The Billion Dollar Marketing Campaign

H&R Block has said that Americans left $1b on the table last year in potential tax returns. That's a nice little slush fund for someone in Washington!

So, this year, H&R Block has used that statistic as the cornerstone of their marketing campaign for tax season. And this campaign was huge.  They used every type of medium available - TV, radio, social media, billboards and even vehicle wraps.

The campaign used the slogan "get your billion back America" and used a recurring character wearing a bowtie.  The man in the advertisement portrays a trustworthy accountant who is very believable.

It would be great to know their return on this campaign.

Gigable Promises Win-Win-Win

Gigable is a new crowd-funding platform for bands/artists to fill the room at their next gig.  The band/artist posts a gig and then fans pledge for a ticket (and other rewards) until the goal is met. If and when the goal is met, money is exchanged and the gig is put on the books.

Venues have a lot to gain from this model as they will no longer have to 'hope' the band brings enough people.

Fans will love it, because they get some cool rewards with their show tickets and the band will be playing to a full house.

Bands should love it, since they will be able to go into new markets with confidence.

This could be the start of something great.

Figuring Out Obamacare (aka Affordable Care Act)

Here's a great resource to understanding the new healthcare law.  Doyle Rowe, LTD. has been consulting with groups large and small for 25 years on acquiring the best health care plans.

They are experts on the new Affordable Care Act and can guide you through the process to find the best plan that fits your budget and health care needs.

How To Create A Swag Bomb

Tim Ferris and Marc Ecko have a secret to share.  And that's how to go from niche to mega-mainstream.  

In the latest post on Tim's blog, Marc Ecko writes on how to properly create a swag bomb.  What is a swag bomb? It's a must-have for innovators and creators everywhere.  This nugget can blow your brand wide open.


Image credit: dribbble.com

Any Room Left For More E-Commerce?

Amazon may be the 900lb. gorilla, but as we know, there's always room for better curating and boutique shops.

This great article on Pandodaily highlights that fact that Amazon can't do it all when it comes to e-commerce. I certainly believe that which is why I'm invested in MileFork.com.

Grow Your Own Mushrooms And Pivot Your Startup Strategy

This is a great story about two UC Berkley grads who launching a mushroom business - and then pivoted their strategy very early on by listening to customers.

Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora were two months from graduating when one of their professors told them a very random fact that you can grow mushrooms from used coffee grounds.  That little fact caught their interest and they started a business selling mushrooms.

While at farmers markets, they did an experiment to see if selling DIY kits for growing mushrooms change the customer engagement. Short answer - it did. And by a huge margin.  Adults and kids were fascinated by the kit and spent much more time engaged with their products.

Here's the video where they tell the story.

Source: Startup Lessons Learned

Experience The Zen Of Gardening From Your iPad

Unity Studios has released a new app that lets a person grow flowers and leaves and provide a daily dose of creative zen.

With this app you can:

• Design your own flower and leaves
• Unlock challenges
• Take screenshots of your flowers and share them on Facebook and Twitter
• Do all this in many languages

Let's Grow is available in the iTunes store.  Here is the link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/lets-grow!/id588671980

Source: PRnewswire

Wood Egg Cracks The Code For International Business

Derek Sivers, the ex-founder of CDBaby, has launched a new venture called Wood Egg.  Since the sale of CDBaby a few years ago, Derek has been living abroad and learning a lot about international business.

Wood Egg is a series of entrepreneurial guides to starting businesses in many countries.  The first series of books teaches how to start a business in 16 countries in Asia. Derek's plan is to release a new series of books every year.

What's extraordinary about this company (if the content wasn't awesome enough) is that has created a process for building the content of the books.  He has created a 200-question process that someone could take and hit the streets of any country and collect the raw materials for a book.  Then, he has editors who assemble the information into a book format.  There are volunteer and paid positions in his company and the waiting list is long.

Medium Is XL On Stories

Medium is a... hmm. What do you call it? It's not a blog. It's not website in the traditional sense. It's a publication that carries many talented folks who write about stuff for which they are passionate. I don't like the term "e-zine."


Evan Williams (Co-Founder of Medium and Blogger) says: "Medium is a new place on the Internet where people share ideas and stories that are longer than 140 characters and not just for friends."


I've setup a little shop there and look forward to contributing.

Vehicle Graphics Expose The Goods

A 3M study shows that vehicle graphics has the lowest CPM (cost per thousand impressions) ratio than any other major medium. Vehicle graphics or "wraps" have increased in popularity among businesses of all sizes over that past 5 years.

Small fleets, such as HVAC companies and large fleets such as nationwide pizza chains have allocated a significant portion of their marketing budgets to vehicle graphics. And the results are paying off. These companies are seeing an increase in brand exposure and sales as a direct result of applying vinyl graphics to their company vehicles.

There are two main providers of vinyl media that is used for vehicle wraps; 3M and Avery Dennison. The state-of-the-art vinyl and adhesive is extremely durable and safe on vehicles.  The vinyl material can be applied to any part of the vehicle and will last up to 5-6 years.

Vehicle graphics and wraps must be installed by a certified graphics installer. The installation process usually takes several hours and each vehicle is different and requires special tools.

The photos below show graphics projects completed by Digital Graphic Solutions in Valparaiso, IN.  For each project, DGS provided the graphics design, manufacturing and installation.

Even Cats Love the iPad

How to stop the civil cold-war in America

The new Apple Tablet is called the iPad

The Kindle killer? Maybe. The next huge win for Apple? Perhaps.

The iPad was announced today at 10:10am PST by Steve Jobs.

Tablet computing has been around for at least 12 years. I should know, I worked at Cruise Technologies in 1996 where we created the CruisePad!

Back then, the problem was screen size/clarity vs. manufacturing cost.  The CruisePad was designed for a completely different market and way ahead of its time.

How to go from 0 - $1b in sales in 8 years (with no advertising)

Zappos.com is the shining example of how an online business can be profitable via word-of-mouth. This article on Read-Write-Web explores Zappos' success and talks to the CEO.

Business Owners Challenge

Want to find out what challenges other business owners are facing? Take this quick survey and get the free report.

New Podcast Series: PlugdIn

Something I've been planning for some time now and finally launched it!

The PlugdIn Podcast is a weekly discussion with (hopefully) interesting people involved in music, design, video, social media, charities and many other topics.

Here's the link to this week's episode. Enjoy!

Sponsored Posts?

Here's a new twist in a well-defined space. Bloggers are selling posts.

So I wonder what the going rate is? How many subscribers do you need to your blog before you can start selling posts?

What is Google Wave?

Doing a little research and patiently waiting for my Google Wave invite, I wanted to get a better understanding.

Google Wave is a real-time collaboration platform. The easiest way to describe it would be a blend of Twitter, Flikr, YouTube and Word all in one interface.

It looks to be very early in development and Google is making it open source to accelerate the evolution of the product.

At this point, by just reading about it and watching demo videos, it doesn't seem to have the impact that Twitter or YouTube. But, it will be interesting to get in there and use it and watch it mature.

Connecting buildings via wireless

We highly recommend this product for ease of setup and cost.

The GNS wireless bridge solution is perfect to connect LAN's between buildings that are line of sight. Dedicated 54Mbs link.

Our implementation was up and running 15 minutes after the antennas were mounted.

SPAM VACUUM

How much time per week does your company deal with spam-related issues? Post comments below.