Ideas Archives - Page 14 of 30

The authentic phone message challenge

Posted on October 16, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

I’ll start by saying the concept of getting customers to “hold” on a telephone is a pretty bad idea. Then I’ll tell this story….

Today I was on hold for Optus telecommunications, which gave me a reasonably standard phone message:

“Your call is important to us. At this time we experiencing high demand for our telephone support staff, and we’ll be with you as quickly as we can. Please hold the line for the first available operator.”

Here’s what I seriously would prefer to hear:

“We’ve made a deliberate choice to only have X number of people to answer our phones. They are incredibly expensive and having any more than this would impact our profit too much. We’ve done studies which have worked out the number of people that hang up for waiting too long, and how much revenue the average phone call generates or loses for us. The number of people employed to answer our phones is just about optimal. We check this every few months. The average wait is about 5 minutes, so it’s a cool idea to put the phone on load speaker while you wait. Then you can do other stuff. If we answer and you’re not at the phone immediately, we’ll do you the the same favour of waiting a bit while you run to the phone to talk to us once we actually answer. We hope you appreciate our honesty. We reckon it’s better than giving you a load of shit that tells you how important you are. Cheers.

And so the challenge goes out to any startup or business is prepared to develop the worlds first authentic phone message be sure to let us know here at Startup blog so we can spread the awesomeness.

There’ll also be a prize for the best comment with a phone number to a company that has a message of this ilk – and the prize is $100 Amazon gift voucher.

Cool hunting – The tail of two movies

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Yesterday I was sent links to two movies which were both entrepreneurial in nature / marketing related. Both revolve around the idea of paid brand ambassadors. One is a documentary on how clever ‘cool hunters’ are, and the other was a Hollywood fabrication of brand evangalists are infiltrating our circle of trust.

The Documentary trailer: The Influencers

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/15595024]

The Hollywood trailer: The Joneses

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Y3GoN2PGw]

The question it leaves in my mind is whether social media facilitates more authentic or inauthentic ‘hidden’ brand evangelists.

Helping your community

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Blogger, thinker and all round nice guy Ben Rowe recently wrote a blog entry just for me. There was nothing in it for him, he just thought it would be nice to share his intellectual prowess for my benefit.

How it came about was pretty simple really. Ben wrote a great blog post on the importance of gaming and how it is starting to transcend currency. Within my comments on his post I spoke of how great it would be to think of a good gaming mechanic for rentoid. A few days later Ben wrote this blog post with some ideas on how to do exactly that. It’s the kind of commercial world I want to live in. An ethic where people do cool stuff for others without asking, and not expecting anything in return. The corollary is that a a return does invariably happen.

Firstly, an emotional return from doing good. Secondly, a collective return from building community. And sometimes a financial one from those who return the favour.

The question for startup entrepreneurs is this:

What are you doing to build your industry community help and promote others?

100,000 eyeballs for $8

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

If you want to know how to get your brand exposed to 100,000 people for $8 then we need look no further than what David did.

You may remember this post where David go his Jarritos soft drink van all branded up. Well, he took the next step in exposure and got to the AFL grand final early for a front row car park near the MCG for a measly $8. As far as I can tell it’s one of the greatest media investments of all time – there were 100,000 people in attendance. See photo journal below. Great startup bootstrapping David.

Top 10 list – Words redefining business

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a little list of words that keep ringing in my head that I feel are changing the way we do business. I’ve written them each with a few thoughts beside them to stimulate your own view.

Gifting – an emerging gift culture started with sharing information freely (Blogs, photos, ideas on the social web). This will start to iterate into a culture of providing actual goods to each other as gifts
Gaming – human existence is defined by counting and gaming. Currency, bank accounts, salary, frequent flyer miles… and now smart phones will turn many brand relationships into games we can play. In many ways it will replace currency.
Real time – the web used to be a repository of information written, found and filed for later retrial. It’s evolving into a what’s happening now forum. With live check ins (four square), live video (Qik / Ustream), status updates (Twitter). This will change they way we buy and interact on a commercial level.
Geolocating – will permeate everything we do, and all the messages we receive.
Community – it took the democratization of media via the web and fragmentation of media channels before we could regain our desire to interact at a community level, not just a consumer level. And we like it. We’ll never let people break down our communities again. It’s a social requirement we have built into our DNA.
Apps – software is now personal. The difference with apps is that they are malleable. We co-create the code as we interact with them.
Screen culture – TV isn’t dead, it’s just changed. It’s now web enabled and everywhere we go. Count how many screens you see today.
Global currency – we now have perfect information on currency and conversions via the web. Our ability to arbitrage is being diminished. It’s only a matter of time before we create a global currency that crosses borders and oceans and automatically adjusts prices of everything we buy to a single lowest global price delivered. This has already happened historically as our world got bigger. First at a tribal level, then state level then national level. The globe is next.
Related revenue – We’ll start making money less from what we actually do (writing a blog? / Google search?) and more from the stuff we do that lives around the edges.
Project careers – Our careers wont be about having jobs, but a number of smaller iterations of projects that interest us. They’ll be higher paying, with breaks in between. This will be more profitable for all parties. Companies wont have the overhead drain of full time staff, and humans wont have the social drain of turning up to a place of work when there isn’t much on. We’ll transform what we do more frequently and fluently, we’ll be projecteers.

Imaginative work

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

I read a great quote today which I thought was worth sharing:

“There is a recognition dawning that the repetitive linear system which controls work and the worker is no longer profitable. Consequently, the presence of the soul is now welcome in the workplace. The soul is welcome because it is the place where the imagination lives.”

What I like about this is the reference to profit, and that linear systematic work isn’t profitable. If I think about every startup I’ve ever been involved with the real profit has come from the excitement and variety of the work. Internal profit rather than financial. And so my soul has been enriched.

What we follow – AFL

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

If you’re in Australia you’d know it is AFL Grand Final week. In US terms its the Super Bowl for Aussie rules football.

One of the most popular teams, Collingwood Football club has made it to the final. They have many fanatical supporters. So it got me thinking about what we are really supporting when it comes to football:

The Location? No, they do not play their games or even train in their original location of the suburb of Collingwood.

The Players? No, they are also never from the location they actually play for, let alone the same state or even country. They also change teams frequenctly and we welcome new players from other teams with open arms (so long as they are good players)

Our Peers? No, often our best friends follow teams which are the arch enemy of ours. We do not switch teams to be accepted by anyone. We’ll attend the games with them, but barrack for our own team.

The Jumper? No, that changes frequently. It barely looks like the original from 100 years ago and we are often forced to change it if the opposing team has colours which are deemed to clash.

The Performance? No, success is tenuous at best. Systems have been built in AFL to ensure the a more equitable distribution of success (Salary caps, draft systems). 1 successful year in 10 is a great result. 1 in 20 is more frequent.

So what do we support? We support the idea of loyalty. A concept only humans can understand. Following a team allows us to live vicariously, and display loyalty no matter what in a non life threatening way. It allows us to be emotional in a world that attempts to demand only rational thought.

Football and sport in general is one way we can remain human without consequence. And when it comes to brands, or clubs in this case, people can only truly love those which feel human.