I’ve been chatting to entrepreneur Patrick McPhee from Splurf about PlanHQ featuring in a startup TV series he’s getting going for New Zealand, due to start screening later this year.

The idea is to show everyone the reality of startups, and the startup culture here in New Zealand. Hopefully by opening our doors we’ll be assisting those in startups by showing our mistakes and successes and providing a little inspiration to those who aren’t in business for themselves to maybe get amongst. Patrick and crew have just released a 30 minute pilot video below, interested in any thoughts. (Note: The outcomes in the pilot are fictional and are for illustration only)

Startup TV Pilot

Online Videos by Veoh.com

The inspiration - Startup.com the Movie

In terms of the style of how the story is to be told, Patrick refers to Startup.com the Movie which follows an online startup govworks.com which goes from inception, to raising $US 60 milion and a couple of hundred staff to dead. Not an ideal outcome ofcourse, but failures are part of success, although in this case, and at this time of the web, was all too common.

Seeing your mistakes from others

I remember watching the movie startup.com in 2003 shortly after I’d helped raise $11 million for early stage energy management technology company Energy intellect. It was the first time I’d watched a movie that had things I could genuinely relate too, and it forced immediate learning. I saw the things that I/we had done wrong, watching someone else make mistakes and seeing them as mistakes certainly helps you.

CrazyEgg has been around a fair while, and like a lot of things, I looked at it and thought ‘wow, that would be cool to try… If only I could be bothered signing up for another Web 2.0 account’.

Well, I’m pleased to announce that yesterday I gave it a shot.

What is Crazyegg?

Crazyegg visually displays where your visitors click on your website, which helps you see the success of various buttons, menus and links (and find out what people think IS a link). You can look at four very nice graphics showing various views on the information, including the EXACT point where people click… And seriously it’s so amazing, you become obsessed with your website.

What’s I’ve learned in a day

People think PlanHQ is Powered by Silverstripe

While our website IS made using the Silverstripe CMS, PlanHQ itself is definitely built using Ruby on Rails. We suspected that some people wondered how we built an entire planning application on Silverstripe, and using Crazyegg, I saw that the link to Silverstripe was one of the most commonly clicked links… Which really supports our suspicion.

I have now updated the text.

People Think the images in our tour are links

That was a surprising but very interesting discovery. We’re still unsure of what to do :)

Why Crazyegg is so Awesome

Crazyegg pretty much makes every user of your website or application a tester. Every single user now provides you with valuable information about what they find confusing, easy and interesting… Without them having to do ANYTHING but use your site.
We’re hoping to embed Crazyegg in PlanHQ to see where people run into problems and what is most interesting to them. The information it provides is literally like sitting down with every single customer and finding out what they think.

That’s truly amazing.

And the smallest account is free.

What a bargain.

But I recommend (having experience with selling web products) signing up for a paid account. This tool is truly worth every penny you spend.

I’m a little late on this one, by now the furore over the 2012 (Terribly awful) Olympic games logo has died down… However, I’m far more interested in the backlash than the logo itself and what this means for branding, who ‘owns’ it and who controls it.

How did they get it so wrong?

Seriously. How could a branding company that charged over $NZ1 million for the logo be so far off? Any non-expert, average Joe outsider can look at the thing and IMMEDIATELY see that it in no way:

• Reflects London
• Reflects the Olympic games

The logo is virtually unreadable and looks like it belongs in the 80’s, The website looks like something a kid created. It’s like the branding company was so arrogant, they put five minutes into the job on the basis that their name alone would make anything fly. It appears these guys were relying on their ‘expert’ status to reenact the fairy story ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. Clearly, they hoped people would believe their ears and not their eyes and change their perception of ‘Brand London’ to
their own half-hearted effort.

But they failed dismally

The Backlash Begins

This is an interesting case where taxpayer money went into the brand while taxpayers were also the main consumers of it - these people truly owned the brand in every way… And they were quick to make their unhappiness known with:

• Almost 50,000 signatures on a petition to change the London 2012 logo
• Heaps of Londoners submitting their own logos for consideration (some of which are actually quite good)
• The London Mayor saying he ‘wouldn’t pay them a penny’

What Does this Mean for Branding?

The big brands of the past (the Cokes, Nikes, Mc Donalds and co) who define a brand and then get consumers to ADOPT it are becoming a thing of the past. Consumers these days are so aware of branding that we have developed our own personal brands. Instead of adopting the persona of a company’s brand, we expect their brand to match our own, or else they don’t get our business.

Lessons from London 2012

• Don’t be a ‘branding expert’ - The days of justifying branding disasters by explaining the ‘creative process’ behind them are over. No one cares about the ‘creative process’ and when you have to fall back on it because the end result is so shoddy, consumers just think you’re a loser.
• Don’t charge an absolute fortune for a logo, simply because you can… Pricing should be based on he difficulty and accuracy of portraying the brand, not the size of the organization commissioning it.
• Don’t think your logo design will be any better than a monkey’s just because you have a branding company.
• Don’t force your consumers to adopt your brand. Instead, adopt theirs.

The biggest disaster in the London 2012 logo disaster was not that the logo was exceptionally ugly, or that it caused epileptic fits… It was that the branding company tried to tell London citizens who they were and what their city was instead of asking them.

One advantage of being a small business is that you have a very limited marketing budget. Yes, it is an advantage. You don’t have the ability to exploit traditional marketing avenues so you’re stuck with making the most out of any opportunity that presents itself.

Your Body is Your Tool

Just before we sent Nik and Koz off to the US to the RailsConf, we had PlanHQ t-shirts made. The fact Koz promptly lost his and forgot to wear it during his keynote aside, these guys were clearly representing us. But t-shirts are old news right? Not if you do them cleverly.

PlanHQ

PlanHQ is all about bringing your plans to life… So what better than personalised t-shirts that proclaim your one goal in life… ‘Sell my company to Google’, ‘Make developer’s lives better’, ‘Still dance when I’m 90′. Each t-shirt is slightly different and unique to the wearer, and because PanHQ is focused around setting goals and achieving them, what better way to introduce people to our business than getting them to think about theirs?

Xero

Xero sells accounting software, a traditionally dull industry, full of dull colours and ‘boring people’… But Xero don’t see themselves like that. Xero have recently come out with a range of T-shirts in blues and pinks that are so bright that when you wear one, it’s impossible not to be noticed. They have added to these t-shirts the somewhat cheeky line ‘Xero Style’. Through these t-shirts, Xero make a bold statement about their attitude towards accounting: It’s fun, it’s cool and it’s the cutting edge of fashion. Who would have thought?

FexEx

A little more famous example is the FedEx t-shirts that personify what Fed-Ex is all about - delivering parcels. It’s unique, it’s quirky and more importantly, it stands out in a crowd and it makes people giggle. This is another business that COULD have sat down and figured that they provide a dull but necessary service and rely solely on the fact that consumers will use their service out of necessity. Instead they put in a little bit of clever thinking and made something that PEOPLE LIKE TO WEAR. And when people like to wear something that markets your company, they become your walking billboard.
T-shirts aren’t expensive. T-shirts are hot right now. Exploit the opportunity.

The town is your Canvas

Smaller businesses may get a lot of benefit from exploiting walls, lampposts and footpaths around town. Once again… an old marketing idea with a new slant.
Instead of adapting to your surroundings, adapt your surroundings to you, look out for how you can turn an existing object into something that personifies what your company is about. Anyone can paste a notice to lamppost, how many people however, have turned a lamppost into a ballerina? Posting a few of these up around the local schools (think school crossing poles and the routes home) is bound to get the attention of the target market without you parting with anything more than the cost of a few photocopies.

If your business has a physical premises that you can alter the outside of (even temporarily), you can use it to convey what you do. Everyone can have a sign outside their office, but no matter how slick and professional it is, it will never have the impact that this dude has as he punches a crack in the pavement with his bare fist. You don’t even have to see the words ‘Karate school’ to know what you will get inside this building.

Creativity is King

These days, you shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money marketing your business. The world truly is your oyster and all you have to do is find the opportunities to make an impact. We’ve got a few more ideas up our sleeves which may come out at some point soon, and would love to see and hear about more success stories from tight marketing budgets :)

UPDATE: Changed atrocious spelling of ‘guerrilla’ because Nik got worked up about it ;)

I was in Fiji the week before last, and finally got around to reading Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. I can’t say I was enthralled by the book but I liked the concept of always thinking about the remarkable. This weekend I had breakfast at a place called The Chocolate Fish Cafe, a place that has totally embraced the concept of being a Purple Cow.

How the Chocolate Fish Cafe is Remarkable

Instead of walking 2 minutes to any of the cafes surrounding where I live, we got in the car and drove 20 minutes to the Chocolate Fish Cafe. In fact, I’d go so far to say that every single patron of the place had to drive there. This is in a city where virtually everything is in easy walking distance. Also, unlike most places in Wellington, every single time I’ve been to the Chocolate Fish Cafe, I’ve had a very long wait to get my food. Normally this makes people angry, at the Chocolate Fish, we all sit around patiently. How do they do it?

• The Chocolate Fish Cafe is limited by Geography and has to have the outside eating area ACROSS THE ROAD from the main restaurant. They have embraced this constraint and turned it into an advantage. Their bright yellow ‘Waiter Crossing’ signs are famous around Wellington, as are the fluorescent jackets that waiting staff wear.
• The Chocolate Fish Cafe is a quirky place. Every single chair has been handpainted with a different picture. I stood up off mine and looked down into the open jaws of a shark that had presumably been biting my bottom throughout my dining experience.
• Because the place is chocka block full of people, The Chocolate Fish Cafe has come up with easy ways to use LESS SERVICE. You get your own menu off a central stack, they have water dispensers around the place where people queue in friendly fashion to get their own water. They don’t apologise for this either, but once again, turn it to their advantage. This time they had a big sign up saying ’sick of slow service? We need you to join us as a cook!’
• The Chocolate Fish Cafe has turned themselves into an institution. They sell versions of the rocks they use as table numbers, they sell paintings of the cafe, and neat little post cards, guides to the city and other weird and wonderful objects including a clay seagull devouring a chocolate fish. They have created a tourist attraction out of a cafe.
• Wellington has a whole lot of waterfront. The Chocolate Fish Cafe is about as far round as you can go from the city. But it’s a stunning drive or cycle and makes a nice lazy weekend activity. A trip out for food turns into an outing.

One thing I got from Purple Cow is that every single constraint can and should be turned into something remarkable. Everything should be looked at in the context of making it remarkable. If you are a marketer or a small business owner needing some inspiration, the easiest thing I can think of is asking the same question about every shop you visit or product you use ‘how could this be a Purple Cow?’. It’s amazing what you come up with.

Short Video’s can be a really powerful way of connecting people with ideas, and when you see a well told story in video it can really immerse you and inspire feeling, insight and sometimes action.

Connecting the dots - The video experience
The opportunity with video that you don’t get with other forms of content, like these words I’m writing, is to very quickly show the connection between things that may otherwise not be immediately and obviously related.

The Machine is us/using us
This is a pretty cool 5 minute, no talk all action and music story of how the web is growing with us, starting right from the basics it quickly flys into current time taking you for the ride.

Connecting an Online Experience with the ground
I’ve just in the last week met up and started working with a last term film student, Pattara, on a couple of video ideas. He popped along and grabbed some footage of a startup funding seminar I presented at as a start and we’re going to get some footage of some cool PlanHQ customers chatting about and showing how they’re growing their businesses, meeting their goals and making it happen. The aim here is to show people how PlanHQ is used to drive action, and blend the world of the online PlanHQ experience with what it’s really doing making it happening on the ground.

30 second Video Intro for ProjectX
Heres a short video friends from New Zealand Online Mapping company ProjectX who run zoomin and power the Trademesmaps site

I’ve just read an interesting article at Customer’s Rock about a web company that calls every new customer to chat to them about what they would like to get out of the company and any questions they may have. There is no sales pitch given (Becky’s shock at this goes to show how resigned we all are to being pitched at by everyone all the time).

This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend the other day. She is a beauty therapist who is ‘encouraged’ to try to sell as much product as she can during a session with a client. You know the drill (and I hate it), when you go to the hairdresser, they line up all the ‘relevant’ products and ask you leading questions like ‘do you want shinier hair?’ and you’re thinking ‘do I have to say ‘no’ so I’m not forced to buy this stuff?’.

Anyway, she feels very uncomfortable pawning products on people who are paying good money for a service. So she doesn’t. This initially caused a little stress because she had sales targets to reach and a boss who was quite into ensuring they were. However from the sounds, she does reach her targets, despite never ramming products down her client’s throats. Why? Because her customers trust her. They know they can arrive, relax and enjoy the service they are paying for. They know she will give them honest advice and answer any questions they have, without ‘forcing’ them to purchase anything. So they buy stuff.

It seems that the anti sales pitch might be the most successful sales pitch?

(image courtesy of stock exchange)

After months of fiddling away, we’ve finally, officially made the move the Wordpress and an updated design!!!!

We’d love to hear any feedback on the much more simple and clean? layout… Which, knowing us, will soon become very cluttered with widgets

Ha ha I just had the funniest experience. We’re about to head off for easter break and I thought I’d read up on some of my favourite blogs… Headed to Buzzoodle and found myself reading a post about me!

Anyway, the reason I mention this article (aside from the fact I think it totally makes me ‘internet famous’) is it points out possibly the best feature of blogging: how you make friends with and network with people on the other side of the world, who you potentially will never meet… But who talk to other people and low and behold, suddenly your name is mentioned in situations you really hope it would be.

Thanks Ron! 

I’ve been looking at our business cards for PlanHQ over the past few days and before you know it we’re all standing around discussing how we can make our cards a little different, a little more useful… I set out on a short search of people who had turned this tiny space into something that truly reflected them.

I quite liked this list from nclud, especially the deck of cards someone scribbled on… There is something strangely appealing about the lack of ‘design’. I’m also always a big fan of Gaping Void, taking other people’s business cards and doodling on them.

These days, personalisation seems key: Cover everything with the little tidbits of information and imagery that reflects YOU, whether it’s your favourite saying, a picture of you doing what you love best. But business cards themselves seem a little irrelevant, Nik is hanging out for the time his phone can just bleep every other phone and get his ‘virtual card’, and it does seem like a luxurious waste of trees to keep printing these little slips of information.

Places like MOO make  smaller business cards that are totally personalised, others are turning to different ways of handing out their contact information… I wonder where it’s all heading…