Is THE GLOW PROJECT Going To Be Bigger Than THE SECRET?

Is the GLOW Project with its movie, magazine and sold-out events the next phenomenon?  Bound to be bigger than The Secret?

The site explains the GLOW this way:

How is it that some women are wildly successful, while others, with the same relative education, experience, passion and goals for success, struggle? We all have the same amount of hours in a day, yet some are able to accomplish so much more. What is it that they do so differently? What is it that they possess that is unique? What is it that makes them GLOW?

There is a powerful essence inside of every woman—a critical ingredient that only women possess. When realized, nurtured and expanded, it becomes the key to true happiness and success. You deserve happiness, fulfillment, and the opportunity to achieve wild success. STOP what you are doing. Take a breath, and connect with your GLOW.

“You gotta GLOW, girl.”

Guru’s Note: There’s an amazing group of women powering this potential phenomenon. They’re not just inspiring, they’ve got life, business and intellectual capital galore. And how serendipitous to launch just as our world is falling apart. Women are the ones who are going to have to clean up the mess. As always. We’d better figure out how to GLOW.

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Y Combinator Looking For Female Entrepreneurs. Deadline October 17!

Lili Balfour of Atelier Partners gave me the heads up this morning on a great opportunity: Y Combinator is looking for female entrepreneurs.

Here’s the link — http://www.christine.net/2008/10/mentoring-women-for-the-next-y-combinator-1017-deadline.html

The deadline for the west coast cycle is this Friday the 17th. However, if you know a female entrepreneur on either coast, please forward along to them.

C’mon, social networks, let’s get this out there.

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So Not Sarah Barracuda.

Tomorrow, Saturday September 6, 2008 is the Ladies Who Launch Live event, also known as BYOB, Be Your Own Boss. Jam-packed with energy and inspiration plus plenty of practical tools for designing your own destiny, the daylong workshop is a true celebration of creativity and entrepreneurship as a lifestyle.

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Your 15 Minutes of UGC Fame & Fortune Start Here.

While researching my article on Rickrolling, I came across a bunch of User Generated Content Contests that sound like fun. There’s something for everyone — from Creative Consumers to Brainiacs. Increasingly tuned-in marketers are playing it smart with these promotions, following the Three Rules of UGC Contest Development:

1. Tap into consumers’ passions
2. Use multiple social channels to reach consumers
3. Know your audience — pick prizes & content format accordingly

Some of these chances at fame and fortune end soon.  So hurry.

Casting Call: Lifetime Networks invites female filmmakers to submit their original short films. Deadline for entries is July 8. The winning contestant will have their short shown on Lifetime Movie Networks and receive a cash prize of $5,000 plus the opportunity to attend networking events and festivals.

TechwareLabs Case Mod Contest with over $600 in prizes!!!Quote: Are you a mad modder at heart? Have you taken the toaster over and crammed a quad core CPU, dual video cards, and four hard drives into it? Have you altered your washer to look like something that qualifies as a WMD and outfit it with a PC? If so we want to see your mod, big or small. Submit everything you have modified and we will incorporate it into a video to be hosted on our site. The winning case mod will receive over $600 in prizes and have their creation appear in the video and also be interviewed by us and be featured on our front page. Get your dremel and bondo out and let the mods begin.

Shoot, Share, Get On TV. Ziddio feels like a mash up of YouTube and Bix.com, allowing users to enter competitions and win prizes - including appearances on TV. People create videos and upload them to Ziddio.com for the world to see, laugh, question, mock, and even enjoy. Run by Comcast; frequent contests.

Do You Think You Have What It Takes To Be A Super Star?
Simon Malls is inviting you to come and check out the Simon dTOUR Live Video and Recording Studio! At select malls across the country you will have the chance of a lifetime to show us what you’ve got.

BrainReactions is an online brainstorming site. Most of the time, BStormers do it out of the kindness of their hearts and a persistent need to do something, anything with their random neuro-eurekas. But for the first time since I’ve been seeding the site with my genius, (mad) money will change hands. Check out the Monjee contest.

Someday Stories From Wells Fargo
Everybody’s got a dream for Someday. What’s yours? This is a contest that’s all about you and what you want for your “Someday.” Today, just tell us the true and aspiring story about your Someday dream and your winnings could help make it real.

Calling All Filmmakers!

Power up with this potion and get out your camera. Create a :30 (30 second) commercial featuring CUBA’s new ‘All Natural’ ‘Herbal Energy Juice’.

TruTv + Black Gold Teams Up To Go Social.
My old white water rafting buddy, Thom Beers, strikes it rich again with the premiere of Black Gold. In conjunction with this sure-to-be-another-hit, TruTV launched the Black Gold Challenge casual game on Facebook, MySpace and Bebo to promote the premiere of the new series about West Texas oil roughnecks, debuting Wednesday, June 18 at 10p. Players tap their friends to form a drilling crew then pick a spot in Texas to begin drilling for hidden caches of “black gold.” One hidden hole contains a voucher for $50,000.

What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar?
You know the drill.

CREATE ENTER JUDGE
Yahoo’s contest site, Bix, offers a variety of contests including a Spore Creature contest with a MacAir and 50-inch plasma TV as prizes. I’m thinking I might have a better shot with the Spore contest than with my karoake version of ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’

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The Tale of Two Bettys, Both Confidential.

This is the tale of two Bettys, both products for women, both with a just-we-girls brand strategy, both looking to chisel an identity in this fiercely competitive and hugely complicated marketplace.  With America’s CPOs –Chief Purchasing Officers – controlling 85% of all purchases, the stakes are high for these tightly targeted products.

One succeeds beautifully.

Let’s start with Betty Beauty. I first heard about this particular kind of follicular-fun from my dear friend,  glam hair stylist, Alicia.  I walked into her salon and found her giggling hysterically.  Then she handed me a small package decorated with a bright magenta triangle and the words: COLOR FOR THE HAIR DOWN THERE.  “FUN” BETTY.  HOT PINK (Rose) 

On the back of the package: FUN IS WHERE YOU FIND IT! GET YOUR BETTY READY!

Lest you think this Betty was destined for the backroom of beauty salons, it turns out that prettying up your pubic hair has gone public in the biggest way possible — via the June issue (hello Bridal Betty) of Oprah’s magazine.  According to beauty editor, Valerie Monroe, she put off getting her Betty ready until the story deadline loomed and finally she had to “match carpet to drapes.”  Amazingly, she admitted to actually liking the new product.  In fact, Ms. Monroe said she was ‘inordinately pleased with my new  (zingy) look.’

Are you ready for the other Betty? This one is a new website for women’s ‘lifestages’ developed by a high profile executive with long experience in the media.  The site features a wide array of writers opining on everything from ‘kissing frogs’ to ‘navigating a career’ to ’shaping a marriage’ or ‘finding you.’  There are message boards called Betty Talk and lots of tips and teasers.  And like Betty #1, the ‘product’ is front and center on the big media outlets like Good Morning America via founder Deborah Perry Piscione.

So there you have it.  The two Bettys. Two contenders for the hearts and minds and Kate Spade purses of America’s 66 million+ time-trapped, stressed, striving and thriving women. 

Did you think I was going to tell you which Betty won my heart and mind? Never mind my preppy striped Kate Spade bag?

Not this time.  You tell me.

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When Name Generation Isn’t About Naming.

Whether it’s the R-word, job loss, midlife crisis or simply some kind of cosmic tipping point, the Guru is getting inundated with Name Generation projects for small businesses.

Normally, name generation centers on coming up with a new brand name, tagline, descriptor and sometimes promise statements, triggers or testworthy concepts for products, services and websites. In the past year, however, probably 60% of my projects have actually been about what my friend Claire calls woo-woo. That is, self-discovery, transformation and ultimately ‘getting’ who you are as a businessperson and your place in the competitive landscape.  The naming process itself, which forces a deeper dive into everything from product to sales to legal to marketing, is provoking more realistic strategies for building businesses. The ones I’ve seen — and helped guide as provocateur — are likely to have a better chance of surviving and thriving.

Planning for the future has always been a significant part of the name generation process:

How scale-able is the name?
Will the name stay relevant? (Hello, dotcom era)
Will the name allow you to migrate into new categories as the marketplace evolves?
And these days, how do you avoid being the plastic bag of the future?

But what’s happening here is more akin to: Does this name fit who I am? Who I want to be 5 years from now? A sizeable portion of these clients are seeing the future via potential names and saying: No way. I don’t want to be perceived in that light. I don’t want to try to squeeze into that slot. Or simply: That’s not me.

This afternoon, one of my all-time favorite client teams called me and rejected all of the names and taglines I presented yesterday.

I was thrilled.

This is because, by wholeheartedly engaging in the process, they learned exactly what they did not want to do or be as a business. They grappled with each of the platforms and names. Some were spot on strategically. Some were spot on creatively. Some were spot on for where they thought they wanted to be when we launched the project.

The good news: The new brand name and strategy they came up with is inspired.  It’s as tongue-in-chic and kicky as they are. Thankfully, they happen to be risk-takers with a history of significant success and the guts to pull this off with panache.

I’m psyched.  I love to watch woo-woo at work.

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Winners and Sinners in the Green Name Grab

Everybody’s out to grab a green name. 

Last year, applications with the word ”green” more than doubled from 2006 to 2007, from 1,100 to 2,400; there were some 900 applications each filed with “clean” and “eco” (up from 800 for “clean” and around 450 for “eco”), and trademarks with “environment” or “enviro” went up from 325 to 450. 

Other words that saw some of the largest jumps in applications were “earth” (increasing 60 percent from 550 to 900), “planet” (a 50 percent increase to more than 400) and “organic” (going from 450 to 700 applications, a 57 percent increase).

These tidbits come from Greenbiz.com, itself a big Winner this year, with a newly launched site redesign that finally does justice to Greener World Media’s pioneering place in the thriving environmental business landscape.  Cleaner and uber-readable, the new look showcases the remarkably robust level of cutting edge content. Joel Makower, with 20+ years as a leading Green Guru, and Pete May, b2b publishing veteran, lead the charge.

Not such good news over at another (formerly) growing green pub.  One of my favorite girly-green sites, Green Girl Guide, will be no more as of June 23rd:

We didn’t want to say goodbye, but a few months ago National Geographic sent us a cease-and-desist letter because of a perceived conflict between our site and NatGeo’s TheGreenGuide.com (Who knew?) and suddenly, what started out as a side-project for three green-minded women suddenly turned into a David and Goliath story of epic proportions. With no resources to fight the geological giant, we’ve decided to part ways.

Thankfully, we sense a new green winner-in-the-works, with the upcoming ecostiletto.com, founded by ex greengirlguider Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff, who wisely hired (my friend) Courtney Owens Zielinski to design the site.

Stay tuned for updates from Sustainable Brands 2008, held right here in eco-paradise Monterey.

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Live From LA! It’s Ladies Who Launch.

The only thing to do after a Friday night of Sex and The City is to continue the femme fun. So on Saturday morning, I headed out to the Ladies Who Launch Live event featuring a powerhouse of panelists including:

Jane Wurwand: Founder of Dermalogica
Paige Adams-Geller: Founder of Paige Premium Denim
Daryn Kagan: Founder of darynkagan.com and former CNN News Anchor
Heather Stephenson: Co-Founder of idealbite.com
Patricia Handschiegel: Founder and West Coast Bureau Chief of Stylediary.net
Amy Swift: Ladies Who Launch Editor-in-Chief and Los Angeles Leader

I’m going to let you explore the site and discover this phenomenon yourself. Over the years, I’ve been involved in countless women’s groups — and even founded a couple. Given my quirky alone personality, groups of any kind are seldom my cup of white pear tea. Then I discovered Ladies Who Launch, a group devoted to creativity and entrepreneurship as a lifestyle.  I signed up for the Palo Alto Incubator, under the leadership of Hazel Grace Dircksen, whose social media smarts and creative intelligence guided us through the four weeks of intensive ideation, visualization and inspiration. As a longtime focus group moderator and Idea Generation Facilitator, few of the Incubator’s methodologies were new to me.  But what was new was the wellspring of support, shared brilliance and confidence boosting flowing through every session. I had been desperately seeking fresh perspective on my business. I got it in droves from a wildly diverse group of positive, powerful women who are way more than business cards stashed in my pocket at some random conference.

 

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