It really is up to me. It's all my fault

I think that I need to be responsible for the things I do, and that involves the businesses I work with and within. If I'm helping them sell more widgets, then I better be comfortable with the proliferation of those widgets; because I'm responsible for them just as much as the company actually making them.

Here's an excerpt from something Seth said recently, he explains it better than I do.

Along the way, “just doing my job,” has become a mantra for blind marketers who are making short-term mistakes in order to avoid a conflict with the client or the boss. As marketing becomes every more powerful, this is just untenable. It’s unacceptable.

If you get asked to market something, you’re responsible. You’re responsible for the impacts, the costs, the side effects and the damage. You killed that kid. You poisoned that river. You led to that fight. If you can’t put your name on it, I hope you’ll walk away. If only 10% of us did that, imagine the changes. Imagine how proud you’d be of your work.

The amazing thing is that over and over again, we're discovering that marketers who actually take responsibility for their marketing are actually more successful. Go figure.

There's going to be a market where the customer will have the same values as you do [I do] and they're probably going to be more profitable than the 'everyone' that are being shot gunned with marketing interruptions currently.



Find the better way, be responsible for what you're doing. It's worth it in the long run.

Why you don't need to pay me to design a logo for you...

Just read this excellent post by Seth.



As ever I think he nails the issue. But, and it's a big but, there are so many people with an interest in these things that there's a huge mountain of advice to get over that is contrary to this. And as a visually centred person I take a little umbrage with the thought that anything will do, but he's right: nobody but you care about your logo. Yet.

If you're given the task of finding a logo for an organization, your first task should be to try to get someone else to do it. If you fail at that, find an abstract image that is clean and simple and carries very little meaning--until your brand adds that meaning. It's not a popularity contest. Or a job for a committee. It's not something where you should run it by a focus group. It's just a placeholder, a label waiting to earn some meaning.

Best read the whole thing here and make up your own mind. And if you don't want your logo designed, call me. Because there's a lot of value I can add to your venture even if it's not an expensive logo.

Here's a reason to do what we do [BLOG]

Yehuda over on his blog writes a great list on how he got some income from what he did. All too often people want to know why anyone would blog. Yehuda shows that even though there may be no apparent financial incentive to do it, there's often so much more incentive than is apparent.



Read his entry to get the whole thing, but the following quote summed it all up for me:

A. The direct results:



By post number 1000, I had made $75, which I gave back to my readers in the form of games. I'm now up to around $50 a month in Text Link Ads ($35), Google Ad-Sense ($12), and Amazon ($3).



Not very impressive, I admit. However ...



B. The indirect results:



I landed a professional blogging position at a company. I went in for a programming position and offered instead to be their company blogger. And they accepted.



I have had a game published by a publisher who is one my readers.



I've received dozens of free games to review.



My writing is getting better all the time.



I know hundreds of great people around the world.



I've had articles published in professional journals around the world. I've even been interviewed a few times on various subjects.



I know a lot about my field and interest.



I'm enjoying myself.

it's your fault

Saw this today and it resonated with me. Basically if you're not happy at work [or at home] it's mostly your fault.How we deal with things is important and if we choose happiness or we choose grumpy then that's what we'll experience.So get along and change your thought patterns, start enjoying work now: read the article...a great post from the chief happiness officer



read more | digg story

Sneezers not as influential as we thought?

Please, understand this is my regurgitation, read the paper, read Mark Earl's insightful post.
For me though this is exciting stuff that is counter to existing
marketing dogma, and many of the ideas I've relied on for my work. Time
for a rethink?



I've been following what Mark Earls has been saying about Herd Thinking here



Today he references a paper by Duncan J. Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodds that researched such behaviour. The premise is this:

A central idea in marketing and diffusion research is that influentials—a minority of individuals who influence an exceptional number of their peers—are important to the formation of public opinion.

In short [and I'm no rocket scientist] the results as I interpret them are that the influencers aren't as influential as we've made them out to be.



Mark has blogged some highlights here: Herd - the hidden truth about who we are: Forest fires and influence

What matters not is who is particularly influential but rather who is particularly susceptible to being influenced. This he captures in the memorable image of forest fires:



"Some forest fires, for example, are many times larger than average; yet no-one would claim that the size of a forest fire can be in any way attributed to the exceptional properties of the spark that ignited it, or the size of the tree that was the first to burn. Major forest fires require a conspiracy of wind, temperature, low humidity, and combustible fuel that extends over large tracts of land. Just as for large cascades in social influence networks, when the right global combination of conditions exists, any spark will do; and when it does not, none will suffice"

Seven steps to remarkable customer service

I wish I was as passionate about running my company as Joel is, I wish I'd thought of this first...

"Here are seven things we learned about providing remarkable customer service. I’m using the word remarkable literally—the goal is to provide customer service so good that people remark."

Read the whole thing here

There's much for any company to learn about taking an attitude that breaks barriers down and creates passionate users

270 seconds to find all about web 2.0

Actually, maybe not for dummies at all.

It's a paradox, the ideas communicated in this video are simple and yet obtuse.

But considering it only lasts some 4.5 minutes it does a fabulous job of outlining some of the changes that face us as the internet becomes a huge part of our daily self.
Whether we want it to, or not, the interweb is becoming tightly integrated into everything we do. The video goes a long way to highlight just how [important] and why that is.

No training necessary, just click play. Please.

Write your own elevator pitch

from Idea Sandbox another stolen snippet we can all re-use

It's important to have an "elevator speech." A 30-second summary of what you're working on to tell the boss... When meeting new people, a quick way to summarize the value of your company and what you do.

It can be challenging to boil down what you do into a short blurb... For inspiration, I suggest paying attention to the 30-second narrations at the beginning of TV shows.

Here's the whole post from Paul Williams it's a must read!

He proposes that just like the synopsis and back story seen at the beginning of TV shows, every business needs a 30 second or so introduction to what it/they do.

I concur, but also suggest that for many of us, figuring out exactly what it is that we do is some of the hardest time we'll spend working on our business rather than in it. There are some tools and thoughts to support you in this task on the homework page.

If we can get a clear idea on what we sell, then it makes it much easier to sell it, both to ourselves, our employees and more importantly to the new customer or strategic partner.

Clarify that thinking into you elevator pitch, practice it, and you'll be prepared to deliver it without having to think what to say when someone asks "what do you do?"

Good luck, get inspired.

read some more background on Paul's blog, or ask google

The next time your company votes to change the brand

Chris Houchens is right on the nail

The next time your company sits around a table and "votes" to change the brand...

…ask yourself if Pluto is a planet.

No matter what the marketing department think, no matter how insistent the designer is about the logo, the right font or the pantone specification for the corporate colour you won't change the customer's view overnight with a new coat of paint on the brand

read more here

The brand is built in the mind of the customer not across the boardroom table, concentrate on ways to change how the customers think about the business rather than the logo

technorati tags:Ninefish, think, strategy, brand

Blogged with Flock

instructions worth learning by heart

Once again Seth comes up with a primer that I wish all the clients we've ever had had seen before they came to us for help

read them all here

Help me out by pointing out the work you'd like this to be on a peer with. If you want a website to be like three others (in tone, not in execution) then point it out. In advance.

Be clear about dates and costs. Not what you hope for, but what you can live with!

You don't know a lot about accounting so you don't backseat drive your accountant. You hired a great designer, please don't backseat drive here, either.

But even more I wish this list had been seen before I started the business, I could have been clearer with our clients, and sought better questions to ask of them

Bonus link:
Rich Westerlink said in response to Seth

My employers and clients have won awards on projects where I've done client-side creative direction. But it's doubtful those projects would've received notice had I let the agency have its way.

Btw, those awards are in a drawer. It wasn't the awards that mattered. Never is. It was that the campaigns worked.

So if you're talking to me, I don't give a damn about awards. Yes, many clients say that. I mean it. Show me the designs and campaigns that made millions in profits or launched an unassailable brand.

And tell me why what you did worked when someone else could've done a faster and cheaper campaign with supporting facts. If you're honest, I might believe. And hire you.

I agree with his input too, there's a difference in winning awards from your peers and gaining rewards for your client though doing something that works [good design] rather than catching attention with eye catching graphics, witty headlines, great photography and what not but fails to sell one more unit of the product.

All the designers and creatives out there are not always the best fit for your product, just as all the clients out there don't necessarily need what we're designing.

Great design is what happens when great designers and great clients collide

Tagged with:

• ninefish
• Strategy
• Think
• design

getting inside the customer's head

Tom Asacker talking about going From Branding to Bonding: "Repetition does not create memories, relevance does."

Read the whole story for some real insight on getting your company some space in the mind of your customer, not with price, not with your logo, and not through understanding your USP but by being the most important thing a product can be: Relevant

Tagged with:

• ninefish
• Strategy
• Think
• marketing

Duh!

Brand Autopsy: Advertising’s Little Blue Book: "You cannot create a brand before you create a business—the process is simultaneous. As you build your business, you create your brand. Dig?"

Brand Autopsy quoting Steve Lance and Jeff Wool. Erudite, clear, concise. Now do it!

UPDATE:
It seems I'm not getting my facts right here. John Moore was the real author of the insight I'm quoting.

Tagged with:

• ninefish
• Strategy
• Think
• marketing
• blog-this

Pass this on, please

This amazing story of the will to change is inspiring, both at a human level and as fantastic marketing, see Leader Notes' commentary on the actual invisible children site for more information

Three 20-something kids with a video camera wind up in northern Uganda. They see incredible horror and encounter heartbreaking suffering, most especially among children.

Instead of turning their backs, they can't stop thinking about it. They decide to do something about it.

What can three white kids do to stop 20 years of horror and war? They decide that alone they can't do much, but if they can mobilize enough other youth, they can influence the powerful.

They know their audience - other youth. They use multimedia, they use rock music, they use myspace, they make music videos, they portray things raw and gritty and honest and authentic.

They first tell their story of their experience in Northern Uganda about the Night Commuters in a documentary:

Can we make a difference from this end of the world? I bet we can.

Tags: think, ninefish, marketing, purpose

Think first, and be clear about what you want

Having been lurking madly, Seth Godin has bought me out of hibernation with this idea that's particularly apt this week for some of our clients

"The first goal of copy is to get you to read more copy.
The second goal is to tell a story that spreads.
And then, finally, to have that story get people to take action"

Seth is talking about a billboard, but the concept is critical in all the communication you do.

Billboards in my opinion should have no more than 6 words on them. You have to hope you can communicate enough to remind the traffic your idea was exciting enough to talk about when they get to work, and memorable enough to be able to find the long story online or via the yellow pages [or even via a memorable phone number]

Tagged with:

• good-copy
• think

Lurking around

I've purposely been quiet recently, enforced by time, but also to see what would happen. I've been keeping an eye on a number of statistics and been surprised a little by what I've found.

As I've blogged more, and commented on other pages and conversations the benchmarks I've been following show that the ranking of this site has been going down. When I was in full flow and posting most days then I saw this trivial blog rise into the top 2 million and get towards being in the top 1.2 million ranked sites on Alexa. This isn't much to shout about I admit. Considering that all that was happening was that I was taking part in the conversation though I was impressed to see the site's rank increase. No animals were hurt in the process, no metatags or code changed, no smarter keywords, just lots of conversation.

As I've been quiet, I've been watching the rank slide again.

My takeaway from this is that if Ninefish can do it, so can your business. Nothing more than sharing ideas has been going on, it's not as if I've been making an effort to find if anyone is listening, but if someone is searching for the same ideas I'm talking about, then they'll find my business easier, just because I'm talking here.

So even if you think no one is listening, talk. If your idea or business is worth anything, if you're passionate about something; talk about it on the internet and they will come, just like in the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams!

Tagged with:

• SEO
• think

Complexity and Technology are not the marketing cure-all

here's a bit of a mashup of Tom Asacker and Seth Godin, I'm linking their points because they seem to make more sense in corroborating each other than separately.

Tom quotes Eric Schmidt, (read the whole post in a new window, I've cut quite a bit of the middle out)

'Our business strategy is not to compete.'...
...People are awash in new products, information and ideas, and therefore are less likely to stay focused for any length of time on one message or one product. And in this supersaturated economy, sustained audience attention is the foundation of brand endurance. So what's a marketer to do?

he goes on to say

...Instead of agency lapdogs, marketers must become innovators. They must work like hell to get sustained attention by focusing on and delivering the value desired by their audience. Forget about competing. Forget about positioning. Yes, you read me right. These old school notions of business success are obsolete.

Marketing isn't a complex process with complex solutions. It’s simple. Not easy mind you, but simple nonetheless. Develop something that people value enough to trade their time, attention and/or money for, and do it at a profit. Simple. The challenge is to continuously change and innovate, and achieve this simple concept over time. And that challenge, my marketing friends, is your job."

add to this idea Seth's realisation that it's not the technology of Google we love,

"Your success was down to marketing, not technology."

he delivers that gem and many others here in a video from his talk to Google employees.

I've had people tell me I'm a techno geek, I guess I am, but I'm not selling you the same sort of connectivity, nor are many of the marketing ideas I propose complex or technology based. What I'm selling is something simple and different, and that's an attempt to get you to think simply, and to utilise whatever simple ideas so we can to reach out into the marketplace and connect honestly with your clients, deliver them some fantastic products they'll love and use if only we can connect them to the idea that they'd like to use them if they knew a little more about them.

Tagged with:

• think
• strategy
• new-thinking

Get a marketing strategy

It's a world wide malaise, do what everyone else is doing, because everyone else is doing it.

Instead, why not break the cycle and get a strategy instead. John Jantsch has a great post on just this idea...

the single greatest small business marketing mistake I encounter - and I encounter it every single day.

Small business owners fall prey to the marketing idea (tactic) of the week because they have no marketing strategy. If I could change anything about the way small business owners view marketing - that would be it.

By strategy I mean your marketing reason for being and I don't mean to exchange money for something. Far too many people think "we want to sell lots of stuff to lots of people" is a strategy.

John goes on to expand the initial idea and it's worth a read. It's a useful stopping point to think first. Why do you think this will work? Do you realise that something like 60% of advertising purchases are not made from a strategy, but because of the relationship you have with the media sales person? [I read that somewhere, but can't remember where so it becomes a useless statistic and hearsay I know] Are you trying that tactic because it will get tested and measured, or because you are fed up of listening to the sales guy and broke down and got your chequebook out?

Think before acting. [or at least practice the process and begin the habit]

Tagged with:

• Strategy
• Marketing
• Think

Battle of the Memetrackers

Micro Persuasion: Breememe, aka Battle of the Memetrackers: "Breememe"

and this week's nonsense word is...

Breememe

Yesterday Steve Rubel began another experiment on tracking the spread of an idea using the new tools of the internet, this is a post purrely to see what happens next

how beautiful is this? how ugly is this?

I always wanted to change the world, just not quite like this though.

Click image below to view video in a pop up window

How have we changed the planet? See for yourself.

the original site is here: Worldchanging Campaign

I haven't any spare money right now to contribute, you may have. Either way, I'd like us all to think just how much we affect those around us with our actions; as people, as businesses, as families, as communities.

Pass it on,

More homework for the CEO and her team

I should add this as a link to the homework page, it's a great example of working on your business, not in it.

20 Questions to Develop Your Business:
"STRATEGIC

1. What are your short term and long term goals (what time period are these goals)?
2. How do you measure success?
3. What do you think are the top three things keeping you from achieving success?
4. What are your company's exclusives? What do you have that your competitors can’t or wouldn't copy?

MEASURES

1. What is the average order size and average order margin? How has this trended?
2. How many customers buy each month? What is the mix of new vs. previous customers?
3. What is a customer worth over a lifetime? Have you calculated the NPV profitability of customers?
4. What is the cost per acquiring a customer? i.e. Total marketing costs / new customers.

MARKETING

1. How do you communicate to existing customers after the purchase?
2. What is your monthly marketing spend, and what is the mix between the different vehicles? What is this marketing expense trend vs. revenue over the past 3 years?
3. How do you measure your marketing? What tests have you run? Results?
4. How do your competitors market differently than you?

CUSTOMER

1. What are the top 3 things customers are looking for when they come to the store / web site? And how do you know this?
2. Where are most customers coming from or going to when they visit your store / site? And how do you know this?
3. If I were a customer, what would my 20 second word of mouth 'sound byte' be if I were to tell a friend about you? What would I say?
4. Who is your primary competition and how do you differentiate your customer service, shopping experience, and products from competition?

EMPLOYEES

1. What are the roles/responsibilities of the top management in the company? How are these made clear to each of them?
2. What are your key performance indicators and how often do you review them as management, and with employees?
3. How are employees compensated? Are there performance-based incentives?
4. What are the career paths? Are they clearly communicated to employees?"