I saw this headline above a few months back when I was searching the Business listing on Craigslist. Usually this category is filled with “scam” ads wanting to involve you in multi-level marketing or selling you advice on starting your own internet business - but this ad caught my eye.

Vacancy rates of commercial properties are increasing and rents are lowering. Renters can get a better location for less money and it is even possible to lock in the lower rental price for the amount of years that fit their business needs. Because of the changing market conditions, landlords need to find different ways to find renters besides just lowering their rental prices until they go broke.

Property owners are business people also. They have bills to pay, just like you and me. The landlord that ran this ad wanted to keep her properties rented and came up with a unique way of marketing them. I am not going to speculate on which way she was going to “invest” in your business; there are a lot of ways to work that out. The key point is that she came up with a way of marketing her business that set her apart from the rest.

When you consider different options for marketing your business, be sure to look at ways that make you stand out from the rest of the clutter. People will notice you. I noticed this ad. I also noticed that she isn’t running it on Craigslist anymore.

If done right, Craigslist can be a great advertising and marketing source. In a future article, I will give you some quick tips on how to use Craigslist effectively to promote your business.

Read About Steve Sorenson

• I needed to sign some cheques so business could continue in my temporary or permanent absence.
• I needed to contact my family to let them know I loved them.
• I wanted to go somewhere outside [behind the building] so that the arrival of the ambulance did not make a big scene inside the store.  

• experience moderate or severe skin irritation (particularly if not present before use of this medicine)
• flushing
• unusually warm skin and reddening of skin

Read About Scott Fraser

The Harvard Business Review has been a great source of case studies (and many other important information) that business owners will find useful.

Their book entitled Culture And Change will help you learn how organizations are influenced not only by the cultural baggage that exists in their workplace, but also on how decisions are made, regardless of their particular management structure

Regardless of their roots, genre, and customs, employees define the organization´s culture, which affects the working climate, processes, systems, decisions (and yes, its influence on their clientele as well).

Read more articles on by the HBR and Read the book on Organizational Culture.

 

Read About Luis Lopez

Buckminster Fuller was especially reputed for his geodetic domes which can be observed as a part of civic buildings, exhibition attractions and military radar stations. Their construction is dependent on the extension of the basic principles of constructing simple structures such as octahedron, the close sphere package and tetrahedron. When built in such manner, they are extremely stable and lightweight. He won a patent for his geodesic domes in 1954 which was a part of his effort in the exploration of constructing principles of nature for finding design solutions. 

Previous to his world famous “geodesic dome” design, Fuller built and designed prototypes which he had hoped to be an aerodynamic and a safer Dymaxion car. In order to that effect, he tried out with a fundamentally new approach. Right from 1932, Fuller worked with professional colleagues over a period spanning three years. Based on the aircraft designs, the three prototype cars were all completely different from those in the market. The first point of difference was that each of these vehicles included three and not four vehicles. It included two wheels in the front and one at the rear for steering purposes. Even the engine was situated at the rear part of the vehicle.  

Both the body and the chassis were original designs. The tear-shaped and aerodynamic body was large enough for seating as much as 11 people. Somehow, it resembled the melding of a wingless light aircraft and a 1950s vintage Volkswagen van. In each of its three trial incarnations, the car was essentially a mini-bus. 

Other Significant Contributions: 

Also included in Fuller’s ideas was the Dymaxion map of alternative projection. It was designed for displaying the continents of the earth with minimum possible aberration while printed or projected on a flat surface. 

Although the low-cost and energy-efficient Dymaxion house managed to gather much interest, it never went into production. The term “Dymaxion” is used for signifying a light tensegrity and a radically strong structure”. 

His Dymaxion House is on display in Dearborn, Michigan at “The Henry Ford”. Developed and designed in the mid 1940’s, it is a round structure and has a shape of a flattened bell of jellyfish. In addition, it has numerous innovative features which comprises of a fine mist shower reducing water consumption and a revolving dresser drawers. 

Philosophical Views: 

Fuller was an early ecological activist. He was well aware of the earth’s finite resources and hence, advertised a principle of “ephemeralization” which essentially meant doing more with less. In addition, Fuller also inaugurated the term “synergetics” which is the language used for conveying experiences with the help of geometric concepts long before the term gained popularity. 

Also, Fuller was the first in disseminating “systematic worldview” and researched the principles of material efficiency and energy in the fields of engineering, architecture and design. He stated that the cost of petroleum from the point of view of replacement came to more than a million dollars. Hence, he was of the view that using petroleum as a transportation fuel would result in a huge net loss, when compared to the actual earnings of those people and the net profits of the firm who travel using gasoline. 

What can one person achieve? 

Lets go and find out. 

Read About John Cassidy-Rice

The New York Times, probably the most literary newspaper of record in the US, just released some startling data.  And understanding it could do astounding things for your marketing.

The online version of the Times allows readers to look up the definition of words simply by highlighting them.  Not only is this a great service to readers, but that data (of which words are looked up and how often) is tracked by the paper.  And in this case, tracking that data has allowed them to compile a list of the 50 most-looked-up words.

If you're interested in the list, you can download it here.

So here are the marketing take-aways:

1) All those terms, concepts, and jargon you think your audience knows (or should know)? They don't know 'em.

Or at least your audience is probably a lot fuzzier on them than you think.  To a Times writer, whose adult life has been spent within literary circles, every intelligent reader knows the meaning of words like, "solipsistic."  The reality?  Solipsistic was the second most looked up word on the list. 

Are there reasons to use lesser known words rather than a more well known alternative word or phrase?  Absolutely.  Nuance,  precision of meaning, emotional associations, concision, displaying "tribal" identification, and just plain style.  Lots of good reasons to break out the occasional 50 cent word.  But they need to be weighed against the cost, which in this case involves confusing or turning off the reader - bad for a columnist, deadly for an advertiser.

For advertisers, though, industry terminology takes the place of highbrow language.  How many grill salesman assume that everyone knows what BTUs are and why a grill capable of producing more of them is a good thing?  How many vitamin stores assume customers know what anti-oxidants are and why it's a good idea to supplement with them?  I'd put money that the same holds true for your business and industry.

2) Be wary of uncritical interpretations of data.

Don't you just naturally assume that the people looking up those words are doing so because they don't know the meanings?  And therefore that The New York Times readership isn't nearly as literate as one would hope?  That was my first reaction.

Further reflection revealed that actually looking up a word is, in fact, a very literate thing to do.  And that it's likely that many of those readers may have already had a darn good idea of what the word meant, but hadn't previously seen the word used in the specific manner or context in which the writer had employed it. Maybe the reader knew the gist of the word, but had never bothered to get a real definition and, in seeking to clarify the meaning of a sentence, said reader looked up the word, just to be sure.  Kind of changes the meaning of the list a little bit, doesn't it? Using words on the edge of a readers vocabulary is entirely different than routinely using words readers have never heard of.

Uncritical interpretations happen all the time in advertising: "We tried radio and it didn't work," or "we had a website, but it never did anything for us, so we pulled it down."  Or any other number of assumptions.  Force yourself to come up with plausible alternative explanations and customer motivations. 

3) Test assumptions - force yourself to watch what people DO and not what people say!

No one likes to admit that they don't know what a word means.  So I rather doubt if anyone ever complained about the times word choice, which is why it was the online version of the Times - and not a focus group, interview, or complaint - that provided this insight into the top 50 most-looked-up words. 

The same thing goes with your advertising: test, test, test.  Measure actions, not opinion. 

4) Know when to go tribal

As I mentioned previously, the right words can signal your membership in a tribe - meaning that confusion amongst outsiders aint always a bad thing.  If you're a hard core cyclist, you don't need to have someone tell you who Lance Armstrong is.  Foodies don't need to be told what, say, Balsamic Vinegar is.  Copy directed to hard core members of a tribe would do well to use their language and cultural touchstones/allusions without apology.  Not only does this attract the hard core, but it attracts wannabes as well. 

While The New York Times probably should be concerned about striking a balance between appealing to a broad readership and maintaining a literary style, those concerns would be poison to The New Yorker.  Aimed at an even more literate audience that the Times, The New Yorker almost has to employ writers who sprinkle in SAT-type words, because seeing them in an article - and seeing them used well - sends a signal to its subscribers about what kind of magazine they're reading and what kind of tribe they belong to.
 

Read About Jeff Sexton

This is an article from the Digital Media conference I attended June 8&9 in Stratford Ontario used by permission of author Greg O'Brien.

By Greg O’Brien

STRATFORD, Ont. – Um, in case anyone out there thought working in media was going to get less bewildering, to paraphrase Dr. David Jacobson: “You ain’t seen nuthin' yet.”


You think you’re pretty cool sipping your latte and watching the latest YouTube clip on your laptop or iPhone using the best Wi-Fi connection you can find, or trying to mess around with a spreadsheet on your Blackberry using some expensive mobile minutes? Nice. But that’s like, so 2008.

“We are at the end of the beginning of mobile ubiquity... the end of an era and the beginning of a new one – the digital media era – and we’re being able to use it with handheld devices,” Jacobson told delegates at the first Canada 3.0 forum, held this week in Stratford, Ont.

Hosted by the University of Waterloo’s Stratford Institute (a new think tank/campus dedicated to training the next generation of kids for careers in digital media – and backed by $10 million from Open Text), Canada 3.0 offered various sessions, from human resources challenges to infrastructure building, regulation to emerging technology.

We picked the mobile media stream on Monday to listen to Jacobson, a futurist and director - emerging technologies in advisory services, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Toronto. He’s also a Harvard prof and focuses on digital media and wireless mobility.

He’s convinced a sea change in human behaviour is under way and while engineers may talk about ubiquitous IP (meaning everything that draws electricity will have an IP address), that will enable ubiquitous participation, or UP.

“The future in business and society is UP,” he said.

Social networking and collaboration will become the norm, everything will be open source, “search” will be replaced with “discovery”, geographical and time boundaries will fall away, management structures will get flatter and new business opportunities will emerge.

And the kids coming out of a place like Waterloo’s Stratford Institute will emerge like no other young workers have before. “They will be expecting more than just an ordinary business,” he said. They will demand UP. “There will be greater demands on (executives) for innovative leadership,” added the good doctor.

And driving much of this change will be wireless broadband, led by the 4G LTE technical standard - which will begin to be deployed as early as the beginning of 2010, said Jacobson.

The hand-held mobile device is no longer a curiosity, or just for business. “It’s an intimate device. People cradle it in their hands,” he noted. “It’s become a part of contemporary life.”

Jacobson noted, for example, a potential game-changer as the Texas Instrument-powered Samsung W700, a smart phone with a built-in projector.

Traditional media companies are trying to take better advantage of existing technology and the upcoming LTE-driven bandwidth expansion, experimenting with bar codes in magazine ads, for example. The companies would urge readers to take a photo of the code with their cell phone, which would trigger the phone to deliver a branded portal to the user, encouraging the viewer to buy, perhaps with a special discount.

Jacobson also showed an MIT experiment, too, dubbed the Sixth Sense. The subject in the experiment had a camera phone and a micro-projector around their neck and a newspaper in their hands. The camera shot the newspaper and the smart phone searched the web for an update of the story the camera “read”, projecting it onto the paper for the user to watch, in either video or text.

And search is about to change, too, said Jacobson. As it currently works, search on Google or Yahoo! or Microsoft’s new Bing works fantastically – as long as you know what you’re looking for. But the best companies will pull their potential customers’ intentions out on the web, allowing those users to discover that which they want or need, but weren’t necessarily looking for.

Using social networking or other collaborative systems, said Jacobson, users get to trust and then their intentions can be divined. Companies need to seek a return on intention. That is, to capture the intention of a person’s desire to purchase something,” he explained.

“And if you can link a product to human emotions, you can capture their intention.”
 

Read About Steve Rae

Broadcast Network Execs: Expect More Integrated Campaigns This Upfront Season

CBS’ Tassler: Network in talks with Unilever to make more pacts like the Hellman’s, Bertolli ads

By Melissa Grego -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/9/2009 8:46:49 PM MT

Few things are certain about this year’s upfront ad market, but one thing is for sure: There are likely to be more integrated product campaigns on the broadcast networks next season than ever.

That was the message from top broadcast network execs convened in Beverly Hills Tuesday for a panel during the ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment's (the advertising group formerly known as the Family Friendly Forum) fifth annual symposium.

CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler said the product integrations her network did with Unilever this season -- involving the company’s Hellman’s mayo product on New Adventures of Old Christine and Bertolli pasta throughout CBS’ Monday night comedy lineup -- was held up as a “gold standard” for how these deals should work. “We’re in talks about doing it again,” she said.

Unilever, which spends nearly $500 million annually on TV, has made efforts to switch up the upfront process by requesting media companies create campaigns around products rather than buying plain-old spots in TV schedules, according to AdAge.com. (Subscription required)

Fox Broadcasting Entertainment President Kevin Reilly said all of the networks have been increasingly involved in creating new ways of collaborating with sponsors and that “we are likely to see more as this upfront unfolds.”

ABC Primetime President Stephen McPherson concurs, saying “both sides [networks and advertisers] are getting more creative at it.”

Read About Jane Fraser

Change afoot among the TV set

Study: Nonbusiness online use surging with boomers

By Paul Bond

June 9, 2009, 11:05 PM ET

It's no secret that business professionals who are members of the baby boomer generation are constantly online for purposes related to work. Now, though, a sea change might be at hand: They're spending more downtime surfing the Internet than they are watching television.

Baby boomer professionals are spending 12.9 non-business hours each week surfing the Internet and 11.8 watching TV.

The data are based on a survey by ChangeWave Research of 1,660 business professionals ages 45-63. ChangeWave relies on a preselected "alliance" of 20,000 members from the business and investor class to identify trends early.

For its "Internet & TV Viewing Survey," director of research Paul Carton says the firm focused on baby boomers because "we wanted to look at a segment well-rooted in the traditional TV model."

It's too early to call any results of the survey a "trend," he says, because it's the first of its type. Comparing it with another one planned in about six months will be more informative. Still, "it's an interesting look at an industry in transformation," Carton says. "It reminds me of when broadband first started to take off and dial-up services like AOL were just swamped."

Some of the report's more interesting findings:

-- Fifty-one percent of respondents maintain profiles on social networking sites, with LinkedIn slightly more popular than Facebook. Classmates, Twitter and MySpace come in a distant third, fourth and fifth, respectively. As much as they like such sites, however, 77% said they would abandon them if a fee were attached.

-- Asked which subscription service they'd be most likely to give up, 44% of the group said cable and satellite TV. Home telephone service, at 23%, was second, followed by a DVD rental service (11%), Internet service (5%), newspaper (4%), magazines (3%), cell phone services (3%) and satellite radio (1%).

It's important to note, though, that the open-ended question was not restricted to those who subscribe to all of those services. Presumably, there were many who couldn't say they'd cancel a magazine subscription, for example, simply because they don't subscribe to a magazine to begin with.

Perhaps that's why, on the flip side, when ChangeWave asked which subscription they would be least likely to give up, TV fared better. Internet service was first, with 56% saying it would be the last they'd give up, followed by TV (23%) and cell phone (6%).

-- About 69% of those surveyed have watched online video during the past 90 days. Among those who answered in the affirmative, YouTube led the way with 79% having watched video there, followed by a TV network Web site (39%), Hulu (16%), iTunes (11%) and Netflix (9%).

A separate report from Bernstein Research on Tuesday, though, could offer proof that ChangeWave's panelists are, as advertised, ahead of the curve: Bernstein's analysts say the average person consumes only two minutes of online video a day, compared with 309 minutes of live TV.

ChangeWave also asked, "How many ads -- if any -- are you willing to view when you watch video through your computer?" Only 3% answered, "as many ads as with conventional broadcasting," and 47% said, "dramatically fewer."

-- Finally, possibly most disturbing to TV executives, 30% of those surveyed said they watch less TV now than they did a year ago, and only 6% watch more. The No. 1 reason for watching less, "I'm just less interested in what's on TV these days," was cited by 62% of respondents.

But 26%, the second-highest response, said they watch less TV because they surf the Internet more.

The survey also asked, "Over the next six months, how likely are you to downgrade or cancel your TV service package?" Twenty percent answered very or somewhat likely.

The survey, according to the report, "shows a powerful shift occurring among boomers away from traditional TV viewing toward new types of online services and entertainment. Moreover, the transformation has affected lifelong habits."

Read About Jane Fraser

I hung up the phone in stunned silence.  After two days of not being able to reach the first girlfriend I'd ever had, I finally knew what was going on.  We had broken up.  No one wants to work in the middle of emotional trauma.  It's much worse if that work includes dancing and exploding with joy on-stage in front of new audiences on your first tour the night after your heart is broken. 

"Crying is all right in its own way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.” said C.S. Lewis in The Horse and His Boy.  I knew what I had to do.  The lesson of so many Sunday mornings after a week of rejection and inner turmoil years before had taught me that the blues are the perfect time to release all the pent up passion of pain into a celebration of life and joy.  I danced my way through tears, shouted hope to eager ears.  People cried and thanked us for the show, and then they bought CDs and t-shirts.

Did I milk it?  Did I manipulate the audience into a financial transaction for my benefit?  No, but I refused to stop at vulnerability and pain.  I avoided letting my circumstances and feelings define my actions. 

Recently my travels found me sitting in a metal tube, flying through the air on my way to Nashville.  When I opened up Southwest Airlines' Spirit magazine, this paragraph jumped off the page...

“It might seem odd to be writing about celebrations when the nation’s economy is probably in the worst shape any of us can remember. I believe that celebrating our Employees and our Company is more important now than ever.”  -Gary Kelly, Southwest CEO

If you haven't noticed, Southwest Airlines has a history of doing things opposite to what other airlines do.  It's probably why they've recorded 36 consecutive, financially profitable years.  But this quarter they posted a loss of $20 million, their first loss in 72 quarters.  So why is it that Gary Kelly is talking about celebration?  Why does Southwest continue to resist the temptation to charge extra for baggage, changing reservations and every other “hidden fee”, as they say?

Reacting to the present without a long-term focus would ruin their reputation.  Their entire business model depends on being the fun, friendly way to fly, the choose-your-own-seat airline.  And if every other airline complains about the tough economy, charges extra for bags, reduces their amount of in-flight service, and processes passengers with a haggard look on their overworked faces, I'm choosing the guys who throw parties while getting me to my destination on-time for less.  I can't remember an unfriendly Southwest employee.

In case you think I'm just talking about the airline industry and rock n' roll performances, La-Z-Boy made a fortune during the Great Depression selling a newly invented, unnecessary chair in a small town that nobody went to.  How'd they do it?  They set up a circus tent and had “furniture shows” complete with acrobatic mice, ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, leaping fish and free shrub and flower giveaways.  They turned their out of the way location into a cheap, tourist destination for a public desperate for entertainment they could afford.  When the people got there, they had a chance to sink into the comfort of an upholstered chair that whispered, “take a load off and let your problems melt away.”  People paid using any form of payment possible to get a La-Z-Boy, including guinea hens, coal, wheat and cows. 

Transcending the limitations of your circumstances will always be a compelling story.  If you need more proof, check out the Best Selling books of the 1930's.  Everyone of them, Cimarron,  The Good Earth, Anthony Adverse, Green Light, Gone With the Wind & The Yearling all deal with people who found a way to triumph over their circumstances.  Not even 1939's best selling, The Grapes of Wrath, with its misfortune stricken characters and plot, can end without Rose of Sharon nursing a dying man back to life, despite her horribly negative experience. 

We're wired for hope, yearning to believe that we can be something more, find some sort of meaning, even if, as happened in my case, pounding rejections have ripped our heart in two.  Decide what you're going to do.  Turn your own conviction and courage in the face of fear into a story that inspires others.  It will never seem pleasant to you at the time, but joy comes on the other side of doing what you never thought you could.  Besides, if you ever hope to turn that story into a successful book, business or other moneymaking adventure, it'll take your acquired strength to persevere when the only sound ringing in your ears is silence.

Read About Peter Nevland

Are skateboards anything special?  Anything worth looking at?

Well, they're certainly nothing out of the ordinary, right?  And that's the problem.  Skateboards are so ordinary it's hard to even see them.  Want to see them for real?  Take a look at this video

By injecting a little visual incongruity into the mix, this video actually allows you to SEE skateboards the way a little kid might see them the very first time he looks at a boarder doing his thing.

And this trick isn't something limited to the magic of digital editing and special effects.  All artists pull this same trick.  Cezanne rescued apples from the everydayness of apples in exactly this way.  That's why we're fascinated by a painting of something as putatively boring as a still life.

Writers do it, too.  Just take a look at how Neal Stephenson was able to transform something as boring as eating cereal into a riveting experience:

"World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in the mouth. The best thing is to work in small increments, putting only a small amount of Cap'n Crunch in your bowl at a time and eating it all up before it becomes a pit of loathsome slime, which, in the case of Cap'n Crunch, takes about thirty seconds… He pours the milk with one hand while jamming the spoon in with the other, not wanting to waste a single moment of the magical, golden time when cold milk and Cap'n Crunch are together but have not yet begun to pollute each other's essential natures." – Neal Stephenson, from Cryptonomicon

So the next time you're thinking about your passion for what you do or sell, try figuring out a way to inject a little incongruity into the picture.  Getting your audience to see it anew is often the first step in bringing them to share your passion for it.

Read About Jeff Sexton