The Wiggles and The Beastie Boys: Together at Last

Two of my daughter’s favorite bands are The Wiggles and The Beastie Boys. She is 4. We try to carefully monitor how much and what of both bands is appropriate. Of course, I try to steer her towards the Beastie’s, like any good father would. (Please don’t call Children’s Services. We don’t let her listen to all of their songs). Anyway, I always thought that my home would be the only place where I might find these two musical acts living side by side until today that is. Along comes Google with yet another fun surprise - Artist Themes for iGoogle.

Quick note: iGoogle allows you to customize the Google home page by adding content from around the web. Very cool tool, and something that I have integrated into my daily life. Totally worth checking out if this is a new to you. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

iGoogle launched customized themes several months back. These range from scenes of the beach, to an animated bus stop, to a zen garden and so on. This empowered the user to easily change the look and feel of Google. More fun than function, but interesting none the less.

Well, today I discovered something new in Artist Themes for iGoogle. These themes were designed by folks like Todd Oldham, Michael Graves, Coldplay, John Maeda, Jackie Chan, Lance Armstrong and yes… The Beastie Boys and The Wiggles. There are many to choose from, and each has special little surprises within them. Activating them is as easy as finding the one you want and clicking. Done.

Another really fun aspect of this is that iGoogle allows users to create tabs within the home page - each of which can be customized with a different theme. So, for example, I have a page that is my normal home page. When I type in google, it is where I land. It has my gmail, calendar, and other regularly accessed information all in one spot. I have now decorated it with The Beastie Boys. I then have a page titled News. It has headlines from a wide swath of sources giving me the latest and greatest from around the world. It is adorned with “The Wiggles” - reminding me of my daughter. All in all there are 6 pages, each displaying different information, and each with a distinct look and feel.

From search results delivered by Elmer Fudd to the Wiggles and Beastie Boys, Google continues to make it more fun for me to use their products.

iGoogle Artist Themes

Would You Miss Max & Erma’s?

I read in today’s Dayton Business Journal that Max & Erma’s, a regional restaurant chain, was being acquired by a firm out of Pittsburgh. Borrowing a question that my friend John Moore poses regularly on his blog Brand Autopsy, “Would you miss them if they were gone?” Details of the buyout of the chain of 100+ restaurants mention nothing of shutting any of them down, but if it did would there be an outcry?

As a kid, I can remember my friends coming back from one of the original locations in Columbus and telling me stories of how the tables had phones where you could call people at other tables in the restaurant. They also went on and on about “garbage burgers” loaded up with artery clogging goodness.

I can remember 15 (ish) years ago, when Max & Erma’s opened in Beavercreek, it was a big deal. There were lines out the door of the place. In college, I had room mates who loved working there because it was always packed - which equaled great tips for servers and bussers (which usually equaled ample amounts of beer money). It seems that over time, the magic has gone away.

Now, I question just how relevant the chain is anymore. I will own up to still eating there, usually for carry out, more than once a month. Generally my choice is based on the geographic proximity to my home as opposed to actually loving the restaurant. Convenience does matter. Still, would I miss Max & Erma’s if it were gone? Probably not - at least as it exists now.

Perhaps the new ownership group will figure out some ways to bring the magic back to Max & Erma’s. I hope they do. It is a long drive to anywhere else and gas is not cheap. My first suggestion would be to go back to making the burgers from scratch. No more frozen patties. Make me a garbage burger that is sloppy, messy, and perfectly imperfect in form and you will at least get my attention. Just my thoughts.

What do you think? Will a change in ownership be good for Max & Erma’s? Would you miss the restaurant if it were gone tomorrow? If you bought the chain, what would you do to turn things around?

Max & Erma’s to be acquired for $10.2M - Dayton Business Journal:

Would You Miss Max & Erma’s?

I read in today’s Dayton Business Journal that Max & Erma’s, a regional restaurant chain, was being acquired by a firm out of Pittsburgh. Borrowing a question that my friend John Moore poses regularly on his blog Brand Autopsy, “Would you miss them if they were gone?” Details of the buyout of the chain of 100+ restaurants mention nothing of shutting any of them down, but if it did would there be an outcry?

As a kid, I can remember my friends coming back from one of the original locations in Columbus and telling me stories of how the tables had phones where you could call people at other tables in the restaurant. They also went on and on about “garbage burgers” loaded up with artery clogging goodness.

I can remember 15 (ish) years ago, when Max & Erma’s opened in Beavercreek, it was a big deal. There were lines out the door of the place. In college, I had room mates who loved working there because it was always packed - which equaled great tips for servers and bussers (which usually equaled ample amounts of beer money). It seems that over time, the magic has gone away.

Now, I question just how relevant the chain is anymore. I will own up to still eating there, usually for carry out, more than once a month. Generally my choice is based on the geographic proximity to my home as opposed to actually loving the restaurant. Convenience does matter. Still, would I miss Max & Erma’s if it were gone? Probably not - at least as it exists now.

Perhaps the new ownership group will figure out some ways to bring the magic back to Max & Erma’s. I hope they do. It is a long drive to anywhere else and gas is not cheap. My first suggestion would be to go back to making the burgers from scratch. No more frozen patties. Make me a garbage burger that is sloppy, messy, and perfectly imperfect in form and you will at least get my attention. Just my thoughts.

What do you think? Will a change in ownership be good for Max & Erma’s? Would you miss the restaurant if it were gone tomorrow? If you bought the chain, what would you do to turn things around?

Max & Erma’s to be acquired for $10.2M - Dayton Business Journal:

As Easy As A Walk in the Park…

Making a difference in people’s lives can be as easy as a walk in the park.  Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 the Epilepsy Foundation of Western Ohio will be holding a walk at Delco Park in Kettering, Ohio. Registration for the walk starts at 9:30am, with the event getting underway at 10:30am. My family is proud to be participating in this event. We are hoping to raise money to support the Epilepsy Foundation of Western Ohio. I serve as a member of the board for the EFWO, and got involved after my son was diagnosed with Epilepsy last year. The organization serves families and individuals trying to deal with Epilepsy - delivering services like prescription medications to those who can not afford them. I hope that you can come out and join us for a nice morning walk in the park for a good cause. If not, you can still help. Visit www.firstgiving.com/judebowman and make a donation to the EWFO. Thanks for your help.

3 Free Tech Tools You Need to Use

The internet is full of tools that can make your life easier. Here are 3 of my favorites. If you have not heard of these, please give them a look. They can empower you in ways you would never have imagined.

LinkedIn - If you work for a living, you should use LinkedIn. Plain and simple. LinkedIn is a social networking site that caters to business professionals. It is primarily used as a way to keep tabs on connections new and old, but has countless other applications. From personal branding to market research, to finding a job, to sales support, to ad-hoc help desk, the site’s usefulness grows daily. In 2004 the site had about 500 thousand users. As of 2008 it is estimated to have 21 million. How is that for growth? While there is a paid version of the site that adds functionality, you can do most of what you would need to in the free version. Creating a profile is easy and can be done pretty quickly. This one is a must.

Jott - What if you could call a phone number, speak, and have your words emailed to you in both transcribed text and audio form? What if you could do this for free? You can. Jott offers you the ability to send transcribed voice mail messages to yourself and others at no cost. This one is great for when you have those “great idea” or “damn I better not forget that” moments but don’t the ability to immediately write it down. I put Jott in my speed dial, and with the touch of one key, I can leave myself a message. Within minutes I get an email in my inbox capturing my message. The quality of the transcription is actually very good. Having used this hundreds of times, I can only think of one time that I actually had to play back the audio to understand what my message was. All you need to do to sign up for the service is to go to the site, enter your phone number, enter your email address, and viola - Jott at will. This service has come in handy for me more times than I can count. It is so simple, but so powerful at the same time.

Goog411 - Google on your phone. I am not talking about looking things up on an iPhone or Blackberry, I am talking about calling your search in and having it read back to you over the phone. Need Pizza in Dayton, Ohio? Call 1-800-Goog411 and have the Google search done for you for free. They will even connect you directly or email you a google map right to your chosen destination. It is so simple. This one is perfect for those in sales and other fields with lots of windshield time. Not sure exactly where that customer is? Goog411 can save the day. Need to grab some lunch or find a tow truck? Goog411. Again, this is free. This one is also embedded in my speed dial and used regularly.

These are 3 of my favorite freebies. What 3 free tech tools can’t you live without?

The Physics of Marketing - Newton’s Law of Gravitation

Sir Isaac Newton makes his second appearance in this series with his Law of Gravitation. Perhaps one of the most widely known principles of science is gravity. I say this knowing that while most people could probably not explain gravity very well, just about everyone understands the idea. This was Newton’s blockbuster idea. It explained ocean tides, comets, and even led to the discovery of Neptune.
So what is Newton’s Law of Gravitation about? Well, here goes…
Newton basically asserted that “every object in the universe attracts every other object along a line of the centres of the objects, proportional to each object’s mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distances between the objects.” This theory served to explain much of the earlier work of Kepler in one concise theory. While Newton’s Law of Gravitation was later proven not to apply to all objects (black holes and situations with extremely high gravity) by Einstein, his work is a foundational part of modern scientific thought.

So in my feeble mind it seems that Mass and Distance are the keys here. Now how to take these ideas and put them in the context of Marketing?

Because people are not always rational, I am not sure you can apply an equation to human behavior with much precision, but I definitely think that there are parallels to be drawn. Here is my first take. Think about customers. Big brands get big attention. People know Coke. People buy Coke. Coke is massive. Coke has pull.

So how do little brands stand a chance of getting some “pull” with customers. The answer lies in proximity - the other part of Newton’s Theory. Small companies must get close to the customer in order to stand any chance of survival. They can actually use this to thrive and exert considerable influence if properly executed. Would a proper analogy be the impact of the relatively tiny moon on the Earth’s tides as opposed to the sun’s impact on them? (I ask because I am not a scientist) The moon has huge pull on the Earth’s oceans, and impacts the tides because of proximity. Certainly it has far less Mass than the giant sun. Still it is close. So, continuing my example in the world of soda pop, (using both terms to be user friendly) Jones Soda has done a great job of being “the moon.” They decided to get close to consumers - actually putting photographs of them on their packaging. This has allowed them to build a loyal following of consumers who are engaged with their products. They conduct events that are designed to be built around the consumer as well. They have done a masterful job of utilizing this principle to create growth.

Here is the rub for most companies. How to maintain that proximity. Starbucks is feeling this pain, Jones is probably going through it as well. As you gain more mass, it is actually more difficult to remain close to the consumer. The proximity or closeness to individual consumers tends to suffer as companies experience growth. The distance increases, and they exert less pull. In summary the moon becomes more like the sun, just not nearly as big. Thus the advantage it enjoyed thanks to proximity is destroyed. Jones becomes more like Coke, but without the Mass to sustain the gravity.

Wonder why your favorite brand “sold out?” Well because they were faced with this dilemma. How to stay close and simultaneously get big. How to maintain or increase pull? “Selling out” is just a natural part of that. People inevitable pick Coke, because it carries a lot of weight. It has mass - and thus gravity. It pulls people back. To sustain that mass Coke invests in Mass media, mass distribution, mass exposure. It must sell a lot of soda pop to sustain that mass and gravity. This is why small companies don’t need superbowl ads to thrive. They need super customer service.

Marketing in my mind is all about the customer. You can have gravity through mass or proximity. You might be able to get both, but often you have to choose. There is no “right choice” but recognize that with that choice comes the implications of gravity. Growth for growth sake - more mass - might not always be the answer.

Alright, so that is my take on Marketing and Newton’s Law of Gravitation. What do you think? How does Newton apply to the modern world of Marketing? Please enlighten the world with your thoughts.

LinkedIn - Sales, Market Research… and Networking tool

Many people think of LinkedIn.com as sort of an Online Rolodex. Others might describe it as MySpace for business people or Facebook all grown up. While these descriptions are accurate on some levels, they are not painting the complete picture of what LinkedIn can offer to business professionals. There are numerous uses for the site that go far beyond basic networking and contact management. Notably, the site is a great tool for Sales Professionals and Market Research. I got the opportunity to present this concept to the Dayton Service Marketing Professionals group today at a meeting which was hosted downtown at Brady Ware. It was an excellent discussion, and I think people found it to be informative. I wanted to share a little of what we discussed here in this post.

First, LinkedIn is just as much “Google” as it is “Outlook”. What does that mean? Well, it seems to me that most users of the site typically think of it as online contact management - which in and of itself has huge value. I use the brand names to illustrate that idea. However, I am here to tell you that if that is all you are using the site for, you are missing out on a wealth of information - free information. LinkedIn is a rich and dynamic database, which can be searched, mined, and yield insightful and useful information to you and your business. It is a goldmine of marketing information, all of which is just a search or two away from you.

With over 20 million users, the site has information about companies large and small. Who is growing, who is shrinking, who is looking for help? All important information for sales and marketing professionals. You can determine quite a bit about a company and its future plans by simply looking at who is adding people and examining the skills they possess. It is all right there for you to view.

How else can LinkedIn help you get the cash register ringing? As a sales rep, the worst thing in the world is having to talk about “The fish on the wall” at your initial meeting with a prospective Client. Still, good sales people know the importance of building rapport, and engaging the prospect in a dialog about something other than business. “Get them to like you,” is often how this is described, and it is 90% of selling. It is also damn hard, which is why people get stuck on “hey, where did you catch that fish?” Pretty lame. Enter LinkedIn. If someone has a profile on LinkedIn, you can find out where they have worked, where they went to school, clubs and social groups they are engaged in, who they know, and who you know that they know. All potential conversation starters. Better yet, if you have a common connection, you can make a call prior to the sales meeting to do some research in advance of your meeting. This could create a very memorable first impression. For example, say you discover that your prospect is from Urbana, Ohio. You could bring along a bag of Mumford’s Potato Chips as a small but thoughtful gift. Your friend might inform you that this person is on a heart smart diet, in which case you might want to opt for some strawberries from Michael’s Berry Farm - an equally thoughtful, and slightly healthier idea. These are the silly little things that might just make the difference in getting the business. They might also get your name mentioned to others - an added bonus. This was an especially appealing idea for using this tool in a room full of marketing professionals who work primarily in the heavily regulated industries of accounting, law, and wealth management. Great actions are often easier to pull off in these industries that are great brochures and web sites. In the end, thoughtful gestures are more effective anyway.

Yes, LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool. You probably already know that. Still think about it a little differently, and possibilities begin to emerge for its potential. I will post more on this later this week. Are you using LinkedIn? How?

Thank You Meredith!

This week I received a very touching letter, and I wanted to publicly acknowledge and thank the sender- Meredith. She is the daughter of one of my wife’s dearest friends, and she sent us a very nice note along with a check in support of the Epilepsy Foundation of Western Ohio. What makes this really special is that Meredith lives half way across the country and is only in the third grade. She came up with the idea on her own, and she raised all of the money herself.

Meredith, you are quite a remarkable girl. My family and countless other families whom you have helped through your kindness, initiative, and generosity, truly appreciate your contribution to the Epilepsy Foundation. I am honored to know you. Thank you for reminding me of the goodness of which humanity is capable. Your selfless act inspires and amazes me.

The Physics of Marketing - Kepler’s Laws

German mathematician Johannes Kepler lived from 1571 - 1630.  He is described by many as the central figure in the scientific revolution for his work in astronomy and physics - two disciplines that were considered to be very different from one another in his time.  An independent thinker, he was very influential on shifting world views from the ancient to the modern.  To give context to the time in which he lived, I will mention that his mother was actually imprisoned for witchcraft for 14 months - accused of making another woman ill by collaborating with a demon to poison her with an evil brew. (No, I don’t know if his mom invented Jaeger)   Keppler was a true believer in the scientific method, and one who looked for patterns in everything.  He initially believed that planets orbited the sun in circular motions - basing his ideas on Geometry.  In attempting to verify this theory, he learned that his entire philosophy was flawed.  However, what he did do is to establish how all the planets in our solar system, and any object that orbits another, actually moves.

Kepler’s Laws:

1. Planetary orbits are elliptical with the Sun at one focus.
2. A planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times as it orbits the sun
3. The orbital periods scale with ellipse size, such that the period squared is proportional to the semi-major axis length cubed.

So…

What does this mean to modern marketing?

For me, I am noodling how to apply the theories themselves to Marketing.  I may lean on a physicist out there to get the ball rolling with respect to how these laws can specifically be applied.  Perhaps something along the lines of consumer behavior, seasonal patterns of demand, distribution, the product life cycle or speed to market?  I will continue to think on that one.  Feel free to jump in and start the discussion.

Certainly, there is much for Marketing professionals to learn from Kepler the man and the way in which he made his discoveries.  He was eternally curious about the truth.  He constructed hypotheses, tested, measured, analyzed, modified, and repeated.  He was well versed in mathematics and used geometry as the basis for his initial hypotheses.  At some point, he realized that his model was flawed.  He needed to change his view.  Some of his assumptions just did not make sense.  Rather than deny that fact, Kepler embraced the unknown.  He sought out the truth.  He took risks rather than trying to continuing on in the safety of the familiar.  The end result was a breakthrough.  Is this not the same way we should approach things like product development, direct sales, or customer service?

What do you think?  What is your hypothesis?  Is there something to be learned from Kepler’s Laws?  What is it and why is it important?  Tell us.  I promise, no witch trials.

Johannes Kepler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is Your Sewer.. on Drugs

Are people in your neighborhood using Cocaine? Meth? LSD? Flintstone Vitamins? Scharffen-Berger Chocolate? Soon, you may be able to have a better idea as to whether your neighbors are truly crazy or just good old fashioned junkies, loaded up on barbiturates. “How?” you ask. Well, it seems as thought scientists in Oregon are now drug testing raw sewage. They can run tests to determine if the waste from an area contains high levels of “intoxicated waste.” One of the ideas behind this is that if the levels of a particular drug found in the sewer system show up or go up in a specific part of town, the police could then step up patrols and change tactics for better drug enforcement. According to the story, individuals can not be tied back to the drug use with this technology - so it would serve just as a general indicator for patterns of drug use. Not sure how I feel about somebody testing sewage for drugs, but I am glad I chose marketing. Many would probably disagree with me on that one. Since hearing this story, I can’t help but sing the musical number below from Scrubs. Looks like they need a new verse.

Everything comes down to poo.  Below is the NPR story that led to this awful post.

A Communal Drug Test via the Sewer : NPR

Next Page »