Tag Archives: business thinking

April 6, 2017 · 11:45 am

Clear Headed

I’ve been MIA from this space for a few days (hopefully you’ve noticed). I caught some kind of a bug and it pretty much laid me out for a few days. Body aches, a little congestion, and a foggy brain. I had zero energy and just wanted to sleep. More importantly, I couldn’t really focus my thinking on anything.

This may come as a shock to you but I do put a fair amount of what I hope is clear-headed thought into the screed. While I might have been able to force myself to spend a lot of extra time to write something, I thought it a better course of (in)action just to give it a rest. I’m a big believer in doing nothing when one’s head is foggy and let me explain why.

“Foggy” to me just doesn’t mean the state I’ve been in over the last few days. Foggy is when things are unclear at all. It may be because you’re distracted or it may be because the information you need to make a decision is incomplete, unclear, or inadequate. Jason Day, for example, withdrew from a golf tournament a couple of weeks ago because he was distracted by the fact that his mom was having surgery (she’s fine) and he couldn’t focus. Rather than making bad decisions on the course, he made a great one and left it.

Each of us needs to think along the same lines. Sure, sometimes fuzzy logic is called for because we can’t get enough information. In and of itself, that’s a clear-headed decision you make. Oftentimes, however, anything from a cold to a hangover to a family matter to office politics can reduce or eliminate your ability to focus. Those are the times when we need more time because I don’t concur that a bad decision is always better than no decision.

What do you think?

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April 3, 2017 · 11:26 am

New Isn’t Synonymous With Good

A decade or more ago (2003, actually), there was an early attempt at a VR world called “Second Life.” It’s still in existence although in my mind it reached its PR peak way back when. Many sports and entertainment properties rushed to set up virtual home bases in the virtual world. If memory serves, MLB built a stadium and the NBA built an arena.

I was running the NHL’s digital stuff at the time and as you might expect, the Second Life folks came to us to participate. You should also know that sports leagues keep an eye on one another (duh) and so the fact that the other leagues were there had some folks internally asking why we weren’t. I had a pretty simple answer for them: we weren’t because it made absolutely no business sense. Back then, Second Life’s business was almost a real estate play. We would have had to have bought “land” on which to construct our presence as well as to build and maintain whatever we build. The audience numbers weren’t all that great when compared with other options. When we put all the numbers together the cost was well into six figures and the potential return was pretty nebulous at best. I explained all this to my management and said that if they wanted to be involved from a marketing perspective (and pay for it out of that budget) we’d proceed but if they were asking if it was a smart business deal the answer was no.

The Second Life folks were way ahead of their time (VR is just starting to take off) but the lesson from that is just as relevant today. Look at the rush of sponsors to new platforms, whether they’re the latest hot app or a new type of programmatic buying. There is no vetting. Many of these things lack any form of third-party verification or transparency. Frankly, my guess is that many of the folks involved don’t even know what questions to ask since ad tech has become incredibly complex. Add in the controversy about rebates driving placements and investment in much of this new stuff might make a visible splash but bellyflop as a business decision.

Good strategy is timeless. Yes, we need to push forward with respect to how we display our messages and engage with our consumers. No, we don’t need to rush off a technological cliff as we try to do that in the name of being cutting edge. Newness for newness’ sake is not synonymous with good. You agree?

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March 31, 2017 · 11:11 am

It All Comes Out In The Wash

I’m not quite sure what to make of our Foodie Friday Fun topic this week. It’s a piece I saw that discusses how someone invented a bag that you can use to cook dinner in your washing machine. Not, it’s not from The Onion. Apparently, the person who invented it was moved by a piece he saw about homeless people using the laundromat as a sanctuary of sorts. There, the homeless get water, clean up, do laundry, charge devices, etc. He wanted to add cooking to the list.

한국어: 유럽향 드럼세탁기 (모델명_F1047TD)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The thinking behind this is that a washing machine is like a sous vide like environment in that it’s a water bath. The problem is that it really isn’t. An immersion circulator holds the sous vide bath at a constant temperature for any period of time required to cook the food. I did steak in mine last night holding the food for one hour at 126 degrees. A typical washing machine uses water that’s somewhere around 110 degrees, nowhere near hot enough to cook anything beyond very rare, if at all. The time a load of laundry is fully immersed in the hot water isn’t long enough either.

Putting aside the obvious problems, what I like about this is that it demonstrates outside of the box thinking. People cook on their car engines (mmmm – is that cylinder head in the potatoes?) and bake their lasagna in a dishwasher. Grilled cheese using your clothes iron? Why not! How often have you sat down to solve a problem and immediately discounted some of the more bizarre solutions out of hand? That’s something that happens a lot in group brainstorming sessions. My feeling is that no idea is terrible and no idea is great until they’ve been thought through and explored. In the case of the sous video laundry bags, I’d probably not have kept going, but the fact that they now exist has me asking myself are there any other purposes for which the technology can be used?

Ever used a microwave oven? It was a mistake, the by-product of radar research. Played with a Slinky? Another mistake. So were potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, and penicillin. While you may have some great ideas that turn out to be not so great, how can they be repurposed? Maybe the bad stuff will come out in the wash, leaving you with something brilliant?

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