momorantings

When Jyri expanded the work of Bourdieu and Hyde amongst others and started to talk about object centred sociality, he used Flickr as an example. The photos were the object while sharing and commenting were the social gestures (or verbs as he would put it). The sociality was a source of competitive advantage. An observation on her own behaviour made by Elizabeth Churchill in a recent talk prompted me to wonder about an unexpected side-effect of continuous improvement. What if your service develops in a way that changes your users behaviour and reduces their sociality? Elizabeth spoke of how her former behaviour of being a frequent browser and commenter on Flickr had stemmed fom downtime while she waited for her pictures to upload. It is "former behaviour" because mobile upload has now been perfected. She uploads on the move and thus now uses Flickr solely as an archive and neither browses nor comments. Yet again, improving a service towards seamlessness shows that seamfulnes...

Proof, if ever it were needed, that the world hasn't changed that much and that the 4 Ps of marketing still prevail comes from the story of Stow Away Storage set up by two guys who noted an absence of storage facilities for sailors in their local harbour. Obviously they'd need to attract customers and so they decided on a marketing budget of £10,000. But that didn't pan out. In fact, they only managed to spend £3 and for that princely sum placed a postcard-sized ad in the window of their local post office for 6 weeks. They got orders worth £250,000. They'd spotted an unfulfilled need and met it. The only aspect of the story that has any resonance with the world of new paradigms is their equivalent of the death of mainstream media. They can no longer advertise in the post-office window. It's been shut down.

My washing machine guarantee has recently expired. I know this because the manufacturer sent me a letter to to try to sell me repair insurance. Now, the selling of extended warranties at the time of purchase is big business, but I hardly think that those of us who refused in the first place are going to have a change of heart a year or two down the line. The direct marketing spreadsheets will, presumably, indicate a positive cashflow on the excercise, but for the huge majority of customers who don't bite on this offer, the only message we've received is this. Your great product (replete with wonderful features and reliability) is now, in your opinion, a little bit dodgy and prone to expensive collapse. I'm not sure about the ROI on that.

Just as brand extensions seek overlaps in imagined psychographic groupings, chess-boxing aims to bring together the number one "thinking" sport and the number one "fighting" sport. You win via checkmate or a knock-out. This is not just transmedia planning , this is trans-sports marketing and about as sensible as much of the demographic targetting that masquerades as insight these days.

My current reading. Full of revelations about what people do rather than what they say or think they do. Full of thoughts that seem applicable to all sorts of human interactions. Out next month. Highly recommended.

Jargon often develops as a kind of short-hand designed to speed up communication about frequently discussed ideas. It is inclusive - a signifier of one having passed some rite of passage and developed a level of expertise that binds you to the gang. Trouble is, that also excludes those who are new to the game. Some people contend that jargon is good exactly because it binds people to the world of the product/service. They have a point. Inclusivity is a great goal. But does it have to be so excluding? It's worth thinking of better ways to welcome engagement with your business and to reward customer achivement and user effort without putting up pscyhological barriers to entry? The best jargon is simultaneously inclusive and exclusive - that which resonates with your distinctive voice but is couched in self-explanatory language.

The diagram comes from Seth Godin's blogpost about the long tail which he illustrated with movie examples. It's a nice device but he missed out the classic example, Snakes On A Plane. If this had been a foreign language horror movie, it would have had very little but cult appeal and been buried in the low profit anonymity of pocket 3 where the aggregators hang out. But it wasn't. It was clearly a genre movie destined for the profitable, popular cult status of pocket 2. However, this very fact and the noise that potential fans made on the internet caused its producers/distributers to conclude that it was, in fact, a mainstream movie with the industry holy grail of pocket 1 at its mercy. It wasn't and, as I've written before, this led to bad reactions from the first view mainstream audience, arguably a lesser box-office performance and cetainly a less profitable one in light of the increased marketing spend that was wasted. The lessons are as follows. 1) Know and be ...

People like change. They like dynamism. They don't want boring, but they also like reassurance that what they're getting is different but the same.

Apple turned the launch of the iPhone 3G into an event, but the first day was marred by the fact that credit checks are individual and don't benefit from economies of scale. There was lots of publicity but also considerable unhappiness. In an age of always in beta, it surprises me how many companies still focus on launch days and events and risk anti-climax as a result of being unable to service the instant demand they've generated. Even if day one goes fabulously, you're going to have cumulatively more customers to deal with on day two and beyond, so why this obsession with hitting a home run on day one? It's not how you built your business, so why change a successful formula?

What started as a list of observations derived from recent experiences at conferences and speaking events has evolved into a somewhat contrived list of general marketing lessons designed to improve "customer satisfaction". As always, they can be extrapolated to other situations as well as making conferences more successful. For audience read customer, for speaker read product/service. 1) Know Your Subject. The curator/organiser must be someone who really understands their subject - not some PR person focussed on selling, but someone who will craft an event that will have resonance and relevance to its audience. 2) Stay Focussed. Keep it brief. Lectures like business books are too often padded out with extraneous examples and bogus rationalisation. Focus your speakers' minds by creating a time limit and you'll focus the minds of the audience. 3) Facilitate Interaction. Ensure the speaker is visible to everyone at some stage so that even if sightlines are imperfect, the...

As seen at the UK's premier design/art school graduation show. Click the image to see the problem.

Speakers: Rick Lester , chief executive officer, TRG/Target Resource Group ; Jill Robinson , president, TRG/Target Resource Group Notes: -A recession is defined by a decline in Gross Domestic Product for two quarters in a row. GDP = Consumer Spending + Investments + Government Spending + (exports - imports). The first quarter of 2008 showed a tiny increase in GDP. Although it might feel like a recession, technically it isn't (perception vs. reality). The problem with the definition of a recession is that you will know you are in a recession two quarters after you have been in it. Since 1980, the United States has gone through 4 recessions, but they have been short and shallow. -The primary impact of a recession is not on box office, but on fundraising. People tend to give when they are optimistic, but in tough times, people still seem to go out--people still need an escape. The only exception to this is cultural tourism. Cultural tourism seems to be affected much more than regular ...

I recently heard an Australian resident of the UK interviewed on the radio. She was being asked about healthcare, but her comments apply to many other areas and many other organisations here and elsewhere. This country is so wary of change. It seems to analyse everything to death and never do anything. Analysis is good, doing something is better.

Is improvement something to shout about or is it simply what your customers should and do expect? If you're going to boast about an award, shouldn't you ensure that it's an award that will impress? More importantly, won't it be the customers themselves who decide if it's been a significant improvement and give you their personal loyalty award? But very appropriate that it's improvement number 2.

There is a lot of talk about commodification around these days, but let's not forget what a commodity actually is. A commodity is defined as a product that can only be differentiated by price. You don't have to have a remarkable innovation to avoid commodification. A me-too product does not necessarily have to be a commodity. It may be very similar to the competition, but you can still differentiate it by distributing it in a different way. You can decommodify its delivery and retail channels. You can even decommodify it by focussing on another aspect of the product. I'm not talking about faux emotional differentiaton here, but an aspect that is common to all your competitors. An aspect which they've chosen not to emphasise because they've overlooked the fact that its customers who decide what it is that they like about a product. You surely don't see your product as uni-dimensional? Technology and transparency certainly mean that commodification is more preval...

It seems like the link to my article that I had posted here is no longer working, however Stage Directions Magazine published an article about the use of PURLs at Arena Stage. That can be found here: http://stage-directions.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=939&Itemid=39 .

Thank you to all of those folks who have contacted me about the presentation that I gave at the Theatre Communications Group conference in Denver. We had a wonderful crowd (especially for 8am on a Friday) and a very nice conversation. As promised, I posted my presentation on the web for you to access. Feel free to download it and steal anything you think that you can use. It can be found here: FileDropper Free File Hosting The only thing that I ask is that you share any good ideas that you might have with the rest of us.

“If customers feel like they have discovered a brand themselves, they become much more loyal,” Ray Kelvin - founder Ted Baker That's because they haven't been on the end of broken promises or general disappointment. Loyalty is given by the customer. It's not captured by the business.