Here are two suggestions:

The most powerful option is to offer something different. But how realistic is that for most businesses? To think that every company has their own customer-centred usp that they can exploit to attract new business is a laudable goal but for most not a realistic option. Imagine 25 competent accountancy practices in a small English town; can they really all develop something unique about their services that would resonate with clients and potential clients?

We need another solution. The second option is to say something different; to present your message in an interesting and memorable way that gets people’s attention. Now there’s an idea.

Who would have thought of using adjectives like ‘delightful’ and ‘magical’ to sell cutting edge technology? Apple did with the iPad2 TV ad and never once mentioned processor speeds or 1GHz core chips. And why would a leading car manufacturer promote their 21st Century brand with a “Think Blue Symphony” using the words of a 1966 Beachboys song to help tell their story. Volkswagon just did – and I remembered it.

The Blue Symphony: A memorable campaign from Volkswagon

Don’t get hung up on the technology or the intricacies of what you do, tell a story that will get people’s attention in a way that they will hopefully remember.

Taking this to a more practical level what does this mean for the small business with a more modest (or maybe no) marketing budget? Hear are some thoughts:

1. Don’t fill you home page with meaningless generalisations like “Our unique business model allows the group to provide a diverse range of services to a variety of client profiles, tailoring the service to meet specific requirements.” (Taken from an anonymous financial services company website this morning.)

2. Don’t force your audiences to sit through tedious hours of Powerpoint presentations full of text that you just end up reading out to them. Next time be bolder, try Powerpoint slides without any words.

3. Make your case studies very specific and very personal, and inject some emotion.

4. Know your own story. Present yourself in a way that will make people remember. And face the fact that it is rarely what you do or who you work for that will be the most memorable thing about you. Speakeasy Groups are doing some interesting work in this area, helping people craft their own more engaging stories.

5. Understand what your audience will respond to. As I mentioned in the introduction, customers are better informed these days. Consider then that people who visit your website probably already know what you do – that’s why they are there! So maybe you don’t need to tell them what they already know – tell them something they don’t know about you or your business, something interesting and something they will hopefully remember. Concentrate on why you do what you do or how you do it. For an interesting take on the importance of ‘why we do what we do’ listen to Simon Sinek.

Now we can all be storytellers

There have always been lots of interesting companies out there with interesting things to say. The problem was there were few opportunities to be heard, particularly for smaller businesses. Now the internet has given all of us the chance to become storytellers through Blogs and social media. And, more importantly, the internet provides people who want to listen with the opportunity to follow people and companies they find interesting. They even have the mechanisms to instantly pass on your story to other people who may like to hear what you have to say. Never before have businesses (of any size) had the chance to use storytelling as a marketing tool, to build a network of followers and to pull people towards them by being interesting.

The power of storytelling is gaining some high profile advocates. Jonathan Mildenhall, Coca Cola’s vice president of global advertising strategy and excellence, announced in October a strategic shift from “creative excellence to content excellence” explaining they will be relying heavily on crowdsourcing, Facebook and Twitter fans to create content through story telling. (An interesting video here explains the rational behind Coca Cola’s content strategy and the concept of dynamic storytelling.)

An agency called Story Worldwide have built their marketing strategy around the power of creating, telling and spreading stories which they are doing on behalf of some very well known brands.

Finally, if you want to apply these principles to your business I recommend reading “Made to Stick” for an interesting analysis of what might constitute a good story that people will remember.

For more information on the power of storytelling look at (and listen to):
http://www.duarte.com
http://speakeasygroups.com

Each has its merits for the ‘text book’ brand with a finely tuned pricing strategy, manageable distribution channels and a promotional budget but how useful are these models for the small business-to-business enterprise?  How does the entrepreneur who is trying to build up a  recruitment consultancy or web design business or architectural practice apply these principles in any practical way? In my experience, not very easily. Usually the person or people behind a small business are the product, the price is determined by what their expertise can command and promotion often revolves around today’s favourite business pastime – networking. In other words, most of the marketing mix revolves around the individuals in the company – they are the brand.

So we need another model, one which is more sympathetic to the needs of the small business owner. This article outlines my new 4 Cs of marketing with the small business entrepreneur at its heart, a practical strategy for today’s changing business landscape.

The new 4 Cs of small business marketing: Connections, Conversations, Credibility and Creativity

Connections

These are all the people who in some way have entered into a person’s business world. Linkedin connections, contacts on an email database, business cards harvested from long-forgotten events or a list of people who might be telephoned periodically.  Unless someone runs one of those enviable businesses that thrives on referrals, connections are likely to be the source of most new business.

The reality however is that connections, left on their own, don’t usually do very much. In fact they might not do anything of any consequence without the next – and possibly most important – stage in our model.

Conversations

I have been to numerous seminars where speakers have told me about all the new business they are getting through social media and implying I should be getting my share too, but no one has really told me exactly how they have done it in a way I can apply to my business. Were they holding something back or had they too not quite defined that part of the digital alchemy which turned connections into commercial gold? It wasn’t until I got my first couple of clients through social media that I discovered what was missing – conversations. Creating opportunities for direct conversations is the only way to maximise the potential of your connections. Whether this is meeting at a networking event, tweeting someone directly, sending a direct message through Linkedin, or a good old fashioned phone call. Unless you can find a reason to make direct contact, to have these one-to-one conversations and to start building relationships, your prospects will never make that all-important leap from connection to client.

Credibility

When you are having these conversations do people really believe what you are saying and will they be convinced that you can do what you say you are going to do? Not just what you say directly  but what everything else says about you, your business card, online content, Linkedin profile, printed literature (yes the printed word still has role to play).

Quite simply the easiest way to be credible is to be honest. If you find you are being honest and credible but not getting the response you need (which did happened to my business about 18 months ago) it may be time to think seriously about changing what you are doing rather than simply changing what you are saying. More than ever businesses today should regularly consider if what they are doing is still relevant. Will there still be a market for what they are providing in three or five years time?; if not, it is time to think about doing something else.

Creativity

Presenting what you are doing in a way that will grab people’s attention and will help them remember you. Maybe even, in some situations, taking the view that what you have to say about your business may just not be that interesting. So say something else. If people remember that then there is a chance they will remember you. Building business relationships does not happen overnight, so you don’t need to try and close the sale at the first opportunity.

One-to-one conversations turn connections into clients aided by a credible 'story' presented in a creative way. Most conversations will lead nowhere and many connections will always be just connections. At the other end of the process some clients may start to drift away. Conversations here can 'intercept' them before that happens and help retain them as active clients.

To summarise:

To apply this model to your own or your client’s business:
work continuously build you Connections; create opportunities to engage in one-to-one Conversations with them; make sure what you say is Credible and make your conversations memorable by being Creative. Get that right and you can add another C to the model as connections start to become Customers, Clients or Collaborators.

This article was written for Cambridge Marketing Review.

We are not concerned with the mechanics of creating Powerpoint, Keynote and other presentation slides or with the pros and cons of different presentation software. We are offering practical advice on how to ‘visualise’ information so you can get your ideas across more effectively in presentations, publications and on the web.

Creating an infographic: there aren’t as many options as you think

The biggest problem deciding how to present a page or paragraph of text visually is knowing where to start. There are potentially hundreds of possible ways to present the same information using different colours, different fonts, diagrams, arrows, nice pictures, charts, logos, symbols and icons…

So lets simplify it – from hundreds down to just six; six different styles of slide you can use to illustrate most presentation topics. You can probably ‘describe’ 95% of the world’s Powerpoint slides using these six categories.

• The Linear Slide

• The Interaction Slide

• The Numbers Slide

• The Image Slide

• The Random Slide

• The (if all else fails) (put it in a) Box Slide

_______________

1. The Linear Slide

This could be a timeline if you are talking about a sequence of events: in its simplest interpretation a line through the middle of the slide with ‘events’ highlighted along the way. This style of slide could apply to pretty much anything that happens in a linear fashion

The slide below shows the key elements of a 12 month campaign summarised on a linear slide.

Slide One: the Linear slide

_______________

Then perhaps you could ‘overlay’ another piece of information onto the timeline. On slide 2 we now have an extra element showing how on-line activity increased over time. The emphasis has also changed on slide 2. Visually, the strongest elements on slide 1 are the Phase One/Phase Two blocks which is OK if this is the point you are emphasising. On slide 2 there is now more emphasis given to the different elements of the campaign.

Slide Two: the Linear slide

_______________

2. The Interaction Slide

You may be explaining how one element is being influenced by other things. So the starting point could be circles intersecting a central ‘element’. Or other shapes that overlap or elements that point to a central idea.

For example you could be explaining how a marketer’s message to a potential customer is a combination of direct communication and indirect communication through the ‘filter’ of social media.

Slide Three: the Interaction slide

_______________

Or a slightly simpler version with the consumer at the centre:

Slide Four: the Interaction slide

_______________

3. The Image Slide

Sometimes a strong image can help to emphasise a point. Or just help add a bit of interest to a slide when you are struggling to liven up a set of bullet points.

Here are a couple of sites listing sources of free copyright-free images:
http://www.digitalimagemagazine.com/blog/featured/25-free-stock-photo-sites
http://socialmediatoday.com/mycreativeteam/166847/top-19-free-photo-sites-bloggers

Slide Five: the Image slide

_______________

4. The Numbers Slide

Numbers are probably the easiest type of content to present visually. Use charts, graphs, tables and diagrams to present figures wherever possible and avoid just listing them as a series of bullet points.

How boring is this?:

Slide Six: the Numbers slide

_______________

How much easier it is to grasp the concept from this:

Slide Seven: the Numbers slide

_______________

5. The Random Slide

Sometimes you might want to cover several topics that don’t obviously interact or follow a timeline and the ‘numbers’ approach may not be relevant. So you may have to go for something that is just random.

If you are discussing the changing media landscape you could emphasise the shear number of channels in a random way.

Slide Eight: the Random slide

_______________

You could also present the same information in a ‘tag cloud’ style so the message here becomes more about relative size and importance rather than just the number of players.

Slide Nine: the Random slide

_______________

6. The (if all else fails) (put it in) Boxes Slide

You may find that your content just won’t ‘lineate’ or ‘integrate’ and you can’t seem to get away from a short list of bullet points. (Not every piece of information can easily be translated into a captivating graphic.) So if bullet points seem to be the only option at least make them look a bit more interesting.

Slide Ten: the Boxes slide

_______________

How might this work in practice?

Here are some speaker’s notes that need livening up with a few infographic slides.

• Conventional campaigns are based on one way, intrusive and persuasive communications

• Digital campaigns are characterised by two way conversations where the consumer has more opportunity to influence what happens in the market place, by influencing the manufacturer and by influencing other consumers

• Conventional campaigns are difficult to target specifically and difficult to evaluate

• Digital campaigns tend to be specifically targeted at smaller groups of consumers with very specific interests and the results are much easier to evaluate

• The overall influence of, and expenditure on, conventional campaigns has declined over the last 5 years

• Expenditure on digital campaigns has increased dramatically over the last 5 years

The first thing to remember is that you will need masses of infographic experience and at least a double page magazine spread to get all the arguments contained on a page of speaker’s notes across on one Powerpoint slide, so don’t try. Select the key arguments and use these.

Lets look at the first couple of bullet points – conventional one-way and digital two-way communication. Slide 11 shows how it could work on a Linear Slide (with perhaps the hint of ‘interaction’ in the “Two way marketing” diagram).

Slide Eleven: Linear (with a hint of Interaction)

_______________

Next we could look at the second and third bullet points which refer to targeting (or lack of it) with conventional ad campaigns and the more precise targeting that is possible with some digital media. Sounds like an Interaction Slide to me.

Slide Twelve: an Interaction slide

_______________
And finally you could summarise some of the numbers. There are numerous ways of presenting graphs and charts; have a browse around www.slideshare.net to find some examples that might be relevant to the information you are trying to present.

Slide Thirteen: a Numbers slide

_______________

Conclusion – don’t substitute style for substance

Good visual presentation is never going to be a substitute for weak content but it can help enhance your presentation and focus attention on the key points of your argument.

The best advice I can give on getting started on an infographic is “Don’t think about it – just draw it” (on your computer or a piece of paper). And if you don’t like it just draw something else. You will be suprised how quickly your infographics will start to take shape.

You can download this article in PDF format from the Mike Farmer Associates website.

Some nice examples of simple infographics

The following websites are worth looking at:

http://www.lava360.com/graphics/30-interesting-infographics-for-your-inspiration

http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=simple&w=730230%40N24&m=pool

http://www.peterorntoft.com/HTML%20filer/infocontext1.html

http://gigaom.com/2010/02/25/the-path-to-10-billion-itunes-downloads

The following presentations contain some simple but effective infographics:

http://www.slideshare.net/seriouslynow/lean-ux-product-stewardship-integrated-teams

http://www.slideshare.net/basf/basf-social-media-2011

http://www.slideshare.net/Ibmindustries/empowering-the-consumer-in-a-globally-integrated-world

http://www.m62.net/powerpoint-slides/powerpoint-clinic/mtv-nick

And a few Twitter streams you can look at:

http://twitter.com/#!/timeplots

http://twitter.com/#!/rtkrum

http://twitter.com/#!/infoshots

http://twitter.com/#!/datavis

Taking infographics to the next level

For some truly inspirational examples of infographics have a look at:

http://www.lava360.com/graphics/30-informative-creative-infographics

http://www.infographicsshowcase.com

http://www.coolinfographics.com

http://www.good.is/infographics

http://simplecomplexity.net

http://spyrestudios.com/an-inspirational-showcase-thatll-change-how-you-display-data

http://www.instantshift.com/2009/06/07/infographic-designs-overview-examples-and-best-practices

This article is based on a White Paper written for the Cambridge Marketing College.

Scan me!

Just in case you are not sure, QR codes are those digital squares (a bit like the Pac-Maze from a Pac-Man game) that appear on posters, packaging and ads. Scan them using a mobile phone and the pixelated graphic is translated into a sales message or a connection to a website to see a promotional offer, movie preview etc. They allow consumers to convert an impulse to ‘find out more’ into action; they make a connection with the consumer that can be acted upon instantly, saved until later or passed on via social networks.

They have been big in Japan for some time where they are used for everything from making an appointment with your optician to encoding the epitaph of a loved one on a memorial headstone. A nice round up of QR campaigns around the world can be seen here: www.xtmotion.co.uk/qr-code-marketing

They began hitting the marketing mainstream in the UK early in 2010 when M & S trialled them on some of their Food To Go range. Consumers were able to access jokes, information about the product and daily offers by scanning the codes.

At the end of October Wilkinson Sword introduced QR codes in selected Tesco, Boots, Superdrug and Sainsburys stores which allowed customers to watch videos of the Hydro 5 and enter a competition using their mobile. Oxfam have recently started using them on products in some of their charity shops to allow the people donating an item to tell the story behind it.

C-K used a QR code to hide the 'racy' content

If you want to get on the QR bandwagon you can generate your own QR code at: http://www.qrstuff.com
And if you are really curious to see how they are being used there is now a Flickr group showing QR codes “in the wild”.

Sticky Bits use the same idea but via the more familiar bar code. You can use a smartphone app to ‘digitally tag’ real world objects with comments, images, videos etc. So now you can attach digital content to an off-line promotion like a leaflet or poster. Gatwick Airport have recently “Sticky Bitted” one of their terminals to keep passengers informed about the progress of the airports refurbishment work – they scan the code and a short video is delivered to their phone.

Mobile apps ‘vs’ mobile web

The figures banded about for mobile marketing are just bewildering. 150 million people accessing Facebook via their mobiles, over half a billion people accessing the internet via mobile phones (expected to double within 5 years), around 1.8 billion internet-enabled mobile devices expected to be in use by 2013 and this year’s mobile ad revenues due to hit 3.5 billion US dollars. The potential for mobile as a marketing channel is obvious but how best to exploit this medium is less clear. The big debate at the moment is whether companies will go down the mobile app route or the mobile web site route.

Apple are obviously pushing the app route. In September 2010 their CEO Steve Jobs announced that the number of apps available from the Apple App Store had passed the 250,000 mark, whilst Google’s equivalent, the Android Market Place, can provide  about 110,000. 60% of the Apple Apps have a price ticket attached.

With mobile web of course you don’t need an app, the website you see on your smart phone has already been constructed with the mobile viewer in mind.

Opinions vary as to which ‘route’ will predominate but I suspect mobile web will have the upper hand. A lot of the cross-platform issues you get with apps don’t really apply with mobile web and why develop multiple apps to run on several platforms when a single, touch-enabled, mobile web site can do much the same thing? Development costs tend to be lower for mobile web, in many cases you will be adapting something that already exists rather than starting from scratch. There are also a growing number of quick-conversion tools to convert a website created for a desk top into a website that works on a phone.

Research company Taptu estimated the number of touch mobile websites to be 440,000 early in 2010 and predicted this would rise to 500,000 by the end of 2010.  The slick functionality of the app is now increasingly possible via the mobile web site. This rate of growth – around 230% per annum is certainly outstripping the apps market. Maybe, as some people are suggesting, the apps bubble has burst and when the novelty of a new smart phone wears off the “app collectors” just get bored. One survey also suggested that less than 5% of apps are still used 20 days after being downloaded.

Dudamobile provide a nice succinct summary of mobile web vs mobile apps: http://blog.dudamobile.com/mobile-web-vs-mobile-apps/

More on-line magazines?

Can the traditional printed magazine gain ground against the onslaught of new media? Lets look at the stats: 24.5 million magazines were sold in the UK in the first half of 2010, 0.3% up on the previous year. According to the Periodical Publishers Association “an improving outlook for the UK consumer magazine sector” – but still the second worst figures in a decade. So could developments like paid for on-line access and magazines for iPads (and other tablet devices) provide an opportunity for magazines in 2011.

The technology for creating and viewing beautiful, interactive and engaging digital magazines has been around for a year or so, but can these new slick iPad-mags actually make money? Or will they fall into the category of “look how creative we are” editions, only accessible to a fraction of the readership, and funded by off-line magazine sales. Serial magazine publisher David Hepworth suggests the ‘indie’ publishers may take the initiative over their bigger corporate rivals but I am not sure how many independent publishers can fund the development costs, then wait for on-line mags to reach the advertising mainstream. Ad Age recently published an interesting review of iPad magazine sales across 7 early adopters. Popular Science was averaging just over 14,000 iPad sales (at a subscription rate approximately double that of the printed edition) and GQ averaged 9,000 sales. The ‘techie’ titles are obviously doing better in this early adopter phase – Wired claim about one third of their sales are from the iPad edition whilst Men’s Health iPad edition sells only 1% of its news stand equivalent.

Organise your life into a personalised magazine with Flipboard

Vogue and Wired UK launched iPad editions at the beginning of November and I’m sure many more will follow in 2011.

I think the big step change may come with Adobe’s launch of their Digital Publishing Suite in mid 2011. This will allow InDesign users (of which there are thousands) to create interactive digital documents using the familiar InDesign interface. The payment model looks a bit expensive, which may dissuade those people who just want to dabble at it, but I think a lot of designers and publishers will be taking a more serious look. You can see a useful overview and Digital Publishing Suite tutorial video on the ProDesign Tools web site.

Perhaps the Micro Magazine will be the medium of 2011? – something between a blog and a magazine. New-media guru Seth Godin suggests there may be room for 100,000 of these small, specialist and profitable micro-mags. I’ll have a count up at the end of 2011 and report back.

And finally if talk of digital magazines has captured your imagination you could always create your own with Flipboard. It allows you to combine content from Facebook, Twitter and numerous other feeds and organises them into an on-line magazine format. Download the Flipboard app – and let me read your first issue.

A page from the first edition of the Gutenburg Bible

Personally, I would go further, much further, and say that an understanding of the design grid has been (and still is) the designer’s most powerful tool in the quest to bring clarity and impact to the printed or internet page. I would implore anyone who is even vaguely connected with the communication or presentation of information to at least get a basic understanding of design grids. They provide the invisible threads that run through just about every graphic design, publishing and web project around the world. The ‘mycelia’ of graphic design that hold a million page layouts together with hardly anyone even noticing.

As you might have gathered I am a big fan, and I am not alone. Lets start with Genesis (the Gutenburg Bible version of course). I am not sure how much time Johannes Gutenberg spent contemplating the ‘golden ratios’ but consciously or sub-consciously his 15th century layout fits neatly into a 10 column grid. (I know this is a gross oversimplification, here is a more informed opinion on the medieval canons of page construction.) I use the example simply to illustrate the fact that the idea of a page grid has been around for a very long time.

These days 12 and 16 column grids are popular (40 and 60px wide when applied to a web page).

The Guardian uses a 12 column grid on their website to good effect and 10 columns on the printed page.

The Guardian making good use of a 12 column grid

That said, ‘grid master’ Khoi Vinh has an interesting take on 9 and 11 column grids, the results of which you can now buy as a Wordpress theme.

Does all this order and formality lead to boring design? Definitely not, a skillful designer can bend the rules and bring fluidity to a layout, even break the grid without loosing clarity. Don’t think of the grid as a set of unbreakable rules but as your structural guidelines that help rather than hinder the design process.

Here are a few articles on grids and how to use them.

A comprehensive introduction -  Article One and Article Two – from Mark Boulton

A practical article on constructing and using design grids:
www.serif.com/support/learning-zone/pageplus/x4/tutorials/design/designing-on-a-grid.pdf

Interesting presentation combining the talents of Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton:
www.subtraction.com/pics/0703/grids_are_good.pdf

Smashing Magazine: excellent article on bending the rules and getting creative with grid -based web design:
www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/26/grid-based-design-six-creative-column-techniques

Design grids and CSS frameworks:
www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/07/30-useful-frameworks-for-designers

Some interesting articles, tutorials and resources on the GridbyDesign website:
www.designbygrid.com

They call themselves “The ultimate resource in grid systems”. Who am I to disagree?:
www.thegridsystem.org

A showcase of websites constructed with clear grid-based designs:
http://grid-based.com

Putting the design grid into a historical context:
www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=620

Interesting overview of grid design, good examples and useful links:
www.sixrevisions.com/web_design/a-brief-look-at-grid-based-layouts-in-web-design

Look out for Mardi Grape - a sophisticated crossover between purple, brown and grey

There is some agreement on the basic emotional responses elicited by the most popular colours, but these are pretty general and in some cases blindingly obvious. For example:

Blue: serene and perceived as trustworthy, dependable, fiscally responsible and secure.
Green: suggests health, freshness and serenity. Deeper greens are associated with wealth or prestige, while light greens are calming.
Black: serious, bold, powerful and classic. It creates drama and suggests sophistication.

You can see the full list here but don’t expect too many surprises. For a similar explanation with some nice examples have a look at www.1stwebdesigner.com

Before we start dissecting the colour wheel one more time, perhaps it would be a more useful to ask a few simple questions when trying to pin down that prefect color combination.

1. Do the colours support your brand attributes?

2. Are the colours relevant to your target audience?

3. Do you have existing colours you want to keep or do we need a fresh start?

4. Will the colours reproduce well across various media (including web safe colours)?

5. Are the colours different or distinguishable from your competitors’ colours?

6. Is there a wide enough palette of colours for different applications, the introduction of a secondary colour palette is popular?

7. Do the colours work in all parts of the world where you plan to do business?

8. Do you want to take account or emerging colour trends?

The last one is particularly difficult. The industry experts that constitute the Colour Marketing Group try to define forthcoming colour trends up to 18 months in advance: their hot tip for 2010 is Mardi Grape which they describe as “a sophisticated crossover between purple, brown and grey”. The also suggest that the following colours are also worth keeping an eye on this year:

Red: possibly strong with pink intuition; bright and clean with energy and excitement – a clean pop to go with neutrals.
Yellow: greener, more natural yellows, softened with grey.
Green: optimistic and uplifting, a clear and bright accent green with a slight shift toward blue.
Blue: a saturated blue with grey influences; rich without being too luxe.
Beige-Brown: a true chameleon to complement darker hues, it can be either matte or metallic.
Neutral Grey: grey with a touch of purple, drawing inspiration from mineral, concrete and steel.

The web provides exceptional opportunities for people to compare, contrast, mix, blend and generally play around with colours in real time. Here are a few of our favourite web pages and widgets that allow you to play with colour.

www.kuler.adobe.comOver 12,000 different colour combinations to choose from.

www.webdevelopersnotes.com200 tri-colour combinations here.

www.colourlovers.comMy favourite, colours, patterns, palettes and information galore.

www.colorcombos.comLots of colour combos and some interesting articles.

www.colorsontheweb.comThe colour tools are useful but the Google ads are a bit annoying.

www.colorschemedesigner.comNice and easy to use.

www.colorhunter.com Upload an image and the ‘Colour Hunter’ will create a palette of complimentary colours with hexadecimal references.

www.degraeve.com/color-palette Similar to colourhunter except with out the upload facility. You need to key in or paste in the url of the image from which you want to create the palette.

Finally a useful list of on-line colour tools and resources can be found at: http://www.avivadirectory.com/color

The Tazara train, a lifeline between Zambia and the East African coast

The Tazara train from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Moshi runs for 1150 miles connecting the Indian Ocean coast of Tanzania to landlocked Zambia. It passes through 3 game reserves, over 320 bridges and through 22 tunnels. The service has run more-or-less continuously since the mid 1970s although recently it has been plagued by fuel shortages, breakdowns and reports of near bankruptcy that have been circulating for the last 4 years. Now it seems the Chinese – who funded the railway’s construction 35 years ago – may be willing to invest once again to bring the Uhuru (Freedom) Railway in to the 21st Century.

Our journey started at Mbeya, the largest city in Southern Tanzania, where we boarded the northbound train bound for Dar approx 560 miles to the North . A train slightly longer than the platform meant those travelling first class had to scramble up the side of the train to enter the carriage but no matter. Our pre-booked first class compartment ticket had already been taken from us and replaced with a piece of paper with number 5 scribbled on it. Now outside compartment 5, we found several other people with similarly inscribed pieces of paper, obviously the hours spent on the internet to ensure sole occupancy of our first class compartment was not time well spent. But a few minutes negotiation, which concluded by grabbing a couple of likely looking travelling companions and camping ourselves confidently in the compartment, sealed the deal.

Soon we were on our way, rollercoastering through the Southern highlands, the tremendous noise of the Tazara exacerbated by the missing windows and poorly fitting doors. We clattered through banana plantations, dusty fields of livestock, through smallholdings and small villages which seem to be populated entirely by excited children running alongside to the train and shouting “Mzungu”.

The restaurant car was basic, friendly and inexpensive and a popular gathering place for   the other first class passengers, mainly European tourists. We found out later that the Tanzanian ‘mamma’ sitting at one end of the dining car was indeed there for the benefit of lonely travellers although no one at our end of the train seemed to show any signs of being that lonely. And I never found out whether the T bone steak at ￡1.50 represented a mis-translation or just exceptional value for money. After dinner we could not resist the temptation to explore the rest of the train. That sort of touristic voyeurism that makes you feel slightly uneasy now but at the time was irresistible. We passed from the relative luxury of first class, into second, then one called comfort class (a collection of coach seats bolted to the floor) and into third class which was a riot of colour, smell, ethnicity, luggage and farm produce.

After dark the train seemed strangely noisier then ever. There were several stops during the night each heralded by a sequence of loud jolts and bangs as the carriages seemed to bounce off each other as the train came to a halt. Now the mechanical noise of the rolling stock was replaced by the human sound of people getting on and off the train and station vendors vying vocally for attention. The only word I recognised was ‘Nazi’ (Swahili for coconut) so never found out what else was on offer that night.

After one of the noisiest (and longest) nights for many years we enjoyed breakfast in (or rather travelling through)  the southern fringes of Selous game reserve with several sightings of giraffe and elephant. The landscape was noticeable dryer and the temperature rose rapidly now when the morning sun hit the train.

About 19 hours after leaving Mbeya we approached Dar es Salaam and were gradually engulfed by station sellers, would-be porters desperate to carry our luggage anywhere and taxi drivers trying to clinch a deal through the open window before the train had come to a stop. There was a greater sense of urgency, almost desperation, in the demeanour of the people who greeted us at this station. Rural life in Tanzania must be incredibly hard, but life in the city even harder.

Our journey had come to an end. A day and a night of fascinating rail travel through interesting (although not spectacular) scenery. You could not describe it as one of the most comfortable or relaxing journeys we have ever made, and probably not the safest, but certainly one of the most enjoyable.  African train travel – lala salama Mzungu!

Mary’s Meals

A charity set up around 7 years ago which now provides around 400,000 meals for children in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Quite an amazing achievement from a standing start.

The concept is simple, Provide hungry children with one meal a day in school. In this way the children are encouraged to gain the education that can lift them, and hopefuly their communities, out of poverty in later life. I was fortunate enough to visit one of their projects in Karonga, Northern Malawi, last August and see first hand what a difference one simple meal can make.

And here’s another fascinating statistic. Just £6.15 provides a child in Malawi with Mary’s Meals for one year. How does that compare with the cost of an average business lunch?

Their activities now encompass work in children’s homes around the world, health and community care projects and a school back pack project. This has provided 45000 children with the basics they need to attend school.

For more information visit www.marysmeals.org

Sustainable Global Gardens

A ‘micro’ charity working mainly on mainly environmental projects in East Africa. I came across them after a change encounter with a couple of their volunteer workers in a safari lodge bar in Northen Tanzanian. SGG’s accountability is one thing that appealed to me, being ‘microsize’ they can tell me where virtually every pound donated has been used.

Quite a diverse range of activities for such a small outfit. Donations can be used for buying fruit trees, sinking wells, providing primary education, mosquito nets and a variety of other community projects.

Have a look at: www.sustainableglobalgardens.org

The views of 180 consultants, clients and variously described social media experts were submitted. Here is a summary of their top three predictions.

The growth of realtime web

An internet no longer dominated by static web sites but driven by realtime conversations delivered by millions of consumers from home, office and mobile devices and shared around the world. User generated content will become a key marketing tool. As more and more companies  engage in these two-way conversations with customers and potential customers social media will hit the business mainstream. Google Wave is hoping to make realtime communication and collaboration an easy part of our everyday on-line experienced. We will have to see how that develops, and whether it just becomes the preserve of a few Google Geeks as some people are predicting!  Google’s CEO said at the end of last year that the real challenge of the age is how to rank realtime content”. Google already indexes Twitter updates, blog content and some social media conversations. With around 25 million tweets every day someone now has to start making sense of it all.

The importance of location

Location-based social networks seem set to grow. Services like Foursquare and Google Latitude already let you find anyone in your social networks who is in your area based on your gps position; soon you will probably be able to append you location to your tweets or blog comments you make. So maybe networking by location, rather than hobbies, job etc, may actually bring social conversations full circle and bring about real (not virtual) social interaction again. Yes people meeting people and talking face-to-face once again.

You will probably hear the term “Augmented Reality” used a lot more. This can be described as “the ability to merge a view of the physical world with computer generated data and imagery thereby providing a richer view of the real world.” Perhaps a less than helpful description so have a look at this and it will all make sense.

Layar is world’s leading Augmented Reality Platform on mobile. Their Reality Browser currently has over 1.6 million users and is likely to be pre-installed on millions of smartphones from leading handset manufacturers by the end of the year.

On the back of that will grow location-based marketing. Brightkite for example can deliver  targeted advertising messages to their members smartphones as specifically “when they are in the hairdressers” or reach “people within 2 miles of a Starbucks at 5.00pm on Saturday”.

For more information have a look at Mashable’s location-based predictions for 2010.

Apps for everything

I have seen several reports predicting 300,000 different iphone apps available by the end of next year. Here’s some more numbers for you. Pizza Hut say they generated $1,000,000 of sales in three months after the launch of their iPhone app. Ebay sold 1,500,000 items through their iPhone app over Christmas 2009.  And don’t ignore the iPad – just over a month after it’s launch The App Store reported 4870 iPad apps available.

I think there will inevitably be a growth in the ‘DIY apps’ and perhaps an opportunity for smaller design and marketing companies to get in on the act. There are already some nice simple developer tools around like Appbreeder, BuildAnApp, TapLynx and Appcelerator. But the next step change will probably come with Adobe Flash CS5 which will take app development more into the designer’s mainstream. More info and a good video at: http://cs5.org/?p=359.

Finally, if you want to bring the concepts of augmented reality and smart phone apps together check out this little Stella Artois video.

For some interesting presentations on 2010 marketing trends have a look at:
www.slideshare.net/Stutts/10-trends-to-watch-in-2010
www.slideshare.net/Balihoo/top-local-marketing-and-media-trends-2010www.slideshare.net/EngagementMedia/social-media-trends-2010-summary www.thecommunicationsstrategist.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/communications-trends-for-2010-part-1

So how have the Newspapers responded?

The London Evening Standard appears to have responded very well. Since it converted to free distribution in October last year it has more than doubled its readership to 1,391,000.  “Average net circulation” reached 610,226 in February, the highest distribution in the newspaper’s 180 year history. The Standard’s owner, Russian billionaire Alexandere Lebvedev, certainly believes Newspapers have a future and has now bought the Independent and Independent on Sunday (for ￡1.00). There is no word yet on whether the former RGB agent intends to distribute these titles free of charge.

Conversely, the New York Times has taken the opposite approach with their on-line content by creating what they describe as  “an online business model with the goal of yielding larger financial returns”. Or in plain English, they are charging people to read it.

This ‘paid for’ model works for the FT and has done so since 2002 when they first started charging for access to some of their on-line content, in fact it may have been the papers salvation. But then they have a premium product which people should expect to pay a premium for; the printed edition has doubled in price in the last 4 years and the cost of an online subscription has gone up from ￡65 to ￡170. The FT now say that digital aspects of their business now bring in 73% of their revenue.

Rupert Murdoch seems to like the idea of a ‘pay wall’ and will be charging about ￡1.00 per day for on-line access to The Times and Sunday Times later in the Summer. With Times Online receiving 20 million unique visitors every month it might offset some of the losses Murdoch’s News International suffered in 2009.  I can’t see Murdoch’s plans  to charge for Sun and News of the World on-line content later in the year being quite so lucrative but we shall wait and see.

When the on-line ‘pay for access’ model is applied to local newspapers the results have been mixed. Surrey based Tindle Newspapers which publishes 220 titles across England and Wales introduced paid for subscriptions for six of its titles last Summer. They claim this was so successful that they are now planning to publish 100 of their titles on-line (via PageSuite) with about 40 of them available only on paid for subscription.

Closer to home our local evening newspaper, the Oldham Evening Chronicle, introduced a paid for on-line subscription in May 2010.

Johnston Press, the UK’s second largest regional newspaper publisher, had a similar foray into paid for access at the end of last year which was not so successful. They started charging for on-line access to the Northumberland Gazette, the Whitby Gazette and the Southern Reporter, albeit just ￡5 for a three month on-line subscription. The publishers appear to have suspended the pay-to-access trial and are now looking at an iPhone App for the Scotsman to provide another revenue stream.

Smartphone apps and newspaper content do at least have the potential to provide a good marriage. At the beginning of April 7 of the top 10 iPad apps were news related. The Guardian’s iPhone app was downloaded over 69,000 times in the first month after launch at ￡2.39 a go; if that rate is maintained that’s ￡2 million in the first year.

You can’t deny the Newspaper industry is fighting hard against the challenges of the digital age.

Only time will tell how effectively newspaper publishers can compete with (and adapt to) the plethora of new media challenges. The Guardian’s Marketing Director  Mark Sands summed up the publishers dilemma very succinctly in an interview with Marketing Week:
”The commercial future of newspapers will one day require that content is paid for in some way – free is never sustainable.”

Finally a word about journalism in the digital age and an some innovations that may (or may not) be destined for the UK.

ChicagoNow has replaced traditional journalists with community Bloggers and writers who write about what is happening in the windy city. Something like 100 posts are day are being submitted.

EveryBlock (also from Chicago) serves up news based on your GPS location – “hyperlocal” news. If you use their iPhone app the news literally follows you around the city.

Finally the SpotUs model turns traditional journalism on its head by letting the reader tell the publisher which stories they think should be investigated. Once a story has been suggested, a journalist will set a price, donations are made until the price is reached and the investigative journalism begins. It seems to be working for LA, ‘Frisco and Seattle. Would it work for Locherbie, Formby or Sheffield? In the current world of crazy new I would say almost anything is possible.