Category Archives: Consulting

June 30, 2008 · 2:49 pm

Leaving well enough alone

I’m not a Luddite, by any means.  That should be obvious based on the field in which I consult (digital media) since the business of digital media itself didn’t really exist 15 years ago.

Mozilla has released Firefox 3 and it’s great.  Mostly.  Except it breaks things.  My site looks funny in it – I know other sites have had issues too.  Some folks’ CMS refuses to work properly with it.  I’m sure there are applications that are a bit screwy too.

Sometimes in our zeal to make things better, we screw up some of the things that are working well.  We used to hear that at the NHL when we’d tinker with rules, etc. and I know Mozilla released enough betas that we could have tested.  But I do think there are times  when maybe we need to think about leaving well enough alone.  As my friend the hit midget (for another post) reminded me – New Coke wasn’t exactly a huge improvement.

So here’s the business thought.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to improve but sometimes we change up our businesses to make smallish incremental gains.  Maybe we’re blowing up the good stuff to fix the stuff that’s not working?

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June 27, 2008 · 10:03 am

Integrated Measurement

As Emily Litella might have said, “What’s all this about integrated measurement?  Why, all the people measuring media already measure everyone – Black, White, Asian, etc.  What more integration do we need?”

OK, so that’s not as good as “violins on television” but the point is we DO need more integrated measurement of all media.  It’s a big topic right now and I’ve had a number of folks ask me how, or if, I think it happens.

To me, it’s a “when” not an “if” and the “how” is through the one place that seems to be the junction of all media these days – the ISP, and more specifically the cable guys.  A large percentage of folks get their TV and their Internet through the same pipe.  It’s not unreasonable to think that as those providers move into wireless and other places (or in the case of Verizon, if they’re already there), use of mobile devices can be added to the mix.

Good column discussing the topic by Diane Mermigas today.  Add to that what Sony is doing with set top boxes, the growth of companies such as Phorm, Microsoft’s purchase of Navic, and I think you get a sense that this is where we’re heading.  I, for one, am glad.  Having spent many years living and dying with the Nielsen TV ratings, which are estimates and less accurate than what we’ll be getting in a few years, the process of analyzing consumers’ media habits and the most efficient ways to reach them will be a lot easier.

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June 20, 2008 · 7:54 am

Why bother?

Sorry I haven’t posted in a couple of days – my daughter graduated high school and then I attended the BMOeMerging Media conference.

While at the conference, I saw, once again, a phenomenon I really don’t understand.  Crackberry-itis.  The inability to stop using one’s Blackberry.  I’m sure, like me, you see people typing away in meetings (where it’s just rude), at conferences (where it’s sort of a waste of the money you paid to be there), and elsewhere.  What could be SO important?  And if it is, why aren’t you off attending to it?

This is an offshoot of something that’s also pretty common: people saying they want one thing and doing something completely different.  That’s why part of the discovery process in consulting involves not just asking questions (and listening to the answers) but also observing and researching on one’s own.

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