Garlic Festival & Borderfest: Making People Matter

Ed Struzik, an IBM guy by day and a Gilroy Garlic Festival 2008 President, is an awesome speaker. He mingled with the audience, encouraged questions throughout his presentation, and virtually demanded we interact with him. The festival is 16 years old, far outlasting the typical festival life cycle of 3-5 years, as told to us earlier today by Dan McConnell. One of the key ingredients, one that was not in place in the beginning, is the combination of support for and accountability by the volunteers and the sponsors.

Imagine, a waiting list to volunteer at the festival. In my world, that is nearly unheard of! Imagine, being a primary fundraising event for nonprofit organizations, and turning away a $25,000 sponsorship from Gillette.

Yet those very restrictions are part of what guide the event. It comes from valuing several components:

• The time and energy of the volunteers
• The time and energy of the volunteer organizers
• The money and attention of the sponsors
• The time and attention of the attendees

Volunteer Secrets
Ed presented this quadrant of attributes that helps them manage their volunteers by matching them with the best fitting tasks and by weeding out those who really aren't up to the task, this year.

Typical Sponsorship
Last year, Calphalon paid $15,000 to provide the pans for two cooking demo's and branded shopping bags at the merchandise booth. Calphalon also included a 10% coupon to the nearby kitchen outlet store, Result: They saw a four-fold increase in foot traffic and sales "went through the roof."

Joe Vera, CEO of Borderfest, says his event does not pay for any city services; instead they have built a strong partnership with the local community. They have over 1000 volunteers, many who come back year after year. "We give them ownership."

• They feature a different country every year. WOrk in advance with the local schools to develop a curriculum so the kids learn in advance, then experience it in person, and, telling their parents and aunties and uncles too.
• Volunteers go to training twice a year. "We want the volunteers to hear the same things we are hearing as we plan the event."
• Signage is very controlled and specific, so we keep the experience for the attendees in sync with the brand.
• Got to be creative and do things differently. "I'm always traveling with a camera to take pictures of ideas that we can implement."
• Give back to the community: $5.2 million impact on the community this year.

Joe's made his presentation available on line here. Awesome Joe! Mahalo.

Tourism: Festivals are Powerful Economical Tools

Dan McConnell DDB Worldwide just spoke here at the Hawaii Tourism Authority Festivals and Events conference I am attending (and twittering and blogging too.)

"Upgrading your web site" is only about 10% of what the internet has to offer today. Yet many of our Hawaii web sites are still web 1.0, not 2.0. So that means we have a long ways to go together to compete effectively. Our speaker also teaches at the University of Washington and encourages CEO's to embrace blogging and social media. Dan's company gets it: the most recent blog post is featured on the home page.

Festivals make your marketing dollars go farther.
We are planning an unconference, Podcamp and Wordcamp combined, that we hope to use to bring together the tech leaders from around the world and connect them with locals to share culture and knowledge. We hope the local business and tourism community will collaborate with us to showcase our beautiful state and akamai kama'aina.

The following points help tell us the full story, as festivals and events draw visitors while the internet is the key player in making it happen.

Secret Draws: Beaches, Outdoor Locations, and Information

• Outside the mainland, beach/resorts are the most popular destinations
• Outdoor venues by far the most popular
• Travelers want local culture; what is a community all about?

What more can I say? We have this here in Hawaii, best in class.

Beach Walks has proven this over and over again. People come by searching for Hawaii and they return over and over again because we share a slice of real life - good and bad weather, local people (not just celebrities), local sites (not just perfectly staged sunsets.)

The Internet is Where It's At. Where Are You At?

• The internet is the most influential method of travel planning; can't play it up enough.
• Most travel planning self--serve online.
• Cable and internet are very important to 25-44 year-old group
• 70% of online users also watch TV while online.
• Internet spend increased over 18% from 06 to 07.

Yet we in Hawaii are behind the curve. How many of our tourism, PR, communications, and advertising execs blog or podcast or twitter? Virtually none. (Please LMK if you do and I don't know about it! I want to give you free buzz and fee hugs.)

This conference did have online payment and registration, but no other internet follow-up. There could have been follow-up to attendees, no reminders or links to maps and parking info, a listing of attendees so we can network with each other.

On-site, no mention of web site resources for the conference. Power point slides were printed and enclosed in our packets; most will be ʻōpala by 6 pm today. They could be posted on online for wider distribution, archival access, to share virally, and to practice sustainable green best practices.

Where is money being spent?

• Festivals and events get about 10% of the total marketing spend
• Traditional advertising dollars going down; cable specialty shows garnering higher rates by delivering a targeted audience.
• Outdoor is the million dollar baby; spending is increasing; people like to get messages while they are outdoors.

Dan's final advice? "Be local, think global. Concentrate on the internet."
Since there are no sessions today focused on building internet skills and awareness for the attendees, I hereby offer my skills as a trainer. If you are in tourism and want to attend a program to see how the internet on steroids can help you, please contact me! i will organize it and guarantee you will leave ready to blow your kids' minds about how tech savvy you became.

The time is now. You can learn to use these tools. I personally guarantee it.

Do you invest more in people or gear?

There was a job posting over on a message list I follow, and it got me to thinking. It seems that lots of companies feel safer and more comfortable about investing in a lot of high end equipment, but then want to find people to work on spec or for very little pay or for fame. As a creator though, I have some different opinions, so I posed the question to a group of colleagues at ad:tech last week. You can listen to their opinions, then make up your own mind - and please tell me what you think!

Here's the original posting for context:

[Company X] is looking for a video engineer to manage, enhance and
operate our state-of-the-art HD multi-camera streaming video studio.
We're switched, have about 3,000 square feet of shooting space, a green
screen, etc. We need someone who wants to chart the course of what a
videoblogging/streaming studio should look be, on a beer budget.

In all fairness, beer is part of the company's culture, so you could take that last comment a couple of different ways. Feel free to leave a comment right in the video as well - you'll just have to create a quick account over at viddler.

Are You Addicted to Big Numbers?

I love math. It has an uncanny way of teasing apart the truth, but alas, it can also just as easily be used selectively to manipulate or create false impressions. And if we get addicted to a certain type of math - tracking eyeballs and households for example - then we can be inadvertently wasting time and money on our way to building brands and selling stuff.

In the old days of business, it was not possible in most cases to communicate with just the people who were a good fit for your products and services. So your agency developed campaigns for you that involved sending out millions of mailers or commercials broadcast to hundreds of thousands of households.

Typical rates of return? Less than one percent. We all know that. But those big campaign numbers are still so addicting. "I need the big numbers in order to get the rates of return to justify this expense." Well, you only want the actual end result numbers.

The point is that now with technology, new media aka podcasting or downloadable media and social networks, you can actually reach the precise people who are most likely to buy from you, on the first round. You don't have to bother interrupting or shouting at gazillions watching a mainstream TV show knowing that in there a few customers (who are probably fast-forwarding the commercials anyway...) You have other more powerful ways of having "private" conversations with your target audience instead of hoping your target finds you in the midst of all that noise.

I call it the phenomenon of having people actually self-enrolling themselves and it's one step faster and juicier than "targeting." Though there were dozens of companies here at ad:tech promising better and better targeting of audiences, wouldn't you rather be able to just show up with your stuff knowing that people had already organized themselves around a related "something"?

I have a couple of examples for you.

iPhone Users and Web Software
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal wrote about a new iPhone software:

Earlier today, we wrote about new software that lets businesses customize Web sites for visitors with iPhones. Our take: Businesses that sell to other businesses shouldn’t rush out and buy this software because iPhones only account for 0.18% of Internet traffic...

That's a really small number. 0.18%. Who wants to bother with such a small, even microscopic group of people? Well what if you knew that iPhone users as a group are high income and highly educated phone users, and as early adopters they are also trend-sensors as well as trend setters? They are the people who have the money and the intellect to detect smart moves in the marketplace and tend to have others who follow them.

Now, not every company wants to meet the smart, rich, trendy, 24-7 movers and shakers, but if you do, iPhone users have already identified themselves as such, and making your web site i-Phone-compatible is an incredibly easy way to say to them: hey you! over here. My company wants to make it easy for you to play with us.

Mainstream Media Placement or Podcast Placement?
There's a local girl band here in Hawaii, MighTyJ. During the production of their album, they set up a blog and filmed a vidcast aka video podcast with their recording engineer, Doctor Trey. When it was time to start promoting themselves, they used a combination of approaches. For one they got booked on the CBS-affiliate morning show (about 25,000 households). After that appearance, there was zero uptick on their web site traffic and no increase in downloads or subscribers to their vidcast.

Then they made an appearance on our daily Internet TV show, Beach Walks with Rox, average daily download of about 2500 or one-tenth the reported size of morning network TV. Their site traffic jumped enormously and they doubled the number of subscribers to their podcast.

So do you want to waste your time contacting 25,000 and get no response or contact 2,500 and get an enormous response?

Welcome to the new new math people. Fall in love with small numbers. Be willing to pay a higher CPM/CPA because other things (technology) and other people (podcast creators) are doing the heavy lifting for you.

Customers are Messy

I am at the SXSW Interactive conference listening to Forrester analyst Charlene Li talking about Social Revolutionaries. She just described how some companies act like they have the perfect customer as a porcelain figurine in the sales and marketing department. They want to sell to this "ideal person" and psychologically resist or ignore real customer data and experiences.

It reminds me of my first business 20 years ago when I owned an exercise club and traveled the world training instructors and setting up health and fitness programs. Most people wanted to teach the most fun classes, to have the most advanced equipment, to work out really hard - because those were the things that drew them into the business.

But there are relatively few people who share that level of interest in health or fitness ability.

To have more customers (and a stronger bottom line as well as bottom) meant to open your arms and embrace the less than perfect bodies. My default message was:

Bring me your bad backs, your bulging bellies, your weak knees, your aching feet, your stressed out minds, and your defeated spirits. I will walk with you side by side and help you rebuild your energy, enjoy your body, and enliven your mind.

This meant I could not do some of my favorite moves: why should I impose that on my customers? It meant having unglamorous people in my club - but these people were far more loyal because I paid attention to them.

Way back then Reebok was ripping a new shoe line "aerobic shoes" and growing enormously, while the Nike board had the following discussion:

Board Member 1: Reebok is selling these aerobic shoes like mad. Should we get into that business?

Board Member 2: What the hell do we want to have anything to do with a bunch of fat women kicking their legs in the air?

Two years later Nike could no longer resist the urge to make money off these fat women and men. They realized there was room to support elite runners and Michael Jordan's along with the masses of people wanting to be healthier and wear a functional shoe as well..

The fact that your customers are making mashup videos about you on YouTube, talking about you on their blogs, and using your products in strange ways, IS THE GOOD NEWS. There is magic and millions in those messes, if you are willing to set aside your own prejudices about who should be using your stuff.

[Read more]

Rent or Buy? How Does a Company Decide to Use New Media

I just tripped across the Custom Content Conference being held this March in New Orleans. It is targeted at brand managers and ad folks who may be considering creating their own serialized web content or new media/social media channels. I thought I'd mention a few of the companies who have already ventured in to this arena, and hopefully you may have some more to add to the list.

Whole Foods has been doing this for about a year with both audio and video podcasts, all of which are produced using in-house talent. Scott Simons, Regional Marketing Director, hosts the Secret Ingredient show. There has been discussion on the Yahoo Videoblogging List about this show and the opportunities to also integrate both freelance-produced content as well as user-generated content. Word on the street is that Whole Food is not interested, preferring to control the show in-house. It's a full service blog-based site, with comments accepted and RSS. Visitors can manually download the flash version of the episode, though that is not playable on most MP3 devices.

American Express last year launched LX.tv which is a combination traditional web site and video blog, using the "new" part of the media and not so much the "social" part of the media. It is Flash-based, which makes the site a bit slow for my tastes, but does allow the designers to create a very rich, urban mood and feel. They use freelance contributors and the episodes focus on restaurants (AMEX merchants) and celebrity/social life. You can get an RSS feed, and in their grab the embed code for each episode, but the flash programming makes that part very cumbersome and the interface is elusive unless you know what the little icons represent. Viewer comments are not accepted.

Starwood Hotels launched The Lobby as a text blog in 2006. It also hires freelance contributors around the world, sharing local life stories and virtually always ending with a link to a hotel or hotel service found in the region. They have started including YouTube-hosted videos made by their contributors. I really like the widget they have in addition to traditional RSS options.

We are in production with a Fortune 100 company to develop a branded show that is educational in nature. Naturally, the goal is to drive sales for this particular service, but the company believes (and so do we) that creating original branded content that is useful and entertaining using new media (aka your own internet TV station) is a terrific, largely untapped opportunity at this time.

There are many other examples of companies who are doing direct ad sponsorships of independently-produced shows. I discussed the Ford - Amanda Across America collaboration in this post with follow-up in this post. Earthlink was an early sponsor of the Washington Post video podcasts and pharmaceutical companies are pursing this as well.

I definitely have my preferences, based on years of experience as a consumer (!) and also the past three years of being on the forefront of creating audio and video content for the web. Keep in mind as well that the criteria will vary depending on your audience and your product/service - there is no cookie-cutter solution here. And if things go wrong, as they did on the Edelman-managed video for Walmart, do like Edelman did and learn from the experience. It's not possible to know it all - and that's the reason for us to keep talking. For those of you attending the HAF Conference tomorrow, we'll be discussing this in more detail.

Getting Clients to Pay On Time

We are a small business. We invoice once a month, for services performed in the previous month. Our payment terms are "due on receipt." Some clients pay accordingly. Others have tended to lump us into the "net-30" category based (my ass-u-mption) on the terms they receive from other vendors. A few others appear to have a "squeaky wheel" folder, aka don't pay until someone is bugging them repeatedly to pay.

Years ago I contemplated putting up a web site called "theydontpay.com" that would serve as a sort of small business Dun & Bradstreet service. Small business owners could post their experiences of companies with a bad record of not paying, so other small companies could check out a potential client in advance. Back in those days, we had a few big names you would think would be an asset to the client list. But in reality, they had a high P.I.T.A. score often based on refusal to pay normal invoices. The concept was very similar to another social media site I recently discovered, RottenNeighbor.com. (I could have some fun there!)

Since I was too busy to do that, and am wary in general of putting out stink eye for all the world to see (I prefer Aloha), I decided instead to offer positive incentives. I've been having fun, but have to report that it has only made the good clients better and not the "bad" clients better. The first month was a 10% discount to the first payment received. We accept and encourage electronic payments so the first payment was delivered in less than 20 minutes by a nonprofit client, NAWBO. I reported that in my next monthly mailing.

The next time I offered a free $10 iTunes Gift Card to anyone who left a comment on our blog. This was to also help our clients get more comfortable leaving blog comments and hey, do any of you not love getting more blog comments?

Guess what? Only one person played. Meredith of HereComesTheGuide.com was stoked, and I extended it some because she actually left two comments! I sent her a 25 gift card that also donates 10% to AIDS relief in Africa. (I hope that link survives outside of my browser cookie settings...)

This month, I am offering a more generic BareFeetShop/Amazon.com $10 gift certificate and link love to all those who tell me about a blog they read and why. (And I even encouraged them to get staff involved.) Early congrats to Andy at Packet Analytics who replied in less than 15 minutes! I'll compile the results here in a few weeks.

Wish me luck. I'd sure like to find out what the tipping point is to get old invoices paid. (You know who you are, though I wonder if you read our blog. Please contact me privately to tell me about your sweet spots.) I am all ears to the rest of you who have fun ways to help clients pay on time and feel so good about it they'll want to do it over and over again.

How much should you budget for monthly website expenses?

Now that most businesses and organizations have a web site, they are used to the line item in the budget for initial development. And for many, getting a site up and running is such a grueling task that they are ready to sit and rest on their laurels for a while after launch! We completely understand; we wish we could take a vacation for a few days after each site launch too.

But really, after launch is when the fun begins. Ideally, your web site has been built so you can play with it as often as you like, and as easily as filling out a web-based form. You are now set free to talk to your customers, to tell the world all about how special you are and why your products and services are the better choice.

As you use your site more, you will run into wanting to do things that you don't how to do or that you don't know if your site can do for you.

1. Training
   • Getting your content to look and speak well is an art that goes far beyond just typing into a form. Photos and graphics for example add tremendous value to a web page, IF they are sized and processed for the web and you know how to add title tags, alignment, and can get the text to wrap around them correctly.
   • Using blog software is easy if you want to do the basics. But once you want to do power blogging, you'll want to know about ping servers, trackbacks, blogrolls, how to find A-list blogs, and so much more.
   • Strategy makes a huge difference too. Using the software to accomplish a marketing or communication goal is not obvious because most people don't have the web in their DNA. It's much more than just remembering to add your web address on all your printed material. It's remembering to blog after you've been invited somewhere and sharing your experience and a public mahalo while linking out to others you met. It's called link love and it's one of the web's power currencies right now.
2. Feature Upgrades
   • Just like anything else you own, if you use it even a little, you are going to want to trick it out. Maybe you want to add an extension or plug-in or social networking application that adds power to your site.
   • Maybe you want to dress it up with a more sophisticated design or add some audio or video.
   • Maybe your competitors started selling directly online, and now you want some e-commerce features.
   • And just like your house or your boat, there is virtually no end to upgrades and widgets you can install to make your site perform better for you.
3. The Unexpected
   • It could be anything right? That's why it is unexpected. Life happens.
   • Even the most user-friendly sites still have a few things that are deep in the code and are better left to your developer to handle for you, like periodic software upgrades.

So bottom line, what should you budget for this ongoing support and maintenance? I think a good rule of thumb is at least 15-25% of initial site development costs to be budgeted over the following 12 months. The less you spend initially, the higher the percentage on average to dedicate to upgrades and support.

It's just no fun (and poor business planning) to build yourself a nice new site and not be able to add a new "work station" or some "grounds maintenance" when the situation arises. More and more, the company web site is becoming its most important communication, sales, and even operations tool. So budget accordingly to keep it humming along nicely.

P.S. To my blogging students: I could have written this post in about half the time if I did not include all the links. But it would have less impact and would have been less useful to you readers who want more resources on these topics. In the process, I actually came across some new interesting blog posts! Just right-click on each link to open it in a new window so you can continue reading here. And I could have saved another 10 minutes by not looking for the confused puppy pic. But how much were you drawn in by that one photo??

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