Tag Archives: Business and Economy

April 25, 2016 · 10:01 am

Being Your Fool

Unless you’ve been off the planet for the last few days, you’re aware that Prince passed away last week. While the word “genius” is overused, it applies in his case. I hope you’ve seen some of the examples of his art – they’ve been everywhere as the tributes pour in. It’s one of those tributes I’d like to discuss today because it is instructive when it comes to business.

English: Prince playing at Coachella 2008.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before we get to that example, let me remind you that one aspect of Prince’s genius was his foresight in seeing how the internet and digital technology would disrupt the music business. This is an excellent overview of his relationship with the Internet from the Washington Post. While Price was an early adapter, appreciating how music could now be sold directly to fans without a record label, he also recognized how that very process could wipe out a revenue stream for musicians. As he put it: “Tell me a musician who’s got rich off digital sales. Apple’s doing pretty good though, right?”

Prince recorded an unreleased song called “There’s Something I Like About Being Your Fool,” and that gets us to our business point today.  One of the “tributes” to Prince came from AMC Theaters.  They announced that they would play Prince’s film “Purple Rain” in their theaters this weekend to honor him.  In my mind, this is the furthest thing from a tribute: it’s greed.  There is no mention of AMC letting patrons see Prince’s work for free.  They are charging full price.  There is no mention that all of the admission proceeds will be donated to any of the numerous charities Prince quietly supported throughout his career. I might be totally off base here and AMC might be doing something honorable, but even if I am, the business point still applies.

As businesses, our motives can’t be questioned.  It gets to the issue of trust, and trust is a critical currency these days.  If we’re not believable, whether it’s with respect to our products, our customer service, or our alignment with our customers, we’re in deep trouble.  Maybe AMC is letting people in for free or donating the proceeds but they’re being awfully loud about the film and quiet about the rest. Unlike the Prince lyric, people don’t like being your fool.  Sure, show the movie, but don’t call it a way to honor anyone when you’re lining your pockets using a tragedy.  I’m not that kind of fool.  You?

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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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