Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

April 4, 2014 · 8:32 am

Cooking In A Closet

For those of you who live outside of New York City today’s Foodie Friday topic may be a little esoteric.

Tiny kitchen

(Photo credit: doraemon)

Then again, since I’ve never lived in an apartment in any other city, perhaps many of you can identify with it.  I know the subject was one I lived with in our NYC apartment and even when we moved to the suburbs the issue persisted:

The challenges of a small kitchen.

Our apartment’s kitchen was literally a closet.  A large walk-in had been changed into a kitchen.  There was a small stove with a tiny oven, a narrow refrigerator, some shelves and about two square feet of counter space.  A small  cutting board and a bowl would cover it completely.  My culinary ambitions generally overwhelmed my kitchen’s ability to produce what I was visualizing.  You’d cook sequentially instead of concurrently, making one course and removing it to another room while you started the next.  Two pots were tight on the stove even though it had four burners, and good luck if you need to sear something over high heat in a pan while simmering a pot somewhere else on the stove.

What cooking in a small kitchen taught me were a series of skills that I still use.  First, I had to think through the entire meal – what to cook when and how to have everything hit the table at the same time.  Second, I learned to be organized.  There wasn’t room to have clutter nor the luxury of extraneous kitchen equipment or ingredients. In short, I learned to focus on the essence of what I was doing and to do so in an incredibly efficient manner.  Which is, of course, the business point.

It’s not just start-up businesses that have resource challenges.  When I work with my clients who are early and mid stage companies, I think about cooking in a closet and how those skills are critical.  That said, every business can stand to think that way.  Sure, your ambitions are way bigger than your business, but what’s the essence of what you’re doing?  What’s really necessary in terms of tools?  How do I organize everything to maximize efficiency?  Since the business can’t do everything it wants to all at once, what’s needed to be done in what sequence to get us where we want to go?

I don’t cook in a small kitchen any more and I have way more silly tools than I know I need.  But while you can take the cook out of the small kitchen, the small kitchen stays in the cook.  I think it’s the same with small business people.  You agree?

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April 2, 2014 · 10:17 am

Where Are We Going?

I like smart people and I really like when smart people get together and have a think about things which interest me.

Internet!

(Photo credit: LarsZi)

That happened recently as the folks at the Pew Research Center, and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center set up an online survey to look at the future of the Internet, the Web, and other digital activities. This is the first of eight reports based on a canvassing of hundreds of experts about the future of such things as privacy, cybersecurity, the “Internet of things,” and net neutrality. In this case they asked experts to make their own predictions about the state of digital life by the year 2025.  It’s an interesting document, an overview of which you can read here and which is available in its entirety at this link.

This is a summary of what they found:

To a notable extent, the experts agree on the technology change that lies ahead, even as they disagree about its ramifications. Most believe there will be:

  • A global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through  the continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data centers in a world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things.
  • “Augmented reality” enhancements to the real-world input that people perceive through the use of portable/wearable/implantable technologies.
  • Disruption of business models established in the 20th century (most notably impacting  finance, entertainment, publishers of all sorts, and education).
  • Tagging, databasing, and intelligent analytical mapping of the physical and social realms.

As one expert summed it up rather elegantly, information sharing over the Internet will be so effortlessly interwoven into daily life that it will become invisible, flowing like electricity, often through machine intermediaries.  But is that a good thing?

I consider myself pretty “wired.”  To the extent I’m not using a technology or am blocking data access, it’s by choice.  I’m not entirely comfortable with the value proposition – my data/personal information/behavioral habits in exchange for whatever it is you’re selling.  Of course I know that proposition is just an extension of the media value proposition – my attention in exchange for entertainment.  But if you’ve read anything about the data collection business (never mind what governments are doing!) you know that there is way too much room for abuse and error, both of which will have a negative impact that negates any value received in my mind.

I recognize I might be of a generation that doesn’t “get it.”  Or maybe we do, since “1984″ was required reading long before the year 1984.  While one of the slogans of the Party is “Ignorance Is Strength” I don’t believe that for a second.  It’s all a matter of what knowledge – data – is owned by whom.  And that, dear readers, is something to ponder.  Will you?

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March 31, 2014 · 8:33 am

Is Push Dead?

Although the drumbeat about content marketing began a few years back, it seems to have become rather loud over the last few months.  We even see content marketing agencies and software pushing (pun intended) their products and services on a daily basis.

The image shows a technology push, mainly driv...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Content marketing is  not a particularly new phenomenon unless you consider the end of the 1890’s new.  That’s right:  as long ago as that companies were creating content they would distribute to consumers in order to give them information as opposed to selling them something.  The theory is that compelling content creates a relationship – engagement – with the consumer and that at some appropriate point the recipient will turn to your company when they’re ready to buy.

I’m a fan of content marketing.  I think most people don’t like being sold to unless they’ve put their hands in the air and said “I’m ready to buy and I need information.”  Those kind of marketing messages – TV and other ads – are push content.  As Imus used to say “I talk, you listen” except what was being said by marketers was manufactured and shoved out the door.  Content marketing is more “pull” marketing.  It’s a newer model than the old push strategy.

But is push dead?  I don’t think so.  Here is why.

The basic definition of pull marketing means that you engage consumers or prospective/current customers.  To do that you need to know something about them.  If they’ve bought, you have that information and they know a bit about you through experiences that have left lasting, positive impressions.   Hopefully you’ve dazzled them with world-class customer service (which I think is push marketing too).  If  they haven’t bought (yet), maybe you’ve been helpful to them in other ways.

The implication is that, of course, is that you need to be discoverable.  You can’t do inbound marketing if you’re invisible.  If you’re trying to give potential customers the idea that they need to engage, they need to know that they have a problem for you to solve first.  Maybe they haven’t done that – defined the problem  – so how can they be considering a solution?

That’s where push comes in.  Sure, it may be intrusive and unfashionable and ridiculed as interruption marketing.  But it has a role in the marketing mix.  Even so, we have to keep a few thoughts in mind.  We can’t spam people – drop unwanted messages on them over and over again.  People have learned to tune those messages out.  Even as we’re talking “at” them, we can try to anticipate their needs and wants even as we’re defining their problems for them.

No, push isn’t dead, but it needs to be changed to match the ways in which consumer expectations have changed.  Then again, if your marketing plan is still very much a function of last century, your revenues might be stuck there too.  Make sense?

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