Monthly Archives: October 2019

The Journey to Better Marketing: Stuffed Animal Companies and What They Offer

Posted on by

Who is our competition? What problems are they solving? What benefits are they offering?

I feel like these questions are really putting us in the position of Scrooge as he struggled against the Ghost of Christmas while trying to bonnet it. If it could be called a struggle when one side puts all his effort and might into overcoming the other, who is utterly unaffected by such exertions. Put me in the 100-yard dash with Usain Bolt, and I still don’t think he would call me competition.

Steiff Teddy Bears and Other Animals

So, is our competition Steiff?

Founded in 1880, Steiff is the world’s premier manufacturer of high-end toys and collectibles. Indeed, Steiff is the only “luxury” toy brand in the marketplace today. Internationally renowned for its exceptional quality, Steiff still utilizes traditional materials and proven manufacturing techniques to create its unique and highly prized products.

Steiff USA website.

Are they the only luxury toy brand in the marketplace as they claim? They use traditional materials and exceptional quality. What are the problems they are solving and benefits they are offering? They are soft, attractively priced, and from the original teddy bear company. Steiff is basically selling entrance into their exclusivity club and the ability of stuffed animals to return adults to the happier days of childhood. (A $1,295 Winnie the Pooh is labeled as for adults only.) They reach the children with animals around $20. Steiff sells nostalgia, collectability, and investment. Your children deserve the best; Steiff proclaims itself the best and has a history and collector base to back that claim. Steiff’s powerful commercial shows a teddy bear protecting a child from the dark.

Gotta Get a Gund

https://youtu.be/dwqFqCI6zuU

Founded in 1898, Gund had commercials in the 1980s. They were selling love and playfulness. Nowadays, they’re selling comfort, play, magic, heritage, quality, surprise, imagination, and love. Gund’s website sells bravery and love. Their products are huggable, and the company has been around for more than 100 years (like Steiff). Gund has stuffed animals under $10 and focuses more on their animals’ child friendliness vs. Steiff’s collectability, though both talk about how long their toys will last and are selling their heirloom status.

Ty, Inc. and Beanie Babies

Ty is the #1 plush manufacturer in the world (according to their job listings). Their Beanie Babies were so popular that Teenie Beanie Babies were featured in McDonald’s Happy Meals. People collected them throughout the 1990s, with some having thousands in their collection. Ty has capitalized on the lower income markets and built market share through their products appeal to people who don’t have a lot of money to spend on Steiff or even Gund. With a $2 Happy Meal, you get a Beanie Baby! That’s a pretty price point for anyone who’s hungry or has children; it’s also a way to get loyal customers for life. They are offering play and love as part of their Beanie Baby package! They push the collectibles a bit further by offering surprise toys in a series. The toys are hidden in a box, so you don’t know which one you’re going to get.

Stuffed Animals

The common theme for these companies is love. After all, how can you not love a stuffed animal. They make great friends, they are fun to play with, and they provide security to younger people. Being huggable is an important part of being a plushie.

Our Penguins

Our penguins are soft, cuddly, and fun. Their wings move, and they’re handmade, so every one of them is unique. Their expressions change based on how your emotions and how you perceive what they are doing. Even just standing on a shelf, our penguins speak volumes and tell a story that your heart needs to hear. You adopt our penguins; you don’t buy them.

So, our we competitors to these larger companies? We offer something none of them can compete with. Our stuffed animals are handmade with love. My wife makes them. There’s no large factory involved in our basic penguins. If you order one with clothes, those are handmade as well. Only some of the accessories, like buttons, may be purchased. Each animal is different because the eyes are hand-embroidered. Each set of eyes is designed and sewn differently. And the eyes are the window to the soul.

Stories from an Alaskan Cabin: Chapter Five

Posted on by

Part of the morning cabin routine is to restart the fire. This responsibility falls to the person who first wakes up and can no longer stand the cold. The disadvantage of being the first one out of bed in the cold is that it is a sure way to wake up. The person who starts the fire won’t, generally speaking, go back to the sleeping bag, especially since starting a fire is more complicated than pushing a button. There’s paper to crinkle, smaller wood to put in and larger wood to follow after that. Anyone who is able to stay in bed through the morning chill will be able to wake up to a warm cabin. As a bonus, since the person who started the fire is up anyway, he or she will probably start on making coffee and breakfast. That’s just etiquette and hunger working together to create motivation.

Continue reading →

The Journey to Better Marketing: Know Your Goals

Posted on by

The object of marketing is to get people to do something. It can be to donate to a cause. It can be to click on a link. It can be to buy a product or subscribe to a newsletter. Whatever it is that you want people to do is what your marketing should be directed it. If you don’t know the goal, you won’t be able to get people to do anything, and you won’t be able to measure what works and what doesn’t.

The goals need to be specific, so that they are easier to visualize and achieve. I want people to be more creative, be better problem solvers, experience more joy in life, learn something new, and be happier. Those aren’t goals that I can measure. They may also not be specific enough.

Buy a Penguin

So, how can I help people to achieve those things? If you buy a stuffed penguin, will you be happier? I hope so. I know how happy they’ve made me. So, the first goal is to sell stuffed penguins.

Buy a Book

If you buy one of my books, will you be happier? I hope so. “The Pirate Union” is a comedy. “The Adventures on the Amur” are like the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys stories. The creativity books are designed to help you become more creative and be better problem solvers. “Polly Penguin Wants to Fly” and “There Are No Penguins in Alaska” are supposed to be fun. So, the second goal is to sell books.

Patreon, Blog, and Email List

Will supporting our Patreon, reading my blog, or joining our email list help you achieve those goals of creativity, joy and problem solving? On Patreon, you get short stories and penguins that should be comforting and funny. The blog will bring about new information that you may not already know, and our email list will make sure you don’t miss anything on the blog. It’s all an attempt to bring you more joy and creativity.

Other Goals

We’ve recently changed our slogan to “Joy. Friendship. Travel. Penguins!” That’s what we want to bring to this world in as many ways as possible. But again, they aren’t easily measured.

Are the goals I have currently too many? They need to be realistic, and I need to make sure that I don’t get overwhelmed with too many of them or with goals that are too large. Goals that are too easy or too hard aren’t realistic. You need to stretch yourself, without breaking, to achieve success. You need to believe that you can achieve the goals.

Books, coffee, penguins, Disney, travel and creativity are things that bring me happiness. I want the freedom to explore, create and build, so I can bring that happiness to you.

So, what are good goals to set? That’ll depend on the month and the activities we’ve got going on.

Adapted from the 2005 version of “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days.” Get the updated version of “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days.”

The Journey to Better Marketing: Get the Right Mindset

Posted on by

“You can’t sell a product or service no one knows about (Levinson and Lautenslager, p. 2).” This is what I am confronted with every day in every conversation. We have great penguins and books, but how do we get people to find out about them? Marketing starts with your mindset. It requires energy, enthusiasm and passion. Every action, especially for an individually owned business, is a part of marketing. How people see you will transfer to how they view your business. In their book “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days,” the question that Levinson and Lautenslager say every member of the organization should ask themselves is “How am I building awareness with my prospects and clients through our marketing?”

I typically ask myself, “How do I best move forward?” Sometimes, it’s by creating something new – a book or an article. Sometimes, it’s by posting or reposting something to social media, and sometimes, I can’t answer that question at all because I am wondering how do I best stay afloat. It’s a balancing act – we have to cover our current moment and figure out how to move forward for the future. I don’t recall the two ever coming together.

Our marketing needs to be tied to our mission statement: Joy. Friendship. Travel. Penguins! That’s the closest we’ve got to a mission statement. It’s more of a slogan, I guess.

The first step in marketing, like creativity and any other activity, is believing that you can. Your actions will make a difference. Once you have this locked in, you can keep doing the activities you need to do in order to market. Those activities like laundry, dishes, and breathing, never stop.

One way to learn more about marketing is to simply observe what is already around us. Look at the emails that are spam: Which do you open and why? Which do you delete without opening? What works? Why do you open one and not the other? Adapt the successful ones to your business.

Always think about the customer. It’s not what you offer or what the features are; it’s what the benefit is for the person getting the product. Our penguins are soft, but that’s a feature. The benefit of a soft penguin is that you have someone who feels good to hold. Our penguins can comfort you and relieve stress (benefits) because there are no hard parts that can hurt you (features). Always discuss benefits. How do our penguins or books help improve your life?

This information has been adapted from “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days” from 2005. You can get an updated version through this affiliate link for “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days” from 2014.

Speakers’ Club: Overcoming Obstacles pt. 1

Posted on by

Rules: Make mistakes and learn from them.

Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers:

Schoolhouse Rocks! America: The Preamble to the Constitution:

(Friends and acquaintances)

The Challenges:

Visa, Green Card

Exchange rate, Income – How do we pay for it?

Finding work

Local resources?

Flights

Fear of Flying

School Differences (university, courses)

Language, accents

Traditions, customs

Food issues

What Do I Need to Do Better? A History

Posted on by

When I first started Penguinate.com in 2012, it was because I learned that people who were able to talk to classmates or others on the job were able to reinforce their learning. They retained more information and learned more than people who had to rely on themselves and their memory to learn. I was going to Disney World to be a part of their College Program, and I wanted to remember everything that I learned there. Not knowing if I would find people to talk to, I decided to start a website where I could keep my observations and put down what I learned, giving myself one more way to remember what I deemed as important and one more connection to tie the information to my brain.

I monetized the website, and as I went through school, I created movie and book reviews. When I started at examiner.com as a reporter, I posted videos on YouTube to support the news I was reporting. I monetized those as well. By the time I went to get my Master’s degree, I was making just enough to pay for my Internet usage, and all indications were that it would keep growing if I kept at it. Then everything changed.

When YouTube changed its policy about who could monetize their videos, I was on the outside looking in. I lost half of my web income. When my website hosting company decided to eliminate contact with Russia, I lost half of my income again. Then I made the drastic decision to move website hosting companies, and my income dropped to almost zero. I thought I had things moving in the right direction when I took another hit in August, my worst month at my website financially speaking, even though I was in the midst of a 251-day publishing streak. September responded in a “hold my beer” fashion, and I’m staring at two months of unexplained decline in income from my website – even while September was my best for “ads served.”

In the midst of all this, I turned to writing books as an additional source of income. My wife has made penguins to help supplement what we’re making. I’ve tried freelance editing with two paid jobs and one that didn’t pan out but kept me from working in September. I’ve started publishing at Medium, where I earn based on the number of views by members and their interaction with the articles I write. I’ve attempted to expand our Patreon base and failed with every offer that I’ve put out there. I have a small but mighty core of supporters. I tried starting an email list – my wife and I are the only ones on it, which makes it a lot less work. We’ve made two calendars – one of which we’ve offered for free to our Patreon members.

So, this is where we are – facing crickets with our web presence and our ability to get the word out about what we have available. I’ve gotten messages about how people love my books. Our penguins have gotten great reviews – in private, so it can’t be the products that are the problem. That leads me to believe my biggest issue is marketing. How do I inform people about what we have available and how they go about getting it?

I have read about marketing, watched videos about it, and participated in courses about it, but for some reason, there’s a block. Either I’m not using the things I have learned, or I am using them ineffectively. I’m not sure where the disconnect is, but it must be somewhere within me, or between me and the computer. Somehow, I’m not translating what I’ve read and thought about into something productive for me. It’s a lot of wheel spinning as I use social media and Google ads to little or no avail. How do I do it better?

If I am right, and marketing is the main problem, then it’s time for me to return the blog portion of the website back to what it was built for – to help me learn. It’s time for me to start going through the marketing materials I’ve already read once, and re-read it with an eye to distilling it down to the main points: Benefits marketing, tell-a-story marketing, and other marketing tactics. Whatever type of marketing I need to learn, it’s time to buckle down and do the research and figure out how to turn it into something usable.

And after all this talking, the one thing I probably need to learn most of all is to how to listen. People may have been telling me things that I have missed. Since I have missed them, I don’t know what they are.

If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments.