SoMaFusion :: travelogue

Refuse Uploaded by D I C K S D A I L Y on 29 Jan 07, 9.45PM GMT.

All of our beloved designers have the same problem. They end up doing projects that they don’t like because the clients ask for minutely specified things. We sympathise and understand. Not to mention that we enjoy reading a lovely new blog (sorry, in Greek only) detailing some such adventures.

However, we tend to say ‘no’ quite a lot. Manolis reminded me today when we were discussing the possibility of doing a pro bono project for someone we like (more on that one later).

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Snow Uploaded by SykoFantiS Bastoyni on 6 Jan 10, 12.36PM GMT

Greetings earthlings from frozen London.

I won’t lie to you we’ve been having challenging weather. So much so that I even had to stop riding the scooter for at least a week and that’s saying something.

What better way to fend off the cold than the amazing little gift I got today from one of our clients. We were gossiping about pies the other day – steak and ale being my favourite, chicken and mushroom his. He remembered and got me this precious book on pies today – the day that we completed phase 1 of our work with him (yes, yes I’ll be blogging about it soon)

Pies: A lovely gift Uploaded by SoMaFusion on 9 Feb 10, 2.13PM GMT

Needless to say I am now obligated to cook at least one pie (sigh).

As the above talk regarding a client would evidence we have not died even though we did take a long and well-deserved rest over Christmas, especially Manolis who managed to wind down and reconcile all of our client hotels’ systems for the winter.

A lot of systems updating has been happening but I will not bore you with the details – suffice it to say that all client software and hardware is ready for the new holiday season. (Yes, we do feel quite smug about it).

Oh, and when I do bake the pie (notice the ‘when’ rather than ‘if’) I promise at least a picture.

* I was this close to titling this “It’s high time for 3,14″. All this systems and numbers talk is getting to me.

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The lovely original photo is by milena mihaylova (Creative Commons) please consider supporting her work

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It certainly is that time of the year – even though in London, if we believed the lights and decorations it has been Christmas since round about August.

We are delighted to announce our Christmas give-away for this year (our first one ever as well). Just book your stay at the Golden Bay Hotel Apartments, for as long as you want, any time from the 1st of April 2010 to the 31st of October 2010 and you get a 15% discount (see how to do this below). As long as you book your stay for those dates you can actually do your booking from today.

Golden Bay is a delightful hotel in Crete, 28km east of Heraklion. Surrounding it are the resorts of Hersonissos, Stalis and Elounda – with the Malia beach just 10 minutes away. It’s actually a wonderful haunt if you are planning to combine sea and sand with a bit of sight-seeing (go to the Palace of Knossos, you’ll never forget it). Check it out when you do your booking, you can also choose to book some excursions at the same time.

It was our pleasure to kick off this year’s give-away (and our first one) via an announcement at the Greek website prosfor.es (which means ‘offers’ in Greek). prosfor.es is a new project started during the 2nd Athens Startup Weekend by Nikos Anagnostou and Thodoris Kargas - helped by Th. Sapountzis and D. Papadimitriou. The idea rocks and we hope it goes the distance.

HOW TO CLAIM YOUR DISCOUNT
To claim your discount please book via the Golden Bay online booking system and in the Special Requests / Remarks field just input “SoMaFusion prosfor.es”

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If you have any questions or issues please contact us on AllOfUs(at)SoMaFusion(dot)com
Disclaimer: Golden Bay is one of our projects (see here for more details)
If you book from any other service and not the Golden Bay online booking system this offer will not be valid.

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Handshake
Uploaded by Sergio Prado on 30 Sep 09, 3.06PM GMT.

Here is a good example of why it’s a good idea to refer clients to people who can help them when you can’t do it.

Went to a corner shop today and I asked for something. The guy behind the counter looked at me, slowly turned around, checked if the product was there, looked back at me and with the bored look of the early morning said “I don’t have any”. Mind you, this guy owns the place. I’m not planning on going back. There is another corner shop just two doors now and I plan on starting to use that one. I would be prepared to stick to the first guy if he had said the most simple thing in the world. “I’m sorry I don’t have any right now, I will be getting a delivery tomorrow but in the meantime there is another shop two doors down where you might find what you are looking for”. There, how hard would that be.

Admitting the limits of what we can do and what we want to do is a SoMaFusion fundamental principle. If there is something that cannot be done or that we are not interested in we will always strive to recommend other people and/ or companies to the client. We do this for a number of reasons.

Asking us to do something is an act of trust
Even if it’s only an enquiry the prospective client is showing a level of trust by approaching us. It would be very poor form indeed if we did not at least strive to repay that trust by being honest and by introducing someone that might be able to do something that we may not be able to do at the moment.

It’s an opportunity to understand their needs and to better explain what we do
Some prospective clients have a vague idea of their needs and a vague idea of what we do. Sitting down together and looking at their needs we might discover that they should look into other communications priorities first before they come onto digital communications. By discussing their needs we can explain the field, explain what we do and give them a better idea of what we think their priorities should be.

Saying we cannot take on a project is a positive thing
Nobody can do everything. We know what we are good at, we know what we like doing, we know exactly where we can help a client. What is the point of pretending? If there are others out there that can do something better then we are definitely recommending them. How many times do you think a client gets to hear that a company is not in a position to do something? Not a lot. And they don’t trust people who claim they can do everything. Clients know from experience that it’s impossible.

Referring to someone else shows that we know our field
We don’t see anyone as a competitor (even though it’s a good word for the title). I come from a policy background which has taught me that businesses turn around a market a lot quicker if they cooperate and understand each other. Especially when it comes to an emerging market and in these difficult financial times as well. By referring to someone else we show the client that we understand our field – hence we know what we are talking about – and that we have good relationships with people out there.

Referring to someone else makes the customer happy AND improves the industry
Think about it. If we all admitted what we can and can’t do and referred to others whenever we couldn’t take on a job we would be able to a) make the client happier and b) make the market better. In the long run we would be building relationships and connections across the industry which would promote trust and would make it easier for a small consortium to be set up easily if a big account turns up. Why should we send it to the big guys? If we all know our specialisations and have been courteous to each other in the past what’s to stop us from getting the big accounts? Not to mention that referring to each other means that we slowly but surely identify the bright stars – in other words we are making the industry better with each referral (provided you are not introducing your best mate but someone who can actually do a good job)

Naturally there is always the money question

Fine, but is it making us any money?
It sure is making us not only money but also gives us a lot in social capital. When you say you can’t take on an account and you refer to someone else you are not losing money. You are deferring it to a later date when the client thinking back to your honesty and help and having understood what you do will come back to you. You are deferring it to a later date when the client will introduce you to other clients. You are deferring it to a date when the people you have introduced will do the same for you.

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Manolis and I went to the World Travel Market today – met old friends and made some new ones. In my question “so, how did you find it this year” I heard a lot of “like last year“, “it’s going to be a tough year“, “we only come to maintain contacts anyway” and similar equally subdued comments.

There was a general worried stance that you could almost taste in the air – the financial crisis is making people nervous and nervous people tend to go back to their comfort zone – for seasoned travel destinations that sadly means playing the game based on price rather than quality and engagement.

Still you have some people – and it’s usually a people thing rather than on a company or country level – who look ahead beyond the financial crises and want to be ready and engaged. For them it’s not just a retention issue but rather a qualitative turn towards visitors who are engaged and demanding. Those visitors are the ones who will make a destination better through feedback and ideas.

For SoMaFusion I have to say that it was a good experience. We had some good meetings with existing clients from Crete (more on that later) and met some new people that we’d love to work with. I was quite impressed by some discussions we had with a truly visionary hotelier from Crete who is eager to engage with his customers and business contacts beyond the old ‘brochure and business card’ model towards a more interactive type of communication. These sort of discussions make these events truly worthwhile.

Work and business contacts aside it was a good exhibition I thought with a good mix of tour operators and booking/ travel systems with country and city presences as impressive as ever. Having said that it was as big and as chaotic as ever and I would have loved to see more tech tools to make navigating the exhibition easier – but hey, I’ll write a separate blog post on that one.

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The nature of communication is something we discuss often at SoMaFusion.

Yesterday we spent the evening debating an old favourite of mine – content over form and the ways in which content and its presentation can cause an emotional impact. We ended up – to put it in simple terms – debating how people communicate better.

Manolis – I have to say – has a practical mind which he sets loose when it comes to discussions like these and he goes all theoretical on me. I on the other hand have a tendency to be convinced by examples and I need them in order to be able to visualise the argument. Being a words person I was insisting about the importance of the written word and how it can excite and help communicate. I don’t think we were in total agreement but Manolis was trying to find me a good example.

This morning he sent me this video (our first on YouTube by the way) and by way of an explanation the words below.

Berlin 2009. The ITB Berlin Travel Show – one of the biggest tourism exhibitions. The video is amateurish, accidental. The music is from my home. The people are from everybody’s home. Africa. How is it possible for a few notes to simply excite people’s body and soul. To mentally elevate them. What is the inner strength of this music that manages to stir us up. The Dionysian rhythms, the dances of the ‘possessed’.

Amazon, Palestine, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Black Sea, Epirus and Crete and a handful of dancers with lyra and laouto. Astounding.

We talk about communications. What do you think they are doing?

The SoMaFusion website is live(ish).

I have been arguing (nicely) with Manolis for a few days now and I was finally convinced that it should go live even if it is not where we both want it (even though it’s pretty close).

The logic is simple. Since the company is new and we are now introducing ourselves it makes sense to expose people to our content early so that we get feedback before we settle.

So, be bold, be harsh, be honest. Do it here in the comments or you can e-mail me wordsmith(at)SoMaFusion(dot)com. Comments are preferable obviously but send your feedback any way you like.

We are live(ish) and we want to know what you think .

It feels a little bit like a dream come true. I’ve always been of the opinion that a logo needs to evoke emotion – trully great logos should inspire people to act. (Well, ours already inspired the Codesmith to act, he wrote his first blog post about it yesterday).

In my first post about it I said that designing the logo is a journey that your designer helps you take.

It is impossible to do justice to our designer Lefteris Koulonis who was with us every step of the way and nurtured our every idea (yes, even the really bad ones so that we would take them up to a point and see how bad they really were).

Myself, Manolis and Lefteris managed to swap a good number of e-mails, messages and telephone calls in the process. In one memorable occasion I interrupted a phone call to ask what that annoying sound in the background was. It was the cicadas. Lefteris was on holiday and he didn’t think it too important to mention when I called to discuss colour combinations.

That’s the kind of guy that he is. Check him out on flickr, tumblr, twitter and LinkedIn.(Kudos to Miss Konstantina Zoehrer for introducing him to us)

When we arrived at the final version (I was seriously dancing around) it felt like the end of a really enjoyable journey. We knew every curve, we knew every thought and we could stand behind the logo 100%

So – what do you think?

Our logo is ready and obviously we are more than excited.

(If you stumbled upon this page and are a bit lost check out how we started and what the name means and our principles).

Sofia will update later on in the day with more details of the history but I couldn’t resist uploading this.

Let us know what you think.