Tuesday, 28 October 2008


Google Project 10 to 100: Our Entry

"How soon will we get the $10 million from Google, Dad?", asked one of our WeDo Marriage heiresses a few days ago. No until after Christmas, sadly. Last week we submitted our entry to Google's Project 10 to 100, "a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible."

Check out the details of our entry and get ready to vote come 27 January 2008.

Here are the main questions asked by Google Project 10 to 100 and our responses to them.

Google: Describe your idea on one sentence.

A marriage to love, a love to last: a better and brighter future for today’s couples and for the children and communities of tomorrow worldwide.

Google: Describe your idea in more detail:

WeDo Marriage empowers couples to design, exchange and sustain personalised, mutual commitments and goals based on contract law rather than family law. Without imposing their vision of marriage on society as a whole, and working with professionally accredited service providers they can build Marriage Contracts that reflect their Love, Values and Aspirations. As happy, fulfilled and productive partners and parents they are equipped to make positive and measureable contributions to their community, locally and globally, now and in the future.

Google: What problem or issue does your idea address?

Experts agree that across the western world over the past thirty years marriage rates have halved and are now at a record low. By the 2030s new marriages will be extinct and most couples will have no legal relationship with each other, and most children will have a legal relationship with only one of their two biological parents. We see the terminal decline of marriage not as a demand problem but a supply problem. Most people want to get married; they just don’t want the only version of marriage currently available from the only people who currently supply it: the state family law system.

Google: If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

WeDo Marriages make happy families; happy families make happy societies; happy societies make a happy world. WeDo families have the purpose, commitment and motivation to invest in a sustainable world, the world they pass on to what is most precious to them: their children. They have the conviction and drive to protect cultural heritage; protect the environment; to prioritise renewable energy solutions and to build fairer, safer and more caring and stable interdependent societies. They have the passion to enrich their children's future on this wonderful planet.

Google: Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

More Love in the world. More individuals entering into relationships in search of enduring love, and more couples advancing into commitment-based, longer-term relationships. More parents having children, reducing demographic imbalance; more children nurtured by two parents, enhancing child outcomes in terms of personal development and educational performance. And a society with more net contributors to the common good.

Over 100,000 ideas were submitted. So our odds at WeDo Marriage of making the top 100 ideas from which the ten winners will be picked are 1,000-to-1. Better odds than we've ever had before ;-)

Go here to learn more about the project, watch a video, and sign up for a notification to select your favourite idea when voting beings in January next. The prize fund will come in handy in the New Year ... when cash is a bit short after Christmas.


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Saturday, 4 October 2008


Seth Godin on selling new ideas

How to Sell a Book (or Any New Idea) (step 1 is the hard part) is the title of an excellent eight-slide presentation from Seth Godin on ChangeThis.

Here's a sample quote ...


My friend Fred has a new book coming out and he was trolling around for new marketing ideas. I think he’d be surprised at this:

Sell one.

Find one person who trusts you and sell him a copy. Does he love it? Is he excited about it? Excited enough to tell ten friends because it helps them, not because it helps you?

More from Seth:

Tribes grow when people recruit other people. That’s how ideas spread as well. They don’t do it for you, of course. They do it for each other. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. If Fred’s book spreads, then he’s off to a great start. If it doesn’t, he needs a new book.

This bit is important:

You don’t get to take step 2 if you can’t do step 1.

And finally - you'll need to view the slides to get this:

What’s hard now is breaking the rules. Successful people are the ones who are good at this.

Go download How to Sell a Book (or Any New Idea) (step 1 is the hard part).

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Lessons for life and business

From Rajesh Setty, serial entrepreneur, investor, author and blogger: Mini Sagas - Bite Sized Lessons for Life and Business. It features 15 mini photo-essays (photographs with stories each of exactly 50 words). Here is the link.

If I had to pick a favourite ...


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What advertising can't fix

A Reuters report Church of England law relaxes wedding rules reveals that a new British law came into force in October making it easier for couples to get married in Anglican churches.

Previously, couples could only get married in a church if they worshipped there regularly, lived in the parish or applied for a special license. Under the new rules, couples can choose to get married in a place with a special connection for themselves or their families.

According to Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of Reading: "Getting married in church just got easier. People who are serious about getting married naturally want a marriage ceremony and a setting which is equally serious." This report story reminded me of a recent blog post from marketing guru Seth Godin called What advertising can't fix and the following cartoon from Tom Fisburne.

With due respect to the good Bishop, marriage rates in Britain are at the lowest level since records began. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of people choosing to sign up for a state marriage fell in 2005 by 10 per cent, producing the lowest marriage rates since they were first calculated in 1862. In the words of British think-tank Civitas:

It is not too extreme to talk about the death of marriage.

The Church of Enlgand deserves credit for relaxing rules that some of its flock may have found cumersome, but it does not change the fact that state marriage is a contaminated brand managed by a self-serving, state-backed monopoly known as the 'family law system'. Marriage rates have halved since the family system took over state marriage in the mid 1970s; according to the UK Independent, the last state marriage will be performed sometime in 2033

The terminal decline of state marriage is not a demand problem but a supply problem; it's not that people don't want to get married (every opinion poll and survey says most do); it's that there is currently only one type of marriage currently available (and it's a rubbish product). The wonder is not that fewer people are signing their names to the state marriage contract; it's that so many are still doing so. But, as the statistics show, it won't be for a whole lot longer.

Few would disagree with Bishop Stephen Cottrell when he says that people who are serious about getting married "want a marriage ceremony and a setting which is equally serious". But should they also not want a marriage contract that is serious: a contract they have choosen for themselves, not a non-negotiable deal imposed by the state? A contract for two, commited people - and without a state-backed monopoly as a dominant and abusive third partner.

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Branding with Schley and Nichols

Why Johnny Can’t Brand: Rediscovering the Lost Art of the Big Idea is a book from Bill Schley and Carl Nichols Jr that offers insights into how to create what they call a Dominant Selling Idea (DSI) and build a #1 brand.


According to the two authors a product or service needs to satisfy the 'Five Selling Ingredients' to become a DSI.

  • Superlative - is best in class - better than the competition. Promise me something nobody else does.
  • Important - offers something that really matters. Something I really want or would be in the market for if I knew about it.
  • Believable - offers a logical reason, has credibility.
  • Memorable - has an emotional hook that sticks until purchase time. Do you have something not only that I need - but what I want.
  • Tangible - offers something real. Customers trust it because they’ve experienced it and it performed as promised. Must perform in a way that’s totally aligned and consistent with all of your claims.


You can download a PDF copy of the Introduction and Chapter One from the DavidID website.


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Remarkability: not taken but earned

From Paul Williams's Idea Sandbox, a blog about remarkability, creative problem solving and brand building:


In his blog post The Challenge Of Doing Something New, And Remarkable Paul quotes George Lucas, director of the Star Wars movies:

Well it’s always hard to get somebody to see something that’s never been done before.

It’s a big problem because there’s no precedent for you to base a judgment on.

People have to have a leap of faith. And trying to convince people to have a leap of faith, especially people that may be accountants or people about to invest - it’s extremely difficult because their imaginations don’t soar the same way creative people do.

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Wednesday, 1 October 2008


Judge blasts Stone's child Botox plan

According to Yahoo News actress Sharon Stone wanted her son to have his feet Botox-ed to stop them from smelling, a court judge has revealed.



According to court papers in the actress's custody case in which she requested to have her son Roan move from his father's San Francisco home to live with her in LA, the actress thought it would be a good idea for the 8-year-old to have a Botox injection - which in addition to being a wrinkle treatment also stops sweating - to cure his foot odour.


Stone's intended action was, unsurprisingly, considered an "over-reaction" and cited by the judge as an example of why the boy should stay with Phil Bronstein. "As the father appropriately noted, the simple and common sense approach of making sure Roan wore socks with his shoes and used foot deodorant corrected [the problem]," said the judge.

Stone's delegation of "parenting responsibilities" was also mentioned in the papers and her refusal to take part in counselling. The Basic Instinct star's conduct was described as "unacceptable" and not serving "the child's best interest".

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