Month: November 2007

So, You Think You Can Market? – Final

Competitions

Bqcomp1

Welcome to the FINAL of So, You Think You Can Market? in support of TheBargainQueen.com.

Round 2 went to Paul McEnany in a unanimous decision — sorry Jason (you know, it’s ok to vote for yourself)!

To recap … in this competition marketers will put forward their best ideas based on this brief from Sara. The entries will be published here … and the best idea in each round will be voted on by a wide, wide panel of marketing experts — YOU. That’s right, you get to decide on which idea proceeds to the next round … and which idea, ultimately, will be worked up in time for a Christmas promotion.

So, the finalist’s ideas are:

  1. Casey Degon – Charity Partnership
    There are two parts to my solution that I believe will help not only the company’s pocket book but their image as well. The audience I am trying to reach are college graduated men ages 20-30. Their most common tool of communication is just like any other college grad, facebook.com.
    I propose using the application of gifts on Facebook to spread the word. During an in class discussion, the class discussed how they usually will not pay for the gift unless they know its going to charity.
    The Bargain Queen should therefore partner up with a charity group and then create gifts that are exactly like the items they are talking about on their web site.  Half of the sales will go towards charity, the other half towards helping the marketing budget. When men click on the gifts, they are redirected to The Bargain Queen web site were they can find out more. If they choose to by the gift and send it to a friend, their friend will not only be sent the graphic and the link from which they can view, but they will also be entered into a drawing to receive that particular article of clothing for free.
  2. Paul McEnany – Empower the Current Readers
    The fundamental issue here is that The Bargain Queen is a site for women. One look at it and a guy like me starts to get nervous. I can start clicking around, but even if I do find something she may like, how can I be sure? I never really know if she likes something I gave her in the first place. So, with this particular site, I think men become the secondary target. It’s just too obvious from the beginning that this is a women’s site, so we really have to be the site that offers an insight into his specific wife/girlfriend the best, not just women in general.

    So, I’d start by making it easy for readers to send suggestions to their husbands/boyfriends. Each post should have a "send to him" button where a woman can anonymously hint that this may be a good gift
    for her.
    Secondly, I’d build a widget for these readers to drop their favorite selections from the site into. She can send this widget to her husband or boyfriend, or just post it on her myspace page for him to find.
    Same goes for facebook by building a similar facebook application.

    Now, if you were to send men straight to the site, I’d make a link to "The Bargain King," as well. Maybe a little obvious, but sometimes obvious works. This page would have testimonial video of various types
    of women, with more in depth descriptions written out. For each type of women described, we’d create gift packages for her with various gifts chosen by the experts (readers and editors of the Bargain Queen, of course).

    So, these are just a couple simple ways to get men to find their way to the Bargain Queen this Christmas. Obviously, I’d put my money on empowering the sites current readers. Their advocacy is probably the fastest way to get to their husbands with the least waste.

The voting for the Final is now open. It will remain open until the end of day, Wednesday, November 14. At stake for Casey and Paul is a cool iPod Touch and the chance to see one of these campaigns activated in time for Christmas! VOTE for your favourite idea in the Final NOW!

Thanks to the other contestants — Matthew Mantey and Jason Collins.

This Blog is Over?

Smart Bloggers

300pxthe_scream My good friend Marcus, has a FANTASTIC series unfolding at present — the topic — "If I were a client today". This series does was Marcus does best … teases out a story, a personal narrative chock full of insight, self-reflection and humour. There are nuggets of truths universally shared. We nod. We agree. Sometimes we even get as angry as Marcus. Please, make sure you read it.

Go there now, and then come back. I have something else for you below.

…

You see, when I saw this on Angus’ blog, my first thought was "this is something new from Marcus". Only it wasn’t. It was another deeply felt, strongly worded, strident cry (again, please read in full):

I fucking hate advertising.
I fucking hate what it is doing to the world.
I hate the way it rots your brain.

If I was to visualise it, I would think of Munch’s The Scream. And in many ways I have been there myself. My first posts were attempts to give shape to my own sense of dislocation, to radiate the signs of my worldly discontent and to shout my own chaos into being. But slowly, surely, I found myself far from alone on a bridge. Or in a field. I found myself rooted, stretching out and connected to others. Also shouting. Also reaching. I think that finding others has been my greatest blogging joy.

But far from being over, this blog has afforded my opportunities for which I am grateful. For blogs and social media allow you to turn your ideas into actions very simply. And effectively. You can become linked to a cause. Or you can start one. You can bend your mind towards solving "large problems". And you can contribute to easing the pain of others.

If what you do for a living means compromise (and it almost always does), then there are ways of offsetting this. But it does mean DOING something. Even if it is just reaching out. David, I hope we see your prodigious talents here. There is no recognition … but you do get a karma credit.

So, You Think You Can Dance, Round 2

Competitions

Bqcomp1

Welcome to Round 2 of So, You Think You Can Market? in support of TheBargainQueen.com. As we only received FOUR entries, the winner of this round will go up against the winner of Round 1.

First up, an UPDATE:

Round 1 went, in a LANDSLIDE, to Casey Degon — claiming 95% of the unexpectedly LARGE vote. Casey clearly understands the potential and approach to activating an online network!

To recap … in this competition marketers will put forward their best ideas based on this brief from Sara. The entries will be published here … and the best idea in each round will be voted on by a wide, wide panel of marketing experts — YOU. That’s right, you get to decide on which idea proceeds to the next round … and which idea, ultimately, will be worked up in time for a Christmas promotion.

Round 2’s entries are:

  1. Paul McEnany – Empower the Current Readers
    The fundamental issue here is that The Bargain Queen is a site for
    women. One look at it and a guy like me starts to get nervous. I can
    start clicking around, but even if I do find something she may like,
    how can I be sure? I never really know if she likes something I gave
    her in the first place.
    So, with this particular site, I think men become the secondary
    target. It’s just too obvious from the beginning that this is a
    women’s site, so we really have to be the site that offers an insight
    into his specific wife/girlfriend the best, not just women in general.

    So, I’d start by making it easy for readers to send suggestions to
    their husbands/boyfriends. Each post should have a "send to him"
    button where a woman can anonymously hint that this may be a good gift
    for her.

    Secondly, I’d build a widget for these readers to drop their favorite
    selections from the site into. She can send this widget to her husband
    or boyfriend, or just post it on her myspace page for him to find.
    Same goes for facebook by building a similar facebook application.

    Now, if you were to send men straight to the site, I’d make a link to
    "The Bargain King," as well. Maybe a little obvious, but sometimes
    obvious works. This page would have testimonial video of various types
    of women, with more in depth descriptions written out. For each type
    of women described, we’d create gift packages for her with various
    gifts chosen by the experts (readers and editors of the Bargain Queen,
    of course).

    So, these are just a couple simple ways to get men to find their way
    to the Bargain Queen this Christmas. Obviously, I’d put my money on
    empowering the sites current readers. Their advocacy is probably the
    fastest way to get to their husbands with the least waste.

  2. Jason Collins – Fashion SnapShots (Jason, send me a link to your blog)
    My solution would start with the women. If men don’t know what to get their partners, then the gals often make the suggestions themselves. Why not make this easier?

    And what does every gal do when she goes shopping? Takes her cell phone. The Bargain Queen should write a mobile app that encourages gals to take photos of products they see when they are out shopping. These should then be sent to The Bargain Queen’s Flickr group (direct from cell or via upload). The Bargain Queen editors would do a "close enough" match with existing fashion profiles and link send an email to the "Bargain King" (the gals partner). The partner can login and see the pictorial wish list and or select from other recommendations from the Bargain Queen editors.

OK … Now, you have read the last two responses … now is your chance to VOTE!

You have until the end of Saturday, November 11. Next week we are in to the FINAL PLAYOFF.

I Am Going to Blogger-Social 08

Smart Bloggers

Bs08button3_2 Commenting on other people’s blogs is fun. Emailing is good. And Skype chatting is a great, cheap and personal way of bridging the distance between Australia and the rest of the world … but it doesn’t make up for meeting people face to face.

That is why I am so excited about Blogger-Social — April 4-6, 2008 to be held in New York City. Sure there are meet-ups like BlogWorldExpo (which I would have loved to be able to attend), but Blogger-Social is special — it is a purpose-built event and it is social. I am sure there will be plenty of IDEAS hatched and PLANS made … but the purpose of the event is to bring us all together.

I am particularly keen to meet all the folks from Age of Conversation … Drew McLellan,CK, Valeria Maltoni, Emily Reed, Katie Chatfield, Greg VerdinoMack Collier, Lewis Green, Sacrum, Ann Handley, Mike Sansone, Paul McEnany, Roger von Oech, Anna Farmery, David Armano, Bob Glaza, Mark Goren, Matt Dickman, Scott Monty, Richard Huntington, Cam Beck, David Reich, Luc Debaisieux Sean Howard, Tim Jackson, Patrick Schaber, Roberta Rosenberg, Uwe Hook, Tony D. Clark, Todd Andrlik, Toby Bloomberg, Steve Woodruff, Steve Bannister, Steve Roesler, Stanley Johnson, Spike Jones, Nathan Snell, Simon Payn, Ryan Rasmussen, Ron Shevlin, Roger Anderson, Robert Hruzek, Rishi Desai, Phil Gerbyshak, Peter Corbett, Pete Deutschman, Nick Rice, Nick Wright, Michael Morton, Mark Earls, Mark Blair, CB Whittemore, Mario Vellandi, Lori Magno, Kristin Gorski, Kris Hoet, G. Kofi Annan, Kimberly Dawn Wells, Karl Long, Julie Fleischer, Jordan Behan, John La Grou, Joe Raasch, Jim Kukral, Jessica Hagy, Janet Green, Jamey Shiels, Dr. Graham Hill, Gia Facchini, Geert Desager, Gaurav Mishra, Gary Schoeniger, Gareth Kay, Faris Yakob, Emily Clasper, Ed Cotton, Dustin Jacobsen, Tom Clifford, David Polinchock, David Koopmans, David Brazeal, David Berkowitz, Carolyn Manning, Craig Wilson, Cord Silverstein, Connie Reece, Colin McKay, Chris Newlan, Chris Corrigan, Cedric Giorgi, Brian Reich, Becky Carroll, Arun Rajagopal, Andy Nulman, Amy Jussel, Kim Klaver, Sandy Renshaw, Susan Bird, Ryan Barrett , Troy Worman, S. Neil Vineberg!

Please remember, plans are being finalised and bookings for attendance must be made by November 15, 2007. So, if you ever needed a reason to visit NYC … this could be it! I hope to see you there.

HumanSigma – Valuing Brands Gets Serious

Measurement

book-of-lies_subway
Originally uploaded by wvs

Whenever an investment is proposed, the first question that is asked is, "what is the return?". In some instances the return on investment is easy to calculate — for example, automating repetitive tasks dramatically reduces transactional costs. But for intangibles such as "innovation" or "brand", metrics are a challenge. It’s not that we don’t WANT to measure the return on investment, it is just more difficult to measure and weigh the impacts of many inputs.

In a tweet yesterday, David Armano pointed me towards Mitch Owen’s interesting post at Lead2020 blog where he talks about Human Sigma — a new book by Gallup Consulting’s John Fleming. This is an approach that measures the emotional attachment of employees and customers and attempts to systematize it in an effort to improve performance across your organisation (or brand). Where this actually has some traction is the impact that employee and customer engagement has on the bottom line — that’s right — the intangibles provide a STRATEGIC contribution. Gallup’s research validates our suspicions that a happy workforce is a productive (and profitable) workforce — those companies with a highly engaged workforce grew earnings per share at over 2.6 times the rate of companies with low engagement ratings.

So how do you measure "engagement"?

The Gallup methodology is built around twelve questions that measure dimensions that leaders, managers and employees can influence. That is, the questions when answered, provide you with points that can be acted upon immediately. I have captured the twelve questions in the above graphic.
According to Mitch, the model for customer satisfaction revolves around for levels of emotional engagement:

Confidence: What are you doing to create customer trust in your services? Would your customers say you always deliver on your spoken and unspoken promises?
Integrity: Do you treat your customers fairly? When something goes wrong, do you apologize for the problem? How fair are you in resolving the problem?
Pride: Do your customers have a positive sense of association and identification with you? Are they proud to be your customer? Does their association with you mean something to them personally? Does it define their own self-concept of who they are?
Passion: Would your customers consider life not worth living without you? Ok.. that is a bit much, but the concept is the same… Are you indispensable? Would they drive across town for you? How much passion do they have for you?

Of course, the challenge is measuring these and combining them into a HumanSigma metric … which is where, I am sure, Gallup Consulting come into play. Nevertheless, this is EXACTLY the thing that agencies should be investigating … and one of the reasons that I continue to think that the greatest threat to the Agencies will come not from "digital" but from "consulting".

But here is a challenge for you … if you were to apply these twelve questions to a brand … what would they be? I am going to have a go at this too … but I would love to know your thoughts!

Is My Marrakesh For You?

Uncategorized

Pots – Marrakesh
Originally uploaded by Shroperz

They say that a change is like a holiday … and one of the most popular and exotic of destinations at present is Marrakesh. But if you are like me and cannot simply jump on a plane and visit, then this might be the next best thing.

Maryam is a great hostess whose blog charts the development of a guesthouse. Along the way she shares her wonder of the world, captures the beauty of the country (and its people) and invites her readers into her amazing and sometimes challenging world.

Right now, Maryam has been nominated for a weblog award. If you like what you see, go along and vote for My Marrakesh. And if you happen to be passing by, be sure to say hello.

Sponsor or Join me this Movember

Good Works

Movemberservantofchaos You might remember that I participated in Movember last year — the annual event to raise awareness around prostate cancer and to raise money for research into the “most common non-skin cancer”.

This year, I want to go a step further. I have setup a team … and I would like you to either sponsor me or JOIN. To make this easier for those based in the USA, I have setup a team with the US organisation which means that any donations made are tax deductible in the US.

I am particularly keen to see the following folks with a MO … David Armano, Mack Collier, David Reich, Peter Kim, Cam Beck, Drew McLellan, Clay Parker Jones, Greg Verdino, Kevin Dugan, Lewis Green, Mark Goren, Matt Dickman, Mike Sansone (ok you have a headstart), Sean Howard and Paul McEnany. Anyone else you want to see with a mo? Let me know and I will add them to the list.

To sponsor me:

  1. Visit the Movember website
  2. Choose to donate or to sponsor
  3. Enter my registration number : 158914
  4. Begin to FEEL GOOD about doing good

To JOIN the team:

  1. Visit the Movember website
  2. Choose the Join a Team option
  3. Use the Captain’s registration number 158914
  4. And my email address: servant [at] servantofchaos [dot] com
  5. Begin to FEEL GOOD about participating

So, You Think You Can Market? Round 1

Competitions

Bqcomp1

Welcome to Round 1 of So, You Think You Can Market? in support of TheBargainQueen.com.

First up, a refresher … in this competition marketers will put forward their best ideas based on this brief from Sara. The entries will be published here … and the best idea in each round will be voted on by a wide, wide panel of marketing experts — YOU. That’s right, you get to decide on which idea proceeds to the next round … and which idea, ultimately, will be worked up in time for a Christmas promotion. Now is your chance to VOTE!

So, the first two entries to kick off proceedings are:

  1. Matthew Mantey – "What the Queen Wants".
    1.  Register whatthequeenwants.com
    2.  Copy and paste the items at bargainqueen onto the new site
    3.  Send new url to existing bq purchasers and bq email list with
    instructions to pass new queenwants url immediately and directly to their
    significant other, upon any purchase conversions (or other qualifying
    conversions) suggest purchasers send it on to their clueless friends of the
    same ilk
    4.  Repeat for all future purchasers and email captures
    5.  Build queenwants application for FB
    6.  Have a few influential male friends download it and jock it
    7.  insert conversions into email stream above
    8.  register whattogetherthisyear.com redirect to queenwants and repeat
  2. Casey Degon – senior at Ithaca College (update: Casey’s blog – reelmoviemarketing.blogspot.com)
    There are two parts to my solution that I believe will help not only the company’s pocket book but their image as well. The audience I am trying to reach are college graduated men ages 20-30. Their most common tool of communication is just like any other college grad, facebook.com.
    I propose using the application of gifts on Facebook to spread the word. During an in class discussion, the class discussed how they usually will not pay for the gift unless they know its going to charity.
    The Bargain Queen should therefore partner up with a charity group and then create gifts that are exactly like the items they are talking about on their web site.  Half of the sales will go towards charity, the other half towards helping the marketing budget. When men click on the gifts, they are redirected to The Bargain Queen web site were they can find out more. If they choose to by the gift and send it to a friend, their friend will not only be sent the graphic and the link from which they can view, but they will also be entered into a drawing to receive that particular article of clothing for free.

OK … Now, you have read the first two responses … now is your chance to VOTE.

You have until the end of Wednesday, November 7. Round two will be live the following day!