Thoughts on Business Cards

I have always been a believer that if you are going to have business cards designed for your business, then you might as well make them memorable.  The cards should have what I call the “Wow, that’s cool!” effect on someone.  This will make the person remember you as well as your brand better than a generic card.  Keep in mind that while I am a big fan of “standing out” when it comes to business cards, it should never be deemed a mission critical expense.   I came across a few ideas for business cards and logos:

http://creativebits.org/cool_business_card_designs
http://logopond.com/all/

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A New Era of Marketing

Marketing has evolved over the course of the century into a completely different model.  It no longer works to canvas your brand or ads all over the place without a strategy.  According to Seth Godin, we are experiencing a shift from Mass Marketing to Tribal Marketing.

Mass Marketing: Average ideas being delivered through an abundance of ads. People with money and power deliver this idea to a mass audience

Tribal Marketing: Leading and connecting people and ideas.  The internet has caused a proliferation of tribes.  It is easy to find specific groups and target them.  All you need is a 1000 people who care enough about your product (true believer) that they spread the idea for you.

Bottom line is that it not nearly as effective to flood the market with your brand any more, it is necessary to implement a strategy to either create a tribe or win over existing tribes to become loyal followers and true believers.  Seth Godin recommends the following steps to

Build an Idea:

1. Tell a Story
2. Connect a Tribe
3. Lead a Movement
4. Make Change

Three questions you have to answer as you build an idea:

1. Who are you upsetting?  You must CHALLENGE the status quo.
2. Who are you connecting with?  You need to know who you are targeting and build a CULTURE.
3. Who are you leading?  Identify who and how you are showing where to go next and COMMIT to them

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Sources:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/538

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A New Era of Marketing

Marketing has evolved over the course of the century into a completely different model.  It no longer works to canvas your brand or ads all over the place without a strategy.  According to Seth Godin, we are experiencing a shift from Mass Marketing to Tribal Marketing.

Mass Marketing: Average ideas being delivered through an abundance of ads. People with money and power deliver this idea to a mass audience

Tribal Marketing: Leading and connecting people and ideas.  The internet has caused a proliferation of tribes.  It is easy to find specific groups and target them.  All you need is a 1000 people who care enough about your product (true believer) that they spread the idea for you.

Bottom line is that it not nearly as effective to flood the market with your brand any more, it is necessary to implement a strategy to either create a tribe or win over existing tribes to become loyal followers and true believers.  Seth Godin recommends the following steps to

Build an Idea:

1. Tell a Story
2. Connect a Tribe
3. Lead a Movement
4. Make Change

Three questions you have to answer as you build an idea:

1. Who are you upsetting?  You must CHALLENGE the status quo.
2. Who are you connecting with?  You need to know who you are targeting and build a CULTURE.
3. Who are you leading?  Identify who and how you are showing where to go next and COMMIT to them

———————
Sources:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/538

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Evolution of SEO

I read a great little article on how SEO has continued to change and evolve over the past few years.  SEO is something that will continue to change, and those that stay on top of it will be successful.  It used to be that page design and backlink generation were the keys to bumping up your webpage on the search results page.  While still important, this has become merely a piece of the overall puzzle to conquering SEO.  A large piece of SEO is now based on interactivity, primarily represented through effective use of Social Media.  Some of the most effect tools that John Jantsch recommends are Flickr, YouTube, EzineArticles, PitchEngine, FaceBook, LinkedIn, twitter, Google Maps, Yelp!, Insider Pages, and industry related social networking sites.  Below is an excerpt from the article:

I’m not suggesting that web page optimization and inbound links are no longer important, they are, they just might not be enough anymore. It is rare these days to do any kind of normal search that does not return results from social media sites. Blog content dominates many question related searches and videos, audios, and images are routinely mixed in on page one searches on both Google and Yahoo.

What this means for the typical small business is that you must add a blog and podcast to the mix, upload, tag, and thoroughly describe images on sites like Flickr, create customer testimonial videos housed on YouTube, write articles and press releases to submit to EzineArticles and PitchEngine, create and brand optimize profiles on FaceBook, LinkedIn, twitter, Google Maps and industry related social networking sites and get very proactive about generating positive reviews on sites like Yelp!, Google Maps, and Insider Pages or you’re not really online anymore.

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Sources:
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2009/05/05/the-changing-face-of-seo/

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Creative Destruction & Recessionary Marketing

Creative Destruction is always widely talked about during recessionary times.  Creative Destruction is the killing off of existing products, services, technologies, or business models by radical change or by achieving desired results by more efficient means.  For example, Wal-Mart’s business model driving mom-and-pop stores out of business, or music CD’s being replaced by mp3s, etc. The internet in general has caused a tremendous amount of creative destruction by providing the means for continual intellectual and process driven innovation.  Here is a cool chart below that I found.

Anyway, we know that recessions are painful but we also know that they provide opportunity.  The point of this post is not to just point this out, but to remind us that marketing efforts must also change during a time like this.  Instead of marketing with the mantra of “make your life better by buying things you don’t need” (a little bit of sarcasm inserted here), the more appropriate mantra is “improve your life by purchasing a needed product that solves a specific problem or need”.  We are working with products (book and other muse ideas) that potentially can address specific problems for people in our current economic climate, we must just make sure we cater to our market appropriately in our product development and marketing efforts.

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Sources:
http://tmccune.blogspot.com/2008/04/creative-destruction-in-action.html

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Sonic Lighter iPhone App – good viral marketing case study

What a simple app is my first impression. But what makes Sonic Lighter impressive is the sophisticated viral marketing genius behind this appearingly simple little lighter app.  Unlike its competitors, it’s effectively leveraging location awareness and social networking/human team building instincts to create a bit of a phenomenon. The result is a viral spread.

As TechCrunch comments:

I wasn’t impressed: there are no less than ten different virtual lighter apps in iTunes, which is what I’d call a saturated market. And it gets better, because Sonic Lighter costs $.99. The official Zippo iphone app is free. The basic functionality of all of these is similar – you have a virtual lighter, you light it and when you move the iPhone the flame moves around. 

So, how did the creators make it stand out?

You can optionally share your location information with the application, and when you light it you show up on a virtual earth-like globe. France and Japan are going absolutely crazy with users, which you can see quite clearly from the virtual globe and the screenshot to the right. The longer a person keeps the lighter going (I have mine sitting here burning while I write this), the more”KiloJoules” you burn. And that helps contribute to the geographical teams that are sprouting up and trying to be the brightest on the globe. Oh, and you can blow on the microphone and extinguish the flame.

Sonic Lighters can also ignite other lighters on other iPhones, which is a fun party trick if you’ve had enough to drink. Pretty soon iPhone users in the room who don’t have the app will be happily paying $.99 based solely on the geek peer pressure.  See the video below:

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Sources:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/26/what-is-the-deal-with-this-stupid-lighter-iphone-app/

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Great example of a promotion

NEW YORK — (June 20, 2008) Olympic decathlete Brian Clay has teamed up with WIN Products Inc., creators of WIN High Performance Sport Detergent and the official licensed detergent of the U.S. Olympic Team, for a new charity initiative called “Take Your Shirts Off to WIN.” Clay will announce a national program calling all fans to donate workout apparel to WIN, who will wash the clothing and send it to Giving is Winning, an organization that promotes sport activities for the youth in refugee camps throughout the world.

This is just a great example of how to promote in a meaningful way and support a good cause.  Something like this would bring a considerable amount of PR for a company, and as D West said, “If its free, its for me!”

This might be applicable for project Mixxer.  

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