ideas

ideas / marketing / music / word of mouth — 3 Comments
10
Jul 09

Some thoughts on “United Breaks Guitars”

Sons Of Maxwell, the guys that put this video together are a small Canadian band from Nova Scotia. Was this a display of marketing genius? Definitely. Has it got them tons of press and views on Youtube? Absolutely. Will United make things right? Maybe. But will it help them win new fans & help take the band to the next level? That i’m not so sure about, at least not the way they may have wanted.

This video is catapulting them from playing pubs in Nova Scotia to coverage on CNN overnight. I just don’t think this is necessarily a good thing for a band because it turns you into a meme, which (as we have seen) have a limited shelf life. This video is going to cast a shadow over everything they do, shows, interviews etc – for the rest of their careers. I guess if they are going the Weird Al Yankovic path that’s ok, but didn’t you start a band to be known for the music?

business / ideas / marketing — No Comments
25
Feb 09

Marketers are like VC’s

A venture capitalist may be invested in hundreds of start-ups, the majority of which never achieve their objectives. However, because the payoff can be so high, when their investments do well it pays for the losses and even returns a profit. It proves the model works.

With all the noise out there these days, it’s unreasonable to expect you can hit a marketing homerun on command. However, with enough “at bats” you are going to knock a few out of the park and prove all your naysayers wrong. The question is, how many at bats are you taking with your marketing?

annoying / business / coding / ideas / recommendations — 1 Comment
5
Feb 09

My letter to Go Transit

For those not from the Toronto area, GO transit provides commuter train & bus services from the burbs to union station (downtown hub). Now, GO is waaaaaay behind technologically speaking, and is plagued by constant delays & technical difficulties. As a web developer, i was excited when i learned today that BART in San Francisco is now exposing it’s data to the community. It got me thinking, and a little bit angry though. Why aren’t our transit companies offering the same things? If they are i want to know when we can expect it.

So… i sent them an email with a few recommendations:

1. Create a http://code.google.com/transit/spec/transit_feed_specification.html for the trains, which would get the detailed station & scheduling information into Google Maps.

2. For each train station, come up with a way to track the # of mins until the next train arrives and publish/maintain this information as XML for the developer community on the GO website.

3. Publish/maintain the Go Transit train schedule as XML for the developer community.

4. Publish/maintain all service advisories in XML format for the developer community in realtime.

I doubt i will get a response, but i will update if i do.

February 17th, 2009: Update – i received a response from Metrolinx (who i also sent my inquiry too). Here is what they had to say:

Note that you have sent your comments to Metrolinx. We are a provincial agency created by the Government of Ontario in 2006 and are tasked with addressing the urgent need to improve and integrate transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). Our mission is to develop a state-of-the-art transportation system that moves people and goods efficiently, economically and in an environmentally sustainable way. In doing so we are working closely with all of the transit authorities in the GTHA. However we are not involved in their day-to-day operations.

The GO Transit website is administered by GO Transit and as such I have passed your inquiry on to their Public Relations department publicrelations@gotransit.com. If you wish you can send further comments on their website to this e-mail address.

Metrolinx continues to maintain a close relationship with GO Transit as reflected in “The Big Move”, our regional transportation plan for the GTHA. You can review and/or download “The Big Move” at: http://www.metrolinx.com/thebigmove/index.html .

Best Regards,
Jacquie

Jacquie Menezes
Senior Associate, Public Affairs and Media
Metrolinx (Greater Toronto Transportation Authority)
Jacquie.Menezes@metrolinx.com
416.874.5923
www.metrolinx.com

And the response from GO Transit directly:

Thanks for writing about the GO Transit Web site. I have forwarded your suggestions to our Web committee for review. In the meantime, thanks again for sending valuable feedback — we appreciate your ideas and links to other sites.

Allison Derin
Webmaster
GO Transit
mailto:webmaster@gotransit.com

Again, i will update as i receive updates. Follow me on Twitter and i will send a Tweet as/if it happens.

business / facebook / ideas / marketing / music / myspace / twitter — 5 Comments
4
Feb 09

Some tips on using social media for bands

Update Jan 16 2010: Check out my Q&A with a reader which elaborates on this post.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3173/3001411113_cb33e76c35_m.jpgHave you heard of Joe Purdy? Me neither. He made a healthy six-figures last year from his music, bought a house & sold more than 650,000 tracks on iTunes. How?

A good friend of mine was over for dinner last night and we had a chat about his band’s marketing efforts for their upcoming album, and here are some of the ideas that came out of our discussion:

- Maintain a blog/podcast, Twitter account, Facebook group, Myspace presence and any other worthwhile social media tools out there (don’t neglect them!)
- Advertise all the above at shows, in interviews, on the band’s website…EVERYWHERE!
- Give away mp3′s of your music for free (from your website), and encourage people to share it with their friends using the above tools. Maybe even seed it on Bittorrent.
- Never spend a cent on traditional advertising. It costs way too much to cut through the noise these days and the ROI is small.
- Use social media to ‘rally the troops’, crowdsource & interact with your fans – keep them engaged!
- Make damn sure all your music is on iTunes & Amazon. Even though they may have a few mp3′s they got for free from you your true fans will buy your music.
- Have a consistent ‘branding’ from the myspace page to the live show

The bottom line is, these days people have too much choice, and to make matters worse there is too much noise in the world. This means people aren’t listening to you. They are however, listening to their friends and people they trust. The key is finding people who have the Otaku for your music and making it as easy as possible for them to do your marketing for you.

I almost forgot – above all else, make amazing music.

business / ideas / marketing / word of mouth — 1 Comment
16
Dec 08

Marketers – don’t give up on social media!

Last week i wrote about an iphone game i had been playing quite a bit the past few weeks. It’s a very challenging game at first, but i figured out what i thought was a winning strategy and decided to share it here. I think i spent about 20 minutes writing the post, and another 20-30 minutes casually submitting it to Digg, and also searching around online where people were talking about this game and sharing my post in those circles (apple discussion forums, yahoo answers etc…).

The results were surprising. Since last week, that post has generated over 7k in unique visitors.

As i type this, I have about 85 posts on this blog to date, with only a few handfuls getting much in the way of traffic. This would seem like a colossal waste of time. However, the more stuff you “throw against the wall”, the better chance something eventually will stick, right?. Keep experimenting and eventually your content will click with an audience.

Only 16% trust corporate blogs

Only 16% trust corporate blogs

A recent Forrester study showed that corporate blogs are the least trusted source of information about products & services, so it’s really important that you don’t waste time trying to sell – it doesn’t work. Remember that famous scene in Glengarry Glen Ross with Alec Baldwin “A – always! B – be! C – closing!”? I think a good rule for marketers is “never be selling” when it comes to social media. Instead, the right approach is to continue to work on developing remarkable content that somehow relates to what you sell. If you can drive a few thousand eyeballs to your social media efforts, a) even if they don’t buy anything, that’s thousands of people who now know your brand, and b) a few of those visitors are probably going to continue over to your product pages and learn about what it is you sell.

Consider this, how much would it cost to get 7,000 people to your booth at a tradeshow?

annoying / ideas / money / tech — 3 Comments
2
Dec 08

Why are Canadian banks so behind the times?

Have you seen Mint.com? If you haven’t you should check it out, because it is awesome. Not so fast though, Mint along with a number of other web based financial analytics apps are not supported by Canadian banks – yet. This seems like a no brainer to me. If one of the big Canadian banks offered online functionality like this to their customers i would seriously consider switching.

I think there is an opportunity here to really innovate the online banking experience in Canada, it’ll be interesting to see who’s going to make it happen.

cool / how to / ideas / productivity / recommendations / software — 2 Comments
18
Nov 08

How to use Evernote to monitor your SEO efforts

Website Grader is a really good tool to benchmark your site on some SEO best practices. I was just grading a client of mine this morning, thinking how it would be good to keep a history of their progress when it hit me.

What i do now is take a screenshot of the grade, using the Evernote screenshot feature and automatically it is dated so i can use Evernote to keep track of our progress (or lack thereof).

cool / ideas / iphone / productivity — 7 Comments
21
Oct 08

How are you using Evernote?

2008-10-21_1511
I have been using Evernote lately for business meetings and i’m loving it. I hate taking notes. If you have an iPhone (or other supported device) you can let it do the heavy lifting for you. When the meeting starts, i capture the discussion as a “voice note”. The mic is pretty good at picking up someone speaking even across the room. Typically there is some scribbling that has been done on the whiteboard as well. After the meeting, i’ll just take a shot of the board with the camera as a “snapshot note”.

Now when i need to refer back to the meeting i can access virtually everything that took place. Love it! All the content is stored on the Evernote web service, so it syncs with your Evernote desktop client as well which means whether you are at your desktop or mobile device your data is accessible.

The only complaint i have, is that voice notes are limited to 5 minutes in length. So right now i have to quickly save every 5 minutes and start another ‘part’ to the meeting. I suspect this may be a limitation of the iPhone SDK though.

Evernote is a free download for Mac & PC and is available here.
The iPhone client can be found in the app store.

apple / ideas / iphone — No Comments
21
Oct 08

The Fix the iPhone website

2008-10-21_0932

While it’s not really an iPhone shortcoming, maybe this will help with my idea from earlier this year.

Check out the site here.

ideas / marketing / word of mouth — No Comments
1
Oct 08

Content + Quality = Audience




2008-10-01_1043

Originally uploaded by oavil

The thing that is really flawed with old school marketing is that you are asking your potential customer to ‘pay’ something, i.e “hey you should pay attention to this email i just sent you and 20,000 others!!”. or “now that i have you on the phone, you should pay attention to why you should switch phone companies!”. Painful truth is it just doesn’t work anymore.

That is why developing good content online is so important. Here’s a formula for you, Content + Quality = Audience. Your business needs an audience to sell product!

If you do this, you’ll build trust and thought leadership with your potential customers. If you establish yourself as the ‘go to’ brand in your space, who are they going to call when they have pain? The guy who understands their problems!

“But my executive team is fighting me on this!”. A post by David Meerman i read this morning that makes a good point about dealing with your boss.


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