Millenium Marketer

If there are two problems that I can’t stand, it is the environmental crisis and human crisis that many are facing worldwide on so many complex levels. It affects everyone spanning North America, South America to Asia. That is why we as individuals and businesses are more responsible as ever for doing what we can to drive change in ways that may not have been thought possible.

Recently, I went up to Redwood Shores Cinemas to see a “rockumentary” that was being considered by the UN, titled “Call + Response.” (Find the movie in your area here.)

I will argue that art can inspire business ideas. In other words, if you’re not familiar with any of these issues and you are an entrepreneur looking for a cause or a new problem to solve, this movie could be one springboard for you. (It hasn’t been too long ago since the SoCap08 Conference.)

We need solutions to one of the most massive and overwhelming problems out there. None of us would want these kinds of things to happen to our children. So, if you have a business that is attempting to address problems in human trafficking or unjust supply chain, I would like to know about it.

Of course, human trafficking is not a new issue. You can never be sure if the piece of clothing you are wearing was made by a slave who works in small, confined space and forced or coerced into labor. That’s why we need transparency in the supply chain, and clarity to truly run businesses that have triple the value and a strong, humane bottom line.

Imagine, if there was a small way to buy these children an education. Send them a tutor and buy their time so that they may open their eyes to more possibility. A strong education to become better critical thinkers and why not social and environmental stewards as well?

Here are a just a few links to known (non-profit) organizations that deal with these issues, listed as resources for potential entrepreneurs and if you know of others please add them:

• Invisible Children
• End Human Trafficking
• ECPAT International

[Reposted to: TriplePundit.com]

I am writing you this e-because I really, really want to see the Palm Centro do better. While I, like many others, am a big fan of the iPhone and even the iTouch for its amazing native touch screen capability, I really think it is time other players in the smartphone market give Apple a run for its money.

Of course, your company doesn’t have the ever-perfectionistic Steve Jobs as your company founder, but really, I like to cheer for the underdogs because without them, where would Apple be?

In your next release of the Palm Centro, please include the following:

1. A larger keyboard that pulls out. My hands are small, but not that small. Or, maybe the option to have a touchscreen keyboard.
2. A better camera. I just found out that Nokia and Samsung won some prestigious awards from a well-known photography magazine. I usually think of Nokia and Samsung phones as “utility” phones, not super-productivity phones where I might Flickr my pictures. Come on, help me and my friends out.
3. Lower the barriers with the web and give us more web integration. If WordPress is having trouble integrating with Palm software, then this says to me that the open source model is biased towards the iPhone. Get out there and outreach to software engineers. Get them excited about the Palm and let’s see cool software emerge like it used to…way back in the 90s.

If Palm can do these things, then maybe, just maybe I can stop hearing about the iPhone where ever I go. Until then, you’re just OK, but you’re not cool yet.

Oh yes, and you can certainly tell McNamee about this. Thanks.

Earlier this year, I noticed an odd phenomenon at the mall. Um, it’s been a long time since I have last been at the mall, but maybe that’s why the difference was so huge to me.

Personal shopping is now a well-emphasized service at the mall, especially with online shopping on the rise.

Enter Tobi.com: a high-fashion clothing website that offers 1-to-1 personal shopping on demand. It’s a genius idea that lets you ask those all important questions, like “Does this shirt wrinkle when worn, or what do you think goes well with the tuxedo top I am looking at?”

I’m loving it as I’m talking to a personal shopper rep, Lisabeth, in the comfort of my own couch, who is already showing promise with a sunny attitude, but every time I click a new link to browse, the IM program threatens to crash.

It’s promising, but this is looking like an amazing business opportunity for Meebo.com in case they haven’t figured it out yet, E-Commerce is in need of a serious chat make-over.

Creativity is so important although we don’t always give it enough space to breathe and grow. As I recall, although I don’t quote correctly, it was Mitchell Baker at Mozilla.org that pointed out that software engineers (and others) have the duty to create products that will best suit the lifestyles of people today.

With so many apps out there, and there being increasingly more, you can’t solve real problems without taking down conventions and structures that people are most used to.

Negativity cancels out creativity

The first rule of brainstorming is to bar out criticism. This means if you brainstorm individually like one Microsoft Chief who goes away for vacation to create “white space,” or if you are brainstorming in a team, negative comments, such as “That won’t work” should not be allowed until the brainstorming session is over.

The same rule applies to supervisors and higher-ups: standing in as a threat to employees is counter-productive to solving problems creatively.

It’s too often that brainstorming and approaching ideas creatively gets a bad rap or is not executed well enough. That takes technical skill, but it’s those who succeed in creative brainstorming will produce elegant solutions for new & existing markets. White space is closer to Blue Ocean Strategy than most people realize.

Frameworks

The second step in creativity is to develop frameworks, such as the “Reframing” approach or a mindmap. The reframing approach attempts to look at a problem from a various number of perspectives, for example from the perspective of a marketer, an engineer, a potential consumer, etc.

Third, don’t let your hard brainstorming work fall away–create action items that get results. If you or your team are not sure exactly how to do this, check out David Allen’s definition of Getting Things Done (GTD) and translate tasks into results. In other words, if you decide to write a document, consider the impact it will have, otherwise known as “So What?”

By thinking through your end goal, you should be more likely to want to work towards the result.

What frameworks have you tried that have worked successfully to break barriers and create new and interesting products, ideas or conversations?

If you wonder why you have a hard time saying “no” to the neighborhood kid selling Girl Scout cookies, think twice, because the company behind the scheme is targeting your automatic pressure points.

Yesterday, my dad went outside to pick up the newspaper and two college students followed him to the front door offering to shampoo his carpets in one of his rooms for free. They said, in addition the free benefit, their employer would give them money to continue their schooling for the next semester.

The sales pitch was phrased in a way that was likely to push psychological buttons to reciprocate on a favor: “I will shampoo your carpets for free and there is no obligation. Also, I will get money for school if I am allowed to complete this task.”

While my father would not think twice about inviting these kids into his house to shampoo the carpets in exchange for school money, I knew that transaction would not stop there. The marketing company would push their limits further under the premise that the customer had given them implicit permission to do so. They could technically use this same information of the name and address of the residence, and perhaps have this information sold to others, or follow up to the call with other requests. The owner of the house, who feels obliged to keep consistent with previous requests will be less likely to decline.

Also, people are less likely to say “no” to children, those who are younger because human beings are conditioned, naturally, to take care of the young. Or as the saying goes, if babies were not cute, we would probably get sick of them.

These cases are much more blatant in face-to-face interaction, but often appear in the form of spam or obvious execution of personal branding.

I have noticed (at least for myself) that when a consumer sales deal is done in a “speed dating” fashion, it feels cheap. It also leads to after-shopping guilt, a syndrome some shoppers feel after making an expensive purchase.

In sum, manipulating your customers for a quick sale is no way to build loyalty and long term rewards, but it’s great for that one-time instantaneous purchase.

Last week, I met David Rich of event marketing firm George P. Johnson. David is their Senior VP of Strategic Marketing, and he was one of the panelists for a marketing workshop on experience marketing. The question at stake: how does social media and event marketing meet as a marketing strategy?

Even more intriguing is that people want to connect more in person after interactions on the web rather than decrease the likelihood of people getting together. There already is some evidence of this, which I have namely seen on Twitter with small announcements of people meeting up over common interests.

As George P. Johnson’s surveys indicate, event marketing appears just as desirable as social media marketing. Take that with a grain of salt, as George P. Johnson is an event or “experience” marketing company, it still resonates in that it is a natural human need to connect with others in person.

In a brief interview, David’s insights about event marketing and the millennial generation are a good jumping off point for marketers to start thinking about the possibilities. There is an entire loop that integrates events with social media, starting with hype on the web and keeping it up after the event is over.
There is an audio version which will be included soon. Find the interview script on the next page.
UPDATE: The interview was recorded in QCP file and needs a workaround.
Continue reading

This is the height of geekdom.
I didn’t really know what I was signing up for when I registered. All I knew is that it was on Yahoo! Upcoming and it looked like it was happening on a good day.

The details:
BarCamp from Noon to 4 p.m. at Swedish American Hall.
On Upcoming: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/859363/

I just realized that this is a BarCamp. If you don’t know what BarCamp is it is a gathering of people discussing a subject, and it’s unorganization at its best. People go, and they say, “What do you want to talk about?” and then the discussion begins. I had a taste of this at Web 2.0 Expo where there were Birds of a Feather and Web2Open sessions. They were about the same flavor: a bunch of people discussing something they were interested in.

I’m not really sure what it is that I am getting myself into, but it should be an interesting discussion and a deep dive into the social media fishbowl. Plus there is a party afterwards from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. with Mashable. I’m planning to asking a few folks there, “Why did you come here, what attracted you, etc” and I want to see exactly how “niche” the social media crowd is….is it birds of a feather flock together or rather people of different strokes learning from one another?

I just received my new Palm Centro in the mail today and I am thrilled! It is always fun to have a new toy. “Productivity” in this case is over rated because most people who use smart phones are use them for both business and fun.
It’s important to remember when to use which features–yet another reason why GTD is very useful for setting priorities, and processing projects. We are in a world where technology-created-ADD is extremely prevalent.

One thing that is really exciting about this phone is the camera feature, which will allow me to create voice interviews or web cam posts, so hopefully some of those will come on the fly if I can manage to use all of the phone’s features.

This is a good opportunity to consider Sprint’s sign-up process and look at how well they are doing at managing new customers. I joined through the Sprint Employee Referral program and got a special deal, so already I am more inclined to want to be part of Sprint than not.

GOOD
Quick service at a reasonable price: I bought the phone online, which made it really easy. The package arrived quickly just two days after it was ordered. Reps were readily available to answer questions immediately after the phone was activated.

BAD
Interruptions: In the transfer of the lines, Sprint called to activate the line, which made us suspicious about phishing. It was also an interruption of our day having to deal with the issue right away instead of when it would be most convenient.

Referral Roadblocks : I got my phone through a referral and wanted to make sure the referral went through. Once my phone was activated, a customer representative answered to verify the address and other information related to the phone line. I asked about getting the referral bonus, and the customer service representative said I would have to call back after she confirmed all information. That is two times I have to dial, although I can see how it would be beneficial for the rep to be available to answer any questions about the new service.

Sprint, as your newest customer as of today, I give you three stars. Two off for the interruption of my work with the shiny new toy and three for a nice phone that arrived promptly and the activation was easy.

I would have preferred to have the referral and activation information in the box, though so I can feel more empowered as a customer to choose the time of day I would like to activate it.

But thanks for the shiny new phone and a much affordable phone plan!

Photo source: TechFresh.net

Continuing on my last post on marketing metrics, I discovered a very valuable post to add to my knowledge base called “The Real ROI of Blogging.”
Traditional Marketers typically ask, “How do you know if social media has a high ROI?”
Lewis Green suggests that ROI does not have to be measured in terms of revenue.

Well we all know that revenue is not the only driver of marketing success. Green lists the following as terms of measuring blogging ROI:
* Create great customer experiences as measured by the happiness levels of our customers?
* Result in loyal clients?
* Result in revenues and/or profits?
* Result in leads and referrals?
* Result in getting us noticed?

I imagine it would take some very tight processes and collaboration with your sales and support teams to identify loyal clients and recognize referrals. This is great for companies who have recognized that organizational process is important from the very start and have been able to maintain a work culture of collaboration. But what about companies that are growing from a traditional, commission-based sales model where secrecy is valued to protect the livelihood of the individual rather than the good of the entire company and customers?

As I understand it, it will take leaders who are driven and committed to start addressing the sales team as a unit, change the way the sales people are paid out and create a network of collaboration across the organization–not at all an easy task.

How have you handled metrics and organizational processes within your company? Feel free to comment and discuss!

Metrics in marketing is a toughie. It is made easier by online marketing tactics, such as Facebook, YouTube pages. Still, the challenge oftentimes with a site like Facebook is that people will join groups or Fan pages, never contribute and perhaps they will not remember that they joined in the first place. Especially if there is not much activity in those places.

There are two big questions for marketers that challenge the profession:
How do you keep customers from being disengaged?
How do you measure their loyalty?

This came about as I was trying to define a set of metrics for a business. Defining a set of metrics is challenging because you have to start with the outcome and then define the issues that would explain whether your analysis is unbiased. It bothered me that it could be so arbitrary, such as “Increase sales by 20%”–and how do you know you are doing that through your marketing campaigns? And does this really matter to your customer? Even if you track page views for a website, there is no real way to know whether someone consistently visits your website, unless they consistently leave comments on your blog.

Here are a few articles that I am reading on the subject. I will update this list with more, but if you know of any good links related to the subject, feel free to comment as well.