01/26/07: A definite attention getter
I'm back in Turkey to see my dear friend, Jan Nahum, CEO of Turkish GP and speak to his team on Microsoft SharePoint integration. Our team has been creating some great user interfaces on top of the bland SharePoint interface and Jan asked that I tell his team about it.
My flight into Istanbul was late and I was pushing the pedal a bit further down to make up some time. Cruising along the Istanbul Highway in my rented car, my heart leapt into my throat when I topped the hill and saw a Turkish police car hiding behind a billboard. Things have come a long way since the time of the movie "Midnight Express", but I was scared none the less.
As I passed the police officer, something didn’t seem quite right. After looking in my rear view mirror, I started laughing. I backed up and took this shot with my camera. What a concept!
It turns out that the billboard and police car cutout were part of an ad from the Turkish bank, Isbank. I asked Jan about the sign and he said that they were all over the city and generating a lot of buzz. In fact police officers were now hiding behind the cutouts!
My flight into Istanbul was late and I was pushing the pedal a bit further down to make up some time. Cruising along the Istanbul Highway in my rented car, my heart leapt into my throat when I topped the hill and saw a Turkish police car hiding behind a billboard. Things have come a long way since the time of the movie "Midnight Express", but I was scared none the less.
As I passed the police officer, something didn’t seem quite right. After looking in my rear view mirror, I started laughing. I backed up and took this shot with my camera. What a concept!
It turns out that the billboard and police car cutout were part of an ad from the Turkish bank, Isbank. I asked Jan about the sign and he said that they were all over the city and generating a lot of buzz. In fact police officers were now hiding behind the cutouts!
In a nutshell, it makes it super easy for someone to tell others about their favorite charities and make it easy to collect donations. Ashley invited me to the kick-off at Sundance this weekend with Bac-o and others. My assistant is franticly trying to juggle things to make it possible for me to attend, including locating my snowboard which got lost my last time flying.
This campaign has all the markings of a successful internet campaign:
1- It is easy to make it my own – The fun comes in making your own badge as well as using a celebrities. In a way you become your own little celebrity. You can embed images and or video along with your own special message. For those of us with blogs, it is easy to add it to the blog.
2- It is easy for someone else to take action – The other person can start the donation process in one click
3- It visibly shows progress – The donation summary is always kept up to date in the badge. I don’t have to update anything to show what is happening.
4- It has an initial push to start the ball rolling – Kevin Bacon and the other celebs give it real star power. Even great ideas like this need some initial push, which the launch at Sundance will do.
With some many worthy charities out there, Kevin feels that it takes a personal recommendation like this for people to act. Regardless, it gets us thinking about the ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game some more.
01/14/07: You can’t spell Excess without CES
Verionica and I were keep a close eye on the East Coast with MacWorld, where Steve Jobs took all the wind out of CES’ sails from a few thousand miles away with his introduction of the Apple iPhone. I just love Steve's presentation style and always ask him tips when we get together.
I flew to New york to visit with a friend and tour the Village. She just purchased a beautiful Red Mini-Cooper. It was a real joy to drive through the NYC Streets. She just recently got a new keychain for her Mini from the MINI USA. But this wasn’t just any keychain. This one has a RFID chip in it that is unique to her. She was instructed to go to a web site and log in. From there she entered a special message.
Here is the cool part. When we were driving under Mini billboards through New York, the sign would display her message. Pretty cool!
Now I loved seeing all the gadgets at CES, but using RFID, the Internet and some marketing genius, MINI USA's keychain/billboard concept was my favorite.
I successfully dug out of our chalet in Vail in time to get to Las Vegas for CES. I was given a new Burton snowboard as a gift from my dear friend and Olympic Gold Medalist Snowboarder, Hannah Teter and wanted to try it out. While there are few things nicer than fresh powder, eight days of it can be too much, especially after you have polished off your last bottle of Maker’s Mark two days earlier. Regardless, I was happy to check into the Wynn for this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and some poker.
I plan on post some reports from what I see at CES later this week, first lets talk about New Year’s Resolutions. While I was sitting in the airport, I heard a number of conversations related to New Year’s Resolutions. While most of them revolved around exercise and dieting, I started thinking about what New Year’s Resolutions owners of Websites should consider. Here is my list:
1- Give your site a good cleaning – Review your site and remove content that is out of date or not relevant.
2- Streamline your forms – A pain point for most users is when they have to enter, or reenter, information to get value from your site. There are exciting technologies, from AJAX to Flex which can significantly improve the user experience. Create a flowchart of the steps and see what can be done to cut the number of steps in half.
3- Integrate conversations with your customers into some part of the site – These conversations are happening elsewhere. Why not embrace them, respond to them and learn form them.
4- Work a video into your site – Broadband home users outnumber dial up users 5 to 1. Pick a topic that video communicates extremely well and think about how to integrate it into your site. Video can be tucked into your site in a very seamless approach.
5- Distribute the role of adding content – New content is great for visitors and search engines alike. Add a small content management tool to an area of your site and enlist some associates to add content monthly.
I’d love to hear what you plan to do with your site this year! Leave a comment and tell us all!
I plan on post some reports from what I see at CES later this week, first lets talk about New Year’s Resolutions. While I was sitting in the airport, I heard a number of conversations related to New Year’s Resolutions. While most of them revolved around exercise and dieting, I started thinking about what New Year’s Resolutions owners of Websites should consider. Here is my list:
1- Give your site a good cleaning – Review your site and remove content that is out of date or not relevant.
2- Streamline your forms – A pain point for most users is when they have to enter, or reenter, information to get value from your site. There are exciting technologies, from AJAX to Flex which can significantly improve the user experience. Create a flowchart of the steps and see what can be done to cut the number of steps in half.
3- Integrate conversations with your customers into some part of the site – These conversations are happening elsewhere. Why not embrace them, respond to them and learn form them.
4- Work a video into your site – Broadband home users outnumber dial up users 5 to 1. Pick a topic that video communicates extremely well and think about how to integrate it into your site. Video can be tucked into your site in a very seamless approach.
5- Distribute the role of adding content – New content is great for visitors and search engines alike. Add a small content management tool to an area of your site and enlist some associates to add content monthly.
I’d love to hear what you plan to do with your site this year! Leave a comment and tell us all!
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