Ooodles of Noodles

Also discussed in class today was the Old Spaghetti Factory's 40th Anniversary. In celebration, the restaurant served their 1970 menu at their 1970 prices. The most popular meal was probably the $1.75 plate of Spaghetti and Tomato Sauce, and apparently there was a line-up of over 200 people outside the original Gastown location. I couldn't find any information on whether this event was tweeted, but the restaurant maybe would have benefitted more if it was to create an even greater buzz. Here is a link to the original menu too! It's neat to learn about the history of local companies and Vancouver itself.

On Sunday I learned about the legend of Samuel Greer who challenged the CP Railway when they tried to build the railway through his property on Kits Beach in the mid 1880's. Greer became a hero at the time, although he eventually lost his land, and Kits Beach was originally called Greer Beach. Samuel Greer's story is mounted on the wall in which I work at in Kits. I was thinking of how this recognition for a historic local hero in the restaurant sets a tone for the restaurant and the community and buzz it creates just like that of the Old Spaghetti Factory.

What Makes A Community?

Today in class we discussed the issues attached with creating an online community or entering one that is pre-existing. Most of the projects in our e-marketing course will discuss the need or development of an online community in some way or form. However, to create a community that is for a long-term basis that creates a relationship with its members and that lasts, a community, as discussed in class, must focus its efforts on the passion of its members. This in turn will allow for further discussion and information sharing that will ultimately grow and spread the community. This may be done more easily by a company piggy-backing on to established communities, but creating your own community takes more time and a lot more effort.

The Global Initiative for Village Empowerment Society (GIVE Society) is a student run organization originally established at UBC five years ago. The main purpose of GIVE was to provide information and educational programs with in the Kanyawegi village in Kenya. This society has now grown to providing medical and financial programs as well. This organization would be a great example of a entity that could use an online community to spread awareness, create discussion, increase support, and donations. Although GIVE does have Facebook and Twitter accounts, their page and tweets are outdated and few and far between. For the creation of a strong community, the provider needs to create a platform that is up to date and regularly updated/checked to keep the conversation/buzz continual. Hopefully, being a new member of GIVE, I can help GIVE build a stable platform for an online community within the next few months with the e-marketing knowledge I've gained.

"New" Art in the City

Before the Olympics, a huge LED lit cross was hoisted at the corner of 6th Avenue and Clark Drive. For a while I wondered what the cross symbolized since it only said "East Van" in the shape of the cross with both words sharing the letter A. During the Olympics I was watching the Knowledge Network and a short documentary on the artist was aired. Ken Lum is the artist that designed the cross and explained that the symbol has long been "tagged", painted, carved, etc... in different areas around East Vancouver for over 40 years. This cross was created in part of the Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program by the City of Vancouver. There are many blogs/forums/photos/comments regarding the cross that are both positive and negative, but in all they have created a conversation. This in itself maybe an organic creation of a community online, especially for those concerned with the federal budget cuts for art funding in Canada. Keep the convo going!

Trip and Fall

I happened to "stumble up on" this website through a friend. Super cool. It's StumbleUpOn.com and basically it shows you different websites you would be interested in according to the preferred boxes you've filled out at the side. I started "stumbling" and first it directed me to a Jackson Pollock website where I could draw my own Pollock-style painting, then it took me to a photography site, then a site known as Fifty People One Question. It's a lot like Post Secret but in film form and makes you think. Here's one of the videos below. This also adds to the conversation regarding online/offline and how this offline interaction is translated into an online conversation that is passed on.

Fifty People, One Question: London from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

New fav commercial!

This isn't "new" but it's new to me and I love it, so I thought I'd share it, watch on!

It amazes me how fast information can travel on the web. But information can travel so much faster when it's interesting, funny, shocking, etc. I passed this video on to a couple of friends of mine before I'm posting this blog. And even prior to posting this I have found out that this video has been past around through to 10 of my friends and that's not counting those who have seen it on the facebook pages in which I have posted its url. This almost instant buzz is great for something and horrible for others. Tim Hickernell was quoted in the article "Harnessing Twitter Can Pay Off for Business" in the Financial Post on March 2, 2010. He said, "What starts on Twitter doesn't always end on Twitter... if you're going to start in Twitter, make sure you assess whether to switch channels to resolve the issues." An interesting point to remind us that just because it happens online it always affects offline in some way or another.

The Ultimate Fate of Print Magazines...

Today, oddly enough, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA.org) posted this blog discussing the switch over of print magazines to online magazines. Just yesterday, I was discussing this very trend with my project group. We are toying with the idea of recommending to our client that they should part take in this trend and switch their magazine from offline to online. Their subscriptions to the magazine have been steadily declining and we are faced with the question of dropping the magazine, re-vamping it, or simply transfer the magazine to an online platform.

Online magazines have many benefits which include lower costs since there is no printing and shipping involved, and also the ability to reach an international audience. In addition, the subscriptions are usually priced lower, which makes them more appealing to subscribers. More benefits are provided in the article “Magazine Subscriptions: Online vs. Offline” by Arvina Sharma. Although online magazines have all these benefits, you can’t deny there are certain aspects that online magazines cannot provide. You aren’t around your computer all the time and reading an article or looking at pictures for a long period may be uncomfortable for some. However, an offline or print magazine can be read anywhere at anytime in many situations and easily on a nice comfy chair without a screen glaring at you.

But more to the point, as Susan Currie Sivek writes in her article “How Magazines Use Social Media to Boost Pass-Along, Build Voice”, magazines that offline or print magazines don’t necessarily have to switch completely to online. Offline magazines can stay offline but they should invest in online social media and networking sites. Sites like Facebook and accounts for Twitter allow print magazines to harness what their subscribers really want to read, to keep up to date, and stay relevant. These are also great outlets for the magazine’s advertisers to get better coverage as well. In all, I’m not convinced that I want to curl up to my laptop on a rainy day on my comfy couch to read my favourite magazine, but I could be swayed if “the price if right” for the subscription.

It was absolutely Mahan!

The Waste Management Pheonix Open was held the first week of this month and was attended by over 420,000 people. For all those who could not attend, Golf Digest and Golf World provided a 360 degree view of the 16th hole that was surrounded by stands and full of spectators. This image consists of 720 photographs that were taken by a GigaPan camera that wizzed around the stands. The pictures were pieced together to create a clear image of the hole. This image is available on the Golf Digest website (click here).

This image was also featured in Golf World's March 8, 2010 issue that provided the url to check out the image on their website. This is another example of an print magazine using their offline product to promote their online services.

Although my Dad, being a golf journalist, watched the entire tournament on tv over that weekend, didn't know about the 360 degree image until he received his weekly issue of Golf World magazine. Even though he was pretty excited about the double page spread featuring the GigaPan image, he admitted he didn't proceed to check out the actual image online. So this begs the question: do offline promotions really translate well to services provided online? However, when I confronted my Dad of his actions, he defended himself by saying although he himself did not check out the image, he did in fact inform 4 other people, including myself, of the image provided online and could confirm that two out of those four had checked out the image through the Golf Digest website. This number is now three out of the four, since I have now checked out the website as well. Is this an issue of different interests or technographics? Not sure, but the image is great and Hunter Mahan was wearing his personally designed Sundog Eyewear, in which my Dad is the Media Coordinator, so that was pretty awesome too. Check it out!

Beware the "Who has visited my profile the most?" FB Application

Last night I noticed I was tagged in a photo on Facebook, and that this photo was commented on by the poster. I checked who had tagged this photo and it turned out to be someone I went to highschool with, that I haven't talk to in over 10 years, and didn't even know we were Facebook friends. Turns out it was a Facebook application virus. There are many of these new viruses surfacing on Facebook. The one I am now a victum of is called, "Who has visited my profile the most". This application must randomly select people from your friends list and portrays them as viewing your profile more than others. My situation is pretty funny, but applications like these could potentially harm or protect you. The Toronto Sun posted a short mention of these applications today saying, "Unlike companies like Apple, Facebook doesn't have an approval policy for third-party applications," and therefore, "...can cause viruses and malicious software to be installed on your computer." Today in class we discussed how the relationship with a consumer can be affected from offline to online channels, and vise versa. Here the offline channel is possibly negatively affecting my offline social network by creating awkwarde situations, or hilarious ones to me for that matter. But this experience has shifted my notion of Facebook being somewhat more contained and not as contaminated as other social networking sites. Here is The Toronto Sun post ( http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/03/16/13245056.html)

The "New" or "Natural" Conversation

On Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010, Rick Spence wrote an article called, "Are you ready for the new conversation?", for the Financial Post. This "conversation" is referring to Seth Godin's book Permission Marketing, written over 10 years ago. So the conversation isn't "new" per say, but it has surfaced within the last few years and has really pick up momentum since. The conversation is, as Spence discusses, companies building lasting relationships with consumers by providing meaningful incentives. Spence refers to Pepsi's Refresh campaign, where people can apply for grants from Pepsi for projects that will aid their communities or society in general. This philanthropic approach is intriguing. It’s interesting to note that with the growth of globalization and the expansion of social networking sites, there is this “new” approach or reverting back to investing in close communities and social incentives. Is it because the community that globalization, social networking sites, and corporate e-marketing have created is so huge that it’s getting irritably impersonal? It seems that consumers really are responding more so to grassroots marketing and more personable approaches to advertising. Maybe this is Godin’s genius or a natural progression. My friend Jocelyn Soares showed me a great example of this more meaningful approach to marketing shown in this clip below provided by Volkswagen.