Domino's Pizza goes to the People
This is yet another example of how companies should go after new money, using traditional media tools and Social Media as the primary tools. Not every business can afford to do this but you can scale it to fit your budget if you get creative enough. Getting new customers is what it’s all about, I’m willing to venture that Dominos won new customers because they went out and made Dominos fun.
Watch the video at PizzaHoldouts.com and then think of ways you could generate new money from your existing product or service. While you’re there, be sure to follow them on Twitter & FaceBook, you can even order a Pizza!
Free Seattle's Best Coffee at Subway
Like McDonald’s, Subway is following suit. Till April 22nd, 2010 you can get your Seattle’s Best coffee free at any Subway, this on the heals of the Golden Arches experiment that increased sales in the Month of March. This another low-level example of how the Open & Free Business Model works. In the retail sector they have a name for it, Loss Leaders. They would blow out product that hasn’t moved or strategically bring in a product of low cost and use it to draw in customers. This is not a new concept but strengthens the argument for the Open & Free Business Model to increase revenues.
I can’t help wondering what’s next, this is the kind of thing I teach and recommend to local businesses, how they can increase awareness, brand and revenues by strategically using what they may already have in house. As I’ve mentioned before, the Open & Free Business Model is not a skill set, it’s a paradigm shift, a new way of looking at the world of business, especially online but also win the brick & mortar types. I hold workshops to help business owners make progress on the deemed paradigm shift, so they can go back to the office and help staff make small changes. The world is coming, it’s not here yet, but when it does, you’ll want to be ahead of the wave. Otherwise, you may get wiped out by that wave.
The fear of loss is what most business owners go to bed with at the end of each business day. How will coveer this, how will I….and so on. The fear of losing their business or money of any amount is a problem. The Open & Free Business Model embraces that fear and confronts it, how, by doing something different and taking a small calculated risk. You most likely took that risk when you started your business.
McDonald’s obviously has resources most of us don’t have, Subway isn’t nearly as large but they see the benefit of giving away Seattle’s Best Coffee for the purposes of leveraging a Social Currency called ATTENTION. McDonald’s sales increased when they ran the experiment of giving away coffee for short period of time, the loss if any, was minimal and got them a ton of Attention. These arrangements are called Strategic Alignments or Alliances, Seattle’s Best wants to sell more coffee, offers to provide the coffee by leveraging Subways customer base. Who wins? They both do!
Even if you don’t own a business, your going to remember Subway’s name, and Seattle’s Best Coffee sales will go up. What a simple concept, but yet the fear of loss seems to win over most business owners. If you’re dealing with the fear right now, go to Subway and have a coffee on the house till April 22nd and get creative with how you can overcome that fear. Or, take my workshop and learn how to defeat the fear by learning the Open & Free Business Model Mindset.
Mainstream Is Stuck In The Mainstream
Change is hard, for some it’s very uncomfortable, and for the mainstream it’s almost impossible, so it seems. Change is inevitable, it is happening with every minute of the day, how you chose to respond to that change determines it’s value. Like ambiguity, change too must be embraced in order for progress to really take hold. I know you know this, I know you understand it and that’s why this environment welcomes those who truely understand it.
Mainstream media, mainstream big business and the businesses that support them, still don’t see what’s coming and it’s coming quickly. Wall street, the Music Industry, Newspapers, Television Media, are stuck in the mainstream, they don’t know how to make the shift to this new economic model called Open & Free. Amber Naslund ranted about how there is an entitlement to free stuff, I agree with her, I’m all for getting paid and we should be if we are providing something of real value. Unfortunately, the world is filled with many looking for a shortcut, looking for a way to take advantage of others and not pay for what they take. But today, we the people get to decide what is important to us, no longer will we be convinced that products, services and information are important. Unethical Internet Marketers, traditional marketing and subliminal messages raise the BS Meter to new levels and become very suspicious. The pay first and and access second model is breaking down rapidly, no longer to be tolerated, and will all but disappear in the next 3 – 5 years when the rest of the world gets here online. There will be 5 Billion people here in the next 5 years and they won’t pay first, and you won’t be able to make them. They will find ways to get what they want, much like we do today, music, movies and information is being copied at will and that’s what the fight is all about. What you may not see is that the money is moving from the selling of copy, to the selling of experience.
Keeping content, products and services behind walls is a losing model, and is a bad experience, the end of control is shaping up everywhere. With Newspaper’s forcing you to buy access to content, record labels unwilling to move on their position and flexing the control muscle, they are in for a rude awakening. Mainstream Media & Mainstream Business must find ways to make this shift, find ways to monetize around product and service. Rather than fight with everyone and try to maintain the current Copyright Model, try working with the stakeholders and content providers. Create interesting ways to replace the Copyright Gridlock we are in with collective agreements where everyone wins. Much of what we know must be unlearned and new creative ways to allow for everyone to participate in a global economy where the content makers do indeed get paid. The Open & Free Business Model allows for this and also brings a hotbed of creativity that builds trust, relationships and attention.
Silicon Valley has the same issues, it is very much an incubator, it doesn’t really integrate with the rest of the world, they talk a different language, and it feeds on itself and funds itself. Sounds cold and harsh but let’s be honest, they are light years away from most of us but still have to share the same space. We need them to be weird and innovative for the rest of the world, but they also seem disconnected at times, it’s a day time soap at times. It’s like being the Nerd in grade school again, everyone looks at you funny because you talk funny and wear a pocket protector.
Mainstream being stuck in the mainstream has a silver lining, it means we get to be creative and help them get unstuck. Unfortunately, today they are fighting against us and the world, and want to maintain control, it’s a losing battle I’m afraid. They aren’t listening now, but they will, musicians and the like are banding together all over the world as messengers. It might appear mainstream media has the upper hand, but it will be short lived. I try to advocate working together, bring awareness, and help build the future in an Open & Free Business Model, a place where everyone (YOU) wins.
Are you ready? How do you feel about an Open & Free Business Model? Do you think Mainstream is stuck in the Mainstream?
Where To Put The Toll Booth
The question of where to put the Toll Booth is being asked of me more and more lately, it’s a big subject and really can’t be covered in a Blog Post well, I’ll just share some thoughts for you to ponder. With the shift to an Open & Free Business Model, the confusion of the concept, the fear of losing control, and how to make new money from it are the biggest reasons to take your time and consider where the Toll Booth should be. Let’s consider some facts.
Today we have 1.7 Billion people on the Internet, in the next 3 – 5 years there will be 5 Billion people here online. Also consider that Advertising dollars are shifting to the digital marketplace, traditional advertising is dropping and digital is increasing. Print is down 18.7%, T.V. is down 10.1%, Radio is down 11.7% and magazine’s are down 14.8% in the USA alone. On the other-hand, Digital is up, HandHelds are up 18.1% and general Internet (Computer) is up 9.2% overall in the USA. These numbers are changing everyday, and these are taken from November 2009 statistics. With over 65,000 iPhone Apps on the market and more are being released daily, these apps are revenue generators that play a huge role in the Open & Free Business Model. A Toll Booth if you will.
The term Open & Free Business Model means a great many things, it’s access first before money, in a way it’s like the old GPL of Shareware model, you got to try it for 30 days and then you had to buy it. But today there is a difference, today people won’t tolerate paying for content in any of the traditional terms. Newspapers are trying get you to pay for content for access, how do you think that will go, I think they will rethink that if they want to generate new revenues.
The biggest issue I’m coming across is a thing called creativity, there is a mental block on how Open & Free is going to make money. Personally I think it’s not that difficult to figure out, but that’s what I do, I help businesses come up with new ideas on how to do that, to build something that can be implemented for the purposes of being ready for the new 3.3 Billion people coming in the next few years. The problem isn’t that it can’t be done, the problem is we have to unlearn and make a paradigm shift in how we view the world of business. I’ve quoted Gerd Leonhard many times, he once said, “the Internet is a giant copy machine, we now have to sell things that can’t be copied. Sell things around the content. Sell the packaging, sell the experience.” I’ve always believed that the experience I have in dealing with you determines the success of your brand. Business is not transactions, it’s interactions with people, and those people determine whether your brand is good or not based on the experience of dealing with you and your business.
If we must stop the model of copy to something that can’t be copied, we must look at a bigger picture, and that means changing the way we see the world. The Open & Free Business Model has nothing to do with technology, it is rethinking the placement of the digital marketplace Toll Booth. Some Bloggers have proven this model in part, offering good if not great content for free that you normally would have paid for upfront. That scares the day lights out of the business world, letting you decide before you buy means mainstream business has give up some control. It means they can’t guide you through the typical sales process of making say yes to a string of mini closes. They have to change how they think and ensure what they want you to purchase brings value and fills a real perceived need. They struggle now with where they make the money and how to ask for it. I’m generalizing of course, some understand but most don’t.
The bigger issues coming, what happens when we go to a single currency in North America, what happens if Net Neutrality comes to fruition, there will be another shift but not nearly as big as the Open & Free Business Model. This is not the same as Open Source but we can learn much from the GPL (General Public License) model.
The placement of the Toll Booth will most likely determine the amount of money you generate in the digital marketplace, but you need to understand how to determine that placement. You may not like the idea of an Open & Free Business Model, but what you may not see is that free gets you to a place where can ask to be paid. It will be quality over quantity, and it will also mean you are solving a problem and or filling a perceived need.
I have probably introduced you to, maybe for the first time, the thought of giving your content away for free and then figuring out how to make new money from that thought. There is far too much to cover for this post but you can read more about it here on my Blog by doing a search on the topic.
Owen Greaves Consulting is currently planning a 2 day workshop on the Open & Free Business Model, to help you learn how and where to put the toll booth in your Open & Free Business Model. If you are interested in this workshop please send me an e-mail or leave a comment for more information.
The Ambiquity of Technology
I’m thinking out loud today and thought I would share those thoughts with you. It’s been said we know the future, and we know what it looks like, but do we really? Yes we can predict with some accuracy what might happen, we just can’t describe the details, what color and what shape. Most people keep their head to the grind stone, look up once and awhile but for the most part they work till the bell rings. There are a chosen few who can’t stand the grind stone and have their heads in the clouds. I’m one of those characters, I love looking at the future, I love seeing what has yet to come and I love to share what most can’t see. It’s not that visionaries are better or smarter, they just see the world differently.
It’s not too hard to see that technology is getting more and more advanced and much smaller, we all embrace the use of handheld devices. Computers…towers and laptop’s will be a thing of the past in the next 5 years or so. Some of you remember the 1st Cell Phone, it was HUGE, today it’s almost the size of a credit card. If Ray Kurzweil is correct in his predictions, we will become wireless devices by merging with technology. Imagine that! Soon the Internet will be readily available anywhere in the world, it won’t matter which device you use, you will have access.
Embracing ambiguity is the secret sauce, and I mean embracing ambiguity in most things online, not just technology. Technology is growing exponentially, therefore we can’t really predict it’s advancement with accuracy. We can however see where technology is going, the deliverables are another issue. Like most things in life we can deduce them to an equation but we really can’t tell you in great detail or when it actually delivers. Visionaries can see what’s coming and they work hard to help you understand it, they just aren’t clear on when you can have it.
Creativity is a function of ambiguity really, we start with an idea, a concept and work within that ambiguity until it takes shape. If you invested in that ambiguity, that would suggest you have huge faith that it will come to fruition. Afterall, you wouldn’t risk without some form of faith that thing you are creating will actually deliver. So why is it so hard for most people to function in ambiguity? It’s a thing called security, we want some kind of quarranttee we won’t lose anything, but will gain everything. Technology is one of those rare fields where that’s possible and we are willing to accept almost every technilogical invention we lay our hands on. For some reason, most are comfortable here in the technology sector, even though the risks are the same in any other catagory or profession.
My point, we can’t possibly know the outcome of any one thing. We must dream big, and with that means we will have to risk big and create within the ambiguity until we have a clearer idea of what’s really going on with our creation. If we always played it safe, do you think we would be where we are today? I doubt it.
So, no matter what you do, whatever profession you happen to be in, try to embrace ambiguity and make it your friend. It won’t be easy, if you have ever been poor or had more month than money, you know what it means to not know where or how you were going to make the ends meet. That kind of ambiguity can turn you inside out, if you’re in Ministry or are required to raise funds in order to pay your bills, you know what I’m talking about.
I share alot about the future of technology, and the new open & free business model, and I need smart people to make sure the predicted progress is done right. Not only do I embrace ambiguity, and not everyone can, it is however easier to embrace the ambiguity of technology.
Are you a risk taker, are you comfortable with ambiguity? Is it the mystery that draws you or is it the anticipation of something new and cool to use?