Tag: innovation

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Introducing Marketing Lessons from Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne

Discover the sneaky marketing secrets of a drug-crazed, boozed-up heavy metal rocker (to quickly make your marketing $#$@ edgy online and off-line)

“I thought I was just going out, having a few beers, going home, shitting myself, then wetting the bed. Everyone did that, didn’t they?” – Ozzy Osbourne, “I am Ozzy”

Brutally frank autobiography. Jail time. Attempted murder charge. Stuff up the nose. Killing chickens. Biting a bat’s head off. The pain, the ecstasy and a mountain of money to live on in comfort and security.

The product so outstanding that even if you don’t like Black Sabbath or the solo Ozzy Osbourne, you’ve got to admire the brilliant achievement of the music.

But between the lines of Ozzy Osbourne’s outrageous, painfully honest autobiography you see the push to break through the over-crowded heavy metal market.

The early positioning, the clear understanding of the young adult market and the clever marketing methods and tricks to push concert and album sales.

It all ended up in selling more than 100 million albums both with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist.

Reading through the book, which must set some sort of record for openness and honesty in the autobiography genre, I was struck by all the marketing lessons that you won’t find in MBA courses and books written by the self-proclaimed marketing experts.

I’ve come up with 12 marketing lessons from Ozzy Osbourne. If you decide to subscribe below, you’ll get one lesson a week for 12 weeks.

You won’t find these lessons anywhere else.

I’ve used my marketing experience over many years, some of which was in FMCG, startups and small businesses and, yes, my MBA degree (which covers none of this stuff but at least embeds the principles), to give you what I can honestly say is a fascinating story of marketing.

I wish someone had written something like this for me to read and put to use … already years ago.

Are you ready?

I can assure you it’s not what you’ll expect.

Take the first step and enter your email below to begin.

It’s free.

 

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Don’t treat small businesses this way

Small businesses help employ locals rather than putting people out on the streets
Small businesses help employ locals
rather than putting people out on the streets

We see all these campaigns to promote small businesses, like International Small Business Week, “Small Business Friday” and other conferences and initiatives that put the spotlight on small business. These campaigns are well-meaning but what impact do they make? What good do they do for the small business person down there in the trenches of a small village trying to eke out a living?

Really?

Small business is about every day slogging it out in the trenches, providing friendly customer service and thinking of what better services or products to provide customers. These grandstand platforms make everyone feel good on the day but what good do they do for small business and the other 364 days of the year?

Continue reading “Don’t treat small businesses this way”

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Is passion waiting to find you?

Santiago de Compostella pilgrimage route
Discovering one’s passion on the Santiago de Compostella pilgrimage route of 750 km

A friend who has been trying to find his passion went over to New Zealand and Australia for six months. He travelled in a camper van with his surf board and came back to South Africa with stories: travelling along scary roads up cliffs and in dense trees to surf spots, getting electrocuted leaning against a farmer’s cattle fence and even stumbling on a nudist beach by accident.

Yet after all his amazing adventures, seeing different lifestyles and meeting new people, he hadn’t found his hoped-for passion. You see, after years working in demanding corporate jobs and high-pressure sales promotions, he has taken time to figure out what he really wants to do. Continue reading “Is passion waiting to find you?”

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New Year’s resolutions for your startup

English: Two New Year's Resolutions postcards
Wish New Year’s resolutions were this simple (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

About the most stupid thing I’ve heard about New Year’s resolutions is: my resolution is to not make any New Year’s resolutions.

That resolution usually comes from someone who bumbles along from year to year with a trail of usual problems – overweight, excessive drinking, heavy smoking and unfit, not to mention being an obnoxious loudmouth.

Continue reading “New Year’s resolutions for your startup”

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Pirates of the Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. ...
Pirate publishers printed their own copies of A Christmas Carol stealing potential revenue from Charles Dickens.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Charles Dickens took a trip to Manchester to deliver a speech in support of the Athenaem, which provided adult education for manufacturing workers.

Like most entrepreneurs he was in desperate need to make money. He and his wife were expecting their fifth child. His family needed money. He had a large mortgage on his Devonshire Terrace home. Sales from monthly instalments of “Martin Chuzzlewit” were dismal.

On his trip to Manchester he had thoughts about education being a remedy to crime and poverty. He wanted to “strike a sledge hammer blow” for the poor. Continue reading “Pirates of the Christmas Carol”

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The squid also bite in the morning

English: Phylum: Mollusca - Class: Cephalopoda...
Not bad for an early morning catch. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They were all there on the harbour pier at Kalk Bay in the late afternoon while the sun stood high above the mountains at the back of the bay.

Eddie, Abbat, Richard, Raymond, Desmond, “Ta Boy”, the youngest of us chokka (squid) catchers that would go down to Kalk Bay Harbour in the afternoons after school in the late autumn and winter.

You know the chokka were going to bite when you saw the “cigarette eater”. A man in his late fifties, small, grey-haired with a scowling face, he was a regular chokka fisherman. He kept a Texan plain cigarette in his mouth as he fished … and it would disappear quickly into his mouth when he squid started biting. Then he’d replace it with another. Continue reading “The squid also bite in the morning”

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What a start-up really needs to know about marketing

Original Recipe Chutney

What does an entrepreneur need to know about marketing to win with their new product or service?

Let’s first see what marketing is and what it isn’t for the start-up business.

Marketing is about offering a potential customer a product or service that meets or fulfills a need, want or desire that they already possess. Don’t let statements like marketing “develops a demand for your product or service” mislead you. Demand must already exist in your potential customer, even an unmet need. For a small business to try create demand is simply foolishness. Yes, you can offer potential customers a product and service that satisfies the need that they already have but you really can’t create the need, want or desire in them. You need to channel their demand towards your product or service. Continue reading “What a start-up really needs to know about marketing”

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Are your customers satisfied with your service?

Weevil
Imagine  opening your pack of pasta only to find it covered thick with weevils (Photo credit: John Tann)

The food came late. The meal tasted awful. The unsmiling waiter kept us waiting for the bill. The restaurant manager wasn’t there to listen to our complaints.

This isn’t about customer gripes. We all have our own tales of service woe:

• Deliveries that come a week late.
• Waiting on the call centre line for up to half an hour to speak to accounts for your utility bill and getting cut off and having to call again… and again. Continue reading “Are your customers satisfied with your service?”

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How to get ideas on the run?

Simple idea but the innovation is in the execution
Simple idea but the innovation is in the execution.

Ideas can bring about new products and services, lead to forming a business and solve our pressing problems and challenges.

But where do you find ideas?

How do you come up with ideas, especially if you’re in a hurry and need them like now?

Really, there are mainly three ways:

• You can wait until an idea comes but you could wait until it’s too late.
• You can observe what is going on around you and hope that an idea will suddenly come from nowhere.
• You can approach idea-generation in a structured way using proven techniques that will increase your chances of coming up with a great idea.

Continue reading “How to get ideas on the run?”

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Is a biz-in-the box the right idea?

My home town featured recently in a Virgin Money flier. Always believed Kalk Bay had potential to be a star. Never crashed cars in Kalk Bay but brought boatloads of fish to the quayside for auctioning.

Off-the-shelf business opportunities (biz-ops) are springing up like Kalahari Desert truffles after the rainy season mainly because of the difficult economy.

The many biz-in-a-box options are so ubiquitous that it’s terribly confusing.

Take your pick: floor cleaning, carpet cleaning, custom engraving, website building and hosting, sports nutrition, vending wholesale computers and electronic products and roof repairs.

The list goes on and on…

Whatever you can think of there’s a ready-made business-in a-box with a DVD waiting for you.

But here’s the bottom-line:

Do you really want to buy a business system off the shelf?

Will it hold your interest and passion?

Will it bring in enough money to be more than a sideline business?

Another important question about these ready-made businesses is how well do they really work?

Continue reading “Is a biz-in-the box the right idea?”