Tag Archives: Reality checks

March 18, 2015 · 11:59 am

I Suck At Art

What, you are wondering, compelled me to announce to the world I lack proficiency in art? Why am I telling you that I can’t draw? The self-portrait I painted in college (yes, I took an art class) looks like something a 5-year-old did while taking acid and flinging paint. I haven’t improved much over the years. But why am I telling you?

I’m telling you because you need to do the same thing. You need to think about your weaknesses. No, I don’t mean your inability to step away from the candy bowl. I mean the areas in business which are not your strengths. It’s a critical step to becoming a better business person and probably to being a better human being too.

Bad managers think they know it all.  They can read the data better than the person breaking it out.  They can write better than the chief copywriter and design better than an art director.  Their marketing campaigns are brilliant and they know everything there is to know about social media.  You might have worked for that guy.  The problem is that inevitably they miss something because they refuse to admit they have a blind spot in their skill set.  They don’t ask questions – they just give you answers.

Great managers know their weaknesses and hire accordingly.  Even those of us who are on our own need to do that.  Sure, I can build you a website but it will take me a long time and it won’t be as good as when I bring in someone who excels at it.  While I know what works from a user experience perspective in digital you don’t want me doing artwork to bring it to life.  This is why you hire someone like me (OK, hopefully me!)  in the first place – to work with you in areas where I’m more expert than you and to bring in resources that will compensate for the weaknesses in your business.

So I suck at art.  You may be Michelangelo but you probably suck at something else that’s important to your business.  What are you doing to patch that hole?

Leave a comment

Filed under Reality checks, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 11, 2015 · 10:33 am

A New Dark Age?

Are you watching less TV than you used to? If the answer to that is “yes” then you’re not alone. Oh sure, you’re probably spending a lot more time in front of a screen, but when I ask that question I’m asking about cable network programming delivered live or watched via DVR within 3 days. That measurement, by the way, is known in the business as C3 ratings and there is not a lot of good news. Michael Nathanson, a senior analyst with MoffettNathanson LLC issued an analysis of recent data and this lede from the International Business Times sums it up nicely:

The biggest American horror story on cable last year, didn’t come from FX — it came from Nielsen. Ratings across national cable television networks tumbled 9 percent in 2014, triple the decline seen in 2013 and more than quadruple the 2 percent decline seen in 2012. To call it a crisis would be an understatement. If the trend continues, TV could be heading for a new dark ages.

Why the dark ages analogy?  You’re seeing it in the news.  Cable operators pay these networks a lot of money each month (OK, you’re right – WE pay…) but if no one is watching maybe losing those networks from their systems isn’t a big deal.  That sort of explains the stories you read about networks going dark on some systems (as I’m writing this Verizon just turned off the Weather Channel and Dish turned off Fox News for a few weeks)over what those fees might be.  Without a hue and cry from consumers who appear to be moving on to alternatives, the networks have no leverage.

While some in the industry are complaining yet again about faulty measurement methods, the reality is that people are shifting their viewing habits away from live, linear programing.  Even sports, which is supposed to be immune to this, suffered a 5% decline. You’re probably aware that HBO, NBC and CBS are launching their own streaming services. That sort of move might hasten the demise of business model that has fed TV networks with licensing fees as the cable and satellite distributors focus more on their broadband ISP businesses and less on TV.  After all, if they can distribute the programming services for free via their internet side, why pay?

Hopefully this is good news for those of us who pay for this stuff.  What do you think?

Leave a comment

Filed under Reality checks, What's Going On

Tagged as , , , , ,

March 4, 2015 · 12:32 pm

Bloatware

Do you use an app to clean up the digital flotsam and jetsam on your phone?  I do and it’s constantly telling me I have files I don’t need or use.  I have 16 gig of storage on my device and quite a bit of that storage is taken up by software I didn’t install – it came with the phone.  I can’t remove it either, not without gaining root access to the device which might cause other issues.  Call it bloatware, crapware or whatever.  It’s unwanted and some of it runs in the background, eating up battery life.  There is some here from the device manufacturer and even more from the carrier.  It is a constant annoyance.

This issue is only going to become a bigger problem as newer devices do not have expandable storage.  In addition to the built-in device storage I have an SD card inserted to give myself another 16 gig of storage.  Without this, my phone would be full.  Yes, I know how to use cloud storage to keep my device clean but you can’t run apps from the cloud nor do apps cache data there.  More importantly, when consumers buy a product which is advertised to have 16 gig of storage (or 32, 64 or whatever) there is a reasonable expectation that the product will have about that amount available.  Both Apple and Microsoft have been sued for promoting devices with far less storage available than advertised, and in their cases it was actually just the operating system that was taking up space.

Why do I bring this up?  I don’t like the vision of the world in which you don’t own or control the goods you buy, and the company who made it has embedded everything possible to give them access to your information.  That seems to be the attitude of the manufacturers and carriers.  Yes I know about unlocked phones (they still have crapware) and how to disable (but not remove) this stuff, but it seems to me that the negligible revenues taken in by adding some of this bloat are negated by consumer disdain.  Put aside the potential data vulnerabilities – and fallout – each of these apps pose.  They are annoying at best and harmful at worst and there is no reason for them.

Ask yourself this – is my business doing anything similar?  Am I trying to make an easy buck while annoying my customers?  Think about how people feel about their wireless carriers as you do.  Is that how you want your customers to feel about you?

Leave a comment

Filed under Huh?, Reality checks

Tagged as , , ,