I Want to Excite Customers Like This

In case you haven't heard yet, Coke has launched a new soda dispenser that allows customers to choose from 140 different flavors (yes, that's right, 140... I didn't even know there were 140 flavors in existence) including Peach Sprite or Orange Coke.

First off, for everyone who used to go into a convenience store and create a suicide drink, you know how much this rocks.

Second, I could launch into a tirade about how this will improve Coke's ability to deliver more choices to its customers, attract new customers, reduce costs, etc, but let's face it...

Isn't this what it's all about (wait until 24 seconds in)?

Email Stuff

First off, I agree with Chad White over at The Retail Email Blog on his post about Ralph Lauren's recent mailing. I don't remember who said it (I thought it was Caples, but couldn't find it in his book), but we've always said around the office that in photos, the subjects should be facing into the copy. Chad: I agree and if you can convince someone to make a bet with you on a test (obviously not for Ralph Lauren), your money's safe. Not that I think we've tested it recently...

Photos from the blog:


















versus





















I'm working on some ideas for upcoming design tests and I think I may try this test to confirm my hypothesis. Anyone care to place a bet on which wins?

Mashable: Twitter Updates Officially Become Tweets

Should I be ashamed to admit that I never realized Twitter didn't invent or even use the term "tweet?"

Link to Mashable

Manhattan Airport in Central Park?

Really???

http://manhattanairport.org/

Cool Saves Campaign

Hearing about this from Mashable, I just wanted to comment on this...

Facebook has come up with a social way of saving people trying to deactivate their accounts. What a great tactic to use for a social media site -- it's quick (lets the person continue deactivating his/her account if desired) and effective (pulling in people on your friends list and inviting you to send a goodbye message). Great idea.

Super 3D Bowl?

Last night, like 97.5 million other people, I enjoyed the Super Bowl's exciting finish. While it still wasn't as exciting as last year's finish, and not even as exciting as it would be if my Skins got into the game, it was still a great time.

One thing I couldn't understand was the whole 3D commercial thing. At a couple points during the game, the commercial breaks were broadcast entirely in 3D. Of course, if you had a pair of 3D glasses, this was probably pretty cool... if you were like 5 years old.

I mean seriously, I think 3D was cool back in 1984 when Michael Jackson did the 3D version of "Thriller," but in 2009, where we have iPhones, lifelike HD, and all sorts of other advance technology, who the hell cares about 3D anymore?? And people are saying that the Super Bowl is entering a new dimension?

Plus, the advance promotion of the 3D commercial breaks was either nonexistent, or it must have been advertised on every show -- except for the 30 that I watch.

How many people could you honestly believe got these glasses before the big game? I can't imagine that it was anywhere near 15 or 20 million... which means that at least 80% of people watching the game were like me -- wondering what the hell was wrong with their eyes...

Besides, if they were going to put something in 3D, shouldn't it be the big game??

Eh, I'd still rather have watched the Caps destroy the Senators instead of the Super Bowl anyway.

Little Gordon

Wow. What a great series of videos! You know Gordon Ramsey -- he's the asshole celebrity chef on BBC and FOX. A hospitality job-search site has given us a look into what he'd be like as a kid. Pretty sweet.

For the longest time...

Howdy folks --

Well, since September, things have gotten quite busy at work and as a result, I've been hard-pressed to find time to put the kind of effort into writing blog posts that I would want to. As a result, I've been trying to keep up my end of the conversation as much as I can through Facebook and Twitter.

We're nearing the end of our fiscal year, which means that things are only going to get busier, but as much as I can, I promise to keep getting posts up on here.

Happy Friday!

Just more of the same?

What's the biggest barrier to entry for new bloggers? I've heard from many that it's the concern about being able to generate new content that people want to read.

Good.

Blogging is way to get involved with the online community and offer new thoughts or ideas, instead of simply consuming the vast amounts of information thrown at you by the Internet. Often people (or companies) are more concerned with simply dipping a toe into the world of social media instead of wondering whether they actually have something worthwhile to contribute. To quote Seth Godin, "The question to ask isn't, 'but how does this help me?'" But "what can I offer to the conversation to help the community?" (not a direct quote).

• To companies that want to publish a blog just because they hear it's the next new thing: give it up. People really don't care about your thinly-veiled attempts to promote a product or service by writing a blog post. Google's blog gets huge amounts of traffic because Google has figured out a way to provide content through that vehicle that can't be found anywhere else.
• Fast Company published a great article this month about the hundreds of top brand-name companies that opened a presence in Second Life before figuring out the community and how they were going to genuinely contribute to it. Now all these companies have reevaluated their involvement and are coming at this world with a renewed sense of contribution to the discussion.

The amount of reposted information that I'm confronted with daily is staggering. Not just from news sites and online aggregators, but from individual bloggers that just want to drive traffic to their sites without providing their own spin on topics. If 50 of your closest friends want to post about the new Gmail developments, wouldn't you be interested in reading what their different takes are -- as opposed to just saying "look at the new Gmail developments!"?

Please, say something new and interesting, or just stay out of the conversation.

Apartment Hunting

When advertising a rental apartment on Craigslist, most landlords are now trying to incorporate typical marketing practices to entice applicants. However despite their best efforts, they still miss the point and end up making it tougher for a potential tenant to find their place.

Some things apartment advertisers should realize:

1. Your "amazing" apartment is just like 50 other ones in the same area around the same price point. If you can't tell me why I should want to live there, then I assume I probably don't.
2. Using CAPS text, overly-promotional language, or unbelievable claims in your description will just turn me off -- not to your apartment, but to you as a landlord... How could I possibly believe all your claims?
3. Telling me a fake rent cost will only delay my losing interest in your place. If I'm shopping for an apartment, chances are pretty good that I'm looking for one in a specific budget range. And I've set that budget in Craigslist's search options. And there are 50 other apartments that are just as nice as yours for the price I want to pay. (See #1) Don't waste my time or yours by lying.
4. I'll never look at any online listing (Craigslist, eBay, etc) that doesn't have pictures. It's not that I don't believe that you're telling the truth -- it's that I don't have the patience to read through an entire description of an apartment that hasn't gotten me excited visually first. Besides, if you don't have time to take high quality pictures to promote your property, then why would I think that you're going to have the time to devote to your tenants' needs?
5. Speaking of pictures... show me what I want to see in the pictures (kitchen, bathroom, etc). Don't waste my time with pictures of the outside of the building, the club house (who cares), or the surrounding neighborhood. Oh, and definitely don't try to hide any cons about the apartment. I'll see them when I come out to view the apartment and if they're significant enough for you to want to hide them in the pictures, then they're significant enough for me to not want your apartment.
6. Spend a second to think about how I'm going to search for your apartment and provide me with a posting title that will let me know if it's something I'm interested in. If I'm searching for apartments downtown, I'm not going to be interested in apartments that are "only 45 minutes from downtown."
   

I'm Baaaack!

Yeah -- remember when I said that I'm going to write more on this blog? That I had tons of different thoughts, ideas, and rants?

Yeah, looks like I blew that one.

So here I am, trying to get back into blogging. Anybody want to place bets on whether I can maintain any sort of regularity this time?

But, if you're the one person who reads this blog, then you probably care about marketing -- specifically marketing by leveraging an online community.

So you should know about the upcoming Interact show. It's going to have a ton of people presenting that have really helped shaped this type of marketing.

I'm planning on attending John Bell's presentation -- I've been reading his blog for a while and am excited to hear him speak in person (according to his Twitter page, he's usually at conferences all over the world -- and not in DC).

Some Cool Notables:
Large Hadron Rap
Steve Jobs quells fears that he is dead
and...

The Motley Fool has a Twitter page. I'm going to devote an entire post to this, but it's cool to see how we're paving the way for how media companies can use these type of sites.

A Couple Updates

I'm trying. I really am. It's hard to keep updating a blog when you no longer have a whole lot of free time. As a Fool, I find that I have a lot less free time on my hands to devote to commenting about the marketing world. This is good. I have my hands into all sorts of exciting things over here at FoolHQ.

Meanwhile, I'm making a real effort to continue updating my Twitter account as well as continuing to share stories that I find in my daily readings through Google Reader.

So stay tuned! I have so many ideas, thoughts, and comments each day that some of them are bound to leap out of my mind and into this blog.

Thanks for continuing to read!

Apple Using Community-Created Ads

We all know that Apple has very little interest in opening up its iPhones to 3rd party developers. But the folks over in Cupertino have no problem with using a 3rd party ad for the phone -- that is, using a community-created video, which :

Why I hate Snapfish

My cousin recently got married and posted the album of wedding pictures online through a service called Snapfish. I hate this site -- it makes you register and login to view these images. Why should I have to login to view these public photos?

Alternatively, Flickr lets users upload photos, tag, and share them with a private audience or the general public. There is no need to authenticate oneself before viewing photos anymore. Snapfish should change the way it shares photos so that it's open to anyone. If an uploader wants to make his or her photos private, the site should send a unique link to each recipient.

...and that's my Friday rant.

Why Lots of Hard Drive Space is Obsolete

About two years ago, Bill Gates published a "Sea Change" memo. He does this to refocus Microsoft on a particular priority. With one of these memos in 1995, he focused the company on the importance of leveraging the Internet in its software. In 2002, he published another memo to focus the company on software security.

I remember when this memo came out. I was working at Ensynch (a Microsoft partner) and this memo sparked a lot of excitement in the Microsoft community. It's funny how long it can take for something like this to be adopted in the general population.

It's now 2007 -- two years after this memo was released. I realized today that I no longer use any local programs on my computer. To clarify, a local program is a piece of software that you install on your computer -- you can access it usually on- or offline and the information is stored on your hard drive. Internet access is so ubiquitous now that everything I do now is accomplished online:

• Write documents
• Manage my finances
• Play games
• Network with friends

The term that's been coined for this shift in how I use software is called "Software as a Service" or SaaS. I didn't realize how useful this model of online software is until my imminent departure from DelCor. In my last job, I had to make sure I deleted a lot of personal files so that my information remained secure. When I leave DelCor tomorrow, I won't have to do this because all the personal stuff that I did while in my office resides online.

This way of using software also proves beneficial in extending the lifespan of my PC. I no longer have to worry about system requirements, hard drive space, etc with my relatively older machine. As long as I can still use Firefox on the computer, I can accomplish all my tasks through the Web.

Five Sites to Get you Started with SaaS:

• Google Docs: Think of this as a free version of Microsoft Office. It has a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation program. Everything I could do on a local program (except the most advanced Word features), I can do through this.
• Gmail: There is really no reason that you should be using any other email program. Threaded email, archiving instead of deletion, and search instead of sort. Everything's stored online.
• Mint: Think of this as an online Quicken. Aggregates all your financial data (kind of scary...) into one site for you.
• Picnik/Flickr: Edit your photos online with Picnik and then upload, tag, and share them on Flickr.

SaaS is without a doubt, the future of software -- expect to be charged for the use of some programs in the future as well.

Do you have any other favorite SaaS sites? Share them in the comments.

The Fresh Marketer Lifestream

I have a Lifestream.

What's that? Well, it's an RSS feed of basically everything I write or look at online. I've combined my blog's feed with my Google Shared feed and my Twitter feed. I'll also add in my Flickr feed once I finally get around to uploading my pictures into Flickr (Facebook photo albums are way too closed off from the rest of the Internet for me to use).

So if you're already subscribed to my RSS feed, you'll start getting posts that won't be written by me. These are from my Google Shared site. You can also monitor the posts I think you'll find interesting by looking at the "What I'm Reading" widget. For those of you who haven't subscribed to my feed yet, take a second and click the "Subscribe to my Lifestream" link or add the following address to your favorite RSS reader:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheFreshMarketerLifestream

Also, if you have any problems subscribing, post a comment or send me an email and I'll help you get it setup.

P.S. If you want any individual feed, here are the addresses:

Google Shared:
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/09913530811447969166/state/com.google/broadcast

Blog:
http://freshmarketer.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/1219701.rss

Welcome Back

Okay, as I'm sure you can see, I've switched back to Blogger. As much as I've tried to fight it, Blogger is just hands down the best free blog software out there right now. WordPress was good in a lot of ways, but I missed a lot of the features I had on Blogger. Here's how the two services stacked up against each other:

How Blogger is Better than WordPress:

• Ability to add in any HTML, Java, etc code in your post or on a sidebar. WordPress seriously restricted this in the free version.
  
• A lot of already-created widgets that are easy to add to the page. WordPress gave you only a handful of widgets -- none of which were very useful.
• Better RSS integration. As you'll see below, I've changed a lot about my RSS feed and I don't want visitors getting confused about which feed to subscribe to. On Blogger (with Feedburner), I can make all of my feed links direct to the same address.

How WordPress is Better than Blogger:

• I have going to Blogger blogs. Perhaps it's because anyone can create one and it seems that I question a blog's authority as soon as I see it's on Blogger. The irony of this statement is not lost on me.
• More attractive templates. Even if these templates are much more limiting than Blogger's.
• Integrated blog stats -- accessible directly from the dashboard. But it doesn't tell you network locations like Google Analytics does, which is the most important thing I look at.

So there we go. I've switched back to Blogger now. I'll probably stick with Blogger until I bite the bullet and purchase a Typepad subscription. That just seems to be the all-around best option if you're going to pay for a subscription.

I Give Up!

I don't think I can fight it any longer. I'm going to have to start using Twitter again. It seems as if everyone is using it now, even if I still believe that no one really cares about what I'm doing at any given moment during the day. I still think Twitter's a great tool for people going on trips, etc. I just don't believe that anyone really cares that I'm:

• Sitting at my desk


• Excited about a tasty dinner tonight


• Ready to get started at The Fool.

Anyway, if you care, my Twitter page is here.

Another Wesch Great

Here's another great video from Michael Wesch (see previous post):



Talk about a great way to virally advertise Digital Ethnography at KSU. If you want to study this, where do you think your first choice would be?

Categories Don't Mean Anything

A great new video is flying around the Interwebs, by Michael Wesch:



It's all about tagging now.

The other day, I was asked by a coworker to explain the difference between categories and tags. After trying to explain it for a couple minutes, the ultimate conclusion from the coworker was that a category and tag are essentially the same. That's really not true. The best way I can describe a tag versus a category is:

A Tag:

• Describes a piece of information


• Doesn't classify a piece of information

A Category:

• Also describes a piece of information


• Places information into a particular classification.

It seems to me that categories are obsolete in today's environment. Even for this blog post, I'm given the option by WordPress to categorize AS WELL as tag the post based on the topic of my discussion. My vote is that we get rid of categories. We really don't need them anymore, right?

Duncan Riley at the TechCrunch blog says that information has been devolving for the past 12 years. I disagree. It seems to me that information has needed to become less categorized due to the way we're able to access information now using search, etc. If we're able to find the information that we're seeking more quickly and with a higher success rate, isn't this an improvement? Why does he call it a devolution?

By the way, if you haven't seen Wesch's other famous video, you can view it below: