Month: December 2008

A great evening at Market Street Cafe

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

We ventured out tonight to attend a sneak peak of sorts for a restaurant here in the neighborhood.  Market Street Cafe is relaunching with a new chef and new menu in January and they hosted an open house tonight.  Here's a description of the event from the local Kirkland Weblog whose author I was happy to finally meet in person tonight.

I'm excited about the opening and intrigued by chef Scott Shampine's background and menu.  From the tasting and hospitality tonight, I look forward to having him in the neighborhood and enjoying his creations.

The case for micro-blogging (or why you should care about Twitter)

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

I tried and failed three times before I began to understand the value of Twitter.  It is not solely to tell the world about the big chili dog you just ate or your mood although that certainly comes with it.  It is, with significant constraints in the form of 140 characters, a way to update various audiences about interesting things.

"Interesting things" are in the eye of the beholder but when I figured out I could use Twitter to provide not only a real-time update to this blog (see "Breaking" on the left panel) but use it to drive both blog and status updates to other applications (like Facebook) via either text message or web form that the light bulb began to go off. 

Also, Twitter's social features require minimal effort.  You can follow who you want, they can block you afterward but not deny you (there is an optional "accept" follow capability for those that want a bit of control) , you can see who others follow and they can see who you follow, you can direct message (an increasingly difficult message stream to manage) but can't forward, cc, or otherwise turn it into email.

Twitter gets grief from many directions about a business model and it is the right question to be asking.  The point to take away, however, is that roughly 3MM people have signed up for Twitter (via Wikipedia) with some subset actually being active users and building dependency on it.  It is a  way to directly engage with people all over the world in a forum different than a social site or as formal as email.  From a marketing point of view, it is an essential place to have a presence both to promote your news and products but to immediately respond to both negative and positive comments about your brand.  Both Dell and Comcast "get" this point and have a presence on Twitter with Dell claiming upwards of $1MM in revenue directly attributable to its Twitter presence and distribution of sales alerts.

It also forces a whole new level of focusing on saying things with brevity.  140 characters is not a lot of room to pontificate but the ability to embed hyperlinks via tinyurl.com provides even more flexibility.

How popular is Twitter?  Here's an article from the WSJ on it and here is one laying out enterprise use cases. Also, Guy Kawasaki weighs in on the marketing benefits of Twitter many of which I completely agree with.  Even members of the US Congress are using Twitter in an effort to drive transparency and direct communication.

No doubt, I am still learning and expanding my understanding.  I am tinkering with TwitterFox (a Firefox browser plug-in), Tweetdeck (a client application), and the various ways to search and tag Twitter content.  More to come…

Am I a Marketing Technopologist?

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Maybe.  Or as this article from the WSJ (thanks for sending along Michael) lays it out it:

"We coined the term marketing technopologist for a person who brings
together strengths in marketing, technology and social interaction."

When I started blogging almost two years ago it was for two core reasons:

  1. To scratch my itch for writing
  2. To experiment with and understand how new and emerging internet-enabled tools could be used to share, communicate, and collaborate.

Since then I have learned a lot, been confused a fair amount, and connected with some really cool people in addition to expanding my understanding of both the technologies I use and the subject matter I write about.

This article is a good read to begin to understand the changing landscape of marketing and how new technologies allow established concepts to be expanded upon and new practices to emerge.

Now this is serious – really rich people losing money

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

I am still trying to get my head around the news about Bernard Madoff and his $50 Billion (yes, Billion with a B) fraud.  This is being way better reported in the financial pubs but seems as if many people wondered how this guy could consistently engineer such great returns.  That, of course, didn't stop the money from flowing in which was necessary because that money was being paid out as returns.  How unimaginative.  If you are going to cause this kind of wealth destruction you'd hope it would be done in a more innovative way.  But I digress…

The losses are adding up as those who lost come forward (or are forced forward).  There are some doozies with Banco Santander at $3.6 billion, HSBC at $1 billion and no shortage of others with big losses including some very wealthy folks.  Here's a list from the NY Times.

Markets are brutal and unforgiving and no one can consistently outperform them (even if you are not running a scam).  Just ask Bill Miller of Legg Mason about his track record of beating the S&P 500 now.  This guy consistently beat the S&P 500 index until recently and he is down, way down.  Stick to index funds (not leveraged ones), own individual stocks for a hobby, and enjoy the ride.  You will do no better or worse than the market this way and save yourself both some emotional strain as well as "management" fees.

No 12Ks of Christmas this year in Kirkland

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

At least not today.  Contrary to the web site, the annual Kirkland 12Ks (~7.5 miles) of Christmas run has been canceled.  Not a surprise given the fact that it snowed last night and the streets are pretty slick.  Riley (my dog) and I just sauntered down to the Marina and got the news. 

While I am bummed not to be running, I can't imagine what would have happened if all those runners hit the slick streets around here this morning.  The person I spoke with down there didn't have any details on a reschedule so looks like we have to wait until next year. 

‘All@’ groundrules

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

If you run a company, start a company, or are an executive at a company, this should be on the radar screen – who can send to the 'all@yourcompany.com' alias.

Email is great at broadcasting news and updates around the office – both good and bad.  It is also a nice way for anyone to send anything to everyone.  Put some simple controls in place that allow only members of the executive team, HR, and Marketing (for internal communications) to use this alias.

I watched this in real life at a previous start up both before and during several RIFs (reductions in force).  What really got my attention was when an especially animated employee decided to cc the 'all' alias in a completely over the top argument he was having via email.  Individual responses telling him to stop were then broadcast back to all in his reply – good times were had by all.  After this incident, these controls were promptly implemented.

You will save yourself some pain and embarrassment especially given the season of layoffs that we are wading through.  Nothing like a snarky farewell email to the entire company to blow the lid off the best laid RIF and accompanying communications plan. 

Free text messaging…for you

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Your friends, well, they still have to pay.  New capability lets you send a text message directly from the Gmail app but… 

"Keep in mind that all these text messages count as part of your regular
mobile messaging plan and might incur fees. So unless you know your
friends have unlimited text message plans, please be sensitive to their
phone bills."


Pretty cool actually as more forms of communication are consolidated in a single application (email, IM, etc.).  I've enabled it in my Gmail and look forward to taking it for spin.