T-Shirt Company Acts Fast, Catches Trend of King James’ Return

Early Friday afternoon, news broke that NBA superstar LeBron James was leaving the Miami Heat after four years and returning to his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers.

We won’t turn this into a basketball article by any stretch, but to set the tone remember the history.  It was four years ago almost to the day, that LeBron (aka “King James”, “Witness”, et al) ceremoniously announced that he was leaving Cleveland after frustratingly being unable to deliver championships he had promised the city. The way in which he told the world has been criticized ever since. He went on to win a pair of championships in Miami.

Meanwhile, the fans in Cleveland were stung and some harbored hard feelings for years afterwards.

But on Friday, all was “forgiven” it seems.

The results of this news are that LeBron will make millions of dollars, the owner of the team will make even more, and at least for now, one small business in Cleveland that took a small risk has made a big name — and a lot of money — for itself in a matter of hours and days.

Fresh Brewed Tees was still selling custom T-shirts it had designed in anticipation of LeBron’s return as of midnight on Friday in the streets of Cleveland. The company’s story is a perfect example of a small business capitalizing on trends — one fast-moving trend in particular.  It also demonstrates how to use social media to communicate with thousands of new customers on the fly, such as this tweet:

Midnight. Lines down the street. Y’all are CRAZY! #FOR6IVEN pic.twitter.com/dZosGDD7Ge

— Fresh Brewed Tees (@FreshBrewedTees) July 12, 2014

Earlier in the day, right after news of LeBron James’ return was published by Sports Illustrated, the T-shirt company’s website crashed, according to a FoxSports.com report.  (At various points during the day we here at Small Business Trends also tried to reach the site, and were mostly not successful.)  Online sales had stopped temporarily but the company was still very active on the ground.

Fresh Brewed Tees used social media to set up meeting points around Cleveland where people could buy their shirts.  By the middle of the afternoon, the company was using Twitter to notify Cavs fans where they could purchase freshly printed shirts to celebrate his return.

Hang tight, y’all! We’re finishing up the next run of shirts and will be headed downtown shortly!!!

— Fresh Brewed Tees (@FreshBrewedTees) July 12, 2014

The T-shirts that are selling literally as fast as they can be made feature the word FORGIVEN across the chest. The “G” in FORGIVEN has been replaced with a “6,” LeBron’s jersey number when he played in Miami. The shirts are available in three color schemes, two matching the Cavaliers current and throwback uniforms, and another in black-and-white. The shirts sell for $26.

The owner of Fresh Brewed Tees, Tony Madalone, told Fox Sports immediately after LeBron’s homecoming announcement that he had begun planning for this moment a week ago. That’s when the design phase for the shirt began — even before he knew of James’ decision.

On Friday, the biggest challenges the company faced were keeping the website online in the face of intense traffic and meeting the demand of thousands of customers. Relatively speaking, those are good problems to have.

Fresh Brewed Tees is not the only company of its kind, not even in the basketball world. Local sports fan bases everywhere are supporting similar small custom apparel businesses that regularly find themselves capitalizing on trends. This isn’t even the first time Fresh Brewed Tees has done this.

Following the NFL draft, the company’s hometown Browns introduced their pick, the much ballyhooed Johnny “Money” Manziel. Fresh Brewed Tees was quick to produce Johnny T-shirts playing off his moniker then, too.  The Johnny T-shirt shows Manziel making the money sign with his fingers, a shot from draft day.

In New York several years ago, The7Line.com experienced a similar – albeit smaller – rush for orders when the New York Mets were faced with watching star players walk away after the team’s ownership had lost millions in the Bernie Madoff scandal. Buoyed by that notoriety and success, that company has since expanded and offers new products constantly and even has created its own fan base that regularly attends games together.

And in the sports-hungry city of Philadelphia, there are several small custom T-shirt businesses that are regularly updating product designs to stay with current trends.

The LeBron Forgiven shirt is at FreshBrewedTees.com.

Image: FreshBrewedTees

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Twitter’s Strategy To Dominate Mobile Advertising Now Includes TapCommerce

TapCommerce is a venture-backed mobile technology company headquartered in New York City’s Union Square – and it is also now in Twitter's nest.

Twitter has reportedly acquired the mobile advertising technology firm for $100 million to position itself to boost its mobile advertising capabilities, with a focus on advertising retargeting technologies.

As reported by CNET, TapCommerce’s technology, which is used by the likes of eBay and game maker Supercell, attempts to convince users who downloaded an app to reopen and use it. The technology can be particularly appealing to retailers, who could direct users to their already-installed app to help finish a sale.

To date, both companies have confirmed the deal, though the pricetag of $100 million remains unconfirmed.

According to Crain's New York Business, Twitter, which has faced slowing user growth for its main application, has been acquiring companies to expand the potential audience for its advertisers.  The San Francisco-based company bought MoPub Inc., an exchange that can distribute advertisements on more than 1 billion mobile devices, in October. The $350 million deal was its biggest acquisition to date.

TapCommerce Co-Founder Brian Long wrote on the firm’s blog, “The TapCommerce platform is already deeply integrated with MoPub…We look forward to growing our role as an integral part of the Twitter Publisher Network.”  He said the acquisition would have no effect on current users of TapCommerce.

TapCommerce will be able to send ads to more than 50,000 mobile applications, according to Richard Alfonsi, Twitter’s VP of Global Online Sales. “Consumers are starting to use their phones not just to install and use apps, but for making purchases of both virtual and real-world products and services,” he said in a statement. “Advertisers spend aggressively to get new users, but reactivating existing or previous users can provide just as attractive a return on investment.”

Frankly, why shouldn't Twitter aggressively move toward mobile ad empowerment?

By 2017, mobile apps will be downloaded more than 268 billion times, generating revenue of more than $77 billion and making apps one of the most popular computing tools for users across the globe, according to Gartner, a leading information technology research and advisory company. As a result, Gartner predicts that mobile users will provide personalized data streams to more than 100 apps and services every day.

Currently, apps often provide an opportunity for brands to reach and engage with customers in a direct way, and therefore data coming from the user is often treated as a resource. This is especially true of free apps, which in 2013 account for 92 percent of app downloads. App users are providing troves of data and often accept advertising or data connectivity in exchange for access to the app.

Gartner said that brands and businesses are already using mobile apps as a primary component of their user engagement strategies, and as the use of mobile devices, including wearable devices, expands into other areas of consumer and business activities, mobile apps will become even more significant.

Brian Blau, Research Director at Gartner said, “In the next three to four years, apps will no longer be simply confined to smartphones and tablets, but will impact a wider set of devices, from home appliances to cars and wearable devices.”  By 2017, Gartner predicts that wearable devices will drive 50 percent of total app interactions.

Twitter is aggressively building a competitive foundation to dominate mobile advertising - #GetReady!

Image: TapCommerce

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Facebook Manipulation Experiment Stirs Twitter Frenzy

There are a few things I understand about media, after being an active member of it for the past 20+ years:

• It can only thrive because it understands it’s users.
• Everything it does is based on what it knows about its users.
• It’s constantly gathering insights, trends and habits about its users.

Facebook is the king of social media because it understands the importance of monitoring it’s community and competition. It has to find ways to keep people interested, engaged and active. It is constantly monitoring our attitudes, habits and lifestyles. It does this while we are sleeping or active on the site.

The experiment they just did, could have been handled better and with more respect – but it wasn’t.

If they choose to continue their research and discovery (which they will), I suspect they will handle it better. But if you don’t want to be in a petri dish, then best to get off social media, particularly Facebook.

How could they have handled it differently and still gotten the feedback they needed?

Facebook experiment to see if tweaking emotional content of news feeds impacted emotions of posting. How dodgy?http://t.co/yJykrjBKWG

— Steve Read (@steve_read) June 28, 2014

@BridgetCarey oh I believe that unless it’s in their policy somewhere to say they can do it, then people could file class action lawsuit — Nathan Bond (@BondNathan_007) June 30, 2014

Their policy page is comprehensive and worded as such and it would be difficult to win a class action suit because it’s all in the interpretation.

Many are choosing to opt out of Facebook. That is a choice that can work really well for people. But, if you use it right, set all your settings, and accept what goes with the territory it can be an incredible resource, as well as fun and productive.

Time to dump Facebook? It manipulated the feed of 600k users as part of an “emotional experiment” http://t.co/ga81rsr0QQ #labrats via @kb

— marc blank-settle (@MarcSettle) June 28, 2014

Great question. It’s sort of addictive, vicarious and very entertaining, not to mention the most immediate, viral way to spread important information and get feedback.

Why do u people keep using Facebook? RT @edyong209: Huge FB experiment on emotional contagion http://t.co/gcl0jstG6l http://t.co/Tlm6FIvCTl

— Brian Banks (@BrianBanks) June 28, 2014

Welcome to the Surveillance Economy.

— Cole Peters (@cole_peters) June 29, 2014

Facebook is NOT required. It’s totally optional and voluntary, so if you don’t want to be under social surveillance, best to log off and not participate.

@BridgetCarey they are getting so big they think they can do what ever they want, just like government

— Vic Bronkhorst (@vicbronkhorst) June 30, 2014

More proof we’re product, not customers MT @edyong209 Interstng piece on ethics of FB emotional contagion experiment http://t.co/9a0gX2HHv5

— Julian Smith (@Julianwrites) June 28, 2014

We are products and so are all our customers really. We are tapped for all kinds of reasons. It’s up to us to build relationships where we see mutual value.

@malefemme It’s mainly to manipulate you into buying things advertisers want you to. You are the product

— Quarries & Corridors (@quarridors) June 28, 2014

Sales manipulation is always going to exist. We need to qualify, vet and make sure we know who we are doing business with. Most of the manipulation like that is transparent.

@BridgetCarey @CNET very disturbing. The year I got strange internal messages from Facebook & spent $$$$ undoing the paranoia. #classaction

— Zoey Goetsch (@ZoeyGoetsch) June 30, 2014

It may be disturbing, but hardly unexpected.

@Raffi_RC WOW! We need to care about this! They were toying with our emotions? #unacceptable! @facebook gains another strike against them

— Carrie Creamer RMT (@CarrieCreamerMT) July 4, 2014

Yes we do, and it starts and ends with you. You can choose not to be on Facebook, or friend people, or create a page that reflects your values, standards and etiquette.

What do you think about the latest activities of Facebook and this Facebook experiment?

Computer Experiment Photo via Shutterstock

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Read “Story-Based Selling” to Craft, Connect and Profit from Your Conversations

"I will give you 70% of my revenue, just so I don't have to do that selling thing."  Seriously, that's what my friend said to me.

Now here's the really ironic part.  Are you ready?  She is the wise woman who told me to stop looking at interactions as "sales conversations" and start looking at them as opportunities to help people, connect with them and make a difference.

But when it came time for her own sales conversation, she fell into the same trap we all do – thinking that we have to convince people to do something they don't want to do.

Selling Isn't About Buying, it's About Feeling

The good news is that none of us need to worry about convincing anyone of anything. Because the actual sale isn't made as a result of a sales conversation. It's made because your prospects either like you or don’t like you.  It's just that simple.

I've always been interested in the buying process and what makes people buy and that's why I was excited to get a review copy of Story-Based Selling : Create, Connect, and Close by Jeff Bloomfield (@Jeff_Bloomfield).

One of the things I really like about Bloomfield's approach is his focus on bringing together the traditional anecdotal idea of sales as a function of being trusted and liked with the science of why logic goes out the window when we're talking about sales.

Stories Work

Bloomfield tackles the perennial challenge of creating stories that sell.  He says they work, we all agree and yet, like me, you're probably struggling with how to incorporate stories inside your selling conversations without looking (or feeling) like a fake or a sham.

The purpose of Story-Based Selling is to actually show you how to develop and use stories as part of the natural way you communicate and ultimately influence people (notice Bloomfield doesn't say manipulate, but influence).

In this book, you'll learn how to develop and use stories to:

• Build the like and trust factor.
• Craft conversations that appeal to your prospects deepest needs and feelings instead of just logic.
• Identify the defining stories of your business and your life that will help build a foundation of vulnerability and authenticity that accelerate emotional connections and trust.
• Develop an attitude that is open to a new way of having conversations.
• Leave your "left-brained" training behind and take on a new way of connecting with people that is not only fun, but affective.

Think of Yourself as a Leader More Than a Seller

Bloomfield doesn't say this upfront, but it's a lesson I took from the book.  In Chapter 1, The Evolution of Communication, he draws the connection between leaders and great communicators.  Here he gives several examples that prove his point and then (this is the best part of this chapter), he gives you a checklist that you can use to evaluate your communication:

• Content
• Passion
• Credibility
• Preparedness
• Note-Free
• Brevity
• Conviction
• Self-Revealing
• Confidence
• Tone
• Story-telling
• Props
• Humor
• Pause
• Eye Contact
• Intensity
• Movement
• Decision

OK, so there's no way you're going to get all of these points integrated into your conversations all at once and without lots of practice.  And this is where the rest of the book takes you.

My favorite chapter is the one that talks about the science of the brain and how human interactions, communication and influence really works.  If you read the book from front to back, you will appreciate the subtle layers of stories and examples he gives early in the book and how well they are illustrated by science later in the book.

Bloomfield Practices What He Preaches

Of course, you wouldn't be surprised to learn that Bloomfield comes from a long line of storytellers.  You meet his story telling mentor (his Papaw) early in the book and you'll see, through his own stories, how he's developed this wonderful guide that will help you develop your own stories.

Jeff has founded and managed several companies and has more than 15 years of sales and marketing experience that gives him a unique perspective that resonates with clients of all backgrounds and industries.

Read the Book and Create Your Story Along the Way

The more I read and review books, the more particular I get about how I like to consume content. On the one hand, I like interesting general content that tickles my brain.  And then, I love to have practical application opportunities inside the book – a "let-me-play-with-your-content" kind of experience.  Finally, I want books to be short, sweet, practical and to the point.

Story-Based Selling delivers all of these and then some.  It's short, it's easy to read, it's educational and fun. If you want to work along with Bloomfield and incorporate story selling – then you can do that too.

What more can you ask from a book?

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Exclusive: YouTube weighs funding efforts to boost premium content - sources

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - YouTube has embarked on a new round of discussions with Hollywood and independent producers to fund premium content, two sources with knowledge of the talks told Reuters, a move that could bolster a three-year-old multimillion-dollar effort that has had mixed success so far.

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