The HeavyChef Project

You got to love the smart bald guy. Seth Godin has given us another nugget of advice about marketing (read it here).

In a nutshell, he’s saying that the best marketing comes from creating a story that can spread easily. This doesn’t cost a lot of money, it just taxes your creative brain.

If you look at all the best marketing efforts online, it’s not the ones that spent the most money - it’s the ones that came up with the best stories. Web marketing should start with this process, then end with selecting the tools that you want to use.

- Fred

Zahira Kharsany writes for the Mail and Guardian: ‘This year will probably be remembered as a time when blogs came of age, with more than 600 000 internet users visiting blogs by their fellow South Africans in just one month.’

Arthur Goldstuck, head of World Wide Worx, said in this week’s Thought Leader ‘blogs will not only be a mainstream component of most online media in South Africa, but they will also be a dominant component’. He believes that we have reached a tipping point in the South African social media environment.

This is exciting stuff. We at World Wide Creative are currently working on a number of online projects where we’re integrating websites with social media platforms. Some of the things we’re developing include:

• A social media intranet platform for Cape Nature
• A twin launch of a website and a blog for a top Young Designer Emporium brand
• Two business networking blogs for the international networking organisation BNI
• A leisure and accommodation blog to integrate with a hotel website we’re designing

The timing seems to be just right. Roland Stanbridge, a founder of Rhodes University’s New Media Lab, said in the Highway Africa conference on Monday: ‘There has been a total paradigm shift in media in the last 12 years. Mainstream media are certainly taking blogs seriously and using them in news sourcing. There are so many factors changing the media landscape. Primarily, it happens with broadband access. What happens in Europe and America doesn’t take long to get through to Africa. We are at a transitional period where very exciting things are happening with media.‘

- Fred

Youve got your business. Youve got your products. Your customers are clearly defined and you know where they are. You understand your industry. You have a database of around 1000 people contacts, connections, family and friends. Suddenly the idea hits you like a freight train.

E-commerce!

Why didnt I think of it before? I set up a site. I fill it with all my products. And wait. No more stock issues, no more warehousing worries. No more middlemen! Rich! Rich! Ill be rich, I tell you. Mwwaahhaaaahahahahaha!

Alright, so maybe your thought process has not played out exactly like the above. However, Ill wager that if youre anything like the majority of most business people, the thought of setting up an e-commerce website has crossed your mind before.

So is it as easy as it sounds? Heres an example. A client of World Wide Creative’s who manufactured and sold their own products decided to put up a website and open a new store at the same time. The store cost around a million rand to set up. The website around R100, 000. Both sold exactly the same products (although the website had the benefit of stocking all the items that the store ran out of.) The website also cost a fraction of the monthly cost of running the store.

So what happened?

Around a year later the website beat the store about 2 to 1 in terms of sales generated; and the store had to be closed down.

Ok, ok, ok so were biased, and maybe a little short on details, but there was a case for the whole online business argument. At the same time, we also know from working with the guys from Yuppiechef, that e-commerce is not all a bag of roses especially in South Africa.

So without further ado, you are invited to our next Heavy Chef Session. Andrew The Brain Smith and Shane The Maven Dryden will be taking us through all the successes, the pitfalls, the ins and the outs of their journey setting up the Yuppiechef site, arguably the best e-commerce site in South Africa.

Date: Wednesday 26th September 2007
Time: 5pm - 6.30pm
Location: World Wide Creative studio
Price: No charge for World Wide Creative customers, suppliers or BNI members. The normal fee for the Session is R950, payable in advance.

Interested? Drop me an email and book your seat.

In the meantime go to the Yuppiechef website and take your credit card with you!

Look forward to seeing you!