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In today’s (commercial) world, everyone seems to be focussed on one thing and one thing only: money. Many companies forget that without customers, they would not be where they are right now and yet, some companies still believe they can treat their customers the way they want.

Normally, this kind of post would turn into a rant, but I think it is important to point out those companies that actually care about their customers and will do (just about) everything to keep you coming back:

First up is QH Networks. I came across them while looking for some professional help on getting a new Operating System installed on my server. Since I value my data and like to be kept in the loop, I bombarded one of their employees with a myriad of questions during the whole project. I had special requirements and special circumstances, yet they did not give up on me and move on to the next, probably more profitable client. By doing so, they earned my respect and I will most certainly come back when I am in need of their services again.

Next stop is Proporta.com. I initially came across them in 2003, while looking for some accessories for my Pocket PC and while I am not ordering from them every other week, they are always the first site that I check. The reason for that is simple: their employees are very responsive and in the rare case that your order cannot be shipped out the same day, they will try to, and actually do, their level best to keep you happy as a customer. It is not so much the reparations they are willing to make but their concern for you as a customer. Granted, said concern is probably based on the fact that they want to keep you as a customer, but still, they care, while others do not. And besides that, Proporta.com includes a selection of English Breakfast Tea with every order, a small gesture, yes, but one I like a lot.

Both of these companies work harder to keep you as a customer than most other companies you will ever come across. It may be related to their respective area of operations, which are more niche than your ordinary brick and mortar store or it may be related to the fact that their employees actually give a damn. Either way, it works out very nicely for the consumer.

Google just stealth-launched a new service (beta, naturally) in the Americas called AdSense for mobile. The service has already been tested for about 15 months now in Japan and was deemed successful enough to roll it out to a broader public.

While I am not a huge fan of advertising in general, I believe that the monetary reward that a publisher can get from services like AdSense can be beneficial to the end user as far as making content freely available goes.

If Google enforces the same guidelines as it does with “normal” AdSense, I believe that this will be a great way to provide mobile users with content free of charge, while at the same time being able to monetize those same visitors.

Whenever you read news from the entertainment industry, you hear C - level staff complaining about how bad digital music is hurting sales and how hard it is to sell music to people because everyone just pirates it, you’ve heard those for years now, you’ll keep hearing them for quite some time more.

Sure, there’s Apple and the iTMS, which is doing quite well - because there are lots of iPods out there and people are easily tricked into buying more than one song ( “come on mom, it’s only a buck!” ). The whole store is doing well, in fact, a lot better than the top 10 stores that sell DRM-secured Windows Media Audio files together, but there are still those that dislike how Apple handles DRM.

Now, I don’t feel like getting into the whole DRM discussion more than I have to, mostly because I’m no expert on it, but from personal experience I know that certain DRM schemes are hurting the customers and put them off.

For example, my ISP provides those that subscribe to one of the better packages with credits for their (WMA-powered) online music store. You don’t pay for it 1:1, it’s all included in your subscription. A nice idea, it keeps people from downloading pirated music … or does it?

In the past, I’d “buy” my albums at the store, then proceed to a P2P site to download the MP3s, including coverart and intelligently named files (rather than “artistid_tracknumber_trackname.wma”). Technically speaking, I didn’t do anything bad, I didn’t share those MP3s with anyone and I was able to listen to them on the device of my choosing (I have / had quite a few devices and I dislike the idea of losing 50% of my media library because of device lock-in). I didn’t even bother downloading the WMA-encrypted files, why waste bandwidth after all?

So, you won’t believe how happy I was when I first discovered the goodness that is MagnaTune. Sure, they haven’t signed any uber-famous acts like Britney Spears or Robbie Williams (who’d want them anyway?), but that doesn’t mean that any of their artists aren’t great musicians. All of the performers are screened and the team from MagnaTune then decides who actually gets to be included in their portfolio.

While that is a a good feature on it’s own, here’s what I really love about them: when you buy a CD, you get to decide how much you pay for it. Say, if you’re short on cash, you could spend a couple bucks, burn that CD, then impress your girlfriend with it while you propose to her. She accepts and you’re so thankful that you decided to buy the CD again and now pay a bigger amount. Granted, I’m quite sure this hasn’t happened (yet), but it’s one way to describe their pricing policies.

When you buy a CD, it’s up to you how you want it. There are quite a few different formats, high and higher bitrate MP3, FLAC, WAV, everything really. And if you happen to lose your music along the road, you just hit up their re-download form and you’ll get a mail with all your music downloads again, at no extra charge, naturally.

Another thing I love is that with every album you purchase, you get three tickets to give away to friends. They can then download the same album you bought for free. Sure, you could send out more tickets, but then again, why hurt those that try to please you?

Like every good web-based company, they have a blog available, with lots of great information, should you be looking for more reading. Oh, and they’re working on a Second Life space too.

Another company that just gets it is CANDdYRAT Records. Like MagnaTune, they have a nice selection of artists in their line up. They approach marketing in an innovative way, if you ask me. I am, like most people, too busy to go out and look for music, I’d much rather get a list of suggestions (just like last.fm and Pandora do) and then take my pick.

Recently, I’ve been using YouTube to discover new music and came across a great clip called Drifting from Andy McKee. The whole clip is available on YouTube and the user that uploaded it, who actually is the owner of CANdYRAT Records, had another 44 videos available for my entertainment.

I was so fascinated by the Andy McKee stuff that I kept watching clip after clip. His music sounds great, but I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have bought it if I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to see the guy in action. Thanks to the use of some innovative marketing of his assets, Mr. R. Poland managed to turn a listener into a customer and so I decided to order my very own copy of the “Art of Motion”.

Ordering the CD didn’t go down without a hitch though, the first time I tried, Paypal asked me for a credit card, even though I had enough funds in my account to cover it. After asking for some assistance from CANdYRAT Records, I was quickly presented with alternate solutions. In the end, I tried again with Paypal a day later and it just worked. During the whole order process, I received quick replies to emails whenever I had a question and was finally told that my order would arrive in 7 to 10 business days.

Well, what do you know - 2 business days (not counting Saturday, where postal service is, technically speaking available) later, I received a small package with the CD I longed for.

With both companies, support has been great. I wasn’t hassled by any DRM-schemes, I received personal support whenever I had questions and paying for the media was easy too. So if you’re looking to expand your media library, have a look at both MagnaTune and CANdYRAT Records, maybe you’ll find your new favorite artist(s) there…

Back at the The Next Web conference, I was first presented with a product called “Fleck“, basically a web 2.0 post-it service. Now, since this probably doesn’t make much sense to most people, I’d suggest clicking on this link and experiencing the goodness that is Fleck for yourself.

Fleck is a project by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Patrick de Laive and Arjen Schat - if you don’t know those names, you don’t know your internet history very well, I guess. These three guys, like they’ve done so many times before, came up with the whole idea and coded it from the ground up and made sure it was ready to rock when they released it into the wild.

Being a privately funded company, means, to me at least, that there aren’t loads of resources for extensive marketing so the Fleck team came up with something unique, something perfectly suited for their service:

Fleck’ians invaded BRIGHTLive and Fleck’ed just about anything they saw.

Total cost of this gig is probably around EUR 20, if not less. Total exposure is probably worth 20 times as much. Great job guys, that’s the way to do guerilla marketing!

If you know anything about marketing, you should be familiar with the term “multiplier”. No, I’m not talking about the factor that makes your marketing efforts more and more expensive based on the amount of users you want to reach but rather about a very special kind of evangelists - so called “multipliers”.

Every company has a different approach for this concept and the one that I liked the most recently was Nikon’s promotional campaign for the new D80.

If you decide to give your product to users and you go for the well-known crowd, like A-List bloggers or decision makers, you lose a lot of credibility, in my eyes. Nikon seems to agree - they gave their new digital SLR to a handful of the most active Flickr users and let them play around with it.

I really like the results. Good job Nikon!

Virtual hat tip to BlueAce.