Archive for the 'Marketing' Category

Everyone’s a critic

Published at 23 March, 2008 in Rant and Marketing. 0 Comments

In Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin writes about dining critic Joanne Kates:

One of my dearest friends is Joanne Kates, the restaurant critic for The Globe and Mail, the most important newspaper in Toronto. Joanne carries a credit card with someone else’s name on it (I promised I wouldn’t say who). Despite her precautions, her picture is posted in the kitchen of dozens of top restaurants. Why? Because once a restaurant knows that Joanne is wearing a wig and sitting in the dining room, the staff can influence the review.

Once a server knows it’s her, he can make sure the service is perfect, the food is hot, and the check is calculated properly. Once he knows it’s her, he can guarantee that the staff will do their best.

Seth goes on to explain what is wrong with this strategy under the rules of New Marketing:

You’ve already guessed the problem with this strategy. The problem is Zagats (and Chowhound.com, and a thousand other restaurant blogs). There isn’t just one Joanne Kates in Toronto anymore. Now there are thousands.

You can no longer be on the lookout for Joanne. Now you have to be on the lookout for everyone.

Joanne is everywhere - there are thousands of people walking the earth with PageRank 4 or better blogs at their fingertips, ready to heap praise (or crap) on every remarkable experience.

I’ve done this a dozen times - rewarded a truly wonderful experience with praise, and been critical of a bad experience. Within an hour yesterday, Donna and I had two remarkably contrasting experiences:

  • A good chat with the guy that owns Plonk around boutique Ciders (he is knowledgeable and genuinely interested in customer experiences) - and we’re happy to recommend his shop to friends (and we know several people who are happy to do the same). We bought a mixed half-dozen Montieth’s beers,  a Trappistes Rochefort No 10 ‘heavy’ for after-dinner enjoyment, and we plan to return.
  • A disinterested and contradictory set of serving staff at the Belgian Beer Cafe in Kingston.  Their all-day menu shows that the Moules Moutarde (mussels in mustard) have bacon with them - when no bacon appeared in our Moules, we asked the waitress if we had the right dish, and she checked with the kitchen who told her that there was no bacon in this dish. What we had tasted good, but it wasn’t what we ordered - and we would never have noticed at all if we hadn’t had to wait so long for it to turn up. We didn’t make a fuss, but we won’t be going back, and we won’t be recommending it to friends.

Can you see the difference between the two experiences? Both were remarkable - in one, the service provider cared and the beer seemed to taste better for it - in the other, there was a notable lack of care, and it cheapened the experience for us. No big deal either way, but we both have blogs, and both of us are happy to talk about it.
If you run a business, read Meatball Sundae. If you take nothing else away from it but this then it is time and money well invested - that there are thousands of Joannes out there just waiting for you to do something truly great for them (or screw them around). Either way, they will talk about it.

An opportunity for an enterprising psych nerd

Published at 8 July, 2007 in Blogging and Marketing. 0 Comments

I work with a couple of psych nerds. I have an interest in psychology and am well read - these guys have degrees in it and do it for a living.

Zern Liew says that the age of action without consequences may be coming to an end. He writes that people are more accountable now than previously because, amongst other things:

Personal websites, especially blogs, can reveal more about a person’s inner world and character than the most intricate personality tests.

I read everything that Zern has to say because he says profound stuff that makes me think (and while thinking hurts, it engenders growth, which is a good thing).

Now… putting two and two together - if the way we write in blogs reveals more than intricate personality tests, there is an opportunity for some enterprising psych nerd to write some personality typing code that analyses blog posts and does some typing magic. Imagine what the world of marketing would pay for an intimate analysis of bloggers, especially when their traditional markets are drying up.

Just a thought :)

Project Management for Bloggers

Published at 2 July, 2007 in Business Analysis, Recommendation and Marketing. 2 Comments

Jeri Merrell has written a four part series on project management for small business. Jeri is a professional project manager who has applied her knowledge to issues surrounding small business  - and I think that it applies very well to the business of blogging.

Part 1: Refine the idea looks at how to take an idea and start to form a business plan around it.

Part 2: Plan the work looks at just that - creating a plan for delivering the required tasks to get the idea up and running.

Part 3: Make it happen looks at execution and quality control.

Part 4: Take the leap covers marketing, deployment and evaluation.

I like where Jeri has gone with this - and can see it applying so well to blogging-as-business. Treating your blog project as a business has the following potential advantages:

  • the formality introduced into the process may look like extra work - in reality, it probably does not introduce a lot of overhead as it reduces false starts and duplicated effort.
  • the creation of business, design and deployment plans will allow you to assess where you are at any stage in the process.
  • the documentation will probably help if you ever need to apply for a business loan.

Read the series.

Transparency: Marketing the health benefits of anal leakage

Published at 30 June, 2007 in Marketing. 0 Comments

Zern is concerned about the lack of transparency in marketing - and references AngryAussie’s now famous post on marketing the “miracle” weightloss drug alli.

alli (please note the trendy lowercase treatment) helps people lose weight by not absorbing fats and oils. The downside is that the oil has to go somewhere - and results (at least for some) in the people cacking their kecks. It is not my intention to take vicarious pleasure in people soiling themselves - there are enough others doing this in the 336 and growing comments.

The marketers of alli have used a lot of very polite words for some very nasty and embarrassing side effects.

Zern’s take:

My friend Stil and I have been talking about the idea of radical transparency in the way we do business. The basis is that generally keeping secrets is bad and tends to do more harm than good to relationships. And where there is no harm, people should be told or given access to as much information as possible. That way they are empowered to make better decisions and take real actions.

I agree.

Book marketing ideas: Go Free!

Published at 24 June, 2007 in Marketing. 0 Comments

Print Is Dead has a wonderful report on the O’Reilly Tools of Change address by Chris Anderson that contains some sage advice on the power of free content to sell hard copy books.

These are some of the ways that Chris is looking at to use free content as a marketing strategy:

1. Make the audio book free with the purchase of the printed book. The buyer of the printed book would receive a code that would allow them to download an MP3 of the audio book (for free). However, the audio book would also be sold as a standalone item.

2. Book would included in all search programs, including Google.

3. eBook would be given way for free, but locked to a specific device/reader. This would allow it to be spread to early adopters and “influentials,� treating them as a “marketing channel.�

4. An unlocked eBook edition that features ads alongside the text (which is much like how magazines look, where content is next to advertising).

5. Page-view model, where users would read it online, with ads that make sense.

6. Sample chapters distributed on websites.

If you have a book project, or are interested in multi-channel marketing, you should read the rest of the post.

Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program

Published at 22 June, 2007 in Blogging and Marketing. 0 Comments

An update on Yaro Starak’s Blog Profits Blueprint now available in Mobipocket: Yaro has launched his Blog Mastermind mentoring program.

I’m in :)

If you join the mentoring program in the next seven days, Yaro is offering a 39% ongoing discount - this means that you will save money every month for as long as you decide to remain in the program.

On Startups

Published at 19 June, 2007 in Marketing. 0 Comments

If you’re interested in net.business, read Marc Andreessen’s blog. His latest article is on why not to do a startup.

I got involved in a startup a couple of years ago - like most, it didn’t work out. I wish that I’d had Marc’s advice back then - not that I would have listened to it, but it would have been good to have it none the less :)

I had a mortgage, and child support payments to make, and a more-or-less stable relationship. I’ve still got the child support payments, but the mortgage and the relationship didn’t survive the startup.

Second Life: Thinking about a virtual shopfront?

Published at 18 June, 2007 in Virtual Business, Life and Marketing. 2 Comments

More government bodies and large corporations are looking towards Second Life as a way of leveraging resources - using a person-hour of effort to create more than a person-hour’s benefit. An effective virtual presence can be had for a little under USD5,000.00 per annum [1] plus staff costs.

Why would you bother?

There are several reasons:

  • because it is a low-cost channel for connecting to potential and current clients.
  • because being an early adopter in this channel is a remarkable thing in and of itself.
  • because Linden Labs, owners of Second Life, want to help make it happen.

For more background on why large organisations (including government) are looking to Second Life, please see:

And it should be noted that not every organisation is suited to Second Life. Some disqualifiers include:

  • no potential client base on Second Life: while this does not apply to most organisations, there are some (such as local government or intelligence) that might be better served by alternative means.
  • low organisational will: if you do not have an organisational website, chances are that your corporate culture does not support early adoption, and it may be a difficult thing to manage a Second Life implementation.

So what is involved?

Costs can be broken down into:

  • Land: this can be the “big-splash - let’s buy our own island” model - this is USD1,675.00 plus USD295.00 a month. A 16-acre virtual territory on the “mainland” is around USD4,000.00 for a good location plus USD295.00 a month in maintenance. You can set up a presence in someone else’ building for a lot less. How notable a presence do you need? For more information see Real estate: buying and selling land in Second Life
  • Setup costs: It is possible to spend a lot of money setting up a government office in Second Life - costs in the low nine figures are bandied about for the likes of setting up the virtual corporate HQ for Dell and IBM. That said, there is a lot of help in-world for those interested in learning to build, as well as plenty of people that will create custom designs for you (for a fee - like every other builder, you should ask for references and examples of their work). For an illustration of how easy it is to get started and create simple structures, read Mitch Wagner’s article on Building in Second Life. You can get your corporate IT providers to create the whole thing for you, or utilise in-world experts.
  • Maintenance costs: Apart from the USD295 a month that owners of islands and 16 acre quadrants pay to Linden Labs, what costs are there for maintenance? At a minimum, none - unless you want to add more functionality (i.e. a bigger virtual shopfront, more online information, and more staff members).
  • Staffing costs: Depending on how you staff your virtual shopfront, this is probably the biggest single cost to the organisation. Do you have volunteers that can be rostered on at opportunity-cost only for eight plus hours a day? Most organisations do not. In-world labour varies (as in real life) in quality and cost - you can hire virtual receptionists with reasonable language skills from a few (USD) dollars an hour and up, or have the best client service/sales/marketing minds in your organisation. Help desk operations are probably a good comparison - first-level operators help with the simplest enquiries and ensure that calls are logged and escalated as required. Fourth-level support pulls the system to pieces and rebuilds it - with all the graduations of specialisation (and cost) in between.

The early adopters are making hay while the sun shines in Second Life - the fad, if it is one, does not look like failing soon. Do it properly by all means, but think about doing it soon.
[1] calculated at an island “purchase” cost of USD1,675 plus USD295 a month thereafter.

Seth Godin: Creativity Crack

Published at 1 June, 2007 in Life and Marketing. 0 Comments

Every time I read one of Seth Godin’s books I get a shot of creativity that is, well, it’s like I imagine doing crack cocaine (but in a good way - read on).

It hasn’t always been this way - I admit to having read Unleashing the Ideavirus (PDF, 893KB) four or five times before I actually got Marketing 2.0. Steve Collins has been a constant source of inspiration - and yes, sometimes irritation :) - for me until I did get it. Thanks for hanging in there, Steve!

When I read a Godin book now, wierd things happen - I get inspired, and lateral thinking goes into overdrive - reading Free Prize Inside and learning about Edgecraft led me to realise at a meeting yesterdat that complex legal requirements can be expressed in simple terms using Infocom text adventure metaphors (”If the product is the only member of it’s group, and it will be released within this time frame, and etc, then this clause applies” becomes “If you approach the iron door, and you have the parrot and the key, then the parrot will fly over the three-headed dog and open the door with the key”. Others have blogged about metaphors in the past, this is not about the metaphor, it is about taking something so wildly out of context that everyone else in the room thought I was joking until I explained how this would help. Some of them got it, the rest will in time.

If you are alive, and need to generate and communicate big ideas, read Seth Godin. It costs less than illicit substances, is not (quite) as addictive, and you’ll benefit from it.

Always include the batteries: Why Margaret Lomas is off my reading list

Published at 23 May, 2007 in Rant and Marketing. 13 Comments

Ever buy a toy as a child and race home, open it, and discovour that it is useless without the batteries? Toy marketers caught on a long time ago that a prominent “Batteries not included” label was appreciated by parent and child alike, because unmet expectations can be avoided. Some include the batteries now (Nintendo do this for their Wii) - I believe that if you make something, you should always include the batteries.

My partner Helen and I are discussing investment and lifestyle choices now that we’ve been cohabiting for a while. I bought a few books on investing in shares and property. Helen needed a book to read on the bus to work the other day so I suggested one from our “to be read” pile: Margaret Lomas’ “The Truth About Positive Cashflow Property”. She handed it back to me that evening and said “She says not to read this one until you’ve read some of her other books, what else do you have to read?”.

I thought I must have screwed up when I bought the book - I have my moments, but I do pay attention to order when buying books. For example, I wouldn’t buy part 3 of a science fantasy series without having read parts 1 and 2. I looked at “The Truth About Positive Cashflow Property” today - there on the cover is the recommendation from Neil Jenman, famous for his honesty in an industry not famed for it. There is the list of Margaret’s other books, and on the front, her smiling face. OK, so maybe it is in the front matter. Nope, there are pages of raves from other readers, but nothing about “Don’t buy this book until you’ve read my other ones”. Then I read the introduction - nothing there on prerequisite reading. I was beginning to wonder if Helen had misread it, so I started on the first chapter. Four pages into chapter one, there it is:

It is crucial that, in order to grasp the basics of how to successfully invest in true positive cash flow property, you read one of the books in my How to series, plus A Pocket Guide to Investing in Positive Cash Flow Property.

She goes on:

Once you have educated yourself about positive cash flow property and you are fully conversant in the process you must follow to buy it, you will then be ready to read this book.

As a reader I have a few options. I can get over feeling suckered and go and buy the other books. I can throw this book in the bin and never intentionally purchase another book by Margaret Lomas. Or I can ignore her advice and read the book anyway, and see if that buys back some of my trust - which is a conundrum, because if I trust her I would not read any further. Whichever way I go, I feel foolish for having bought the book in the first place.Why has she done this? If her intention was to prevent the reader from making my mistake, she probably would have put the warning on the front cover - or at least the back - that this was an “advanced topic” book that requires some pre-reading. It is OK to do that, serial fiction authors do it all the time, as do the writers of academic texts. Because I have a trust issue with her, cognitive dissonance leads me to think badly of Margaret even when there is no evidence to support it. So now I think, rightly or wrongly, that she has deliberately hidden this warning in the text of the book (nine physical pages) so that I would have to buy her other books to find out what happens in this one. I don’t know her from a bar of soap, and was prepared to trust her until proven otherwise, so I may have this wrong. Neil Jenman’s recommendation aside, I have no logical reason to feel this way about her - but as a human being, I distrust what I percieve has burnt me.

How could she have avoided this? By being up front - totally transparent - and discussing the prerequisite books, if only for a paragraph or two, somewhere that could not be missed, and stating plainly why they should be read before this one. Who knows, I might have decided to buy one of the others first.

But for now, the book goes back into the shelf, because Margaret should have included the batteries. I will seek out other authors that cover the same or similar material, and sadly I may be a little wary of Neil Jenman’s recommendation on the next one. This is a pity - my late father spoke highly of Neil and in his (brief) career in real estate said that he was a man to be trusted.