Open up your mind and say, ahh...

If you sell at the top of the market (luxury travel, services to Fortune 500 companies, financial services for the wealthy…) you might be tempted to figure out ways to cut costs and become more efficient.

After all, if you save a dollar, you make a dollar, without even getting a new customer.

Resist.

The goal shouldn’t be to reduce costs. It should be to increase them.

That voice mail service that saves you $30,000 a year in receptionist costs–it also makes you much more similar to a competitor that is more efficiently serving the middle of the market.

Go through all the ways you serve your customers and make them more expensive to execute, not less. Your loyalty and your market share will both grow. People who can afford to pay for service often choose to pay for service.

Mini, for whatever reason, is rolling into the Paris Motor Show with an electric scooter it says “meets the needs of the young urban generation” because “it’s spontaneous, flexible and CO2-free.”

British model Agyness Deyn yanked the sheets off three versions of the E-Scooter Concept in London on Wednesday night, and she sounded more excited than she looks in the pic.

“Living a city life,” she said, “it is important to get around quickly. I was thrilled to hear Mini is developing an environmentally friendly scooter, their reputation for cool design is well-known. I can’t wait to try driving one!”

Mini didn’t offer any specs beyond saying the E-Scooter is powered by an electric motor and recharged from a wall socket. Instead of a key, the scooters start with a smartphone app. Sillier still, GPS software will alert you to other E-Scooter riders in the area and flash your headlights when you pass them.

There are three “interpretations” of the design by Adrian van Hooydonk, senior VP of design for BMW Group. One is a two-seater done up in the same colors (matte charcoal and yellow) as the Mini-E electric prototype. The second is a single-seater Mini calls “almost purist in design.” The third draws on British ’60s pop culture, particularly “the distinctive graphics of the Mod era.”

The E-Scooter pays homage to the classic Italian scooters of yore, but somehow we doubt trendy urban hipsters will be trading in their vintage Vespas and old-school mopeds.

Btw, Smart is working on one, too.

Photos: Mini. More after the jump.

One scooter, three versions.The two-seater is on the left, the “Mod” is in the middle and the “purist” single-seater is on the right. Only London gets to see the Mod; the other two will be shown at the Paris auto show.

The Mod model, modeled by a model.

Room for two on an E-Scooter done up in the same colors as the Mini E electric car.

Mini says this one’s a single-seater with “purist” design that “nods to the British heritage of the brand.”

I worked with silence yesterday. I didn’t look at my email until after 11. I didn’t check into Twitter until much later. I didn’t play the radio in the car. I didn’t turn on my amazing Sonos S5 player at my office when I got there in the afternoon. I just stayed silent.

Noise is Often a Reflex

What I learned was this: we often make noise out of some kind of reflex. Sometimes, if someone steps on your foot, you’ll say “ow,” even when it doesn’t hurt. It’s a reflex. Sometimes, you’ll say something because it’s what you think you should do. There’s a lot of noise that comes out of us as reflex.

Silence Helps You Listen

Listening is truly one of the best tools that social media ever gave us. The ability to monitor and listen and use this information to better understand how people interact, what they want, how they complain, and to earnestly listen with the goal of being helpful in some way, is a downright super power.

Silence in Print

I’ve unsubscribed from another 20 or so newsletters lately (mind you, I’d never subscribed to any of them, but people feel that because they have my email address, they have my permission to fill my box with their noise). In every case, the reason I eventually noticed them and unsubscribed was that they mailed me daily. It’s one thing if I’ve opted in. It’s another if you’ve swiped my address and think I want to hear about your stupid products daily.

There can be beautiful silence in print. Even if you sent a daily email, but it was brief and supremely helpful, what you leave out would contribute to the beauty of the remaining silence.

Silence Frees Up New Ideas

The best thing that happened in my silence yesterday was that I came across an idea. I was reading a book and thinking about my own speech content. It dawned on me that it was time my speeches got a bit of an overhaul, and that I streamlined my production methods. I wouldn’t have heard this if I was busy speaking and answering and telling people this and that about the day’s events. It just wouldn’t have come.

Work With Silence

Schedule it. Try it. See what you can do with it. Turn off your email notifications. Make your phone silent. Make your Twitter and your whatever stop blipping and poking and blinking and updating you. See what it means to have your head in one place for a while. Even in doses. I promise it’ll be interesting.

Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007.

Control of the House of Representatives hangs in the balance of the 2010 Congressional election. A recent forecast published on The New York Times website anticipates a two-out-of-three chance for a change in power. The election has become a war, with battles being fought locally and nationally, in person, on the news, and online with social media.

With new media at hand, elections become a time for innovation, and online engagement can lead to enormous influence. We’ve seen this with Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008, and more recently with the British general election. During the last debate between the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the Labour party, 154,342 tweets appeared containing various terms from the debate, and coming in at 26.77 tweets per second from 33,095 different people.

I sat down with both the GOP and the Democratic social media team leads to learn more about their efforts for the upcoming election. While both parties are playing it close to the vest as they move toward the final weeks, we managed to get a look inside their social media strategy, discuss the tools they are using, and review their tactical execution.

The Weigh-In

For the 2010 general election, early indicators show the “Grand Old Party” (GOP, short for the Republicans) leading the Democrats with the highest follower counts when it comes to official social channels. On Facebook, the Republicans have 180,000 fans while the Democrats have 120,000. On Twitter, the Republicans have 18,000 to the Democrats 13,000. On YouTube, the differential is even more drastic, with the GOP commanding a 17,000 to 2,000 lead.

In addition to these statistics, it should be noted that the Democrats are also operating the Barack Obama Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages, with 13 million, 5 million and 200,000 followers each. However, it’s unclear whether the Barack Obama properties for 2008 are successfully impacting the larger Democratic party’s efforts, given his decline in popularity and the larger issues shaping the 2010 election.

Strategies

After the effort demonstrated by the Obama campaign in 2008, it only makes sense to see community listening and crowdsourcing become the primary strategy of the 2010 GOP effort. In addition to these core social media tenets, the GOP is focusing on influencers and bloggers that are self-identifying as advocates. These influencers range from relatively anonymous stay-at-home moms to Tea Party Co-Founder Brooks Bayne.

“This RNC listens to folks,” said Todd Herman, chief digital strategist, Republican National Committee. “We insisted on a listening platform. It’s not at all unusual for [Chairman] Michael Steele to ask me to put him in touch with a participant on our gop.com site or on Twitter.”

The efforts show real promise. A recent awareness campaign hit the web with $16,000 behind it, and GOP influencers propelled the message to the fore of Twitter with a related hashtag. Links circled the blogosphere through the deployment of more than 22,000 widgets. The effort leaked onto Facebook and turned into a fundraiser, eventually netting about $1.6 million, including eight online donations of $16,200 a piece.

The Democrats, in turn, have focused on a localized strategy of canvassing and using social tools to make peer-to-peer connections. The hyperlocal approach, with a stress on individual action, is bolstered by the existing Obama accounts which support the party’s platform. The combined effort is being called Organizing for America (OFA), and uses visual branding elements from the 2008 presidential campaign.

“Our end goal is to make a turn-out happen,” said Natalie Foster, director of new media for the DNC. “Our online innovations are driven towards that: Boots on the ground and face-to-face interactions. We use those for organizing and messaging via dialogue.”

Strategy Analysis

Both strategies have strengths to consider. The GOP’s listening and focus on crowdsourcing are more in line with the core principles of successful social media campaigns. Herman cited several instances where individual GOP representatives went so far as to introduce legislation on the House floor that was suggested by their constituents online. While none of these bills have passed, Herman thinks it’s only a matter of time before one becomes a law.

“The Democrats seem to be sticking with the tactics that brought them into power, whereas the GOP, as the challenger, is exploring more innovative ways to tap the power of new media,” said Shana Glickfield, co-founder of the BeeKeeper Group, a Washington, DC public affairs firm. “Both are effective and embrace the strengths of technology and community, but I see the Republicans getting the added bonus of attracting blogger and mainstream media attention for innovating in the campaign space.”

Tools

Perhaps the most exciting development for the Democrats is the party’s use of mobile. The OFA iPhone app lets party supporters find people living in their immediate vicinity to canvas. In addition, it provides canvassing tips. Not enough? The Democrats are also using text messaging to activate mobile phone users and have them place calls to potential voters.

To execute mobile canvassing and activism, the Democrats are using an open API in their VoteBuilder database via middleware such as MongoDB. The Democratic Party has made its widget available on Open Dems. The party expects to unveil a couple more surprise applications using the API this fall, says Josh Hendler, the DNC’s director of technology.

The GOP is using its Points API to create a social CRM solution and database called Blender. This effort mixes its Voter Vault database with traditional records in order to match them against peoples’ social media accounts and facilitate conversation. The API is available on developers.gop.com.

Using the system, interested party advocates can volunteer for canvassing phone calls or social contacts from their home using volunteer.gop.com. The site features immediate opportunities that any would-be canvasser can take on. In addition to its own use, the GOP is licensing the system out to candidates at rates much lower than traditional political CRM solutions.

Both parties have their own developers at their disposal and they have both deployed a wide variety of additional tools. These efforts include widgets, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube videos, search engine optimization tactics, automatic tweets and social messaging.

Tools Analysis

Both parties are doing some great work and are deploying tools and leveraging their databases via APIs and developer teams. The one major differentiator remains the Democratic Party’s use of mobile tools, which have drastically helped canvassing both via app and mobile web use. These tools match the party’s strategy. It remains to be seen how they will impact voting.

“The Democratic Party leads the technology charge, going all the way back to Bill Clinton with his fax strategy and Howard Dean harnessing the power of the Internet to build the Deaniac movement,” said Julie Pippert, one of the Momocrats, a group of Democratic bloggers. “In 2008, Obama’s Internet and social media strategy were unarguably key factors in his successful election. … [they are] moving forward to the next best step in mass collaboration on social networks and through using new technology such as iPhone apps.”

Tactical Execution

Strategies may be great, tools can bring an advantage, but in the end, results are created by the how well the individual technologies are used. The best use of social media for a party is to engage its online stakeholders to create their own movements through empowerment, and have them go out and rally their own social networks.

One example is the RNC Women site, with its slogan, “You Asked, We Listened.” Featuring all of the female candidates, this effort seeks to provide women in the party with a unique voice. The community manager is RNC Co-Chairman Jan Larimer, who has used the Ning-powered network to activate 3,000 social media-enabled women across the country. The apex of Larimer’s community development was a 15-city tour.

“There wasn’t a person in that room who wasn’t tweeting and Facebooking,” said Todd Herman. “It’s incredible to see this from the GOP perspective, a party that wasn’t supposed to get social media. People are using it to activate their own networks.”

The RNC Women site is just one example of how the GOP has used community to rally influencer groups. In addition, the main GOP site is a hotbed of activism.

The Democratic social media properties showcase popular Facebook posts from Barack Obama, some of which have received thousands of comments. In this way, they’re using social media to empower one-on-one local engagement.

With the Democrats’ online effort, there is less focus on empowering others to become brand advocates. This is a likely indicator of why the GOP has a larger follower base across the board on social media sites. The difference is best seen on my.barackobama.com, home of the OFA effort.

While there’s great encouragement on the Democratic OFA site to get the vote out and canvas via mobile, calls to action for local group activity are nowhere near as prevalent as on the GOP sites. Navigating through the site to attend local events and volunteer activities takes more steps than on the GOP site. That being said, according to the Democratic Party’s Natalie Foster, over five million people have taken action with OFA since the 2008 election, and much of that action has been generated via my.barackobama.com.

Tactical Analysis

It’s arguable that both parties are executing well on their strategies. Of the two, the Republican party’s efforts — focusing on the core through crowdsourcing and listening efforts, and then empowering the core to push out on a national and local level — are most likely to create groundswells of activity across the web. It’s a populist approach that can make local bloggers into national party voices, and creates encouragement across the entire country for local races.

Generally, the Democrats are fascinated with the local, but are not encouraging a national community, leaving that to the primary Obama social media accounts. Perhaps that is fitting for an election that is all about local congressional representatives and not the president. However, the larger Barack Obama accounts are being used in a messaging-focused approach that is less likely to make local Democrats feel empowered to talk about their issues and be featured by the party as individual leaders on social media sites.

“Both parties are canvassing, and getting the right people to the polls, and reaching people,” said Albert Maruggi, founder of Provident Partners and the former RNC Press Secretary for 1988 presidential election. “This, however, is a very different election. 2008 was a simple choice to change direction or not. In the fall of 2008, President Bush’s approval ratings were in the mid 20s and today President Obama is in the mid 40s. This election cycle is about issues, regardless of sentiment about the president.

“So in this election, hitting on economic and health care issues are working, which seems to fit with the Republican social media strategy,” Maruggi continued. “Why bring personality into the mix when only 15% of homeowners expect the value of their home will increase?”

The GOP might have have larger swings of grassroots activism on social media sites during the 2010 election season, but the Democrats could upend the stakes if the party returns to its 2008 strategy and reinvigorates its core. The Barack Obama sites have impressive follower counts and could turn such a strategy into a winning advantage.

A revolutionary idea that converts existing roadways into a national solar power grid is up for a major cash prize.

Scott Brusaw (shown above) is working on a project to encapsulate solar panels in high-strength glass capable of standing up to thousands of cars and trucks passing by each day. He estimates that a single parking lot paved with solar panels — even one where cars are parked — could power the big box store it serves, and a cul-de-sac paved with solar panels could take an entire subdivision off the grid even on a cloudy day.

Eventually, LEDs built into the tops of solar panels placed on highways could move lanes around, create crosswalks, display speed limits and even detect and warn drivers about road hazards like stopped traffic and crossing wildlife. Best of all, the panels could be laid down over existing asphalt.

The project might sound improbable, but he’s got the ear of the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) and is currently in fourth place in the GE Ecomagination Challenge, a competitive funding opportunity that could get the project off the ground, so to speak. Voting for the Ecomagination Challenge ends next week.

“We’ve gotten estimates from the universities for developing the glass and it would cost about $50 million to complete the research and get ready for production,” said Brusaw. “If we could get part of that, it would get us going and help us finish our R&D.”

It all started a few years back when Brusaw and his wife Julie were gardening and talking about climate change. Scott had dreamed of transmitting electric power through roadways since he was a kid playing with slot cars and always thought an electrified roadway could be used as a solution to reduce emissions. “Couldn’t you make your electric road out of solar panels?” Julie asked.

That inspired the Brusaws. If they could only create a case for a solar panel that’s similar to an airplane’s crash resistant “black box,” a solar roadway could be possible. Plastic wouldn’t work — according to Brusaw, it yellows over time and blocks sunlight. Glass seemed like a solution, but Brusaw knew electrical engineering — not materials.

“When we first started I didn’t know if it could be done,” he said. “My experience with glass is a window.” He did research with the University of Dayton and at Penn State, and the prospect of a non-petroleum based durable road surface interested the FHA who gave him some money to prove his concept.

Despite the energy benefits of paving roads with solar panels, it’s the glass case that could save serious cash for towns with crumbling roadways. “The FHA is looking for some kind of paving material that can pay for itself, and that’s where we came in.”

Brusaw said his initial target price is $10,000 for a 12 x 12 encapsulated solar panel. If it drops to $6900 during production, he said he could break even with asphalt. That’s not even counting the benefits of an LED display on the road’s surface, or the benefits to providing a green energy source on land where there are no issues about rights of way.

“We can fix the power grid, build an intelligent highway and a smart grid all in one swoop and move into the 21st century,” Brusaw said.

Brusaw and his wife are currently testing solar panels in his backyard. Since panels are designed to be angled toward the sun which is impossible on most roadways, he’s comparing the energy produced from two panels — one angled, one flat. “The odd thing we found is the one that’s flat outperforms an angled one on an overcast day,” he said.

The next step for Brusaw is getting out of the backyard and into the lab — and eventually into a parking lot, which he hopes will be made possible with funding from GE.

“We can make anything work under lab conditions,” he said. “But we know if we go to a Wal-Mart parking lot, we’ll have leakage, we’ll have breakage and we’ll learn a bunch of lessons.”

Photo and video: Mark Dixon/YERT

Image: Dan Walden