COA Pioneers Green and Socially Responsible Business Program

Our Emarketing class was recently featured in a story on MPBN (Maine Public Radio) about College of the Atlantic's Green Business Program.

From the story:

"College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor recently started the first Green and Socially Responsible Business Program in the Northeast and plans to become the first liberal arts school in the country to open a sustainable business incubator for entrepreneurial students. Both the students and faculty say that even in this economy, there's plenty of opportunity to meet customer needs, treat the environment well and still turn a profit..."

Listen to the whole story here.

Web Log, We Blog, Blog, and Blogger

Have you wondered about what the blogging is? well, I did - so here what I found and sharing.

"weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997.
"blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word we blog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in 1999.
Later, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog")
Pyra Labs later devised the word "blogger" with respect to their Blogger product.

Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers From Original Blogger Jorn Barger

Moldova's "Twitter Revolution"

The fast viral internet messaging.

"In several hours, 15,000 people came out into the street."

This news shows the power of internet communication, the Twitter.com behind it. Worth reading.

Neural Stamping

I watched a talk on TED.com by Seth Godin, a thinker of marketing ideas in digital age. He states some very interesting points about standing out in the crowd (well, that is what everyone is trying to do!). As we have too many choices, we are likely to ignore the ordinaries and “when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.”

The talent of Susan Boyle is a good example of how an ordinary and unattractive woman surprised almost the whole world with her beautiful voice on “Britain’s Got Talent” TV show. When she first got in stage most audience was almost disgusted the way she talked, looked and acted. Almost seemed that “oh my, she is so unattractive, what the hell she can do!” Without realizing that as an ordinary and unattractive women she really had a hidden gem inside her; a beautiful voice.

But, one thing that really strikes me about the standing out idea is that focusing too much on making something non-ordinary is blinding our intellectual depth to really understand the ordinaries. In the case of Susan Boyle, the audience saw her as an ordinary, low socioeconomic background with no talent, but she rocked the audience with her voice.

What about looking into marketing the ordinaries - the true value of something or someone or somewhere?

Avon or Mary Kay?

While doing research for my peak pitch, I found an article discussing how Avon had reinvented its online image in 2005. Avon, for those who don’t know, is a makeup company in the same strain as Mary Kay. They’re known mainly as a representative company, their products are sold by sales representatives who hold “house parties” that feature Avon products. What’s interesting about their new online image is that instead of having one website that answers every need, Avon has two websites—Avon.com where consumers can buy directly from the company and YourAvon.com, which is directed for sales representatives. As the article featured on Plonka International’s website says, “in effect, Avon is competing against its Avon ladies.” I found this interesting, because for companies such as Avon or Mary Kay, the sales representative is a huge part of their image. Avon’s tagline is “the company for women” and Mary Kay’s is “enriching women’s lives.” As the majority of sales reps for these companies are women, a huge part of their appeal over other makeup companies is that they advertise that their products enable women to build successful careers as well as make you look prettier. What does allowing for online purchases do to Avon’s image? Does it undermine their sales representatives? If so, will that turn away potential customers? In contrast, Mary Kay’s website only offers information about their products and gives information about sales reps near you. Is this a better way of staying true to the image they project? Unfortunately I couldn’t find which company makes more money, so I’m not sure which company has the right idea.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/13/berglass-apple-abercrombie-leadership-clayton-christensen-merchandising-innovation.html

http://www.plonka.com/website/contents/avon.asp

https://www.youravon.com/REPSuite/login.page

http://avon.com/

http://www.marykay.com/

Net Neutrality & The Pirate Bay

A few days ago I came across an article about the conviction of the founders of the popular file sharing site, The Pirate Bay (here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/business/global/18pirate.html). I thought this was interesting for a number of reasons, first, because section one of Groundswell mentioned file sharing, and second because I felt it raised the larger issue of net neutrality. I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with "net-neutrality", but my understanding is that the term refers to the deregulation of the internet -- meaning essentially, that no corporation or outside entity can dictate what a person does while surfing the internet. That being said, things become less clear when an action's legality is in question (e.g. file sharing), but I felt that the concept was relevant to the class.

Specifically, when Groundswell mentioned file sharing the authors stated that it was not a viable alternative to online music stores, due to issues of quality and convenience. This may have been true a few years ago, but technology has progressed to such a point that this argument is no longer valid. The file sharing community has undergone several mutations recently, but overall it is now able to offer an enormous selection of content, often comparable in quality to media obtained through "credible" sources. As far as I can see, the difference is the rise of concrete file sharing communities, groups of people who come together in forums and on torrent sites (torrents are explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.torrent)in order to streamline the file sharing process. These communities increase the variety of content offered by expanding the number of files shared (more people sharing results in a more diverse selection), and improve quality through a feedback system. To explain, files found to be corrupt or of poor quality are tagged by the community and are no longer downloaded.

This community is now playing a crucial role in the Pirate Bay's legal battle. The Pirate Bay's homepage now features a huge link to a European internet neutrality website, the site's official blog features press releases from the founders, rallying support and ensuring users that the site will continue to function, and apparently, a group of sympathizers has begun to collect donations in order to pay the 3 million dollar fines facing the convicted founders.

Essentially, the file sharing community is already an influential demographic and is steadily growing. As emarketers, this, and net neutrality in general, provides us with a huge opportunity, but also a fairly substantial challenge, so I guess I have two questions:


1. How can we creatively take advantage of this deregulation without crossing into illegality?

and...

2. How do we adapt our marketing strategies to better reach a generation of people who expect to be able to get things for free?

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