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In the world of marketing, you can score a double-play whenever you can create a promotion that is so noteworthy that more attention is drawn to your methods of promoting than to the promotion itself. A few months ago, the alternative music group (an overly simplistic label on my part) Radiohead released its first major album after parting with its record label. The album is available for download for whatever price its listeners are willing to pay, which was and is an amazing concept for artists and marketers everywhere. Check it out…it’s an interesting site and a great listen.

Of course, this model is only truly economically viable if you are fairly confident that you already have a strong, loyal audience that will carry the majority of the financial burden.

Steve Thorson, one of my friends and a co-worker from a previous life, is a designer for Paste Magazine’s website, and he let me know that Paste is using the same model to sell a year-long magazine subscription – you pay whatever you feel the magazine is worth to you. 11 issues, plus 11 full-length CD’s full of the latest and greatest music for progressive tastes. What’s great about this promotion, is that it’s also a gauge of the loyalty of its current subscribers, as Paste is allowing renewal subscribers to get the same deal. As an added incentive, Paste is highlighting those who pay more than the $19.95 for a standard subscription rate (although Steve tells me this experiment has yielded an unexpectedly high number of subscriptions at $19.96 by those who just want to be featured in the magazine).

This is a great deal for consumer, and a great deal for Paste, as they can expand their subscriber base to uber-frugal people like me that wouldn’t normally pony up the 20 bucks for a magazine about music (yes, guilty, I paid a dollar, but I know that Paste will make it up in ad revenues). Asking people to pay what they want is the next best thing to giving it away for free, and it offers the added benefit of giving you, the marketer, a very real picture of what your value is to your customers.

>>UPDATE: Steve just let me know that the slew of subscribers at $19.96 was inaccurate (and third-hand) information. So far, only one person has done that. On the upside of things, he said the highest price someone has paid so far is $70. So now, I can officially feel less guilty about only spending a dollar.

After a semi-long absence, I’ve decided to go a little Seth Godin on you and post a picture from my camera phone.

Sure, as a photographer this image makes me cringe, but my trusty Treo was all I had on hand. While on a client pitch in NYC earlier this week, I spent a few minutes in a lobby with a DHL drop-off box. I was inspired by the simplicity of the answer for a very important question that anyone about to drop a package in the box may have, “Have they picked up packages here yet, or not?”.

The large, block letters in all caps that indicate if a package has been picked up or not are not sexy, or even all that interesting, but they are 100% functional. I think that can be a hallmark of great design. DHL could have gone with a really slick system of lighted buttons, color-coded tabs, or whatever, but instead they chose the direct route. If I can walk up to the drop-off and see immediately that the packages for the day are “NOT PICKED UP”, I can drop my package with confidence and not have a second thought, which I would bet is exactly what the drop-off box designers were going for. Bravo DHL.

I’m a regular reader of Time magazine and of Time.com (especially their super-friendly mobile edition). Naturally, I was quite interested to see that they had put out an article that highlights the top 50 websites and top 5 “Worst websites” on the internet today. Their criteria is much different than the design community would use, so I anticipated some head-scratching while I read the article.

However, I was totally shocked to see that the number 1 “site to avoid” (also the number 1 worst site on the web) was eHarmony.com. From a design and functionality standpoint, eHarmony isn’t anything to write home about, and it’s probably not going to be at the top of the buzz lists for Web 2.0 applications. It is, however, a solidly designed and functioning site. According to Time magazine, the reason that everyone should avoid eHarmony is:

“Our main beef with this online dating site is its power to cause utter despair. eHarmony claims its more “scientific” approach to matchmaking differentiates it from competitors — its users complete extensive personality questionnaires, in order to connect them to others based on compatibility. In early 2006, eHarmony announced that more than 16,000 couples had married during the previous year as a result of meeting on the site, citing a 2005 Harris Interactive poll. That’s about 90 people finding love every day, a track record bound to inflate expectations. On a more typical dating site, where users are prone to making snap judgments based on photos and sketchy profiles, if you don’t find that special someone you’re less likely to take it personally. It’s easier to shake off because, after all, that’s hardly the real you up there on that site. But if you’ve taken the time to answer eHarmony’s 436 compatibility survey questions and paid its premium charges ($21 to $60 a month, depending on how many months you prepay), and the site then delivers terrible recommendations — or worse, rejects you as unmatchable — what do you tell yourself then? The company’s advice, to stick with it for several months to improve your odds of finding a soul mate, sounds all too self-serving (the longer you use the site the more you pay). The site also discriminates against gays.”

If you read the “discriminates against gays” article, you’ll see the real backbone of Time’s issue with eHarmony and how utterly absurd of an argument it is. The author even acknowledges at the end of his rant that’s it’s perfectly within eHarmoy’s rights as an independent company to choose not to provide services for men seeking men or for women seeking women. The author is gay himself, and he does a thorough job of pointing out that there are many sites that provide dating services for gays only that do not include services for straight people.

Time, normally a trusted source of objective news about what’s going on around the world, has really let their readership down by choosing to publish this article. To be clear – I’d just as quickly blast Time if they were saying that a site for gays was discriminating against straight people by now providing services for them. It’s not like eHarmony is a public institution, or holding back vital services from a particular community…it’s a dating service! People generally want something that is tailored to their particular tastes when it comes to a dating service. It’s no secret that eHarmony is a more conservative site for people who are trying to find that special someone. But so what? Imagine a dating service that did nothing to be selective – how would that do anything to increase the odds of like-minded people getting together?

Rather reviewing eHarmony using objective criteria (or even subjective criteria that is somewhat rational and consistent), some disgruntled writer at Time who evidently has had some bad luck in the dating arena has chosen to take out their personal frustrations on eHarmony.com. The review has nothing to do with site functionality, its impact on the online movement, or anything else. I’m very interested to see if there is any public backlash, as well as how eHarmony will respond.

Thanks for braving my rant!

You can say what you want about the “green” movement, which has as many political overtones as a Dixie Chick concert, but some aspects of it are great. MountainSmith, a well-known manufacturer of outdoor gear, has recently announced the arrival of two new lumbar packs that are made from recycled plastic water bottles. By their estimates, it sales of these products will keep approximately 1.1 million bottles out of the landfill each year, which is great news. The sad thing is, the technology to achieve this isn’t really anything new, so I’m grateful for the political firestorm that’s yielding things like hybrid cars and recycled fabrics. Most outdoor equipment manufacturers know that they cater to an environmentally-conscious crowd, so innovations have been abundant (and well-promoted) for years, but now utilizing such techniques can generate a very real ROI from an increasingly aware public.

Of course, I didn’t see a lumbar pack recycling program mentioned anywhere…yet =).

Anyone who knows me knows that I am almost always drinking water from a plastic Nalgene bottle. It’s good to stay hydrated at work, and in my opinion it’s really good to do so from a reusable container.

I read something on CNN.com this weekend that really excites me: the mayor of San Francisco has signed an executive order banning city deparments from buying bottled water. The mayor cited the overall financial costs and the subsequent environmental impact as major reasons for the ban…I think this is really a great initiative and should be applauded. In fact, in America and other developed countries, I hope that bottled water will one day go the route that smoking is today – banned in most places.

Does that seem a little extreme? Americans already have some of the cleanest water in the world. In fact, the water discharged from waste water treatment plants must meet stricter guidelines for potability than municipal water supplies in the developing world. I’ve read in several places (but can’t find them currently to cite them) that if the world spent on international aide what it spent on bottled water each year that we would be able to provide clean drinking water to everyone on the planet.

And then there’s the environmental impact. Just take me for example. I’ve been using the same bottle for the past 4+ years, and it’s still going strong. Let’s say I had instead used a throw-away bottle every day for the past 4 years. That would mean that I would have placed over 1,400 bottles of plastic into the landfill by myself! Americans buy enough bottled water in a year to give an 8-ounce serving to every man, woman, and child in the country. But that’s really nothing compared to all of the other costs. Check out this Wikipedia article (it’s properly cited and footnoted) for more information…it’ll blow your mind.

I’m glad that Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco is taking such a bold step forward. I hope other towns will see the cost benefits and follow suit.

I’m an outdoor enthusiast, and I enjoy hiking, backpacking, camping, caving, etc. It’s no secret that I’m as obsessed about having the right gear as I am about the actual activities, so I’m constantly scouring discount outdoor gear stores online in search of the next great thing that I didn’t know I needed. One of those sites is moosejaw.com, a very reputable dealer that has its marketing talons firmly embedded in the 16-30 year-old market, as their website design clearly indicates. I saw a promotion on their site that made very little sense from a product standpoint, but was a brilliant idea from a promotions standpoint:

“WOW!” I thought. What a great hook to get that twenty-something male to part with $60 in dispensable income for some sandals. A real ninja star, just for buying shoes! I can picture the masses of young men who would otherwise never own a ninja star becoming very excited about buying some sandals in order to have one. However, when you click on the promotion…
… you get to see how “real” it really is. It’s a cheap plastic star. As if that wasn’t safe enough, moosejaw thoughtfully included a plastic safety ring as well.

What a crushing disappointment. And worse, how useless! What would you do with such an insignificant trinket? Now I know, there are thousands of good reasons for not sending a real metal star with sharpened points. Thousands of reasons that lawyers with good intentions of protecting their company posed in the conference room where this ninja star promotion was probably dreamed up. But in doing so, moosejaw ends up delivering something to their customers that is worse than nothing – an empty, misleading promise.

Maybe I’m from a different school of thought than most people, but I think that warning labels that are just that, warnings, do little to deter consumers unless accompanied by a logical explanation. For instance, the warning label on my son’s can of powdered formula states, “WARNING- DO NOT HEAT BOTTLE WITH NIPPLE ATTACHED.” No explanation. I must confess, as a result of either urgency or laziness I have often disregarded that warning, to no ill effect. Positively nothing wrong has happened as a result.

Now consider that level of communication vs. this that of a warning label on the back of a bottle of drain cleaner, or other poisonous chemical. Phrases such as, “will cause severe burns”, “may cause blindness”, and of course “contents extremely flammable” clearly demonstrate the risk of misusing the product. However, so many other products contain warning labels such as those on a bottle of shampoo, “for external use only”, that have no rational explanation as to why downing a refreshing bottle of Head & Shoulders after a hard day’s work may be a bad idea.

Okay, so that last example was a bit silly. But the point is this: in the Information Age, consumers expect to know why, and in as conversational as a tone as possible. If my son’s formula said, “Do not heat bottle with nipple attached, because it might reduce the nutritional content of the formula” (I’m making this consequence up here) I’d be a lot more apt to follow it.

Just for fun, here’s a website that lets you create your own warning label:

http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/

Enjoy!