Whenever you start a project, it is extremely important that you are interested in it, yes, but you should not be the only one who is motivated to make it happen.

That was my first mistake.

It was the summer of 2011, and I was planning a fundraiser for Y.A.N.A (You are not alone) geared towards helping families on the island. I was excited to start a “pirate auction” where past and retired Navy chiefs and officers donated items to be auctioned off. We had plenty of stuff to auction out, a dunk tank was rented and set up and I even planned a barbecue for those who attended. All the funds were taken care of, decorations in place, barbecue and food, mcs, volunteers..

Great plan, great idea, but the interest just wasn’t there or the event wasn’t advertised properly. There was approximately 40 out of 147 people who came.

I quickly realized what went wrong:

– posters were put out, but in places where people did not read them.

– My staff did their job, but they were not motivated enough to step out of the box and do more than what was asked.

The result? Two platters of casserole were dumped, two boxes of hamburgers and hotdogs cooked and uneaten, boxes of opened condiments trashed, tubfuls of beverages drained. It was a nightmare for third world countries. I will never forget that moment when my team and I hauled bagfuls of uneaten food to the dumpster.

However, not all was lost because the fundraising part of the event went well. The auction and the dunk tank event went extremely well. The event raised a total of $5000 and surpassed all my expectations. In the end, we had to cap the items sold at $50 apiece.

So not all was lost, but with a little more experience and knowledge of marketing, things could have gone a little smoother, with a lot less grief on my part.

More “bumps along the road” coming up next blog post!

Stay tuned!

 

People always say that out of the big three: Finance, Accounting, Marketing…the latter is the easiest and the artsiest way to a business degree.

There may be varying degrees of truth in this statement, but all three rely on a different kind of brainwave to true and actual accomplishment. Here’s a cold hard fact to those who made the statement: marketing is hard.

For those who say it is easy, they mustn’t have done it before, or believe marketing is just a leisure read of the textbook and a guess and check multiple choice midterm. After this past week, I have concluded that marketing is indeed a completely arduous task.

It is when popularity gives you that upper advantage in terms of getting news out: if the person likes you, then maybe they would want to find more about what you have to say. If they don’t give a damn, well, tough luck, you just lost another reader.

It is when type A, career conscious-like friends become your best buddies, because you couldn’t kiss their hand enough in gratitude just enough for helping you get through a bump in the road and saving you from having a total of three attendees (yourself, your mom and your sister) to your event out of 650 invites.

This features the start of a new segment I will be blogging about. My journey towards getting the news out about a new projecting I am starting with, my very personal bumps in the road; building relationships; creating value; promoting interest — real life style.

Stay tuned!

Did it start with the 2009 movie “This is it”, showcasing Michael Jackson’s life and his achievements? Or was it Justin Bieber’s biography “Never say Never” in 2011 which created a buzz for those working behind the big screens?

Whatever started this trend does not even matter anymore, because it is coming hard and it’s coming fast. And here’s why.

Lady Gaga, Queen of labels, trends and trinkets is going to have her very own movie in the near future. Posted first in the Wall Street Journal blog yesterday morning, this news is guaranteed to spark interest within her fans and the public. Already, comments have been spurting on facebook whether or not they should watch it, what they think is going to be in it and who should play the part of Stefani Germanotta.

One thing will stay constant though, and that is when in regards to all things Lady Gaga, any publicity is good publicity. She has gotten so big that negative publicity can’t even hurt her anymore. In fact, she can get even more popular out of it. It’s no wonder she loves all the attention she’s getting, even stating in her song “Paparazzi” that she’s the paparazzi’s fan and she would follow them until they love her.

And everyone wants a piece of her fame and wealth.

Perhaps we would get life stories on the screen of stars who’s career hasn’t always been on the rise: a Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan movie should be pretty interesting. In fact, I can definitely see something of the sort happening in the future; people in general are too curious about other people’s business. And businessmen alike who see opportunities to make more money would pounce on any given chance they get.

Good luck to those who are producing the movie, I will be lining up for my ticket once it premieres.

A couple months ago, I stumbled upon the most wonderful shoe site I have ever laid my eyes upon. It would be selfish to hoard this site all to myself and I thought my blog would do well with a little shoe christening to kick-start the new school year. So here’s to the most outrageous shoe site I have seen to date:

Solestruck.com, home to the most exquisite pairs of outlandish, off-the-top shoes.

 

Let me introduce Finsk 116-97.

A 6 ½ inch wedge with 4 inch platform. Five cents to a thousand dollars. More than enough to pay a course’s worth of tuition.

 

 

 

 

 

Jeffrey Campbell BENCHED

 

 

The middle part is cut out leaving the sole of the foot completely exposed.

 

 

 

 

 

Haus of Price MEGA BOOTIE 2

 

 

 

The caption: “I think a unicorn just exploded”

 

 

 

 

The best selling point of this shoe site is the ridicule of the shoes it puts out for sale. It’s mission: “to rid the world of ugly shoes one pair at a time” is both hilarious and contradictory. Although I do not see myself wearing any of these heels out in daylight, I honestly can’t help but wish I could own a pair of Baby Blue Finsks. I would keep it in my closet, and take them out during the day to admire its technology and humour. But my practical Finskless feet and I can only sit and watch as Solestruck stocks, restocks and sells out these wonderful shoes again and again. One day, when I graduate from university, I would own a shoe closet, full of magnificent finsk-like shoes…

I’m not surprised that many others feel the same way as I do. Just this morning, I happened to see a group of elementary girls walking to school with their bedazzled platform boots. Shoes are getting taller; shoes are getting outrageous, chunkier, and more substantial. Women are expressing themselves through the length of their heel and the size of their shoe and with the current technologies, their shoes can levitate as high off the ground as they want it. I’m excited to see what is in store in the shoe industry, and I welcome with open arms the trend of extravagant shoe collecting.

 

Wind energy has been growing in Canada, most notably in Ontario, Nova Scotia and British Columbia. Experts say that Canada has “big investment opportunities because of the country’s natural wind resources” in Western and Eastern Canada.

With Canada’s hydro-electric plantations, they could easily become the world leader in renewable energy…but nothing comes without a price. The wind projects in Ontario will skyrocket electricity bills and is estimated to do so for a prolonged period of five years. But even after five years, there is no guarantee that the electricity bills with decrease.

After the economic downturn, it is a good decision to invest so soon in a project so large and unfamiliar?

Canada’s federal debt is estimated to be $566.7 billion for 2010–11, and there are no signs of decrease, as the debt in 2008-2009 was $463.7 billion. Maybe it is time to invest in projects that are not so risky.

References:

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/headline_news/article.jsp?content=b5326698&page=2

http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/en/

http://www.debtclock.ca/

I am not tech savvy, but I have always enjoyed the company of my computer whenever I had time to kill. A few clicks on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Email can easily kill a few hours a day for me. This is how I came across this video on youtube. This video is dated back in 2007, the quality is terrible, and within three minutes or so into the video, I contemplated clicking on to another page because the man who was typing on the screen was bad at it—he was so slow and made so many mistakes. But i was determined, why were there 76,939 views then? There was clearly going to be something interesting that was going to revealed, and i wasn’t going to miss it, especially since I already wasted a couple minutes watching the video.

This man is a genius.

Even a video that was uploaded three years ago has such informative value for me. The man speaking in the video speaks of tracking strategies to monitor stats on video and webpage views. Pictures and videos substantially increase a website’s traffic, and the man experimented this himself with several of his own videos and webpages. Twenty four hours upon launch of his website and he already received the seventh position on google out of 110,000,000 results. If you type in google “internet video marketing” today, his video is in the sixth rank…pretty impressive, seeing as he hadn’t touched it for more than fours years.

Either I was just holed up in my limited facebook world, or I just never bothered to explore the technological world…whatever the reason is, I definitely got showed up by a man I never met on youtube.

This video shows a great way to expand the network where you market or broadcast a video commercial.

As of five hours ago, Lady Gaga is dead.

I kid. Physically, Lady Gaga is still alive, but her “digital life” is dead. What she really means is “no more Facebook or Twitter updates.” It takes $1,000,000 in donation to help HIV/AIDs in Africa and India to buy her life back.

And I would have found out sooner had I not turned off my phone for morning classes at UBC. I have linked my Twitter and Facebook accounts to my phone, and whenever lady gaga has a status update or “tweet”, I can read it instantaneously, basically from the moment she hits her return key to submit the microblog.

It is apparent that many people do the same, because in this five hour period, 34,649 people have “liked” her comment, with 5,946 comments. What is most shocking however, is the fact that with the collaboration of other popular music artists, the joint total raised was $61,699 within a 5 hour time period. Not a bad method to fundraise for a cause. However, I am suspecting that most of the contributions are from *little monsters. But that’s just a hunch from a diehard gaga fan.

What is unique is the method chosen to donate. No credit cards are necessary, (although there are options for credit card payments) just your phone. All a fan needs to do to save her dear favourite music artist’s life is text “GAGA” to 90999. That’s it. Simple, efficient, effective, productive. This is the new age of the online network. The power of social media is revealed in plain site.

Check it out.

*little monsters: a nickname Lady Gaga calls her fans

References:

http://www.facebook.com/ladygaga

http://buylife.org/index.php#lady-gaga

DONATE! (I  did)

T-mobile is offering small uk business owners a chance to win £2,000. All entrees get free online publicity by having its own page on the T-mobile site. T-mobile is offering businesses an excellent head start on their online marketing by allowing them to utilize their high-traffic website. To enter, all that needs to be done is write a 140 character summary to “sell” the business.

Consequently, 140 characters is the exact limit for posts on Twitter.

If T-mobile were to have this competition a couple years back, before the launch of Facebook or Twitter, I can guarantee it would not be as effective as it would be now.

Social media is derived from the combination of social interaction and technological advances over the internet. It provides its users the ability to keep an ongoing connection with people around the world through blogs, posts, comments, photos, and videos. Sites like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to name a few have become increasingly popular over the years. These sites build an online network of people around the world, and anyone can connect, no matter who or where you are.

People often overlook social media’s power in the modern world. For many small businesses, this is a a great opportunity to market their product or service. The increasing online network of people makes social media a more effective way of advertising. The new age calls for a new way of advertising when strategies are not as effective as they were in the past.

References:

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/business/business-sense/competition/?WT.mc_id=BON_BR_Comp_B2L

Walt Disney is man whose idea brought much happiness to many people. Surprisingly enough, he started his company from drawing rabbits named Oswald. Oswald gained much success and the company expanded quickly.

Walt Disney’s team then created Mickey Mouse and his characters. They animated fairy tales on the big screen. They own amusement parks all over the world..Disney’s message spread quickly, and racked up large profits along with it.

Can you imagine how he started the company? From doodling inhis sketchbook and investing in his belief! Not many people can do this because of the high risk of failure…but to many people’s delight, Walt Disney carried on with his belief, and his company now owns multi-million dollar characters. A company thats pretty much “too big to fail

Walt Disney made “Dreams come True” for many, but most of all, he fulfilled his own dream by creating not only a company but a legacy for those after his time. Nowadays, there aren’t many people who haven’t heard of his name or his innovations…In the end, isn’t that what entrepreneurs are all about? Combining ideas with an innovative manner and hopingthat customers believe in its value? Walt Disney never fails to impress young entrepreneurs all over the globe, as well as the children he seeks to delight with his stories.

DANCING. LADY GAGA. KATY PERRY’S CALIFORNIA GIRLS.

These are the ipod essentials for the summer and Cebu Pacific wants to integrate these must-knows into their flight safety procedures. Loud dance music starts and the attendants dressed in bright coloured t-shirts skip out with seat belts in one hand. Lady gaga’s voice leads the way as they dance and demonstrate the proper way to put on seat belts, face masks, barf bags…Meanwhile, the passengers sit dumbfold with a look of shock and amusement. These flight attendants are definitely not of the norm, and i must admit their dancing is quite entertaining.

It turns out I am not the only one who believes so, for the video of these dancers reached close to 9 million hits in twelve days. Big accomplishment for a couple of ordinary flight attendants. This goes to show that one must never underestimate the power of the social media. Use it wisely, and good things will happen. In this case, with CP already being the country’s leading domestic carrier, the company just chuckles at the free publicity it is receiving.

References: