Statistics can be fascinating. Google trends is a helpful source, where I learnt that Texas is bigger than Russia?
Applying them is even better. Sprint have made use of a whole bunch of stats in a commercial currently on US television.
Enjoy!
Eric Schmidt Interview
02/02/2009 — KristinHere is an interesting video interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
It was number 5 on a list of the top interviews of 2008 conducted by and published in the Mckinsey Quarterly.
* Mckinsey & Company are management consultants. I’d recommend registering (free) for their articles.
The Credit button
24/10/2008 — KristinIn a similar vein to an earlier post about presentation, I’ve been pondering the paper/sellotape sign phenomenon.
Some examples:
Service Stations – Today when filling up I saw a sign printed off on an inkjet printer saying… STOP: HAVE YOU USED THE CORRECT PIN PAD? (here’s a similarly typed message)
Why not make the pump interface simple so that the shop front employee doesn’t have to make a half-pie sign?
Dairies – the credit button sellotaped over/blotched out with a vivid. Eftpos limited must see this happen to their machines when they’re swinging by to see how things are going? So, an idea exists a problem needs solving. A dairy friendly, ’stop the credit button being used’ tool.
Maybe an overlay of the keypad, with the Credit button blanked, like in the entry level car dashboards, so you know what you’re missing:
Now, i’m sure a streamlined tool for the credit button issue isn’t a priority for the dairy owner, but it should be for Eftpos limited.
The marketing department’s of the more franchise based businesses should be aware of these common issues and develop plans to make them go away. Not rely on employees to do bad patch-ups.
Business studies 101?
06/08/2008 — KristinA few weeks back I was teaching 7th form Year 13 Business Studies. The boys were studying marketing.
It was interesting going through and hearing the myths prevalent in most of the out of date resources. A gaping omission was the significance of the need for businesses to be transparent. It was refreshing to be able to tell these students why the more successful trusted companies are the ones blogging. Even about their blunders, openly.
Having been teaching commerce for around 5 years at secondary school, it’s very interesting to see the lack of change occurring in resources and curriculum and the antique nature of alot of the concepts.
Relevance? There’s often not much.
Not much is made of the fundamental need that businesses must solve a problem. More about the need to have accounting structures and marketing plans sorted. I guess it’s the technology and computing classes that are picking up the slack here. I believe however that the commerce curriculum should be leading the way with business knowledge and passing it through to the various subject areas for various implementations as their expertise fits.
Some new concepts necessary to be introduced into commerce in my view are:
- Business blogging
- Solving customer pain
- Slimline management structures
- Google’s 20% time rule
- Risk
- Business funding
- Investment
- GST
- Capitalism in terms of incentive
If some change here doesn’t happen, pretty quickly the commerce departments in NZ schools will be more or less teaching a form of business history, not business itself. The technology departments will be tagging it onto their projects, and the business leaders of the future will be fat with unnecessary yet complex accounting knowledge.
Rebellion sells
24/06/2008 — KristinI recently caught these lyrics from the song Shelter by Rage Against the Machine:
“What you need is what they selling, Make you think that buying is rebelling”
Promoting the purchasing of a product as a kind of ‘rebellion’ has unique merit.
Some examples:
Apple – rebelling against bad taste
37signals - rebelling against stuffy, feature heavy applications
Trade Me - rebelling against classifieds
Grand Theft Auto – rebelling against everything in town
Volcom – their brands tagline: Volcom | Youth Against Establishment
Negativity sells, and so does rebellion. It might happen naturally or be contrived. Either way, it works!
Next please
04/06/2008 — KristinNegativity sells, but it doesn’t last without a change in form every now and then:
- Nuclear fallout
- Ozone layer depletion
- AIDS
- Y2K
- SARS
- Bird Flu
- Terrorist attacks
- Climate Change (bubble)
… sigh, next please!
More or less obvious
11/04/2008 — KristinAll the time I discover stuff added into things for what seems like no good reason. It screams OBVIOUS but it still gets printed/spoken.
Examples:
- PO in front of a Box number.
- Mob: in front of an 021/027/029 number. For those overseas the distinction between types of numbers isn’t necessary, and for those onshore, pretty soon the distinction won’t be necessary.
“Our goal is to be in a position to say ‘why bother with a landline?”
Hamish Sansom, Vodafone NZ
- Dictating the .co.nz when giving an xtra email address, or similarly .com after gmail, .net after clear etc. (maybe mailer-daemon could be more informative and include the ending required, not just “i’m sorry it didn’t work out”).
- Email: before the email address in a message footer. I can see it’s an email address.
- The www. in front of a domain.
- Amongst the babyboomers when quoting them an email address: “is that all lowercase?”
I’m trimming branding paraphernalia. It’ll be like clearing old clothes out, kinda difficult to make choices, but refreshing once it’s done.
PS. Upon finalising this post something related on the ‘put less’ theme came up.
Is it Marketable?
07/03/2008 — Kristin
I went to a gig at Sandwiches last night and there was a super talented guy playing. Between songs he was talking about album sales or something similar and stated, somewhat jokingly; “it’s all about the marketing”.
This implied that the product is irrelevant, it’s just the hype generated that will sell something. I disagree! I reckon consumers are more intelligent than that. I reckon they’ll buy his album anyway, it’s that good!
Blake Ross of (Firefox) said in the book Founders at Work;
“I thought marketing was something that required a degree and formal
experience. It turns out that marketing is just making the product good enough
that people spread it on their own, and giving them ways to do that. It’s a lot
easier and more natural than I thought it would be. Now I can’t stand meeting
with professional marketers who try to “craft” the “message” and all that junk.”(Livingston, J. 2007, chpt 29, p. 401)
Confused Presentation?
29/02/2008 — KristinI was walking along Cuba street, in Wellington the other day and saw this ratty A4 page notice sellotaped to the window frontage of an established restaurant…
It seems foolish that a business will spend several thousand dollars on a great frontage for their store, yet proceed to cover them with tacky paper notices. The equivalent would be TradeMe posting their listing fees on their homepage. Trademe don’t do that as far as i can see. You don’t find need them unless you’ve listed something. Makes sense!
What is a note that insignificant doing in the front window in the first place? Surely only a small percentage of their customers bring cakes anyway? This place should just bring the ‘cake policy’ notice out to the birthday celebrant’s table at the relevant time.
To me it says… we care more about recovering $10 than portraying a welcoming image. Play by the rules or you’re out!
I’m guessing it’s one of two things:
- they don’t care if they seem unfriendly
- they have a load of customers with birthday cakes
What about using the store frontage in a more effective way such as placing a framed print or small blackboard stating news like:
- New Menu
- Entertainment on Weekends
- Welly’s only Authentic Turkish Restaurant
On a different note, here is a cool idea for a shop frontage.
Lessen product life cycle = hasten repeat business
12/02/2008 — KristinIf ever there was a great example of how to get repeat business it’s Australia’s Ksubi. Their staple product …jeans …with holes, have great potential for repeat sales. Holes in jeans, not a new idea sure, however these holes are riskier than you’d expect from wherever you buy jeans for less than $400.
Intentional or not, this is a great way to generate repeat business, at a ‘faster rate than usual for jeans’. They’re effectively lessening the product life cycle.
You can try to lessen the impact of the hole problem by patching etc (some of the holes are in rather awkward places). But really the easy answer is to buy another pair, with small holes again. At $400 a pair they’re expensive holes. When you buy a pair there’s a sticker attached which reads something like: Most of our jeans have holes, and they mostly will get bigger, in fact we guarantee it, love our holes!
You might be wondering why folk wouldn’t go for another brand. It’s because these jeans are seriously comfy, get better with age, and pretty much make their way around your pins 365 days of the year.
Holes in addictive jeans! Great repeat business concept. I wonder if it’s intentional?
Other interesting facts:
- Ksubi were formerly named Tsubi, before they were challenged on trademark infringement by US shoe label Tsubo which resulted in Ksubi doing this to vent.
- If you want to see the loosest website ever, check out Ksubi’s. No real conventions followed there.
- These would be the guys mainly responsible for the return of the stovepipe…
