Tag Archives: Reality checks

September 17, 2013 · 10:13 am

Our Own Private Idahos

Happy TunesDay!  For our musical subject today, let’s listen to the B52’s.  It’s OK to get up and dance – I’ll wait:

I got to thinking about that phrase and our own private Idaho‘s the other day.  On one level it’s about someone who is wrapped up in their own narrow frame of reference.  They create their own little world and exclude anything outside of its borders.  Maybe that thinking was what inspired yesterday’s post on TV and social.  I do know that it was a bit of synchronicity (not the song!) when I came across an article in the NY Times magazine about popularity that made the point about the continuing segmentation of culture very well.

The piece, entitled What It Means to Be Popular (When Everything Is Popular) sums it up well:

This refraction of the culture into ever-smaller slivers leaves us instinctively with a sense of something lost. Once we listened to the same song together, watched the same show together, argued over the same movies together. Now we’re each focused on our own screen, listening to our own playlist, we’re bowling alone, etc. A landscape that once featured a few unavoidable monoliths of popularity is now dotted with a multitude of lesser monuments, too many to keep track of, let alone celebrate.

I think this creates opportunities for those of us in business along with the obvious difficulties, the ability to scale being the largest problem.   Perhaps we need to be thinking about deep engagement in a series of micro-audiences as opposed to the mass reach everyone seems to desire?  Rather than thinking about going viral (which to me is top-down thinking), maybe we should recognize that there are too many different Idaho’s for that to occur with any regularity and focus instead in creating something for several of them which each of them can serve within their own borders (bottom-up).

When I was a kid there were three television networks and the roster of programs was pretty limited.  The lowest rated shows then would be huge hits now.  That’s not a function of their quality, it’s just that there weren’t any other choices.  Today’s choices are unlimited. “Popular” means someone – anyone – is paying attention.  We need to run our businesses around that definition of popular and build a business model that works, throwing away “old” models in the process.

You with me?

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September 13, 2013 · 8:58 am

Eating Vs. Dining

It’s Foodie Friday! Today I want to talk about something that was pointed out to me by an older friend.

English: Minangkabau cuisine (Padang food) ser...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We were talking about the quality of a number of restaurants and we happened to hit upon one that we both agreed was not of particularly high quality. The interesting thing was that it always seems to be full of people, generally younger ones.  I was expressing my wonder that their business was doing so well despite that lack of a quality product when he said this:

They’re there to eat.  We like to dine.  You can eat anywhere.

I knew immediately he was right.  The young audience to which this place caters generally doesn’t cook.  They need to eat and are less fussy about the quality of the experience as long as the food is serviceable and not particularly expensive.  They want to perform the human equivalent of gassing up a car.  They need fuel!

My friend and I, both decent amateur cooks, prefer to dine.  We emphasize the quality of both the food and the atmosphere in which it is served.  It’s a very different standard in many ways.  While you and I  could have a good discussion about whether that difference is good or bad, we can probably agree about  one point of differentiation: once you have us as regular customers, we’re not leaving.  Which is an interesting business point.

Having a customer base that treats your product as a commodity is risky.  It opens you up to the whims of the market.  There’s always someone who can play better music or offer cheaper food.  If your customers don’t recognize your product and the experience through which it’s delivered as unique they’ll be gone.  Having a clientele that savors your product is very different from one that views it almost as a necessary evil.

This isn’t a young vs. old or cheap vs. expensive issue.  It’s about building deep relationships between customers and products.  We want them dining and not just eating.  Wouldn’t you agree?

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September 11, 2013 · 10:09 am

September 11

This is the post I wrote on the tenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11.   While I try not to repeat posts too often, my thoughts of the day haven’t changed very much in the subsequent two years (maybe they’ve intensified on the latter portion of the post).  You might also know I don’t bring political discussions onto the screed either.  I broke that rule too.  Anyway, I’m posting it again with a couple of minor edits.

Today, this isn’t about business. If you want to skip it and come back in a couple of days, I understand.421621_639685039032_1897023870_n

I’m publishing this on 9/11, 10 years after a horrible day changed the world forever. I’ve spent a good part of the day thinking about the subsequent decade and how it was so very different from the 4 others in which I’ve lived that preceded it and I want to use today to share some of those thoughts. I also know we don’t do politics here – I think today we will, although hopefully in a non-partisan way.  So here are a few things I remember most about 9/11/01.

First, how beautiful the weather was that day. My commute brought me into Grand Central Station and as I walked into the sunlight and smelled the air with the smallest traces of Fall in it, I thought about how the weeks after Labor day are the best time to come to NYC. I now think about 9/11 every time it’s a really nice day.

I also thought how nice a day it was going to be for flying. A few work colleagues and I were going to San Francisco that afternoon out of Newark. We were originally going out on a morning flight but realized our meetings were later the next day so we changed flights a week earlier. Spooky.

Finally, the main thing I recall about 9/11 was 9/12.  And 9/13.  And many days thereafter.  It was about how for one of the few times in my life, the entire country came together as one.  No Democrats, no Republicans – Americans.  I felt it in the emails and calls I received from concerned folks from all around the country and from other countries.  As a New Yorker, you saw it in all the folks who came to help from all over.

That all changed later and was, in retrospect, probably only a Band-Aid on some wounds that began to fester some time in the 90’s.  But MAN, it felt good.

That’s what struck me today – how those wounds have turned gangrenous and how utterly incapable we as a people seem to sit together and discuss how to clean up the economic and social messes around us, much as we cleaned up that other mess 10 years ago.  The memorials today showed me that we still have the ability to unite in a common good under a flag, but only if we stop yelling, start listening, and try to feel what we all felt after the unspeakable horror of that day:  that we have to find a way to clean this up and fix this.  Not as Democrats or Republicans – as Americans.

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