Wind Mobile is the latest mobile carrier to hit the scene in Canada.
They are spending millions on print and billboard (transit) advertising to market their new service. Yet it looks like they overlooked one aspect of their marketing plans…
Being prepared to handle all the inbound traffic those millions of dollars can bring.
Here’s what Wind’s website looks like around 9am this Sunday morning: Continue reading »
The other day I got a piece of direct mail from Shaw Cable.
It was an over-sized postcard, double-sided in a standout colors.
Nothing that interesting yet … However, what was interesting is the level of personalization they included in the direct mail piece.
(front)
(back)
“Japan just got a little bit closer” To many of you that might not mean anything, but to me it does. Continue reading »
Most meetings are a waste of time.
You go in with your plan, you start to discuss the issues on your list … and somehow the focus of the meetings gets chopped and splinters into a thousand tangents. Surely, you’ve encountered this before?
At that point you have to make a choice. You can be the bad ass and slam your fist on the table and say “ENOUGH! Let’s focus” or you can sit back hoping that all the bantering and meaningless small talk will end shortly. The problem with the latter is that it just never seems to end and time continues to tick-a-way.
So unless you’re hardcore enough to jump right in front of that out of control train and tell it to stop … well, you’re pretty much screwed. Continue reading »
If you’ve ever wanted a company to listen to your feedback and not only SAY they’re going to do something about it … but actually DO something about it … then you’re going to love this video.
This is a huge move for Domino’s.
Disclosure: I haven’t had the ‘new’ Dominoes and it’s been a while since I had the ‘old’ one too. Nevertheless, this is a clever campaign and very well done video. Nice work Domino’s and team!
Today I received an email with Warren Buffet’s Annual Letter for 2009.
I don’t know whether Warren Buffet writes this himself … though I must say the copy oozes personality … and if he didn’t write it … there’s one heck of a copywriter behind this.
Size Can Fool Ya
Given Berkshire Hathaway’s monstrous size you’d expect an annual letter from the top dog to be some dry cookie-cutter verbiage filled with all the usual corporate jargon.
Yet this letter has none of that…
Financial Copywriting at Its Best
The document his lined with numbers, percentages, return rates and all that good stuff that would usually put the average person to sleep … this letter makes you laugh, nod, and believe in the company.
This paragraph gives a clear picture of the company’s values:
With our acquisition of BNSF, we now have about 257,000 employees and literally hundreds of
different operating units. We hope to have many more of each. But we will never allow Berkshire
to become some monolith that is overrun with committees, budget presentations and multiple
layers of management.
And how about this beauty:
We make no attempt to woo Wall Street. Investors who buy and sell based upon media or analyst
commentary are not for us.
The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics have come and gone. I definitely enjoyed having the city come to life and reminded me of my days in packed Asian cities such as Osaka, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
There’s another story going on that many people aren’t familiar with – the success of sales of Olympic goods. A local company, Elastic Path Software was tasked with running this ecommerce store.
During the development process and on an on-going basis the good folks at Elastic Path kept notes and shared their results as they optimized the ecommerce stores web pages.
Here are links to 4 such blog posts. If you’re into internet marketing and website conversion optimization, you’ll enjoy these links:
Checkout Process
Product Details Page
Homepage
Category Page
Was searching for a rental car company in Europe and heard of Easycar. Anyways I was too lazy to type it into the address bar so I just hit up Google for the search. Look what came back … I’ve never seen this kind of Adwords ad that delivers additional links.
Is this new? Any experiences with it?
As I continue to work on building new businesses a formula for reaching success faster has started to emerge.
Many of you are likely familiar with it. But actually executing it takes determination and is harder said than done. Why? If everyone followed through there would be many more successful startups around.
One company that look to be executing extremely well on this formula is Japadog in Vancouver.
Japadog sells hotdogs. But from the get go they’ve taken this commodity type business and differntiated themselves extremely well. How you ask? They sell hotdogs created in Japanese style. The hotdogs are covered with Japanese mayonnaise, seaweed, Japanese pork and many other wild and wildly tasty goodness.
Back to Japadog’s model though. They seem to have started off with just one hotdog stand. They tested the waters and when things went well they opened another, and now another is coming. They started off in good locations and opened up in even better ones. Continue reading »
Just went over to Zellers’ website today to compare some products with another local retailer.
The initial look of the site was great. Clearly they’ve done some nice design work. But seems like someone forgot the customer experience and why people actually visit retailers’ websites…to look at product!
There’s no where on this page to find what products they carry. The only way is to click on View Flyer and then have to enter a postal code. I don’t want to see a flyer with some products, I want to search as I please…is that so much to ask?
In this day and age it’s surprising to see that Zellers shows so little of what they carry. Maybe I’m missing something here? If I am, do let me know…BTW, I never found what I was looking for (I headed for another retailer’s site).
I contacted both of these companies recently to get more information for a new project.
Intense Debate replied with a very detailed and honest answer about how their product can and can not be used.
Disqus replied with “You can use Disqus”, that’s it.
I’ve heard great things about both companies and products. But as someone that really values customer service and support it’s interesting to note how different the responses were.
Just typed in “Freshbooks” into Google and got this interesting result. This is the first time I’ve seen a Twitter result come back like this. Note: Search was on Google Canada.
My 3rd installment of How to Become A Consultant is now live. You can also check the other two in the series from that page. And there are still a few more to come…
Hope you all are well. Let’s keep things moving!
I know a lot of marketers in the social media space are saying that the old approach to advertising doesn’t work anymore.
No doubt there’s a ton of books written on the ‘new’ social media landscape and marketing strategies and techniques that
can be used effectively. And hey, that’s all good.
In fact, I not only believe a lot of what authors such as David Meerman Scott have written in their recent books – we’ve been putting some of these principles to work for our clients for quite some time.
What I found myself questioning the other day, is how can so many people say that the old direct response approach to selling products directly to consumers doesn’t work anymore…when the TV and magazines are filled with repeat advertisers hawking their wares. Continue reading »
It’s been extremely busy with the launch of Advicetap.com the business community and directory for consultants.
Most of my writing these days has been up on Business Consulting Buzz, so for the latest articles on being a marketing consultant and the consulting business be sure to check that out.
I’ll continue to post here as often as possible. Stay tuned. Cheers!
I’ve written a few new consulting articles over at Business Consulting Buzz. Most are looking at the consulting business, but
the latest is all about time management for consultants. Check em out!
Attended the Connect ‘09 conference yesterday. Some solid networking and presentations. Highlight of the night for me was definitely Leonard Brody’s talk on business and entrepreneurship.
Lots going on right now.
You can check out Business Consulting Buzz for the latest articles from other consultants and yours truly.
I’ll also be attending several events in October before heading to Japan at the end of the month.
Let me know if you’ll be attending any of these…
Also more exciting news coming very soon on a new project…stay tuned.
Here are a few more consulting related articles you may find of interest.
Two are from expert consultants and the other from yours truly. Check em out.
Let me know what you think of them on this blog or on the Business Consulting Buzz blog.
I was watching CNN this morning as I was having my breakfast. Either CNN viewers are becoming much younger or CNN has a big message to market mixup…
The broadcaster played a song by TI and Justin Timberlake, the song not only had profanities in it, some of which the station forgot to cut. It’s clear that by the songs name and if you listen to the lyrics that this isn’t what you’re used to hearing on a news station.
Mixup or is CNN repositioning itself for a younger audience?
You can check out three of my most recent articles below:
Consulting Methods to Keep Clients
