Category: Marketing Insight

The Prius Monopoly

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Maybe it’s the spaceship interior or the futuristic aerodynamics, but there’s no doubt that when it comes to hybrid cars, the Prius has the monopoly of the mind.

 

This has been verified by the board game itself – Monopoly, where the Prius has now taken place of the racing car.

 

The hybrid movement is not without its naysayers…

  • A $50,000 Greenpeace badge?

  • The eco-razzi car of choice?

  • Not as green as public transport?

It shouldn’t matter if it is moving human consumption in the right direction.

That fact is all this is the result of some damn good marketing. Kudos to Toyota.

American Chopper

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I love to see people who are passionate about what they’re doing. American Chopper is a classic example. There’s so much belief, it shows in their product output. It’s also a fantasy brand.

 

Definition – Fantasy Brand: Brand which people can also consume vicariously, through media or secondary branded offers such as merchandising.

Football teams are also often fantasy brands. Think Manchester United and the ‘Theatre of dreams’

American chopper has it all, a single minded proposition, theatre, emotion, craftsmanship, autheticity, artistic integrity, and premium pricing. Put simply you’d seek them out to build your chopper, because it’s them. Very cool.

Customer service

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I needed a web guru for a project I am working on. So through a friend I got onto Barbara at Pearl Creative Consultants.

 

Pearl specialize in connecting ‘creative’ resources to businesses in need – freelance and permanent.

Although Barbara didn’t have what I needed on her books, she connected me with a colleague of hers and was exceptionally helpful. There was nothing financial in it for her – yet. As an entrepreneur Barbara understands time lag.

Guess who I’ll call next time I need such a service? And if you’re in Australia you should too.

1984 – update

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Seems George Orwell was about 23 years out…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wuBqlny50]

 

No doubt it will be handy, in fact it’s quite brilliant. There’ll be opportunities for entrepreneurs to leverage the service too. But I’m not sure if Google is losing focus on it’s core business or is about to take over the world? Does the world want this?

 

Maybe the next search champion will be one that isn’t so pervasive.

Letter to Public Transport Marketers

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Dear Mr Public Transit Marketer,

May I introduce you to the concept of ‘wildcard ingredients’. I would very much like to know if you have considered this in your strategy. May I also suggest your wildcard ingredient as ‘climate change’. You see, you won’t need to adapt the public ‘worldview’ to do this. They already know that public transit is a big part of the solution. Yet for some reason, you continue to compete on comfort, price and parking. It seems strange to me that you haven’t leveraged climate change at all.

It is also my humble opinion that you may be able drive this message home with significant free media coverage.

Please Mr Public Transit Marketer, take heed and do something really important. You may even improve the profitability of your employer also.

 

Yours sincerely,

Startup blog

traffic-jam.jpg

 

There’s no promotion without self promotion

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Read the title of this blog entry again and think about it deeply.

This is true for your job, career, start up or existing business. Don’t be afraid to promote yourself and everything you do. In fact, we must do this to be successful.

We have to sing your own praises before anyone else will.