One of the best parts of my job as Managing Director of Lenzr Corp is walking to work in the morning through the Distillery Historic District in Toronto. Located at 55 Mill Street, south east of Front and Parliament, this is one of the oldest parts of the city and was originally the busy lakefront up until the 1870s. I used to work as a grip in the film business, and I’d get called to shoot movies here in the 1990s, which was before it was restored to its present glory. Today the compound is still filled with cinematic old buildings and beautiful cobblestone streets, but also accommodates a thriving community of artists and theatre workshops, cafes, galleries, stores and specialty markets. The area has been preserved as much as possible to accommodate museum quality historic artifacts and tell the life story of a large Canadian distillery, Gooderham and Worts… Read more »
Posted in: corporate social responsibility, Interactive, Lenzr, Photography, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource
Taged with: Christmas Market, Distillery District, Electronic Engineering, Gooderham & Worts, historic buildings, Lenzr photo contest, mortgage broker, reed switch, Toronto
Lenzr is a social media marketing masterpiece that’s tragically flawed, and that’s what makes it so interesting. The serial photo contest website is basic and clunky, and the rules and voting mechanisms are easily bent by human avarice, but at the end of each session, it works. With very few exceptions, every business that sponsors an imaginative photo contest on Lenzr enjoys an inexpensive boost in their business URL’s search engine findability. The last session received over 4000 visitors, over half of them unique. The average visitor reviews seven pages and spends four minutes on the website. On July 1st 2010 the May June Lenzr photo contests came to an extraordinarily dramatic conclusion, resulting in scandal. In the Portable Luxury photo contest, the winning picture was removed by admin (because of ‘voting irregularities’) a mere 15 minutes before the contest was scheduled to end. Debbie Watson felt like she had… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, corporate social responsibility, Interactive, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Social innovation, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: aerial photography, Bill Watson, Debbie watson, Lenzr, Mommakoala, photo contest, portable toilet rentals, Rockton Worlds Fair, Ve3bnw
Once again, all participants in the 2010 Search for Miss Teen Canada – World beauty pageant must start and maintain a personal blog. That one single innovation has completely changed the landscape. Now the pageant pretty much advertises itself, teaches valuable skills, and lets the public share the excitment in real time. The model also shares links from contestant blogs with sponsors. Yes indeed, things have changed backstage at the beauty pageant, there’s a new category now; to win this pageant girls not only have to be seven shades of beautiful, but also, the successful finalist will have to be an exceptional blogger as measured in style, technical skill and original prose. So far the 2010 MTCW Blog Army (that link is to the index page) has recruited over 52 contestant blogs from all across Canada, and the writing is fantastic. Each finalist has plugged in live Twitter feeds and… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, corporate social responsibility, Fashion Blog, Friends of Smojoe, Interactive, Smojoe Clients, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, Web Marketing
Taged with: 2010, beauty pageant, Blog Army, blogging, case study, Casie Stewart, Miss Teen Canada World, Social Media
Pro Bloggers know that some subjects are really hard to write about, and it takes mad skills to subtlety broach sensitive topics, especially in 3rd party social networks, blogs and discussion forums where you can’t completely control the reaction. Now let Smojoe show you two women who make it look easy… Enter two creative writers Skye Blue and Elizabeth Rose. These girls write good content on tough topics, like disease, bad sex and heartbreak. Believe it or not, there are lots of women out there who can’t talk about sex, even with their lovers, and they’re ashamed of getting personal and can’t communicate important emotions. Met Another Frog is a dating blog, a catharsis? an therapy with a feminine perspective that tackles tough questions and comforts readers. Unfortunately at this time the site is almost completely void of pictures, and my first piece of advice was to get images in… Read more »
Posted in: corporate social responsibility, Interactive, Lenzr, online business, Photography, Smojoe Clients, Social innovation, Toronto
Taged with: Lenzr, Locaboire, Mommakoala, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, Orato, Phronk, single gender education, St. Andrew's College, The wine Ladies, Toronto Forums, wine blog
Try as they might, Canadians cannot stop CanPages from delivering their obsolete advertising product to their homes and offices. There is no mechanism on the CanPages website to allow consumers to opt out of the delivery scheme. On Thursday Jan 28th, 2010 two nice people from CanPages visited the 2nd floor hallway of 176 John St and left behind five pounds of rubbish in eight tiny piles outside everyone’s door. I told them to stop and to please remove the debris, and I personally tried to give one unit back – the deliveryman said nothing, smiled and took it down that hall. He left it on a stack beside the stairs. That’s when I vowed to do something about it, and to write this resource page demanding action, and accountability and CHANGE. CanPages is pollution, and because I have a microscopic carbon footprint I really don’t want to be associated… Read more »
What is social capital? I saw Julien Smith on December 1st 2009 inside the Berkley Church in downtown Toronto and he talked about Trust Agents and how to value social networks. He waxed poetic about advice his father had given him concerning perspectives on friends and potential employers. His script was pretty flat actually, and there was no deviation from the template – a couple times he paused for laughs and there werent any and I suspect he was used to laughs in those places and missed them. In my humble opinion, Julien mislabels social events as Social Capital. These things Smojoe considers to be ‘social currency’ which can build capital. But that’s me being knitpicky … The only thing that kinda bothered me in this presentation was that Julien did not once define social capital in the plainest terms, and so most of the audience is still mesmerized by… Read more »
Last week, Smojoe built a beautiful WordPress blog for TellOscar.com. If you haven’t heard about this place yet, let me explain Canada’s first user driven complaints website. This web destination might be better described as a customer service reports index, and by that I mean a place that lists both good and bad stories; both compliments and complaints can be recorded. But very few people bother to write nice things or record pleasant observations here. No, this site runs on complaints and preserves warnings to consumers researching specific goods and services. How does TellOscar work? If you owned a business, and suddenly found your beloved establishment written up in TellOscar’s archives, you’d do whatever possible to get the problem resolved. Am I Right? You’d pay whatever fees necessary to access the forum and respond to the complainer, personally one on one. I’m certain you’d pay money to make them happy… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, corporate social responsibility, Interactive, online business, Smojoe Clients, Social innovation, User Submitted Content, workshop
Taged with: bad customer service, Canada, complaints website, consumer advocacy, stories, TellOscar, Wordpress blog
Nestle Pure Life TV commercials and web initiatives are greenwashing Canadians into believing that bottled water is a healthy choice, and a manageable environmental solution. They make me sick, and very angry. Have you seen this? The thirty second spot shows kids playing outside in a sprinkler system and then drinking bottled water. The marketing advocates making a healthy choice, and implies through suggestive narration and on screen text that human bodies need large amounts of bottled water, daily. Their website contains a challenge wherein the fourth component is to ‘Go Green’ and that’s like a cigarette company advocating users ‘Stay Healthy’. Readers please note: there is no green bottled water solution. Eco-costs include manufacturing, trucking, shelving, and marketing. At this point in history, the annual U.S. demand for plastic bottles requires enough oil to keep 100,000 cars on the road for a year, says Janet Larsen of the Earth… Read more »