A Better Course

• The Worst IPO Market on Record? | Business Week
  In the second quarter of 2008, there were no IPOs for companies with venture capital financing, according to the National Venture Capital Assn. (NVCA). That’s the first time a quarter has passed without an initial public offering since 1978.
  (tags: venturecapital entrepreneurship IPO businessweek markets economy)
• Bob Sutton: Creativity as a Decision: Wisdom from Robert Sternberg
  Encourage people to decide for creativity, impress on them the joys of making this decision, inoculate them for the challenges attendant on this decision. [This] does not guarantee that creativity will emerge but without the decision it certainly will not
  (tags: bobsutton creativity innovation management)

• mediation: Smart and Relevant Customer Relationship Building from Atlantic
  great to see Atlantic putting their CRM where there mouth is and sending me something which is tangible, practical and above all pertinent to the credentials they’re aiming to build.
  (tags: mediation crm energy directmail directmarketing)
• Facebook to Users – Let’s Cut Grammatical Errors – NYTimes.com
  “Users who haven’t specified their gender in their Facebook profiles will be asked to do so in the coming weeks. That way, Facebook doesn’t have to default to ”their” or the made-up word ”themself,” as it had been doing.” — …and collect more data
  (tags: nytimes facebook privacy gender online)
• Why ‘How’ Matters More Than Ever | Business Week
  “So, Ralph found a way to “outbehave” his competitors by using trust to forge a deeper connection with his customers.” –also, deliver them doughnuts faster! Surely also a factor.
  (tags: businessweek strategy marketing differentiation customerservice)
• Nau, Outdoor Eco Clothier, Lives to Ride Another Day : TreeHugger
  “I didn’t have explain who Nau was. Most people said ‘We’ve been watching you’, ‘We’ve been studying what you’ve been doing.’ ” Many said they weren’t in position to help. But “A few days ago a lifestyle apparel company bought the
  (tags: business nau brand hornytoad treehugger fashion sustainability)
• 1-800-MAGIC: Back to Microsoft
  you can spend more time fixing bugs, you can introduce processes to improve things, but it is very, very hard to change the culture. And the culture at Google values “coolness” tremendously, and the quality of service not as much.
  (tags: culture microsoft google opensource 1800magic management leadership innovation)

• The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete
  Google’s founding philosophy is that we don’t know why this page is better than that one: If the statistics of incoming links say it is, that’s good enough. No semantic or causal analysis is required.
  (tags: wired analytics science chrisanderson data google statistics)

• John McCain Is Way Behind Online | Business Week
  “McCain’s deputy e-campaign director, Mark SooHoo, responded that McCain was “aware that there is an Internet,” and understands its impact, even though he doesn’t use such new Web tools.” –McCain might want a less funny deputy e-campaign director.
  (tags: america businessweek mccain obama publicrelations marketing online election)
• Meme Huffer: Who ate all the shadow pies?
  Memehuffer via Photoshop Disasters. It’s like a grittier version of Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign.
  (tags: memehuffer photoshop zoo funny)

Favourite Monkey Crisps

Originally uploaded by Alexandra Mitchell

Some packaging and copywriting that I found interesting, from Favourite Monkey. In general, packets of crisps in pubs come with lots of copy about how much the company cares about you, and the potatoes, and you enjoying the potatoes now they’ve been made into crisps.

This is clearly setting itself up in opposition to that, and the slightly snide tone is something I don’t think anyone needs to see more of. Given that they also mention there are no artificial flavours or preservatives, it’s not like the key message is “They’re made in a vast factory – get over it, bitches.”

What is good is a bit more awareness of context they are -the crisps are going to be eaten in a pub, and the bag is actually designed for sharing. What’s positive about their packaging actually works; they tell you what they are (a snack food) and what they’re for (adults. In pubs.)

Not everyone is as alive as you are to the marketing context of your product. But everyone is going to be aware of the context they’re in when they buy it; and making that context a part of your marketing is going to be much more relevant to customers than being dismissive of your competitors could ever be.

On Sunday night, when I got back from holiday, I went to look at Moo‘s site, only to see this –

– and the first thing I thought was, “oh no, the door is closed, how else will I get in on Monday?”. I immediately thought of writing this up as a comment on how we negotiate the difference between an online and an offline world, or on how the way copy is presented changes our perceptions of where and how data exists – a graphic of a note on a landing page becomes a real note on a door in a building. But actually, this is my way of saying I’ve left the School and today was my first day at Moo. The products and marketing are great, as are the rest of the team, and it’s awesome to have the chance to be part of that. Really looking forward to more days there…

• adliterate: The work fights back
  In the short term it left our best shops with huge financial write-offs as bankrupt clients proved unable to pay their bills. In the longer term a far more cautious market destroyed the enthusiasm of clients to buy truly excellent creative work and the am
  (tags: advertising adliterate agency dotcombust)

• Reverb – Seattle News, Events, Restaurants, Music from Seattle
  Musicians […] want every effort paid to making their band a household name, as long as they are portrayed as humble back-porch songsmiths who learned to use a telephone so they could call their mothers in prison.
  (tags: music musicindustry reverb publicrelations marketing authenticity)

Bad copywriting is something I complain about quite a lot – sometimes it’s because it’s poorly proofread (and I start planning the Alex Mitchell School Of Copywriting), sometimes it’s trying too hard to be something it’s not, sometimes because one tiny phrase just annoys me. Today, I’ve seen two bits of copywriting I really liked.

The first was this post from meebo about how they went about designing the ads for their site. It feels very open, which is what’s going to be useful in persuading a user base not only to accept something new, but also to use it. Things are presented as suggestions and opinions, but the fact that ads are going to be there is not open for questions; it’s a post about how to make the best of what the site have done, not about what the site have done.

The second is from Tate Britain:

It’s fun, enough so that you can miss things while reading it quickly, and it plays on the ideas of the Tate collections being pretentious, while mentioning enough different pictures and styles to make it sound interesting. I always enjoy an obvious punchline, too, which probably helps.

This Bottle Grafitti

Originally uploaded by Alexandra Mitchell

I’ve been reading quite a bit recently about differentiation, and about how the best way to market is to find a single thing that makes your product remarkable.

This bit of graffiti made me think – because Innocent have actually made this work for them very well – people aren’t going to automatically buy your product because it has something remarkable about it. They’re going to think about your product. They’re going to judge your product on that single thing that you think is so important. Have you thought through everything about that? Are you happy with dealing with all those implications?

I want to see more marketing to smart people, more marketing that works through everything it says before the consumer sees an advert or a product.