web Archives - Page 5 of 10 - Steve Sammartino

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?

The great media rumble

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

The internet has been a boon for entrepreneurs. The commerce said entrepreneurs have created has been one of connection, more than revenue with social media networks being the greatest love child of the internet age. The overwhelming majority of them are free to use, which has resulted in a dramatic power shift in the industrial media landscape. More succinctly social media is very quickly stealing eyeballs from traditional media.

While startups are busy creating the new forums which people connect and entertain themselves on, advertising and media agencies are scrambling to stake their claim on new media. It’s shaping up to be the demarcation dispute of the decade. Both parties believe that social media is rightfully theirs:

Media Agencies claim it is ‘Media’ and so their clients should engage them strategically.

Advertising Agencies claim it is ‘content driven’ and so their cleints should engage them straetgically.

What’s clear is that is isn’t about to go away and it will continue attract larger percentages of the marketing budget as time progresses. And just in case your wondering what I think about social media and who rightfully owns it, my viewpoint is very clear and is given below:

Just like any emerging technology or industry, no one rightfully owns it. It’s up for grabs. The companies (new or existing) who move into the space the quickest and add the most value will take home the trophy.

New on line supermarket

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

I’m developing a new website which is an on-line supermarket. Here’s some of the features I’ll be building into it in terms of usability.

If you want to place an order for milk, you must first look at all the items you don’t want to buy. They will pop up on the screen one by one. You’ll have to click past all of them. Then the milk will pop up after you’ve seen every other product for sale to click on. But after this, you then must click past all of the goods for sale again. The same ones we already showed you. When you want to proceed to the checkout, we’ll make you wait for maybe 5 or more minutes and show you many of the items you already saw on screen, again, just in case you changed your mind. If you decide to shop late at night at our on line supermarket, only one person can buy at a time, because we will restrict our ‘server’ so that all of our customers cannot buy their supermarket items simultaneously. This is because we will be trying to save a few dollars on serving people. A few people might leave and go somewhere else, but it will be a great expense saving idea.

Sounds pretty ridiculous right? Well, this is defined as ‘retail strategy’ in the physical supermarket world. Maybe it’s time they re-thought how they do some things. Right now there is tremendous opportunity for smart startups in the retail space employ on-line usability best practice to show some dinosaurs how it’s done.

Grandparents circa 2010

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s some surprising statistics about those over 65 in Australia.

75% are online
70% use search engines
63% shop online
30% instant message
56% share photo’s online
46% bank online
45% are on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo! Groups

Yep, the former young male demographic bias we love talking about on the web is now truly busted. The web is everywhere and everyone.

Web startups, you’re market may not be tech savvy, mac fan boys after all!

(stats provided by Eye of Australia 2010)

Johnny Walker brand story

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

The high ground for any brand is the story. It’s what we should be aiming for. A brand where part of what people buy is the is the history, or to be part of a tribe. Johnny Walker has put together a great new campaign where they tell their story. It’s a 6 minute time investment worth taking.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnSIp76CvUI]

Some things worth thinking about with the Johnny walker story:

It’s a long copy format. 6 minutes plus. Something which can’t be done on TV.
It circumvents the negative connotations with success and globalisation. The personal effort and history makes financial success more palatable.
It gives detail about the product, range and brand that just wouldn’t be possible in shorter media formats
It’s sharable. Easy to send to friends, worth talking about.
It’s eyeball worthy. Well shot and executed.
It’s the idea. Ideas are king again, not media. Any brand with a story, and a small level of film / web expertise could have done it.
This is clearly Radvertising

What does this mean for startups? It means that a large part of what we talk about should not only be how we got here, but why we are taking this journey. A story they can live vicariously through.

Media Exponential

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

The speed at which media consumption has grown is mind boggling. So I thought I’d pull together a little info graphic titled Media Exponential using my Artline 725. Makes you wonder what’s next? Answer = what we create.

How to win a debate

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Winning a debate isn’t about proving the other party is wrong. It’s about proving you are right. In fact it’s about proving that you are more correct, even a little bit.

Then, by inference the other party must be wrong.

Although that’s a nice tip, debating is hardly the approach we need in any part of a startup business. The best advice we can give here is to never enter a debate, and let the other party believe they are right. Startups are about building relationships, not sabotaging them.