Selling Bricks

Apple are the master storytellers and they DO do it with video more than most other organizations (and yes, I am a fan boy, I’ll be picking my iPad up at 9AM tomorrow). … The (rumored) sales Figure was over $75million in the weekend it was available to order.    So let’s hope that OgilvyOne do a bit more to develop sales skills in the wider world than a flashy piece of PR.

Wow Marketing

We chatted, and by the time I’d finished, I came out with a new Garmin Edge bike computer (I’ll write more about the horrible experience with Garmin’s site later). … This week in the mail I get this: Wheels of Justice mailer 1 WoJ2.png What a fantastic piece of reinforcement of my purchase and a personal way to emphasize their personal service and support.

Golden Rule – again

I’ve talked a lot about the Golden Rule – ‘treat others as you wish to be treated’ (what my mum used to quote, from the Water Babies I seem to recall “Mrs. Do As You Would Be Done By’) – because it seems to me to be the fundamental ethical plank for all businesses. Or…

John Nack’s though provoking quote

” I’m told there’s a Japanese proverb, “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” If I could code worth a damn, you’d never see me again as I’d never leave my basement. That is, I already have the ideas for what to do, but I need to collaborate with people…

We are REALLY sorry, now about that hard sell?

Some weeks ago I received the attached message and new credit card form Citicards: Security Notice I was not happy to hear that my personal data may have been compromised, but at least I live in a State that requires that a company tell me when such an event happens. In too many places that is still not the case and such an event can be quietly forgotten, more than six years after California became the first state to require such disclosure. … If one of my clients is ever in that situation my advice is to apologize, be contrite and ask what the company can do to make amends. … And to add insult to injury, I can no longer download transactions from my Citicard account into Quicken which I use for my business and personal finances. 12 weeks later, I still can’t.

Where is YOUR advertising dollar going?

I collected mail from a PO box today and was once again struck how many people did what I did. I struggled to get the mail out of the small box; not because there was a lot of mail in there, simply because of all the unsolicited brochures, mailers, junk flyers etc. … There are big tables and very large trash bins, as far as I ca see only to serve to sort the wheat from the chaff and to dump the chaff. … is when the recipient sorts through to ensure that there is no real mail in the middle of this stuff.

Decide who (or what) you are….

An aside, that seems like a horribly negative name, perhaps that’s why the keep telling us (on NPR within the last hour) that they used to be Horn, Murdoch, Cole. … Not what they stand for, why I should get to know them, but who they haven’t been for over TWO years. … This stuff is not that hard, You do work hard to define the business you are in, the way you relate to your customers, what your products and services are; and then you tell them the story, over and over again. … It’s not that legacy should be forgotten, but there are few, very few, organizations for whom it should, or can, be the marketing route to the future.

Living Your Values

I was fortunate to be involved in a (still closed) social network in support of Seth’s latest book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us” and there was, as you might expect, a local Bay Area group. … Seth not only knew that this group was meeting (out of 5,000 participants in the network) but took the trouble to make sure he had the host’s number and called to congratulate and encourage us.

Your mother is watching you…….

He recently posted a very good way for ALL of us to think about our actions whether marketing or not. You can read the article here: Act like your mum is watching you Now if only we could get drivers to adhere to this principle too!