According to an article over at FastCompany, now is a good time to start a company. The article depicts the current trends and examples of the current profiles of entrepreneurs, far more people are sticking to their current jobs while only the “wild-eyed” ones are sticking to their guns and embracing the obstacles that didn’t exist a few years ago when creating a company.
While some are providing auditoriums with speeches that include the common “the Chinese word for crisis also means opportunity”, the braver and more operational ones are taking advantage of the current situation to start their own company and hopefully become the next Microsoft, LinkedIn or Facebook…
Archive for the 'Business' Category
A pretty unusual and original buzz around an advertising stunt at a German trade show. I never thought I’d be amused by a video of those pesky household flies. Obvioulsy 2nd generation offspring won’t be born with the same adverts 
:
Re-blogged from FastCompany via WiredUK
I bought a Braun electronic toothbrush several months ago and just decided to write about it because I now want to buy a shaver but because of what happened with the Braun toothbrush purchase I have decided that regardless of the reviews, the proof or any other type of argument that may indicate (which you’ll see is not the case) that I should get a Braun shaver I WILL NOT.
braun oral b triumph professional care 9900 coupon con
Why may you ask, be so stubborn. Well I purchased a Braun Triumph toothbrush from Cdiscount and was promised a partial refund by sending it back with a coupon and proof of purchase.
The morning I received the toothbrush by post I sent the coupon on with everything asked for:
- Code bar from the box
- Bill with date of purchase
- Coupon filled in with all the information.
Several weeks if not months later I get a letter from some company I have never heard of saying that because I took more than 5 days to send the coupon in after the purchase I was disqualified and would not get the money from Braun. Also to be noted there was no email to contact anybody, neither Braun where ever they are in France and just a snail mail address for this company that did a great job of looking through the elements I sent. They might have seen that I purchased it online, and that well, guess what, you can’t send via email so it takes time for me to get the box with the code bar needed to get the refund.
You should know BRAUN coupons are a con in France and they cheat you!
So I will not spend another cent on anything from Braun. I am not going to buy a Phillips Sonic toothbrush just to spite them since the Braun toothbrush works fine but obviously don’t buy one
Philips Flexcare Toothbrush
However as explained I am now looking for a shaver and well I started looking at the Philips shaver because unlike the Braun toothbrush I am unhappy with my Braun shaver. I have looked at the Philips site and reviews about the arctic shaver and I must say for a dude like myself it looks like a cool gadget and looks a lot sexier than the Braun shaver. The whole cleaning system on my Braun one is just not good. But obviously for the moment I can’t compare. but I soon will be able to because as you guessed from the beginning of my post there is no way in hell I’m buying another Braun product. And to make it funnier I couldn’t even link to the page about the equivalent Braun product because it is all in Flash and couldn’t get an image either although I could from the Philips site because they were clever enough to do it in HTML with Flash rather than a full Flash site!
Philips 1095 Arcitec Rotary Shaver: now does that look sexy or what
And the time indicator had better be readable upside down like on the image or else I will not be happy 
I was also impressed by the Philips site because you could check the manual out. I was wondering whether the shaver would charge in the cleaning system and was able to confirm by ready the first few pages of the manual. But also found out that what looks to be just a cool looking travel case actually charges the shaver at the same time. You can buy it on their site and register the product online which is pretty cool. I found that the video that runs through the functions etc was good, although I felt the voiceover in French was a bit annoying, but that could just be me…
Following on from the Twitterer is a mainly a narcissist article, the currently trendy term of “Consumer intelligence” seems to be giving clients the jitters (so agencies see it). Companies that understand the need for a consumer “pull” strategy where the emphasis is on the consumer, fits with the need to quickly respond and listen to the consumer, analyse new behaviour and habits. In a very interesting Ad-Age article the journalist explains that companies feel they don’t need agencies as much!
There is a great quote from the CEO of Unilever Paul Polman:
“Maybe the most extreme example of this is to be found in consumer-generated content, where we have invited consumers to develop communications for Omo and Vaseline as a complement to those generated by the company, and in the case of Peperami, we have even dispensed with the agency in favor of exclusively ‘crowdsourced’ content.
“However well traditional advertising agencies read the signals and recognize the need for radical change in their capabilities,” he said, “few agencies can address all the communications needs of a brand. … This is making the management of agencies increasingly complex, and raises challenging questions on how best to measure the value added by the respective partners and consequently how to manage remuneration.”
The current economic situation pushes clients to search for financially viable solutions, or at least good ROI you can present to your boss. From an agency perspective, we know this is without being prepared to accept a reduction in scope or speed to market. Although the speed to market aspect can often be better managed by agencies, the “same scope, with reduced budget” is just not always possible. Sure you can provide cheaper solutions but that generally implies a reduction in quality, even though clients may agree to it. Clients rarely anticipate the reactions from their project sponsors and hierarchy and it can fall back on the agency.
Clients who have previously externalized their marketing and branding requirements are now looking to internalize what they had given away to agencies over the years according to the above article. The likes of Forrester are pushing to get marketing and brand managers (sorry Forrester prefers Brand Advocates) to be use ‘invaluable’ Forrester insight and work in house rather than go through agencies as much.
Would this have anything to do with some of the larger digital agencies producing detailed market reports (ex: Digital Outlook) and complex dashboard systems that provide the same type of ‘insight’ Forrester is selling to clients?
I’m not sure Forrester is my idea of a company capable of seeking and identifying trends in the digital arena to serve as a catalyst for the client’s brand coverage but hey I work in an agency so I would be biased. Without denying the importance of the number crunching and analysis, it is just a small ingredient of the digital marketing mix.
Although the above article does not touch on the details or definition of an agency I think there is a tendency to consider them all to be the same. In the same way that Jon discusses how both Forrester and Gartner don’t go into enough details in their Content Management comparison reports, I feel they do the same when discussing and comparing agencies. Good digital agencies do provide support for the above areas mentioned by Forrester and far more. The intricacies and issues of implementing complicated technical solutions are part of a digital agency’s normal day. They also have a good understanding of all the other ingredients of the digital marketing mix, how it all works together down to the small details that Forrester don’t even touch on!
…so Fast Company says in their article:
“Attention Marketers: 80% of Twitterers Are Narcissists” (check out the illustration )
Two Twitter happenings caught my attention. 1) The seismic effect of dear young Miley Cyrus deleting her Twitter account in order to “have a life”. 2) It seems to be a revelation for film studios; Twitter may affect box office results depending on the film, hey, they seem to be understanding what Twitter actually is!
It’s a global word of mouth booster, which kind of means that, yes you are not under the spotlight, you are under multiple spotlights, to the extent that everything is amplified at will. When a film is good, guess what, people talk about it, and I will trust (or avoid in some cases) a friends comments on a film far more than any journalist. Twitter just allows people to spread the word to lots of people quickly, maybe even people will tweet while watching the film…
So people that have thousands of followers, just cry out ‘narcissist’ for me, and are invariably comprised of celebrities telling people they have just been to the shop! The exception is the 20% that actually have something interesting to say, and funnily enough, don’t always have thousands or millions of followers.
A few articles about the Miley Cyrus Twitter account being deleted event also pick up the fact that Twitter is not really extensively used by her current target population / fans.
But the main thing is that the companies like Twitter, be they Facebook or Myspace have taken the same approach as Google:
- We will provide you with the tools and you (can) create the content.
- A footnote says “oh and by the way we’ll make money from selling adverts on your pages so don’t worry the service is free!”
‘Giving’ these tools to the crowds has changed the channels advertising agencies and marketing departments are used to. Listening to people who discovered the internet (and the web etc.) 2 or 3 years ago and explaining it to either of the above is at the moment like the blind leading the blind.
I’m astonished when I hear people saying that the social media technologies allow companies to engage the consumers. I think companies will find that social media technologies have given consumers a real voice. A voice that can get very loud. So if you are trying to sell a product that is not bad and your marketing team is promising to make it a success this is where the global word of mouth effect (like Twitter) may be waiting to bite you and any ‘engaging effect’ may only last a few seconds…
Sure you could find (or pay) narcissist Twitter gurus with millions of followers to say your product is great. But wouldn’t it be better to make your product around what consumers want. Not everyone can take the Apple stance of saying we don’t do user testing we make great products…
If you take a look at the article on All Facebook about Honda’s attempt to sway people towards the new Accord Crosstour you’ll see that the idea of using tools in a concealed fashion makes people think you believe they are tools! The big no-no of course is to try and erase comments perceived as an attempt to silence people. Being open to feedback (criticism) is in my opinion the sign of a company that is really trying to provide customers with the best possible service / product. Hey there are millions of companies that still pay enormous amounts of money to get customer feedback rather than using the web.
The social network with systems like Facebook have unleashed the word of mouth. Creating an interesting and valid buzz around a good product will unleash the crowds. Try to trick them and you will be drowned by the wave of mistrust. The same people that are creating the above events like the Accord Crosstour are often the same that complain the Facebook, Twitter et al. aren’t raking in the money because they do not understand the systems and are unlikely to understand their potential if used properly…
Joel Cohen, Warner Bros.’ executive VP and general manager, tells the Sun: “We may be putting too much weight onto the Twitter Effect. But you can see Twitter’s benefits as a communications tool that spreads the word about a film, and the negatives have yet to be proven.”
Source: econsultancy.com
T-Mobile users of the sidekick device have been warned to not let their devices drain completely after a server from the Danger company (owned by Microsoft) had a catastrophic failure, specifically the server managing this service. Seems weird when you read up on cloud computing that one server would hold all the data and not have any type of backup system! Especially when it concerns so many people’s everyday digital life! Read more about the event here and here.
Through the different accounts of the incident it seems that there a) wasn’t an ongoing backup system and b) when upgrading the system the techies at Danger didn’t actually perform a backup, so when things went wrong they were, well, out of options! c) data is not saved on a proper backup system on the Sidekick since the battery draining itself can kill all the data and relies too much on the cloud / offsite storage system!
It is obvious that this story is a dream com true for consultants and companies that work in the backup industry and a nightmare for T-Mobile users concerned…
I just came across Windows 7 Professional at £149.98 on Amazon whereas across the channel in France Windows 7 Professionnel E costs € 284,90
According to xe.com today this gives you:
149.98 GBP = 172.710 EUR
So currently on Amazon France and Amazon UK the difference between the same flavour of Windows 7 is €284,9 - €172.710 = €112.19 (over £97 difference)
What is interesting is that the Windows 7 Ultimate version is also available on Amazon.com at £159.85, so for 10 pounds more you get the Ultimate version! The Ultimate version doesn’t appear in many other places at the moment and not on the French Amazon site either but having a Vista Ultimate version on my Dell I was wondering why Ultimate had been left out of the previous offers. In France there was a 49.9 Euros offer between July 15th and August 15th on the Home version. I guess this is also a time specific offer but I must admit I still find it is a very hefty price after having paid so much for the really dissapointing Windows Vista Ultimate and actually having re-installed Windows XP because Vista was so bad.
I then installed the RC of Windows 7 on my Dell XPS as you can read. Windows 7 is great so far but I’m concerned at the moment that Windows seems to be selling the full product as an alternative to the upgrade because they haven’t been able to come up with an appropriate solution for upgrading from Vista Ultimate to the European version of the Windows 7 Ultimate. This may explain the difference in pricing at the moment between the US and the UK. A kind of “sorry you are going to have to do a clean install which will waste a lot of your time, instead of an upgrade like in the US”…
My question is why should I pay pretty much the same price as I paid for Vista for a new version when the previous one was so bad I didn’t even use it!
Note: When you check the Microsoft stores these differences are also visible:
In the US, Windows 7 Ultimate is available for $319.99
In France, Windows 7 Ultimate is available for €299.99 (eq. $430 xe.com on 23/08/09)
In the UK, Windows 7 Ultimate is available for £199.99 (eq. $330 xe.com on 23/08/09)
So much for the talk about the US prices being higher than in Europe for once! They are as usual higher in Europe than in the US, even though there won’t even be a simple upgrade option and you have to backup then do a clean install then transfer data over. Granted this is the best solution in the long term but not having the upgrade option is a pain…
Carrying across the types of situations that occur between clients and vendors (in the B2B world) to real world, everyday situations, now that could lead to some funny situations, couldn’t it!
I was perusing my dear Mr Marks blog and came across a link to Mr Potter’s blog where I found the below video.
What is actually even funnier/more interesting is to read the comments on YouTube, there are 520 and counting at the moment…
So Google was one of the first large companies to actually use cloud computing extensively and now, as usual in the English language, there is a move to talk about ‘the cloud’, dropping the more geeky ‘computing’ part! Like other buzzwords, take web 2.0 or SaaS (Software as a Service) not everybody has the same definition. It is highly likely that some people will say that ‘could computing’ and ‘the cloud’ are two different things.
Seamless access to hardware and software: the Supercomputer
The main idea with ‘the cloud’, from an IT perspective, is to seamlessly supply extra resources to providers of IT services and by ricochet to end users of these services. Even though it is not a behemoth word like sustainability that continues to suck in so many different meanings, cloud computing is likely to evolve and cover more and more services. Hey it could even end up being synonymous with the Matrix type concept from the film!
In the case of IT infrastructure, people are interested in outsourcing their hardware needs which can be covered by what is called HaaS (Hardware as a Service). One of the most well known services of this type is Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud or EC2.
Does this remind you of passive terminals that connect to supercomputer?! It is not a coincidence that equipment like Netbooks are so successful in the current context of more and more key services, instantly available on the internet. Cloud Computing can help provide further such important services to people. The Cloud services currently available and Netbooks are however far more complex than the mainframe and passive terminal model.
HaaS and SaaS
The Cloud services provided can be viewed as building blocks. Both HaaS (Amazon’s and Google’s server farms) and SaaS type applications (like Google Docs, Salesforce.com and Sliderocket) are purchased without needing to worry about the risks involved in evaluating growing usage. In this sense cloud computing is also referred to as “on demand computing” where you just purchase the system and someone else worries about your evolving needs.
Utility Computing & Server Virtualization
If you are aware of solutions like VMWare that allow you to run several virtual instances of a server on a physical server, then you will quickly see the similarity with cloud computing whereby clusters of servers can provide hundreds of instances of virtual servers. Google’s need to ‘crunch’ huge quantities of data, which requires highly knowledgeable people in cloud computing or grid computing. Like Amazon, Google is now offering the public some of the cloud computing services that used to be restricted to their own projects and internal service requirements.
The ability for companies to tap in to this cloud of both services and hardware (data centers) in the same way you would just turn on the tap or the light, provides powerful and efficient “on demand” services and resources a bit like a utility grid hence the idea of utility computing.
The Cloud is in its infancy but is already proving to be an extremely efficient solution for small to large companies and even the general public though services like Google Aps etc. Could computing is also likely to take on many new meanings along the way
Take a look at the following video where numerous tech celebs explain what Cloud Computing is (audio is a bit shoddy though):
Tim O’Reilly, Dan Farber, Matt Mullenweg, Jay Cross, Brian Solis, Kevin Marks, Steve Gillmor, Jeremy Tanner, Maggie Fox, Tom McGovern, Sam Lawrence, Stowe Boyd, David Tebbutt, Dave McClure, Chris Carfi, Vamshi Krishna and Rod Boothby are asked “what is Could Computing?”.
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