entrepreneurship, innovation, business information and stuff
Last May I wrote about putting our toe into the water with regard to Twitter, The Business & IP Centre takes on twitter.
Since that time the amount of activity on Twitter (I can’t be doing with these modern lower case names) has increased almost exponentially. Even taking that into account, our recent move above 1,000 followers for the Business & IP Centre Twitter feed is pretty impressive. This is nearly half of the current following of the main British Library Twitter feed.
Many thanks for writing a blog article about Marketing Maestros! Just a thought – if possible, would you mind adding a link to the webcasts as well? http://www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/
Once again a great Inspiring Entrepreneurs panel this evening, with regular chair Matthew Rock (the founder-editor of Real Business) brining his inimitable enthusiasm to the event.
(You can still watch a webcast of the event at http://www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/)
Ajaz Ahmed Chairman of AKQA, the world’s largest independent digital agency showed some impressive examples of innovation in advertising, illustrating his point about the importance of originality.
His key message was for his company to let their work do the talking’. In other words, don’t tell you customers how great you are, show them.
Not surprisingly Simon Calver the CEO of LOVEFILM (a £100 million turnover company) is a fan of films, and so used examples to illustrate his four P’s of business success.
P1 – ‘I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse’ (The Godfather).
Focus on the consumer proposition first and worry about building the brand later on. The three legs which hold up his company are choice, value and convenience.
P2 – ‘Self preservation society’ (The Italian Job) i.e. Preserve the cash in the business. Make sure you focus on the time it takes to get cash in and out. If you get it right it gives you a competitive advantage. Also analyse everything you do – where you spend your cash and how you do it.
P3 – Spin City (American sitcom) Never under-estimate the importance of PR. In his case they have three targets, their investors, trading partners and of course their consumers. You have to be constantly creating new stories about your business the papers will want to publish.
P4 – Passion (a choice of seven films according to Wikipedia) Make sure you surround yourself with great people from the beginning. ‘Fiirst division people recruit first division people’, which makes the business great. Make sure you have fun too. Simon hosts a monthly BBQ for his colleagues. Also reward your people on a quarterly basis (in the case of LOVEFILM bonuses of between 10 and 20%. This allows for more flexibility in changing targets in a fast growing business.
In conclusion, starting a business is probably the most rewarding thing you can do in your life.
Tristram Mayhew the founder and ‘Chief Gorilla’ of Go Ape, the UK’s leading forest-based adventure company talked about Gorilla marketing.
Instead of focussing on their specific activities Go Ape are branding themselves as ‘creating adventures’, and are encouraging everyone to live life more adventurously.
Gorilla marketing means turning your customers into an effective free sales force. These are his tips:
1. Wow them with what you do.
2. Delight them – turn complainers into ambassadors.
3. Build a trust and charm based relationship
4. … and they will buy more, and more often – Tristram openly admitted that many of their ideas have been borrowed from the Innocent drinks company.
5. Innovate, validate, cultivate.
Tristram strongly recommended The Brand Gap, it is very readable and nice and short too.
They are building a loyalty base using Tribe magazine (published every 6 weeks) to reinforce brand values.
They also make use of Social Media such as encouraging customers to post videos on YouTube, and have nearly 5,000 to date with hundreds of thousands of views.
By ‘making friends’ with existing adventure bloggers and giving them free Go Ape experiences they hope to generate positive reports online.
‘Doing good things.’ For example to help support gorillas in Rwanda 25 staff and 85 customers completed a fun run dressed as gorillas.
Will King is the ‘King of Shaves’, creator of the cult shaving brand that has overtaken Wilkinson Sword and Nivea to become number two to Gillette in the UK shaving market.
After 16 years of building the brand Will launched his own razor the Azor one year ago almost to the day. They already have up to 10% market share in the UK.
Lessons learnt:
The Harvard rule of 4
1. No one has it
2. Every one will have it
3. Price for profit
4. Price for sale
Take an existing product and make it better – eg iPhone, Innocent smoothies.
Change constantly, push boundaries – it also helps to generates news stories for PR coverage.
Will introduced his SPACE strategy, which stands for Satisfaction of Success, Passion and Persistence, Attitude of Action, Confidence and Communication and Enthusiasm and Enjoyment.
There is a great degree of satisfaction in succeeding. If you achieve great satisfaction, whatever that is, it may be having children or running a marathon, but you’ve got to work at that. There’s no substitute for hard work to get that satisfaction of success, which feeds on to the passion and persistence bit. Things don’t happen overnight, it takes years to become truly successful..
You’ve got to have a can-do attitude to get things done; if you can’t be bothered who else will? The confidence and common sense part relates to having confidence in yourself and what you’re doing but not being delusional; if you try to take on Apple with an iPhone it’s a big ask, but if you want to come up with a cover to protect the iPhone clearly that’s something you could do.
There’s a certain amount when you’ve got to have confidence beyond the success that you don’t enjoy, especially when you’re starting out – people won’t give you credit, people don’t believe you’re going to do it, people think you’ll go bust, you’ll owe them money, and you’ve got to imbue them with confidence if you’re going to be successful.
And finally the enthusiasm and enjoyment piece; if you’re not enjoying it then nobody else is, especially if you’re leading a business. So have enthusiasm, have an edge about what you’re about to do because people do look to you, especially if you’re running a business or are involved in senior management. If you can’t get them motivated by transferring your enthusiasm to them, then how are they going to transfer their enthusiasm either to the products you sell or to the services you provide? They’re not.
The same evening as the The Social Media Exchange – For the Cultural and Heritage Sectors event, I hobbled over to Kings Place to visit the shiny new Guardian (and Observer) newspaper offices.
As it was evening, we were able to see the journalists hard at work creating the next days newspaper. The building itself is amazing, with lots of glass and open spaces, making for a ‘transparent’ working environment. But as the building is also partially open to the public, the journalist are even more open to scrutiny.
Our guide, Luke Dodd, the Guardian’s project manager for the building and former Director of the Newsroom, explained the background to the move. In particular the bringing together of several disparate offices into one space. As well as merging the paper and digital activities, so that content for both media is produced by one extended team instead of separately, as before.
As a bit of a techie, I was most impressived by the sight of literally hundreds of uniform 24 inch iMac computers on every desk. Each floor was filled with these very desirable pieces of kit as far as the eye could see. Again, the move gave an opportunity to equip all the staff with a same technology.
Many thanks to the Association of UK Media Librarians (AUKML) and SLA Europe for organising such a fascinating visit.
It has already been a week since I attended the one day Social Media Exchange – For the Cultural and Heritage Sectors. Organised by the irrepressible Jude Habib, co-founder of Sound Delivery the communications and training company, it was a fun day learning about the uses of social media in museums and libraries.
I have included a selection of my notes from the day below, but most of the content plus updated comments are available through their dedicated website at http://socialmediaexchange.org.uk/
Using Web Content to Build and Engage Your Audience
Madeleine Sugden – KnowHow NonProfit – http://www.knowhownonprofit.org/
http://www.slideshare.net/sounddelivery/making-content-work-for-you-presentation
What is web content for:
What is web content for? – 5 Questions to help you make the most of your web content
1. Audience – will they get beyond your home page?
Examples:
2. Presentation
Examples:
3. Medium
Examples:
National Museums Liverpool – audio content is key part of page – subject integration – includes transcript alternative – http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/
Great Fire of London – interactive video game type experience for children – http://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/
Welcome to Yorkshire – help to build your day in … – dynamic itinerary building tool – http://www.yorkshire.com/inspire/inspire-me
Hackney Museum Virtual Tour – very boring – http://www.virtualtours360.net/hackney/virtual-tour.html
4. Marketing
Examples:
Eric Bloodaxe from York Museum has a Facebook page
Mediamuseum on Twitter with 1,700 followers
Eureka museum putting their images on flickr
Wellcome collection – medical London – videos of relevant walks around London – http://www.medicallondon.org/related_events.html
Imperial War Museum North – their page on the Big Picture Show does not come close to capturing the impact of the actual experience in the museum – http://north.iwm.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.2141
5. Influence
Examples:
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Group Tweeting or Finding your organisation’s voice on Twitter
Ali Holder – Westminster Libraries
@wcclibraries
Started in March 2009
Currently lone tweeter
First tweet: Planning to put all news and events in libraries here. Also additions to the 24/7 library of exclusive online resources for library members.
11:34 PM Mar 3rd from web
Why?
Instant
Getting started:
Buy-in from senior management important as speaking for Westminster
Get tweeting – once or twice a day, most days – not too much, not to little
Set up Business Continuity colleague so they can tweet library closures etc
Aims:
Mainly post news & events, but also draw attention to existing / regular / ‘hidden’ aspects of service.
Issues:
Lessons:
Finding our voice – who is tweeting?
Me, us or them?
Future plans:
Tips:
Twitter demographics – typical user – around 30 and urban
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Round up discussion
Patrick Forbes – Head of Documentaries at Oxford Film and Television
Nick Reynolds – Editor, BBC Internet Blog
Frances Croxford – Consultant and Account Manager at Jane Wentworth
Be aware of both huge opportunities and significant risks associated with adoption of social media.
Inherent lack of control.
Before you start make sure you are aware of the external perception of the organisation.
Tell stories which come from both your staff and your audience.
Conclusions:
After many months of patiently waiting, I was glad to see that our new website went live today at www.bl.uk/bipc.
It has a much cleaner look than before and is designed to simplify what we offer to entrepreneurs, business start-ups and inventors.
The sections are divided into :
I would be very interested in any comments you have on the website (both positive and constructive criticisms).
To celebrate their 50th Anniversary the Marketing Society has selected 50 brands from last 50 years, and asked visitors to vote for their favourite.
Although some of my favourites such as Apple and The Body Shop do appear on the list, they have missed some truly iconic names such as Walkers Crisps, Marmite and my personal favourite Alessi.
In true social media style the site allows comments, and I was amused to see “No Marmite No vote” from Michele.
1959 was the year The Marketing Society was founded and the birth of modern marketing. Today, The Marketing Society is the most influential network of senior marketers dedicated to championing marketing in the UK. Fifty Golden Brands is our exploration of the changing role of brands since our foundation.
This is not a definitive list. It’s a work in progress, a platform for discussion and now we need you to get involved. Who have we missed? Where were you? Which brands shone more brightly? Share your memories and insights of the last 50 years. Your involvement will enable us to finalise the definitive 50 Golden Brands in time for our anniversary in 2009.
Thanks to Sarah Lane a guest on net@night with Amber and Leo for recommending namechk.
This is a ‘one stop shop’ for seeing if your personal or company identity is available at dozens of Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites, such as Twitter and Facebook. It enables you to be consistent with your brand or identity wherever it appears on the Internet.
This is the heading for an intriguing article in the latest issue of gadget obsessed Stuff magazine.
I have to admit that I only heard about Spotify for the first time two weeks ago on Leo Laporte’s net@night 91.
However, since then the mainstream press has started to pick up on it as a potential iTunes killer – Spotify declares war on iTunes.
It seems hard to believe that Spotify can already have six million tracks (including the very latest albums in full) and over a million members signed up to either its’ free advert supported service, or the ad-free subscription of £9.99 per month. Although the fact I am listening for free to the brand new album from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as I write, proves the case.
Now it has gone one stage further by linking up with London-based online music store, 7Digital which has four million individual tracks.
This is yet another indication of just how revolutionary the Internet can be when it comes to both established and even novel business models. It took iTunes just six years to become the dominant player in music sales, currently accounting for 70 per cent of all online music sales, and selling six billion songs along the way.
However, Spotify was only launched in the UK in October last year and already has more than a million customers.
The lesson, is that if you are going to operate a web based business you can’t afford to stand still for a moment.
Perhaps not surprisingly in these YouTube obsessed times, there has been something of a rash of video-pitching websites. A friendly version of Dragon’s Den? and See my pitch are just two that I have covered previously.
However, when Richard Branson of Virgin fame gets involved you just know there will be a lot of interest.
PitchTV gives you the “chance to pitch your business idea directly to people who could make your ambition a reality.”
Once a month we’ll pick out a selection of the best video pitches and then let everyone vote for their favourite. Each month the five most popular video pitches will make it on to the PitchTV show which will premiere on Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight entertainment – to be seen by top business professionals from around the world.
So if you think you have the media friendly features to make it through to the final round, then why not give it a go.
I have always been a fan of April fool stories. My previous job included producing a daily press cuttings service for my organisation, and I used to look forward to trying to find all the April 1 ‘news stories’ for inclusion. One of my all time favourites was from the Daily Mirror announcing that the Channel tunnel diggers had struck gold half-way to France.
The big ‘story’ from today has been the Guardian newspaper letting its loyal readers know that it would shortly be giving up on old fashioned ink and paper. Instead they would switch to Twitter for all future news coverage. The Twitter switch for Guardian article has some lovely touches about the benefits of reducing all news to 140 characters. Even going back intto their archives to ‘re-write’ history;
Major stories already completed include:
“1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!”;
“OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more”;
and “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”
On a less amusing note I received an email today from SlideShare (a free service I blogged about in 2007).
Hi infield,
We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right. 😉
Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.
Congratulations, SlideShare Team
I checked my three presentations and sure enough one of them had rocketed to 751 views. This was something of a surprise and perhaps I should have been suspicious. However, it took a blog post from Phil Bradley (Slideshare April Fool joke goes disastrously wrong), before I realised I had been conned.
As Phil points out, SlideShare have made ,”a huge error”;
I don’t appreciate anyone manipulating data on my content. That SlideShare are so relaxed about this, and feel they can do what they like is really sending entirely the wrong message about how they view users and content.
To be fair to the authors of this ‘prank’ have confessed their sins on Phil’s blog, and apologised to their customers;
My sincere, personal apologies. Its just an April Fool’s prank. I understand why you are upset, however, we did not mean to offend our users who we love. But I can see your perspective.
Rashmi, CEO & Cofounder, SlideShare I think I can forgive them this time, but fear many of their customers may move to rival services as a result.