A quick observation in education

My daughter in grade 7 came home this past Canadian long weekend with a map project to complete. She did have a text book from school but it was dated 1992.  Now I don't know about you but the world boundaries have changed since 1992, especially in eastern Europe which was part of her homework.

Without asking me for help about the mapping and country names, she asked me to help install Google earth, which provided her with a perfectly useful and updated map for her to use.

I would never have thought of that use for Google earth, but she did...  These Gen Y and younger folks do think differently than we do, we can learn from them if we just watch and learn.

Thanks for listening....

Today makes me think of . . . .

My Wife's Grandmother who was a spirited lady who shared this little ditty at 85 years old. At 85 she used to go to the local seniors club to help the "old folks" with cards and games. She lived to a ripe old age of 98 and almost made 99.

Her ditty that she shared re when to plan a family that I am reminded of this morning;

" When the waether is hot and sticky, now is not the time for dunking dicky;
When the frost is on the pumpkin, now is the time for dicky dunking"

Thanks for listening . . .

United Breaks Guitars - Understanding Social Customer Service

I have been on this quest to understand Social Marketing and Business and how the two meet.

I had a slight epiphany tonight while re watching the Dave Carroll video, "United Breaks Guitars".

While we know that Dave was approached after the fact by United to try and make amends, what caught me of guard tonight is the video I found by Bob Taylor of Talyor Guitars. See it here

While the original video has over 5.6 million views the Taylor corporate video has an impressive 180,000+ views. That's a lot of customer contact is what I thought.

Bob does a great job of covering empathy for Dave Carroll, making references to material on their web site, and extending empathy to other guitar players who have suffered similar fate. He makes reference to material they have on their site from TSA about carrying guiatrs on planes and suggests to avoid problems travellers should print and carry these rules to educate airline employee's. He closes with a subtitle but strong message about a new service that Taylor Guitars now offers to repair not only their guitars, but other manufactures guitars.

It hit me, Wow what a great way to play off the idea that your product is in the news and when it gets viral like Dave Carroll's video that you leverage that to reach out to new and potential clients the way Taylor Guitars has.

I think it is a brilliant use of Video for a corporation and demonstrates how to reach out in a social media way.

Thanks for listening...

Chapter 2 - CIO to Marketing Person

In the first installment in this series I introduced the concept and how I was brought into this evolving role as Marketing Guy. Just for clarity I have not abandoned my role as CIO type, I have added the marketing to it.

I started with 3 major challenges;

• Learn to be open to social networks versus my typical IT thought process that all social is bad, block it.
• Marketing is not always an obvious skill, it goes way beyond know your customer and create the next selling pitch.
• IT and Marketing have nothing in common

The first item was easy for me to overcome as my history in IT has shown that I am typically an open guy to start with and I see more value in looking at technology that isn't obvious in solving business problems. e.g.: Linux in the enterprise over 10 yrs ago, Virtualization in 2003

The second item took me a few months to let my guard down as my instinct was to block and avoid. I started into facebook just to monitor my Son and from there I haven't looked back. In July I was starting to get it so I posted this piece as a response to "Why Twitter users Give Up". I haven't looked back since

The last item was only overcome in the last 2-3 months. It now is very easy for me to see why CIO types should be involved in business development/marketing, although not necessarily leading the charge. They should be at the table contributing to the organizational ability and understanding, I see that as the role I play.

Thanks for listening...