Social Media Interview Of The Week – John J Wall From Marketing Over Coffee

This week we have an interview with John J Wall from Marketing over coffee. John speaks, writes and practices at the intersection of marketing, sales, and technology. He is the producer of Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program that discusses both new and classic Marketing with his co-host Christopher S. Penn, and has been featured on iTunes.

His work has been profiled by CBS Evening News, The Associated Press, NECN, The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, DM News, and the Yahoo! Year in Review.

He has held positions specializing in Customer Relationship Management and sales support systems at both venture funded and privately held businesses (companies including MarketingSherpa and the Digital Consulting Institute), working with clients such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce.

How long have you and Chris Penn known each other and how did Marketing Over Coffee come about?

We both started podcasting around 5 years ago, Chris with The Financial Aid Podcast, and me with The M Show. I shut down The M Show earlier this year and FAP has passed on too. Four years ago we met in person at a New England Podcasters Meet Up (which is also defunct…. Fail fast and move on…). I wanted to do something more business than The M Show , and I knew Chris was being held back talking only to the Financial Aid community, his knowledge could easily serve a much bigger market. The twist of fate is that we only live one town apart, so recording in person was possible.
It was funny trying to set up the first session, we both have crazy schedules with our day jobs, and at that time Chris had a long commute but I was determined to get it together. “How about 7:30 am? Ok, How about 6:30am? Ok, how about 5:30am?” And that’s how it started.

You have had some great guests on the show, who would be your dream guest?

Actually this is a bit of a problem. As a marketing podcast I considered Seth Godin the dream guest that we would never get. We finally had him on a show in January thanks to a stunt I had pulled earlier in the year. The interview was fantastic, but now I have no idea how to top that. I would really like to interview Ira Glass from NPR’s “This American Life” about telling compelling stories. That’s going well, his PR person has pegged me as a stalker and they don’t return my email. Being a guest host for Graham Norton on his day off with John Cleese and David Tennant as guests would be a gig I’d pay to do.

You reside in Boston but have lived all over the states, is there anywhere you really miss?

If I ever get to the point where I can afford insanely expensive real estate I’d have a place near Coit Tower in San Francisco. The climate, restaurants, arts, and tech scene are all there. Boston is strong in all of those except weather. February and March can be physically draining in the ice, cold and snow.

Now that Google Wave has finally been laid to rest, why do you think the big G got it so wrong?

Dave Winer pegged it. The product needs to do something cool and all your friends need to be there. If nobody’s really sure what it does and it’s hard for people to sign up without an invite, it’s not going anywhere.

Google does search better than anyone else, do you ever see this boat being rocked and if so, by who?

I think they have a good number of years advantage over anyone, but I have been surprised how fast Bing has come on. I think the bigger threat is that the G will be replaced by whatever the next step in the evolution of search is. If I knew what that was going to be, I’d already have my house by Coit Tower. Something that takes better advantage of mobile devices is one option, another is creating expert systems. For example if everyone had their health history in a database that could be queried (and still maintain privacy), healthcare could change dramatically. This could happen in almost any market.

With mergers and acquisitions taking place every other week, is there one you would love to see happen?

I’d like to see the company I am working for now get acquired so I can exercise my shares.

Gary Vee recently vouched for Formspring, is there something that excites you just around the corner?

I’ve been all about the iPad recently. I also want Sprint (the cell carrier I use) to get a good phone.

How do you take your coffee? If you come to Ireland it’ll have to be over a Guinness.

Large Iced, cream and 2 sweet n low.