The City of Aspen and the Aspen Chamber Resort Association want YOUR marketing ideas for stimulating Aspen’s economy through special events and “outside of the box” approaches. And they’ve put aside $200,000 to make the winning idea happen.

“A lot of people have some good ideas out there about how to attract visitors to Aspen, fill empty storefronts or raise Aspen’s profile as a destination,” said City Manager Steve Barwick. “We’re hoping to create a way for those ideas to be harvested and vetted, with the best ones implemented.”

You have until Nov. 6 to pitch your idea.

All the submissions will then go to a committee of City, ACRA and Commercial Core and Lodging Commission officials for review. The best ideas then will be presented to Aspen City Council for possible implementation and perhaps funding as well.

“In a way this is a ‘request for proposals’ for ideas,” Barwick said. “But this isn’t a contest with a cash prize, or anything like that. This is Aspen’s citizens pooling their brainpower to come up with some creative ways to help us get through these difficult economic times.”

It’s also a bit of a beauty contest, of course, and a sucking up of free ideas (from everyone but the eventual winner). Still, it’s not compulsory to take part.

One early contender, Qittle, a mobile marketing company, has asked the council for $100,000 to help market its “Live the Dream” contest, in which an individual will be selected to live in Aspen for a year with all expenses paid. In return, that person will work for Qittle hosting a weekly radio/TV show that will air locally and also will be responsible for his or her own blog, where they will share their experience in Aspen and Snowmass with the world.

If that idea sounds somewhat familiar, that’s because it’s “modeled after a similar contest held in Queensland, Australia”, which garnered worldwide attention. [The Bahamas Tourist Office, similarly "inspired by" the Queensland campaign, is running a six-month competition to find aspiring and professional film-makers called The 14 Islands Film Challenge: 14 Islands, 14 Filmmakers, 14 Days, £14000 prize.]

Clearly great minds think alike — or at least copy from the same source material. We advise you to stay well away from the Tourism Queensland “Best Job In The World” concept if you’re pitching an idea for Aspen — too many of your competitors will be spontaneously inventing the same idea. Oh, and a copycat idea won’t “garner worldwide attention” either.

Here are the details of the Tourism Queensland promotion, just so you don’t get confused:

MINING ASPEN FOR IDEAS: THE DETAILS

Here’s what the “Mining Aspen for Ideas” Response Form includes:

Share your thoughts for stimulating Aspen’s economy through special events and outside of the box approaches to business.

How would you …

• Increase visitation?
• Showcase Aspen?
• Help local businesses?

Information you need to provide:

• Explain your idea:
• How will this idea stimulate Aspen’s economy?
• How much funding (if any) would be needed for your idea?
• Of that funding (if any), how much would you be asking the City of Aspen to contribute?
• Other than funds, what else would your idea require? (human capital, etc.)

There aren’t any terms and conditions currently associated with the RFP, so you’d be well advised to stick some copyright notices on your submission to protect your IP if you don’t win.

Read more about the RFP here.

Enter here.

Good luck.

Tags: Aspen, aspen chamber resort association, Bahamas, cash prize, dream contest, empty storefronts, Marketing Ideas, mobile marketing, Queensland, request for proposals, tourist office

Reuters is reporting that “Google Inc is partnering with major music labels to launch a new feature to make it easier to discover, sample and buy songs on the search engine”.

The notion, according to the usual suspects “people familiar with the plan”, is that under this new scheme music will be streamed directly onto Google pages.

Of particular concern is the proposal that alongside the songs you’ll find a handy “buy” button, taking you to “a variety of different sites, including Amazon.com and Apple Inc’s iTunes Music Store”. This will, Reuters reports, “help reduce the number of steps fans need to purchase their favorite songs or albums.”

It’ll also potentially reduce the revenues of music resellers other than the favored few in partnership with Google.

We don’t want to be alarmist, but what happens next if this new “buy” feature turns out to be highly profitable for Google and its preferred partners?

Will we see a hazardous new direction for Google, where the corporate titan turns its search pages into ecommerce BUY NOW displays, in direct competition with advertisers and with anyone else who allows/encourages Google to index their site?

It’s not difficult to imagine a scenario where a search on Google (the sherlock of choice for most of us) for, say, “PlayStation 4″ delivers a prominently displayed “Buy” button in conjunction with Wal-Mart or Best Buys, leaving other consumer electronics outlets competing for the crumbs on pages 2 through infinity.

We’ve already heard, via the Frankfurt Book Fair, that Google is gearing up to launch its own online bookstore, “Editions”. Once that facility is up and running, Google’s shareholders would have every reason to expect that any book title available for sale via Editions would be prominently displayed (perhaps with that dreaded “Buy” button) in response to relevant Google searches. That’s hardly going to endear the Googleplex to Amazon, Barnes & Noble or about a trillion other booksellers around the world.

We could even see a whole new tier of Google advertisers/partners emerge — those who are willing to bid for access to the Buy button for their choice of keywords. It would certainly make a rich new revenue stream for Google (whilst somewhat devaluing AdWords as an advertising currency).

We are heartened by the Google corporate mantra, “do no evil”. But we also remember the words of Google co-founder Larry Page: “The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.”

That could mean giving a big fat BUY button to those consumers who can articulate exactly what they want (by brand name, rank and serial number).

Should we be afraid?

Tags: amazon, frankfurt book fair, google inc, google pages, itunes, music labels, music resellers, online bookstore, reuters reports, the buy button

We’ve just come from Google Trends, in awe of the might of Oprah.

Check out this graph.

Cookie Johnson Jeans came from nowhere to hit the Number 1 Trending search term thanks to Ms Winfrey (CJ Jeans is currently in the #2 slot).

Why? Because on her show today, Oprah said Cookie Johnson Jeans are the best jeans for women with “real booties”.

Forbes Magazine ranked Oprah as the world’s most powerful celebrity in both 2007 and 2008, but prematurely (in our view) handed over the crown to Angelina Jolie in 2009. Forgive us, we respect Ms Jolie mightily, but Oprah has her own daily platform from which to influence her followers.

Little wonder that so many try so hard to get themselves on Oprah’s show (consider this our pitch!)

Tags: angelina jolie, celebrity, CJ Jeans, Cookie Johnson Jeans, forbes magazine, google trends, ms winfrey, Oprah

House parties have been around for a l-o-n-g time.  And obviously they’ve worked. Without them, Tupperware would be just another piece of plastic in the bargain bins.

But, like any marketing tool, you’ve got to ensure that the medium matches the message.

Selling lingerie via house party works because:

• it seems slightly naughty (and intimate), so it’s appropriate for the private, at home setting
• it’s got the ‘giggle’ fun factor, so you don’t feel like you’re just selling out your friends
• it’s a female thing, which again works with the home setting

Now along comes Microsoft, with its own take on the house party idea. Here’s how it was described in the marketing trade media:

Microsoft this month is spreading word of the release of Window’s 7 during several thousand parties hosted across the globe by employees and everyday people in their own homes. Each host receives a special Signature Edition of Windows 7 Ultimate to keep, as well as a party pack of supplies for guests.

Engadget, however, offered up a slightly different perspective:

So by now you all know about Microsoft’s painful, cringe-inducing Windows 7 party idea.

The tech blog went on:

What you might not have known is that Redmond also put together a ‘Hosting Your Party’ instructional video that blends all the worst parts of infomercials and cooking programs into one giant melange of awkward acting. Well, Cabel Sasser — founder of Mac software maker Panic Inc — has remixed said video, and the result is nothing short of a triumph.

Here’s the remix, for your viewing inspiration:

House party to gush over your new operating system? I don’t think so, Tim.

Tags: cringe, house parties, house party, infomercials, marketing tool, Microsoft, new operating system, party idea, tupperware, What were they thinking, Windows 7

Oh dear. They’re serious.

From the Press Release issued on behalf of Jacques Hagopian, Brand Manager for Charmin Toilet Paper:

America’s favorite toilet paper launches $10,000 national job search to find 5 people who really “enjoy the go”.

Charmin is looking for five outgoing and enthusiastic people to work this holiday season in New York City’s Times Square Charmin restrooms.

But wait — it gets worse:

“The five chosen Charmin Ambassadors will interact with hundreds of thousands of restroom guests while getting paid to revel in their own ‘love of the loo’. This isn’t your ordinary 9 to 5 job, and Charmin only asks that candidates should enjoy going to the bathroom so much, they never want to leave.”

The 20 clean, deluxe, A-D-A compliant, family-friendly and fully-staffed restrooms are just like those you’d find at home [yeah, right] and offer an interactive Charmin experience with additional luxuries like stroller parking; baby changing stations; seating and a family photo area.

There’s even a website:

http://www.enjoythego.com

Tags: charmin restrooms, Danger Will Robinson Danger, going to the bathroom, Marketing Ideas, national job search, toilet paper

Universal McCann’s annual social media tracker Wave has mapped key changes in consumer uptake and usage of social media platforms for the past four years. Wave 4, released recently, reveals dramatic changes in the way that consumers are using the internet to create and share their thoughts, pictures and videos.

The Universal McCann (UM) research study reveals that globally social networks are becoming the dominant platform for content creation and content sharing.

After four surveys of active internet users—those who use the internet every day or every other day—showing impressive growth for all types of social media, consumers are starting to focus their digital life around the likes of Facebook, MySpace and Orkut.

It’s not that consumers are cutting back on blogging or sharing images it’s just that they are increasingly opting to do it via their social network page rather than the likes of Flickr and Blogger.

76% of social network users, for example, upload photos, up from 45% in Wave 3, and 33% upload videos compared to 16.9% last time around.

The heavy and varied usage of social networks has proven that these sites are no fad. Not only have 96% of social networkers visited a friends’ social network page but nearly two-thirds of all active internet users have spent time managing their own profile.

Another key change to note has been the expansion of video usage, with significant increases both in the number of social networkers and bloggers uploading video but also in terms of the number of the active internet users watching audio-visual content.

Key statistics from the report:

• The total estimated global active internet audience is now 625 million people
• Mobile internet usage has now reached nearly a fifth of all active internet users. Seventeen percent now access internet on the move as well as at home, work or college
• Widgets continue to thrive with 34% of social network users installing them for their own use and 24% installing them to impress visitors to their profile page

Glen Parker, Research Director at UM EMEA, comments that “Social media is a very fast-evolving landscape and one that’s taking an increasingly important role in consumers’ digital lives. Brands that want to engage with consumers in these spaces need to understand how and where and why they are using the many different platforms that enable content creation and sharing.”

It’s All Going Social
UM concludes that every element of digital media is becoming socialised, providing marketers with new ways to engage a target audience like never before.

Wave 4 shows that social consumption of digital content is either already highly penetrated among active internet users or still growing rapidly. It also sheds new light on consumer motivations for social media behaviour. Through the research UM have observed that the desire to belong to something is as motivating as the desire to communicate and express one’s self.

UM believes that the engagement opportunities of social media are deeper than those of traditional mass media and that the power of social amplification is also much stronger.

The UM 10-step programme for successful social media marketing:

1. Listen to/observe what the target audience is doing in social media
2. Create a “social object” that is relevant to the brand and of genuine interest
3. Segment the target into tribes. Give them something they can join.
4. Allow them to engage via their preferred platform of choice—create multiple interfaces to your community
5. Make the experience better when shared
6. Optimise your content for sharing—particularly via newsfeeds and Twitter
7. Use paid-for media to get the ball rolling
8. Take advantage of extreme targeting offered by social networks
9. Make sure you have the resources to manage your community management and refresh the content.
10. Track the results and optimise where necessary

About Wave 4
UM questioned 22,729 active internet users in 38 countries between November 2008 and March 2009 for Wave 4.

Download the study here.

Tags: flickr, key statistics, mobile internet, online video, social networks, Universal McCann, video usage, widgets

Those green shoots that some optimistic observers were reporting?

Seems they weren’t the tips of Christmas trees.

If you were hoping for festive largesse from your friends, co-workers or customers, sorry, not this holiday season. And if you’re in the gift-selling business, times are still going to be tight.

The latest Holiday Forecast Consumer Behavior Report from PriceGrabber.com finds that this holiday season consumers will NOT be buying Christmas goodies for:

• Acquaintances, 57%
• Co-workers, 53%
• Service providers (eg parking attendant, housekeeper), 44%
• Extended family (sorry auntie), 42%
• Friends, 31%

Other Holiday Trends from the PriceGrabber.com survey of 2,018 online consumers, conducted from Sept. 24, 2009 to Oct. 12, 2009:

• Consumers are using more money-saving techniques
  More than ever, comparison shopping is on the forefront of consumers’ minds, with 70 percent of consumers doing more research and comparison shopping online, compared with 38 percent last year. And fifty percent of consumers are planning to shop at discount or outlet stores this year, while only 43 percent did so last year.
• Consumers are cutting back
  Fifty-three percent of consumers are planning to spend less than they did last year. Of the consumers who are planning to spend less this year, 48 percent reveal that one of the reasons that they are spending less is due to an increase in prices (necessities, gas, etc.), 45 percent cite lack of confidence in the economy, and 38 percent indicate making less money as a reason for spending less.
• Shopping starts earlier to ease the impact of holiday spending
  In past years, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) has been the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. This year, consumers are planning to start their holiday shopping long before Black Friday, with 22 percent of consumers starting their holiday shopping in October and 29 percent starting in November.
• Gift lists are trimmed down to manage budgets
  When it comes to holiday spending this year, 36 percent of consumers expect to spend between $100 and $499, 28 percent plan to spend $500 to $999, and 30 percent anticipate a holiday spend of $1,000 or more.

More on Green Shoots and Holiday Trends in our November newsletter.

Tags: Christmas, Christmas 2009, comparison shopping, consumer behavior, forecast, gifts, holiday spending, holidays, lack of confidence

Eating In,we’ve been told,is the new Eating Out. Something to do with saving money in the current economic climate. We’ve gotten the impression that Americans have spent the past year simmering more home-cooked meals to fortify themselves against the hard times.

Alas, hard-hearted researchers have poured icy cold water on that romanticised notion. In a very useful article in AdWeek, Harry Balzer, The NPD Group’s vice president and chief industry analyst, observes that:

Americans have been microwaving their way through the recession. Use of the actual stove — i.e., the kitchen instrument that cooks food as opposed to merely thawing it out and warming it up — has fallen to new lows. “Americans are eating in their homes,” he says, “but they’re microwaving, not cooking.” He adds that the increase in microwaving “was entirely in frozen foods” and not in any use that would qualify for the term “cooking.” Microwaving had been flat for the previous 20 years, but it surged last year as the recession prompted consumers to shift from takeout foods to less-expensive microwaveable products — say, frozen pizza rather than pizzeria pizza.

If you were considering developing new products such as baking ingredients, to take advantage of the perceived move back to warm and fuzzy traditional home values, forget it. If it can be reheated, it’s a contender. Otherwise not.

The AdWeek article also notes that:

If Americans were looking to food for comfort in the past year, it was more likely to be in the form of a snack and a beer than a slow-cooked pot roast. A recent Mintel report pointed to potato chips as a category that has performed well in the past year after having been flat earlier in the decade. Mintel senior analyst Bill Patterson notes some other categories that have fared well during the economic downturn. “Comfort-type foods that have benefited include pancake mixes, eggs, butter/margarine, salty snacks, beer, cream and creamers and sweet spreads,” he says.

Health is out of favor as well

As The NPD Group puts it, healthier eating has been “one of the big casualties” of the recession. Price is an obvious factor, since, as Balzer notes, healthier foods tend to be more expensive. In any case, consumers’ oft-proclaimed intention to pursue a healthier diet could be fragile. “I think they want to eat healthier, but they don’t,” he says, adding an allusion to an Eddie Vedder lyric that says we “change by not changing.” And consumers sometimes make do with a pinched sense of what constitutes healthy eating. “We eat healthier versions of a food we shouldn’t be eating at all,” says Balzer. And even that limited step fell victim to the recession, as supermarket shoppers focused more intently on price.

On a brighter note, market researchers Synovate have found that new products are still important in the food business. “Brands need to stress innovation. With many consumers thinking about price/value, marketers have to create impactful innovation more than ever.” That dovetails with Balzer’s observation that the downturn has not squelched consumers’ interest in innovation in supermarket goods. “I don’t think the recession has stopped us from wanting new and novel things,” says Balzer, even if the bad economy has led marketers to cut back on new-product launches.

Worth reading the full article at AdWeek.

Tags: adweek, developing new products, economic climate, economic downturn, home values, mintel report, npd group, saving money

Today’s smart marketing idea in a nutshell: if you operate an ecommerce store, whether pureplay online or  clicks and mortar  (i.e. both online and offline channels), offer layaway. Enable consumers to find their desired purchases online, put the products on hold and then pay them off over time.

Source of the inspiration? Kmart, who have just launched an online center where customers can find, hold and make installment payments for the items they want to pick up in-store and give this holiday. Chief Marketer’s Big Fat Marketing Blog has the story, including the news that (according to Kmart) web users searched on the term “layaway” twice as much this past August as they did in the same month in 2008. Clearly the green shoots in the economy need a bit more watering before they’re quite ready for harvesting.

This year more consumers than ever are expected to be grappling with paying down credit-card debt or facing sharp cutbacks in their credit limits. So ideas that enable consumers to pay for holiday gifts in advance — such as layaway, or like the Christmas savings clubs that Sears and Kmart rolled out in August — may have even greater appeal in cash-strapped 2009.

Your online layaway offering need not be as complicated as Kmart’s — because the retail giant offers a “pick up from a designated store” facility, Kmart has to ensure that stock is available at individual store level when the consumer orders, so that the product can be physically removed from the shelves and placed in storage until the final payment is received.

Here’s how the Kmart scheme operates, according to Big Fat Marketing Blog [the parenthetical  insights are ours]:

The online layaway feature lets customers locate a store participating in the program by entering their ZIP code at www.kmart.com.

• [Our View: if you operate multiple offline stores and offer local pick-up or delivery, the zip code is a handy indexing tool. If you only operate in the online space, however, the zip code lookup can serve another purpose, enabling you to determine the distance goods will need to be shipped from you to your customer, and therefore the final deadline for payment to ensure delivery in time for the festive season.]

Kmart customers can also look for a special layaway icon against selected products in online commerce and indicate at checkout that they want to put those items on layaway at their local participating Kmart store. The icon indicator is needed because items have to be physically available in the store at the time of the order to be held on layaway.

• [Our View: if you're offering products on layaway and taking customer monies on that basis, you'll similarly need to flag items currently in stock -- and keep them in storage for the customer.]

Customers pay a $5 initiation fee to start a layaway contract and must pay either $15 or 20% of the total purchase price of the items they want to place on layaway at the start of the contract. They then make four payments of 20% of the total purchase of the merchandise over the eight-week hold period.

• [Our View: you'll also need to offer a predetermined payment schedule, although if you're an online-only operator you'll probably want to automate that process through regular credit card deductions, to minimise transaction costs.]

Once installment payments are complete, the customers who opened the layaway accounts can pick up the merchandise, but only at the store contracted with. They must pick up merchandise within 25 days of making the last payment. If they miss a biweekly payment by seven days, Kmart can return the items laid away into stock.

• [Our View: you should probably be a little less blunt about your terms and conditions, but you'll need to have boilerplate legal agreements on your site spelling out similar issues. Just remember you're not Kmart and be appropriately gentle with your customers.]

Online, customers can use their checkout receipt number to sign into the payment center and make their layaway payments with a credit card, debit card, Kmart gift card or Kmart cash card. Shoppers can also make their biweekly payments in the store in which the layaway order is being held. E-mail alerts will remind shoppers of payment due dates.

• [Our View: large organisations such as Kmart inevitably require stringent processes to handle these sorts of multi-channel, multi-encounter transactions. For mom and pop online-only operations, the process can be far simpler: install shopping cart software that enables payment in installments. That solution can be as simple as using PayPal's subscription plans or choosing an ecommerce program that offers an installment facility (we conducted a quick Google and found a number of shopping carts with installment options, such as this one).]

Whatever option you choose, now would be a good time to start. Only [mumble] shopping days left!

This is another of our “101 Marketing Ideas Worth Stealing”, from the ebook STOLEN MARKETING IDEAS, available in limited release from December 1-20, but only to subscribers to our Marketing Rag newsletter.