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Fresh cookie dough + mix-ins = your cookie

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I just had one of the very best food-retail / business-jealousy experiences of my adult life. I just had a cookie created for me, custom, baked in just 2 minutes. Sweet Flour has opened in Toronto's Bloor West Village, and I'm now a fan. Big time.

The place is immaculate, smells like home (cookies + love), and boasts all kinds of delicious treats, not the least of which is the custom cookie. As I understand it, the custom cookie is the key to this wonderful place. You pick your dough (plain, PB, or oatmeal), you pick some 'Mix-ins' like various chips, nuts, chunks, pieces of snickers, sprinkles, etc and then your cookie is mixed, squashed, turbo-baked, quick-cooled on what looks like a refrigerated marble slab, and served up melty and delicious.

The whole walk home, as I devoured my cookie and restrained myself from tasting Claire's cookie, I was thinking about this place. I want to go back and it's only been 15 minutes.

Built in what was the Sherwin Williams of many years ago, located at 2352 Bloor St. W, Sweet Flour is the dream of entrepreneur and former CPG marketer Kim Gans. (I got a mini-bio from an employee while I was waiting the 2 minutes for my cookie). Kim used to manage marketing for some big brands for General Mills. More about Kim here.

I often read Springwise, the trends and innovation web zine, and find cool ideas like this, or bike rental services, or customized cereal that gets mailed to you in a tube, or hotels make from old shipping containers--- It's not often that I get to accidentally wander into one.

If you live in Toronto, you should be making your way to Bloor West Village right now to create some cookie art. Invite me along, I want another @andrewkinnear.




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Google knows. Did you know?

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If you have a Google Account, you may or may not know about Google History, which is a record of all the searches that you've done since activating your account. My account was only activated in 2006 when I migrated to Google from some other services, and I've managed to rack up over 11,000 searches.

If you're concerned about privacy, rest assured that only Google (that's the giant company that you don't control) has access to the data. They use the information to better service your web, image, video and other queries, as well (I'm sure) to serve you better and more relevant content and advertising.

The more relevant the content and advertising that they can serve, the higher likelihood of conversion, which translates to better revenue.

What interests me about this is being able to access my own "Wayback Machine" and see what kinds of things I was searching for and clicking on over two years ago. Funny videos, interesting articles, etc.

Google thinks the same thing, which I think is why they've added the 'bookmark' feature to this compilation, as well as promoting the Google Bookmarklet to drag to your toolbar for more accessible bookmarking. It makes sense.

Could (or has) this information ever been the subject of a court case? It could almost be considered an alibi-- "You're honour-- I was clearly at home searching for Monkey Videos on the day in question, as you can see by my IP address, searches for the eact time period of the crime, and flawless password security."

On the other hand, the prosecution may come back with "Objection-- what kind of nerd looks at Monkey Videos on a Saturday night in July?"...

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Protect yourself in a Flu Pandemic

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For those alarmists out there (like me) who daydream about the day that Zombies will take over our city, disease will render us a crippled infrastructure, or aliens attack, I present the 14 step "What to do in a Pandemic" plan, which I was able to research thoroughly (in roughly 15 seconds) but which makes a lot of sense depending on the situation.

There's also a real plan here (PDF): York Region Flu Pandemic Contingency Plan

Because we seem to be closer to Swine Flu than Zombies, we'll take that into context. Also, Zombie preparedness is much different.


1. Have a Family Call-out Plan. When the pandemic starts, activate the Call-out plan - calls out to every family member to get everyone home ASAP.

2. If still on the road and/or in public, pull out gas mask, with bio-filter, from kit in auto.

3. Keep radio tuned to local stations you trust for local updates.

4. Upon arriving home, start quarantine process by bringing everyone inside including pets.

5. Put a "Quarantine" sign on front door.

6. Start bio-in-house filter.

7. Set up decontamination station in garage with drapes, shower, gloves, masks, and gowns.

8. Set up isolation rooms for possible sick family members and guests

9. Start everyone on immune system boosters.

10. (a) Check all electrical (solar, 12 volt, and battery) systems in case of loss of power.

(b) Check water supplies, have everyone shower daily until loss of water pressure.

(c) Check on possibility of working from home.

(d) Stockpile supplies where possible.

11. Request over the phone for advanced homework assignments for school age children to be sent over the Internet

12. Check with contacts you trust for updates on problem.

13. Call your neighbors, on the phone, for distribution of information sheets to neighbors upon confirmation of problem.

14. Prepare to pull out alternative heating/cooking/lighting/sanitation measures to be used.


I will also add that things like survival books, tools, weapons, and cleaning/medical supplies are also extremely valuable in the global apocalypse. Don't underestimate the time it takes a Walmart to be emptied...

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Trek Yourself before you Wreck yourself.

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This Auto-starts, so I've moved it off the home page...


Awesome. Very slick integration viral site promoting the new Star Trek movie. The speech is pretty famous, so I can't claim credit.

Create Your Own

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What's Popular for iGoogle gets ready to kill Digg

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Google has just launched a new gadget for iGoogle called What's Popular that aims to compete with, if not destroy, Digg. Though just a gadget for now, it's not like it would be a lot of work for Google to spin it into a Google labs service for those with a Google Account.

It basically does the same thing: Submitted links and pages, rankings, + algorithm = awesome.
What's interesting to me is if this does truly offer the same services as Digg, with Google eventually adding some kind of badge or bookmarklet to "WP" something (like Digg-ing it) then with the superior web skills, bigger reach, internationality and languages, and huge financial opportunity by monetizing through AdSense-- how could Digg survive?

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Browsing on the Blackberry (and other non iphones)

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Blackbery Curve RIMI'm interested in exploring custom CSS that takes what looks normal on a desktop and modifies it in favour of usability on a mobile device. I think I have to add the caveat that I'm only talking about non-iphones, as I understand that the iphone renders pages much like a desktop does, and then you just zoom around. That's not what I'm talking about, since not everyone has an iphone, and Blackberries are far more prevalent in the business world.

Using a utility called JL_Cmder I was able to take some screen shots of various sites on my Blackberry Curve 8310. What I noticed was that depending on the effort, the result was very different. I also noticed that images, Favicons, text size and form field entries all factor into the design.


Air Miles Mobile BlackberryThe first example is airmiles.ca . I'm a little biased, because I know what the infrastructure is behind the Air Miles website and I know that there are changes in the pipeline that just haven't come to fruition yet. For that reason it's a great example: The "You need Flash" message doesn't appear on many other sites I tried. The images aren't optimized for mobile. There is no browser sniffing determining a custom CSS. There is no favicon visible. Scrolling down a little, the experience get's better with text versions of a java menu that makes navigation very easy.

You would assume that RIM would make the Blackberry site the absolute best possible experience via a mobile device, but alas, this is not the case: Not bad as far as images, buttons, etc still being readable. No Favicon. Text size seems oddly large compared with the size of the image text within the buttons and graphic assets.

The New York Times does a good job. Not sure if Blackberry can display transparency in a Favicon, but not a big deal. The masthead image in the top takes up a lot of room for a content based site, but as I explore further down, the stories are structured in an extremely navigable fashion and the text size is good.

Google knocks it out of the park with their mobile site. Clearly a site designed specifically for a small screen, even showing the option at the bottom (of a single screen mind you) to switch to a 'classic' mode. The favicon is clear and adds just enough brand to the screen. Top nav links are shortened. Site is simple and delivers exactly what you visit for.I'm not sure that this kind of multi-platform, multi-screen-size, multi-browser thinking is quite feasible yet for joe-website designer, but certainly as big brands reach out into the mobile world and engage their own consumers in new ways, they will need to think about how their brand is presented.

A while back I explored a similar CSS hack for geo-targeting that allowed Perez Hilton to change his page background to a Canada-centric background image and engage his Canadian readers that little bit more. Simple enough, but why isn't everyone doing it?

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Toronto is too clean. Weird huh?

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Last summer I went through the process of starting a business that would 'clean' messages into the (seemingly) dirty sidewalks, streets and other areas of Toronto. I called it Washvertising, and even built a kick-ass website.

It was going to be an eco-friendly way to leave a message, ad, or logo on a public space without breaking any laws.

It turns out that after many tests all over the city, there just wasn't enough dirt around to create the right contrast necessary to show the ad. Today, ad agency Green Graffiti found the same result in Toronto. Read all about it on Torontoist here.

I shut down the idea after my tests because I determined that unless you could reliably deliver the service to multiple clients in a profitable way there simply wasn't a business-- just a novelty. Leading up to Earth Day (April 22nd) I've so far had 3 different organizations approach me about this type of work (for obvious reasons) and I decided to just tell them how to do it, rather than try to make money off them. Hopefully it works out for them and we'll see some more. At the end of the day, it's a pressure washer and a stencil; not rocket science.

UPDATE: See Comment Below


GreenGrafitti cleaning on Bloor for mykula.ca from Andreas Duess on Vimeo.

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The challenge of marketing in two languages

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 After working for Green Rewards for a year, and then being acquired by LoyaltyOne, I wasn't sure (back then) that we'd actually get this far. Today is the official launch of the new AIR MILES My Planet program.

It's interesting to go through the process of developing a new section/part/area of an established and well known brand. The My Planet stuff that I was fortunate enough to work on was the website. The group that I work with was responsible for creating the new section on airmiles.ca where Collectors can do a few different 'green' things. My favourite section in the tips and tricks.

The Tips and Tricks section has seven categories of things that you can do to reduce your carbon footprint, reduce your strain on our natural resources, and reduce the amount of chemicals you use in your house. Very Practical.

I'm also a fan of the inter-connection we've made with the AIR MILES Community. By linking the community, we get to tap the 5000+ (and growing) group of avid Air Miles Collectors that want to share their own ideas and experiences. We could only research and create so much for the launch of the site itself, but I anticipate a flurry of activity on the Community that will sustain the growth of the program.

Research that we did almost 2 years ago showed that people were eager to do something to help the planet, they would be willing to spend money to do it, but they simply did not have the information they needed to decide what to do. Well, now there are some ideas.

Check out the site and let me know what you think? Or even better, comment in the community about what you think.

So what does that have to do with two languages?

Any marketer in Canada can tell you that when you're a national brand, or a company launching a national promotion, you have to consider our 'other' official language. I'm an anglo through and through, and though I took French in school and put on a funny fake-accent, I really don't understand the nuances of the culture. What I've learned is that even people who are FLUENT sometimes don't understand the nuances, unless they live and breathe it.

When creating content for a bi-lingual site, I see there to be two distinct ways to do it. The first, and what most companies, brands and even governments do is to create in one language and translate to another. This works in most cases, but has drawbacks. Things like local-isms that may make sense to an english-speaker in an english province, once translated, make no sense at all. This diminishes credibility in what you're trying to do (but only for those reading it in the other language).

The second, and far superior way to program/develop/write/design for a bilingual culture is to co-create. I learned this term from Bianca Barbucci, a former colleague and friend who lives and works in Montreal, and is a seasoned marketer with experience from startups to national corporate giants, both agency and client-side.

The term, as I understand it, means to decide what needs to be communicated (like any agency creative-brief process) and then let native speakers develop language and sometimes actual art creative in their own language. Obviously the messages will be different. They won't necessarily translate (and that's the point). But what happens is that the French readers feel like they're reading something written in French, not written in english and then expertly translated. There's a difference.

So how does this affect social media?

Twitter is a great example of an environment that facilitate multi-lingual communication, but doesn't make it easy for a marketer. If I'm just a person on Twitter, and I tweet in Arabic, then only readers who read Arabic are affected. I probably wouldn't get many followers in English. But what if it's a brand doing the tweets. Do you translate? Do you make a separate account for each language? You you give two different people (ENG and FR) access and co-tweet?

Definitely an issue. No clear answer.

With the Community for Air Miles Collectors, the forums are set up to be distinct. When you're looking at english content and you hit the 'Francais' button at the top, it changes the page, not the posts by the random guy in Alberta who doesn't speak french. You have to go to a French forum to talk to French people.

I think experimentation + respect = success. As long as you recognize that people speak different languages and have different cultures, you can market to them properly. Try a few things, see what works. (If you know the right answer, let me know!)


Photo: Mike 'The Fonz' Kewley

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Dogs following Dogs on Twitter.

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These are tweets by people (because Dogs can't use computers) pretending to be dogs, talking about their Owners (themselves) in the third person, and in some cases even changing the language level down a few notches to emulate a child (or what we would expect a dog to sound like.)


What really peaks my curiosity is the amount of work this is for the Owner (the person contributing) and what they seemingly get out of it. They could be anonymous if they choose to be, but instead they take on the persona of their dog, and away they go.

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Value of a Facebook Fan page

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Facebook Blackberry Fan Page via Andrewkinnear.com
I posed the question to my professional network on LinkedIn to gauge the level of interest, and specifically some real-world examples with operational insights, as well as possible ROI or PR impact.  What I asked was "What kinds of things is your brand doing on its Facebook FAN page? What is the level of engagement? Is it a free for all, or is it tightly monitored and censored? Do you have any specific examples of REVENUE generating promotions, campaigns or ideas that you've successfully executed or seen executed via the FB fan page?" 

What I got back was interesting.

Guillaume Foutry writes:
At 77Agency we have a fan page for our agency, 77Academy (our training program) and 77Lab (our blog). We launched these three pages to communicate more easily with people. The level of engagement depends on your community and topic, but yes you have some possibilities of analyzing your traffic.

Emory Cook writes:
Facebook pages are so essential, and so easy to maintain! I tend to lean toward leaving them open for all to use--Facebook (and social media in general) is about dialogue and meaningful conversation, and your company's fans won't appreciate being censored. But I understand the realities of PR, and some sites may not be appropriate for public viewing (for instance, we maintain the fan page of a non-profit organization for kids, and we don't allow their photos to be viewed publicly--you have to be a fan). Facebook has great privacy settings and also has wonderful control features for administrators of fan pages.

As far as ROI is concerned, I can testify to Facebook's amazing PR potential. I'm currently using a client's fan page to promote its upcoming product line for 2009, and the page's fan base has increased 13 times in the past 48 hours. I also recently used a Facebook group to encourage fans of another client to vote for its CEO to be featured in a state-wide business magazine. The response was enormous, he won the vote, and was featured in the magazine. PR via Facebook!

Voila.

David Collison writes:
We set up a Facebook page at the beginning of March, with a general feeling of scepticism among my directors that we should actually be doing this, but we had a new TV advert I wanted people to see, and this appeared to be an ideal opportunity. We have it open and free to everyone.
The number of fans is growing daily, our TV advert has been seen thousands of times and we have some great comments from customers.


Colin Andrews writes:
We invited all our old customers to join our fan page through a competition: we wanted photographs for our website and brochures and so got our customers to tag their facebook photos and write testimonials.

Overall response was about 20% of people we initially mailed took part in the competition. Result was our material now has original photographs of our customers with testimonials. It cost $1000 in prizes for about 20 images. Great value as far as we were concerned.

Once the fanbase was established, we now use it to advertise promotions, and often will contact customers directly to remind them of an approaching deadline. We also had indentified all of our active customers; the ones who would be the best people to target to help us market though word of mouth. For the most part we use the fan page as an alternative to email. But while most people will ignore emails, pretty much everyone will read a Facebook notification.


Overall, I think that big brands have taken advantage of the Fan page properly, maximizing exposure, promoting offers and other things the drive actual revenue, and in general engaging their audience like any other channel. (some, not all). As far as small and medium sized businesses, there are lots of opportunities to improve. The regionality of the Facebook Social Ads makes it a breeze to be able to message specific target groups. Even the updates from the Facebook Fan Pages can be demographically, socio-economically, and psychographically targeted with a few clicks. Considering starting a Fan Page is free (except for resources) it makes sense for every business to have one as an integrated part of their social media strategy.

Feel free to give me your own answer via LinkedIn or in the comments below. Connect with me on LinkedIn using linkedin(at)andrewkinnear(dot)com


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