PostcardPerfect.com/blog

I’m just finished filing for a utility patent. For those not familiar the process, it’s detailed, time consuming, and expensive. And, to top it all off, I hear that the patent office is backed up. I don’t expect to get an answer for a couple years.

Anyway, on a semi-related note, I was restocking our bathroom last night when I noticed something interesting. According to the Charmin Ultra Soft packaging, The toilet paper I was handling was “made under one or more” of a list of 40 US patents. 40!

We’ve come a long way, huh?

So just a warning, if you think you’re thinking about getting into the TP biz, you may want to reconsider. I think Procter & Gamble may have it pretty wrapped up.

PS. Check out this site I just found: Toilet paper: the interactive user experience of the last 1.5 centuries

Tony at Zappos twittered last night about seeing one of those crane games that usually retrieve stuffed animals and candy. This one, however, allowed you to catch live lobsters. According to one sign: You catch ‘em, we cook ‘em, and you eat ‘em.

I love unique product ideas, and I’m pretty impressed by this twist on a tired classic. Apparently it does the job, too. According to Tony:

“Lobster game machine at bar is brilliant. Watched people spend $20 in past hour trying to catch a live lobster. “

A little web research brought me to the the site of Lobster Zone, Inc. The company claims to have over 300 such games placed around the US and has been around for roughly 10 years.

The “press section” of the site has an interesting article written back in ‘98. It says that many of the machines (placed primarily in seafood restaurants at the time) were making over $1000 a week. It also estimated that it took a patron 18 tries with the crane before they mastered it.

The price was only $2 a try back then, and after 10 years -it still hasn’t budged. So there, quit your complaining about inflation.

Here’s a YouTube video of the crane in action: Lobster Game

I canceled our cable a few months ago and, for the most part, have been very happy with the decision. I waste much less time on the couch and don’t really miss it all that much. Of course, when I do want to watch some tube - I can always jump online where, thankfully, many networks have decided to post full episodes of their shows.

This weekend I decided to catch up on some of USA’s programing and headed over to their site to watch the built in video player. USA shows one 30 second commercial at the beginning of each episode, and then another every 10 minutes or so. All in all - nothing new. What was interesting though, was the two types of ads I saw.

Saturday morning I pulled the laptop into bed with me and comfortably caught up on season two of Burn Notice. Almost every ad I saw was for Blackberry, so it’s safe to say I saw 12-15 Blackberry spots over the period of three episodes.

Here’s what I remember:
The spot showed a guy with a soccer ball. When he kicked it, it exploded into lots of different pictures and logos. They all came back together to form a Blackberry. Within the array of images I only remember a Facebook logo and a text message (”c u tonite”). At the end there was a slogan, but I can’t remember what it was. Something about Blackberry being able to handle everything in your life, I think.

Sunday night my wife and I watched one episode of Psych before bed. The structure was the same (4-5 total commercials), but these ads, all for the new Honda Pilot, were interactive. They moved for about 10 seconds, and then allowed us to click around for more info, change the car’s color, etc.

Here’s what I remember:
The Pilot has a backup camera, hill start assistance (so you don’t roll backwards), navigation, seating for 8, and comes in 7-8 colors. It looks coolest in Tuxedo Black and has a gear shifter in the interior that I don’t really like.

See the difference?

Even though I may not (OK, I straight out won’t) be rushing out to buy a Pilot, I learned and remembered much more about it than I did about the Blackberry. Remember, I saw three times the amount of Blackberry commercials too.

The other cool thing (from an advertiser’s point of view) about the Pilot spots is that they weren’t limited to 30 seconds. There was a count down clock and when it hit zero it allowed us to click to resume the show. However, we were free to keep exploring the vehicle for as long as we wanted. In fact, most of the time we’d be playing around and then realize that we could be watching the show if we wanted. Who knows how long we actually spent interacting with Honda.

Well, Honda knows - which is yet another great feature. I’m sure they can see how long people stayed, where they clicked, etc. That type of data is gold to marketers trying to evaluate their efforts.

Anyway, I guess it just reinforces that the opportunities online are much different than those in traditional media. It’s cool to see some companies embrace the technology and take advantage of the interactivity that the net offers. On the same token, it’s kind of puzzling to see the ones that haven’t adapted yet.

PS. Speaking of unique internet marketing ploys - check out nograpesnonuts.com.

Last time I checked, “And helps keep them clean.” didn’t qualify as a sentence.

I got a straight flush during a poker game last week. Needless to say I bet confidently and forced everyone but one player out of the hand. And, for that privilege, I made him put everything he had into the pot to stay in.

It was just a friendly $10 buy-in game, but the pot still swelled to over $40. I could taste the win.

Unfortunatley, when I triumphantly flipped my cards, I found that my 8 of clubs was actually the 8 of spades. Apparently I had looked at it wrong and failed to double check before putting most of my chips into the pot. I lost. Ouch.

Think about how many mistakes could be avoided if everyone double checked their work, their facts, and…well…their cards.

Most fast food places use the back of their receipts to get you to take a survey, but I thought the Quiznos approach was kind of interesting. Observe:

If you visit the website, you get ten changes to win. TEN! Wow!

Of course, if there is only one winner per day, and everyone gets ten chances - then the odds of winning didn’t really change, did they? Very tricky, Quiznos.

But wait, maybe they did. What about the poor suckers that call to do the survey? They only get one entry into the contest. There’s a cost saving measure if I’ve ever seen one. I’m sure the online survey is much cheaper to administer. Again, well played, Quiznos.

I was going to end the post there, but I decided to do some investigative journalism (just for you), so I took both surveys (and not-so-coincidentally got 11 chances to win).

Last time I took an online survey I was very unimpressed. This one didn’t do much better. It was kind of entertaining though. Here are, without further ado, my top 5 questions / screens.

5) Surprise, I didn’t win.

4) Despite asking the date I visited (two weeks ago), they wanted to know if I had purchased specific items “today.” I was tempted to say no across the board, but I decided to cut them some slack.

3) They nailed it. I come to Quiznos for the visual enjoyment…

2) I’m not very health conscience. Do they really have to rub it in three times?

1) And my favorite question: “Why not?” There was nothing proceeding it. I was just instructed to think about my recent visit.

The phone survey was kind of clumsy as well. It took about 6 minutes and “using my touch tone phone,” I had to type in half the info from my receipt before I could start. There were many of the same questions, but it was definitely shorter. My favorite part was in the middle of the survey when they said:

“Tell us why or why not you enjoyed your visit so that we can improve.” Then, with no warning: beep - it was recording.

My answer? “I liked watching my meal being made.”

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No long surveys : subscribe in a reader

PS. The new site is finally up. Go check it out.

It’s been awhile, so I figured I’d put up a quick post.

I’m all but finished with the new site. Well, I would be - if IE and Firefox displayed things the same way. I, not being the most talented web designer around, am having a hard time getting the two browsers to agree. It’s really annoying me. Hopefully I can get it straightened out soon. There’s a backlog of other things I want to do with the company, but most are on hold until I finish the site.

I have a few blog topics to write about once I get some time. So, once this site is live you can expect some more original content. Until then,  here’s two links where I’ve spent time while I should have been working:

Garr Reynold’s Authors@Google video on Presentations (long, but good)

Interesting post from the Freakonomics blog on unofficial police tactics

Postcard.rar - 29.9MB

As I write this, I am downloading the source code for all of PostcardPerfect’s kiosk and back-end applications. It’s kind of a weird feeling. Knowing how much time, effort, and money went into it all - there’s something unsettling about seeing it all wrapped up into a 30MB file. My mind can’t help but put an obscene dollar amount on each megabyte.

Bring 6 cups of water to boil. Add noodles. Stir for 8-10 minutes. Drain. Mix in cheese, 1/4 cup of milk, and 4 tablespoons of butter. Mix well.

I can now make mac and cheese without consulting the instructions. At $1.25 per box, it’s budget helping dinner. Know how many boxes I could buy for one MB of source code? Of course you don’t, but it’s a lot, a whole lot.

Putting business and personal expenses next to each other is intriguing. The mindsets traditionally used to evaluate the two are worlds apart. However, the value of a dollar is the same regardless. It’s an odd phenomenon.

As some of you already know, I guest posted at the very cool (and immensely more popular) IttyBiz.com last week.

Thanks to some prodding from site owner, Naomi, many of the readers headed over to PostcardPerfect.com to see what we’re all about. A few even checked out this blog and subscribed (welcome!). The end result was two days of traffic roughly 10x what I normally get.

That’s good news, right?

Well, yes - but not necessarily for the reason you’d expect. Order volume didn’t mirror the traffic spike. In fact, it wasn’t even close. (Note: I did, however, get a bunch of nice e-mails, including a few future business prospects.)

So here’s why it WAS a good thing: feedback.

The surge of analytical data, e-mails, and comments all gave me a much better picture of people’s first impressions of PostcardPerfect, and (surprise!) it’s not quite what I want it to be.

Essentially all the traffic highlighted a few current shortcomings of my quickly launched website. For example, the navigation needs some serious work. Also, a lot of people missed the point about custom postcards. Too many still see them as something only for vacations and long distance correspondence. (These babies are much, much more…)

I’m working on fixing both issues, but the real point of this post is to endorse a methodology that I once resisted.

It’s OK to launch before perfecting every detail.

I’m not saying it’s smart to jump haphazardly. Careful planning still plays a very important role in success. However, like all things, planning is subject to diminishing returns (little economic term for you). Meaning, the more you do it - the less additional benefit you receive. I’d even say that you can worsen your position by over-planning, but I’m sure that’s debatable.

A quick, imperfect, launch will cost you less time and money upfront perfecting details that customers may later veto. It will help you get to market sooner (maybe much sooner), and it will make you much more willing to accept constructive criticism later on.

Last time I wrote about it, I was admitting a mistake. This time around though, I think I did it right. That said, I’ve got adjustments to make.

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No planning required: subscribe in a reader.

I think it would be fun to send interesting postcards to D-list celebrities. For example, maybe I’ll send one to Jared of me doing the “five dollar foot-long” thing. Maybe I’ll write my congressman. How about reality TV stars? There are plenty of those to keep me busy.

You get the point.

So, here’s the idea: Each week I could pick someone and create a custom postcard for them. Then, I’ll put up an image of my Celebricard™ (not actually trademarked) on the blog for you all to see.

Wait, it gets better.

What if we made it a game, where the goal is to get the D-lister to write me back? Not necessarily snail mail, I’ll take a e-mail or comment too. Anyway, and and let’s say that if he/she does write in - everyone wins a free postcard!

Everyone? Well, how about the people that commented on the post of me showing off the card I was sending? Yeah, that could work…

Any thoughts? Who would you send one too?

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Elevate me to D-list status : subscribe in a reader