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Happening in the new year!
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Commentary from John Moore and others on a recent talk by David Jones (global CEO of Euro RSCG) ... make sure you read thru the comments - interesting perspectives!
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Leesa Barnes is writing about the top women podcasters -- excellent work, Leesa! We need more community building efforts like this!
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*Incredible* image of Paris. Via Seth Godin's "Stranded" lens. http://www.squidoo.com/strandedinparis/
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Posts from November 2006
Liberal Party design traps Canadian women in the 1950's
The Pink BookThe PINK Book?
Yeah, yeah .. I know .. it's a play on the Liberal's "Red Book".
That doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
And where did they get the designer for the cover?
Oh, that's right.
Kotex ads from the 1950's.
And this is why design and language matter.
I possibly could have lived with "The Pink Book" title if it were an updated, modern take on the power of pink.
I have not read the Pink Book. And I likely won't. Because it is telling me, through its flat, saccharine, stereotypical design, that there are no new ideas here. Nothing that we haven't heard since the 1950's ... telling me to stay home, take care of the kids, cook my husband dinner and wash away all his insecurities.
That isn't my vision of a strong Canadian woman. If it's going to be pink - I want it PINK and powerful! Like Pink Ranger. Now, that's a vision I can support!
Update: Based on Darren's comment below, I updated the title to clarify that my issue with with design and not policy.
Canadian Blog Awards .. MNIK made the second round!
Well, some interesting news. MNIK has made the second round of voting over at the Canadian Blog Awards in the Business Blog category. They don't really have a "marketing" category, so I guess business is the next best thing. MNIK actually came in second in the first round which is awesome; albeit a very distant second to the Vancouver Housing Blog which roundly kicked the category's collective ass.
I'm in with some pretty interesting and diverse company:
- Michael O'Connor Clarke's Uninstalled; he's VP at Thornley Fallis Communications in Toronto.
- Barry Welford's The Other Bloke's Blog; Barry is in Montreal and is President of SMM (Strategic Marketing Montreal).
- Industrial Brand Creative Inc.'s group blog: We're Not Wired Right; IBC is in Vancouver and focuses on design.
- "Van Housing Blogger": Vancouver Housing Market Blog; the one I would consider the genuine "business blog" in the group.
So, if you're inclined, you can vote once a day. I managed to score some pretty good placement at the top of the page, so you don't have to search too hard.
Competitions like this are always really interesting, not so much from an "I won" perspective, but because you get exposed to readers who might not have found you and you find blogs you might not have known about.
There are a number of bloggers who have done extensive write-ups of their choices. Bow. James Bow. goes through each category in detail (except, ironically, the Business Blog category) as well as has links to other Canadian bloggers with their own write-ups. If you have a little time, it's worth going through and getting familiar with some Canadian blogs you might not have heard of. We have some pretty great talent here!
Oh, and you could vote for me :-) Voting closes Friday, December 1.
Congratulations! You bought our stuff!
I just registered for YAWTPOS (Yet-Another-Web-Two-Point-O-Service .. apologies to Yahoo!) and I received the following email:
Congratulations on your successful registration! You can now start doing ABC and XYZ - and blah, blah, blah, blah blah ... and for future generations to come.
This language, of course, traces its heritage to product manuals:
Congratulations on purchasing our very expensive widget. After you wade through all the painful, scary warnings we place at the front of this manual, you can then comb through page after page of unhelpful, dry instructions. But we have your money. Ha! Good luck. And no, we're not putting our customer service number in the manual. Because then you might call us. Try our website. It's there. Really. We promise.
This irks me in a couple of ways ...
First ... tongue planted firmly in cheek ... with the inconsistent state of software on the web, I actually feel like sometimes I should be congratulating *them*.
Congratulations, I was able to successfully register on your site. Your registration system correctly identified which fields were mandatory and didn't ask me for any overly personal or unnecessary information up front. Better yet, it didn't crash my computer and your confirmation email didn't end up in my spam folder.
Second, why isn't anyone *thanking* me? I'm a fickle, time-starved, choice-rich consumer! For heaven's sake, there are over 300 choices[1] in the cereal aisle alone. If I take the time to register on your site and try to engage with your service, I would like to be thanked.
Here's the important bit:
If we are to truly engage in customer-centric product development as well as partner with our customers in our marketing programmes (and I know some of you reading think this is still a choice. You're wrong. It we're lucky, our customers will let us partner with them), we have to change our thinking and reinvent the experience of every touchpoint with our customer.
Marketing must reinvent itself and the business it serves. Marketing can be the leader of customer-centric product development and communication. If only we have the will and the fearlessness.
I have been recently inspired in my thinking on reinventing marketing by Peter Kim from Forrester. He is writing some great pieces over at Forresters' blog Integrating Social Media. This blog is a complement to a recent Forresters event of the same name.
[1] "Too much of a good thing", Kansas City Star, 2006
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