Next generation of transactional statements?

Is this the next generation of billing statements?

I think two and a half minutes is a little long.  It is an interesting idea and good use of personalizing video.  But it doesn't make it any faster to review a bill.  This is for the laziest of bill readers.

Video probably won't be the thing that makes paper bills obsolete, but it might be just right to move a few customers into eStatements.

Viral Marketing and Red Bull's Mission to Kill Someone

Today I watched a man jump from the highest point ever. Pretty awesome to watch, considering that it was a flawless jump and he landed safely on two feet and walked away. (time passes)

Cool. . . So he landed a little more than a week ago and he has been making the talk show rounds, declared he is retired, and stated that he did not enjoy the fall until his parachute opened.

I remember watch the guy in Vegas on New Years jump a motorcross bike up and down the faux Archtriumph.  It is amazing that guy made it up and down was even crazier.  . . . powered by Red Bull

The Flugtag.  Per google: "Red Bull Flugtag is an event organized by Red Bull in which competitors attempt to fly homemade size and weight limited human-powered flying machines. The flying machines are usually launched off a pier about 30 feet high into the sea."

It is amazing no one has been seriously hurt.  . . . powered by Red Bull.

And there are a bunch of other teams, athletes, and events that are sponsored by Red Bull and they are all high octane, high adrenaline, and high energy.  Red Bull has done a great job of finding the physical manifestation of their product and slapping a logo on it.  The most important part of their marketing strategy is that they are doing more promotional events that have the potential to go viral.  They appeal to short attention spans and are short enough that you want to and will watch them over and over again. . . powered by Red Bull.

I make no judgement about Red Bull's morality or the social effect of their campaigns.  They market their product to adults and adults should be able to know that they can not build their own flying machine and get it flying off the docks of Lake Erie.  They may actually kill someone some day, but they will continue to rack up MILLIONS of youtube views.  When posting this Red Bull had over 27 Million views of the above video.  No Gangnam Style, but pretty effective.

Now what is their cost per impression for advertising?  Well I saw their costs estimated as high as half a billion dollars.  Now that is ridiculous, right?  This message board discussing their marketing budget and estimated it at $900 Million in 2010 on revenue of $4.4 Billion.  So over 5 years, they could have dedicated 20% of their budget to the Stratos program.  Their cost per impression will continue to decline as they get more views, more mentions, and more sharing of their record breaking even.

Bottom line: They know how to get people talking about Red Bull and they know their customer profile.

Why the world needs the cloud -or- Hoarders: Data Edition

The cloud will / should play has a crucial role in the long-term viability of the internet.  Big data has made the crunching of huge amounts of data open source by some.

Cloud is necessary because duplicate data on multiple systems will require an exponential amount of storage.

Data hoarding is something that others have written about: see video

Data hoarding today (pictures, documents, videos, and a record of everything) It has increased the demand for local storage and with lots of competition in the hard drive and storage market, storage has been commoditized.  Data's cyclical pricing as technology is improved and storage becomes cheaper.

There have been times when storage would go from $1000 to $200 in a year.  It will continue to drop in price.  Amazon Glacier has taken storage to a new low at the cost of a penny per gigabyte per month.  

Facebook Stock Prediction: Outsmart the Market

The Pump/Hold/Buyback

Facebook waits to go public.

Early investors make their money by selling stock at the opening IPO price of $40.

Quickly, anyone who purchased at the opening price loses a significant percentage of the stocks value as the media reacts to information on Facebooks relatively low annual profits and projections.  None of this information is new.  But the buzz of the IPO and the strong desire to get in on a potential boom leads investors to ignore the fact that facebook profits are 1/100th of the valuation.

The first date where employee stocks are able to be sold creates an influx in available shares, driving the price down.  Stock hovers around $20 / share.

Peter Thiel dumps his stock, still makes a boat load of money, but doesn't get as much as he could have if he sold his shares at the opening IPO price.  As the first Facebook investor, rumors and speculation that he knows something we don't know further hurts the stock price.  Stock drops slightly.  Thiel remains on facebooks board.  What could he know that we don't?  He shouldn't know anything the public does not know, but that is impossible.

The second date where employees can unload stock comes and shares drop even further.  I predict a low of between $10 and $15 / share.

What is facebook doing?  Monetizing mobile, being more agressive with ads, harvesting more user data, and further targeting.  All equaling higher revenues.  What does facebook need to increase stock price significantly?  Projections of 200% annual profit growth.

Zuckerberg has outsmarted the system by capitalizing on buzz to sell shares at a high price.  Then he waits for them to drop, going as far as referring to it as disappointing.  The public must know about financials and company management, it does not have to know about R&D and upcoming product development (look to Apple as an example of extreme secrecy from a public company).   

New product developments and acquisitions increase revenues.

Zuckerberg and insiders buy back significant shares of stock to "Show Faith" in the future of the company.  What they really did was buy back their company for significantly less while still getting a massive payday.

Because Zuckerberg has majority control and has decision making power that trumps the board, he is able to convert his public company back to private.  His early investors got their exit.  Loyal employees got their reward for low pay and long nights.

Facebook is once again able to focus on making a great platform that people will use without the restrictions of shareholders.  Profits can become secondary again and Facebook has enough cash to run the company on zero profit for many years.

Wallstreet weeps, Nerds rejoice, Zuckerberg outsmarts the market.  

@rynmcmns gets Visual.ly Inforgraphic

@rynmcmns Check out visual.ly  You can't build your own infographic yet, but for companies that want to add some cool to their marketing, this makes it pretty easy.

What is white label software?

White label exists in all industries. Unknown to most customers white label or "private label" products or services are developed and maintained by one company while branded by another.

Definition
Labelable (Label-able): software made available for private labeling (aka white labelable to be labled

Software that is labelable or available to resellers that apply their brand or create a new brand to market the software.

www.labelable.com

Tell your facebook friends that you pay your taxes, but don't tweet about it?

I get why people post pictures and the inane details of their life of facebook.  I get why we all post articles we read on twitter.  But I still don't get why some people want to share some of their online interactions on their social pages.  You would never auto-tweet from the ATM that you just withdrew $500 from Chase or post on facebook that I transfered money from your checking account to your savings.

When I finished up my taxes this weekend, there was an option to tweet or post to facebook that you had completed your taxes.  This was the first year I had seen this.  With the socialize-everything mentality of b2c marketing, I was not really surprised to see it.  I was intrigued by the disparity between posts to facebook vs twitter.  The social sharing prompt came up twice during the verification / checkout process and I snapped a screenshot of each.

This screenshot was taken first.

Even more peculiar was that the second prompt I saw had fewer facebook posts and now only 1 twitter post.  I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that each link had its own count and that's why there were different counts.

This screenshot was taken second.

Would you share that you pay taxes with the friends you know of facebook or the strangers that follow you on Twitter?  

It must be that people want to tell their friends what good tax paying citizens they are.  If turbotax offered a discount for anyone who clicked on their link, I think their tweet count would be on par with their facebook count.  In many ways, facebook is about boosting your ego and twitter is about boosting your personal brand.

PS. they must have a low threashold for what "fattened your wallet" and "big bucks" means.

5 Domain Name Tips for Entrepreneurs Trying To Name Their Startup

5 Domain Name Tips for Entrepreneurs Trying To Name Their Startup

1. Don't sweat the domain.  Figure out a name that works for your business, is not too abstract, and doesn't make everyone you mention it to scrunch their forehead and say "What?"
2. What's the domain doing now: If it goes straight to a parked page or it looks like it was designed back in '99, your brand name is probably safe and you have a much better chance at getting it in the future.  If there is someone using the domain and their website is unkept and they were not able to make a go of it, ask yourself why.  Just like a strip mall that has frequent turnover and a constant empty storefront, a domain name that failed in the past might be a good indicator that it is not the best name for your business.
3. Use a tag line for the domain.  String a few words together and you will start seeing more green checks on godaddy when searching for names.  So if you can't get the business name, go for the tag line.  If you business takes of and you can afford to buy the actual .com, awesome.  Use the tag line domain for your blog or just forward it on.  It won't be a waste of $10.  
4. Check the trademark then grab every social account name you can.  If you can get the twitter account name, facebook link, blogspot URL, and even a .net, .mobi, or .something else, you are ok for now and you have a leg up.  Gauge the seriousness of your startup before throwing a grand at a domain.  There are plenty of domains on the auction block that are up for grabs and most people are sitting on domains hoping for a windfall like color, but they would gladly take a few thousand bucks if you can make the offer before you get too big.  
5. Google It. This is an obvious one.  Probably the first thing you do when trying to come of with a good company or product name.  But go a step further and do a keyword search through adwords and find out what your company name would cost as a keyword with PPC ads.  If it is already highly sought after and the competition will cost you several bucks a click, you might have a good opportunity because people are looking for it, but make sure you budget for the traffic.

Terrible Startup names - and why it is not their fault

Every tried searching for a domain name for your business.  Yeah. . . you can buy most .Co's, and there are still plenty of available .biz and .us sites, but if you want to be taken seriously and attract any amount of investor funding, your really need a .com to show that you are legit.  Did you read the story from last March about the startup Color and the $350,000 they paid for color.com?  TechCrunch by Robin Wauters

They have since burned through a good chuck of the $41 million in VC and founder funding that they collected trying to figure out what they want to do.  So a domain alone doesn't guarantee success.  And the dotBOOM also showed that a domain alone does not make an internet success.  Here is a short list of failures:

5 ways to use Evernote on your iPhone

16 gigs on an iphone has quickly become not enough, so I am on a constant pursuit for free storage to save things. (Do you want to sign up for dropbox? I'd appreciate the free space. Plus it is good cloud karma for you.) A flaw of photos on the iphone is that after awhile, it can take some time to find your photos and there is not a good way to search. Awhile back I started using evernote, thinking it would replace the notepad on my iphone. But it has become so much more.

5.) Photo storage: Right...so I need one more place to put photos. Use number 3 makes evernote the perfect hub for your digital photos. Instagram makes them available to anyone who follows my grams (are pics on instagram called graandms?) Pinterest puts them out there for the world to search and repin. But evernote is just for you. Create a photos tag and use the geolocation feature to help you find your pics later. Easy way to share them with the people you want to and keep them away from the constantly crawling search engines.

4.) Take better notes: I have a stack of notebooks in my home office with quickly scribbled notes that I will never look through. If it were important I would have done something with it. Maybe. But you never know when a website or a phone number is needed and you can remember which moleskin it was in. You can put your notes into Evernote and tag them appropriately. The timestamp alone helped me fin the right note.

3.) IFTTT.com Ok so its not necessarily on the iphone, but setting up a fee recipes will save you time and keep you from saving a picture somewhere twice. There are some cool recipes on IFTTT that let you send something to Evernote. (read post on 5 crucial IFTTT recipes)

2.) Reminders without a deadline: Want to remember something eventually? Sometimes you take a courtesy reminder when a friend is insists that, "you gotta check this out dude!". Maybe I do, but not right now and probably not tonight. But someday I will watch your buddy eat a ghost pepper on youtube.

1.) Idea Notebook: I try to always have a notebook handy. You never know when a good idea or even a bad idea needs to be written down.

Download it, get it on all your devices. You will be more organized.

Android QR Code

This is an example of using a QR code as an attention getter. The colorful code doesn't actually work, but it gets you to look at the poster.

The Gamification of Tradeshows

Trade shows are fundamentally flawed. There is no accountability to the event holders. They sell space, promise a big turnout, take forever to report actual attendance data, and vendors have no repercussions if attendance is lower than expected or if booth traffic is poor. Trade shows are in the same marketing class as print advertising. No extended guarantees because it is up to marketers to produce a compelling call to action. Marketers spends thousand on concrete and displays with the hopes of getting more business then the cost of the event.

Some shows do a good job of encouraging and incentivizing attendees to visit your booth. Vendors do their part by passing out SWAG, but that is usually snatched up by those who are least likely to become a customer. Drawings for iPads and Kindles are easy targets for box stuffers. And when have you ever seen a key decision maker with serious buying power, standing at your reception counter filling out a form for a $100 itunes gift card? NEVER.

With travel budgets dwindling and marketing dollars shifting to online and direct efforts, how can trade shows stay relevant?

A good friend leads sales efforts for an IT security trade show that is invitation only. That ensures only qualified individuals. I believe that less is more with trade show attendees for anyone focused on B2B.

How to Make Money on Pinterest

Today articles popped up as some tried to paint picture sharing startup, Pinterest, as a shady site that makes money off your words. This New York Times post about pinterest is worth a read.


Is pinterest making money, quietly?

I am sure they are not making money, but they need some revenue to maintain the infrastructure so you can keep pinning.

How can you make money on Pinterest? Here are five tips to help you make money from your pins.
1.) be cool about it: pinterest does not have banner ads or search ads. They have built a huge following in a short amount of time by letting users share great content and keeping brands out of it.
2.) follow the affiliate model: this is how pinterest is making money. You can follow the same methods to monetize your pins. Have you notices the gifts link with price ranges? You can go for a similar result with boards that focus on a specific topic and make each image link to a product page where you get a kick back.
3.) promote stuff you like others will like it too. EBooks about penny stocks probably are not what your friends will repin. Consider your audience. Did you see 98% of pinterest users are women? I think you can save your football jersey pics for tumblr and focus on products that will appeal to the masses of pinterest. I've chosen to focus on baby stuff using the amazon affiliate links.
4.) link somewhere: posting pics from your phone can be interesting, but it won't be profitable. Pinterest (non-mobile) lets you enter a URL and select from pics on that page.
5.) repin and follow others

How to get Facebook stock for 6 Cents!!!

There is much discussion of whether buying Facebook stock is a good idea.  Speculators have guessed the opening price between $30 and $40 per share.  With a billion dollar profit in 2011, Facebook stock seems like a no brainer on the surface with current valuations of companies like Google (trading at: $607 on 2/7/12) and Apple (trading at $466 on 2/7/12), Facebook has the potential to reach 10+ multiples of the opening day price.  But how can you get stock cents a share?

Press Release: United States Postal Service Ranked No. 1 in the World

The Best Among Top 20 Largest Global Economies

WASHINGTON — A review of the performance of universal postal service providers by the Oxford Strategic Consulting (OSC) firm ranks the U.S. Postal Service the best postal service within the world’s top 20 largest economies for access to services, resource efficiency and public trust.
“We’re proud to lead the world in postal services and we will continue to deliver superior performance for future generations,” said Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe. “Our best days are ahead of us. I have no doubt the Postal Service will overcome its current financial challenges and endure as the world’s leading postal service.”

QR Codes at the airport

For the last two years marketers have been pushing qr codes and even though a majority of the content stinks, there are some great applications for QR codes so I hope they do not go the way of the laserdisc.

Of all the places I see QR codes, I think America's airports have the highest concentration of QR codes. And what place better for QR codes. Everyone has a smartphone it seems, theres plenty of time to waste, and ads are a big part of airport decor.

Do you have a jailbroken iPhone?

Give it six minutes, it is worth it.

Unseen Apps is exactly what it sounds like. A bunch of apps running in the background.  For example, someone calls you and their number is not in your phone, it automatically searches and displays a name, picture, and whatever info it can scrape from online directories.  Pretty cool for $20.

Square places huge outdoor ad in downtown Columbus

www.squareup.com

I was downtown this Thursday and snapped a picture of this huge Square ad promoting their free card swiper. I know quite a few columbus merchants that use square. This is a pretty mainstream ad for a company like square. The mobile payment revolution is well underway, but how does Square plan to change once EMV (micro-chipped) cards become a standard.

BLACKOUT YOUR SITE AGAINST SOPA

Google, Wikipedia, and many major sites are joining together today to protest the SOPA act that congress will be voting on January 24th.

Visit http://sopastrike.com to join the protest.

Black out your blog, twitter page, linkedin.  Just make it known that you are against internet censorship.  What is deemed unlawful today may change tomorrow.  Keep the internet free, by the people, for the people, and keep the government out of our web.

2012 Predictions

I thought I would give it a week before jumping on to make my 2012 predictions for marketing, social, and startups.  There have been plenty of posts on predictions but I have tried to avoid them.  What I have gotten from the few that I have read is:

• google+ and how it is changing the way we search
• facebook, the timeline, and more legal stuff around privacy
• Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
• Is this the year bubble 2.0 bursts?

Of course there is alot more being discussed and I won't be talking about any of those things.  My prediction of 2012 is that this will be remembered as the year that the web breaks out of the computer and into our every day lives.  More than just  mobile and tablets.  I had an idea the other day after coming home a little later than usual and what I had in the crockpot had been slightly over cooked.  "What if I could control my crockpot with an app so that I didn't over cook my food?" And the iCrockPot was born! (The name is TBD).  I believe the internet will be integrated to more and more devices which will give manufacturers better feedback on problems with their products, allow for product updates, and more.  The crockpot is something only to be sold at The Sharper Image, but more internet enabled products will be on store shelves soon.

Did you see they are putting internet in cars now?  This is big stuff and it didn't make the front page of yahoo.  Even the commercials from Toyota and Chevy have barely bragged about the in-car internet.  The new Camry has apps.  This is Pandora's time to shine.  Replace my FM dial with a Pandora app in my dash and I am willing to pay for their service.  Will anyone pay $30+ a month for internet?  This will be the year that more car makers add internet to their vehicles and consumers will decide if they want it.  

QR Codes decline in volume, increase in Quality: This is a hopeful prediction.  2011 was a take-off year for QR Codes.  By the end of the year they were on everything.  But still. . . no one is scanning.  I don't see anyone scanning at least.  For me, I scan when I see an exceptional ad or want to find out what is on the other end of that code.  Most of the time, it is still disappointing content.  Because QR codes are easy and free to make, anyone can throw them on an ad or poster.  But this is a gift an a curse.  Where is the Microsoft Tag or that one shaped like an L with circles?  Those didn't take off because they were proprietary.  QR Code proliferation happened because they cost little to nothing to add on to your marketing campaign.  If QR Codes required some skill to create, fewer would be on the streets, but I think the quality of the landing page would be much greater.  Let's hope this is the year for some great QR Code campaigns.

Square goes mainstream:  It is already uncool to look at Square like a foreign object when it is handed to you at checkout.  I have had once for over a year, but never had a use for it.  Being sold in the Apple store was a big boost and their Christmas promotion made it a great add on to the many iPhones that were gifted).  I have seen several store front windows promoting Square among their accepted payment methods.  In the last week I have paid with Square twice.  (Shout out to Paul at Zeroz in Columbus, Ohio.  He took payment for my awesome new wallet with Square.  Da Levee on High Street also used Square for my etouffee)  Even though many small businesses are ditching their expensive POS systems for an iPod Touch and Square, a big name retailer will be necessary to push Square into the mainstream, but this could be their year.

iTV: Will consumers pay more for a TV from Apple?  Probably.  But with LCD and LED TV's priced so low you should put one in your bathroom, this TV better seriously improve my viewing experience and the way I interact with content.  I have an Apple TV and I don't use it because Apple video content is basically pay-per-view with a YouTube and Netflix player.  Once I dropped my Netflix subscription, I stopped using it all together.  iTV still interests me and I think this will be the year that we see Apple take its place in the living room.

Cable providers evolve or die: Hulu, Netflix, Crackle, Apple TV, Roku, YouTube (now that it has channels), JustinTV, and the list can go on.  With every viewer that chooses to view their entertainment online, cable is one customer closer extinction.  Why do I still have cable?  Probably because I want something to watch in any room and sometimes it is nice to just veg out and be entertained without the need to choose.  With my internet media, sometimes I need the freedom from choice.  That is why the new YouTube channels interest me so much.

Apps for the enterprise:  Big money apps made for the enterprise will start to play a bigger role in the way we work.  Since the advent of the App Store, there have been apps design for business.  Scan business cards, manage your calendar, bump contacts, and more.  But these are bought by me for me.  I predict that businesses will play a greater role in the content of the phones their employees use for work, starting with apps that they want you to use.  So delete Angry Birds from your company iPhone and make room for the next wave of apps for business.

My New Years Resolution is to blog more.  So here's to the start of a great 2012!