Posts tagged marketing
Giving a fair shake to the eyes in the sky
Dec 11th
by Francis Moran
In July 2002, a FedEx Boeing 727 carrying cargo crashed on its approach for a night-time landing in Tallahassee, Fl. A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigation identified the first officer’s colour vision deficiency as a factor in the crash and recommended that all existing colour vision testing protocols employed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) be reviewed. Four years later, this case, and the issues which it raised about colour blindness testing in the commercial aviation industry, was the subject of a panel at an international workshop hosted by Saudi Arabian Airlines.
For Matt Lemelin, CEO of Genevolve Vision Diagnostics, stories such as this validate his company’s mandate, and commercial potential, to redefine how colour blindness is tested, diagnosed and treated. As Genevolve moves closer to its commercial launch, he is eagerly looking at specific industries such as aviation, where there is an opportunity for the company to establish new testing standards that are more fair and equitable. Genevolve’s ultimate goal is to create a global colour vision standard for all occupations. Read the rest of this entry »
Why ‘Small Business Saturday’ would make no sense
Dec 1st
If Canadian small and medium-sized businesses really think that having a day dedicated to them will boost sales, they must worry about competing with Santa Claus for revenue, too.
Shane Schick, editor-in-chief, IT World Canada
The hysteria around Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping periods in the U.S. calendar, has been rivaled only the increased attention paid to so-called Cyber Monday, when online retail also reaches an American Thanksgiving-induced fever pitch. In both cases, it’s the Wal-marts and other giants of the shopping industry that seem to benefit the most. SMBs, often independently operated and unable to compete with the steep margin discounts offered by the big box stores, don’t necessarily see this particular rising tide as lifting all boats. That’s the rationale for “Small Business Saturday,” one of the more desperate marketing ploys I’ve come across in a long time. Read the rest of this entry »
The weird and wonderful world of gathering customer insights
Nov 27th
by Christine Wong
In this crazy, weird, wired world of 24/7 virtual connectivity, Pamela Bailey still makes face-to-face house calls to SMBs.
- Christine Wong
In the most memorable one to date, she paid a visit to a shipping yard office in Singapore, realizing the manager’s “office” was actually a shipping container perched rather precariously on stilts out in the ocean.
“It was raining really heavily,” Bailey recalls. “I was a little bit concerned about the stilts falling apart and me falling out of the shipping container. But it was a great experience!”
All part of her Edmonton-based job as experience design manager at Intuit Canada. That basically means she travels the globe knocking on doors (including the rickety one on the shipping container) to see, firsthand, how SMBs use Intuit products. Read the rest of this entry »
Driving steady organic growth on a shoestring
Nov 23rd
By Francis Moran
Many startups with aspirations of grandeur have fallen prey to the temptation to call themselves a “leading provider of …”. But at Teamly, founder and CEO Scott Allison and his team appreciate that earning the label is a “big hairy audacious goal” which takes a lot of hard work and no shortage of hustling.
Teamly is a two-year-old startup which has brought to market an innovative productivity and project management tool which it delivers through a Software-as-a-Service (Saas) model. Or, as described in the company’s vision statement, “Teamly provides online teamwork software that helps businesses be more successful through more aligned and effective people.”
Part I: BlueArc’s challenge to get past the low-hanging fruit
Nov 9th
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Last month, BlueArc Corp., a 13-year-old maker of network storage systems based in California, was acquired by Hitachi Data Systems for a reported $600 million.
BlueArc’s business was networked attached storage (NAS), the kind of high-end storage system for managing unstructured data — files, spreadsheets, digital content and images — in high-performance computing applications. However, the company struggled for years to achieve profitability despite periods of strong revenue growth. Read the rest of this entry »
Meet CommentAir Technologies
Nov 8th
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Siblings Katie and Luke Hrycak are in that category of entrepreneurs who could be called reluctant innovators. They found themselves in the midst of a problem they felt compelled to solve.
That problem was the quality of the experience in attending a major sporting event live versus watching it on television. They both found themselves dissatisfied with the experience of attending NHL games and UFC matches. Why? Because fans at the event can’t hear the live commentary. Read the rest of this entry »
People imbue the tech brand
Nov 7th
by Andrew Berthoff
Back in the late-1990s I wrote a column for Computer Dealer News in which I somewhat facetiously contended that the Pope is the world’s greatest living spokesperson for a “brand.” I still think that, and was reminded of it after the recent passing of Steve Jobs.
Andrew Berthoff
I say living spokesperson, because most religions have a prophet who established the doctrine. We can point to central figures in Christian, Buddhist, Mormon and other faiths whose teachings guide the religion’s beliefs.
While I don’t want to wade into the murky waters of whether Steve Jobs led a quasi religion of Apple faithful, we can use his leadership to illustrate the pros and cons of an individual being closely identified with a company, or, conversely, the identity of a company wrapped in a single person.
As a reader of ITBusiness, you are most likely working with a company of some kind. Whether a large enterprise or a SME or even as a three-person consultancy, the essential tenets and risks of branding via personality remain the same. While products and services are brought to customers by people, at the end of the day they are products and services. They work or they don’t. They live on after the people behind them move on. The sellable goods provide a guarantee of continuity. Read the rest of this entry »
Tricky social media puzzle makes audience feel smart
Nov 2nd
I’ve been a long time fan of Trent Reznor and the Nine Inch Nails, to the point that I pay an unhealthy amount of attention to every project Reznor becomes involved in. At least enough that I know that after winning an Oscar for scoring David Fincher’s The Social Network last year, Reznor collaborated with Fincher again on the upcoming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie sound track.
Not only was Reznor involved in the soundtrack, but it’s become clear to me that he’s also involved in the marketing of the movie. There’s been a couple of cryptic Web sites set up and a Twitter account called MouthTapedShut. Much of the design on the Web sites harken back to artwork NIN has featured both online and in its album art over the years with images of natural elements in a square grid. And today, the MouthTapedShut Twitter account engaged its users in a puzzle that is reminiscent of the tactics Reznor used to promote Year Zero.
How to lose public trust and achieve international ridicule
Oct 31st
by Claudiu Popa
Talk to anyone in the world of business about their biggest hacking fear and you’re bound to hear that “embarrassment” ranks right up there near the top.
Claudiu Popa
Everyone knows that to do a proper job of alienating clients and embarrassing your organization you need to not just be good at, but excel at three things:
- amateurish planning in protecting against security and privacy problems
- boneheaded response once a breach has taken place
- abject failure to make sure it doesn’t happen again
I know what you’re thinking: “Hey! That sounds pretty difficult to pull off! I was hoping for an easy way to annihilate my audience and damage my credibility! I thought you were good! Can you at least give me an example?” Read the rest of this entry »
The fine art of the business hustle
Nov 21st
Posted by Francis Moran in Managing Business
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For a pre-revenue startup that is bootstrapping its way to market, incurring the cost to travel to another city to attend an industry trade conference with an admission price of $1,000 may appear to be an expensive endeavour. For Katie and Luke Hrycak, sibling co-founders of CommentAir Technologies, it’s the kind of opportunity they can’t afford to let slip by.
The 2011 Sports Management Conference and Trade Show, taking place in Toronto on Nov. 14 and 15, features dozens of speakers from the senior ranks of professional sports from across North America, from team owners and league commissioners, to broadcasters and professional services which cater to the industry. It is the very sort of high-profile event they need to draw attention to CommentAir’s programmable earpiece technology.
Read the rest of this entry »