Battle of the Roasters

Who else would pay a premium on premium roasted coffee than the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle. It's no surprise that Starbucks has chosen to setup their "one-of-a-kind shrine to coffee" here, as their email announcement suggests. Stumptown Coffee (a local-to-Portland coffee roaster and purveyor) also has a newly opened roasting operation in Seattle as well. No doubt, they've noticed that Portlanders and Seattlites alike gift their bags of coffee to other coffee aficionados.

It would be a sad day to see Stumptown Coffee in an establishment other than a coffee house or acquired by a Starbucks-like conglomerate (let's hope that never happens). Stumptown Coffee has shops in Portland, Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles; whereas Starbucks is just about on every street corner with a heartbeat.

My little inkdot of a city has a population of 160,000+ and still has no Stumptown Coffee shop. Alas, I don't think our city meets the demographic or market size specs for the audience that Stumptown is targeting. After all, what's the cost of short drive into Portland for coffee besides the expenditure of transportation for a tax-free purchase? There are other local coffee roasters here like Paper Tiger, Torque, Compass, and my favorite Brewed Awakenings.

What's amusing about technology is that almost 20 yrs ago I wrote a business plan for an entrepreneurship course where my business model was a cyber cafe. It is astonishing to see how WiFi and the ridiculously cheap price of high speed internet has transformed eateries and coffee shops to all become BYOD (bring your own device) cyber cafes. Anyhow. That's it for this post.

Disruptive Technology, 2014

Disruptive technology, to me, is software or hardware that upends, replaces, or disrupts an existing market, methodology or process. Here are 10 notable disruptions that caught my attention this year, in no particular order:

• 3D printed tissue engineering / bioprinting - Move over lab grown beef and incredibly long wait lists for human organ transplants, this tech allows scientists to potentially grow replacement body parts, organs, or bone. (e.g., heart valve tissue)
• Sensory Substitution Devices (enables the visually blind to see colors and shapes, e.g., EyeMusic)
• Volkswagon's XL1 fuel efficient car
• WiFi-enabled automobiles (this came out last year, but we didn't start seeing Internet ads for it until this summer)
• Circuit design without pre-fabricated circuit boards (e.g., Circuit Scribe fast drying liquid ink circuits)
• Commercial drones and minidrones for domestic surveillance (e.g., Parrot)
• IoT wearable tech for health (e.g., Microsoft Health Band)
• Organic LEDs / flexible display screens (e.g., Sony's 13-inch Digital Paper)
• Verizon's VGo Telepresence (video conferencing with robotic interface)
• Credit card and mobile payment processing for smartphones and tablets (e.g., Square)

And while not a technology, the most disruptive change to an established, traditional business model was CVS pharmacy. Read more about this unique ad campaign to change public perception about the role of the neighborhood pharmacy and the fight against big tobacco. While chain stores and pharmacies still sell chips, soda, and candy, banning tobacco products is still a big step towards a better tomorrow.

What didn't make the cut:

• the Hendo hoverboard - has promise, but the marketing/concept video is a #fail for consumer use. It would prove worthy if it could move dense items in human/robot unfriend and inhospitable surfaces, like on the moon or Mars for example.
• 3D printable prosthetics - this "industry" has been around for a while; there is a lot to still be done before it becomes a mainstream way of life

Bad Ad Copy, or Just Bad Proofing?

The Swash product has a decent offering; and the company's monopoly or revenue stream is likely to be from the cartridge refills for the "refreshed" scent. For the convenience it offers, it will probably save you a lot more over time versus sending clothes out to be professionally dry cleaned. Although, the ad doesn't say that the product actually cleans; so a consumer might think they're refreshing it and thousands of dead skin cells still clinging to it.

2014-10-03, Swash ad on NBC.com

Talk about ad copy #fail.  This is the first that I've seen in quite a while where the ad copy proofreaders failed to see this one. The product reviews feed looks like it is specific to that ad. Gotta love default text, except when it is shown like this to a national audience.

Best Features of iOS 8

This was a tough post to write. I really had to think about what the best features that came with iOS 8, even after shuttering many of the new functions. What can I say. I like the minimalist approach to what I allow the phone to do.

Podcasts App:  Under 'Settings', if you want to preserve the battery life, you'll want to refresh episodes manually. Podcasts are MP3s, so the more you have on your device, the more it'll take up in your native storage. Fortunately, you can also stream from the app without having to download any of the episodes. The "featured" and "top charts" shows the top subscribed to podcasts.

iCloud Family Sharing: Have not activated this yet; not sure it'll be all that useful at the moment.

Time-Lapse option for Camera - Maybe this will work better than the panoramic option that I can't get to work right. The concept videos look nice though.

Battery Usage by App - Shows a percentage used in the last 24 hours or last 7 days. I don't know what I'm doing other than checking the time, but the Home & Lock Screen shows that it eats 9% of the battery. Even with the cache cleared, I'm not sure why Bing hogs 747 mb of device storage. Compare that to Chrome which uses 162 mb or Safari with 130 mb. 

Hey Siri - only for the truly lazy. Siri still eats up battery power like candy; so, it's best to use her if you are connected to a wired power source.

Bold, Italics, Underline in Notes - I have not noticed this before the update. But now when I copy/paste from a website to Notes, some of the formatting stays.

There doesn't seem to be any way to disable the default view from showing up as 'Recently Taken' and 'Recently Deleted' folders for the Photos folders.

iOS 8 Update

It took quite some time to get around to updating to iOS 8 because I had more than 2,000 photos on my phone and the update says it needs at least 5 GB to download. I had to archive the photos off the phone (sadly, this means I have to use a second machine to do this instead of eating up 1/5th of cloud storage), and then individually select photos to delete them off the phone. I'm sure there is a better way, like a batch delete? I have not found it. After manually deleting 1200 photos, I had enough storage space on the iPhone 5 to download the update. Seriously, I have to tap onto each photo just to delete it? Double ugh.

I even let the download run overnight. WTF would add an "Install" prompt to the download. I mean, why would you want to just download the update and not install it? Anyhow. The actual update took a lot longer than I thought it would. 46% adoption rate from iOS 7 to iOS 8 isn't terrible. It would probably be higher if the update wasn't filled with bloatware.

I don't think I want to upgrade to the latest hardware version. The iPhone 5 is large enough, even with the rugged case I have it in. I think I'll wait until the 6's durability issues are resolved.

Canada's anti-spam laws (CASL) and its impact on US marketing

Here are the top 10 elements of Canada's CASL anti-spam legislation and its impact for US companies marketing to Canadian citizens:

• CASL applies to all commercial electronic messages (CEMs) sent to Canadian electronic addresses. This includes emails, text messages, and social media messages.
• CASL requires that you obtain consent before sending a CEM to a Canadian resident. Consent can be express or implied.
• CASL requires that you identify yourself and your business in all CEMs. This includes your name, physical address, and email address.
• CASL requires that you provide a clear and conspicuous unsubscribe mechanism in all CEMs. This means that recipients must be able to easily unsubscribe from your mailing list without having to contact you.
• CASL prohibits the sending of CEMs that are false or misleading. This includes CEMs that contain false or misleading information about the sender, the content of the message, or the purpose of the message.
• CASL prohibits the sending of CEMs that are unsolicited. This means that you cannot send a CEM to a Canadian resident unless they have given you their consent to receive it.
• CASL prohibits the sending of CEMs that are excessive. This means that you cannot send too many CEMs to a Canadian resident in a short period of time.
• CASL prohibits the sending of CEMs that are harassing or annoying. This means that you cannot send CEMs that are intended to annoy, alarm, or inconvenience the recipient.
• CASL prohibits the sending of CEMs that contain viruses or other harmful content.
• CASL provides for significant penalties for non-compliance. These penalties can include fines of up to $10 million for individuals and $100 million for organizations.

The impact of CASL for US companies marketing to Canadian citizens is that they must comply with the law in order to send CEMs to Canadian residents. This means that they must obtain consent, identify themselves, provide an unsubscribe mechanism, and avoid sending false or misleading, unsolicited, excessive, harassing, or annoying CEMs. If a US company does not comply with CASL, it may be subject to significant penalties.

5 Lessons Learned About Leadership and Change

Last night I got to meet Phyllis Campbell, chairman of JPMorgan Chase's Pacific Northwest region at WSU Vancouver's MBA Stakeholder Speaker Series event. The evening's audience were graduate students of WSU Vancouver's accounting and MBA programs. I was able to ask her the rolodex question (who gets into it and why) and the mentor question (how did you find your first mentor).

Phyllis' lessons learned from the WaMu - JPM Chase transition:

1. Instill a sense of urgency
2. Create a common vision or purpose (JPM focus is on their customers and community; what they stand for)
3. Get the right people on the bus (even when some people don't want to be on that bus)
4. Communicate early and often (email, newsletters, etc.) and be willing to meet with stakeholders (employees, customers, community leaders) whether they like you or not
5. Model the culture and values of the organization - JPM culture is Doing 1st class business in a 1st class way; then things will happen; walk the talk that you stand for

Home Depot Black Friday Ad - In Spring?

Recycling of the November/Holiday Winter ad pricing theme? Poor ad planning? No one running their email marketing department? It is rather curious why any retailer would use the Black Friday phrase in a season other than after Thanksgiving day. Even the US Post Office knows that Mother's Day weekend is the busiest parcel shipping "season", which outpaces Black Friday. What do you think? 

2014-04-03 Home Depot Spring Ad

The Myth of Organic and Sustainability Food Marketing

The use of "organic" in food marketing is highly unregulated outside the US and the word "sustainability" is un-standardized and means both wild and farm raised. The USDA, a government agency that regulates agriculture in the US with the intent of protecting consumers, has guidelines about what can be labelled as organic but is so understaffed that labeling abuses are all too frequent and unenforced. And, the harvest standards are different across the many segments of the food industry, from meat production to fresh produce to fruit to fish and seafood. 

The current USDA definition of "organic" is:

"Organic is a labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural product has been produced through approved methods that integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used."

"Organic" is not the same as "natural", even though by a plant or animal's chemical structure it is. And, it certainly does not mean that fertilizers aren't being used to cultivate the food source. A farmer can feed GMO soybeans to his chickens and produce organic fertilizer from the dried chicken droppings; which is then tilled into the soil to produce more food. Can it really still be considered organic? Of course, because we're only looking at the end product and not the whole process of how that product gets to the market.

The myth of sustainability is that if we (as farmers/gatherers/food producers) use herd management best practices, this food source can be harvested indefinitely. If you think that eating buffalo meat is healthier and better for you because it's a leaner meat than beef, and you eat it because it isn't raised on a farm, think again. All buffalo meat in the US is farm-raised and the herd is roughly 500,000. All wild, free-range buffaloes in the US exist only in environmental and government preserves--and hunting these is a crime. 

Our greed and growing appetite for consumption fuels these myths.

Think you're supporting a small food co-op, family farm, or responsible food producer? Take a look at this infographic and see who owns these popular organic food products.

Google's Blacklist, Pt 1

Email deliverability is one of the many struggles with legit businesses offering products or services through email. ContentTech just had their online marketing summit a few weeks ago and a lot of the follow-up B2B emails from the participating vendors have ended up in the Gmail spam folder, even though it was clearly stated within the online conference that you were going to be opted into partner messages if you responded to offers or downloaded sales content.

Examples of Google's spam filter messages:

• It's similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.
• Many people marked similar messages as spam.
• It contains content that's typically used in spam messages.

In the case of T-Mobile's career center emails, the email doesn't follow the standard practices for opting out, double opt-in, nor does it even have those options in the email's footer or any identifying marks about why the user is receiving the email. A user could have registered with T-Mobile's old career center before the MetroPCS merger; but all that language is absent from the email:

2014-03-20, T-Mobile Careers Email Screenshot

This email has only one call to action: Create a new profile. Hopefully this is just a one-time broadcast. Like with most things in life, you rarely have the opportunity to make a second impression.

LinkedIn: Gone Phishin'

One of the problems with automated platform emails is never knowing what you're going to get on the receiving end. Sure, there are plenty of people on my contact roster whose first name is "John" and others with the last name of "Smith", but the "John Smith" character simply does not exist. Maybe someone at LinkedIn thought it was clever way to add connections this way. What makes it weirder is the language of the email which reads:

"Your contact, John Smith, just joined LinkedIn
Help welcome John and get connected"

2014-03-12, mobile screenshot
of LinkedIn notifications email

If he's already a contact, presumably farmed from the LinkedIn ecosystem, wouldn't he by default be in my network already? It makes me think this is a phising email since I don't know any John Smiths. And none exist in my LinkedIn connections nor among the apps that share contact data with LinkedIn.

Klout and Unnatural Ranking

Klout started a while ago as a reputation ranking tool for users (and corporations) of social media. I only have one social property tied to Klout and as such, my Klout score is pitifully anemic (holding steady at 41, for just signing up and doing nothing much at all). I started looking at the scores of public figures and companies and then it dawned onto me that these entities have teams and a multitude of people contributing to and managing this score. Which really seems vastly unfair to those of us who represent small businesses. Sure, there might be a tinge of anger in this post; but I assure you it's for good reason.

Klout does nothing for my business. It doesn't help me generate leads or create new business opportunities; nor does it do anything for my clients who share the same online space on social media platforms. Klout doesn't even help a business gauge how well they are liked by customers who have purchased products or used their services. It's a useless "reputation" score that's generated by how frequent you post to your social network across multiple social networks. Seriously, neither I nor my followers and readers need that level of spam in our lives.

What bothers me is the inconsistency of how scores are calculated. It begs the question of today's random sceenshot:

How many tags does it take to get the phrase "Being a Mom" associated with Microsoft's Klout score? That's what I want to know.

About.Me - Push My Buttons

The only time I hit the about.me website is when I see it featured on a new acquaintance's LinkedIn profile or business card. While I get an occasional product update email from about.me, I hardly take the time to look at it in detail. What gets me tickled is that my profile (about.me/mktgurl) has gotten 1,190 profile views. This is significantly more than what I get on LinkedIn where I actively manage the profile. How people find me is a mystery. I don't advertise this profile url much. It's tied to Google+ and Facebook. Other than that, I don't expect social engagers from either social platform to refer traffic to about.me.

What about.me does is the same as Vizify, a non-portfolio-centric view of yourself. I suppose you could go route, but why bother when other comparable alternatives exist with far better tools and frills.

The connectivity content push has never been easier than now for end-users of these services.

About.me: easy steps to add links to a profile

About.me has simplified the act of typing with its quick button-oriented profile add-ons. Does it work for you?

Home Depot: Gardening Club News

Home Depot's Gardening Club newsletter has always been a favorite of mine. This is where regional news really comes into play and why regional targeting of this type of content marketing really works. When I lived in California, it was sunny nearly all year and the overnight lows really never got below 40 degrees F. In the Pacific Northwest where we can have hail and snow as late as April, it's nice to see that this newsletter is aware of that and makes suggestions as to what can be planted at this time. It's a really good resource for both new and current subscribers. There's a lot going on in this basic spring email, and it is all relevant to the store, the brand, and the customer.

2014-02-19, Home Depot Garden Club email

Vizify's Twitter Video

This neat tool allows Vizify users to create a short video clip of what makes up your Twitter feed. I used my @nwfood calendar feed to create this one:

The biggest downside to this is not being able to share the video directly to other social media platforms, like say Google+, Facebook, or practically everywhere else outside Vizify's ecosystem.

LinkedIn: Profile Suggestions

At this rate, I won't even have to think about what to add to my profile to get the extended network to click onto it. Looks like a new "analytics" rollout from LinkedIn that shows you a little bit more about "Who's viewed your profile". Seriously, I don't think I'd get "up to 3%" more views per click that I add to the profile. Seems like a lot of the suggested skills aren't skills but keyword phrases used by my peers in the management consulting industry. This is almost as bad as getting a skill recommendation from someone who behaves online as a 2nd or 3rd degree connection. What do you think?

2014-02-12, LinkedIn Profile View Suggestions

The view for updated stats available to basic accounts has been upgraded. This is what it looks like now instead of the former tiny line chart and a raw number count.

2014-02-12, LinkedIn Profile Views Dashboard

GoPro: Be a Hero

Once upon a time, a recruiter at Amazon asked where on Amazon's homepage the Kindle should be advertised. GoPro takes this one step further with a leap from suborbital space and an intro video that covers their entire homepage that is pretty darn amazing to watch.

2014-02-08, GoPro's Homepage

For about $200 a video camera, GoPro enables everyday adventurers to shoot extraordinary scenes that used to be in the domain of the professional videographer. And, having sold 2.3 million of them the company has decided to go IPO. Personally, I think it's so the original investors and the founder can cash out of the company and move onto other projects. The camera itself is pretty darn cool.

Pre-Game Day Super Bowl Ads

I was served up an ad trailer of a game day ad by Toyota. And it was the feeblest 30 seconds of my day so far.  Part of the excitement and anticipation for the half-time show is to see what new spins on ad creatives that agencies and corporations have come up with, to laugh and be amused. 

This ad trailer already has more than 44k views. I imagine the email advertisement went to all current Toyota owners who are also registered subscribers. I can understand why marketing and sales would have chosen to run a preview of the ad; perhaps they can use early feedback to tweak the ad components or to test campaign tracking; but isn't that what Q/A testing is for? Or maybe they want to prep the audience for what looks like it will be an over-spent ad spot.

Anyhow. I don't see the point of wasting an existing customer's time to read an email to click through to a video hosted on YouTube for content that isn't even an entire ad. Ugh. And the micetype? Watch outtakes? Not even close. These are just clips of the same ad hastily pasted together.

The saddest part? There will be Super Bowl ads on game day from companies and organizations that lack deep-pocketed agency resources but will be able to pull off a good ad that drives home a relevant selling point and reasons why you should buy or invest in that company.

Internet of Things

When people ask me what I do, I usually tell them that I consult on questions that are too small or obscure to ask of a full-service marketing agency. My clients come from different backgrounds and not everyone is as tech as someone who immerses in it for fun. I was recently asked, "Internet of Things. This is supposed to be the future. Can you find out what it is all about?" This was my response:

Mobile App Auto Email Opt-In

I met up with a long-time friend in Los Angeles who told me about this new dating site called "Coffee Meets Bagel". An interesting enough name that got me hooked. However, as a marketer, after being on the site for less than an hour, I found that I couldn't unsubscribe nor delete my account. And, because I have so much fictitious info on Facebook, much of what is displayed on the CMB profile is inaccurate to say the least and there are aspects of the CMB profile that you can't edit, like your age. Apparently I have a bachelor's degree from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, according to my CMB profile.

What caught my attention on their privacy page was this statement: "...we reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to Coffee Meets Bagel such as service announcements, security alerts, update notices, or other administrative messages) without affording you the opportunity to opt out of receiving such communications." 

Oh really. Plenty of startups have burned on such flagrant disregard for privacy standards.

If I delete the smartphone app, would that in turn really delete all my info on their server; or would they continue to use my info to hook other people into the system?

From the app's web and iPhone interface, it doesn't look like I can delete my account at all. How to do this is not apparent. I had to look at the intro email and it's not terribly obvious. It's in the mice print section of the email where one normally unsubscribes. But, before you opt for permanent deactivation, be sure to unsubscribe yourself from everything you've been already subscribed to. Because heck, there isn't anything more annoying that receiving email from a deleted account. 

One thing comes to mind when it asks for my mobile number as a means of tracking, I mean matching, my profile to a potential bagel: lead generation. Nothing nefarious here. But it has the makings of bait and switch written all over it.