One example before I tackle our beloved Mugg & Bean, is rhino poaching. Friends of mine were making a big noise on Facebook and telling people to wear black on the 1st of September to raise awareness against rhino poaching. What the hell is the point? Have you met a rhino poacher before? No. Do you all agree we shouldn’t poach an endangered species like rhinos? No. Then stop the awareness only nonsense, find out how to help and go and do that! In this case, donate money to WWF’s Rhino Conservation fund which directly aids in fighting poachers. Make a noise about that, before doing your own little “copy and share this status if you agree rhino poaching is wrong”

Breast Cancer and my gripe with Mugg & Bean

Mugg & Bean, one of my favourite breakfast joints for that matter, is creating awareness for breast cancer by creating the cherry whizz milkshake.

On the back of that flyer, it says “In Support of Breast Cancer – SMS M&B to 38584 to donate R10 to the Breast Health Foundation and Bossom Buddies Support Group”.

How nice of them. (You do know that pretty much 50% of that R10 goes to the network operator, Vodacom, MTN, Cell C etc.)

So here is where I have a big problem with Mugg & Bean. Breast cancer is probably one of the most high profile diseases affecting women today. It’s so big, that an entire month is dedicated to breast cancer awareness! Mugg & Bean have instead doing something about breast cancer by donating money to worthy causes, they have pretty much done a “me 2″ in support of breast cancer awareness.

I was just about to buy that milkshake when I realised they weren’t helping breast cancer at all. They literally profiting off everyone who does support breast cancer! One thing I cannot understand is why they can’t donate R2 of every milkshake to those charities they mention? Hell, they could of increased the price of the milkshake and donated the difference if they are so hard up on donating any of their own profits. I for one would of bought the more expensive milkshake. I’d probably take a guess that the charities would receive more R2 milkshake donations than people sending an SMS to donate R10!

People are lazy. I would buy that milkshake 10 times over if it was donating R2 to breast cancer. Send an SMS? Forget about it.

So Mugg & Bean, and everyone for that matter that tries to raise awareness, next time, put your money where your mouth is first before making a noise about nothing.

(I have confirmed with Mugg & Bean’s Marketing Executive that they are in fact not donating any money to breast cancer charities, but have created the milkshake to draw awareness to this worthy cause)

The US have a huge obesity problem, but since when is its McDonalds fault? Sure they sell the food, but who pays for that processed burger, deep fried chips and fizzy drink? Parents! Kids are taken to McDonalds by their folks who order and pay for the unhealthy food.

So explain to me why McDonalds bows down to the US government when they tell them to make their food healthier? They are a private company creating thousands of jobs. Imagine McDonalds turned around and told the US government they were replacing 90% of their staff force with an assembly line that now automatically makes all their meals?

Start educating parents on how to feed their kids better, get them to exercise more and generally look after their kids heath, rather than changing an ingredient or 2 at McDonalds. By attacking and getting McDonalds to make these tiny changes, they sending out the message that its ok to eat their Happy Meals.

It’s never ok to eat at McDonalds if you are obese!

For one thing, I can vouch for how awesome it is to work for The Foschini Group, so if you think you fit the job specs below, get in touch with me and I’ll put you in contact with the right people.

Digital and Social Media Coordinator

If you have a love for social media and the latest insights and trends in the digital and social media space this is the job for you.

• Manage the relationship with the various external digital suppliers
• Develop campaigns that include social media techniques to generate visibility for our three brands.
• Develop digital and social media strategies to Marketing and Brand Managers
• Coordinate all elements from start to finish – briefing to final invoicing stage
• Ensure project is executed within allocated budget
• Update and maintain websites and mobisites
• Managing and reporting on sites like Facebook, Twitter, MXit as well as managing external consultants
• E-mail and viral marketing initiatives, in conjunction with Marketing and Brand managers.
• Maintain and update customer databases
• Manage the digital newsletters and Information Warehouse request.
• Upload Intranet information updates
• Manage Voucher system (ProVantage)
• Source digital content from our events/activations

• Knowledge of online technology like blogs social networks and other emerging trends
• Comfortable with the use of and ability to learn new digital technologies and media tactics
• A strong interest in working within a diverse and technologically advanced environment
• Excellent communication skills including verbal communications, active listening and excellent written grammar and spelling
• 2-3 Knowledge around digital and social media

Pop me an email and I’ll put you in touch with the HR team at Foschini.

A teaser of the names I jotted down using my FieldNotes booklet

Names

The first thing the 3 of us did was sit down together, drink a beer and jot down a number of keywords that we thought encompassed the direction and type of project we wanted to build. With that, we all went away and had a mini deadline set to each come up with names, phrases, quotes or keywords we could use to create a name for the project. In total we had close to 40 variations between the 3 of us.

I took the 3 lists from Basecamp, shuffled them and put them into 1 long list, which we now had to choose our top 3 favourites. Luckily we all had 1 name in our top 3, so we finally had a name!

Selecting a .com domain

.com domains are always first prize, so when we were batting our heads against the wall trying to find a domain to match our name, we flirted briefly with going the .net route, but every time I wrote down project#.net, it just never did the name any justice. This is where you must not give up. Keep on searching, trying alternative and quirky uses of the name of your project to come up with a .com domain that is available. Add keywords to the name that don’t change the meaning of the project such as project#app.com, thebigproject#.com or project#now.com. This was the route we had to go and came up with a gem of a domain that is catchy and memorable!

My tips on choosing a name and .com domain:

• Jot down keywords/phrases/quotes on paper that come to mind
• Mix and match the keywords and create a list of them
• Choose your top 3, sleep on it and finally choose 1!
• Don’t give up searching for that .com domain as it will take a couple of days and different angles to find one
• Add keywords that don’t change the meaning of the name such as keywordapp, keywordblog, keywordnow, thekeyword etc

By no means is this the definitive way of choosing a name and .com domain, but it worked for us. The more people you have to bounce ideas off the better, but make sure there is 1 person that makes the final decision as all of you may never agree and ultimately never get the project off the ground!

On paper its an easy decision – rather turn away the work and get on with that project. However, when you have money on the table, that decision is not that easy. As small businesses, we constantly chasing the money while the dreams and internal projects get postponed over and over again.

So you can understand now why me taking the best decision is definitely not easy!

Accounting

From the money side of things, I use make use of 2 different web apps. One for invoicing & time management and another for keeping record of my income and expenses.

Harvest is a really simple, yet feature-rich (if you need it) application that manages the creating of invoices and tracking of time. For the most part, I use it to invoice and keep record of invoices. There is a pretty slick Dashboard widget for both PC and Mac for time and project management which I do use from time to time, but mostly I use it for sending invoices and creating statements for clients. There is a free plan, but I pay $12 a month for the Solo account which allows to me to make full use of all the features I need.

Pulse is a basic cash flow management tool for small businesses. I use it to track all income and expenses I incur relating to Beanbag Media. So every few weeks, I go through all my slips I’ve collected, from parking slips to coffee shop receipts to stationery I’ve bought and enter it into Pulse. I’ve also setup recurring expenses for ADSL and other monthly expenses that I know are constant (the $12 I pay for Harvest App as another example). I quickly go through my business bank account to record any income I’ve received and when my accountant knocks on my door to tell me its tax season, I hit the export button and that’s it! Everything is categorised too, so my accountant knows where to assign the different expenses and incomes to. Another $9 a month well spent.

Projects

As a small business, most of the projects I undertake are collaborations with other freelancers or small businesses. For managing all the interactions with them, I use Basecamp by 37Signals. It’s a no brainer in terms of project collaboration as well as a place to keep record and update others on the status of projects and ideas. It’s slightly pricey at $24 a month, but I feel its well worth the expense, considering how it keeps all the projects I am working on in order. You can’t properly manage a project with multiple people in different locations over email.

Beanbag Media’s email, calendar and online docs are run using Google’s apps for your domain, which is free!

So that’s a basic insight into how I run Beanbag Media from a day to day perspective. There are apps online that are free that do the same job as the products I’ve mentioned, I just found these apps to be easy to use as well as well-designed, which most of the free alternatives seem to lack.

In the end, I’ve gone with the above logo for my company. The more I’ve been looking at and using online, the more I’ve grown to like it. The typeface and colours I’ve known for quite sometime, but putting together a logo element to the design was one of the trickiest parts but in the end, I’ve gone with something simple and striking that I can use alongside the type, or standalone.

In the end, I’m extremely happy with the logo and even more impressed with the designer I used. We have gone back and forth numerous times and midway through the design process I wanted to start all over as I changed my mind on what I wanted! His prices were extremely reasonable, even after the number of changes I requested. His strengths lie not only in print work but in web design and I’m just itching to show you those in a couple of weeks! (Email me if you would like to get in touch with him – I’ll put in a good word :) )

Next up are business cards, letterheads and stationery. I’m speaking at 2 conferences in a couple of months, so I need something to give away other than my hand scribbled email address on the back of a serviette. :) The website is however on hold while I’m finishing up a couple of projects that will fill up the portfolio nicely.

So, what do you think of the logo?

My small business, which I soft-launched in January, has no website, no identity (logo is *almost* done!), I’ve done no marketing, nor put together a decent business plan, is absolutely thriving. All these things I just mentioned I will still get to, but as long as I’m picking up new business, increasing turnover monthly with the possibility of hiring within the next 2 months and still keeping all the current clients more than happy, why worry about all of these things right now?

I’m blessed to have not felt the effect of the recession, but I’m putting it down to being in the right industry. Companies, and large ones at that, still have to spend money, and when their current marketing and advertising channels are pretty much unmeasurable (tv, radio and print) going online where EVERYTHING, including ROI is measurable, is definitely the smart move. And I’m sitting here licking my lips with anticipation on what the next few months will bring.