Carman Pirie's Blog

London's Hub comes to Halifax

Jonathan Robinson and I having a pint at the Henry House.

I spent part of yesterday with the girls from the Halifax Hub along with Jonathan Robinson of the London Hub. If the investor lunch yesterday was any indication, I think it will be fascinating to see how Halifax's business community makes use of the Hub. Couple of thoughts:

- Businesses in the Burnside Park can have trouble attracting and retaining young workers... they'd all just rather work downtown. With the Hub, these businesses could buy time for staff to work out of an interesting downtown space (with all the cross-pollinating side benefits). Essentially, save the huge dollars by locating in Burnside, but invest a little wth the Hub to keep that downtown connection. Seems simple enough.

- I think for many businesses, locating project teams off-site at the Hub might be just the thing that is needed to help push their thinking into new places that they wouldn't otherwise get to.

- The Hub will provide some much needed flex space for businesses who are adding people but perhaps aren't quite ready to add permanent space for them.

- Since Halifax is the regional centre of business for Atlantic Canada, a lot of people travel here for business. Many of those meetings are downtown, and the Hub will be a great place to touch down for a while when you're in the city.

On a final note, Jonathan's an interesting guy. The work he's doing in setting up the Hub network across the globe is much needed, to my mind. And, he doesn't lose sight of the need to be economically viable while doing good in the world. There is a thread of abundance in much of the work I'm involved with these days... and the Hub is no exception. It operates from the basis that there is no shortage of great ideas in the world, we just need to host the spaces where they can be cultivated and brought to fruition.

Miss Landmine Angola

Incredible.

The Transparency Trap

Seasilk. 70% silk and 30% Seacell.

The Internet-fueled age we live in demands transparency - I've written about that before here and here.

This time, it's Lululemon's turn. I'm quite sure they've invested a lot into their brand. But, if this report turns out to be true... if their Vitasea fabric line, labeled as 23 percent Seacell seaweed, actually turns out to have no Seacell seaweed at all... well, let's just say that their brand-building expenditure might be all for nothing.

The end of advertising as we know it

Interesting IBM study here. Enjoy.

Mailer and McLuhan

Fascinating, and relevant, discussion.

Hat tip to Russell.

Moving up Seth's permission ladder

So Seth Godin is pitching a new way to take a peak inside his mind: he’s offering up 8 hours of Seth – a speech, an interview, and an extended Q&A session. Four DVDs for $800USD.

I’ll probably buy one.

What’s more interesting is this part of Seth’s post:

If you're interested in buying a set for your company, click here and drop me an email. I won't bill you or even make you promise you'll actually cough up the money. But I will add you to a list and alert you when it's ready, and I'll use your note to guesstimate the interest. I'll keep the email lines open for two weeks and then let everyone who responded know what's up.

If you read Seth much, where do you think he’s going with this? Here’s my initial take:

Through principally his blog along with other initiatives, Seth has built a permission asset. He’s earned the right to talk to us. We not only listen, we look forward to the next post. And we buy his books – instantly putting them on the bestseller lists.

Now he’s asking us, if we’re interested in the DVD set, to drop him a note and let him know. Sounds reasonable. (I emailed and said sure) But Seth doesn’t just see this as potential customers letting him know we’re interested, he sees this as us giving him an increased level of permission. By emailing him, we’re moving to another rung on Seth’s permission ladder.

It’s exactly what he wants us to do. What do we get in return?

My bet is that we get more than an “alert when it’s ready”. Here are some options, we could get one or any number of combinations of the following:

- A pre-release only to those who raised their hand. Say, maybe 2 weeks to a month before everyone else.
- Free shipping. (It really should be built into the $800USD purchase price, but he didn’t say it was)
- An early-bird discount – say 10% off or something.
- A special, interesting, particularly creative case. (Although I have my doubts on this – too Purple Cow-ish)
- An extra mini-DVD of bonus content.
- A bonus podcast. (Just send a special URL with a pass code)
- An advanced copy of his upcoming book Meatball Sundae.
- A special offer for bulk orders of his new book.
- An invitation to a special 1-day seminar open only to those who said yes. (We’d still have to pay a bit and get ourselves to NYC. This might have to be a capacity-limited, first come / first served thing.)

Of these, I like the seminar best.

The bulk order book offer makes a lot of sense to me too. The DVDs are likely to appeal to a corporate audience that will show them to groups (your 10-person marketing dept, for example) or, at least, pass them around. Bulk order pricing might make you more likely to buy copies of his new book (that comes out around the same time as the DVD) for everyone.

Why not do both.

Time will tell, I’m looking forward to the rest of the story.

It isn't twitter's fault

Everybody who's blogging less lately has been blaming twitter - I have no such excuse.

Quite simply, it has just been busy. Some social media consulting with the IWK, we're launching phase 2 of Landlord Lou (more info to come on this soon), along with a number of other client engagements. Adding to that, I hosted a planning session for my fellow partners at Colour too - always a challenging assignment - and I've been cooking up a bit of a new business venture for Colour (definitely more to come on this, I hope). Also, I'm serving on a bit of an advisory board for the halifax hub, a cool project started by three friends: Tracy, Joanne and Sera.

All good stuff. I'll try to post more... thank you for being patient.