Courtesy of Fortune
The situation was tense. Time was truly of the essence.
A Nordstrom housekeeping staff at Connecticut found a customer bag together with her receipt and flight itinerary in the parking lot…
Author: coolerinsights
Sweet Strawberries at Beerenberg Farm
Located in the picturesque Hahndorf area just a short drive away from Adelaide in South Australia, Beerenberg Farm is a delightful strawberry farm which is a favourite haunt for lovers of that red and juicy fruit. Other than allowing tourists like us to pick strawberries and taste them out in the fields, it also offers lots of items like jams, chutneys, dried fruits, nuts and other products for sale. What’s cool is that this farm is also quite social media savvy, with a facebook page, youtube channel, flickr page and a link to a website offering cooking tips and recipes.
Here are some photos of our delicious adventure with our favourite Fragaria species, which apparentally is a false fruit. Well, they sure don’t taste fake to me!
Striking a pose in front of the Strawberry shopfront.
This Is How You Should Use Your Brain In Marketing
In the hyper-competitive world of marketing and sales, it isn’t sufficient just to push out an ad or a sales letter and hope and pray for a response.
Consumers and corporate buyers are increasingly spoilt for choice. Selling based on price alone is no longer sustainable in the long haul.
Free Entry to 13 Museums on 31 May!
International Museum Day or more affectionately IMD’09 is upon us yet again. This year’s nine-day celebration revolves around the theme of ‘Holiday Fun at Home’ and features 40 activities that promises lots of sensory pleasures for children of all ages. Specially catering to kids and families, it features a wonderful smorgasbord of entertaining yet enriching activities specially designed to pique the sense of wonder and curiosity of your little ones.
Even as I write, a couple of exciting programmes and events are already ongoing. Do check out Yesterday.sg to keep updated on what’s happening at our museums this year. Read all about Singapore’s last leopard, participate in the various children’s programmes at our national museums, or take note of the blow by blow account of what you can do in a week. Some of the cool stuff you can do this year include meeting Phua Chu Kang and his family at the Singapore City Gallery, learn about environmental sustainability at the Marina Barrage and Newater Visitor Centre, or reliving the genius and artistry of the legendary Renaissance artist cum inventor Leonard da Vinci!
Just in time for the opening of Angels and Demons (and Night at the Museums 2) I suppose… 😉
Is Social Media Marketing a Myth?
Is social media marketing just a myth? (courtesy of Snap Trends)
I love dabbling in social media in its various forms, be it blogging, facebooking, twittering, youtubing (occasionally), plurking and flickring.
Digital conversations are addictive, and I can spend an entire day just reading blogs, following tweets, retweeting, commenting on facebook photographs, chatting on MSN, uploading photographs on Flickr and so on.
Chicken Eating Crocodiles at Dundee’s Wildlife Park
Located off the Murray River just an hour away from Adelaide, Dundee Wildlife Park is a charming little old-school zoo focusing primarily on native Australian birds, reptiles and animals. A boutique-sized establishment catering largely to families and kids, it occupies a fairly small area and can be easily covered in an hour and a half (or less). This privately-owned establishment includes a restaurant and hotel too, so one can literally eat and sleep with the animals (ala Doctor Dolittle). As this was the first wildlife park that my family and I visited, Ethan was naturally all excited about it.
The theme for this visit? “Food Glorious Food!” and you will see why as we go on.
Looking fairly nondescript, with a simple and disarming facade, Dundee Wildlife Park was quite a “no-frills” park although prices are not exactly cheap at $10 per adult and $7 per kid.
Emotional Marketing the Hallmark Way
Courtesy of AZ Quotes
“People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” – Zig Ziglar
This quote from the legendary sales guru Zig Ziglar aptly describes the world of marketing, where it is vital to reach the heart in order to generate a buying response.
While the rational part of us would sort through the price, features, and logical needs we have for a particular product or service, it is the emotional part – the feelings, benefits, wants and beliefs – which determine the purchase decision.
Seth Godin Talks about Tribes
One of my favourite marketing gurus Seth Godin shares his ideas on how tribes are changing the world, community by community, in a grassroots evangelistic sort of way. In the age of social media with its platforms and tools – blogs, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, Plurk etc – the barriers to entry in starting any movement is considerably lowered. The democratisation of publishing and content production means that anybody can leverage on these tools to create pockets of influence wherever they are.
While not every one of us can be as convincing or charismatic a speaker as Seth, his speech does give us much food for thought on what we can do as marketers, as communicators, as publicists and as leaders. Perhaps it is time for us to start our own movements today?
PS – I just heard from Jackie Huba (via Twitter) of Church of the Customer that Seth’s looking for stories for his next edition of Purple Cow. Sounds like a great way to get your local stories of extraordinary products and businesses in …. if you can meet Seth’s high standards! I will start to consider some options now…
Mainstream Media Still Rules Online
Still the most influential website based on links
Just had a quick glance at the Technorati Attention Index from Technorati’s blog. This is a list of the 50 top sites with the highest number of blogs linking to them in the past 30 days.
Other than YouTube, which has continued to surge ahead largely due to the immense interest in its ever growing pool of user-generated videos, it is interesting to note that mainstream media related websites are still the most influential in the list. While American websites have dominated the list, several British content providers like the Guardian, Telegraph and BBC News have received attention. Many of the media firms are also concentrated on a few cities (or megacities) in the United States like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, and Houston.
This shows several things about social media influence:
1) The lure of sight, sound and motion (sisomo according to Kevin Roberts) is still influential, whether online or offline.
2) Mainstream media players still wield incredible influence on social media debates and discussions.
How Anticipatory Marketing Helps You Win Customers
Can you deliver what your customers want – before they even ask? (Designed by Freepik)
Remember the last time you visited a store which offered you a cup of warm tea on a cold day?
How did that make you feel? Warm, welcomed, and ready to reward your hosts, I bet.