Raise funds for a Cat Café, Topless Male Waiters..?!!!!
Want to raise funds for a fledgling business idea? How about crowd-funding? And the quirkier the better – or maybe
not! The Irish Times here highlights 5
would-be entrepreneurs who are seeking crowd-funding including a café where you
can play with cats while you have coffee, a restaurant with topless male
waiters in tight shorts and ‘food you will rave about’ and the one I really
liked – a drone to help monitor the treatment of animals. Interestingly, the drone idea has raised the
most funds – the others very little to date.
The cat café idea fascinates me – I know they have the cafes elsewhere
in the world – but why a Cat Café and not a dog one? Cats don’t really interact with you unless
they feel like it – and/or unless there’s food involved. As the proud servant of a cat called Millie,
I wouldn’t pay €10 to have a coffee and play with her as I’d be hanging around
for hours just waiting for her to deign to give me a few minutes’ attention!! I’m not sure how they got the cats in the pic
above to be so co-operative! Maybe
Japanese cats are different?!
3 Tips from Cisco on maximising your Blog
Okay we’re not all the size of Cisco or anywhere near it
(I’m a SOHO myself – small office, home office) but it’s always interesting to
see how the big boys do it – so here they offer 3 tips to having a successful
blog. They recommend – activating your
employee base, inviting guest bloggers and experimenting with social media –
but not relying on it. They post an
amazing 27 pieces of content to their blog every day – but they only promote
about 3. Interestingly, they say they
get more traffic from RSS subscriptions than from social media.
Unbelievable brands
Don’t use “we believe” or “we passionately believe” in
your marketing messaging, begs the author of this article in The Guardian. He cites a few examples of brands with
genuine beliefs and values including Ella’s Kitchen and Honda’s Hate Something,
Change Something campaign. Introduce
real people behind the brand and, if appropriate, get Moral. But not all brands have such stories –
companies like Unilever with its many sub brands have to take a different
tack. So Walk the Walk he says and rally
around a cause that’s worthy of belief, time and effort. Another example he gives is of Volvo’s
commitment to road safety which saw them develop a glow-in-the-dark paint.
