College!

My posts have mostly been about startups and there successes and setbacks. 
I believe that we all have a start-up in us and that through knowing what other young minds are coming up with, we can realize our potential to do the same.

I feel like as marketing students, we all have a pretty good idea by now of what could be successful in the market place today. I feel that now is a tremendous time to build an market new ideas. What is left for us after college is to snatch up opportunities and continue to learn about new techniques. A big part of this is talking to respected advisors in the field but also through reading blogs like this one:


Make sure to look at advertising and marketing in other countries like Argentina that is doing some cool things like this:

In retrospect I wish I could have made it to Start-up weekend because I do have a great business idea for professional artists but there is plenty of opportunities for me to follow this idea and make it a reality in the future. I hope that all of you can dream big and listen to those great ideas.


Here is an article that list cool start-ups by students like myself:

http://www.inc.com/diana-ransom/coolest-college-startups-2014.html

Everyone loves sharks

They are brutally scary and deceptively intelligent but no one can deny that Sharks are authentic.

The reason I brought up sharks is due to the popular TV show (Not Shark Week even if it is awesome) but Shark Tank.

The opportunities are out there to make money but money only falls to those with passion. The lottery is a joke and not the american dream. You might like this show or not but if you watch one episode then it will get your creative juices flowing.

I should not do this but I will state that one of my favorite Sharks is Mark Cuban (maybe because he doesn't wear a tie). Here is an interview with him through the magazine Inc. on how to find that passion in what he calls being "Audacious."

http://www.inc.com/audacious-companies/scott-leibs/mark-cuban-on-audacity.html

Mark Cuban is famous for owning the Dallas Mavericks and being a controversial character on the sideline but he made is billions $$$$ thats right billions by co-founding AudioNet which was the first company to stream radio on the internet in 1995.



All of the sharks have unique personalities to go with their fortunes but if you research them then you get a better understanding of the amount of work it takes to become this successful.

I recommend to anyone who is looking to start a business and maybe become filthy rich in the process, that they should watch Shark Tank if only just for the entertainment aspect. 

Thank You Smart People

Overwhelmed by the internet like most people then this company has a product for you. 

Everything that goes on the internet that concerns your company takes a team of market researchers to keep track of it. This program collects all the data and makes it useable/useful. 

Here is a quick video on how it works:

This is helpful to me since I work for a ticket printing company that relies on Search Engine Optimization and going through millions of generated data. I have spent weeks just coming up with the product categories that customers search for and buy the most. 

Ticketprinting.com is an IT company so it isn't to hard to see the relationship.

Splunk is cool because anyone that has a website and users could take advantage of this product. Here is a video of how it helped Dominos 

I made this blog because I have a tremendous respect for my fellow employees that work with code all day which makes my job is easier. I think that Splunk is a great tool for any business or marketer.  

Where are the fans?

I love live sports and growing up in Montana I had very little option for sporting events. I never got why people would spend 10-20 dollars to go to a movie they could rent months later when they could spend there money on live sports games. I get that sports are not everyone's thing but at least it is something to do.



The question is how do we fill these seats and make going to a game as fun as it should be.

This next company might have the solution to club owners and fans alike.

Qcue is a company that offers dynamic ticket pricing. 
http://www.qcue.com/whatItIs.php

This company looks at all the variable of why a fan might not by a ticket for the baseball game and then created an algorithm to adjust ticket prices accordingly.

If I had a turnout like this to one of my games then I would do anything possible to sell more tickets and I would take the chance of using this company to help me out. Especially after completing our "Springfield Nor'easters case."

The best part about this company is the fact that it was a texas student that created this company to win a Business Plan Competition.

This gives me entrepreneurial hope and reason to believe that our generation is awesome and can do anything we set our mind to.  

Surprise:)

You can have so much fun with marketing and New York City advertisement firm Thinkmodo is a great example of how much fun.

Here is a sample video of a marketing campaign for the movie Carrie which is a remake of the 1976 thriller.

You might think that this attempt while cool is a little bit over the top but if it can make a scary movie remake the Peoples choice awards winner for scary movie of the year and actually come away with profit then it was well worth it.

As a marketer I always try to think outside the box. In the case of this cool agency, they like to think outside human imagination all together.

I could go on and on about this company but I would rather you just discover them for yourself at http://www.thinkmodo.com/

He is successful because he is Ruthless

The company is UBER and there CEO is Travis Kalanick.

This guy is a brilliant computer programmer and loves to party. But, Charlie Sheen could take lessons from Kalanick when it comes to "Winning" 



Uber was one of the first to merge tech with cabs but since then they have many competitors like most tech companies. The interface is great and the program just works. Here is a link to the website so you can get a taste of how cool the app might be:

https://www.uber.com/

This company has taken every logistic problem out of the equation and made there service as simple as possible = Just get people rides fast and charge them based on demand.

As far as the competition goes Kalanick knows he is better and spends his advertisement efforts discrediting all of the imitators. Here is an example of a billboard:




Lyft is a competitor that is known for placing obnoxiously large pink mustaches on the front of their cabs. (this is very clever idea but so is this billboard)

Uber is now in 35 countries and has created capital that no competitors can match. Uber could easily be a synonym for bully.

Uber also has a terrible reputation for its surge pricing or peak pricing and the fact that all licensed traditional cab drivers hate them because they are jealous.

Everyone might hate Uber but they still use them (so what ever this tech company is doing to advertise must be working) 

Oh Lorde!

This is a Tweet from pop star Lorde:

i find this curious - two photos from today, one edited so my skin is perfect and one real. remember flaws are ok :-) pic.twitter.com/PuRhxt2u2O

•  Reply 
•  Retweet 
•  Favorite 

Lorde is extremely popular wither she likes it or not. It is starts like this and other that make twitter one of the best social media platforms to advertise with. The reason is the re-tweet or what is basically forwarding it to everyone. Facebook has everyone as well but it is not a welcoming atmosphere for a business and getting "Likes" doesn't mean anything. Twitter is different because it works more like PR. 

Here is a link to how Twitter is planning on making more money in the future. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/12/twitter-public-money_n_3916996.html

We will se how this works out for them but they just announced IPO status and are already doing better than Facebook.

The main difference that I can see behind Twitter and Facebook is that Facebook is all about self reflection and personal image, and Twitter is based around communication with others (even if they are strangers). 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thestreet/2012/08/28/why-twitter-will-live-and-facebook-will-die/

When I talk about advertisement I do not mean a single thoughtful presentation of the product that will amaze. I am talking about a personality that your brand wants to portray. Not everyone will see your tweets even if they are a follower. Each tweet's purpose is to just bring them back (somewhat similar to a drug addiction). 

"No one takes twitter that seriously, but that still doesn't mean they aren't listening" - Myself

If a tweet is a disaster then who cares it two 2 seconds so just take 2 more seconds and tweet again. 

BE ACTIVE, BE THOUGHTFUL, BE CREATIVE AND MOST OF ALL BE YOURSELF

follow this recipe and twitter could be your new favorite marketing tool

Where is it coming from

So I recently got woken up at 4am (which I can not say I was sleeping very well in the first place, but that is besides the point) by another "snap" from Team Snapchat. The snap was for St. Patricks and was just as annoying as the one for Valentines and other holidays. What is the point 

Snapchat or as my parents and their parents will call it is the sexting app. I got Snapchat because of my girlfriend and I assure you that as much as I might want she does not use it for sexting.

My girlfriend uses this app to replace those pointless texts that never meant anything besides the fact that she is thinking about you. And I forgot to mention the most important reason to snap which is to send out billions of "selfies" that are only annoying for 10 seconds. 


This is actually a clever message compared to some of the snaps I get.

Regardless of my distain for Snapchat I can't deny the effectiveness of this app. I do believe that those annoying holiday snaps that I got at 4am are like an untapped oil field for advertisement. I can see it now that instead of "Snapchat wants to wish you a happy Valentines" that instead it will be "Burger King wants you to have it your way"


Why Facebook would offer them 3 billion and got denied?
The answer to this question is because  Facebook realized what Snapchat had and Snapchat did to or it was just their stupid pride that made them deny the deal.

Why Facebook would buy WhatsApp (they make no revenue either)?
This purchase was a consolation prize for Facebook and is probably less of a risky investment anyways. Facebook is making these buyouts because of there uncertain future.

But lets face it all of these tech companies are mostly just fads but some are gems.

The question of the decade is if Snapchat is a fad or a gem?

Your opinion matters

The app world has transformed how marketing is done. So many creative ideas can come from this platform and create a market really centered around the consumer.

Some of the best apps that I discovered have been successful because they thrive on customer feedback. There is certain apps like the Facebook one that has improved their experience tremendously from listening to what their customers want.

And then their is apps like Yelp that only run because of customer ratings on their experiences. These new business models have customer opinion built into them. The need for expensive marketing operations to find out what the customer thinks about the product or service is not always necessary. This is because every time the app is used the customer experience is recorded while it happening or shortly after. 

In an information age where customers want an easy way to compare products then personal reviews matters. A customer can scan a few reviews and get a good sense of how their experience is going to be. 

The best thing about review apps like Yelp is that it makes businesses compete. It also helps small businesses get more in-touch with their customers. 

There is a downside to Yelp because it could create an unfair advantage to business owners. 

 

A company like Yelp should prove that they have a sure-proof way to eliminate phony reviews and create a better filter process that is fair. If this happens then not only will the customer get better experience but the good businesses will be more successful. 

Pretty much it tells businesses what they should change without them having to search for it.

Provides FREE MARKETING

and it allows a marketing platform that is useful to your target market that is Searching for a bagel shop for example. 

Imagination and Love

I am apart of Marketing Club at Montana State University

I thought long and hard about what I would like to do may blog posts on for my final marketing class. I didn't figure it out until I had to come up with creative marketing solutions for Red Tractor Pizza, which marketing club is working for at the moment. We are thinking about many ideas on how to introduce young students like ourselves to a high price point, high quality pizza. One of our talented members made a short video for Red Tractor Pizza, which frankly could either be shorter or use some good background music. The video is worth watching and demonstrates the process that goes into every pie. 

Enjoy...

There are many qualities to this pizza place that attract Bozemanites like local ingredients, brick oven, gluten and dairy free, along with community involvement. Red Tractor has everything they need to establish themselves in this community. 

This good business plan would not work, especially with the high prices unless the pizza itself didn't TASTE AMAZING!

The pizza options have opened my mind to "what can go on a pizza" 

I has one pizza with brown sugar on the crust while another has honey.

I have never been a picky eater growing up but my parents could never get me to eat brussels sprouts. 

and Guess What, my FAVORITE pizza there has them on it. who knew

I have tried many of their pizzas mostly because it is a perk for doing marketing for them. I even tried the gluten free pizza which was good, "mostly because they cover it in balsamic vinegar." 

I choose to write a blog on this place because the owner and the employees care about some of the values that should be honored as far as small business go. 

1. Challenging themselves to create a unique and enjoyable experience for their customers
2. A drive to get involved in this great community 
3. Doing the simple things right and working hard
4. Being open to what the target market want 

This space below is for ideas to help market this business... 

"Red Tractor Pizza... Imagination baked in" 

"Another slice is right around the corner" 

"A Red Tractor is timeless, just like its pizza"