Area 224 Ltd.

Content + Communications Consulting

You are here: Home / Archives for Dave

Dave

Winning Isn’t Everything

Time to talk baseball. And a tale of two teams.

One has a great on-the-field product, winning this year to the tune of 90-plus games.

The other lost almost that many.

Team One has camaraderie, is in the playoffs, has charismatic leadership, players who go the extra mile for each other.

Team Two is under new management, under new ownership, doesn’t know which end is up.

The first team may well win the World Series this year.

The second team hasn’t done so in what only feels like an eternity.

Get This: Team One can’t give away tickets. Team Two pretty much sold out every game and is making money hand over fist.

So, in this corner, the Tampa Bay Rays – energy and enthusiasm on the field, tumbleweeds off it.

In the other corner, the Chicago Cubs – where winning isn’t everything (and this year it wasn’t anything), but the cash register has no problem ringing.

What can the Marketer learn from this?

Probably more than anything, the Rays sell “baseball.”

The Cubs sell “the experience.”

Like it or lump it, the knock on the Northsiders has always been this: world’s largest happy hour, go for the beer, don’t pay attention to the game, free sunshine, etc.

This same experience includes “lovable losers.”  This is, after all, a team whose drought of 102 years (and counting) since a World Championship has become a calling card.

Neither marketing model, neither business model, is wrong. Both teams are profitable.

But, maybe, after all, you should ask yourself: are you selling “the experience?”

Pabst Blue Ribbon and Realtor Marketing

I’ll say it again: most Realtors are pretty bad at Marketing.

The reason is that they’re spinning their wheels with tactics (refrigerator magnets, email blasters, being “social” without a point) and not figuring out why the heck they’re in business in the first place.

They’re oftentimes trying to be something they’re not: like an expert on interest rate trends, or someone who can help you go green with your new home.

Which brings us to Pabst Blue Ribbon.

An iconic beer that fell upon hard times but made a renaissance. Big Time Renaissance.

Thanks to knowing EXACTLY who they are. The value brand your Dad drank back in the day. Inexpensive. Old School. Not to be ordered at a hoity-toity place of business.

 

Pabst Sign
photo by Chuck "Caveman" Coker

 

Realtors: Are You Trying to be Something You’re Not?

That’s right, I’ll say it – there’s a reason that some Realtors are effective marketers and others, well, not so much. It’s not having the killer social media presence, it’s not having a keen understanding of how interest rates impact the local economy. These things can be important, granted, but the real reason is playing to their strengths.

Our Webinar from Friday, on Personal Branding for Realtors (copy of the slides below), centered around how to find out what your strengths as a Realtor are.

This could work for just about any marketplace — the local coffee shop is never gonna be Starbucks.

As a Realtor, know where your strengths are and your marketing strategy should play to those strengths.

Drink up!

 

Area 224 personal brand for realtors 10.1.10

View more presentations from Dave Walle.

The “Real Business” Question for Twitter

So there I was, minding my web business, and I saw a headline that really grabbed me:

“Can Twitter’s new CEO turn the company into a real business?”

The article — from the always dependable Venture Beat — got me asking a question:

Could you define “Real Business,” please?

First, let’s use the BUZZWORD test. “Disruptive?” “Innovative?” “Value-Added?”

Okay, they pass all three. So the real business test comes down to revenue, in the eyes of Venture Beat.

Because, after all, a “real business” does one thing and one thing only: make money. Right?

Wrong.

In fact, I am going to zero in on one word as proof that (1) Twitter already is a “Real Business” and (2) the money will follow:

Ecosystem.

Twitter has one. They have talked about it from the get-go. It has driven their product development, Evan Williams has made it a buzzword that, you could argue, Twitter owns.

Oh, and the new CEO? Dick Costolo didn’t just make a ton of money at FeedBurner, he built something that leveraged an existing ecosystem — Google — in new and exciting ways. So I think he understands the big-picture, revenue-focused, yet don’t-kill-the-culture mission of Twitter.

What Does This Mean For You?

There’s an ecosystem out there, right? Maybe it’s at your office, maybe it’s at the store you frequent, or the coffee shop. It could be the way a group of your peers communicates with each other, or it could be a new twist on an old technology, or an old twist on a new technology.

You can build one, or you can leverage one.

But go find one.

 

Teachable Moments from TechCrunch, Groupon and Freshbooks

Were it just that simple: come up with the concept, make things happen, make it big.

But, hey, there’s still time. Plenty of time. This is a marathon, not a sprint — and we found three “teachable moments” from the world of startups, technology, communicating your vision, etc. that we can’t wait to share. Here goes…

TechCrunch sold to AOL. Because they worked their collective a$$ off for a bunch of years, Michael Arrington and his team were able to leverage their position as the leading breaking news blog for technology into a nice payday. AND a chance to keep on doing what they’re doing.

Teachable Moment: Did you notice they worked really, really hard at it? Like non-stop, 24×7? Any doubts, read the Inc. Magazine Interview with Michael Arrington. Good stuff.

Groupon Spawns About 250 Competitors. If you haven’t heard of Groupon, that’s okay. You’ll be hearing a little bit about it, or one of its competitors, when it comes to a town near you with a daily deal site.  In fact, you can learn about any of these daily deals by visiting a site called Deal Radar and sorting through all of the deals in a town near you.

Teachable Moment #1: (There is more than one teachable moment here.) First of all, while first mover advantage is huge in this case, the fact that there are 250 competitors — and even olde tyme sites like Open Table are getting into the act — there’s time if you’ve got a twist on a current idea, or you want to be hyper-local, or you just think you can do it differently.

Teachable Moment #2: Chicago, Baby! When this reporter was running his first startup, Chicago was very much a “who sent you?” and “old school banking” town. The fact that Groupon’s Andrew Mason (and people like Jason Fried from 37 Signals) can make it here gives hope to others in a town that, darnit, has finally gotten some entrepreneurial swagger.

Freshbooks Hosts Supper Club. I totally loved this event last week. In Chicago, over drinks and dinner. Pitch-free. Freshbooks invited customers to informally gather and talk business. No pressure.

Teachable Moment: Be Awesome. Freshbooks has a Chief Handshaker in Sunir Shah. Talking with him about marketing and engineering and how the two go hand-in-hand was totally cool. (Guest blog post to come. You’re all forewarned.) But Sunir seemed to think — and I agree — that focusing on the product (or service) and making it awesome is the way to go. In fact, I can’t totally remember where I saw any marketing messages from Freshbooks. I do remember, however, hearing people say how easy it is to use Freshbooks. How well it integrates with other stuff (like Basecamp, for instance). Etc.

So, go out there and make something — big, huge, simple, important, or just plain cool — happen.

Why a Speech That is Two Years Old is Still Relevant

Dave Van de Walle, 2008 CEO National Conference Science and Technology Track from IIT Entrepreneurship on Vimeo.

Way back when – November of 2008, Dave from Area 224 spoke at the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization’s annual conference. He wasn’t Dave from Area 224 then, he was Dave from U Sphere.

And he was overseeing the company through what amounted to its Hospice program, as it was nearing shutdown.

We think it’s still relevant information for marketers and business folks, and here’s why:

  1. We talk about places where we screwed up.
  2. We don’t mince words.
  3. We share our vision for where social media is heading. (As of almost two years ago.)

Hope you’ll check it out – if only to see Dave from Area 224 in action.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...