No, I haven’t quit the Responsible Marketing blog to ump League League games.

Well, not completely.

I wrote five posts a week in 2008, but due to a number of factors, this is my fifth post this month.

Here’s why you’ve been hearing less from me lately:

My workload at Outsource Marketing

While I like to write, I really love doing Responsible Marketing. I’ve been busy with some cool social media, Web planning and naming projects lately. It’s been fun, and I’ve thrown myself into it.

Family stuff

After some soul searching at the end of last year, I’ve been working to regain some balance in my life. I’m not quite there yet, but my head is clearer and I know I’m on the right path.

Yes, helping out with my son’s Little League team is part of that balance.

Social media is eating some of my blog posts

Although my social media activity has lightened up a bit, the prediction by some social media gurus that social media would cannibalize blog content has been true for me.

I’ve found myself sharing shorter, easily digestible things I might have shared here last year via social media.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and/or LinkedIn.

Blogger information overload

I’m beginning to appreciate the challenges reporters, editors and full-time bloggers face. I’m receiving more news releases, free books and invitations to interview people than I can shake a stick at.

I have a huge backlog of interesting content, and I’ll do my best to share the best of it with you.

But I value your time, Responsible Marketer, and I’ll only post on topics I’m confident you’ll derive real value.

So that’s it. Now you know where I’ve been.

Keep an eye out for some new stuff in the coming days. I’m looking forward to getting the conversation going again!

~ Patrick

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For years I’ve grappled with the conflict between commerce and conscience.

Like most of you, I’m a marketer.
Like all of you, I’m a consumer.

So, I’m always asking questions:

To break through, you have to do work that gets attention. But how far is too far?

What do you do when a marketing practice can be justified from an ROI standpoint but not a moral, social or even and environmental one?

What are the root cause problems with marketing today, and what’s working in spite of the marketing environment?

When I started this blog in late 2007, I wanted to accomplish two things:

First, organize my thoughts for a Responsible Marketing book that’s been in the works for far too long.

And second, share that work to foster conversations and community regarding the Responsible Marketing idea.

I feel good about the former goal—writing nearly 300 posts on the topic have definitely helped me refine my ideas for the book.

As for the latter, though 15,000 people read the blog in December, there wasn’t as much interaction as some of these topics deserve.

A subtle change in direction

Last year, my New Year’s resolution was to write one blog post per weekday for an entire year. It was a lot of work, but I did it.

Ironically, all those posts came so fast there wasn’t enough time for some of the ideas to stew before something new came your way.

So in 2009, I’m going to lighten up a little and I won’t post every weekday.

To promote more discussion, I’ll post less here (probably about three times per week) and more on marketing blogs I respect, in Responsible Marketing Groups and on other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Plaxo—to name a few.

And I’m going to work on that darn book!

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A year ago today, I soft-launched the Responsible Marketing Blog.

My goal was twofold: Create a digital scratchpad for my ideas as I write a book on the topic and get unfiltered feedback on those ideas.

Both goals have been met, but progress has slowed on the book as it has transformed itself over the last year—and that’s okay. The book will be the better for it.

I made a personal commitment to write a post every weekday in 2008. So far, so good—there are now 278 posts here.

Thanks are in order to those that read and comment on the blog regularly. Without your continued engagement and encouragement, I wouldn’t have made it this far. It’s surprising how gratifying your feedback is, good and bad. It’s the fuel that helps me write the next post.

Thanks to my amazing wife and kids who have shown incredible support and patience with the time commitment required to keep up with the blog.

And of course, thanks to my team at Outsource Marketing for letting me be the voice for an idea we all embrace. Eric Anderson and Martin Pierce deserve special recognition their work in the technical deployment and of the blog and development of the Responsible Marketing brand.

I’m looking forward to our continued conversation regarding the challenges marketers face today, and ways to help commerce and conscience come together.

So, what’s the most memorable post from the last year?

Comment below to share.

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Actually, I don’t discriminate.

I hate Top 25, 10, 7, 5 and [insert number here] lists. Blogs love lists, and it’s the best way to land on the front page of Digg.

And though I occasionally write ‘em (I wrote 25 ways your business can help fight poverty just yesterday), I’m not a fan of the format.

Here’s why:

1. Top X lists may be easy to read (and write), but they aren’t a great way to communicate detail or ideas. You wouldn’t want to learn a foreign language reading Top 10 lists, would you?
2. Our brain isn’t wired for long lists. We struggle with seven numbers, so retaining a list more than four or five ideas requires real effort. We remember beginnings, endings and ideas extremely relevant to us individually.
3. We retain stories, not details. Remember History class? You probably remember the stories, but you’ve forgotten the rote facts, dates and statistics.

In some ways, Top X lists are like a pumpkin full of Halloween candy:

It looks great, so you consume it.
When you’re done, you forget what you consumed.
It’s mostly empty calories.

Top X posts are good for supplemental reference material—a way to communicate loosely-related information thematically—but they don’t do a good job of transferring knowledge.

Will I continue to write Top X posts? Now and then. We’re all busy and these lists are easy to digest for quick reading.

I just hope you, Responsible Marketer, are okay with an occasional bag full of candy in your intellectual diet.

Are you cool with an occasional Top X lists, or should I lay off the info-carbs?

I’m all ears.

Comment below to share.

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Tim Girvin and I go back. Way back. Okay, not that far back.

We were on the advisory board of a before-its-time start-up six or seven years ago, then reconnected through social media recently.

Tim’s firm, Girvin, is known in design circles for its work on identity programs for over 350 motion pictures such as Ironman, Braveheart, Beowulf, Unforgiven, The Matrix and The Last Samurai. But Girvin’s firm isn’t just movies—other clients include Gucci, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Yum! Brands and a long list of other companies you’ve heard of.

Tim has been reading The Responsible Marketing Blog since its launch, and unbeknownst to me, wrote about The Concept of Responsible Marketing [& Its Etymology] in late May.

It’s a fascinating linguistic journey, with stops in the years 1200, 1225, 1300, 1390, 1599, 1651, 1787 and 1836 A.D.

Really, what Tim is seeking is the Truth, and he sums it up here:

For me, it’s all about truth. And truth, these days, is hard to come by. Being “truth full” is laden with challenges. How can you market something being truthful? Because, in a way, the legacy of marketing is about stretching the truth—it’s telling a story that extends beyond the actual, to the imaginary in premise. When I think about it—it’s about the premise as the driver to actualization of marketing principle—and that premise delivers against a promise.

Make sure you subscribe on Tim’s blog, and don’t miss his post Exploring the Brand Obama. It’s one of the best I’ve read on the topic.

So, what does Responsible Marketing mean to you?

Comment below to share.

Alltop is the excellent blog aggregation site that offers “aggregation without aggravation” because it lists just the best of the best blogs.

I was honored to be included in the marketing.alltop category in May and gave you Responsible Marketers the opportunity to weigh in on which badge I should use.

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that the Responsible Marketing Blog has been added to socialmedia.alltop category.

This list includes the thinking of some of the best minds in social media, and I’m humbled to be included.

Thanks to you for making The Responsible Marketing Blog part of your day, and to Alltop for including it on their list.

Each month, we share marketing articles, links and information with the Friends of Outsource Marketing. This month, we added “podcast” to that list.

My partner Bill Boyd has done quite a few podcasts for clients, and decided it was time to do one for us.

Click play below to listen:

[audio:http://homepage.mac.com/bill_boyd/Patrick%20Byers%20-%20Responsible%20Marketing%20-%20042508%202.mp3]

Can you help me answer a few questions?

1. Do you like an audio format?
2. If no, how can we change it to make it better?
3. If yes, what is your desired frequency for podcasts?

Thanks for your help.

Well, the more research and writing I’ve done on Responsible Marketing, the more I appreciate the marketer’s conundrum: Responsible Marketing, on the surface, seems like an unachievable, almost Utopian goal.

If you are getting great results with your catalog campaigns, why would you ever make it easy for someone to remove themselves from your mailing list?

If tacky, disrespectful advertising actually works, why would you care about being message responsible and respecting all your audiences?

If being a good corporate citizen doesn’t improve the bottom line, why do it?

All good questions and all worthy of a discussion.

And that’s what this blog is all about: it’s the place where commerce and conscience collide. And finding a way to bring them together to do marketing right while doing the right thing.

Let the conversation continue!

We all know how difficult marketing has become. Ask an audience of 300 marketers or business owners if they are happy with their marketing results and see if one hand goes up. The fact I don’t have to tell you answer speaks volumes about marketing effectiveness today.

There are a host of reasons, but over the last decade at Outsource Marketing our work with hundreds of companies–large and small, established or start-up, B2B or B2C–we’ve found one thread that seems to lacking in some way in each of these organizations: marketing responsibility.

Marketing responsibility requires your organization to be–

• Strategically responsible – to save time, money and improve focus
• Execution responsible – with best practices instead of best efforts
• Message responsible – to respect all your audiences
• Casting responsible - so your have the right people in the right roles, internally and externally
• ROI responsible – because your efforts must impact the bottom line
• Environmentally responsible – since our world needs us to be
• Socially responsible - because marketing is more than moving product

I know this will generate a bit of discussion. That’s what I’m hoping for, so let the conversation begin!

Oh, click here if you’d like to learn more about Outsource Marketing.