Archive for the 'Marketing' Category

Awesomeness at the GeekRetreat

Published
by
Dave
on January 19, 2010
in Marketing
. 6 Comments

Talking Heads at the Geek Retreat - photo by Paul Furber

Talking Heads at the Geek Retreat - photo by Paul Furber

This past weekend I participated in the second annual South African Geek Retreat. It was held at the beautiful Stanford Valley Lodge. Basically, it was a bunch of people involved in the South African web industry getting together to share ideas, build relationships, and have fun. HIGHLY recommended!

The most important rule of the retreat, and what made the experience so extraordinary, is: There are no tourists at the retreat. Everyone must contribute something (a blog post, a talk, a workshop, a crate of beer…). Another rule, or recommendation, is that you don’t have to attend any session, and if you aren’t enjoying a session you can just leave it.This put everyone into a collaborative state of mind and helped everyone make the most of the retreat.

Because of this innovative format (which also included long breaks and social outings), along with the wonderful people who participated, the GeekRetreat was perhaps the best conference I’ve ever attended.

Besides all the cavorting that would be expected (did I mention the all the beer?),  the geek retreat was made up of some formal sessions that were organised during the retreat. For example:

  • Skills-Share: people give a 30 – 60 minute class on how to do something in particular (e.g. “What it Takes to Start a  Web Consultancy Business)
  • Talking Heads: Various people have 10 minutes to share a particularly interesting idea with audiences of  two  people at a time. Questions and comments are encouraged. The listeners rove.
  • Geek Quiz: Teams get together to answer questions such as “What was the name of the first graphical web browser? (Answer: Mosaic)

I presented a “Skill Share” session on the topic of “How to Present Talks Professionally (and well too)“. I’ll share the ideas in a subsequent blog post.

While everyone at the retreat contributed to the experience and the learnings, a particular thank you goes out to:

I have the greatest appreciation, however, for each and every person that I interacted with at the retreat. I’ve long maintained that the best part of any conference is usually the participants, and this was a prime example of that. You ALL rock, srsly.

Lastly, there has been some criticism of the event online (see, for example, the comments on Jarred’s post). Most of the criticism comes down to the statement that the retreat isn’t likely to change anything. My answer to that comes from my own experience of not only the GeekRetreat but also events like 27dinner and PodCamp: Meeting stakeholders in the SA web, media and marketing industries and sharing concerns, ideas and opportunities consistently leads to new projects, friendships, businesses, and innovations within businesses and NGOs. Not always, and not for everyone, but often enough. This is why we all carry on participating in them.

I would personally like to see more initiatives like GeekRetreat, SiliconCape, 27dinner, HeavyChef and more. These community building events are educating our industry, driving innovation, raising awareness, and stimulating growth. They are beneficial to the participants, the industries involved, and the country in general. If you don’t like the current offering, start your own and see if you can do better – that’s how these all started in the first place!

p.s. I can highly recommend White Water Lodge in Stanford Valley, where I stayed for the retreat. Great getaway spot.

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Fort Knox: a Stunning Example of South African Artistic Talent

Published
by
Dave
on October 11, 2009
in Art, Case Study, Marketing, Media, Music & Events, Video and Viral
. 4 Comments

I couldn’t resist sharing this music video for one of my favourite South African bands, Goldfish, that was animated by my friend (since primary school), Mike Scott. Click play and witness the product of creative genius:

Given the difficulties that South African groups have breaking into the global market (ask Just Jinjer), I think that investing in a world-class music video (that people are compelled to watch over-and-over, and show their friends) could really help Goldfish get more airplay on YouTube and international TV stations. Rock on!

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Opting Out of Telemarketing

Published
by
Dave
on June 8, 2009
in Marketing, Sales and South Africa
. 21 Comments

telemarketingRecently I’ve been getting almost daily calls from telemarketers offering me mainly insurance or cellphone contract upgrades. Despite asking to be removed from their lists, the calls have persisted.

There are four types of prospects for telemarketers:

1. Impressionables : People who will buy the product because they were called (and wouldn’t have otherwise);

2. Customers: People who would have bought the product whether they were called or not;

3. Indifferents: People who won’t buy the product whether they were called or not; and

4.  Boycotters: People who will decide NOT to buy the product BECAUSE they were called.

Out of the four types, telemarketers only gain from calling Impressionables – they waste time and money on the rest.

Unless I’ve specifically asked a company to call me, I’m a number 4 – a Boycotter. Unsolicited telemarketing, like all spam,  is abhorrent to me.  So not only is it a waste of time calling me, but it’s actually counter-productive for the companies concerned.

However, in SA the responsibility is currently on the consumer to somehow get removed from these call lists. You’re supposed to go here (DMASA website – nothing there) or here to opt out.  Unfortunately, as Andrew Rens has pointed out: Opting out of Direct Marketing in South Africa Doesn’t Work.

Telemarketing is a numbers game though, so it hardly matters to the call-centre agent whether one customer is peeved about them doing their job – if they contact enough people in a day, they’re sure to make a couple of sales. This is why they don’t seem to respond to requests to be removed from their lists – there’s no incentive for them to do so.

If telesales is not to be banned, then companies who practice it need to start responding to complaints themselves, and adapt their databases, offers, incentives and calls accordingly.

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Decision-Making Biases

Published
by
Dave
on April 14, 2009
in Marketing and Psychology
. 6 Comments

Flip a Coin by The Bartender 007 on Flickr

While there are many rational reasons for people to choose to buy a particular product or service, it’s often our emotions and personal biases that drive us.

Below is a list of some of the more commonly debated cognitive biases that can affect people’s decisions (From “Decision-Making” on Wikipedia):

  • Selective search for evidence (a.k.a. Confirmation bias in psychology) (Scott Plous, 1993) – We tend to be willing to gather facts that support certain conclusions but disregard other facts that support different conclusions.
  • Premature termination of search for evidence – We tend to accept the first alternative that looks like it might work.
  • Inertia – Unwillingness to change thought patterns that we have used in the past in the face of new circumstances.
  • Selective perception – We actively screen-out information that we do not think is important.
  •  Wishful thinking or optimism bias – We tend to want to see things in a positive light and this can distort our perception and thinking.
  • Choice-supportive bias - occurs when we distort our memories of chosen and rejected options to make the chosen options seem relatively more attractive.
  • Recency - We tend to place more attention on more recent information and either ignore or forget more distant information. (See semantic priming.) The opposite effect in the first set of data or other information is termed Primacy effect (Plous, 1993).
  • Repetition bias – A willingness to believe what we have been told most often and by the greatest number of different of sources.
  • Anchoring and adjustment – Decisions are unduly influenced by initial information that shapes our view of subsequent information.
  • Group think – Peer pressure to conform to the opinions held by the group.
  • Source credibility bias - We reject something if we have a bias against the person, organization, or group to which the person belongs: We are inclined to accept a statement by someone we like. (See prejudice.)
  •  Incremental decision making and escalating commitment – We look at a decision as a small step in a process and this tends to perpetuate a series of similar decisions. This can be contrasted with zero-based decision making. (See slippery slope.)
  • Role fulfillment (Self Fulfilling Prophecy) - We conform to the decision making expectations that others have of someone in our position.
  • Underestimating uncertainty and the illusion of control – We tend to underestimate future uncertainty because we tend to believe we have more control over events than we really do. We believe we have control to minimize potential problems in our decisions.

Reading these, I realise the truth in what Bertrand Russel said: “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd” – decisions and beliefs are hackable.

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