Monthly Archives: January 2015

January 13, 2015 · 11:50 am

Hitting The Bullseye

I spend a lot of my day working with clients on tech.  If it isn’t about how to implement the latest and greatest platform in other marketing efforts, it is about using the data we’ve gathered via web, social, and other business analytics to improve tactics and guide strategies.  We look at a lot of numbers and at a lot of methods with which to gather more.

One of the things I feel it’s critical for me to do is to play the role of a Cassandra of sorts – to see the future but to hope I’m believed a lot more than was the figure from mythology.  The one thing I keep “prophesying” to them is that we can stay on course and out of trouble if we keep our eyes focused on the customer.  They can’t become just aggregations of data.  They’re not just numbers.  They are the reasons why we’re in business.  They have names, faces, significant others and maybe even children.  They’re us!

Much of the ad and marketing technology today has little to do with the customer.  You might think that odd since much of it is based on getting to know the customer on a very granular level.  That’s true, except the focus is on the technology and data, not on the customer.  Thinking about social media is important but only after we’ve spent time thinking about the customer.  Are they on social platforms?  Why?  What are their expectations when they use them?  How do they want to interact with brands in that space, if at all?  Sure mobile is important but a discussion of mobile apps needs to begin with an investigation of how your consumer base behaves on that platform.  “Build it and they will come” is tech centric, not human centric.

Start with your business objectives and your consumer needs.  Move to technology and data after that.  The consumer is the bullseye, not the platform.  Thoughts?

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January 12, 2015 · 11:55 am

Self-driving

You might have seen some news stories about CES over the course of the last week.  It’s a huge tech trade show that starts every year off with a glimpse of what technologies are down the road.  In many cases, not very far down the road either.  One of the tech area that was most prominent last week was automotive; specifically, autonomous cars.  While you might have heard about Google’s work in the area of self-driving vehicles, many other automakers – Audi, Mercedes, and others – are quite far along in developing this technology and Audi even let a car drive itself to Las Vegas from San Francisco to show how well their prototype works.

Honda-like steering wheel vector graphic

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Maybe you find that creepy.  Maybe the thought of sitting down in a vehicle that moves along pretty quickly and letting that vehicle control itself scares you.  I guess you haven’t flown lately, since most airplanes do exactly that.  Some even land themselves.  So what is the business point?

This thinking isn’t new.  Way back in the 1990’s engineers were re-thinking the automobile and the way in which humans interact (or don’t) with it.  The Saab folks designed and built a car without a steering wheel.  The driver used a joystick instead. As the Wired folks reported:

It turns out that the steering wheel is an excellent way to steer a vehicle, and really tough to improve upon. That’s why they’ve been used on ships for centuries. The key to controlling any vehicle is to make smooth adjustments to keep it going where you want to. Steering wheels allow this. Most turn 1,260 degrees—3.5 turns—from lock-to-lock, that is, from all the way left to all the way right. That allows the driver to make very precise corrections to get the car pointing the right way, or quickly make big corrections to, say, avoid hitting something.

There were other problems too but the business point is this.  All of us need to constantly challenge our paradigms.  Maybe we don’t need people to drive the cars, or even BE in the cars.  BMW showed a car that you could “call” to you and which would go find a parking space for itself and park once you were done with it.  That redefines how a designer might think about the vehicle.  So the real question is this:

How have you challenged your paradigms today?

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January 9, 2015 · 11:43 am

Wine And Winning

Foodie Friday! I don’t know about you but I enjoy a glass of wine with my meals when I dine out. Unfortunately, there is no faster way to run up a restaurant bill than to order wine. I’m pretty familiar with many of the better low-cost wines from around the world and I tend to seek them out when I’m dining out. Usually they cost anywhere from 2 to 3 times what I know I would pay at retail.

This image shows a red wine glass.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This sets up a classic problem. Restaurants make a good amount of profit on selling wine and liquor and I certainly don’t begrudge them that. I would rather, however, pay them a lot for a really great dish that I know I can’t possibly make at home or for spectacular service. Paying $35 for a $12 bottle offends me, frankly.  The restaurant’s priorities are out of sync with mine and that’s never good in any business.  As a result I (and a number of my wine-loving friends) have made it a habit to seek out BYOB restaurants.  We bring our own wine and spend our money on food.  That’s a missed profit opportunity for the establishment, especially since we avoid “corkage” charges religiously.

Lately, quite a few nearby restaurants have done a very smart thing.  On what are their slow nights they offer half-price bottles.  Has this enticed us out on a Wednesday night?  Yes it has.  Which points to how we all need to solve business problems no matter what our business.

In this case the restaurant is selling the wine at a small markup, nothing like the 100%+ they usually charge.  More importantly, they have more covers on slow nights, and their overhead doesn’t change if they restaurant is full or empty.  As a customer I think of it as a big win, and going out Monday or Wednesday is fine with me, especially since it is generally slower, the service is better, and the kitchen usually more attentive.  I might even buy a much better bottle than usual which helps the turn over the wine stock or order an additional dish.  In other words, it’s a big win for everyone.

Isn’t that how every business dilemma need to be resolved?

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