I’m of a generation where we’re not old enough to remember wearing gloves in church, and we’re too old to embrace playing death metal in church. Somewhere in the middle, there lies the amount of propriety we’re comfortable with. So there’s an interesting way of putting things in perspective: let’s look at the evolution of rudeness throughout my life.
When I was a young kid, in the 1970s, it was rude to talk back to an adult. It was also embarrassing for a parent of a child who did talk back, and while it was pretty rude to discipline your child in public, the fact of the matter is that it was even more rude not to discipline your child when he needed it. Today it’s rude to tell someone that their kid is mouthing off. In fact, do so and you’ll find that you’re the one getting disciplined in public.
It wasn’t rude to smoke in the 1970s, but it was rude not to ask “Do you mind if I smoke?” The asking, that was the difference. It was rude to eat something loud at a tennis match. I learned that one firsthand. I don’t know if it’s still rude to do that, but I know that I wouldn’t do it anyway.
In the 1980s, it was rude to bring an RV-sized boom box into a public place and start blasting it. It wasn’t rude to say “boom box,” but there were some synonyms that weren’t rude then but are darn near impossible to say now.
If you were a “preppy” in the 1980s a lot of things were rude. A lot of preppydom had to do with propriety, as if the concept had just been invented. On the other hand, it wasn’t rude to make fun of Asians when at a Chinese restaurant, as long as you waited until they walked away from the table. It was pretty rude to make fun of gays, but truth be told it wasn’t easy to find someone who admitted to being gay in the little town in Massachusetts I hail from. It wasn’t rude at all to claim that gays deserved to get AIDS, at least a lot of people thought it wasn’t rude. I always thought that was pretty dumb.
In the early 1990s, it all of a sudden became rude to say things that made women feel harassed. I remember being in seminars back then, leaving with the feeling that if I ever had to stand in an elevator with a female coworker, the best thing to do was turn and face the corner, unless I could escape the elevator. In the years before I was born people would have considered that rude, but given the alternative… it seemed like the best choice.
Sometime around 1996 it started to become intolerably rude to smoke anywhere. I supported this and still do, because I think people who smoke when others are around are in essence saying that they simply don’t care about anyone else’s health. But on the other hand, smokers found it rude to stand outside in the rain at restaurants and bars when they were paying the same as everyone else.
Interestingly enough, around the same time it must have become rude to wear too much cologne or perfume. As a young man I worked with a lady whose perfume saturated the whole floor she was on, but it was considered rude to tell her so. Maybe all the people who stopped smoking realized how much they stank in other ways too. Funny, no one really talked about it, though.
The twenty-first century brought us a whole new level of rude: electronic rudeness. It started when people got pagers. (I never got a pager, I though it was dumb to have something where you knew someone wanted to talk to you but you couldn’t do anything about it.) Then people got cell phones and rudeness exploded. Loud ringtones, inappropriate conversations in restaurants, talking in the car… it went on and on. The rudest of all was the guy who just knew that whomever was calling him had to be more interesting than me. If his phone rang, he held up one finger in a “hold on” gesture and answered the phone, even if I was in mid-sentence. Everyone knows a guy like that. Generally you learn to call him instead of talk in person, that way you’re the important one.
Electronic rudeness puttered along for most of the ’00s, but sure as shooting it got worse around ‘06. All of a sudden people got into texting, which naturally begat tweeting and facebooking and a whole host of other communication options. The face of rudeness began to change, and it became far more subtle.
This new rudeness started with that guy who knew his phone conversations were more important than live interactions, and went nuclear from there. It seems to me that it’s now perfectly normal for people to give me one-quarter of their full attention; they’re checking their e-mail, updating some sort of social network status, or just playing a game while I’m talking to them. This is an insidious discourtesy that leaves me feeling unimportant and unwanted.
Then, blogging came along and we all figured out that if we gave ourselves funny aliases, we could be as rude as we wanted! Sorry, when I’m online, I try to remember that the other guy is really a human being, and I don’t have an unlimited license to holler on him just because he can’t find me at home and retaliate.
At the same time, rudeness went institutional. Who among my readers works somewhere with a receptionist? Very few, I’d bet. No, greeting a person who walks in the door or answering the phone with a smile is a thing of the past. Now it’s voicemail and, if you’re lucky, some sort of security guard at the front gate. Whatever happened to welcoming the customer? The way I see it, It’s rude to make someone wait on hold and it’s rude to presume they have no business coming to see you.
This brings us to the present day. There’s a whole new world of rude on the horizon, and it’s the rudeness of being ignored. Now, since it’s already socially acceptable to give someone half your attention, it’s becoming common to simply ignore them all together. Let me give you an example:
I’m in a complicated, semi-business relationship with a large company. It would be rude for me to say which one. What I can say is, sometimes I e-mail them, and if they don’t feel like answering, they don’t. It’s their corporate culture. I’ve learned that it’s nothing personal, but they’ve just decided that their side of our relationship is the side that decides whether e-mails are answered. Sorry, that’s rude.
In the last year, this level of rudeness seems to have caught hold. I send out a lot of personal e-mails to business contacts for a lot of reasons, and more and more I find my questions ignored. I don’t try to be a bother; maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong. Maybe if my e-mails were more rude, they’d get answered.
And if only it were limited to the internet. In the real world, the rudeness of being ignored has mingled with what I call “the rudeness of the righteous.” In this scenario, you can be as rude as you want so long as you’re doing it for a good cause. I think this started online too, when discussion forums let people who had the right answer shout at people who honestly sought help. But, it’s mutated.
A while back there was a walk to benefit cancer research in my hometown. Now, that’s a good cause. It attracted about 8,000 people. What’s so wrong with that? The organizers didn’t exactly go out of their way to publish the route, and as fate would have it, eight thousand people walked right past my house, took a right turn at my corner, and started hooting and hollering and congregating at the portable restrooms about one hundred feet away. I was trapped in the house, and awakened on an otherwise nice Sunday morning. (This caused me to become fairly rude to my loving wife, which I regret.)
You see, it was all to benefit a good cause, so no one thought anyone would mind. No one thought it would be a good thing to at least send a letter off saying they were sorry for the inconvenience. Their rudeness was justified, you see, as they were being undeniably righteous.
But you know, a little common courtesy would have made a big difference. I would have brought it up to the event organizers, but I had a feeling they would (1) ignore my e-mails, (2) put me into a voicemail maze if I called, or (3) only pay half-attention when I finally met them in person.
And that, friends, is the state of the art of rude. Thanks for reading. If you think it’s worth it, pass this little essay on. But if you don’t, please let me know as courteously as possible. .
]]>Most people hear this for the first time and say, “I couldn’t do that” or “How can you stand it?” I get that a lot. In fact, before I started doing it, I didn’t think I would ever be even-tempered enough to survive a commute that long. But it turns out, just like anything else it’s a skill and it’s learnable. I’ve learned a lot, not just about traffic but about myself.
I learned that in order to succeed, you need deep vision. If you track the car ahead of you too closely, you’ll drive yourself crazy stopping and starting. You won’t know what to do until it’s almost too late. On the other hand, if you try to track 10 cars ahead and simply make sure there’s enough room between you and the closer cars, you’ll see the patterns as they form. You’ll go a little slower sometimes and a little faster sometimes but amazingly you’ll still get there at the same time.
I learned that problems never start where you think they do. Common sense would tell you that freeway intersections are the worst parts of the drive. In fact, traffic slowdowns start about one or two miles past the intersection. That would seem to make no sense, until you realize that these are the areas where merge lanes end, where some people want to cut across, where frustration gives way to action. By learning and anticipating where problems really start, it’s given me more of a sense of control and peace about things.
I learned that the media can’t help me most of the time. Radio stations and web sites are great for telling me about the really big stuff like full closures but on a smaller scale they’re wrong about twice as often as they’re right. Not only do they lack the perspective that I have on the ground, but their information is usually too old to be of use. The best thing is to listen critically, and make up my own mind.
I learned that sometimes it’s better to go with the flow of traffic than fight it. In the days when I’d frantically shift from lane to lane, I found myself frustrated when someone I’d passed half an hour ago would sail past me. Since then I’ve learned that while there are still times to strike out passionately and zoom into the fast lane, patience is just as rewarding. There’s always a smile on my face when I pass the guy who passed me half an hour ago.
I learned that a long journey has to be looked at in perspective. Unless there’s a big traffic tie-up, my commutes almost always take the same amount of time. Sure, they vary by ten minutes more or less, but the funny thing is that slow traffic at one point almost always gives way to high speeds somewhere else. Given enough time, it all smooths out.
And most of all, I learned that we’re all connected. My actions affect others and theirs affect me. In fact, someone’s actions on a completely different freeway can have a profound impact on my ride home. In the end, we’re all trying to do the same thing which is get somewhere we have to be. There’s no need to be rude or judgmental.
The funny thing is that after thousands of hours, you find a way to exist on the daily commute. If you’re lucky, you realize that it’s not too different from anything else in life… you learn from it.
]]>Search for this phenomenon on the internet and you’ll find I’m not alone. I’ve researched it and found out that it has to do with our notion of randomness, which is different from true randomness, and making matters worse is the fact that computers have no notion of randomness at all. They essentially pretend to generate random numbers using math.
This will blow your mind (unless you’re a statistician)
What are the chances of hearing “Desperado” ten times in a row, as opposed to hearing ten other songs you’ve chosen? The same. Pick ten songs, and the odds of those ten songs coming up in the same order you’ve picked them are the same as the odds of hearing “Desperado” ten times in a row. Freaky, right? This disconnect between the way we perceive randomness and the way that true randomness actually happens is part of the reason that I think my iPod loves the Eagles.
Another part of it is that I’m programmed as a human to remember things that annoy me and forget things that make no difference to me. I may not remember the fifty songs that I heard since then, but I remember how torqued I was when I heard “Desperado” ten minutes after hearing it before. When I hear it again, it torques me even more, and I remember that even more.
I’m also programmed as a human to treat inanimate things as if they were people. That programming goes back a very long time… to cave people and probably further. In my case, I make sense of the randomness that I can’t understand by assigning emotions to my iPod. I do this all the time with computers, and whether or not it makes the computers work any better, it seems to do wonders for my temperament.
So, what is randomness?
That’s a really rough question to answer, because it gets into religion and quantum mechanics and about ten other things that are far above my pay grade. But I think it’s more important to ask, “What is the unexpected, and what can I do about it?” If you don’t know about statistics, it’s unexpected to hear your iPod play “Desperado” over and over again. On the other hand, the more you learn, the more it’s possible to accept that there’s a lot about the world that we don’t know, can’t control, and what’s worse, flies in the face of common sense. So…. I’ll ask the opposite question:
So, what is the opposite of randomness?
You may have answered the question in your mind as you read this essay. You may have said, “order”, “harmony”, or something like that. Here’s an answer that may not have occurred to you so quickly:
The opposite of randomness is wisdom.
Wisdom gives us the patience to see past seemingly random events and see patterns, and it also gives us the ability to look at patterns and decide if they’re predictive. Wisdom is the prize we earn a little bit more every day, with our experiences and travels, and with our willingness to look both forward and back. Wisdom is an important commodity, as it helps us compensate for the fact that we’re not as bulletproof as we thought we were, way back when.
Wisdom is also the key that unlocks our better natures, allowing us to be patient, tolerant, and even generous to those who are not as wise as we hope we’ve become. It’s wisdom that lets us see that working with someone is better than working against them, and when that’s not possible, it’s wisdom that helps us navigate our conflicts with a minimum of loss.
For better or worse, there is no shortcut to wisdom. The only way to gain it is to earn it through making unwise decisions. As elders, parents, and leaders we want desperately to pass our wisdom along, and yet we have no choice but to watch the next generation make so many of the same mistakes on the same road to wisdom that we ourselves took. We can only hope to make that road a little less bumpy and take a little less time. In the meantime, we hope that society as a whole learns to value wisdom a little more than we did when we were the impetuous youths who sought to run the world.
In the meantime, I’m going to put some Eagles songs back on my iPod and do my best to make the wise choice if I hear “Desperado” twice in five minutes.
]]>The internet allows every person access to more information than the most learned man could get just twenty years ago. We can contact other people instantly, broadcast our words with no cost, and learn about other societies quickly and easily. Yet in many ways this great tool leaves us more ignorant and insular than we have ever been.
Our social circles have expanded in size but shrunken in scope. Instead of being forced to deal with those around us, we can search the entire world to find those with whom we have the most in common. If we don’t like the conversation at a party we can twitter with friends who were smart enough to stay home. We join internet forums to share our views on the tiniest bit of pop culture. As for those people close enough to actually talk to, we learn less and less about them once we discover they don’t share our secret passions.
The same is true in business. Instead of using the internet to discover whole new streams of revenue, we use new tools to get the same type of customers. Perhaps we’ve opened up a line to potential sales around the world, but we’ve also gained competitors from those who are doing the same everywhere. The net result: no new business.
Social networking sites are great for exploring, and their use in business has only just begun. As marketing tools, social networking can open so many new doors, so long as we use them as a wide-angle lens instead of using them for tunnel vision. Here are some options for companies to use social networking in new and exciting ways:
Make every employee an evangelist
If you’re confident in your people, if you’ve treated them right and you know they’ll represent you well, encourage them to social-network at work. Most companies discourage this, and I think that’s the wrong tack. You can open whole new lines of communication by letting people share their social networks with you. Because we’ve become so insular, many people don’t know where their friends work or what they do. Involve your employees in promoting the company. If your company “friends” them, you’ll be able to see what they’re saying, too.
Reach out by adding value
Rather than using the internet to give your customers more of the same advertising you already give them, use your company web site as a resource for people who need help. No matter what the product or service, there are people around the world who are seeking answers. People trust internet forums increasingly more than paid tech support, so offer a community where users can help users. You’ll make a name for yourself as a good, honest player in the market.
The traditional view is that the more information is shared freely, the lower profits will be. That has never been less true. People expect free information, and to deny it is to mark yourself as a dinosaur. Of course there are trade secrets, but be honest… your competitor is probably trying to hide the exact same information from you that you hide from him.
Treat your customers like friends
This is an old marketing strategy, but it’s worth updating for the twenty-first century. Your customers have their own social networks, and if you join them, you take a step toward making a friend. A friend is, by definition, more loyal than a customer, and therefore worth more. Become “facebook friends” with your customers, and put down the “marketing hat” when you do. Take a genuine interest in their lives and you’ll be rewarded with a richer life of your own. Your customers will resist you if you turn every meeting into a sales pitch, and they’ll embrace you when they find you share outside interests.
Resist the easy, familiar path
As we all age, we inevitably gain wisdom that lets us predict future outcomes. We also become more afraid of the future, and it’s all too easy to use that wisdom to close doors that look scary or unfamiliar. All the while, we’re being chased by a generation who does not have such worries, who gleefully bound into new territory and often succeed as a result. Don’t close yourself off to potential experiences in business, but rather use the wisdom you’ve gained to take bold steps into the future knowing full well that you’ve survived the challenge before.
Don’t be afraid to let your social networks cross. You may find out that it’s much more fun, and more profitable, to view all the possibilities that the new age affords you.
RIP William Safire; may society judge you not on your past employers but to your inestimable contribution to the English language.
]]>In my younger days, I loved classic car shows. I cut my teeth on “American Graffiti” and “Happy Days,” and I found the subject of the 1950s and 1960s endlessly fascinating.
There came a time when I realized that I’d seen every 1957 Chevrolet, 1963 Corvette, and
“1964 1/2″ Mustang at least twice, and car shows began to seem like a relic of an earlier day. I began to question classic cars, and our devotion to them. Even more so, I began to wonder, why are there no new classic cars? Why is it that no car made after 1974, save a few Corvettes, are classics? What about the cars of my childhood?
The answer is obvious. The American cars of the 1970s were overwrought, gas-guzzling, poorly-engineered rust buckets endearing to almost no one. As to whether they were intrinsically worse-looking than the cars that came before, of course that’s all subjective. Still, there are cars out there that should be classics…
“Foreign jobs”
When I was young, I don’t remember people saying “imports” or using brand names like Toyota or Honda. They were “foreign jobs,” a term which not only implies that they didn’t belong here, but that they may actually have taken jobs away from real Americans. (In fact, that part was true.) But at any rate, I didn’t know too many people who drove foreign jobs.
I remember my neighbor across the street had a Honda in the early 1980s. I wonder why she bought it, I wonder what drove her to a tiny little car like that. For the life of me I don’t know where she got service for it. I’m sure it was cheap and ran well and got good gas mileage. Those are still good reasons to buy a car, but since many people still didn’t trust foreign jobs, they weren’t always good enough.
A new kind of classic car
Maybe it’s time that we as a nation get interested in a new kind of classic car. Maybe it’s time to take some interest in some very rare iron: those Toyotas, Hondas, and Datsuns from the 1960s and 1970s. Who says they’re not as beautiful as a 1957 Chevy? It’s all in the beholder, right? These cars were the first of the breed, a new generation that came to define what we as a nation drive. They were the exception, not the norm, and the people who drove them had virtues like thrift and environmental awareness long before they became buzzwords for every politician.
There’s something inherently beautiful in an efficient machine, and those early Japanese imports had efficiency in spades compared to their American contemporaries. A 1970s Chevrolet might have gotten 15mpg in real-world driving, while a 1970’s Honda Civic was rated in the mid 20s. That’s a big difference at a time when people were just waking up to how expensive fuel could be. Not only that, as American manufacturers turned out compacts that literally rusted out on the showroom floor, Japanese cars quickly gained a reputation for reliability and value that stays with them to this day.
The ancestors of today’s dream cars
Lest anyone think that Japanese cars were no fun, there were performance stars in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s import classes as well. The Datsun 240Z was the first of a breed that continues today as the well-reviewed Nissan 370Z, and many drivers in the day found that a little Japanese import was as much fun to drive as a 1960s British or American sportster. Today’s most common family cars have histories reaching back then too; Honda’s Accord first came here in 1976, and the Toyota Corona (grandfather to the Camry) showed up in America in 1972. These cars are top sellers now, but early examples are rare.
A different kind of car show
I’d like to propose that a different kind of car show would be a lot more fun for those born in the days after the “American Graffiti” era. I’m tired of seeing cars I’ve never ridden in, and I doubt there would be too much demand for a perfectly-restored 1975 Ford Granada. I’d like to see a car show made up of cars that got great gas mileage and still run today.
What’s great gas mileage? For 1970’s cars, I’d say 20mpg. For 1980’s cars 25 sounds about right, and raise it up by 5mpg every decade. It would be great to see all those efficient, clean cars in a row… a real inspiration. Young folks could draw a line from early Volkswagens to today’s Toyota Prius, and see how fuel-efficient cars have gotten more comfortable and better for the environment while sipping less fuel. That’s more inspiring and hopeful for future generations than staring at an ancient, carbureted piece of Detroit iron.
I don’t expect this idea to take off right away, but in my mind, it’s an indication of the direction we must go if we’re to thrive as a nation… forward not backward, and toward responsibility and stewardship while creating machines that are both beautiful and efficient.
]]>That seems like quite a statement, especially from someone who’s been doing marketing for most of his career. And yet, I have to stick by it. In all but the largest companies, marketing is a useless and moribund enterprise, a vestigial part of the corporation.
What do I mean by that?
There was a time when it was worthwhile to advertise, worth the time and effort to put together newspaper or magazine ads, phone book ads, flyers and mailings to promote a business. That all seems so 20th century, and the simple fact is that for a small business it just doesn’t work.
Why? It’s because everyone does it and it’s become cheap. The average consumer is bombarded with unsolicited e-mail, bulk mail, commercials, coupons and flyers. What do we do with it? At least 97% of all bulk mail goes unopened. Closer to 99% of e-mails go unread. We skip past commercials, turn off the radio or change the station, and let advertising materials pile up. It’s a colossal waste of time with very little return on investment. Marketing budgets survive though, because most forms of marketing and advertising are cheap. The bottom line for most businesses is that it’s nothing but a waste of money.
I work in the printing industry. Commercial printing is dying, and while it’s true that the internet is the greatest contributor to our slow and painful demise, the secondary cause is that we’ve forgotten what’s more important than marketing: product and service. Our products don’t distinguish us from each other, and there’s a good reason for that, but I’ll get into that later.
Cynicism is king
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, we all developed a healthy cynicism for any claim by any company. Too often in our lives we’ve bought some miracle product only to find that it doesn’t work. We’ve learned the lesson over and over again… no over-the-counter pill will help us lose weight. No cologne will help us do well with the opposite sex. Most of all, no wild claim made by an e-mail or bulk mail will do us any good, ever. We’re far more cynical about product claims than our parents and grandparents.
Can we as consumers be blamed for this cynicism? Most certainly not. Hucksterism in our culture is not a new phenomenon, but today we’ve developed a powerful tool for dispelling product claims… the internet. We can search and immediately find a lot of information, both good and bad, about any product. That’s great for us as consumers, and it’s terrible for us as marketers. Marketing is dead, and in the end the murderer turns out to be the truth.
The blog culture vs. the marketing culture
That’s right, with no money down and nothing but a few hours to spend, anyone (including your humble author) can have a blog. It takes even less time to post your opinions on someone else’s blog or make a comment in a support forum. Using twitter takes even less time and is easy to do, anywhere. This populist press has a way of cutting through all the carefully timed and honed marketing and getting to the plain, simple truth.
This week saw two big “scores” for the blog culture vs. the marketing culture. Honda saw the fortunes of its Accord Crosstour fall quickly when the marketers who previewed it on facebook got a wakeup call: the Crosstour is ugly, at least in pictures. This simple statement may prove more influential than all the millions spent in clinics and on commmercials.
On the more successful side of the spectrum, Ellen deGeneres announced via Twitter that she’ll be judging American Idol. In past days, this information would have come from a press release, even a press conference, with interviews in all the major newspapers and a followup ad campaign in newspapers and television. Ellen’s tweet cost nothing and it was just as effective as an old-fashioned marketing blitz.
That, dear reader, is what I mean when I say marketing is dead. An announcement on a social network will make or break a product, and it seemes that the more casual, honest ones work far better than carefully planned ones. Why bother marketing when twittering works better?
What differentiates a successful business?
It turns out that successful businesses aren’t successful because they have good marketing departments. They aren’t successful because of a single campaign. They’re successful because their products and service differentiate them from their competition.
Let’s go back to my career in the printing industry. Print shops are dying left and right, but it’s not because they’re bad businesses with no investment in infrastructure. It’s because there’s no differentiation. In my industry, we all subcontract to each other. Almost every small print shop wants to pretend to be a big one, so they will subcontract to larger shops for anything they can’t do. Medium-sized shops want to compete with the real big boys so they contract out parts of the process like folding and binding. Large shops can’t be bothered with very small jobs, so guess what? They contract out to the small shops! Then there are “trade-only” shops, who specialize in taking work from other shops, and “brokers” who specialize in doing nothing but finding the right contractor for the job. Does it sound confusing? It should.
In fact, there have been times that I’ve seen print jobs that pass through six or seven hands between the customer and the manufacturer. In an environment like that, it’s impossible to really stand out, because it’s quite possible that your competition is contracting out to the same company you are!
If print shops are to survive, and that’s a big “if”, they will have to figure out how to keep customers when everyone has the same product and tries to match the same price. That’s a pretty rough lesson to learn and businesses are learning how to do it, or dying in the effort.
Service really matters
In fact, manufacturing processes make it possible for most products to be high-quality. The internet makes it possible for poor performers and bogus claims to rise to the surface quickly. We’ve already gotten to the point where the products we buy are uniformly good. So what matters? Price and service.
Most marketers will tell you that competing on price will kill you in the end. There’s only room for one price leader and no matter what, today’s price leader will eventually lose to a new kid on the block. Woolworth once competed successfully on price… they’re long gone. That’s something Wal-Mart needs to remember.
Small businesses are even more prone to self-destruction by pricing. The easiest thing in the world for you to do is to drop your price 10%, and guess what… it’s easy for your competition too. So you get in a price war on every product avnd before you know it your profit is gone. It’s important to have a good price point, and if you’re much higher than the competition, the market will desert you. However, it’s just as important to give the market a reason to stay, and that reason is service.
Service means different things to different people. For the online shopper, service equals convenience. iTunes succeeds because it’s so easy to use. Amazon is a retailing giant because one click makes the sale. However, small businesses are quite a different thing. For most small businesses service means personal service; going the extra mile for the customer even when it takes time or creates cost. It’s hard to know when to do this, and when it’s getting too expensive, but it’s been proven over and over that most folks will pay a little extra to get a little extra service. Even in a recession, when cost is king, there’s room for a company to compete on service when it’s impossible to compete on price.
In the end, product is king
As a small business, sometimes your product is your service. If you’re a plumber or doctor, the care you offer is all you have. In most other cases, though, there’s a true product to sell. What makes your customers come to you when they are almost always going to find it cheaper on the internet? If you’re a retailer, selection is key. When I walk into a bookstore, I want the book. Don’t ask me if I want to order it, I can do that at home. When I walk into a grocery store, I want a good selection of the familiar and intriguing. When I’m looking for a custom manufacturer, I want an outstanding product at a fair price.
When I bought window shutters, it seemed that everyone was subcontracting to the same manufacturer, so I went mostly on price. On the other hand, when I bought windows, I went to the manufacturer directly. That’s a lesson for any company who subcontracts most of their work. You can only compete on product if the product is yours.
Whither marketing, then?
So, what to do about marketing? I hope I’ve presented a convincing argument that it’s no substitute for solid product and excellent service. Marketing alone will only dilute your marketshare. If you’ve done your homework and are ready with products and services but have overcapacity (who doesn’t right now?) how should you market?
My advice is not to bother with low-yield marketing solutions like radio, television, spam e-mails and bulk mailings. You’re only going to get drowned out. The key is to place your products in the hands of influential people. In the case of a small local company, that may mean sponsoring a local event or donating product to a charity (in a high-profile way, of course.) When your product is in the right hands it will make an impression.
Larger companies can partner with web sites and offer free product to influencers and early adopters. No commercial or press release will compete with the words of a trusted forum leader or blogger, and courting these people is a key strategy. You may have to give out a lot of free product to find the people who will do all your evangelism for you, but once you find them, keep them close and keep them happy.
Be smart, make sure you have a standout product and excellent service, and you may find that news of the death of marketing is greatly exaggerated.
]]>I want a new opportunity where I can grow. I want to take all the skills I’ve acquired and put them to new and interesting use. I want to work somewhere I can stay for years and years and eventually retire. I want to be proud of what I do, and enjoy doing it especially when it’s challenging. I want to pass on my life experiences and my skills to others.
What does that opportunity look like? It looks like a management position in a medium-sized business or governmental entity. It looks like a position where I would have one foot in some sort of manufacturing and one foot in some sort of marketing.
I don’t want to close my eyes to opportunity and I want to be ready when opportunity comes.
]]>I’m happily married and love to talk about my nieces and goddaughter. I’m proud of the small part I play in trying to shape them into decent, honorable, thoughtful people.
My goal in life is to tread lightly and to leave things a little better than I found them. I hope by making little changes in the way I live, those changes make the people a little happier, and might make the world a little nicer for the next generation. I couldn’t ask for more.
I believe in honesty, integrity and consistency in everything I do and I do not like to waste time, materials or money.
I enjoy spending time with friends and family, reading, watching movies (and discussing them afterwards), and poking around on the computer.
]]>Still, people keep judging me by my computer skills, so I’m happy to list the more pertinent ones. All these are advanced skills — I don’t bother listing things I don’t know very well:
In addition, I’ve become expert at applying industry standards to the printing process. This has been “all the rage” in printing for the last several years, and it’s been important to keep up with the market’s needs. for example I’ve implemented the following standards to improve consistency in the printed product: