May 2009 - Sheldon Nesdale

22 May 200911 June 2012

Is Georgie Pie coming back? Why did Georgie Pie fail last time? Who owns GeorgiePie.co.nz?

So you’ve probably heard about how the “Bring Georgie Pie back” campaign on Facebook has over 21,000 members (and climbing fast). And that McDonalds owns the brand and they haven’t decided if it will consider bringing it back yet.

I have 2 questions:

Why did Georgie Pie fail last time?
Who owns GeorgiePie.co.nz?

Q1: Why did Georgie Pie fail last time?

For some background first, see Georgie Pie on Wikipedia.

It seems that 3 factors contributed to Georgie Pie’s failure last time:

They expanded too fast, and when demand didn’t climb at the same level they ran out of money
A price rise from the iconic $1 (and even 75c menu), killed the value for money that drove thousands to the restaurants
There is some talk about people becoming more health conscious in the mid-late 90’s (I think this is bullocks. Most people don’t give a damn. If a pie looks tasty, they’ll buy it).

So the question is: Could Georgie Pie suffer the same fate this time around? Not likely. And with such a ground swell of support and huge public awareness, I think it could work.

I think a key to success would be to roll out the chain very slowly, so it keeps the demand and excitement high. Imagine being able to tell your friends “I was craving a Georgie Pie Steak and Cheese and drove from Hamilton to Auckland to get it. The queue was so long, it went out the door and up the street, I had to wait 2 hours. It was awesome!”

Q2: Who owns GeorgiePie.co.nz?

Some guy called Eddie Powell who lives in Tuakau, South Auckland. He also owns www.UnitedTrucks.co.nz and www.EddiePowell.co.nz.

He purchased GeorgiePie.co.nz in November 2008. Smart guy.

But it could go in 1 of 2 ways:

Either McDonalds/Georgie Pie will keep the offer to buy the domain on the down low and offer him a few grand to get it back (maybe $10k, maybe $20k, who knows?)
Or they sue is ass for TradeMark infringement, and the court orders him to give it to them for a couple of hundred bucks (and they might pay his court costs to be nice)

17 May 20095 June 2009

Can you tell me what you want?

Just watched a Malcolm Gladwell presentation about the work of experimental psychologist Howard Moskowitz. He talked about how people don’t know what they really want. They have trouble articulating it. “The mind knows not what the tongue wants”.

One example he used is; ask people how they like their coffee, they will reply “a dark rich hearty roast”. And 25-27% of people do like their coffee that way. But the majority of people like their coffee “milky and weak”, but they would never tell you that.

Another example from the video is how they toured the U.S. with 45 kinds of spaghetti sauce, and asked thousands of people to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. There was never going to be one perfect spaghetti sauce, instead, the data was clustered into 3 categories “plain”, “spicy” and “chunky”. “Chunky” was a brand new category that noone had ever mentioned in focus groups, ever. They made US$600 million with a range of chunky spaghetti sauces.

Have you heard that “focus groups don’t work“?. Everybody lies, and give you the answer that they think you want to hear, so they are very unreliable.

So you can’t ask people what kind of coffee they want. You have to ask them to buy. You have to watch their behaviour to see what they want. Present all the possible options for them and let them choose.

Unfortunately, you will find that there is not one perfect coffee that you can sell to the masses.

Have you heard the phrase “market of one“? That’s when mass marketing doesn’t work anymore, so companies realise that people want something unique to them, personalised to their preferences (as long as it doesn’t cost more!).

I think that’s why Starbucks, and Subway do so well. They realised there is no such thing as the “perfect coffee” or the “perfect sandwich” that they can sell to the majority. But each and every person can choose their own perfect coffee or perfect sandwich if the options are there in front of them.

So is there a way you can offer customisation of your products and services but without increasing your costs or the price the customer pays?

16 May 200925 February 2010

How to receive News Feeds (RSS) via email

In one of my all time favourite books – Tim Ferris, The 4 Hour Workweek (in fact I quit my day job because of this book), he talks about productivity (you certainly have to be very productive to only work for 4 hours a week).

One way to increase productivity is to limit distractions.

But at the same time I don’t want to miss out on stuff that is going on.

So I have subscribed to a few News Feeds (RSS) for my favourite blogs. But news feed readers suck! I don’t want to install software, and I don’t want to get interrupted all the time when I am focused on a project. So I set up these news feeds on my igoogle dashboard. But the problem is, they are buried at the bottom of the dashboard so I don’t even notice them.

I have to consciously make an effort to look in that area to scan the headlines. It feels like too much work.

And often, they are interesting so was a bit gutted that reading the headlines wasn’t easier.

Anyway, I use my email inbox (Gmail) for my workflow. I automatically filter much of what comes in (like newsletters and automated alerts), and deal with messages from real people before doing anything else.

The bottom line is, what I really want is to be able to receive these News Feed headlines into my email inbox for 3 reasons:

So receiving these messages doesn’t interrupt my workflow
So I get a chance to take a closer look in a timely manner if they are interesting
So I can still apply my automatic filter so they bypass my inbox so I can look at them when I have spare time

I have found the solution: www.FeedMyInbox.com.

You don’t need an account, you just type in the url and your email address and you are done. Easy.

Cool service. But it makes you think – how the heck do they make money?

Why do so many online companies give away awesome services for free?

Do they just hope that huge companies will find them and pay the founders millions to buy their ideas? Perhaps.

15 May 20097 August 2009

Are Unhappy Customers Damaging Your Brand Online? What Can You Do About It?

Anybody can write anything, at anytime about your brand online.

Sometimes they will have good things to say and you benefit from positive word-of-mouth. Yay! 🙂

Sometimes they will have bad things to say, and these comments can damage your brand. Boooo! 🙁

What can you do to minimise the damage to your brand?

There are 2 simple steps:

Get notified whenever comments are made about your brand online
Write an official response using a method that turns a negative comment into a positive that is 10 times more powerful

Two ways to get notified whenever comments are made about your brand online

Sign up to Google Alerts so you are emailed whenever your brand is talked about online.
Sign up for Twitter.
1. Search Twitter for your brand name eg “Coca Cola” or “Vodafone“
2. Copy the url into Feed My Inbox. You will get emailed up to once a day whenever someone mentions your brand name
3. Respond promptly to both negative and positive comments

How to write an official response using a method that turns a negative comment into a positive that is 10 times more powerful

Your first reaction will to make an excuse “That only happened because blah blah blah”. They don’t want to hear your excuses. Fight the urge to make excuses, because making excuses is starting a fight. It tells the customer that you’re not listening and that you don’t care. Getting into a fight with a customer either online or face to face is a really bad idea, so don’t make excuses.
Realise that they are just upset because they were expecting to have a good time, but something went wrong and now they are lashing out in frustration, and, unfortunately, you are the easiest target. Don’t take it personally. They’re just having a bad day, give them some slack.
They really want just 3 things from you. And if you give them these 3 things they will love you for it. They will love you because most of the time they complain, no-one listens to them. So here are the 3 things they want from you: A) Acknowledgment, B) Apology, C) A promise of Action.
1. So first, acknowledge them; “thank you for your feedback Joe Bloggs”. Easy.
2. Next, apologise for their negative experience. But it wasn’t your fault was it? It doesn’t matter whose fault it was, apologise anyway. You can say “I’m sorry you had such a disappointing experience when xyz happened”.
3. Next, address their issue or concern and describe the changes you are going to make (or even better “have made”) so it won’t happen again. Like this “We are making changes this week to ensure this doesn’t happen again to you or anyone else”

Trust me, if you do these 3 things you will blow their minds.

They will think “Wow, they really cared about what I had to say!”, “They are true professionals!”, “I helped make that place better!” and they feel a warm glow.

But the real magic happens afterwards: Hundreds of other people will read their complaint and then read your professional response.

They will think “Wow, look at the way the team responded to that whinger, they really listen and care! I’m going there!”

Download a pdf version of this method (13Kb .pdf)

Do you need help to monitor your brand online?

15 May 200925 February 2010

Example of how new packaging can give boring products new life

Check out these fun and funky first aid kits

Are you selling a product or service that’s a little bit boring? How can you funk it up with new packaging?

14 May 20092 February 2017

The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun

My Notes on “The Myths of Innovation” by Scott Berkun:

Myth #1: The Myth of the Epiphany

An epiphany only comes when you’ve put in all the hard work. It’s just the final piece in a 1000 piece puzzle
When inventors are asked how they came up with their idea they say “it just came to me”, and have some interesting story about how the idea formed in their head. They don’t say “after 1000 hours of research the idea became obvious”, because it’s boring. Stories about epiphany’s are interesting and exciting and give us hope that we will have one
The most useful way to think of epiphany is an occasional bonus of working on tough problems

<br />
Continue reading “The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun”

12 May 20095 June 2009

The Principle of Scarcity at Work at a new Hamilton Restaurant

Went to Smith and McKenzie Chop House on the weekend. Quite an experience.

Seth Godin (my #1 favourite marketer in the world), says that you have to tell a story to have any chance of selling what you are selling.

Smith and McKenzie tells a story.

As soon as you walk in you notice the high ceilings, the open kitchen, the multiple seating areas, the meat hooks hanging from the bar and the old freezer doors between between the areas (they recycled materials from the old Horonui Freezing Works), the massive pipes leading from the keg room to the bar, and the 6m tall shelving units (almost 3 stories high) full of wines, beers and spirits .

At the bar leaners while waiting to be seated we read about the back-story, their history, on an A5 display unit. We find out how the idea of a “chop house” comes from the states, and how it stands for quality ingredients – especially when it comes to cuts of meat.

We sit down and receive our menus and here’s where the real fun starts. Each item has it’s own story! An entire paragraph describing where the animal for each cut of meat comes from.

What immediately caught my eye is the Chop House Special: Rib eye that is slow cooked for 16 hours at 59 degrees. You have to book 24 hours ahead to get one! Wow.

I asked the waitress if she could check if there were any available to me tonight. She returned in a minute with “no, I’m sorry, you’ll have to book ahead next time.” I want it even more!

And that is the principle of scarcity at work. We want what we can’t have.

You’ve come across statements like “while stocks last!” and “first 10 callers only!”, a million times. But the story behind this example makes it very special, unique, authentic and highly desirable.

Did you notice the risks they are taking?

They are risking me leaving because they can’t give me what I want (I could get up and leave instead of choosing something else from the menu). They are also locking themselves into the scarcity, because it actually takes 16 hours to cook (compare that to an infomercial selling kitchen knives claiming that stock is limited when you just know they have 10,000 units in their warehouse, and another 10,000 can be on the way from China tomorrow)

Those risks create authenticity.

What story can you tell about your product or service? And how can you introduce the principle of scarcity into it (in an authentic way)?

P.S. I settled for the 400grm T-bone with BBQ sauce (medium rare of course) and it was the best steak I’ve ever had (did the story accentuate the flavour? For sure.)

12 May 20097 August 2009

Reasons Why Websites Are My Favourite Marketing and Advertising Medium

7 Reasons:

Websites operate 24 hours a day, every day (I love the idea that you can make money or achieve your goals while you sleep!)
Accessible from anywhere in the world
Well written content is like having a team of non-pushy sales people simply providing the information and answering questions that potential customers are asking for
Websites are cheap to build, and cheaper to run
Websites are easy to update (unlike a brochure or a book that is out of date as soon as its finished printing!)
It puts the user/customer in control (so it challenges you to get inside their head and figure out what makes them tick)
It’s easy to get free traffic from Google searches

Are you this excited about your website? Is it time for fresh ideas?

12 May 200920 March 2019

Essential Steps for Building a Website That Generates Business For You

8 Essential Steps:

Define the most important action that you want the audience to take. Is it filling in an enquiry form? Call your toll free number? Download an information pack?
Make it dead easy for them to take that action. 1 click or 2 clicks. Not 5 clicks
Make your forms super short. Ask for essential information only. Not their age, not their gender, not even their address (if you aren’t posting them something, don’t ask for it). And it doesn’t matter if some of your form field aren’t compulsory, if it looks too long it will turn people away
Ensure your code is search engine friendly:
- Clean urls like “this-is-a-page-about-how-to-do-stuff.html” rather than “index.php?ss=2&s=abc”
- Clean html code, eg use H1, H2, H3 tags instead of heavily formatted paragraph tags
A stripped down CMS for commonly updated content (like blog entries, articles, products). Lock down other pages so you’re not tempted to wreck them with crazy fonts and colours
“Write for the web” by formatting all your content with headings, sub-headings, short paragraphs (none more than 3 sentences), bullet points, numbered lists, and internal hyperlinks
Follow usability guidelines, such as:
- Hyperlinks that look link hyperlinks. Buttons that look like buttons
- Breadcrumbs so when the users deep-link they can quickly figure out where they are
- Disable the hyperlink in the navigation if the user is already on that page
- And just about everything else website usability guru Jacob Nielsen recommends
Choose a web site developer who knows about all this stuff

Continue reading “Essential Steps for Building a Website That Generates Business For You”

12 May 20094 March 2010

How To Build A Website That Wins You Business

7 Steps for Building a Business-Winning Website

Define the most important action that you want the audience to take. Is it filling in an enquiry form? Call your toll free number? Download an information pack?
Make it dead easy for them to take that action
Ensure your code is search engine friendly:
- Clean urls like “this-is-a-page-about-how-to-do-stuff.html” rather than “index.php?ss=2&s=abc”
- Clean html code, eg use H1, H2, H3 tags instead of heavily formatted paragraph tags
A stripped down CMS for commonly updated content (like blog entries, articles, products). Lock down other pages so you’re not tempted to wreck them with crazy fonts and colours
“Write for the web” by formatting all your content with headings, sub-headings, short paragraphs (none more than 3 sentences), bullet points, numbered lists, and internal hyperlinks
Follow usability guidelines, such as:
- Hyperlinks that look link hyperlinks. Buttons that look like buttons
- Breadcrumbs so when the users deep-link they can quickly figure out where they are
- Disable the hyperlink in the navigation if the user is already on that page
- And just about everything else website usability guru Jacob Nielsen recommends
Choose a web site developer who knows about all this stuff

Other Important Things

Ensure all your navigation is in one place (preferably displayed vertically on the left so it can scale as your website grows)
Don’t have any animation or moving images at all. It distracts the user from completing their task

7 May 20092 February 2017

Making Things Happen – Mastering Project Management by Scott Berkun

My Notes on “Making Things Happen – Mastering Project Management” by Scott Berkun:

The Five States Of Communication

1. Transmitted

When you send an email or leave a voice mail, you are transmitting a piece of information to someone. This doesn’t mean she has read or heard it, it just means the message has left your hands with the intent to arrive in hers. With email and the Web, it’s very easy to transmit information, but there is no guarantee anyone is ever going to read it.
<br />
Continue reading “Making Things Happen – Mastering Project Management by Scott Berkun”