Shitbox found

May 3, 2011 in shitbox rally | Leave a comment

The Magic Carpet

White 1987 Toyota Camry sedan. Rides like a Magic Carpet... must get those shocks looked at.

Ok, so now I understand a *lot* more about the second-hand car market. And I’ve been to suburbs of Sydney I never knew existed. And I finally realise just how far it is to drive from Chatswood to Campbelltown to check out a Holden Commodore with severe mechanical problems. I have embraced the spirit of the thing and driven some *real shitboxes* as well as some really nice rides and it’s amazing what going up $500 in your pricepoint actually gets you. It is also amazing, after (say) driving around the block in a mid-80’s Magna with a massive steering wobble and white smoke coming out of the back just how good it feels to get back in the late 00’s CRV. Realistically, if the wife wanted to collect the life insurance she wouldn’t have to cut the brake lines on some of these bangers, the line would do the job all by itself….

So, after nearly three weeks of juggling Carsales, EBay and Gumtree, it came down to an ’87 Toyota Camry sedan with questionable suspension bought for cash and a handshake from an Egyptian bloke down a back alley behind the airport at dusk. What could possibly go wrong?

Social Commerce: the death of member-get-member

May 1, 2011 in ecommerce | Leave a comment

It seems like the best way to get someone to buy something is to get their friend to tell them they should buy something. On the face of it, this sounds like saying the best way to get from Sydney to Melbourne is via Perth: if getting someone to buy your product is hard, getting their friend to sell it for you must be nearly impossible, right?

Yet that’s just what some retailers are betting on. Maybe it’s the case of not knowing enough to know it’s impossible, but it’s looking like there’s money to be made in social commerce providing you can get it right – but it’s not easy money, by any stretch of the imagination because you have to get into the conversation, somehow.

But how? Here’s the four phases of buying a product:

* Consideration – realising that you might want to purchase something
* Research – how do you make sure it’s the right one for you?
* Purchase – getting the product at the right price and at the right time for you
* Post-sales – what do you do now you have the product?

I’d say that post-sales is distinctly a conversation between a customer and a retailer, but can be social through special offers and member-get-member campaigns. During purchase and even research, the opportunities here are in social ratings and recommendations: it’s not so important that a friend has recommended the product (hey, what do your friends know about buying lawnmowers anyway?), but that someone like you (and separate from the retailer) has given their view of it.

Consideration is where opinions are formed and the urge to acquire is kindled – traditionally the realm of glossy magazine spreads and opinion pieces. However, it’s also the realm of word-of-mouth – and there are lots of places that conversations are going on all the time on-line (Facebook, Twitter to name the obvious two).

A traditional way of getting into the conversation has been member-get-member, as mentioned above, which has evolved within Facebook to friend-get-friend campaigns – but since when did you enjoy a friend trying to flog you something? Take the typical scenario: you get a $10 discount for recommending a product to a friend (usually if they then go on to buy). The trouble is, you probably feel cheap selling out your friend for $10, and your friend is probably going to realise this at some point. A massive disincentive.

It turns out that people generally value their friendships more than they value a discount. But what if you turned this on its head? What if you got nothing but your friends got the discount? All of a sudden you don’t need to feel bad anymore since you’re helping your friends save money. They get to know about the product from someone they trust, and get an incentive to buy it.

And what do you get? Kudos, which is something money can’t buy.

To kill a shitbox

April 22, 2011 in shitbox rally | Leave a comment

Last week the dream finally died. Mike, my old neighbour had offered his ’68 Austin 1800 for the rally and had got it to the point that we were ready to take it for a spin around the neighbourhood to see how it performed.

On the face of it, there’s something to be said for taking the world famous Mini’s big brother for a 5000km trip from Sydney to Darwin, a sense of doing the rally in the style befitting such an enterprise. Add to this Mike’s desire to give the old girl one last hurrah, and no doubt his wife’s desire to have some garage space back, and you would be forgiven for thinking there is some element of destiny at play.

We took it for a first spin around the block, choke out all the way to prevent bunny-hopping. Mike muttered something about muck in the fuel line and to give credit where it’s due, the old girl settled down pretty well after the first 500m. Now your old 1800 is not the same kind of drive as your modern car. There are certain niceties to be observed when attempting a gear change. The idea of power steering in the era of the 1800 is still a future dream, like something out of the Jetsons, so you feel the weight of the car. The same for braking too… you know you have well over a ton of welded steel moving at 40kph when you try to halt it.

All that said, I was getting a feel for the beast, recalling the Austin Princess I learned to drive in. I moved into 3rd gear up a slight hill and opened up the throttle.. and for one moment it looked like a goer. Then the universal joint disintegrated on the left wheel side and we ignominiously came to a halt by the kerb. Mike nursed it back home and we stood at the front of it, silent for a little while before I said “that’s buggered it” and let it go: the 1800’s destiny lies elsewhere.

So now I’m looking at early 90’s Toyota Corollas on eBay. It’s not the same, granted, but an outback mechanic is a lot more likely to have parts for a Toyota. Sometimes it’s not how you play the game but whether you win or lose that counts.

Saving Artarmon

April 17, 2011 in community | 1 comment

A while ago, we received a letter from the Council informing us that our area had been selected to be upgraded into medium-density apartment blocks. The gist of the letter was that the population base of Sydney is still expanding and after due consideration they had to sacrifice an area of the municipality to the state-wide upzoning plan. It just happened to be us, which did not go down well with those of us that live in the area: we like our street and our community. We thought it was worth preserving but we were told that we didn’t have a chance, it was pretty much a done deal.

I wrote in to the council objecting and would have left it at that… it’s easy to feel powerless when you feel you’re a lone voice. In a stroke of good fortune, I bumped into a neighbour who felt the same way. He had bumped into a few others who felt the same way. We had a dozen names in an entire suburb who wanted to do something about it. From this start, six months later the rezoning plan was rolled back. We learned something about starting up a grassroots campaign in the six month journey that I think bears reflection. Here are the main things we learned:

1. The overwhelming first instinct may be to storm the council offices with pitchforks and firebrands. This rarely works. It is VERY unlikely that an outright “no” will work because Council has reasons for making the proposal in the first place. Harness the passion into a plan: you will need to refute the parts of the plan you object to with solid alternatives if you expect to make headway. Contact your local Progress and Residents Associations; these people are likely to be more experienced in influencing Council or will at least be able to give you an idea of the political landscape.

2. Council isn’t evil. They are in general a collection of people trying to make the best decisions they can. Approach your local representatives in a business-like way. See how they feel and whether they’re willing to intercede on your behalf. Above all, we found that being even-handed, polite yet insistent enabled everyone to engage with each other constructively to find a joint solution.

3. Gather exposure. The key thing in a campaign is growing the list of people on your side. Stories in the local press are an excellent way of letting other people know that they aren’t alone in feeling that the proposals are wrong. Couple this with a website* and an email distribution list (and understand that Council will see this) so that like-minded people can join the campaign even if they don’t know you.

4. Take to the streets. Use the list of interested citizens you’ve acquired to reach people beyond the website or local press: organise a petition and get signatures. You may be surprised by how many people think the same way you do and are willing to sign.

5. Never give up. Prepare for the period in the campaign after the initial heat has died down, when the end is not in sight and you’re unsure that you will succeed. Most campaigns fizzle out. We instead kept the pace up with regular email newsletter updates and appearances in Council meetings to state our position.

In the beginning, it was like each concerned resident was an isolated island of objection in an archipelago. We worked hard to join up the islands and in the end, we were able to organise and present to council a petition signed by half a thousand people representing all streets in the district. The petition not only showed popular resolve to oppose the plans but also went a sizeable way to suggesting viable alternatives: we aimed for a win-win situation and that seemed to help all parties to come to a workable arrangement.

Notes

*The website and email newsletter were built over a couple of nights with off-the-shelf packaging and hosting: saveartarmon.org is a Drupal 6-powered site with the following plugins: forward, google_analytics, pathauto, simplenews, token and xmlsitemap. This was hosted at a cost of a cup of coffee a fortnight on Dreamhost. The plugins allowed the site to be submitted to Google to turn up in searches from early on in the campaign, when word of mouth is important.

Shitbox Rally Charity Trivia Night @ Wooloomooloo Bay Hotel 6.30pm Tuesday 19th

April 14, 2011 in shitbox rally | Leave a comment

We’re in full swing now with the Shitbox Rally team fundraising. The big event for the team is a charity trivia night – we got the good folks at the Wooloomooloo Bay Hotel, down by the finger wharf, to give us a room for nothing and access to all their TV screens for a night of trivia and sh*t.

Test your knowledge over drinks at the Wooloomooloo Bay Hotel, from 6.30pm. There will be some laughs and also some truly sh*t prizes to be won. $20 entry fee, all proceeds to the Cancer Council. It’s guaranteed to be the best Tuesday night out you’ll have all week!

There is also a Facebook event invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138250809579921

See you there!

Finding the right shitbox

April 11, 2011 in shitbox rally | 1 comment

One of the big requirements for entering the Shitbox Rally is that you have a shitbox. These are not as easy to acquire as I’d first assumed: for a start, the vehicle has to cost less than a grand. Now you can get a car for a few hundred dollars (go onto your favourite car sales website and search for the keywords ‘scrap’, ‘good for parts’, ‘massive accident’), but you have to start rolling in the extra costs like rego, blue slip, and occasionally arc welding and you hit the $1000 limit pretty quickly.

So, there are two approaches. The first is to see what the dealers have at the back of their car lots. I spent the weekend in the rain out on Parramatta Road in the car yards looking for that absolute gem of a runner miraculously overlooked by the rest of the crowds. The nearest I got was a Ford Telstar for $900 that had probably last seen rego under a Bob Hawke government. I’m beginning to suspect that seam of bargains is pretty much tapped out.

The other option is through the private sales, which is much more promising. A friend of mine has a 1968 Austin 1800 that he could give away, but rates it as a 50/50 chance of not even making it to the start line in its current state of repair. On the other hand, there are private sales for $800 and up that have rego and are on the road now. But is it better the devil you know? Phrases in the private sale ads like “I suspect it may have blown a head gasket maybe” could translate to “I patched up the engine block with duct tape”.

So the big decision, and with the clock ticking down to 5 weeks before start, is whether it’s better the devil you know. Maybe a ’68 Austin is what the rally is about, and maybe potentially grinding to a halt in the middle of the Outback is a fitting end to a great machine. Maybe.

Shitbox Rally 2011

April 4, 2011 in shitbox rally | Leave a comment

It seems that things always come in threes. In the last few months three people close to me have health scares with the C word mentioned. One turned out clear, the other two were early enough stage that the cancer was operable. But it does make you realise just how powerless you are to do anything constructive.

So I took the hint and signed up to the Shitbox Rally, which raises money for the Cancer Council to continue work on researching treatments for cancer. The rally itself involves getting from Brisbane on the 21st of May to Darwin on the 28th via the back roads, though ‘roads’ may be too strong a description. The snag is, your car must be worth $1000 or less. The snag also is the 7 croc infested river crossings… breaking down mid stream is not an option.

I’m doing it with my brother, a paramedic from back in York. If you think that beating cancer is a good idea, or if you’re just curious how long two poms would survive driving a banger through the Outback, please consider donating at Yorkshire Puddings Shitbox Rally. Let’s hope my brother’s Ambo training doesn’t come in useful…!

Turn off your website

April 2, 2011 in ecommerce | Leave a comment

Here’s the thing: you have something great to sell, you’ve built a fantastic site, you’ve opened your doors, but no-one’s coming in.  It’s the classic build-it-and-they-will-come scenario, which tends to work for ghostly baseball teams in cornfields but seldom in real life. There are ways to get the traffic…. You can painstakingly craft your pages and linking strategy to wring maximum SEO benefit in the hope of turning up on the first page of Google for specific searches. You could go for the sledgehammer and pay SEM dollars to appear on the first page. You can do deals to get other sites to refer in to you. Or you can produce a very cool viral video that tickles the zeitgeist and puts your site on the front page of every news site on the planet. (Some of these are harder to pull off than others, your individual mileage may vary).

Or you can fish where the fish are. After all, do you really think people will squeeze five minutes into their busy day *every day* to go to your site?

This is an age-old retail trick.  Think of everything from lunch carts to coffee vans to milkmen – by meeting the customer on the doorstep, they can ensure sales and also do some marketing at the same time.  The same applies to online retail, but where do customers live online?  Sure, there’s the inbox, but mass eDMs are like the door-to-door salesman: it’s highly unlikely you want to buy what he’s selling but he’s going to knock on thousands of doors to find a few punters.  And let’s face it, the in-box is already crowded enough!

So where else are they?

Well, Google.  It’s a guaranteed jumping off point for customers starting their shopping journey – over half of purchases in certain categories are researched online first, rising to 90% for consumer electronics. But, getting to the top of the pile in Google means you pay the bucks (to your SEO guy, to Google) to dangle your link in front of would-be customers.

Then there’s Facebook. They have also launched into the ad market, but with a twist: they offer much more targeted campaigns based on the rich demographic data they have on their members. For example, you could choose to reach everyone in Australia – 8.5M Facebook members, (well, today) – or just single females in Sydney aged between 18 and 24 (78,000). Again, your mileage may vary, but you may get much more bang for your buck if you know your market well.

But you could go further. An eCommerce website usually follows this sort of flow: landing page > search/browse results > product details > cart checkout. You can argue that as long as the customer clicks ‘checkout’ you don’t really mind how they got there. So, why not turn the website inside out? Instead of making customers come to you to shop, feed products out to them where they are, for example:

* Deals of the day to their inboxes
* Reading in their Facebook streams when friends comment and brag about their purchases
* Gathering together to demand group discount rates
* Sending out birthday gift lists
* Letting your customers do the selling

By sending your products out in affiliate feeds, emails, Facebook posts, tweets, how your own site works becomes less important. You could empower fashion bloggers to sell the products they mention from their own site (powered by your checkout systems). There is a control issue here, and there is also a requirement to know your customers well (after all spamming a Facebook stream is a good way to lose friends and alienate people!). But by letting shoppers buy your product without ever setting foot in your (virtual) store you increase your reach beyond your site.

After all, what you want are the sales, but running a website to get them can be expensive. If you love your products, perhaps you should set them free…?