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Category: Public Relations

4 Internet Marketing Lessons From My Mexican Holiday

Published November 27, 2006

Gentle ocean breeze, white powder sand, Mai Tais hand delivered to an umbrella protected beach chair – yes indeed, there’s nothing like a week’s vacation in the Mexican Riviera. I’ve included a picture of my hotel here just to help those of you currently struck at your desks to find the motivation to take your own trip sometime soon.

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But what, you might be asking, does any of this vacation boasting have to do with internet marketing (the philosophical foundation of our special onedegree.ca). Lots, it seems. To outline this point, I have included here “Michael’s 4 Internet Marketing Lessons from my Mexican holiday”.

Lesson 1: Travel Review sites are really just fancy words for “Blogs” about travel.

I use www.tripadvisor.com and I love it. Do you remember when your only source of online information on a hotel came from the hotel chain itself? It was the sound of one hand’s thunderous self-applause. Well, now there is a real-time forum for discussion on virtually any hotel or resort in the world, along with rankings and pictures and real people to ask questions to who just got back from where you are thinking of going. The consumer value of user generated content in the travel industry has turned 60 year old grandmothers from Wichita into blogging machines without them even knowing it. Move over Paul Theroux!

Lesson 2: The traditional travel industry still hasn’t realized that the Internet has changed its business model forever.

My wife (who is also an Internet professional) really wanted to use the local travel agent. She argued that she was really nice and helpful and close to our house. My wife even started the search for our holiday with her and got prices and availability options. But what came apparent very quickly is that as we wanted more information over a period of days, the restrictions on the agent’s working hours and availability became a huge bottleneck in our search, and eventually we turned to the Internet to get all of the information we needed in real time (in this case using www.selloffvacations.com). Even still, my wife was committed to booking with the local person. Unfortunately, we made our final decision to book a special available deal on Saturday morning and she didn’t work on the weekends. We had no choice but to book our holiday through the “always open, always on”, Internet travel service. That industry will not survive without changing.

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5 Questions For Crayon – A New Marketing Company

Published November 14, 2006

Crayon is billing itself as “A New Marketing Company.” It is the brainchild of Life After The 30-Second Spot author, Joseph Jaffe (who also happens to Blog over at Jaffe Juice and Podcast over at Across The Sound). Jaffe is joined by the For Immediate Release co-hosts, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, along with Podsafe Music dude, C.C. Chapman (who also recently launched his own marketing Podcast, Managing The Gray). One Degree fired them each a question and then got them all to answer a final one together. Here’s what they said… The first question should be why was I willing to help promote a marketing agency that is not Twist Image (my own)? It’s a great question if you didn’t know that I consider the principles of Crayon to all be personal friends. We’ve even managed to meet in person on more than a handful of times. It’s that kind of social media power that led Joseph Jaffe, Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson and C.C. Chapman to not only launch their new agency, Crayon, together, but they are running their head office out of Second Life (which seems much easier than trying to get people from Connecticut, Massachusetts, California and England all in a room at the same time). Crayon launched with a significant amount of fanfare – which took place in Second Life, but for now, One Degree stuck with some real life questions.

One Degree: Why does the world need Crayon?

Joseph Jaffe: The world needs honesty, integrity, transparency, conversation and community. If crayon can play any part in helping make that a reality, I would consider myself as having been successful. There is a “collective consciousness” which is rising at an unprecedented rate. People want to make a difference. People want to focus on the stuff that matters. Selling stuff will always be important but not at the expense of humanity. That is what crayon is all about. Helping brands stand for something that counts…eliminating the fluff, false promises and hyperbole and in its place, create relevant and meaningful context and experiences. And if the world needs that, then hopefully the world will need Crayon.

One Degree: What do marketers need to know about Podcasting?

C.C. Chapman: They need to realize know that podcasting is a direct connection to the eyes and ears of their consumers and the population at large. It’s appointment based consumption of audio and video that is controlled and selected by the individual. It’s easier to push the skip button then it ever was to change the channel, so it’s critical that the content be engaging and appropriate to what the consumer was told it would be. You only get one chance to do it right so take the time to play it out ahead of time and then push forward.

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