Lots of Wasted Lots

I know it’s been quite a while, but I don’t give out all the ideas for the taking. It’s too bad I can’t loan my blog to other people to fill it with content when I’m too busy/lazy to put up new material. This is far fetched, but if it would fetch me a pretty penny, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Living in Chicago, one of the most expensive and desired commodities is space. It’s not as expensive as it is in Manhattan, but it’s close enough for me to not want to live in New York. Parking spaces are one of the most expensive commodities in the entire city. Take the recent hikes in metered parking prices and the cost of a deeded space in Chicago, $30,000 in a nice condo building [that's only if the building management doesn't lease spaces at an inflated rate].

The North Side of Chicago is the worst place to be in need of a parking space. You can drive around for 30 minutes before conceding to the inevitable [you're going to have to walk half a mile or more from where you parked]. There is an abundance of parking lots that are empty each and every night during off-peak hours that threaten towing to unauthorized vehicles. So, why not authorize people, just for the night?

The weekend visitors and commuters that want nothing more than to get in their home without playing Where’s Waldo [Parking Edition] at the end of the day would gratefully pay a small fee to park in said lots until the morning. An even happier group, towing companies would be obliged to take any late starters out of the lot when regular business hours resume. A cheap gate and pay stations would allow the business owners to make money while they slept and towing companies to get it when they wake up.

What’s the Wait

Most people love to club hop after a good meal. Even if you don’t want to hop, it would be nice to know which clubs have the longest wait so your buzz isn’t blown walking from one place to the next looking for a good time. There are applications for restaurants that allow you to make reservations that show the available times for your party size.

So, why aren’t there applications for making bottle service reservations or that tell you how long the wait is to get into your favorite night spots? It would also be helpful to know if there are any drink specials or if it’s invitation only so you don’t waste precious time going somewhere you’ll be turned away. I think this would make a great app for any phone or a simple site you could check. Club promoters could also use this as a medium to advertise events.

Coat Check

As a frequent traveler, every week, I am in a unique position to notice all of the little things airports and air carriers could do to improve their service offerings. One of the biggest issues with traveling during the winter from a cold climate to a warm climate is that everyone on the plane is almost guaranteed to have a large winter coat. Don’t forget that baggage checking fees are the highest they’ve ever been, and no one wants to put their coat on the floor if they can help it. This means that people will always try to put their coats in overhead bins, slowing the boarding process and usually requiring the last 20% of passengers to board the plane into gate checking their baggage.

So, I would love it if someone would start an airport coat checking business. You give your return date, and your coat is waiting for you in the airport when you return. Two people could man this kiosk at the heaviest times, especially if it is set up like the automated check-in stations. Enter your name and return date, swipe a valid credit card, handover your coat, and receive a coat check ticket. An online component for drop-off and arrival updates would only enhance the service that much more.

Refillable Dry Erase Markers

Whether in a corporate or educational setting, it is very annoying to search an entire whiteboard tray or multiple rooms for a marker that still works. This is the easiest solution to the problem manufacturers should institute a recycling program for shells or build an apparatus to refill the markers.

The makeup of a dry erase marker consists of a plastic shell, ink, a felt tip, and a cap. 50% [the shell and cap] of the marker is guaranteed [barring abuse] to last significantly beyond the life of the ink. That 50% most likely makes up the majority of the production cost.

So, why not institute a discount incentive for returned shells and caps? Production costs decrease, and revenue is sure to increase for the first manufacturer to adopt this policy. A 3rd party firm could even enter this market and possibly become an attractive business for purchase.

Or create an apparatus that eliminates the need to repurchase empty shells? Packets of tip replacements and ink would cannibalize a portion of marker sales, but production costs still decrease. And who wouldn’t rather just refill the marker while in the room than go rummaging through drawers and supply cabinets? Problem solved.

Protect Your Neck

I have to wear business casual 5 days out of every week to work. I’m not going to complain about the dress, but I will absolutely complain about the cleanliness of my shirts. After a few years with the same shirt, it’s impossible to keep the collar and cuffs free of stains caused by the natural oils your skin secretes. Sweat also plays a crucial role, but nothing will ruin a shirt faster than a series of long, hot days and a lack of attention to problem areas when laundering the garment.

A simple solution would be to pretreat all of your shirts when you take them off. Simple, but not always feasible, and it is reactive instead of proactive. I don’t know of any products out that serve this purpose specifically, but there are a few ways one could go about solving this problem:

• Low tack adhesive on one side, non-irritating barrier [cloth or plastic] on the other
• Non-stick spray with similar properties to Teflon®

If you run with this one, be sure to send me a sample.

Brand Alliances

I travel every week. Everyone has alliances. From airlines to hotels to car rental to credit cards. You can always earn something from one service provider by purchasing something from another. What you can’t do is go to the grocery store and receive a discount for purchasing products from the same producer. You don’t get a discount on toothpaste and soap if you buy detergent from the same manufacturer. Coupons are next to useless if you’re on the go all the time. The first company to institute this method should see an immediate increase in revenue, especially after they stop paying to have coupons printed. What a waste of paper.

Jetway Ads

Hundreds of thousands of people walk through airports every day. They all eventually board planes which requires a trip down a jetway. Those telescoping tubes are chock full of ad space that is completely underutilized. I travel every week, and the most I have ever seen more than a crudely framed ad that wouldn’t catch the interest of the most bored individual. I do not remember one of the ads or what the point of it was.

The frames don’t allow for the jetway to fully retract or extend without running into the frames. So, they are only placed on the first section of the jetways, leaving at least another 20 or 30 feet [at least 8 feet high on each wall] completely empty. Advertisers and airlines should change the method, not the goal. Placing ads in jetways takes advantage of the effects of primacy [the ads being the first thing exiting passengers see] and recency [the ads being the last thing passengers see before boarding the plane].

Skin-tight vinyl ads, much like the ones applied to passenger vehicles, public metropolitan buses and trains, and large panes of glass, would be the perfect advertising medium for jetways. Single ads could span the entire length of the jetway and take advantage of the creative opportunities such a large canvas offer. The ads would remain unscathed during the retraction and extension process. This is quite possibly one of the best ideas.

College Students and Contests/Projects

College students possess what working people lose year after year in droves. Hunger. They hunger to be noticed, and that ambition . They hunger to achieve. And more importantly, their hunger can be satisfied more economically [cheaper] than a seasoned veteran with less talent and creativity. My favorite projects in undergrad and grad school were the ones that required helping outsiders [public or private enterprises not directly associated with the university].

Colleges like Havard, Yale, and MIT are chock full of overachievers. So, why don’t more businesspeople in other parts of the country apply this business model? Contacting a college with a promising program with a problem, especially a state school, is like getting a return on your tax dollar investment. You pay for the learning institutions, and the students repay you with creative ideas to further your business endeavors. Case and point: If you need a website, contact a web design professor. If you need artwork, contact an art instructor. If you need fabrication work done, go to an engineering or a technical school.

Interns cost too much. Temps usually aren’t skilled enough, hence the reason they work for temp agencies. College professors can point you to talent, or open their entire pool of talent to you. All the business requiring services [logo creation, web design, etc] needs to do is speak with a professor in advance and offer to ‘allow’ their students to participate for credit or alert them to the opportunity to enhance their portfolios. It would take some time to structure the project, but the return on the investment of a few hours of your time could be more than worth it. Best case scenario: You hire/have a project added to a syllabus and get great work for next to no money or [if you have some extra cash] you could pay a small prize.

Virtual Flash Mob Advertising

There are two keys to any great marketing strategy:

1. Low Cost
2. Penetration of multiple and diverse demographics

There are also two keys to a successful flash mob:

1. A large group
2. A memorable theme

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and other social networking sites offer advertisers millions and millions of endorsements for next to no cost. Instead of compensating the hosts of these sites for ad space, advertisers could be compensating users for visual endorsements or promotion. A photographic endorsement of an individual user with thousands of followers might cost a manufacturer as little as free product.

Better still, a virtual flash mob is a one and done advertising blitz. Users would be given a specific photograph to upload as their profile image. It could contain information, logos…whatever the advertising wishes. The incentives could be monetary [this would probably work best] or product-based. It could even be setup as a contest style where individuals displaying the image are selected at random. Advertisers would need to perform online due diligence by ‘friending’ the individuals vying for the prize and systematically checking the profile pictures of all contestants for the duration of the mob.

The duration of the mob can last as long as advertisers predict users would be willing to keep the images posted. This will likely directly correlate to how attractive the prize or compensation is. The most important key is that this is not considered spamming because it isn’t pushed on the user’s friends. It is seen and remembered or forgotten.