Great article by Daniel Pink about removing corporate talk or ‘professionalese’ from your vocabulary and speaking more open and honestly to your customers and colleagues.
Go back to that all-too-common phrase: “We apologise for any inconvenience this might have caused.” Would you say that to your daughter when you were late picking her up from football practice? To your neighbour when your dog trampled his flowerbed?
“Any inconvenience” is emotionally anaemic and lacks the specificity to make it meaningful. “We apologise” isn’t much better. It’s distancing almost to the point of dismissiveness. “When you say, ‘I’m sorry,’ you’re owning,” Fried explains. “When you say ‘I apologize,’ you’re renting.”
Professionalese is a renter’s language. It doesn’t expect to be around for very long and has no stake in the long-term prospects of the neighbourhood. It says, “mistakes were made” rather than “we messed up” and claims to “take responsibility” instead of acknowledging “it’s my fault”.
Mashable recently featured an indie film production company that used some pretty creative marketing in order to put butts in the seats to see their latest documentary – Ready, Set, Bag! Of course they used twitter and set up a channel on Blip.tv, but the thing that really impressed me was their use of Groupon to sell tickets to see their show. Starting in the Seattle market, Groupon subscribers were able to purchase tickets to the premiere through one of their daily specials. Not only did the film makers gain lots of exposure from the Groupon deal, but it also allowed the theaters to take a chance on an indie film by essentially guaranteeing a level of attendance to their show ahead of time – something that hasn’t been possible before.
This got me thinking of similar industries that could take advantage of Groupon or similar deal sites. Movies are great and you could also do the same with up-and-coming bands trying to fill a venue, newly minted authors, artists or even attendees to a local event or festival. Heck, I could even see niche Groupon-like sites taking advantage of this idea to market to music and art fans. This type of model works great for all parties involved. Venues know what to expect in terms of attendance, the producer of the product gets exposure for their work and the customers get an exclusive deal at a great price.
What other sort of ways do you think they could expand upon the Groupon model? Let me know in the comments below.
In case you were interested in the Ready, Set, Bag! documentary; I’ve attached a preview below.
New developments over the weekend from Facebook will give publishers the ability to communicate deeper with their likers. For example, let’s say you like this article. Well, with these new options, I could possibly send a news feed item to all likers with a link to my follow-up piece, a thank you video or even a coupon to go and purchase my book. This goes beyond the likes on facebook.com as well; it expands these interactions to all areas of the web. Facebook even offers publishers the ability to track these interactions. Check out the documentation here.
This option really opens up more of a 2-way dialogue with publishers and fans of their content. I’m looking forward to seeing how smart brands take advantage of this new option.
Facebook ads were never that really hard to create in the first place, but now they’ve taken most of the brain work out of it for you. Now, when you go to create a facebook ad and input your destination URL (the place where the user will go when the click on the ad) it [...]
* This is what I hope will be a regular occurance to the blog. I plan to post my secret blog crushes, a song that has me noddin’ my head and a twitter profile that I’m following this week. If you’ve got suggestions, add them in the comments or drop me an email. Blog Hippy [...]
Here is how to view your view your Foursquare check-ins on Google Maps. Visit your foursquare feeds page. Right click and copy the KML link (no need to download it). Visit Google Maps and paste your copied link into the search box. Hit enter. You can also add “?count=100″ (or any number that you’d like to see) [...]
The Yahoo Style Guide is like the more progressive mom who got her MBA in journalism, but decided to stay at home with the kids and takes pride in designing, laying out and writing the PTA newsletter. It offers practical advice (and an alternative to the AP Stylebook) for writing for the web, with articles [...]
Go buy about 5 of these machines, borrow your uncle’s trailer, set up at your local fair this summer and charge $5 a hit for these waffle popsicles. I can almost feel the buttery, syrupy, powder sugery goodness dripping down my arm. via The Daily What
So, to give you a little history, there was this cheap little plastic camera that a small group of kids loved back in 1982. It could be modded with different lenses, film and flashes to make all sorts funky prints. Today, thanks to alien technology and Steve Jobs you can get all the Joan Jett [...]
Tribune is the latest WordPress theme from WPZoom. It takes advantage of all the goodness in WordPress 3.0 including custom menus and backgrounds, custom templates and 3 widgetized sidebars. Good work fellas. Check out the demo.
In November, Google launched a small beta of Ad Sitelinks. Essentially, Ad Sitelinks is a feature for search-based ads that lets you include up to four additional links to deeper content on your site beyond the main landing page or link. To give you a better idea, here’s what they look like. Well, I guess the test [...]
