Monkey Business
Archive for September, 2009
Scam Baiters
Sep 22nd
I was in a student documentary that has been nominated for awards, none of which were for acting of course. It’s about the Nigerian scam artists who trick people in to giving them money and how Australians are fighting back. And winning!
TA Spring
Sep 19th
A wise friend, Geoff Chiapello once gave me some advise in a birthday card. “Time wasted having fun, isn’t time wasted at all”. So now I drink more, relax more and party more. Thanks Geoff!
Sometimes I relax with a game of chess or poker, both of which can be used to explain good business practices. When playing TA Spring, a games about war strategy, I couldn’t help but notice that many of the strategies used in the game are relevant in business as well.
Keep the pressure on.
Every move counts.
Every asset counts.
Use your strengths.
Abuse competitor weaknesses.
Anticipate competitor moves.
So if you want to refine your strategic skills, try a game of Spring RTS. It is a free, open source real time strategy game with lots of robots and explosions. Check out the video…
4 tips to hosting a fun design competition.
Sep 15th
Ugly. My design attempts are ugly. Like a smashed crab, beaten with ugly stick. My grade 9 art teacher, Miss Sprot tried to teach me all about aesthetically pleasing design. Unfortunately, design was like girls. Just because I knew which girls looked great, didn’t mean I get hem to be my girlfriend.
I wanted aesthetic design so I found help…
Design competitions are Fun
Usually, I prefer training and keeping in house employees. I make exceptions when it comes to design. The only way you can review 100′s of creative ideas from many talented designers, within a number of days and for zero cost, is by hosting a design competition.
Make me want to lick the screen
Remember how Steve Jobs once said that his new O.S. made him want to lick the screen? (I didn’t care. I’m a PC.) That’s how I want to feel when I review the submissions for my design competitions on 99Designs. I use 4 tips to help do this.
1. Motivate the top designers
You want the very best designers to enter your competitions. A large prize helps, but you also need to motivate them. If there is a chance there may be future work for the designer. Say so. They like this. If the winning design will receive good exposure on a popular website or signage, say so. Good Designers know this is impressive for their portfolio.
Case Study: New website design for CarHire.com.au
The Competition: http://99designs.com/contests/20132
Competitors: 164
Prize: $600
2. Leave lots of feed back
The competitors need to know if they’re on the right track. Give feedback at least once a day.
Case Study: Design a logo for CaptainCompare
The Competition: http://99designs.com/contests/25547
Competitors: 28
Prize: $295
This competition didn’t actually receive many entries. Luckily with lots of feedback, it was rescued and a decent logo won the prize. As mentioned in Tip#1 the designer received extra work to design a super hero
3. Mention three Logo design rules
If the competition is for a logo, copy and paste these three rules in to your competition specifications. Makes a big difference.
ONE. must look good big and small
TWO. must work good in greyscale
THREE. keep it simple. No photos in the logo.
Case Study: Logo for RoadTripMania.com
The Competition: http://99designs.com/contests/28055
Competitors: 361
Prize: $460
4. How do you want to feel when you see it?
Sing to yourself the M.J. song “The way you make me Feel” as you write down some words describe how you want to feel when you see the logo. eg. Fun, Safe, Dominating, Friendly, Happy, Trustworthy.
This makes it WAY easier for designers to know what you’re looking for.
Case Study: Krow
Prize: $450
Entries: 102
I used words like “fun, happy, talkative”. There was no winner in this contest since the project was put on hold. Therefore, I did not have to pay the $450 prize.
5. Bonus Tip: Invite recent winners
Invite recent winners of other competitions to submit an entry into yours.
These rules have helped me run design competitions on http://99designs.com that are fun with results that have exceeded my wildest expectations.
If you’re about to run a design competition, tell me about it so I can mention it here and tweet about it.
District 9 inspired me to exceed customer expectations
Sep 9th
You already know that a way to create passionate customers is to under promise and over deliver. Think of a movie that you thought would be good that turned out to be fantastic. You remember it for a reason. It was better than expected and this experience is always more memorable then watching a fantastic movie that you already expected to be fantastic. As the title says, District 9 helped remind me the importance of exceeding customers expectations. So, should you intentionally simulate this experience for your customers? Yes, you should.
Here is a private message that I wrote for the VroomVroomVroom staff magazine today.
Every time you exceed a customers expectations, you make VroomVroomVroom more money. This means we can give out more staff bonuses and buy more cool stuff for the office! So how do you exceed customer expectations? Well, you’re a smart person. We wouldn’t have hired you if you weren’t. You’ll need to be able to think of ways to exceed customer expectations on the spot. Some examples might be:
- randomly sending a car rental customer a gift in the mail without warning
- meeting them at the airport and lending them your babyseat that you don’t use anymore
- compensating them when the car rental companies don’t represent themselves as well as they should
- program some code to tweet the customer with the cheapest price of the car rental search they just did
- ask if they have anything interesting planned for the weekend. When they answer, don’t change the subject. Continue the conversation.
- ask them what their favourite thing to do in their city is. Then ask them if you can quote them and their answer to add to our website.
You need to answer a question. How can you exceed your customers expectations?
Video Camera Confusion
Sep 8th
My brother David bought a nifty little HD video camera. A Canon VIXIA HFS100. He had it posted to my USA address and kindly asked me to test it out before forwarding it to him in Australia. Here is the test run video outcome, with a little confusion. Hey, I was tired.
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