Yearly Archives: 2008

Happy 150th Birthday, British Columbia

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Happy Birthday, British Columbia, the Vancouver Sun proclaims today.  Today British Columbia is officially 150 years old. Sincere congratulations to all in B.C. as they commemorate this important anniversary. It is an incredibly beautiful and resource-rich land.

oppenheimer

The Sun salutes some of this city’s oldest companies that have adapted and grown with B.C.  The oldest is The Oppenheimer Group, which is as old as the Province.  In 1858, four Oppenheimer brothers followed the gold rush to British Columbia and founded Oppenheimer Bros. & Co. in Victoria, to provide food and supplies to thousands of fortune seekers.

They are now one of North America’s top fresh produce companies bringing in and delivering over 100 varieties of produce from more than 20 different countries. The  business is managed by a team of professionals located in over a dozen offices throughout North and South America.

marketplace iga

The multibillion-dollar H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd. started in 1903 and now has flowered into an energetic family business.  Today, Brandt Louie, the grandson of the founder, heads a $4-billion empire, employing 8,000 people in four different businesses: food wholesaling, the IGA food chain, London Drugs and an import-export division.

purdys chocolates

Vancouver’s most famous chocolate company, Purdy’s, has also been around for more than 100 years. It began in 1907, when Richard Carmen Purdy began selling chocolates he made in his own kitchen from his Robson Street store. He quickly attracted a loyal following from chocolate lovers who passed on their taste for Purdy’s Chocolates from generation to generation.

These three are only a small fraction of the companies that have prospered and grown throughout British Columbia’s 150 year history.  With the 2010 Olympics the future is certainly even more promising.

Related Books:

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Five Seconds In The Blink Of An Eye

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Ann Smarty  offered some Fun Tools to Check Your Website Usability today and I was somewhat delighted to notice that one of these was the five second test.   The irony is that this was mentioned on the day when Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink, was to launch another book, Outliers: the Story of Success. Blink introduced the notion that our impression of a webpage may be fixed within a matter of seconds.  The five second test can check this out.

The test comes in a number of versions.  The classic five second test is that devised by Jared Spool, the very well-known usability expert.  This asks people to list the things they can recall after viewing your interface for five seconds.

If you would like to test it out here are five second tests for the four SMM online properties:

For something a little easier, the sentiment five second test asks people to choose their most and least favorite elements after viewing your interface for five seconds.  This test is suitable for identifying strengths and weaknesses in the design of your interfaces.

I encourage you to try out a few of these to see how this goes.  Then think of your own website and consider how others may see your website in that first few seconds.  That blink of an eye test may determine just how many visitors are inspired to explore your website.

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BWelford’s Top Picks To 11/15/2008

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This is the online version of the new-style SMM Newsletter.  It is a selection of the most popular posts written during the past two weeks. We hope you will find this round-up instructive and in some cases amusing. You can receive an e-mail version of this if you prefer.  In that case, please subscribe at the top of the right sidebar.

The blogs in which the posts appeared are indicated by the following abbreviations after the date:  BPW = BPWrap; TOBB = The Other Bloke’s Blog;  SGL = StayGoLinks; CF = Cre8tive Flow (the blog for the Cre8asite Forums); VC = Viral Conversations, a new website from Michael Gray.

Social Media: Please Keep The Noise Down - 11/14/2008 SGL
Tolerance of activities like Live Blogging in social media may be influenced by where individuals sit on the sociability scale.
POW! Surprise Marketing – Push or Pull - 11/13/2008 TOBB
Andy Nulman is the king of Surprise and his new book is a fount of advice and ideas on how best to exploit Surprise Marketing – with POW.
Random Thoughts - 11/13/2008 BPW
Many write random thoughts but randomness is an essential feature of strong and secure passwords. random.org gives true random numbers.
Brand Canada � Aw Shucks - 11/12/2008 TOBB
Future Brand puts Canada at #2 on their National Brand scale, whereas Anholt has Canada at #4. Canada needs to be a little more brash.
Always On The Alert - 11/11/2008 BPW
Systems that provide SEO Alerts when particular conditions arise give an easy way of monitoring performance and competitive activity.
Grow Your Business- 11/11/2008 CF
The final article in the Marketing Right Now (MRN) series on Internet Marketing covers how to continue to grow your business to achieve your goals.
Barack Obama And Grassroots Leadership - 11/10/2008 SGL
The nomination of Barack Obama as President elect signals many things but the most powerful is the Internet support to grassroots leadership.
Tools and Tips to Help You Keep Up With The Latest Buzz- 11/07/2008 VC
Tools are available to identify what are hot topics in social media. These confirm the effectiveness of the Barack Obama organization in using social media.
RightNow Customer Service - 11/05/2008 SGL
Providing the customer service that satisfies customers through online software or chat services is win/win as sales growth covers costs.
Frozen UK Pensions – European Court of Human Rights – Decision - 11/05/2008 TOBB
The ECHR has rendered its Judgment in the case of the Frozen UK Pensions. Only the President of the Court dissented from the negative decision.
SMM (Social Media Marketing)- 11/04/2008 CF
Social media can absorb a great deal of human effort for negligible results. It is important to use time effectively in making your social media efforts count.
Talking Behind Your Back - 11/03/2008 SGL
Conversations will occur massively on the Internet. Companies can get involved through social media or they can leave everyone else to talk.

Footnote:
BWelford’s 6 Top Picks From The 2008 Business Best Sellers

POW! Surprise Marketing – Push or Pull

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pow andy nulman

I have now completed reading The Book About Surprise Marketing by Andy Nulman.  The official title is POW! Right Between The Eyes!, which is also the title of his blog.  It is a stimulating and provocative book, as indeed might be expected, and I would thoroughly recommend it.  Click here to order it.  Pow! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Power of Surprise

A big part of creating surprises is being creative and this book is full of ideas.  Nulman also recommends two other books as further resources that you may wish to check out.

Of course surprise is not just a question of creativity.  Nulman provides a short list of four key things to keep in mind when creating a surprise. In each case, he has a number of real life examples to illustrate what he means:

Everyone’s a kid in Disneyland
Under the skin we are all the same.
Balls beat brains; balls beat budgets
You don’t need money, just chutzpah.
Little things mean a lot
Provided you choose the right ‘little’ with creativity.
Sometimes there is no reason.
Enough said

I was also struck by his phrase that post-dictability is one of the keys to create a satisfying surprise.  In other words after the event, looking back at the moment of surprise, you can sense it was almost predictable.

As I said, it is a thought-provoking book.  Andy Nulman delivers a lot of value.  However I was struck by his logo / image as it appears at the start of this post.  Old-fashioned push marketing is losing place to pull marketing as the Internet changes the balance between buyers and sellers.  Certainly surprise is not something that prospects or clients ask for, indeed how could they.  It is almost a more traditional way of going about things.  Will surprises be as well accepted now as they were say 15 years ago before we all became empowered by the Internet.   I would be interested to see your comments on this.

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Brand Canada – Aw Shucks

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The headlines this morning point out that Canada’s ‘brand’ second only to Australia’s. That is based on a study by Future Brand, a New York consulting firm who surveyed 2,700 business and leisure travelers to gauge which countries they had visited, which they most wanted to visit and which they would recommend to friends.

For four years now, Canada has been working on its brand with the phrase "Keep Exploring," to show that we offer more than just pretty scenery.  Perhaps it is working. Rina Plapler of Future Brand wrote. "It’s a familiar country to people. It’s familiar, it’s well-liked, it’s safe, it’s seen as family oriented."

Canada Brand International Is also trying to leverage that brand to sell more food around the world.

Canada has a positive image around the world. We’re known to be trustworthy, reliable and competent people. Our land is thought of as pristine, fresh and environmentally friendly. Our food and agriculture products are considered safe, fresh, and natural.

Clearly getting to the top spot will be tough.  The experts on Branding in Canada cite the following difficulties:

  • Canada itself, and what it means to be Canadian, are widely debated but any agreement there might be remains largely unarticulated
  • Canadian brands have not consistently leveraged "Canadian-ness" nor have they created a universal appeal for Canadian attributes and values in corporate, product and service branding
  • The Canadian character does not lend itself to bold communications

That is perhaps why another study by renowned national branding experts, the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index, puts Canada at only the number four position with Germany as number one.

nbi country brand hexagon

Their index is based on a survey in which respondents from across 20 major developed and developing countries are asked to rate their agreement with statements about each nation. The statements cover six categories: Exports, Governance, Culture, People, Tourism and Immigration/Investment. The NBI ranking is based on the average of these six scores.

Germany is viewed as the best overall "brand”, receiving the highest ranking of the 50 nations measured. The full listing of the top twenty is as follows:

1. Germany
2. France
3. United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. Japan
6. Italy
7. United States
8. Switzerland
9. Australia
10. Sweden 		11. Spain
12. Netherlands
13. Norway (tie)
14. Austria (tie)
15. Denmark
16. Scotland
17. New Zealand
18. Finland
19. Ireland
20. Belgium

Clearly the time for Aw Shucks is over.  Canada needs to continue to speak out but at least we seem to be making progress.

Books that may be of interest

Ikonica:
A Field Guide to
Canada’s Brandscape Jeanette Hanna

Brand Innovation Manifesto:
How to Build Brands,
Redefine Markets and
Defy Conventions John Grant

The Global Brand:
How to Create and Develop
Lasting Brand Value
in the World Market Nigel Hollis

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