http://www.kainoto.com/Free-your-mind.aspx http://www.kainoto.com/images/layout/KainotoRss.jpg http://www.kainoto.com/Free-your-mind.aspx Free your mind Copyright Kainoto.com. All rights reserved. Now this is a new year surprise. On the top of all my FB and whatever "community" accounts I got a new one, for marketing profs. The name is great and the source (Marketing profs) is even greater. So I've joined.2 days are past since I've joined. I've uploaded a photo and set a status. And checked some people status in a few seconds.To be honest, might be just the last things I did for a few months. Why?1. I need to earn money2. My job is more or less consultancy, business projects management3. If I want to do my job properly, I need to focus on content of my job for at least 6 hours per day4. I need to eat (yes, I ain't a robot)5. I want to eat healthy as possible (yes, I want to live with as little time in hospitals as possible)6. I need to manage my company, talk to people7. I need to do some marketing for my company8. From points 4 to 7, I need some more hours per day9. I need my real friends that live in the range of 100 kilometers10. These friends all use mobile phone11. These friends like "real" parties, getting together for real12. So I need to have a few more hours per week for them13. Somehow I have some basic hygienic and exhaustion needs that take me up to 45 minutes per day14. Sometimes (not often, but happens) I need few minutes for myself15. In the end, unfortanetly, my body needs some sleep.So, no matter how much I would love to be an active member of Marketing profs community, I might just be a very inactive member. But wish you love, all. :-)I might just be a very inactive member. But wish you love, all. :-) http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-profs-connecting.aspx Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-profs-connecting.aspx It was one simple day that we were testing different bug-tracking (ticketing) systems Move Close Bug trackerMantis bug trackerOTRSosTicket. And we didn't like any, even tough some are very known and widely used.Why? There's just another password you need to remember and another form you need to get familiar with. And most of all, we don't want to bug our clients Move Close Now this is extremly important - clients really don't like a new login they need to remember and most of all - when there's bug, they're angry! And they just need a simple way to tell you that! And they're used to email. It's the only system that is so kind that they need only to type, attach and click send. with new login system, upload files,...So Dennis mentioned Gmail in a sentence and it started to blow our minds. Why not? Let's start, create an account and send stuff there. Here's how it looks now:What's great about it:you can send whatever idea you have anytime from anywhere (hey, we have mobile mail, don't we?);we are using special email address for stuff to develop; through filters it is automatically labeled "ToDevelop Move Close Hopefully we will have time to get to that label eventually. :-)))";if I want to assign a task to a specific person, I just type ToPerson: anywhere in the message or subject; filter assigns it (labels) to that person Move Close Hopefully it is often that someone else in the team. :-)));yes, you can assign to get an email if something is assigned to you; hey, you can even get SMS!there is a label called "Urgent" if something is on-fire; It is RED. :-)there is a ticket "thread" alway avaliable; if you reply, you have it stored, if the customer replies, it is there;customers are happy Move Close Not really. They're happy only if they get an answer quickly with a resolution on the bug. So don't get lazy!, they just use their email and they're used to it!no "file-upload" system, this is email working;search through bugs is extremly fast Move Close Did I mention this is Google? :-);you can label everything by clients, projects, unreal names, so you have any pre-defined search avaliable;there are great API's out there, so future looks bright;google-wave will most probably make us even more happy. :-)So, what do you feel about it?the best bug tracking (ticketing) system. http://www.kainoto.com/bug-tracker-in-gmail-ticketing-system.aspx Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.kainoto.com/bug-tracker-in-gmail-ticketing-system.aspx As (almost) every day also yesterday our post-box was full of advertising leaflets. Quite some of you probably throug it to the trash bin immediatelly. I always check them (probably professional deformation, after working almost 8 years in F(ast) M(oving) C(onsumer) G(oods) where such features in such leaflets and catalogues are "big topic" and deeply analysed). Well, this time one specially stood out. On the first impression it was just normal leaflet, same as every month. But when I looked more carefully, there was something strange... the text...Did you notice that you may not understand it? Well, it's not Slovene. Unpleasant mistake happened to well-known retail chain. Those catalogue which were found in post-boxes around Maribor, should probably be inviting Italian customer to visit their outlets in Nova Gorica or Koper. And now due to mistake in distibution we are reading catalogue in Italian here in Maribor. Quite unpleasant situation, not to mention potencial risk that some angry receiver of italian catalogue informs inspection (catalogues delivered in Slovenia need to be in Slovene langues). What to do, how to react to minimise damage (and to not cause even more)? Ok, check internally how the mistake happened in order to be able to avoid in future. But what to do in the outside? Stay silent and hope that most of the customer throug the catalogue away without reading it, so they did not even notice the language? Publish the apologie and risk that also those who did not notice it will know? Or simply just send another catalogue, this time in Slovene? Hmmm... What would you do?There is no simple answer, I guess. Every solution has pros and cons. But in any case reaction should be fast. As such mistakes can happen to all of use, it would make sense to prepare ourselves with a scenario "What if it happens to us?". Calmly think about what kind of mistake might happened in our communication to customers and how to solve it. Which are pros and cons of single solution? So which solution is the best? Then we save this scenario in our drawer (or computer disk) and we work on carefully to avoid mistake. And if (in any case) happens to us, we quickly take out our scenario and use carefully prepared solution to minimise damage.what to do if it happens to us http://www.kainoto.com/Free-your-mind/upps-mistake.aspx Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.kainoto.com/Free-your-mind/upps-mistake.aspx Amazing example how we can combine biology, technology, sociology and even marketing to do almost impossible in short time. Take your time, we just might save our planet:to change the world. http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-articles/power-of-interdisciplinarity.aspx Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-articles/power-of-interdisciplinarity.aspx inertia, bad practiceIt took us years. We prepared many "taylor-made" seminars, workshops and lectures, we thought about them, worked over and over again. And we did it - the "Eleventh school of marketing". For all of you, who encouraged us, were excited with us and solved with us interesting problems.We have a daring vision to change routines. Clear the marketing processes and search for opportunities for changes in your organisation. What we usually do in projects, we will now provide you in series of workshops. We tailored them upon your workdays which are always full of tasks. Sometimes they will only last 1 hour, sometimes there will be series of workshops lasting 3 hours. Squeezed to the essence of challenge.Of course there is missing a lot now in the begining. We wish that our school would develop naturally. Based on your ideas, expectations and needs. Do you have a problem with a routine in you organisation? http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-articles/we-will-change-routines.aspx Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-articles/we-will-change-routines.aspx only for persistantWhen I was still a student I heard an interesting comparision about Jack and Hans on a lecture of a Swiss professor (unfortunatelly I forgot his name). Jack is of course American businessman and Hans is German. The key difference between them is that if Jack's business fails, he will try another 20 times to succeed, while Hans will only did it once. After first failure Jack will say: "I know exactly what I did wrong. I will do it better and I will manage it next time.". Hans would probably commit suicide after his first business fails.The comparison is of course totally hypotetic, but shows well the difference in thinking about past failures. Even more important is, as Paul is pointing out nicely (an American, of course), that usually the most successful companies or products are made on the remains of 20 to 30 failures.Paul explains well that changes are not linear, but in form of S curve. And based on this some starting trials will have to fail, while 1 will just be a huge success.Did you know that there were 35 companies who tried to develop virtual worlds before Second Life, but without success?And what does it mean for marketing? Do not copy what competition did well. Copy that they did not manage. Take the failed ideas, think about why they failed and find out if they can be changed so that they become really big success? http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-articles/marketing-opportunities-in-failues.aspx Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-articles/marketing-opportunities-in-failues.aspx marketing, HRM and communications smart thinking http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-articles/archive/Archive.aspx Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT http://www.kainoto.com/marketing-articles/archive/Archive.aspx