Mike Stopforth

Dave (and others) have been raving about Joe Jaffe’s new company crayon.

Crayon is a ‘new marketing’ company made up of some serious talent - leading thinkers in Web 2.0 and cutting edge marketing concepts (Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, etc.). They came up with the very original (and superbly cost effective) idea of launching their company in Second Life (remind me where it’s written that companies have to be launched like ships - or is it a Web 2.0 thing?)

Look, it’s all very sexy. Joe and gang are a very clever bunch of dudes with an abundance of great ideas between them. They have certainly got some buzz happening around their company in record time at very little cost. Ten points to them there. But now it’s down to business. It’s execution stuff. Now it doesn’t matter how sexy the logo is or how smart the ideas are or how innovative the launch was (bit of a pity us African-bound bandwidth-challenged enthusiasts couldn’t enjoy the experience with everyone else - but not a bad thing - they’re not looking for African clients, I don’t think).

You see, I’m a bit skeptical about things that promise huge at the beginning. Joe and Shel and gang have set the stakes really, really high, but now they have to go land a few hundred thousand / million dollar deals to build something significant. They’re essentially pioneering new territory, which is nice and all as it creates interest very quickly, but often new concepts take some selling before 50-year old corporate hands will sign cheques to buy them. I know this. I know it well. A year down the line my business is less hype and all delivery. Less fancy and all functionality. I’m not right, but in the same way that they’re going to have to pay school fees in the new marketing arena in the States, I’ve paid school fees selling selling social software to SA corporations. Here’s the crunch - once you’ve paid the school fees, or sold the concepts, it’s 10 times easier for your competitors to jump the gun and steal the business.

Joe and Shel have something unique, for now. But how long until the next new marketing firm springs up with better ideas? They’ll have to be vigilant and brilliant and flippin’ agile to stay abreast of the competition.

I wish them luck because I think they’re all very nice, very smart guys. I hope they’ll get out of crayon what they’ve clearly put in - lots of energy, passion, emotion and effort. Well done dudes.

One last thought and this time directed at the crayon team (I hope Joe will pick up on this ‘cos I’m sure he has Technorati watchlists and Google alerts and del.icio.us feeds and all manner of other mechanisms set up to track the blogosphere) - WHERE ARE THE WOMEN!?

You can’t be truly creative and diverse and disruptive without some ladies on the team. Also, a word to the wise - female clients will look for female employees.

Use it, don’t use it.

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