Tag Archives: business thinking

September 13, 2017 · 11:47 am

Taking One For The Team

When was the last time, other than The Super Bowl, that you actively watched an ad? I suspect that you’re like me and you’re actively doing what you can to avoid seeing ads at all costs. You wear out the buttons on the remote or you record your favorite shows and watch them later. You might even have jumped into the camp of those of us who pay not to see ads. We pay Netflix or Hulu or Amazon or all three to watch the content we love in an uninterrupted way. I pay SiriusXM not to hear my favorite music interrupted by product ads (still can’t seem to avoid those promos, although they’re usually appropriate to the content I’m consuming).

Then there is the web, both computer-based and mobile. It makes a NASCAR vehicle seems as uncluttered and virgin as the newly fallen snow. Pop-ups, pop-unders, hidden ads that spew sound from a minimized window, multiple windows popping in succession, far too fast for the consumer to read but quickly enough to record an ad displayed and a marketer charged. It’s a nightmare.

Let me digress. There is one topic we hit hard here in the screed: customer experience. We’ve covered the customer service rep that screws you over, the faulty products delivered without shame or recourse, and the airline that my friends and I call “Air We Don’t Care” (actually our name is a little different and a lot more obscene). We’ve also covered the other side of that – the customer service rep that goes the extra mile and solves your problem beyond your expectations. All of that relates to what is called the user experience in the digital world.

It’s nice to see that there are finally a number of publishers who recognize that a focus on user experience over driving maximum revenue call pay off in the long run. Digiday ran a piece about it, explaining how some brave publishers are overcoming their fear of losing money in favor of cultivating a more loyal audience. It finally dawned on these publishers that people aren’t coming for the ads.

I spent many years selling media. I know that our customer is really the marketer and their agency. However, in order to attract those customers, we need to have viewers and readers that consume our content – a LOT of our content – and keep coming back for more. Improving the user experience makes that happen even if it might cause a temporary drop in page views, ads displayed, and revenue. Heck, when even the NFL is recognizing that they have to reformat their games to speed them up and make the ads less intrusive (a better user experience!), all other content providers need to take notice.

Is the sales department taking one for the team as the editorial group improves the user experience? Probably in the short term, yes. But in a world where ad-blockers, remote controls, DVR’s, and streaming rule, it’s a smart sacrifice in my eyes. You?

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September 5, 2017 · 9:51 am

Getting Fitted Correctly

I hope you all had a relaxing Labor Day and were able to indulge in one or more of your favorite activities. I did, and doing so reminded me of some very basic things each of us needs to keep in mind as we leave Summer and get back to business.

I spent $99 for a process known as a full bag fitting. Yes, it’s golf-related (hey – you write what you know, right?). It’s a process in which you go through the various types of clubs in your bag while hitting balls using a launch monitor. I’m not going to get technical but it’s basically a tool that shows you everything you’d ever want to know about how the club is performing and allows you to change club brands and components to improve the results. My fitting was scheduled for two hours with a wonderful Irish golf pro named Martin. Here are some of the things I noticed that apply to you and your business.

  1. Go beyond expectations. I’ve gone through this process before and it was fairly clinical. Hit the ball, watch the result, change the club a little, rinse, repeat. Martin was personable and non-judgemental (there were quite a few horrible shots). Where he really went beyond expectations was in giving me little swing tips as we went. A minor grip change and a slight change in my address position had me striking the ball more solidly. I went to have my clubs checked and fitted and he went beyond that by checking me too.
  2. Be human. We hear a lot about bots – automated processes – taking over a lot of tasks these days, particular customer services. I suppose as I think about it, this process could have been fairly automated as well. The bot could have used the numbers to have me change out club shafts or heads until the numbers were optimized. What it couldn’t do was give me the feedback Martin did. He ignored data from what were occasional bad swings and only used the numbers from the normal ones. Most importantly, by the time we got to hitting driver, the last type of club left, I had hit close to 300 shots. I was tired and my swing was breaking down. Martin saw it after I was unable to hit anything normally. Rather than continue and give a good analysis of a faulty, tired swing, Martin suggested I go away for a couple of hours and recover. At this point, we were already over the 2 hour time but he said we’d do the driver analysis later for no charge. That’s something no bot would suggest.
  3. Communicate effectively. The monitor spits out a lot of very complicated data. Even though I know what most of it means, Martin took the time to be sure that I was interpreting the data correctly and understood how the changes we were making were improving the result, even when the visual representation of the ball flight looked off.

After two trips to the monitor bay and a total of three hours, I left with a list of club specifications that will hopefully translate into better play. More importantly, I left with an appreciation of how any of us can keep customers happy and solve the cost/value equation. Make sense?

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September 1, 2017 · 9:23 am

Weenies!

It’s the start of the college football season this Foodie Friday and that means weenies. You may call them pigs in a blanket but my daughter and I, who are aficionados of them, refer to them as weenies. One football Saturday several years ago we heated up a tray to watch our favorite team play (Go Blue!) and have never looked back. They are a staple of our game day experience and we’re so serious about them that we have tried just about every brand we could find. We learned a few things, some of which have to do with your business as well.

The first thing we learned was that these are one of those foods that are just as good bought frozen as making them yourself. It’s not that they taste appreciably better from the store but the effort required to roll out the puff pastry and properly size either the cut pastry or the hot dog doesn’t yield a dramatic improvement over the best of the store-bought products. That’s an important business thought as well, as we return to the old cost/value equation. For consumers to choose to use your product or service to solve their problem, you need to provide a better return on their investment of time and/or money. In this case, the final results of our homemade weenies took a fair amount of effort that wasn’t a significantly better solution.

Next, we learned that not everyone’s concept of what a weenie should be is the same. We bought versions that were bland hot dogs in buttery puff pastry. Some pastry was dense, almost biscuit-like. Some had parmesan cheese rolled in. Some folks even try to pass off a bagel wrap as an acceptable option. Ha! None were perfect. We found that we loved one brand’s hot dog and another brand’s pastry. Yes, it crossed our minds to buy both and combine the best parts, but our top choice has decent enough pastry to negate the Frankenweenie from happening. But the business point is that you can call your product whatever you want, even a fairly common name, but not everyone is going to think of it in the same way. I think the IHOP even calls sausages wrapped in pancakes pigs in a blanket. That’s definitely NOT what we have in mind to munch whilst watching college football.

Present your product clearly. Excel at solving the cost/value equation from the consumer’s perspective. That’s a dish worth eating every time.

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