The Twitter Hype Cycle (Podcast)


Listen to the episode on iTunes

Listen to the episode online

Episode Summary:

This week I am joined by a very special guest, my good friend David Smith. Dave took the liberty of doing some terrific research on the hype surrounding Twitter and even created a fantastic infographic on it. Dave and I have a fascinating discussion about all things Twitter and end off with where the social network may go in the future. We hope you enjoy the conversation! (Runtime: 41:51)

Sources for the discussion:

1. Wikipedia: The Hype Cycle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
2. Bloomberg: Twitter's Financing Round Is Said to Value Company at More Than $3 Billion - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-03/twitter-s-financing-round-is-said-to-value-company-at-more-than-3-billion.html
3. The Guardian: Twitter valued at $10bn as Google and Facebook reportedly vie to buy it - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/10/twitter-valued-at-10-billion-dollars
4. Nielsenwire: Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitter-quitters-post-roadblock-to-long-term-growth/
5. Harvard Business Review: Is Twitter for Serious Marketers? - http://blogs.hbr.org/davenport/2009/04/is_twitter_for_serious_marketer.html
7. Business Insider: How Twitter Was Founded: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-twitter-was-founded-2011-4?page=1

Interesting places to check out:

Dave on LinkedIn

The Value of Attention

This past week, Newsonomics published a great article about Seth Godin's Six Lessons for News Publishers. It was a truly fantastic read, especially if you are in or considering getting into publishing but it even contained (as Seth's posts always do) valuable lessons for marketers. 

There was one lesson I was particularly drawn to because of its extreme relevance to the modern marketer: In describing Domino, Godin says, “The only asset we care about is attention.” You’ve got to ask, he says, “What are you doing with the attention you have?” 

Here are 2 key take-aways from that question: 

1. Get to the point - Your content needs to be short enough to read and valuable enough to share. For great examples of posts that get to the point check out: Seth's blog, Mashable, Newser and one of my recent favourites.. Gapingvoid. 

2. You don't have much time - People are being exposed to a rapidly increasing amount of content every single day, why should yours matter so much? Having someone's attention even for a few minutes is extremely valuable. Get to the point and get to it fast.  

Somehow I Manage - Lessons of Michael Scott

Tonight marked the beginning of the end for the (self-proclaimed) world's best boss. Some may argue that David Brent was true genius but Michael Scott was certainly a hero to many people. The Office will be a different place without him, who knows what the future holds... may be one day we'll see him back in his old chair, preparing to be Prison Mike .. or Date Mike .. or if we're really lucky .. Michael Scarn. 

I have been a fan of this wonderful man ever since the pilot episode and as such I have decided to dedicate this post to some of his teachings. Here they are: 

1. (Season 3, Episode 2) - The Convention

Jan: "Michael, I underestimated you."
Michael: "Yeah, well maybe next time you will estimate me." 

Lesson: Have fun, but work hard. Michael worked hard when he needed to. Most of the time people saw him as an incompetent manager but his branch was always the highest performing and on many occasions he has personally closed massive sales. Do you enjoy what you do? So much so that you may even consider it fun? Although for most of his reign we saw Michael as a manager, he secretly had a passion for and truly enjoyed being a salesperson. Passion for what you do can help you have fun and work hard. 

2. (Season 7, Episode 9) - WUPHF.com 

Michael: "Excuse me everyone... SEX! Now that I have your attention.."
Stanley: "You don't have our attention,"
Michael: "MONEY!"
Stanley: "I'm listening." 

Lesson: Written by Seth Godin (in Purple Cow) and embodied by Michael Scott... be remarkable. It's simple, but Michael managed to do it over and over again. Michael's many characters are what made him remarkable to me. The beauty of this is the fact that comedy was something that came naturally to Michael. When necessary and even when unnecessary, he always turned to humour. What makes you remarkable? If you met someone for the first time today, what would make that person remember you tomorrow? 

3. (Season 3, Episode 16) - Business School 

Michael: "A good manager doesn't fire people. He hires people and inspires people. ... People, Ryan. And people will never go out of business." 

Lesson: Employees are the greatest asset a company will ever own. I would argue that Michael Scott believed this more than anything else. On many occasions he referred to the office as his family. What do you love about the people you work with? Are any of them linchpins? What are you doing with yourself today to become a greater asset to your organization tomorrow? Michael recognized that his branch was only as good as the people in it and the same can really be said of any organization. If you want to build a great organization, hire and inspire great people.  

Conclusion: 

Michael: "There are four kinds of business: Tourism. Food service. Railroads, and sales. And hospitals slash manufacturing. And air travel."

There will only be one kind of Michael Scott and he will be missed.  

Magical Service

At Macy's ... Magic stands for:

  • M...eet and make a connection
  • A....sk questions and listen
  • G....ive options and give advice
  • I.... nspire to buy
  • C....elebrate the purchase

This is part of the company's new plan to train sales staff on the importance of good customer service interactions. This idea is in itself... magical. 

Almost anyone in an organization is in the customer service business, the only difference may be whether they serve internal or external customers. The beauty of this is that we can all learn something from the wonderful acronym that Macy's is using. My favourite parts of the acronym are 'A' and 'G'. 

'A' - Ask questions and listen. When was the last time you asked a question with the intent of listening and following up with another question? Canadians are pretty well known for this. Here is a standard Canadian interaction:

Heyyy, how's it going? Good.. you? Good. That's good. (end)

This is great because at the very least you are asking a question. Here is how the interaction would change if you listened and followed up:

Heyy, how's it going? Good, you? Good. That's good... so why are things good with you? (continue talking) 

It's a pretty simple addition and it really doesn't take a lot of effort on the part of the parties involved; however, it may lead to a much greater interaction. Try it next time you find yourself asking someone this question and see how it goes. 

'G' - Give options and advice - Have you ever had a service interaction where the customer service employee actually promotes a competitor because he or she feels the competition would serve your need better? Even if you haven't experienced this, think about it for a second and think about how that would make you feel... That employee just put your needs way ahead of their own... that is true customer service. A smart customer can always tell when they are being given sound advice, and nowadays the good old Internet has given rise to an entire legion of smart customers. Giving options and advice is important but giving honest and selfless options and advice is even more important. 

So since we are all in the business of customer service, what will you do to make your next interaction ... magical? 

Will Our Future be Supported by Ads?

Kindly take a few seconds to look at the picture on the left and let your brain digest the apparent tomfoolery that is going on. This is no tomfoolery my friends... I assure you this is very much real. So real in fact that the person (or people) living in this house, currently have their mortgage taken care of... thanks to advertising. 

This is the business model behind a campaign aptly titled, 'Paint My House' by a company called Adzookie. The idea is simple and it is one that I have already explained to you. At this point you may be thinking one of 2 things: 1. Is this an April fools joke? (Oh... wait, that was 2 weeks ago) or 2. Where does the madness end? 

Allow me to present to the court exhibit number 2 (pictured on the right)... the brand new Amazon Kindle Wireless Reading Device with 'special' offers.. this of course is $25 less than the regular Kindle device with no such 'special' offers. In Amazon's own words, "Same bestselling Kindle, plus special offers and sponsored screensavers." 

After viewing these 2 examples you may come to the conclusion that the latter is a little more understandable than the former; however, they both work on the same basic model: ad support. Ad support is not a bad thing though is it? After all, it has reduced the price of products (Kindle) and may even allow us to live a comfortable life (Paint my house). Furthermore, we as consumers have become so immune to commercial messages that we are likely just going to tune them out anyway and reap the benefits they provide us with. 

As you can probably imagine the last sentence I just wrote is not something that would be particularly pleasing to a traditional marketer. Good thing traditional marketers aren't marketing traditionally anymore. Digital platforms have given marketers the opportunity to provide consumers with messages that will cause them to tune in, not out. Will our future be supported by ads? I hope so. I hope most of all that these ads will be relevant to us and that the future will bring the customization of messages to such a level that you and I could be holding the same device, looking at the same piece of content, but receiving different ads because you are you and I am me.  

It is certainly going to be an interesting future. Allow me to leave you with this two-part question... what do you think will be the next big consumer good to be support by ads? Once you have your answer... how will this ad-based model affect the future of this product? 

Playing for Kiips

I first heard about Kiip on the latest episode of Foundation. Kevin and Tony talked about Brian (Founder of Kiip) and how brilliant of a guy this young entrepreneur is. Brian's story alone is worth an entire post but for the purpose of this one, I'm going to focus on his latest venture: Kiip. 

Kiip came out of stealth mode today and just to give you an idea of how big this move was, here's who talked about it: Mashable, Wired, TechCrunch, Forbes, Bloomberg, Techland, Techvibes and probably even more sources that I didn't come across. This level of attention is nearing color's level but with one big difference... right off the bat, Kiip makes sense. 

I'm not going to go into detail about the mechanics behind how exactly Kiip works for 2 reasons: 1. All the brilliant aforementioned sources have already done a great job of that and 2. I sort of understand the business model but not 100% just yet (so I asked a question on Quora about it). In the founder's own words though Kiip is a 'rewards network' that is meant to reward mobile gamers with tangible goods provided by certain partnering brands. So for instance, if you complete a story of Angry Birds you may potentially win a box of chips or if you become the mayor of Home Depot you may win a new set of gloves... you get the idea. The brilliance of the entire platform is really in its simplicity.

Here are 2 reasons why marketers should be all over Kiip: 

1. An army of advocates - The beauty of mobile games is how much people talk about them and share stories around them. I am almost certain that if you are reading this blog you have discussed or heard someone discussing Angry Birds at least once in the past month. Imagine if people discussed your brand that often? Marketers have the opportunity here to create really unique rewards and offer them through Kiip's platform to a group of inherently social individuals. The opportunity to create a group of highly motivated brand advocates can easily be triggered by offering a relevant and unique award (e.g. Dr. Pepper could create and offer a new drink only to users of this platform). 

2. Positive reinforcement - This reward behaviour trumps all others when it comes to human psychology. The purpose behind any kind of reinforcement principle is to increase a desired behaviour. The beauty about Kiip is that it offers marketers a chance to positively reward consumers for something they already like doing. To a consumer this is basically the ultimate win-win situation. I am doing something I love .. and getting rewarded for doing it! Even if the reward is not necessarily relevant to you, Kiip allows you to email it to someone who you think it may be relevant to... that is social 101... that is brilliance. 

Final thoughts: Kiip is playing for keeps. Brian Wong set out to refresh the mobile advertising experience and Kiip is certainly on its way to doing just that. Kiip has given marketers and game developers alike, a serious opportunity to delight an already engaged audience. I cannot wait to see how this evolves. 

A Sunday Evening Trio (Podcast)


Listen to the episode on iTunes

Listen to the episode online

Episode Summary:

In this episode I have the pleasure of being joined by my two most regular guests... at the same time! Andrew, Dave and I managed to get together and discuss some interesting news from the past week. Our topics ranged from live interviews with President Obama to the Plum rewards card by Indigo. Hope you enjoy the conversation! (Runtime: 41:51)

Sources for the discussion:

Interesting sites to check out:

Andrew Baskerville's Blog

Dave's Blog

Channel Surfing (Podcast)


Listen to the episode on iTunes

Listen to the episode online

Episode Summary:

This week, Dave Silva and I talk about the present and future of on-demand entertainment. We discuss some interesting moves being made by YouTube and also mention an unexpected retailer that is making some big moves in the digital entertainment space. Hope you enjoy the conversation! (Runtime: 42:35)

Sources for the discussion:

Interesting sites to check out:

Dave's Blog