Hot Koehl

I was reminded today of Office Max’s classic series of commercials set to the tune of Rubberband Man by the Spinners and starring Eddie Steeples who now stars on the television show My Name Is Earl. I absolutely loved these commercials when they came out; you can’t help but dance in your seat with that happy song and Steeples’ fantastic physical dexterity.

A great advertisement is one that propagates itself. Make it funny, engaging, insightful, interesting, and people will willingly pass it along for you. So many marketers complain about the inability to keep peoples attention. You can still keep it, you just can’t deliver crap anymore.

Case and point: I’m writing a blog post about the Rubberband Man series, I readily found all the commercials online, including a “Making of” video, and it’s been over two years! That’s damn good advertising.

Enjoy some positive vibes before you get back to work.

Office Max Rubberband Man

Office Max Rubberband Man — Back to School

The Future of Web Apps conference is so right up my alley it’s almost stupid that I couldn’t attend. Web development with a focus on business: customer service, driving traffic, marketing, sales… It’s essentially the event for geeks who want to go from the basement to the corner office. Fortunately, Ryan Carson and the team at Carsonified are kind enough to freely distribute some the presentations made at this year’s London event.

I couldn’t find an index of all of them, and I wanted to watch them all in chronological order, so here you go. If there are videos for the presentations I’m missing (here’s the full presentation schedule), please let me know so I can link them.

Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose

Introducing Atlas: A Visual Development Tool for creating Web Applications by Francisco Tolmasky

Start-up Metrics that Matter by Dave McClure

Branding and Marketing Essentials for Your Web App by Alex Hunter

Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

The Future of HTML5 by Bruce Lawson

You-Centric: The Future of Browsing by Aza Raskin

The Future of the Cloud by Simon Wardley

Are you planning to attend a trade show or expo to showcase your product or service? Costs surrounding these events tend to run into the ridiculous category, even for established companies. If you’re a startup, it’s quite the juggling act.

We recently had a very lively discussion on the matter on the Philly Startup Leaders mailing list, chock full of hints, tips, and suggestions from those who have been there/done that. First here’s the original inquiry…

We’re going to be attending our first tradeshow this November and need to figure out how to put together our booth on a budget (or lack thereof). We’ve got a 10×10 booth along with a few hundred other vendors. Thankfully, we managed to snag a decent location on the floor.

We ultimately need something pretty simple. We plan to bring 4-5 workstations for people to use our website and put a 50″ LCD on the back wall to run some demos. The whole goal is to get people in the booth, on the computer and signing up.

Everyone we’ve talked to is saying it is going to take more than $10k to build and deliver a booth (this is to buy, not rent as we’ll likely be at several more tradeshows over the next year). We literally don’t have a budget for doing this, but we’ll figure out how to do it somehow, and we do plan on having as professional a presence as possible. Does anyone have any suggestions and/or good exhibit companies they have worked with before? Typically, are exhibition companies willing to negotiate on price?

Also, if anyone has any practical advice on tradeshows that they’d like to share, please do. We need to gain as much exposure as possible.

– Jameson Detweiler, Green Konnect

And here are key excerpts from the discussion (edited for content, spelling, etc)…

The most important part of show prep is to write down your measurable goals for the show (X number of leads, X number of orders, etc.) and to plan your follow up process for during and post show. Also think about pre-show marketing and which prospects and clients to whom you want to send a free pass. And consider any p.r. opptys you can create while you’re at the show. The post show work is critical in my mind. Otherwise any money you spend on the show is wasted if you don’t plan your follow up and execute on it. Can’t tell you how many companies I’ve seen waste $’s for lack of follow up.

For the booth, shop around online. When I set up the trade show program for one company I think we spent about $2500 to buy our very good quality 10×10 booth, plus some amount for the artwork for it. It was a basic concave back w/ basic lights. That was 4 years ago so I don’t know where prices are now. I think I used Exhibit Deal. The short answer is that you want your booth to look professional, not like one of the companies that can’t afford to be at the show (they have no chairs, no carpet, no lights and use a cheap back drop).

To do that, make sure you go thru the exhibit book carefully to see where you can shave costs. The exhibitor companies typically hit you for everything, electricity, carpet, daily cleaning, chairs, tables, fabric, etc. Also if you’re in a union exhibit hall you’ll have to read the rules carefully to figure out how to package your samples and stuff so you can load them yourself and not be crushed by the union rates.

We rented the table w/ fabric and carpet, paid for the electric outlet, were allowed to plug in our own electric devices and not have the union electrician do it b/c we were a small booth, and brought out own good looking folding chairs. We also brought our own booth box w/ all sorts of stuff that came in very handy.

We also spent money on logo’d button-down shirts for a booth uniform, booth shipping, product samples, marketing collateral, air fare, hotels and meals for 3-5 people over 4 days, 1 rental van and other incidentals.

[...]
I’d take a careful look at the exhibit rules to see if they say anything about using computers and video screens. While you can figure out a way to get a 50″ big screen set up w/o buying the expensive backdrops needed to hang them, the set up you describe – 50″ video w/ lots of computer terminals – is the kind of set up that would require union workers. Make sure you see if that’s an issue for you as you shop for a booth. That killed our plans to do the same kind of thing.

– Bruce Segal, E*S*Q Unlimited

My wife and I built a 10×10 trade show on a budget. It was super simple, but only cost $2K to make.

• Postcards to hand out, $185 (from modernpostcard.com)
• Fabric for table & sides, $50 (from Jomar’s in Philly + my wife)
• Sewed big pieces together really quickly
• 3 Posters (2 with lights), $1560 (from postergarden.com)
• Fishing line held the software boxes up

– Gabriel Weinberg, Duck Duck Go

Also, I would recommend having some good swag. It draws people into your area.
– Tracey Welson-Rossman, Chariot Solutions

I would recommend against trying to mount a 50″ display on a pop-up. You’re going to have some stability issues. Instead, get a floor standing monitor mount. Here’s a cool one with place for keyboard/mouse at a decent price. You’ll also need a table for your workstations. With a handful of workstations, you’re going to need some room.

Cramming all of this in to a 10′x10′ space is going to be very tight. Of course, it also depends on how many people you plan on manning the booth. Generally, shows prohibit you from lingering in the walkway between booths. So, let’s say you have the booth back, the floor stand with 50″ monitor, a table with 5 workstations and 3 people in the booth, you’re going to be tight for space. Add 2 or 3 attendees and you’ll literally be on top of one another.

As far as show strategy goes, it always helps to have something interactive going on (more-so than just your product). Having some kind of gimmick, giveaway, contest, prize, game, etc., goes a long way to drive more traffic in to your booth. Now, of course, you don’t want this to be the main attraction of your booth. Nor do you want it to be tacky – so as to detract from your presentation or harm your brand.

Here’s a good example of bad interactive execution. I was at a show about a year ago and outside of a 20×20 booth, lingered an attractive, scantily clad female, who was encouraging attendees to come over to the booth and take a whack at a golf ball with her putter and land one in the hole to win a prize. I stood there and watched as one person after another lined up to take a crack. What I found interesting was that once the attendee took a shot at the ball, they disappeared instantly… wanting nothing to do with what the company had to say about itself. Also, not one female approached the booth. It was a disgrace.

So, some ideas for things you can do that will draw attention, give you a chance to talk to an attendee and avoid detrimental branding:

1. Grab 10 ipod Nanos and give away one every hour on the hour. Ask attendees to drop their business cards or sign up with one of your pre-printed entry forms. This way, you can talk to them while they’re signing up to win – you can talk to them again if they come back later to see if they’ve won… and you can tell them to come back every hour to enter again if they don’t win. You’ll get a lot of repeat traffic. Also, word of mouth will spread around about the contest.
2. You could have a grand prize – for example, everyone that “signs up” on the spot for your product/service gets entered for an end-of-conference/show giveaway where you give them the 50″ TV from your booth.
3. Give away a decent show bag. While attendees almost alway throw away 99% of what they stuff in to those bags, if the bag itself is nice, they will keep it. I probably have 10 of them at home in my closet. (Good for groceries, etc.) This way, your brand sticks around with the attendee for an extended period of time (post-show).

If you want to look professional and do this right – I would expect to spend ~$6k-8k. I don’t think the $10k estimate was off base. For the last big show I did with a client (show in DC with ~20K attendees), the client spent ~$55k on the booth, $10k on personnel in the booth (we hired actors and put on a whole production in a 20×30 booth), and ~$15k on giveaways, prizes, take-homes, etc. We also put in four small movie rooms inside the booth, where attendees could sit down and watch a short video presentation we created about the product. They could pull the curtain shut and enjoy a few minutes alone. This went over very well. This client wanted to go all out for a new product/brand launch and make a big splash, which they did. Microsoft’s booth was right next to them, and the Microsoft guys were jealous of all the attention they received.

Another one of my clients used to have a singing Elvis in their booth every year. They did this for about 8 years straight (until I came along and got rid of him). It was interesting, though… people remembered the singing Elvis and would come back to their booth year after year to hear him sing. It got attention and was memorable (just not the kind of attention I wanted for my client).

If you do something creative, something different, you will get attention.

– Aaron Haydn McLean, Eight Eleven Inc.

Check the prices on anything you plan to rent or ship, chances are that you’re find that many items can be purchased locally near the show for less than the rental/shipping. This goes for most furniture/supplies and even some LCD displays. We did CES a few times and typically arrived a little early to buy a lot of stuff locally versus renting or shipping. Also, we bought a used booth at a local booth maker which saved us a lot of $ and dressed it up with new artwork.

– Rick O’Brien, SemperCon

Hand-me down wisdom from an advisor with many startup success stories:

Don’t get a booth – just go and sell to people with booths. Still have the same goals in mind, but only pay for a day-pass to walk around the exhibition areas. I don’t know if that helps, but it’s worth considering going commando.

– Jordan Epstein, Philly Startup Leaders

Update: And if you happen to be in the social networking or registration businesses

Try working out a deal with the conference, such as being the official networking site for conference attendees.

You would pitch the conference on the value to attendees, show them what they would normally have to pay, then offer to provide it to them at no charge or a discount. You’ll do all the work and the attendee marketing. They would just need to send you the attendee list with e-mail addresses.

We’ve worked ticketing deals like this with success. It gets you better exposure than you could pay for and shows off your product doing what it does best.

If they are interested, be sure to ask for the extras that don’t cost them anything — including a booth in a premium spot, a speaking opportunity, ads in the program, on the web, etc, and a final attendee list so you can continue marketing to them.

– Blake Jennelle, TicketLeap

An effective business always remembers that their relationship with a client is a two-way street. If the client isn’t holding up their end of the bargain, the company can and should drop them. This is called firing your customers. The discussion surrounding this notion, both pro and con, is pretty vast, and I recommend you do your own research to ensure you take the right approach for your market, your business, and yourself.

However, in most cases the decision to fire a customer stems from one or both of the following basic scenarios:

1. The client is a calculable drain on resources (i.e. the client is a net negative income)
2. The client is a complete pain in the a**

My personal feeling is that both situations grant justifiable cause to at least consider dropping the customer. In the case of A, something is seriously screwed up with the terms of the relationship. You initially charged too little or promised too much, or the client somehow wrangled you into that position after the fact. Whatever the case, the relationship has to be balanced or eliminated.

Scenario B is self explanatory. In addition to generating a massive amount of stress and anxiety around the office, these cases often lead to Scenario A.

In short, I would try to repair a relationship in Scenario A, but I would get rid of a B client as fast as humanly possible.

Today a friend presented me with Scenario C, which is a landmine for businesses.

The web developer for my friend’s company dropped them as a client recently. In the Dear Jon email on the matter, they stated that the relationship was “no longer engaging for less than $XX per month.”

*Smack* No! Bad web developer!

Let’s put aside the possibility that it was cover speech for the aforementioned Scenarios A and B and assume that the profit margin was the primary reason at work here. Unless there’s another con in the relationship to point to — perhaps toeing the line on B — this is never ever a good reason to drop a client.

Businesses grow by building on past success, and you have your clients to thank for the opportunity to create that success. Dropping smaller clients for bigger fish is a helluva way to say “thank you” to clients who helped get you started and/or grow.

No matter how awesome the work that my friend’s company received, that developer will only get bad reviews from here on out. Referrals, both good and bad, are the most powerful advertising you can’t buy. I’m on several business networks, and participants are often asking for web help. This developer has actually come up in a few cases. Guess what the response will be the next time someone asks about my experience with them?

And consider the payoff to the developer. There are always bigger fish, so this practice only helps engender a reputation as an “ambulance chaser” of sorts. It’s a clear indicator that money is your first, last, and only motivation, and no one likes working with a company that’s purely concerned with the bottom line.

You generate bad blood, and only get the opportunity to make more money in return (Which you had to begin with! Expand, hire more people, work harder!). There’s no way you come out looking like anything other than a money-grabber.

Firing a customer is fine, but you better make sure you have your head on straight before doing so.

I’ve become a big-time RSS junkie in the last few months. Google Reader is my preferred format, but I am looking into some of the desktop-based readers. I’ve picked up on a subtle trend from these months of scouring roughly 50 feeds. The vast majority of feeds simply include the entirety of a given article, eliminating the need to visit the site at all. However a few only include small excerpts, usually the first few lines of the article, and you have to click through to the site to read the entire article. Perhaps it’s not surprising, but in all the cases I’ve seen, these sites use significant amounts real estate for advertising. Some even do those stupid shoved-in-the-middle-of-the-article ads.

I subscribe to feeds for one reason: to centralize and simplify my information digestion. Centralize is bolded for a reason; If I can get to everything from one location, I can read it faster and move onto other things. Feeds that force me to click-through disrupt this process. Worse, they annoy me, making me less likely to stick around and even glance at the precious ads.

Click-through feeds also say a lot about the content itself. Obviously the site management is focused on advertising. For web advertising to really work, you need eyeballs, and lots of them. How do you get more eyeballs? By writing more content, and lots of it. The more content you have, the more stuff you get indexed, the better your chances of getting more eyeballs. It’s a simple formula, and it’s also emotionally void. How useful (or insightful, or interesting, etc.) can the content truly be when the primary focus is on writing articles simply to make more words? Content for content’s sake will never hold a candle to information eagerly shared through genuine interest.

If you are currently using or considering the click-through feed format, I offer this alternative. Take the time to produce meaningful content, and offer it without strings attached. Then, when you have something to offer me, present it in and with your content. I promise you that you’ll have my attention. To put it more bluntly: if the crap you’re peddling isn’t relevant enough to actually be a part of your content, I don’t want to see it.

Besides, I use AdBlock Plus everywhere I go. And now, hopefully you do too.