I really like what Seth is saying here. No pain, no gain.
He explains that most people see only the first half of this chart, in which case, the Local Max is perceived to be the top. However, if you’re prepared to ride out some tough times, there’s probably a much grander Max awaiting you.
“The problem is that to get to Big Max, you need to go through step C, which is a horrible and scary place to be.”
“There were 10,000 single-location hamburger restaurants in the world when Ray Kroc decided to build a giant chain of franchised McDonald’s. Anyone could have done it. No one did. Because everyone who tried had to go through point C to get there. It took Colonel Sanders more than a decade of pain to get through point C.”
Add Your CommentsACNielson says that one-tenth of the world’s population, or 627 million people, are shopping online. Even more amazing, of those, 325 million have shopped online in the last month.
…Wow!
Not surprisingly, Europe and North America have the highest incidence of online shoppers, with Germany, Austria and the UK topping the list, with at least 95 percent of Internet users having purchased online. Here’s what people are buying:
- over 135 million people have purchased DVDs and/or video games;
- close to 135 million made plane reservations;
- over 128 million purchased articles of clothing/accessories/shoes;
- over 112 million paid for music downloads and/or CDs;
- over 106 million purchased electronic devices (including cameras, etc);
- close to 98 million bought computer hardware; and
- over 86 million consumers made hotel and/or tour bookings.
I just had a fascinating conversation with a woman named Linda Samis, who started a company called Canaqua less than a year ago. Linda told me she’s never made a single sales call, yet today, her water is available at luxury stores across Europe and Asia.
How does this happen?
Linda says it all starts with a fantastic product. “We have been like the little fish in a big pond, but we are breaking through at an enormous clip. People around the world, recognize a great product when they see it.”
Yep. That’s true, it starts there. But…having a great product is simply the cost of entry in today’s market. That alone is not good enough. There’s no doubt that there a lot of factors at work in Canaqua’s success, but I’m betting the elegant design of her packaging is largely responsible for her traction.
It’s simple, it’s clean and it tells me a story about “living well” without even picking it up.
Wonderful design = wonderful word of mouth.
Steve Jobs gets that.
Linda Samis gets that.
What about you? Is your product so pretty that people will want to talk about it?
p.s. I almost forgot the best part of this story. Linda has also never hired a branding agency or conducted a focus group. Her son came up with the name and designed the logo and her daughter does all the photography.
p.p.s. I’m going to meet with Linda in a couple weeks to talk about how she can use the Internet to keep the buzz alive. I’m also very excited to try the water!
Venture Capitalist Paul Graham says you need 3 things to create a successful startup:
1. Start with good people.
2. Make something customers actually want.
3. Spend as little money as possible.
I think we’re doing all 3 of those with Cell Phones etc.. Time will tell.
According to consulting giant McKinsey, about two-thirds of all economic activity in the US is influenced by shared opinions about a product, brand or service. To help make some sense of that, WOMMA (The Word of Mouth Marketing Association) has partnered with eMarketer to deliver a report examining why so many online marketers are engaging in word of mouth or viral campaigns - and why even more plan to do so in the future.
According to the report, the top ten reasons are:
1. The consumer is in control
2. There is a growing distrust of advertising messages
3. Empowered consumers are not just negative, they are fighting back
4. There is a marked increase in online advertising
5. Media fragmentation is causing marketers are shifting from mass advertising to targeting efforts
6. Email and other interactive platforms make it easy to employ viral programs
7. Word of mouth marketing is relatively free advertising
8. New tools can now track and measure online word of mouth
9. Online word of mouth marketing campaigns have a long shelf life
10. Remarkable offline marketing campaigns can ripple on to the web
The full, paid version of the report is available here. [via Church of the Customer]
For their second consecutive year XO Create! wins the national American Graphic Design Awards. The team is proud to be honored in the 2005 awards for their entry in the self-promotions category. The unique entry was conceptualized as a ???gift of time??? and appropriately titled ???Take 5???.
Read entire press release…
Does this guy look like a rock star? Well in the world of high-end graphic design he is considered just that.
“Regarded as the world’s foremost book jacket designer, Chip Kidd’s work covers a wide array of authors: Michael Crichton, Allan Gurganus, Anne Rice, and John Updike, to name only a few. The recent books of Texas authors Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry all have Kidd covers. In his 14 years at Alfred A. Knopf, the venerable New York publishing house, Kidd has created more than 1,500 book jacket designs.”
I’ve been using Mailblocks.com as my personal email account for a couple years now. In fact, in the early days, I was one of their paying customers. Unfortunately, Mailblocks recently sent me an email informing me that their new owner, AOL, would be shutting the service down.
All Mailblocks customers can transition to the new AIM Mail service immediately, because the Mailblocks email service will be discontinued on November 16, 2005. Per our Terms of Service, we are providing 30-days advance notice. The Mailblocks email service will be discontinued on November 16, 2005 and any future email after that date will be returned to the sender. Once the account is closed, there will be no way to gain access to the account and all the data will be permanently deleted.
Hang on a second! “Any future email after that date will be returned to the sender.” Come on! That has to be a mistake. Surely if I sign up for the new AIM account you can forward my old mail to me? I emailed this very question to the Mailblocks team and all they could come up with was a canned response telling me how “the Mailblocks service is designed to be the ???consolidator??? of all your email accounts.” That’s not much good if the service is being shut down. So…I emailed them again.
Did you even read my previous email? I got an email from you guys a few days ago saying you are canceling my mailblocks account. How can mailblocks act as a “consolidator” if you are shutting the service down? I’ll ask my question again. If I create a AOL email address, can you forward my mailblocks there after the mailblocks service has been shut down.
The response:
As stated in the email, the email servers will be deleted of all data and disassembled after November 16th. Due to this, email service or forwarded emails will not be available after that date.
I see. So…why on God’s green earth would I sign up for AOL mail? First you tell me you’re taking away my email address. Then you tell me that all my personal data is going to be deleted, permanently. And then, you try and muscle me into your new service with no real benefits for my previous loyalty.
Call me crazy, but doesn’t it seem odd that a company would use its shareholders money to buy a promising young company and then tell all of that company’s customers to screw off. Basically, play by our rules or don’t play at all. Still sounds pretty “walled garden” to me. Could you imagine if Yahoo said to all Flickr users - sorry, now that we have purchased Flickr we are going to delete all your photos. But you’re welcome to upload them again at our new Yahoo Photo service!
I don’t know how many Mailblocks subscribers there are, but obviously AOL doesn’t care. Ahhh, who needs customers anyway?
Design software publisher Adobe has announced that its stockholders have approved the recent acquisition, by Adobe, of web graphics company Macromedia. According to Adobe, the stockholders of both companies have voted in favour of the merger.
