Brandosophy Buzz

If you’re ready for another interesting social networking site, check out Pinterest.com. This site allows you to “pin” visual content of interest, organized into categories, onto a “board” and to share those interests with your friends and followers. Your categories might include, “Places I have been”, “Places I want to go”, “Books I like”, “Recipes”, “Home”, “Products”, and more. According to Comscore, as of January 2012 the site had more than 11.7 unique users. Pinterest quickly gained new users and is said to be quite “addictive”. I have just begun to use the site so I will just share my first impressions here which are quite positive. Within a few minutes of using the site, I already found products that went immediately onto my wish list. I had even more fun identifying “Places I want to go” and finding the right images to express my vision for what a trip to that place might look like. Papua New Guinea is on my wish list. Now, if I find a friend that also has this destination on their board, the door opens up for an interesting conversation about travel planning to that destination.
Check out Pinterest.com and see what you think.

A few quotes, just for fun:

“Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time”
– Anonymous

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”
– Bill Gates

“It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”
– Charles Darwin

“Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lamp posts — for support rather than illumination”
– Anonymous

“Twitter is a great place to tell the world what you’re thinking about before you’ve had a chance to think about it”
– Chris Pirillo, blogger

The U.S. Census Bureau released this week some interesting news about the increasing diversity of our population. Hispanics now number over 50 million in the U.S., +43% growth from the year 2000.
This growth accounted for over half of the overall population growth in the U.S., and now, 1 of every 6 Americans is Hispanic.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the growing importance of this segment, many companies – both large and small, are not paying enough attention to this important demographic in their marketing efforts and their media spending.
Take Action:
* Is it time for you to reassess your media and overall marketing plan in light of this new information?

When I got my new IPad, the first thing I did was head to “The Genius Bar” at the Apple store.
I loved being able to take my new shiny high-tech toy and getting some customer service the old fashioned way — face to face.
In a world of ever-increasing impersonal connections from emails and messages sent from social networking sites, companies can take a lesson from one of the true masters of marketing and innovation — Apple — and be reminded that a face to face contact is still an incredibly powerful tool in fostering consumer loyalty.

As 2010 winds down, it is helpful to be reminded of Pareto’s 80-20 Rule (that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes).  A few questions you might ask yourself as you think about your upcoming marketing plans for 2011:

1.  Do you have a clear handle on which 20% of customers are generating 80% of your revenues and profits? 

• Are you fully maximizing your potential with those top 20%? 

2.  Are there any customers you should fire?

• 80% of your problems are likely coming from 20% of your customers.   Are they all worth keeping?

3.  Which 20% of your products are the most important? 

•  Should you be developing new line extensions that leverage their success? 
• Should you be killing the bottom 20%?

4.  What about your competitors?  Which 20% of their customers are generating 80% of their business?  

• What can you do to grab your slice of this?   

Take Action:  As you tally your final year-end numbers, take out your 80/20 lens and identify at least one new opportunity that you can act on in 2011.