If you want to check out our session, we’re speaking at 11:30am in room 1a08! Would love to see you there!

The Census, in my opinion, is the best way for the Government to gather the information that it requires to meet my needs as a tax paying citizen of our great country. It’s like market research for the services that are delivered to me.

This year, with the elimination of the Long Form Census, I expected that the short form census would contain a slightly more thorough examination of Canadian demography. This was not the case.  The government now knows that I’m not a farmer, that I live alone, that I speak french and that I’m 26.

A quick Google of “26 year old french man not a farmer” reveals that I might as well be a camel. The other results are just as concerning. I guess being a camel has its advantages. I can carry my own water in my humps so that when the government cuts essential services that I use, I won’t die of thirst.

Now, that leaves us with the National Household Survey, a voluntary survey that is by invitation only, but that people don’t have to fill out.  This means that Canadians will not be statistically represented, meaning that my point of view is not respected.

What if no non-farmer, French-Canadian males of the age of 26 answer the survey? Or even if a disproportionate number answer it?

The mandatory nature of the long-form census ensured that people were represented in a manner that was demographically representative, but the new voluntary model doesn’t ensure this.

Where previously, we were able to say that “18% of Canadians have made love in a canoe”, we can now only say “18% of survey respondents have made love in a canoe.”

But then again, I guess, ultimately, a government who does not want to serve its citizens does not need to know about them.

I thought to myself, as is the case with so many friends, “I really must get together with Emily more often!”.  I realized that she had given me the best gift a friend could ever give. Pickles! Everytime I reach for a pickle, I’ll think of Emily. The pickles will last a while, because pickles aren’t an everyday kind of food, but as long as they last, I’ll be reminded of my friend every time I open the fridge. It will be a warm feeling, because it’s personal.

Marketers, communicators, salespeople, pay attention: Your customers WANT pickles.

The best marketing is not a direct mail piece that gets a 0.8% response rate which is better than the 0.6% response rate you got last month. This is no longer enough. This is tantamount to trying to catapult pickles at your customers from a mile away.

The best marketing is something personal, that comes in a format that touches at multiple points, is created with good intentions, builds on a relationship and feels good inside. Just like my pickles.

If I think of my favourite marketing campaigns , I think about the following:

1. Old Spice

   And the many personal responses that followed. They were personal, they were fresh, they made my stomach tingle when I laughed at them and I saw lots of them, all in the same type of package. All characteristics that they share with the pickle.

2. The Obama Campaign

   With the slogan “Change we can believe in” and “Yes we can!”, the Obama campaign made it seem like it was everyone’s duty to enable change. By giving the everyone the tools to spread the message, the Obama campaign put pickles in everyone’s fridge. It was now the responsibility of every person to spread the message and get involved in the biggest and most engaging eating competition the U.S. had ever seen: eating the republican competition.

3. The “The Wilderness Outside” album launch

The Arcade Fire has perhaps one of the most pickle-perfect album launches of all time. For the launch of their new album “The Wilderness Downtown”, they set out to create a personalized experience that touched your heart at on a very emotional level. The reason that this campaign keeps popping up in my fridge is because it spreads. Eventually, all my friends will ask me if I’ve seen it, which will re-evoke the feelings that I felt when I first went through the experience, keeping this launch campaign top of mind.

So, the next time that you design a marketing campaign, communicate en-masse, or try to make a sale, ask yourself if you’re putting a jar of pickles in your customer’s fridge. Are you personal, tasty, interesting, and will whatever you’re doing remind them at every turn who it is that gave them that great jar of pickles?

When you build a new house, most people want their house to be immune to the perils of nature and society, and such is also the case with Twitter. The average person, I imagine, wants a sustainable following who values them, and who, in turn, they value.

I see no value in new followers who have no followers themselves, are following thousands of people, and have very few tweets to share. What does this say about a person/organization? This says “I want results but don’t know how to achieve them”.  They are building mobile homes. No foundation, no worthwhile content, and certainly no class.

If you can’t afford to take the time to build a solid home, don’t build one at all.

With Facebook making many changes to the way that it manages user data and allows data to be used outside of the Facebook network, it is only natural, and expected that users would have concerns about how their identity, information and privacy was being treated. With change comes resistance, it has oft been said.  I’d like to present my side of the argument for more openess on the internet.

I would like to propose that, over time and with the advent of technology, the average person’s privacy has severely diminished.  I supposed that this has done two very important things to the world. 

1. It has helped fuel an information revolution.  The internet is fueled by information, and all information is, at various levels, of some private nature.  Whether that is information about objects, people, concepts, etc, the information comes from someone and ultimately holds claim to some level of privacy.  In greater and greater degrees, people have let go of some, and in some cases, all of that privacy for the benefit of mankind. 
2. It has created an environment where people should know and understand that nothing that they publish can be private.  There are ways to be private. Internet publishing services are not it.

It is my general feeling that Facebook is following a great path.  I truly feel that openess of information will lead to far greater developments and that open communication and sharing is the key to revolution.  That being said, I strongly believe that users are under-educated as to their responsibilities when it comes to their own privacy. 

Some have proposed an “opt-in” model, however, in so many situations, opt-in fails to generate any results. Take for example the graph below.

For organ donation opt-in, the results are tremendously low. But for opt-out, the results are significantly higher.  Most people follow the status quo.  If this concept is applied to privacy, information openness would never go anywhere if it were not for companies like Facebook pushing the boundaries.

I congratulate Facebook on their forward thinking.  Ensuring that they are leading the trend when it comes to openness of information ensures that they remain the innovative company that they have always been, leading the world to a new information era.

I proceeded to ask the hot dog vendor why his hot dogs were $4,50 when I could buy one across the street for less money, to which he replied “Mine are better.”  Great! I’d be willing to pay a premium price for a premium product.  But I wanted to ensure that I was getting the best value for my money. I asked him why his hot dogs were better, to which he replied “They just are. You can go across the street if you don’t believe me.”  Now, having purchased a hot dog in from this vendor in the past, I knew that his hot dogs were no different than the hot dogs across the street because I’d made the mistake of purchasing a hot dog from him before without asking his price, assuming that he was competitive.

True story. This actually just happened to me, and I thought of a very very good point about how to operate a business.

You can make your customers pay more.

Now, you can go about this in a few different ways.  You can be ignorant to your competitive market and charge what you think is appropriate and think your product is the best. This will work once, it might work twice, and you will make more money on those sales. But as soon as your customer figures out that they can get a comparable product at a cheaper price, they’ll leave you for the competition.

You can ascribe a distinct benefit to your product. Had my first hot dog vendor said “My hot dogs are made locally” or “My hot dogs are organic” or even “My hot dogs have premium condiments”, I would have bought the more expensive product rather than crossing the street.

You can build a relationship with your clients and have them buy into your brand proposition. As soon as I crossed the street, the cheaper hot dog vendor captivated me with the story of her hot dog stand. She’s been there for over 20 years. She’s never raised her price. She even mentioned that she had never seen me and asked if I was new to the neighbourhood. I almost want to go back and buy more hot dogs just to chat her up.

If all else fails, and you just want a quick buck, you can just charge more and hope that your customers don’t figure out that they’ve been duped or you can be better and create longer, sustainable profits.

It looks like Twitter may be allowing multi-user support on corporate accounts as evidenced by Intuit‘s TurboTax account.

Note that under the tweet, it states “1 hour via web by TTaxChels“, one of their employees.  Prior to this point they’ve been using CoTweet and other methods but it would appear that individuals are now able to post under their own name.

New Feature?

These sorts of features could help Twitter move towards a Business friendly business model by adding such extra features for a fee. Other things that would be useful in the realm of business and could be coming soon:

• Long term archiving
• Tweet audit trail
• Assignment of tweets to specific users
• Tweet importance ratings
• Automatic searches and trending on company selected topics

Twitter could create a very effective and desirable revenue stream with these types of features.

Update (10:17pm EST February 24th)

It would seem that while Intuit’s Chelsea can neither confirm nor deny that Twitter has incorporated new features, Twitter is definitely working with large brands to ensure that their corporate Twitter experience is improved.

Presented for our consumption is the following set of statistics.

As per these new statistics on the use of Twitter in the UK released by Nielsen, it appears as thought 7% of all UK twitter users are creating 70% of the content, which Lee equates to a “circle jerk”.  I definitely agree that this statistic is not surprising and that if these 7% of Twitter users were to leave Twitter tomorrow, the service would disintegrate.

That being said, I firmly believe that Twitter is like the government.  For instance, only 3-7% of the population is employed by the government, depending on which statistics you believe, however, they are the decision makers. While they’re influenced by the greater population, they hold the keys to the creation of government content.

I feel like Twitter is much the same, except in a self-governed sort of way. Those who have stepped up to create the content have the opportunity to have their content consumed by everyone else and influence everyone else’s content.  So while the tool may be ephemeral, the impact of the tool is widespread.

We must remember that the medium of many-to-many media is still new in terms of it’s impact on communication evolution, and that Twitter but a building block to the overall evolution.  The influencers may move on but the impact will be long lasting to everyone, not just those involved.

I say architects of the future rather than circle jerk.

The friction that can be created when creating change in your environment can range from mild encounters with those who would rather continue on the path of least resistance to serious emotional breakdowns with those involved.

But positive change in your environment is likely critical to your continued success both as a person and for the company you work for. Whether you need to fix something, want to create a competitive advantage, or just need to remain current, the stress that you create, both on yourself and with your colleagues is necessary. That being said, it doesn’t have to be so hard.

Here are 5 tips that have helped me achieve change in my environment:

Provide a Purpose with Passion

When Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and addressed hundreds of thousands of people, he didn’t say “I have a great plan.”  The strongest and most successful leaders of change have empowered people to see their vision, the outcome of their proposed change, and the benefits that stem from it. By providing purpose, people will buy into the change because of the outcome.

Pick your advocates

Just as two heads are better than one, two advocates are better than none. Find those who support your message of change and enable them to spread that message.  The effect can be viral. I’ve had great ideas take off at such a pace that those advocates were crucial in ensuring that the vision of change was managed and didn’t result in disaster. If you can’t find advocates, and no one wants to support your change, see the next point!

Understand the objections

Most of the time, people’s objections are founded in ignorance in the truest sense of the word. People just don’t know what they don’t know. It’s not their fault. Your opportunity is to enlighten them and provide them with the information that is driving your opinion.  I have even, at times, recognized that objections to change that I was implementing were founded in knowledge that I wasn’t equipped with, changing my perspective. Recognizing that objections can be overcome through open dialogue, trust and understanding is critical to the success of change.

Pick a time for change

While I completely disagree with the adage “Don’t fix it if it’s not broken.”, I think it really is important to point out that timing is everything. You can have the most desirable change in the world but if no one supports it, no one is ready for it, and you can’t find an advocate, then it just won’t happen.  No matter how hard you might try, you may not be the catalyst to change. But just because change isn’t now, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Be ready when the time is right.

Start Early

When I was young, my parents and I would go to my aunt and uncle’s house for dinner on a weekly basis.  We would spend 4 hours there and mom would say “We’re leaving.” and I would argue that I hadn’t had enough time to play. My parents very quickly adapted to this. They would give me a departure time when we arrived, tell me an hour before we left that we were leaving in an hour, and then 30 minutes before, and 15, until it came time to leave and I had no objections. I had no objections because I’d been advised of the change early in the process and was kept aware of the change throughout.  The process is much of the same in a business environment. Start early, give people nuggets of your change in very small increments, keep them along for the ride.  80 small incremental changes will go over much better than 1 big change.

Good luck implementing your future changes!

Any other suggestions of things you’ve found to be helpful in supporting change within your environment?

The new flavour, called “Connect”, was developed on Facebook through a contest, endorsed by Canadian celebrity Steve Nash.

I was very excited when Vitamin Water launched a few years ago as I’m a bit of an indie-beverage aficionado.  I love anything that is not made by the big beverage conglomerates. Think craft-brewed root beers and old fashioned Cream Sodas.  Then I disappointingly found out that The Center for Responsible Hydration is, in actual fact, owned by Coca-Cola.  After overcoming my absolute underwhelmedness, and drinking a delicious bottle of Fifty Cent’s namesake beverage “Fifty”, I once again became a huge fan.

Launching in March 2010, the new Connect flavour will be Black Cherry-Lime.  You can read about it further here.