Tag Archives: business

June 22, 2012 · 8:24 am

Is Your Menu Out Of Style?

For our Foodie Friday Fun this week I refer you to an article on the Eater/Philadelphia blog.

menu

(Photo credit: pomarc)

It makes a statement about food that just might have some business implications too.  Let’s see what you think.

In a piece entitled The 10 Signs Your Menu Is Out Of Style, they assert the following:

…what we eat is strongly influenced by the trickle-down effect of creative ideas and the cultural atmosphere we’re making decisions in. But, at what point does an ingredient or dish that once seemed utterly fresh become completely stale?

A classic like roast chicken may be safe, but most dishes are not so timeless. For example: The Korean taco. What started as a food-truck highlight from Kogi in Los Angeles has wended its way to TGI Friday’s menus everywhere. And recently, a bacon-studded sundae has appeared at Burger King. When a dish turns up on a chain restaurant menu, it’s over.

I agree – there’s a huge difference between a classic that’s widely executed with varying degrees of success and something “trendy” that loses its cutting edge.  Of course, that’s kind of true about anything in business, isn’t it?  The problem with trendy is that it becomes passe.  Or as Yogi once said about why he no longer went to Ruggeri’s, a St. Louis restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

If your business is built around catering to the masses, grabbing the latest thing and making it widely available is a good thing.  More often than not, we’re not about mass anymore – we fulfill niches, we serve highly segmented audiences, and we can’t afford to let the rest of the world catch up or dilute our magic potion.  Apple is the best at this (and yes, they serve mass markets but they’ve moved on by the time others catch up).

So what’s on your menu these days?  Classics?  Something others will be dumbing down for their own menus in six months?  Or are you trying to stay afloat serving up stale versions of other’s creativity?  Think about it!

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June 21, 2012 · 8:32 am

The Social Hot Potato

An interesting read this morning from the folks at Genesys (with a hat tip to Media Post).

1 and a half russet potato with sprouts. Slice...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Genesys conducted a study that surveyed more than 798 senior executives worldwide about customer communication and found that the social and mobile channels are not yet aligned with customer service.  Shocking, I know.  Some key points:

  • Fifty eight percent of C-suite Execs see the CEO as responsible for the social media and mobile channels, but only 28 percent of middle managers agree. The disconnect between top-level and mid-ranking executives might be explained by the novelty factor of social media.
  • When it comes to driving the customer conversation, the marketing department, not customer service or the C-suite, is driving the response to new channels with 44 percent of executives saying the marketing department has dominated the dialogue between company and customer.
  • The report also found that 43 percent of companies only began using social media in the last year and only 11 percent of businesses have been using social media to communicate with customers for three years or more.
  • Customer Service has not been a priority with new communications channels. Only 42 percent of organizations use call centers to communicate with customers and just 6 percent see customer support/service as the main purpose of new communication channels.

A few thoughts.  In larger, more mature companies, the CEO is generally someone my age – well over 50.  One might wonder how familiar your stereotypical CEO is with social channels and what sort of daily (much less hourly) use they make of them.  No wonder the middle managers are a little skeptical.  The implied turf war between marketing, PR, and customer service over who is in charge is no surprise.  Nor is it a shock that companies that appoint a single person, instead of a team, to manage all communications were more successful. Thirty-three percent of executives within companies that have appointed a team to manage social media/mobile channels felt that there was a disconnect between teams that touch these channels. In organizations that had appointed a single individual to manage new channels, just 9 percent perceived the same disconnect.

Social media as a communications channel is a huge disruptor.  Those sorts of hot potatoes aren’t welcomed into most corporate environments.  As the study show, the social round peg isn’t fitting into any of the existing square holes.  The companies that are doing well are the ones that have drilled a round place.

Thoughts?

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June 20, 2012 · 10:05 am

Why Your Phone Won’t Stay Charged

My phone almost ran out of power the other day.

Angry Birds

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience – a busy day of calling and mail and suddenly you’re getting the red battery indicator, triggering a desperate search for an outlet.  Not fun at all, especially when it doesn’t feel as if you’ve been all that careless about battery use.  Oh sure, you checked Facebook a couple of times and there was the 10 minutes of Angry Birds during a coffee break.  Well, that might be all it took.

According to research conducted by the folks at Microsoft, free mobile apps which use third-party services to display ads drain a lot more battery life.  In fact, they found that up to 75% of an app’s energy use goes to power the advertisements in free, ad-supported apps.  Notice the use of the word “free.”  The paid versions of the apps – the ones without the ads – don’t have the same effect.  It’s not just apps either – some mobile web pages were evaluated along with various browsers and that made a difference as well.

This raises a few questions in my mind.  If people can pay $1 and improve battery life, they’ll probably do so.  What does that do to the installed base of ads in the mobile sphere?  The study is very detailed about where the energy leaks occur, sort of like a report from an insulation installer walking around your house before winter begins (seal this window, you need to weatherstrip the doors).  Why don’t app developers spend more time on this?  Is it because they don’t particularly care?  The researchers recommend developers ask one question – Where is the energy spent inside my app?

The point for us as consumers is that “free” isn’t always better in the grand scheme of things.  More importantly, the point for those who depend on the continued growth of the ad-supported mobile economy is to focus on keeping those phones charged.  People can’t see and click on ads if their phones are dead.  It’s not the other guy’s problem even though they share the responsibility.  Finally, the lesson for all of us in business is to keep the consumer front and center.  Creating apps, web pages, or any other product that make us money and make our customers miserable is short-sighted.

And now I’m off to uninstall a bunch of apps!

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