Introducing..

Thanks for asking. We are working fast and furious to get Remarkable Tributes ready for primetime.

Look for announcements at www.ARemarkableBlog.com, on Twitter (www.twitter.com/remarkabletweet), and on this blog in the coming weeks.

Sign-up for the mailing list on www.RemarkableTributes.com to be alerted when we are live! Start thinking of people that you know that need the recognition of their friends and family. Anyone's birthday, anniversary, retirement party, or the like coming up? Hold that thought and get ready to do something remarkable!

I just read about a company called KidsRx that is taking Mary Poppin's admonition to add magic to medicine a step further. It is a pharmacy that allows kids, primarily, to customize their medicine. They can tailor the color, flavor (think cherry, vanilla, bubble gum, etc) and form (liquid, gummy bears, lollipops, etc) of their prescriptions. "Candy drugs" some call it. People are predicting that it might start a larger trend and that folks like Walgreen's or Target may start allowing this personalization. In the meantime, KidsRx is accepting insurance and shipping worldwide.

I love how personalization and "mass customization" can be used in an existing infrastructure (the corner pharmacy is centuries old) to solve a real problem: getting kids to like to take their medicine.

Just when I was convinced that my growing addiction to Twitter (www.twitter.com/jenniferdavis) was going to kill my desire to blog forever, I think of some things I want to talk about in more than 140 characters. So, I am once again returning to familiar territory here on the blog.

I have been doing some consulting work for a non-profit group called Westside Praise, in which I am a part. We just released a CD of original a ccapella praise and worship music, including a song I wrote, and I have been working on some guerilla marketing techniques. It has proven to be a great project in which I can experiment some some new marketing tools that I haven't yet had a chance to use professionally.

First off, I created a website using Google Apps. Although not being as flexible or powerful, as a ground-up development, it was easy and fast and accomplished our goals. I then expanded this with our own mini-site widget, created at Sprout. I can definitely see me using this tool again. These little widgets are super flexible, easy to create, and really encourage viral marketing among fans. With a click of a "share" button, viewers can add it to their profiles at Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and a host of other sites. Very slick!

For the CD duplication and distribution I am using CreateSpace, an Amazon company. Their website and customer support was a little clunky, but the end result has been good and the whole process certainly went smoother than if I had done it all myself. In addition, because of their relationship with Amazon.com, the CD (and eventually the corresponding songbook of sheet music) will be available for sale on their main site, as well as the AmazonMP3.com site without additional submissions. Have I mentioned that I love print on demand!

There are more things in the works, but I can tell you that starting to market this CD has reminded me how much I enjoy marketing and how exciting it is to see measurable results come from the use of new technologies. The CD has been for sale for less than 24 hours and although I won't disclose how many have been sold so far, let's just say the word of mouth that we are enabling with these tools is working!

I plan to feature more case study information about this project on this site in the future, which I hope to be a help to others wishing to kick-start a marketing program on a budget.