The text on my homepage says “Your Customers Could Be Your Best Marketers...”

and I’ve struggled with whether this is the best way to tell the story of how I help clients. Seth Godin calls it “giving your customers the megaphone.”

All I know is, that’s what we’re doing.

Let’s take a look at NY Times best-selling author Dan Pink and Johnny Bunko (full disclosure: my client).

How are books (800 released per day in the US!) traditionally marketed?

Old Model
You’ve probably been to a book signing event.

There are a handful of people there. Some have heard of the author, some happen to be in the store. You don’t get much interaction, save for 2 minutes as you get your book signed (if you buy one).

Let’s say 15 people show up and 7 buy a book.

New Model
OK, now let’s take what Dan has done with the Bunko Breakfast series. As I’ve blogged, we’ve moved the experience from broadcast to dialogue.

Since he’s going to be in whatever city anyway for a book signing (per publisher’s order), he puts a link up on his blog saying “I’ll be at such and such coffee shop at 3pm. Any one who shows up…coffee is on me.”

Now, the people who show up have already read his book. No new sales will be generated that day.

However, the value of the conversation that they have with Dan, and more importantly, with each other, means that when they leave the coffee shop, they go back to work or home and say, “yeah, it was nice to meet Dan Pink (and they’ll post pictures with him on their blog, post a video, or upload to the Facebook fan page), but it was really, really cool to meet 20 other people in Minneapolis (or wherever) who also love his stuff.”

Then, they go out and buy a book (or 5!) for their friends.

And their friends feel their passion and they say, “wow, I’ve got to join the Bunko Nation” (it’s not on the BusinessWeek bestseller list by accident, you know).

And then, other folks say, “hey, Dan, when are you coming to Nashville (or Las Vegas or Houston, etc.)”

Now, Dan has no plans to go there, so we say, “you know, it’s not really about Dan, it’s about the community of people who like what Dan is talking about.”

Scalable New Model
So, we then say, “can we do a Bunko Breakfast without Dan actually being there?”

Uh, yes, we can! We launched the Do-It-Yourself Bunko Breakfast Starter Kit.

We now have 20 people around the world (Sydney, Toronto, London, Manila, and a slew of US locales) who have volunteered to

• find a location for a Bunko Breakfast
• market the event to their friends
• share the experience after the fact with Dan and his community
• share best practices with others who are hosting similar breakfasts

and all for the cost of 6 books and some postage.

Put that in your ROI pipe and smoke it! ;-)

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