Filemobile helps bring Life Is Good’s Good Vibes to the masses

May 15th, 2012, Toronto. That was the idea when Boston, MA-based Life Is Good, one of the fastest-growing fashion and lifestyle brands in the U.S., launched its Good Vibes project inviting its many fans to share their experiences while living active lifestyles. Why? The brand’s mission is to spread the power of optimism and help kids in need through its products and non-profit efforts, so it made sense to ask its highly-engaged devotees to share photos and stories of how Life Is Good has changed their lives, or simply fun stories of good times had while wearing the company’s clothes.

Within this “Hub of Optimism,” visitors worldwide can share inspiration by uploading pictures, videos, quotes and stories, adding to an overall anthology of all things optimistic.

Their stories range from the hilarious to the heartwarming. Take that of the couple (former best friends who eventually became a couple and got married) who embraced Life Is Good’s message years ago and have spent their time together being active and simply enjoying life—all while nurturing a healthy addiction to the brand’s shirts, pyjama pants, bags and car magnets. Then there’s the story of the businessmen travelling in first class on a recent overseas flight. After realizing they were both wearing Life Is Good t-shirts, the pair struck up a conversation and wound up doing business together, not to mention becoming friends.

The, um, good vibes for Good Vibes have been so strong that the page has been virtually inundated with stories every day since the initiative launched.

To breathe life into the project, Life Is Good turned to Filemobile and its Media Factory social media suite to provide a flexible and reliable platform to accept those uplifting user-generated photos and stories.

“This is a great example of how a brand can effectively engage its many fans and create interesting content,” said Filemobile chief financial officer Ron Watson. “Good Vibes’ momentum has been steadily increasing, so we’re excited to see how many more people upload content to the website and share their stories.”

What’s clear is that Life Is Good’s fans not only boast a lust for life, they’re eager to share their passion—all with an emphasis on the simplicity, humour and humility that’s made the brand so popular—with millions of people the world over.

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FP Blog: How cash-flow creativity helped Filemobile survive past five years

Tech startups need to be creative to keep the cash flowing through the development phase.

January 23rd, 2012 - Toronto - Republished in part from the Financial Post.

The wise financier who long ago declared that cash flow is key to the successful operation of a small- to medium-sized business, probably had a tech startup in mind. That’s because no matter how small, tech firms tend to burn cash at a rapid rate.

As we discussed in our last entry, it doesn’t necessarily take millions to found a tech company, but it does take significant capital — and a steady stream of cash — to account for costs related to product development, market research, wages, marketing and so on, all of which tend to grow exponentially over time.

It also takes an awareness of which key financial metrics need monitoring. As we quickly learned as young entrepreneurs, anyone who founds a tech firm without a familiarity of the intricacies of working capital is in for a big surprise.

Companies can have assets and be profitable, but can be precariously short on liquidity if their assets can’t be readily converted into cash. Positive working capital ensures there are sufficient funds to satisfy both maturing short-term debt and upcoming operational expenses. Tightly managing that working capital means staying on top of accounts receivable (collecting payment from clients, for example) and negotiating better terms on accounts payable.

Why? Suppliers love to receive their money quickly and monthly costs for must-haves such as office rent and data or web hosting facilities put a constant strain on a company’s cash flow. If a firm is providing financing to its clients and not invoicing until the work is done, they’ll quickly understand that the time between paying out and collecting money can leave them insolvent. This is often referred to as the cash conversion cycle and is a critical metric that we learned to monitor early on.

Keeping the taps flowing through a few creative business manoeuvres, some management-level sacrifices and a sound understanding of market needs also helped Filemobile survive past the critical five-year mark. In our case, we even managed the feat without sacrificing equity to outside investors.

How? We incubated Filemobile’s research and development initiatives through people who had other paying jobs. We also had an existing online fantasy sports business that at the time was profitable and generating significant revenue. We then leveraged software developers from that business to design Filemobile’s proprietary social media software platform, Media Factory, at little or no cost to our new firm. Without that financial foundation — which otherwise would have required us to seek alternative financing such as venture capital or angel investment — there’s almost no way we would have survived.

To read the full article go to Financial Post.com.

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How Social Media Drives Value Creation

Toronto, On | March 31st, 2010. Value is an expression of the worth of something. There are many different ways people assess a value. For example, Neoral is a drug used for patients that have recently received an organ transplant. If you were a patient that just underwent a transplant the value placed on this product would be quite significant. However, if you are fortunate enough to still have all your original parts, it could be argued that the value of this product, to that individual, is somewhat negligible.

Not surprisingly the “value” discussion surrounding social media is currently a very hot topic. Social media marketers and traditional marketers are both obsessed with finding ways to drive interest and traffic using this new medium. However, where many marketers are falling short is in articulating how these efforts are creating value to the organization. As a result, many initial attempts in social media are being met with a feeling of being prescribed Neoral in the absence of a new organ!

Although social media may be a new marketing channel, it does not follow that traditional business methods of analyzing and measuring value creation have changed. To the contrary, in order to be successful and win repeat business it is becoming increasingly critical that empirical measurements of value be demonstrated to your clients.

There is no shortage of discussion around social media and value measurements. Interestingly, they almost always focus on revenues. In actuality, revenues only represent one element of how value is measured; equally important are the costs and the discount rate. Let me explain this further. From a financial standpoint the value of a business comes down to the net present value of future cash flows, discounted at a rate of return which reflects the risk of the business. Cash flows for this purpose basically mean profits.

For this blog post, let’s focus on the expense side (costs). I will follow up with a post on how social media can lower your discount rate to produce more value. The bottom line in social media marketing is if done properly, the cost of investing in this form of marketing is significantly lower than traditional forms of media with greater results.

Let me substantiate this with an example. Recently, we ran a campaign for an international consumer brand. The campaign had a traditional media spend and a social media spend all driving traffic to a website for a contest. The cost of the traditional media spend was ≈ 150 K. The cost of the social media spend was included in the overall contest site which was ≈ 30 K. When the final results were tallied the social media initiative drove 25% of the traffic/registrations, and the traditional media budget 20%. Not only were the costs dramatically lower, the results were also considerably better, thereby enhancing the business value creation for this client.

The internet and social media in particular have the ability to drastically enhance operating margins in an organization. Savvy marketers that are aware of the proper software tools can develop purposeful campaigns at a fraction of the cost. Thus, driving greatly improved operating margins for their business. I think it is important to always remember that at the end of the day the marketer’s job is all about augmenting their companies’ cash flow. It is our job to help them understand by how much!

Ron Watson

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Filemobile ranked #8 on the Profit HOT 50 Emerging Growth Companies

Leads the way for new Software as a Service (SaaS) companies in Canada

Toronto, Canada, September 22, 2008 - Filemobile, a leading social media and networking platform provider, has emerged as one of Canada’s fastest growing companies according to the 9th annual PROFIT HOT 50 ranking.

“We are honored and delighted to be named to the PROFIT HOT 50 list as the eighth emerging growth company in Canada,” said Chris Becker CEO, Filemobile. “As a self-funded company, we recognize the need to manage our growth and yet expand our business quickly to enable customers to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities in the social media space.”

Filemobile provides services and tools for media companies, brands, and digital agencies. It enables clients to collect, manage and monetize content, making it simple to leverage social media and engage customers. Filemobile software powers some of the most popular online campaigns in Canada, including CBC's Canada Hockey Anthem Challenge, a cross-country search calling on all Canadians to be part of hockey history by composing the next theme song for CBC's Hockey Night in Canada.

The result has been the most successful user generated contest in Canadian history. 14,685 songs were submitted for this recently launched project, powered by Filemobile's Media Factory. There have been over 12 million page views, over 600,000 unique visitors, and 1.2 million site visits. Media Factory powers and tracks several other campaigns across the web for clients including:

• CTV – Live the Drama
• Muchmusic - Showmeyours.tv Community
• Molson - Molson Dry Association of Party Pros

“The PROFIT HOT 50 companies illustrate the ingenuity and vitality of Canada’s entrepreneurial sector,” said editor Ian Portsmouth. “Anyone who wants to start or grow a business can draw much inspiration and many lessons from the HOT 50.”

The PROFIT HOT 50 is the definitive ranking of Canada’s Emerging Growth Companies. Published in the October issue of PROFIT magazine and online at www.PROFITmagazine.ca.

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