In the need to use more than 140 chars. to explain myself i decided to write a blog entry response to @adam_weitner_PR – his original post being here.
Overall, I don’t disagree with the article at all, however I feel Adam misses one crucial element. An element that I’ve thought about and talked about with others, including my wife (she works for a professional sports team and they are having more and more trouble selling advertisements within the venue), I like referring to it as the shotgun approach versus the rifle approach.
Traditional media (be it newspapers, radio or tv stations or even sports venues) tends to tak a shotgun approach to advertising. They sell based on getting to the most eyeballs “People will see your product/company X # of times by placing this ad”. And yes they have loads of statistics to back up everything they’re selling, but does it really matter if a million people see my product but there’s only 10 in that million that are my potential customer? If there was a way to target just those 10, get direct feedback and do it in a much cheaper format wouldn’t I want to use that method instead?
The best example (of course) is Google’s Adwords/Adsense products, but there’s plenty of others. The idea that i can take out an ad and have it placed directly in the face of the exact person that has a direct need/want for my product is just amazing – as a business i don’t care about anyone else!
Taken a step further, used properly, social media can be used by businesses to engage/get feedback/gain valuable knowledge/etc. from their customers and potential customers all for the low low price of time. And best of all, they can see the results immediately – whether from statistics/analytics or immediate responses from people interested in their business/product.
So why aren’t companies spending as much money on traditional advertising? The smart ones have worked out new strategies that have truly measurable results, allow them to easily connect with their target market without wading through the unwashed masses and do it all on a budget. If the recession is what’s causing/helping this shift I say great, it’s about time businesses started acting smarter.
With that kind of aim would you prefer to use a shotgun or a rifle?
I for one would take the rifle.
BTW—I do hope traditional media starts to wake up and figure things out, I think they play a valuable role within society when done right (even if at the same time I think the news become a sensationalist/fear-mongering/celebrity obsessed pile of trash over the last few years).
This entry was written by , posted on March 31, 2009 at 3:53 pm, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I just got back from SxSW (as the last blog post can attest) and after wandering through the tradeshow floor on Fri. afternoon it struck me: almost all of the internet related offerings to bands/music industry are showing what’s going to be possible, not what they’re doing now. Such is the nature of this type of stuff and you need to build hype before you launch, I get that, but it seemed that this was a rather major expense for something that is not yet a usable solution.
However, it was reassuring to see that other companies have come to similar conclusions to us (Hot Bottle) and that similar solutions will be available. Rather than turn us off it, invigorates us, as it indicates that we are quite likely onto something. We’re also confident that we are going to offer enough of a different solution that we’ll stand out. We’ve been focusing on fairly singular things, trying not to muddy the waters and preaching simplicity back/forth between each other, and when we do open for our initial beta period we hope that we’ll have come up with a great solution for touring, independent bands to save a lot of time, book better shows and (as the site says) “Make a scene”.
Sunday night, while having a pow-wow before we had to separate and return home, we also had a fantastic ‘a-ha’ moment and think we’ve got a great way to start building some hype while not requiring investment dollars as well as offering another well-focused, useful solution for bands – stay tuned, we’re gonna move fast with this one.
This entry was written by , posted on March 24, 2009 at 3:10 pm, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
So that I don’t forget this experience anytime soon this is my online record…
My adventure started at Ottawa Airport (with the 2hr before the flight check-in rule i had to get up at 3:15am), I got to the airport shortly after 4, got checked-in and had to queue up for security as it didn’t open until 4:30. I got through security shortly after 4:30 and 20’ ahead was US Customs, which (of course) doesn’t open until 5am (why was it necessary to show up 2hrs early again?). After waiting until 5 I got through customs, waited for my flight and everything was uneventul through Chicago, into Dallas. At this point i texted Ken to say i was here (20 min. early). He was suppose to be into Dallas at 11:05am, however he had been delayed in Houston (from Florida) due to fog and didn’t get into Dallas until about 2pm. I met him at the gate, we went and got our rental car and were on our way – SxSW bound!
We kind of blindly felt our way out of Dallas/Fort Worth (why didn’t i bring my TomTom?) and about half way to Waco we hit a small, innocent piece of plywood (maybe 6” sq.). After stopping for lunch, as we got back onto I-35 there was a ‘low tire pressure’ indicator on – in hindsight we probably should of done something about that right away.
We went on another 20 miles or so when suddenly the tire blew, luckily we were in a pocket of little to no traffic and were able to pull over safely to the side of the road. To make a long story shorter, we started replacing the tire while waiting for road side assistance then spent another 30 minutes or so in Waco waiting for the only open tire shop to repair – all told about 90 minutes from blow-out to back on the road.
We finally got into Austin at around 9:30, checked into the hotel, realized we were too late to pick up our badges but decided to try our luck downtown anyway.
We wandered through the chaos to 6th st. and the Radio Room to see the Obits, there was a line-up, and it was a badge/wristband show (uh-oh). After pausing Ken (having had enough bad luck for the day) decided to go plead his case with the girl at the door, explaining that we’d been delayed…flat tire…etc…and to both of our shock she said ‘are you here to see a specific band?’, to which we answered ‘yes, Obits’. She quickly checked her schedule, realized they’d just started, ushered us inside and told the other guy at the door ‘these two are on the guest list’ — thank you! we are forever grateful for being able to end Thursday on such a high note!
After stopping for crispy tacos at a taco truck (and mass confusion over our order with the taco truck lady) we retired around midnight, happy.
Friday we woke up, made some room coffee, checked the schedule we’d setup online and set out for the day. First on the agenda, Obits (round 2) at Club DeVille. Breakfast consisted on stumbling upon a Chipolte’s and ordering a burrito. We headed to the convention center to pick up our badges, check out the poster show and the trade show, then headed to La Zona Rosa for Cursive. This was the start of our walking (I should’ve brought a pedometer and/or gps tracker of some kind just to see how far we actually walked during SxSW).
After Cursive we hooked up with another friend and headed to Whole Foods to stock up on snacks, water, etc. I also went across the street to the ATT store to avoid the outrageous over-charging and lack of options Rogers offers customers who are traveling outside of Canada.
We then went back to the room to recharge (us and our devices). Next up – back up to La Zona Rosa for Danananakroyd. On the way back we found out about a ‘secret’ Metallica show, so badges in hand we headed over and got in line, after debating multiple times if it was worth actually waiting inline and 2 min. from bailing to go somewhere else we were in – with 2000 or so of our closest friends. About 5-10 min. later, beers in our hands, Metallica hit the stage. It was probably not their best show ever, but to see them in such a small environment (atleast to what they usually play) was very cool.
Next up – Devo! I cannot believe how tight they were, everything was perfect in my eyes and i can only dream of playing drums half as good as their drummer. We then made the long hike from the Austin Music Hall to 12th and I-35 (our hotel).
Saturday…we ended up at the Radio Room for almost all of Saturday, watching bands like the Young Widows, Life and Times, Tight Phantomz, Van Pelt, Milemarker, Cursive and a couple of others. It felt like the last 10 yrs never happened, including watching Scallen up front taking pictures.
We also hit-up Lambert’s BBQ for some amazing beef brisket and pulled pork after which we returned to the Radio Room for the remaining bands and then went back to the hotel for a rest.
We could not for the life of us find anything we wanted to see on Sat. night – how is that possible? We ended up at Emo’s an hour early for …And you will know us by the Trail of Dead and caught the absolutely most amazing french electro-rock band ‘Yelle’.
After another trip to the Taco truck, me trying to school Ken in how to order properly but failing even more miserably than him we retired for the night.
Sunday was a little slower, we were exhausted and there just wasn’t much going on. A quick trip to the airport to drop off Scallen and then more walking, stopping at a Mexican restaurant named ‘Rio Grande’ for Enchiladas and Margaritas then on to the Radar Recordings showcase to end our SXSW experience.
Now I’m back in Ottawa, exhausted, rejuvenated, happy and sad – it’s fantastic.
This entry was written by , posted on March 23, 2009 at 12:00 am, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I can’t think of a better way of putting it. Reid Hoffman (CEO of Linkedin, investor in a bizzillion other web ‘2.0’ startups) really hits the nail on the head.
This entry was written by , posted on March 5, 2009 at 8:54 am, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
If all goes well this is going to be a fantastic year, I’m currently at various stages of design/development on 4 web-based apps that will either fall completely under hashbrown or partially (on top of some very exciting client work as well).
The first one is Hotbottle which i’m working on with @sogood. We’ll be heading to SXSW on the 19th of March to show it off a little to anyone that wants to listen as well as just generally have a good time.
The idea for hotbottle started with Ken (@sogood) getting frustrated booking tours and realizing that there must be a better way. Having booked a couple of tours myself the need seemed obvious when he started telling me about his idea.
We got together in person for 2 days (we live 3.5 hours and a border apart) and hammered out the basics, keeping one principle in mind—simplicity. We tried to pair everything down to the bare bones, Getting Real as some say.
We think we’ve come up with a great way for bands to share their opinions about places they’ve played, make smart decisions about where to play based on other bands opinions and generally improve their luck at ‘making a scene’.
A sign-up page has been created at hotbottle.com and we’ve been making steady progress towards getting the site prepared for an initial beta phase.
I have no doubt that marketing/getting the word out is going to be an even bigger job than actually creating these apps, but look forward to changing my business a little, taking a bit of a risk and rising to the challenge.
I’ll be blogging more about Hotbottle, and hopefully about the other 3 projects soon too!
This entry was written by , posted on March 4, 2009 at 8:32 am, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I love the internet.
Politicians can talk all they want about power to the people, how democracy is about the peoples view all the rest of their rhetoric but the internet truly is all of the above—it is the one and only great leveler.
We all start at the same point on the internet—anyone can have their say and with little effort can build a community of like-minded people, can have their opinion(s) heard, they can even build the next Google!
Think about that—sitting at home on the couch you can create something as fantastic as Google for the price of a computer, internet access, a domain name and some hosting, how many other businesses have such a low barrier to entry? You don’t even have to wear pants to accomplish any of this!
When I hear talk about net neutrality, legislating the internet, or controlling any part of the internet it infuriates me, do we really want yet another watered-down controlled place to be entertained? I guess if you’re already established making gobs of money by artificially controlling your market/environment the answer is yes, but that’s ok, your time is limited—the rest of us still building what it more, are willing to fight harder and to find new and innovative ways to make even more money than the past ‘leaders of industry’.
There is no truer form of power for the individual than picking up a computer and taking part in this great experiment called the internet—if we all staked a small claim on here and nurtured it just a little think about the culture that would be created, with no funding from the government, no ‘grants’ to enable it, just a few minutes/hours every day/week/month of your time adding your little piece.
Why aren’t you sharing or creating your piece?
This entry was written by , posted on March 2, 2009 at 8:34 pm, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
From quite awhile ago, but good reference for css-is-izing buttons
This entry was written by , posted on March 1, 2009 at 1:23 pm, filed under link. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.