Anastassia Elias, from Paris France, is a full-time artist and illustrator and her preferred medium is paper collages and paintings. With a quirky canvas and steady hand, she created these fantastic scenes inside empty toilet paper rolls. With the right lighting these scenes burst to life; silhouettes in a land of cardboard.

There is a difficult balance we marketers and business owners face when creating special offers for our customers. It requires discipline and problem-solving to build programs to drive sales and awareness in the short run, without doing damage to the brand in the long run.

This week, I received a promotional email from a local day spa.

You know, massages, manicures and pedicures. In addition, it also offers a retail line of lotions and aroma therapy oils. The spa is positioned as a higher-end brand. Its pricing and build-out is higher than a quick-service spa place you’d find, for example, find at a mall location.

The email contained two offers:

1. An incentive.
2. A special seminar.

The incentive:
For each $100 in gift certificates you buy, you receive a $10 gift card. This is a sales driver.

The special seminar:
A “Yoga Basics” class. The spa’s expert guest will teach about yoga, the benefits, and a few of the basic moves. It listed the date, time, and the cost of the class—$5 cash. Though this may have been created as a way to do something special for customers, this should really be considered a traffic-driving tactic.

The Offers Reviewed

What I’ve explained is pretty standard stuff. We see (and create) these type offers all the time. A special offer to drive gift certificate sales and a relevant class/program designed to help customers. But, each of these has poor consequences. Let me explain where I think the ideas have gone wrong.

$10 Offer (Sales Driver)

Get a free $10 gift card for every $100 gift card purchased.

I give them credit right off for not offering “10% Off!” Percent-off is in-your-face discounting. A “free $10 card for you when you buy a $100 for a friend” is not as blatant, however, it is still discounting.

The problem with discounting is that it reduces the perceived value of the good or service. Why would I ever pay $200 again for a massage that has been offered at $180? It is obviously worth only $180 or less. I’m now going to wait to purchase when the price is low.

Instead of offering a discount, offer a value. I mentioned they have a line of beauty products. Why not give a $10 pack of beauty products free with each gift certificate purchase?

It provides a $10 value, but what you’re actually doing is driving trial. Someone (the giver or receiver) is going to try the products. What if you were able to convert them into a product buyer in addition to a service buyer? Now we have just increased the value of this customer to your company by increasing the average purchase.

Special Seminar (Traffic Driver)

Come to our class, bring five bucks. Seriously?

I mentioned this was a swanky brand. What’s with “bring five bucks? I know, it the cash fee to pay the person who is giving the class. This prevents the spa from taking the money out of their petty cash. But, they’re missing the point. This isn’t a five-dollar-per-person cost … It is an investment. The purpose of bringing people in, is NOT the class. It is a chance to DRIVE TRAFFIC to the site to DRIVE TRIAL of products.

The chance to offer participants a short massage, a chance to use the beauty products. This is a chance to roll out the red carpet and make them feel welcome. Show them why you’re worth paying more for. Perhaps the value of coming in every four weeks instead of every six weeks.

Asking participants to pony-up five bucks make the spa sound like a cheapskate. The spa should either charge $50 a person (make it seem of high value), or make it a free seminar and use the traffic as a way to drive trial, and future purchase.

In Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, on the surface these ideas are pretty standard. And, you have to give points to the spa owner for doing something.

Something isn’t always better than nothing when it can cause damage. The smart strategy not only works to achieve the short-term goals, but also supports or builds the brand in the long run.

Now is the perfect time for businesses to jump into mobile communications, says “The State of Mobile Communications,” a newly issued report by Burson-Marsteller and Proof Integrated Communications (where I am Managing Director of Emerging Media.)

The report provides recommendations based on the implications of a range of key mobile research reports, including:

• Companies who are not already engaging with stakeholders via mobile are missing infinite business and revenue-generating opportunities created by exponential mobile growth. And, once mobile is even more pervasive in a few years, businesses who are not in the mobile space risk being squeezed out by competitors.

It’s no secret that RIM is in trouble on Wall Street as it loses out in the consumer market to Android vendors and Apple. But what about RIM’s core competency, the enterprise? We’ve been covering the rapid adoption of Android and especially iOS in the enterprise, and the availability of device management alternatives to the BlackBerry Enterprise Manager. Is RIM in danger of losing business customers as well as consumers? We think so, but have a few ideas on what RIM can do to keep its competitive edge.

First of all, let’s be clear: most of the Android and iOS adoption in the enterprise is coming from user-owned devices. At the moment, RIM seems to be holding onto its existing enterprise customers. So why are we worried? Two things:

1) User-owned devices could start to cut into corporate owned devices. Business customers may start ditching their BlackBerrys in favor of carrying only one non-RIM phone as more organizations begin to allow user-owned devices.

2) As enterprises start supporting Android and iOS devices using device management solutions such as Good,Mobile Iron and Zenprise, they may start to realize they don’t need BES any more.

3) As we pointed out when the European Commission decided against using BlackBerrys, enterprises are increasingly relying on more than just e-mail for communication and collaboration – and the lack of developer support for BlackBerry could be a stumbling block in the future.

So what are they to do?

Switch to Android

Dan Frommer recently suggested that RIM switch to Android. There was already a rumor that RIM’s tablet will be Android powered, though that seems unlikely (others suggest it will be QNX powered).

Certainly that would be difficult, but it would give BlackBerry users a greater selection of software. As Frommer points out, the BlackBerry OS isn’t RIM’s core competency – its secure e-mail service is. If RIM offered a device with modern hardware, an Android operating system and its own e-mail service, all tied to a BES, then it could secure its position in the enterprise.

Altimeter Group analyst Ray Wang disagrees. “There is so much value in the BBOS today,” he says. “The issue is they need to rearchitect the platform to be more object oriented and developer productivity focused.”

“My 12 year old cousin can build a fairly complex iPhone app in 3 weeks,” Wang says. “The same app would require him 2 months to build on the RIM platform.” To this end, RIM is re-tooling its app store, but it seems a lot like the Torch: too little, too late.

Deeply Integrate with Enterprise Software

If the future of the enterprise is in apps, then RIM could do more to engage enterprise software vendors and integrate their software more deeply in the BES. RIM is already doing this with SAP, but as Wang points out, development for BlackBerrys can be difficult.

“Relevance in the enterprise is not really in question at this point for RIM as they are still the dominant platform in this area right now,” says Seregon CEO Julian White, “Where the other platforms have a slight advantage, and therefore RIM has a great opportunity to improve upon, is in the development tools they offer to build B2B, B2C, and B2E applications.”

Seregon markets mobile enterprise application development platforms and will launch a new mobile application framework DragonRAD this year at BlackBerry DevCon.

A big issue for enterprises creating mobile apps is how to handle custom installations, according RhomobileCEO Adam Blum. “Almost no enterprise is using an out of the box schema,” he says.

Rhomobile attempts to solve this with its mobile application framework Rhodes (which we covered previouslyhere), which supports changing schemes. According to Blum, Salesforce.com spent quite a lot of money developing its own schema framework for its mobile app. RhoLogic was able to use Rhodes to quickly and cheaply build a SugarCRM mobile client.

RhoMobile or Seregon could make interesting acquisition targets for RIM, or point to a future strategy for RIM: making life easier for enterprise developers.

Create a Breakthrough Technology

RIM has been lagging companies like Apple, HTC and Samsung in its hardware development lately. The Torch’s 624 Mhz processor and 360×480 resolution display failed to impress most reviewers. At the very least it needs to keep up with the competition – but what if they were able to leapfrog the competition? It’s hard to predict what that could be, but if RIM stays in the hardware game it would be nice to see some real innovation.

The Good News: Apple might Not be All That Interested in the Enterprise

There is some good news: even though Apple may be capturing some of the enterprise market, but CanonicalCOO Matt Asay recently tweeted “Will Apple care? It has never aggressively courted enterprises.” In fact, Steve Jobs hates enterprise IT.

It’s difficult to see Apple walking away from all that money, and have been releasing enterprise iOS tools, so RIM shouldn’t take too much comfort. But IT managers should take note of Apple’s antipathy towards the enterprise before investing too heavily into Apple technology.

What else?

Are you a business user who has switched to the iPhone or an Android device? Or an IT manager considering supporting more mobile operating systems? What can RIM do to win you back or keep you?

The collection of languages on YouTube is continuing to expand, with the addition of four new languages today.  YouTube users can now surf the video site in Croatian, Filipino, Serbian and Slovak.  That brings YouTube Worldwide to a total of 28 different languages, which is an increase of almost 50% from the beginning of the year.  And international YouTubers can expect the site to launch even more languages by the year’s end.

According to the YouTube blog, the video site hopes to offer the YouTube experience in 40 different languages, which is double what they offered at the beginning of the year.  The site started out with only English in 2005 and began adding new languages mid-2007.  Ever since, the site has been on a roll, adding new languages for international users and we can expect a big push with adding even more languages from here on out.

Check out the timeline below, which shows all the languages that have been added to YouTube so far.  As YouTube continues to add languages, making the site available for users no matter what part of the world they live in, their viewer base will only continue to grow.  Is your native language accounted for?  Can you think of any major languages that are missing?

Turkish designer Beste Miray Dogan makes envelopes lined with a map showing where the letter originated. A clever way to advertise the location of a shop, restaurant, or office.

A debate is taking place here in New York over a proposed office tower across from Madison Square Garden. 15 Penn Plaza would bring 67 stories of Class A office space to the doorstep of Penn Station, the nation’s busiest rail hub, as well as much needed transit improvements to the subway stations around Penn. However, the owners of the Empire State Building say the new tower will obstruct views of one of New York’s best-known buildings.

The City Planning Commission has already approved the project, and in advance of a vote by the City Council this week – one of the last major approvals needed – 15 Penn Plaza’s developer and the Empire State Building’s owner have released renderings that alternately make the new tower look like a glowing new icon, or a massive behemoth:

You can see in the renderings above how each side envisions the future of the skyline. In Vornado’s (left), each tower is clearly visible in all its illuminated splendor. Co-existence, hooray! But in the Empire State Building’s (right), it’s like 15 Penn Plaza has obliviously and obnoxiously lumbered in front of the Empire State Building while you were taking a photo. “Um, excuse me, sir — sir? — you are right in our way.”

Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal reports on robust interest in the iPad from the business world, which was initially reluctant to consider the iPhone when it debuted three years ago:

Businesses are behaving differently with the iPad, in large part because the new device is starting out as more of a known quantity from a technical standpoint. The iPad runs the same operating software as the iPhone, which has been enhanced with a number of business-friendly features.

In addition to using the familiar and business-friendly iOS, the iPad has two big advantages that businesses can’t ignore. It is less expensive than a laptop, and better suited to certain tasks:

iPads, with list prices ranging from $499 to $829, are also less expensive than the laptop computers most companies buy. They also have advantages over laptops for certain chores, such as when employees work standing up or give demonstrations.

Worthen’s article looks at the current state of iPad use in four companies: Bausch & Lomb, Kaiser Permanente, Daimler (parent of Mercedes-Benz), and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.

Bausch & Lomb:

Bausch & Lomb Inc., which makes eye-care products, built its own iPad app for its salespeople. The company said it had about 50 employees using iPads in the field within a week and a half of the device’s release.

Kaiser Permanente:

But when the iPad was announced, Kaiser preordered a pair, and it has since been testing them in a 37,000-square-foot technology lab. Among the uses so far are viewing medical images such as X-rays and CT scans, and accessing medical records through a trial version of an iPad app developed by the electronic-record system’s maker.

Mercedes-Benz:

For example, Mercedes-Benz Financial, which provides loans and leases for Daimler AG, has equipped some dealerships with an iPad loaded with its app. The goal is to begin the credit-application process while customers are standing near a vehicle.

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal:

“We made sure that we knew as much about these devices as possible,” said Michael Barnas, the firm’s director of application services. The technology department now offers access to its internal systems for more than 50 iPad-toting attorneys, and anticipates issuing iPads as an alternative to laptops as soon as next year.

Besides business, the iPad is popular with Senior Citizens. Which market will it win over next? Apple’s 4th Quarter earnings report, due out in October after back-to-school, should tell us a lot about the device’s reception in the education market.

Despite Google’s global grip on our planet, Facebook has emerged as one of the premier sites not under the search giants influence (minus a few mobile details of course).

While its 500 million plus users appreciate the fact that Facebook is free, truth be told the social network can not rely on Facebook gaming credits and advertisements forever (especially if the world enters a double dip recession).

Although it would be foolish for Facebook to charge users to access the site (as that would benefit the upcoming Google Me), there are at least a five freemium features they could offer which might help Facebook keep the lights on.

Podcasting On The Go

Sometimes users want to update their status with a voice sound bite instead of via text. While one could always use FriendFeed (a service Facebook bought in 2009) to do this, it would be great if users could embed this directly upon their wall.

Facebook could offer this for users for free (perhaps allowing them to upload 60 seconds max per entry) and charge users who require (or desire) more space.

Podcasting via Facebook could also appeal to mobile users, who may prefer to say it rather than type it via thumbs.

Video Editing Please

Believe it or not, Facebook is the third largest video site in the US, behind only Yahoo and the mighty Google Goliath. Despite their bronze medal, Facebook videos as a whole are rather basic compared to rival services like YouTube.

While it’s great to see Facebook offer a decent YouTube alternative, what users really need is a way to edit their videos without having to load up an iPhone app or desktop software.

Even though a video editing suite would not appeal to professionals, it would appeal to millions of families using the service (as allowing Grandma to easily touch up a video vacation could help draw in even more users).

Themes FTW!!

If there was one thing MySpace fans miss about their former hangout, its the ability to customize their themes. Unfortunately most MySpacers lacked the talent to create elegant themes (to the horror of graphic designers everywhere).

In order to satisfy the “wanna be creative” crowd, Facebook could offer approved themes by third party designers, which users could purchase in order to have their profile “stand out” from the crowd.

Facebook could even mimic Apple’s model and take a 30% cut from whatever the theme developers charged (via Facebook credits of course!).

Are You Photogenic?

Despite the fact that there are many photo editing sites out there, having them pull your Facebook photos, edit them and re-upload them is (more or less) a pain.

While Facebook could simply roll out a freemium photo editing suite, it might be wiser to outsource that feature to third party clients who could help users touch up images without leaving the site.

Facebook (or a third party) could roll out basic editing features for free, while offering premium services for users desiring to remove the “red eye” from various albums.

Ad Free Zone

Believe it or not there are some users willing to pay Facebook in an attempt to remove the (often) annoying ads next to their social profile (as not everyone wants to see those dating adverts).

However since ads are a very profitable feature for Facebook, the social network could charge a high premium for users wanting to prevent ads displaying next to their profile whenever their friends visit their wall.

Although this feature would probably not appeal to the free loaders, it could help Facebook generate some extra cash every month.

Would You Pay For Facebook Features?

If Facebook offered these features above, would you consider exchanging your hard earned cash for? Or is there another feature not mentioned here that you would consider worth paying for?

Earlier this summer, select Yelp users in the Sacramento area noticed Groupon-like deals appearing in the right-hand side of the home page. At the time, Yelp confirmed that a Daily Deals product was in the works. Today the company is revealing more about the initiative and promises to begin testing the program in New York and San Francisco soon.

“We have been working with some of the best local businesses — as identified by the Yelp community — to highlight some great deals for our users,” said Director of Local Business Marketing Dylan Swift.

The San Diego deal in question offers Yelp members five yoga classes at The Little Yoga Studio for $30, an offering that normally sells for $65. Yelp members can purchase the deal for a limited time period, as well as share it on Facebook or Twitter. Unlike Groupon, Yelp does not require a minimum threshold of users to purchase the deal before it is unlocked for everyone.

Yelp may be entering Groupon’s territory, but group buying makes sense when coupled with Yelp’s core purpose. What’s smart about about Yelp’s implementation is how well-tied each deal is to the retailer’s Yelp listing, so Yelp users can find immediate context for the deal they’re considering by scrolling down and checking out the reviews and ratings of other patrons; in this case, the listed reviews for The Little Yoga Studio are stellar.