The highlight of the conference was without a doubt the presentation from Jeremy Gutsche, Chief Trend Hunter at TrendHunter.com, who said “Complacency will be the architecture of your downfall”. He told a story about Smith Corona, at one time the largest typewriter manufacturer. They saw the rise of the personal computer but essentially said “there will always be people who need a typewriter”. They are now bankrupt.
That made me think. How many times do you hear somebody say “yeah, but people still want to…..”. All the time right? These words by itself is telling. It acknowledges that a change is inevitable, but combined with the refusal to accept it and the argument that change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s based on having comfort with the status quo, the fear of the new and perceived risk associated with it. That’s not leadership, that’s complacency.
From now on, whenever somebody says something like “yes, but people still want to…”, please respond with “complacency will be the architecture of you downfall.”
We finished Canada-e-Connect yesterday. I had a great time at the conference. Jens and his team did a fantastic job putting it together. The speakers were excellent, the award show very cool (and short). It was nice to take home the Gold metal for best innovation in the public sector for our HelloBC Blogs website. The people attending diverse and from all over the country. I’ve met a whole range of new and interesting people. The Tips from the T-List book turned out great, although I probably would have run a spell check over my entries if I would have know (oops, blame it on my Dutch roots).
The thing that I’ve taken away from the conference is that the ongoing evolution of the internet and impact on our culture, consumer behaviour and travel and tourism is something that requires consistent attention and should be an ongoing priority.
We’re looking for a video host. We’ve been primarily doing this viral. I posted about it last week. You can imagine what happened next; audition videos on YouTube!
Note: I’m not part of the selection process.
I don’t get it. Why do so many destinations build specific websites for specific campaigns? Are they seriously thinking that consumers are only interested in the content specific to the campaigns theme? Let me give an example. Queensland has a campaign called Outback Holidays. It has a campaign website with a unique URL; adventureoutback.com.au. It has a lot of content about the Outback. This Dinosaur Trails information is really cool, for example.
Queensland also has it’s regular consumer website, queenslandholidays.com.au. It’s a great website with a lot of great information. But is doesn’t have the nice Dinosaur page I found on the campaign site. But it DOES lists all kinds of tourism operators including Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways, also very cool. This information didn’t make it on the campaign website though.
There is a link buried somewhere on the campaign website to the main website, but good luck finding it. I’m picking on Queensland because I happen to know their website well, but it happens everywhere and I-don’t-get-it. My assumption is that there is some co-op marketing deal where partners who buy in are featured exclusively on the campaign site. There’s probably also an agency involved who produces content exclusively for the campaign site.
Imagine Amazon building a campaign website to promote the new Harry Potter book without any references to its main website or other products. And you can only buy the book on the campaign site, and the campaign site is completely disconnected from the main Amazon website. It would never happen because it doesn’t make any sense.
I’m sure there are a lot of things we can do better on our website (and I’d love to hear it), but when it comes to campaigns, I think we’ve figured it out. Campaigns motivate a consumer to start learning about or planning a trip to British Columbia. There might be a campaign landing page to follow through on a specific call to action, but after that, we put the consumer at the best place of the website to start planning their trip. And what do we see? Somebody that responded to a golf message could be looking at our ski pages next, or at a spa operator, or whatever else is relevant and of interest to that consumer. Just because the consumer responded to a golf message, doesn’t mean she’s not interested in anything else. Limiting information based what motivated the consumer to visit is a missed opportunity.
I’m having an interesting Facebook wall-to-wall debate with my friend Liddie about mass marketing. I’m going to post my latest rant here for everybody to enjoy. Feel free to join in.
Mass advertising is like flinging things at a wall and hoping something will stick. That makes it too often an annoying, intrusive, obnoxious, irrelevant, unwanted waste of my time (with the exception of the mini-wheats commercial, they should make a show out of that).
Consumers go through every means to block, skip or ignore commercials. If I’m not looking for dish washing soap, I don’t want to hear about it. Companies should focus on creating great products instead of trying to sell crap with interruption marketing. People will tell each other about great products, that’s how you generate awareness.
Look at the fasted growing brand in the world: Google. Never ran any mass advertising campaign. Second fasted growing brand: Zara. Also no on mass. Fifth fasted growing brand: Starbucks, virtually no mass. Third and fourth fasted growing brands: Apple and Nintendo. They do run mass but that’s not the reason for their success; iPod and Wii are word-of-mouth phenomenas and so are Google, Zara and Starbucks.
Tourism British Columbia is looking for an online ski video host.
We have an exciting opportunity for a competent skier who is also dynamic on camera to host a series of mini documentary-style videos of three BC ski hills. The videos will appear online within a specific page on Tourism BC’s www.HelloBC.com site and potentially on other sites.
Host role
The role of the video host includes travelling with a videographer to three pre-selected BC mountains for between two and three days each, to ski while sharing information about choice runs and après ski activities with an online audience. They will also encourage consumers to submit their own photos or video footage. The host will be
sharing their ski hill experiences with a targeted online audience of 35 – 55 year olds who are affluent and enjoy skiing as a couple, with friends and/or with their children.
Required Skills
The host should be able to naturally adlib, while at the same time, include factual information about BC and each ski mountain, within their monologues. Mandatory key facts and information will be provided ahead of time to the video host. The host should have a passion for BC and enjoy sharing travel experiences with friends and family. In addition, the host must be a strong skier and will be required to ski on the video. Timeline & Compensation Travel dates are set between November 15th and December 19th 2007 and may fall on weekdays and/or weekends. In addition one video will be filmed inside locally prior to the travel dates. Compensation will be in the form of a project fee plus transportation, accommodation and per diems included.
Application Details
Please submit, by email to kristine.potter at cossette.com, a 1-2 minute maximum video showing why you should be chosen as the 2007/08 Tourism BC Online Ski Host along with cover letter and resume. Please include “ski host audition tape” in your email subject line.
Deadline
All submissions must be received no later than 12:00 noon, Friday, October 19, 2007.
It’s simple. Just set-up an RSS feed in Technorati for the search results of your product or brand and join the conversation where appropriate. I’ve seen plenty of examples where even CEO’s are monitoring blogs and posting comments.
Examples:
My prediction is that all big travel brands will have a dedicated Social Network PR person on staff soon. But when you join the conversation, do in a transparent way, or you’ll end up being called on it just like Beatrice from Mobissimo.
I’ve read Gerry McGovern’s new thinking for a while. They are great insights and reminders of what managing content is all about, and how it’s not a stand-alone thing. His postings from September 17 and 24 are good examples.
From his Evidence-based website management posting:
Absolutely. Websites are measurable. Content is measurable. Measure the effect of a page, change the page, and measure the result. It’s simple, it’s organic, it follows the rules of evolution. The better genes win. This applies to content, navigation, design, everything. There is no place for opinion if it’s not based on data. But you’d be surprised how many opinions are out there without any data to back things up.
From his Time for content to become more scientific posting:
This is true. It applies to visual design as well. The challenge is that creative people consider their delivered product perfect. But in an online environment, it’s only the perfect starting point. Evolution is key. The copy or design that produces the best results is what creates perfection.
Instead of arguing and resisting the fact that evolution is key, they should embrace it. After all, you’re working in a business environment. As a manager, you should make sure you leave plenty of budget and resources available to evolve things after something is completed.
I just launched the new look for my blog. Only for the homepage; not very professional, but I need to put pressure on myself to finish the other templates. The old template was the default Movable Type template and I wanted something more personal. Some details:
Header
The identification in the header is my own handwriting for a personal touch. The picture on the right is taken by my friend Steve on our trip in Holland, just after we arrived. So it’s me without sleep for 20 hours and a 9 hour flight.
Colour schema
Yes, it’s busy. But that’s intended. I wanted a geeky look and took my inspiration from a Dilbert cartoon and the colour schema of van Gogh’s Starry Night.
Web 2.0
I added two areas above my blog entries that are syndicated from Twitter and del.icio.us. The Twitter box grabs my latest tweed my my latest thoughts. The del.icio.us area displays the last links I’ve bookmarked. There is also a Flickr area in the right column where the last photos I’ve uploaded on Flickr are displayed.
I’m reasonably happy with it.
Chris Clarke interviewed me on the Canada-e-Connect blog. If you’re visiting from this blog and are interested in more information, check out these posts:
Karin Schmollgruber from the Fastenyourseatbelts blog also interviewed me a while ago.