Eco-Friendly Advertising

Joshua Jaffe, who writes for the VC Ratings blog, posted a story on Hangar Network, "a startup that sells advertising on biodegradable dry-cleaning hangers." This story can be found through either "Reads" list to the right or by clicking here.

At first blush, putting ads on biodegradable hangars sounds like sort of a dumb idea, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me. Pretty much all the hangars I have in my closet are from the dry cleaner, and who knows how many times I walk by them every day. Seeing "We [HEART] our Customers" gets pretty old after awhile--why not ads instead? And they're biodegradable, which is nice I guess.

More to the point, dry cleaning hangars could be an extremely efficient way to market directly to my target audience--young professionals in upscale, yuppyish parts of town. According to their website, Washington, DC is their number 8 market. I've put in an inquiry for a rate card; who knows, if the price is right, you might see the Referral Union logo under your next suit jacket or blouse.

Flyers

During my first week as a marketing intern at Referral Union I began working on increasing the number of pre-registrants by creating flyers aimed at both applicants (see sample) and employees in the DC area.

The flyers targeting applicants will be posted on bulletin boards at local universities, and possibly also distributed through their career centers, while those targeting employees will be given out in restaurants and cafes that are popular with professionals during their lunch break, and in bars downtown during happy hour, where they go after work.

This is just a start in our effort to raise awareness about the site, I am glad to be a part of the RU team, and look forward to many exciting and successful projects in the future!

Tinkering: Worthwhile Reads

If you look to the right, you'll notice I've added two new sections to this blog: Worthwhile Reads and Good Reads. The first is through Google Reader, and the second is through WidgetBox. Google Reader allows you to share selected items from your various daily reads list while the widget pulls all the items from whatever RSS feed you select (in this case, one that aggregates Venture Capital items).

I'll keep experimenting with each in order to (a) hopefully provide some interesting/useful items and (b) explore how or if they might work on the final Referral Union site once it's launched.

If you'd like to use either of these, click the links above. They were both rather painless to set up once I figured out RSS feeds (almost all news sites support them now). WidgetBox has its own cache of supported feeds (about 1000 at the moment). While you're at it, sign up for my feed!

Dissapointment

One of the two interns I decided to bring on was disallowed by his academic department. The department refused to give him academic credit interning for a company less than three years old. This is rather disappointing from one of Money.com's "10 Cool Colleges for Entrepreneurs." The university also recently submitted an application to the Kauffman Foundation for a grant to

"assist in developing the Institute for Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Innovation (ELI Institute). This Institute will unify the university's current approaches to stimulating entrepreneurial behavior on campus and throughout the extended community."

Shame the university's policies do not reflect its rhetoric.

Design Updates

I received the updated design for the site today, and I think it looks rather sharp. I had quite a few comments on the design and layout, but I think things are coming along well.

If you have any thoughts on the design, please feel free to leave a comment below.