I got this in my inbox today:
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We set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. With your help we reached 8,002,530 downloads.
You are now part of a World Record and the proud owner of the best version of Firefox yet!
Don’t forget to download your very own certificate for helping set a Guinness World Record.
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Impressive stuff. I wonder if Internet Explorer crowd are quaking in their boots?
During last night’s Heavy Chef Session, Rui Esteves answered one of the questions about marketing his brands by mentioning their early efforts to start a viral video campaign in 2000. After the Session, I was asked by some of the folk who attended to get hold of the videos.
Rui kindly sent them through to me and I’ve posted them to Play.24.com - check these out…
Bear in mind, this is a few years before Borat… way back before YouTube. The voice is Rui’s.
Last night Rui Esteves (left), co-founder of CSG Portugal and Vida e Caffe, presented a Heavy Chef Session on ‘Building a Brand in South Africa‘. It was a great session, one of the best so far, and a huge thanks must go to Rui for sharing his adventures with us.
We loved the new venue. We managed to fit all the extras in comfortably (we had well over 70 people wanting to come). Eventually there were 40 attendants, but there was space for everyone.
We tried a new format for the evening. Everyone took a number upon arriving, then were selected to ask a question when that number was pulled from a hat. In the spirit of Heavy Chef though, we’ll try something different next time. Suggestions are welcome…
Big up to 24.com and to Perdeberg for sponsoring the event. The venue was awesome, and the wine sumptuous (I especially enjoyed the Perdeberg’s award-winning Chenin).
Thanks to all who attended, including the boys fom Yuppiechef.co.za, Nick from Uhuru, the crews from Encyclomedia and BrandSmith, Rob from FuelDesign, Eric from Springleap, Rob and Charl from BWC, Jason Bagley (
finally, in the flesh), Brandon, JP and Thabiet, the guys from BNI, Jade and co. from Wired Communications, Helene from New Media Publishing, John from Capsicum Culinary Studio, Dave from Cape Venture Partners, and, of course, the team from World Wide Creative.
At the end of it, everyone left with a bottle of exquisite beer from Rui’s new venture which looks set to be massive. Chatting to people afterwards, the beer seems to be an instant favourite with those trying it for the first time. Personally, I’m a big fan of the darker labelled Marques, but could easily enjoy the other two (Gabriel pictured here, and Rafael, as drunk by the rat from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*) every other day.
p.s. everyone was asking for the videos that Rui spoke about (Rui explained how he attempted to use viral video waayyyy back in the early days of Vida, circa 2000, using basic Flash and his own voice-over skills). We’ve managed to get the videos from Rui, so we’ll be putting them up shortly.
*Just kidding. Bad joke, really…
Rui Esteves, co-founder of Vida e Caffe and CSG Portugal, is our speaker for the June Heavy Chef Session on the 25th next week. The topic is ‘Building a Brand in South Africa’.
Vida, as most marketers in Africa know, is one of the fastest growing franchises in South Africa. When the first branch opened in Kloof Rd in Cape Town, it raised the bar in terms of coffee appreciation down here in darkest Africa, and alerted people to a new kind of energy and passion in franchising. Rui has recently started a new venture, CSG Portugal, that is continuing the innovative streak. CSG is stretching Rui’s brand building expertise further afield as the new company is currently poised to take the European market by storm.
The Heayv Chef is pleased to continue its partnership with Play.24.com, and this month the venue is at the 24.com offices in Green Point. For our upcountry and international readers, Play.24.com is going to film the event and edit in their own inimitable way (view last month’s ‘Session here).
There are a smattering of seats available, so if you’re keen to chat to a world-class entrepreneur, phone Rowan at the World Wide Creative studio (0861 932226), or email Rowan at rowan [at] heavychef.com to book your seat.
See you next week!
The Heavy Chef Project blog is published in South Africa:
There are many countries like South Africa that are in similar boats, but what amazes me is that we all look to first world countries to provide us with technological inspiration.
So, consider this: There is a country that has basically been at war for 60 years yet look at this (see image below). It’s a list of world class web start-ups that originate from Israel.
If a country with as much turmoil as Israel can make it happen, so can any country. It relies on individuals to believe in themselves and make it work, despite the odds.
This is otherwise known as entrepreneurship.
A lot has been spoken about crowdsourcing, and the influence of crowds on everything from popular culture to politics.
Here’s a site that makes the leap and uses the idea for business: Crowdspring.
Looks like this can be a very profitable website for them.
I recently attended the Wordpress Cape Town Meetup #3 and had a cracking time meeting up with some of Cape Towns most talented Wordpress evangelists and blogging heroes!
The event was very well organised by Nur from Nomad-One and with the help of some sponsors everyone was well fed and clothed :) You can read all about the event and get links to resources from all the speakers on the official WPCPT website.You guys can also see some pics on our Flickr Photostream.
All in all a very exciting event and I will definitely try to get more involved in the future of WPCPT, next on the calendar though is Word Camp SA that will be held on the 23rd August 08.
As many of you know there is a segment of the online “cash cow” dedicated to making money from developing and releasing Premium Themes for WordPress. A Premium Theme is basically a well developed/coded theme that you can use for your WordPress website. So in essence 1xWordPress install (FREE) + 1xPremium Theme = Rocking Website!
I would like to know from our HeavyChef readers, would you ever consider using a premium theme for your website? Something like www.premiumnewstheme.com is a good place to get an idea of a well developed and supported Premium WordPress Theme.
Give us some feedback on your feelings.
This just in: Facebook have released news of the new incarnation of their familiar duotone web layout.
It looks like they’re trying to dumb things down a bit, with less clutter… and therefore sightly less distraction from advertising space.
Better usability is always a good thing. As my Danish forebears say ‘Form Follows Function’, but the jury’s out on this. Personally I like simple layouts.
Click here for pics and more info.
Remember Maverick and Goose in Top Gun? Goose was the wing man to Cruise’s Maverick. This meant that, when they’d go to a bar, Goose would be the fall guy and Maverick would score the chicks. Goose was married, so it was cool by him. He happened to be married to Meg Ryan in the movie, so he was stoked to let Maverick be the gloryboy, because that was back when Meg Ryan was really hot. (Just a little movie trivia for you on a Monday morning).
My question today is: ‘But, what if the chick went for Goose?’
When we design websites at World Wide Creative, usually we work on a couple of ideas on layouts. However, there is always one ‘Maverick’ layout. The one that a little extra effort goes into, and that just has that little extra zing. The other layouts kind of fall by the wayside, and enter the ‘Goose’ (the Wing Man) category.
The Maverick is the one we want the client to go for.
So do we present both options to the client, or just the Maverick?
There are two schools of thought:
1) Wing Man - In order for the client to go for the layout you like, you offer what we call ‘the Wing Man’. This is the Goose of layouts. It’s the poor cousin to the Maverick… and often is the one that was knocked up as a second thought in your creative sessions. No sweat or tears have been spilled over the Wing Man. The idea is that the gloryboy shines when seen in comparison to the Wing Man, and the client invariably goes for the right choice.
2) No Wing Man - The other school says that the client is paying you serious money for your expertise, and you should filter out the ‘wrong’ designs for them.
Most of you I bet are now leaning towards to the second option, right?
That’s fine, and we do too - but the problem is that design is so subjective, that sometimes you can get it wrong. It’s an art, and like any art, you can only rationalise it to a point… and then it’s about whether it goes with the couch. Sometimes, it’s a lot easier to just point out Goose’s flaws in order to make Maverick look better - especially when the client is not a design-oriented person.
So, Wing Man or no Wing Man?
I receive a lot of gumpf about ‘making millions online’ and ‘blog your way to profit’. I’ve met people who’ve told me their world domination ideas, and the pivotal part of their strategy requires blogging. Now, I’ve been blogging for almost on 3 years now, which kind of makes me a veteran in the field - at least here on the tip of the Dark Continent - and I’ve received VERY LITTLE money in return.*
Some notes on making money via blogging:
- VERY FEW people make money through their blogs. I’d say (using the hyper-accurate Heavy Chef Table of Statistical Ananlysis) that 0.00001% of bloggers actually earn a salary from their blood-drenched keyboards.
- Blogging is HARD WORK. Writing is HARD WORK. It is time-consuming, laborious, low-paying and, did I mention, HARD WORK?
- Google AdSense is NOT THE ANSWER. I received another list this morning with ‘Blog Tips’ and nigh top of the pops was ‘Insert AdSense and make money without any work!’ Huh? The last pay-check we received was for a thousand bucks or so - a paltry return for the hours, if you think about it.
- For every one ‘I Can Has Cheezburger‘ example, there are 9 million ‘Hello Worlds’ out there that have failed to pass go.
Yes, we prescribe social media strategy a lot (at World Wide Creative), but the reasons vary. It is not the ‘money for jam’ approach that you’ll see in some quick-fire, written-in-a-month, pseudo-bestsellers out there. Social media works when it is part of a bigger communications strategy.
Here’s my personal top tips for people wanting to be a professional blogger:
1. Don’t bank on it
2. Use a multi-channel approach (i.e. print, website, networking, etc) to get your audience
3. Find a niche and own it
4. Start conversations with a few right people, instead of a lot of wrong people
5. Respect your audience
For some additional reading:
How top bloggers earn their bucks
Bloggers bring in the big bucks (remember: don’t get too excited, this is a tiny group of people!)
*I’ve not yet quite formulated a response to the very valid question: ‘So, why do you keep on doing it, chump?’
I can’t begin to tell you how many people didn’t think this would happen.
Verity, a singer/songwriter came to us 3 years ago. She was up against it. On one side, she had the choice of signing her life away to a record company; on the other she could pack it in and moonlight as a lounge singer. Verity decided to do neither. After some brainstorming, she came up with the idea of selling ‘future albums’. She worked out that she’d need around 2000 album sales to finance a record producer to work magic on her suitcase full of songs, and she figured the best way to do it was via the net. Enter World Wide Creative’s designers, a logo, some posters, a few thousand flyers, a blog, an e-commerce site and a shoestring budget.
3 years later, Verity has recorded the album, with 14 tracks chosen by the people who coughed up the bucks with no guarantee of return. There are currently around 1900 future owners from all over the world, mostly fans who’ve come across her songs and have bought a future copy online.
We’ve just heard the production, done by a world class producer Paul McIver at Toneworks in Jozi, and… well, let’s just say it’s been worth the wait. It’s very, very classy. A great production, very catchy, and very representative of the great talent that Africa has to offer.
Now, we see that the story is picking up momentum. In the past few days, Verity has been featured on SABC Morning Live, The Star and now on IOL (click here to read the IOL article, entitled ‘On her way to stardom, with a little www help’).
Your journey has just begun, Verity.
Last week I was involved in the Nomadic Marketing course at the UCT Graduate School of Business. I always find this course fascinating and learn new stuff every-time I participate, but marketing-based courses always get me thinking about one of the reasons we first set up World Wide Creative.
Prior to my life at World Wide Creative, I was an HR manager with Marks and Spencer in the UK. During a difficult time at the end of the 90’s, it really became apparent that the message being sent to the staff was very different to the message being conveyed to the general public. Marketing departments quite often seem to focus on the external and forget about marketing internally to staff. When we started World Wide Creative, we wanted to remember this and continually find ways in which we could facilitate the process.
With social media technology we now have some fantastic tools at our disposal to help bridge that gap and ensure a consistent message is sent to both the customer and employee, and that both get involved with your brand:
1) What is your team doing? Use Twitter to let your team know all the important moments that are happening in your company.Those things that you might not post on your blog or send out as an email.
2) What is your team saying? Use a blog for your staff intranet. It can incorporate rss feeds for for industry related news, provide communication for social events, as well as a platform for gauging opinion on new ideas or internal policies. For this to work really effectively, you need to find a “champion” within your organisation that will take the blog under their wing and encourage others to get involved.
3) How is your team collaborating? Your Training/Knowledge Library can utilise Wiki technology. Create a collaboration of information rather than old style one-way learning from a video made in the 1970’s. Also get your team to bookmark new resources using Del.icio.us and it becomes a collaborate learning experience.
4) What are you saying to your team? Sending newsletters is not really Web 2.0, but still effective if used in the right way. Make sure you send your company newsletter to your staff as well as your customers. Even better: get your staff to contribute.
So don’t forget your staff! As the guys at Fresh Consulting say:
‘Happy Staff + Happy Customers = Happy Company’
The last couple of weeks I have been mouthing off about WordPress this and WordPress that, and so, it’s time to show you some examples of what can be achieved using this awesome platform. Read More
You were introduced to WordPress in my previous post (Getting to know WordPress - The Basics) as a content management system and bloggin’ tool deluxe. This week I will introduce you to some of the features and show you how to add and manage your content. Read More
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