A great "oh no...the sh*t's hit the fan" solution

Tara points to a great story about how flickr were able to manage their recent down-time crisis and I think it holds a lesson for all of us.

After acknowledging that they had gone down (sorry, no smut here!!!) they didn't post your usual run of the mill "sorry, we're doing everything we can" message. They used their typical friendly, humourous, but ultimately, respectful tone to turn it to their advantage.

Miffed users were invited to print off and colour in two round circles! Genius.

Further highlighting the benefit of tags, the entries were tagged with a "flickr is buggered for now" type tag which would be searchable once they submitted their photos (of the circles) and when flickr went back online.

Just think about the sheer genius of what they did.

1) Acknowledge the problem (respectfully but in a friendly tone - we are only humans!)

2) Use the very tool that draws people to the site to "divert" attention without looking like they were diverting.

3) Buy time to allow them to get things sorted (some of the entries are works of art)

4) Gave people something they wanted

5) Turned negative buzz into positive buzz.

6) 1,032 entries later you have not only sorted the problem but also have not pissed off your regular users.

Gotta love it. Simple.

Tags: pinko marketing, pinko, flickr, tara hunt, flickrcolourcontest

Selling houses the Pinko way

I was speaking with an agency this week who speaclises in marketing and advertising material for house developers and it got me thinking about how Pinko could be implemented in such a business.

 

What do you see wrong with this image:

 

 

Building site..dull, nothing of interest...nothing interesting to see...even though the crane stands out a MILE!

 

How about inviting 2 or 3 primary (Kindergarten?) schools to come down and paint the fence? Why not make the fence look appealing instead of a cold, industrial eyesore?

 

Why would it work?

 

a) The parents have to give permission (and in doing so become aware of the development).

b) Buzz is created as the kids get to do something fun (and inveitably talk abotu it with their parents).

c) The kids have something to show for their work/fun.

d) The eyesore fence attracts more attention by having something interesting on it.

e) The local rag becomes interested...and you get free coverage.

 

Result?

 

You sell houses without having to sell.

 

 

Motorola Q - Wiki

The new Mortorola Q is the latest attempt at getting a phone to do what a computer does, for a 100th of the size and a quarter of the price!

BUT, they have struck a great idea by asking users to create a consumer-friendly user manual based on user's experiences with the phone.

To quote the wiki

Because the possible applications for the Q will always expand, the "ideal" user guide would also be able to grow and change. This wiki is an attempt to do that. It's a place to capture and share the knowledge of the greater community of Q users.

Chapeau!

Merci a Francois Goube!

 Tags: motorola q, pinko marketing, pinko, wiki

A GENIUS idea

OK, strike me down if this isn't suitable for the Pinko blog, but I just have to post one of the most ingenious ideas I have seen in ages!

Million Dollar Homepage on a BUILDING:

It's real, it's in Holland, it costs 19.99 a brick and SEEMS to have got some big takers already!

Tags: million dollar homepage, pinko marketing, pinko

Offline Pinko Idea #1

So as you know, I am a big part of Killinghall Bathrooms, as well as Big Hippo a small online and offline bathroom business in Harrogate, UK.

Keen to implement what I spend all day theorising about (!), I have started the ball rolling on a quirky idea which I feel taps into the local community very nicely indeed.

I have arranged for 250 packs of Killinghall Bathroom branded crayons and 10-page colouring books (with bathroom-related line drawings) to be distributed to all local BBQ's, Car Boot Sales etc. which we sponsor. There are about half a dozen where we have a banner ad, so even indirect PR should be fairly positive as people tend to go these events in flocks (hmmm!). The competition isn't about the parents - the kids get the prizes (Toys R Us vouchers) slap bang in the middle of the end third of their summer holidays when they are the most bored!)

I am also asking (as a tie-breaker) the kids to tell me the best part of their bathtime. The idea behind this is to get the kids, with their lack of prejudices and suspicion to reveal the things they use most in the bathroom.

As many kids (under 10) as possible are given these colouring books and asked to send/drop in their favourite picture back to us at the showroom. The revelation of the winners is perhaps the best part of the idea.

Sundays are always very quiet, so we are revealing the winners on a Sunday at the showroom. Now this may not seem particularly exciting until I explain that the pictures will be covering two of our massive front windows. (Our premises are a car dealership) so we have got some BIG windows to fill! And it will be VERY noticeable.

Our window becomes a display for the endless kids pictures are currently getting sent and I am also toying with the idea of having a sort of kids gallery inside the showroom to stay longer. I am then toying with incentivising the family-centric bathroom suites to make sure they are irresistible (based on what the kids revealed to us in the tie-breaker question) to their parents.

The local paper is already booked to photograph the entry window and should generate a lot of great PR.

We have already spoken with the local schools to provide the same thing for them (all schools want free pens, pencil, drawing tools etc.) and hope to make it a regular event.

What lessons to draw from this idea:

1) It is not a sell - it is a kids competition.

2) It is not a sell - not even to the parents.

3) It is not a sell - it is PR.

4) It is two-way interaction (colouring + prize incentive + showroom prize display = showroom visit).

5) It is fun.

6) It mobilises the parents who might otherwise not care about coming to us.

7) It generates positive PR (banners and in local paper).

8) We meet people and develop relationships (we are not bathroom salespeople - we are "those people that did the funny colouring competition).

You ever walked into a shop and shied away when the sales person asked if they could help? Me too.

Make people want to come to you for reasons other than a sell.

I would love to hear your comments on how this can be improved. Hopefully, we can then create a neat little ideas collection which will be full of great, prtactical ways in which we can implement Pink Marketing.

Tags: pinko marketing, sponsorship, advertising, pr, sales

Pinko Marketing Podcast - #1...an unmitigated disaster!

Guys...bad news!

The recording was running along sooo smoothly until the SONY VAIO WINDOWS XP-running laptop damn-well crashed before saving the previous 37 minutes of the conversation. The PC then even refused to reboot before I had to call Jay back on a landline!

PC's SUCK, SUCK, SUCK!

Can anyone find me a cheap Macbook Pro?! I'd rather spend hours learning how to use a Mac than using this damn f*ck!ng Windows piece of sh1t.

Anyway, (rant over). Jay and I had a great chat and talked about how the methods in his book "The Customer Marketing Method" would stand up against the newer, more open and flexible consumer environment and his take on the seed-based community/Pinko marketing philosphy.

There's some interesting points that came out of it and alas, due to the crash, I am in the process of having to type up my notes and they will hopefully form an interesting pdf of the conversation in the next couple of days.

Jay has also given me some useful resources which we may be interested in, one being the way in which marketing departments can adapt their thinking to the constantly-changing consumer environment.

I hope you aren't all too disappointed about the lack of audio (to be honest, I sounded crap anyway!) but I look forward to learning from my mistakes. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day - but then again it was built properly!

Tags: jay curry, pinko marketing, podcast

How to create community - be an expert

Yahoo Answers
Squidoo
Wikipedia

Are probably the 2 best known communities where questions get asked and answered on a grand scale.

Put yourself up there. Find a niche, stick to it. Become KNOWN.


Update: Note that Bono is asking a question. Hat tip to Yahoo for an amazing idea.

Tags: squidoo, yahoo answers, yahoo

Some useful community/group links

Google: http://groups.google.ca/

Yahoo: http://groups.yahoo.com/

Alternatively, just see what wonders hit you when you google "discussion groups". More groups than you can shake a stick at!

NOTE: It might be a nice idea to grow this list over time to make it a useful resource for anyone seeking to become part of any particular community. If you have a general group directory worth publishing, let me know and I'll post it (and accredit it to your blog).

Paul

If you can't build a community - FIND ONE

One of the grass-root problems I have found with Pinko is where the hell you find a community in the first place!

In many cases, nonline businesses (neither online or offline - the internet does, simply NOT apply to their business!) think that there is no way to embrace the internet for them, but this is simply too short-sighted an approach to take.

Pete Prodoehl's post on the google group questioned how Pinko (online Pinko anyway) could be applied to nonline businesses such as "a technical college, a garden center, skate/snowboard shop, manufacturer of industrial pipes or a distributor of bottling equipment?"

What common areas of interest are shared by these groups? To answer the above groups directly:

Technical College
A college will always have a website, but find the computer club forums, find out where the computer/sports clubs "play" online by becoming part of their online community.

Follow the interests of those online - chances are they'll be fairly representative of many other people in that community. Get involved with one of them and the rest will open up for you.

Garden centre
Google pulls up 15,200,000 results under the term "Gardening Forums". Become a member, sign-up for the biggest ones, make your avatar your business name and logo. See what areas people are talking about. There will be many people looking for seasons advice on planting, grass-mowing advice, specific bulbs for specific - talk knowledgably, keep your profile completely up to date - be the EXPERT that people are looking for to answer all their problems.

Skate/Snowboard Shop
A bit of a no-brainer. There are hundreds of thousand of communities online! Be part of them. Offer your advice on the best new gear for summer, trends, innovations. Kids (OK, me!) crave to be the first to have something. Give them the chance, you'll be remembered! Befiredn the most popular ones with PRIME information before the rest and watch your name grow!

Steel Pipe Manufacturer
Harder but by no means impossible. Within 60 seconds of searching for the term "industrial pipe manufacturer forums" I was at http://www.globalspec.com/ the industrial search engine...scroll down, we have "Topics & Discussions" a job directory a company directory, and even a globaspec browser toolbar.

Even applying this to concrete pipe (less of a bust sector it seems!) but there is a Production School Short Course tell me there ain't going to be any sort of future decision-makers or future buyers there? Involvement. Offer advice, offer to speak, offer to provide sponsorship, get in touch with the associations, offer graduate placements, graduate engineering job fair's.

Bottling equipment distribution
The Brewing Network has 802 registered users, but over 14,100 active topics (that's over 17 posts per user - pretty good I'd say). There is even a section for Beer Brewing Equipment - 148 topics, 1452 posts. B2B just became B2C.

Alternatively, consider bewers forums, wine forums.

On a more industrial scale, try looking into the glass manufacturing industry. Globalspec comes up trumps again here, alternatively, try www.glassonweb.com for everything glass. See where that leads you.

So...thanks for sticking with me!

I hope I have demonstrated that the Pinko adag of being part of the communities you serve is actually quite simple.

Think around the product and the service, play word-association until you find something that
is still relevant to your business, but which posesses a community (although there are communities for pretty much anything these days!).

I hope I have shown it is simply a matter of opening your mind to the possibilities of what there is online. There are communities everywhere, you just need to look in the right places.

The need for Pinko Marketing - in a red dot!

Shoot me if this isn't what you were expecting on this blog (ok, don't take me literally please, just unsubscribe!!) but this struck me as something with a far deeper meaning that simply pressing a button - which goes to the root of what I believe Pinko marketing to be.

(Is the button a live link??!!)


Assume the dot is a brand. Assume the instructions are the brand message. ("We are good for you", "the best tasting" etc.)

What do you do as a consumer with the instruction: "Don't click"?

The opposite. You "Click".

A simple action but the reason why we need Pinko.

God (whoever/whatever he is) gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason.

There are millions of red dots everywhere.

Listen to the customers. Give them the option to press the button. Don't tell them to press it - they'll only do the opposite.

Change the world - don't let the dot win!

Great podcast line up...Jay Curry

...more soon but I can confirm that I will be interviewing Jay Curry (Adam's dad!) this Friday (7th July) and will hope to post the interview sometime this year (taking into account editing and recording deficiencies!!). I reckon a week would be about right!

Jay Curry is well known worldwide as a wonderful direct marketing speaker and author, but particularly in Europe where he runs his Netherlands-based company Jay Curry Associates.

I was lucky enough to work alongside Jay in 2000 presenting a direct mail/marketing workshop to some of my then employer's biggest European clients.

Jay's exceptional book, "The Customer Marketing Method" is a wonderful guide on how to implement a customer-focused CRM approach. It gives useful insights into how you can secure the tepid leads and move them UP his pyramid to convert those people into customers.

The "Permission Myramid" explores the way in which businesses can listen to the customer in order to move them along the sales process.

While Pinko purists would always argue that any type of customer management is not appropriate, what makes Jay's theories particularly interesting is that there is a definite view that giving the customer a louder voice is essential.

I am very excited to get the opportunity to speak to Jay about how he thinks his theories may have evolved since his book was written.


More soon!

Pinko Marketing - Welcome

You've read Tara, you've been to the wiki, you've seen the google group, you've even read The Cluetrain Manifesto (which started it all off!) and The Hughtrain, well here is the Pinko Marketing Blog!

As some of the wiki and group members may know, this has been something I have been wanting to do for some time and as I grew ever more frustrated at the amount of "theory" being discussed around Pinko Marketing, I decided it was time to put some of it down into black and white (or other colours if the community decides it is better!) - Practical Pinko Marketing.

So, consider this a home for all ideas Pinko - Online, offline, the good, the bad, the ugly.

Pinko is a philosphy, not just a bunch of online marketing stuff. There are many, many different businesses out there who would benefit from some good old common sense (and a bit of genius!) and I hope they find some here!

Most of what gets posted will be my own ideas, but hell, Pinko is all about community so if you have ANYTHING TO SAY, and i do mean ANYTHING, send them in to me at pinkomarketingblog (at) gmail(dot) com and I will post what I can!

Hell, I don't know it all. Who does? So if I'm wrong, misguided or plain stupid - tell me. I accept all forms of constructive criticism if it helps improve our understanding of how to implement Pinko Marketing.

I am also lining up some great podcast guests (once I have fathomed hotrecord!!), for which Tara has kindly said she will volunteer as well help me with some other well known names (TBC!!).

I also hope to post my ugly mug in a 60-second view-style video blog which I think may bring an added bit of character to some otherwise dull days! (the challenge may be to get me to say ANYTHING within 60 seconds!)

If things get too complicated, my 2 1/2 year old son Luca may have to take over!

I hope (and i do mean this sincerely) that this blog will be a useful, ongoing addition to the wiki and the group as well as Tara's efforts with Pinko Marketing.

Full dues, respect and thumbs up go to Tara for the inspiration behind the blog and I hope to add some real value to a movement in which I believe very strongly.