Baaaarnsley

If it’s a fix, it’s a badly disguised one – Arsenal v Man Utd in the 5th round.  Who planned that?  To be honest if it a) acts as any kind of diversion or b) allows players from each side to take chunks out of each other, thereby letting teams below them to play catch up (though this is highly unlikely) then I’m all for it.

More likely it’ll be a 0-0 til 80 mins to go,   one controversial tackle, a sending off, a penalty and a 1-0 to who cares.  As long as the victor gets Chelsea or a difficult away tie at Ninians Park.  For us, we’ve a tricky (let’s be honest every game’s tricky at the mo) home time v Barnsley – stand out player Brian Howard, team captain, and top scorer with 10 league goals – a commendable 16th in the Coca Cola Championship. Got to be worth a 5iver on a replay and the tricky (that word again) return match at Oakwell.  Please God no…. Liverpool could steal unnoticed into the quarters and a further tricky tie against – well pick ‘em – banana skins of Coventry, or Bristol Rovers..

I’ll take either. 

The Value of Tactical Incentives continued

From experience of countless programs I witnessed in my network days, it’s got to be a case of “money can’t buy” incentives e.g. a trip to the moon, an invisibility cloak, Keira Knightley, otherwise the majority of sale generating affiliates would simply want the cold hard stuff.  I wonder if that’s still the same these days.

One particular merchant sent out a box of creme eggs at Easter with the Mi££ion do££ar strap line “Thanks for the eggcellent work this quarter!”.  One affiliate came back suggesting an Easter egg with a £5ifty pound note in would work a lot better.  One of the merchants other networks refused point blank to distribute the gifts.  Though I spose these weren’t incentives, just little thankyous.

I still believe that the best way forward is a simple, tiered and (crucially) achievable, retroactive commission structure is the way, based  not on volume of sales, but on proportional volume growth month on month, over time is the only way to build loyalty.  That and a decent OSC.  Otherwise, with the amount of jollies out there now from merchants, networks, media owners, and even some affiliates, it would have to be a show stopper for affiliates to throw in the extra yard, long term.

DGM-MBO party

Well I was invited to, and attended the DGM-MBO celebration party on Friday evening, which to begin with I thought was a bit off.  When I worked there many moons ago I was always a bit aggrieved that the Christmas party was on a Friday, because it didn’t give you the right to have an easy day the following day getting over the night before.  Instead it would eat into your weekend, but on this occasion, in this long skint month of January, it was a blessing to have a subsidised Friday on the tiles, and it was a bloody good night too.

There were a lot of familiar faces there, but not that many who actually worked at DGM did I know, and I think that’s a credit to the industry we find ourselves in, that there is a steady stream of new blood coming through.  It’s good news for the industry because it ensures the momentum remains, grows in fact, even though some of these kids looked like they were straight out of O-levels, er I mean, GCSEasys  I jest but I mean like I said, now I am effectively over the hill, just keeping up, etc. it’s reassuring to see, and in particular to see DGM’s grad recruitment and training system is in place and operating well.

So these familiar faces were loosely based around the affiliates who came along who I know from working with (inside and outside DGM days), the guys I worked with at the same time I was there and those who are still there from that time.Highlights for me were hooking up with Dunc and Christian, respectively at one time or another Head of Sales, one of the Highgate 5 (not a band I assure you) and Strategic Manager, Head of Marketing Operations (HoMO), and now fledgling legal power (the irony). We met up beforehand in a bar in Farringdon then wandered the streets aimlessly lost, chatting about the old days.Seeing the affiliate multivirate (not sure it’s a word) of Julie H, Jamie, Mark, Rich F, Duncan, Josh, Chris K, Rob B all rubbing shoulders, and not blogging about it (or have they?!).

Seeing the past champions of DGM 1.0 such as Jerry, King Kev, Mandy & Rich, and Steph Small, and of course the ones I knew then who I still know now, Apfelsaft, and JJ, and Dan Cohen who is apparently the 2nd longest serving DGMer now (how things change). And of course Spratt (Ogi ogi ogiiiiii)…

So a top night as I said, and encouraging to see that DGM means business again after what they have self styled a consolidation and strengthening period (last 18 months). I hope for their sake that it does continue to turn around for them. The technology works, they have people who do people (where was Matt Bailey by the way?), and they have a handful of very good clients, which should help them go out and get another handful, and another perhaps. I also hope things keep going in the right direction, in case the share price moves upwards, we can but pray…

The Hunt is Complete

The search is over, and I’ve sorted out some office space, well let’s be clear, a couple of desks, in a shared space near London Bridge.  It’s ideal actually, as it’s short term, on a monthly basis, and there’s a few decent sorts in there, doing different things, haven’t worked that part out yet.

Yesterday was a throwback to the old days of number crunching and my limited knowledge of the depths and potential of Excel meant that I did a lot of pissing about that I probably could have shortcut,  Add to that the beautiful clunkiness that is the iMac, sensitive as fuck so called “Mighty Mouse”, which effectively negates the use of the diddly gadget for scrolling purposes, but hey ho… it’s a throwback after all.. So I’ve now got some tasty charts and facts, insights and arguments, thoughts and suggestions – all the juicy consultancy stuff, which I plan to use to encourage further growth in their digital sales channel namely their affiliate program.

The world of the blog is huge now, and this is my third iteration, so I hope to make it sustainable. I don’t mean financially, I mean for the sake of sanity. I’ll avoid the naive second blog approach where after posting that a former employer were a collection of idiots, only to see the very post ranking particularly high on Google following day. I love them damned spiders. So for sanity, what with loads of folk out there slagging each other off – I love to observe the political mess of the digital marketing community, the paranoias, and the backstabbings, and the peace deals, the pacts, the promises and the lies, and within all this the joy of the day to day, the shits and giggles. I expect it’s like this everywhere, but from I’m looking it’s definitely happening in this one.

For now, I’m off to see my people, to eulogise.

Expanding the business ‘08

Been looking for new offices, to expand the business space, and so far met a strange bunch.I managed only to get home and find bed, and then eventually get up and try to remember what it was that I was supposed to be doing that particular day.  It’s all relative; some people are not content until they’ve hit the top line with the bottom possible before the lunchtime rush.  For me it was back to back stats analysis, which is never great on just a mild hangover, so I was happy to achieve so early in the day. We found some good venues.  For me we met some cool people – the Latvian* (*Polish/Lithunanian/Georgian) attendant at the first place – Three letters.  Hot.  And I expect eager to please in private, though no doubt quite H.M. too.

The mad bird at the Goswell Road with the stripper mate – the one with the nails.  Awful venue too – like being in a recurring nightmare arriving and staying there each working day.

The Asian chick the hottest in the Ghostbusters HQ just off Hatton Garden.  For me, even hotter than the beeatches in the White Horse – she’d charge more than a quid wouldn’t she?  You can tell these days.So expanding the business… hmm… as we enter the third year in business, it’s definitely an opportunity to build on the experience gained and contacts made in the previous two years.

Two bloody years since I moved into the office on Mansell Street, as a kind of favour by Dave of Barracuda Digital fame – and his contact with Webcredible  who are still there and now have two floors, and much business success.  Well done to them.  I wonder how Dave’s doing, last I heard he was in Namibia looking at baboons.  Busy chap.

He’s in office share arrangements with Dez my good buddy from school, and fellow entrepreneur, and successful business guru heading up Sticky Moon (he wanted Moon on a Stick… as in You want the Moon on a Fucking Stick you Do! but that had gone, apparently).I was in there too, sub-sub-letting space from Mad Yannis and the Skyron kids (well worth a look at the Sumo office move), but there was way too much distraction from the “Build a Whole New World Outside My Window” theme tune / development project, so I moved to Project Oakdale – Unit 1, and for a time it was fine until I found myself sitting in my pants at 4.30pm on a Tuesday, not having been outside for 48 hours.  

Now I’m happy again, in a new part of town again, not so close to Borough Market, which is great on the bank balance and cheese quota. Roll on Feb 1, I’ll be down the Market Porter for a pint of Harvey’s…