TGIF…

3 07 2009

It’s Friday!

You’ve lived the week, now watch the movie. Seriously…

If you haven’t watched “Thank God It’s Friday”, you’re missing one of Jeff Goldblum’s finest performances (and some incredibly fine honeys). Check out the trailer:

Leather Man cracks me up!

Anyway, have a fantastic weekend! And happy 4th of July to my all my American friends…

PS: A very special happy birthday message to Kitty Stiletto for tomorrow. Hope you have a splendid day!





Buzz…

2 07 2009

Moonfruit has declared their recent Twitter promotion a “success”. I’m sure they have metrics for determining this success (perhaps site-visits?) but I’m not that convinced that it’s a sustainable result.

Sure, “everyone” is hashtagging Moonfruit in their Twitter-stream but what are they saying?

goffik: RT @wez:About to leave for @cwcrawley’s birthday luncheon… Any excuse – #moonfruit (Me too! Yum! Pier View, anyone?)

iarebox: well i am the #moonfruit running though your veins – You Me At Six less than 10 seconds ago from TwitterFox

Ok, I’m being a bit unfair. There are people playing the game in good faith and hashtagging appropriately (”Win a MAC #moonfruit”, etc)…but then again, so what? They’re not actually saying anything of value about Moonfruit. In fact, it took an article on another site to tell me exactly what Moonfruit was about (and you can Google for it you lazy bugger).

In my opinion, this is the problem with Twitter competitions. The focus is not the brand but the prize on offer – in this case, a Macbook Pro. So it’s no wonder that the buzz around Moonfruit has seen it claim the number one trending topic position on Twitter (simultaneously dethroning Iran and Tehran while clearly proving that free stuff outweighs the social conscience).

At this point, if you want to send out a #moonfruit tweet, go ahead. I’ll wait…

A better way to execute this competition, would be for Moonfruit to use tags that are relevant to their business (#freewebsite, #DIYwebsite) and set time-based parameters around these tags.

For example, #freewebsite would only be valid for the 8th of July and only tweets with that tag would be eligible for entry. That way, Moonfruit would get a better idea of who’s paying attention to their brand and get across some idea of what they do.

Bottom line: it doesn’t matter that everyone’s talking about you if they’re not saying anything of value. Quality over quantity – that’s where the bullseye is.





The BLOC

1 07 2009

BLOC – it’s an acronym for Basic Level Of Competence.

It’s essentially the minimum amount of skill required for anyone to perform a task efficiently and effectively without screwing up. You’d be amazed at how many people in key decision-making positions lack the BLOC. In fact, the number of people who lack the BLOC is directly proportional to the size of the company at which they’re employed. Smaller companies mean less places to hide and fewer people to blame when things go pear-shaped.

You see, cream rises to the top butĀ  crap also floats with ease…

So, today’s game: take a look at the people who work for you/with you. See if you can spot the ones who are without theĀ  BLOC. And then try to figure out why they’re still cashing a paycheque. Bonus points are scored if you can do their job better – and they can’t do theirs without you…