Happy 2nd Blog Birthday

May 16, 2008
Filed Under Blogging, Change Management, Customer Experience | 1 Comment

I’ll keep this short. It’s not about me, it’s about *you*, my friends around the world who create a business network that empower me to reach people and accomplish things that I could never do all on my own. To all of you who practice the words below, I love you and thank you for your continued help and encouragement in my life adventures and for pushing me forward towards my goals of creating highly monetizable ventures:

“Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers.”

- Peter Drucker

“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

- Jack Welch

“Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity.”

- Michael Porter

“Learning is not compulsory…neither is survival.”

- W. Edwards Deming

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

- Sam Walton

To the rest of you, there is still hope for you and encourage you to come over to the other side. :)

Hello Dell “Community” Lurkers

May 16, 2008
Filed Under Customer Experience | Leave a Comment

Dell has not fixed the design flaws and workmanship quality issues of my poorly built laptop Insiron 1505. They instead have chosen to play word games like they have with thousands other victims of Dell Inspiron purchases. Just Wednesday night I met two more Dell Inspiron quality victims when attending a local meetup group on a different topic. I wonder just how much shareholder value Dell’s alleged “community outreach” group destroys on a daily basis? If that group spent even one tenth the time standing by it’s products instead of making lame excuses they could be amazing, intead they have blog posts, like the one mentioned in the post below where they moderate comments about the truth.  

What Dell doesn’t know is A) people are now telling me their stories left and right and Dell’s inaction is increasing the likelihood of the groundswell to create the justifiable national Dell Inspiron recall (then maybe Charlene Li can tell the truth about Dell in her follow up book) and B) that when they sent me an email saying they consider this matter “closed” I could see that they then visited my blog several more times yesterday. I currently use a program called whoslookin.com to see who is visiting my blog. I find it beyond hilarious that Dell considers the matter “closed” yet they then visited my blog several more times yesterday further undermining their credibility.   

 Company Name                              Hits/Visits                       Last Request

Dell Computer Corporation                   16                               3:05 PM

I again repeat Danny Sullivan’s words:

 “My plea is simple. Empower your customer service people to simply replace things that don’t work rather than making them jump through whatever procedures you have in place that clearly don’t work.”

Sent My Dell Inspiron 1505 Back to Dell For Repairs

May 14, 2008
Filed Under Customer Experience | 1 Comment

After way too many emails, I sent my unreliable Dell Inspiron laptop back to Dell this week.

It has had the following problems: slow boot times, frequent blue screens, unreliablity connecting to the Internet due to a flaky Internet card, weak and broken hinges due to a poor design in fact, the Inspiron line got rid of this altogether with the latest redesign, gee maybe it’s because it was a design flaw? 

This matter is made worse by the behavior of a certain inconsiderate Director of Dell’s community program, who rudely interrupted my conversation with a senior person from a major search engine last fall because he thought inspecting my hinges was important at that moment.

Dell was founded on reliable, highly tested equipment that was flawless, this experience and the experiences of others show that is no longer the case, they play word games and do not stand by their products and take responsibility for their design flaws - in fact my mahcine wasn’t even made in the US, which used to be one of Dell’s mantras.

This laptop is an unreliable and poorly designed machine. It is why people like Danny Sullivan and others are switching brands. I agree with my good friend Danny totally when he says:

 “My plea is simple. Empower your customer service people to simply replace things that don’t work rather than making them jump through whatever procedures you have in place that clearly don’t work.”

Update: It appears Dell VP Bob Pearson is more interested in selling new PC’s than creating satisfied customers who would then create positive word of mouth. PR does not equal customer focused culture and process improvement!!!

Google’s Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Operations to Present at NASDAQ OMX 21st Investor Program in London

May 13, 2008
Filed Under Google (GOOG) | Leave a Comment

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — May 13, 2008 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
announced today that Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President of Global
Sales and Operations, will participate in a question-and-answer
session at the NASDAQ OMX 21st Investor Program in London. The session
is scheduled for 9:45 a.m. Eastern Time / 6:45 a.m. Pacific Time on
Tuesday, May 20, 2008.

To access the live audio webcast of the presentation, please visit
investor.google.com/webcast.html.

Best of Show: Chicago Global Food and Style Expo 2008

May 11, 2008
Filed Under Chicago, Customer Experience, Entrepreneurship | 1 Comment

This year the Global Food and Style Expo did not have the FMI show co-located along with the All Things Organic, Fancy Food Show and the U.S. Food Export Showcase so it was a slightly smaller show with less foot traffic. But it was filled with innovative products and amazing entrepreneurial stories! it’s a shame most consumers do not have the opportunity to meet the creators of new products like this and hear their stories of passion and how those overcome distribution.

It gives me great pleasure to announce these items as best of show:

VinJus - A unique non-alcoholic grape juice drink! Not yet publicly launched, it is scheduled to be distributed shortly. It’s a unique drink. They describe it as:

NAPA VinJus™ - the perfect non-alcoholic aperitif! Refreshing virgin vineyard grape juice – created for your sophisticated palette as an alternative to soda, water or energy drinks. It’s unique balance of crisp, tart and sweet lingers with a hint of green apple, honeysuckle, wildflower and lavender.

Made in the beautiful Napa Valley from early picked varietals, such as Chardonnay and more, this delicious drink is but one single ingredient - mouth watering virgin vineyard grape juice and nothing more! Compared to wine it’s almost half the calories and compared to regular grape juice it’s about half the sugar! And it’s made by a GREEN company!!!

Lucy’s - Smart Cookies. Made with Love. Norfolk, Virginia based Dr. Lucy Gibney M.D. has a son with major food allergies. Lucy describes it best on their website.

Every crispy, crunchy, delicious Dr. Lucy’s cookie is baked without wheat, gluten, dairy milk, butter, eggs, casein, peanuts or tree nuts. But you’d never know it. They taste delicious! We use only high quality ingredients in our carefully controlled bakery to be sure our products meet our tight allergen testing criteria.

Lucy was amazed at the lack of food available to serve that market. Lucy turned to the kitchen in order to change that and once a few varieties were perfected she decided to solve the problem for others without her unique combination of talents. They weren’t even supposed to be at the show, they got added to new items section at the last minute. I’m glad they did, Lucy is a wonderful person and I know her niche product will succeed. Terry Starbucker is already a huge fan.

Blackwing Meats, Inc. - A variety of elk, buffalo, ostrich and other exotic organic meats as wide as I’ve ever seen! They get bonus point for having an highly functional e-commerce site to ship Roger Gerber’s creations directly to you. Even in the down economy Roger says 1st quarter sales were up 77% over the previous year. These items have momentum and the distribution to match it.

Bionade is a unique German based, non-alcoholic refreshment drink that is scheduled to be introduced in the United States later this year. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted, but it is truly outstanding. In Germany the Elderberry is most popular, however I like the Herbs flavor the best (see picture here). If they are able to get shelf space and have an affordable price point, it could easily be a hit in the USA.

Leggio’s herb infused olive oil - Chef Joseph Leggio creates an “amazing” herb infused olive oil product. While there were others at the show with offerings in this vertical, none match the taste of Leggio’s. Joseph started experimenting with the concept several years ago. Then one day asked his wife to ask her dad, a wine maker, to bring over some bottling equipment for him to test with. Though she thought he was crazy, she did it anyway and his hunch paid off, his business is growing quite briskly and he claims to have some other innovative ideas up his sleeve, I can’t wait to see what they are.

Sheila B’s Popcorn (web site under development) - awesome butter flavor, ultra high pop rate, doesn’t dry out upon popping, no aftertaste like most popcorn has and best of all, not really more expensive than other popcorn on the market! Really nice folks too that taught me about the current state of agriculture.

BigHorn Extreme Foods - Peter Andrews has unique sausage offerings as well as tasty buffalo and elk burgers for restaurants and retail outlets.

WowBacon - Amazing clean cooking micro-wave bacon preparer. 6 years to perfect as an invention. Works extremely well as I’ve tried it out. Please note it will not stand upright in smaller microwaves. See a review here with some photos.

Tre Bella Foods Organic - Gail Tiburzi’s organic Italian foods were inspired by her grandmother’s original recipes. It’s not everyday you meet a former investment banker turned food distributor, my time with Gail was all too short as she had a meeting. I told her to call me if she had time during the rest of the show to compare projects, I guess she was too busy taking orders as I never heard from her!

For those needing last minute Mother’s Day gift ideas, there you go!

Remembering SOBcon08 - My House Guest Andrew Dubber…

May 7, 2008
Filed Under Blogging, Change Management, Customer Experience | 2 Comments

I got a call from Liz Strauss to claim my apartment’s extra space a day or two before the event. It was determined that Andrew Dubber would be my house guest during SOBcon08. Andrew, pictured on the left below, has a personal blog and his primary blog, New Music Strategies.

Andrew was a fascinating guest! He was ultra low maintenance and had great stories to tell about living in New Zealand and then moving to the UK,  the music industry and his love for jazz (all too rare in the UK). He is the proud new owner of a Leica D-Lux 3 camera - which takes ultra sweet photos, even at high speed on Lake Shore Drive! More importantly I think I experienced several new things about Chicago that I never had before such as Chicago’s many jazz clubs and music stores. Andrew experienced Italian Beef (pictured below), Greektown and tasty BBQ ribs and cornbread! I’m glad he stopped by for a visit and I hope to see Andrew again someday soon!

Eco-Safe - Nice Idea - Needs Much Better Execution

May 3, 2008
Filed Under Blogging, Social Media | 1 Comment

Just saw Eco-Safe installed on Chris Brogan’s blog. It looked super cool and was excited to try it so I emailed a file to my self.

I was massively disappointed by what followed…

A giant and unnecessary pdf file weighing in at a hefty half a megabyte arrived in my mailbox. :(

Giant pdf files are anything but eco-friendly!

Sometimes those massive pdf’s are jammed into archaic email servers with small file size limits like the joke of the size of my chicagogsb.edu email address (the quota hasn’t ben raised from 20MB in it’s history and creates networking bottlenecks). Secondarily, large files are not eco-friendly in general as they take up larger amounts of hard drive space which drives demand for more hard drive space - this is hardly eco-friendly. This isn’t even mentioning RAM implications.

I would hope that Eco-Safe would chose to immediately work to limit the file size of it’s output or better yet eliminate pdf’s altogether…

Search Engine Journal Adwords Quality Score Scoop!

April 30, 2008
Filed Under Google (GOOG) | 1 Comment

Go read it! Wow…interesting comments over there for sure…

Revisiting SOBcon07 - Welcome to Chicago for SOBcon08!!!

April 30, 2008
Filed Under Blogging, Change Management | 8 Comments

You remember how much fun it was to be at the successful and outstanding blogger conference last year…don’t you?

I was sitting next to Mike Sansone all day and I learned a ton about community! I got a little tip from Robyn Tippins who I’d known for years online and had never met in person! I met Lorelle VanFossen - one tough cookie who really knows her Wordpress - she got a cool mug recently - me I’m still waiting for an XL hoodie. I met other great online friends like Easton Ellsworth and Jason Alba for the first time. I built relationships with people that blossomed into subsequent relationships. Most importantly they are blogger relationships! So many other great stories from wonderful people.

For the 2008 attendees, I’d like to tag you and ask you to write what you hope to achieve from the experience this weekend. For the 2007 attendees, I’d like to tag you and ask you - what foundation did the experience create and how has it impacted you in the following year? If you were an attendee last year and will be attending this year, you will have been tagged twice but one post is OK… :)

For me I learned about conversational blogging and learned tons of blog tips and tricks! It was so much fun! This year I hope to continue that journey. I’d also like to learn how time strapped bloggers find or make time to blog when you are ultra busy…my frequency has been down recently for this reason…I look forward to hearing your replies to these issues!

Please take this html link lists and repost the link love to the 2007 folks as well as this year’s people too!
Click on the link, right click, then select all, then copy and paste!
2008 SOBcon Chicago blog link list
2007 SOBcon Chicago blog link list

SOBcon2008 attendees…
Cliff Atkinson
Shashi Bellamkonda
Chris Brogan
Harry Brooks
Anita Bruzzese
Dave Bullock
Mark Carter
Brian Clark
Tom Clifford
Valerie Combs
Chris Cree
Lisa Cree
Thomas Croghan
Donna Cutting
David “Chicago Mobile Marketing” Dalka
Kevin Dixie
Tim Draayer
Andrew Dubber
Monica Duncan
Easton Ellsworth
Kevin Ferrasci O’Malley
Jonathan Fields
Sarah Filipiak
Mary-Lynn Foster
Annie Galvin Teich
Brian Gardner
Chris Garrett
Jon Gatrell
Phil Gerbyshak
Jared Goralnick
Karen Hanrahan
Joseph Hauckes
Vicky Hennegan
Scot Herrick
John Hong
Stephen Hopson
Robert Hruzek
Timothy Johnson
Sara
Pete Jones
Todd Jordan
Bob “Internet Advertising” Kakoliris
Christine Kane
Adam Kayce
Kristen King
Jen Knoedl
Stephen Koernig
Bryan Kress
George Krueger
Amy L
Tammy Lenski
James G. Lindberg
Eli Litscher
Rick Mahn
Sim Margolis
Michael Martine
Becky McCray
Maria Meadows
Cory Miller
Ann Michael
Dawud Miracle
Debra Moorhead
Matthew Murphy
Paul O’Flaherty
Tim Padar
Jesse Petersen
Melissa Pierce
Wendy Piersall
Sandra Ponce de Leon
J. Erik Potter
Karen Putz
Susan R Quandt
Levy Rivers
Barbara Rozgonyi
Jeff Sable
Sheila Scarborough
Mary Schmidt
Derek Semmler
Maria Sharon
David Sherbow
Steve Sherlock
Brad Shorr
Louise Silberman
Sonia Simone-Rossney
Julien Smith
Stephen Smith
Michael Snell
Derrick Sorles
Terry Starbucker
Liz Strauss
Jon Swanson
Ruth M Sylte
Windsor Tanner
Michelle Vandepas
Lorelle VanFossen
Colleen Wainwright
Denise Wakeman
James D. Walton
Randy Windsor
Joanna Young

SOBcon2007 Chicago Attendees:
Sandra Renshaw
Brad Shorr
Timothy Johnson
Tammy Lenski
Muhammad Saleem
Lorelle VanFossen
David Dalka - Mobile Search Marketing - Chicago GSB MBA
Todd And
John Yedinak
Joe Hauckes
Tim Draayer
Jeremy Geelan
Carolyn Manning
Sheila Scarborough
Steve Farber
Dawud Miracle
Doug Mitchell
Jeff O’Hara
Dave Schoof
Jamy Shiels
Adam Steen
Hannah Steen
Chris Thilk
Barry Zweibel
Eric Bingen
Ellen Moore
Cord Silverstein
Jean-Patrick Smith
James Walton
Sharan Tash
Vernon Lun
Tony Lee
Scott Desgrosseilliers
Mark Murrell
Kammie Kobyleski
Easton Ellsworth
Mark Goodyear
Ann Michael
Kent Blumberg
Ashley Cecil
Robert Hruzek
Sabu N G
Mazur Krystyna
Lisa Gates
Franke James
Chris Brown
Troy Worman
Karen Putz
Jesse Petersen
Terry Mapes
Andy Brudtkuhl
Lucia Mancuso
Peter Flaschner
Derrick Sorles
Mike Rohde
Thomas Clifford
Rajesh Srivastava
Claire Celsi
Jason Alba
Cristiana Passinato
Sean R.
Alex Shalman
Cristiana Passinato
Brad Spirrison
Ari Garber
Dr. Rob Wolcott
Cheryll Cruz
Sharon Scherer
Jonathan Phillips
Jason Wade
Jill Pullen
Doug Bulleit
Wendy Kinney
Chelsea Vincent
Ayush Agarwal
Paul Mangalik
Premchand Kallan
Xochi Kaplan
Michael Snell
Ella Wilson
James Bergstrom
Raj Majumder
Keith Levenson

SOBcon2007 Chicago Speakers:
Andy Sernovitz
Phil Gerbyshak
Liz Strauss
Mike Sansone
Drew McLellan
Mike Wagner
Terry Starbucker
Rodney Rumford
Ben Yoskovitz
Chris Cree
Robyn Tippins
Diego Orjuela
Vernon Lun
Wendy Piersall

Winners of 11th Annual ad:tech Awards

April 17, 2008
Filed Under Interactive Ads | Leave a Comment

ad:tech announced the winners of the of the 11th annual ad:tech awards. Congrats to all of the successful winners!

The 2008 Industry Achievers:
Pete Blackshaw (Executive VP, Digital Strategic Services, Nielsen Online) has been an industry leader since co-leading p&g’s interactive marketing efforts. He founded PlanetFeedback.com, coined the term “consumer-generated media,” and co-founded the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). He also has a forthcoming book, “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000″.

Kate Thorp (CEO of Real Girls Media) was named one of the Top 25 Women to Watch by Advertising Age (1998) and a Media All Star by OMMA (2005). She was also inducted into the AAF Hall of Achievement for executives under 40 (2000).

Rich LeFurgy (General Partner of Archer) was recognized by USA Today as “the Johnny Appleseed of Online Advertising” (1998), was inducted into Advertising Age’s Interactive Hall of Fame (2000), and received the IAB’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2004). Rich is the Founding Chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and remains active in the trade association since it’s founding in 1996.

The 2008 Limelight Award Winners:

· Best Banner Ad: WaMu Friendly Banner, Avenue A | Razorfish

· Best Interactive Broadcast Ad: Nissan Rogue Campaign, TBWA\Chiat\Day\Tequila

· Best Large Format or Overlay Ad: Assassin’s Creed Roadblock, AKQA

· Best Next Generation Ad: HEMA Rube Goldberg Viral, CCCP

· Best Use of Rich Media: HP Gwen Stefani Yahoo Paper Dolls, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

· Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign: Moosejaw - Growth and Profit, Schaaf Consulting

· Best Branding Campaign: eBay – Renew & Rethink, Agency.com

· Best Business-to-Business Campaign: EyeWonder Client Testimonials, EyeWonder

· Best Consumer Campaign: Nokia Jealous Computers, These Days

· Best Direct Response Campaign: Soccer Club Sells Seats with DRC, eStara

· Best Email Marketing Campaign: Sun APAC Re-engagement, Acxiom Digital

· Best Integrated Campaign: Heinz Top This TV Challenge Website, Smith Brothers Agency

· Best Mobile Campaign: Motorola “Say Goodbye”, The Hyperfactory & Ogilvy

· Best Multi-Cultural Campaign: Vivemejor, Media 8 Digital Marketing

· Best Social Media Marketing Campaign: Bamboo on Facebook, Guerilla PR

· Best Word of Mouth Campaign: Elf Yourself, EVB & Toy

· Best Campaign Optimization: Lincoln Educational Services, iCrossing

The 2008 Limelight Award Winners (continued):

· Best Search Engine Optimization Strategy/Campaign: Millennium & Copthorne SEO Campaign,
eMarketingEye (Pvt) Ltd

· Best Search Marketing Strategy/Campaign: HGTV Design Star Marketing Loop, Scripps Networks

· Best Business-to-Business Marketing Web Site: Mullen.com, Mullen

· Best Business-to-Business Transaction Web Site: FurnishedQuarters.com, The Buddy Group

· Best Business-to-Consumer Marketing Web Site: HP Serena Williams Site, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

· Best Business-to-Consumer Transaction Web Site: Virgin America, ROKKAN

· Best Micro Site: Every journey needs a Journal, T3

· Best User Defined Experience: DesignMyRoom Website, andCulture

· Best of Show: Elf Yourself, EVB & Toy

The 2008 People’s Choice Award Winners:

· Best Banner Ad: Blue Shield of California Headbanger Banner, TAXI, Inc.

· Best Interactive Broadcast Ad: Ubisoft Rayman Video Inventory Ad, AdMission Corporation

· Best Large Format or Overlay Ad: Flight of the Conchords, Deep Focus

· Best Next Generation Ad: Motorola Rockstarizer, Draftfcb

· Best Use of Rich Media: Taco Fu, Blockdot and Draftfcb

· Best Business-to-Consumer Marketing Web Site: Breville Concept to Kitchen, Avenue A | Razorfish

· Best Business-to-Consumer Transaction Web Site: Virgin America, ROKKAN

· Best Business-to-Business Marketing Web Site: Business Breakthrough, Visa

· Best Business-to-Business Transaction Web Site: ADSDAQ Selling Desk, ADSDAQ by ContextWeb

· Best Micro Site: Funship Island, Avenue A | Razorfish

· Best User Defined Experience: Elf Yourself, EVB & Toy

Net.Finance 2008: Jon Kaplan of Google - YouTube and Financial Services

April 16, 2008
Filed Under Google (GOOG), Interactive Ads, Social Media | 2 Comments

Before I post about Jon’s interesting session, I’ll note that it’s important that marketers considering using this channel read my post on YouTube Video Optimization as there are many highly unique search engine optimization techniques that can improve your success in this area.

Jon Kaplan’s talk starts here: Youtube was founded at a dinner party in 2005. There was no easy way to share video files.

Online video viewing in the mainstream

Americans stream of 10 billion online views monthly…

Explosion of Content = connection of people + democratization of the tools of production + broadband penetration + falling cost of data storage

Sharing is the new viewing - 150M unique users globally

Demographics: 2/3 of YouTube users are over 35, 37% earn above $75,000

800 content partners attended YouTube Videocracy in February

Four ways to think about marketing in 2008
- Target your audience with video profiling
- Integrate your brand into the user experience – on YouTube and Beyond!
- Leverage your offline assets and ones YouTube is creating
- Think about measurement differently

Video Profiling – Building Tools for Effective Targeting – using traditional demographics in the search by audience features…

YouTube’s Creative Standards – 20 million home page views a day

Animated flash overlay is the current YouTube ad format – NO Pre-rolls are shown
Promote Your Video: Video Search capabilities

Integrate Your Brand into the Experience – HP example

It’s all about interesting content: Turbotax

It’s about all about educational content: Vanguardinvestments brand channels

Launched test of video ads in the 1st Quarter of 2008

E*TRADE – pre-seeded SuperBowl commercials – 2,000,000+ views on Youtube.

American Express sponsored fashion week

YouTube Global Gathering

Metrics – the social side of YouTube
- Users can rate videos
- User can comment on videos
- User can add videos to their list of favorites
- User can share videos with friends
- Users can subscribe to their favorite channel

New metrics will accompany this, Google Trends data – admitted that this drives need for Adwords campaigns. Discussed other metrics in terms about how the video was measured and then closed with questions.

Audience question: Should YouTube provide statistics for videos with completed views or the average time of engagement with viewers so that more accurate measures of engagement could be provided?

Answer: That’s a good question. Said several things about exploration of new areas. Did not say yes we’ll add it or no we’ll never do that. It will be interesting to revisit this issue at some point.

Net.Finance 2008 - Retail Mobile Banking at Wells Fargo: Eskander Matta, Senior Vice President, Internet Services

April 16, 2008
Filed Under Customer Experience, Mobile / Cell / LBS / SMS | Leave a Comment

Mobile phone penetration in the US is now 95%+ and data plan penetration is now 50%+

Modalities:                             Usage   Capable phones
Texting                                        50%     100%
Mobile Browser,                         25%      >60%
Downloadable Application        17%      >60%

Application download cons are pretty significant – carrier control, downloading, device management, etc

Browser cons – sign-on, complex navigation, lack of awareness

SMS text message cons - Simplistic UI, Security, Plain Text

Distributing services in the mobile ecosystem requires a highly complex series of relationships.

Wells Fargo and external research shows that there is adoption interest.

Most frequent uses presently: checking balances, fund transfers and activity monitoring

Browser usage presently 2.5 times per week, 66% active users (last three months)

Text banking – 83% of all mobile banking enrollees are including the text banking service. Sending 19 text messages a month overall, becoming more engaged with the accounts overall.

Mobile Contactless Pilot with Visa…

Mobile delivers strategically – when, where, why and how?

What is the potential value?
Customer retention, reducing servicing costs by controlling call center calls, reduced risk and fraud, customer acquisition and usage revenue (P2P, Panic Play, Mobile Contactless, etc)

Security order: SMS, Browser, Application

Mobile customers slant towards a desirable demographic overall due to the very fact they are heavy mobile users.

Future state is for SMS, application and browser to be ubiquitous and the three will be tightly integrated.

Well Fargo is trying to build usage of the channel, not charging for the service at this time. Getting techno-savvy users so servicing has been minimal.

Reaction: I’m highly impressed with the full deployment of SMS, Browser and Application download models as they will be fully able to determine which best meets customer needs based on actual usage data. I chatted up Eskander afterwards and he’s a joy to speak to.

How To Triple Your Current Adsense Income - Max Davis

April 3, 2008
Filed Under Google (GOOG) | 1 Comment

If you’ve got some free time and some sales skills, Max’s post shows you a long-term alternative to Adsense. Most people don’t have the time or the skills to do the direct selling he suggests, but I love the creativity and analysis of the facts. Top notch. Bravo!

His post gives an all too rare but welcome dose of independent thought - more people need to be educated and make independent choices about Internet advertising. The world does not necessarily revolve around Adsense.

He is after all giving a glimpse the future of Internet advertising. One where the publisher is respected, given a fairer share as a true partner and rewarded with greater relevancy of ads on their site.

Why Earth Hour Was Lame

March 30, 2008
Filed Under Customer Experience | Leave a Comment

Wow, we turn off some lights for an hour in some giant empty office buildings in downtown Chicago (which should be the case every night) and people lose their minds.

If people were truly energy conscious, wouldn’t they want these lights to be off in these empty buildings every night, all night? Wouldn’t that do something actually meaningful? Have we gotten to the point where the American media is so incapable of independent thought that a completely meaningless story like this gets way too much attention? It appears so.

It’ll be a real story when all of these empty office buildings have these lights completely turned off in the middle of the night, every night.

Why isn’t this the focus? It should be. 

Others are even more critical of the event.

Tom Churchwell Venture Capital Speech at University of Chicago GSB

March 16, 2008
Filed Under Chicago, Chicago GSB, Venture Capital | Leave a Comment

The following are high level notes of Tom Churchwell’s speech discussing venture capital at The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (Chicago GSB). This talk took place in Chicago on January 22, 2008. I’m posting it today in celebration of this week’s Midwest Venture Summit.

Typical Fund Structure
- Management Fee 2.5% of committed capital
- Carried Interest – after losses offset by profits
- 80% Net Profit – Investors
- 20% Net Profit – General Partner
- 50-70% desired return…
- Vesting occurs over 5 years

- Experienced, successful entrepreneurs abound throughout the country
- Start-up companies have access to abundant early-stage venture capital
- Skilled attorneys, accountants, consultants are readily available
- The majority of start-ups can result in successful IPO’s within 2-3 years
- Increasingly hedge funds are an alternative financing source
- Angel capital is more available in Chicago than it used to be

- The space a VC plays in is extremely important - industry sector, growth

- Tom has changed management 3 times on average in the 60 companies he’s invested in

- Buckets of entrepreneurship seed entrepreneurs, beta stage, scaling skills

- Discipline = Success

Criteria:
- Proprietary product or service
- Sustainable competitive advantage
- Viable business model
- Large markets
- Experienced management team
- Appropriate use of funds
- Target 10-15x growth 5-7 years
- Objective: Sale of IPO in 5-7 years

Management:
- The most critical resource
- More important than all other elements
- Stage appropriate, later stages may require different management
- Must have a significant stake in success
- Tom says “Management experience is management experience, big company experience is just as good as small company experience in his view.” (Note: I actually find a *mixture* of both sizes in your experience to be of high value)
“We don’t make money on IPO’s, we make money selling to the Baxter’s, Motorola’s etc.”

“Nothing succeeds like revenue, it’s the cheapest form of capital.”

In 60+ company investments, I can only say that once it was the technology that made the company fail. It’s about getting the product in the marketplace.

What makes you say yes?
Passion. A product I have to get on the marketplace that solves a real problem. Management discipline which means they can step back and say realistically this is how long it will take, this is the team you will need, etc.

Revenue is an outcome, it’s not a driver. What is going to cause the business to scale? It’s business model testing. I don’t care about year 5, I care about what will get us more proof of concept and closer to a success.

The first screening process is where did this plan come from, if another VC sent it to us, we pay attention more. I ask, “Do I want to have a beer with this guy? You shouldn’t be there if you can’t say yes. ”

60% of the time we at least get our money back.

Scientific Board of Directors (compensated with a point of equity +/- a bit)
- Should be at least equivalent in stature to the scientific founders
- Like the Board of Directors, should have complementary skills
- Used properly, play a vital strategic role
- Typically meet semi-annually

Tom never signs an NDA.

The Business Plan
- Executive Summary is most important
- Shorter is better
- Assume the full appreciation of the technology will come in the due diligence
- Avoid jargon
- Avoid the hockey stick
- Focus on the revenue model
- Have a realistic exit strategy
- IPO’s are rare – most VCs are quite happy with a nice M&A exit
- Nobody reads the full business plan - I care about the executive summary
- Cashflow is more important than revenue during this phase

Finally…Real Proof That Brands Affect Search Choice…Ginger and Mary Ann

March 15, 2008
Filed Under Branding/Buzz/Viral, Optimization, Search Engine Marketing | 2 Comments

Yahoo Buzz had this interesting tidbit…

What was Mary Ann thinking?
Though Spitzer rode roughshod over most of the week’s news, a few other stories still managed to slip to the top of Buzz. One of them was a Yahoo! News article on Dawn Wells, the actress best known for her portrayal of Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island.” The aging star was caught in a pot bust, fined several hundred dollars, and slapped with six months of “unsupervised probation.” But the indignity didn’t stop there.

The story stirred a tremendous amount of interest in Search—but not about Dawn Wells. Instead, lookups skyrocketed for Tina Louise, the va-va-voom redhead who played Ginger on the show. We registered an astonishing 13,076% rise in demand for her name (compare that to Wells’ 5,860%). Just the thought of Mary Ann triggered all these luscious old memories of Ginger, Ginger’s photos, and Ginger’s legs. Searchers also boosted “tina louise news” and “tina louise now.” What would the Professor say?

So TV character Mary Ann(Dawn Wells) gets into some legal trouble and Ginger’s (Tina Louise) traffic more than doubles the increase of Mary Ann’s. WOW! That is the first time I can recall a vivid example of a news story about one topic creating a massive increase in search volume for another topic that was not mentioned. In other words, it clearly shows the power of brands.

For those of you who say it’s due to another word starting with the letter B, I’d offer this picture of a young Dawn Wells to show in conjunction with the picture above that the scripts and wardrobe selection shaped Ginger’s superior brand recall when it came to their search of choice this week.

So Anil Dash Wants WordPress Users to Change to Moveable Type…

March 11, 2008
Filed Under Wordpress | 5 Comments

Anil Dash has put up quite an intriguing post arguing the case. Matt Mullenweg are you listening?
I’m gonna add a few more reasons to his list of reasons why it would be wise to do so, but before I do that I thought I’d tell Anil why I’m not doing that…YET…

1) I don’t know of any Six Apart family of product users that are overwhelmingly happy with the spam message filters. Akismet is still king of spam deletion. Though lately Akismet is showing cracks of vulnerability.

2) Trackbacks, I have yet to see Six Apart products reliably and consistently accept my trackbacks. This highly unfortunate and unacceptable as trackbacks are a major foundation of the blogoshere. Until you fix this, across both Typepad and Movable type, I will likely continue to be tempted yet decline your offer. UPDATE: I sent a trackback to Anil’s post and it did not immediately post to his blog. :( 

3) The duplicate, make that often triplicate, content problems that pollute the blogosphere from Typepad are repulsive and show a complete disrespect to all members of the blogosphere. It makes it hard for me to respect Six Apart as an organization as much as I respect it’s wonderful individuals such as yourself, Andrew Anker, Mena Trott, etc. The situation is simply unacceptable creating inaccurate Technorati link counts, duplicate and even triplicate content and is blogosphere pollution, plain and simple. I met a Typepad representative at last year’s Forrester Consumer Forum and she stated that this area was “not a priority to fix”. I was dumbfounded and confused by this response. Worse, she said Six Apart was working with Technorati to come up with a fix. I’m not exactly the world’s biggest Technorati lover, but why the heck should they write a kluge in their code to fix your massive flaw in your Typepad software? That’s right, they shouldn’t spend a minute on it, they should be fixing the death of blog search. Six Apart should immediately fix this mess and show you respect user’s time by cleaning up this duplicate and triplicate content that inflates Typepad users link counts. I’ve made a note to revisit this issue on May1st, 2008.

4) Your post URL (http://www.movabletype.com/blog/2008/03/a-wordpress-25-upgrade-guide.html) is well, really kinda lame. How about dropping the .html extension on the end? I mean I know of the warm, fuzzy feelings for dot.com 1999 era, but this would be so much cleaner (and better for trackback extension convention standards).

OK, onto WordPress.

1) Anil in my opinion did a fair job in communicating the current state. In fact, many WordPress users will consider this status generous.

2) The plugin problem jumps out at me as the one that is the largest laughing stock, the continual disrespect of the user by not creating a professional backward compatible process in both themes and plugins is NOT sustainable over the long run. Anil should have ranked this issue at the top of his list in my opinion.

3) The widening feature gulf between the Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org (self-hosted) is becoming absolutely embarrassing and needs to be addressed. It also creates massive potential new blogger confusion as to what is what.

Alright, WordPress I love you, but that love is not blind. Anil is right you need to do much better, in fact Anil didn’t go far enough in where you need to go. My number is on the bio in my blog if Anil or Matt care to reach out about the issues I’ve raised in more detail. I will be watching your progress and wish you both good luck!

Bryan Eisenberg Seminar: Website Optimizer: What Should I Test?

February 29, 2008
Filed Under Blogging, Customer Experience, Google (GOOG), Optimization, Wordpress | Leave a Comment

Check it out! There is a Google Website Optimizer seminar with Bryan Eisenberg on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 9:00AM Pacific Time is a great opportunity to try it out and learn about the Google Website Optimizer!

It’s also useful in Wordpress, if you haven’t downloaded the Google Website Optimizer for WordPress, now might be a good time to experiment with it before this valuable free seminar. It should be a treat as anyone who can analyze Amazon’s calls to action in the shopping cart and has literally written the book on call to action can surely teach you how to get more action from your website through testing!

See you on the call!

Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising & Commerce, North America, and David Eun, Vice President, Content Partnerships at Google to Speak at Bear Stearns 21st Annual Media Conference

February 28, 2008
Filed Under Google (GOOG) | Leave a Comment

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced today that Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising & Commerce,
North America, and David Eun, Vice President, Content Partnerships, will participate in a question-and-answer session at the Bear Stearns 21st Annual Media Conference in Palm Beach, FL. The session is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time / 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday, March 10, 2008.

To access the live audio webcast of the presentation, please visit investor.google.com/webcast.html

ASW08 Looking Back at My New Friends at Affiliate Marketing Summit West

February 27, 2008
Filed Under Reputation Management | 12 Comments

Apologies for the lack of posts during the conference. My Dell Inspiron, as well as several other people’s, could not connect to the Affiliate Summit Internet signals. This is Dell’s fault, not Affiliate Summit’s. On that note, Dell needs to finally take responsibility for the many flawed drivers and poorly designed hinges in these machines and do a complete and total recall. I’m gathering horror stories for a future post since Dell is not taking these problems seriously and correcting them fully and globally. If you have a Dell Inspiron horror story please drop me a note.

OK, back to my highlights of Affiliate Summit West 2008!

- On Saturday meeting Ned Farra from Zappo’s, Patrice Kaddatz from Scrapbook.tv, Heather Paulson, Chris Graham from Syntrx and Carsten Cumbrowski was great! Learned some great things.

- On Sunday at the Meet Market I had tons of great conversations! I met John Chow for the first time and he wasn’t anything like I expected him to be! He was amazingly down to earth and easy to talk to. I ran into Kevin Lee from Did-it, we had a nice catch up chat. I met Dominic Sofia from DGM, Richard Forster from Buy.at and George Hansen from Digital River about their quality offerings - really awesome people I’m glad to now call friends. Also had a great talk with Geofferson Marcy at Advaliant about how they uniquely manage publishers.

- Meeting Shawn Collins on Monday during Jason Calacanis’ speech. Shawn complimented me which was quite unexpected but a nice surprise. As you know I attend alot of Internet conference however this was my first time at Affiliate Summit. I was immediately struck at how difficult this conference community is to manage and program due to it’s highly fragmented and unstandardized nature. The accomplishment of not only satisfying this community but growing it in the way that they have is something that both Missy Ward and Shawn Collins should pause to appreciate. The use of Twitter in a group manner as they did at the conference is also brilliant (note to self - I need to get instructions on how to set up a group Twitter like that - maybe Shawn will point me in the right direction!). I look forward to building an outstanding long term relationship with Shawn and Missy over time.

- Speaking of Jason Calacanis and Mahalo, you see me asking a question of Jason in this photo after his speech. Regardless of whether you love and/or hate Jason, I’d highly urge anyone to listen to his speech in the Webmaster Radio link. It was highly thought provoking talk that replaced the word seo with affiliate spam. So what did you ask him Dave? Let me set some background first. Since meeting Jason Calacanis in December, 2006, he sent Linkedin invites to his whole address book while an entrepreneur in residence at Sequoia and then did not participate in the ecosystem there, he’s sent me dozens of Facebook invites, yet last year when I was in Santa Monica and gave him a jingle and he didn’t call me back. Jason has stated that Digg was “Brilliant” yet Digg is causing content to be recycled and stolen from small blogs and pushed to the lazy masses. Mahalo also has the Alexa toolbar installed on all of the machines at Mahalo, which games Mahalo’s Alexa rating.

So Jason what is your role in creating and contributing to Internet spam? You are certainly not a totally white clean angel virgin here. Listening back to the recording today though, I admit you acknowledged and didn’t deny anything I said when I stated and asked my question. I gotta respect that. I’m left mildly confused if that is the blogger in you that is taught to engage the one that questions you or whether it is truly how you feel. I’m conflicted. To me a friend means going beyond the surface level, I’m still not convinced you are fully capable of it. I’d love nothing more than for you to prove me wrong. I’d also like to thank the dozens of people who came up to me during the rest of the conference and stated that they appreciated my bringing up relevant examples of how Jason (and everyone else) participates in polluting the web, some are more guilty than others of course but nobody is completely innocent.

I’ll ask you another question Jason, “You mentioned how you you have ego alerts during your speech, then you attacked Seth Godin and Squidoo. How can you reconcile how you are urging the creation of content with your ego alerts and how that is terribly different than your personal views on Seth Godin’s creation?”

Alright enough about what I think, here are the other posts on Jason’s talk:

Mahalo’s Missing DNA back at you Jason Calcanis

Affiliate Summit West Thank You

Calacanis is and the Real Hurdles for for Affiliate Marketing

Live Blogging the Jason Calacanis Keynote at Affiliate Summit

Jason Calacanis Urges Affiliates to Think Big, Stop Holding Up Checks

Message board discussion of the keynote

“Don’t pollute the river”, affiliates told.

Jason Calacanis Keynote Recap (Affiliate Summit)

-Other people I met on Monday include Jamie Birch from Converseon, Mark Kirschner from Linkshare, Krissy Mitchell a Northwestern University Kellogg alum who works at Avon in New York City. Also met Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV who will be speaking at the TECHcoktail conference in May. Dan Murray at Ravenwood Marketing and Steve Schaffer from Vertive gave an truly educational talk about how to manage affiliate managers.

- Affiliate Bash - WOW!!! Daron Babin and Brandy really outdid themselves at this one! The Blue Man Group performance during party was amazing. The venue was awesome! Special thanks to Kris Jones at Pepperjam for being the primary sponsor of this event.

- On Tuesday, I sat at a table and there was a talk about Wordpress with Karen Jackie and Dana Rockel from Content Robot. Fun folks who know their Wordpress.

Attending Affiliate Summit was an outstanding experience, if you attend many other Internet conferences you’d benefit highly by attending the next Affiliate Summit and seeing how these folks fit into your existing web strategy - irregardless if you are a search or a brand marketer. See you in Boston in August! If you met me at Affiliate Summit, please feel free to add me on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. See you soon.

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