REMEMBER: Life Is Too Short for the Wrong Job!
Monday, April 25, 2011
Awesome Advertising: "Life Is Too Short for the Wrong Job"
With my college career is winding down, I find myself constantly thinking about the bleak job market and what exactly I want to do with my life! These international adds for a job finding service struck me particularly funny. Enjoy!
Friday, April 15, 2011
Pizza Hut puts the APP in APPETITE
It is truly incredible the passion that smart phone users have when talking about their phones. This is especially true for iPhone users. Smart phones have not only made cell phone an extremely functional tool, but also have given its consumers an emotional connection to their product. Often I hear friends excitedly explaining new apps or even talking about apps they need.
This new and improved technology has been a blessing to businesses around the globe. They have utilized application technology and have been able to engage consumers on a much personal level, while increasing profits. A perfect example of this utilization is the Pizza Hut app for the iPhone.
Pizza Hut is an American chain restaurant that has become an international gold mine. The company has expanded their business to now offer their hungry consumers wings, pasta, and breadsticks along side their pizza. The company has an astounding 34,000 restaurants in about 100 countries around the world. It is no surprise that this global franchise adopted an iPhone app to reach the millions of consumers that they had. The iPhone app they created engages customers on a much more personal level then any other online pizza delivery service.
Purchasers of the application are able to order their food in an exciting way. When ordering pizza, customers visually see the pizza they are making and are able to drag toppings and adjust the crust and size with a simple touch of the finger. For those customers who get carried away and add too many topping, the pizza explodes and they are told to try again. The personal creation does not end there either! When ordering wings, users fill up a bowl of wings and pour the sauce on themselves. For the new “Tuscani Pasta”, a Italian waiter appears on the minuscule iPhone screen and takes your order. Once completed, consumers can review their personal orders and place delivery at the moment. Orders completed through the online app receive a 20 percent discount in order to encourage consumers to engage themselves in the Pizza Hut iPhone experience. The fun does not end their either. To keep customer busy while waiting for the arrival, Pizza Hat has created an interactive game: Pizza Racer. Players become delivery drivers themselves and are forced to drive through treacherous streets, avoiding obstacles in order to bring consumers their pizzas. The app also tells its users about new promotions and food that they are developing.
The idea behind it is that is both functional, interactive, innovative, and entertaining. For this blogger, that is the key to a successful smart phone app. The target market for the application is pretty much identical to the target market of the iPhone. This person is a tech-savy 18-34 and predominately male. I feel that this is a perfect fit for the target market. They want something they can use that is also entertaining. These pizza lovers will have no complaints after using the app. Not only did this become a lucrative application, it also was praised for its innovation and functionality in the application world.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
All I want for Christmas is a FLOG!
The Internet has done some wonderful things. It has made the world a whole lot smaller by making it effortless to communicate with people all over the world. Another great thing is that it has made it incredibly easy to become a published author- through blogging. Blogs are an amazing outlet for people to air their grievances, spread ideas, and even just simply vent to friends. The first blog was created way before we understood the meaning of the term. In 1994, Swarthmore student Justin Hall created first blog ever, Links.net. However, it wasn’t until 1999 that people began to hear the term “blog”. At this point people began to hear more about the idea of blogging but had yet to take it serious as a form of expression. The buzz on blogs sparked in 2002 when Heather Armstrong was fired from her job when she began blogging not only about her job but her co-workers on the Internet. Today, we certainly know better however, for Heather it was not so clear the implications of one measly blog post. Blogging is now old hat and everyone seems to have one. Some have even learned how to abuse them! And that is where this post is going to take you readers… into the world of the duh duh duhhhhhhhhh, FLOGS! I am sure you may be unaware of this term but it means a “fake blog”.
One of the first well-known Flog cases was a cute little blog chronicling a couple across America in 2006. Jim and Laura would blog daily about their nightly parks in their RV in Walmart parking lots around America. The blog would talk about the incredible employees at these Walmarts and how great the super store really was. It turns out this was a big old hoax and Walmart hired the two to probably have a miserable tour of all the Walmarts across the country. I wonder if they were really married? Anyways, you would think that people would learn their lesson. A fake blog won’t work! People will find out! Talk about a PR nightmare? Well, it turns out that it happened again, and again and probably will continue to.
In late 2006, a Sony fan site popped up called “All I want for Christmas is a PSP”. The site appeared to be ran by two uber-fans of Sony and more particularly of the game system PSP. During this time, the demand for the game counsel was extremely high and people were dying to get there hands on the toy. The buzz was at an all time high for Sony. The site featured the teenage boys explaining how all they wanted was a PSP. The boys did this through videos in which they rapped and did other cliché things in order to convince their parents for the gift. Not only was the site completely made up and the two boys were “acting”, fake comments were also weaved within the site. Under the alias, “True Gamer”, the floggers made comments such as “best site ever”.
What a great way to get buzz out their! Fans basically taking their own time and effort to make a site in order to express how much they love a product. The idea was certainly good but completely hurt the company. It turns out that Zipatoni made the site. Zipatoni is a marketing company that is known for its crazy ideas and zany use of marketing. They created the site so consumers would take notice and even convince some not-so-bright consumers that it was an authentic fan site. Looks like Sony did not think too highly of the intelligence of their gamers…
This campaign ended up being criticized heavily. People not only didn’t buy the site as a real fan site but they were insulted at that Sony would try to pull off something with little authenticity. The problem I feel (that could have been avoided) was that Sony was not transparent. They did not make it clear that the blog was coming from their marketers. Because they were not transparent, people did not understand the motive of the fan site once they discovered who the real bloggers were. Real fans were left to believe that the whole thing was a scam and their main goal was to almost brainwash people that they needed a PSP for Christmas.
Unfortunately, the videos and the website was taken down after people were outraged so no examples are on the web (other than a few montage-like videos like at the beginning of the post). I am sure we all can imagine the cliché heavy Youtube videos. I think that instead of making the whole idea a waste of their time. Marketers may have been able to leave the videos up and just make themselves appear more transparent and perhaps make it even more cliché. The new and improved satirical website could have really put a Band-Aid on the wounds of PSP fans and also keep them engaged with a new viral campaign.
Although freedom of speech does apply, marketers were attempting to fool potential consumers into thinking that these PSP fanatics really existed. Blogging has really had to develop its own set of rules and guidelines in order to give itself some credibility. This self-regulating that Internet surfers are doing is working pretty well. Like in this case, when people feel that something fishy is going down, they make others known, making it nearly impossible to “Flog” and “Flog” well.
Sources:
4.) http://nymag.com/news/media/15971/
Monday, February 28, 2011
Well this is interesting...
I was looking today at "Dane Carlsons Business Opportunities Weblog" and this certainly caught my eye! A clothing company in New Zealand is now beginning to use benches to advertise on the people who choose to sit back and relax. The bench prints their logo on the backs of the sitters thighs. It is certainly an inventive way but I feel that innocent bystanders will not be too happy to become a human billboard.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Addicted?
We have all been there. It is 2 in the morning and you see an all-nighter in your future. Time is running out and you only have so much time to prepare for the big test or finish the paper. You should be using every minute but instead you are looking at photos from a kid from high school whom you barely spoke to of his family vacation to the Grand Canyon! Well fear not, fellow procrastinators! Here is a website that warns you if you are using any website too much in a certain time period. I tried it out today while finishing up some last minute homework! It actually worked =D
Here is the link...
http://keepmeout.com/
The Elevator Pitch
While studying in London, I got the opportunity to work at a search engine marketing company, Perfect Storm Media. The one of a kind service that the owner Tom offered his customers was extremely elaborate and was often hard to communicate to people who were not familiar with both google analytics and search engine optimization. He emphasized to me the importance of "The Elevator Pitch". It is the idea that it is important to be able to communicate yourself to people both quickly and accurately (in enough time to take a short elevator ride with someone). Having an elevator pitch is quite handy in case you run into someone who you really could have a networking relationship with. Whether it be your business in a few years or even attending a networking night in the near future to land your first job it is important to communicate!
Here is a link to a website that explains how to create a one minute elevator pitch. It is brought to you by the Harvard Business School!
http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/pitch/
Friday, February 4, 2011
Web 2.0: Retail Therapy 2.0 with Zappos
Zappos is a company that is “powered by service”. You could also say that the web today is powered by service. If not “powered by service”, it certainly is driven by the people. Zappos based their company off of Amazon and their idea of making the online retail experience a bit more personal. Zappos uses one to one marketing to really satisfy the needs of the customer. For those who are new to marketing, one to one marketing is a way a company can stand out o differentiate themselves from their competitors. One to one makes online retail (or e-commerce) more of an intimate experience where companies customize what they are selling to each customer. It allows the customer to feel special in a way because they get the feeling that their purchase matters. The overnight success of the company was due largely in part to this idea
Zappos is a clothing retailer that was primarily started and still remains a great place to find a good pair of shoes. When you chose something on Amazon or sign in, you receive suggestions to what you should purchase. This not only helps the customer feel like they are getting more of a personal experience, but it also makes retail therapy come a bit easier while browsing the site. The suggestions also come from customers as well. When you are looking at a certain product, you can view what others say about it. It makes the customer feel like they can have a dialog about the product and hopefully not feel so much buyers remorse after knowing how much other people enjoyed the product. For Zappos, they have made the idea of customer service an art and it extends far past suggesting products. The site prides themselves on having such personal relationships with their customers. They also are differentiated b their unprecedented free shipping both back and forth. This allows the customer to feel more as if they were experiencing a personal shopping experience at a store, where shipping is not needed. As the above commercial shows, they set out to find employees who are passionate about customer service. This passion does not come at a steep price either; Zappos.com is listed as ne of the top places to work today. Making the experience extremely personal, both online and over the phone with their 24/7 customer service line, Zappos heightens the “Retail Therapy 2.0” experience.
The principals of wikinomics and the new web 2.0 are openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally. In this bloggers opinion, Zappos.com does all of these things except maybe peering, and is why they are so successful in a larger sense. Zappos gained overnight success maybe for its 24/7 customer service and free shipping, however, the lasting success is due to the four principles of wikinomics.
Openness is the idea that a company is transparent to the customers. They get knowledge from outside the company and share that knowledge. Zappos is doing so by letting customers give their feedback on what they like and didn't like about products and even the service the customer receives. This openness allows the shopping experience to be more of a collaborative experience. They also have blogs on the site that although are written by hired writers, the blogs give that sense of openness because they are pretty much writing daily what comes to mind involving the retail experience. These blogs are different and every consumer can find a blog right for them.
The second aspect that Zappos.com uses is sharing. Although they have not have this idea exactly right as other companies like amazon do, they implement the idea on the site at least a little. On other websites, when you are purchasing things, the site sometimes directs you to a competitors website to ensure you get exactly what you are looking for. In Zappos' case they are just starting to let customers see competitors on their website. For example, if you really like the Betsy Johnson Collection on Zappos, you are able broaden your horizons and see everything that the designer offers. This again helps customize the purchasing experience for customers. It also reiterates the idea that the customer comes first. This is enough to stop any "shopoholic" from even leaving their couch.
The final aspect of wikinomics that Zappos.com is now starting to implement is acting globally. The company now sells to Canada and more than likely will continue to expand. Acting globally is the essance of the internet and especially the 2.0 web because it is the idea of making the world a whole lot smaller. No longer does a person need to travel the globe to fully experience it. For todays shoppers, experiencing the shopping of France will one day be a click away.
As far as Zappos.com and their business plan is concerned they certainly are going in the right directing. Their advanced customer service shows that they understand that the customer should have the best experience possible ( a large part of Web 2.0 retail sites). As long as they continue to implement all of the wikinomic ideas they are on the fast track to success. In the future I can imagine a merger with Amazon since the website has not fully integrated fashion onto their website. Zappos is currently a "mini" Amazon and seems to be following in its footsteps. Regardless, the future looks quite bright for Zappos.com.
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