The RussCo Idea Buffet

Travel Tip: Use your travels to show your brand all over the world

One of my colleagues used his travels all over the country to participate in a contest for his school showing the Fresno State name everywhere. Feel free to pass this along as well to help my man Healy win his contest, I promise you no one loves their university more than this guy, he is Fresno State.

The Pundit Cup Debates

The Idea: Host an Oxford Style debate series between all the pundits and talking heads that are on TV.  Have them debate a series of issues and have them judged by actual debate competition judges and also the audience to see who actually has something to say and who is full of it.  My dream match-up would be Stephen Colbert vs. Nancy Grace.

Timeline Feature for Facebook

The Idea: A feature on Facebook that lets you make one of those nice, graphics heavy timelines for your life.  You could obviously put in their schools, jobs, trips, awards, marriages, kids, etc.

Fraternities revert to using their non-letter names

The Idea: Many organizations such as my own, Sigma Nu Fraternity actually have other names that they have gone by in their history.  For example one of the original names of Sigma Nu was actually, Legion of Honor. 

The Background: As there has been for so many years, a very distinct stereotype exists about greek letter organizations, namely fraternities and sororities.  So much so that I fear sometimes this stereotype becomes the brand itself to some groups and instead of trying to fight that image they actually try to live it.  So why not revert back to some of the names our groups had before they took on the greek letters.  While the letters do mean something, a phrase in Greek that is meaningful to our members, the name, Legion of Honor, I think speaks even clearer to what we are really about.     

What if your ad or branding messasge was in another language?

The Observation:  After going to France for a few weeks for a vacation and being thrown into a culture that speaks a different language I started thinking that a good test for any marketing or branding message (ad, commercial, etc.) would be to think if that message was shown in a country that does not speak your language would they still get the message?  Would they know what the focus of the message was, what you were trying to communicate about the focus, and what message you wanted to leave them with. 

Frequent Flyers in Safety Video

The Idea:  Airlines could redo their safety videos each year and as a reward for the top frequent flyers or given out lottery style among all the frequent flyers, they could use those people in the video. 

City Wide Scavenger Hunt through You Tube

The Idea:  Create a city wide scavenger hunt open to anyone.  Kick it off with a video from the final destination with the final prize.  The hunt could be organized so that it lasts a few weeks with a new video debuting every week to pace it out or once it is started it runs till someone gets the final prize.

The Possibilities:  Are literally endless.  You could make this a big marketing tool.  You could franchise it out city by city or even make it nation wide.  Everyone wants to be an Indiana Jones and go on a treasure hunt.

You Tube Movie Studio

The Idea: Create a movie studio of sorts just to make You Tube movies.   The goal would be to make viral videos that would catch on like a wild fire online.  Advertising could be sold on each video either through product placement, banner ads, etc.  You could bill the client one penny for every click the video gets on You Tube in stead of them having to pay a flat rate on TV.

Online lectures by successful alumni

The Idea:  A fraternity or university alumni association could leverage some of their successful alumni by asking them to give a lecture via Microsoft Live Meeting, GoTo Meeting, or similar tool.

The Possibilities:  The range of ideas could be massive, from business to government to sports.  The alumni giving the lectures would be happy to be asked to give something other than their money.  The alumni groups organizing these could require that you must be a donor to attend the meeting and use that as a way to get more people giving. 

Airline layover business networking/matchmaking

The Idea:  As part of each individual's frequent flier profile they should indicate the type of business/industry they are in & what types of other professionals from which industries they would be interested in meeting if they both had a layover at the same airport at the same time.  There are many stories of two unsuspecting future business partners sitting next to each other on a flight so why not open that luck to a much larger field.  The airlines simply would cross reference each individual's profile with layovers each day and send messages to possible matches.  Then for a meeting to be setup both would have to accept before they could contact each other.

The Possibilities:  This could easily turn into a marketing piece for joining the airline's lounge/club as only those members could participate in the program. 

Johnston & Murphy shoe horns at end of security line at airport

The Idea:  Have Johnston & Murphy provide shoe horns for all the male business travelers in the security lines at the airport as a simple add or to inform them of where their store is located in the airport.  They could have a few really big nice ones and engraved on the inside say Johnston & Murphy located at Terminal C, next to the Cinnabon.  Or they could have tons of small simple ones sitting there for you to take with that same info. 

The Background:  I don't mind having to take my shoes off for the security line at the airport but I do mind having to shove my foot back into my $500 shoes and beat the back of them up.  They already have advertisements on the bottom of the trays you put your stuff in to put it into the x-ray machine.  Also Johnston & Murphy has a pretty good presence at many airports so both these factors make it a natural marketing extension.

Banners, logos, & taglines that follow golf putts on TV

The Idea: Advertisers could use technology similar to the super puck on hockey a few years ago and as golfers make putts on TV a tagline, logo, or other media could roll out as if rolled up in the golf ball and coming off as the putt is rolling across the green.  This could be another way to incorporate advertising into TV and golf.