Category: English

Blood, sweat and viral marketing

Shit doesn’t happen. Shit takes time and effort.

I was recently in a meeting where co-founder of a next-big-thing-startup, when probed about marketing plans, said something to the line of we’ll do something viral so we don’t need to worry about marketing too much. Right. I’m in no means a viral marketing expert but this much I know: viral marketing does take time and effort.
There seems to be a widely spread misconception that viral marketing doesn’t cost anything and that if you do even tiny bit of it, customers will turn up on your door or website like zombies. In my view this is only true on four occasions. First, companies like Skype or Facebook whose product is so viral in nature that they seem to grow “just like that”. Second, brands like Apple or Obama that have such loyal followers that every step they take is echoed on blogs, social network profiles and T-shirts of fanboys across the world. Thirdly there are those whose idea is just so spot-on that no-one can refuse to pass it on to a friend. Blendtech’s Will it blend? campaign is a good example of that. And lastly, some just get lucky because a celebrity blogger somewhere happens to like it.
That leaves 99% of folks to make viral marketing happen with their sweat and/or marketing dollars. I’ve seen the behind the scenes of quite a few viral campaigns, and none of them have been super cheap or super easy to do. Take my recent task of generating blog coverage for Pledgehammer. I now know I have to do about a dozen units of work (this can be an email, blog comment or a guest blog post) to receive one unit of coverage. I’ve made north of 250 contacts to get about 20 people interested and writing about Pledgehammer. That’s good many evenings and weekends spent on creating “something viral”. (Luckily the weather has been rubbish). See here, here, here (got to love this one) or there for results, more links are available on Pledgehammer blog.
Long story short – viral marketing is a powerful thing, definitely worth some experiments, it just takes time and effort to work.

Want Tartu Entertainment?

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This text ad is fresh off my Gmail account. It left me somewhat confused. Targeting works – I’m in UK and probably have quite many Estonia-related emails in my mailbox. But what’s Tartu Entertainment? And what does Visit Online! really add? That I should visit the country online, not in person?
Visit Estonia folks, if you ever read this and wonder who was the one person that clicked on that ad, it was me.

Behind the scenes of the T-Mobile ad

By now you’ve surely seen the new T-Mobile ad. Such a great idea! A friend who was in the video told me they had five full days of rehearsal, at first in some huge building in North London where the life-size plan of Liverpool Street Station was drawn onto the floor and at night in the station itself thereafter. They shot the thing six times with 16 (or was it 14) cameras, with half-hour breaks between the shoots. Dancers were carefully choreographed to leave corridors between them so no-one would miss their train and there were station official present to green light the beginning of each take. Which all makes it a great idea that is also executed brilliantly.

The only thing I couldn’t understand is that the guy I spoke with reckoned that 40.000 pounds was paid out to the dancers. With 400 dancers involved, can it really be just 100 pounds per hard working dancer?

In 2008 I travelled at the speed of a butterfly

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Dopplr is a nifty little web tool that helps you bump into people that travel a lot. I’ve added it to my profile, too (mind the photo). Dopplr just sent me my annual travel report. It says: You took 21 trips in 2008, which added up to 76,089 km or 20% of the distance to the moon. You spent 116 days travelling. I was surprised at this relatively large number, even with Tallinn, which almost doesn’t count as travelling, being my number one destination. And what’s funny – my personal velocity for 2008 was 8.68 km/h, which is about the same as a butterfly.
A few ideas sprang to mind

  • I’m feeling I’m bi-domiciled now. Or bi-homeless, whichever way to look at it. I feel at home both in London and in Estonia. Boarding the familiar blueish aircraft which is familiarly late is like stepping from living room into my bedroom.
  • Ma carbon footprint calculated by Dopplr is almost as much as leaving a Hummer running for a year. What are my best options to set it off? And if I mostly travel for work, should I expense it accordingly?
  • If we’re not yet connected on Dopplr please share your trips with me.

    • I updated this post a day later. Note to self: writing stuff down in a hurry can miss the point of writing.

    God bless California

    The sign in front of US economy It’s difficult to do injustice to a country like the United States but I think I have managed to do just that. I hadn’t been to the States a while. One the one hand because there was no good reason to go but on the other hand I sort of thought that even if there was a reason to go, that’s not a good enough reason to actually go. Having been to New York and Miami, arguably the hotspots of that great country, and having been unimpressed by both, I was feeling strongly neutral about travelling to USA and was absolutely sure there were about a thousand better places to go to.
    This turned out to be injustice. I had come to that conclusion before I had been to California. It was very refreshing to be there, and not just because of the weather. Because it was a short work trip I couldn’t see and do enough to write a travel journal or even a travel memo but I did make a mental note not to rule out California as a holiday destination.
    Still, one thing that was impossible to miss was that everyone in the States seemed to be talking about Obama, almost as if he is the Messiah. Looking at the state of the country he has to do miracles of similar magnitude, too. First he has to feed about 300 million people (and a few banks and auto makers) with two fish and 5 barley loaves. Then he has to calm the stormy seas of US foreign policy. I wish the man nothing but good luck.
    The only time media didn’t only talk about Obama was when the commercials were on. In a very non-American way the commercials were mainly about how to turn excess gold jewelry into cash, get a free consultation on credit card debt or advice on paying taxes. On my previous visits they had mostly been about buying a bigger car that would get rid of the existing car’s problem of not consuming enough fuel. And hey, maybe it was this shift in the mentality that made this country more appealing to me. Might even try Utah next time.

    Bring on 2009

    It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I’ve made my resolutions for 2009. Among other things I pledged to become more serious about learning Spanish, keep on training sanjuro, travel to see another (probably awesome) country and impress myself with new kiteboarding tricks yet to be learned. So if you see me skipping my Spanish or sanjuro class please do apply some good old peer pressure. This is what friends are for.
    There are a few other more personal resolutions that I didn’t want to make public, relating to (storm-ridden) finances or private life. I guess I just don’t need the extra kick of motivation for these ones.
    Wasn’t 2008 awesome!
    So much to look back at and smile. And there are quite a few resolutions I managed to keep : Pledgehammer is up and running, I managed to attend as many sanjuro trainings as I intended and I travelled enough for my liking. Then there’s the slightly weird resolution about my private life where I either wanted one thing or the other but I sort of achieved both. But I did fail several resolutions, some for good and some to be reached in years to come.
    As you may have already guessed by now I like to set goals for myself, and not just on New Year’s Eve. If you don’t know where you’re going you may not get there, as the old saying goes. If you haven’t done so yet, I warmly recommend sit down and ask yourself what you do want to get from 2009? And what do you want to give to 2009, or the people you care about. I of course recommend to write it down on this great site for making resolutions (sorry, just had to link one more time) but you can also share it in your mood message, blog or a bumper sticker on your car for that matter.
    Talking of which, it’s great that Pledgehammer has gotten some nice coverage and that there are now more other people’s resolutions on the site than mine. If it becomes useful to a few people and helps a few charities get more donations, that’s another one of my resolutions for 2009 done right there.
    So bring on 2009 and a happy new year to you all!

    Written by Comments Off on Bring on 2009 Posted in English

    Welcome Pledgehammer

    pledgehammer.pngIt gives me ridiculous amounts of joy to present a new nifty tool for making (and keeping) pledges. Welcome to this web two-dot-oh filled world, Pledgehammer.
    According to any dictionary a pledge is a solemn binding promise to do, give, or refrain from doing something. It is also something given or held as security to guarantee payment of a debt or fulfillment of an obligation. We just put the two together. The idea is very simple. First you make a pledge with a firm deadline and a financial incentive for keeping your resolution. For example, I will not smoke until May 1st 2009 if you want to make one of the most popular new year’s resolutions or I will not invade any Middle Eastern countries until February 2010 if you happen to be the president of a powerful Western country. Pledgehammer then makes your pledge public and asks you how you did upon the deadline.
    If you kept your pledge, well done. We’ll be proud of you and probably so will you. But if you didn’t you have to pay up (you had to pick a financial incentive, remember?). However, the money doesn’t go to greedy people behind Pledgehammer. It goes to a charity you pick yourself. So either way the world will be a little bit better. Or a lot better, because who needs people that can’t quit smoking, invade other countries or don’t donate money to charity anyway.
    So please make a pledge. And if you spot anything that shouldn’t be there or should be better please let me know. We want to get everything just right for the time when people rush in to make their new year’s resolutions.
    Thanks go out to Priidu for his design geniuseness, Malthe for his common sense and advice plus a good many other people without whom Pledgehammer would be just an idea left undone. Merry pledging to you all!

    Update 2010: project closed down.

    Baby, it’s dark outside

    Call me a tourist, but I had completely forgotten how dark it gets in Estonia in December. Bring on the snow!
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    Written by Comments Off on Baby, it’s dark outside Posted in English

    Don’t cry for me, Argentina

    Don’t cry for me, Argentina
    Slovenia said it’d do it
    Turkey, you can stop the song
    Thailand will sing it later
    No need to open doors, my Poland
    It’s Belgium’s turn today
    Tansania, leave my soul alone
    To Sweden I have sold it

    I’m off to my next odyssey. You guessed it, Argentina this time. Travel journal on its way, and hopefully better than this poem.

    Other people’s thoughts

    If you think it’s right to lie, you’ve got to deal with the hard work of ass-covering, so the best thing is to tell the truth. If it’s a legal situation, don’t do it before you talk to your lawyer. But there’s nothing in lying. It’s always a manifestation of being frightened of something.
    The interview with Jack Nicholson in the December issue of GQ UK is pure gold. Platinum, even. Or whatever the most precious metal is. If you don’t read that magazine too often, as is the case with yours truly, that’s the issue to read.
    Started posting good quotes on Tumblr.

    PS. Any tips on how to aggregate my different RSS feeds into one? I can’t figure out whether Feedburned can handle random feeds eg. those coming from Tumblr or Edicy.