“Join the Conversation” Review

Marketing, Review, , , ,

Join the Conversation BookI have just completed the book Join the Conversation by Joseph Jaffe and as someone new to the Marketing and New Media space it certainly was an eye opener. Jaffe’s first book Life after the 30-second Spot ‘reveals how today’s brightest marketers are using new tactics to engage consumers and new avenues to take the place of TV, radio, and print’ (from the books website). Join the Conversation takes a similar approach and reveals ways brands and companies can reach consumers that are already fed-up or blind to traditional marketing techniques.

I first came upon Join the Conversation as part of Jaffe’s Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing campaign (UNM2PNM for short). In UNM2PNM, Jaffe offered this book for free to individuals willing to read it and give it an honest review. He wanted to use the marketing techniques is his books to prove their own effectiveness, turning the book into it’s own case study. This is a pretty bold move as the reviewers are free to disagree with him and criticize his hard work. But after reading the book, I realized that it is a case of ‘eating ones own dog food‘, that Jaffe stands behind his work and feels confident that you will find value in it.

The biggest takeaway for me is that as a marketer (or brand manager, public relations, etc) you truly need to engage your customers as honestly as possible. This can be as simple as starting a blog and allowing comments on your corporate website, to one of several interesting techniques used by brands described in Jaffe’s book…sorry no spoilers here! But the key is that it is done honestly with no contrived conversations.

Jaffe incorporates this exact technique as the embodiment of the book where he references and provides a web link to posts on Jaffe Juice or the books website to get certain points across. The beauty of this technique is that you, as the consumer of the book, are free to follow that link and formulate your own opinion. If you disagree (or agree for that matter) you can post a comment and let him know. How’s that for opening the lines of communication between brand and consumer!

The Price of Convenience

Misc, Review, ,

How much are you willing to spend to save time? When my wife and I had dinner Friday night we realized we were extremely short on…well, just about everything. So we fired up the old laptop and logged into our Peapod account to pick out some items.

  • Fruit
  • Veggies
  • Cereal
  • Snacks
  • Bottled water
  • Cat food
  • Cat litter

All coming to a grand total of $85 plus a delivery charge of $10. We selected Sunday 9am delivery and the driver was here right on schedule for essentially an 8.5% convenience surcharge (plus a little tip). Well worth the money as opposed to going to the store and selecting the items aisle-by-aisle.

Peapod is a service provided by Stop and Shop  but I am sure there are similar services elsewhere and hopefully in your neck of the woods. What do you think? Is a $10 delivery charge for groceries worth it to you? Especially with the added convenience of a categorized and search based online shopping experience.

Disney World 2008

Misc, , , ,

Last week we spent a few days down in Orlando. My wife had a business meeting Thursday to Saturday so we decided to make a long weekend of it and i tagged along. We only made it into Disney one day even though our hotel was only a stone’s throw from Epcot Center.

Highlights

  • I rode a Segway which was pretty cool, I didn’t want to wait in the long line, but my wife convinced me, and I’m glad she did!
  • Saw a very cool acrobatic act outside China in Epcot Center. One girl was flipping metal bowls (several at a time) onto her head. Oh yeah, while riding on a 7′ Uni-cycle! See the pictures below.
  • Live streamed into Podcamp Toronto and NewBCamp while sipping my morning Coffee on the patio (Thanks to Christopher S Penn, Matthew Ebel and the staff at Ryerson University)

Here are some photos:

 

 

Person Matthew Ebel

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

Investigate missed calls with 800notes.com

Misc, Tech,

For the past 2 weeks I have been getting calls from 866-463-3021. When I pick-up there is no one on the other end; if I let it go to voice mail, no message. I put the number into Google and the first result was from 800notes.com.

Apparently 800notes.com allows users to enter in phone numbers to see who is using that number. It derives it’s information from user contributions so the results may not always be accurate. For the number above, there are actually 18 pages (as of this writing) of comments from people who have had this show up in their call log.

So the next time you get a call from an unknown number, look it up in 800notes.com to see where it is coming from. For me, I’ll be wading through all those pages to see who the hell is calling me!

GTD with Jott

Tech, , , , ,

I have a speed dial on my cell phone programmed to (866) JOTT-123 so I can record new task items on the go. If you are not familiar with Jott, it is a service that transcribes your voice message to text and sends it to you in an email. It’s perfect for collecting new to-do list items the moment you think of them.

In addition to the task to email functionality, Jott can be used to send tasks (or notes, reminders, etc) to:

There are several Jott tutorials online, have a look for yourself and see if it can work for you.

Adopt a Newb Day 2008

Tech, ,

Paul Muller over at the Caffination Podcast has come up with a great idea to help out those less technical: Adopt a Newb Day 2008. What Paul recommends is that you take time out of your day (on or near the 15th of April) to help out a friend, a coworker, a relative or a complete stranger with some technical assistance.

I think this is a brilliant and fun idea. I certainly take my tech knowledge for granted and this is a good way to “give back to the community”. I have certainly become a better teacher over the last year I’ve spent in consulting but at times I’ve struggled with trying to teach people things that come as second nature to me.

I hope you will join me in celebrating Adopt a Newb Day 2008. If you do, please leave a comment and let me know how it went. If you are looking for assistance, leave a comment as well or send me an email.

Outlook Search with Xobni

Review, Tech, , ,

I have been using the Outlook search add-on by Xobni for the past few months and I have to say it is a great time-saver for me. It is lightning quick in searching my Outlook email compared to the built-in search Outlook provides.

In addition to the search capabilities, Xobni allows you to better navigate your email world. When you are viewing an email in Outlook, Xobni will display the contacts phone number (and a link to call if you have skype installed), recent conversations and recent attachments.

Have a look at the following youtube video to see all the features of Xobni.

A Tale of Two Customer Service Experiences

Marketing, , ,

Red RoseIt wasn’t too long after reading about James’ horrible Walmart customer service experience that my wife told me of her great experience with Winston Flowers.

The gist of the Walmart fiasco is that James, a blogger over at Men with Pens, bought what turned out to be a defective Kodak camera from Walmart as a gift for his daughter. While trying to return the camera he experienced some pretty poor customer service. From policy changes barring him from returning the camera to just flat out poor service it is pretty clear that James will take his future business elsewhere.

Compare that with the customer service my wife received from Winston Flowers. For Valentines Day I bought her a red rose flower arrangement and had it delivered to her office. After they were delivered she called to thank me and to tell me how beautiful they were.

Later in the day she received a call from Winston’s to ask how she liked the arrangement. She told them how beautiful they were and that she was very happy with the presentation. She mentioned that one or two of the roses in the back of the arrangement had some blackened edges presumably from frost. The customer service rep asked if she would be in the office all day and that they would like to send over another arrangement!

Later that day, Winston’s delivered the same arrangement, vase and all, to my wife with their apologies. If you are unfamiliar with Winston Flowers, they are high quality flowers, i.e.: expensive. In the name of customer service, they had no issue with sending over a complimentary $90 arrangement to try to secure a customer for life.

Well done Winston Flowers, well done.

Does Dodge “Get” Conversation?

Marketing, Review, , ,

I am starting to realize a lot of conversational marketing now as I am reading Join the Conversation by Joseph Jaffe and one in particular that I watched last night. I was in my PJ’s with no pen/paper so take my recollection for what it’s worth! I will continue to look for the ad on YouTube and the Dodge website, it doesn’t seem to be available just yet.

The commercial starts with two individuals we are to assume work for Dodge designing cars. They are working at a drawing table and there is a car sketch on a board behind them. In from the left and behind walks an average woman we are to assume does not work for Dodge. She walks right up to the car sketch, picks up the marker and scribbles swirls around the back tires and wind lines off the back to indicate motion.

The designers turn to her and say, paraphrasing “So your saying it needs a bigger engine?”.

To me, this indicates that Dodge understands the two way street that is the conversational marketing Joseph speaks of in his book. They are showing us a “conversation” (albeit a contrived one since it was a staged commercial with actors and a script) between the consumer and the design staff for the car the consumer is interested in if it only had a bit more power.

What do you think?