Yep, I’ve seen the signs posted all around town. “We build great websites”, “Custom Web Design – $300″, “Your business, Your Website – Call us today!!” There’s an influx of people trying to take advantage of the entrepreneurs in our city by building cheap websites and providing even cheaper design and brand development. We’ve all seen the templates you can buy online for $20 and you might be thinking, “Yeah! – that’ll do! That’s all I need and I don’t need to spend “X” dollars for some professional to build me a website….”

You can even get full flash templates online for less than $100 that are like the shiny, sparkling toy in the store window – that one you just HAVE to have… So, say you buy one…what now? Say you hire one of these guys who posts flyers on the signs at turn-signals and on your neighborhood’s telephone poles? What then? What is your brand? What colors or fonts or phrases, keywords and symbols describe YOU or YOUR BUSINESS? Whether or not you know the answers to those questions still begs the question: How do you know the guy with the flyer is going to deliver what he promises?

The answer to that question is “do your homework.” Would you take your car to be fixed by someone posting a bill in your neighborhood? You might – but you’d find out if they were a mechanic – whether by asking them directly, through neighbors or judge by the car(s) in his/her driveway (most ratchetheads have at least a 70′s era Corvette or 40′s era hot-rod in the driveway to tinker with). It’s the same thing with trusting your business’ website to someone. Find out if they’re someone who has at least a portfolio (eg. – that 70′s era Corvette in pristine condition) or if they’re that guy who just returned “learn HTML in 24 hours” to the library and is an expert at Googling “how to build a website”…

There’s an old fable about a man that had a very successful barber shop offering $10 haircuts. One day another shop opened across the street advertising “$5 haircuts”. The established barber, after watching the results of his competitor, over a few days, erected a sign stating “We fix $5 haircuts”. This is what I find myself doing on a consistent basis after my freelance clients have been sucked into one of these quick website-in-24-hours schemes and end up having a shit website they can’t do anything with.

I don’t pretend to be the best web developer out there. I don’t tell everyone I have the best portfolio either. My strength is customer service. I find out what exactly my client’s goals are in having a website and where they want it to be in the grand scheme of their business. A lot of what I do is education. Most of my clients don’t know what SEO is, why a good hosting company is important, whether a CMS is a good thing for their needs or not, should they be blogging?, Twitter?, Facebook?…. These are all things I can help with because I’ve made the mistakes, seen the successes, and have applied the lessons to help promote some really big brands. Almost all of the sites I’ve developed over the past 4 years came to me via client-testimonial or simply by word-of-mouth.

When a client asked me “Why should I pay you for a custom design and a full custom website when I can buy a template and drop my own words and logos into that.” Aside from pointing out the obvious (because 100000 other people are using the SAME template) – I take the time to educate them on how their business *could* benefit from a Search-engine-optimized architecture, keywords, color palette, icons, font-treatments, full motion (flash) and even social media integration. People like it when they learn something new – especially if it’s technology based – it makes them look good! (This is quoted from a client – I can’t make this stuff up…)

Every single URL I checked for “Web Design Company X” that I’ve seen posted around the city DID NOT have a portfolio linked on their site. NOT ONE. Don’t believe me? Next time you see that sign around town, take the 2 seconds it takes to memorize the URL and check it when you can. I’ll wager they don’t have links to any sites they’ve built, any case-studies they’ve completed or any reviews from current or past clients showing the results of their work. This is because the crap they deliver is BRUTAL. I know — I see it every time I pick up a new client.

The best Web Design Companies don’t post bills around town. They may even have a very simple site of their own at best. The reason why? They’re too busy making life BETTER for the small guy. They’re too busy helping entrepreneurs or enterprises build their business online, designing brands and making the web work for them!!

The next time you see that ad for “Custom Web Design” posted somewhere in your town – think about how you might find that Web Designer who is too busy ACTUALLY WORKING to advertise. When you find them – you’ll know you’ve made the right choice.

Since the Vancouver 2010 Olympics came to a close and Canada finished with its best medal-count ever setting a record for the most medals received for a host country and most gold medals, there’s been a lot of talk about the “Own the Podium” (OTP) campaign. This was introduced in 2005 and provided transparency for the traditional providers as well as Corporate providers of funds to National Sports Development Associations into where their money was to be spent.

After the first week of competition, I was skeptical of the OTP as the results were nowhere near where they were predicted to be. But as the games closing drew nearer the Canadian athletes finished very strong and proved me and many other Canadians wrong about our ability to “own the podium”.

One concern I saw with this was the affiliation of Corporate funding to events. I would hate to hear something like: “This gold medal in Men’s downhill brought to you by Bell Canada….”. There should only be one logo affiliated with any result in the Olympics – Winter or Summer and it is that of our National Flag. Every brand I’ve worked with wants their logo splashed and tagline read with every success they accomplish and my worry is that this is where the Olympic Games are headed…. As many media reports pointed out – The Olympics are a big business.

Canada achieved a better result because of not-only the usual sponsors but because more people got involved with local and school-level sports development. There was more money for kids to learn how to ski, luge, skate and curl and many people got out of the proverbial armchair, rolled their sleeves up and helped develop the athletes that brought home Gold Medals in Vancouver.

This brings me to the (perhaps) crowning achievement of the Canadian team, the Men’s Hockey team winnning Gold. CBC published the credo that adorned their dressing-room wall and it’s a testament to the will and determination they showed in battling through each round to meet the US Men’s team again in the final game:

• LEAVE NO DOUBT
• That this is our game.
• That this is our time.
• That 14 days in February will be 2 weeks for the ages.
• That every day counts.
• That every meeting matters.
• That every practice makes a difference.
• That each one of us will rise to every occasion.
• That this isn’t about us, it’s about our country.
• That we know 33 million Canadians will attend every game.
• That home ice is an advantage.
• That nothing can distract us.
• That nothing will stop us.
• That our determination will define us.
• That we are built to win.
• That we are a team of character.
• That we are a team of destiny.
• So let the world be warned on February 28, 2010, we will …
• LEAVE NO DOUBT

I grew up in a hockey town. The Victoria Cougars were known to all the locals as the “cats.” When someone asked what you were doing on a Friday night – you were going to the “cats” game and no one questioned what the heck that was.

It was interesting to me that the Rochester Americans of the AHL have built their online branding around that local “slang” term for their team. In Rochester – when people go to check out the Americans play – they’re going to see the Amerks. When I saw the commercial (satellite tv) I was like – buh? – But then I realized that this is what EVERYONE in Rochester knows their AHL team as – the Amerks.

Check out amerks.com and see what I mean. Very cool that they’ve done this to promote the team locally using a term that everyone understands and recognizes.

Facebook is just a tool. It is a tool for communicating, re-connecting, sharing and sending the occasional “poke.” As it pertains to agency-work, where we are striving to build, drive and help create an experience online for a brand, Facebook should be viewed as this – just a tool.

When a client comes in for a pitch or for information on what an agency might be able to do for their brand, tools such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc. should be accessories to the ideas, innovation and creative that have made the agency’s brand stand out over others. It should NOT be the first thing out of the agency’s bag of tricks – “hey – how about a cool ajaxy facebook app?!?” Any tech-savvy, media-savvy client would cringe and begin to wonder if this agency was really a good idea in the first place.

Sure some brands have used Facebook with incredible results with applications or banners on the Facebook ad-space but all of these brands have one thing in common – the Facebook pieces are hooks, traps if you will, to bring people AWAY from Facebook and to the amazing creative, interactive engaging content that has been created miles away from the pokes, “what kind of dog are you” sillyness that is Facebook.

Remember this next time you are sitting with a client and try to think of ways to engage the client with your ideas, design, innovative technologies and imagination before saying – “well I think we could start out doing something on Facebook.” It sounds like a ‘cop-out’ to me and it will for them too.

I am going to write the abbreviated version of this post. I’m in Toronto on vacation and spent a good portion of the morning at my favorite brewery – Steamwhistle Brewery. I have been to a LOT of brewery tours and have never experienced the level of customer service I have experienced at this particular establishment.

We weren’t in the door longer than 3 minutes when we had beers in our hands and a good conversation going with our host. We loved the tour, had more than our fair share of samples and when they realized they were out of the size of the shirt I wanted – they made it right by giving us VIP tour cards for the next time we’re there.

It didn’t take much, and it was easy for them to provide and I can guarantee you I will continue to stock my fridge with Steamwhistle Pilsner and will definitely head back to Toronto to do another tour!

Cheers to the Steamwhistle Brewery and their excellent staff.

So tonight I logged into facebook and realized there was a link at the very top of the page that read: “The New Facebook is Here – Try It Now.” After clicking on the link I realized that the new url shows that the Facebook Developers have been hard at work giving the Application a “face”-lift. I think it is fantastic! All of your main apps are grouped together and they have made the layout wider so that you don’t have to search for something (like your photo-album)…. Kudos to the design team and the dev team for taking the UI to a new level.

So in order to save money, I have brought my coffee-grinder and press from out of storage and placed them on my desk. I did a little math and realized that Starbucks was making far too much money off me going in each morning and getting my “quad-no-room-americano.” At $4.26 each per work day that’s $21.30 a week.

Instead I went to the Calgary Farmer’s Market and visited the Phil & Sebastian Coffee Company- a small importer shop that brings in free-trade-organic coffee from all over the world. I purchased some shade-grown organic coffee from Guatemala that is just heavenly!

A one-pound bag of beans will last me a month and at the cost of $16.00 for some of the best coffee I’ve ever had – forget Starbucks!

On the train downtown last Friday I overheard two guys talking about getting new cellphones. They both couldn’t have been older than 16-17 years old and were discussing the new mobile devices they’d each purchased.

I overheard the one guy, with the half-turned-flat-brimmed ballcap and pants-halfway-down-his-ass say “I was going to get a Blackberry, either the Curve or the Pearl, but I don’t think I’m important enough, or professional enough.”

This reiterates how important brand perception is. How do your potential customers, clients, consumers perceive your product? How do they value your service? What demographic to they need to belong to (or in this case – do they perceive they need to belong to) to use or purchase your product?

This young man obviously had the money to buy his new motorola flip phone but he also had the money to buy the blackberry – for which – with all intents and purposes may have done what he wanted (play music, text, msn, email) much more efficiently than his Motorola. But because RIM has chosen to brand their products as a “smart phone” or “business tool” they have possibly omitted an entire target audience in the 16-21 demographic.

It just goes to show the power of a brand and choosing the right media and the right channel to reach all of your potential customers.