Marketing Hipster

Now when you read this story, the first thing that is going to come to your mind is, “What does this have to do with marketing?” I promise I will tie it together.

Leigh sent me this story via Reuters:

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper reported Monday.

“Suddenly he stopped the bus,” the woman named Debora C. told Bild newspaper. “He opened the door and shouted at me ‘Your cleavage is distracting me every time I look into my mirror and I can’t concentrate on the traffic. If you don’t sit somewhere else, I’m going to have to throw you off the bus.’”

The woman, pictured in Bild wearing her snug-fitting summer clothes with the plunging neckline, said she moved to another seat but was humiliated by the bus driver.

A spokesman for the bus company defended the driver.

“The bus driver is allowed to do that and he did the right thing,” the spokesman said. “A bus driver cannot be distracted because it’s a danger to the safety of all the passengers.”

And for everyone who is wondering about this “snug fitting” woman, here is a picture of her.

Now as I said, you are wondering what does this have to do with marketing? I guess this is just me and my suspicious mind, but what if this was all a setup? What if this was staged to get this woman great press? How much money is woman going to make now that this story is out? Wouldn’t such a wacky and simple story like this be an absolutely perfect marketing plan?

A guy could not drive his bus because of this woman’s “beauty”. This happened in Germany and I am writing about it here in North Carolina, all without spending one penny on advertising. I would say that would make this a pretty impressive marketing campaign.

How many times have you seen a product or service come onto the market and be very successful and you cannot believe just how simple it is and how you had not thought of that yourself? One of the things I am seeing more and more when it comes the web is that instead of having this scorched earth mentality of trying to hit everyone and everything; what’s working and working well is when a small untapped niche is found and you deliver something that people like using in that niche.

So I am throwing down the gauntlet to my Hipster community… Let’s come up with the next great “must-have” widget! I don’t care what community it is geared towards, how it works, what it is, anything. The sky is the limit here. I have been constantly amazed at the talented people who I have been lucky enough to bring in as readers and I want to try to tap that talent into a real discussion on what could be next.

I will share just some initial thoughts I have and you can run with these or come up with ones totally on your own, up to you.

1. RSS Readers – I still do not believe there are any RSS Readers out there that does a really good job. The presentation and forcing you to click on each one post to read the entire thing, it’s all a poor user experience. What would the next generation RSS reader look like?  How would it work?

2. Analytics – There is a wealth of analytics out there from high priced huge applications down to free services. Getting good solid analytics is now open to any and all who wants it. The issue I feel is users not having the experience, know how or time to truly understand what the metrics mean to them and what to do with them. Could a mashup be created that sat in front of several analytics programs that did some of the work for the user and walked them through what the numbers mean?

Alright, there’s a couple to start with from me. As I said, please feel free to throw in thoughts of your own that has nothing to do with what I discussed above. I would love to really start an interesting discussion, so comment up my brothers and sisters and let’s see where this might take us.

With the Superbowl coming up this weekend, we all know that the football game is just one part of the spectacular. Companies are spending huge dollars for thirty seconds of time to get in front of millions and millions of eyes. The commercial that I think started it all, at least for me, was Apple‘s 1984 Macintosh commercial. It still rocks twenty some odd years later. What was the commercial that you remember most from Superbowl’s?

Technorati Tags: Superbowl, commercial, Apple, Macintosh

The problem with innovation is that an innovator usually has to be someone who is first to try something before anyone else. If the innovator tries something and it works, that’s when they are usually labeled an innovator. Though if you try something first and fail, you tend to be called more not so flattering names other than innovator. It feels to me even though it is early in 2007, that a lot of companies and marketers alike are all standing around this deep black hole named Web 2.0 and even though everyone is very excited about Web 2.0 and everyone has a great deal of ideas and opinions; no-one is willing to be the first to jump in to see what happens.

I was speaking with a friend of mine who is also in the industry and we were discussing an idea I had that I wanted to pitch to one of my clients. He decided to play devil’s advocate and started asking me questions as if he was my client. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: Hmmm, interesting idea Cord. Has this been successful with your other clients?

Cord: Well, this is something relatively new and in it’s entirety has never been done before to the best of my knowledge.

Friend: Can you give me some examples of companies that has done this and what kind of results did they receive?

Cord: As I said, what I am recommending has not been done before. There definitely are parts of this campaign that has been done and I can absolutely supply you with results they have received.

Friend: So what you are telling me is that I am going to be a guinea pig of sorts? Why should I spend my hard earned marketing dollars on an unproven commodity?

Luckily, I was speaking with my friend on the phone or he would of gotten smacked right in the face, just kidding. Though he did make some excellent points and those same points I have no doubt would of been brought up by my client. So the question is, how do get a client to stand behind a campaign that has really no past results to prove it’s worth?

Maybe for the time being, a bunch of us marketers could all just gather around that Web 2.0 black hole with our clients and start chanting, “Jump! Jump! Jump!” What do you think?

Technorati Tags: innovator, Web 2.0