119 Years Later

The first known recorded music was created on Thomas Edison's "yellow paraffin cylinder" on June 29, 1888. One hundred nineteen years later, Prince is launching his anticipated new recording in CD format for free to subscribers of a British Magazine.

New methods of distributing information, products, services, ideas -- just about anything you sell or share -- are popping up every day. Are you thinking of new ways to get your product or service into the hands of more customers?

(edison photo from the Smithsonian Institution; Prince from 3121.com)

May the Young and the Restless Take Over

Seth has a great post today about creating a business environment where workers really care. In addition to the fun interactive promotions listed in his article, I add this: If you really want to make the front line care, give them a real incentive. A piece of the pie.

Give the sandwich maker a small commission on every sale, and he will be more concerned about giving the customer a good product, value and experience. He'll want them to come back. The more sandwiches he and his co-workers make, the more money they take home.

This could apply beyond food service to every day retail. How quickly and accurately do you think your cashiers will ring up your customers if they get paid a commission on every product they ring up, even if it is small? An extra $20 to an employee on a busy day will make sure they do what it takes to make every day a busy day.

Remove the tip jars. Add a commission on every sale for the whole staff. Watch your employees become salespeople, customer service reps, teammates and company champions all in one. It used to be that way; perhaps it's time to bring it back.

One thing's for sure... it's going to take a slew of new business leaders to create the environments needed to enable employess to care. May the Young and the Restless future business leaders take over soon.

No One Reads Your Crappy Blog...

So funny, and so true... but you have to keep plugging away. You're writing about your business to help customers and employess better understand your services and products -- not to become the world's most-read blogger. By the way, you can have fun with these funny shirts.

New Music Delivery

There are a lot of ideas about how music will be distributed in the future... but here's one way that's sure to be a hit. Custom USB drives. Pictured above are two options from the White Stripes, selling at $99 for the pair and each containing their new album. Get these down to about $25 each and "record" collections will turn into desktop curios.

Not Even Wired

Wired.com, arguably one of the best publications of the digital age, even screws up from time to time. Look at this ad, created in Flash, that drops down and stays in my window this morning, blocking all the top content. There isn't even a "close" button at the top.

Don't go nuts if your site goes down today, or if you found out an email didn't make it through to a client. Not even Wired gets it right every day.

Update: An apology always helps. http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/06/ads_behaving_ba.html

Mobile Marketing Madness

AdAge reports today that mobile marketing marketers are missing masses.

I was hoping mobile was going nowhere, and will continue to go nowhere, because I do not want to use a mobile device to seek products, services or information. My little Vaio laptop is just perfect, and this is as small as I want a monitor to be.

My guess is that in a few years I'll have an ear-piece (ala Jack Bauer, not those big bluetooth bugs hanging on your ears today), and I'll be able to communicate through my laptop, wirelessly, hands-free and with voice command (which I don't use yet).

We'll see... but there's one thing for sure I'm not going to do... read, write or browse through a phone monitor. Even though the iPhone looks cool... I still think that is too small for a monitor.

I'm the Pusher Man

I have two new projects launching that I hope you check out.

First, an e-book I've been working on for four years. It's only 14 pages. That's right, 14 pages in 4 years. It's about a solution for U.S. taxation, as we all know the current system is terrible. It has a unique marketing plan: let folks read the book for free, and if they like the idea, buy it and pass it on to everyone they know and earn $5 for each sale. It's like an MLM except it's not shady, has a mission instead of a fake product, and very low cost of entry ($10.40).

Please check it out at http://kirklancaster.com/AET

Secondly, an extension of my Working Billboards project: http://KeepTheBeachClean.com/.
Self explanatory. Check it out.

Spread the word.