I’m a big proponent of doing whatever it takes to get creative… including buying moleskine note books with colors matching the colors of your brand 
I bought these the other day from Borders. The green is for my Wave Marketing notes, and the pink is for The Geekettes Club notes. I love writing in nice notebooks. It gives me a great feeling of creativity and organization. Am I weird?
I have also used other things to get the creative juices flowing in meetings with attendees. Like hats, crayons, children’s toys and lots more. Here’s an example (no, this is NOT me. It’s my friends TJ). 
I use these so people will start to think a little differently. You’d be amazed what wearing a funny hat (or looking at someone in a funny hat) will do for innovative and out of the box thinking. Give it a try!
So – what do YOU do to get the creative juices flowing?
One of my friends, and fellow marketer, Keith Parnell, spoke recently to an audience about Blogging for Business – the How’s and Why’s. I liked his presentation, so thought I’d share it with my blogosphere friends! ENJOY!
Thanks Keith for sharing your knowledge with us!
P.S. You can watch UStream of Keith’s presentation here
Its my humble opinion that Crowdsourcing will be a pretty big trend this year.
So what’s Crowdsourcing? Here is the Wikipedia definition:
Crowdsourcing is a neologistic compound of Crowd and a short for Outsourcing, for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an “open call” to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions.
For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design[1] and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm (see Human-based computation), or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science).
There are a huge range of opportunities for cash-strapped marketers and businesses with crowdsourcing by tapping an online community for ideas on how to advance a brand, or develop a product or, in many cases, both. However, we must advance with caution, as crowdsourcing can be perilous!
How? Well, let’s create a little scenario :
You are a marketing manager at a startup company, with no budget, and no resources to help you. You decide that you need help from your pals on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to come up with a new name for a product line your company is launching. So you Tweet it out, Facebook it up, and shout it out on LinkedIn. The incentive you offer? Not much – couple hundred bucks on a BestBuy card.
Problem : You underestimated the desire for people to be heard and to provide input! Forget the incentive. People want to do this for bragging rights! So you’ve now got 200 entries! Holy cow – that’s awesome! Well, isn’t it? Don’t forget – you have no resources. So now you have 200 entries to sift through and try to come to a decision on your own… BUT – how about selecting the top 10 options and crowdsourcing (well, polling) your community again? Phew – crisis averted!
Now how long did it take to go through this process? Yep – maybe you could’ve come up with a name by yourself in the time it took to manage the crowdsourcing process.
These are still early days, though, and as this model takes off supporters say such problems will be resolved. More industry resources are being devoted to crowdsourcing, which should also help. Last October, for instance, a new advertising agency, Victors & Spoils, was launched by former executives from Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, billing itself the first creative ad agency built on crowdsourcing principles.
There are hundreds of websites leveraging crowdsourcing for a variety of purposes. Here is a great Wiki that lists Crowdsourcing sites, grouped by the following categories:
1. Individual businesses or sites that channel the power of online crowds
2. Brand-sponsored initiatives or forums that depend on crowdsourcing. I’ve included those that are no longer active as well, for reference.
3. Brand initiatives that allow users to customise their products
4. Brand-sponsored competitions/challenges focussed on crowdsourcing
Companies are getting smarter about crowdsourcing in general, according to Matthew Greeley, CEO and founder, Brightidea.com (via DM News).
“Marketers need to be brought in to ensure that open innovation sites serve as an extension of the overall brand. A simple way to do this is through white-label innovation platforms, which easily enable marketers to influence the look and feel of a crowdsourcing initiative so that there is a stronger tie between the brand and innovation.”
Smart companies are also applying crowdsourcing interally as well, he said. “Innovation can often come from unexpected places. Just a year ago, when one well-known consumer-facing Fortune 1,000 launched an internal innovation platform to help spur ideas within the company, one of its best actionable marketing ideas came from someone in IT.”
So how are you going to use crowdsourcing? Do you have any ideas? Please feel free to share them here. (See? Now I’m crowdsourcing!)
Why? Because I can! I just ordered one of the best products I’ve heard of in recent years – IdeaPaint. You just paint it on , and you can start writing on it. Sweet! I’ll take pictures once I’ve painted my office, but here is a pic for inspiration. Follow them on Twitter @ideapaint and order online at ideapaint.com
If you do nothing else this Sunday, take 5 minutes and watch this wonderful video
Everyone knows how wonderful it feels to help other people! If you received a new laptop or desktop for the Holidays, would you consider donating the old one? A new company I’m launching in February – The Geekettes Club – has a laptop donation program in which we will be providing laptops (within 3-4 years old) to women in need who are trying to learn computers and the internet/technology.
The Geekettes Club mantra is ‘Paying It Back, and Paying It Forward’, so pay it forward in 2010, and consider helping someone less fortunate stay connected, and perhaps learn something new.
Thanks in advance to everyone who considers paying it forward! (AND stay tuned for more to come from The Geekettes Club!)
Social media is no longer a buzz word. Brands are getting smart and hiring qualified people to manage and execute social media programs; and self proclaimed experts will continue to blog, tweet and facebook themselves into oblivion.
This post by John Moore sums up my thoughts quite well on this subject; if you can’t deliver business value to a brand or any sized business, you will be exposed. Driving strong customer relationships and increasing brand awareness is not the same as personal branding, period.
What is a brand? Depending on who you ask, the answer may vary. A web design company may tell you that a brand is your logo and website. Others may say it is the adjectives a customer or potential customers use to describe your product or service. A brand is all of these things and more.
A brand is an experience; it is the experience that others encounter when they come into contact with your business. It includes your online presence, the service and professionalism put forth by you and those who represent your company and it is the quality of your communications.
Here are 3 ways to improve your brand ‘experience’:
- Understand that you have the power and ability to increase (or decrease) your brand image every second of the day. Before you answer the phone, or meet with that next customer consciously think about what image you want to put forth.If you are in the bad mood and your business is making people happy, don’t answer the phone or meet with anyone while your mood is negatively impaired. Be and act like what you want people to think of when they think of you. Make sure your online and offline presence is consistent. Ensure your people match and project the company image.
- Take Inventory Of Your Points of Entry. Your points of entry are all those places where others come in contact with your business. Your phone message, business cards, website, staff, etc… Evaluate your points of entry and make any necessary adjustments so as not to make any poor first impressions.
- Tell People Who You Are! An easy way to build brand knowledge and awareness is simply to tell people who you are and what you stand for. If your business is fun, quirky and creative, then let folks know! If your business is poised, refined and conservative then say so. And then make sure the rest of your brand image matches what you say. No Say-Do Gaps!
Remember, perception IS reality it its what your customers believe. Take a step back and take a long hard look at your brand from an outsiders perspective. How does it look? Time to improve your brand experience?
As 2009 comes to a close, everyone reflects on trends from the year, and start making predictions on where we’re headed next year. Nielsen just released it’s 2009 wrap-up, and its projections for the top advertising trends for 2010. In 2009, budgets were slashed, social media networks and UCG (or user generated content) began to be embraced and realized as opportunities to interact and reach consumers in a new and more intimate way.
Neilsen’s predictions for the New Year include:
- Optimizing media convergence is a top priority. A better understanding of media convergence will manifest in order to deliver a better return on investment. The ability to accurately measure activity and link online ads to offline purchasing behavior will be critical.
- New models emerge to take advantage of smartphones. Accurate mobile measurement will be required to stay head of the snowballing growth of that media platform.
- More cross-media ad campaigns surface. The massive growth of online video games played and shared online leads the way for more successful interactive and cross-media advertising campaigns to appear. Growth in the adoption of this innovative advertising across screens and activities will increase.
- Commercialization of social networking hubs increase. Social media will provide a new sales channel for establishing product awareness and commercializing brands to better support traditional advertising or text-based ads.
- More interesting and interactive online ads appear. Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as video, attention-seeking page takeover ads and mechanisms for greater interactivity will drive the next era of Web development.
So in a nutshell – think mobile, social, interactive, and converging media for 2010.
