Rainbow Layers

I've over the last few years become increasingly frustrated when the term "marketing" is used to describe actions such as publicity campaigns, or straightforward advertising. So just this once, I'll rant. Well, I'll rant for one paragraph, and then make up by talking about how great life is when businesses get marketing.

Start of rant:

Marketing is NOT advertising! Advertising is just one of the small actions that may or may not happen as part of the whole marketing activity! If you're guilty of using the word "marketing" to describe "advertising", or "publicity", you should write this out a thousand times: "marketing is finding out what customers want, and delivering it to them, making a fair profit".

End of rant.

My apologies for this rant. (I don't like ranters much, but I've wanted to do this for such a long time, and feel much better now!)

Incidentally, the definition of marketing, that it's "finding out what customers want, and delivering it to them, making a fair profit", is a slight modification of the definition given by Malcolm Auld in his book "Direct Marketing Made Easy". It's a great book by a man that gets it, and helped me to get it too.

So, what happens when businesses get marketing?

They win customers of course. I'll give three examples:

Air New Zealand

I used to love this airline, back in the days when they gave decent hot meals on long flights, served in porcelain, and gave you stainless steal cutlery.

My loyalty to Air New Zealand dwindled when they went cheap, same as all the others, and reached a low when the unofficially started discriminating against lone male travellers (though that, admittedly, might have been either an urban legend or FUD dreamed up by the competition). But to the competition I went, and flew Qantas until they too, stuffed up their quality and stopped flying between Christchurch and Wellington.

And then, earlier this year, I discovered the www.saverjet.com spoof, and Air New Zealand's bodypaint commercials. My goodness, do these guys have a brave marketing team! They worked out what the issues was that bothered me about their competitors, worked out how they can make a difference, and told me about it in a bold (almost daring) campaign.

Well done Air New Zealand, you've won me back!

Cadbury

I've never liked Cadbury's chocolate much, mainly because it's to sweet to my personal tastes, though I do have a soft spot for a few of their products, especially Crunchies.

When Cadbury changed their recipe, adding palm oil, I thought okay, I'll do my bit and tweet it. Marietjie even wrote to them to complain.

While Cadbury wasn't quite into it at first, trying to advertise their way out of a sloppy marketing decision, they certainly rose to the occasion by not only reversing their decision, but also publicly apologising for their mistake. How brave is that? They even emailed Marietjie back, thanking her for her feedback, apologised about the vegetable fat and palm oil thing, and telling her when the old recipe will hit the shelves again.

I'm impressed, Cadbury. I still prefer European style chocolate that's not so sweet, but next time I stand in the chocolate aisle in the supermarket, I'll consider buying you instead of Whittakers.

Wagamama

How to turn occasional customers that like good food into loyal brand advocates?

• Serve food that makes them feel energetic, rather than sleepy!
• Serve food that their kids love: they will bring their friends for a birthday lunches.
• Facebook and Tweet to them: they will find you and start mentioning you in their online conversations.
• Invite them to a free lunch to launch a $12 lunch: they will queue into the street, drawing even more attention.
• Give him vouchers for free fruit juice if he buys another lunch: the will be back for more.
• Start a photo competition: they will publish themselves, creating even more online conversation about your brand.
• Find your supporters' Tweets and Facebook mentions, and join the conversations.

Notice how we started with "occasional customers" but ended with "supporters"? I'm following Wagamama's marketing in New Zealand with interest, because this business gets it!

Almost five months passed since my last entry in this blog, so it's about time that I get round to it again, isn't it? So here goes.

Since February, I have:

Been working flat-out to develop the Entrybox website. Entrybox is a site that makes it easy for New Zealanders to find and enter competitions. The coolest part of creating Entrybox (using the Drupal CMS), was the challenge to stay true to the awesome grapic design, using the Zen theme as a starting point. The result is a site that doesn't look anything like Drupal (until you go to the login page that is).

Completed my MySource Matrix admin training.

Become a BlackBerry user. At first, I had my doubts about the BlackBerry, but it definitely grew on me. I actually became fond of it. It has certainly confirmed my belief that all websites should be built using web standards, and made me even more irate when I encounter Flash that is used inappropriately on a website.

Started to tweet on Twitter . Yes, I'm Twitter-pecked. I mostly tweet about #coffee, #cooking, and #baking, but also a bit about marketing, websites, and the odd social issue. Such as #cadbury stuffing up their already questionable chocolate by adding palm oil to it. Yuk. Long live De Spa Chocolate !

Did not become a slave to Facebook. Me, I prefer LinkedIn. True, Facebook is a neat way to catch up with old connections and relatives now living Far Far Away, but I just don't feel like living my life in Facebook.

Added less recipes to Rainbow Cooking that I would have liked to. Not doing so makes me feel a bit guilty, especially as the number of visitors to Rainbow Cooking continue to climb at a steady rate. Sites such as www.self-help.co.nz and all4women.co.za started to re-publish our recipes, which is really cool.

Wellington Convention Centre, 19 Feb 09, 9:00, the hall is full, wireless is up and running, and the lights just this minute dimmed and the music started rolling, we're getting the credits rolling on the screen too: Webstock 09 is All Systems Go!

Technorati Tags: webstock | webstock09

A college, who is gearing up for a large website rebuild, asked if I know of any events or seminars coming up here in New Zealand, or in Australia, in next 6 months.

My answer: Webstock 2009. The programme is not out yet, but the list of speakers is. Because it tends to have a good mix of concepts and practical topics that is geeky but not geek-only, Webstock is great for web staff who is not complete geeks. Webstock 2008 will be in February, in Wellington, and is not overly expensive. I'm going. You should too.

Technorati Tags: webstock | webstock09

Felicia from Tag Design introduced me to Balsamiq Mockups : an application that allow you to rapidly draw wireframes.

And I mean rapidly.

I used Mockups for three different projects this past week. Two of them required fast action, and Balsamiq Mockups was just what I needed.

Until now, the software I've seen and used in this category of tools, can draw anything from company org charts and flow diagrams, through to pixel-perfect mockups of websites and desktop apps. Which is why they have steep learning curves and complex toolsets.

Not so with Mockups. It doesn't try to be the next Corel Draw, it simply wants to make it easy for you to draw simple mockups. That's why Balsamiq Mockups has a two-minute learning curve. Well, almost.

All you need to do is:

1. find a pre-drawn building element from a scrolling library

2. drag the element to the sketchpad below the library

3. edit the text that describes the element

4. drag the interface to the size and position you want

It is really that easy.

To give you an idea of what you can quickly dream up in Mockups - this design took about 20 minutes to complete:

Mockups has a wide range of buttons, navigation interfaces and media objects in it's libraries.

It is easy to group objects into a single object, and Mockup's interface to move objects forward or backward it simply delightful.

Another clever aspect of Mockups is that it gives a hand-drawn look to your mockup. This is great when you create wireframes for customers because when they see the sketch-like designs, they understand that you're busy with concepts, not visual designs. Which means they don't start talking about colours and logos, but concentrate on the words and interfaces.

Balsamiq Mockups is simple. It is not overly comprehensive, but also not highly flexible. There are a few things you can't do with it:

You can't print directly to a printer. You have to save your design as a PNG and then print the image. At least it automatically saved your image files to a new revision every time, which is handy.

You can select the size of text for a given element from a drop-down box, but you can't type in the text size.

And you know what? That's okay with me. I actually wouldn't want Mockups to become too advanced. I don't want it to do everything for everyone because making it too powerful will risk will cluttering up the interface, and the result may be a complex, increase learning curve.

I hope that as Mockups mature, it will retain the simple interface and balanced library-size, that enables me to create simple wireframes, rapidly.

Technorati Tags: balsamiq | wireframes | mockups

In my presentation on 22 August 2008 at the 8th Annual Strategic Intranet & Enterprise Portal Management Summit in Wellington, I looked into aspects of merging corporate Intranet, Extranet and public websites into single synchronized systems that allow access to both staff and partners.

The challenges that I discussed included:

• Synchronising visual design and branding
• Integrating separate systems from multiple vendors into a single sign-on system
• Creating search results that are rich in context
• Finding win-win solutions to diverse requirements from teams and business units that are distributed across the globe

I find the most interesting challenge, however, to be the issues around publishers that want to use a single instance of information across multiple websites.

Re-use of content when publishing to corporate Intranet, Extranet and Internet websites

The write-once, use-many-times model is popular and rightly so: when content requires updating, a single update of the source will automatically be reflected on the multiple websites where that content has been used.

Requiring multiple instances of similar content also happens when publishing to corporate Intranet, Extranet and Internet websites.

A very simple model would be to use security levels as access levels: documents marked as Internal would appear on the Intranet, Restricted would appear on the Intranet and Extranet, and documents with a rating of Public would appear on the Intranet, Extranet and public websites.

There is a down-side to this approach: external audiences often require less information than internal audiences, but they need more context around the information. A system engineer, for instance, will be comfortable with highly detailed descriptions of the features of the products that must be integrated into a system. A salesperson may require a less detailed description of the features, but would need to know as much as possible about the benefits that these features will have for a potential customer.

Due to the need to have different levels of detail and context for different audiences, matching a single instance of information to a wide audience is not always appropriate. It sometimes mean that content must be adapted into different formats and then maintained in more than one location.

Another approach is to display additional information when required. In the example of feature and benefit descriptions, someone who is part of the system engineering group will see fully detailed specifications of a specific product, but nothing about benefits. For the same product, a sales person will see a subset of the technical specifications, but a comprehensive range of benefits. In other words, content is presented or filtered out by audience role.

What is the difference between Intranet, Extranet and Internet?

Steve Gallagher from Synapsys and I had a number of conversations on this topic in the past few months, and it was also a regular point of discussion during the summit.

Ten years ago, Steven L. Telleen wrote on this topic, and laid down a rather robust definition (relevant after 10 years) of the difference between Intranet, Extranet and Internet.

My take on it:

The Intranet is the sum of an organisation's websites and web applications used by its staff. This can range from applications such as the phone book and calendar, issue and document management systems, through to internal wikis and blogs. Mature Intranets consolidate the information and applications that a staff member requires on a personalised home page.

The Extranet: websites and application on the Extranet is meant for business partners or customers of the organisation. Note that the sites and apps that comprise the Extranet, may also be part of the Intranet. There may also be sites or apps that are part of the Extranet but not used by staff and therefore not part of the Intranet.

The Internet: any content that is not secured by a login.

To ensure data security, Extranet sites and applications are best located on a DMZ, while Intranet sites and applications belong inside the corporate firewall. This requires a physical separation between Intranet and Extranet, but the information served up by these separate systems can still be integrated seamlessly as described above.

So in the end, in terms of information, Intranets and Extranets are separated only by the roles of its users: if a website or app is used by staff, it is part of the Intranet. If it is used by users who are not staff, it is part of the Extranet. If it is open to the public, it is part of the Internet.

From that, I conclude that we had better know who our users are and what information they require!

Technorati Tags: intranets | extranets

Just one week to go before the start of the 8th Annual Strategic Intranet Summit .

I found myself being more fussy during the preparation of my presentation than usual, possibly because I'll be providing insight into how my employer's Extranet was created. The issue is that I need to provide compelling information to my fellow delegates, without providing too much insight for our competitors. As a result, I opted for a presentation that is relatively low on text, but visually rich. I choose this approach not only to not reveal too much in an electronic format, but also because I believe that modern presentations tend to loose oratory impact because we tend to rely too much on our slides.

The two most compelling presentations I have attended in the last five years was by Don Norman (at University of Canterbury) and Greg Comfort (talking about Web Standards during a seminar at my workplace). Both speakers delivered rich oral presentations that were beautifully illustrated, but not overshadowed, by their slides.

Greg is presenting at the Intranet Summit too, and I'm looking forward to listen to him! The other talk I particularly look forward too, is Michael Sampson on Collaboration.

My daughter keeps an eye on the sites that I work on. Being a bookworm and a budding cook, she expressed appreciation for the two sites that kept me busy this month: Rainbow Cooking, which is our family's recipe website, and Tell Tails, which is an online shop for children's books that I co-developed with Felicia from Tag Design. It is a fun website that I thoroughly enjoyed working on, mostly because I recognised so many of the books that my daughter and I read over the past six years or so.

The highlight of February was, without any doubt, attending Webstock 08 .

My family came along for the ride. They were having fun in downtown Wellington while I slaved at the conference: two days of drinking amazing coffee , typing 7000 character's worth of notes, and listening to prolific speakers.

My favourites included Luke Wroblewski (forget the "guru", this guy is for real!), Dan Cederholm (the reason I decided I just have got to get to Webstock) and Peter Morville (if I had a hero, it would have been Peter!). 

PS: February also included a business trip to the States. I prefer Kiwi airports any day!

It's sad that so many people consider cooking to be a boring chore, because it really is not! I find cooking up a storm of a family meal to be one of the most pleasant and productive ways to wind down after a hectic day at the office. It is so much more satisfying than cooking out of the freezer, or even worse, out of the local supermarket's deli.

Yes, Marietjie and I enjoy cooking good food. Especially traditional food. Moroccan, Mexican, Kiwi, Thai, Chinese, Italian and French, to name a few... they are all lovely, and surprisingly easy. And then there's our favourite: South African cooking.

There are two reasons why we like South African cooking. The first is that we grew up with it. The second reason is that migrants from all over the world brought their staples, flavours and techniques to South Africa over a period of three centuries, to create a truly magnificent fusion cooking.

It is fascinating to see a second wave of fusion happening to South African food: the cuisine cooked by South Africans living abroad, using local ingredients, and adding local techniques, tastes and flavours.

Marietjie and I found that South African dishes go down well with our Kiwi friends and we are frequently asked for the recipe for the dish of the day. Because almost our recipes are in Afrikaans, this required constant translation. In the end we decided to publish the recipes that we adapted and translated and this led to the birth of our Rainbow Cooking website: a collection of mostly South African recipes, in English, for people that like the tastes and flavours of migrant cooking.