Thanks to Jimmy for pointing out this great video that he found on Tristan Walker’s blog.
My wish for Martin Luther King Jr. day is for all of us to have a dream. And act on it.
If you can’t see the video, click here.
The Second Sale
January 11, 2010 | 7 Comments
Too many marketers focus solely on the first sale.
I was leaving Las Vegas today (Nicholas Cage was nowhere in sight) and with my stomach sensing that my culinary options would be limited once on board, I decided to grab lunch while at the gate.
My best option was Moe’s Mexican Grill. I had never eaten at a Moe’s but a burrito sounded good and it was very close to my gate. The next option was a Starbucks five gates away. Clearly, my first visit to Moe’s was one of impulse and convenience.
While waiting in line, I perused the menu.
The Homewrecker brought to mind a joke a friend recently made about about Gisele Bundchen.
The Jon Coctostan quesadilla brought me back to about 136 hilarious late night viewings of Fletch with my good friend Ben Lower.
Joey Bag Of Donuts made me think of the former Green Bay Packers center Frank Winters, who teammates would lovingly refer to as Frankie Bag Of Donuts.
Ruprict triggered memories of laughing uncontrollably at Steve Martin’s hilarious character in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. (Why is the cork on the fork?)
I physically smiled. A few funny item names on a menu immediately triggered happy memories.
Then something happened.
Moe’s workers seemed more upbeat than your typical airport food service employees.
Moe’s customers seemed happier and less haggard.
Moe’s burrito tasted a little better than I expected.
Was all this real or a placebo effect leftover from the menu that made me smile?
It doesn’t matter.
I won’t drive miles out of my way to go to Moe’s but if I’m hungry and they are an option, the choice is easy.
If I’m alone, I get to smile at the menu again (maybe they’ll have some new items by then – I would love to see an Underhill Steak Sandwich). If I’m with a friend, I get to share their enjoyment of the inside joke.
By having a little fun with their menu, Moe’s locked up the second sale.
Thinking outside the (Four)square
January 6, 2010 | 9 Comments
Today I was at the Consumer Electronics Show helping Altec Lansing (a Tribes Win client) setup their booth. In between unpacking and displaying product and setting up the booth’s wifi, I was tweeting on my iPhone and decided to check in on Foursquare.
(Tip: If you ever need to setup wifi at a conference, I highly recommend Trade Show Internet – it all came in a nice little box and setup was a snap. Great service.)
If you don’t know about Foursquare, it’s a location based social network and game. Mashable did a great overview post on it here. The potential for Foursqaure is huge and just this week, they went global.
While I was setting up the booth amidst the thousands of others, the marketing portion of my mind (the rest is just Wire episodes) started thinking of fun ways to encourage people to stop by the Altec Lansing booth.
The progression of my thought process was as follows:
1) CES is filled with early adopter tech geeks like myself.
2) Many of these tech geeks will be using their geeky smartphones and many will be checking in on Foursquare.
3) People like to win things.
So I setup a “special” on Foursquare. Businesses can setup almost any special they can think of for Foursqaure users. For instance, they can setup a special where the mayor (the person who has checked in the most times at a given venue) gets a free drink, like in the example below.
So I setup a Foursquare special where anyone who comes by the Altec Lansing CES booth and checks in gets entered in a drawing to win the Mix boom box. If you haven’t seen or heard this thing, it’s the quickest bass-booming way to punch your ticket to cool-kid status, especially for us tech & gadget geeks.
So now when anyone checks in anywhere near our Altec Lansing booth at CES, Foursquare will notify them of the “special” we have and they can stop by to enter and win a Mix.
Is this the intended use of Foursquare? Not exactly.
Will our “venue” even exist past Sunday? Nope.
Is it a way for us to meet and connect with more people at the show and have some fun? Definitely.
Sometimes you have to think outside the (four) square.
(I also tweeted that if you stop by, play RockBand and beat Angel’s score, you can win a Stage Gig. If you’re at CES, come by and say hi.)
You need a David
October 19, 2009 | 3 Comments
David makes passengers laugh.
David makes passengers applaud.
David makes passengers safer.
David gives people a story to tell their friends.
David makes it fun for his colleagues to come to work.
David loves his job.
David makes more people fly Southwest Airlines.
David’s video has almost 2.5 million views on YouTube but even without the internet, the story spreads. Social media just helps it spread faster and further.
Your organization needs more people like David.
Do you know how to look for Davids?
Do you know how to hire Davids?
Here’s a secret…
We all have more David in us than we think, it’s just buried beneath years of “you can’t” and “you shouldn’t”.
Does your company culture enable and encourage people like David to be…….like David?
50 Extraordinary Billboards
October 17, 2009 | 1 Comment
Interruption marketing rarely works. Permission marketing is always better.
I honestly believe that most people can’t remember a single billboard they saw in the last week.
Can you?
What if you saw these billboards? Whether you want to buy the product or not, would you at least point it out to anyone else in your vehicle? Would you tell your friends?
[I think some are probably Photoshopped but most are real.]
Full list of all 50 on Johnson Koh’s blog here.
Anyone need a cape?
July 25, 2009 | 2 Comments
A great example of one store who really understands marketing.
The typography.
The store layout.
The consistent story.
The treatment of customers like the superheros.
The absence of fear of lawsuits claiming that their invisibility paint doesn’t really make you invisible.
The fact that the the store is a clever front for the non-profit (youth orientated) creative writing and tutoring center, 826NYC. To enter 826NYC, you actually have to go through a swinging bookcase in the BBS store. Proceeds from the BBS store fund 826NYC directly to help young people with their creative writing skills.
Awesome. I know where I’m buying my next cape.
Image credit: dels from a tribe called next.
An effective parrot
July 5, 2009 | 1 Comment
My good friend Susan is hiring a boss.
That’s right. Hiring a boss.
As we start to wrap up the SAMBA program, Susan took the traditional (and extremely ineffective) job search, cover letter, resume process and flipped it upside-down.
She created a cool website at www.SusanHiresABoss.com.
The positive responses have been overwhelming – you can learn more and read some of the comments here.
Many bosses applied to hire Susan, but one company in particular stood out.
Inventables responded back to Susan in their own unique way by creating a position called, “Susan” on the Careers page of their website. It looked like this:
It was brilliant and showed Susan that Inventables not only understood her but that they were willing to do something out of the ordinary themselves. Of all the applications, theirs clearly stood out. Susan laughed, shared it with the team and responded immediately.
By parroting back to Susan that they were a company willing to break the rules, Inventables got noticed.
What rules did you break today?
Ice, Ice, beautiful
June 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment
The weather is getting warmer and most of the ice we encounter in July is cooling down our lemonade.
Nick Cobbing’s amazing website will change how you think about frozen water. Amazing, breathtaking pictures of glacial ice in forms you’ve never seen.
His site contains a two-option “choose your own adventure”:
Surface Tension is a photographic documentary of stunning ice formations in Greenland.
Noorderlicht is the pictorial diary of the travels of a man named Dutchman Gert, aboard his 100-year-old, double-masted schooner inside the Arctic Circle.
Both stories are worth a look, so refill your lemonade, settle in and let Nick Cobbing show you ice as you’ve never seen it.
What would people love?
June 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Innovate, don’t imitate.
The problem with taking someone else’s idea and doing it a little better is that it’s just as easy for the next company to improve it a little bit more. Cheaper labor. Faster machines. The improvement becomes a linear asymptote, until making any further improvement is costlier than the benefit gained.
Instead, dream up what people would love. Then create it.
I say dream it because nobody will ask for it. Before they existed, nobody asked for:
- the iPod
- OpenTable.com
- Build a Bear workshop
- Blue Man Group
- online check-in
- Twitter
- FedEx
- The W hotels
Nobody ever said, “wow, you know I really love writing extremely short blog posts. I wish there was a website that limited mine to 140 characters or less. THAT would be great.”
Doing something just a little better can make a few dollars in the short run but if you can tighten the screws, someone else can tighten them a bit more.
Zappos didn’t sell shoes online just a little bit better. If that was the plan, they could have stopped when they offered more sizes, colors and styles than anyone else. They dreamed that customers would love the best customer service they’ve ever experienced, online or in person. They were right (and did over $1B in sales last year).
Whether you are thinking of starting a new business or improving your existing business, ask yourself, “what would people love”?
Then build it.
Your idea isn't special
May 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment
I hate to tell you this, but someone else has already thought of it.
You know, that million-dollar gem that you thought of last year but haven’t told anyone about for fear they would steal it?
Go ahead. Tell them. Tell anyone. Tell everyone.
Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK wasn’t the first guy to think about making money by hauling people’s trash away. He just executed better than anyone.
Ev Williams and Biz Stone weren’t the first people to have the idea that microblogging would take off. But they were the first ones to build Twitter. They executed. They won.
The value isn’t in the idea. (Here are 999 ideas you can have for free.) The value is in the execution.
If you can out execute the competition, you’ll win. It doesn’t matter how many people know about your idea.
If you can’t out execute, be honest with yourself. That isn’t likely to change anytime soon, so share the idea with someone who can. Write a blog post. Send a letter to an expert. Start a Facebook page. Partner with somebody who can execute and maybe they’ll bring you the next idea.
Either execute on your idea or share it liberally.
