Tag: marketing

January 11, 2007

  • Introducing “Ask A Marketer”

    Most Wednesday nights I teach the Email Marketing Certificate Course for the Canadian Marketing Association here in Toronto. As always I’ve got a great group of marketers and would-be marketers taking the course this semester. We’re a bit behind on the curriculum right now because they just can’t stop asking me questions! This got me to thinking, “I bet there are loads of One Degree readers that are dying to ask another Internet marketer a question or two”.

    We do of course have a feature here where we ask you a question — QotD — but it occurs to me that we’ve never really let you folks ask your questions of us — the One Degree Contributors. So, starting next week we’ll have a new feature here at One Degree called, cleverly enough, “Ask A Marketer”.

    I’ll take a crack at answering any question you might have about Internet Marketing. If I can’t answer it I’ll open it to the other One Degree Contributors. If none of us can answer it we’ll put it to the readership as a QotD. And of course the comments will be open on our answers so if you disagree or have a different approach, you’ll be able to add your two cents worth.

    If you’d like to help kick us off, take a moment and think of a pressing question you’ve been working on, or something you’re a bit embarrassed to admit you don’t know (last night it was “how the heck to cookies work anyway?”) and send it off to . And yes, “Ask A Marketer” is an homage to Ask A Ninja — not that we’ll ever come up with as good an answer as the Ninja’s answer to What is Podcasting?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on January 11, 2007.

January 5, 2007

January 4, 2007

  • Rewind ’06, Fast Forward ’07 — Ken Schafer

    In our final contribution for our pre-holiday rewind of 2006 and fast forward to 2007, One Degree’s creator Ken Schafer shares his thoughts on the year past, and the year to come..

    1. Rewind — What trends in Internet marketing surprised you in 2006? The incredibly rapid growth of video really caught me off guard. I’ve always been a believer in Internet Video but never saw the tipping point that was YouTube coming.

    2. Rewind — Did you add any new tools to your online marketing toolkit in 2006? Not really. I’d say that I moved from thinking of “Social Media” as an interesting concept to being core part of the online marketing toolkit, but I’m not sure I’ve done that much to really integrate it into the work I’m doing. The closest I’ve come is the Tucows Squishies on Flickr that I wrote about earlier and the Tucows Blog but I’m not sure I can claim those to be truly social.

    3. Fast Forward — What do you see as the biggest trends in Internet Marketing in 2007? At this point I’d say that Email, Paid Search, Organic Search, and Display Advertising are “Traditional Internet Marketing”, while Blogs, Feeds, and Video are the trends to leverage — if you’re not getting serious about these in 2007 you’re missing the boat. Trendsetters wanting to get ahead of the the curve or with early adopters as their target markets will be exploring Social Media and Branded Entertainment in 2007.

    4. Fast Forward — At the end of 2007, what do you expect we’ll be looking back at as overhyped? My guess is that most marketers can safely ignore mobile marketing, virtual worlds, and any location-aware marketing for another year without any career damage at all.

    5. Fast Forward — Any SPECIFIC predictions for 2007? Buy-outs, bubbles bursting, records broken, reputations toppled, break-out companies? I think we’ll see a new type of agency establish itself this year — “Branded Entertainment Agencies”. More companies are understanding that entertaining advertising can be more powerful than advertising around what entertains. Traditionally we’ve left it to the marketers to sponsor (through ad dollars) the entertainment “producers” create. Virals, video, flash-apps, innovative micro-sites — all of these require a level of story-telling and creativity that goes beyond what we expect of typical ad agencies. Some smart agencies will realize that self-identifying as “a leading branded interactive entertainment agency” will get them the mindshare and differentiation they crave.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on January 4, 2007.

December 3, 2006

  • Never Overestimate Your Visitors

    It’s easy for us to get very focused on what we do and to assume that everyone thinks like we do. But they don’t. We’re all “web 2.0” and “folksonomies” and “viral marketing” and they’re all “click what?” and “but the guy said he was related to Nigerian royalty”. Let me very simply illustrate the incredible chasm that we have to deal with.

    Back in September, I wrote a post called Kraft.ca — The 20 Character Home Page that just this weekend generated this email from a One Degree reader:

    In the last year your 600 gram packages of cheese has gone from 600 grams to 560 and now to 540 grams. Do you think that no one has picked up on this. What’s going on. I purchase your brand exclusively, but maybe not any-more.

    Bob

    Clearly Bob is confused. He thinks our post about kraft.ca means that he is ON kraft.ca and he’s decided to complain about the vast cheese conspiracy he’s uncovered. Please remember this next time you hear someone say “don’t worry, our users are pretty with it — they’ll figure it out”. BTW Bob, I think this is the page you were looking for. Oh and “BTW” means “by the way” — sorry about that.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on December 3, 2006.

  • Just For Laughs Goes YouTubey

    I was going to do a big write-up about the new Just For Laughs website which as gone all YouTubey and MySpacey, but it turns out the site did it for me:

    One thing the site does need to fix up is how they deal with French and English. The site tries to incorporate both into one interface which kind of works but when you embed a video (like I’ve done above) you sometimes get French text rather than English. Oh yeah, and kill the audio mouseovers on the main nav bar for the site — very irritating.

    I’d be interested in thoughts on the site both from the IA (Information Architecture) and Social Media geeks out there. A bold attempt by a Canadian company to stake a claim on the emerging video sharing & social media space.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on December 3, 2006.

  • QotD: Make This Viral More Viral

    Here’s an interesting situation. Ideazon, who makes “gaming keyboards” (something I must plead ignorant to even knowing existed) has created a very sophisticated viral campaign called “Dominate” that, as I understand it, is not actually “going viral”. Or at least not to the level they’d like (or that the budget would require I’m guessing).

    I think the campaign has many of the components needed to go viral with their hard-core gamer target market (95% of customers are male and 82% are over 25) but something seems to be missing in the strategy, execution or media. My guess is that there are a bunch of little things that all dampen the viral impact — probably enough to prevent it from becoming a true hit.

    Rather than offer my $0.02 worth I thought I’d leave it as an exercise for you humble One Degree reader. Consider this a group assignment for this, the first full week of December.

    1. Go to Dominate and review the site. Warning: Some people will be offended by this. Guaranteed. If so, hit the back button quickly and accept this little unicorn chaser to cleanse your mind.
    2. Think about what great viral marketing campaigns have in common and see if anything is missing from Ideazon’s.
    3. Consider new ideas they might try to jumpstart things that you haven’t seen elsewhere.
    4. Report back to us in the comment area below. I look forward to grading your work. 🙂

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on December 3, 2006.

November 28, 2006

  • QotD: Can A Video Card Have Friends?

    A while ago Matt Williams sent me this…

    I was just downloading the latest nVidia drivers for my new GFX card and guess what? nVidia has their own MySpace page. Is this a new, serious marketing medium? I always thought of MySpace to be a social networking site, but how do you socialize with a corporation that manufactures graphics cards? Are they just out there to get people who use their cards to be “friends” to advertise the strength of their product? Are they hoping that the friends of these people will see their buddies using the nVidia cards and follow suit?

    So, let’s help Matt out here folks. What do you think of the nVidia Myspace page and the concept of companies engaging in social networks this way. Comment below and share your wisdom…

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on November 28, 2006.

November 15, 2006

  • 6 Tips For Better Blogger Outreach

    With the rise of bloggers as key influencers, a growing number of smart marketers are looking at blogs as a way to seed products and develop word-of-mouth while building web traffic and inbound links. Most marketers approach seeding products to influential bloggers in an ad hoc manner — they’ll pick a few blogs, send them a sample and see what happens.

    Interestingly, there have been some very controversial attempts to formalize this concept be companies like PayPerPost and ReviewMe. All this had been a rather abstract concept for me until very recently when I got an email from Andrew Milligan, owner of Sumo Urban Lounge Gear, based here in Toronto.

    To: Ken Schafer

    From: Andrew Milligan Subject: Contact Form from onedegree.ca

    Hi Ken, My name is Andrew and I have a company named Sumo which makes modern, funky and high-quality bean bag chairs. I could simply say, our Omni chair is the most comfortable chair in the world and truly enhances one’s life! I am a fan of your site and was wondering if you would be interested in taking a sample of our Omni chair and posting a review on it.

    After taking a look at the Sumo Lounge site and checking out the Omni chair he was offering, I sent back a hearty “you’re on — as long as I can blog about you asking me to blog about it”.

    Luckily Andrew accepted my challenge and sent the chair a few days later.

    Based on my experience on the receiving end of a blogger outreach campaign, here are my recommendations should you want to do something similar (Sumo scored high on every one of these):

    • Pick Your Target — Not all sites have the right audience and the right content to fit with all products. Make sure that your product is something that fits not only with the blogger’s interests but with their readership.
    • Personalize You Message — You’ll turn off bloggers pretty quickly if you send a generic form letter. Personalize your message to show that you’ve actually read the person’s blog.
    • Don’t Make Demands — Note that while Andrew did suggest a review, he didn’t demand it and he didn’t imply in any way that it should be a positive review. Saying “I’ll give you this in exchange for a good review” will likely get you more bad PR than good reviews. Be warned.
    • Follow Through — Andrew got back to me in a few hours asking for my color preference and shipping address. The beanbag (which is huge) arrived a few days later as promised. If he’d blown the follow through many bloggers would end up blogging about that instead of the product.
    • Have a Product Worth Talking About — Whatever you do — do not seed product into the market if the product is a piece of crap. Even if it’s just run-of-the-mill, don’t do it. Only remarkable, mentionable products need apply. Sumo’s stuff is comment-worthy, quirky, a “little guy” story and a ton of other things that make it a good candidate for outreach.
    • Follow Up — I’ll be honest, we started using the chair and the original version of my review sat in draft mode for _weeks_. Andrew gave a few friendly follow-ups, first asking if we got it, then asking if we liked it, and finally wondering if I’d be posting a review at some point. He never demanded anything but did gently guilt me into posting something. (Hope you like the end result Andrew!)

    Did the strategy pay off for Sumo? Not sure yet, but the rave reviews and links from a wide range of sites are a great indicator of how this kind of campaign should unfold.

    And you may ask, how great is the Sumo bean bag chair?

    Everyone in the Schafer household was WAY impressed. My tweens immediately adopted this monster as their own and gave it a rating of “seven stars”. It was used as a couch for movie night, a bed for sleepover guests later that night, and is now the official chair for all Nintendo gaming sessions.

    My wife, parenting expert Alyson Schafer didn’t understand what the fuss was about saying, “I grew up with bean bag chairs the first time around, I don’t need to try them again.” Once repeated pleas from the kids got her in the chair she spent the rest of the evening sunk into it, admitting it was nothing like what she remembered.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on November 15, 2006.

November 13, 2006

November 8, 2006

November 6, 2006

November 1, 2006

  • Podcasting’s Perfect Storm

    Sebastien Chorney is head of operations at Podzapper, a producer of branded digital media for the online and mobile space. Sebastien has a long background in audio and music production and is a consummate storyteller.

    One Degree: Sebastien, my guess is that humans can only absorb so many podcasts into their lives. I’ve been listening to podcasts pretty much since “Doc” and “Dave” got the ball rolling but it’s rare that a new podcast unseats the 20 or so I subscribe to in iTunes and already have trouble keeping up with. Does this give an advantage to early adopters that “latecomers” (in a two-year-old industry?!) will have a hard time overcoming or is there a way for future podcasters to unseat my current favorites?

    Sebastien: I think there’s a bit of a perfect storm going on in the podcasting or “media on demand” world right now that strongly favors the so-called latecomers. There are probably three main reasons: one having to do with content, one with distribution and the other with demand on the consumer side.

    You’re right that there’s an inherent advantage to being first to market with any new product or service, but 2006 may well be remembered as the year during which many of the poster children of podcasting faded into obscurity. It’s been nothing short of astounding to watch established media companies and other brands muscle their way into this space, particularly over the last 12 months or so.
    Up-and-comers looking to unseat your favorites would do well to align themselves with an established brand and create content that is highly differentiated, useful, relevant and/or entertaining with good production values. It seems obvious, but bears repeating!

    On the distribution end, there are so many syndication options, which makes it easier than ever for users to discover and subscribe to new “casts”. Depending on the audience, iTunes and/or RSS may not be the front door that people walk in through, so it makes sense for new podcasters to offer a variety of file formats, have an embedded Flash player and/or syndicate through email, an interface that everyone can understand. For those who publish ads, it also makes sense to drive subscriber traffic directly to your site rather than to an aggregator. YouTube, Revver and now Brightcove (current website is down) have different revenue sharing models that up-and-comers should explore.

    Finally, on the demand side, this explosion of content plays to our insatiable curiosity as consumers, and for the moment at least, the economics of producing niche content really do favor the so-called “late comers”. Aspiring podcasters looking to produce more mainstream, broadly targeted content will be held to a higher standard (both in terms of content and production values) and have a tougher road ahead of them.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on November 1, 2006.

October 31, 2006

  • Why Blogging Matters

    Over at Bernaisesource Dan Greenfield has pulled together six senior marketing executives to talk about why they think blogging matters. Here’s his introduction to the six mini-editorials:

    Technology has enabled customers to dramatically change their attitude towards marketing. As a result, they are tuning out in increasing numbers and talking back. Customers are shifting massively their entertainment and information consumption away from traditional media to the new web space. Marketers are responding by shifting their advertising to web properties, but online advertising is struggling to gain trust. According to a recent Forrester survey of US households, only 6% trust search engine ads and 2% online banner ads. Customers trust themselves and each other in influencing their perception of a brand. Yet few marketers have embraced blogging, although it supposedly enables a more personal and two-way interaction with the brand. So does blogging matter? All of us are senior marketing executives in established corporations but we also share a common passion for blogging. At the initiation of Eric Kintz at Hewlett-Packard, we decided to all get together to share our thoughts about the opportunities and challenges of this new marketing frontier.

    The entire article is well worth a read. Thanks to Judy Gombita for the link.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 31, 2006.

  • A Travel Guide For Second Life

    Wired Magazine is looking at Second Life just like One Degree is.

    Included in the feature are:

    I’m still not convinced that any of this is really relevant to marketers — at least in the short-run. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to talk about it. If you think that Second Life is for you and your brand, let us know. And if you’re from Telus, how about the inside scoop on how your SL(Second Life) store is doing.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 31, 2006.

  • Squishy Cows As Viral Marketing

    A few weeks ago the lovely AC Riley interviewed me for an article for Canadian Business but I ended up on the cutting room floor. AC was nice enough to post my part of the article to her blog and to let me reprint it here:

    Over the summer I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to Ken Schafer, VP-marketing at Tucows, as well as Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image for an article on viral marketing, Are Clients Catching Your Message? Both Ken and Mitch were informative, highly knowledgeable and a lot of fun to interview!

    Unfortunately, due to space restrictions, Ken Schafer’s contribution and the Tucows case study didn’t make it to the final version. So, I’d like to post some of the text that did not get printed:

    One of the things that often hold back SMEs from adding a viral component to their marketing arsenal is finding the right hook. It needs to connect with the consumer in such a way that it gets people talking and, more importantly, forwarding the campaign to friends and colleagues. Ken Schafer, VP-marketing at Toronto-based Tucows Inc., looked to the popularity of a particular company giveaway — a foam squishy cow — for inspiration.

    Well known as a provider of freeware and shareware downloads, Tucows was looking to promote its B2B offerings: wholesale Internet services and back office solutions. Schafer used the company’s technical blog, Tucows Farm which is read by software developers, programmers, and resellers of Tucows’ services, to execute its viral campaign.

    On July 10, 2006, there was an unannounced, one-day offer to give away the coveted squishy cows, with one provision: the recipient photograph the cow in an interesting place and post the picture online.

    The response was unexpected, with over 100 requests. Tucows ran out of the spongy bovines and is in the process of obtaining 5000 more for future campaigns. Schafer explained that campaign created more than the initial viral buzz — it also entices blog readers to keep checking back for other spontaneous campaigns. Ongoing benefits include word-of-mouth as more and more Tucows brand ambassadors pop up on desks and squishy cow photo shoots turn into water-cooler conversations. As the campaign continues, inbound links from the photos will continue to grow, driving traffic to the company.

    Tucows’ example is a sign of the times. Based on a survey of U.S. executives Blackfriars Communications’ report, Marketing 2006: 2006’s Timid Start, predicts a 10 percent drop in budgets allocated to traditional marketing with most of the shift going toward developing new media and alternative marketing — including viral.

    It’s hard to over-estimate how much people love those little squishy cows. We’re taking tubs of them to ISPCON next week to satisfy demand and hopefully drum up more pics of our little friends in exotic locales.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 31, 2006.

October 26, 2006

  • Organizing the CMA’s DMC — Louise Clements’ Thoughts

    This 1:01 video features event organizer Louise Clements sharing her thoughts on the conference’s length, and her opinions on the conference’s vibe. I apologize that the video cuts off, but my memory card ran out of space.

    <video lost due to link decay>

    Recorded at the Canadian Marketing Association’s Digital Marketing Conference in Toronto, October 20th, 2006.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 26, 2006.

  • Steve Levy On Market Education

    This 0:37 video features Steve Levy, of Ipsos-Reid, answering a quick question regarding the gap of knowledge between marketers and agencies.

    <video lost to link decay>

    Recorded at the Canadian Marketing Association’s Digital Marketing Conference in Toronto, October 19th, 2006.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 26, 2006.

October 18, 2006

  • Thinking About Second Life

    We haven’t spoken much (okay at all) about Second Life, the virtual online space that is getting lots of attention.

    While Second Life may look like a game, it is much more than that. You can chat with others in the virtual space, create your own space and objects, buy stuff, and bring parts of the “outside world” (such as sound, video, feeds, etc.) into SL Second Life). In fact, “American Apparel has a store” (that’s me buying a track jacket up there) and “Starwood has a hotel” in SL.

    Others are following. This is, of course, all very experimental but I’m finding it very interesting. When I bought my American Apparel gear I was helped by a real American Apparel staffer who ran around the store looking for something for me and complimented me on how it looked once I’d tried it on. Note that I really paid for my virtual jacket using Linden Dollars that I bought with really Loonies. Yes, American Apparel made real money selling me virtual clothes.

    I’ll be keeping an eye on Second Life because the gang at “Tucows” is thinking about if and how it might prove to be a good communication and community building tool for us. I’d be interested in hearing from others that have experimented with Second Life as a marketing tool as well as those who’ve taken a look and rejected the idea. Feel free to add your thoughts (and questions — I know this is a bit weird) below…

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 18, 2006.

  • Floyd Landis Gets Serious About Context

    I’m a firm believer in contextual advertising — making ads have some very direct correlation to the content that brought the user to the page in the first place. Of course, Google AdSense has made this concept pretty common (see the ads around this post for example) but controversial Tour de France winner Floyd Landis” offers a great example of this strategy on his blog. Here’s his site (as of, uh, now):

    <image lost due to link decay>

    On the lower right you’ll notice an ad that says “Learn more about the hip Floyd chose”. Clicking through we learn that inside Floyd there is a Birmingham Hip I really wish that clicking through had taken me to a testimonial and more information about Landis’ hip and such. But still, not bad for a (basically) non-commercial site.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 18, 2006.

October 16, 2006

  • Frank & Gordon Are Dead. Long Live Gordon & Frank

    We here at One Degree have built a little cottage industry out of following the online adventures of Gordon & Frank.

    As you may recall, the Bell Beavers first started appearing around Superbowl 2006. At the time I noticed that while Bell had built a custom site for their mascots and frankandgordon.ca they had forgotten to register the transposed names — gordonandfrank.ca. I pointed that domain to my One Degree post on the topic and within a few days we had a major story on our hands.

    Rumour has it that word of this oversight and our coverage of it went all the way to Michael Sabia’s office.

    Now we move to the next chapter.

    It appears that a few weeks ago Bell decided that, since the awareness campaign for Frank and Gordon was over, the micro-site for their spokes-beavers was no longer required.

    So they just took it down.

    No redirects, no “sorry but we’re not here anymore”, no pointing it to the bell.ca home page. Nothing. So it looks like it’s “Frank & Gordon Are Dead. Long Live Gordon & Frank”. gordonandfrank.ca now points to a new Frank and Gordon Category.

    We promise we won’t overload you with Bell Beaver minutia but we will give you occasional updates on how the beavers are being used — particularly in an online context.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 16, 2006.

October 13, 2006

  • Bell Beavers Making Guest Appearances Online

    A few weeks ago I got my monthly “Aeroplan”: newsletter and I was surprised to see some familiar but unexpected faces in there — Gordon and Frank — the Bell Beavers:

    I can’t seem to think of any other examples of mascots from one brand being leveraged by another. Did the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee ever do a Nike commercial? I vaguely recall the Pets.com Sock Puppet in someone else’s ad after the dot-bomb, but still, this is pretty unique.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 13, 2006.

October 4, 2006

  • Catmas.com — Can Viral Marketing Be Perennial?

    Generally, Viral Marketing is a one-hit wonder kind of business.

    Take for example “Snakes On A Plane”:

    <image lost to link decay>

    Or maybe “ShaveEverywhere”:

    <image lost to link decay>

    Virals are the “I Melt With You” or “Puttin’ On The Ritz” of the Internet marketing business. (SEO is “Dark Side of the Moon”, SEM is “Nevermind”.) At the risk of overextending the metaphor, my team at Tucows is looking for catmas.com to be our White Christmas — a perennial, seasonal hit.

    Here’s how Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla (Tucows’ Technical Evangelist) got newbies up-to-speed on the festivities:

    Back around the fall of 2003, Ross [Rader] and I wanted to come up with a little event to commemorate the launch of Blogware, the software with which our blogs (and this blog) are built. It didn’t take long for us to settle on “Post a Picture of a Cat to Your Blog Day”, an unwieldy title that refers to the cliche that bloggers always post pictures of their cat on their blogs. The day took place on Friday, October 3rd, 2003 and enough blogs participated for us to call it a success. From that day forth, we declared that the first Friday in October would be the official day on which you should partake in that most bloggy of blog activities: posting a picture of a cat on your blog.

    The following year, we gave the day a pithier name: BlogACatMas, and more people contributed. By 2005, BlogACatMas had caught the attention of the Canadian national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, which made mention of our holiday in an article titled The Truth About Cats and Blogs. This year marks the fourth instance of our special holiday, whose name we’ve shortened to Catmas (although “BlogACatMas” is still an acceptable usage) and registered as its own domain,Catmas, the home of this blog, whose purpose is to keep the Catmas spirit alive all year ‘round.

    Catmas 2006 will take place this Friday, October 6th. We encourage you to post pictures of cats — they don’t have to be your cats, any ol’ cat will do — to your blog and tell us about it in the comments of this blog! Just remember the funnier or cuter the picture of the cat, the better. p. We’ll do a bit of a deconstruction on the results of BlogACatMas 2006 once all the fur settles. (And if you have a blog, we’d love it if you’d post your kitty pics and let us know at “catmas.com”.)

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 4, 2006.

  • Exclusive — Wendy Muller Leaving Google Canada

    Anonymous sources earlier this week told One Degree that Wendy Muller — Head of Canadian Advertising Sales and Operations at Google Canada is leaving the company after almost exactly four years at the search/advertising firm. When asked for comment, a Google representative replied:

    We can confirm that Wendy Muller will be departing Google. She has been a key asset to Google in the development of the sales organization in Canada, and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

    No further details are known at this time. Muller joined Google on October 2nd, 2002 and at the time the company stated:

    As head of Canadian advertising sales and operations, Muller is responsible for growing and maintaining Google’s client base, generating Canadian ad sales revenue, and growing the team to support expansion. She brings more than 20 years of Canadian advertising and publishing experience to Google. Most recently, Muller was the chairman of DoubleClick Canada, where she led the overall growth and operations for the region. Prior to DoubleClick, Muller held numerous high-level positions in the advertising and publishing community.

    Hopefully we’ll hear Wendy’s plans soon.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 4, 2006.

October 3, 2006

  • Nakama Is Interesting

    Earlier today Ambient Vector launched their new mobile service, Nakama. We think they’re interesting. Judge for yourself.

    One Degree: Who needs you? Nakama lets anyone with a mobile phone capture, publish, share and view pictures and videos. We want to get everyone with a cameraphone using Nakama, and sharing their pictures and videos.

    One Degree: Why do they need you? Nakama is (to us) the easiest way to share pictures and videos: something almost everyone with a cameraphone wants to do. We’re also really focused on entertaining people… phones today have great displays and fast networks, so they’re an obvious choice to kill some time, browse a few pictures, watch a few videos, and be entertained, and this is something Nakama is especially good at.

    One Degree: Why are you interesting? We’re not sure that we are :-), but we’re flattered you asked. We’re a small team, with great backers, and great people. We’re also solving a whole lot of hard technology problems that are hidden by our focus on making the user experience as clean and simple as possible.

    One Degree: How do you make money? Nakama makes money three ways:

    1. Premium services (more hosting, special content, etc.) — There are a ton of parallels in the web and mobile world here.
    2. Advertising — Mobile banner ads are cute (and lucrative), but we’re also looking at interesting opportunities like using Flash and video ads on mobile. # We’re not telling — Nakama’s got what we think is a huge opportunity to build an ecosystem. Sound vague? Yeah… but you’ll see soon enough. We promise.

    One Degree: What is your mission? Oh, the meaning in a word… Nakama loosely translates to “Circle of Friends” in Japanese (it also translates to “useless” in Urdu, but you can’t win ’em all). We want people to use Nakama every day to publish special moments in their lives, connect with their friends, and entertain themselves on the metro.

    One Degree: Who are you? Ambient (the makers of Nakama) is a small software startup, made up of a small management team, with amazing engineers, and fortunate enough to have a stellar advisory board, and tier-1 venture capital backers behind us.

    One Degree: Where are you? We’re based in downtown Toronto, a block or so from King and Spadina. Send us a note if you’re in the neighborhood.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 3, 2006.

  • Exclusive — Scotiabank Podcasts!

    Exclusive A little bird let me know that Scotiabank has just launched a podcast for the bank called The Money Clip. (As an aside, I’m wondering if, given Apple’s aggressive trademark saber rattling we should call it an “audiocast” from here on out. Wait I know, how about “Zunecast”? 🙂

    Scotiabank’s Michael Seaton tells me that they’ve submitted the feed iTunes but will likely not appear there for another day or two as it apparently takes them a while to approve things. Right now it is streaming and downloadable from the page. The first series from The Money Clip is on Mutual Fund Investing, split into three segments for beginners, intermediates and advanced investors. Part one is available now. Part two goes up next week and the series continues. Michael believes this to be a first for a North American financial institution.

    Here’s Michael’s overview of the service:

    • This podcast represents a first in Canadian financial services, certainly it is among only a select few worldwide

    • The goal is to extend the same neutral and helpful advice for Canadians as demonstrated in our newsletter, The Vault. (The Vault is an online guide to getting ahead financially, helping Canadians with insights and advice on money matters for six years via email — over 1,000,000 subscribers currently receive The Vault newsletter via email.)

    • Podcasting is a big part of Scotiabank’s digital communications and marketing strategy as it will allow us to go deeper into financial matters, speaking with experts inside and outside Scotiabank

    • We hope the self-select/on-demand nature will deliver our brand in a relevant and meaningful way for customers and non-customers interested in demystifying and growing their personal financial knowledge.

    • Access is provided in three ways — iTunes, downloadable audio file or, via streaming audio on the site.

    • A side goal of The Money Clip is to help overcome perceived technical barriers with the term “podcast”. We hope to demonstrate the power of informative audio in a highly accessible and exciting way. (Yes, we will try and make finance exciting!)

    The site is still a little rough around the edges (no iTunes listing, feed called “XML” and not properly formatted, adding a www. in front of the URL breaks it, etc.) but overall kudos to Michael his team and Twist Image who help them out with it.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 3, 2006.

September 28, 2006

  • DigitalEve Toronto Calls It Quits

    I’m sorry to see that “Digital Eve Toronto” has decided that it can’t continue.

    The organization has done good work from its roots in Webgrrrls to Digital Eve. There are hints they may still reformulate in some new fashion. We’ll keep an eye out. Here’s the announcement from the Board:

    To all DigitalEve Toronto Members:

    It is with deep regret and sadness that we make this announcement. Due to the our training facility being now too expensive to maintain a proper training schedule, and interest in training too low to fill the classrooms, the training has had to be put on hold indefinitely. The last several events have not been met with the interest needed, and therefore the revenue stream from them has dwindled to a crawl. Since Training and Events were the organizations only source of income, we do not have the required income to run this organization. It has been decided by a unanimous vote by the board members to officially close the Toronto Chapter due to lack of interest and income. We would like to redirect our members to one of several Women in Technology groups around the city that we hope will fulfill the need that we don’t feel we are capable of anymore.

    NOTE: The list managers are working on moving the lists to a new domain, and are investigating the option of evolving DigitalEve into a new format. We have survived through Webgrrls, into DigitalEve, maybe we can do it again. There will be more information coming regarding this as it is available. We would like to take this last opportunity to thank everyone for their support over the last few years. It has been a good run, we have made many friends. It is time to say goodbye.

    In the meantime, maybe Wired Woman can take up the slack.

    (Thanks to Bill for pointing this out.)

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 28, 2006.

September 27, 2006

  • MobileMonday Toronto Builds Momentum

    Normally we don’t quote press releases at length but I thought this one for “MobileMonday Toronto” did a pretty good job of summing up what’s happening with this newly minted organization here in Toronto:

    With its inaugural launch in June this past summer, the newly formed MobileMonday Toronto chapter is starting to attract a loyal following. Set up as a networking group for mobile industry professionals, the goal of the group is to ultimately spread knowledge and opportunities in the mobile space. “We felt that Toronto would be a great location for a chapter of MobileMonday based on the proximity of venture capital, communication companies, programming talent, and universities,” said co-founder Alexander S. Bosika. Mr. Bosika along with MobileMonday Toronto’s other co-founder Jim Brown are both veteran hi-tech professionals that felt the timing was perfect for monthly meetings of this nature. Since the launch, Jack Zidaric, and Jolon Craw, two other industry professionals have joined to help manage the monthly networking events. The events have drawn people from all parts the mobile industry to network, share ideas and interact with discussion panels.

    Speakers for the events have included Canadian executives from Research in Motion, Palm, the dot Mobi initiative, including US-based executives from Singlepoint and July Systems. The upcoming October 2nd session will probably be its most widely attended event with speakers from Google and Yahoo! participating in a moderated discussion panel around mobile search. Roger Skubowius (Google Canada) and Kristy Cook (Yahoo! Canada) each plan to answer some of the pressing questions surrounding mobile search for MoMo Toronto attendees.

    You can find out more the organization and the event at “their website.”

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 27, 2006.

  • Why I Include My Feed in My Sig File

    One Degree: “Jordan, can you tell us about your .sig file and what the pros and cons of your approach are?” I use the animated headline feature from “Feedburner” in my .sig file, to publicize my blog. It is a very cool feature that I think everyone should try (provided they have a Feedburner feed associated with their site). The response to it has been overwhelmingly positive, and I have to agree that it does give my messages an extra bit of credibility than a static text “siggy” or even a company logo would. Here’s a peek at what we’re talking about here:

    Jordan Behan

    www.telltenfriends.com

    778.840.TELL (8355)

    Jordan Behan: I opted to list just my url, and not a full company name and title, in exchange for less content to have to look at. I’m still pretty convinced this was a good decision, as it shouldn’t be too busy, in my opinion. When people first see it, it’s not out of the ordinary for them to say “Wow, I want one of those!” But here is where I start to list the cons of this method. I do web marketing and PR consulting, specializing in small business. Many of my clients and prospects discover what an RSS feed is when I explain it to them, and not before. If you’re not already familiar with the use of feeds, then you might not understand the content that you see when you click the link in the animated .gif. I have yet to have anyone ask about the “site” they get linked through to when they click, but I have to guess that for some it is a bit confusing. They might have expected to be linked to my site, not the Feedburner feed.

    That’s why I’m beginning to think (this exercise of explaining was certainly a catalyst) that I actually do need to add one last bit of info at the bottom of the .sig, for RSS newbies. Maybe something to the effect of: What’s an RSS feed? (With a link to a blog post explaining how to subscribe, etc.) Or, alternatively, just an extra link below that reads: Or click here to visit the homepage. Still, overall I would have to say that the tool is very useful. It reminds people that I do have fresh content all the time, and even if it is a bit ugly, that content is available when you click through to the Feedburner feed, where you are just one more click away from the homepage, any given individual post or of course from subscribing. As the average end-user gets even savvier, this little tool will really begin to realize its potential.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 27, 2006.

September 20, 2006

  • ThinData Announces ZenData

    ThinData CEO (and past Five Questions interviewee) Chris Carder, just sent word about an interesting extension of ThinData’s business:

    Last Thursday, we announced a joint venture in equal partnership with Montreal-based e-relationship marketing expert, René Godbout to form ZenData Marketing. René, previously Director of Marketing with Montreal-based Aeroplan, brings his 30 years’ experience in marketing and CRM to the venture including consumer marketing experience with Bell Canada and Radio-Canada television network. ZenData will provide e-relationship marketing services to Quebec brands. The relationship between companies extends ThinData’s commitment to providing permission-based email marketing nationally. The presence of ZenData does not change our existing client relationships in any way. It does, however, increase our ability to service Quebec based accounts.

    The full press release announcing ZenData is on the ThinData web site and the bilingual Zendata.ca site is now live.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 20, 2006.