And now… I bring you the pics! Some of the more appropriate ones of course

The time is here! Bevo Media has officially opened it’s doors to the public! It’s been a long and epic 3 year journey. All pending accounts have been approved, and new accounts are free to log in immediately. I would like to personally thank each and every individual beta tester. I could not have done it without the help of all of you. For those of you who are not familiar with Bevo Media, you can find more information here.

And in celebration, I have made the following video for all of you describing what an epic journey this truly has been. The video, however, comes with a twist. Truth be told, I actually created this video 2 years ago, the night when I was told I had to recreate the entire project from the ground up due to scalability issues. At that point, I was faced with the decision to either cut my losses and move on, or pretty much invest everything I got into the project. Being the entrepreneur I am, I chose to go for the homerun. That night I swore to myself I would never show another soul this video until the day the interface was open to the public. At times, this video was all I had to carry out the vision of this project, and years later, I am proud to announce that I can finally introduce it to the world!

Enjoy!

(View in full screen for best experience)

Years of an unbelievable amount of work, including stressful days leading into nights and all nighters. At times of what looked like endless amounts of work, worrying of things outside of a single persons control, we are finally ready to take the next step in the Bevo Media journey. At the end of the day, if nothing else, I feel like after all I have gone through the past 3 years, building this project from the ground up, I have learned an incredible amount of life lessons. Whether it’s learning how to deal with all sorts of people, networking, managing massive workloads, dealing with stress, coping with the lows and capping out the highs, I think I have seen almost every unpredictable issue thrown my way. This project, in particularly, I feel brings the already incredible amount of stress that goes into a startup to a whole new level.

From day 1, the knock on our business plan was that the project was too massive for anyone, let alone a 20 year old to pull off. Well 3 years later, not only did I do it, but I figured it out entirely on my own. I had a vision, no idea how I was going to pull it off, and grinded through the thick and thin. Sure I made some mistakes, but I feel like I have grown as person because of them. Building Bevo Media was, point blank, the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. The experience I’ve had building has made me a better person today. The best part is, that the real journey, has just began…

More soon, really soon

After three years of development, hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours of work…Bevo Media is set to start it’s marketing launch on Tuesday, August 10th!

Starting Tuesday at 12:01am EST, we will be enabling all publishers accounts. Shortly after, our aggressive marketing campaign will begin with the help of our first Network of the Month EpicDirect/AzoogleAds.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved in our beta. Bug finding is an extremely tedious task and could not have been done with out the help of hundreds of people coming at the interface from all different angles. We took everyone’s feedback extremely seriously, and implemented the most requested features from our beta testers. In the internet marketing industry, it is hard to find tools that aren’t riddled with bugs and problems. Bevo Media has taken every step to ensure that the interface is stable, and that support is available for when things pop up. Bevo Media was created to be flexible as the industry continues to evolve. New features are constantly being added and the Bevo team goes out of its way to have a good relationship with its users to allow for a solid interactive atmosphere.

Click Here to find out more information about the Bevo Media Online Marketing Platform.

Yes yes – I know I am late to the party with the Old Spice Buzz, but I must say first hand that Old Spice’s most recent, world famous, marketing campaign is by far the best advertising I have ever seen. From all angles, they successfully bridged the gap between television and social media marketing…raising the bar to a whole new level.

So what did they do that makes them so special? Well, let’s go over the Old Spice Marketing timeline and take an in depth look at how they won the hearts of millions of people all over the world.

The Beginning:

It ALL started Super Bowl weekend – with these 2 commercials:

Their are 3 very important aspects about these videos:

1.) It’s the same actor (Isaiah Mustafa) in each video, essentially branding him as a mascot for the company.

2.) The script itself is extremely funny.

3.) Isaiah Mustafa is actually a funny person and a great actor.

At this point, Old Spice just has a few good commercials they are advertising heavily, giving a good chuckle, which leads to the next point in the timeline.

The start of the buzz:

In early March, Isaiah Mustafa was featured on the Ellen DeGeneres show. During the show, Mustafa gains personal and company recognition by using his charm and swagger to win over the audience. Not only is this great for Mustafa’s career, but this is completely free advertising for Old Spice, on one of the most popular shows on television. Mustafa went on to appear on several other talk shows after this.

Capitalizing on Social Media:

This is truly where Old Spice separated themselves from having a great campaign, to taking the world by storm. At the beginning of July, they launched a Youtube campaign – responding to tweets coming to the Old Spice Twitter account. In these videos, Mustafa personally replies to tweets in his Old Spice commercial form, ranging from marriage proposals, to personal shout outs. An example of a few are below:

These responses, are not only funny, but also creates a huge connection between consumers and the company. The opportunity to have “THE” Old Spice spokesperson take the time out of his day to talk to YOU gives users that special feeling of “The Old Spice Guy is the man!”, and most likely makes a person’s day. Once word got out that Old Spice was doing this, the viralbility of these videos literally exploded with millions of views a day. TONS of tweets, followers, comments and praise all came with it. And yes, all for much cheaper than the cost of a TV commercial.

Spread of the Buzz

Perhaps the MOST valuable part of all of this is the community reaction to the videos. There have been thousands of parody videos popping up on Youtube modeling after the Old Spice commercials. A great example of this was done by the BYU Marketing department trying to advertise their library usage.

This is all FREE marketing. Millions upon millions of views for free. Yes, it may be done in a joking manner, but everyone knows what company the videos are a parody of, and more importantly, it imprints the brand into a consumer’s brain.

Final thoughts:

Old Spice does an incredible job at building a connection with their consumers. We have recently seen how much social media has helped the careers of celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Chad Ocho Cinco. What’s even more interesting is that what Old Spice did is not all too hard to replicate. Companies who reach out to their target market, and create a type of personalization between the company and consumer will simply be more liked in general. I personally WANT to see Old Spice succeed after seeing their efforts to reach out to their consumers. My personal opinion is that body wash is body wash. It’s basically the same thing regardless of companies, and all runs for around the same price. When I am at the store picking out my soap, it really doesn’t make a difference to me what kind I get, and I simply rely on my personal bias to make my purchase decision. Being said, next time I’m at the store, I’m sure you can guess which soap I’m going to chose

I want to thank you all for your amazing feedback and bug finding. We are actively fixing every single bug we find as they come in. We are also in the process of developing a HUGE feature list that we have yet to make public. These are all the most requested features suggested by our users. I think that they will take our interface to an entirely new level.

Note to pending users: We are letting people in as we feel would be most beneficial to the userbase. I’ve been trying to respond to each individual email, however this weekend I received 172 emails requesting account approval, so I figured I’d throw up a quick note on the blog just in case I couldn’t get back to you all.  I will be enabling a few hundred more accounts early this week.

To create an account and take part in the Bevo Media Beta check out http://beta.bevomedia.com. We are looking to have the interface in an open beta stage within the very immediate future!

Click here to find out more information regarding Bevo Media.

Thanks to good old Facebook, I couldn’t help but realize that the Syracuse graduation was this past week (my undergrad). This caused me to reflect a bit, based on my time from when I graduated school to where I am now. I will say that my life now is probably the polar opposite from college… for better or for worse. As a disclaimer, this post is based off my own experiences in both the business and social worlds, which may have been very different than other people’s experiences…based on how I see the world.

Point #1: DON’T FALL INTO THE AMERICAN TRAP! American society, as we know it, instills this SICK trap into the education system making 99% of the world destined for mediocrity. When you were growing up, everyone always said to you,  ”You can do whatever you want with your life! The sky is the limit etc. etc.” Then, suddenly, you get to college and all you think about, and general advice you receive, revolve around, “being good enough to get an entry level job.” Or worse, “Just find SOMETHING, some job….anything!” Whatever happened to those hopes and dreams?

So often in college, students stress about grades so they can “get a good job with a high paying salary”. Unfortunately, anyway you look at it, 99.999% of undergrads are going to have a horrible paying, entry level job coming out of college. The mindset: “I just need a few years and I’ll have enough money to do my own thing, to pursue my DREAM.” Well, guess what? In a few years, you will be getting a raise, and your mindset will then shift to, “I can’t quit now, I’ve worked my ass off to get this promotion, I’ll keep going for just another 2 year or so.” By this time, you’re already 27-28 years of age, likely have a whole life setup, with friends, family, girlfriend/boyfriend, and dare I say a child?… Yes, actual responsibility. The problem with these responsibilities is that they require monetary support. At this point, it makes NO sense to quit your job, as you are risking ruining people’s lives. You keep moving up the “corporate chain” and next thing you know, you’re 50 years old, your life is 70% over, and you’ve been bossed around pretty much your entire life. Another DISCLAIMER: Your goal might very well be to “climb the corporate ladder and be a ‘big boss” someday. This post still applies to you because to actually stand out in your profession, you will have to make an aggressive move sooner or later. You’ll have to do something that veers off the “path of mediocrity.”

Anyway, this, my friends, is the American Trap. I worked very hard (maybe “I worked very smart” is a more appropriate phrase) to ensure that I do not fall into this trap. Once you fall into it, it requires an extremely risky move to get out of. So do yourself a favor, recognize it, and avoid as much as humanly possible. This brings me to my next point, which is KEY to avoiding ‘it.”

Point #2: WORK ON BUILDING YOUR VALUE DURING YOUR FREE TIME: This where I feel I had my biggest realization. All throughout high school and college, I used my free time perfecting an internet marketing hobby. This hobby lead to me being pretty damn good at search marketing, which lead into money, and ultimately led into bootstrapping Bevo Media, which is now my life. Keyword: [MY LIFE]. Not answering to anybody but myself. In the meantime, everyone in college who used their free time to play video games, play the guitar, and do whatever else college kids with too much time on their hands do, are now pissed off at the world because they have to start at the bottom of totem pole. If those students would have just used that free time to develop a skill extremely well, they could have used that skill as leverage and experience going into the work force. This leads into point #3.

Point #3: YOUR VALUE IS DEFINED BY YOUR EXPERIENCE. The reason why first year graduates get paid such a low salary is because, as bad as it sounds, that’s basically what you are worth in the profession. 90% of what you need to know, you learn on the actual job. College is beneficial for the most basic aspects of your job, however, the true value of college is throwing a kid out there on their own and seeing if they can *make it through alive* with all sorts of obstacles thrown their way. Anyone who’s been through college knows that the vast majority of students study the day before the exam, take the test from mere memorization, then forget everything the next day. The only way you truly understand the concepts of your profession is to experience it firsthand.  Obviously, someone who has been doing the same job for 9 years is more valuable to a company than some new college graduate who has only proven that they have good interview skills. This is why developing a useful skill during your free time can be so powerful (Point #2).

Point #4: YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO ANYTHING. As horrible as it may sound, aside from your family and really close friends, nobody really cares about you or your feelings until you’ve accomplished something in life. There are 7 BILLION people in this world. Yes, BILLION, and you are just a single one of them. Realize this, and see it as a challenge.  Make it a point to be better than everyone else. Don’t accept mediocrity.  So many kids these days think that they are magically going to become rich but don’t even take the time to map out how these “dreams” of theirs can become a reality. NEWSFLASH: You need a game plan and unbelievable determination to achieve your goals. It’s easy to just “keep going” in life, but if you really want to make something of yourself, explode forward, get off your ass, stop complaining and actually DO SOMETHING to make people care.

Point #5: REFLECTION IS KEY: The only experience in life that is truly harmful is one that you haven’t learned something from. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good or bad experience; make it a point to reflect on how you felt during the experience and what you learned from it. You will begin to correlate those experiences with a similar situation in the future. You will find that this will give you a much better idea of how to handle yourself. This is called maturity, and in the long run, you will find yourself much better off because of it.

I am adamant in my belief that your life is a culmination of a few vital, life defining moments that ultimately leads to your destiny (destiny, by the way, is self-constructed.) Everything leads to your goals and your dreams. Each day is just a step forward. Graduation is one of those life defining moments. Do NOT just go with the flow. Take the time and develop your goals. After you have these goals, develop your plan. Finally, revolve your WHOLE LIFE around this plan, and strive for that euphoric moment of achievement.

Azoogle has accommodated me time and again, whether it’s going to the Playboy Mansion, World Series tickets, a Kindle, or showing a good time. Azoogle has hooked me the heck up!

For those of you who don’t already know, Azoogle is having another Party at the Playboy Mansion this upcoming August. As an attendee last year, I can definitely say that it is worth working for! You can see more information about the party here. PS: Notice the posterboy in the video

http://themansion2010.com/