Today was the soft launch date for NeoNeighbourhood.com.
This is a project I’ve been working on for a few months now.
In October 2006, I wrote about a book called Neo Power, an examination of consumer spending patterns that identified a different way of identifying and marketing to people with a high level of discretionary spending.
The people behind the book, known collectively as the Neo Group, had the idea that it was feasible to establish a website that could serve as an online guide to Neos, on the basis that Neos are selective, willing to spend on quality and comfortable with using the web as both an information gathering and purchasing tool.
I provided a bit of early consulting regarding how the underlying principles might take web form.
I had thought that was pretty much that, but the project ran into some roadblocks and I was given the opportunity to help resolve some issues between the graphic designers and web developers.
Enthused by my understanding of the situation and my efforts to get the project rolling again, I was given an ongoing brief to help bring the project to proper life.
It’s a big project and to this point has had some big issues to resolve, but it’s been satisfying at least getting the thing up and running.
A major factor in this was bringing in a new web development team. This was the reason behind my flight to Perth to talk to Bam Creative.
Bam have been tremendous, working off little in the way of formal specifications and making sense of the frequently less-than-coherent rantings of someone on the other side of the continent.
I am in awe of the discipline, flexibility, common sense, doggedness and sheer human understanding displayed by Chris, David, Shane, Miles and the rest of the Bam team. I’d recommend them any time.
There are a host of aspects of this project that bear extended discussion, but it’s not appropriate yet to go over them in public.
I hope by the time I can talk about some of those things, NeoNeighbourhood will be firmly established as one of – if not THE – leading online consumer guide in the world.
I know that’s a huge aim, but folks … this site might just do it.