This blog was originally established for my internet marketing course, however I really enjoyed the weekly process of writing about a new idea affecting business, strategy and marketing. So, I decided to keep this blog alive. My goal for 2013 is to post weekly and keep it as a forum of my thoughts and experiences throughout the rest of my MBA program and potentially beyond.

My inspiration this week were TEDTalks.

TED’s mission statement begins:

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other

I know everyone has a favourite TEDTalk and now there are so many of them that it is hard to keep track, here are three that I think are valuable to watch:

1. Tribal Leadership: David Logan. Logan looks at the types of `tribes` that humans form naturally ranging from 1 – 5 whether in school, at work or in relationships. I found it humbling and provided some good self-awareness about how I classify my relationships based on these criteria.

2. Schools kill creativity: Ken Robinson. Robinson looks at how institutions can rob kids, teenagers and adults from their naturally creative instinct. A good reminder about how to think outside the box and encouraging our teams to do the same.

3. The puzzle of motivation: Daniel Pink. Pink looks at what actually motivates people to work harder. His findings are likely the opposite of what you think and provides some useful tools about how to apply his findings in the work place.

I continue to be inspired by TEDTalks and will try to highlight more as I come across them.

This blog post is going to introduce some key points from the esteemed book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams and provide some tangible examples about how companies can use them.

Wikinomics refers to the recent phenomenon of user generated content in social media and mass collaboration. Tapscott and Williams argue that how individuals interact with each other and with society has fundamentally changed and in order to be successful companies, governments and people need to unleash the power of mass collaboration.

The book starts by highlighting Time magazine`s choice for person of the year in 2006 was “You – the online collaborator.”

In Hawaiian, wiki means quickly. Wikinomics is now about companies can “conceive, design, develop and distribute products and services in profoundly new ways”. While Wikipedia is probably the most well-known wiki site, this post is going to look at an unusual example.

Enter Canadian mining company Goldcorp. In 2000, Goldcorp’s CEO Rob McEwen was facing significant problems, Goldcorp had the rights to explore gold ore deposit in Red Lake and they needed help.

Inspired by the development of Linux’s open collaboration methods, McEwen established the Goldcorp Challenge. Goldcorp set $575K in prize money and provided “every scrap of information about the 55,000 acre property” on their website. Within weeks – submissions came in from across the world and eventually Goldcorp was able to leverage that mass collaboration and transform itself from a $100M company to a $9B company.

Now this is obviously suffers from winner’s bias, this was a very risky move that could have gone sideways. However, it demonstrates an extreme example that should help make the case about how valuable mass collaboration in the modern business world can be. It also teaches us some valuable lessons about how companies can use mass collaboration to improve performance.

Lesson 1: Everyone can use them – There is room for mass collaboration even with the most secretive companies as demonstrated in the example above by Goldcorp.

Lesson 2: Employee engagement – Mass collaboration and the use of wikis can help engage employees. For example Bell Canada uses internal wikis as an “idea exchange”. Employees submit ideas and are voted on by staff. Best Buy also has a voluntary outlet where they can share positive customer experiences, best practices, etc.

Lesson 3: Improve efficiency- Internal wikis can also improve internal efficiency by enabling staff (within and outside of your organization) to manage projects better (e.g. posting proposals, FAQs, best practices, etc.) – which can reduce emails and increased the quality of documentation.

Overall, there is lots of potential to harness the power of mass collaboration, the challenge for companies will be figuring out how best it can satisfy their needs.

Groupon (GRPN) recently released its Q3 results where they missed their sales target and posting a net loss of almost $3 million. GRPN’s share price fell 25% bringing it down 80% below its original initial public offering (IPO) value, they are also eliminating 80 sales jobs.

This begs the question, how much longer will Groupon survive and is their business model sustainable?

GRPN was founded in 2008 by Andrew Mason and was once named by Forbes magazine as the “fastest growing company ever”.  GRPN is essentially a mass email marketing company that positions itself as win-win-win for retailers, customers and itself.

In 2010, Google offered GPRN $6 billion, however the firm declined, instead seeking to do its own IPO in 2011, which raised $700 million (valuing the company at $12.7 billion). At the time, this made GRPN the largest IPO by an internet company since Google.

Criticism of the business model have been raised for the following issues:

Attracts the wrong types of customers: 

• GRPN segments for price-sensitive customers and these customers are unlikely to be long-term customers.

Impacts operational logistics: 

• GRPN deals typically expire within a certain period. This can have significant impact on the logistics of a firm. For example, if a hair dressing salon with a limited number of chairs does a GRPN promotion, the business has a constrained number of chairs from which to serve customers. This means that it may lose those seats to lower paying customers who are unlikely to come again. This presents itself a as a challenge for firms who are looking to provide excellent customer service.

Alienates your current customer base:

• Small businesses are built on personal relationships. Groupon’s hidden cost may jeopardize your existing customer base as you are providing a deal to new customers instead of rewarding your long standing customers.

So what does this mean for small businesses?

1. Before you embark on a GRPN – develop a marketing strategy. What is the marketing problem you are facing, where do opportunities exist and what type of customer are you trying to reach. This will help you to clarify and understand what type of customer you are trying to attract and whether GRPN would appeal to that group.

2. If relevant, incorporate GRPN into your marketing strategy, however don’t limit yourself to that area exclusively. Small businesses tend to consider GRPN as a silver bullet that is an easy way to generate new leads. Businesses need to consider what financial, strategic and logistical impact this promotion may have on your firm.

3. Do your homework. Consult with other business who have used GRPN as a marketing techniques. There may be some lessons that you can learn from other’s experiences.

4. If you have an existing loyal customers consider investing your marketing dollars in them (e.g. recession discount). Focus in retention that increasing the number of people through the door.

Overall, GRPN can be an effective marketing tool, however it needs to be approached cautiously and with a clear understanding of what its purpose is and what businesses need to consider when incorporating it as part of their marketing strategy.

Once considered the biggest social media site in the world, Myspace is trying to claw its way back into the big leagues with endorsements from co-owner Justin Timberlake. Myspace released a teaser video in September to re-brand itself as a relevant online platform for artists. The site has been described as a “mash-up” between Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook with a focus on music.

This post will analyze both the NewMyspace and explore its history to ensure it does not repeat its mistakes.

Myspace’s lifecycle:

Unfortunately Myspace has followed the traditional boy-band life cycle.

Stage 1: Humble beginnings: Myspace was founded in 2003 by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, originally designed as a file storage site and it quickly became one of the most trafficked sites on the internet.

Stage 2: Stardom: Myspace was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2005 for $580 million, their first major internet purchase. In 2006, Myspace’s 100 millionth account was created and the site surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US.  In 2008, Myspace generated $800 million in revenues and was valued at $12 billion. However, for a variety of reasons Myspace’s popularity started to erode.

Stage 3: Fall and struggle: In 2008 Myspace lost 10 million users between January and February 2011 and Facebook overtoook Myspace in the Alexa.com rankings.

Reasons for decline

1. Failed to “grow-up” and evolve: Myspace failed to innovate and stuck to a “portal strategy” of building an audience around entertainment and music.
2. Not user-centered: Myspace had an advertising deal with Google, which meant it was required to tons of ads on its heavily advertised space. This made the site slow, difficult to use, and less flexible.
3. Open vs. closed platforms: Myspace built everything in-house, whereas rival sites like Facebook created platforms that allowed outside developers to build new applications.
4. Buggy products: Myspace introduced a lot of features but many were poor quality and launched before they were sufficiently tested.
5. Free speech: Myspace was being investigated for allowing children’s exposure to pornography. This bad press caused new social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to target Myspace users.

Stage 4: Low point:  In 2011 Myspace was put up for sale (estimated to be worth $50–200 million), however they were unable to find a buyer for more than $100 million. In June 2011, Myspace was acquired by Specific Media for $35 million.

Stage 5: Revival: Myspace is still operational. According to comScore, Myspace has 54 million users and employs 200 people (down from the 1,600 employees in June 2009).  Alexa.com ranks Myspace’s global rank as 196 (November 2012).

The NewMyspace:

The teaser video highlights the user and artist experience of the new site.

User experience: The teaser follows the user experience of “David Croft”, as he clicks through a variety of features including mixes (playlists),  connections (friends), and  trending (background information on bands such as media interviews, magazine articles and profiles).  Each page is almost all photos and seamlessly integrates together.

Artist experience: From an artist perspective, the site is designed to give them information about who is listening to their music and where they are. CEO Vanderhook argues it is “a social network for the creative community to connect to their fans.”

A message on the website announced the redesign: “We’re hard at work building the new MySpace, entirely from scratch.”

To ensure the New Myspace it is a success they should take the following lessons from their past:

1. Continue to innovate adding features. 
2. Make sure new features undergo rigorous user testing. 
3. Use open platforms as much as possible so you don’t have to shoulder all of the work. 
4. Focus on the user experience. 

If Myspace follows these tips and is ready to learn from their mistakes, hopefully it will be able to follow in Justin Timberlake’s foot steps and regain its position as a leading social media site.

This week I am inspired to write my first blog post on the US presidential election and how the Obama and Romney campaigns are using some best practices of marketing to try to win the election and woo voters. 

This post will first look at the recent President debates. The debate is one of the most anticipated parts of any campaign. The purpose of the debate is to sway voters, particularly those that are undecided, not only to vote (voter apathy was at 43% in 2008) but also vote to for the candidate in question.

Overall, the debate demonstrates a couple lessons in marketing.

Lesson 1: Earned, owned and paid media

The debate is the ultimate ‘earned media’ event over the course of the campaign.  “Winning” the debate can mean a significant boost in the polls, which means candidates are more likely to win the election and can also help the campaign focus their resources. These resources are either in the form of paid advertising or volunteers knocking on doors. These precious resources are the most critical asset of any campaign – where they target their paid advertising dollars and volunteers can mean the difference between winning and losing the election.  This really reinforces the relationship between paid, owned and earned media and demonstrates how increasing earned media can reduce the need for resource allocation to paid media.

Lesson 2: Debate`s key messages

Romney and Obama’s debate strategies can be analyzed using traditional marketing plans.

Objective: Both candidates had the same objective, to sway undecided voters in targeted states to vote for them and not to lose any of their existing bases.

Identify their target market: Both candidates seem to be targeting a similar target audience – the undecided middle-class female voter. Obama’s platform is called “A Plan for Jobs and Middle-Class Security.  https://secure.assets.bostatic.com/pdfs/Jobs_Plan_Booklet.pdf

Romney’s platform is called “Mitt Romney’s Plan for a Stronger Middle Class”  http://www.mittromney.com/jobsplan

Develop your message: Obama’s key campaign message focused on the #webuiltthis. He has focused on his record as being strong on foreign policy, Obamacare and managing the economy under the circumstances. Romney’s key campaign message focused on positioning himself as fiscally responsible but socially moderate candidate who hopes to use his experience in the private and public sector (working for Bain, saving the Salt Lake City Olympics and serving as Governor for Massachusetts).

Sell your message: 

• Keep it simple – James Carville coined Bill Clinton’s 1992 strategy “it’s the economy, stupid”. Carville has continued to reinforce the need in political campaigns to keep your message simple and clearly communicate it.
• Use stories to convey your idea: Facts don’t persuade voters, but stories can.  That is because stories follow a universal structure and can evoke strong imagery.
• Use dichotomies to distinguish yourself from your opponent: Obama’s campaign has tried to position his plan as moving the country forward – not backwards, which is how his campaign has characterized Romney’s plan.

Lesson 3: Understand the medium

This was the first presidential debate with a mature facebook and twitter platform. The first president debate was the most tweeted event in history with more than 10.3 million tweets during the 90 minute debate.

What struck me about this year’s debate is that candidates are not only fighting for the five second news highlight but also to dominate the chatter in the twitter-sphere.  If you ask most individuals what they remember about the debate, most will say – big bird, binders and bayonets.

The presence of social media has disrupted the debate. Whereas traditional debates used to be structured as follow:

• Traditional: Live debate watched on TV — at the end of the debate commentators would analyze the results — the newspaper would report on the debate the following day.
• Contemporary: Debate watched on TV or streamed online — viewers are able to post comments on social media or directly to media sources — at the end of the debate commentators analyze the results and provide instantaneous insights from viewers — media outlets report on the debate immediately following the debate and post online.

I created this blog as part of class assignment to explore hot topics in marketing. I have to say, the most difficult part thus far has been coming up with a name for my blog. After much deliberation, I ended up name my blog after my two passions in life, politics and yoga. While this might seem like a random combination, I believe that politics and yoga actually have much more in common that you would think.

Politics

I got bit by the political bug when I was in university, and when I graduated, all I wanted to do was work in politics. I joined a political party on campus, got an internship working at the provincial legislature and before I knew it, I had been elected to a youth political party executive, I had been asked to co-Chair the party’s Annual General Meeting and I was asked to co-run the youth campaign from the “War Room”.

Politics gave me some amazing experience to meet incredible people and to feel like I was able to have a tiny contribution to a party that I firmly believed it.

Politics taught me three key life lessons.

1.       Understanding yourself is paramount: Before you can try to convince someone to vote for you or your party, you need to have a strong idea of what you stand for and what you are willing to compromise. (For me, access to health care and education are always non-negotiable).

2.       Hard work and perseverance isn’t always enough: Working on campaigns taught me in certain situations, regardless of how many hours I worked; sometimes it was not enough to win the election. But, that doesn’t mean the effort; the time and the cause were not worth it. As in life and sports, losing really teaches you more than winning.

3.        Remember to breathe. Some of my most stressful moments in life stemmed from my experience working in issues management for the Minister of Economic Development, during the financial crisis and the Minister of Health during the H1N1 and eHealth Ontario crisis. These moments instilled upon me, the importance of taking a breath – to refocus and not to make decisions in haste that could have significant consequences.

Yoga

I am not going to lie, I still have a hard time calling myself a yogi and I still find some yoga classes and yoga studios intimating.

For me, yoga came into my life at a very critical point. Two years ago, I picked up my life and moved across the country to Vancouver. I had done a fair bit of yoga before moving to Vancouver, but yoga in Vancouver is very different than anywhere else I’ve done yoga.

Similar to politics, at times yoga can be a bit of a cult… That said all of the life lessons from politics are also applicable to yoga.

Yoga taught me three key life lessons.

1.       Understanding yourself is paramount: Yoga is many different things to many people. For me, it’s about understanding who I am today, where I am going and how I am going to get there. I have found that spending an hour on my mat multiple times a weeks has given me far more introspection that I could have thought.

2.       Hard work and perseverance isn’t always enough: Similar to politics, yoga does have some areas over which you have no control. For example, there are many, many postures that I know I will never be able to do properly. That said, every class allows me to get further into my own yoga practice and either motivates me to work harder on a posture, or deal with the challenge of having to settle my mind.

3.       Remember to breathe: Breathing is one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned from yoga. One of my instructors always says regardless of what position you’ve found yourself in, all you can do is focus on you can control – your breathe.

I hope this blog provides some insights on current events, particularly in the business and political arena and teaches you something about marketing.

This is an experiment, but I am looking forward to it!

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