Everyone has been referring to today as Black Friday, the first day that many retailers get into the black all year due to the increased buying for the holiday season. Today was especially critical, given the economic conditions, and for consumers, all the amazing SALES that are happening. But, for a growing trend of companies, today could be named GREEN FRIDAY as retailers, like eROI client, Seven Planet, are trying to educate people on mindful commerce of buying goods that are good for the planet as well as bringing in a little green money to sustain their business model.
Today was the first day of the soft launch of this green general store. eROI designed and produced this dynamic, search-engine-friendly, e-commerce site, so please check out the site (www.sevenplanet.com) and check back in to this blog for a more in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at what went into the thought process for the business model, website strategy, design, and development.
Our team at eROI had a ton of fun updating and redesigning the Travel Oregon Blog. This project took about 2 months to design, produce and make all other necessary updates. After learning about the wants and needs during the initial meeting with the client, the designer, Elliot, and the rest of the team, knew exactly what they wanted to do to this blog. Deciding to go with an overall rustic look and Oregon feel, Elliot incorporated a few things from the previously existing blog to keep the Travel Oregon personality while almost entirely re-inventing the site to really give the blog its own unique look (such things including a date stamp for entries and the borders around the search bar).
Just saw this article on Reuters. If Facebook acquires Twitter, it could be a huge advantage for users of both like me. There are already some great integration points between the two apps. As business users, we just need to start separating out personal contacts from business contacts. Crap – too late for that now. Here’s the article:
“(Reuters) – Social networking companyFacebook recently held acquisition talks with Twitter, the micro-blogging company, the Financial Times said.
The negotiations, put a valuation of as much as $500 million on Twitter, which has become one of Silicon Valley‘s most closely watched start-ups, the paper said.”
Last week was a real rollercoaster. Projects that should have signed off the week before, then Mon, then Tues, then Wed, finally signed off on Thurs and Friday – phew. We’re on a roll now at eROI and this week is going to be all about optimism. We’re going to jam away on all the work we have in the door and create some new opportunities as well. It’s only a 3 day week, but a good 3 days.
Optimism runs deep
Behold, we’re launching a
New site – it’s awesome
Let the haikus flourish like Jack Black in KungFu Panda.
Portland software startup entrepreneur extraordinaire, Craig Barnes, and his bro Eric are rolling out a new company and a new tool for bloggers. It’s called Panels and it is in BETA. Our eROI blog developers tell me that it is implemented in this WordPress blog, so this blog post will be a test. We’ll see if it works. As a reader, please tell me if you are able to see some cool stuff when scrolling over some of the links here.
During this BETA stage of the product, they’ve mapped in content for most publicly-held companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Intel. If you also blog, let me know if you dig this tool on the front-end and I’ll hook you up w/ the guys at Panels so you can start using it – it’s free and no headaches (hopefully – we’ll see if it works when I publish this blog post).
Holy crap – I was exhausted last night – crashed at 8pm. I think it had something to do with the Portland Advertising Federation (PAF) Rosey Awards on Thurs night at the Performing Arts Center. Aside from hearing from other agency owners in town how brutal the economy is, it was clear that everyone has been working way harder than normal and was looking to blow off a lot of steam (translation: a perfect excuse for a night of heavy drinking, loud music, and overly-honest conversations). One of the highlights of the Roseys was the hosts – 3 guys who pushed the envelope in a big way – nicely done! If you watch the second video, you might agree with me.
Our NYC Director, Chris Masagatani, has creating, editing, mixing, and mashing video with a very urban, creative flair. He posted his video to the blog he contributes most to – CrossPixelNYC, however, I couldn’t resist embedding the video in this blog post here. Enjoy!
I regularly give speeches on the importance of blogging. It is one of the core pieces of our grassroots marketing effort, personalizes our brand, engages a 2-way dialogue, helps search engine optimization of all eROI sites and blogs, seeds some press that we get, and indirectly generates some leads through all of this.
That being said, there are weeks like the past one where it is really challenging to make blogging a priority as a CEO. Over the past 2 months, I’ve gotten a lot more engaged in the company and am actually working a bit harder (60 hour weeks vs. 50 hours before). My focus has shifted more towards Sales, Speaking Engagements, and Product Development (and I’ve kept the same high level of commitment towards interacting w/ employees).
I am not making excuses (actually, that’s exactly what I’m doing), but that’s why I haven’t blogged in 8 days. My biggest reflection of this poor blogging discipline is that I missed Haiku Monday (by 5 hours at is now 5am on Tuesday). After a brief, private flogging, I now forgive myself for this major faux-pas. Let the haikus roll like water in a rocky stream:
I had my daughters
To myself this weekend and
We laughed and danced.
Tom Szaky lit
Up the stage at eROI – telling
Huge successes of Worm Poop
Last Tuesday, an articulate, inspiring man was voted into office and people all over the world celebrated. In my own neighborhood, fireworks went off and a group of 25 college and high school students were banging pots and pans and stopping traffic on Hawthorne Street to jubilant honks in passing cars. My family of four walked thru the misty evening and soaked in the positive energy that had our girls jumping up and down gleefully shouting “Obama.” After my wife and I put our girls down to bed, I headed over to a sports bar, OnDeck, for drinks with some close friends – the place was packed and rowdy with 50+ huge TV screens monitoring all of the events of the evening. The bar became immediately silent when President-elect Obama gave his acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago. We hung on every word.
Since then, it’s been an adjustment. The party only lasted one night and reality set in the next day with the stock market down and life moving at warp speed. Every newspaper and magazine has blitzed us with this momentous, historic event and Obama has lived up to the expectation, for now. Expectations are so high, that at some point, there will be cracks in his armour. But, hopefully, as a human race that values inspiration, innovation, and progress over fear, we will support him when he stumbles. As an exercise of documenting a few of the videos and articles that mattered most to me, I am showing them below:
What a difference a good email makes to motivate, inspire, and deliver a strong message. Christine Baker (Twitter handle: @cbakes) creates a different yoga email for reminding all of us at eROI that we have yoga practice the following morning.
I’d like to talk about all the things she does right in the email above:
The preheader “Yoga Friday at 7:45am” reminds me of when it is when I read this email on my Blackberry or in the top area of the preview pane of my email client (even when images are turned off).
Also in the preheader is “View as webpage >>” which allows me to see the full extent of this graphic-rich email if I’m getting a text view of it on my Blackberry or Gmail or Outlook.
Solid, consistent branding
Relevant messaging and imagery (Obama had just won days before and Christine knows her audience well enough to know most of us in the company are big fans)
Clean email design template
Tight, functional footer using a lot of email best practices and compliance: Unsubscribe, Update Profile, Send to Friend, and mailing address.
Here is an email that I’ve been sending to my entrepreneur friends in Portland today:
Tom Szaky is one of the hottest, most dynamic, young green / sustainable entrepreneurs in the country. I’m writing you because I know you’d love meeting this amazing entrepreneur who is coming to Portland b/c of its green, sustainable presence (and because I asked him after getting to know him at the past two Inc. 500 conferences).
Tom Szaky is an absolutely amazing speaker (up there w/ President Clinton as another keynote at the Inc. 500 conference last year). I invited him to fly out here from Trenton, New Jersey to speak to 45-60 entrepreneurs at eROI and he’s able to be here on Sat, Nov 15 at noon (free lunch). This is a Starve Ups event – thanks to John Friess and the Starve Ups member companies for making this happen.
He really is an amazing guy (27 years old and running a $15 million green / sustainable company called TerraCycle where everything about its product and packaging comes from waste) – please consider coming to this.
A vote tomorrow
will make a huge difference,
big change will happen
Please share your comments below. It’s the only way to start your week. BTW – huge thanks to eROI employees who wrote birthday haikus to me on my card for this weekend. Yes, this is my first blog post as a much wiser and more distinguished (laughable) 34 year old.
This blog post = simple.
Intent = you have more value to add than me. You are the master – show us the way with your wise haiku. I saw KungFu Panda in the movie theater w/ my girls this weekend, I have found peace, and am inspired to read your haikus.
The End Of A Chapter – My Next Move - Just like a good book, there are never really any endings, only beginnings. I wanted to take a moment to let you know that I am leaving my position at eROI as of January 31st, 2011. I will be starting a new position at a company outside of the email marketing and interactive agency business [...]
Join eROI at DMA 2010 in San Francisco – October 11th-14th - Alex Williams, Strategy for eROI, will be presenting in San Francisco at DMA2010 on email, social, mobile and ecommerce. DMA2010 is the global event covering all marketing channels — from traditional...
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