May Calendar for Download

Another month means another edition in my 2009 calendar is ready. May is now ready to download. It's formatted to print out at 5x7 and looks great on white card stock. Visit my website to download May now.

Get Happy Fast

Take a break out of your day and read The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur's list of 199 Ways to Get Happy Fast. My contribution is tip number 52 (though right now number 52 is listed twice, maybe once you click through that will be fixed and my tip will be number 54). Anyway, here's my tip to get happy fast:

How To Get Happy Fast: Yoga – Have an instructor come to your office once a week. It gives you a scheduled break and permission to take your mind off of everything but yourself for an hour. During the ohm, visualize where you want your business to be then start planning to make it happen.

When you're done getting happy take a look through his other blog posts for tips on how to make the most out of your business.

Image by: Shunpikie

Corporate Blogs and Freedom of Expresion

Last week I was at a marketing meeting at the Boston Society of Architects. The presenter, Mike Reilly from Reilly Communications, briefly introduced HOK’s blog, Life at HOK. After seeing the blog the question came up of how to keep everyone “on message” while blogging, an oxymoron in my opinion. If you’re trying to keep everyone on message within a blog then you’re not allowing the true power of a blog to come through – freedom of expression and opinion. A blog is about free communication - no corporate police, no messages to deliver. For HOK it’s an outlet for its employees to express themselves, whether relevant to architecture or not.

Another company may take a different approach where there are parameters around what the content can be. That too is a viable strategy so long as there is no one in the background editing and putting the corporate spin on the posts. Blogs have different voices unique to their writer(s). It’s the personality that comes through in a blog which makes it more engaging for its readers.

The HOK blog is a testament to what a corporate blog should aim to be, an unfiltered collection of messages. It gives the reader a glimpse into the culture of HOK in a way that polished corporate messages cannot.

April Calendar Ready for Download

Another month in my calendar series is ready to download. I call the design for April Cracked Eggs. As always it's sized to 5x7 and prints great on eco-white card stock from Papersource. Download now.

Creating new products that solve needs

Some of the best (or at least most ingenious) product ideas are born to solve a need that many people don’t realize they have. It’s that ah-ha moment when you see something and ask, why didn’t I think of that? It’s that simple idea you think of that on the surface seems to be common sense. That was my feeling as I read the sponsored ad in yesterday’s morning edition of HARO (if you’re not a member of HARO you should join now – in short its PR leads delivered to your inbox three times a day).

Back to the ad – it was for SmartMom, makers of teethable bling. Essentially it’s jewelry for mom that looks like real stones, but that’s made out of safe materials for baby to chew. Wear it when you’re with your little one and you’ll always have that much needed thing to chew on, a way better solution than whipping out the car keys for baby.

Of course, the real test is does it really solve the need effectively – having something attractive to wear that is durable (no more broken dainty necklaces from chubby little hands grabbing at them) and doubles as a teething ring? Not having any babies in the house I won’t be testing it out myself. But I’ll keep my eyes open as I pass all the new moms strolling along Newbury Street this spring.

One thing that SmartMom can teach us is to pay attention to the people around us. There are new product opportunities all around us. As marketers, we need to tune in and listen. Find the need and create your product to solve it. Then make sure people realize the need exists and that yours is the right product to satisfy it.