Head Problems? Head to Fresh Start

Project Mayhem left San Diego in May 2001, bound for the South Pacific. As with most boats, we spent countless hours preparing and addressing every aspect of our boat for the voyage. There is an old saying, that we think we just made up, that when you buy a used boat, you also buy the previous owner’s crap. Knowing the potential for disaster with old and dubious plumbing, we performed major refurbishment, replacing all lines, fittings, and even installing a shiny brand new toilet. Unfortunately one tiny-yet-not-at-all-trivial item escaped installation - the vacuum release valve. The entire system functioned perfectly at the dock and on test-runs, but soon after we left for the Marquesas Islands, the toilet vacuumed shut.

Now, at sea, far from sensitive eyes and stomachs, it’s not such a bad thing to simply hang your ass over the side - sometimes even getting a saltwater douche. It’s as if the Pacific Ocean is your very own and incredibly large saltwater bidet.

Unfortunately, this practice tends to make one lose friends in small anchorages. After landfall in French Polynesia, something had to be done, lest we be completely bereft of friends. So with a quiet sense of desperation, we soon settled on our old laundry detergent bucket as an alternative to pre-dawn elimination.

Thus began the phenomena of The Fresh Start. Project Mayhem is a racing design. As such, it lacks some of the privacy features available on more cruising-oriented boats. So what a perfectly appropriate euphemism to be able to grab the bucket, casually voice your need to Start Fresh, and head below, thereby allowing your shipmates to seek sanctum topside. One of the features of a bucket is its mobility. In the evenings, with guests aboard, the bow of Project Mayhem became a quiet place to contemplate a beautiful sunset while contemplating a Fresh Start. Of course you needed to block out the cheers of your fellow shipmates – who have been in the same situation and can commiserate. And hey, they’re only trying to help. But what the hell, you’re Fresh Starting in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. It takes more than a little jeering to ruin the view of, say Makemo in the Tuamotus, or maybe Daniel’s Bay in the Marquesas. Perhaps we should send the bucket to the Survivor television show so they can contemplate their own defilement of the place.



At this point a new problem arose on Project Mayhem: the lack of a guest log. After drinking our last bottle of tequila and chasing it with a can of chipotle peppers, we found a remedy to this problem as well. So began a long-standing Project Mayhem tradition – if you use the Fresh Start bucket, you must sign it.

Given instructions for use, a calm quiet place, a large black magic marker, and a roll of environmentally friendly toilet paper, visitors never failed to leave a memorable memento. Unfortunately, such rigorous uses were never intended for the Fresh Start bucket. After months of being put through the paces, Fresh Start began to show considerable wear. A cracked rim led to many a cut butt, to say nothing of the obvious design flaw of its incredible sharpness to begin with. Finally, the old faithful Fresh Start bucket had inconvenienced one too many female guest. So like a sequel to a Japanese horror flick, the Son of Fresh Start was born. While in Tonga, the girls of the Canadian cruising boat Elakha decided that Project Mayhem needed a new, larger, and more comfortable bucket. After initial decoration by the Elakha girls, the Son of Fresh Start spent several days at Mermaid’s – the cruiser’s bar in Neiafu, Tonga, where fellow cruisers and locals got a chance to flex artistic muscle on the new throne. The Son of Fresh Start, with its comfortable rim and formidable diameter, posed some issues concerning our Caucasian Asslessness, but ass good and creative sailors we have overcome this small inconvenience.

Perhaps you’re wondering why we never simply installed the vacuum release valve? As luck would have it, nowhere in the entire South Pacific could we find this trivial piece, not in Tahiti, nor in Pago Pago. Only after reaching New Zealand was the search finally successful. After a simple five minute installation, Project Mayhem has a new, functioning head. We still keep the old buckets around just in case.

When cruising, there’s enough to take seriously. So have your fun where you can find it, be serious when you have to, and above all, do anything to save your ass.

Originally published in Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine

Praxis Universal reaches 100,000 views on YouTube

As Praxis Universal is a video company which creates videos for clients, we typically give our clients a copy of the finished product, and let them upload it to wherever they like, or we can embed the video on their site. A few years ago, the non-profit organization WiLDCOAST contacted us to create an advocacy video to shut down illegal pollution by development companies in Mexico. We uploaded this video to YouTube, at their behest. Since then, we've made many other videos for clients, some of which have gotten tremendous amounts of views.

We're proud to announce that we've reached the 100,000 video views mark!

Come check out our videos at our YouTube Channel.

Note: all of our Favorited videos are entirely Praxis Universal's content.

Have a great day!

Marketing in the Social World of the Web

The concept of viral, or social, online networking marketing is not very well understood nor have many figured out how to make it work. Viral of course means spreading via word of mouth or person-to-person where it grows exponentially.

Integrating a marketing project into a the social media environment is more complex than simply listing your product or services onto Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or any of the myriad of online social networking sites - many of which are topic specific.
The key is consistent integration, you must become part of the social environment online.

To quantify the impact of social networking, think about this: Social Networking has grown bigger than online pornography. Ten years ago pornography accounted for 20% of all time spent online. It has now dropped to 10% with Social networking supplanting it, and also emailing, as the single most used WWW activity - says researcher Bill Tancer in a 2008 interview in Clicked magazine.


Meanwhile, 33% of small businesses indicated that they would keep spending on social networking about the same, while only 5% reported that they plan to spend less than in the previous year. Surprisingly, while 37% of small businesses in the survey don’t use social networking at all, that’s a smaller percentage than any other medium, including email marketing, search engine marketing, and even just maintaining a company website.
The numbers would seemingly point to what might be a better-than-expected year overall for businesses that depend on online marketing dollars. Small businesses indicate they are growing (or keeping the same) and not shrinking their marketing budgets.
Costs are certainly being cut elsewhere – the unemployment rate in the US is at a 16-year high – but online marketing is a bit better off than other areas of the economy.

Optimizing Your Social Networking Marketing

Social Networking has blossomed very quickly and traditional Marketing has not quite figured out how to configure a marketing strategy for this medium.

In the current climate of social networking where Facebook alone has over Four Hundred Million (400,000,000) users, social marketing is an incredibly efficient way to get your products or services in front of the people that need and want them.

The most useful and/or poorly underutilized tool of Internet marketing is video.
Using video, you can optimize the impression and message you want people to see. Your videos are you putting your best foot forward every time.
Think about this: How long would it take you to get face time with 1000 clients? And how often would you say the perfect thing? By using video online you can optimize your message and your face time. When someone is looking at you online, and thousands will, you’re always getting it right.

But, it is a two sided sword; a boring, poorly done, or as in most cases, overdone video will turn off as many people as it attracts. Like most of the antiquated advertising strategies, marketing videos tend to be overdone, and too long. Marketing videographers should work more towards reality-based, short, honest videos with a marketing schedule that incorporates regular videos into the program. Nothing gets the message across quicker or for longer than a video. Your videos will be watched for years online. Every one of your videos is an introduction for you and business.


Social Network Marketing Model

The social network world is not a place for false promises or hard sales techniques. No one needs to listen to you. The potential is enormous and the key is consistent honesty, and sincere availability.

In the social network world you meld video, blogs, smart phones, your website, the social network sites, and a myriad of additional tools into a cohesive marketing entity, all interactive and cohesive - a web if you will.

Your website becomes more a depository for your product and relevant information. It is less a sales site and more the corner market where your customers already know why they’re visiting.


Social Networking

To use social networking organizations to market your product means one must be consistently interactive offering almost daily information interlaced with video media to create a relationship with your clients.
As the title “social networking” infers, this is a relationship based on networking, where you and your clients become integrated and interactive participants in the social organization of the online community. For success, it should be a permanent role that is rewarding for you as well as your clients, a community that evolves to the betterment of the whole.

Viral marketing in the social networking sphere, as the name implies, necessitates a long term commitment where your clients become a part of your social network, and in your respective field you are an authority.

Quite simply, you are selling you.

This long term commitment is based on your passion, the quality of your product, and your expertise. Your interactivity and availability are critical.


Ancient Marketing

Consider this; the Super Bowl attracted 106,000,000 viewers in 2010. It is the largest single event on TV and advertising during this event costs $2.6 million for a 30 second Ad. Advertising on the Super Bowl has become more about bragging rights than having any significant dollars translation. Most advertising companies talk about ad retention and its significance, but it’s hard to equate a dollar to video translation, so once again we turn to the internet for a definitive perspective

According to Bob Parsons, CEO of The Go Daddy Group, via his blog, “it was a great way to spend advertising dollars.” Mr. Parsons opined, “I’m proud to report that Go Daddy unquestionably had the very best ad in this year’s Super Bowl.” According to data provided by Go Daddy, the company experienced an incremental 1.79% increase of visitors to the Go Daddy website over two days.

Many marketing companies and websites have simply tried to translate the antiquated, passive, and often times deceptive marketing techniques to the Internet.
Like ads in a magazine or on TV, the flags, banners, and pop ups on Internet sites and the boring over-produced videos on websites, they were never very effective and are much less so in the world of Social Media Marketing.

The reality is advertising in magazines, newspaper, or on TV, is quickly losing its effectiveness.
Bill Gates while speaking at the IAB Engage 2005 conference told delegates that “traditional media such as television, newspapers and magazines would move to being delivered via the internet within the next decade. The debate about internet versus non-internet advertising will become obsolete over the next 10 years.”

Bill Gates prophecy is being proven correct every day.

Marketing techniques of the past are not going to work any longer, and most advertising companies don’t have a clue how to make this interactive consumer information network work for you. In this environment of a poor economy, consumers are generally smarter about their purchases, researching and checking quality through their social networks.


Website Management

You should view your website as part of the whole, and it should be clean, simple, efficient, and safe. There should be no need to hard sell yourself or product because your social network marketing has already convinced them about you and your product/service.

Integrating your website with your social network marketing is key your company’s survival. In this scenario when your potential client comes to your website they are generally there for a purpose. So long-winded videos or sales pitches are wasted.

The simpler your purchase process is the more likely your client is to purchase and return. Videos should be seen as the new written informational panel on your site. The less written information you have the better. Product videos, like everything on the site, should be clean and efficient.
Videos should be succinct and entertaining. We live in a fast paced world so don’t waste your clients’ time by thinking more is better.


Creating your own Social Marketing Web

Your marketing has to be out in the social media venues and from there clients will come to your website. Video is key to developing your social media persona and integrating social media and technology is part and parcel with your marketing. But your marketing needs to be consistent, interesting, informative, and entertaining (which is one of the few things Super Bowl ads have in common with this venue).

Obviously to optimize these tools is a growth process and can take some time. Make no mistake this is a campaign, viral in nature, self-sustaining to a point, but something that needs to be maintained and constantly upgraded.

The longer you keep the information flowing the larger your net will grow and the larger your customer base will become. The web world is evolving at an incredible rate, and like any highly specialized field you need to work with specialist in this venue.

The reality of a business’s survival is integrating into the World Wide Web’s social spheres and creating your own social and business web; simply having a website is not enough. Creating and integrating all the tools available allows you to increase your sphere of influence by orders of magnitude in a proactive manner.

The Marketing of Zac Sunderland: Part 1

Praxis Universal is an Internet video and social network marketing company. We specialize in online marketing using the vast spheres of social networks to help people get their message out. We tend to work principally in the boating industry, our primary area of interest, but by no means is that our sole area of production. We’ve done some work with environmental groups and in the nonprofit arena as well.

Last year we worked with Zac Sunderland, marketing his attempt to sail around the world by way of Internet social networking and video. Marketing via the Internet is not necessarily new but our style of aggressive social networking is. Praxis Universal is a boutique video marketing company.
We aren’t a big company, and that allows us to work very closely with our clients. Marketing in the social spheres is personal and calls for a closer relationship between us and our client than would be found in a larger production marketing agency. Because of our limited clientele we can react very quickly, as one must when working in the dynamic online social world.

In the course of working with Zac, we were able to help raise several hundred thousand dollars and create an awareness of Zac throughout the world. We did this using video, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and many other more topic specific networks. We aggressively worked with numerous major newspapers, magazines, and TV networks.

Many people will have heard of Zac Sunderland. If not, do an Internet search and you’ll quickly find out all about him. You can also go to PraxisUniversal.com, and you’ll see the videos that promoted his around the world attempt.

This isn’t an article about Zac Sunderland, but a study in a marketing endeavor.

Zac

In May of 2008, Zac Sunderland, a 16 year old from Thousand Oaks, California, set off to sail around the world alone. 13 months later he returned at 17 years old the youngest person ever to sail around the world single handed. In the process he became an internationally known figure, a huge Internet personality with videos and articles everywhere online, in print, and on television.

The Family

The Sunderlands didn’t have the money to finance the trip and in a conversation with them we decided to donate about $10,000 worth of marketing and video work to his attempt. This included a five minute video (the original promotional video) and our Internet marketing skills. (As well we spent weeks working on the boat right up until he very minute he left.) Later on we would come to work on the project in various positions.

Initially we wanted to see how the general public was going to react to this venture so we ran a survey to see what the public’s general feeling was going to be about a 16 year old trying to sail around the world alone.

There were many remarks of the obvious sort, family using their child for personal gain, for publicity, living through their child, questions about their religious beliefs and how it impacted the decisions being made a lot of skepticism and some questions about the sanity of the parents letting a child attempt such thing. Among professional boaters there were many questions as to his skill level and the boat. It also brought up questions about the whole “youngest record” attempts.


Working to Promote Zac

In the seven months we worked on this project, we spent a majority of our time putting together footage for stories, at times driving hundreds of miles to get footage to various news agencies before their deadlines so they would cover Zac and his adventure. It was amazing how few of the major networks had good computer skills or downloading capabilities, and we spent many weeks working with them to put the footage together in useable packages.

But in the end, Zac would become one of the most recognized figures of 2009.

As is always the case in situation like this there were many empty promises and little follow through. Our primary job was to keep building a buzz around the project and keep the interest of the general public. Well after Zac had left and all the excitement died down we were hired by the family to keep the project relevant and interesting. We did this via videos about the trip and by working in the social networking spheres, and supplying edited footage to the various shows that wanted to pieces on Zac.

Since the trip had its share of controversy we circumvented many of the potential marketing pitfalls by supplying and editing the footage used in the various news and human interest pieces and by working closely with the networks and multitudes of other agencies around the world to make sure that Zac and the family were seen in a positive light.

This took up the majority of our time. In contributing to dozens of shows we only had one news agency get upset with us. They were a news/ human interest show in Australia with a mailing address on their website that was in Los Angeles which was where we had raced to one Friday afternoon to get the film to their Los Angeles affiliate with the intention of their being able to upload the footage for the show from there the following Monday. Unfortunately it was an old address so they never got the footage, though someone did received a nicely edited package of exclusive Zac footage from somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Media Work

We put out some feelers online and talked to the family about making calls to various local media to see if anyone else would do a story. Then we got to work outlining a promotional video for “Zac’s World Adventure.”

Soon, a fairly large local newspaper, the “Ventura County Star,” picked up the story. The article went well, and the tone was positive. Next the story was picked up by the local ABC affiliate in Los Angeles a very big market. Soon after that story went national and the requests for interviews exploded.
In these circumstances, timing is everything and luck plays a big part in the success of things like this. It was a slow media year and there was a need for a feel good story - this being the beginning of the economic downturn and all the anti U.S. rhetoric in the world. So a young man from the U.S. going out to do something very much in the line of our American spirit of adventure was perfectly timed.


Internet Audience

It was really in the Internet realm that the story took off. With the help of our videos, social sites and blogging, Zac found a following. The interactivity of the Internet allowed people to voice their opinions and concerns and discuss the various aspects of the trip. Many of the discussion boards were quite in depth with discussions about routing, weather, places visited, and sailing in general. Some schools were using the trip for educational purpose and we even made a video for a French Canadian school to be used for teaching English. We encouraged all this by interacting in the various social spheres answering questions and starting discussion boards. Considering that there were thousands of people commenting on dozens of sites at any one time it was a full-time job just keeping on top of it.


For the family blogging, became their connection to his audience - it is one of the most important aspects of any good website. It allowed the family to answer questions and set the tone for the other sites following along with Zac and helped to keep interest going in the trip. For the family it was even more important as they were attempting to make a documentary and to do that they had to continually validate the attempt.

Blogging, particularly in the case of a controversial attempt like this, can be a two edged sword. It is easy to get your back up when people are looking closely at things you may feel are private. But as the family was asking for public and sponsors dollars, it can be damaging to not address the negative as well as positive questions. If you decide to make your living in this manner then you become a public figure and a lot of the rights to privacy don’t apply.




The Promo Video





Initially we opened conversations on various blog and social sites to generate awareness. Many news agencies find their ideas via this venue.

One of our major concerns was the controversial nature of the trip - dropping out of school, safety issues, age issues.
Because of all the controversy we took a statement that Zac had made to us on film and made that the focal point of the trip, “I want to have big adventure.” We down played the record attempt and focused on Zac sailing around the world meeting people, stopping regularly. It was to be an extremely adventurous trip, but one filled with personal growth and learning. Thankfully it was all that and though there were a few problems the reality is it was a fairly uneventful trip- as far as any ‘Around The World Alone’ trip can be. There were no pirates, no bad storms, and if anything, the biggest problems came from the inexperience at being sixteen years old.

Once we had what we felt was enough footage we start the process of organizing the footage and what the various messages of the video would be.
Our style may seem a little backward to many but when we are working in a reality based mode our process is very organic. We go through our footage, time coding it and really just let what we saw sink in, usually throw out ideas while we’re looking at the footage, seeing how the needs of the client will match up with the footage and our general idea of what were wanting to create.

We had some very specific goals in mind for this video. We wanted people to form an attachment to Zac as a person. We wanted to show his youth and his willingness to do the hard work, and his boating skills. At the same time it was important to show that he was dedicated to this goal and was aware of the difficulties involved. We need to show that his boat was being prepared properly. Then we had to resolve the question of “what kind of parents would let their kid do something so dangerous?”

Primarily though we were asking people to donate to the cause. We had several conversations with the parents about how their website was set up, it was a bit of a mess, and we want to make sure that once the video came out that it would be easily accessible to potential sponsors and that they would be available constantly- usually you only get one chance at a potential sponsor.

The process of laying out a video promotional project varies depending on the goals, footage available, and desires of the client. In this case we had a free hand on the project.
We opened with some sailing footage to set the tone and let people orient on what this was about. Then we decided to start with a bold statement of fact and a quick explanation from Zac on what he was about. “My name is Zac Sunderland and I am going to be the youngest man to sail around the world alone.” On a sub note, we wanted to push the concept of his having a great adventure, to personalize it.

We then introduced the parents and it was very important to present a very positive competent image to the public. We also included some shots of Zac being interviewed by a major network to legitimize his venture in the eyes of the public.

In this case we used no narration and just let the family describe themselves. Critical in making a reality based video is not to be to heavy handed- it’s ok to leave some the Uhhs and Umms but we did have to spend an awful lot of time reconstructing sentences and of course all the matching of images to narration.

It was a difficult video and in our final push in the studio we spent about 10 hours just trying to get everything right- even waiting for permission for one of the musicians to use the music. Copyrights are extremely important!

Up until we finished we were really unsure about the video and getting extremely frustrated, finally we stopped and just sat back and watched it. We were very pleased with the first video I think it was one of those projects where you just nail it.
But it isn’t just about making a video and sticking it on a website, making the video is only the first step. Once we had the family’s approval we blasted it all over the web, paying particular interest to the boating industry because that is where we figured we could get Zac the most support. It worked better than we ever dreamed. The one video, and the Internet marketing that went with it launched Zac’s dream, and his world record attempt is now in the record books.

Action Abounds

It's been unmitigated excitement here at Praxis Universal. With our Internet media campaign for the non profit brain injury group "Freedom House" coming to a close, we're happy to reflect on the last few months and see what we've accomplished. Using our knowledge of social networking, we took the number of online followers of Freedom House from under 10 to over 2000. For example - you can friend them on Facebook here: facebook.com/freedomhouseabi, or follow them on twitter here: twitter.com/freedomhouseabi, or you can read their blog here: freedomhouseabi.blogspot.com.

Here is the second Freedom House video (Music by the amazing Casey Shultheis):



Our third Freedom House video featured their Third Annual Walk for Thought for Brain Injury, March 20, 2010:



We'll have more soon!

On Non-Profits and such

The cusp of a New Year finds us extremely busy here at Praxis Universal. We are in the process of reorganizing our website, filming with a non-profit organization, and doing what we most love: filming on the water here in San Diego. Here's our latest video for the Non-Profit Freedom House, formed to provide housing for survivors of traumatic brain injuries:

No news is boring news

Well nothing much going on here at Praxis. We're still sitting on an almost completed documentary, and in the mean time if you interested you should look at our Ocean Rescue shows on our oceanrescue.tv website. There still a lot of fun to watch. Currently were just finishing up some work for a couple of non-profit organizations.

Robbins B. Thompson