July 6, 2010
Best of …
Best of …
Originally published in NZ Marketing March-April 2010, page 7
Books
Every Bastard Says No: the 42 Below story
Justine Troy and Geoff Ross, Random House
I’m a jealous bastard, so re-reading the story of Geoff Ross’ multi-million-dollar vodka success was sick-making. Lucky the book’s so good. Most business yarns are formulaic, but the husband and wife team lay bare the journey, from falling in love at Pakuranga High to flogging vodka in the fanciest bars of Europe.
The book’s littered with genuine insights into the deals and the feelings of the founders as they muddle towards the eventual sale to Bacardi for $138 million. Splashed throughout are cocktail recipes, photos of the PR antics and a post-script by ad-man Daryl Parsons. It’s a great book. Awesome, actually. I’m even more jealous, you bastards.
101 Quick Tips: Effective Communication
Debbie Mayo-Smith, Penguin Books
Effective Communication is number four in the 101 Quick Tips series and, once again, Debbie Mayo-Smith, offers up a host of advice from international writing and business boffins.
The book runs the whole gamut, giving instruction on conversations, sales, writing, emailing, marketing, presenting, PowerPoint, negotiating, media management and telephone use. And while some of the tips might be helpful (send a follow-up note after a meeting or networking event to remind the person who you are and what you do), some of the others are more dubious.
It’s certainly hard to believe that changing standard bullet points in your documents in order to “make a graphical statement that ties in with the message” (for example, a dentist using toothbrushes and a doctor using band-aids) will make you more memorable or persuasive. It would be well-suited to your typical SME owner looking for an edge. Or maybe to those hoping to make an impression in a new workplace.
Web
Contagious magazine.com
Edgy and idea-centric, Contagious claims to offer a total communications resource for the global marketing community, pegging itself as the bible of “non-traditional” marketing. And it does a pretty good job, too, with a collection of marketing news, case studies, competitive monitoring, consumer insights, trend spotting and inspiring creative. As well as the flagship magazine, Contagious also provides a DVD and the online resource offers a range of free and paid for content, both for interested readers and industry folk.
Resources
Ipres
Traditional business presentations are often characterised by slow-moving slide-shows and unreliable software. But Christchurch company Orly Productions hopes to change that with a new, more engaging and user-friendly presentation platform, iPRES.
iPRES is aimed squarely at the sales, marketing, PR, education and training sectors. It’s like the best features of PowerPoint and Interactive DVDs on steroids, allowing users to create tailored, adaptable presentations to showcase products or entire systems using video, text, motion graphics and real-time 3D animation that can demonstrate internal moving parts, display products from any angle and change speeds and move in for close-up views.
Designs, logos and branded elements can be locked down, so everything presented is consistent and ‘on message’, but there’s also room to create text and visual elements on the fly. And it’s all on a portable USB drive. iPRES offers step-by-step staging and drag-and-drop simplicity. Content can be updated automatically to USB via the internet. And it even has built-in security—up to fingerprint encryption—to protect IP.
It’s available under licence from Orly Productions as part of a tailored presentation package. So check out the DVD on the front cover for more information (if it’s missing, contact Orly for your copy).