Make your customers look good

Here in the Czech Republic it’s a long weekend. And by long I mean very long; there are two bank holidays, on Monday and Tuesday.

Read the rest of this entry »

Think Guerilla

Last weekend, with beautiful blue skies overhead, I went to the Prague Food Festival held in the gardens below the castle.

It seems I mistimed my visit however. The Festival’s version of crowd control was to close the gates for up to 2 hours at a time. They’d used this tactic before, last year, too. Imagine what an opportunity 200 hungry foodies standing in a line represents to build good-will (or even earn money) for an enterprising restaurant with some spare capacity.

Whenever there’s an event taking place on your turf, don’t just think you’re limited to playing by the organiser’s rules and spending money on buying a stand, stall or what have you. Some of the most memorable advertising around world sporting events has been by non-sponsors – freed from paying out vast sums to the event organisers, more budget can be directed to the creative and the media buy. We’ll be seeing the same again for the World Cup in South Africa. So-called ambush marketing is the big brands’ advertising version of guerilla marketing. If you’re a small business marketer, try thinking guerilla.

Banding Together

Is your local retail business going well? Some of your (not ‘really competing’) neighbours doing worse?

I wrote a piece last year about why you might want to help out those who you might consider competitors. I’ve just seen first hand what can happen when a company’s neighbour goes out of business: a much more serious competitor can move in.

My local sandwich shop, a small independently owned business has been serving baguettes, salads and paninis for over 5 years. Later this month a sandwich-shop chain is opening up in place of a cafe, just three doors away. They should have them beaten on price, unless the new shop gets aggressive and goes after their loyal customer base of office workers from around the area. As it stands they’ll attract business just on the basis of curiosity.

Now is the time for the little guy to raise their game, whether they broaden the menu, encourage loyalty (the chain already has a loyalty discount card) and raise their service level: offer delivery, take pre-orders – all the things the chain isn’t willing to do.

Read the rest of this entry »

Who needs social media when you’re too busy being awesome?

Catching up on some blogs this weekend, I found this post about Comcast’s usage of Twitter by Lisa Barone over at Outspoken Media.

Not living in the US I don’t have the opportunity to try Comcast’s service. My overall opinion of the way Comcast use Twitter is that it’s great for the people who get help that way, though it creates a two-tier support system – people savvy enough to turn to @comcastcares get ‘premium hotline’ support. Those who aren’t so connected (if your internet connection is out, you’re probably using your iPhone) are subjected to phone trees and hold music. If the team that use Twitter in some way can generalise problems and drive organisational improvements then I can see the up-side. Otherwise @comcastcares is just an insiders’ priority support channel.

Anyway, to my point. I’ve been in the Czech Republic since 2001. Over that time I’ve used numerous internet providers (cable, ADSL, Wi-Fi), but the one that’s always my first choice if it’s available (a few years ago we even paid to have a building wired up) is UPC‘s cable internet service.

Every year since I moved here their offerings have got faster, when their infrastructure could take it, or cheaper. They’ve driven a stake through the ADSL internet provision business of Telefonica O2 (previously Czech Telecom) by always beating them on price AND quality of service. They were the first ISP here to get rid of FUP limits. They don’t have blanket coverage of the city yet but where they offer service, you’d be crazy to go with anyone else.

Read the rest of this entry »

New Bargain Higher Price

click to enlarge

Lilek is aubergine/eggplant, in case you were wondering. Telling you the old lower price (29.90Kc) is an interesting approach. Maybe someone’s POS labelling software is buggy.

Price Discrimination in the clear

click to enlarge

There’s something about this ad that strikes me as just plain wrong.

It’s a billboard at Prague airport, in English, offering up to 49% off local Czech prices if you’re in the military, a diplomat or just an expat working abroad. Quite how your average Czech Volvo customer feels about what appears to be some pretty extreme price discrimination I couldn’t say. Wouldn’t amuse me much though.

Read the rest of this entry »

20 Years of Freedom

Today’s post is in honour of my adopted home and the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism.

On the 17th of November 1989 life began to change dramatically for the citizens of Czechoslovakia. By the 29th of December, Alexander Dubček, instigator of the Prague Spring reforms in 1968 was speaker of the federal Czechoslovak parliament and Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and poet was elected President of Czechoslovakia.

Every 17th of November the Czech and Slovak Republics celebrate the ‘Struggle for Freedom and Democracy’. In some ways to think that a whole 20 years has passed, in other ways it’s an incredibly short time – recent enough for me to remember what it was like watching events unfold on TV as first East Germany then other Communist regimes crumbled under the will of the people.

There’s been an immense amount of change here since the Velvet Revolution . First the Velvet Divorce in 1993, and shortly thereafter Havel was (re-)elected as President of the Czech Republic (and as a new country his two term limit started anew).

Read the rest of this entry »

Advertising Smarts

Read the rest of this entry »

Window writing, sometimes it’s right but the Jury’s out on this one

Click to enlarge

Earlier this month the Jury’s Inns hotel group opened their first property in Prague. It’s in a busy spot, opposite a metro interchange station, just on the border of Prague 1, the centre of the city.

Read the rest of this entry »

Case study – the sports bar – part three – summer update

Just a quick update on the website situation

Web traffic is holding steady (even though it’s off-season for their main sports).

Now number 2 result on Google.com (above the local 10-pack) for a search for “Sports Bar Prague”. Beating out sportsbar.cz

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Not performing as well on Google.cz (which Firefox defaults to when you’re in the Czech Republic) because there is no Czech version of the site. Though the Czech language version of the Facebook Fan Page that we set up does make a showing lower down the first page, compensating somewhat.

Read the rest of this entry »