word of mouth

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?

music / recommendations / word of mouth — 1 Comment
27
Mar 09

Gutter Anthems – Enter The Haggis

If you have never heard of them before, Enter the Haggis is usually described as a celtic rock band, mainly because of the bagpipes, pan flute & fiddle. They have been featured on Regis & Kelly, Canada AM (video at the bottom), PBS and Breakfast with the Arts (A&E). Back in the early days, ETH made a name for themselves on the celtic/irish festival circuit for their modern/high energy interpretations of traditional celtic & irish songs, but on the past few albums they have been evolving tremendously, taking some exciting genre-bending risks along the way.

Now, i should mention their last album “Soapbox Heroes” – was probably my least favorite ETH album (sorry guys hehe). The production was slick, the musicianship was exemplary as usual and there were a few catchy tunes like new monthly flavour & one last drink, but something was just lacking for me overall. I do not feel this way about Gutter Anthems at all. I cannot stop listening to this album, check my last.fm profile for proof! This album is a very special musical creation and while i don’t usually talk about album reviews here, today i make an exception.

Here are some of my personal favorites:

Litter & the Leaves: a ridiculously catchy nod to Dropkick Murphy’s, Green Day & Freddy Mercury

Cameos: A great poppy folk song many will find reminiscent of Great Big Sea.

Death of Johnny Mooring: A hard rocker that tells the story of a Canadian fiddle great who was killed outside a bar one night in 1974. The vivid imagery in storytelling is prevalent on other tracks as well (check out “Noseworthy & Piercy”!).

DNA: One of the catchiest, radio friendly songs on the album. Love the REM/Goo Goo Dolls’ish guitar melodies.

Lights & Cars: Lush vocal harmonies, the ending reminds me of “They Stood up for Love” by Live. Check it out, i’m not crazy.

Murphy’s Ashes: Rush would be proud of this prog-rock instrumental accomplishment. As a musician myself i can tell you shuffle + hard rock is not an easy thing to pull off but when it works (as it does here) it’s awesome.

Suburban Plains: Fans of Paul Simon’s Graceland or world music should dig this tune, featuring some masterful drumming/percussion and African inspired guitar lines.

These are just my personal favorites, but every track is strong. I think that’s part of what makes this album so special. Like classic ‘rootsy’ albums that came before it such as “Crash” by Dave Matthews Band, Gutter Anthems is a melodic tour de force which i HIGHLY recommend everyone should check out.

You can listen to the whole album for free here. If you like what you hear, share their music with your friends, buy their stuff, go to their shows & be sure to follow them on Twitter / Facebook / Myspace & Youtube.

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?

business / how to / marketing / word of mouth — No Comments
14
Nov 08

How do I convince my boss of the ROI of new marketing?

I have only ever worked for the “MBA” driven “i have to measure everything” marketing types, so i know first hand exactly how frustrating this can be. This great presentation by David Meerman Scott discusses handling the poor neanderthal marketing leaders in your company.

apple / cool / gaming / iphone / tech / word of mouth — No Comments
16
Oct 08

Fieldrunners: best iPhone game to date?

The Good

  • Lots of fun, fast paced.
  • Seems to have pretty solid replay value.
  • Controls are simple and feel good.
  • Graphics are pretty solid.

The Bad

  • No soundtrack or even sound effects, although this is rumored to be coming in an update.

How it works
Your goal is to stop waves of enemies from making it from the left side of the screen to the right. With each wave, you’ll face different & stronger enemies. Once 20 make it to the right, it’s game over. So how do you stop them? You’re able to create 4 different types of ‘towers’, each having it’s own strengths/weaknesses. You have your “Gatling Tower”, which has a weak but continuous short range attack. The “Goo Tower” which does no damage, but slows enemies down from a medium range. The “Missile Tower” which causes fairly significant splash damage & from a long range and finally the “Tesla Tower” which does massive damage but only within medium range.

As you kill bad guys with your towers, you get cash. Cash is required to buy towers. The other interesting dimension to the game is you can also spend cash on upgrades for existing towers to make them more powerful. The positioning of towers and the types of towers you use make for a really interesting strategy game.

So here’s what i think about it.

Graphics 9/10
Really solid for an iPhone. Only seems to be one level right now (albeit a long one), but the textures are really nice and suit the game. Kind of reminds me of Legend of Zelda for SNES if you recall that game.

Audio 0/10
Unless i am missing something, which i don’t think i am there is none! No sound effects, no music – nothing.*

Gameplay 8.5/10
Tapping & positioning towers feels just right. If i was going to complain about anything it might be that i wish you could zoom in a bit more and add more variety of maps.

* On the App Store page the developer mentions a big update is coming that adds music, sound & new content, which will take this game from great to awesome most likely.

Fieldrunners is available on the App Store for $4.99. Here’s the link.

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.


cool / ideas / marketing / wine / word of mouth — No Comments
23
Sep 08

Building your personal brand

Love Gary V.

apple / business / marketing / recommendations / word of mouth — No Comments
21
Jul 08

Word of mouth – how to get it?

Ever noticed how the mediocre products/services are usually the ones to offer rewards for word of mouth (“refer 5 friends and get a free ____ “). Yet when referring a truly amazing product to family/friends consumers are more than happy to do this sans incentives. The satisfaction from evangelizing is enough reward for them!

I’ve actually gotten to the point with my own consumer habits that when i hear/see an ad for product/service promotion it changes my image of the brand to one of desperation “if they had a product people actually want/need they wouldn’t need to be doing this – clearly something is wrong what they are offering”. Maybe that’s just me though?

Every day brands like Apple, Virgin Airlines and Google are doing some insanely powerful marketing regardless of their advertising. Word of mouth is king. So how do you get people ‘converting’ their friends / family / colleagues to your brand?

Easier said than done, but you need to build something and make it remarkable. Hint: must be remarkable to your customers.

apple / cool / tech / word of mouth — 1 Comment
7
Jul 08

Why i’m still going to buy an iphone from Rogers

Rogers voice/data plans are horrible. With no competition in Canada, Rogers is quite frankly gouging consumers but it doesn’t really matter… people are still going to be lined up on Friday morning, myself included. Here’s why:

  1. Canada has 3 cellular carrier options. Bell, Telus & Rogers. The iPhone is exclusively a GSM phone, Telus/Bell are both using CDMA technology which means the iPhone will never work with their networks.
  2. Bell & Telus have terrible options for phones. I’ve been patient with Bell Mobility for like 10 years.
  3. I have an ipod touch and cannot live without it. I also have a cell phone, digital camera & GPS. This will replace my ipod touch and consolidate alot of seperate gadgetry i tend to carry around.
  4. As a web developer, i’m excited about learning how to develop for the iPhone and getting to write apps that take advantage of the GPS or camera.
  5. The iPhone syncs with Address Book on my iMac at home, so centralizing my contacts is going to be awesome.
business / marketing / word of mouth — No Comments
11
Apr 08

Do it for the users

I wish my past managers, and THEIR managers had taken this advice.

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