Red Zen Marketing

For four years, and ending only recently, NPR ran a revival of a 1950's era personal essay segment every week entitled "This I Believe". It was just a few short minutes in which the essayist--sometimes a well-known public figure, but just as often just an ordinary individual from across the spectrum of the American Experience--with a strong desire to say what was on their mind and heartfelt conviction had the opportunity to speak their own Truth as they saw it. It was thought provoking and often very moving.

I guess this post is my own little essay.

I've been waxing philosophical lately about the time I spend online and on the phone that is not directly relevant to my paid occupation or my job at hand. There are a number of friends--and some acquaintances--for whom I've taken time out to give of myself without expectation of anything other than the opportunity to talk with them about their situation, and share what perspective as I can in hopes that it may be helpful. I have no illusions that it is always so--they don't call or email me daily, so perhaps my perspective is not so illuminating as I might sometimes think! <grin>

Regardless, the growth of the Twitter phenomenon has had me thinking about this more of late.

My thought is that, although, yes, Twitter is incredibly powerful for pushing out news of important happenings "under the wire" from places like Iran and Tehran, it is also useful for "crowd sourcing" great business ideas and best practices across a wide realm of segments. Graphic designers are using it to share information--freely sharing links to other great sources for Wordpress themes, and other great tips. Enthusiasts of all things gadget-y find their true brotherhood online with updates posted seemingly by the minute to help others pimp their XBox or tweak their iPhone in the-land-down-under. And, incredibly, they do it all -- free.

Why?

Well, true enough, some might be after followers, believing that there's a monetization path before them. And well there might be. But the information offered is out there for the rest of us all the same. It's the classic Internet Freemium offering-- gather a user base (in this case a base of those 'using your tweets') and hope to see some of them make the transition to pay for something being offered.

There's also a good number of these Twitterers who are tweeting away, gathering followers, simply for the sake of tweeting and entering into the conversation. Else why would they devote such time to it with no apparent business model? It was at this realization that I realized I was doing the same thing with my time-- each time I spent time on the phone, or via email with Kevin, Chirag, Jeff, Dave, Elia, Gabe, or any of the perhaps dozen others.

Was I so different? I was not expecting anything of my interactions with my friends. It was time given back--or perhaps more appropriately stated-- time given forward. It's encouraging to see the indictors of this permeating new technology--to see that 'social media' is not entirely taken over by those who would relegate it "New Marketing Tools" but also being used by those simply reaching out to lend a hand.

I have worked remotely from my home in western Pennsylvania leading projects and creating products and helping companies grow for ten years. I could not have done that without the strength of an incredible network of friends and colleagues that reaches around the world. And, I can truely say that some of my best friends are half-way around the world from me right now.

I believe that as the world becomes increasingly smaller, and our many technologies for touching and communicating with each other expand and multiply, we have to remember that humans will always demand a channel for pure human interaction--that 'business models' and 'ROI' and 'justifiable business purposes' will never be enough to satisfy the insatiable human need to reach out and assist another, simply because.  Twitter may die--as some have foretold. But having tasted this new communication medium, I believe the masses will not rest until it is replaced by something that does not depend upon a slick Silicon Valley business plan. 

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All true -- as unbelievable as it sounds.

I once was rejected from a pool of candidates for a job at Avaya because I told the interviewer that when releasing a the most recent version of a previous employer's mobile office suite, the product requirements AND the feature set remained fixed for the final 2/3 of the development cycle prior to release. I'm sure that he was likely an advocate of the Agile Programming development method (hey, I think it's a great method as well and has it's place) and believed that the feature set would remain fluid based on constantly changing user input much later in the process.

Well, having worked in many different industries spanning consumer durables products like ladders and windows, as well as high tech products like software, hardware, and even online Software-as-a-Service, I can say that the real answer to that question of "how late is it acceptable to continue to make changes to your product" actually depends on the product, the customers being served, and the environmental variables involved.  My adversarial interviewer at Avaya wanted to hear his preferred answer parroted back to him, and was unwilling to listen to the reasons why our particular mobile office suite, already quite mature on the old, stale Palm OS platform by then, was not going to be seeing late-breaking feature changes and additions. No matter, for whomever he eventually hired didn't make much of a splash--the project I was interviewing to lead was shelved or fell into obscurity 8 months later as a result of shifting priorities. I guess he didn't see those late breaking "customer requirements" on the horizon, for all his openness to last minute changes. Oops.

Back to bras
So what does all this have to do with bras? Well, as I blogged about earlier, my wife and her friends have been working on a special benefit project-- designing a bra to benefit the American Cancer Society in our area that is hosting an Unhooked bra design competition to benefit cancer research. My dear wife and pals have spent over 30 hours in total working on creating a very uniquely decorated pink bra using the theme Milk and Cookies. 

This theme ties in to another nonprofit benefit that is the passion of Jen DeFazio, one of my wife's dear friends, who some years ago conceived of the Stacking the Odds benefit event for breast cancer. In this event, individuals (or teams?) stack Nabisco Oreo cookies to see how many cookies they can stack up upon a base of a single standard Oreo cookie. It's a fascinating premise for a competition and I can hardly wait to see it this year. Anyhoo--the bra design you see below represents how their design finally came together. 

"Um, what about this whole product development angle and bras? You lost me..."
Yeah, understandable-- just bear with me here. (Fitting bra pictures into a marketing blog is not so easy, folks.)  Well, it all comes down to being flexible to changing concepts and circumstances and needs.

The initial concept for the bra design was Jen's. Milk and Cookies -- makes sense; ties in to the Stacking theme nicely. Jen wanted a pink bra to convey the color of the pink ribbon used by Susan G Komen for the Cure and other breast cancer foundations. She also wanted to find someway to tie the milk theme in in a fun, lighthearted way. And, well, the cookies were obvious. I observed seven ladies working on this project the other evening. During that time, they realized that they could not use perishable items.

This posed a problem. Cookies had to be simulated. Hmmm. A quick search on Wikipedia turned up a bit of suitable Oreo cookie art (since removed!) that was reborn as a reversed iron-on for dark brown or black felt. The ladies had wanted to position some sort of vessel behind the D-cups connected to the taps in the tips of the bras, to be able to turn on the milk at will. That seemed untenable as well. Warm milk was, well, icky. Rolling white paint around the interior of the cups seemed to do the trick nicely--indicating the idea of a full milk container. But, well, they weren't going to connect to the taps too well. Hoses and other intricate connectors were postulated--and rejected.

After some debate, and the first day of long hours designing expired, the ladies left for some sleep. A new day and the challenge still faced them. What to do about the milk? Voila! Inspiration at the grocery store-- pink milk in the form of Dean's Strawberry Milk. This was particularly relevant, since Deans Dairy had been a past sponsor of Jen's Stacking the Odds event in eastern Ohio. It was all coming together. Now, the Milk Chug was positioned within the bra, full size Oreo's were mocked up with a half-eaten cookie left with it's crumbs next to the empty milk container, and the bra design we finally mounted on a presentation board embellished with gold ribbon icons.

                   

Click here to download:

A_Lesson_on_Product_Developmen.zip (1445 KB)

Flexibility in the design concept had ensured success. If any of the initial concepts had been held to too stringently, the design would have come off too forced. Creativity and serendipity each had a role to play in creating the final product.

Often in product development we fail to be open to serendipity because we become too focused on our initial thoughts of where we are headed. Like the Avaya head of R&D, we have our preconceived notions of the answers we're looking for and fail to ask new questions that might illuminate the situtation, or fail to open our eyes in mundane circumstances -- like the Jen in the grocery store -- to see new possibilities that enable new creative solutions.

Where do you need to open your eyes to new possibilities in your business. Where could your customers help you see differently?

Yes, I can help... 

Mike Compeau
Red Zen Marketing
www.twitter.com/mikecompeau
724-734-1624

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Get 7 women to decorate a bra for the American Cancer Society and Susan G Komen for the Cure

Then just sit back and watch, and listen.

                                                                                                         

Click here to download:

How_to_spend_an_evening_laughi.zip (8385 KB)

My wife and her friends from First National Bank, Hermitage, PA, spent this evening in creative abandon. The reason was the "Unhooked" competition to be held on June 5 at the Tiffany Banquet Center in nearby Brookfield, Ohio, as a benefit to raise money for the American Cancer Society's fight against cancer, and specifically with this event, to raise awareness of breast cancer.

Thus, this team, with avid (rabid?) leader Jen DeFazio at the helm, descended upon our home; a cadre of like-minded ladies to set about on an awesome mission. Now, understand, Jen has been working hard raising breast cancer awareness for a number of years, having conceived and organized the very novel "Stacking the Odds" Oreo cookie-stacking competitions in western PA and eastern OH to benefit the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure organization in years past. So it was natural that Jen and her troop were looking to inject this theme into their bra design entry for the first annual local ACS "Unhooked" competition this year. Their theme pick was a natural...

2009 Bra Design Theme: Milk and Cookies

As the photographs in this series show, the standard very large white 'D' cup bra was first RIT dyed in pink dye last evening to provide a willing and ample canvas. Next, the ladies signed "Mother", "Sister" and other cancer-impacted relations on the side panels along with afixing various metallic terms of endearment to embellish and adorn. Though a Twitter dialog was established during the day with @KomenForTheCure to make inquiries, no positive response was received in time to provide for use of the Susan G Komen logo on the bra, so this planned feature had to be omitted from the right cup. 

The left cup featured the " Stacking the Odds" logo to provide awareness for the 2009 Oreo stacking competition, currently planned for November 7, 2009 in Hermitage at the High School (room location TBA). Special milk cups were prepared (that's paint in there, people) to provide the illusion of that vital sustenance--these are to be afixed within the concave portion of the cups, with the clever and functional spigots to be attached, thus illustrating the critical role breasts play in life.

To interject the Stacking the Odds cookie theme, over 2 dozen faux black/white baked chocolate cake and milk-creme-filled cookies looking very much like Nabisco Oreo cookies were affixed to the bra straps like so many jewels in the crown of this endowed pink lady. These were made of three layers of felt, with the top dark brown/black layer including an iron-on pattern to resemble a famous cookie.

Alas Podcast fans: No audio was recorded during this event--it would not likey have been appropriate for a family oriented blog, in any case.
Enjoy the photos, and interpolate related to the good times as you are apt to do anyway.

If you need assistance with bra decorating, contact me for names and email addresses of the guilty parties shown.

(Yes, I can help you with that...)

Mike Compeau
Red Zen Marketing

mike.compeau@compeau.net
www.twitter.com/mikecompeau

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Rescue724 - Who else makes free house calls for pest removal?

Bob Travis, a bee keeper hailing from New Wilmington, PA, became my best friend when he pulled into the drive in his gray pickup at 11:15am, just as the bees were beginning to increase their activity level. In his heavy cotton white jumpsuit and matching zippered screen-hood, Bob wasn't too worried about fashion, but he was taking some basic precautions. It was clear he'd done this awhile--for forty years, actually--as he left his hands gloveless. "So I don't drop anything and get them angry," he explained.

                                                                   

Click here to download:

Home_is_where_you_hang_your_...zip (8588 KB)

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How many calls does it take to move 16,000 bees?

Sixteen. That is how many calls I made to finally locate a beekeeper who was near enough to my home in western PA to come and fetch this fine batch of honey-makers. I learned that there are quite a few beekeepers in the Pittsburgh area, but interestingly, it seems that the more rural you get, the less likely these folks are to be involved with a beekeeping association, hence the difficulty in tracking them down.

The locale Penn State county extension office was hard to locate a number for, and was tardy in getting back to me, so those inquiries were the least useful in my experience. Using person to person Social Networking (ok, telephone calls between individuals) was the method that most quickly yielded results. Imagine: none of these 60-something year old guys are on Twitter or Facebook. Grrr. Don't they realize the buzz they could be creating?  (Sorry, couldn't resist!)

   

Click here to download:

Help_is_on_the_way--bees_are_w.zip (2836 KB)

Pics of the smoking and removal will follow when Mr. Bees arrives later.

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What you don't want to see without your EpiPen handy...

       

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Here_they_come_And_theyre_hung.zip (1275 KB)

Mike (not allergic) Compeau

mike.compeau@compeau.net

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