Innovation Workshop at Washtenaw Community College
Oct 18, 6 pm Washtenaw Community College at Towsley Auditorium I and 2 other international experts on Innovation will be presenting a free workshop, courtesy of the Student Enterprise Zone Club. If you can attend I highly recommend it.
I will be joined by David M. Verduyn, President, C2C Solutions Inc. and Len Kaplan, Managing Partner of OutCompete. Both of these gentlemen have over 20 years of success helping wide range of companies from startups to Fortune 500s innovate.
Learn how to:
- Turn your idea into real-world business opportunity
- Reveal target customers real needs and how to deliver it
- Solve the “unsolvable” problems preventing your business from achieving success and growth
- Dramatically reduce costs and effort of competing and increase your profitability
- Turn your customers into an enthusiastic, efficient and inexpensive sales force.
I will be speaking on Evangelism Marketing. Len Kaplan will be talking about Turning ideas into real business success. And David Verduyn will be teaching systematic innovation methods. This is a hands-on workshop. And a DVD of the entire event will be available for a donation to the Student Enterprise Zone Club.
Download the PDF flyer How to Innovate for Business Success Flyer
Ron Paul Viral Marketing Success
Ron Paul is winning popularity portion of the united States presidential election. He consistently speaks the truth and does what he says. And lucky for Ron Paul the truth makes a lot of people so happy they sell his message for him.
I pioneered viral media on the web. And have since moved beyond viral to a broader more accurate term, evangelism. Its clear Ron Paul has a lot of evangelists. All of his success is from normal people spreading the message all on their own.
Part of my research on viral / evangelistic marketing is what the trends mean and how to get the results you want. Looking at the trends for Ron Paul and the other candidates I see some very striking results.
Google Trends is accurate unbiased data on what real people actually care about. According to Neilsen/NetRatings 232 million Americans use the Internet. That makes Google Trends the largest most accurate measure in the world.
First, Ron Paul (dark blue line) has more searches than than any other candidate. Plus his searches is continually growing. This is suggestive of real wide spread support. There are 7.7 million pages on Google for Ron Paul.. That is almost 4 times as many as Mitt Romney. Ron Paul has more pages about him, which confirms support not just interest. There are other measures I use and will explain those in future posts.
Romney (orange line) has no real support. You can see this from how his traffic jumps then immediately falls to nothing. He depends on events to get any interest. If Romney was a company I would short his stock. His advertising works but Romney is a bad product.
Hillary Clinton (the red line) is suffering from the same problem as Mitt Romney. She gets big spikes but people don’t like her and try to forget her as soon as possible. Even with a huge budget and over 16 years of national media attention there are only 5.8 million pages talking about her. And much of that is criticism. Hillary Clinton is the political equivalent of Paris Hilton. She gets attention when she does something insane but loses popularity every time.
Barack Obama is in bad shape. Notice that he got a big jump when he announced he was running for office but his traffic has consistently gone down. With only 2.8 million pages and downward trend Barack Obama he is far behind the leader, Ron Paul. The fact Obama doesn’t get any new jumps means its unlikely he will gain any support. He could linger around for a long time but will have a hard time getting new attention. He is played out.
My Suggestions
Hillary has total name recognition. Since people react so negatively she can’t really benefit from Evangelism Marketing without doing something very different. With her long track record she would face the credibility issue if she tried to be different. She depends on spending huge amounts of money and favorable treatment from the big press to get attention.
Romney is dead in the water. He needs to find something unique that he actually deliver. Unfortunately that would require going back in time. He can’t deliver anything unless elected.
Obama can make it to the election with his current trend. He needs to find a new audience, which is unlikely since he already had a huge jump in the beginning. If he offers something new that might get more attention.
Apple iPhone Marketing Mistake
Apple is great at marketing. The PC vs. Mac commercials are viral video favorites. Those videos have launched a new micro genre of fan made PC vs. Mac commercials. Now that is some amazing marketing, which I don’t think they quite planned. But they could have predicted. That is why I feel they are making a huge mistake in threatening legal action against people making and sharing skins that make other phones and PDAs look like the iPhone.
Not only do I think it’s a mistake to try to force people to not share these skins I think Apple should make the skins and give them away.
Here is my thinking on this. The graphics on the screen aren’t what makes the iPhone cool, its what the iPhone does, its the functionality that makes an iPhone worth buying. So Apple could have a great viral marketing campaign by saying, “For all you people with other devices you can imagine what its like to have the real thing.” And Apple could poke fun at copy cats saying, “You can look like an iPhone, but to do what an iPhone does, you have to get an iPhone.” Apple could even give away removable stickers or possibly even sell phone carrying cases that make other phones look like an iPhone. The entire message, only an iPhone will do.
Predictive Innovation Training
Predictive Innovation: Core Skills Book
RoundSquareTriangle.com