With the advent of Google Earth and Google Maps here’s an inventive way to literally make your business – or town – more visible.   Target paints huge logos on the roofs of their stores. Customers have another way to locate the nearest one – and people like us comment on it.  Chad Upton blogged about [...]

Imagine your photo in a boutique hotel lobby, illustrating a magazine article or in another public place – and getting compensated.  Here’s two crowdsourcing ways that could happen.  A prospective client can find your photo on iStockphoto – or you could take a photo for a special assignment – and allow peers vote for the [...]

Oops. Don’t just design and decorate your people-serving place or event. Storyboard it.  Create the experience for them, just as a movie director plans the sequence of scenes to pull people in and evoke an strong emotional response. But, unlike a movie director, you can involve all the senses.
From the first smell to the last [...]

What a stop-you-in-your-tracks attention-grabber and visibility-builder.  Got an example to top this one?  (Thanks Todd.)

Some of the most masterful baristas in the U.S. gathered in a hotel lobby in Minneapolis for their annual competition last month, judged by their peers. But this year was different. More excitement. And pressure. Coffee growers, café owners and other baristas and coffee lovers from around the world can watch them [...]

He was in Bangalore and his co-presenters were in San Jose, yet Cisco’s CEO appeared live – on the same stage. How? By using a breathtaking 3D holographic-like technology. They tout it as, “the world’s first real time virtual presentation. Aptly, it’s called TelePresence.
See Sir Richard Branson – live at a London press conference, [...]

It took a much-discussed hit and continuing stock tumble for Starbucks to finally turn to “us” customers and staff for ideas on how to get back in their good graces. Sign up at my Starbucks Idea and offer your suggestion. It pops up on the site immediately. Then peruse others’ ideas to [...]

But first figure out the kind of community that your customers most desire: Clique, Cult, Network or Nation?
So advises popular co-authors of Church of the Customer, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. That is if you want to inspire “the word of mouth gospel” from avid customers.
To turn your customers into evangelists (your sales [...]