Nowadays pets are big business and pet owners are willing to lavish big money on their pets. I was delighted to hear this evening on the radio, friend, business personality and travel journalist, Karen Creed, talking about her latest project. Characteristically entitled the Ruff Guide, Karen has teamed up with Pedigree® to Publish a Guide to for Dog lovers to take weekend breaks and bring their beloved family member with them. It tells you where to go for great wakls and what pet friendly hotels Better still they are giving away the guide free of charge.
To get a free copy of the JointCare+ RUFF GUIDE, you can write to: Pedigree JointCare+ RUFF GUIDE, PO Box 7808, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin or e-mail JointCare(at)edelman.com.
Congrats to Karen on her success and it got me thinking about how pet products has become such an emerging business, with massive potential. Take Mollys.ie, under the leadership of entrepreneur Claire B (another entrepeneur who i have the privlidge of calling a friend), which in the past two years gained huge success and a loyal clientel. In a business where the customers are buying a product that must be filled with love, it’s not a business that you can throw money and make a success – i think you’ll all agree the labour of love shines through when you look at Mollys.ie or visit their store.
Its a dogs life and its great to see some of their loving owners have their more than over due success.
One company that has got its marketing bang on the money in the last few months is Guinness. The last two promotions i’ve been aware of have really demonstrating that whoever is now running the show knows the three elements that makes any marketing campaign.
1. Know your customer 2. Know your customers life time worth to the company. 3. Know your customers expectations of perception.
In Guinness’s case they had a particularly hard challenge, in my opinion, as they needed a perception re-adjustment to reposition the brand to a changing market place.
Several weeks ago Guinness hit their first home run by offering free branded poker kits. They made it simple to get and did complete risk reversal. They even beat customer expectations with a few free samples of their products, well timed apart, so that frequency was brought into effect. This way the brand was constantly in the homes of potential clients and when the poker kit was in use the brand was re-inforced with the product in a comfort situation – Their homes. Possibly the best product placement done in years.
Then the next phase of their marketing, this evening, in one of Dublins better bars i was impressed to see the Guiness promo team out in force, with another well thought out promotion. To create a habit you have to use repetition and with tonight starting off a three consecutive week promotion, where each week customers much buy a guinness (there by not devaluing the brand) to get a reward, which changes each week. This week they severed Gourmet burgers, with special guinness brand mustard. I think if you partake all three weeks you get a hoody; again re-enforcing the repetition to create a habit.
So i take my hat off to the Marketeers behind the concepts, its rare marketing guru’s get praise, usually they just get buckets of money.
Probably the one of the two most benefical things I did when going through 3rd level education was to focus on learning everything I could about successful entrepreneurs (the other was becoming a lecturer for a year). One sure way to learn about business is to find out what makes great entrepreneurs great, then do that.
In UCD, NOVA bring in some big name entrepreneurs to talk to the business community and students. I remember sneaking off half way through lectures to make it to these talks, then do my best to hang around after words and try to have a two minute chat with each of them.
These Jems of lecturers / seminars are avaiable FREE online – its one of the most powerful uses of the internet in my opinion. The files are about 500mb so their very big and my hope is that should Nova get the traffic they deserve they will still be able to continue providing such a great service with the backing of the Enterprise boards.
Almost a year since it took place, this morning i listen/watched (for the second time) Stephen Flood, Managing Director, Gold Investments . If you take into consideration the current price of Gold (hint – its up roughly 42% since he advised to go into it!) and his economic forecast and insight. I think that alone should make you want to download these FREE seminars.
Reading the Irish Times article on how Irish customers spend 31% MORE on branded goods.
Prices have been adjusted for VAT and excise, so whats going? So who’s fault is it? Well actually its our own fault.
As the economy slows down in a natural re-adjustment of market dynamics, Irish customers are starting to think twice about just forking over their cash without shopping around. More and more people who see goods they like in retail stores turn to online providers to find the same items at what can often be a substancial discount.
While in Stephens Green the other day i noticed a greedy retailer that had a price tag 200% above the RRP of the Item in question. So should the Irish public cry foul? Well not really, market dynamics dictate that a retailer will sell an item at whatever price they can get. The Irish consumer needs to talk with their wallet. Make it hurt the retailers in their pockets. Shop around for bargains, choose items on specials, its something looks expensive look online and then buy it there. Better still, if you need it now go to the store manager and tell them you can get the same product online cheaper (so them a print out) and would they be willing to beat the price to get your business. Any store manager worth their salt would prefer a sale with a small profit margin over no sale and i’d go as far as saying a majority will give you a discount if pushed.
Problem is we, as a nation, need to grow some goolies and ask them for it.
skyhighatrist Put together this little demo of some of the tips and tricks that he does on the CDJ’s. I’m planning on doing one up which is more appropriate for the course i teach but for now have a gander at this one and check him out on youtube – Which btw is a great resource to pick up the basics of DJing.
One thing that never fails to shock me is bad customer service from large pubic companies. There’s no faster way to loose customers than to cause problems for them and then do every thing you can to annoy them instead of resolving them.
This morning a collegue was “over quota” on his e-mails, so i rang the person responsible for my account in Eircom only to be told by an answering machine he’s on holidays for two weeks. No call someone else who’s looking after his clients, just he’s on holiday for two weeks so leave a message. The blood warms.
I ring customer support. After two minutes of automated talk which is clearly a technology not yet fit for use in business as it takes three times longer than touch tone call direction, the machine tells me to turn off and then turn on my computer – Then HANGS UP. (The fault is with their system) The blood starts to simmer.
I try again, this time i get through to someone – who gives me a different number for “that” kind of support – no i’ll direct your call, just go ring someone else. Bubbles start to appear in the blood stream.
So i ring someone else, more annoying super slow voice direction – which needs to clarify every answer i give. “Thanks for calling Eircom… Oh for “that kind of support” you’ll need to ring 1530…. Blood Boils. Look there is no way i’m ringing a premium rate number to fix a problem you have caused, can you please give me the direct line. “What do you mean sir?” Look i’m already paying for a service and your not delivering so you wont be profiting (75c a min) from your mistakes.
So the guy decides maybe he will try to help. Well Sir your “over quota” so thats why your mails wont deliver – he says in an informative way as if he had dignosed the problem rather than just regurgitated word for word my complaint and hope the problem would also suffice as the solution. The blood starts overflowing, my PA silently leaves the room, don’t get me wrong i’m not shouting or outwardly angry at the person on the phone (she just knows when i’m inwardly mad) – the blood boils at the fact Eircom is a somewhat successful company. They hire consultants etc and no one told them – hey why not offer a good reliable service?
So i try to figure it out for the guy – “well is there a package upgrade so we can still get e-mails” – “there could be one in a few months time. In the mean time just don’t go over quota again.” I think – you mean just try not to opt for Eircom again. Honestly they could put ads for Digiweb/Irish Broadband on their hold music and it wouldn’t increase the number of people that leave Eircom due to Customer Focus Issues.
A quick update on the Dj Course Starting this Sat in the Digital Media Centre. Tim Harrington AKA Tiny Tim has agreed to guest lecturer for this course 10th of May. Which make the full line up for the teaching staff – Garv Rigby (Vibe Records CEO and Star DJs founder – day 2 only), Tim Harrington (one of Irelands biggest name DJs), Kevin (DMC – Day 1 onlly) and Myself (Ronan O’Brien) as the host.
Only one place left but i believe Star DJs are organising the next course already – [email protected] – for more next available dates.
Every now and then you come across a million dollar idea and (in a ‘Satori’ kinda way) wonder why no one else has ever bothered cashing in on such a simplistic concept. So if there’s any of you techies in the printing / computing field this one is for you, do us all a favour and make yourself rich.
In the same way that DYSON revolutionised the Vacum cleaner (over taking a brand that had such a strong choke hold that vacuming is still known as Hoovering in many homes because Hoover at one stage were so market dominant). I propose that in less than two years printer cartridges will go the way of the “hoover bag”.
Seriously why do we as consumers need printer cartridges??? I get why they want to sell them to us – few companies even breakeven on the printer itself but do so to get cash cows in the form of printer cartridges. But when you see these little refill printer cartridge shops all over the place all offering to re-inject ink into a cartridge surely some one should just bit the bullet and come up with a printer that you just poor the ink into – its a million dollar idea with severe market changing implications.
The mechanics would be fairly simplistic so don’t tell me it cant be done, the only reason it hasnt been done is the same reason you couldn’t legally download movies untill recently. Industrial laziness. You can be sure that a market disruptor will lauch the product in the not too distant future and everyone will scramble to get one. Major first mover advantage to be had in terms of the market positioning if branded and marketed correctly. Certainly i find myself changing cartridges once a week and its actually unnecessary.
In the next installment of Hed Kandi’s mix CD releases comes the Hed Kandi – World Series Sanfrancisco Summer release for 2008.
It’s a good realease, i’d probably rate it a 7/10 but considering the way hed kandi has been going lately its a step in the right direction. One thing that really got to me about this release is that they’ve turned into indian givers. The Promo CD was RUINED with a VO roughly TWICE per track letting you know it was a “promotional Hed Kandi Release” – whats the point in distributing a CD to Industry influencers and then purposely making them enjoy it less. The repetitive VO sounds like a jingle from my days as a kid doing pirate radio, i don’t know what they were thinking, possibly that they could send out promo’s and tease DJ’s into buying it! Well thats not gonna work.
Over all a well mix CD, nothing amazing or over exciting about it, but nice to listen to near a pool.
Hed Kandi do get a little kudos though with the a Savage release from Ricki-Lee – Wanna little of this getting its general release later this month. 16th of May for the digital release and 23rd for the full release. Sundrenched Vocal house in its top form, guaranteed summer anthem. 9/10
As Part of the course we’ll be primarily focusing on the CDJ 1000 mk111 series – this is because 95% of the clubs use these and i’m a big believer in teaching on industry standard equipment. However i’m sure some of you (students / readers) will be using the more affordable option – the pioneer CD800’s. So here’s a few tips and tricks, again thanks to DJ Resource.
