Steven's Thoughts

I love this quote

Wow, I love this quote: "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

— Norman Cousins

Great business idea - give all subscription $ to charity

I was on my way to Tokyo when I stopped at one of the newsstands in the airport.  Because I was getting ready for a 14 hour flight I bought a bunch of magazines. One of them was this magazine I had never seen before called "Good".

On the plane I got completely sucked into the content.  I barely skipped any of the articles, which is very uncommon for me. But this what makes this magazine a great business ideas is not only the excellent targeted content, but also their subscription model.

First, this magazine is targeted as they call it at people who give a damm:

"We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let's call it GOOD. We're here to push this movement and cover its realization."

Second, the subscription money goes to a charity that the subscriber choses. This is why they say they do this:

"We're doing this because

1) it's smart business and 2) we believe in this.

Let the secret be known—most magazines do not make money on subscriptions or newsstand sales. Traditionally, the best way to get a bunch of new subscribers is to send millions of pieces of unsolicited mail—junk mail—to people who might have some interest. We don't like junk mail, and we don't like the thought of spending millions of dollars on it. So we came up with the idea of giving away all subscription fees and allowing subscribers to choose which organization they would like to support.

This whole thing is an experiment. If it works, we'll actually spend less than half of what it traditionally costs to acquire subscribers. The success of this campaign will allow us to:

a) meet a self-selecting group of quality subscribers who find us through word of mouth, internet links, media coverage, our partner organizations, or the other crazy schemes we like to come up with; b) raise significant money for organizations that will do something important with it; and c) save resources and prove that you can do well by doing good.

Our goal for our launch year is to create 6 amazing issues of GOOD, sign up 50,000 subscribers and donate $1 million to their favorite organizations.

If you like what we're doing, please help us make it happen. Choose GOOD. Thank you".

The magazine didn't bridge the majority of my flight, but was a great read and got me to subscribe to it.

KRS ONE and wholetrain

One of my friends from Munich is on tour with KRS ONE.

Florian's film "wholetrain", which I talked about earlier, is being shown in conjunction with the legendary KRS ONE at SOB's MONDAY DECEMBER 11.

For tickets click here

You can also  catch the film December 12 at 6:30 at:

THE IMAGINASIAN
239 East 59th Street
NY, NY 10022
212.371.6682

I know I can rock you to sleep

When he was a baby, Sebastian and I used to battle over who was going to win the sleep war. It was "Am I able to rock you until you are asleep? vs. "Are you going to win by keeping me up all night? "

Now instead of battling the rocking war, there is a great new product called the Lulubub which will gently rock the babies cot automatically and unassisted in a harmonic rhythm, to naturally settle and soothe the baby to sleep. The Lullabub is suppose to mimic the motion of a car and assist in the routine of settling babies.

I wish they would have developed this earlier.

Interesting Quote

"If you always do, what you always did. Then you will always get what you always got." Anonymous

kasina blog

We just launched our kasina blog. I will be posting most of my industry thoughts on the kasina blog and I will be using this blog for postings that are more personal.

Enjoy

Malcolm Gladwell has a blog

Malcolm Gladwell finally has a blog. For any of you who liked his books ("The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference" and "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking) you will be happy to see that he decided to blog.

Photo Stamp

When Sebastian was born my friends got flooded with daily photos of his progress. I did not realize until Mike got Sean that other people don't care as much as we do about their daily progress.

So for all of you who still can't share enough of your little ones, PhotoStamps let's you upload a photo, which then will be turned into a U.S. postal stamp. Great idea for all of you parents who can't share enough pictures with your friends and family.

Sony Draws Reproach Over Graffiti-Style Ads

A few weeks ago I posted a piece on Sony's street awarness campaign   
for their PSP . Lee made me aware of an article in the LA Times that reports that the city of Philadelphia cited Sony for violating sign ordinances and ordered the company to remove the ads or the city wound take them down. Sony has been warned that it faces fines for posting ads without a permit.

Regardless of the negative press, it's still another example of great guerilla marketing tactics.   

Top 10 - Virals ads of 2005

BoreMe's Top 10 are some great examples of viral ads. My favorite one is  Toyota's "Daily running route by the lake."