estimates that if defibrillators were as prevalent as fire extinguishers an additional 40,000 lives would be saved each year – that’s more than a cure for breast cancer. And I’ve met a 6- and a 16-year-old survivor. They were “fine.” The first symptom of sudden cardiac arrest may be death.

Tia Peterson: “I don’t believe necessarily that price is an issue at all. If there is a market out there buying AEDs at that price, you could use a sales page effectively, so long as the people visiting your sales page are in that market.”

Tia, noted. For this test, I wondered if people who knew – and trust – me personally would take the message at face value. If the letter worked, I would have explored these points for the follow up.

William Bernhard: “While your pitch is compelling your presentation is not. If you make the page more visually compelling and use a lot less text (and the hard sell) I think you’ll generate more sales. People don’t really read web sites, they scan them.”

William, I struggle with your feedback a bit only because I designed the layout in the spirit of many sales letters I’ve visited. I trust the lessons I picked up from Jason Fladlein, Michel Fortin, and others.

Reynald Fleury: “It would make sense splitting the target market between school children for 5-10 years old and school children for 10+.”

Reynald, thanks and noted.

Ted Rubin: “Think from the viewpoint of your target instead of from your own (someone who is totally educated on the subject and is looking at it intellectually instead of emotionally).”

Ted, absolutely. I tried to educate and appeal emotionally. I fell short.

Jennifer Rosenberg: “Have you thought of adding video to these e-mails? Might that be worth a try?”

Thanks, Jennifer. My next foray into sales letters will include video.”

Conclusion
If I were afraid to experiment, I would never have launched http://UrKidatSchool.com. And if I were afraid to ask for feedback, I’d still be wondering why this was “a learning opportunity” instead of a success.

Go out, try something new, and ask for feedback!

Thanks again to all contributors for this great insight,
Sincerely,
Joe Hage

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