If you’re in Orlando and you’ve never been to an Ignite event before, here’s your chance. Ignite is a unique event in which several speakers present on a variety of topics. The catch is, they only have 5 minutes and 20 slides, and the slides auto rotate every 15 seconds. As you can probably imagine, this makes for a very interesting show!
Jim’s presentation is called “Robots, Kids, and the Future of Engineering” and mine is called “Things I’ve Learned About Marketing.” If you can’t make it out, we should have videos here soon after. Don’t think that’s an excuse to stay home though. Did I mention that there will be beer?
Well, not so great I’m afraid. I grabbed Subway’s attention on Twitter by posting the following tweet:
Subway just responded today with this:
I have to give them credit for responding, but even so, there’s roughly 36 hours between my post and theirs. Normally this isn’t bad at all, but when the community is responding faster than you are, you can’t take a break. Take a look at all these retweets from yesterday, prior to their response:
When we released IE6Update, one of our motivations was our claim that most people don’t understand the difference between a browser and the Internet. Admittedly, we didn’t have any statistics to substantiate that assumption, and we were going on direct experience. Interestingly enough however, some Google employees in New York interviewed random individuals in Times Square and ask the question, “What is a browser?” Here’s what happened:
Tonight in marketing class, we had a guest speaker named Jeffrey Ganssle, the CEO of DiPasqua Enterprises. Jeff is responsible for allocating the marketing budget for over 90 Subway franchise locations in the Greater Orlando area, and while he was very knowledgeable about things like profit margins and customer loyalty, Internet marketing (namely social media) was barely a blip on his radar. Out of a $500,000,000 annual marketing budget at the national level, Subway only spends 2.5% on Internet marketing, most of which goes towards the unremarkable; banner ads. Pretty risky for a higher quality brand that has historically done very poorly when competing on price (sans the highly successful $5 foot long sub, of course).
A quick search on Facebook revealed about eight different fan pages carrying the Subway branding, the largest of which has over one million fans. Here’s the shocker though: None of the fan pages were “official.” Rather, they were started by either franchise owners or random people. The situation on Twitter is similar. When I asked Jeff about this, his response was that some franchise owners are more comfortable than others.
What? The fan page for TechCrunch, one of the most popular blogs on the Internet, numbers in the mere thousands, even though the Internet is their home turf. So how can a Facebook fan page with over a million fans (not to mention the other Subway pages with hundreds of thousands of fans), go so unnoticed by their corporate marketeers? We live in an age where customer interaction is oftentimes what defines a brand, and many traditionalists have trouble loosening the reigns. There’s a point though, where the “official” brand needs to step in and bring order to the conversation.
But wait… there’s more! When I asked Jeff how he would react should he have a Domino’s Pizza situation on his hands, he was laser focused on prevention and censorship. Probably the most laughable thing he said was that cell phones with cameras shouldn’t be allowed. I can’t remember the last time I saw a handset without a camera.
He later admitted that he, along with others in the QSR industry, were scared out of their minds over this happening to them. The truth is, these things are going to happen no matter how rock solid the preventative measures are, so it’s the brand’s response that truly matters. Domino’s did an outstanding job recovering from the disastrous YouTube video by (imagine this) posting a YouTube video of their own from the President of Domino’s USA, immediately addressing the situation head on. They took a beating on Twitter, but they responded swiftly and did a great job answering people’s questions. Overall, Domino’s is probably better off because of the whole situation (this is called the service recovery paradox).
I’ve seen a lot of traditional brands miss the boat, but Subway takes the double meat cheese steak on this one.
UPDATE: Jeffrey Ganssle is in fact the COO, and not the CEO.
This past Monday, Jim and I launched a brand new video blog in partnership with Robert Dempsey, CEO of Atlantic Dominion Solutions. It’s called Rock the Job, and its goal is to help students understand the impact of social media on their careers. Check out the first episode right here:
Some background…
During my time in college, I’ve noticed that many students aren’t really sure how to go about landing a decent job, beyond attending career fairs and sending out resumés. It’s easy for young bright spirits to get discouraged, especially in the current economic climate. There’s a better way though.
When employers are reviewing potential candidates, often they’ll Google the candidate’s name. This can sometimes have a negative impact on a candidate’s chances of getting hired. However, it’s actually an excellent opportunity to convey more about yourself than what can be shown on a resumé. Rock the Job will feature exciting guests, offer detailed advice on personal branding, run through tips and tricks for various social media tools, and more.
Jim and I have been wanting to get more into video for some time, but we didn’t want to make videos just for the sake of doing so. However, by partnering with Robert Dempsey, we feel that we’ve identified a great subject matter that’s gone unaddressed for far too long.
If you’re an employer, an employee, or unemployed, and you have a question or an interesting story you’d like to tell, drop us a line on our Facebook fan page. Also, be sure to pass along Rock the Job to anyone that you think might be interested.
This is a really exciting project for us, and we can’t wait to bring you more episodes!
At this year’s FOWA Miami, we asked several people to give their predictions for the web in 2009. Here’s what social media strategist Wayne Sutton (socialwayne.com), had to say.
A little late on this video, but still very relevant! In this video, Wayne talked about location based networks and mobile applications. We personally prefer BrightKite. What do you think about location based social networks?
So, as you may have noticed, our website has received a bit of a revamp!
When we started Done21, we only ever intended to make web applications like http://www.belongsto.me/ - but things change.
Many people were emailing and messaging us, asking for information in regards to our rates, availability, and skills. There are a lot of great ideas out there, and with the right execution, any one of them has the potential to become something really amazing. We’re interested in being a part of exciting projects, so instead of only working on new ventures for ourselves, we decided it was time to open up and work with other businesses and individuals.
Both Jim and I are really excited about the new possibilities this presents. We’re accepting new clients right now, so drop us a line!
Ouch. I haven’t felt that kind of sting since the fresh squeezed orange juice from Jerry’s Famous Deli hit my palate at FOWA Miami 2008. Now, Ryan is a cool guy. I know this, because Jim and I had breakfast with him (I’m the fellow on the left playing with his iPhone, Jim is the guy in the black shirt sitting next to me, and Ryan is the one in the hat on the right):
Paul’s post over at ThinkVitamin launched some great debate, which I love (life would be boring otherwise). And in the comments, Ryan gave a nod to IE6 Update’s innovation, which I’m humbled by (although some credit goes to Activebar2, from which IE6 Update is derived). Cool as Ryan may be though, I’m bewildered by what he says next:
“I worry about the folks who are using an intranet or some bespoke internal web app that relies on IE6, which would then break for them.”
If a network administrator doesn’t want their users installing or upgrading software, the machines should be locked down. Period. Networks with machines running Internet Explorer 6 should especially be locked down, due to its terrible security track record. I personally try to steer clear of the phrase “not my problem,” but I fail to see how IE6 Update, which is essentially a link to Microsoft’s website, threatens the integrity of their intranet.
We care about the web very deeply. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have created Validifer, a tool that converts Flash embed code into valid XHTML. Some might say that IE6 Update is an extreme measure, and I’m not denying that, but to move the world onward from a browser that’s nearly ten years old, I strongly believe that IE6 Update is a great option in cases where education has failed. Before loving it or hating it, you have to consider your website’s audience.
