If you have a waiting room, where people are likely to sit for longer than 5 minutes (doctor’s offices, corporations, hotels) you need to offer free wireless internet access.
From personal experience, it’s the difference between continuing check things off my daily to do list and the frustration of being held hostage.
This weekend, I caught up with a college friend in central Wisconsin. Starbucks recently opened their first storefront in Wausau. Given Starbucks’ consistency and my lack of knowledge of other options, I suggested we meet there.
“How about something local, like Jeannie’s Cafe?”, Tom asked.
I’m always up for tasting the local flavor and we planned to meet there.
Neither of us were aware that Jeanie’s, like the majority of downtown Wausau, is closed on Sundays. This reminded me of my time in Germany. There the shops were also closed on Sundays. While I agree, closing at 6pm during the week, noon on Saturday, and all day Sunday, keeps a designated time for personal and preferably family-focused activities, it only works best when everyone plays along. And when the economy isn’t based on retail sales. Conversely, not playing along hurts everyone and can make actually getting things done a modern day, dual-income family a really hassle.
In Wausau, the ice cream shop, chocolate shop, gelato shop, and the downtown enclosed mall were all open – with a couple of patrons in each. With a handful of shops open and the majority closed, I imagine the traffic for the open shops is dramatically lower than what they see on Saturday. The open shops don’t get walk-in traffic from non-open shops.
In the end, Tom and I drove across town to Starbucks, it was packed.
To me, this felt like small-town American example of the EU’s economic issues.
This week was chock full of conversations with people interested in how podcasting can work for their business. The amount of enthusiasm and energy I consistently received from across the table blew me away. Two other things that struck me:
As we all know, there’s still a layer of geek needed for the podcasting magic to happen. I can’t wait until that’s no longer an issue.
Yesterday, I listened to the latest from the Podcast Brothers featuring an interview with Todd Storch. You’ve probably gleaned that I don’t see the viability of an ad subsidized podcast. As I’ve mentioned in the economics of podcasting, existing broadcasters have huge amounts of money sunk into transmitters, spectrum, studios, and talent. The easiest way to get a return on that investment is from advertisers. These sunk costs don’t exist in podcasting. So, there’s no financial pain for advertisers to heal.
For the sake of not having the advertiser conversation for a moment, let’s put down the radio metaphor.
If someone calls my phone and leaves a message – I get it automatically. When Dave Winer, Tim Elliot, Cayenne Chris, or Dave Slusher publish a new audio file, I get it automatically.
Phone messages are also very personal, relevant to a topic I’m concerned with, and vary both in frequency and duration. All characteristics of a good podcast. Voicemail also isn’t ad subsidized.
As Doc Searls famously asked in the BloggerCon Making Money session:
“What’s the business model of my telephone?”
Lawyers, accountants, coaches, and other professional consultants stake each paycheck on answering clients’ questions expertly and immediately. What’s the value of a voicemail from your accountant? Depends on the question.
How much would you pay for your accountant to leave a voicemail answering a question just before you ask it?
That’s how to make money podcasting.
In Podcasting is the New Voicemail, Ross Mayfield is thinking along the same lines:
“Soon it will be one of the simplest ways to communicate with groups.”
I had a couple of apartments completely furnished via IKEA. As I’m sure you know, once assembled Billy isn’t going anywhere. Drooping and wabbly, the Billy entertainment system lasted – to the day – as my last rental lease. Not a bad thing, I didn’t have to move it. Though it did leave me without a bookcase.
Tonight, browsing their rug selection and picking up a couple things for the office, I pondered again the potential for an IKEA Furnishings Subscription Model. Yes, subscription-based furnishings. IKEA’s furniture prices are low enough where refurnishing is like putting on a fresh coat of paint and like that coat of paint, it only lasts a couple years. Two-years later, when that bookcase is sagging and worn, no worries – it’s replacement has been paid for. The delivery truck will be here tomorrow. Same with the sofa and dining room set and eventually the entire house?
Mark Ramsey at Radio Marketing Nexus nails the value of podcasting to business:
Podcasting is to Radio spots as infomercials are to TV spots.
I’ve used the informercial comparison before, I’m glad others see it also. The traditional model of commerical spots interrupting a regularly scheduled program falls apart in podcasting. Podcasts can shrink and expand to whatever length makes sense and economics of it mean businesses can publish them in-house faster and easier than waiting to get on a networks schedule.
A good podcast is about one idea, like a good sentence. Traditional interruption-based advertising duct-tapes on a second idea. Earlier, this would be the only way to distribute the commercial message – outside of an infomercial. With podcasting businesses go direct to customers – plus now the commerical message won’t be interupted by the regularly scheduled program.
Beside, when you get far enough down the long tail, everything is both information and advertisement.
Elsewhere 22 April 2007
One of the challenges of highly customer-driven systems like the iPod, Tivo, and Netflix is the keeping it fresh. I wrote about my experience with this problem last fall (New, Unexpected Music on Your iPod).
I’m sensing the same “2,000 songs and nothing’s on” wall with Netflix. Sure, there are 50 discs in our queue right now. But that’s down from nearly 80 a few months ago. This means, we’re adding movies at a slower frequency. Though we’re watching them at about the same frequency.
To add to this, the only reason I visit the Netflix.com is to add an item to my queue. I get the queue as an RSS feed and my ratings are posted via email. I never checkout their recommendations
This is a recipe for burnout.
Tivo solved this problem by developing recommendation engine that records things it thinks you’ll like. Though Netflix also offers recommendations, it doesn’t go the extra step – sending me the disc.
Since Netflix makes the bulk of their revenue on a tiered subscription model, the discs in each of their tiers could default to a ‘Netflix Suggestion’ with additional membership dollars going to override their recommendation engine with a something I’ve selected. The upshot is, of my 3-at-a-time subscription – 1 or more of them could be selected and delivered by Netflix – thereby guaranteeing new stuff is always in the queue.
Here’s a small (and growing) list of meaningless, negative words that I’d like to strike from my world.
- User
- Consumer
- Content
- Sticky
- Leverage
- Synergy
- Facilitate
Doc Searles has a nice follow-up on these terms and language in Relating to Customers
…customers don’t like being “consumers” or “targets.” Being “reduced” doesn’t stir their hearts, either. Least of all do they wish to be “acquired.”
Doc, as always, gets right to the point with:
“…we’re living in a world where customers will only become more and more independent and self-reliant. And — even more importantly — that they can often supply themselves.”
A second Buzzword blacklist from Fortune magazine
Ask Annie – Business Buzzword That Make You Gag
Heretofore, most business were founded on the idea of scarcity. Being the One and Only as Seth Godin describes.
If you’re the only vendor offering something, it used to be easy to make money. Just convince people you’re the only one that can solve their problem. Then surround yourself with huge barriers to entry while locking your customers in with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Today, the only things remotely scarce are time and money.
Everything else, like mosquitos in August, are irritatingly abundant; news, exotic fruits, stylish furniture, spam, and reality television. Given the constraints of time and money, what you’re ignoring is as important (if not more so) as what you’re paying attention to. I’ve talked about this before in What Price Garbage Avoidance. I’m going to repeat something I originally wrote there:
“This filtering-out is why Tivo can charge a monthly subscription and why AOL is marketing themselves on virus, spam, and pop-up protection.”
As I’ve been refining Working Pathways’ purpose, ‘filtering out’ is a recurring theme.
Complete eradication (spam filtering) is one avenue. This approach keeps out anything that isn’t already known. Fine for short term, yet completely worthless for staying relevant. As I’ve written before, this is why podcasting was such a huge win for iPod listeners. It brings the unknown into a closed environment. Tivo’s recommendation engine, despite its drawbacks is a more interesting model – filter out things I don’t like, and continually and intelligently offer things I might like.
Today’s media environment is bigger than newspapers, radio, television, and magazines. It includes weblogs, video logs, podcasts, email, video games, satellite radio, DVDs, and SMS. No one can track everything that affects them all the time. Therefore, all of the messages we receive each day are worthless if they don’t answer 1 question:
In a hotel concierge study I conducted a few years back, I learned the goal of a good concierge was to fulfill a guest’s need the moment before the guest acknowledged the need. We need more businesses founded on delivering the right information to the right people just before it’s needed.
A couple years back, I helped Orbitz.com redesign their shopping process. During that time, if you wanted to book travel the major players were Expedia and Travelocity, with Orbitz aiming to be the more usable, better-looking alternative.
Today, those three players are equally mature and equally less than compelling. They don’t capture all airlines and have yet to offer the recreational traveler’s dream: give me the cheapest flight to Brussels, anytime, any day, in the next 1, 3, and 6 months.
Enter Kayak.com. Think of it as Froogle for travel. Just the bare-minimum needed to start a travel search. If you want something a little sexier, check out Pinpoint Travel. Pinpoint uses Kayak’s engine and leverages the new AJAX web application model making a very interesting and helpful interface – like Google Suggests. Also, by asking me questions about my personal preferences, Pinpoint does an excellent job of keeping me engaged while it’s searching.
On the downside, AJAX relies heavily on Javascript so Pinpoint isn’t accessible and for some odd reason neither is Kayak.