Little Space Heroes needs your help!

As you know I’ve “Gone startup” and am working with some friends to create a new game for kids. I’m so excited to be working on this and I truly believe what we’re creating will be something amazing that kids and parents will love.

But I need your help – Little Space Heroes is a massive undertaking. We’ve been seeking out funding and support to help make our dream a reality. While we’ve made some progress, it’s very tough in startup world and that’s why I’m reaching out to my friends and followers worldwide.

We’re applying for some government funding – special grant that will provide us with needed capital to complete product development and scale up. But we have to reach a certain milestone before we can receive these funds.

For that reason we’ve turned to Kickstarter, an awesome crowdfunding community that helps connect creative projects with people like you and me – those that are interested in seeing new or innovative projects come to life, turning dreams into reality.

I could really use your help in one or two ways:

1. Please pledge your support to help our Kickstarter project. Even a pledge of $1 helps – it will go straight towards product development and help make Little Space Heroes a reality.

2. Spread the word – whether or not you pledge, I’d love it if you could spread the word and tell your friends, family and colleagues about us.

To help me out – just head to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulalexgray/little-space-heroes

Thanks for reading!

Little Space Heroes Kickstarter project

This week I launched a project on Kickstarter – a crowdsourced funding service that helps creative projects get off the ground.

The project is “Little Space Heroes” – a virtual universe for kids and families. This is a game that I’m working on with my friends at Bubble Gum Interactive.

We’re very much a startup, working super long hours and scraping by on the leanest of budgets. We’re making good progress with the game and have released some mini-games online to start building some awareness up.

After a lot of free ‘sweat time’ we’ve had some success in securing funding from private investors and we’ve been earmarked for some financial assistance from an Australian government funding body. But we need to reach certain milestones before we can secure the government grant.

That’s why we’re turning to Kickstarter, to see if we can raise a little bit extra to help us meet the milestone. Every dollar raised will go straight into product development and will help ensure Little Space Heroes is a truly amazing game. We’re offering awesome rewards for those that support us on Kickstarter – there’s lots of exclusive in-game content and virtual items as well as the chance to take part in the beta and real world gifts like posters and animation cels for the higher pledge amounts.

Check out the pitch video – you can see me and my colleagues being incredibly cheesy. But hopefully you’ll also see the passion and energy and help us out. Whether you can spare a few dollars or can help us with a Like or a Retweet, it all counts.

Let’s blast off for adventure!

A professional network for female students in Australia

I’m sharing news about the launch of a new product that I think has great appeal for its target audience – women who are currently students at universities across Australia.

Research from Graduate Careers Australia showed that of female bachelor degree graduates available for employment in 2010, only 76.8% were in full-time employment within four months of completing their degrees. This figure had worsened from 79% in 2009 and 85% in 2008.

Academic institutions prepare students for life in the workplace, yet many lack the resources to assist students getting their first job. Students often report feeling lacking in the skills needed to identify appropriate jobs, prepare an application, interview appropriately and secure a desired role. Students have the energy and drive, but lack resources and the connections and networks to help get their careers started.

Business Chicks is a community of professional women across Australia. Unlike purely online professional networks, Business Chicks combines online and offline elements and delivers a service that helps women to connect, share with and learn from eachother. Members share ideas, advice, experiences and inspiration.

For students who are finishing their studies or thinking ahead and who want to develop a professional network, its hard to know where to start. With the new membership package – offered at a 60% discount to standard membership – students have a great opportunity to give their career a head start.

There’s more info available directly at the Business Chicks website: http://businesschicks.com.au/articles/articles/student-membership-launch

Disclosure – I worked on the project that led to development of this product.

Customer value or shareholder value?

When I did my MBA I undertook a couple of corporate finance classes. As someone who started out in marketing, these classes showed me a side of business that I hadn’t previously had much exposure to. I found these classes tough, but definitely worthwhile.

What did surprise me though was that a significant portion of this field of business seemed to be about extracting value from a business – sometimes at the expense of the businesses own future opportunities. Now I only did a few classes, so I’m no expert but I found it surprising how many ways there were to change the value of a corporation by tweaking and shifting the ownership structures, the mix of debt vs. equity and other factors that seemed to make sense, but have little relevance in what I regarded as the ‘real world’.

To me, the best way to increase the value of your business is to actually make that business better in delivering its products or services to customers.

If you create something that customers want, deliver it in a way they want, do it in a way that’s difficult for competitors to replicate and do it in a way that’s sustainable to you and the community in which you operate, then surely you will be successful. People will buy your stuff, whatever it might be.

Standing in the background and pulling levers, toggling balance sheets and shifting around ‘on paper’ stuff doesn’t seem to be the right way to do things – if you ask me. So I can change the value of the company by adjusting our mix of assets and debts, ok great. What does that do in the long term? Does it mean more people will buy our products? Does it make it tougher for competitors to imitate us? Does it inspire and motivate our people? I don’t think it does.

For all the efforts of those who espouse these practices, I wonder what the response is to the whole Global Financial Crisis thingy – it was finance experts that made that happen right?

What do you think? Is the best way to increase shareholder value by adjusting, tweaking and changing how the business works on paper? Or is it to deliver something that customers want? Because after all – if you deliver what customers want, you’ll do well and ultimately deliver shareholder value.

Runner up in The Product Person of the Year

I’m truly honoured to have been announced as the runner up to The Product Guy’s “The Best Product Person of 2010“.

Jeremy Horn, aka The Product Guy is an experienced product management professional with an interest in and a great perspective on product management, particularly for startups – an area I’m obviously becoming more and more interested in. Jeremy’s posts cover a wide range of timely topics as he discusses and analyses topics including the convergence of business & technology, function & form and art & process.

Jeremy interviewed me and he’s now going to be sharing my responses on his blog – so check it out and see what I’ve had to say. I’d recommend you stick around and subscribe to keep up-to-date with all his thoughts, ideas and insights.

Tags: product management

3 simple steps to create a successful product or service

I’ve been thinking recently about how and why some products and services do really well, and others fail dismally. I think it comes down to these three things:

1. Create something that people really want or need: The emphasis is on ‘really’. Any successful product exists to satisfy some need or want or solve a customer problem. If there’s no particular need for it, then no amount of effort, money or resource will make it work.  
2. Deliver it in ways that they want it: This doesn’t just mean the way it’s physically delivered – but the entire process of engaging with the customer and meeting their needs and wants. Service, process, time, efficiency and cost of the product are all factors for consideration.
3. Support these customers with exceptional customer service: I think this is the real clincher. Too many products have atrocious customer service. Whether it’s the company that says they’ll call you on Tuesday and then never ring, or the delivery you’re meant to get between 9 and 12 which arrives at 6pm, this sort of thing is a major ‘let-down’ for customers. Exceeding their expectations can pretty much blow them away – and creates a huge level of affinity for your product or service.

This all sounds pretty simple but I’d challenge you to think of the products you’ve seen today – either things you own or things you’ve seen advertised or talked about. Do you, or someone you know, need or want them? Are they delivered well? Are the customers happy with the level of service they received?

If these things are done well, then a product or service has quite a good chance of succeeding.

What do you think?

 

Are social shopping services sustainable?

You’ll have surely seen the news today that Yahoo!7 has acquired Spreets – an Australian social shopping service. It’s great news for the local startup industry and a sign that big brands are taking note of this new form of collaborative consumption.

Spreets is one of many competitors in the Australian market, all of whom sprang up after Groupon established the model in 2008. Right now, you can even head to sites like Dealsmix.com.au that simply aggregate all the daily offers available. (This is a danger in itself – Dealsmix has a great opportunity to build the relationship with customers)

These services are very much identical – in fact I’d go so far as to say they’re simply clones of the same concept. This is a dangerous business proposition, as there is very little stopping anyone from replicating what you’re doing. As my MBA Strategy lecturer used to say “You must not be inimitable”. Now I’m not sure if inimitable is even a word but the point is that to be successful in the longer term, a business must have something unique. All I can see that is feasible as a unique selling point for these types of business is their brands.

But herein lies a potential problem. One that I’ve just seen first hand. As the businesses grow, their deals end up reaching wider audiences and are thus snapped up more. While a small or new social shopping site may sell 50 or 100 vouchers, an established one can sell a few hundred. Spreets regularly sells over 1,000 vouchers per city. With Yahoo!7 now in charge of Spreets it will want to see significant growth. But what does this mean – will there be tens of thousands of sales of vouchers?

Is this sustainable for the types of business that are attracted to market via these sites – hairdressers, restaurants, gyms and so on. I’m not sure it is.

Scary math example

My wife bought a voucher from Jumponit Sydney just two weeks ago for a super cheap haircut. Today she went to the salon only to find that it had shut down. You can imagine how annoyed she was – and her wrath is centred firmly on Jumponit.

Now, I cannot make presumptions as to why it shut down but it had been in business for 15 years and is now gone. I’m speculating here, but maybe the owner realised that there was no way she could honour the 257 people that bought into the deal.

Look at the maths – it’s a bit scary.

Saving = 63% or $216

Sales = 257 vouchers

Lost revenue = $55,216

On top of that, I believe the business model is that the vendor and the site share the remaining revenue – so there’s even more money pouring out the door.

That’s quite a bit of cash for a small business. I’m no hair salon expert but I know that my wife’s haircuts often take 3 hours so must be expensive. Furthermore, at that duration a salon may only be able to do 10 haircuts a day across a few stylists. So it would take 25 solid days just to get through the loss making vouchers.

Looking at Spreets today their Sydney deal has already sold 811 vouchers for a seafood restaurant (at time of writing). with a saving of $91 that’s lost revenue of over $73,000! At least at a restaurant people might splash out a bit more cash on wine or other items but still, it’s a big hit.

Are these the right customers?

I also wonder if the types of people that buy vouchers are really those that are most likely to become loyal shoppers. I think that if a small business has a unique product offering that it does well then it should naturally perfom well. If it’s just a run-of-the-mill same/same as any other business then my suspicion would be that most vouchers would be bought by “deal-hunters” who simply look around for another voucher rather than becoming a loyal customer.

This seems in a way to be trying to buy word-of-mouth. And I don’t know how successful that can be.

I know the spiel is that marketing money can be wasted quite easily on various types of advertising. This is very true – but at least with that marketing customers tend to come in and spend the full price and make money.

I’m by no means ruling out the overall business model of social shopping. I’m sure it works well for lots of businesses. Perhaps it’s better for those that have low cost-of-delivery, or who have the scalability to handle the likely demand spike after selling via a social shopping site.

What do you think? Have you had a bad experience with social shopping? Have you seen any examples and case studies of smashing successes or terrible disasters?

Tags: enterprise 2.0, Marketing

Boring and indistinct logos

I noticed something funny today. Two corporate logos that look pretty much exactly the same. At least I think they do.

The first is the ANZ bank logo. It was “refreshed” in 2010 and supposedly is some sort of flower. To me it looks like a woman with a big Afro praising the Gods above.

The other is the logo for Ten’s TV show “The Biggest Loser” It’s been refreshed for the new series. I think it’s a terrible logo.

Both look to me like cheap clip art. They’re clearly undifferentiated.

And what’s funny – is if you stuck them together, you end up with a kind of blue circle!

Bing Lee’s Epic Fail: The fine line of corporate charitable efforts

In January 2011, the state of Queensland Australia suffered from terrible floods. As I write these are still ongoing and it seems the worst is yet to come. People have died, families have lost their homes and the damage bill is set to be in the billions. The spirit of the community is showing through however with people lending a hand and making donations of money and other useful products and services.

Naturally, corporations are stepping in with their own contributions. The Commonwealth Bank has chipped in $1 million matching donations from customers. Telstra has agreed to contribute up to $500,000 to match donations from employees. Others such as Football Federation Australia are auctioning off a signed Socceroos shirt on ebay. While that amount is a lot lower, it does help raise awareness and enthusiasm amongst the wider community and it provides links for direct donations.

Why is it that corporations give money at times like these? And what do they expect in return. Increasingly, corporations are recognizing that they play a part in the community, and that like any good citizen it is expected that they will help out where they can. But what else do corporations get out of giving? While it’s not so frequently discussed, a key factor of a giving strategy is to improve perceptions of their brand and increase affinity. People are more likely to do business – or want to do business – with companies that they feel are… well, nice.

It’s clear that there is a delicate balance – brands have to be careful in how they get involved with charitable contributions.

Crossing the line

Australian electrical retailer Bing Lee stepped in with an initiative on their facebook page. For every new fan that “liked” their page, they would donate $1 up to a maximum of $10,000.

Almost immediately they started copping flak. Their Facebook page has been swamped with critical messages blasting Bing Lee as “shameful”, “terrible” and “disgraceful”.

The Australian Twitter scene flared up as people called Bing Lee out for an apparent ‘fan-grab’. “Bing Lee” is a top trending topic and hashtags such as #charityfail emerged on Twitter with colourful and creative criticism such as:

• @mitch_phillips “Yo, @HarveyNormanAU, Imma let you finish, but that @ilikebinglee had one of the best Social Media fails of 2011! #charityfail Bing Lee”
• @lutrov “A marketing stuffup of monumental proportions by Bing Lee with their “offer” to donate $1 for each “like” on Facebook. #marketing#fail”
• @ThedivineMrsO “I so don’t like Bing Lee. Using the #QLDfloods as a marketing ploy to get people to “like” their Facebook page. You are a disgrace.”

I completely agree with this sentiment. While the Bing Lee team *may* have had good intentions, their execution makes it impossible to tell and instead appears to be a callous grab for new fans.

I have a big issue with the fact that Bing Lee placed a cap on the amount that they would donate. $10,000 is not a lot of money for a national retailer. That’s the margin on the sale of a couple of big-screen TVs. And what happens if they got 50,000 fans? Would they just “keep the change??” While it’s appropriate to have a cap of some form, they could have picked something a little more generous.

My major issue however is that they are receiving a rather unique benefit in exchange for their ‘contribution’. With Facebook presenting a great way for brands to connect with its customers, an initiative that increases the number of fans is in general a good thing. Marketers go to huge efforts to attract customers. Usually this involves spending some money or doing something innovative, creative or fun to get people interested and involved.

Bing Lee is using a Natural Disaster as the basis for their acquisition efforts.

Today’s lesson: How to screw up PR 101

What’s worse is Bing Lee’s reaction to this scandal. Rather than simply apologizing or saying “Hey, look we misjudged things and we’re sorry. We’d like to make this right by making our donation outright and hope we didn’t offend anyone” they came out with a rather passive-aggressive and somewhat confusing (“The $1 donated from Bing Lee is not from us”…. What??) defense of their stance saying.

I think it’s a pretty long shot for Bing Lee to claim that their efforts are raising awareness. I’d be surprised if anyone in Australia wasn’t already aware of these floods – just turn on the TV to see hour long specials and check any news site.

No doubt there will be numerous other tweets, blog posts, articles and analysis of Bing Lee over the following days. Rather than helping generate new fans, this ill-thought out initiative is actually turning into a bad PR blunder. I am a bit surprised to see quite a lot of people using Bing Lee’s Facebook page in support of the initiative, but the overall sentiment is negative.

The adage “Any publicity is good publicity” is most certainly not true. This is likely to have an impact on their brand affinity – and at a time when Australian retailers are already copping flak for being out of touch, this is doubly bad for Bing Lee.

What would I do if I was Bing Lee? Post an apology. Explain that you had good intentions and then find a way to increase your own contribution and to try to get people to also contribute through Bing Lee. Openness and admission of mistakes is a great way to diffuse bad situations. What has Bing Lee done? So far nothing – their last post on facebook or Twitter was simply defending their stance a few hours ago.

Tread carefully with charitable giving

Is it fair for Bing Lee to be criticized for this initiative? What’s the difference between this and Socceroos shirt? Or the dollar-for-dollar matching?

I think the big difference is that Bing Lee is getting a much more direct and tangible benefit in return for a rather insignificant contribution. For $10,000 they got a whole bunch of new facebook fans – whom they can promote offers and incentives to. You’d pay more than that for a mailing list! And what do the people of Queensland get from Bing Lee? Enough money to buy a couple of appliances.

Even if this was not their intention, it is the way that it is being perceived. And that is a failure. Lessons should be learned.

Brands should help the community out in times of need. But they must ensure that they keep the real purpose front and centre. Brands must ensure that their initiative provides something useful and appropriate. They should look at the different ways they can help directly and how they can engage their own employees, partners, suppliers and customers to also get on board.

What do you think?

PS I’ve just made a donation online at the Premier’s Donate to the Flood Relief Appeal which you can do here: http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html

Tags: Marketing, publicity, Social Media, stupid ideas

Is the new Foxtel ad a beautiful marketing failure?

I believe that effective marketing commuinications are those which result in the target customer making some form of decision or taking some action. I do love a good story though, and I love ads that achieve their goal in an inspirational, exciting and memorable way.

I was rather surprised to see the new Foxtel TV ad (linked below to open in new window). I’m pretty sure these are just on-Foxtel ads rather than acquisition efforts (i.e. they’re unlikely to be played on free-to-air TV).

View the Foxtel ad here: http://scaryideas.com/content/20676/

Watching for the first time I thought “What a lovely ad, such great scenerey, it really captures the fun, free, outdoorsy, chillaxed style of the Australian summer.” THe ads inspired me – maybe I should get a fishing rod? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to go to the beach tomorrow? Gee I’d love to have a BBQ and have some mates round and we could just shoot the breeze as the sun sets.

Imagine my surprise then when I saw at the last frame that this was an ad for Foxtel. Foxtel – as in the subscription TV service.

This makes no sense at all to me. In fact, it seems like a terrible ad for the product. Why?

The message of the ad seems to be that the viewer should be inspired to celebrate summer – to go outdoors, meet up with friends, do physical activities and enjoy it. How on earth does this relate back to watching TV? I know that there’s a few Foxtel celebrities in the ad – but I only discovered this by researching it. I’ve had Foxtel for over three years and I didn’t notice or recognise a single ‘celebrity’ in the ad when I watched it.

Nowhere in the ad do we even see a TV, or anyone engaged in some activity other than having an awesome time outside the house.

This ad does nothing to showcase the great features of having subscription TV – exclusive content that you can’t get on free-to-air or shows that come out months ahead of free-to-air TV. It doesn’t emphasise the sports coverage or the ability to provide broad entertainment to the viewer when they want it – none of the PVR functionality is even touched on, unsurprisngly given there’s not a TV in sight.

While I recognise the feel-good factor, this almost seems to damage the value proposition. Watching the ad is likely to make a person think “Gee, I’ve been watching too much TV. I should really get out more. Maybe I should cancel my Foxtel subscription? Freeview has been going on and on about all their new channels anyway, do I even need Foxtel anymore? They don’t even seem to think so!”

Now I’m no cold emotionless zombie that suggests all advertising should be feature led or literal. In fact, I recently saw another ad that I thought was fantastic. It is similar in style to the Foxtel ad in that it shows the various activities that a person gets involved with in different stages in her life. But it makes sense.

The ad below is for John Lewis, an upmarket UK retailer. It shows us the journey that a character takes – from baby to young girl, to young woman and ultimately to family matriach. But throughout the ad we see physical posessions in sync with the experiences she goes through. From baby toys to clothes, household furniture to decorations, outdoor dining and more. All the stuff that you could buy at John Lewis.

The ad is high on emotion and it tells a story. It uses a recognisable song to draw at the viewers heart strings. But above all, it shows that the product – John Lewis’ range of ‘stuff’ that you might need in life – is available.

The John Lewis ad connects the viewer to the story, and also to the value proposition.

The Foxtel ad – while beautiful and inpsiring – just makes me want to go to the beach.

<iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/17172478?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0&amp;color=d1d1d1″ width=”400″ height=”225″ frameborder=”0″></iframe><p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/17172478″>Foxtel ’100 Days of Summer’</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/photoplayfilms”>PHOTOPLAY FILMS</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>