Happy Christmas

I hope 2006 brings you all you wish for yourself

we'll be back on January 4th if you need us, in the meantime, enjoy
yourselves, relax and stay safe.

we can share a giggle as well as insight

one of these pops into my mailbox most days, i thought i'd share the love with this one, i'm still giggling

i wish i could go, but you should if you can, i'm busy that day

Gosh! everytime Seth announces these i wish i could get there, hopefully one day i will.

until then, if you want to make a difference to the way your organisation thinks and interacts with it's staff and customers you should check this out, or even better- take me with you!

"By popular demand, the day-long Seth Godin Whiteboard Seminar is going uptown.

Last year, I ran only four seminars (each sold out), so if you’ve been waiting, here’s your chance. No promises about when it might be offered again.

On Thursday, January 26, you’re invited to attend an all-day seminar with me in New York. It will be held in the beautiful Harold Pratt House located at 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10021. As you can see from the picture, this majestic brownstone is totally upscale. Most days, it’s the headquarters for one of the most prestigious thinktanks in the world.

WHO IT’S FOR:
Brand managers, CEOs, entrepreneurs... Actually, anyone who’s working to spread a big idea about a product, a service, an organization, a rock group or an open-source piece of software. Anyone with a website. And especially for people frustrated with the status quo."

read more here: Seth's Blog: The new whiteboard seminar (you're invited)

Everyone's an Expert [squidoo again]

i've been working on pages on squidoo for a while, and not been able to make myself understood about what squidoo is, this post goes a long way to explain it better than i have in a while

DailyCandy - Everyone's an Expert: "What is Squidoo? It’s a place for smarties like you to flaunt your expertise and benefit from that of others — think Friendster meets Wikipedia."

it's not about you or your product

jeff jarvis of BuzzMachine said in the guardian...

Where the Europeans lead the Americans must follow: "Content alone can no longer win. You must build and interact with audiences ... We now concentrate on using social software to build closer relations with the communities of readers around our magazines.' Relationships. That is what Burda builds now. That is what Murdoch just bought for $580m (�335m) when he acquired online community MySpace.com."

the whole post is interesting, but i've highlighted the content element because business often concentrates on content and forgets the relationship part.

we think because we build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to our door, that the world is as fascinated and in awe of our own product as we are. things couldn't be further from the truth!

but if the world can talk about it, have conversations with users, find out about it through trusted social networks, they'll look for our product and maybe even buy it!

the stuff about the death of print [newspapers at least] is a prediction that we should heed in the graphics business. i've seen the level of our print work has decreased 80% in the last ten years.

incredible! a sublime concentration of ideas on marketing in today's society

Tom Asacker has just published this PDF on Marketing, i've looked through it, it's insightful, funny and as far as i'm concerned right on the nail, please read it, embrace it, and implement it in your business. i wish i'd written it first!

Thought Pieces: "On Branding: A Visual Presentation"

marketing is broken, so is advertising

Tom Asacker of a clear eye has a new thought piece, it's not been posted, but here's a link to the PDF on his site

eventually everyone will know this, but for the moment ti seems that business is content not to rock the boat, to stick with the status quo and continue to pour good money after bad

Until marketers understand and embrace the concept of clarity, we’ll continue to witness
millions wasted on new logos, goofy ads, viral campaigns, reality TV, blogs, stadium naming, et al. And
CMO’s will continue to lose their jobs (as they should), on average, every 22 months. Open your eyes
marketers! Your marketing plans are a smorgasbord of expensive and misguided tactics that collectively
fail to add up to a clear and compelling brand⎯a reason to choose. We can see it. Why can’t you?

The customers are still there, and in the same
numbers, but they have evolved to tune out, and otherwise hide from, marketers. And yet marketers have
not evolved with them. While the marketplace pendulum has swung from a fascination with image and
consumption to a preoccupation with experience and value, marketers continue to focus on awareness,
engagement, and other extinct concepts.

make a difference, begin to change, look elsewhere to sell more, engage with your clients, have conversations, seek their input. change!

Johnnie Moore's Weblog: Inherent qualities

i've held the view for a very long while, that anyone can do anything

the desktop publishing revolution of the late 90's proved that secretarys could be graphic designers [even if not great designers :-) ]

and as a teacher [and parent] it was a daily mantra

"I find this a refreshing view of life skills... that we have a huge amount of inbuilt talent that is ready to emerge when needed. It reminds me of the story about Michelangelo's David. An admirer asks the artist how he was able to produce such a fine piece of work. 'Simple,' says Michelangelo, 'I just take a large block of stone and chip away anything that's not David.'"

Johnnie Moore's Weblog: Inherent qualities:

and that's some of the point of this blog, with some inside knowledge, some pointers to the pratfalls, you could market your own stuff better, and use teams like mine to do the really great stuff. of course, it might be cheaper for me to do it all, but at least this way, you get to choose

Squidoo top 100

well i felt it worth the skite to say i'm in the top 100 with the lense i spent the least time on!

#61 of nearly 5,000!

i've been working on these pages off and on for a while, i like the concept that the "expert" can corral the best [or most relevant] material in one place, and save users time on the web

after all, one of the biggest issues with the internet is finding stuff. it's a problem that's getting bigger, how do we find thiings on our own hard drives let alone the 11 billion pages on the internet [and google only has 8 billion indexed!] so squidoo will eventually have a magnifying lense anyone can apply to find the stuff they're looking for

i've done lenses on Christchurch, Le Race, and logo design


it may not last, but i'm chuffed to be i the top 100 of something :-)

Squidoo goes live

i've been working in this beta loop on squidoo, user generated content that is a lens [that magnifies a section of the web]

seth's idea is that everyone's an expert in something, why not see what the experts say about their little niche?

there's a few lenses i've been playing with, one on : Logo Design

one on Le Race and a few others i'll let you discover

check out squidoo, something worthwhile i think

angry, but accurate view of advertising

"Advertising is considered almost the least trustworthy of all professions. Right there with lawyers and used-car salesmen. The public doesn’t trust us, and neither do our clients. And we wonder why. I said it at the beginning, and I’ll say it here: Our true nature is most evident in the way we treat those below us in the chain of command. If you’re a jerk, the world knows."

read the whole post, it's funny, angry and insightful> The Universal Jerk

I've been reading ernie's blog for a very short while, but i love his honesty and his values. i guess we're emotional twins about the business we're in. i haven't anywhere near the same number of stories about the business [even in his post here] but enough to believe the system here is the same as the system there

but the point for me, is that to do anything in this business we have to be honest, it may even be the unique part of our business

Great marketing doesn’t always start with marketers

i'll just be your reader on this occassion rather than comment

"Don’t be obvious by using the same tried-and-true tricks in the marketers bag. Don’t fall back to them just because they are safe, even if you get burned by being out on the edge. The challenge to all of us in the field is to look outside our profession to those who are doing great marketing, even if it’s not so easy to recognize it as such at first glance."

go read the whole thing here Great marketing doesn’t always start with marketers

exposure, repitition, niche marketing, but it didn't work [or did it?]

Seth has a post here that points here about being overexposed scott andrew says…

"Anyway, it kind of hammers home the lessons I've been learning for the past two years, namely that most of the time, exposure is just exposure. It's one thing to get in front of someone; it's another thing to keep them interested, and another thing to get them to care. It also gives you an idea of the numbers game the Big Labels have to play in order to make the bucks they need to stay in business.

Now I kinda wish we could re-run the experiment. Are MySpace users just younger and without credit cards? What happens when you make the 'Buy CD' links bigger? What happens when you include artwork? Change the colors? What if you offered $2 off just for MySpace members? What about a free t-shirt for the first 10 to buy? Eh, forget sales — how about a free CD to anyone who refers 10 more MySpace friends? You know, make 'em feel good for being a MySpace ninja...

...and it's around this point that I realize: evil marketing-bot DNA has somehow seeped into my blackened soul, threatening to turn me into a switch-your-phone-service telemarketing lizard-boy, to be scorned by the world.

I will atone by listening to Led Zeppelin I-IV."

read the whole post, there's some very interesting statistics that show how the exposure didn't work. but scott has some ideas about why it didn't work, or could work, and Mary Schmidt goes on to point to a further idea and some insight

So, some questions for you to keep in mind as you develop/grow your business:

1. Am I going after the right target markets? Will they (easily) understand and value what I’m offering?
2. Am I positioning my product/service as a value offering? One of the common client mistakes I see in my consulting practice is pricing too low or - yes - even offering things for “free” to attract customers. This kills the value proposition and reduces them to competing on price, which is a no-win proposition for just about any type or size of company. (Wal-Mart and handful of others being the exception to this rule and there are many reasons they can do this - not just marketing positioning.)
3. Am I using the right sales methods & channels to attract and keep quality (revenue/profit generating) customers? In this case, MySpace isn’t the place for bands to make money, as evidenced by the results quoted above. Same is true of any potential “channel” If you’re selling a high-end, high quality product - you don’t want to offer in low-end, mass market stores or web sites. Example: I (and many others) would never buy Land’s End clothing at K-Mart.

it seems to me that maybe it's not the right niche.

we've said before: fish at your feet.
show up where your clients are.

unfortunately teenagers are on myspace, but if they're anything like the teenagers in my home, they've got no money and think music is free anyway

simple and honest insight

the original quote is worth a look on it's own, but tom makes even more of a point about that, quoted here

"I've often wondered: If your employees won't boast about your business to their friends, why would you expect it from your customers?"

see the whole post here W. Edwards Deming on profit

raving fans are crucial to any business, how can you get that enthusiasm? start that enthusiasm conversation with you, with the owner, the staff, the managers, and every customer that comes through the door.

the energy will rub off on your customers and your staff, and they'll all pass that message on. enthusiasm is easy to infect other people with

go for it

i'm scared now, this is incredible...

this is quoted on a penny for from CNN
Brand Loyalty Starts At A Young Age

i can't find the original piece on CNN, but here goes anyway

At what age do children start to develop 'brand loyalty'?

A. Six Months Old
B. Two Years Old
C. Four Years Old
D. Seven Years Old

Answer: B. By the age of two--really, two--kids can recognize a favorite brand on store shelves and let you know they want it, with words or gestures, says James McNeal, a former marketing professor at Texas A&M. (In fact, his research shows that babies as young as six months are able to recognize some corporate logos and mascots.) Once the brand lightbulb goes [on], children quickly learn the art of the nag: Kids ages four to 12 influence-- that's putting it nicely--an estimated $300 billion of their parent's purchases annually."

let's just hope that the leadtime on developing the sale is too long for most marketers or we'll be facing targetted ads for toddlers

attention deficit

Merlin Mann at 43 folders showed me this Repetitive Information Injury:

"It sounds silly, but I'm literally stuck in a loop of information acquisition. What I am looking for? Something interesting informational tidbit which grabs my attention and if I don't find it, I'll often loop four or five times before I realize that I'm in this useless, non-productive loop."

the whole post is an eye opener, well really a reminder. it happens all the time to me, but i'm guessing it's not so different for everyone out there if not with blogs and the internet. how many of us catch ourselves watching that advert before leaving to make the tea, or watching a programme on TV even though we've just said how naff it is? or reading the junk mail as we take it to the recycling. i always open the junk mail that's made it to my mailbox too, even though i know from the multi coloured printing on the outside that it's the monthly newsletter from the stationery company who's products i don't buy anymore nor do i have an account with any longer.

how does this affect advertising and communication? not sure really, but it does. whether we're short of time because of the sheer volume of messages we are exposed to every day, or whether some of that exposure is of our own doing, it's still time that's gone, attention that's been stolen from us.

i think that if we kept things simple it would be better. if only New Zealand's four main supermarket chains stopped their bi weekly junk mails at the same time, then they'd save money and my bet is that the sales wouldn't drop one cent, in fact profitability might rise as they shopper who changes store every week to follow the advertsed specials might just stick with the local store, or the store that smiles the most instead of driving across town in a different direction every week

is it cool for you, or good for the client?

we often say that it's not about being cool.

as a youngster i wasn't in the cool groups, and now i'm still not cool [ask my kids]. ninefish has won one award [from the three times we entered competitions] but we're still not in any of the cool peer groups.

we've always sought what's best for the client, and not been in the market of getting kudos in our client's shadows.

i think this post from ernie mosteller is on the nail [that's why it's here] tangelo ideas - erniesblog: Family Resemblance: "Are you doing what speaks best to the audience? What's best for the client? Or are you doing what you personally think is cool? Worse yet, are you doing what the competition is doing, too?

There's too much stuff out there"

15 minute pop quiz

one of our biggest frustrations is making a relationship quickly with new people, how do you create an ice breaker moment? how do you do this maybe even before you've met?

how can i quickly get up to speed on understanding the story behind a new client's business so i can pas that on for them?

try this, i'd love to see your responses for your business. you could also give me feedback in the comments too if you've got time...

of course, you need to change your name for mine :-)

i did this [again] today with a new client.

what's unique about ninefish?

guarantees: budget and deadline [all graphic designers can do much of what we do, few are so oriented to solutions, few keep to budget...]

what's the best thing about working with ninefish?

being heard. because our clients work directly with the designer things don't get confused or lost by an account manager layer

if ninefish was beer which one would it be?

speights old dark. it's an acquired taste, but once tasted you won't go back to the lighter tasteless beers, you'll seek out the depth and breadth of the taste of old dark

why did you name it ninefish?

to begin with the story went like this but we also realised that it was unique, it could be used to cover a multitude of business opportunities, and it could be on-sold eventually. none of that could be done if it had been named Adrian Price Design. and it's meant that we can be remembered even after many years without contact

in seven words or less describe ninefish...

telling our clients stories

or

solutions not excuses

or

effective graphics that connect businesses with customers

an idea that's been had before

"Less isn't more; just enough is more."
Milton Glaser, designer

putting pressure where it counts

once more seth distills the issues into a pure gem here URL: The needle, the vise... and the baby rattle

we've been seeing a lot of changes in our business, and clients seeking the answer to an ever changing question in fads and the stealing of attention.

we cannot continue to be sneaky and grab attention through gimmicks. if we use simple techniques and honest ideas it is poosible to have raving fans talking about our products, it is possible to have people we worked with years ago remember the feeling of that and call us back after five years and begin talking about doing a new product. [that's exactly what happened twice last week for us]

the precision of the needle is an awesome tool, and we believe it's the tool to keep using.

the power of the vice is ensconsed in the nagging that we do to you about making the brand consistent...

both graphically and within the use and exposure to the company. your brand is so much more than the logo, don't let your designer convince you otherwise. see pretty much anything that tom peters has to say about companies for more on the service as a brand

...you have to keep the pressure on, otherwise they don't notice you. but it has to be consistent pressure otherwise it hurts!

passion sells

tom asacker says on acleareye.com: On passion and compassion:

"passion sells! Passion not only sells, it creates! It busts paradigms; it inspires; it attracts; it stirs; it rejuvenates."

i'm with tom! there's sometimes not enough passion for what we're doing. what is it that drove you to start that company? to begin that project? to burst out and change the world? i bet it was passion to make a difference

get some of that passion back for what you're doing and your clients will pick up on it, enjoy it, and best of all pass it on...

it's easy to pass conversations on in word of mouth if there's some passion involved. and passion breeds passion.

how not to advertise

for many firms, this is how they start their marketing campaigns, whilst amusing to read it's my fear that many of us are still working like this, but have maybe swapped the paperwork for CRM software

hugh at gaping void points to a post by hamish that hits a nerve for me

Cardboard Spaceship: Finding the Likely Customer: "So, what do I do? I start, God help me, at the beginning of the box, and I start calling through to the back of the box. (Duration, about 10 weeks.) I do not even have a notion of which of the cards in this box have been spoken to last, and I keep my on notes on when to call anyone promising in my diary, which given that the punter who had this seat and box before me has gone and taken the diary they used with them, I have no idea when anyone before showed any interest. Each card has a bunch of cryptical dated and scribbled comments, like 'WCMB' or Will Call Me Back, which is the telesales equivalent of being told to go take a long hike off a short plank."

there has to be a better way of conversing with our [potential] clients

hint: there is, it's a simple solution to complex problems. call me :-)

http://www.gapingvoid.com/MT-2.65-full-lib/mt-tb.cgi/1410

the new advertising

Fred Wilson says "We have heard that the “online advertising market” will be a $12.3bn business this year." in his post here A VC: When Is A Market Really A Market?:

this is an indication of the maturity of online advertising and pay per click adverts with things like adsense

we've been saying that advertising is dying, this would seem to make that out to be a lie wouldn't it? i don't think so really, and we've also begun to change our conversation about advertising dying to one of it being broken.

traditional marketing is dying because it's broken. it's too complicated and doesn't reach the right people. we believe those are facts.

but at least online adverts are in front of the right people

and at least online adverts are only paid for when they're used

and online advertising allows really small companies the same reach as large ones

and it has another feature we love: it's simple to test and measure how effective it really is.

kill the ineffective stuff!

do more of the effective stuff that actually works and sends customers to the shop!

rollout the red carpet...

CSS can be a pain in the ass, but it does make for separating the content from the style

I've spent the last three days stealing code, modifying it and deconstructing it so that it works the way i was hoping

please review the site and if you see any problems let me know, email me with feedback, i'd appreciate it

my theory was that it should make updates easier, and can be rolled out into client sites as well, there's a few finicky things that need tweaking, but hopefully it will work

i've tried to make the content reflect our current thoughts on what our clients should be doing, but after all you're the benchmark that really counts not me. shout your praises and brickbats just the same