Monthly Archives: April 2016

April 22, 2016 · 11:58 am

Box Wine

Foodie Friday, and this week our focus is on wine. Like many of you, I enjoy a glass or two of wine with dinner. Over time, that can add up in terms of keeping the cellar stocked, so I try to find inexpensive, well-made bottles. I’ve found it’s not hard to find quite a few that retail for under $12. Some of the better wine I’ve been drinking lately actually doesn’t come in a bottle at all – it comes in a box.

This image shows a red wine glass.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you’ve never tried box wine, you’re not alone. Box wine represents less than 5% of all wine sold here in the USA. Compare that to 20% in Europe and nearly half in Austrailia. What do they know that we don’t? Maybe that each box is generally the equivalent of 4 bottles and it will stay fresh for 3-4 weeks after you open it due to the vacuum sealed bags that are in each box. Unless you drink a typical bottle in a day or two, it oxidizes and the taste can become funky, no matter how well you reseal it.  But there is a broader business lesson here as well.

Box wine is a win-win for both the wineries and the consumer. The numbers I can find say that the cost to produce the box is less than the equivalent 4 bottles and the carbon footprint is less than half. It is way more convenient (try to carry 8 bottles vs. 2 boxes to your car).  Obviously, it moves more wine while providing a great value.  Why hasn’t it caught on here?  Maybe because some producers focus on making the wine as cheap as possible which often results in an inferior product.  As a great article from Food52 said on the topic:

In the U.S., boxed wine is plagued by associations with Franzia and college drinking games; when the technology first came out, cheap brands seized upon the budget vessel and filled it with contents that fully deserved the terrible reputation they gained. And the reputation has stuck.

We all need to think about the “bad actors” in our business segment.  How are they screwing it up for the rest of us?  Sure, it’s easy to say “well, they make the rest of us look good by comparison,” but the reality is that a significant percentage of consumers paint with a very wide brush.  While I think we all know great, honest lawyers, auto mechanics, advertising professionals, etc, those businesses have terrible reputations.

Consumers now assume box wine is low quality and won’t buy it, and because they won’t buy it, producers hesitate to make it.  It’s too bad that what is an obvious win-win becomes everyone’s loss due to a few bad actors.

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April 20, 2016 · 11:03 am

Bad Code And Bad Business Thinking

The digital world continues to be abuzz about ad blocking. Many in the digital ad space have expressed everything from frustration to outrage, calling those who use blockers everything from misguided to thieves. They don’t, however, seem to acknowledge the root of the problem: bad code and bad business thinking. Now that mobile ad blocking is on the rise, they are turning up the rhetoric but let’s take a quick look at the problem.

It comes as no shock to anyone who has a mobile device that there are no unlimited data plans anymore. Every byte is counted against a cap, and in a world where images and videos are becoming the currency, those bytes add up pretty quickly. In essence, every screen, whether on a computer or a mobile device has a cost to the user, so it’s in the user’s best interest to be as efficient as possible when loading those pages or screens. More data also means shorter battery life since the device has to work to load and render. With me so far?

Now let’s revisit an analysis done by The NY Times last October. They spent a few days on some prominent sites measuring how much the ad blockers cut down on web page data sizes and improved loading times, and also how much they increased a smartphone’s battery life. The results?

The benefits of ad blockers stood out the most when loading theBoston.com website. With ads, that home page on average measured 19.4 megabytes; with ads removed using Crystal or Purify, it measured four megabytes, and with 1Blocker, it measured 4.5 megabytes. On a 4G network, this translated to the page taking 39 seconds to load with ads and eight seconds to load without ads.

In another example, the home page of The Los Angeles Times measured 5.7 megabytes with ads. After shedding ads, that dropped to 1.6 megabytes with Crystal and 1.9 megabytes with Purify and 1Blocker. On a 4G network, the page took 11 seconds to load with ads and four seconds to load without ads.

I’d encourage you to look at the interactive graphic associated with the article. The cost to the consumer can be anywhere from 2x to 4x when not using a blocker of some sort, and load times are much less when using one as the examples, above, show.

I get the problems these blockers cause, but maybe the bad code and bad business thinking that forces the bad code (lots of external calls for ad serving, user tracking, etc.) need rethinking instead of a lot of whining? What do you think?

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April 19, 2016 · 9:52 am

In Control

One of the interesting parts of The New York Times’ editorial makeup is the public editor. In addition to writing a few times a month, the public editor‘s role is to “handle questions and comments from readers and investigates matters of journalistic integrity. The public editor works independently, outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper; her opinions are her own.” Margaret Sullivan is leaving that role and penned her last column over the weekend. In it she cautioned the following:

The New York Times logo

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The old business model, based on print advertising and print subscriptions, is broken. A new one — based on digital subscriptions, new advertising forms, and partnerships with other businesses and media platforms — is in the works. There are hopeful signs, high ambitions and lofty plans, but certainly no guarantee of success.

I think we all recognize that. It’s interesting that the Times seems have reinvented itself as a digital media company that publishes a newspaper. That paradigm change affects everything – how content is created, the speed with which it’s made available, and most importantly, the business model. The Times isn’t the only organization to have done this. Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), for example, has always seemed to think of itself as a digital services company that has Major League Baseball as its primary client, and not just as Baseball’s digital arm. Having run a similar organization for a league, I can tell you that the differences in how business is done based on that thinking are stark. Perhaps it’s time you stepped back and had another think about your paradigm?

Ms. Sullivan also struck a cautionary note:

As partnerships, especially with Facebook, the social media behemoth, become nearly impossible to resist, The Times shouldn’t let business-driven approaches determine what readers get to see. In dealing with Facebook and other platforms and potential partners whose businesses revolve around algorithms, it’s critical that the paper makes sure the news that readers see is driven by the judgment of editors concerned about journalism, not business-driven formulas that may only reinforce prejudices.

In other words, be who you are and service your readers.  Don’t let others control you and broaden your thinking about the best way to solve your customers’ problems. I think that’s a good mantra for any business.  You?

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