I started a business. It made me want to drink copious quantities, smoke myself into oblivion and hit my head against a brick wall. Instead I wrote a blog.
Site Launch Day: 44
User Count: 69
Going right: Recruited my first marketing consultant - Investment Impact starts to grow its proposition from strategic finance to holistic business consultancy!
Going wrong: User growth slowing, See a correlation between my direct promotional efforts and number of users.
Comment: For any site who hopes to grow users without a huge cost base of PR etc., it is obvious that there needs to be a very good ongoing referral system
In my favorite film, '50 first dates', the girl - played by Drew Barrymore - relives her day over and over again, after a car accident which leaves her with a 24 hour memory. Her family and friends live with her in the lie that her mind creates - it is permanently her father's birthday and they watch 'The Sixth Sense' every evening. The upshot is that her life and her day is a happy one unless she finds out that her reality is a lie, until a man (Adam Sandler) falls in love with her and tries to change the way her day is programmed so that she can live a little in the present every day.
It's a cheesy love story, nothing to really mark it out from the rest of the romantic comedies for the general population, but I cry at it every time because my emotions are triggered for two reasons.
1. The sacrifice of a man who is faced with the challenge of loving a woman who forgets about him every morning. How easy it would be to move on to someone else! I do admire a man with staying power because I have been a particularly difficult bundle of issues myself.
2. My own experience of a car accident at 12 years old where I permanently lost my memory of about a month, lived in a dream state for six months and gained fairly horrific facial scars.
Clearly there is a poignancy about the film that resonates with me because it mirrors characteristics and events that are familiar. There is a very strong need for humans to identify and be familiar with a brand, a service or the person standing in front of them. It's what - for all marketing bleats on about price, promotion, placement and product - is the elusive ingredient that converts users and clients into advocates and enthusiasts. There may be an overlap in clients and advocates (one would hope!) but personally, I would take advocates over clients any day. Why? Well, Math (once again math proves its domination over the universe).
Scenario 1: Ten clients
No. of Clients (e.g. 10) x No. of products bought (e.g. 1) x price of products (e.g. $1) = $10
Scenario 2: Ten advocates
No. of Advocates (e.g. 10) x No. of people advocated over lifetime (50) x No of potential clients in that circle e.g. 10% x No. of products bought (e.g. 1) x price of products (e.g. $1) = $50
We assume that advocates have a regular number of contacts or friends; that may be as low as 10 or as high as 1000....but on average an enthusiast may tell his or her whole circle; and on facebook, twitter and google plus, that means a powerful amount of referrals.
Getting advocates for your business is tricky. It usually requires superb customer/user experience which in turn requires effort, care and money. But more than that, it also requires that your business and brand contains emotion - because at the basest level, humans are unable to feel empathy without also feeling emotion. Remember....No. 5...is alive.
Site Launch Day: 47
User Count: 72
Going right: Getting a revamp of the facebook page courtesy of the new project manager
Going wrong: Pr still bloody elusive
Comment: Rode a bike for the first time in months today, pushed by a craving stronger than myself for a snickers.
Gill, Investment Impact's new project manager, is forthright, funny and Irish. I have a great fondness for the Irish - their strong ties to freedom, their continued quest to be assertive and of course, their propensity for drinking. Gill is someone I have known for a while - she was a student in the class I lectured on decision analysis in UCD - and we struck up an unlikely communication over skype thereafter. My curiosity today lies in wondering whether it is in fact Gill - the person - I like, or Gill - the Irishwoman - I like. Fortunately, I certainly like one of them.
The Hofstede cultural dimensions framework, is commonly studied when doing business in different countries. The 4 dimensions are:
- Power distance (the degree of equality, or inequality, between people in the country's society)
- Individualism (the degree the society reinforces individual or collective, achievement and interpersonal relationships)
- Masculinity (on the degree the society reinforces, or does not reinforce, the traditional masculine work role model of male achievement, control and power)
- Uncertainty Avoidance (the level of tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity within the society)
In cultural terms Ireland has
- Low power distance
- High Individualism
- High Masculinity
- Low Uncertainty Avoidance
If this were typically Gill then, she would believe in equality for all people in terms of materiality and class, a high sense of individual achievement over that of the collective, she would stress assertiveness, resolve conflicts by fighting them out and disobey rules!
Now I happen to know that she reads this blog every day - and will also have to retweet this analysis of herself, ha ha.
Cultural analysis is something that is essential when running an international company. Investment Impact is unlike other consultancies in that it depends on an embedded gaming system to promote competition amongst its users. Those users who gain the best reviews get more sales and more consultancy projects. This would therefore do well in countries with a high individualism and masculinity - theoretically like Ireland and the US. However the company is and will remain a collective because once you get to higher levels of the game, the only way you can succeed is by collaboration and promotion of others' work. That means - theoretically - that Asian cultures will be far better at the latter stages of the game than those cultures primarily motivated by self-interest.
The game is due to start at the end of the month and I for one, can't wait - if only to see how its adopted and picked up by different cultures. The game testers primed to set off in a few weeks have given various reactions -
"I think you should make it easier."(English Man)
"It's pure genius. Groundbreaking." (Italian Man)
"You're opening up a great opportunity for people to consult virtually, why don't you just let them do that instead of making them go through the game to achieve it?" (French Man)
"I can't wait to start. This'll be brilliant" (Spanish Man)
The game allows auto-verification of excellence for consultants and builds up client trust. Only those consultants who have gained consistently good reviews of their products and participation (as denoted by 'most helpful answer' type-bonuses) will be able to consult virtually for Investment Impact. Clients can see demos of consultant work, before employing them.
Gill, an Irish woman, thinks it's amazing. And that's probably a lot of why I like her :-)
If you want a peek at the business that's driving me insane you can click here.