Monthly Archives: August 2015

August 10, 2015 · 12:19 pm

Too Much?

You are reading this on some sort of screen.  It may be on your laptop or a tablet or even on your phone.  Hopefully, you don’t consider it to be wasted time.  You do lots of other things on those screens as well: your email, social media, and other forms of staying connected as well as being entertained and informed.  All of that screen time adds up – some estimates have it over five and a half hours each day.  That doesn’t include the four and a quarter hours we spend with traditional TV either.

Apparently, many people feel guilty about it, according to a report in eMarketer:

In a July 2015 study by YouGov and The Huffington Post, 54% of US internet users said they spent too much time using digital devices, including computers, mobile phones, TVs and video game consoles. Responses were even between males and females. However, feelings of too much screen time correlated with age. While respondents from every age group were more likely to agree that they spent too much time with screens, younger consumers were far more likely to say so compared with their older counterparts.

I don’t share their guilt. After all, the tools we use for all of this communication and entertainment are just more efficient ways to engage in activities which we’ve been doing all along.  If anything, I find them too efficient.  We all have access to far more information and to many more entertainment options than ever before.  What were we all doing before these screens (and I realize that if you’re under 25 you probably don’t have any memories of a world without them) to keep in touch?  Phone calls, I know, but they were inefficient.  How many friends could you reach out and touch in a day?  Snail mail? Between the time it took to compose, write, and deliver a letter to a friend or a group of them, a week could have gone by.

I’m not guilty about the hours I spend with my screens.  Too much time?  Not at all.  I celebrate them because they make me smarter, more informed, and better connected.  I might have been anyway but not as efficiently or with such wide range.  You?

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August 7, 2015 · 10:01 am

The Lord Helps Those That Yelp Themselves

Let’s end the week with a Foodie Friday post about reviews.  There are lots of studies that will tell you just how important “social proof” is as consumers are checking out a prospective buy.  People want to take comfort in knowing that they are making a choice that others have made and felt good about.  Over 70% of Americans say they look at product reviews before making a purchase, and I suspect the number is no different for restaurants.  Because of that, it’s incumbent on every business to check out their reviews.  For restaurants, that means Yelp.

We went out for dinner the other night and I decided to post a review of the place.  We’ve been to this place a number of times over the years and love it, so I thought a positive review would be a nice thing for me to give in addition to my patronage.  Most of the reviews of the place are quite positive.  There were, however, a few one-star reviews (roughly 10% of the total) and they are what bring up the business point today.

You can’t let bad reviews hang around like an old plate of food.  They must be dealt with or eventually the smell will overpower everything else.  Bad reviews are also a great source of research.  In this case, there were complaints about undercooked rice on a few nights.  Who was cooking that night?  A couple mention slow service – was someone absent?  Sometimes the reviews are unfair – complementing the food and service and giving the place one star because you think the neighborhood is “sketchy” isn’t accurate.

So what do you do?  Read every review carefully – you can learn from the good ones and learn more from the bad.  If it’s bad, maybe you want to figure out if this is a legitimate complaint or just a troll (check out the reviewer’s other posts).  You’re going to respond either way.  Apologize, lay out the facts as best you can gather them, and promise to do better if given another chance.  Remember that most of the people reading reviews have no opinion of you (or the reviewer).

A recent Washington Post article mentions that most restaurants don’t hear directly from customers while they are having an issue.  Instead, 80% go home and write something.  Your reputation is one of any business’ most valuable assets.  You need to monitor it and, to the extent possible, control it.  Fair or unfair, that’s reality!

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August 6, 2015 · 11:32 am

No News Isn’t Good News

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  Here at the World Headquarters, we step away from the computer screen at lunch time, usually to watch the big screen.  Generally it’s a whip around through the various news channels to make sure that it’s worth continuing to work the rest of the day.  After all, if the world is going to end, I’d rather try to sneak in one last round of golf than write a few more emails.

One thing I’ve noticed lately as I watch CNN/MSNBC/FoxNews during lunch is how little actual content I see.  Mostly I see ads.  After many years in the TV business I understand why, but when you factor in national breaks, promotional spots, and the local cable affiliate breaks, a viewer can leave the set for 5+ minutes at a time and not miss a thing.  Entertainment programming doesn’t seem much better. Then again, maybe I’m just old and cranky and wrong.

It turns out I’m not.  As Business Insider reported:

Almost every major TV network in the US is stuffing more ads into their commercial breaks in a “desperate” attempt to prop up ad revenues as ratings across the industry decline, according to a report from investment research and management company Sanford C. Bernstein. The report shows that prime-time TV audiences (as determined by Nielsen C3 measurements: TV watched both live and three days after the show was first aired on catch-up services) are down 9% year on year, yet ad loads on some networks are up as much as 10% on last year.

The chart I’ve embedded shows how commercial hours have changed in the last year across major cable network groups.  3% or 4% may not sound like a lot, but when you’re running over 10,000 seconds of commercials a day, that’s several minutes more each day.  Times 7.  Times 365.  The problem with that is that in the process of maintaining revenues you’re exacerbating the problem of viewer abandonment.  In particular, viewers are going to streaming, where commercials loads are way smaller if they exist at all.  What I find nice about the commercials on Hulu, for example, is that you know exactly how long they will last.  I have no clue as I’m taking my short lunch break if I’m ever going back to the news.  In this case, no news is very bad news since it means yet more of what I definitely did not tune in to see.

We can’t alter our products to preserve an income statement when that alteration provides a lesser experience for the consumer.  It’s a short-term fix that will have very bad long-term ramifications.  Cheaper ingredients, lesser workmanship, or ad cramming are all part of the same mindset.  It’s one we should avoid, don’t you think?

 

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