March 16, 2016 · 12:05 pm

How’s That Going?

Sometimes when I meet people and they describe their work lives to me, I’ll listen as they tell me what they’re doing and then follow up with a simple question: “how’s that going for you?” You’ve probably done something similar, and I bet that you rarely get “I don’t know” for an answer. I certainly don’t, and it concerns me when I do since how can you not have some feeling about so important a topic that occupies much of your waking day? 

What made me think of that was a report put out by the folks at Rundown. It took a look at how companies feel about their content creation process and the subsequent content marketing. It’s instructive to any business regardless if you’re doing content marketing or not. You can look at a summary of the report here.

Almost 80% of the surveyed content marketers agree or strongly agree that their team “makes awesome content that our audience loves.” That’s great, except for that pesky follow-up question – “how is it going?” You see, 52% of these same people disagreed that ” My team has a clear understanding of what works and why.” 55% disagreed that they knew how much each type of content costs to produce, and an astonishing 82% disagreed that they have a good understanding of the ROI on the content creation and marketing investment.

I’m not going to pontificate about in which activities a business should or should not engage.  I will say, however, that no matter which ones they are, it’s imperative that there is a handle on costs as well as some measure of ROI.  I am cringing as I think about answering any of the people for whom I worked with “I don’t know” when asked about what something cost or how it was impacting our goals (revenue, engagement, whatever).  Resources are precious.  So are measurable, actionable data about the results of activities we undertake using those resources.  Saying you make “awesome content” (or anything else) doesn’t resonate with me unless part of “awesome” is moving the business forward.  You?

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March 15, 2016 · 11:59 am

Business Suicide

A clear indication of when it might be time to rethink how you’re running your business is when your own interests overtake those of your customers. I’m pretty sure that while that sort of prioritization makes for short-term gains it’s a losing strategy in the long term. What’s prompted that is a piece I read this morning about programmatic media buying. You can read the piece here and it’s pretty sobering. That said, I suspect many executives could tell similar stories in their fields. 

The piece starts this way:

Programmatic is supposed to bring efficiency to ad buying. But in reality, it’s becoming murky and less reliable for many brands. Most of the time, brands end up paying their agency double and even triple when they collaborate on programmatic.

In other words, what is supposed to be a winning solution for both client and agency turns out to be anything but. I’m very sure that there will be collateral damage on publishers as well. This is what happens when business interests are misaligned. We see this sort of thing all the time. What caused the home mortgage crisis? Lenders putting their profits ahead of the customers to whom they issued loans they knew would be in jeopardy from day one. Why do some drug companies levy outrageous price increases? Shareholder interests before patients’.

One thing of which I remind clients is that as a consultant I have no interests other than theirs. Maybe that’s a lie of sorts since in truth my interest is in making their current customers as happy as possible while expanding that customer base. I think that’s the only way forward to sustained profitability, and it only happens when the business’ interests are perfectly aligned with the customer’s. Anything else is akin to committing business suicide. Do you agree?

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March 14, 2016 · 10:59 am

Daylight Saving

We turned our clocks ahead an hour yesterday and Daylight Saving (no “s”!) Time is upon us. Hopefully, you checked the batteries in your smoke and CO2 detectors too. There are some funny things about Daylight Saving and they’re instructive for business as well.

Victory-Cigar-Congress-Passes-DST papa edit

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First, as with many things in business, the origins of DST are widely misreported. There is a collective myth that Benjamin Franklin invented it when, in fact, he only commented back in 1784 that the French (he was in Paris) could save a lot of money if they’d awaken earlier. He proposed a change in sleep schedules, not in the time. The real father of modern DST is an Englishman, who had the idea and campaigned for it in the early 20th century (Germany implemented it in 1916, the first country to do so).

Second, the reasoning behind it is commonly misunderstood. Many people believe that it was to benefit farmers when, in fact, it was a wartime measure. Farmers don’t especially like it and they work by the sun anyway. In fact, farmers led the fight to repeal DST in 1919.  It doesn’t save energy and it does seem to lead to more strokes and heart attacks.

So the “who” and the “why” are not correctly understood and yet we continue to have DST in many places (interesting that it’s not universal, even within the USA). I bring this up because it seems as if there is beginning to be a discussion about why we have DST at all. Which leads to the business point.

So many things in business happen just because “that’s how things are done.” Why they’re done that way is often misunderstood and who is behind the process or practice is often misidentified.  There is rarely, if ever, a questioning and reevaluation, but like Daylight Saving, maybe it’s an anachronism that causes more problems than it solves.  Thoughts?

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