However, while we’re filled with zeal and aspire to take over the world (or at least our little corner of it), we’re also realists and acknowledge that we don’t have buckets of gold waiting to be invested in promising young businesses or fancy degrees from highly touted Universities that say (on paper) we know more on how to ‘institutionally implement best practices to maximize operational efficiency’ or whatever other convoluted jargon corporate squares tend to pontificate about.

What I’m talking about is where the rubber meets the road. The nuts and bolts of the operation. Let’s start thinking outside the box. Soup to nuts. I’m joking.

While we love working with established companies with large marketing budgets (got to pay the bills somehow), we really enjoy working with startups and entrepreneurs to establish an identity, cultivate a brands personality and create the materials necessary to communicate — and sell — their product or service.

Most recently, we’ve had the chance to start from scratch with Spinzit. As serial entrepreneur, our client has successfully created products and launched product companies many times over. But, as he can attest, the process and need for quality materials and clear, concise communications is key to success.

We truly enjoy working with companies like Spinzit — their energy, ideas and willingness to try new things makes what we do all that more fun. And challenging. Plus, we think we’re pretty good at it.  And easy to work with.

So until we can master more catch phrases and feel a part of the conference room circus, we’ll stick with seeking out and working with small businesses and entrepreneurs like Spinzit.

Next up: Board Room Acronyms and how they are making mush of our brains.

In this AdAge artical, Social-media agency SocialCode is the latest firm to try to calculate the value of a Facebook fan as part of a new study. Their verdict: about $10 per “fan,” assuming a constant cost-per-click of $1.

Looking at more than 5 million Facebook ads placed by over 50 clients (spanning verticals, but mostly in consumer packaged goods, auto and finance) from between May and September of this year, the study looked at the cost of acquiring new fans, and what it took to get them to perform a desired action.

Unsurprisingly, it found that fans perform desirable actions such as installing an app, voting in a contest and making a purchase at a much higher rate, and it’s significantly cheaper to prompt them to do so through advertising than it is to prompt non-fans.

Click here to read the rest of this article. It’s worth some time.

Animal House. Footloose. Tremors. A Few Good Men. Apollo 13. And of course, the classic The Air Up There. All outstanding performances driven by the main man, only seven degrees separated from all of us, Kevin Bacon.

What’s that you say? Kevin Bacon has been ham-hocked and is no longer needed. By one degree?  It’s true. You shouldn’t be surprised to know that there’s significantly fewer than six degrees of separation between you and anyone else on the planet. Wild huh.  (Now it makes sense when you run into ‘that guy’ at the mall/bar/grocery store and there’s that uncomfortable pause where you both try and figure where (or if) you know the other person. It all makes sense. Six degrees. Where’s rainman when you need him.

These findings come from a new study by scientists from Facebook and the University of Milan. Before you poo-poo it because it was sponsored by 2011’s version of Big Brother, consider that the cohort for the study was 721 million people. Facebook users, yes, but also a full 10% of the world’s populations. (another awe-inspiring figure as the massive weight the Facebook behemoth carries).

For all you social media naysayers who would argue that “friends” takes on relative meaning since it’s likely that you really know a very small percentage of your Facebook friends, please take one stupendously big step forward and join us in the 21st century. As Cornell computer science professorJon Kleinberg says in the article, “It’s the weak ties that make the world small.”

What a great articulation of how social media is bringing people together. Someday we’ be playing three degrees of Kevin Bacon. The only question is how soon, and how much more you’ll have to imbibe if you’re playing the drinking game version.

Chuck also says he wants to stay ‘small’ — although I think that’s relative.  I’ve watched him manage his company from one manual press and drier in a 1,000 square foot shop to a shop that’s four times that size and includes multiple manual presses, an art department flush with creative whizzes overflowing with ideas, multiple driers and a whopping automatic press that slings ink like no ones business. It’s crazy. And fun.

With all of the talking heads spewing this and that about the economy, taxes for the rich/poor not to mention the people occupying ‘things’, I think it’s best to remember the guys like Chuck and the dedicated workers who make Chux one of the reasons small business are an integral part to the fabric (pun intended) of the community. All hail the Chuxsters slinging ink.

Now, for a bit of education pulled directly from the Chux Facebook page, a bit of historical information on t-shirts.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly when the first T-shirt was produced. It’s documented that as early as 1913 the US navy adopted the crew-necked, short-sleeved, white cotton undershirt, to be worn under a jumper to cover sailor’s chest hairs.

In 1913 the t-shirt was definitely still an undergarment. Even then, however the t-shirt was not the undergarment for the average working man. He was still wearing a sleeveless undershirt called a “singlet”, or a single-piece “union suit” almost into the forties. It wasnt until the late thirties that companies such as Hanes, Sears Roebuck, and Fruit of the Loom earnestly started to market the t-shirt.(FOL didnt actually start to knit shirts until 1938.)

It is reported that the T-shirt(and union suit) received a major setback in 1934, when Clark Gable took off his dress shirt to reveal a bare torso in the movie “it happened one night”. Although his costar, Claudette Colbert, was not impressed, American women liked the bare-chest look and men followed Gable’s lead.

A 1937 consumer’s union report lists “cotton undershirts” and “cotton union suits” as separate categories and shows undershirts with names like “Skivvies” and “jimshirts.” They were only 1.5 to 2 ounces back then – a far cry from todays heavy weight t-shirt that can weigh as much as 8 ounces. By 1940, the Consumer’s Union Report had dropped the “cotton union suit” category.

**And by 1941, apparently the interest in reporting on the expansion of t-shirts dwindled. But don’t let that dissuade you from contacting Chux and getting some custom apparel made for you.**

What are QR codes?

They’re the little black and white digitized squares you see now and then on print ads, banners, bus stops, etc. QR codes consist of black modules arranged in square patterns on a white background. “QR” stands for quick response: the contents can be decoded at high speed. QR codes have been around since 1994, but have until now been used mostly for industrial applications. Their usefulness in marketing is starting to be explored – especially since the dawn of the ‘smart phone’.

Why are QR codes valuable for marketing communications?
The marketing potential of QR codes lies in the fact that they are open source, free to generate and have a hyperlinking capability. You can generate and print your own QR codes for free, for others to scan, by visiting one of several sites that generate QR codes. QR codes can connect a person equipped with a camera phone and the right reader software to not just text or contact information, but also to email, IM, SMS, a web site, or a wireless phone number.

How much information do they hold?
QR codes can include up to 7,100 characters of numeric code, 4,300 alphanumeric characters, or 3,000 binary (8 bits) units. (That’s an homage to our geeky developerChad).

How easy is it to create a QR code?
Very easy. Search QR Code Generator and you’ll have too many choices …

How are QR codes used in marketing?
You can now see them on billboards, in-store displays, business cards, event ticketing and tracking, trade-show and conference management, print ads, contests, direct marketing campaigns, coupons, restaurant menus, sides of trucks, point-of-sale receipts, products tags and packaging, and more and more. Whew. I’m out of breath. Okay, finger cramping. But you get the idea.

So … now you know everything you’ll ever need to know. About QR codes. Maybe. I think next time — when the finger cramping subsides — I’ll prattle about reasons you should be using QR codes in your marketing.  Now I need a banana. 

So I just got an RFP from a local company. 32 pages…of crap…of stuff that has nothing to do with marketing their services or their vision for their new online presence. What makes it worse is that the first group to look at the RFP at that place won’t be marketing folks. It will be some subgroup of folks that have to weed through hundreds and hundreds of pages. And when it’s all said and done, when 3 weeks of non-billable work is done, we will never know why we were not chosen. Whatever the reason, what in the hell does this have to do with great marketing? Nothing.

In fact, if our company focused on RFPs and this sort of business, we would wind up being a very boring place that did boring work because all the people here would be boring people—who like doing RFPs.

So, this request for proposal will continue to serve its purpose — a coaster for my coffee cup and occasional adult beverage until it becomes too wrinkled with drips, drops and dollops of stuff that it needs to be recycled.

I just had coffee (at freaking 6am — WAY too early for me) with three good friends — and small business owners — at the first of what’s to be a monthly gathering of the minds to discuss the ins and outs of running a small business.  It’s the American dream right? Well, as we all agreed, there are a many more variables to running a successful business that any of us anticipated.  While the conversation ebbed and flowed through a variety of topics, the mainstay was a discussion on what Silver Creek Paddle & Co.has learned over the last year and a half as a retailer (and now distributor) of stand up paddle boards and related G&A. What’s amazed me is that Rob (and his wife DeeDee)

have taken a relative unknown in SUP (at least in the Midwest) and positioned themselves at the forefront of the sport as the thought leader for media, product experts for consumers and now the pipeline for retailers hoping to catch a bit of this fast rising sport.  And they’ve got a plan (hey, a plan! what a novel idea for a business) to expand their distribution and bring SUP to even more people on the water. It’s an awe-inspiring feeling to see the wheels (or is it paddles) of a successful small business churning and moving forward. And to have it be a friend and client makes it all the better. As a small business owner, you learn a lot by just doing things. Right and wrong. But after only two cups of coffee and some good conversation, I’m looking forward to expediting the learning process and discovering some new ideas to run and grow my business.  Even if it is too damn early.

Her website sums up the project as:

“Lake logos have a tendency to be, well, fairly ugly. This project was created to rethink what they could be. One Minnesota Lake. One Logo. Every day. Should only take a little over 27 years to hit ‘em all. Stay tuned and enjoy!”
– Nicole Meyer

Enjoy.

Just in case you’re not already planning your mobile marketing strategy, here are a few reason to start:

Mobile Marketing Facts for 2011

• More than 1 billion of the 4 billion mobile phone users are now using smartphones
• 3 billion are sending SMS messages on a daily basis
• Over 70% of the world’s population now have a mobile phone
• Apple has sold almost 60 million iPhones world-wide since the iPhones initial launch
• Google’s Android OS is growing at 886% year on year and carriers now activate over 160,000 Android devices a day, in more than 40 countries.

Holy crap, what did we do ten years ago?

Mobile devices offer opportunities in mobile advertising that extend far beyond display advertising in applications and websites. It really is time to explore the opportunities and get focused on “mobilizing” (that made me smile; it’s early give me a break) your brand and your marketing in all media through mobile response mechanisms such as, QR codes and mobile coupons.

Get to your niche group fast and reach them wherever they may be. Whether it’s a special offer, event announcement, or brand awareness campaign, targeted mobile marketing will get you in front of the right audience.

“With a single light on top, a black-and-white color scheme, and old fashioned police logos on the sides, the car is a tribute to old time squads only seen in black-and-white photos around the department. It is, however, completely up to snuff compared with all the other squads,” says Police Commander Mike Meehan. “It has a 1940s flavor complete with the most modern technology.”

The retrofitted squad debuted at the Golden Valley Days Parade May 21 and will be seen around Golden Valley for the rest of the year.

I’ve seen it on the road twice now, caused a double-take both times.