More Internet Snapshots

Number 27 is the work of Jonathan Harris, who is behind the "We Feel Fine" site that I wrote about in my previous post. For example, 10 x 10 is a photographic snapshot of the globe. Well worth a trawl through.

How's the Blogosphere Feeling?

This site - We Feel Fine - searches the blogosphere for phrases such as "I feel", "I'm Feeling" etc. and then collates them to view in an amazingly engaging way, you feel like you are poking about in a pool of emotions - link. It also takes information about the weather and where the person was posting from to provide some context and make it feel especially personal. There's a good description of it here.

Supercool Brand Tie-ups

Fab stuff from Nike & Apple, a collaboration between the ipod nano & running gear - link (via Coolhunting.com)

Customer Creation - Nokia

Another example of customers using their creativity, simply because they want to (and perhaps to win a little prize!) - link

The Hughtrain

A recent Gaping Void post reminded me about Hugh MacLeod's "Hughtrain". Well worth a read - link

Connecting With Audiences

The LAPD is getting all web 2.0. They've started a blog and a Flickr stream - link (to a Boing Boing post which has all the relevant links)

High Traffic vs Good Traffic

Lovely stuff from Seth Godin on different ways of looking at traffic - make sure you're looking at a meaningful metric for your needs - link

Co-Creation

Post from Jennifer Rice on the subject of involving customers in creating products. Lots of good examples such as 'Lego Factory' - link

Proportional World Maps

Found this post on Guy Kawasaki's Blog - world maps that are density equalising. In other words the countries are shown is a size proportional to the feature being measured - link

The Perils Of Focus Groups

Seth Godin comments on the dangers of the focus group - link

Net Promoter Scores

I recently came across the concept of the net promoter score. It is beautifully simple - ask your customers the single question "Would you recommend XXX to a friend or colleague?" and you have a superb indicator of how your business is doing and a good predictor of revenue growth. You can see more about it here (a company set-up for conducting the research), here (for some research done by Bain & Co, here (for an interview Ogilvy conducted with a chap called Fred Reichheld or here for some research by LSE.

Psychological Bias In Decision Making

In this McKinsey Quarterly article there is a discussion about how psychological biases can impact exit strategies (I think you may need to register to view the link). I found it most interesting for the biases themselves. The article itself describes "The Confirmation Bias" and "Anchoring & Adjustment". But you may need to follow these links to Wikipedia for "The sunk-cost fallacy" and "Escalation of Commitment" (which have very similar roots).

The World's Shortest Marketing Plan

Great stuff from Guy Kawasaki. His post links first to an article about moving on from the 4'Ps' of marketing. He then links to a post about creating a meaningful marketing plan in less than 40 pages. And then Guy merges the two into his own marketing plan for the Cluetrain generation - link

Latest Trendwatching Briefing - Customer-Made

Customer-made is a really important trend at the moment especially in light of how web 2.0 is impacting customers and their decision making - link

Purple Cow

In case anyone is not familiar with Purple Cows - link

CMR not CRM

As though Seth Godin was deliberately contributing to my presentation to CMW on 4th May - link

Open Source

I also re-stumbled across this article on open source & the impact it can have on business - link

Introduction to The Long Tail

Doing a bit of research for a presentation, I dug-out this October 2004 article from Wired magazine. It's a great overview of the subject - link

Online? Offline? What Line?

The line between virtual and reality gets even more blurred - link

Frozen Food & World View

This press ad is part of a new campaign from frozen food manufacturer Birds Eye. The people behind the campaign have no doubt laboured hard to find a truth about why frozen food is better for you than 'fresh' - which is all based on the fact that the frozen food remains technically fresher. I'm not convinced that anyone is really going to buy this idea as, in my opinion, it is against most of the public's worldview. The fresh carrots I bought in the grocer's on Saturday hadn't been out of the ground that long, were not rotten and I'm pretty sure will taste nicer than their frozen counterparts.

Advertisers not only need to find the truth, but to then make it believable. This will often start from the worldview, rather that directly contradicting it. With all the news about healthy eating at the moment, it will take more than an ad campaign to shift people's opinions favourably to frozen food.

The MySpace Generation

Article from business week on social networking and the profound impact that it is having on the lives of teenagers - link

Web 2.0 & the empowered customer

Post from Jennifer Rice about giving customers control - link

Don't be consumer led.

I found this thought-provoking quote as part of a Tom Peters presentation.
“These days, you can't succeed as a company if you're consumer led - because in a world so full of so much constant change, consumers can't anticipate the next big thing. Companies should be idea-led and consumer-informed.” - Doug Atkin, partner, Merkley Newman Harty

First and foremost make great products.