June Freelance Jungle is super funky
After flirting with doing a Google Hangout for June’s Freelance Jungle, I’ve decided to go completely the opposite to sitting around at home, doing it via video in my PJ’s (which may still happen in July, but anyway). The June Freelance Jungle is being rolled into a launch party- and man, is it cool! One of my clients, eXpertLocal, is having a launch party. In typical creative style, it won’t just be one of those do’s where you turn up,... Read More
Case Study: eXpertLocal Launch
Background: Collaborative consumption startup, eXpertLocal, was looking at launching at the beginning of 213. CEO Jervis Bharucha engaged Unashamedly Creative to help with the initial marketing and planning, main website copy, and to generally support marketing, content and social media initiatives for the new business. Objective: To create a strong, SEO friendly presence through website copy To create content to help customers learn about experienced... Read More
Case Study: TaskRunners Launch
Background: Collaborative consumption startup, TaskRunners, was looking at launching at the end of 2012. CEO Cheryl Leong engaged Unashamedly Creative to help with the initial marketing and planning, main website copy, and to generally support marketing, content and social media initiatives for the new business. Objective: To create a strong, SEO friendly presence through website copy To create content to help customers learn about collaborative... Read More
A to Z of Hosting Ideas on eXpertLocal
A to Z After spending a little time in a hammock in Hawaii and being up close and personal with a little too much cheese and cider, the team of eXpertLocal have come up with an A to Z of suggested tours you could host! A is for art gallery tours. With a huge number of small, pop up and interesting art installations in Sydney, a locals guide to all things art is totally a must! B is for beer tasting. Between the Red Oak Brewery, the Mac and several... Read More
Be a host on eXpertLocal!
Are you on the search for the best iced coffee in town? Why not build a posse via eXpertLocal? Experience based collaborative consumption business eXpertLocal has just launched and they’re on the lookout for hosts! What does a host do? A host is a person like you who turns their knowledge and love for a particular topic into an experience for other people. It’s basically like being a tour guide, only showing what you think is cool... Read More
Toilet Paper from Germany, Chalk to Mozambique. The mmMule Story.
Avis Mulhall Avis Mulhall is bright, colourful and full of life- even though she suffers from Crohn’s Disease, has spent considerable time under the surgeon’s knife and was staring down the barrel of death barely six weeks after she arrived in Australia and started working on her then fledgling startup. Full of pluck and tremendous character, Avis shines through as part of the magic of mmMule and its charity arm, AngelMule. An Irish lass... Read More
Breaking bread with the unknown. The Eat With Me story.
beth- eat with me Ever been to a new town for business and felt like a complete Nigel no friends as you ate because you didn’t have anyone to catch up with? Or maybe you’ve wanted to hold a sumptuous dinner party and known it’s going to be lost on hubby and the kids? Liisa Vurma and Bethany Jones understand these pains, and that is why they have started Eat With Me- a collaborative consumption business where you can find other people to eat... Read More
Thanks to this lasagne, I can now surf. The MamaBake story
The wave of collaborative consumption. Just the tonic needed for an Australia that keeps being told its poor, in environmental crisis and disconnected! The original Mamabakers Thanks to this lasagne, I can now surf. The MamaBake story Michelle Shearer lives in the beautiful Mid North Coast of New South Wales. One afternoon a friend had made too much food and rang up to ask if Michelle and her family would like some lasagne. The act of sharing dinner... Read More
Business for all the right reasons- The MeeMeep Story
There is a new startup wave that is not driven by getting what you have ready in order to sell off for a profit or make waves in the usual sense. The co-founders who work on it aren’t imagining Ferraris in the garage or floating themselves for millions on the stock exchange, although some do dream of connecting with the world’s charities or sipping tea with Richard Branson. These new entrepreneurs want to create community, encourage sharing and... Read More
Business for all the right reasons- Open Shed
Lisa and Duncan from Open Shed There is a new startup wave that is not driven by getting what you have ready in order to sell off for a profit or make waves in the usual sense. The co-founders who work on it aren’t imagining ferraris in the garage or floating themselves for millions on the stock exchange, although some do dream of connecting with the world’s charities or sipping tea with Richard Branson. These new entrepreneurs want to create... Read More
Going Mobile!
Things are getting super mobile in the world of Unashamedly Creative of late. It’s pretty amazing to see the explosion of content and usage of mobile Apps as more and more people change over to smart phones. Currently, I have 3 projects now on mobile with another to come (which I will talk about closer to release). Check them out! Gomi: A new client of mine, Gomi, is a great little App that allows you to keep your local streets clean and... Read More
eXpertLocal is now recruiting hosts!
Guess what everybody? I’m super proud to announce eXpertLocal is now officially open and ready to take hosts! What this means is my latest awesome collaborative consumption client is looking for passionate locals who would love to share their version of beautiful Sydney with other people by setting up a tour. It doesn’t matter if you are a mad keen fitness enthusiast looking to do a surfing sea-fari or if small bar crawls, checking out live... Read More
Guest Post: Five Profitable Green Business Start Up Ideas
Carlo Pandian is guest blogging on a subject I just love- green businesses! take it away Carlo! Read More Like my style? Enjoy the content? Contact me if you need custom content created or marketing help! Read More
The Rise of Co-working Spaces: A Sharehouse of Ideas
Larissa Meikle from the Loop pops buy to share some news and views on co-working! Take it away Larissa! Read More Like my style? Enjoy the content? Contact me if you need custom content created or marketing help! Read More
10 Ways to De-stress this Christmas
Got more things to do than a Men’s Shed’s got Dad jokes? Want to do things in a more meaningful and less cash heavy way this silly season? Then have I got the hot tips for you. Check out 10 awesome ways to keep your cool this Christmas with collaborative consumption! Save Money: Christmas takes enough of a slug out of the purse with food, holiday bookings, presents and so on- the last thing you need to do is buy equipment to make Christmas happen.... Read More
The Results of the TaskRunners Survey
Thank you to everyone who who took the time to respond to the very first survey by new collaborative consumption business, TaskRunners. For those of you who don’t know, TaskRunners aims to carve out opportunities for free time and extra cash by sharing tasks across neighbourhoods and communities. This exciting little client of mine is run by soon-to-be-mumma on a mission Cheryl Leong who is throwing her all behind hooking up people with assistance... Read More
Clients in the News
It’s always super rewarding to see Unashamedly Creative clients kick goals but September has been especially awesome for TaskRunners, Open Shed and Space Heroes. Cheryl from TaskRunners at the Breakfast Point Fair TaskRunners First Public Appearance I met Cheryl from TaskRunners 3 months ago when she was still working her full time job and just about ready to make the leap into the dizzying world of startup. Since then, Cheryl and I have... Read More
TaskRunners becomes Unashamedly Creative!
The latest startup as part of the Australian collaborative consumption movement, TaskRunners Australia, has joined the Unashamedly Creative portfolio! Since the collaborative consumption (or collcon as it is affectionately known) hit Australian shores in earnest, over 60 new businesses have sprouted around the country. The latest, TaskRunners, is about bringing people together to lighten the domestic burden, help small business operators and give... Read More
Roadtesting: The Mesh by Lisa Ganksy
Considering the rise of collaborative consumption in Australia, it was time to take a look at the Mesh by Lisa Gansky. Here is what I gained from reading it. Trust: Anything to do with community, trust is fundamental. Trust is a social currency too and the best way to build it is through hyper-social activity. The more social people feel, the more likely they are to connect and the more connection they make, the more trust will follow. The more trust,... Read More
Updated: A to Z of Aussie Collaborative Consumption
Welcome to a list I hope will grow and come to life as the collaborative consumption movement does in Australia. Please feel free to email me at any time to let me know of new things you find or have started up so I can add them to the list. The list is up to date as of APRIL 2013 (now in 12th revision!?), so if you are missing or know someone who is, let me know! Couple of Points: 1. I have tried to be accurate with URL and description, however... Read More
Open Shed gets a makeover!
The gang held a wee bit of a working bee and spruced up some of the Open Shed features recently. The aim is to make your Open Shed experience a member friendly and community orientated one, so they’ve done a lot of work around making things easier to use and more flexible for your needs. Here are the major changes in no particular order. Makeover Time Whilst Open Shed is still the collaborative consumption site you know and love, it’s had... Read More
It’s not “Do not buy anything ever” month!
Can you help me defend what is a cracker of an idea? “Buy Nothing New” month is being featured in a poor light in the Daily Telegraph. Take a look at the article here and please make your own determination but… This October, it is planned that two people will be housed in a sustainable pop-up house in Sydney’s CBD. They will have to source all their clothes and all the furniture for the house second hand. It’s promoting... Read More
CASE STUDY: Open Shed Member Survey
Background: A startup in the collaborative consumption space, Open Shed (www.openshed.com.au) was looking to qualify some of the assumptions about how people use Open Shed, what they were hoping to get out of it and how they approached the idea of collaborative consumption. Objective: Unashamedly Creative was engaged to assist with clarifying these assumptions, work out a research strategy and incorporate the findings into marketing and brand planning... Read More
Make the Most Out of Collaborative Consumption
Having recently started a series of interviews for the lovely lasses at Business Chicks on collaborative consumption, I have found most of the #collcon businesses out there face the same problems. Those problems are potential customers like the idea of sharing, but we worry about what might go wrong if we trust another person. And we want other people to lead the charge before we dip our toe in, and if that doesn’t happen, we walk away. So for... Read More
Quick and Dirty Guide to Collaborative Consumption Renting
You’ve opened up your shed, cupboards and in all the nooks and crannies to find stuff to put on Open Shed, and now you have a list of things you would like to put on the site. Yet it all looks a little daunting, right? Well fear not little Share Bear! Here is your Quick and Dirty Guide to Renting on Open Shed! Break it Down Easiest way to start is to grab a piece of paper and pen and just write down what you have and see what you think would be... Read More
The Empowered Consumer
We hear a lot these days about how we as consumers are the mercy of big corporations, are being dealt a rough hand by paying over inflated prices or are being mislead by advertising more than ever. I have to say, what utter hogwash! It appears to me consumers (and we are all consumers in one way shape or form) are more empowered than we have ever been. Here’s how: We can shop however we want, whenever we want Australia really has come into its own... Read More
Collaborative what now?
This post is dedicated to all of the wonderful people out there who are embracing collaborative consumption on a business and everyday level who sometimes find it a little bit hard to explain the concept to friends, family and people in the street. In particular, this is my little bit of love for the guys from Open Shed. What the heck is all this stuff about Collaborative Consumption? Take yourself back to kindergarten or pre-school… Here you... Read More
So simple it has to work…
I recently finished reading The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing by George Silverman (have put up some pieces from it previously and still have another 5 pages of notes I may share, depending). Each time I pick up a book of this kind, it’s great to find some kernel of wisdom that really rings the bell. Here is that bell ringer for me. I wrote down a heading (like the studious little freak I am) of “Six Steps to Harnessing Word of Mouth” with... Read More
