Room237

The value of influence.

2012-03-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

Your most value customer isn’t the one that spends the most money. It’s the customer that influences the most people.

So in theory the Pareto principle (80/20) is out. As the 80 percent may have influenced the 20 percent (to become customers) and you may potentially lose the 20% by treating the 80% poorly. Perhaps focusing on the 20 percent is a good rule of thumb for sustainability but not for growth? any thoughts would be appreciated in the comment section.

So marketers should focus on people who influence the strongest. This should not be confused with focusing on people with a large amount of subscribers/followers, as these people may not have a strong influence.
Basically a re-tweet by an individual with a small amount of twitter followers can be more influential than a re-tweet by an individual with lots of followers.

The small amount of followers may be influenced more strongly to re-tweet and share than the faceless big profile. Plus the person with a small amount of followers is probably more likely to share their influence.

Of course this is all hypothetical and I’m not saying that a small twitter profile is more valuable than Justin Biebers or Lady Gaga’s profile….but to the right people it can be more influential.
The important thing is creating content that people want to share and sharing it with those individuals (small or large) whom are strong influencers. It's finding those strong influencers and finding them first…. that’s the hard part.

To summaries don't focus on B2C but C2C .

Follow @JoeMurfin

3/Three Mobile Contract Bad Service.

2012-03-24T09:00:00.003-07:00

Long story short...NEVER SIGN A THREE MOBILE CONTRACT AS THEY ARE TERRIBLE.

My Phones broke. Probably down to planned obsolescence. Im not going to mention the phone manufacturer as I've previously had very good experiences from this brand.

My complaints are with 3 aka Three mobile.

I've been with 3 for my entire university life. So three years. The current contract was a 24 month contract( which takes the piss anyway, and I was perhaps foolish to sign up for 2 years)

My contract now ends in October 2012. So I have 7 more months left on my contract. Over this time I've not been offered a chance to upgrade my phone.

What gets under my skin is that i've been on this contract paying £25 pounds a months for 17 months. Thats £425 I have paid 3 mobile. Not to mention the amount I paid them on my last contract.

Thinking to myself that I have been a good costumer, paid my bills every month on time etc etc I was perhaps entitled to a new phone or a early upgrade. I was even happy to end this contract and sign up to another. But no.

I phoned them, had to talk to a computer for approximately 3 minutes then I was passed onto someone that English was clearly not their first language. The problem wasn't me understanding her but her understanding me. When I said "My phone had died" she initially thought I said "My friends died" she siad was sorry for my loss.... I laughed and corrected her, then she started trying to sell me a new contract. This makes me think where is my money going? If they are outsourcing their call centres they are probably cutting corners on customer service everywhere.

I declined the offer as I already have a contract with Three mobile. They couldn't offer my anything unless I paid them more money on top of my current contract. I decided to go buy a cheap phone from Tesco or Argos and stick my sim into it.

The cheapest locked 3 phone you can buy I believe is around £40 and it's crap. I then went to Asda and they only sold phones locked to a particular network (or so I was told by the guy at the counter. Probably incorrect information).

I didn't want to just buy any phone put my sim into it and have it not work. Then have the effort of trying to get a refund. I will no doubt have to get one soon.

It seems to me that when you pay for a contract you pay for the phone and the contract, thats why iphone contracts are so expensive right? So if the phone breaks(through no fault of my own) the network company should give me a new one, I mean I am paying for a service. If I was renting a flat and the roof started leaking the landlord wouldn't ask me to fix it. He also wouldn't say you can still live here but with a leaky roof.

Perhaps everything's just got so bad we just expect this kind of service as customers but it really isn't good enough.

Hopefully this isn't more time wasted and will inform someone in the future.

Renault TWIZY design competition.. Win £9000.

2012-03-06T04:46:00.004-08:00

So I'm in the top 10 of a Renault design competition and I could win 1 years tuition fees... up to £9000.Whaaaaat?

To vote you just have to click the "like" button below.

Alternatively If that doesn't work you can visit the actual page and vote.
http://www.designatwizy.co.uk/joe/

Thanks for the support.

It's all common sense.

2012-02-22T09:40:00.000-08:00

I sometimes end up in a conversation about marketing and advertising with someone who really doesn't know the first thing about it.

How the conversation usually goes is I will tell them what I study (Which is marketing and advertising) and they give me a lecture about it.

What they usually say is "it's just common sense". How insulting is that? It's basically a big fuck you for anyone that has ever studied it. know-one would say that about any other subject.

I can see why they would think that. It's because we've all grown up around advertising and we all have our own views on it. My argument against this would be "You dont watch a football match and assume you can play professionally" or maybe you do.

It's usually"common sense" for them up until the point you ask them about what marketing strategy a company should adopt, how branding can effect post cognitive dissonance or the ROI of social media.

Anyhow... Iv writeen a post of improving your copywriting skills on Total Insights, check it out. It's not rocket science. =p

http://www.totalinsights.co.uk/11-simple-tips-on-copy-writing

@joemurfin

Thoughts on SEO and "toady" marketers.

2012-02-06T04:01:00.000-08:00

So I've written a post on TotalInsights about SEO. Here's the link.

www.totalinsights.co.uk/seo-quick-guide

Before you understand what SEO really is you don't really understand how simple it can be. Lots of marketers seem to glam it up and describe it to be more difficult than it really is.

I have found lots of marketing tactics and understanding of marketing is usually wrapped up in acronyms and strange terms that in actual fact are very simple points.

If you dont know all the marketing acronyms it doesn't make you a bad marketer, it just means you dont read MarketingWeek ( or an alternative). Although if you dont read up about your industry what are you worth?

I suppose it's those "toady" people David Ogilvy was on about in the early 90s. These marketers just ruin it for all the decent marketers.

The word marketing has been ruined. Things need to change and these people need a finger pointing at them...and maybe a hard poke.

@joemurfin

Sherlock’s Fall Explained

2012-01-22T15:25:00.000-08:00

So here’s a short roundup of how I think Sherlock cheated death.

May be SPOILERS here.

The first part is that Sherlock got Molly to dress up a corpse like Sherlock. This combined with the cyclist hitting Watson and drugging him with the drug from the previous episode (the Hounds of Baskerville). This would make Watson see Sherlock when Watson checks Sherlock's pulse.

When Watson checks Sherlock’s pulse his hand is looking pretty old. So probably not Sherlock.

Watson wouldn't see Sherlock hit the ground because Sherlock asked him to stand behind the little building (as we can see below).

Sherlock did fall, but he fell into the removal truck that was parked by the building. Molly's associates put down the body prior the fall.

The removal van moves away, the paramedics get there (unrealistically quickly) and don't take his body to the ambulance…Just down some dingy alley.(Its come to my notice that this is a hospital, so maybe not that quickly or dingy)

The sniper then sees Watson acting sad and packs away his riffle.

Here's the video.(There's actually a continuity error at 4.08 where the removal truck should be closer to the body)

It's probably more ingenious than what I have deduced, but we'll all have to wait until next year to find out.

Any better ideas?

The Internet Magnifies everyone’s Beliefs.

2012-01-18T05:40:00.000-08:00

I’ve finished reading this book recently, as you can tell it's about “Brainwashing”. When someone says brainwashing you automatically think about some quack doctor wiping your mind or something of fiction.

In actual fact we're exposed to real brain washing techniques everyday. A key technique of mind control (discussed in the book) is milieu control. The basics of this is controlling what an individual's exposed to. (Think Rupert Murdock or more correctly North Korea)

More about milieu control here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milieu_control

Slowly this information influences you and you are completely unaware of it. It's the same deal with advertising. We form our opinions on our surrounding and the information we're exposed to.

What’s interesting about this is that we effectively brainwash ourselves, with help from Internet. If you want to back up your thoughts on a conspiracy all you have to do is type it into Google and all your thoughts will be backed up. So some people form their opinions on mass miss information, kinda scary right?

When using the Internet "small-minded" people re-enforce their beliefs and "open-minded" people generally become more open minded. The Internet tends to magnify everyone’s initial beliefs. What’s worse is that Google and Facebook change the results to match that person’s beliefs. Watch this Ted talk about Facebook and Google changing your search results.

Personally I'd rather live in a society where everyone can form his or her own opinions. That's got to be better than having mass thought control through the media.but what’s safer?

Too many hypothetical questions, as usual.

On a current episode of Sherlock a character said “you’re only a nutter if you’re wrong.” And I think that’s quite fitting for this post.

Sherlock’s worth a watch and I would recommend reading (Brainwashing) the book too, although it gets pretty heavy on how the brain works about half way through.

FIN

£44 billion High Speed Rail aka The Great Train Robbery.

2012-01-17T07:12:00.000-08:00

Everyone’s got his or her opinion on the proposed high-speed rail. Or maybe not.

"It seems to me a slightly unimaginative way to improve a train journey is to make it shorter.

“Employ all of the top male and female supermodels pay them to walk the length of the train handing out free Chateau Petrus for the entire duration of the journey. You would still have money left over and people would ask for the trains to be slowed down. "
- Rory Sutherland (IPA President and Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy Group)

Maybe not an exact quote from Rory but you can see what he's getting at, it is a colossal expenditure of money. You could give everyone in Britain (62,218,761 people) £700 with £44 billion. Let Google do the math by clicking the link http://tinyurl.com/7nseuht .

After seeing this in terms you can get your head around you really can start to see why it’s seen as a waste of money. To shave off about 45 minutes of a journey for £44 billion seems ridiculous.

After thinking about this wastage I realised I was framing the issue and convinced myself by putting it in these terms. (More on framing here http://tinyurl.com/37wokk )

So what are the real crooks of the matter?

The train will even out the population in the country. In terms of social status and pay. By having the line it will no doubt encourage people from the Midlands to go to London and vice versa. Even if it’s not that much faster the perception of it being much easier/faster will be set.

Therefore individuals who can't see any future for themselves (Harking back, the riots of last year) won’t feel so trapped. On the flip side of this all the rich businesses will move to the West Midlands because 1. It’s cheaper and 2. it won’t be much of a hassle to get around anymore.

House prices will even out throughout the country; prices in London are on the rise even though house prices elsewhere are falling, so it’s the government’s way to make the poor richer and the rich richer.

It's no doubt a hassle for the people that have to move and have their houses demolished but they will be getting far more money for what their property is worth. Although it's not all about money.

Finally £44 billion is a lot of money for you and me right? But for the government it’s really not that much. This sounds like madness but when we consider how much the government spends on the military every year it seems like a drop in the bucket overall.

Id rather the government be spending the money on high-speed rail than on weapons to kill people, not that it was ever a toss up between those two things anyway.

and for the people saying it's ruining our countryside, a great Vulcan once said "Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." - Spock

It's a very complex and hypothetical debate obviously, because there's a fair bit of guesswork and projectioning but overall I'm indifferent. Thoughts?

END