Drew Broadley's Bottomless Pit of Rambling.

Marketing Idea #12 - Cops and Robbers

Imagine you're racing around the tarmac, tires squealing, a cop on your tail with lights blazing. Is this a video game ? No. Sounds a bit too cliche ? Sure! But this is the appeal...

Put yourself up against the best on the NZ Police force. Setup on an open race track where you can backtrack on sections of the race track and the goal of the cop is to perform a pit maneuver and spin you 180 degrees to win. Identical cars are setup with bumper sections on the front/back to reduce damage and absorb impact. Cops have cars in the NZ Police force branding, and the "robbers" have cars in Dukes of Hazard or similar stereo-type paint jobs.

This can be used as training for NZ Police in the public eye to demonstrate how safe their apprehension methods are, and lets every person who has the want to see how good they are up against the people in blue. National qualifying events that boil down to a final at a defined race track.

This can become a community fundraising event and a great spectator sport annual event, with sponsorship from a car manufacturer. Potential to become a short life-span TV show or a recruitment drive styled event.

Potential Clients:
NZ Police, Defensive Driver Education (AA), Driver Training Companies (Holden, BMW, etc.)

Potential Mediums:
Interactive

Marketing Idea #11 - Design the perfect garden

Building a garden is easy, or is it ?

When creating the garden of your dreams, or even just digging out a section of your current landscaping it's always hard to know (unless you're an avid green finger) about what plants go well together, how they will survive in the position with exposure and sunlight hours a factor.

Building a garden simulator that uses basic CAD overview and taking into consideration plants that work well together, or don't work well, are hardy, last all year around, flower at certain times, you can offer the novice green fingers an insight into how their garden will look all year around.

A simple overhead layout, with ability to position a house, designate north/south/east/west, any shady spots, will give the to-be landscaper a chance to experiment their ideas. Allow them to chose from a large array of plants, they can place them in arrangement that suits them.
Using a seasonal timeline slider, and time of day slider, you can simulate how the plants will work together all year around. Show when each will flower, drop leaves, if they wont suit the shady area they've been placed in and if any of these factors don't work well with the plant it will die.

This will save people from making mistakes, and also allow the offering of advice by submitting your garden and suggestions can be received in return by experts to how they could better their intentions.

This would be a great interactive piece to place a large plant retailer behind. They can offer garden design competitions, even make a game of building the best all around garden from selected templates.

This could also be put in store as an interactive piece that people can select stock from the shop and place it in a landscape layout that is similar to their home. In-store experts can offer advice on the spot, and they can have it emailed to them or printed out at the store with the names of the plants and can place an order at the counter.

Potential Clients:
Palmers, other plant retailers

Potential Mediums:
Web, Interactive

Swimming with the Dolphins

On our South Island trip of adventure, we had planned on doing swimming with the dolphins in Akaroa. Unfortunately the Chile earthquake that caused a tsunami warning closed the whole village down, and we were left there with no where to go and our adventure cancelled. We had to re-arrange plans to swing back around after cruising the West Coast. We managed to fit in time, and went swimming with the dolphins at Kaikoura, but to my dismay lost the DVD with all the videos from the encounter! Alas, when we thought all hope was lost, we found it embedded in our bungy photos.

I cannot recommend this enough, easily the highlight of our trip. Enjoy.

Marketing Idea #10 - Strange Dogs

With the rise in awareness recently, and always subdued knowledge of dog attacks, there needs for user education to people who are afraid of dogs (previously or a little anxious with the news of stereotypical aggressive dogs attacking).

There's a common approach many people do, is walking towards a dog with their hand out. This is quite a highly dangerous manner to approach a dog, as they work by scent, then sight, then sound, and finally touch.

A TV/Radio/Internet campaign to educate people that the best thing to do is stand tall and still, avoid eye contact and let the dog sniff you. When the dog wants to interact with you, it will rub up against you, or give you a nudge or other playful signs. Most dog behaviorist can be used as reference and research for the campaign.

The aim is to stop people being afraid due to not understanding.

Potential Clients:
Councils, SPCA, Dogsafety.govt.nz

Potential Mediums:
TV, Radio, Web, Mail drop

Marketing Idea #9 - Paperless Receipts

On the previous idea of being green, one of the largest and most wasteful items out there is receipts.

The idea is simple, having a system that offers the ability for all PoS systems to hook into. The selling of the idea will be the hardest, as no one will want to invest in a system that don't "have too". To help with the blinkers that the potential outlets will put on, this is a great time to market this idea, everyone is focused on being less wasteful in the public eye.

With the rise in more disposable items due to manufacturing costs being lower, the products you buy today are generally more brittle. Alas, another main push for this system is the ability to look up previous purchases and provided an authorised receipt from quickly searching through an online system and clicking a 'Returning product' button which sends an signed request back to the retailer which provides them with the proof of purchase required when taking a product back.

Not only does the retailer/consumer receive the benefits of returning an item painlessly with a simple proof of purchase, but the retailer can use this system to reconcile for stocktaking, accounting and more.

Potential Clients:
Anybody who creates a receipt/invoice

Potential Medium:
Point of Sale, Web, Mobile

Marketing Idea #8 - Are you carbon neutral ?

Marketing Idea #7 - Faux Fundraising

Marketing Idea #6 - Chat Roulette

Marketing Idea #5 - Get In Behind

Got a dog ? Always wondered if the breed was any good at herding ? Setup a 1/4 acre with about 4-5 sheep and hire a proficient sheep dog trainer to train the household dog.

This is great to setup to do at a local dog park, or organised event. The dogs will have a lot of fun, and is a great time to push any dog food or dog accessories. Potentially a launch pad for a business to offer exercise sessions for dogs to give them the run of their life. Getting dog owners to register to collect direct marketing contacts, provide samples of dog food/training tools.

Prospective Clients:
Dog food manufacturers, AI&P/A&P Shows, Dog training business

Prospective Mediums:
Interactive

Marketing Idea #4 - Change the Toilet Paper Roll

How many times have you come to use the toilet in the house, and the toilet roll has been left empty? The woman of the household will appreciate this.

Incentive SMS, where there's a unique code with instructions on the roll of toilet paper, with such prizes to attract the men of the household. The instructions are as follows:

Person sending in the SMS must elect a phone number of another household member (preferably of the opposite sex). This will then send a confirmation to this person saying that +64xxxxxxxxx has entered the draw to win xxxxxx, but only if you confirm they have indeed changed the toilet roll by sending an SMS back with YES.

Potential clients:
Toilet paper manufacturers

Potential mediums:
SMS