(Thanks to Jarern for taking and sharing the image on his blog).

For some time now, Epson has been taking your printing needs into the realm of personality with these campaign designed to help their consumers “find the one Epson inkjet to fulfill your inner printing needs.”  Though it may seem a bit silly, they are taking a direct approach to what has become one of the most common practices in marketing technology … creating a more human connection through using images of real people and promoting the emotional benefits of a product as much as the functional ones.

As time goes on, we’ll see more and more brands starting to tap this idea of their customer’s personality to promote their brands.  I can’t help but wonder in looking at this campaign how Epson might describe their own “epsonality.” Or, more accurately, the personality of their brand behind this campaign that people might connect with.  Unfortunately, if you visit the main campaign website, you are presented with a slightly more highly designed interactive product feature selector.  It’s a missed opportunity to carry through the humananity of the campaign idea into implementation.

Instead, what if they had certain types of personalities such as “Album Alice” (the mom who prints photos at home) or “Legal Larry” who prints lots of legal documents in text and doesn’t need photo capabilities or color printing? Then they could have allowed people to select their own “epsonality” that matched these personas to weave the product into the choice in a more human way.  The point is, it’s not enough to say that you’re focusing on your customer’s personality. You need to follow through.

Gary Vaynerchuck is the wildly successful entrepreneur behind WineLibrary.TV and speaks often about using social media tools to promote your business. He also runs a wine community called Cork’d which was recently hacked.  Below is a video where he admits his mistake and uses the lessons of “Fallibility Marketing” (explained on Page 217 of PNI) to not only deal with the PR crisis, but also promote his brand at the same time.  A great PR and marketing lesson from an emerging master:

I just published some photos from the launch party at the Ogilvy offices in Taiwan. The book so far has been a hit in Taiwan, selling over 5000 copies in its first few weeks of publication!

Recently heard from the McGraw-Hill team that they have sold the rights to the book in Poland. That makes a total of 6 translated versions sold, and two are now publicly available from China and Taiwan respectively. The others coming out soon are Spanish, Russian and Thai.

Last week at a publishing industry gathering of the Bookbinders Guild of NY, Personality Not Included and Art Director Anthony Landi were honored for the cover design featuring the crazy rainbow chicken. It is a great validation of some hard work from folks behind the scenes in a publishing group that don’t often get the recognition they deserve for the work that they put into making a book look good and be successful. Congratulations to Anthony and the rest of the McGraw-Hill design team for this much deserved honor! It was great to work with you and glad that the book is getting such great recognition from the industry.

Today marks the official release of the Chinese (Mandarin) version of Personality Not Included. It is now available on Amazon China and will be in Chinese bookstores starting next week. We’ll be doing some media and interviews around the book in the coming weeks so if you happen to be in China, hopefully you’ll hear more about the book soon. This is the first of 5 international versions that will be published over the next few months. The others are Taiwanese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

An inside look at how I wrote Personality Not Included:

I just had a chance to attend and speak at a great event in London last week called the Future of Social Media sponsored by the Internet World group, a leading organizer of digital and online events in the UK. The event was a good discussion of topics such as how media is evolving and new lessons that marketers need to take into account when planning campaigns in this new social media era.  I talked about two UK-specific examples from the book in describing the lessons of the book: Moo.com and Innocent Drinks. Both are brilliant examples of the power of authenticity and how businesses are using it to get ahead.

As a result of my time there (hopefully), I saw a great spike of sales on Amazon UK and even hit #1 in the Sales & Marketing category on the site.  The book is currently on a 6-8 day backorder as I write this post, but hopefully will be in stock and shipping the same day again soon. The image above is one that I used to create a series of stickers with the crazy chicken alongside a UK flag in an egg (how poetic!).  I’m hoping to make it back to London a few times next year for a variety of reasons and continue to build buzz across the pond, so to speak. In the meantime, if you happen to be based in the UK - please check out the book and a few early reviews on Amazon UK and if you have already had a chance to read it, please add your voice to those reviews!

Just added to the www.personalitynotincluded.com/bloggingadvice page mentioned in the book is a downloadable PDF excerpted from my blog with tips on how to create a successful blog in the first 90 days. This step by step guide should offer you useful advice on the toughest questions when deciding to start a blog, such as what to write about, how to grow your audience, when to focus on design and lots more. Visit the blogging advice page right now to check out this new piece as well as lots of other content on how to bring your brand’s personality to life through a blog!

DOWNLOAD PDF >> How To Launch A Successful Blog In 90 Days

Tomorrow I will be in Atlanta doing the lunch keynote at the Executing Social Media conference. As part of that trip I am doing a book signing at the Borders bookstore in Buckhead. Following the signing, we’ll all be gathering at Fado’s Irish Pub in Buckhead (an old college drinking hole of mine and a bar mentioned in the book too!) If you are in Atlanta, hope you can make it to one of all of the events:

Executing Social Media Conference

Borders @ Buckhead Book Signing

Fado’s Irish Pub

This is part of the PNI Q&A series where I share responses to common questions about the book. Got a question? Share it in a comment and I might answer it in an upcoming post!

The one that stands out for me simply because I travel a lot and live in a major hub is United Airlines. The amount of money they waste on “brand campaigns” is just staggering. Who in America hasn’t heard of United Airlines? No one. So why spend all this money to tell them who you are? They have so much potential to reinvent the way that they train their employees and that they use social media to allow people to have a more direct relationship with them. Sometimes I dream about getting them as a client because there are so many solutions that could make such a big impact on their brand. It’s uncommon to have a brand with that much untapped potential.

Several months ago, I had the chance to go into the studios at the CNet offices in San Francisco to record a session for something called a “Business Book Brief” that runs on cNet’s companion site for business called BNet. The video has been produced, professionally edited and is now online on the BNet site. Check out the video below for a brief introduction to Personality Not Included and let me know what you think.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is part of the PNI Q&A series where I share responses to common questions about the book. Got a question? Share it in a comment and I might answer it in an upcoming post!

The whole process of writing to publication for me was just under a year. I got my book deal in June of 2007 and published in May of 2008. It’s a pretty fast turnaround for a full length business book, but both myself and the publisher were keen to get the book out sooner rather than later so we worked hard to finish it and still have something we’d be proud of. One thing I was surprised at was that I thought I would be able to reuse more of my blog content for the book, and I really didn’t use much. Luckily the blogging kept my writing skills current and probably helped me to write much faster than I could otherwise have.

I recently launched a photo collection of all the places that I have managed to find Personality Not Included or promoted it. It’s a fun gallery of the book in lots of bookstores, at parties and a few other locations. Check it out and if you have any photos of the book in your local bookstore, please do share them with me so I can add them to the gallery! You can send them to me at pnibook@gmail.com or tag them on Flickr with “pnisighting.”