eu estou sempre soprando bolhas

I remember reading recently, and being somewhat surprised to say the least, about the popularity of long lost east-end bootboy combo - and West Ham United crew - The Cockney Rejects, in Brazil, of all places.

Apparently Stinky Turner and the boys are the toast of Torcidas organizadas, and West Ham tops are de rigeur in the punk rock clubs from Rio De Janeiro to Sau Paulo.

This phenomenon may or may not be connected to a web application called Demand It! from Eventful.

Demand It! users can 'demand' events, (eg concerts by now obscure east-end Oi-sters) and if they enough support can be galvanised, then they can bring these events to their town.

It's a simple VRM-esqe notion, meaning the fans get what they want by pulling together, reducing the risk for concert promoters (who may, or may not even be involved) and meaning that bands outside of the mainstream (whatever that is in 2012) can find their audience, wherever it may be.

Eventful founder, Brian Dear explained to Fred Wilson aka AVC:

'I remember US bands shocked to discover they had throngs of fans in distant places like Finland and Uruguay and Japan, and so they'd go tour there because it turned out their Demand it! numbers in those places were big enough to get gigs that would be profitable.'

Wilson himself remarks at the end of the article:

'With the Facebook IPO on everyone's mind, the topic du jour seems to be valuations, revenues, and profits. But the most impactful thing about social media is not the dollar value of these platforms, it is the people power of them.'

Venha sobre vós ferros.

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insidr

There's an inevitable-ness about this service that is both wonderful in it's inventiveness and yet frightening in as much as 'has-it-really-come-to-this'.

Insidr.

'Rewriting the rules of customer support.'

Connect directly to real people who have worked in big companies and are willing to help when the company can't or won't.

They say “We started INSIDR because we feel helpless when we have to call customer support. We decided to find a better way – that relies on real people and not company politics – to solve the problem.”

Not only that, the potential to lift the lid on customer services practices that we all suspect to be true , yet have no proof, can only be a good thing.

In the office the other day, we discussed the one whereby an customer service person says 'thanks, I'll add a note to your account about that' followed by some typing noises.

Are they really adding a note to my account?

Or just tapping the keyboard?

If indeed they are adding a note, what does it say?

I never get to see the note, anyway.

Does the note say 'annoying douchebag, get rid of him as quickly as possible.'?

What kind of flakey data is being generated about me, that I will never see?

Story via Techcrunch.

And thx to ProjectVRM mailing list.

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trustfabric connect

TrustFabric Connect is a VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) tool. 

This is where we are heading, trust me. 

When this becomes mainstream all bets are off. 

It's a clean slate. It's start all over again time. 

In the world of personal mass media it will be near impossible to reach ‘audiences’ through interruption only. 

In the world of personal mass media I program my media. 

In the world of personal mass media I own and control my own data. 

The funnel is broken, it can never be fixed as customers are more unpredictable than ever before.

Yet customers are demanding more touch points and more interaction. 

But on their own terms. 

What do we do now? 

• Define value from the viewpoint of the customer (sounds simple but it's the hardest bit)

• Identify all the touch points in a buyer journey

• Make value-creation interventions that flow together 

• Let customers pull out their own value 

While much of this will involve digitally enabled touchpoints the focus is not on emerging technologies per se, but on emerging cultural practices.  

(To paraphrase Henry Jenkins)

Exciting, disruptive times we are living through... 

Found via the ProjectVRM mailing list.

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getabl

You ping out a message saying what you want, vendors ping you back with an offer.
It had to happen.

They say...

'GETABL connects you live to your favorite local businesses, at the moment you are looking for something they provide.

You search for your desired product or service and local merchants are notified instantly via text. Merchants can then respond and present their best deal to you. If you like the deal sent, you can simply walk into their place of business and redeem. Its that easy!

GETABL is a patent pending social utility that unlocks real time deal seeking and assistance capabilities for c*nsumers with unprecedented customer acquisition tools for merchants.'

It seems to only work for USA at the moment. We'll be watching this space...

HT Project VRM mailing list.

UPDATE
See also Zaarly,
'It's a little bit eBay and a little bit Craigslist, but it's mobile, real-time, and location-based'

thanks Niko Herzeg

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control your own data?

For a long time now the mantra in certain quarters has been 'everyone is making money off c*nsumer data, except the c*nsumer'.

Allow is attempting to address by acting as a kind of permission broker, protecting customers data, making it scarce, and ergo increasing it's value to the customer his/herself.

Allow users will, in effect, be able trade their data for relevent marketing (Allow will also operate on a profit-share basis with it's users on sale of data) and they will also work on customers behalf to remove their data from UK mass databases they never opted-in to.

One scenario, in simple terms.
If i'm in the market for a new car, Allow would present my data to potential vendors inviting their pitches for a pre-defined period, say a month, then it would be withdrawn again once I've bought something.

Whether this can really scale enough, only time will tell but it's another indicator of the shift towards people taking more control of their data and ultimately benefiting from the use of their data. And that's not going away any time soon.

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next evolution of direct mail?

What if you could apply web style 'spam filtering' to your physical letterbox?

Enter Sendsocial...

I've summarised the decription from springwise.

'Users simply tell SendSocial the Twitter ID or email address of the person they'd like to send a letter or package.

SendSocial then sends a request to the intended recipient to get their approval.

Only if that person agrees to accept the delivery does SendSocial get their address details; it does not, however, share that information with the person on the sending end.

The sender, meanwhile, is then informed that the mailing can proceed.'

Again demonstrating web behaviour transference into the physical world, and the trend towards consumers taking control and protecting of their own data.

Is this the start of an evolution of direct mail?

HT to Litmanlive via Twitter.

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