hasbean Steve iPhone Fund
UPDATE - Steve has already commented on this post and we have just spoken on the phone, so any donations are going to be made to www.coffeekids.org
If you fancy donating something, you can do it direct on their site here 
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For those of you have met Steve Leighton, you won’t forget him. He is one of the most generous, kind, thoughtful and top chaps you could hope to meet. He does so much for other people, both in this country and for the people he meets on his coffee travels in Africa, and South America.
He never asks for anything back, he just gives, and that deserves recognition and in this case, us giving something back to him.
A fellow Mac fanboy and a lost iPhone
Steve and I started keeping in touch after I began to order my coffee from him and we had that fateful “ooo, you’re a Mac fanboy too!” conversation 
He was VERY excited to get his first iPhone before all of us, and then his 3G and then his 3GS last Friday. Unfortunately, he has now lost it 
And this is where we come in. As I’ve stated before, Steve always gives, and in this case we can help someone who really deserves it.
hasbean Steve iPhone Fund
My suggestion is that we buy Steve his new phone. He has many, many customers, and so if everyone gives a little, it will all add up very quickly
So, I think the best thing to do is to use PayPal. My paypal email address is
jonmoss at mac.com
Please mark donations “hasbean Steve iPhone fund” and just send what you can For starters, I’m giving a tenner, the very least I can do for all the generosity Steve has given me personally over the years. (If anyone has a better suggestion, don’t be shy and let me know quickly!).
I’m sure with the power of the web, we can soon get this moving, so please retweet, please blog about this and link to this post.
Steve you are a star mate, and you truly deserve something back after all the times you have given.
Coffee and Great Illustrations
The world of coffee can be a wonderful, yet complicated place. That is why I thought these illustrations would help you all. They are from an excellent blog from Lokesh Dhakar. His blog design is refreshingly clean, easy to read and really draws you in, and his post on these coffee illustrations has over 300 comments!
I mix and match with coffee – tend only to have espressos when in Italy, and normally drink Americano. The only constant I have is using decent coffee, and if you would like to know a whole lot more about this wonderful drink, how to brew it, store, where it came from, then head on over here and sign up for a 10 day course. Highly receommended!
Disclosure – Steve from hasbean is a good friend and also a client, but I would not recommend rubbish, even if paid!
Great List of Brands / Companies on twitter
twitter, as you should know, is a microblogging platform, which a) seems to have got over its problems and b) seems to be getting more and more popular and grabbing headlines on the web.
What has impressed me is the number of brands / companies / important and influential people on twitter. fluentsimplicity has a post here which has an excellent list. Have a look… pretty long isn’t it?
What strikes me is that there are not that many UK based companies that have cottoned on to the fact that twitter could be VERY useful to them. A bit like monitoring their online reputation – they don’t really get this.
Another industry which is seriously under-represented is the healthcare / pharma industry. Ok, they would have to be a little careful as it is strictly regulated, but honestly, most people use drugs (prescription ones!) or healthcare products. There is definitely an opportunity here, certainly for the more consumer-related brands.
Two of my clients are on twitter – Paul from purebeans, and Steve from hasbean. You can follow them here and here. (You can follow me here).
When word of mouth marketing works
Word of mouth marketing is something that makes a huge amount of sense. If you experience something good, you tell someone about it. Word of mouth. On the other side, you experience something bad, and you also tell people about it, possibly even more!
Word of mouth marketing has always been there, but with the rise of the web, and of course Google, it has started to be recognised as a serious part of the marketing mix and even has it’s own association – WOMMA, and they do a good job of explaining what they think it is all about.
What is vital for Word of Mouth marketing is customer satisfaction, (and dissatisfaction in some cases), the ability of being able to facilitate a conversation between customers, potential customers and the company / brand, and transparent communications. The basic elements are laid out by WOMMA are:
- Educating people about your products and services
- Identifying people most likely to share their opinions
- Providing tools that make it easier to share information
- Studying how, where, and when opinions are being shared
- Listening and responding to supporters, detractors, and neutrals
There are a number of key things to understand here.
- If you have a happy customer, they are going to sing your praises
- Encourage them to tell other people if they have a good experience, and give them the means to do so if at all possible
- Listen, learn, get feedback, and actively take on board all postive and especially negative comments, so that you can act and make your product and service better
- Word of Mouth marketing really fits well with an authentic company which behaves in a postive manner with its customers. Word of Mouth is being honest, telling the truth and should not be forced
In fact, as pointed out by the WOMMA, Word of Mouth marketing can be organic (natural) or amplified (I like to use the term, stimulated). I regularly take part in natural word of mouth for certain brands and services because I am pleased with them, and have a desire to share my enthusiasm, with the honest belief that I will be helping someone, making their life better, or recommending something they will also enjoy. (Natural word of mouth could be likened to evangelism). Examples of my organic / natural word of mouth would be:
- Apple computers and the iPhone (I know, a real shock)
- 37 signals services
- Wordpress
- Method Cleaning gear
- Howies clothes
- Hasbean Coffee
- First Direct banking
- IC Berlin spectacles
All of these companies and brands make me smile, provide excellent service and great products. Stimulated Word of Mouth marketing happens when companies actively launch campiagns to facillitate Word of Mouth.
There is one BIG watch out with this seemingly great form of marketing. And that, ladies and gents, is false Word of Mouth, paying people to be positive, spamming people, providing misleading information, I think your get the idea. Word of Mouth works best when you have a great product or service. It really is as simple as that. That’s what your aiming for anyway isn’t it? If you get this right, word of mouth will come along soon enough, you may just want to be able to harness it, and perhaps stimulate it. Just don’t think people won’t notice if you try and do something a little unethical. They will, and it will always come back to haunt you.
PS I nearly forgot about why word of mouth works! Two good examples from yesterday and today. A friend recommended me to his friend, who got in touch and I get a new client. I tell my friend about the great coffee we are drinking, and he goes to investigate online and will order some. Natural, unprompted word of mouth resulting in sales and more business. If only all marketing was like this! But, it could be. Think about it
