2 Percent Creativity - Marketing and Advertising Insights from a Connected Perspective

It's Been A While

I must apologize to those of you who have subscribed to the feed and those who just come for a visit from time to time. I have been away from blogging to concentrate on our new business project and also starting another chapter in this marketer's life. First for the news on the new venture ChirpMill Communications.

We have been very busy over the past year developing the client side of the business and enjoying a return to the world of print and advertising. Several key clients have come back into our world and it has been exciting. In addition, we have been building some web apps that will get their official releases within client web projects in the few months.

In the meantime, I have started on a new journey which includes being back at school part-time working on a Masters degree. Some of you may be thinking, wow, Glenn's getting the good old MBA. Well, as big a fan as I am of this coveted degree, it is actually a Masters in Theology that has my undivided attention. More on that at another time.

For now, too many great posts have passed us by on the world of marketing, the web and all things social. There is much that I have to say on some of the developments in social networking and our world's fascination with brands.

Stay tuned.

Glenn

Introducing ChirpMill: We Get People Talking

As I previously promised in Glenn's Career Update, I would update my 2 Percent blog when the new venture was ready for prime time. Well, the incubation process has taken only a few months and now we are ready to introduce our new venture to all our friends, associates, customers and the online community.

Introducing ChirpMill.

We have been very busy developing our new identity, the corporate website and working with some of our new customers. In addition, we have started development on our first web-based application.

Please be one of our first guests and visit our new ChirpMill.com website and read all about our new ideas. Be sure and check out the ChirpInn Blog and subscribe to the RSS feed. We'll be posting all kinds of regular news about our web app's progress and some good articles on designing websites that provide remarkable customer experiences.

Here's a quick rundown on what we are all about...

First and foremost, our focus will be on developing websites that provide truly remarkable customer experiences. From website tweaks, website redesigns, to developing brand spanking website design, we have a lot of expertise and are dedicated to getting people talking about our customer's websites.

Secondly, as a result of our experience in developing real estate websites over the past 6 years, we have a completely unique service—customer experience website usability evaluations.

We start with an extensive study of your website’s usability, functionality and navigation. Sounds simple until you realize that we perform the evaluation from your customer’s point of view . What does that mean you ask? It means, we look at what your customer wants to do and where they want to go, NOT necessarily what you want them to do and where you want to take them.

Truth is, your customer's needs and requirements are often not the same as yours. When your website strategy is based on forcing the customer down a certain path, the customer experience usually suffers.

Next, our online Portfolio displays a good outline of our recent work in the three key categories that we specialize in: Marketing, Identity & Web Design.

Finally, we developed a new blog entitled ChirpInn for the development of our new web-based application and to pass on our insights on effective website design, customer experience and usability evaluations and much more. Our goal is to turn our focus to helping build remarkable and effective websites for B&B's, Inns, retreats, resorts, camps, adventure and eco-tourism providers. Our web app which is being built with Ruby on Rails, will be an effective tool to help our clients better engage their website customers.

That's it for now. Be sure to visit our website and new blog for more information.

Glenn

Glenn's Career Update

As many of you may know, for the past 6 years I have been involved in a web-based software and services company called Most Home. Our venture began in 2001 with the development of the Most Referred Real Estate Agent brand, websites and lead management system. In the past three years, we took what we learned building Most Referred and applied it to the development of ClientBuilder for Real Estate Brokers. This 6 year experience has been a tremendous opportunity to learn the ins and outs of a very dynamic industry and to apply our marketing and leadership skills to the business venture. I am very proud of what we accomplished and the people I have had the pleasure of working with during this time.

Well, as you can probably conclude from the subject of this post, it is time for me to move on from Most Home. I am very excited about what lies ahead and the new opportunities that are in store for us. A good friend and colleague of mine, Curtis Cottrell (Most Home's former Director of Creative Services) and I, have formed a new consulting business focused on helping businesses with their marketing, advertising and web development needs. In addition to consulting services, we have also begun the development of a new web-based application that we hope to launch later this year.

Stay tuned to 2 Percent Creativity as I will provide updated information about our new venture (new name, website etc.) as it comes available.

Glenn

What's With 2%

There have been many firsts in my personal and business life. I was just 20 years old when I first cracked the spine of David Ogilvy's classic, Confessions of an Advertising Man. Instantly I was aware that I had found someone who understood what my mind had been telling me for some time—that there's nothing truly 'new under the sun', but inspiration and creative genius, potentially, YES!

It was during this period of learning and discovering what the world of advertising was all about, that I heard of a quote that was attributed to Mr. Ogilvy. It went like this, "advertising is 98% plagairism and just 2% creativity." I appreciated this sentiment as it indicated a certain level of humility and at the same time it says, most marketing or advertising is in the 98 percentile, it is the 2 percent that is truly remarkable and therefore worth seeking. This mindset has shaped my approach to marketing for the past 30 years and hence, the name of my blog.

Another, was my first great job as a retail salesman for Bay Bloor Radio in Toronto, Canada. The family who owned this wonderful shop gave me what every young entrepreneurial mind needs—opportunity. Concepts like profit margin and paste-up were terms I regularly dropped at parties to impress upon my friends that I was both a businessman and an ad man. These were heady times.

Many years have passed and retail, wholesale, distribution, radio, desktop publishing, fundraising development, music and the web, have all captured my attention along the way. Two things have remained constant in my 25 plus years in business—a passion to avoid growing up and the belief that Marketing is what makes it all tick.

Today (2005), I act as the President of an exciting technology company that provides real estate agents with web-based lead generation, qualification and management systems. We have been pushing the online envelope for the past 4.75 years and are having a great time doing it.

I am also the father of 3 boys and along with my wife, live in a cosy little neighborhood just 30 miles from Vancouver, Canada, where playing drums in the local Baptist worship band, is part of my weekend enjoyment. Hockey (of course, I AM Canadian), golf, fly fishing, hiking, reading, music, cooking and hospitality, round out this marketing guy.