The Big Day

Posted on April 25, 2011 by adriangstewart

Living as I do here in the USA, it has fascinated me to see the enthusiasm that has developed for the Royal Wedding this Friday.  It fascinates me because I am English and surely therefore my enthusiasm should be the greatest. Should it not?

I can see two big attractions; Firstly (and these are all generalisations) Americans love big weddings, after all this is the country where wedding planners were created. Fridays main event will be the biggest wedding this century and no one can out do the British Royal family when it comes to a wedding. The second reason is because Prince William is marrying a commoner and I believe this brings a lottery type thinking to the event “it could be you” – incredibly long odds perhaps but not impossible. Kate the descendant of coal miners will one day be the queen of England….. that is like winning the biggest lottery going.

According to Neilson Co.the Royal Wedding accounts for 0.20 percent of all news stories on the online versions of U.S. newspapers and magazines, compared to only 0.08 percent for U.K. outlets. This has been the case since the story broke. Back then, news stories about the nuptials accounted for 0.31 percent of all online news content in the USA, compared to 0.19 percent for the UK, Nielsen said.

However, when Nielsen researchers examined social media buzz, (blog posts and online message boards), the Royal Wedding at its peak accounted for 0.47 percent of all posts in the UK, compared to only 0.17 percent in the USA.

What does this all mean? I have absolutely no idea.

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Procrastination

Posted on April 22, 2011 by adriangstewart

Believe it or not this is actually one of my weaknesses… my reason for writing about it here is because several people have read this embryonic blog and said to me me; “I would love to do that but….”

Here are the four most common reasons I hear for not taking action;

I don’t have enough time to do it at the moment…..

And guess what, you never will have. Its the rocks in the jar story…you have to start with the big rocks first….if you really want to write a blog or a book you will make the time.

I don’t have the money to get started…….

It takes less money than you think. I spend more on coffee than I do hosting this blog.

I’m not an expert…….

We all know some subject better than 90% of the population and once you are in that position you are an expert. In two years I learnt enough about breeding South American camelids to start a blog and publish a book. I wasn’t the world expert but I knew more than most people.

There are already other people doing that……

Great – I would be more worried if no one was doing what you wanted to do. A market can be endlessly segmented and new categories created.

Well I hope that helps move you closer to action.

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The Art of the Start

Posted on April 21, 2011 by adriangstewart

Last weekend I had to take a 12 hour drive and wanted to make the most of the journey so decided the time had come to sign up with Audible.com via Amazon and find a book that would keep my interest.

Firstly, the whole sign up process through Amazon was just so easy it was as simple as buying a book from Amazon…. and so it should be…but somehow my expectations were set lower.

After much hemming and hawing I found myself in the management books section and decide to revisit that classic by Guy Kawasaki – The Art of the Start. A quick download onto my iphone and I was ready to hit the road.

If you haven’t read it or listened to it I recommend it to you. The Art of the Start covers the 11 Arts of Entrepreneurship. 

  1. starting
  2. positioning
  3. pitching
  4. writing a business plan
  5. bootstrapping
  6. recruiting
  7. raising capital
  8. partnering
  9. branding
  10. rainmaking
  11. being a mensch

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The Return of Alfa Romeo

Posted on April 20, 2011 by adriangstewart

If you can remember The Graduate from 1967 you will know it featured….. the Alfa Romeo Spider an iconic red Italian sports car from a time when product placement was yet to be invented…..

FIAT have a 30% stake in Chrysler which will shortly climb to almost 50% and it is this new relationship that is encouraging FIAT to dip a toe back in the US auto market through its Alfa Romeo brand.

The bad news is that there will be no blood red Alfa convertibles to set our pulse racing…instead we will probably get a Sport Utility that is still in development……the good news they wont be here until 2013 so there is still plenty of time to save up our hard earned cash.

Much has changed since 1967 and I am just not sure that Americans mothers will want to use an Alfa for the scholl run given that the Alfa logo features a snake eating a small boy…..its true.

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BP – Ad Campaign to Express Remorse

Posted on April 19, 2011 by adriangstewart

According to people that should know BP has commissioned a series of ads as it starts the not insignificant task of reairing its tarnished image.

Full page spreads have been booked in the press, as well as in magazines such as The Spectator, New Scientist Newsweek and The Economist.

BP has so far spent over  $12 billion on the clean up operation and committed a further $500 million on the funding of scientific studies to combat the impact of the spill.

Although the copy for the ad hasn’t been published yet the following is claimed to be close to the final version.

 “This was a tragedy that should not have happened. Our responsibility is to learn from it and share with competitors, partners, governments and regulators to help ensure it never happens again.”

The ad goes on to state that no further oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the well head was successfully sealed in July 2010 and that all beaches and 99 per cent of the waters have since been re-opened to the public.

This latest move follows a huge campaign in the immediate aftermath of the disaster which saw BP spending $5 million a week in America alone.

Storm in a Teacup

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Will Smart Phones Kill Our Old friend e-mail?

Posted on April 18, 2011 by adriangstewart

Smart phones and their associated Apps are the hot new kids in town. e-mail which has been a faithful friend for almost 15 years has an uncertain future. One of the reasons e-mail has been so popular is its low cost and more recently the ability to measure effectiveness in quite sophisticated ways using multi-variate analysis of alternative campaigns.

In 2013 tech firms are estimating they will ship close to 650m handsets…this year alone they will ship one phone for every ten people alive on the planet. 3G is spreading faster than a common cold in a primary school.

What this all means is that e-mail needs to be born again on mobile devices if it is to remain an effective weapon in the marketing arsenal.

Here are some do’s

  • Create mobile content there are no excuses.
  • Plan meticulously and test exhaustively.
  • Use an agency if you don’t have great skills in house.

And some myths

  • One size content fits all – it doesn’t.
  • It almost looks right on some phones – almost is not good enough.
  • All smart phones are equal – nope, this years phones are much more powerful than last years phones.
  • A mobile campaign is all you need – wrong, you also need mobile content on your website.

 

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2D bar-codes – Why?

Posted on April 15, 2011 by adriangstewart

Initially developed by the manufacturing industry to track the movement of parts through the manufacturing process 2D barcodes sometimes called QR codes are the best tool we have at the moment to convert viewers from print media to digital. Getting readers of print to enter a URL has often been a bridge too far and 2D barcodes improve that.

Merging Print with Online

The most popular use of 2D barcodes in marketing is when there is a call to action. The codes are used to lead readers away from print media (but also TV and other sources) towards; special offers, research papers, product details, contact information. In fact in any situation where there is complex information to be communicated in conjunction with the advertisement. At the moment there is also a novelty value for the user in being able to scanthe 2D bar-code using their smart phone and then receive a  visual “reward”.

Readability

All bar-codes are equal…its just some bar-codes are more equal than others. When selecting a bar-code format avoid Microsoft’s Tag Reader and go for one of the open symbologies on the market such as QR adn Data Matrix to name but two. There are several sites that will create your 2D bar-code, here is one you can try.

Effective

There are two basic approaches. You can use the code to deliver a URL, these are called direct codes and you go straight to the web page just as though you had typed it in. Then there is the direct type like Microsoft where the content is served back tot he mobile and so can be more easily measured and varied by location or even time of day. Horses for courses – but you need to look carefully at the price you pay by using a proprietary reader….which right now guarantees a smaller viewing audience.

Keep it simple

While 2D bar-codes are good they are far from perfect and SMS is still the leader. Ina recent promotion Pepsi put 2d bar-codes on 500 million cans and these were scanned 30,000 times. 0.006% response…. maybe a can is not the best medium. These codes have been super popular in Japan and the reason for that is because most URLs are in western text even when the advert is in Japanese, so the codes got around the language barrier.

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What do Zipcar and Living Social have in common?

Posted on April 14, 2011 by adriangstewart

Zipcar, trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ZIP,” gained 67%, opening at $30………..

If you haven’t heard, Zipcar is a car-sharing service that’s popular in cities like San Francisco and Boston for example. Zipcar members rent cars, located in convenient spots, they pay by the hour or day plus their annual membership fee. What makes them so attractive is that the cars are located in locations with high foot traffic so they are much easier to get to than having to go to  central location which can often mean the airport. Their other big advantage is hourly use charges this opens up a much bigger market with students for example. It has taken the thick end of ten years to reach critical mass and for the service to become truly convenient.
The veterans of car rental like Hertz and Enterprise have reacted by adding their own car-sharing services with home/office delivery.

Anyway on to the IPO Zipcar were hoping to sell 8.3 million shares for $14-$16 each, but blew the expectations and ended up selling almost 10 million shares at $18 each for a total of $174.3 million in new equity. That is pretty impressive for a company who had racked up losses of $65 million by the end of last year.

This was of course excellent news for America Online co-founder Steve Case, after Zipcar’s first day of trading on April 14, the car- sharing company had a market value of $1.12 billion. Case’s Revolution LLC owns about 18 percent, valuing its investment at $199 million.

LivingSocial, is an online-coupon service targetting market leader Groupon Inc., is the next shot at payback for Steve’s fund. Like his other investments, he got in early enough to help transform the ambitious start-up into a business with much broader consumer appeal.

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Social by Design

Posted on April 13, 2011 by adriangstewart

Facebook Deals is becoming part of a natural evolution “social by design” brands are making to incorporate social and location -based media into their business models.

Here in the US Facebook Deals is open to any brand that has a facebook page. Last year companies were using part of their advertising budget to drive traffic to their Facebook Page now they are starting to use Facebook Deals.

Brands that are quick to exploit these new avenues are starting to concentrate on  three main factors:

  • Social Media
  • Brand
  • Business systems

Social media is becoming an imperative in produc and to illustratrate this I would point to the move by GM to work with Nuance and use speech recognition in their up market brands so that drivers can continuously interact with social media and other information and enetrtainment while on the move.

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Tesla and the lame publicity stunt.

Posted on April 12, 2011 by adriangstewart

The more I discover about the legal case against Top Gear that has been brought by Tesla the more I suspect  that their goal is probably more about tapping into the 350 million people who watch Top Gear than anything else.

The fact Tesla are only looking for a notional  100,000 pounds in damages and have created content on their website specific to the case  www teslamotors.com/teslavstopgear  makes me suspicious.

Andy Wilman the executive producer of Top Gear posted a strong rebuttal in his blog that makes the law suit look frivolous….which is probably what it is.

 

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