Being Smarter

So much of what we get up to here at Being Smarter is about getting personal. The days of broadcast email, send and hope direct mail and one voice for all customers are effectively over.

2010 and beyond is all about defining your buyer personas and getting personal. Click each of those links for some background and inspiration if you want to get your business noticed.

Bearing all that in mind – I couldn’t help noticing a piece of direct mail my wife received over the weekend from Boden clothing.

The front page is a real attention grabber and you can’t help smiling at the fact they’ve recognised she’s not bought from them recently…

Inside – they carry on with the personalisation… in a really nice way.

If ever there was a piece of DM to make you take a look at someone’s ‘stuff’. This would be it.

What are you doing to get personal?!

We’ve been doing quite a bit of research of late for our new venture and been looking at a ton of web application sites – because I’m a massive believer in not reinventing the wheel. Why try a new design from scratch when there are thousands of sites and companies who’ve already blazed a trail.

I just came across a great example of how to do a features tour – never seen this technique before, and I like it. Judging by the fact there’s a couple of hundred links back to this page – I’m thinking there’s a few others liking it too.

Huddle have been around for a while. It doesn’t stop them innovating.

Check out this technique for producing a feature tour. You’ll find it will also work on your iPad – because it’s not Flash!

Write on Glass has been gathering buzz and momentum for some time now. Quite simply, it looks like an awesome new way to share content. Sorry, experiences…

Whilst I’ve not got access, what really interested me is seeing how have they chosen to demonstrate the concept. With screen shots? screen cams? a clever technical animation?

No.

They’ve illustrated the concept quite brilliantly by showing the application interacting in a real live environment and I like it. It stands out from the crowd as an application and they way they tell their story does exactly the same.

We can all learn from this!

Watch, enjoy and learn.

It’s been a real delight getting involved with my son’s local school recently. We’ve been building their new website which I’ll talk about in another post and which will go live in September. I’m really excited about getting the pupils blogging and the parents more involved in what goes on.

Whilst that’s been going on, we’ve also produced a video prospectus for the school – 4 mins 31 seconds of a day in the life. Not too long, not too short. Narrated mainly by the headmaster – the fabulous Richard Jarrett, and produced quite brilliantly by a colleague of mine.

The beauty of having an asset like this – is that it started life as a DVD rotating on the plasma screen in the school foyer. It’s now going to be available online for anyone who wants it, as well as available on DVD for prospective parents. It will also be the start of a collection of video assets available on the school website, which will tell the story of the school year for parents and extended family, who can’t always get to events and see their children participating.

I’ve always preached the opposite to the title of this post because I’m normally discussing communication with customers and I will never stop believing that surprises are normally bad.

The right kind of surprises are very welcome however and mobile operators are notoriously bad at not giving those. Imagine my surprise then when I got the text below yesterday.

Costwise, bearing in mind Vodafone own networks in most EU countries this will have minimal impact. Revenuewise, people are too scared to use data abroad anyway and so the majority of customers don’t use it. Financially it’s therefore going to have minor impact either way. From a customer loyalty perspective however, this is huge. Customers will renew contracts because of this and customers will leave other operators for this scheme too.

Vodafone I’m personally very grateful for this promotion. However in a corporate sense I also think you are very smart and I bet the others follow.

Proof below a campaign can go viral for something as dull as a biscuit if you’re smart.

Have to say, I’m not sure whether this is staged or not, however it’s got them 400,000 views on YouTube in the last month – so either way it’s a great brand awareness tool.

What beats me is that you have to assume people will check out the Wheat Thins website and sadly I suspect there’s a different group of people building the site, to the viral campaign.

The site is a shocker, but the video is great…

Hat tip to David Meerman Scott.

After yesterday’s post about a case study on getting noticed, I thought it would be fascinating to publish a series of case studies, featuring the latest and greatest innovative ways people have got their content noticed.

I’m interested in hearing about:

• Viral campaigns people can learn from
• Great link bait stories
• Great results in reaching ‘market leaders’ to spread a message
• SEO successes
• And any other category of ‘getting noticed’ story – whether yours or links to great case studies.

As a thank you and an incentive, I’m going to give away a copy of a book from one of the world’s experts on viral campaigns – David Meerman Scott. His book World Wide Rave is a must read for anyone in marketing today. You can have a copy sent to you anywhere in the world if your story is the best one… (as received by 1 July 2010).

If you’d like to submit a story, brief or otherwise (there are no rules here)… please email my colleague bruce@the845club.com

Everyone will then benefit from the stories submitted as I will make sure they’re shared on this site.

Thank you!

Image courtesy of oaklandish

I wanted to share a simple idea with you around how to get your ‘stuff’ noticed.

Stage 1: Create a site, a blog, an article, an ebook, a video… something of real value which is related to your ‘stuff’. Something which doesn’t sell, doesn’t capture emails, doesn’t advertise, just something which is going to have genuine community interest. If you’re struggling on how to create content like this, you could do worse than checking this out. (Yes I have a vested interest).

Case study: www.watchusgettingreal.com

Stage 2: Develop it fully, promote it yourself as best you can, get it established. Road test it with friends and colleagues. Really make sure it’s fit for purpose and will stand up to scrutiny. Let it sit.

Case study: The site was built for around a month, we’d had a couple of hundred visitors and had written 6 posts and were well on the way to telling our story.

Stage 3: Find the sneezers in your community – people who can help you to spread your word. (This is why stage 1 is so important) and write to them. Use Email, paper, Twitter, Facebook, whatever. But make it short, sharp, personal and relevant.

Case study: http://twitter.com/mark_copeman/status/15838905789

Stage 4: Assuming they’re happy to spread your word, thank them, keep them in the loop, keep them involved in what you’re doing.

Case study: http://twitter.com/mark_copeman/status/15853098651

Stage 5: Find other sneezers, rinse and repeat. BUT keep adding to Stage 1. Keep adding value to the asset you’ve created and develop your community.

Case study result: Dozens of thank you emails, 4,000+ visitors in 5 days, dozens of RSS subscriptions, feedback on the project, multiple retweets…

Not rocket science I know – but a fascinating exercise. It’s amazing what you can achieve in a week and it’s only possible thanks to people who have become Market Leaders in their niche. They hold the power today and it’s what we should all be aiming to be.

Thank you once again to @jasonfried