Wednesday, April 23, 2014

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) 

Monday, March 31, 2014

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 :-)