Focused - On-Demand Help for Distracted Minds

This application shuts out all desktop distractions making it easier to focus on writing. Pretty cool!

Focused - Demo from funkyboy on Vimeo.

The End of an Era - JC Penney Goes On-Demand

The end of an era. As kids, we always looked forward to receiving the JC Penny and Sear's "Big Book" catalogs in the mail around holiday time. Change is good. Like the rest of the retail industry, it seems JC Penney is moving to focus its marketing efforts online, on mobile applications, and smaller, more personalized catalogs. These personalized catalogs will no doubt be smaller in size. I wonder if they will still make that "flippity" sound of pages turning fast to get to the toy section!

So I have a question: How is moving a cultural icon like the JC Penney "Big Book" catalog to a smaller size and online format change the perception of that organization? Are some "old school" marketing mediums better off left alone? See the press release by clicking here.

Social Network Contacts and Followers - Like a Bag of Marbles?

A friend said something to me over the weekend that struck a cord. He said, "I've got all these LinkedIn contacts but I've never gotten anything from them." I thought it was interesting that he felt if he collected a bunch of contacts, a miraculous event would occur. I replied to his comment with, "contacts are not like marbles; you don't collect them for collecting's sake. You need to collect contacts so that you can leverage them to glean information from them." Social networking applications are ripe with sub-applications such as Quick-Polls, Surveys and Online Presentations; all with the ability to have your contacts participate and comment. Use these applications to help you gather information to assist you with on-the-job research and other business knowledge. In other words, make sure you play with your marbles.

A Printer Manufacturer talks about a Campaign Manager Solution?

Just saw a brief clip on WhatTheyThink.com regarding campaign management tools. The speaker was Kodak's Aaron Tavakoli. He's the Kodak Product Manager for their Insite product family of solutions. I'm seeing more and more of the major print manufacturers opening up to non-print equipment solutions. I believe you'll begin to see a few of the major print manufacturers migrating a large portion of their revenue streams into more software solution sales. After a while, the technology of the presses becomes so subtle that these companies need to differentiate themselves in ways other than a "my press is bigger than your press" type of mind-set. Manufacturer's software and customer service solutions are going to be the money makers in the near future. Imagine buying a digital press like you would a cellphone and only paying for the services it integrates itself with. Who knows, maybe one day you'll find yourself buying a press for $19.99 with a two year contract. What do you think?

Walk the Walk: Using Your Digital Print Technology to Market Yourself

I saw this great article by Shelley Sweeney, VP of the Service Bureau and Direct Mail Segments at Xerox, that addresses one of the most challenging issues that print producers are dealing with in today's changing economy. It overflows with marketing on-demand symbolism and feedback. Although it mentions using "Digital Print Technology", it's fair to say that all print producers have the capability in some way, shape or form to produce these type of campaigns. The bottomline is that the print producers need to start marketing themselves by using these technologies and solutions to increase revenue and stop "waiting until I get a customer who needs it". Hats off, Kudos and big SHOUT OUT to Shelley for taking the time to get this message out!

CLICK HERE to read the article!

Fantasy Football and Vegas Style Gambling... On Demand!

A friend of mine recently launched a new online sports portal that combines fantasy football and Vegas style gambling. It's called FanGamb, short for Fantasy Gambling. The beauty of the site is that you get all the thrill (and frustration) of gambling without all the RISK! Checkout the video of the site:

FanGamb 2009 from FanGamb on Vimeo.

They even created a viral marketing aspect of the site by allowing you to set up your own league and invite 15 of your friends. Once that happens, they'll mail you a $20 Visa Gift Card. That's enough to buy a case of beer and big bag of pretzels!

On-demand fantasy sports, gambling and viral networking with a dash of incentive thrown in. I tip my hat off to the guys at FanGamb!

Nice URL Shortening Service with Reporting!

I know there's alot out there with regards to shortening long URLs. However, I recently found one (through a posting on LinkedIn) that adds quite a bit more than the usual. It's a service offered by interlinkONE out of Massachusetts. The web site is http://ilnk.me/. It plays perfectly into interlinkONE's focus on marketing automation and accountability metrics.

The service reports Yearly Visitors, Weekly Visitors, specific URL visitors, etc. It's an ideal tool to track those often used shortened URLs. It even allows you to Tweet It! right from the report page.

Once again, interlinkONE comes through with an integrated marketing module to help marketers figure out how their campaigns are progressing. Job well done!

Mobile Short Codes - Billboard Example

I was recently driving down one of the many major freeways in Southern California and saw this digital billboard advertising discounts via mobile short codes for a local shopping complex. You don't see these on the East Coast very often. They're huge in Japan. I wonder what percentage of drivers actually try the mobile short code while they're driving. Is it illegal to text and drive in California? For the record, I didn't try it.

Is Social Media just a fad? I think not...

Take a look at this quick but extremely informative video. Everything is changing so fast. I'm sure there will be some gyrations in Social Media over the next few months, but I feel it's here to stay.

Wide Format Print - Only in LA!

I spent my family vacation in LA and San Diego a couple of weeks ago. I was amazed at the number of wide format print on the sides of buildings. Below are a few examples. How does print on demand play into this medium? Is it possible to "create" such a large print piece by uploading text and images into an online template? Upon closer observation, these large print pieces are actually individual sections of print attached together. As they say, "Only in LA!"