info bit #5

shaving has been around for hundreds of years. Men want to keep this tradition manly and alive and dont want the image of a man man shaving be skewered by images of a guy of "less manly stature" trying to shave his beard into some girly shape. All of the other shaving advertisements are drawn towards images of manly guys trying to look more powerful and rugged. The Art of Shaving does this quite well in that it gets men excited to go "back in time" to look at how the men of the 1950s business world shaved and have a product that can help them connect and feel like that hero of their time. This is exactly why HMF will be staying away from all the glass, stainless steel and girllyness of other salon based shops and focusing directly at the hard wood, hand carved man cave that is His Man Friday. All the other companies supplying shaving good are doing it...HMF needs to follow.

Info Bit #4

Mens Health magazine is one of the most popular mens fitness magazine in the world. It covers everything from how to get a better body to how to maintain your image...as you can see, this is a powerful play for His Man Friday. As of right now, Gilette's The Art of Shaving has a powerhouse on the shaving advertisements placed in the magazine. They know that they are targeting their market of men and for anyone to come into the game and try and compete for advertising space would be hard done by. This is where I was thinking that HMF could have an advantage...if we went into the Women's Health magazines and played the role of introducing a product to the ladies that would help their man look better, we could gain a serious advantage over the Art of Shaving adds without trying to compete with them. The women are going to be one of our customers as well, so if we can introduce them to our products, they will buy them and help promote them to get their significant other to purchase them as well.

Info Bit #3

We had stated that we might want to look into putting "how to" videos on our website to help our customers better take care of themselves and to help them use our products that they buy. I found it interesting that a number of "men information" sites already have these sort of videos on them. For example, Ask Men.com has a number of how to videos that do exactly what we would be doing as well. They are professionally done, and what I found interesting is that they were all sponsored by some company, most of the time, that had nothing to do with mens care. (for example, Audi was a sponsor of one of them). I was thinking that this is interesting in that we might be able to sponsor all of the videos to exclusivly "His Man Friday" style and that way save us the time and energy of making our own videos. This would aslo be great advertising for us as these websites draw in over 15 million readers online.

Here is the link to Ask Men.com:

http://ca.askmen.com/

INFO Bit #2

I read an interesting article in the Calgary Herald last week about a couple selling their house. They decided that it would generate a lot of buzz around the housing market if they were to offer $1000 worth of "free beer" to the first person to purchase their house. I thought this was quite interesting because when your dealing with selling a $500,000 house, that extra $1,000 isn't really a deal breaker, but when you are on the front page of the housing section of the paper and on google news, that extra $1,000 of free beer seams like money well spent. By thinking outside the box in terms of marketing their "average house" they have turned a $1,000 investment in beer into a marketing structure worth more than that. They have generated a lot of buzz about their house with minimal monetary investment.

This is interesting how people are becoming more creative in terms of marketing themselves and their businesses. It will be interesting to see how people market their business in the future. I think that a lot of people are going towards the "give away" marketing strategy. This is the latest way of bringing awareness to your business and is a great way to get people interested and hooked on your product after they try a simple sample. Since marketing is a large part of our business plan, we will most certainly be looking into using this strategy when we market our business.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.mnn.com/food/beverages/blogs/houses-stocked-with-1000-worth-of-beer

Info Bit #1

For my first info bit I decided to look farther into a coffee powered car.

Here is a link to the website:
http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2011-09/video-coffee-powered-car-sets-land-speed-record

Since the technological aspect behind powering this vehicle (Gasification) is a little difficult to explain, I will let the folks at Popular Science do that for me. Quote on quote from their website:

"Gasification works by introducing oxygen or steam to an organic, carbon-based material (such as coffee beans, in this case) and increasing the temperature until a synthetic gas made of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane is created and burned up by a regular internal combustion engine."

I thought it was interesting to see that there are continued use of organic materials to power vehicles. Though there is enough fossil fuels on this planet to power my vehicle for the rest of my life, it is more of a concern for future generations. The most popular form of non gasoline fuel is the use of canola oil to produce fuel. Now with the invention of this coffee powered car, there is yet another form of fuel to harness.

Some unforeseen consequences of using this coffee powered car is the ever increasing price of coffee beans. If bean prices continue to increase the way they are right now, running this coffee powered car may be more expensive then running a normal gasoline powered car.

Fall Reading List...

I am reading an interesting book called "Super Freakonomics". Its the follow-up book to the first book Freakonomics and address interesting issues such as "Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should By Life Insurance"

As I read more I will keep updating you on interesting parts of the book....