Personal Email Assistant Is Pissing People Off

You know, you sign up for something and you think it's a god send, your savior and then it goes and starts harassing your friends and family. Ever come across software like that, uh hmm ... Plaxo, SMS.AC, etc. There's a new one called I Want Sandy and people over at GetSatisfaction are complaining about how it's pinging their contacts and trying to get them to sign up. Even if there's a feature to turn this off, what were they thinking when they created this functionality if they knew it was like opening Pandora's box? Anyone else have any interesting stories about software that has taken over your life? Why do personal assistants go too far?

Customers Key To Survival During A Recession

I was on our flight down to Riviera Maya in Mexico to celebrate our 1 year anniversary and invite both families down to share in our joyous occasion, when I started thinking about everything I was reading about the upcoming recession and how the government was giving us back money only to have "us" being consumers go and buy unnecessary items. What it brought me to was this notion that with companies potentially limiting their spending or moreso being more cash-conscious, there were going to be areas that would still see significant growth from consumer spending and some areas that would be able to make use of their funds by leveraging those consumers and their insights. So here are my top 10 observations on how customers will lead you to the promise land during a recession:

1. Companies will downsize and outsource to create cost efficiency and at the same time lessen the control they have at certain customer touch points. Look for these companies to invest in ways to garner and respond to customer feedback.

2. Softening real estate creates opportunity for franchisees. Listen to your customers and bring your business closer to them in areas where dirt is cheap and getting access to former corporate managers gets easier with layoffs.

3. Companies, who can, will gain more market share and more customers.

4. Corporations will cut too quickly, require emergency outsourcing. Customer feedback is critical to this process, better have it in place.

5. Innovation will lead to product diversification, increasing the number of vendors you'll have to deal with also. Have a system in place to capture business critical data to ensure smooth transitions and that all those who need it are getting it. Look for an increase in Employee Feedback platforms.

6. SBA is trying to automate front end customer service. This will require employee ideas and suggestions.

7. Consumers cut spending, adopt better "green" products and initiatives. Players in this market will need ways to capture customer feedback to innovate on existing technologies and products.

8. Going Green = new processes, services & products = solution for capturing employee and customer feedback.

9. VC and Angel wells will start to dry in the tech industry. Getting to critical mass is one thing, but having a way of managing all those customers is another. Keep them happy and your word of mouth will spread; bring them discomfort and you'll have to pay to bring them back.

10. Entrepreneurs and Companies alike will look outside of their doors for new revenue streams in the form of partnership distribution channels. Gather the feedback on how it's going and take action.

As the election year 2008 moves on and we progress into this upcoming recession, look to your customers to help you shape and finetune your products, strategies and direction. At the end of the day they're the ones paying and keeping you in business.

75+ Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter

Connect with the movers and shakers of the internet marketing and promotion (and maybe spam once in a while). Are you on the list????

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500th Tweet!

So I hit my 500th tweet today on Twitter. Kind of a geeky milestone, but I've gotten a lot of using the tool as of yet. Here is my 500th tweet:

"The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” (Michaelangelo) - Thanks to my wife for the inspiration.

Some things I've gained from Twitter:

1. Access to great minds in the area of marketing, development, design and entrepreneurship.


2. Found a great cause recently and donated on behalf of the cause.


3. Received a Seesmic invite from Jeff Clavier (thanks Jeff!)


4. Broadcasted the Pea Fund and found on BBC Homepage


5. Hopefully introduced some people to HugMyMac initiative from team over at Carsonified


6. A great tool for promoting the new non-profit I joined, Eleho and their first project The Road, a film about freedom.


7. Great leeways and insight into many conversations permeating the web.

The Team Is Growing!

So we've expanded our team and are now looking for the best and brightest marketers in the San Diego/Los Angeles area. Online Marketing Manager description

We're also looking for a PR/Communications Manager. Contact me for details bj [at] positivedigitalsolutions.com

Is Being Green Just A Phase?

It's late, but I wanted to post this before I headed to bed to get some people's feedback on the whole green movement that has been happening over the past couple of years with The Inconvenient Truth, Grist, WorldChanging, Vanity Fair, Wired; the list goes on. I had the opportunity to be right in the mix of it all with the launch of BeGreenNow.com. It was a great project and we geared up for a big push, but the idea of carbon credit offsetting wasn't too appealing for mass market adoption. I just revisited the website today and it seems to have abandoned its entire social networking section, its Myspace page and even its blog (blog.begreennow.com) which was the best part as it was updated with Eco-tipcs, eco-living articles, seasonal trends and a wealth of information suited for any beginner tip-toeing into the world of green. The abandonment of some of the core online marketing pieces baffles me. This is a great lesson for any company that is leveraging multiple touchpoints via the online channel that you can't just give up on initiatives and leave your brand wide open for scrutiny, leave your Myspace page filled with empty images and a blog with great content just redirected to your site that is pretty much just an online store now.

100 Blog Posts!!!

...and all I got was this stinking badge! I'll be choosing my top 10 favorite blog posts from the past 5 years.

Dunkin Brands: Help Wanted - Conversational Marketing Visionary

In July 2006 I covered the Dunkin' Brands and Foghound search for a unified digital marketing strategy:

It used to be all about "Time to make the donuts", 31 flavors, and great sandwiches, but this week the Dunkin' Brands announced their search for an agency that could bring a unified digital front to their campaigns spanning breakfast, lunch and dessert.

This new "agency campaign" is headed up by the Foghound Corporation and Lois Kelly, best known for her book, Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Conversational Marketing. Kelly mentions the need for a leading agency with experience in big retail brands and the ability to handle strategy, creative work, and also back-end operations including e-commerce engines, analytics, and databases. So for all those shops that would love a little donut hole morsel, better get your thinking caps on and setup your own campaign to generate some buzz to grab the attention of Foghound and Dunkin' Brands.

In February 2007, they announced they had chosen Studiocom Interactive based on the following:

"Our experience in engaging younger consumers with brands online, and our ideas for positioning Dunkin' with its present and future customers was, in the end, the determining factor in their decision," noted Studiocom President, Carlos Pimenta.

So I decided to do some more research and check up on Carlos and Dunkin to see how they were doing. With an acquisition in 2005 by Bain Capital Partners and a plan to add 1,000 new Dunkin Donuts locations and 600 Baskin Robbins, I can see why they want to create better conversations with a younger audience. As the current generation graduates from college and goes onto their first career, makes their first investment or continues onto grad school; there is a need to be filled and that need is fresh, young entrepreneurs who want their own Dunkin brand franchise!

So how has the new agency been doing, let's look at how they are crafting their conversations online. Here is a video ad that is on Youtube. It doesn't look as if it was placed there by Dunkin or Studiocom, but it's kind of funny:



Next, they have launched a new website called My Iced Coffee that allows travelers to plan road trips and map its stores along the way in all 33 states where it has shops. Dunkin' partnered with online mapping company MapQuest to power the site, which also features trip-planning advice and instant-win games with prizes of $100 gas cards, JetBlue airline tickets, and global-positioning systems. Uhm ... yeah. I visited the site and there aren't any entries for Iced Coffee tales. The site is designed in Flash 9, which is slow on my home computer and they lost my attention after 35 seconds. Even better is when you do a search for "iced coffee" you don't get anything near Dunkin Donuts, but do you know who you do get???
Onto Facebook. I found a profile for Dunkin Donuts and some groups. These are the loyal youngens you need! Get in there and start cultivating the conversation, listen to them, engage them, put your marketing budget to good use. I'm interested in seeing what else they have up their sleeve for 2007-08, but it's late and we don't have Dunkin Donuts in San Diego so I can stay up all night. Line up them donut holes and make sure you're leveraging everything online has to offer.

technorati tags: dunkin brands | digital marketing | conversational marketing

Top Model: Missing the Offline to Online Conversation Continuum

So I must confess that I'm an avid fan of the DVR box as it allows my wife and I the ability to watch the shows we oh-so-love, well most of the shows she loves and they kind of grow on you. We're watching America's Next Top Model on the CW and I'm wondering what they are doing to leverage the online channel during season to bring that watcher/viewer relationship to another level. So I do a search for "top model" and what do you know, they are number 1 in Google organic search results. So then I click through to their microsite, which ends up being just a directory within the overall site architecture. Strategic move? Could be, why not create a more engaging environment with its own URL? You can brand the heck out of it with the CW brand. Sure it creates more content under the CW domain and it increases links pointing into the CW domain thereby increasing link popularity, yadda yadda. Okay so maybe they did it the right way, but I was looking for something that was as innovative as the show's title tries to be by bringing America the next top model.

The "directory" provides users with many options like photos, videos, a forum, a lounge to chat with each other, blogs for users and even shows featured members based on the most profile views. Something any typical community-based website does these days. Then if you do a little more research you find out that in the Pre-Launch marketing, America's Next Top Model lets you personalize a message from Tyra Banks to one of your friends. It's kind of like a Mad Libs for voicemail. The campaign leverages the Varitalk technology. I've seen this done before with 50 Cent and Sprite. But, I had to create one and send it to the wife! We'll see what she says.

So what could they have done better?
So here's some free advice to the CW crew ... It's great that you are creating a community around the show online. Truly a good use of the standard social media tools like forums, commenting, profiles, messaging, blogs, videos, etc. Yet, the community is lacking the authenticity of the viewer's relationship with the show itself and the models that they feel they most identify with. That's the key. Each girl/guy watching may in some way identify with the struggles/successes/failures that each of the models are dealing with on a daily basis as portrayed by the show. So why not leverage that "authentic connection" and continue it past the 60 minute episodes and into your online community. Why wouldn't each of the models have their own space to blog on? They all seem to be sitting there enough, laying around, drinking, smoking, drawing, reading; give them a place to connect with their true fans. Each of the models is creating their initial fan base through each episode, but it stops there and it's only once a week. The CW is missing an opportunity and whether they know it or not, it could provide a better integrated online/offline experience for their viewers. Come on CW, work it!

Social Media Marketing ... Still No Love

I was reading Laurel's blog about the post she saw on BizReport about a study done by Coremetrics where they surveyed a series of companies to get their take on a breakdown of their marketing budget and where social media fell. I decided to check the post out for myself.

"78% of the marketing professionals stated that social media marketing was a way of getting an edge on their competitors"

An edge on their competitors and only 7.7% of their budget was going this direction. They say the waters are uncharted, they say it's because there's no way to measure the ROI; all valid points I guess. It comes down to what you are trying to "communicate" with the end consumer. Do you actually have a value proposition? Do you even have a great product? There are a lot of good products out there dipping their toes in the social media space and then complaining they don't have the tools to measure their return. Maybe it's not the best reason to invest in something because you think it gives you a competitive edge in your quadrant study. Here's my recommendations to the companies that are standing on the edge trying to figure out this how social media thing that's really been happening since the dawn of forums, chat rooms, bullet boards, etc:

1. Be authentic
2. Have a great product
3. Have a plan of action that includes metrics and how you are going to measure them
4. Tag everything, data is your friend
5. Know your audience, find out where they are 24 hours a day, what devices they use
6. Don't be afraid to test for 30 days and know where your money's going
7. Monitor, Optimize and Increase your touch points
8. At the end of the day, have fun doing it!

Planning is nothing without execution.