Monthly Archives: November 2015

November 17, 2015 · 11:40 am

Choosing Ignorance

Ever had some fact creep up on you and scare you to death? I have had that experience this morning. It’s particularly disheartening because we’re coming up on an election year here in the US and one would hope that people are paying a bit more attention to the news than usual as they seek out facts and the information they need to make decisions. No, I’m not going down the political road. The point I’m going to make is about business, but I find it disturbing outside of business as well. Let’s see what you think.

Business Information Systems

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An organization called the Media Insight Project, which is an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, conducted some research on how Millenials get news. The headline coming out of the research is that the vast majority of Millennials, people who are ages 18 to 34, regularly use paid content for entertainment or news.  53 percent report regularly using paid news content — in print, digital, or combined formats — in the last year.  That goes against the conventional wisdom that younger people won’t pay for content.  While that is a significant finding, in my mind it buries the lede, which is this:

Among those Millennials who say keeping up with the news is very important to them, only half personally pay for news content. And, even among Millennials who do pay for news, free services like Facebook and search engines are their most common sources for obtaining news on many topics.

In fact, as the study looked at different types of information, Facebook was cited most often as the source for national and political news, social issues, as well as crime and public safety even among those people who pay for news content.  Given that what you see on Facebook is based on an algorithm that reinforces your current attitudes and likes, and is NOT meant to provide you with an unbiased world view, this is pretty dangerous in my mind.  It’s a business problem as well.

Just because some Millenials make an effort to have the broader, less tilted sources of news and information available to them by paying, there is no requirement that they listen to those sources.  It’s not really enough to find the information if you’re going to choose to ignore it.  That’s as true in business as it is outside of the business world.  A younger adult’s willingness to pay for news is correlated with his or her broader beliefs about the value of news, the study found.  Your willingness to seek out business information – even paying for it – should also imply that you’re willing to pay attention and not just pay lip-service.  Are you choosing to do so, or are you choosing ignorance?

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November 16, 2015 · 11:33 am

Getting Personal

At the tail end of last week, I received a mailing from the folks at Total Wine.  It’s one that comes along each week and contains what Total calls my “weekend recommendations.”  It shows me some highly-rated wines that are supposed to fit my tastes.  The problem is that they don’t.  There are several bottles of white wine listed and I don’t drink white wine.  There is some expensive champagne and I prefer prosecco.  I don’t believe I’ve ever bought pinot noir in the store and yet there is a pinot recommendation as well.  

I’m not surprised. Although I shop fairly regularly at Total and love the store, there is no system in place to associate customer purchases with customers.  There is no loyalty card, as I have with a supermarket or two, to record what I’m buying, how often etc.  Without that information, recommendations can’t be personalized.  It’s the difference between me walking in the store and having them greet me by name as opposed to a generic hello.

I think we’ve all become spoiled by personalization, so much so that I think the ability to personalize the customer experience is table stakes for any retailer.  Notice I’m not limiting that to online retailers either.  My supermarket personalizes every trip as soon as I use their scanner to shop by delivering instant coupons and savings on products I buy or might like based on past buying.  We’ve all used Amazon and seen their recommendations.  In fact, their algorithm is so good that it’s worth examining what they’re using to determine your personalized selections and deleting things that you don’t want to include (maybe you bought something as a gift that should not be included, for example).  Netflix famously paid a lot of money to scientists that improved their recommendations by 8.5%.

Any business needs to think about how to incorporate personalization, even those of us that are not in B2C businesses.  Still showing generic decks to potential customers?  Still have a standard rate card that you send out when people ask for price quotes?  Still think you’re in tune with customer expectations?

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November 13, 2015 · 12:48 pm

You Do It 226 Times A Day!

It’s Foodie Friday, so let’s think about food and business.  Actually, you’ve probably thought quite a bit about food already today.  I make that statement and am supported by research.  You see, way back in 2007, Brian Wansink and Jeffery Sobal of Cornell University asked 139 participants about the number of food-related decisions they thought they made every day.  The average answer, off the top of the subjects’ heads, was 14.  However, when the participants were asked to break down a typical day and to think about how many ‘when’, ‘what’, ‘how much’, ‘where’ and ‘who with’ decisions they made for a typical meal, snack and drink,  it showed the participants made an average of 226 food decisions a day, 59 of which related to what kind of food to eat.

I doubt any of you reading the screed today are in a business that’s thought about 226 times a day by your customers.  If you are, please share how you managed to get that level of engagement and passion.  But if you’re like most of us, the challenge is to increase whatever the number of times a day we’re considered by consumers.  If you’re a food brand, apparently you have a head start on the rest of us.  But what is it about food that prompts this level of thinking?

The obvious reply is that food is necessary for our survival.  We get hungry, but as the study shows, we don’t really make mindless decisions about food despite our hunger (although I’m not sure why most of us aren’t more aware of how many food decisions we do make each day).  How to drive hunger for your brand?  It’s through many of the ways we talk about here – being responsive, building loyalty, being transparent, focusing on the customer’s problems and your solution, and, most importantly, listening.

I suppose we could try to piggyback on the 226 by running food-related ads even if we’re not a food brand.  Trying your brand at this time of year to family and food is fairly commonplace.  I think, however, that we’re better served in the long-term by fostering the brand hunger through the means I mention above, each of which we’ve discussed many times here (and we’ll continue to do so).  Great dishes excite and delight the diner – so do great brands.  Does yours?

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