One of my true loves in life is Radio. Since my Teenage years I’ve been involved in radio presenting. Every Christmas for the last four years we put together a temporary licensed radio station called Christmas FM which we run to raise money for charity. We’ve finally counted up all the donations and I’m delighted to announce we generated €116,749 for our charity partner Focus Ireland, which help the homeless community in Ireland. This figure is way above our target for 2011 and brings the total raised in the last 4 years to €320,000 for our Irish Charity Partners.

A big thanks to EBS and the Irish Daily Mail, who are the stations co-sponsors and the Alexander Hotel in Dublin who donated a suite for us to base the studio in. Here’s a quick look at the set up:

Christmas FM will be back in 2012 bigger and better then ever. I look forward to talking to you on air then.

In the Halloween Costumes industry there has been a recent fascinating development that should make all marketeers stop dead in the tracks. It’s become a real game changer this year. Companies who have developed characters, cartoon or otherwise, to use in the TV and marketing campaigns are starting to awaken to the new social economy. By Licensing their costumes to be manufactured and sold to loyal customers who love their marketing / brand so much that they are willing to pay to dress up and represent their brand for the night, they have living social endorsement. This is the kind of marketing that we as the business community spend hundreds of thousands trying to achieve and mean while there is a queue of people, willing and ready with cash in hand to pay for the pleasure in promoting your brand.

Now the arguments are vast why many brands will turn down the opportunity of this new form of customer engagement, what if The Burger King was to be photographed eating in McDonalds or The Honey Monster was to make a wholly show of himself on the dance floor doing a funky chicken impersonation. To me this is yesteryear thinking and trying to control the conversation. People are smart enough to know it’s the guy in the suit who can’t dance and either way, the brands just given them a bit of a laugh and will be at the forefront of their mind for the next few days.

The Juxtaposition of customers adopting brands that represent them in their Halloween Costumes isn’t suitable to every brand, but if you have a brand with a character it could be massive untapped potential. Certainly for a new brand wanting to make a splash and that has a decent TV and Billboard budget, it’s worth considering should you create a character with this as part of your strategy. At the moment my industry is actually paying the brands to license their characters, however I expect come next year the tables may turn and they will infact be aggressively encouraging it.

It seems in the recession businesses are being squeezed for every drop they can get from the proverbial stone. However the the merchant banks increase has to take the biscuit. Banks are in the very slow process of changing Laser cards over to Visa Debit cards, in a move that most people assume was just re-wording a card that does exactly the same thing – allow you to spend money which you already have in your account, without the need to write paper checks.

What myself and nearly every other retailer in the country didn’t realise was that some were infact positioning themselves for instant, supernormal gains.

A €500 purchase last year paid by Laser card would have cost the retailer roughly 15c. The same purchase for the same customer & amount this year, using their spanking new Laser replacement, Visa Debit Card, would cost the retailer €7.75 – An astonishing 5,100% increase in their fee’s on the transaction with the flip of a switch! The change happened because by moving from Laser which is a fixed fee charge to a Visa debit, they “can” charge a percentage commission on. Banks are one of those institutions which you tend to have as little contact with as possible, you assume if there is a change in their rates they will pass them on, like when the ECB change interested rates your mortgage changes too.

The above is a personal example from My Merchant Bank – Elavon, however other banks are also benefiting, some only taking double digit increases in the fee’s. As I’ve said before Merchant bankers are probably our least regulated banks in Ireland.

Now what really gets me is when I happened to stumble across this injustice and bring it to their attention, they “offered” to reduce the 5,100% rate increase to a MERE 360% increased fixed fee, but there is a further cost too for this mere increase. If you fix the fee at 54c, up from 15c, but better than 1.55%; Should someone spend only 5Euro, their cut on the transaction is over 10%. One way or another they will squeeze some money from the stone.

Now put this in perspective of your business. How much is this change in a technicality going to cost you? And were you aware of it? If you want to fix your fee on transactions via Visa Debit it is possible, so you will need to approach them and request to negotiate the deal. The problem with negotiating with these banks is there is no real leverage. They hold all the cards and competition amongst them is extremely poor, in my experience it’s been a tale of who’s the least incompetent to preform what is an automated function once you’re set up.

So rather than just take it on the chin and complain, I propose we do something about it. Lets get some leverage and form a buying group, with this group we use the combined buying power to not only lower or bring back transaction prices to, wait for it, “the good old days of the 2008″; but also we could insist on basic common decency like responses to calls and emails within 48 hours and advanced warning on when ‘minor’ changes in their industry are about to set us back tens of thousands on our balance sheets.

Very interested in your thoughts and comments below, If your interested in the buying group for merchant services (companies big & small welcome) send me a message on Twitter @Ronanob.

———————————–# Update 12/08 #———————-

As a further comparison, UK retailers are paying 12p to process visa debit cards Vs our 1.55% variable or 55c fixed fee options. Its yet another reason why Ireland is such an expensive country to do business in and has difficulty in competing in the export market.

———————————–# Update 16/09 #———————-

Thanks to all who have joined the buying group, I’ll be sending around information next week via email. In the mean time I really must stress that if you have a merchant account you should contact your merchant bank to find out if you are on a fixed or variable rate for visa debit and make an informed choice which provider is now offering the most suitable rates.

All of the merchant banks have been very willing to participate in quoting for the group so I believe we have a very fair process in place now, buying rates will reflect the merchants risk level, turnover and industry so that everyone is treated fairly. In the process Elavon have met with me and taken on board suggestions to address other concerns I had and make improvements in their security, which is a very positive step forward. I’ve also been impressed with AIBMS who have changed a good deal since we worked with them some years ago.

I still believe the industry has a long way to go however there is signs of competition and “a customer centric” approach, which is a very welcome insertion. Thanks to all of those in the media who featured this blog post in their newspapers, radio shows and tv news.

Recently I was asked to speak at the Athlone online business conference on conversion optimization and converting online traffic to sales, below is my talk from the conference and the Q&A session at the end.

The talk focuses on the basics of online business and how to use data to work out conversion rates, then implementing an equation to make the requirement of a “marketing budget” a thing of the past as the marketing cost becomes a variable sunk into the sale price on each unit sold.
Ronan athlone presentation 21.6

When businesses have too much supply or perishable products, they often turn to the likes of Groupon or Facebook deals to stimulate demand. The deal generally works on the basis that the customer can get an extreme deal, on something they would not otherwise be buying. The business pay Groupon / Face book a large chunk of the realisable amount so the business only generally gets about 25% of the regular selling price. Saying that Starbucks and other big firms have been able to use this model to stimulate demand and make money on the back end. So could we as a country do the same???

The answer is surprisingly yes in my opinion. So lets assume the country is a private company with a mission to create jobs and make profit – big stretch I know but bear with me. As a marketeer here’s how I’d structure the deal for maximum effect.

The Irish Gov own 25+% of former state airline Aerlingus and the Majority of our hotels have less than 50% occupancy due to the government incentives to create them. Now the Irish Government is effectively broke at the moment, so assuming it was a business with cashflow problems, part of the remit would be not to spend any cash. Impossible you may say? Not really, I’ve done it many times! The government has other assets it can barter with.

Remember the remit create jobs and bring money into the country. To incentivise the airlines and hotels to come into the scheme and give free seats and rooms – the government can barter PRSI credits which is a tax on jobs. In other words the airline and hotels can reduce their outgoing expenses in exchange for using a perishable good that would otherwise not be sold. So for no upfront costs they could get airline seats and places for the tourists to stay, these tourists then spend lots of money while in the country, called the back end potential. Which eventually makes its way to the government in VAT and income taxes. The tourist sector will need to hire more staff to cater and entertain the visitors to the country so more jobs are created. Hotel owners fill their rooms without any upfront investment either, sell the residents food and beverage; all while increasing staff numbers and decreasing PRSI costs.

The beauty of this model, is that is sustainable. Groupon and Facebook deals are geographical target-able. Every week they could target a town or state in a different country. We could turn them off for St. Patrick’s day when demand is high and ramp them up to all of the USA for the quiet January period.

Well, erm, in fact yes! TD Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan is in the papers today for openly being a drug user and pro-legalization. Not only that but he grows his own stash.

Surely another blow to the Irish international reputation today comes when one of the newly elected TD’s who’s job it is to run the country makes statement that he grows cannabis and intends to continue breaking the law. Is this really the attitude we need to steer our ship out of a recession?

If I thought an employee of mine was taking drugs which negatively was effecting the business, there would be (and its in everyone’s contracts) mandatory drug tests. Where does the public sector get off putting up with this non-sense. Regardless of the reasons one might like to legalise cannabis, it is currently is considered production of Class C drugs which is illegal. It’s a black and white issue.

On another note, one of his campaign promises was to give back half of his €90,000+ salary to the tax payer. I’d say this was quite the incentive for people to vote for him, unfortunately he’s changed his mind about this as soon as he was elected and decided to spend it on projects in his constituency. Seriously these are the people we’re relying to help us out of recession??

I can honestly say when I went the the polls this year my attitude was who’s likely to do the least damage. Sad but true.

Ireland has been hit this week by a series of scammers who call unsuspecting people to inform them that their computer or app has a problem, they ask you to visit websites which may disable your antivirus by containing viruses. Please be aware this is not Microsoft and Microsoft never call customers if there is a problem with your computer, especially one you didn’t know you had. If you we’re dupped into give your laser or credit card details, cancel the cards immediately and notify the issuing bank.

At the moment the scam is using the business name CISTRON, but no doubt soon after this post is published they will start using a different name.

The real Mircosoft released this description of the manner in which it describes the rough layout of the calls, based on thousands of complaints.

” * A cold caller, claiming to be a representative of Microsoft, one of its brands or a third party contracted by Microsoft, tells the victim they are checking into a computer problem, infection or virus that has been detected by Microsoft.
* They tell the victim they can help and direct them to a website that then allows the scammers to take remote control of the computer.
* The cold caller will then spend some time on the computer trying to demonstrate where the ‘problems’ are and in the process convinces the victim to pay a fee for a service that will fix the computer.

As with any cold call scam the best proceedure is to hang up the phone and pay absolutely no attention.

So for the last two months i’ve been traveling in Asia and India, as always I find traveling gives a unique opportunity to get ideas and perspective.

One of the big take-aways from this trip is that when needs become musts there is a tendency to do less with more. It’s got me thinking that maybe the role of an entrepreneur is to self discipline and limit resources with the specific intent of gaining the maximize ROI in terms of operational efficient.

Gary Chang is a great example of how limited resources mixed with smarts can be an awesome combination, transferring his 330 square feet apartment – into a 24 room luxury pad!!

Another example of this is Jugaad in India. In the rural communities you see many home made vehicles called Jugaad, these are self made vehicles which run on a pump meant for agricultural use. A family can rely on the engine for their transport, then use the same engine for lighting in their house if needed and when the waters come to pump water around their farm our out of their house if there is a flood.

So the question is do you have facilitates or assets that could be used beyond their current state? Could a night club on Dublins expensive Stephens Green be easily transform into a clothing shop during the day when its not being used, simply by applying some of Garys principles from the video?? Think of the synergy and imagine how much value could be created that at the moment we are just ignoring.

“It’s just the way things are done in our industry”, it’s an easy justification to almost any non-productive practice. Be it why banks need to close their doors before their key target market (the 9 – 5 employed) can utilize their services or why Lawyers operate a burn them out mentality with the not so occasional overnight shift, when it would be more productive to have twice the number of lawyers working half as often (and you’d probably attract all the best ones if you did).

Sometimes the stupidest reasons for businesses start-ups to do anything is the exact reason they do it. “I can’t understand why my competitors do it this way so I’d better go ahead and copy them or I’ll look like I just don’t get it”.

Its also why insurance companies let you fill in big long forms online to get a quote only to deliver you to a page saying they can’t make an online quotation. But you should try their phone support (although it’s not open right now), but hey their computer intranet might have some super secret information not available to the website or they might just waste another 10 minutes of your life…

These examples are so common place we start to not even notice them anymore but it always makes me think of the classic Henry Ford Quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Sometimes we just need to change the rules of the game altogether.

So Christmas is here and for me this means one thing. Christmas FM is back on air!! Since being a teenager I was in love with the world of Radio and although I no longer and involved full time in the industry, every Christmas for the last three years I fall back in love with it.

This year we are broadcasting in 5 regions in Ireland a huge increase as our first year was just in Dublin and the second in only Cork and Dublin. This year we broadcast on the following frequencies:

Dublin – 89.9 | Limerick -105.5 | Cork -106.7 | Galway -89.5 | South East -103.8

We also had the No1 downloaded I-phone App on itunes in Ireland within 2 days of launching it.

Christmas FM is a social enterprise. A business set up to run a temporary radio station for 1 month a year, with all the proceeds going to charity and run by volunteers. There are three simple aims:

1. Make as much money as possible for our chosen charity each year and help raise awareness for the work they do – This year our Charity Partner is Barnardos.
2. Spread a bit of Christmas joy to everyone who wants to tune in.
3. Have a lot of fun with all the volunteers who help make the station happen.

Last year Christmas FM won awards for “PR Excellence for a Non Profit” from the PRCA.

For me it’s a great way to leverage charitable donations, so we raise money for the stations operation costs via the Christmas FM online store and put money forward to cover the operation costs. Then the station itself builds a huge listenership who text message in to have requests and everytime they text €1 goes to the charity directly. Also by raising awareness for the charity (Barnardos’s) good work, our listeners give generously to their cause and we have street teams to raise cash in all the major cities.

People love the radio station, feel under no obligation to give to the charity if they don’t want to. And yet we often get people who find the station from all corners of the world, listen online and then want to give back to a cause that brought them a small piece of Christmas happiness.