Awesome Vintage Coke Can Designs

Posted by Anthony Stevens on June 22, 2009 under Design | Be the First to Comment

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/06/vintage-coke-cans.html

Starbucks: Words Speak Volumes

Posted by Anthony Stevens on May 12, 2009 under Language / Words | Be the First to Comment

I found this post by Andrea James, writing about the recent Starbucks quarterly earnings conference call, fascinating for what it tells us about word connotations.

Starbucks is an image company, one where words matter. In 2009, executives described the coffee giant using a different set of terms than they used in 2007. [...] Starbucks’ has said that its research shows that customers are increasingly looking for value. In 2007, the word “value” was mentioned five times. In 2009, it spiked to 37 times.

Words matter, and the executives know it. Turn this around, and note that the words that customers use to describe your business also speak volumes. Are Starbucks customers using the word “value” as much as Howard Schultz would like them to?

And wow would they find out if customers thinks Starbucks provides value?

(Hint: it’s called Crowdify).

Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds

Posted by Anthony Stevens on under Books, Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

I would like to read this book:

Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds, by Dan Hill.

Anyone read it? Worth it? Not?

Likert Scales Don’t Work!

Posted by Anthony Stevens on May 11, 2009 under Marketing | Be the First to Comment

New on the GrokDotCom “Top Marketing Optimization Posts” newsletter comes an article by Jeff Sexton titled “On a Scale of 1 to 5 Surveys Stink. Here’s Why!”

In the article, Jeff writes:

The words people chose, the way they phrase things, what they actually comment on, what details are mentioned, all add up to a much richer insight into the psychology behind the responses.  They provide context.

This points out some of the rationale behind the Crowdify process: traditional market research methods (such as Likert scale surveys) can’t possibly deliver as much insight as a language-mediated approach.

Sensory Descriptors and Emotional Resonance

Posted by admin on May 9, 2009 under Marketing | Be the First to Comment

Reading LinkedIn’s VERB group, I found an interesting discussion of the Buffalo Wild Wings fight with Procter & Gamble over the use of the unregistered trademark “Blazin’”.

Paul Van Winkle made the very good point:

One of the missing links in so many of these exercises seems to be sounder emotional intelligence — how better, wider, deeper understanding of emotions — and feeling, sensing — brings new ideas and eventually clarity to these challenges. This technology-centered data world is cold, detached from feelings. And it doesn’t serve the heart of these challenges. So many branding exercises often seem to get lost in graspings for some sort of logic, often flawed, often overemphasized, often based on misconceptions of human nature.

We feel faster than we think. It comes down to the nervous system and its wiring.

At Crowdify, we hope to capture and analyze those feelings that are the true measurements of sentiment.

Excellent startup marketing checklist

Posted by admin on April 8, 2009 under Startups | Be the First to Comment

If you have a tech startup, you should read this startup marketing checklist by Dharmesh Shah.

I love Dharmesh’s practical advice and his direct writing style. Here’s an excerpt:

Find three closest competitors. Pretend like someone is paying you $10,000 for locating each competitor.  Really try hard.  Barely managed to find three?  Take a lot of effort?  Great.  Now find 3 more.  Of these 6, pick the two that you think are the most marketing savvy.  They should have a Website Grade > 90, a blog with some readers, a website that you can envision people using, a twitter account that they actually post to, etc.  These are the competitors that you’re going to start “tracking”.  Add their names and websites to your Google Alerts.

Day 2: Get SQL Server SMO Working

Posted by admin on December 2, 2008 under Software | 2 Comments to Read

In the past, when I’ve had to run SQL Server commands in an automated process (such as create table or create procedure in a build script) I’ve always used the System.Diagnostics.Process object and the Process.Start() method with a local filesystem EXE, typically osql.exe or, more recently, sqlcmd.exe.

This has worked OK, and I’ve even wrapped the common operations in custom MSBuild tasks for clarity and ease of reuse.

My goal today was to get some new SQL Server SMO coding under my belt; I used the RestoreDatabase MSBuild custom task I started on yesterday to implement a database restore using SMO.  For example, you can tell the task where a production backup file is, add a couple other parameters, and it will create a new database in a new physical file location and restore it to the SQL Server you specify.

Mission accomplished.  The code is not shippable yet, but as today was all about learning and spiking, I don’t mind.

The other thing I did today was get rid of Moq and replace it with Rhino Mocks 3.5, which has some cool new lambda-style syntax.  For example, you can do something like this:

myStubObject.Stub(x => x.Login("foo", "bar")).Return(true);

Check out the Rhino Mocks 3.5 documentation to learn more.

Day 1: Get Moq Working

Posted by admin on December 1, 2008 under Software, Testing | Read the First Comment

I’ve been working with Rhino Mocks for about 6 months now, and have come to really like it.  However, I’m actutely aware of the professional tension between the “Classical TDDers” and the “Mockist TDDers” and don’t want to surrender to behavioral verification without giving state verification mocking methods a fair shake.

Moq is a framework that its inventors describe as opinionated - in this case, they are of the opinion that behavioral verification and record/replay is generally inferior to state verification with simple Assert()s, and the Moq framework, while supporting some limited behavioral mocking constructs, such as Verify(), is very much developed with that opinion in mind.  Set up your context, run some stuff, check the state, confirm the state.

What I’m currently missing in Moq is the concept of Partial Mocks from Rhino - the ability to mock an object only partially, such that I can override properties and methods that might expose me to messy 3rd party services like databases or file systems, while keeping the rest of the “real” behavior.

I submitted a question to the Moq discussion group on Google; we’ll see if I can get some help.

#31daysofcrowdify

31 Days of Crowdify

Posted by admin on under Productivity | Be the First to Comment

My December goal is to do one thing per day, every day, that moves Crowdify along.  I don’t have any particular end goals in mind, but I want to develop the habit of doing one thing each and every day (even Christmas!).  The things I do might be technical; but they might also be business-related.

Wish me luck!

Hello world!

Posted by admin on November 16, 2008 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!