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David at eXtra for Every Publisher has a contest going, with a remarkable prize: one of two Nintendo Wii-related domain names. When I saw that, I popped over to GoDaddy and checked out some other variations on the “Wii” name. There are a lot of Wiixxx.com site names that are already taken, and David has two good ones.
While it might be too late to set up a site to capitalize on the Christmas season, Nintendo Wii shortages continue, and that is something that could definitely be capitalized on.
The domains are WiiWe.com and WiiStart.com. They are both currently registered at Godaddy. Neither of these have been used for anything else, and are both very short and memorable.
I haven’t gotten into the domain dealing business, but I suspect that this may be a good time to start. I would like to have wiistart.com for myself, put up a keyword- and ad-loaded homepage to generate some revenue, and then have an auction!
Lenore Skenazy says that t-shirts are the lazy man’s scrapbook:
Humble, trite and tacky though they may be, T-shirts remain one of the longest-lived promos you could ever throw at a customer. Long after the free pen has exploded and the free Frisbee has been chewed (hopefully not by you), the T-shirt remains a garment — something we humans seem hard-wired not to throw out. And we never seem to get enough of them, either.
And so I ask you, if I came up with some snazzy designs and put them up at Cafe Press, would anyone be interested? Vote for your favorite design: (these are very rough mockups, I have no mad skillz!)
My associate at Collaborative Ideation, Ryan Rasmussen, and Duc Ly (who blogs at Duc N. Ly) had a little chat in Second Life recently, regarding the role of business-customer conversations and community involvement. Ryan was part of a massive collaboration on a new book “The Age of Conversation“:
In what may be a first-of-its-kind collaboration via the internet, more than 100 marketing professionals have joined together online to write The Age of Conversation, a book that will be published July 16…
The book has an unusual story behind it, involving online connections between people around the world who have never met each other.
Drew McLellan, who heads McLellan Marketing Group, an advertising agency here, has been writing a blog online for since September 2006. His blog, www.DrewsMarketingMinute.com is among the 25 most-read marketing blogs in the world. McLellan’s partner in this adventure is another marketing blogger in the top 25, Gavin Heaton. Heaton is the Interactive Director of one of the world’s leading marketing and promotions agencies, Creata, where he is Director of Interactive. Heaton blogs at www.ServantofChaos.com.
In March, McLellan wrote about Wharton’s effort to create a collaborative book and Heaton commented, “And it sounds like it could be fun … but you know what, Drew? I reckon between a few of us we could knock out a short book and publish it. All we need is a theme and a charity …”
This book is not only unusual in that it has 100 contributors, it was written and printed at a breakneck pace:
…bringing together over 100 marketing experts under the single topic of “conversation” — in record time — from idea to completion in around THREE MONTHS!
Not only did the contributors band together, they also willingly put aside their royalties so that the profits from sale can be donated to Variety, the Children’s Charity.
The power of Web 2.0, still in its infancy, is undeniable. Here is a snippet of the conversation between Ryan and Duc:
Ryan: Although the ROI is near impossible to calculate, a word-of-mouth campaign is incredible powerful. However, it requires passionate customers + responsive merchants.
Ryan: Social media provide the opportunity for companies to really learn how customers feel about their brand through open conversation. Ben’s presentation leads me to seek out other marketing bloggers that might be actuating this sort of campaign.
Duc: Well said….
Ryan: Large companies, like Microsoft and Google, realized the importance of corporate blogging some time ago. I was on a quest to see who else was actively questioning and listening to their customers.
Ryan: This led me to Gavin Heaton’s blog, and the open call for participants.
Ryan: My email simply stated, “I have been working with customers online for quite some time.”
Duc: true true
Ryan: In my own article, I chose to speak of some of the obstacles to approaching this sort of open engagement.
Ryan is very involved with the D*I*Y*Planner community and has been influential in bringing some of the DIY ideas and brainstorms out into the real world as commercial products.
Getting involved with communties is going to be the only way for businesses to survive in the Cluetrain world.
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April 17th, 2008 by Stephen
News flash! Productivity in Context has been added to the Alltop feed site. It is listed as HD Bizblog, and you can check it out here. This is a thrill for me, as there are a lot of cool blogs listed here.
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