There’s something about brands that know how to have fun. I reckon the Toyota Prius fits in this category. Their recent advertisement asking the crowd to work out the plural version of the word Prius is very catchy. (I’m a long time jingle lover). It’s also a cool way to build some anticipation and awareness of the new range
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUor4gdFoyg]
Is your brand having fun?
You may be aware that I recently ran my annual Startup School in Melbourne.
During the event we ran a tweet stream of the ideas and soundbites coming from the forum. A lot of people followed the hashtag #melsus and said they got some great stuff from it. One person in particular Josh Moore, took it to the next level and pulled together a great PDF of the event via what appeared on line from it. Entirely his idea and work.
We both thought it was worth sharing here as a small entrepreneurs e-book made up of tweets and links in different categories.
PS: there are some pictures of me in it *red face*, which Josh saw fit to include…. and who am I to moderate his work?
You can follow Josh on Twitter here. And see his blog here.
This is the fourth of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Lani Pauli. Lani wanted to get my thoughts on the following: How to overcome the fear to take the leap and do your own thing.
I’ve written about this a few times. And I’ll start by pointing out previous entries on De-gearing, Quit your job and The number 1 reason being an employee sucks. But to make things contemporaneous here’s my thoughts on the topic today, off the top of my head.
Two important words come to mind when I think about the fear of pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors.
Having & Doing.
And as far as I can tell these two words are what we worry about when it comes to finance. We want to do cool stuff (like build a startup and pursue dreams), but in the short term it can have a big impact on our lifestyle and consumption patterns – the having part.
But most people don’t realize this important fact until after they have made the leap:
“The having is in the doing”
In my view we often replace our dreams and goals with consumption. And society promotes this ideal. We use money and steady income as a means of consumption based happiness. When in reality, we’d be much happier if we just did what we wanted to and had greater fulfillment in the hours of our days.
We have to make a decision on what’s more important to us; having lots of stuff and security, or doing cool things. I believe the latter creates a more enjoyable existence, and often leads to a virtuous circle where you realize how little we really need.
The real bonus is this: it’s easier to be successful when you are really into what you spend your time on. And when success comes to entrepreneurs we get the best of both worlds.
Startup blog says: Dream chase now!
I bought this reasonably cool pair of board shorts for surfing this summer.
They cost me a whopping $80. Which is what I call ‘insult pricing’. It’s a pretty simple equation actually. The key players in the surfwear industry (Billabong, Quiksilver and Ripcurl) charge these prices because they can. They don’t have any ‘credible competitors’ in this board short subsegment of clothing.
In recent years surf brands have been hit by many competitors in other areas of the market which they used to ‘own’. Especially in t-shirts, from the myriad of streetwear companies, to the uber cool on-line players like Neighborhoodies and Threadless. Interestingly the shorts in this photo would cost >$5 to make. There is significant margin in the product. Such high margins often begets competitive entry into the market place.
The arrogance of said surf brands has invented an opportunity for a nimble entrepreneur to steal part of this market. And the way to do it is exactly the way Threadless have. Go online and build a community to design the uber cool boardshorts / shorts and sell them globally at a fair price. In fact, surf wear is so clichéd and over branded these days that I avoid wearing it. Most of the designs are very rank and have really lost their edge. I only use surf brands for surf equipment. The only reason I bought the pair in the photo is ‘lack of options’.
If anyone knows some one already doing it – let me know
If anyone wants to do it – let me know as well. I think it’s worth ‘investing in’.
There is plenty of buzz around UGC (User Generated Content), Crowd Sourcing and Mass Customization at the moment. And the truth is I am a sucker for it. I embrace it, love it and really believe it is an economic revolution. In fact many of the new features we’ve implemented on rentoid have been at the suggestions of our members…. but there is a downside.
We need to be aware that not every consumer knows what they are talking about, and not every idea we get from the crowd happens to be a good one. The crowd can get it wrong occasionally. Yep – there are people out there with ideas that just might send you broke if implemented.
If we are building a forum for people to create & share their own stuff on like Youtube or Etsy – that’s when it’s a cool idea to let the crowd take over. That’s when it’s cool to build the forum and get the hell out of the way. But when it comes to them designing and creating products for others – we need to keep our heads. In fact if there is one piece of advice startup blog can give is know which business you are in:
A) Are you building a forum for them to connect on?
or
B) Are you building a product for them – with their input?
If you are doing the latter – that’s when you need to be wary of the Homer mobile.
Instead, what we need to do when we want the crowds input is look to our “lead user group”. The lead user group is our base of fans who are knowledgeable, expert, style leaders or simply influential. These are the people we need to listen to when UGC is part of the mix, but not the whole story.