Laugh Out Loud Funny
March 12, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I have another little business called Simple Assembly Me Hole. We provide an important social service helping people to assemble flatpack furniture they buy (mainly from IKEA).
Sometimes people query how we can charge the large amount of €40 to assemble stuff – well this video – which is laugh out loud funny – should answer that. Poor Max in this video takes 5 hours and a lot of grief to assemble a chest of drawers. We do the same for you, in about an hour, without the bad language and no stress!
Enjoy – but remember, this could be you!
Tags: IKEA furniture assembly
Got Great Idea, Need Some Funding?
March 3, 2010 at 11:45 am
Your Country, Your Call is a competition to ignite imaginations and inspire thinking.
The goal is to pick two truly transformational proposals so big that, when implemented, could secure prosperity and jobs for Ireland. Proposals that could help change the way we do things, allow businesses to grow, employment to be created and prosperity to flourish.
Have you got one of those ideas floating around your head?
Visit the site, become a member and you can put forward your idea. If you haven’t got one, you can always do the Irish thing and knock the ones that are there… oh sorry, I mean support the ones that are there!
While it says on the site that there are 58 days left, it doesn’t say anywhere what the actual closing date is. So maybe that’s a bit of a hurdle to sort the maths/science heads from the rest of us. It also doesn’t say who’s coughing up the €200,000 cash – is it us again? The tax payers? Some slush funded quango? Or are the public sector being asked to take another pay cut to fund it? Now there’s an idea….!
Tags: Your Country Your Call
Crystal Ball Gazing (2009-2014)
December 13, 2009 at 1:48 pm
What better time to cast our minds into the future than coming to the end of the year? Forrester’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 – 2014 makes an interesting read. The US has always been a couple of years ahead of Ireland in online terms. That gap had been narrowing and anecdotal reports from Google Ireland were that the gap had narrowed to about 2 years. Recent economic conditions and the resulting freeze on investing in new and emerging technologies here has seen the gap widen again to about 3 years. However, with the focus on the “Smart Economy” who knows what changes that will bring?
204 US marketers were surveyed in March 2009 by market research company, Forrester, about their marketing plans from now until 2014. I’ve taken the time out to read and absorb the report. Here is my summary with own opinions included (of course!):
Wholesale shift in budget away from traditional to interactive
60% of marketing budgets are moving away from traditional advertising. Kimberly Clark Worldwide Huggies campaign bypassed TV completely to invest in digital media where new moms hang out. Expect to see more of this kind of thing.
What’s been hit?
What To Look Out For
Interactive marketing spend will reach $53 billion by 2014. Where’s this money going to be invested?
Search Dominates Spend
Accounts for 59% of online budgets. It’s expected to grow at 15% per annum to $32billion by 2014. It makes sense – 85% of online consumers search from their desktops at least once a week. If you’re marketing online, search is the first port of call for being found by a wide audience. Mobile search expected to increase – 11% have searched from their mobiles in the first three months of 2009 alone. The search market is growing through expanded keyword search strings. E-Consultancy noted in its Best Practice Guide for Search that as we become more used to search, we are searching using more and more keywords. So the supply of search is also growing.
Email Marketing Continues Healthy Growth
97% use or plan to use email marketing this year and this will continue to grow. Email is enjoying something of a renaissance as marketers grow lists with the promise of ‘green marketing’, as money is shifted away from direct marketing to email marketing, and as effectiveness is improved with linkages to other channels such as user generated ratings and reviews. Sovereign Bank in the US increased its email marketing spend from 10-15% in 2009, and completely skipped the DM piece in its student campaign.
Social Media Fixed Firmly in the Mix
Poster child social media shows the steepest growth of any channel (but remember it’s coming from a lower base) to 34%. Forecast spend on integrated campaigns and agency fees will top $3 billion by 2014. Social media is growing into an established part of the marketing mix – 64% of marketers already build social media apps and another 22% will by the end of 2009. When 42% of online adults and 55% of online youth want to engage with their favourite brands through social media applications, the demand is clearly there. It’s still early days yet for social media in terms of types, tools, metrics and benchmarks. Expect to see more engagement in the coming years and not just reach. Forrester foresees that portable identities will enable users to move their social profiles from site to site. So anyone engaged in that space is on to a winner.
Display Ads – Rich and PPC
Recession minded marketers prefer pay-per-click buy over impression-based ones (58% of budgets). Expect this trend to continue even after recession. But we’re still loving our rich media formats which are currently accounting for one-third of budgets; expect this to grow to 45% by 2014. (That means more of those annoying eircom ads where the ‘actors’ wave at us and annoyingly distract us as we browse).
Online Video
Pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll are sold in exactly the same way, so you’d expect the old television-centric agencies to shift their focus into online video anytime soon. With awareness and recall of nearly 300% being achieved by P&G for Charmin pre-roll ads, it would be strange not to see trad agencies dive into this space. The 2007 Forrester forecast predicted widespread adoption of online video and mobile marketing by the end of 2009. This hasn’t yet happened – largely due to the recession and resource-constrained marketers not wishing to trial untested media. But Forrester (2009) predict that online video will kick off big style in mid 2010 following by mobile marketing in early 2011 as marketers emerge from recession. Does that mean that the gap will widen ever more between US and Ireland if they come out of recession first and we lag even further due to the endemic nature our woes?
Mobile Marketing
Reminds me of Smithfield in Dublin – we’re still waiting for it to happen! Mobile marketing is one of the most anticipated, least adopted channels. Why? Complexity around metrics, marketers and carrier relationships, plus limited use of data by consumers have all put the skids on mobile to date and stifled adoption. When the recession is over and marketers are spending on newer channels again, Forrester expect mobile to take off.
Why? There will be increased use of data as devices improve, apps proliferate, and mobile operator competition brings data prices down. We’ll see more strategic apps and less of the gimicks that tend to crowd out the app store currently.
Forrester say that mobile maturity will see some efforts being made at introducing standards – but I don’t think so. We’ve had email for close to 15 years and are nowhere near standards amongst email clients (which is why I support the Email Standards Project and you should too!) – I don’t see the disparate mobile providers and handset manufacturers working together on standards as easily as Forrester expect. But I’d be happy to be wrong!
So What Does It All Mean For Us?
The main lessons I’m taking from this is to continue as we are. First step to promoting your business online is to invest in search and make sure that your business can be found by thge 85% who use search to look for your product. The report refers to US marketers investing more heavily in SEO as PPC gets expensive. I’ve been banging on this mantra for quite some time now. While PPC is great in the short-term, the click costs can be quite high – when you add up what you’re paying Google over a year or two, it makes more economic sense to invest in a listing on the left hand side.
Email marketing continues to bring great results. Whether it’s driving traffic to your site for a sale or promotion, or simply brand-building, keeping your business in front of their minds – it works! It’s been the most regular producing, low risk retention strategy for years. It makes sense as majority of people have emails. Emails are not dying out as had been predicted. In fact, we should soon be seeing the growth of the Social Inbox - fusing the best parts of our inbox as we now know it with control and immediacy of social media apps. Long live email marketing!
Early days for social media – my perception of it in Ireland is that 2009 was indeed a year in which many jumped on the bandwagon – or at least familiarised themselves enough to be ready to jump in 2010. But the message I’m sending time and time again is that social media is for life, not just for Christmas. We’ve all been to the seminars on the amazing results that can be achieved, some of us may understand that the creative costs aren’t that high compared to other media. But it’s the ongoing resourcing and dedicating of time to engage with the people we’ve tried so hard to reach – that’s the bit that costs money and that, sadly, is missing in many cases. Don’t just take my word for it. Seth Godin puts it like this:
Dating is a process. So is losing weight, being a public company and building a brand.
On the other hand, putting up a trade show booth is an event. So are going public and having surgery.
Events are easier to manage, pay for and get excited about. Processes build results for the long haul.
Tags: email marketing trends 2010, internet marketing trends 2010, social media trends 2010
Flashmob Friday
November 27, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Ireland’s largest flashmob to date took place in Cork earlier this month. Well organised and oh so Irish. Grey sky, warm winter coats. Lots of girls looking sort of embarrassed and flicking their hair, but still doing it! I love Flashmobs. They make me feel all emotional and in love with humanity again. I think I might make flashmobs a regular feature here on Fridays – what do you think?
Thanks to Piaras Kelly whose blog I found this on.
Tags: flashmob cork
RTE Asks Us What We Think
March 18, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I dislike RTE because:
- Presenters way past their sell-by dates get paid exorbitant amounts to annoy us. Same presenters wouldn’t be employable outside of the state broadcaster. And why is Lucy Kennedy everywhere? I don’t know anyone who finds her amusing or even talented.
- The website uses Windows Players for video content. Mac users are unable to access. This flagrant ignorance really annoys me.
- They don’t take risks like UK channels do. I’m not talking ground-breaking risks, but just mild ones like actually allowing 20-somethings write comedy rather than 40 year old men who know nothing but just happen to be on the Montrose payroll (The English Class, Leave it to Mrs O’Brien, The Big Bow Wow anyone?)
But giving credit where it’s due, RTE is finally doing something that should be applauded. Acknowledging that ‘television is changing’ they put out a call 5 months ago for film makers to put forward new and creative ideas for drama. The finalists are now over on the Storyland part of the site and we the people of Ireland can vote for the ones we’d like to see produced into a second episode.
Amazingly, the videos can be viewed by all! They play as Flash videos. Now why can’t the good people behind Storyland have a word with their colleagues over on the main site?
You’ve got until 5pm on Monday 30 March to cast your vote. Go now.
I don’t want to sound like a whinger here, but the few I’ve looked at all look crap.
- Happy Slapper is just 29 seconds long and doesn’t reveal enough
- The intro to Pub World is too long, it took about 2 minutes (out of 4) before anything actually happened. Lots of overacting man looking surprised in pub before that.
- Chez Spuds‘ description reads well, but I stopped it after 10 seconds as it looks like another attempt at humour not working
- Same for Rental Boys. I like the concept, but unfortunately it’s another bad example of stereotypes.
I applaud RTE for this ground-breaking attempt at user generated content. But it’s just not doing it for me.
PS – I don’t hate all of RTE’s stuff. Last year’s drama ‘Raw’ was worth staying in for. Excellent stuff.
Tags: RTE Storyland
Happy St Patricks Day!
March 16, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Thanks to Declan for reminding me about The Big Geraniums. They were part of the soundtrack to my college times. This is for all the Irish diaspora overseas. Don’t be home sick. Be happy. And make sure you at least get out to lunch on St Patricks Day. In fact, if you work with someone who’s Irish and you live in London, Sydney, New York, or Chicago, it is your duty to take that person out for a pint at lunchtime.
Tags: St Patricks Day, The Big Geraniums
Feedback on Web Writing Training
October 15, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Please take a couple of minutes to complete the feedback survey.
Tags: survey
Contact Us, CallBack, Live Chat
February 14, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Arriving back on Irish shores in 2001 from the customer-service rich land of Australia, there were a number of things that I’d taken for granted that had to be let go:
- Service with a smile
- Eye contact when purchasing something
- Expecting serving staff in convenience stores to actually bother to say the amount owed and then ‘thank you’
- Thai food without water chestnuts
On the plus side, there were many things that I was pleased to welcome into my life:
- Ability of most people to remember my name and not automatically abbreviate it
- Being able to pronounce the letter R correctly for the first times in ages. As in “or” and not ‘ar’
- Being able to speak in my natural accent and not having to endure the monotony of questions which goes a little something like this:
- You’re from Ireland? Yes.
- My grandmother came from Ireland. [Feigns interest] Oh really?
- I’ve never been to Ireland but I’ve always wanted to go…
- Not being surrounded by insecure people whose cultural focal point is the plastic side of Los Angeles
Perhaps the single biggest thing I had to let go of in the online environment was the response time expected from contact us. My experience was to ensure that all enquiries to a website be replied to within 24 hours. When I started working in Ireland, I’d often be faced with looks of disbelief when I made this suggestion. So I let it go, and concentrated instead on eradicating ‘click here’ from Irish websites.
I’ve noticed recently that not only has this changed and in fact, many commercial sites are replying within 24 hours, but many have also added ‘live chat‘. Real time chat with their people. You click the live chat box, type in your question or query and a person on the other end should reply. Simple. Amazing and it works!
Or for businesses that don’t have too many staff sitting on computers at the other end, call back is a great option. You want a question answered, you don’t want to wait 24 hours for a reply to contact us, so you hit ‘call me back button’, type in your name and number, and magically a member of staff will call you back in a couple of minutes. We’ve added this feature to some recent sites, have a look, but please don’t click unless you’re interested in Fleet Management or Fashion: Merrion Fleet and MacLeod Agencies.
Sadly though there are some cases of where call back / live chat is horribly wrong – like on the hosting company, HostIreland.com website for example. You’d think that a company of their nature (web-based, ‘tech savvy’) would get it right but no. This morning, after spending 15 minutes on hold on their phone line, I clicked the link to LIVE CHAT, filled in my details, and was hoping for a response.. but no. Those idiots have actually put a contact us form on their site posing as live chat. I don’t know why they have done that.
It’s -100% customer service points when you pretend to offer something.
Another case of the basics being done badly is the Bord Gais website. Designed and developed by Strata3, so it can’t have been cheap. It looks lovely. But I’m still waiting on a reply from Bord Gais from 3 weeks ago. I used the contact us button to ask a question – why do I not receive any notice in relation to direct debits? Bills arrive with huge amounts and my bank account is hit the same day, or in some cases, a day earlier. Doesn’t give a girl a chance to prepare…
What’s your view? Are Irish sites finally coming into the customer service era? Does increased competition mean more service? Does a slowing economy make us more hungry for converting enquiries into sales? And why oh why do our public service sites lead the way in terms of how not to do it?
Differences between Ireland and America
June 14, 2007 at 9:06 am
Am back from the US and I’ve been thinking about some of the different perceptions I observed.
- I’m always looking to the US when it comes to online developments. With a substantially larger market, there appears to be a greater take-up of new ideas and with larger budgets, there is also a richness in media that sometimes budgets don’t permit here… At the same time, most of the Americans I met felt that we Europeans are rocking when it comes to online and mobile. Many were shocked that I held them in such high regard. (But those same people were also shocked to find out that the total population of Ireland is less than the size of New York!) So it’s all eyes on each other from both sides of the Atlantic.
- Unlike the popular conception – I found New Yorkers to be extremely polite and courteous. They know how to share the sidewalk with countless others. And they all stopped and helped when I was asking for directions. Dublin on the other hand? You wouldn’t want to slow down and ask for help while crossing College Green. We don’t have as much time for each other as we once did.
- I also become keenly aware of a difference in perception in terms of what it means to be a worker. In Europe, I believe that we have a fairly high regard for ourselves. We are the talent that makes the business function. As such , we ought to be valued, trained, and treated well. Maybe that’s just Ireland and the fact that we’ve been at full employment for many years now? In the US, I found that the popular conception was that the employer has the power. There are so many others out there who would fight for your job. You’ve therefore got to give it your all, do NOT take long holidays, don’t rock the boat, put your head down and be glad of the work.
- Sadly, I noticed that there is a culture of fear in New York. The police conduct random bag checks in the subway, the language used in public messaing is all about ‘keeping you safe’ rather than, for example, ensuring you have a pleasant journey. I was discussing this with friends on Sunday and Julie said it reminded her of the movie, “V for Vendetta”. In that film, the way to create power is to make your people live in fear. Then you can be seen to keep them safe. I know that 9/11 happened since I was last in New York, but that fear thing is the only thing I didn’t like on my recent trip there. (Weak dollar for shopping, good sushi on every corner, strong cocktails I loved!)
Apple Users Take Note
May 23, 2007 at 7:14 am
A couple of weeks back, we had some ‘technical problems’ which meant that one of our trusty machines had to be sent off to hospital. Of course we back up our data. But what does one do when you’re 1 laptop down in a busy but small office? ie. we don’t have banks of computers on which to hop onto.
What we did was get in touch with Nostra Systems. I met them through the Dublin Chamber of Commerce networking evenings which have generated rather a lot of good contacts and business for me in the short space of time I’ve been a member.
Nostra Systems rented me out a high spec massive screen Apple mac. At a very reasonable weekly rate, this beautiful piece of design not only solved our problem, but looked good in the office too! Rather like needing to get in some hired help, and they deliver a super model (but not Naomi Campbell).
When I got a call last night from someone whose Mac Book Pro had just started acting up, I passed them on to Nostra. For all Apple users out there who might sometimes feel a little alienated or penalised for having taste, take note of Nostra!
