In the US, the right of publicity and the right to privacy are not the same issue; nor are they managed at the same statutory levels; state or federal.
"The right of publicity prevents the unauthorized commercial use of an individual's name, likeness, or other recognizable aspects of one's persona. It gives an individual the exclusive right to license the use of their identity for commercial promotion." --Cornell University, Legal Information Institute
The right to privacy, while inferred in the Constitution, is not explicitly stated and is narrowly defined in Amendments 1, 4 and 5. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) largely enforces the statutory right of privacy; and the increased occurrence of companies and individuals having privacy policies and privacy statements are evidence of the work the FTC has done.
This is a gray area that Facebook, and other corporate or social networks deliberately trespass into again and again. Users have few options to respond in kind; two of which are that you don't sign-up for the service to begin with and in the event that you are an existing user, you can always cancel and delete your account. Is the average user going to lobby for FB (or any other social network provider) to change its policies or hire a lawyer to negotiate a bilateral policy with FB? Doubt it.
Instagram has changed its usage policy to take advantage of its treasure trove of photo content and enable its advertisers and 3rd party partners to use its user content without having to define licensing or copyright protections. This is a usage policy notion that gets lauded by the general public as a social media no-no and generally results in a mass exodus of users (and subsequently, user-generated content).
There are never any right or wrong ways to deliver such a message to an audience; there is only tact and diplomacy. Let's start with the basics. Instagram is a free-to-use photo customization and posting service; it allows users to take photos with any media device, upload them to be manipulated by Instagram's digital sepia process to mimic old Polaroid photos, and share with others (presumably, publicly) within social networks.
Birthday Automation
One of the simplest automated emails that any company can send out is a birthday (or anniversary) email. ING Direct embeds a nicely simple video ("What Matters Most", 189k YouTube views) in its birthday email sent to customers.
Sprint sprints ahead
This week I've been researching the US telecom market and had been looking into the merger between Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile's parent company) and MetroPCS. While I was comparing stock performance of top telecom providers, I noticed something unusual... what is Sprint doing that the others are not. The attached chart is just a YTD look at stock price. It compares Deutsche Telecom, Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T. I think it's just a math thing, for Sprint's stock performance; which today trades for $5.47/sh while Deutsche Telekom trades at $10.61/sh, Verizon at $42.82/sh, and AT&T at $33.68/sh respectively.
And then, between Deutsche Telekom and MetroPCS:
And then, between Deutsche Telekom and MetroPCS:
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| This chart makes me wonder what happened in mid-2011. The drop happened on July 22, 2011 at a stock price of $17 and fell to $9.53 by Aug 5, 2011. |
Bring Your Own Device Strategy
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is an interesting customer acquisition strategy that is currently in use by T-Mobile, whether it is regarding a tablet, a SIM card mobile device, or other portable device such as a next-gen handheld GPS, wifi-enabled A/V, etc. The BYOD concept emerged just a few years ago and is gaining more traction among security software providers, as well as corporate and government work environments.
By 2016, Gartner predicts that more than 1.6 billion smart mobile devices will be sold, two-thirds of the workforce will own a smartphone, and 40 percent of the workforce will be mobile. Mobile will change applications and how they are delivered. By the end of the decade, more than 30 billion devices will be permanently connected (to the internet) and 150 billion will be occasionally connected. It will soon cost more not to monitor devices than to monitor them.
By 2016, Gartner predicts that more than 1.6 billion smart mobile devices will be sold, two-thirds of the workforce will own a smartphone, and 40 percent of the workforce will be mobile. Mobile will change applications and how they are delivered. By the end of the decade, more than 30 billion devices will be permanently connected (to the internet) and 150 billion will be occasionally connected. It will soon cost more not to monitor devices than to monitor them.
Zynga: Words With Friends
Saw an ad on Hulu. This one is targeted at the adult women demographic; at least that's my impression after seeing the ad.
It is an interesting notion, but the people who already play the online game aren't the right audience for this type of game play. After all, one of the reasons why the online game has so much traction with adult players is that we don't live near our friends.
The future of smart glass
This is a concept video from Virgin Media Business. A lot of these technological components, like smart glass, holographic imaging, and gesture navigation already exist. Holographic imaging for a variety of applications from cooking to video conferencing to remote medical diagnostics from a healthcare provider is not just for science fiction.
The Tale of Two Bookings
For the first time on an extended road trip (longer than a day, shorter than a week), I did something that I thought was reserved just for the unplanned and spontaneous. I traveled without reservations for half my trip. Traveling in the off-season (autumn or spring) to places usually visited in the summer does offer some travel discounts on the basis of supply and demand.
I planned to end day 1 of the road trip at Forks since it was at the midpoint of two places where I wanted to see the next day: the Cape Flattery lighthouse at Neah Bay and the Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic Nat'l Forest. I booked a room at the Forks Motel in downtown Forks, mostly because it was the only non-Twilight-themed lodging place that had rooms available on a Saturday. Their online reservation system was easy to use and even sent me an email confirmation immediately after booking. When I got to the motel to check-in, the front desk already had my key ready. Checking out was just as easy. I'd say that for such a low-key motel that attracts a lot more fishermen (this season it's coho salmon), it did a lot of things right for customer retention. When I filled out the guest comment card, I only put my room number on it. What I didn't expect was a personalized note from their guest services manager thanking me for choosing their motel:
I planned to end day 1 of the road trip at Forks since it was at the midpoint of two places where I wanted to see the next day: the Cape Flattery lighthouse at Neah Bay and the Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic Nat'l Forest. I booked a room at the Forks Motel in downtown Forks, mostly because it was the only non-Twilight-themed lodging place that had rooms available on a Saturday. Their online reservation system was easy to use and even sent me an email confirmation immediately after booking. When I got to the motel to check-in, the front desk already had my key ready. Checking out was just as easy. I'd say that for such a low-key motel that attracts a lot more fishermen (this season it's coho salmon), it did a lot of things right for customer retention. When I filled out the guest comment card, I only put my room number on it. What I didn't expect was a personalized note from their guest services manager thanking me for choosing their motel:
This is the first motel where I received a personalized response by email. It's awesome. Sure makes me want to stay with them again.
When I drove further along my mostly planned route to Lake Quinault, it was already dusk. I had a few options available for Sunday night's lodging. Lake Quinault Inn was on the other side of the lake and had no cars in its parking lot. How safe would you think a woman would feel booking there. That one got skipped. The parking lot at Lake Quinault Lodge was decently full. A cashier at a local grill recommended the Rain Forest Village Resort for its more reasonable prices. It's a fancy name for an inn with motel-styled rooms. It was apparent after getting my room key here that it was the sort of place one goes to escape from the city and possibly the summer heat. The room itself was designed to let air in and didn't have a heater. It was cold and brisk indoors. As for the other standard amenities that resorts are supposed to have? This place had none, not even have a telephone nor an alarm clock radio. It did, however, have a mostly working TV that received four local stations. Good thing I packed a library book. For the most part, it was on par with the Forks Motel; except the customer retention part. Maybe it's an oversight, or maybe it's because there are very few lodge-styled places next to the lake.
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| Who needs amenities with a view like this? |
Would I stay at the Forks Motel again? You bet. Not only is it inexpensive, it satisfied every requirement I had in a motel room. I travel a lot domestically and internationally, and the amenities, however insignificant they might be, are worth a lot to a tired traveler. The Rain Forest Village Resort? Don't know. There are other lodging options I would check out if I'm in the area again. Also, this isn't based on price. The two lodgings were equally priced and both were in desirable vacation locales.
Hulu's Ad Targeting
Ordinarily, Hulu has been spot-on for serving up content that I like or that my fellow Huluians enjoy watching. Except for tonight. Earlier I had been surfing the web for recipe ideas for a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) themed potluck, and subsequently hit a few culturally Spanish-oriented websites. Hulu usually presents users with one-question surveys about their viewing preferences. Sometimes these ads are represented in a way that is purely a commercial play where an advertiser pays a viewership fee and essentially hosts the entire video feed with one extended commercial at the beginning; or with regular commercial interruptions.
Tonight's pop-up ad was a user preference survey targeted at the Spanish speaking audience. Why I was targeted for this survey can only be traced to the cookies on my laptop. I have no problem with Hulu's surveys; it's a fair exchange of time, considering that I watch videos for free on Hulu. The experience is no different than a cable-tv subscription service where you pay to have to watch the commercials. I digress. This is where Hulu really should have used its own data warehouse for survey targeting instead of relying on web cookies. I haven't even watched a Spanish tv show or movie on Hulu.
This was the survey ad that popped up:
Tonight's pop-up ad was a user preference survey targeted at the Spanish speaking audience. Why I was targeted for this survey can only be traced to the cookies on my laptop. I have no problem with Hulu's surveys; it's a fair exchange of time, considering that I watch videos for free on Hulu. The experience is no different than a cable-tv subscription service where you pay to have to watch the commercials. I digress. This is where Hulu really should have used its own data warehouse for survey targeting instead of relying on web cookies. I haven't even watched a Spanish tv show or movie on Hulu.
This was the survey ad that popped up:
Here's what's weird about the popup. There is a disclaimer on it, even though it is entirely in English. When you click through from "yes, let's get started" it warns you again that the survey is in Spanish and that you can "opt out" from the survey. Uhmmm..
If Hulu advertisers really wanted to know more, wouldn't it be more appropriate to have served up the popup in a bilingual format; or in formal Spanish intended for an American audience?
At it's core, it is a strangely written survey letter which started off great but leaves you wondering what is the real purpose of the mailer. Perhaps this was the least offensive demographic targeting method available to Hulu's ad agency (or in-house marketing team) since there isn't an ad choice in the user settings for foreign language movie preference.
Pardot: My first drip test
Probably the most bothersome of this whole affair is the waiting. Pardot's drip campaign setup requires you to put in a minimum 1 day (can't do partial days, hours, or minute settings) between when a user is sent an email and opens or clicks. For every open or click, add another day to your test cycle. For brevity, this test only uses two email templates. While I could have Pardot do more complicated actions, I don't want to have to delete or reset my test addresses in Salesforce, so these actions just trigger the Pardot side of the data.
Having four unique-by-content templates (video, case study, webinar, and general) for persona nurturing is a lot better (Thanks Kate!) than setting up 40 unique templates. Except, to start the personas, I'll have to create at least three sets of eight persona content pieces. Each set would include body content, a video placeholder image and a video link, and a unique call to action.
The drip report display is a big step up from what you could get out of Silverpop's EngageB2B product (and much cleaner too) which shows how many prospects are in each section of the drip.
Having four unique-by-content templates (video, case study, webinar, and general) for persona nurturing is a lot better (Thanks Kate!) than setting up 40 unique templates. Except, to start the personas, I'll have to create at least three sets of eight persona content pieces. Each set would include body content, a video placeholder image and a video link, and a unique call to action.
The drip report display is a big step up from what you could get out of Silverpop's EngageB2B product (and much cleaner too) which shows how many prospects are in each section of the drip.
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| Pardot - Sample Drip Progress |
Parkopedia
Before I started working in downtown Bellevue, I had to find where to park near my workplace before I was issued a parking pass for my building's parking lot. The high end of the downtown parking scale is $24/day and the Civica parking garage next door gouges you for $18/day. The low end of parking downtown is free at either the mall or Safeway's parking structure, roughly a half mile walk. There's also the Bellevue Transit Center which is two blocks north, which doesn't have a route that passes near where I live. At the moment, the only option I have is to commute via driving into work.
I stumbled upon the Parkopedia website and it is very cleverly done. The site allows you find parking lots, public and private parking garages, and parking meter-enforced spaces.
Here is a sample map and listing of downtown Bellevue:
There's even another service listed on the site for parkatmyhouse.com, where users can find a house or private garage to park a vehicle at, for a fee of course. There's not much action on the eastside. This is more useful for homes and garages near a metro airport, train station, or transit center.
I stumbled upon the Parkopedia website and it is very cleverly done. The site allows you find parking lots, public and private parking garages, and parking meter-enforced spaces.
Here is a sample map and listing of downtown Bellevue:
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| Parkopedia Map - Downtown Bellevue WA |
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| Address Listings, Available Duration, and Price |
There's even another service listed on the site for parkatmyhouse.com, where users can find a house or private garage to park a vehicle at, for a fee of course. There's not much action on the eastside. This is more useful for homes and garages near a metro airport, train station, or transit center.
Promote a post, only $7 on Facebook
Well, that was weird. I was just doing a shout-out to all my Seattle friends on Facebook and was notified that I could 'promote' the post.
Out of curiosity I clicked 'promote' and Facebook wants $7 for opportunity. Well, here's the thing. I don't represent the business that I'm promoting, just spreading the word about their special customer offer to other consumers.
Companies should be paying me to promote their posts; not the other way around. What do you think?
Out of curiosity I clicked 'promote' and Facebook wants $7 for opportunity. Well, here's the thing. I don't represent the business that I'm promoting, just spreading the word about their special customer offer to other consumers.
Automation Quirks: Pardot
Pardot's integrations with third party vendor software make it competitive among vendors that offer marketing automation solutions; but there are quite a lot of quirks (read this as lost functionality) when you go from using the soup version of an email marketing platform to a nuts version; Pardot is definitely the latter.
I was setting up an email for a rebroadcast. It is a basic flat email with a tracked link for a webinar invite to a select group of prospects in our database. That is pretty easy to put together. Heck, all I had to do was make a copy of the previously broadcasted email. Although, a lot of vendors don't require this step. Anyhow. To set up a rebroadcast, I had to pull out a list of 'opens' from the previous broadcast (which, fortunately, I didn't have to export and re-import as a list) and append it to the new broadcast as a suppression list. Weird. Normally, I would be able to just suppress any lead record who received the previous 'email' in say, Silverpop, and broadcast as usual.
It just causes me to have 'more stuff' within the user environment in Pardot. Now I have an extra list that I don't need for future broadcasts, but I need for this one. I have a stinkin' suspicion that if I delete the list, I'll lose the attributes of the send data for the affected prospects.
I have noticed, however, that if you have a distinct question in Pardot and look in their help or idea forums, and can't find it...the solution does not exist. And, if you really wanted them to implement it, you could suggest the idea to their idea forum and users can vote it up to the top of the queue for development.
I was setting up an email for a rebroadcast. It is a basic flat email with a tracked link for a webinar invite to a select group of prospects in our database. That is pretty easy to put together. Heck, all I had to do was make a copy of the previously broadcasted email. Although, a lot of vendors don't require this step. Anyhow. To set up a rebroadcast, I had to pull out a list of 'opens' from the previous broadcast (which, fortunately, I didn't have to export and re-import as a list) and append it to the new broadcast as a suppression list. Weird. Normally, I would be able to just suppress any lead record who received the previous 'email' in say, Silverpop, and broadcast as usual.
It just causes me to have 'more stuff' within the user environment in Pardot. Now I have an extra list that I don't need for future broadcasts, but I need for this one. I have a stinkin' suspicion that if I delete the list, I'll lose the attributes of the send data for the affected prospects.
I have noticed, however, that if you have a distinct question in Pardot and look in their help or idea forums, and can't find it...the solution does not exist. And, if you really wanted them to implement it, you could suggest the idea to their idea forum and users can vote it up to the top of the queue for development.
Blog Widgets
Tonight I found another widget for Blogger that is pretty darn nice. It's made by printfriendly.com and allows you to print or PDF a blog post. For recipes, this is a nice feature to have. It sets up the blog post in a printer-friendly page that strips out the excess blog navigation, ads, and other non-necessities.
Learn Agile Development Through Tetris
I stumbled upon this on Slideshare today. It is an amusing and informative look at how software development (or web rollouts) are like a game of Tetris.
Death of a Brand Name
Kraft Foods, a company and brand that has been around since 1903, is throwing in the towel with its 100+ year legacy for its flagship name for something completely bizarre. I should clarify that Kraft is still around, except it won't be branding its snack foods under the flagship name. Kraft's flagship products include brands such as Cadbury, Maxwell House, Nabisco, Oreo, Oscar Meyer, Philadelphia, Trident and Tang. Part of this name, ticker, and branding split is to protect the larger branded assets (mostly the grocery category) from the volatility of the snack foods category, which has faced a lot of regulatory and agricultural pressure lately. The new name for the snack foods entity will be Mondelez International Inc. (NASDAQ:MDLZ, as of Oct 1, 2012).
Seeking Alpha has a pretty good by-the-numbers breakdown of how this company and stock split will affect investors. Read more?
Battle of the Joes
When instant coffee becomes a gourmet standard for home-brewed coffee the times have certainly changed about the perfect cup. Keurig, a brand best known for single cup brewing systems, is owned by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) and held roughly 80 percent of the US market for single-serve coffee category, making it a desirable, acquisition target for larger consumer beverage companies such as Coca-Cola or Nestlé. But, that was more than a year ago when its shares traded above $40. With 34 patents on its K-Cup design expiring this September, competition for the single serve category will be even more fierce.
Related articles:
"Green Mountain is a costly cup of coffee," Businessweek, 2/28-3/6/2011, pp. 44-45
Related articles:
"Green Mountain is a costly cup of coffee," Businessweek, 2/28-3/6/2011, pp. 44-45
Flash Mob: Som Sabadell
This well executed video is actually an advertisement for the Som Sabadell, banking group in Spain.
Cloud-based data can be interesting...
...especially when it's not mapped or indexed properly. Surely, someone wise in the ways of data at Facebook would have seen this one coming long before the feature got implemented. To get to this drop-down list, pick one of your friends that has a viewable Friends list, and then change the category selector to filter the list. It doesn't matter what category you choose (other than by Name), all other categories will result in the same un-targeted category results.
Example. A search by "hometown" yields these sample selections, where the match is based on any letter match, say "*a*" versus "a*". It makes a big world of difference to start the match based on criteria that comes after the first letter that a user keys in than what it is today, a match based on any placement in a phrase or word. See image below:
Example. A search by "hometown" yields these sample selections, where the match is based on any letter match, say "*a*" versus "a*". It makes a big world of difference to start the match based on criteria that comes after the first letter that a user keys in than what it is today, a match based on any placement in a phrase or word. See image below:
Data Inflation
It seems as though every time a population number is cited for a social media site, the number of users keeps increasing. I'll just go ahead and say it since no one else will. As long as user-to-user incentives exist, there will always be enough fake user accounts to take advantage of what are supposed to be exclusive benefits. What are we talking about here?
500 million user accounts on Twitter (as of April 2012), with 42 million unique visitors per month according to Compete.com (May 2012). It makes you wonder who these users really are. They are more likely to be companies with multiple locations, brand groups or products that appear on the site as multiple "user" accounts. If we just focus on the U.S., it's a mere 107 million users. Let's assume for a moment that the average marketer or social promoter has at least 3 "user" accounts (a personal acct, a main company acct, and a brand account). Take the 107 million accounts and divide that by 3. That's a safe bet that there are only 35 million, at best, Twitter users in the U.S.
Thinking about targeting Facebook users instead? The figure of 901 million users frequently cited by news and marketing publications represents a global figure, with only 155 million (143 million aged 18-65) being in the U.S. There are some ad targeting issues with Facebook which I'll address in another post. Is it plausible that Zynga has over 250 million active users on its popular Facebook games? Possibly, but depends on how an active user is defined. Are we talking unique users accessing a multitude of Zynga games; or counting unique user accounts per game? Here's some hefty division to pare this down to a more realistic number. This is where in-game incentives get silly. Take Cityville's top population number, 40 million, and divide that by 5; a rough estimate of actual number of users or the number of "friends" you need to get by on a daily city/farm/mafia maintenance for your character. If people are willing to write and install browser scripts to autoplay a social media-based game, anything is possible within the Facebook universe. Cityville may only have 8 million real users by conservative estimate. Still, Zynga's $900 million revenues from advertising, in-game branded product placement, and sales of virtual goods and fake currency is pretty damn impressive for casual social gaming.
Data inflation is not such a big deal on business networking site LinkedIn since a business person can really only respond to one unique offer per set of user credentials. Even with its 150 million plus global userbase and more than 40 million users in the US, it's safe to say that you could take that number and divide it by two. It'd be a fair representation of an actual userbase, given company churn and users who forget that they can assign more than one email account to their LinkedIn account. Even without the divide, 40 million business users seems low for the US audience.
Why does any of this matter? Because it's a damn freakin' problem for social media marketers, that's why.
500 million user accounts on Twitter (as of April 2012), with 42 million unique visitors per month according to Compete.com (May 2012). It makes you wonder who these users really are. They are more likely to be companies with multiple locations, brand groups or products that appear on the site as multiple "user" accounts. If we just focus on the U.S., it's a mere 107 million users. Let's assume for a moment that the average marketer or social promoter has at least 3 "user" accounts (a personal acct, a main company acct, and a brand account). Take the 107 million accounts and divide that by 3. That's a safe bet that there are only 35 million, at best, Twitter users in the U.S.
Thinking about targeting Facebook users instead? The figure of 901 million users frequently cited by news and marketing publications represents a global figure, with only 155 million (143 million aged 18-65) being in the U.S. There are some ad targeting issues with Facebook which I'll address in another post. Is it plausible that Zynga has over 250 million active users on its popular Facebook games? Possibly, but depends on how an active user is defined. Are we talking unique users accessing a multitude of Zynga games; or counting unique user accounts per game? Here's some hefty division to pare this down to a more realistic number. This is where in-game incentives get silly. Take Cityville's top population number, 40 million, and divide that by 5; a rough estimate of actual number of users or the number of "friends" you need to get by on a daily city/farm/mafia maintenance for your character. If people are willing to write and install browser scripts to autoplay a social media-based game, anything is possible within the Facebook universe. Cityville may only have 8 million real users by conservative estimate. Still, Zynga's $900 million revenues from advertising, in-game branded product placement, and sales of virtual goods and fake currency is pretty damn impressive for casual social gaming.
Data inflation is not such a big deal on business networking site LinkedIn since a business person can really only respond to one unique offer per set of user credentials. Even with its 150 million plus global userbase and more than 40 million users in the US, it's safe to say that you could take that number and divide it by two. It'd be a fair representation of an actual userbase, given company churn and users who forget that they can assign more than one email account to their LinkedIn account. Even without the divide, 40 million business users seems low for the US audience.
Why does any of this matter? Because it's a damn freakin' problem for social media marketers, that's why.
Chobani Market Share
Greek yogurt is as Greek as french fries are from France. Greek yogurt is a style of strained yogurt which has the consistency and flavor of whole milk yogurt; both of which have more protein per serving than their 1% or nonfat counterparts. I've had the opportunity to eat real Greek yogurt in Greece, so, I must say that all American-made yogurt pale in comparison. Some notable stats about yogurt:
- $7.6 billion: US yogurt industry in 2011
- 93%: average additional cost of Greek vs non-Greek yogurt
- 5 years: projected market gain of Chobani as a $1 billion business
- 25%: Chobani's market share in the US
- 2007: Chobani started selling yogurt cups at a grocery store in NY
Chobani has run only one ad campaign and relies heavily on word-of-mouth and social media buzz. While yogurt is marketed to a broad audience, women are the primary consumers who account for 63% of grocery sales.
Source: Steinmetz, Katy. "Smooth Operator: How Chobani spread Greek yogurt across America", Time, 2012-06-25, pp. 70-71
Three Blind Men
The following story comes up a lot at seminars, marketing and business case studies, and by anyone trying to explain perception to a general audience. Folktales communicate this concept pretty well because we're more apt to remember stories than case study specifics.
One day, three blind men happened to meet each other and gossiped a long time about many things. Suddenly one of them recalled, "I heard that an elephant is a queer animal. Too bad we're blind and can't see it."
"Ah, yes, truly too bad we don't have the good fortune to see the strange animal," another one sighed.
The third one, quite annoyed, joined in and said, "See? Forget it! Just to feel it would be great."
"Well, that's true. If only there were some way of touching the elephant, we'd be able to know," they all agreed.
It so happened that a merchant with a herd of elephants was passing, and overheard their conversation. "You fellows, do you really want to feel an elephant? Then follow me; I will show you," he said.
The three men were surprised and happy. Taking one another's hand, they quickly formed a line and followed while the merchant led the way. Each one began to contemplate how he would feel the animal, and tried to figure how he would form an image.
After reaching their destination, the merchant asked them to sit on the ground to wait. In a few minutes he led the first blind man to feel the elephant. With outstretched hand, he touched first the left foreleg and then the right. After that he felt the two legs from the top to the bottom, and with a beaming face, turned to say, "So, the queer animal is just like that." Then he slowly returned to the group.
Thereupon the second blind man was led to the rear of the elephant. He touched the tail which wagged a few times, and he exclaimed with satisfaction, "Ha! Truly a queer animal! Truly odd! I know now. I know." He hurriedly stepped aside.
The third blind man's turn came, and he touched the elephant's trunk which moved back and forth turning and twisting and he thought, "That's it! I've learned."
The three blind men thanked the merchant and went their way. Each one was secretly excited over the experience and had a lot to say, yet all walked rapidly without saying a word.
"Let's sit down and have a discussion about this queer animal," the second blind man said, breaking the silence.
"A very good idea. Very good." the other two agreed for they also had this in mind. Without waiting for anyone to be properly seated, the second one blurted out, "This queer animal is like our straw fans swinging back and forth to give us a breeze. However, it's not so big or well made. The main portion is rather wispy."
"No, no!" the first blind man shouted in disagreement. "This queer animal resembles two big trees without any branches."
"You're both wrong." the third man replied. "This queer animal is similar to a snake; it's long and round, and very strong."
How they argued! Each one insisted that he alone was correct. Of course, there was no conclusion for not one had thoroughly examined the whole elephant. How can anyone describe the whole until he has learned the total of the parts.
Source: Kuo, Louise and Kuo, Yuan-Hsi, Chinese Folk Tales, 1976, Celestial Arts: Millbrae, CA, pp. 83-85.
Digital Media in the AWS Cloud
One day, I'll take the hint and stop signing up for these webinars. Ten minutes into it, my brain glazed over because the content dramatically shifted from being marketer friendly to heavy hardcore IT. All I managed to ascertain from this one were the benefits for hosting media on Amazon's cloud. However, this isn't any different than prior AWS webinars.
- speed (improve agility and time to market)
- scalability (scale up or down depending on resource requirements)
- lower maintenance costs (see previous bullet)
Hog prices: Up or Down
When evaluating market data, especially to promote a product or industry, it's important to look at data in context. A friend in Idaho had grumbled about the recent rise in menu prices at Five Guys Burgers, where a mere bacon burger and fries costed more than $13, and swore off visiting the restaurant ever again. I thought that maybe it's because of how much gasoline costs. Last time we were above $4.35/gallon for gas, food prices went way up at grocery stores. This is largely because distributors pass along prices to their customers, the grocery stores who then pass on those costs to consumers.
So take a look at this graph, which shows the month-over-month rise in hog prices from March to April of 2.9%. When data is laid out like this, it looks significant to us laypeople since we have no context for it nor do we know what factors are driving this rise.
In the following chart, I've expanded the chart to show hog prices for a year:
Quite a big difference, don't you think? Except, what online and traditional media outlets will report is the rise in pork prices but without the context that these prices are in cents per pound of what is sold in the US wholesale market. It then begs the question, why does pork cost about $7/lb at the grocery store. It's okay to blame marketing and advertising for this. Remember the 5 P's of marketing...it still costs money to bring various pork products (or any product) to market.
So take a look at this graph, which shows the month-over-month rise in hog prices from March to April of 2.9%. When data is laid out like this, it looks significant to us laypeople since we have no context for it nor do we know what factors are driving this rise.
In the following chart, I've expanded the chart to show hog prices for a year:
Top US States that Benefit from Trading with China
The US-China Business Council (USCBC) released 2011 numbers recently. From the year 2000 to 2011, exports have risen quite a lot--from a mere $16.2 billion in 2000, to $103.9 billion in 2011. The percentage change is simply amazing, considering the exchange rate between these two countries (1 yuan = 0.1584 US$).
[PDF] Top US State Exporters to China, 2011:
[PDF] Top US State Exporters to China, 2011:
| US State | 2011 Exports | 2000 to 2011 %Change | Top Exports to China | |||
| 1 | California | $14.2 billion | 300.00% | computers and electronics, waste and scrap, transportation equipment | ||
| 2 | Washington | $11.2 billion | 489.00% | transportation equipment, crop production, waste and scrap | ||
| 3 | Texas | $10.9 billion | 653.00% | chemicals, crop production, electronics | ||
| 4 | Louisiana | $7.3 billion | 690.00% | crop production, chemicals, waste and scrap | ||
| 5 | New York | $4.5 billion | 472.00% | waste and scrap, machinery, chemicals | ||
| 6 | Illinois | $3.9 billion | 631.00% | machinery, waste and scrap, crop production | ||
| 7 | Pennsylvania | $3.5 billion | 1177.00% | chemicals, machinery, minerals and ores | ||
| 8 | Georgia | $3.2 billion | 873.00% | paper products, transportation equipment, waste and scrap | ||
| 8 | Oregon | $3.2 billion | 936.00% | computers and electronics, chemicals, waste and scrap | ||
| 9 | South Carolina | $3.0 billion | 2261.00% | transportation equipment, waste and scrap | ||
| 10 | Ohio | $2.7 billion | 838.00% | machinery, computers and electronics, transportation equipment | ||
| 10 | Michigan | $2.7 billion | 1169.00% | transportation equipment, machinery, chemicals | ||
| 11 | North Carolina | $2.6 billion | 651.00% | machinery, computers and electronics, chemicals | ||
| 12 | Alabama | $2.3 billion | 1324.00% | transportation equipment, chemicals, crop production | ||
| 13 | Massachusetts | $2.1 billion | 316.00% | computers and electronics, machinery, waste and scrap | ||
Coffee & Pinterest
Today I stumbled upon a random infographic about coffee on Pinterest. I'm glad the graphic's author included his details on the graphic because I'm finding that it's rather hard to track relevant content from that site without being an active member. I had to scroll down several pages after site searching on the coffee keyword, sifting my way past multiple re-pins of the same content. I'm debating whether or not it's a good thing that the site has culled back its open user registrations. Look at what happened to Google+ when registrations were throttled back. It really hasn't had the momentum we all expected the webapp to gain after beta.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
There are a lot of choices for consumers with how they interact with favorite restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, and other local retail stores. A lot of press has been on daily deal sites and the widespread appeal they have for using online communities for word-of-mouth advertising. The truth of the matter is that there hasn't been a slowdown of print ads either in the weekly circulars. My physical mailbox is just as stuffed with BOGO offers as it was before all the hype, thanks to the 3rd party marketing offers the US postal system delivers to every household in a region.
What we have now is a paradox of choice, as Barry Schwarts puts it, where all the choices we are given as consumers causes decision paralysis and unhappiness rather than liberation. Simply put, people choose inaction because there's less friction by doing so. In the event that a choice is made, consumers end up less satisfied with the result of the choice if there had been fewer choices to choose from. He suggests that the key to happiness is to have low expectations. Well, that's the suggestion for consumers.
For marketers, we have always been focused on profit-maximizing behaviors instead and opting for marketing methodology and strategy that meet business expectations for ROI. What makes a consumer or end-user happy with the product or rendered services has little to do with the choice that was made, but rather how that choice was fulfilled.
What we have now is a paradox of choice, as Barry Schwarts puts it, where all the choices we are given as consumers causes decision paralysis and unhappiness rather than liberation. Simply put, people choose inaction because there's less friction by doing so. In the event that a choice is made, consumers end up less satisfied with the result of the choice if there had been fewer choices to choose from. He suggests that the key to happiness is to have low expectations. Well, that's the suggestion for consumers.
For marketers, we have always been focused on profit-maximizing behaviors instead and opting for marketing methodology and strategy that meet business expectations for ROI. What makes a consumer or end-user happy with the product or rendered services has little to do with the choice that was made, but rather how that choice was fulfilled.
Urban Summit 2012
I met a lot of interesting people at Portland's Urban Summit today. I also found that Mercy Corps NW hosts business seminars (and has visitor parking at their bldg on Naito Parkway). The summit was styled like mini-TED talks with speakers covering topics such as cultural intelligence, elevator speeches, business storytelling, and business development.
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
- Marketing is about relationships (between the business owner/company and everyone else--vendors, partners, customers--for the best possible experience (speaker: Veronika Noize)
- Have a powerful, clarifying message (elevator speech) when someone asks you what you do
- Ask for the sale; Offer a prospect the opportunity to discuss if you might work together
- Say "thank you" or appreciate the rendered service to make clients super loyal for choosing you
- Business storytelling is a lot like word-of-mouth marketing (speaker: David Vanadia)
- It can be positive or negative; it conveys energy to others
- The "about me" page on a website is the most important part that helps build the brand and your story; it should answer what is the value about what you do
- Portland resources for SMBs (speaker: Kent Lewis, Anvil Media)
Buy American
A predecessor of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, commonly referred to as "the Stimulus" or the "Recovery Act") is the Buy American Act which was passed in 1933 by Congress and signed into law by President Roosevelt. It was intended for the US government to prefer US-made products in its purchases and that preference could be waived if foreign-made products were cheaper.
While the US is still the largest manufacturing economy in the world, at least in 2010, with $1.7 trillion in manufacturing value compared with China's $1.3 trillion, that gap is closing quickly. Quite a lot of products are still made here, though largely durable goods such as household appliances, vehicles, electronic components, industrial machined parts, as well as goods that are too costly to produce overseas and ship back to the US for domestic consumption like pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and cosmetics. Probably one of the more challenging things to find in the US is a gift for hosts when visiting China.
A word of caution that not everything sold at a "buy local" branded retail store (e.g., Made in Oregon) has locally made goods in it.
Read more?
"Buy American is Un-American" by Harry Binswanger, Ph.D.
Do Robots Take People's Jobs?
While the US is still the largest manufacturing economy in the world, at least in 2010, with $1.7 trillion in manufacturing value compared with China's $1.3 trillion, that gap is closing quickly. Quite a lot of products are still made here, though largely durable goods such as household appliances, vehicles, electronic components, industrial machined parts, as well as goods that are too costly to produce overseas and ship back to the US for domestic consumption like pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and cosmetics. Probably one of the more challenging things to find in the US is a gift for hosts when visiting China.
A word of caution that not everything sold at a "buy local" branded retail store (e.g., Made in Oregon) has locally made goods in it.
Read more?
"Buy American is Un-American" by Harry Binswanger, Ph.D.
Do Robots Take People's Jobs?
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