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031cinephile · 4 years ago

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41ST DURBAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL GOES VIRTUAL WITH ONLINE DIGITAL EDITION

The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts (CCA), will once again host the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) from 10 to 20 September 2020. Now celebrating its landmark 41st year, this prestigious South African international film festival is a unique phenomenon on the African cultural calendar. This year the festival will screen selected films, host seminars and workshops virtually and include limited drive-in cinema screenings in Durban, Port Shepstone, Newcastle and Zululand.

Opening Night’s Film stars the late legendary leading actress Mary Twala in her final role, with a virtual and a drive-in screening of the film “This is not a Burial, but a Resurrection”, by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese. The film is co-production between South Africa, Lesotho and Italy. The visually striking drama, set in the mountains of Lesotho, opens with an elderly widow named Mantoa (Mary Twala), grieving the loss of her son. Determined to die and be laid to rest with her family, her plans are interrupted when she discovers that the village and its cemetery will be forcibly resettled to make way for a dam reservoir. Refusing to let the dead be desecrated, she finds a new will to live and ignites a collective spirit of defiance within her community.

“This film was specifically selected to open the festival, because it sheds some light onto the land issues in Lesotho by telling a very personal story through the journey of one woman. Its sophisticated imagery, the stunning, haunting landscapes that appreciate the depth of the magnificence that is the African landscape and how this was intertwined so effortlessly into the narrative is a true homage to African folklore.” says Head of Programming Chipo Zhou.

Closing Film is the thriller Dust, directed by Pieter du Plessis, and with actress Shana Mans in the lead role. A story of female oppression and emancipation, a contemporary look at the current global discourse on women’s rights. This film is apt on the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic whose effects will be seen and felt globally for years to come.

This year’s opening and closing film selections are narratives that push boundaries and open up dialogue to contemporary challenges being faced in society today. Both films celebrate unparalleled performances by two South African leading ladies.

“Both narratives are about finding strength and resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable injustice and speak very much on the human emotional need to connect, belong and be a part of something much greater than themselves. Set in two very different worlds, and centred on seemingly unconnected issues, both films tackle loss and trauma delicately and uniquely.” Says Zhou.

The Programme The festival has curated a film programme consisting of 60 offerings consisting of shorts, documentaries and feature films. The plots in the selected films, through different lenses, show contemporary relevance to the challenges currently faced by the world which has, over the last years, progressively begun to interrogate history to right wrongs and restore human dignity to previously disenfranchised populaces. Some of the films that highlight these themes include Our Lady of the Nile, directed by Atiq Rahimi, which takes us on a journey that juxtaposes religion and mythology in a beautiful tale set on the backdrop of the Tutsi and Hutu conflict that ravaged Rwanda for decades. Ouvertures, directed by Louis Henderson and Olivier Marboeuf, explores the social abundance and history of Haiti, where the brutal legacy is slavery and how the world has begun to collectively revisit the past to try and heal the wounds that are still globally felt. In the film Beanpole by Kantemir Balagov, two young women, in the aftermath of World War II, search for meaning and hope as they struggle to rebuild their lives among the ruins. The documentary In Your Eyes, I See my Country where Neta Elkayam and Amit Haï Cohen live in Jerusalem where they created a band that revisits and reshapes their common Jewish-Moroccan musical heritage. They grapple with this identity duality; an attempt to heal the wounds of exile carried by their parents. A captivating narrative musically driven, they reshape their perception of who they are and want to become, along with aspirations to consolidate bridges with the homeland of their ancestors. A Rifle and a Bag, a documentary by Isabella Rinaldi, Cristina Haneș and first-time feature-length director, Arya Rothe is an insightful love story that survives a decade of armed struggle and violence. A search for a new identity in the aftermath of a violent past. Bereka, a short film directed by Nesanet Teshager Abegaze exquisitely explores similar themes of memory, migration and rebirth.

The DIFF Awards Head of programming, Chipo Zhou is proud to announce the films in competition, that are diverse but have a common threat of revisiting the past as a way to instill hope for the future. “The physical and internal wars and struggles in the films that explore what seemed impossible decades ago is now but a distant memory that we dissect in art as a way to reflect and create a better world. 2020 has proved to have been a very trying year, one of which despair and hopelessness enveloped the world. We are in this moment living the history of tomorrow. These narratives are mirrors of the art that the generations after us will create looking back at this very moment. The festival looks to the future, optimistic that this is not the apocalypse by exploring the histories that in those moments, could have felt like the very end.” Says Zhou. On the advancement of the film industry, she adds “The industry has changed, how film is created and consumed has evolved dramatically. The way we showcase has been propelled into the future, by the Covid19 pandemic, and the festival will, for the very first time be presented online. Virtual platforms store everything in perpetuity as an archive of the showcase and subsequent dialogue around the issues highlighted in the narratives. This archive will be a great contribution to the future of film scholarship on the continent and beyond.”

Documentaries in the 2020 Competition:

143 Sahara Street directed by Hassen Ferhani, Algeria, 2019

A Rifle And A Bag directed by Isabella Rinaldi, Arya Rothe and Cristina Haneș, India/Romania/Italy/Qatar, 2020

Softie directed by Sam Soko, Kenya 2020

FADMA: Even Ants Have Wings directed by Jawad Rhalib, Belgium/Morocco, 2019

In your Eyes, I See my Country directed by Kamal Hachkar, Morocco/France, 2019

Influence directed by Diana Neille, Richard Poplak, South Africa/Canada, 2020

The Letter directed by Maia Von Lekow and Christopher King, Kenya, 2020

Features in the 2020 Competition:

Beanpole directed by Kantemir Balakov, Russia, 2019

Dust directed by Pieter du Plessis, South Africa, 2020

Farewell Amor directed by Ekwa Msangi, USA, 2020

Force Of Habit directed by Kirsikka Saari/Elli Toivoniemi/Anna Paavilainen/Alli Haapasalo/Reetta Aalto/Jenni Toivoniemi/Miia Tervo, Finland, 2020 Lusala directed by Mugambi Nthiga, Kenya/Germany, 2019 Our Lady of the Nile directed by Atiq Rahimi, France/Belgium/Rwanda, 2019 Stam (The Tree) directed by Louw Venter, South Africa, 2019 Take Me Somewhere Nice directed by Ena Sendijarevic, Netherlands/Bosnia/Herzegovina, 2019 This is Not a Burial, it’s a Resurrection directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, Lesotho/South Africa/Italy, 2020

All short films are in competition.

“The DIFF prides itself on discovering and nurturing new talent, and each year we select films from a diverse number of first-time feature-length directors. The 41 st edition is no exception with almost 30% directorial debut feature-length productions on showcase, which we are very excited about” says Head of programming Chipo Zhou. Some of these directors include Arya Rothe, the director of A Rifle and a Bag, Sam Soko director of Softie, Aslaug Aarsæther’s director of The Art of Fallism, Amine Hattou director of Janitou, Carla Fonseca director of Burkinabe, Ena Sendijarević director of Take Me Somewhere Nice, Louw Venter director of Stam (The Tree) and Kislay Kislay director of Just Like That.

isiPhethu At the heart of the University of KwaZulu Natal is a mission to redress the imbalances of the past, and its contribution to this mission through the Centre for Creative Arts is emphasised through a robust community engagement programme titled isiPhethu. This year, in addition to drive-in screenings in the greater KwaZulu-Natal, the programme will host various online workshops and seminars. isiPhethu aims to entertain, educate, train and up-skill, instill confidence to young aspirant filmmakers and share information that is relevant to the film industry to empower young people.

“The idea is to link the film community virtually in these trying times where the Covid-19 pandemic threatens not just our lives but the arts in general”, says Isiphethu curator Sakhile Gumede.

A range of top facilitators and guest speakers are featured, under which multi-award-winning filmmaker Shirley Bruno and producer and actor Michal Birnbaun. DIFF is also proud to host the New York-based writer, producer and director of ‘Equal Standard’ which tackles the issue of police brutality in the US. Taheim will be joined by a few of his colleagues to give the DIFF audiences an in-depth insight into his work. South African born documentary filmmaker Jessie Zinn now based in the US, will be joined by award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer Simon Wood to discuss new approaches to documentary filmmaking.

“Many young people will undergo training through these programmes. The video production and scriptwriting workshops both aimed at development of young makers. This year we have opted to engage in virtual workshops, and this allowed us to bring many players on board from across the globe. Some of the highlights include speakers from the San Francisco Black Film Festival, SWIFT, Visual Network SA, George Mason University, Coastal-conferences”, added Gumede.

isiPhethu Community film screenings, school programmes and engagements with various community organisations around the city of Durban and the province of KwaZulu Natal will be the pulse of this year’s Isiphethu industry-focused programme at DIFF. The isiPhethu programme remains a backbone of DIFF and act as a centre stage for the industry role players to showcase their work, talents, and network in the film industry. The vibrant programme aims to entertain, educate, train and up-skill, instill confidence to young aspirant film-makers and share information that is relevant to the film industry to empower young people. A range of top facilitators, guest speakers and participants will be featured. They will headline several of these programmes as the DIFF continues to position itself as one of the biggest and most significant festivals on the continent.

Curators

As a festival, the DIFF prides itself on inclusivity and a celebration of diversity as is shown by the riveting selection of films, which has been curated by a small group of talented and diverse individuals, headed by DIFF head of programming, Chipo Zhou. Nataleah Hunter-Young, a Canadian writer, film curator, and PhD candidate in Communication and Culture, Lisa Ogdie, an American short film programmer who works with Sundance Film Festival and Mitchel Harper a South African freelance curator and cultural programmer specializing in the arts in areas of film, music, literature, visual and performing arts.

Programme and details The full programme, alongside all the films that will be screening, is accessible on www.durbanfilmfest.com. Ticket sales are open. Tickets for the virtual screenings are only available FREE in South Africa. Once a ticket is booked, you can watch the film for 2 days and once you have started watching you can playback for 24 hours. There will be drive-ins screenings in Durban, Port Shepstone, Richards Bay and Newcastle. Tickets for the drive-in screenings are available on Quicket for R100 per car, however at a limited capacity.

The 41st edition of the festival is organized by the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts, in partnerships and with the support of Durban Film Office, eThekwini Municipality, National Film and Video Foundation, KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission, KZN Department of Arts and Culture and other valued funders and partners.

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#Durban International film festival #DIFF2020 #Durban #South Africa #Centre for Creative Arts #Online Virtual Edition #Stay Home #UKZN #Free Tickets #Drive In #Isiphethu Hub #Awards #Streaming #Free

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thecastingcircle · 6 years ago

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By day, Jennifer Turner works in law enforcement in Vancouver. But on this particular late August weekend, she’s in Cleveland, attending JemCon, an annual gathering for devotees of the colorful Eighties cartoon Jem and the Holograms. Turner’s fandom runs deep. She grew up with a single father who supported her love for all things Jem. One Christmas, she woke up to find he had bought her every single Jem-related doll available at the time; other times, he would set an alarm and wake her up early so she could watch the show before school.

“It was such an escape, and so different from the regular narratives that you had about mom and dad,” Turner says of the cartoon, which follows the adventures of a philanthropic-minded orphan named Jerrica — proprietor of an orphanage for teenage girls, the Starlight House — who has a rock-star secret identity/alter-ego, Jem. “I think I identified a little bit with Jem losing her parents.”

In hindsight, Turner, who sports a detailed, full-color tattoo of Jem on her right calf and ink depicting a rival bandleader named Pizzazz on her left calf, also recognizes how the show informed her feminist worldview. “Here was a heroine that owned her own business, was a humanitarian, ran an orphanage, took care of her sister. [She] had a romance, but it was never the whole point of the story. It was about her, and her career. It whisked me away.”

For many, Jem is a forgotten retro footnote. The cartoon had a relatively short lifespan — 65 episodes aired between 1985 to 1988 — and the accompanying doll line enjoyed only a brief burst of popularity. But for fans such as Turner, Jem was a life-changing phenomenon.

Thirty years after the cartoon initially went off the air, and three years after a poorly received live-action feature-film reboot, the Jem universe — or “multi-universes,” in the words of Samantha Newark, who provided the speaking voice for both Jem and Jerrica on the cartoon — remains a vibrant, creative space. Jem lives on via fan art and detailed websites dedicated to the brand. T-shirts mash upJem characters with art in the styles of Duran Duran, Queen, Mötley Crüe, Poison and the Misfits (who share a name with the Holograms’ rival band on the show). There’s also Truly Outrageous: A Jem Fan Film, a Kickstarter-funded live-action short named after a key line in the chorus of the show’s theme song, and a Spain-made short film, MisfitSized. Newark has even compiled a “Jem Drag Stars” playlist on her YouTube channel, featuring detailed makeup tutorials and drag performances themed around the characters.

That same dedication permeates “How Rock & Roll Infiltrated Saturday Morning Cartoons,” an unofficial JemCon kickoff panel discussion and Q&A. Held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the event features appearances from three luminaries in the Jemuniverse: Newark; series creator Christy Marx; and cartoonist Keith Tucker, a storyboard artist on many of the show’s music videos.

Newark, a beaming presence with cascades of auburn hair, trills one of her character’s signature lines into the mic: “It’s showtime, Synergy!” All three speakers have an easy rapport as they share behind-the-scene tidbits from the cartoon. At one point, Marx draws gasps of wonder by revealing she once pitched a Jem episode set in the Rock Hall that never moved forward.

As the Q&A wraps up, a young woman standing against the wall raises her hand and shares that her name is Jherica —and that she is, in fact, named after Jem’s non-rock-star persona. Incredibly, Jherica Belle isn’t from Cleveland and hadn’t heard about JemCon but just happened to be in town for a work conference and decided to visit the Rock Hall, where she came upon the panel. Her close friends and family call her Jem, Belle shares later via e-mail. “No more than a handful,” she writes. “Not everyone can call me Jem. That name is special.”

Jem and the Holograms was originally created by Sunbow Productions to promote a line of rock & roll-themed dolls produced by toy giant Hasbro, whose other properties included G.I. Joe and My Little Pony. The original Jem doll line is a New Wave fever dream encompassing neon-hued clothing, shoes, accessories and musical instruments. Some toys even came packaged with actual playable cassettes featuring original songs heard in the cartoon.

The show expanded on the dolls’ backstory. After the death of her parents, an ambitious young woman named Jerrica suddenly finds herself running an orphanage and owning half of her late father’s record company, Starlight Music. Simultaneously, Jerrica discovers that her dad created a smart computer named Synergy, who informs the budding music exec that her magical, star-shaped “Jemstar Earrings” can create holograms that allow her to assume the identity of a rock star. Cue the formation of the band Jem and the Holograms, whose lineup features Jerrica’s younger sister, keyboardist Kimber and two adopted sisters: guitarist Aja and drummer Shana.

The show’s 65 episodes boast plenty of over-the-top drama and narrative cliffhangers. Jerrica’s Starlight Music CEO competition is Eric Raymond, a slimy character who constantly tries to sabotage and undermine her. Jem and the Holograms do battle both onstage and off with the Misfits, a gang of felonious (if musically talented) mean girls managed by Raymond. Jerrica also takes care of the Starlight Girls, the foster children who live at Starlight House, and navigates her relations with boyfriend Rio. In true fantasy-land fashion, Rio also falls in love with Jem, but never discovers that the two women are one and the same.

“It’s a character-driven show,” says Christy Marx. “Basically a soap opera for kids is what it was — [or] ended up being anyway.”

This cartoon drama mirrored the press-inflated real-life drama involving the toy lines. As it goes with many real-life female musicians, Jem was often pitted against another female talent: Mattel’s doll juggernaut Barbie. An October 1986 Los Angeles Times article,“Barbie Takes Up Rock ‘n’ Roll to Match Rival Jem,” detailed the emergence of Barbie and the Rockers, a line of rock-themed dolls that debuted in stores shortly before Jem did.

The competition was at least healthy. According to an August 1987 Los Angeles Times story, Jem had sold more than 3 million dolls to date, and the cartoon was drawing 2.5 million young viewers each week, “making it the third most-watched children’s program in syndication.” Unfortunately, Jem’s pop-cultural moment was short-lived: The animated series was canceled in 1988 due to the doll line’s decreasing popularity.

The ongoing fascination with Jem and the Holograms certainly has something to do with nostalgia. Yet Jem isn’t like most children’s entertainment. The show’s sophisticated story lines often involved heavy real-world issues; for example, a runaway hotline was flooded with calls after the phone number ran at the end of one episode. Plus, even minor characters have elaborate backstories, making the show feel more like an adaptation of a novel rather than a cartoon spun off from a toy line.

According to Newark, it was by design that the characters on Jem felt like three-dimensional people. “Our reads had to be very real,” she explains. “They didn’t want cartoony. They were like, ‘No, we want the kids to look up to you, like you’re their older sisters, or their friends.'”

The quality and care that went into Jem’s narratives extended to its in-episode animated videos, whose original music and lyrics also promoted thought-provoking messages. “You might dismiss [the songs] as cheesy, but they’re not,” says Ari Gold, who provided the singing voice for the character Ba Nee, an eight-year-old Vietnamese orphan who was losing her sight. “The messages are good; they’re complex; they’re messages that we still need to hear today. There’s really almost a Jem song about every situation in life.”

Gold, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, notes that their character’s signature song, “A Father Should Be,” is “about the ideal father that so many of us didn’t have.” As another example, they cite “Alone Again,” a rather serious song touching on depression and feeling self-conscious that was sung by a young character dealing with drug addiction. “I mean, this is a cartoon in the Eighties for children. This is before Oprah was talking about this stuff,” Gold says with a laugh. “It was so ahead of its time in so many ways.”

The lyrics were set to equally high-quality music, courtesy of co–composer-arranger Anne Bryant, who noted in a 2009 interview that the Holograms’ songs were orchestrated with real horns, woodwinds and strings, while the Pizzazz-led Misfits tunes had electronic elements and guitars. “[Anne Bryant] was writing pop music, but with a lot of key changes,” says Britta Phillips, who was the singing voice of Jem and is now better known as a member of the band Luna and duo Dean & Britta.

“It was all very sophisticated, and not simple vocally at all,” Phillips says. “I feel like I really learned how to sing doing that. I had a really powerful and high voice, but not a lot of nuance or flexibility or any of that until I started doing the Jem stuff. That all came from that, from working with Anne.”

The show’s smart, non-pandering approach can be traced to Marx, who is revered by fans. Stefan Spierings recalls being “extremely nervous” before he and his cousin Rob met Marx at the 2007 JemCon. “To us, it was almost like meeting Madonna,” the Netherlands native says. “She’s one of our heroes.” A cosplay fanatic named Raven, who published her first book in 2016 under the pen name Evelyn Whitney, could be seen furiously scribbling notes during one of Marx’s JemCon presentations and also considers the creator a writing role model. “I want my career to look like hers,” she says.

The respect is mutual, however. As JemCon unfolds, it’s clear that Marx, who also wrote 23 episodes, takes her role as the shepherd of Jem’s legacy quite seriously, and answers fan questions about character motivations with care and respect. The attention to detail makes sense: Marx grew up an ardent fan of comic books, and worked in TV production before becoming a writer.

When Marx signed on to the Jem project, certain elements were already locked in place, including the rock-star premise and the Jem/Jerrica secret identity. Yet many other elements were in flux, right down to character names (Jem was originally known as “M”). Marx also recalls being given conflicting directions as she began to flesh out and develop Jem’s world. “They said, ‘OK, it’s a girl’s property, and it’s got to be romance and fashion and glitter and glamour,’ and all of this stuff. ‘But we’re afraid the boys might change the dial, so there’s got to be action!'” She laughs. “It was really interesting how they were trying to juggle all of this.”

Despite such seemingly divergent directives, she says working with Sunbow Productions was “a dream” and adds that Hasbro was, for the most part, “hands off. They had moments, perhaps, when they exerted a bit of control over certain stories, but not much. They really let us have a lot of creative freedom.” That helps to explain why Jem explored deeper themes than other cartoons of the time and featured such a stereotype-breaking female lead. Jem herself is a quintessentially Eighties icon, a fashion plate with a shock of pink hair and cutting-edge outfits who’s also whip smart and a total boss. Despite the tragedies Jerrica/Jem has faced, she seemingly has it all: a fun, glamorous and successful life full of romance, rock and responsibility.

The cartoon’s progressive approach toward ethnic diversity — Holograms member Aja is Asian-American and Shana is black — also resonated with fans such as Christina Santisteban, who sports pink glitter eyeshadow, a blue wig and a yellow lace dress. “There were very few other cartoons that were so diverse in its characters, and so inclusive,” she says. “Where do you get a girl band that had sisters that were of different backgrounds? It was very, very well representative of what the ideal should be, in a sense. Jem was a wonderful microcosm.”

For all of Jem’s over-the-top flash, the show also offered subtler messaging to some fans. “[The show] did have an unconscious appeal to the LGBT community, because [of] the secret identity, and being afraid of people finding out and using it against you,” says Garth Jensen, who’s known in the fan community for his seamless custom mashups of Jem cartoon songs with Eighties hits such as New Order’s “Blue Monday” or Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” “And just the idea that it was OK to be different — and it was OK to have that side of yourself that was fabulous, and you could bring that out. Being your true self is your ultimate goal.”

Will Edwardson, who boasts colorful, intricate tattoos of the faces of the Misfits and Holograms on his right arm, had a similar takeaway from the cartoon. As a gay teenager growing up in rural Kentucky, he turned to music for solace. “It was a comfort for me, because I was, of course, an outcast,” he says. “[I] didn’t fit in in my area. Being gay was just not the thing to be. It was pretty lonely and isolated.”

Developing an affinity for Jem and the Holograms‘ music- and glitz-filled premise was a natural next step. “I’ve always loved movies and [been] attracted to showbiz and fame,” he says. “So here’s a show of someone who has a dual identity — you have to be someone here, and you have to be someone else here — along with the music, the colors and the clothes. I just identified so much with that.”

Neither Marx nor Newark were aware of how much of an impact Jem had when it originally aired. But as Newark has started attending more conventions, and met fans, she’s seen the show’s profound, enduring effect on people.

“I have a lot of criers,” she says. “They just burst into tears. Nostalgia’s so powerful, and I realized quite a long time ago that I am custodian of something very precious, and I take it seriously. They’re, of course, like, crying and apologizing, and I’m like, ‘No, I understand.’ They’re suddenly eight years old again, or five years old, or however old they were. And the show’s just meant so much to them.”

Jenny Dumlao — a gregarious, enthusiastic New Yorker who traveled to JemCon with her two daughters, eight-year-old Aurora May and six-year-old Leilani — in particular gets extremely emotional when she talks about the ways Jem has provided her with guidance and comfort throughout her life. Born in the Philippines, she moved around frequently as a child after coming to the U.S., and fell in love with Jem early on. In fact, she and one of her best friends would play “radio” using a boombox, and pretend to be DJs talking over the Jem music cassettes — idle play which sparked a lifelong love of music and even a future foray into real-life radio DJ’ing.

“[The show] stays with you, and you experience it in so many different ways as you’re getting older,” she says, adding that she also sees now how big of an impression the show’s ethnic diversity left on her. “I was a kid that would get very excited if there was a character that was like me. And so Aja was the first favorite character. Because you’re like, ‘Oh, she’s Asian, but not only that, she’s so cool — and she’s so smart.'” A few minutes later, she becomes overcome with emotion as she talks about the power of this representation. “I don’t know, as a parent and just even back then, that’s really important to me in media, seeing yourself.”

When her daughters were old enough, Dumlao naturally introduced them to Jem and the Holograms. This introduction came at a time when she was leaving the girls’ father, as their relationship had turned toxic. “Sometimes bad things would be happening, and our safe space was in my room, in the bedroom away from stuff,” Dumlao recalls. “And we would watch [Jem].

“I didn’t think it was happening at the time, but I know based on how [the girls] would talk about the show that it was helping us in those times,” she adds. “And sometimes it was helping me too — whether at that moment I was getting inspiration, or whether I feel like I was going to a simpler time.”

Dumlao and her girls are in a much better place these days. Unsurprisingly, both Aurora May and Leilani are now mega-knowledgeable Jem fans in their own right. (During Friday night trivia, although they seem to be concentrating on coloring, they very quietly answer some difficult questions correctly.) Dumlao recognizes their Jem fandom might not always persist in the same form, but she sees how they’ve soaked up lessons from the cartoon, including the value of hard work, as well as the idea that girls can be anything and everything they want to be.

“I remember one time the girls said to me, ‘You’re like Jerrica — you work really hard, Mama,'” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Wow. Thank you for noticing that.'”

JemCon kicks off bright and early on Saturday morning with toy designer Stefanie Eskander, who draws a rapt audience to a fascinating, photo-packed presentation covering her time working on Hasbro’s Jem doll line back in the Eighties. To the delight of everyone in the conference room, at one point she reveals her original concept art for Jem’s pet llama, Rama Llama, a fan-favorite cult item that ended up being available only as a mail-in incentive.

People furiously snap photos of a slide featuring Eskander’s drawing of the pink-hued animal, which she initially named Dolli Llama and gave accessories such as a smart bowler hat and hatbox. For a capper on the reveal, she pulls out a prototype llama figure that’s pale yellow, not shocking pink; it occupied a prominent place on her art table in the vendor room all weekend, a mini-celebrity in its own right.

Over the three-day weekend, more than 140 people from all around the world — two attendees short of the all-time JemCon attendance record — will converge on (and brighten up) this otherwise nondescript suburban Double Tree Hilton. The JemCon agenda is packed with activities, including trivia, a costume masquerade and late-night disco, panel discussions, karaoke, a charity auction, and a vendor room full of Jem ephemera for sale and display.

Loyalists devour this kind of minutiae, and have impressive knowledge of every inch of Jem’s narrative world, judging by Friday night’s competitive trivia round. (Sample: “This San Diego Comic Con-exclusive doll had issues with mold in the packaging.”) The Jem-inspired cosplaying is also truly, truly outrageous (and impressive). A willowy 17-year-old named Erica Hill — an aspiring graphic designer who “became totally obsessed” with the Jem and the Holograms cartoon via TV reruns — sports three separate outfits painstakingly constructed by her mom, Andrea, from a combination of thrift store finds and homemade flourishes. “She’s a MacGyver when it comes to birthing cosplay ideas,” Erica says proudly.

JemCon founder Liz Pemberton, who came to Jem after she started collecting the dolls in the early 2000s, launched the convention in July 2005 as a one-day event at the University of Minnesota. That initial installment drew 50 people and, from there, JemCon has happened every year since then in various cities. “Which astounds me,” Pemberton says with a laugh. Even more impressive, JemCon is still a very grassroots, DIY effort: It doesn’t have huge sponsors, and is a volunteer effort planned by a different person or group of people each year.

“I just wanted to get people together to look at our [doll] shoes and fashions,” says Pemberton, a thoughtful speaker who wears her silver-gray hair pulled back into a ponytail. “That it has grown into this much more comprehensive [thing], and that it has become such a welcoming place for such a diverse lot of people, continues to amaze me and makes me very happy.”

In Cleveland, every JemCon attendee has a different story to tell about how they came to Jem or why the franchise is meaningful to them. There’s Ankur Malhotra and TJ Schuessler, who started dating after they met at JemCon; Ilana Pernica, who has fiery red hair and cat-eye glasses and stresses with great urgency that she is the biggest fan of the Stingers, a fictional band introduced later in the series; and first-time attendee Becky Scott, who first loved Jem after hearing cassettes of the music.

Many fans have traveled great distances to JemCon or have parlayed their fandom into a career. Italy native Davide Quatraro learned English from watching the cartoon and now works in the dubbing industry; in fact, he even translated the Jem and the Hologramsmovie into Italian. “It was a huge thing,” he says, “when you can have your greatest passion turn into a job.”

As a kid, Rachel Pankiw — host and organizer of the Cleveland JemCon — was first drawn to Jem and the Holograms by the bright, eye-catching packaging of a VHS tape. But once she watched the cartoon, she saw her own life reflected in the story lines. “I really related to this whole story of the Starlight Girls, and the whole thing with kids not getting attention or getting left out,” she said, adding that her parents were divorced when she was small, and her dad wasn’t around much.

Independent of one another, and without prompting, multiple people express that JemCon feels like a family, which would be a cliché if it didn’t feel so absolutely true. This inclusivity isn’t just lip service, confirms Will Edwardson’s husband, Steve. “I’ve made a lot of good friends here,” he says. “With him being the collector and the one into Jem — and me being a supporter — they’ve made me feel very welcome.” In fact, the soft-spoken Southerners decided to get married in a surprise ceremony at the 2010 JemCon in New Hampshire, since same-sex marriage was then still outlawed in their home state of Tennessee. “We talked about it, and we said, ‘What other place to get married than at JemCon?'” Steve says.

Pemberton gets choked up while mentioning the Edwardsons’ JemCon marriage, and that Malhotra and Schuessler also connected romantically there. “Their lives have changed,” she says. “You don’t go into a convention going, ‘I’m going to change people’s lives.'” She laughs. “Just the way you don’t write a cartoon going, ‘I’m going to change people’s lives.'”

Certainly those attending JemCon represent a cross-section of the most dedicated Jem and the Holograms fans. Pemberton realizes that, in the greater scheme of pop-culture fandom, the brand’s impact is small. When she attended the official 2010 Barbie convention to promote JemCon — while dressed as the Misfits band member Pizzazz, bright green wig and all — “nobody recognized me,” she says, save for one man she knew from the Jem message board. But an interesting twist, Pemberton recalls that there were dancers dressed as Barbie and the Rockers at the convention who “made some joke about Jem and Jerrica, some little insult kind of joke.” She laughs as she adds, “And I’m like, ‘Mattel certainly knows who Jem is still!'”

That Jem and the Holograms hasn’t been given more of a modern second chance is curious. Nostalgia for Eighties cartoons shows no signs of abating, judging by the popularity of modern iterations of My Little Pony and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a buzzed-about new Netflix reboot, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Unfortunately, the cartoon’s polarizing reemergence into pop culture has something to do with it: The 2015 Jem and the Holograms movie was lambasted by critics (it has a 20-percent-fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating) and earned an anemic $2.3 million worldwide at the box office.

Perhaps because the show remains a cultural underdog, fans are intensely loyal to the franchise and its principals. Newark has parlayed her time with Jem into a musical career, and records danceable synth pop in the vein of Kylie Minogue or early Lady Gaga, while Britta Phillips too has Jem fans come see her live. “The confidence it gave me later in life, hearing that people were still so into [Jem], has given me confidence as a musician, in my singing,” she says. “It took me a long time to make a solo album, but I made one a couple of years ago, and the Jem fans were so supportive of that even though it sounds nothing like Jem.”

Unsurprisingly, JemCon attendees also have very detailed opinions over why the 2015 Jem movie does (and doesn’t) succeed. “Christy Marx wasn’t given the opportunity to write the movie,” says Katie Brandt, who’s attending JemCon with her younger sister, Colleen O’Leary. “That’s why it didn’t work; that’s why it fell apart.” This isn’t an assertion out of left field: Even producer Jason Blum apparently admitted in June that the movie should have had Marx involved.

Still, Marx did make a cameo in the film, portraying Lindsey Pierce, a Rolling Stone reporter, and received a warm welcome on the set — to the extent that when she asked to change some of her lines, she was given a green light with no hesitation. Marx is also extremely complimentary toward the actresses in the movie, even as she too expresses wishes that she had been involved with the writing.

“I think that the essence of Jem got lost, and we lost a great opportunity to genuinely reboot Jem,” she says. “I’ve had so many ideas over the years — of ways to reboot Jem, to bring it back, to rejuvenate it—and yet could never get any traction to do that. And so I think it’s just a shame that opportunity didn’t get pursued.”

“I think there’s a lot that can be done to update it, but keep it true to its essence,” she adds. “So I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen. I kind of doubt it at this point. “

Still, Jem is staying alive in pop culture. In recent years, Integrity Toys launched a high-end Jem and the Holograms doll collection. There’s a special edition, Jem-themed Manic Panic hair dye that glows under black light, while Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken has featured Jem in multiple episodes, once envisioning the character as a pop star who’s fallen on hard times since her Eighties heyday, another time as a foul-mouthed sexpot. (For an even raunchier take on the show and characters, there’s also a mega-NSFW fan parody on YouTube dubbed “Jiz and the Mammograms.”) The original Jem cartoon is finding a new audience as well, in the form of a comprehensive DVD release and, in recent years, syndicated reruns on the Hub (later Discovery Family) and Netflix.

One of the most groundbreaking extensions of the Jem and the Holograms legacy is the IDW Publishing comic book series produced between 2015 and 2017 written by Kelly Thompson. The comics feature characters with body diversity — a particular strength of artist Sophie Campbell, who drew many of IDW’s Jem issues, Thompson says — and expand the backstories of some Jem regulars; for example, Holograms keyboardist Kimber and Misfits keytarist Stormer are openly gay. Later in the series, the comic also introduced a musician named Blaze who is a transgender woman.

“I was interested primarily in drawing out the spirit of the original, which was incredibly diverse for its time, and making sure we continued that tradition by modernizing it and making it even more diverse,” Thompson says.

At JemCon, the Saturday evening festivities especially embody Jem’s spirit of diversity, and playful music and fashion. The impressive costume contest possesses both an abundance of inside jokes and attention to detail. Cherise “Tootie” Sims, who’s cosplaying as Jem’s boyfriend, Rio — specifically as he is in an episode where he kicks a plant in frustration — draws raucous laughter as she mimes kicking a tiny manicured fake plant with exaggerated anger. A veteran JemCon attendee named Jacques, who’s dressed as Jerrica’s late father, Emmett Benton, sports a lab coat and carries a working, light-up prototype of supercomputer Synergy.

With a giant smile on her face, Raven sweeps around the room wearing a floor-length cloak over a black miniskirt and yellow print leggings; she’s portraying a character dressed like an oracle, as seen in the beloved episode “Midsummer Night’s Madness.” Pittsburgh resident Danna Kurela glides gracefully in a costume handmade on her embroidery machine: a shiny gold dress with a fur-trimmed collar based on the Integrity doll line’s Glitter ‘n Gold Jem. The eventual winners are Dumlao — who draws laughter as she does ballet moves around the floor while dressed as Synergy, complete with purple body paint and a silver jumpsuit — and her girls, cosplaying as Jem and Jerrica.

Once the contest is over, the musical portion of the night kicks into high gear. Jem-themed musical karaoke goes longer than it’s supposed to, simply because everyone is having so much fun belting out the songs from the show, although Dumlao (under her DJ name, Jenny Doom) eventually packs the dance floor by spinning an all-killer mix of tunes: Prince, the B-52s, Madonna, Cardi B, Sugarhill Gang. The time ticks away toward midnight, and JemCon has been going full steam for nearly 15 hours.

Plans are already in motion for the next JemCon, which will take place in September 2019, in Buffalo, New York. An agenda and guest list are still being worked out, but it’s safe to say many in attendance in Cleveland are already looking forward to next year.

“I meet so many little kids now,” Newark says. “Some of them come in full cosplay, like a little tiny Pizzazz or a little Jem. I always wondered if [the cartoon] would translate, because it was set in the Eighties, but they don’t care. They love the whole thing: the color, the music, the sparkle, the glamour. [There are] new little Jem boys and Jem girls running around. It’s so cool.”

“The characters, the stories, the emotional elements of it, the fashion, the music,” Marx adds, “I mean, it all came together in a perfect storm, and became this amazing phenomenon that’s called Jem.”

#jem #jem and the holograms #jem & the holograms #the misfits #the stingers

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recentanimenews · 6 years ago

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Fans Rage Over Curse Shield In Episode 8

*SPOILERS BELOW*

If you’re not completely caught up on The Rising of the Shield Hero, please shield your eyes.

Everything’s been so nice (besides the rivalry) lately but that mood was put on hold this week. It was time to bring back the anger and darkness.

This week’s episode got very real very quickly. Filo being swallowed up by a zombie dragon took a drastic toll on Naofumi. He focused on the hate inside of him and unlocked fully: Curse Shield. Seeing the anger and hatred be released in such a manner looked really cool but scary and Raphtalia was able to calm him like she beautifully did in episode four.

Unfortunately, she took a lot of damage and Naofumi desperately tried to save her while simultaneously trying to fight the dragon. Luckily, Filo took care of the dragon and everything was well again except for Raphtalia who we now know has a severe curse on her.

Emotionally, this episode was heavy, heartbreaking, and released a lot of rage and hatred. Thanks to Filo and Raphtalia, this didn’t become Naofumi’s permanent state and he even SMILED at the very end. The collective vow made by the entire party to become stronger to protect each other ended things on a nice note.

This episode made everyone go through another emotional rollercoaster but thankfully, Shield Hero himself provided a place to process all of it:

— The Rising of the Shield Hero (@ShieldHeroEN) February 27, 2019

We felt the heat from the episode.

pic.twitter.com/NKRi4dRfvk

— A Person (@APerson36375399) February 27, 2019

This episode gets pretty hot

— Christopher Solis (@CxSolis) February 27, 2019

Finally showing some of the hatred our MC has in the anime. The book has a lot of interior monologue's about how he views the world, and I'm glad a (little bit) of it gets shown her.

— CJ (@Animated_CJ) February 27, 2019

Nice finally got to see the cursed shield

— Bossanova51 (@Bossano_v_a) February 27, 2019

I want to know more about the curse shields and if Naofumi can harness all its power ????

— Mike (@HoboSexMattress) February 27, 2019

Hope he learns how to control it

— Terry C. (@Collins_ET) February 27, 2019

Man I love this anime! They are doing a great job of hitting all the high points of the LN; and a fantastic visualization of the curse shield coming to life. Can't wait to watch the story unfold before my eyes.

— Shana (@ShanaLouise4) February 27, 2019

Any moment when a character goes into a demonic rage is the best

— Master Ty (@TheTrueMasterTy) February 27, 2019

pic.twitter.com/w9QXHRZhNa

— Thejok3ster2 (@thejok3ster2) February 27, 2019

They'll all burn ????????????????

— Chandler Ingram (@Chandler_Ingram) February 27, 2019

— Cedric Rodgers (@cedric_rodgers) February 27, 2019

And love.

Going from Naofumi's pure hatred to Raphtalia's endearing love had me on the brink of tears. Just goes to show that the purest of love can smother the darkest of hatred. This is why I love this show. For how real Naofumi is to how loving Raphtalia is makes it all worth it. pic.twitter.com/IwQehgMtiD

— Kanato (@realJayniro) February 27, 2019

Always take the hand of the best girls pic.twitter.com/d1SxjQ4LUR

— Ginto ???? (@Ginto62) February 27, 2019

Another Wednesday meaning another Shield Hero meme pic.twitter.com/udrquSWfb6

— N-SIX (@asg_6420) February 28, 2019

Them feels in today's episode ???? But it was very nice to see our Shield Hero smile naturally thanks to our lovely Raphtalia and Filo ???? pic.twitter.com/hHnHWEwQci

— Tyler Le (@TylerLe09_) February 27, 2019

The best raphtalia's i got from this episode pic.twitter.com/VDSppHjdsz

— IamPatBack (@IamPatBack) February 27, 2019

— Kirie (@Kirie_Zero) February 28, 2019

How do you feel about episode eight? What was your favorite moment? Which side are you on? Tweet a reply to The Rising of the Shield Hero page!

Share your thoughts on the latest episode in the comments section below!

Ricky Soberano is a Features Editor, Script Writer, and Editorial Programming Coordinator for Crunchyroll. She’s the former Managing Editor of Brooklyn Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @ramenslayricky.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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investmart007 · 6 years ago

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SANTA FE, Texas | School shooting victims remembered as sweet, hardworking

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/VgbhMa

SANTA FE, Texas | School shooting victims remembered as sweet, hardworking

SANTA FE, Texas — An outgoing and “really funny” student who blocked the door to try to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom, an exchange student who aspired to work in civil service and a substitute teacher who frequently hosted gatherings were among the 10 people killed at a Texas high school.

Family members and friends of the eight students and two teachers fatally shot Friday fondly remembered their loved ones. They used such words as sweet, hardworking and loving.

Eight of the 10 were students: Kimberly Vaughan, Shana Fisher, Angelique Ramirez, Christian Riley Garcia, Jared Black, Sabika Sheikh, Christopher Jake Stone and Aaron Kyle McLeod. The other two, Glenda Perkins and Cynthia Tisdale, were substitute teachers.

At least 13 others were injured in the attack at the high school in Santa Fe, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Houston. A 17-year-old student, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, is being held on capital murder charges.

Here are some of the victims’ stories:

GLENDA PERKINS

Perkins for years had been a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High School, where her grandchildren are students.

Student Jay Mann, a junior, tells the Houston Chronicle she always had a smile on her face, took the time to learn students’ names and became part of the fabric of the school.

Mann says she had a great attitude and “never got mad at anybody for doing something stupid.”

An all-female Galveston Mardi Gras krewe, Tutu Live Krewe, has posted on Facebook that Perkins, along with her daughter, was a member of their marching group.

ANGELIQUE RAMIREZ

The senior pastor at Dayspring Church says Ramirez was a member of the Santa Fe church’s youth ministry.

Pastor Brad Drake says she had occasionally accompanied a younger brother to the ministry at the church where her parents are among the some 150 people to attend Sunday services.

Drake on Sunday described the 15-year-old as “a sweet young lady, had a style all of her own.” He says she “almost always had a new hairstyle.”

An aunt, Sylvia Pritchett, said in a Facebook post she has “a broken heart and a soul that just can’t process all this right now.”

JARED BLACK

Black turned 17 on Wednesday and was looking forward to a party this weekend at his family’s just-purchased, above-ground swimming pool.

An older brother, Anthony, from Odessa, Texas, was planning to visit with his wife and kids. Jared also had a younger brother, Houston, 13.

The Houston Chronicle reports his family now is planning for his funeral.

His stepfather, Travis Stanich, tells the newspaper Black took daily medication for attention deficit disorder and was quiet and kind and loved art, video games and sci-fi, wrestling and wolves.

Stanich called him “a great kid” who was creative, drew cartoons and loved people.

SHANA FISHER

The mother of 16-year-old Shana Fisher believes that her daughter was intentionally targeted by Pagourtzis.

Sadie Rodriguez said Pagourtzis repeatedly made advances toward Fisher in the four months leading up to the shooting. Pagourtzis was an ex-boyfriend of Fisher’s best friend, she said.

“He kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no,” said Rodriguez over Facebook Messenger. “He continued to get more aggressive.”

Rodriguez said that the week before the shooting, Fisher “stood up to him” by “embarrass(ing) him in class.” Rodriguez gave no other details.

Rodriguez described her daughter as “shy and sweet” with a passion for video games. Rodriguez shared a video of Fisher from 2015, in which the teen contemplates whether or not she’ll continue making gaming videos because her computer keeps crashing.

The day of the shooting, Rodriguez wrote in a Facebook status to “love like (you’re) getting one more day with them.”

“Anything can happen,” she wrote. “I will no longer get to see my baby my 1st born anymore.”

CHRIS STONE

Stone was among a group of students who blocked the door to try to prevent the gunman from entering their art classroom, freshman Abel San Miguel, who was in the class, told The Associated Press. The shooter fired his shotgun through the door, though, striking Stone in the chest, he said.

Stone was outgoing, “really funny” and had a lot of friends, said Branden Auzston, a 17-year-old junior at Santa Fe High. He said he knew Stone for about three years, and Stone was one of his best friends.

Auzston’s mother, Nicole Auzston, described Stone as a part of her family.

“We would have done anything for him,” she said. “He’s just a great kid.”

Robert Stone told the AP by phone Saturday that his family was grieving his nephew’s death and requested privacy.

SABIKA SHEIKH

Abdul Aziz Sheikh was expecting his daughter Sabika to return home to Pakistan in a few weeks for Eid al-Fitr, the three-day holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Instead, he learned that his oldest child was among those killed in the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, where Sabika arrived as an exchange student last August.

Surrounded by mourning friends and family at his home in Karachi on Saturday, Abdul Aziz Sheikh fought back tears as he relived his frantic efforts to check whether his daughter was safe half a world away. She wasn’t returning his calls and neither were her friends. He eventually learned from the exchange program that she was among the dead.

“We are still in a state of denial. We can’t believe it. It’s like a nightmare,” Sheikh told The Associated Press.

He said his daughter was a hardworking and accomplished student who aspired to work in civil service, hoping one day to join Pakistan’s Foreign Office.

“One should not lose his heart by such kind of incidents,” he said. “One should not stop going for education to the U.S. or U.K., or China, or anywhere. One must go for education undeterred. But controlling such incidents is the responsibility of the respective governments.”

CYNTHIA TISDALE

Leia Olinde said Tisdale, her aunt and a substitute teacher at the school, was like a mother to her and helped her shop for wedding dresses last year.

“She helped me put it on, she helped fix my hair,” Olinde said through tears.

“She was wonderful. She was just so loving,” said Olinde, 25. “I’ve never met a woman who loved her family so much.”

She said Tisdale was married to her husband for close to 40 years and that they had three children and eight grandchildren.

Tisdale’s house was the center of family gatherings and she loved cooking Thanksgiving dinner and decorating her house, Olinde said.

Olinde’s fiance, Eric Sanders, said of Tisdale that “words don’t explain her lust for life and the joy she got from helping people.”

AARON KYLE MCLEOD

McLeod, a freshman who went by Kyle, could always be counted on to make light of any situation, said close friend Kali Reeves, who added she wouldn’t have been surprised if the 15-year-old “made a joke about getting shot” if he were still alive.

Reeves, 15, said she knew McLeod for years and became close friends with him in the eighth grade. She said he always had a smile on his face and loved to hang out with his friends.

“He was never one to be a sad or down person, he always had to joke or laugh about things,” she said. “He was just outgoing and super sweet. He definitely didn’t deserve this.”

Reeves said she texted McLeod throughout the day to check up on him. She sent him one final text, saying she hopes he “gets better.” Shortly after, she checked Facebook and learned he was one of the 10 killed.

By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (A.S)

___

#10 people killed in Texas high school #Santa Fe #school shooting victims #TodayNews

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sualkmedeiors · 7 years ago

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30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer

It’s that time of year! Leaves are starting to turn, the days are getting shorter, pumpkin spice everything has infiltrated the consumables marketplace, and syllabi are in the hands of many students as school is back in session!

While marketers don’t exactly get the summer off, Fall is a perfect time to get back to into a learning and growth mindset with 30 books to stick on your reading list. Each book is written by an influencer that we think not only writes about something worth learning but shares valuable insights on their social channels (you can follow all of them here). Throughout the month of September, each day we will be covering a new influencer and their great book to help you elevate your marketing. We’ve divided the 30 books into five categories:

Content

Thought leadership

Digital marketing

Engagement

Leadership development

At the end of the month, we’ll be giving away six books each to five lucky marketers!

If you’ve already read one (or more) of the books, we hope you’ll find us on Twitter and share your key takeaways. Read one, read five, read all 30! Treat this blog as the syllabus for your next marketing course.

In this blog, you’ll find 30 books that you can use to jump start your marketing learning this Fall.

MKTG4901: Content Marketing

Content marketing is a vital part of the Engagement Economy and an important way to develop strong relationships with your customers. If you want to increase brand awareness and provide real value to your audience, content marketing can help you with that and more!

To buff up your content knowledge, we recommend these six books:

Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

Ann gives in depth, expert-level guidance through the creation of content across all of your assets. Her goal is to make you look as smart as you possibly can. How can you NOT get excited about that?!

Michael Brenner’s The Content Formula: Calculate the ROI of Content Marketing & Never Waste Money Again

In this book, Michael divides up content success into three stages: 1) how to build the case for content marketing within your business, 2) how to find the budget to establish a new content marketing program, and 3) how to measure success once you’ve implemented your strategy. Michael makes content marketing manageable!

Kyle Gray’s The Story Engine: An entrepreneur’s guide to content strategy and brand storytelling without spending all day writing

Every great B2B company started out as an entrepreneur’s dream. Kyle breaks down how to rapidly get to your brand to the place where you want it to be through actionable and concise strategic moves.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

This New York Times bestselling author has a few tricks up his sleeve when it comes to building a true connection with your customers across all social media channels. Gary taps into best practices for several different social platforms as well as how to make sure your content aligns with what your customers want most.

Rebecca Lieb’s Content—The Atomic Particle of Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing Strategy

Rebecca does a deep dive into how to find the balance between content marketing and content strategy. With years of deep quantitative research under her belt, she’s able to enable her readers to make important decisions in order to get your content to its maximum potential.

Andy Crestodina’s Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing

In this 4th edition, Andy digs deep and provides a guide that you’ll be referring to again and again. This book is the result of him talking to thousands of content creators at hundreds of companies across the globe. He proves that not only is content necessary, but it can be fun too!

MKTG4902: Engagement Marketing

Engagement marketing is the use of strategic, resourceful content to engage people and create meaningful interactions over time. It is the marketer’s answer to the challenge they face in the Engagement Economy and it’s the ability to deliver personalized and connected messaging at scale and creating authentic relationships with your customers to drive the idea of wantedness.

Become an engagement marketing master by reading one, or all, of these books:

Bryan Kramer’s There Is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human: H2H

As marketers, we’ve been trained to either speak B2B or B2C, often forgetting we are ultimately speaking to another human being. In this book, Bryan explores communication within marketing and how to find new ways of commonality.

Jay Baer’s Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

This book shows marketers how to deal with opposition in any channel. Let’s face it: you’re going to deal with haters whether you’re a teeny tiny startup or a big and bold corporate giant. Jay shows marketers how to bring in the human side in order to solve these problems. A must-read for any marketer at any stage in their career!

Amy Cuddy’s Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Amy’s famous TEDTalk took the world by storm and has, to date, garnered over 60 million views. In this book, she teaches people how to flourish in stressful moments. In the Engagement Economy, putting your best foot forward cuts out the noise and allows you, as a marketer, to make confident decisions to develop stronger relationships with your customers.

Jonah Berger’s Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior

In this book, Jonah delves into the psychology and social sciences behind influence, especially that which we may not immediately see. By understanding the key drivers behind human behavior, marketers can develop a more robust plan to engage their customers.

Mark Schaefer’s Known: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Mark provides a step-by-step guide to developing a personal brand, something paramount to success in engagement marketing. As customers are looking to connect on a personal level during their buyer’s journey, developing a personal brand will allow marketers to develop deeper relationships and create a personal relationship with each and every one of their customers.

Philip Masiello’s Think—Engage—Thrive: Marketing Actions To Skyrocket Your Brand In The Digital Age

Think—Engage—Thrive gives marketers a toolbox to engage in today’s data-rich environment in a scalable way. In this easy-to-digest guide, Phil gives a lot of great insight into many industries making it applicable to marketers across the board.

MKTG4903: Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing can be overwhelming in this ever-changing digital world. With so many channels, which should you choose? Which channel is right for your brand and your brand’s future?

In these six books, you’ll find the answer to these questions and more.

John Jantsch’s SEO For Growth

In this book, John gives an incredibly in-depth overview of SEO strategy and how it fits into a digital marketing strategy. His straightforward approach to search engine optimization allows marketers to develop a strategic plan and dominate their vertical.

Kim Garst’s Will the Real You Please Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic, and Prosper in Social Media

Kim’s book isn’t simply a how-to guide, it’s much more than that. She helps marketers uncover their inner voice in order to thrive on social media as well as in the real world. This comprehensive journey will boost anyone’s social media game—from novice to expert.

Josh Turner’s Connect: The Secret LinkedIn Playbook to Generate Leads, Build Relationships, and Dramatically Increase Your Sales

LinkedIn is a vast resource for nearly any job function. In this book, Josh covers scalable solutions within the channel allowing marketers and salespeople to use LinkedIn as a comprehensive resource.

Shana Hyder’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue

Social media has infiltrated every facet of marketing today. Shana’s guide gives essential advice on everything from how to put your best social media game out there, no matter the size of your business.

David Kelly’s Social Media: Strategies to Mastering Your Brand—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat

David’s effective guide will help you maximize your brand’s impact on social. The book gives an analysis of specific channels and how marketers can use them best. This critical guide is a great jumping off point for those just getting involved in the social sphere.

Travis Wright’s Digital Sense: The Common Sense Approach to Effectively Blending Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technology, and Customer Experience

This complete playbook gives organizations a wonderful framework for a more engaged customer experience strategy via digital channels. As today’s customer is savvier than ever, Travis aims to make sure that marketers are prepared to meet the customer where they are.

MKTG4904: Thought Leadership

Establishing your spot as a thought leader in your industry is the backbone of great marketing. To elevate your brand to a thought leadership zone requires buy-in from every facet of marketing.

To get insight from a thought leader, check out one, or more, of the following books:

Matt Heinz’s Full Funnel Marketing

Matt is a nationally recognized, award-winning blogger, as well as the President and Founder of Heinz Marketing. Full Funnel Marketing gives insight into his rich experiences as a B2B marketer and expands on how marketing has transformed within this space.

Arun Sundarajan’s The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

The sharing economy cannot be ignored. From Lyft to Airbnb and beyond, this new business model provides an interesting interruption to the way that business is done. Arun’s expertise in this space gives marketers insight into the inner workings of sharing economy businesses.

Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Robert is the most cited psychologist of our time, securing his spot as a thought leader. In this book, he outlines specific techniques marketers can use to develop a digital marketing strategy using influence and persuasion techniques. It operates under the premise that in order to change minds, a pre-suader must also change states of mind.

Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer

Marcus’s passion for marketing shines through in this book. Known as “The Sales Lion,” he uses this book to explain how best to turn your customers into evangelists and gives practical advice for marketers in teams of all sizes.

Carmine Gallo’s The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t

In this book, Carmine gives advice on how to become a master storyteller, an invaluable marketing skill. He offers lessons from visionary leaders and gives marketers tips to turn their story into an action-based passion machine.

Tarah Wheeler’s Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories

Tarah combines practical career advice with inspirational stories from some of the most successful women in tech. She gives advice ranging from salary negotiations to how to start your own company. As an added bonus, there are many puzzles within the book. If you run the code, you’ll get additional content!

MKTG4905: Leadership Development

Growth and leadership go together like peas and carrots, to grossly misquote Forrest Gump.

Whether you’re just starting out with aspirations to one day be a C Suite employee or you’re already at the top, these books will help you develop your skills as a leader, and as a person.

Bill George’s The Discover Your True North Fieldbook

This interactive book takes leaders on a journey to find their authentic leadership style. Bill George, along with Nick Craig and Scott Snook, have taken incredible insights from over 10,000 leaders and helped them discover and live up to their fullest potential while discovering their true strengths.

Aliza Licht’s Leave Your Mark

Aliza’s knack for PR is useful for anyone from a recent college grad to a seasoned professional with years of experience. As a leadership guide, this book gives marketers techniques to comfortably navigate the lines between personal and professional in today’s contemporary working world.

Lolly Paskal’s The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

Lolly helps readers discover what kind of leader they think they are and how to guard against anything from preventing progress. A psychological look into the psyche of leaders at every level, this book offers marketers a perspective into themselves and those who lead them.

Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Simon provides an in depth examination of success and failure in teams driven by the principle that the teams that function best are those who would sacrifice for their team. An essential guide for anyone looking to drastically improve their team or build a new one.

Drew Neisser’s The CMO’s Periodic Table

Garnering advice from over 100 marketing leaders from prominent companies across the globe, Drew has highlighted 64 of these interviews in this book. The book offers advice on everything from research and strategy to risk-taking and shake-ups at the top.

Brad Lomenick’s H3 Leadership: Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle

Sharing his insight from more than two decades of work with leaders from Fortune 500 companies and start-up entrepreneurs, Brad outlines 20 essential leadership habits broken down into three categories: Humble, Hungry, and Hustle. In this guide, you’ll find a way to lead wherever you are in your career path.

What books from this list wound up on your must-read list? We’d love to hear what you’re reading lately! If you’ve got anything that we must read or have already read any of the books we’ve included, please let us know in the comments, engage with us on Twitter, or share this article with someone who is ready to bring their marketing game to the next level.

We are also running a giveaway this month where you can enter to win some of these great books. We will select five winners, one for each category, and they will receive all six books from that category! Please see terms and conditions for more details and enter here.

The post 30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from https://blog.marketo.com/2017/09/30-books-help-make-better-marketer.html

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racheltgibsau · 7 years ago

Text

30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer

Content

Thought leadership

Digital marketing

Engagement

Leadership development

At the end of the month, we’ll be giving away six books each to five lucky marketers!

In this blog, you’ll find 30 books that you can use to jump start your marketing learning this Fall.

MKTG4901: Content Marketing

To buff up your content knowledge, we recommend these six books:

Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

Michael Brenner’s The Content Formula: Calculate the ROI of Content Marketing & Never Waste Money Again

Kyle Gray’s The Story Engine: An entrepreneur’s guide to content strategy and brand storytelling without spending all day writing

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

Rebecca Lieb’s Content—The Atomic Particle of Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing Strategy

Andy Crestodina’s Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing

MKTG4902: Engagement Marketing

Become an engagement marketing master by reading one, or all, of these books:

Bryan Kramer’s There Is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human: H2H

Jay Baer’s Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

Amy Cuddy’s Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Jonah Berger’s Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior

Mark Schaefer’s Known: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Philip Masiello’s Think—Engage—Thrive: Marketing Actions To Skyrocket Your Brand In The Digital Age

MKTG4903: Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing can be overwhelming in this ever-changing digital world. With so many channels, which should you choose? Which channel is right for your brand and your brand’s future?

In these six books, you’ll find the answer to these questions and more.

John Jantsch’s SEO For Growth

Kim Garst’s Will the Real You Please Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic, and Prosper in Social Media

Josh Turner’s Connect: The Secret LinkedIn Playbook to Generate Leads, Build Relationships, and Dramatically Increase Your Sales

Shana Hyder’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue

David Kelly’s Social Media: Strategies to Mastering Your Brand—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat

Travis Wright’s Digital Sense: The Common Sense Approach to Effectively Blending Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technology, and Customer Experience

MKTG4904: Thought Leadership

Establishing your spot as a thought leader in your industry is the backbone of great marketing. To elevate your brand to a thought leadership zone requires buy-in from every facet of marketing.

To get insight from a thought leader, check out one, or more, of the following books:

Matt Heinz’s Full Funnel Marketing

Arun Sundarajan’s The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer

Carmine Gallo’s The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t

Tarah Wheeler’s Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories

MKTG4905: Leadership Development

Growth and leadership go together like peas and carrots, to grossly misquote Forrest Gump.

Whether you’re just starting out with aspirations to one day be a C Suite employee or you’re already at the top, these books will help you develop your skills as a leader, and as a person.

Bill George’s The Discover Your True North Fieldbook

Aliza Licht’s Leave Your Mark

Lolly Paskal’s The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Drew Neisser’s The CMO’s Periodic Table

Brad Lomenick’s H3 Leadership: Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle

The post 30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://blog.marketo.com/2017/09/30-books-help-make-better-marketer.html

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zacdhaenkeau · 7 years ago

Text

30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer

Content

Thought leadership

Digital marketing

Engagement

Leadership development

At the end of the month, we’ll be giving away six books each to five lucky marketers!

In this blog, you’ll find 30 books that you can use to jump start your marketing learning this Fall.

MKTG4901: Content Marketing

To buff up your content knowledge, we recommend these six books:

Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

Michael Brenner’s The Content Formula: Calculate the ROI of Content Marketing & Never Waste Money Again

Kyle Gray’s The Story Engine: An entrepreneur’s guide to content strategy and brand storytelling without spending all day writing

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

Rebecca Lieb’s Content—The Atomic Particle of Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing Strategy

Andy Crestodina’s Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing

MKTG4902: Engagement Marketing

Become an engagement marketing master by reading one, or all, of these books:

Bryan Kramer’s There Is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human: H2H

Jay Baer’s Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

Amy Cuddy’s Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Jonah Berger’s Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior

Mark Schaefer’s Known: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Philip Masiello’s Think—Engage—Thrive: Marketing Actions To Skyrocket Your Brand In The Digital Age

MKTG4903: Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing can be overwhelming in this ever-changing digital world. With so many channels, which should you choose? Which channel is right for your brand and your brand’s future?

In these six books, you’ll find the answer to these questions and more.

John Jantsch’s SEO For Growth

Kim Garst’s Will the Real You Please Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic, and Prosper in Social Media

Josh Turner’s Connect: The Secret LinkedIn Playbook to Generate Leads, Build Relationships, and Dramatically Increase Your Sales

Shana Hyder’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue

David Kelly’s Social Media: Strategies to Mastering Your Brand—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat

Travis Wright’s Digital Sense: The Common Sense Approach to Effectively Blending Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technology, and Customer Experience

MKTG4904: Thought Leadership

Establishing your spot as a thought leader in your industry is the backbone of great marketing. To elevate your brand to a thought leadership zone requires buy-in from every facet of marketing.

To get insight from a thought leader, check out one, or more, of the following books:

Matt Heinz’s Full Funnel Marketing

Arun Sundarajan’s The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer

Carmine Gallo’s The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t

Tarah Wheeler’s Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories

MKTG4905: Leadership Development

Growth and leadership go together like peas and carrots, to grossly misquote Forrest Gump.

Whether you’re just starting out with aspirations to one day be a C Suite employee or you’re already at the top, these books will help you develop your skills as a leader, and as a person.

Bill George’s The Discover Your True North Fieldbook

Aliza Licht’s Leave Your Mark

Lolly Paskal’s The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Drew Neisser’s The CMO’s Periodic Table

Brad Lomenick’s H3 Leadership: Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle

The post 30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://blog.marketo.com/2017/09/30-books-help-make-better-marketer.html

0 notes

archiebwoollard · 7 years ago

Text

30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer

Content

Thought leadership

Digital marketing

Engagement

Leadership development

At the end of the month, we’ll be giving away six books each to five lucky marketers!

In this blog, you’ll find 30 books that you can use to jump start your marketing learning this Fall.

MKTG4901: Content Marketing

To buff up your content knowledge, we recommend these six books:

Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

Michael Brenner’s The Content Formula: Calculate the ROI of Content Marketing & Never Waste Money Again

Kyle Gray’s The Story Engine: An entrepreneur’s guide to content strategy and brand storytelling without spending all day writing

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

Rebecca Lieb’s Content—The Atomic Particle of Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing Strategy

Andy Crestodina’s Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing

MKTG4902: Engagement Marketing

Become an engagement marketing master by reading one, or all, of these books:

Bryan Kramer’s There Is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human: H2H

Jay Baer’s Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

Amy Cuddy’s Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Jonah Berger’s Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior

Mark Schaefer’s Known: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Philip Masiello’s Think—Engage—Thrive: Marketing Actions To Skyrocket Your Brand In The Digital Age

MKTG4903: Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing can be overwhelming in this ever-changing digital world. With so many channels, which should you choose? Which channel is right for your brand and your brand’s future?

In these six books, you’ll find the answer to these questions and more.

John Jantsch’s SEO For Growth

Kim Garst’s Will the Real You Please Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic, and Prosper in Social Media

Josh Turner’s Connect: The Secret LinkedIn Playbook to Generate Leads, Build Relationships, and Dramatically Increase Your Sales

Shana Hyder’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue

David Kelly’s Social Media: Strategies to Mastering Your Brand—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat

Travis Wright’s Digital Sense: The Common Sense Approach to Effectively Blending Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technology, and Customer Experience

MKTG4904: Thought Leadership

Establishing your spot as a thought leader in your industry is the backbone of great marketing. To elevate your brand to a thought leadership zone requires buy-in from every facet of marketing.

To get insight from a thought leader, check out one, or more, of the following books:

Matt Heinz’s Full Funnel Marketing

Arun Sundarajan’s The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer

Carmine Gallo’s The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t

Tarah Wheeler’s Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories

MKTG4905: Leadership Development

Growth and leadership go together like peas and carrots, to grossly misquote Forrest Gump.

Whether you’re just starting out with aspirations to one day be a C Suite employee or you’re already at the top, these books will help you develop your skills as a leader, and as a person.

Bill George’s The Discover Your True North Fieldbook

Aliza Licht’s Leave Your Mark

Lolly Paskal’s The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Drew Neisser’s The CMO’s Periodic Table

Brad Lomenick’s H3 Leadership: Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle

The post 30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://blog.marketo.com/2017/09/30-books-help-make-better-marketer.html

0 notes

maxslogic25 · 7 years ago

Text

30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer

Content

Thought leadership

Digital marketing

Engagement

Leadership development

At the end of the month, we’ll be giving away six books each to five lucky marketers!

In this blog, you’ll find 30 books that you can use to jump start your marketing learning this Fall.

MKTG4901: Content Marketing

To buff up your content knowledge, we recommend these six books:

Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

Michael Brenner’s The Content Formula: Calculate the ROI of Content Marketing & Never Waste Money Again

Kyle Gray’s The Story Engine: An entrepreneur’s guide to content strategy and brand storytelling without spending all day writing

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

Rebecca Lieb’s Content—The Atomic Particle of Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing Strategy

Andy Crestodina’s Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing

MKTG4902: Engagement Marketing

Become an engagement marketing master by reading one, or all, of these books:

Bryan Kramer’s There Is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human: H2H

Jay Baer’s Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

Amy Cuddy’s Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Jonah Berger’s Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior

Mark Schaefer’s Known: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Philip Masiello’s Think—Engage—Thrive: Marketing Actions To Skyrocket Your Brand In The Digital Age

MKTG4903: Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing can be overwhelming in this ever-changing digital world. With so many channels, which should you choose? Which channel is right for your brand and your brand’s future?

In these six books, you’ll find the answer to these questions and more.

John Jantsch’s SEO For Growth

Kim Garst’s Will the Real You Please Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic, and Prosper in Social Media

Josh Turner’s Connect: The Secret LinkedIn Playbook to Generate Leads, Build Relationships, and Dramatically Increase Your Sales

Shana Hyder’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue

David Kelly’s Social Media: Strategies to Mastering Your Brand—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat

Travis Wright’s Digital Sense: The Common Sense Approach to Effectively Blending Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technology, and Customer Experience

MKTG4904: Thought Leadership

Establishing your spot as a thought leader in your industry is the backbone of great marketing. To elevate your brand to a thought leadership zone requires buy-in from every facet of marketing.

To get insight from a thought leader, check out one, or more, of the following books:

Matt Heinz’s Full Funnel Marketing

Arun Sundarajan’s The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer

Carmine Gallo’s The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t

Tarah Wheeler’s Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories

MKTG4905: Leadership Development

Growth and leadership go together like peas and carrots, to grossly misquote Forrest Gump.

Whether you’re just starting out with aspirations to one day be a C Suite employee or you’re already at the top, these books will help you develop your skills as a leader, and as a person.

Bill George’s The Discover Your True North Fieldbook

Aliza Licht’s Leave Your Mark

Lolly Paskal’s The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Drew Neisser’s The CMO’s Periodic Table

Brad Lomenick’s H3 Leadership: Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle

The post 30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://blog.marketo.com/2017/09/30-books-help-make-better-marketer.html

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teachanarchy · 8 years ago

Link

I’ve always been bothered by the fact that at the college level, where students pay a lot of money for their education, the people who do the teaching have little to no training in teaching methodology. Colleges and universities place a high premium on a person’s expertise in their field, but they often require no teaching experience or formal preparation in pedagogy.

This is a problem. Because knowledge of subject area is just half of what’s needed to teach well. Teachers who haven’t learned the most basic principles of instruction are doomed to repeat the mistakes of those who came before them, delivering content with the driest, most ineffective methods possible, then wondering why their students aren’t more excited to learn.

Norman Eng, Ed.D.

Norman Eng is attempting to solve this problem. With his book, Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting, and Engaging Students, Eng shows college instructors and professors exactly how to be successful at teaching college students.

This is not the first book that’s been written on the subject. But Norman Eng is unique for two reasons.

First, he was a K-12 teacher before he taught at the college level, which gives him a solid background in pedagogy. That’s significant on its own, and would probably be enough to fill a pretty good book on college teaching.

The second thing about Eng—his background as a marketing executive—is what really makes this book different. Eng has spent a good part of his professional life studying how to reach people, how to communicate a message, how to get the attention of a highly distracted audience. So when he moved into teaching at the college level, he saw how marketing principles could be applied to the classroom.

In Teaching College, Eng blends good pedagogy and marketing insights into a handbook that will help anyone who teaches college, or even high school, teach more effectively. In our podcast interview, he shared five specific strategies college teachers could use to dramatically improve their instruction.

1. Create a Student Avatar

“Instructors have to know who they’re teaching,” Eng says. “And I don’t mean basic information like My students want to go into business or My students want to go into journalism. Instructors need to know what actually drives their students, what matters to them.”

One way instructors can do this is to create a student avatar, a term used in marketing to describe a fictional ideal customer, someone who embodies a set of characteristics typical of a company’s target audience. Doing this exercise as a teacher helps you narrow your focus to a single student. This focus boosts your ability to shape instruction for that student, and this ultimately improves the experience for all of them.

“In marketing,” Eng says, “we do this when we actually have a product, we think about who is our perfect target audience. And this perfect target audience isn’t like talking about a group of people. It’s actually talking about one person. It actually describes the audience’s demographics like their gender, their age, as well as their psychographics, which is more like their attitudes and beliefs.”

Based on what he knows about his own student population, Eng has created this avatar:

Betty is a 20-year-old Latina from a working class family who commutes to college, lives with her parents, and works part time. She works hard but is often overwhelmed, because she takes five classes per semester to qualify for financial aid. She has one younger sibling and is concerned with passing the new, harder teacher certification and teacher performance assessments. Although she loves working with children, she’s not sure if she can handle the rigors of teaching in an urban public school classroom with its diverse student needs.

To create an accurate avatar, it’s important to actually learn about your students. If you’re in a new position, ask other faculty members to share their insights.

You should also, as Eng does, ask your students. “On the first day of class, especially if it’s a new course that I haven’t taught before, I will ask them, What is the most important thing that you want to get out of this class or program? What are some of the obstacles that you face? What one thing do you wish all professors knew about the way you work? And then you take all that information and you find the patterns. That’s how you create that avatar.”

Once that avatar is created, it should guide most of your instructional decisions. “It’s going to influence how you plan your course and your lessons,” Eng says, “because you’re asking questions like, Will she understand my lesson if I plan it this way? or What examples can I use so that she can identify with it?”

2. Use Tent Cards to Remember Names

Building supportive relationships with students has far-reaching effects on their engagement in class. One way to help this along is to learn students’ names. But in colleges and universities, where class size can reach the hundreds, this task may seem impossible. To meet that challenge, Eng recommends using two-sided tent cards.

“Take a 5×8 index card, and fold it in half so that it’s long,” Eng explains. Folded this way, it can stand on its own. “Write the student’s name on both sides of the card with a marker, so that when a student is talking, and their tent is on their table, students behind that person can actually see their names.”

Obviously, these cards will help the instructor call students by name, but they should also be used to help students engage with each other. In every class meeting, Eng reminds students to refer to their classmates by name. Although this can feel forced at first, students will eventually learn each other’s names and it will come naturally to them.

3. Implement “Cold Calling” and “No Opt Out”

Lack of student participation is a common complaint among college instructors. To address this, Eng uses two strategies from Doug Lemov’s book, Teach Like a Champion: Cold Calling and No Opt Out.

With Cold Calling, instead of calling only on students who volunteer, the instructor “cold calls” students randomly, including those whose hands are down. “But you can’t use this technique to kind of catch students when they’re not focusing,” Eng warns. “You can’t say, ‘Oh, John, what’s the answer?’ just because you saw that he was on his phone or whatever. Because the minute you do that, they’ll resent you for it. It has to be done in good faith. It has to give everyone a chance to shine.”

Eng adds that this approach will not work unless teachers use it in every class. “If you don’t, students might feel like they can still kind of get away with not raising their hands.”

The second strategy, No Opt Out, is used when students give an “I don’t know” response. “Students are trained to know that when I say, ‘I don’t know,’ the teacher will probably call on someone else, and they can just keep saying ‘I don’t know’ and never have to participate,” Eng says. Instead of letting this happen, “Pose that same question to another student, and then go back to the first student and ask him or her to repeat it or rephrase the response. This holds that student accountable for listening. So if you say, ‘John, what are one of the causes of World War I?’ and John says, ‘I don’t know,’ then you go to someone else, let’s say Shana, and say, ‘Shana, can you help John out? What’s the answer?’ and then she says whatever her answer is, and then you go back to John, and you say, ‘John, did that make sense? Can you repeat what Shana said?’ or ‘Can you rephrase what Shana said? or my favorite is, ‘Can you add to that?’”

Both of these strategies will work best if you already have a good relationship with students. “The truth is that I’m very conscious about using it,” Eng says. “I know that there are certain students that have a lot of issues with being put on the spot and being very shy…if you don’t know your students, then (these strategies) will just seem like you’re imposing.”

4. Deploy the QQC Strategy for Readings

Students not doing the required reading? Eng addresses this problem with something he calls the Questions, Quotations, and Comments Strategy (QQC). “Basically, students respond to the readings in a very short way, just by jotting down either a question they had about the reading, a quotation they found interesting from the reading, or a comment or reaction that they had to a particular section of their reading. Or maybe all three of those.”

The key, Eng says, is to keep it short, so that you’re not creating a whole extra task for students to do on top of the reading.

The other piece that keeps this strategy effective is to hold students accountable. “Follow up in class,” Eng says. “Every single class. If you could reserve maybe the last 15 minutes of class or the beginning 15 minutes of class to just kind of randomly ask students to share their questions, comments and quotations, then it will work.”

To build in further accountability, Eng also gives points for this work. But rather than collect the QQCs every time, he has students log them in a single document over a period of time, then collects that document twice a semester for a grade.

5. Put the Lecture at the End

A typical college class starts with some kind of lecture, and maybe after that, the students will be invited to discuss or apply the concepts being taught. If teachers flip this sequence, starting with some kind of engaging activity and then following it up with direct instruction, students will have a context for the information and will be more engaged.

“There’s so much research in education right now that talks about how students won’t understand something unless they can place it within the context of their life,” Eng says. By simply starting class with a meaningful discussion, question, challenge, or activity, students’ minds will be primed for the instruction.

Here’s an example: When teaching about philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and their differing beliefs on child development, Eng did not start class by lecturing on their theories. “I didn’t even bring up their names,” he says. “Instead, I asked my students, ‘How did you guys grow up?’ I wanted to kind of hear their experiences with discipline, with school work, you know, how their parents raised them. This led into a rich discussion about different philosophies of parenting and teaching, and that in turn led into the lecture on Locke and Rousseau.”

This example gave me goose bumps. I’m picturing Eng’s students, who have sat through hundreds of college classes that all basically start the same way. They show up, expecting a dry lecture, gripping their coffee cups in hopes they can stay awake, and they are met instead with this question. Totally unexpected. The rest of the world, for moment, would completely drop away.

That’s the kind of attention an exceptional college professor gets from their students.

And with just a bit of creativity, it’s something you could achieve in every single class. Even if you’re in the middle of a semester right now, even if your course calendar is tightly planned, this is a strategy you can start to use right away.

Bonus: Design Meaningful Experiences

Layered on top of these five strategies is Eng’s final piece of advice to college teachers, which he says is more of a shift in mindset than a specific technique.

“Think of your role less as a ‘teacher’ in the traditional sense of that word, and more as a designer of meaningful experiences. Next time you’re planning a lesson, think about what experience can you create that’ll allow students to understand the content. Maybe it’s group collaboration, maybe it’s a debate, maybe it’s a demonstration or a video or even a field trip. We’re all trying to cover the curriculum, and you’ll never have enough time for that. Focus instead on creating meaningful experiences every single class, because that shift in mindset, I’m positive, will put you in that elite status of instructors and professors.” ♦

#instruction #pedagogy

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investmart007 · 6 years ago

Text

SANTA FE, Texas | Family, friends recall shooting victims' optimism, humor

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/U0r1NV

SANTA FE, Texas | Family, friends recall shooting victims' optimism, humor

SANTA FE, Texas (AP) — Hardworking. Funny. Loving. Grieving family and friends recalled the endearing qualities of some of the victims of Friday’s mass shooting at a Texas high school, as authorities on Saturday released the names of the 10 killed.

At least 13 people were injured in the attack at the high school in Santa Fe, which is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Houston. A 17-year-old student, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, is being held on murder charges.

Here are some of the victims’ stories: ___ GLENDA PERKINS

Perkins for years had been a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High School, where her grandchildren are students.

Student Jay Mann, a junior, tells the Houston Chronicle she always had a smile on her face, took the time to learn students’ names and became part of the fabric of the school.

Mann says she had a great attitude and “never got mad at anybody for doing something stupid.”

An all-female Galveston Mardi Gras krewe, Tutu Live Krewe, has posted on Facebook that Perkins, along with her daughter, was a member of their marching group. ___ ANGELIQUE RAMIREZ

The senior pastor at Dayspring Church says Ramirez was a member of the Santa Fe church’s youth ministry.

Pastor Brad Drake says she had occasionally accompanied a younger brother to the ministry at the church where her parents are among the some 150 people to attend Sunday services.

Drake on Sunday described the 15-year-old as “a sweet young lady, had a style all of her own.” He says she “almost always had a new hairstyle.”

An aunt, Sylvia Pritchett, said in a Facebook post she has “a broken heart and a soul that just can’t process all this right now.” ___ JARED BLACK

Black turned 17 on Wednesday and was looking forward to a party this weekend at his family’s just-purchased, above-ground swimming pool.

An older brother, Anthony, from Odessa, Texas, was planning to visit with his wife and kids. Jared also had a younger brother, Houston, 13.

The Houston Chronicle reports his family now is planning for his funeral.

His stepfather, Travis Stanich, tells the newspaper Black took daily medication for attention deficit disorder and was quiet and kind and loved art, video games and sci-fi, wrestling and wolves.

Stanich called him “a great kid” who was creative, drew cartoons and loved people. ___ SHANA FISHER

The mother of 16-year-old Shana Fisher believes that her daughter was intentionally targeted by Pagourtzi.

Sadie Rodriguez said Pagourtzis repeatedly made advances toward Fisher in the four months leading up to the shooting. Pagourtzis was an ex-boyfriend of Fisher’s best friend, she said.

“He kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no,” said Rodriguez over Facebook Messenger. “He continued to get more aggressive.”

Rodriguez said that the week before the shooting, Fisher “stood up to him” by “embarrass(ing) him in class.” Rodriguez gave no other details.

The day of the shooting, Rodriguez wrote in a Facebook status to “love like (you’re) getting one more day with them.”

“Anything can happen,” she wrote. “I will no longer get to see my baby my 1st born anymore.” ___ CHRIS STONE

Stone was among a group of students who blocked the door to try to prevent the gunman from entering their art classroom, freshman Abel San Miguel, who was in the class, told The Associated Press.

The shooter fired his shotgun through the door, though, striking Stone in the chest, he said.

Auzston’s mother, Nicole Auzston, described Stone as a part of her family.

“We would have done anything for him,” she said. “He’s just a great kid.”

Robert Stone told the AP by phone Saturday that his family was grieving his nephew’s death and requested privacy. ___ SABIKA SHEIKH

Abdul Aziz Sheikh was expecting his daughter Sabika to return home to Pakistan in a few weeks for Eid al-Fitr, the three-day holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Instead, he learned that his oldest child was among those killed in the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, where Sabika arrived as an exchange student last August.

“We are still in a state of denial. We can’t believe it. It’s like a nightmare,” Sheikh told The Associated Press.

He said his daughter was a hard-working and accomplished student who aspired to work in civil service, hoping one day to join Pakistan’s Foreign Office.

Leia Olinde said Tisdale, her aunt and a substitute teacher at the school, was like a mother to her and helped her shop for wedding dresses last year.

“She helped me put it on, she helped fix my hair,” Olinde said through tears. “She was wonderful. She was just so loving,” said Olinde, 25. “I’ve never met a woman who loved her family so much.”

She said Tisdale was married to her husband for close to 40 years and that they had three children and eight grandchildren.

Tisdale’s house was the center of family gatherings and she loved cooking Thanksgiving dinner and decorating her house, Olinde said. Olinde’s fiance, Eric Sanders, said of Tisdale that “words don’t explain her lust for life and the joy she got from helping people.” ___ AARON KYLE MCLEOD

Reeves, 15, said she knew McLeod for years and became close friends with him in the eighth grade. She said he always had a smile on his face and loved to hang out with his friends.

“He was never one to be a sad or down person, he always had to joke or laugh about things,” she said. “He was just outgoing and super sweet. He definitely didn’t deserve this.”

Reeves heard that her friend had been shot as she was evacuating Santa Fe High School. She joked to her boyfriend that if she FaceTimed McLeod, he would have “made a joke about him getting shot,” adding that “he just always looked on the bright side of things.” Reeves said she texted McLeod throughout the day to check up on him. She sent him one final text, saying she hopes he “gets better.”

Shortly after, she checked Facebook and learned he was one of the 10 killed. ___ JOHN BARNES

School police officer John Barnes was shot in the arm when he confronted the gunman. A bullet damaged the bone and a major blood vessel around Barnes’ elbow, which required surgery to repair, said David Marshall, chief nursing officer at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

Barnes was the first to engage Pagourtzis, according to Marshall. Walter Braun, the school district’s chief of police, said Saturday that the last he had heard, Barnes was in critical condition. ___ ROME SHUBERT

Sophomore baseball player Rome Shubert said the gunman walked into his classroom and tossed something onto desks.

Shubert told the Houston Chronicle that he then heard “three loud pops” before the attacker fled into the hall. Shubert said he realized he’d been wounded as he was running out the back door.

Shubert said he was hit in the back of his head with what he says was a bullet, but that it “missed everything vital.” He also tweeted that he was OK and stable. ___ Zimmerman reported from Springfield, Illinois. Associated Press writers Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco and Amanda Lee Myers in Los Angeles and Michael Graczyk in Houston contributed to this report. ___ This story has been corrected to fix the spelling of the suspect’s name in the first segment.

By JUAN LOZANO and SARAH ZIMMERMAN , By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC(R.A)

#Dimitrios Pagourtzis #Glenda Perkins #Los Angeles and Michael Graczyk #Santa Fe #Texas #Texas high school #TodayNews

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sualkmedeiors · 7 years ago

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30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer

Content

Thought leadership

Digital marketing

Engagement

Leadership development

At the end of the month, we’ll be giving away six books each to five lucky marketers!

In this blog, you’ll find 30 books that you can use to jump start your marketing learning this Fall.

MKTG4901: Content Marketing

To buff up your content knowledge, we recommend these six books:

Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

Michael Brenner’s The Content Formula: Calculate the ROI of Content Marketing & Never Waste Money Again

Kyle Gray’s The Story Engine: An entrepreneur’s guide to content strategy and brand storytelling without spending all day writing

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

Rebecca Lieb’s Content—The Atomic Particle of Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing Strategy

Andy Crestodina’s Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing

MKTG4902: Engagement Marketing

Become an engagement marketing master by reading one, or all, of these books:

Bryan Kramer’s There Is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human: H2H

Jay Baer’s Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

Amy Cuddy’s Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Jonah Berger’s Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior

Mark Schaefer’s Known: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Philip Masiello’s Think—Engage—Thrive: Marketing Actions To Skyrocket Your Brand In The Digital Age

MKTG4903: Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing can be overwhelming in this ever-changing digital world. With so many channels, which should you choose? Which channel is right for your brand and your brand’s future?

In these six books, you’ll find the answer to these questions and more.

John Jantsch’s SEO For Growth

Kim Garst’s Will the Real You Please Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic, and Prosper in Social Media

Josh Turner’s Connect: The Secret LinkedIn Playbook to Generate Leads, Build Relationships, and Dramatically Increase Your Sales

Shana Hyder’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue

David Kelly’s Social Media: Strategies to Mastering Your Brand—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat

Travis Wright’s Digital Sense: The Common Sense Approach to Effectively Blending Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technology, and Customer Experience

MKTG4904: Thought Leadership

Establishing your spot as a thought leader in your industry is the backbone of great marketing. To elevate your brand to a thought leadership zone requires buy-in from every facet of marketing.

To get insight from a thought leader, check out one, or more, of the following books:

Matt Heinz’s Full Funnel Marketing

Arun Sundarajan’s The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer

Carmine Gallo’s The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t

Tarah Wheeler’s Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories

MKTG4905: Leadership Development

Growth and leadership go together like peas and carrots, to grossly misquote Forrest Gump.

Whether you’re just starting out with aspirations to one day be a C Suite employee or you’re already at the top, these books will help you develop your skills as a leader, and as a person.

Bill George’s The Discover Your True North Fieldbook

Aliza Licht’s Leave Your Mark

Lolly Paskal’s The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Drew Neisser’s The CMO’s Periodic Table

Brad Lomenick’s H3 Leadership: Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle

The post 30 Books to Help Make You a Better Marketer appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from http://blog.marketo.com/2017/09/30-books-help-make-better-marketer.html

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