Jonathan Brun

Online Only Marketing Company

I think there is a real business opportunity for building a new type or marketing company. One with much lower costs and a different corporate structure/culture. It would be a marketing company tailored to SME’s who cannot afford the big agencies and who do not fully understand the power of the internet. Essentially, “participative marketing” for old school companies, but not just guerrilla marketing. The marketing company would manage items such as:

Costs would have to stay under control and the agency would work through offering many different items in rapid iterations. Think 50 Youtube videos instead of 1 television spot, or 50 blog posts instead of 1 newspaper feature. Maybe this sort of venture already exists; if so, please point me in their direction.

Related: A recent book, DigiMarketing by Kent Wetime and Ian Fenwick, outlines what it takes to be successful online. I have not read the book, just the review, which I think is enough.

Published on November 28, 2008

My Business Venture – Enterprise Web 2.0

Many people have recently asked me what I am doing, by which they really mean are you employed, getting dressed in the morning, and abiding by the rules of upper-middle class society. So here is my rough explanation of what is occupying my time these days. 
Until recently, I worked for EEM, an environmental consulting group. As a small portion of their business, they sold an online database of Canadian environmental regulations and simplified explanations. The product, NIMONIK, was originally designed as an enterprise (web-based) software for large multi-jurisdiction corporations. It was a break-even operation.
Some of the shortcomings were the high price structure, the old web 1.0 technology and the static 800 x 600 design – ultimately boiling down to the product itself. Since May, we have purchased the product from the consulting group and started renewing it as a more dynamic, simpler, and richer website that will (we hope) become a community hub for Canadian environmental managers. We want to build an affordable web 2.0 application for companies – not currently a common sight.
On this project, I am working with Yves Faguy, a lawyer who was at the consulting group, and Paul Maclean, the president of the consulting group. We also have two fantastic people working on the content and the software with us.
Part of our strategy is to reduce membership fees, allow users to import/export ISO 14001 information, and upload corporate documents. Furthermore, users will be able to add comments, rate articles, and generally speaking – participate in the content to create institutional memory for their companies. The great thing about the project is that it comes with cash-flow (not much), a reputation and a lot of rich content – more than what 90% of web start-ups can claim.
Soon, NIMONIK will become a web 2.0 enterprise community driven website for Canadian Fortune 5 000 000 businesses. 
Published on July 25, 2008

The Seeds of the Housing Market Bubble

The graphic above provides a quick overview of the magnitude of the tech bubble in the late nineties. And the following – a very similar graphic for the housing market.

The housing crisis is obviously dominating the news right now and is likely to continue to do so for the forseeable future. To get a quick background on how (and why) this happened, I suggest the following resources.

The begining of the end of Fannie Mae – A Consultant at Fannie Mae

How we go from one bubble to another – Harpers

Published on July 12, 2008

Mass Media

Mass media has degenerated beyond the point of recognition. However, let us not romanticize the days of Ed Murrow, Bob Woodward, Vietnam protests and true investigative journalism. The trend of reduction and popularism started long ago – our situation today was probably inevitable. With more competition for people’s time, television has been forced to emulsify their broadcasts to sound bites and rhetorical questions. Arriving at a point where, “The no. 1 issue for voters this year, again, is bullshit”. Of course, what is mentioned above is not news to anyone reading this, nor is it a recent phenomenon.

In 1962, Newton Minnow, then chair of the FCC, gave an amazing speach entitled “Television is a vast wasteland.” Even 55 years ago, the trend of putting the bottom line before the truth was apparent. At what point do a sufficient number of people stand up and demand real news, real analysis and real dialogue?

As outlined in Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”, media driven by advertisement will always be a self-censored entity. Newspapers will not print too many stories that run against the grain, simply because they need to retain their advertisement revenues. A fringe population knows what bullshit looks like, tastes like and smells like; but the general voting population are too busy with kids, work and life to care about things that are 3 degrees of separation from them. They want Britney.

The inflection point where the masses see the emperor naked will always arrive when the situation has worsened so considerably that it can no longer be ignored. The general apathy towards abuses of power by corporations and politicians is ignored by most people because We Have it Good, Real Good.

Anti-slavery crusader Frederick Douglass succinctly stated, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.”

Though modern propaganda was born with Napoleon’s conquests and scientifically improved by the Nazis; our modern society of scientists and marketers that have put the nail in the proverbial coffin. Corporations know their interest lies with the satisfied client and so bookstores carry more liberal books than ever before with more negative analysis of Bush than ever thought possible, yet so little change.

With the availability of information, the illusion of discussion has been created. Yet, people “debate” between democrat and republican when they should argue between right and wrong. During the infamous appearance of John Stewart on the CNN show Crossfire, he ripped apart both hosts of Crossfire for their practice of duping the public into thinking that a real debate is occurring. In reality, the media argues over how to cook the steak and not whether the steak should be cooked at all.

The ultimate risk, as described by Aldous Huxley in “A Brave New World” is a semi-totalitarian system, where we suckle on the teat of the beast we have bred. As stated by Edward R Murrow: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” We must not permit our opulence to cloud our judgment of what is good and worthwhile information.

Published on April 6, 2008

Bus Optimization

Why are so many huge buses half-full.

http://www.eem.ca/index.php/blog/68-half-full-or-half-empty-bus

Published on March 13, 2008