Category: Customer Relationship

Thursday, 22 September 2005

Law Firm Hosts Fashion Show, That’s Like Blogging

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Law Firm Hosts Fashion Show, That’s Like Blogging

Tonight Jen and I attended PKR&G‘s Never Out of Fashion show. Yes, in the interest of full disclosure, our invitation was part of our 6 part PKR&G podcast series at the First Crack.

Howard Rubin kicked off the event asking, “Why does a law firm host a fashion show?”

The same reason you’d blog. Here’s the break down;

  1. Give people a reason to talk about you. (your remarkableness)
  2. Highlight the people and places you know. (their remarkableness)
  3. Connect your community of customers to each other. (our remarkableness)

Does it work?

  1. If I need a lawyer and my uncle can’t help me, you know who I’m calling. Hugh says, “25% of conversations in the blogosphere about ‘South African Wine’ are now about Stormhoek”. I only know of one law firm hip to podcasting and fashion, yeah, they’re in Minneapolis.
  2. I only know of one other law firm in Minneapolis. Why would I choose PKR&G over them? PKR&G reinforced our relationship with this fashion show event. That’s it….for now. For me, blogging is the easiest way to answer the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately question.
  3. If you ask me what the hippest hotel in Minneapolis is, it’s Graves 601. Seriously. It is.

How doesn’t it work?

Friday, 9 September 2005

An Evil Genius With the Personal Touch

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on An Evil Genius With the Personal Touch

I received my Evil Genius stuff package from Dave Slusher today. If you’re not familiar, Dave’s selling the Gentle Readers’ HiHoney and EGC t-shirts to support both his podcast and the band.

This month, he’s donating $25 of the $35 to the Red Cross. How could you not support that.

Opening up the package; yes, there’s a t-shirt and yes, there’s CD. Neatly tucked in the shirt are two pleasant surprises.

  1. August 27/28 from Dave’s George Carlin Quote of the Day calendar. Entertaining in itself. Flip it over and there’s a personal, handwritten note from Dave.
  2. Dave’s business card promoting Evil Genius Chronicles and Voices In Your Head. Again useful and hand in itself. Flip it over, and it’s one of Hugh Macleod’s gapingvoid blogcards. You know I’m a big fan of Hugh. Yeah, that really made my day.

Thanks Dave and yes, there’s photo forthcominghere’s the photo:

Evil Genius Style Council - Van Buren Branch

Friday, 26 August 2005

Advertising Either Credits or Discredits Both Brands

by Garrick van Buren 3 Comments on Advertising Either Credits or Discredits Both Brands

Kristina from BrainTraffic and I were discussing podcasting over lunch today, specifically – relationships between advertisers and podcasters. As always, we concluded the most logical, credible solution is the conventional, NPR-esque, announcer-mentioned sponsorship IT Conversations is exploring.

As Kristina stated, this model helps guarantee the both podcaster and advertiser are interesting and appropriate to the listener. In the best case, the result is a “peanut butter in my chocolate” combination like IT Conversations and GoTo Meeting. This combination raises the credibility of both brands. I might even be able to use GoTo Meeting to create an IT Conversation. Everyone wins, including the listener.

Worst case scenario, it’s an advertiser trying to buy street cred like:

In this case, the opposite happens, both brands are discredited.

From Laura Reis at The Origin of Brands Blog:

“Vogue did not decide to cover the latest trends off the Wal-Mart runaway. Vogue editors are not suddenly endorsing Wal-Mart over Prada. Vogue simply took Wal-Mart’s money and ran.”

Friday, 19 August 2005

Where Everyone Prefers Your Name

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Where Everyone Prefers Your Name

I’ve been a customer at RCU for as long as I can remember. For all those years, our relationship has been just as I like my relationships with financial institutions – uneventful.

They’re upgrading their system and sent out a letter alerting customers to the changes they might be expect and when to expect them. The biggest change – account numbers. The account number you’ve been accustomed to has changed. In the letter, RCU consoles;

“Please know that our staff will be able to assist your quickly if you provide your current Account Number, however we’ll know you better by your NAME!” (emphasis theres)

Such a refreshing change from the customer as account number mentality.

Wednesday, 17 August 2005

The Mass Market Mentality vs Individual Customer

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on The Mass Market Mentality vs Individual Customer

Doug Kaye states Mark Ramsey doesn’t get podcasting.

Mark Ramsey replies that Doug doesn’t get broadcasting.

Yes, podcasting is a great opportunity for broadcasters to experiment and create a farm team. Yes, podcasting is a no-brainer for a broadcasters to connect with their audience on their audience’s terms. Finally, Yes, podcasting is the easiest way to share audio on a very specific, niche topic with self-selected people.

Mark is right, podcasting and videoblogging can’t be shoehorned into traditional distribution channels:

“But ask your local movie theater how much they care to show a movie only a few people see, ask the local bookseller how much they want to stock a book only a few folks buy.”

No, it doesn’t make sense for a movie theater to show an extremely niche production. Though perhaps if they did, it would help solve their current attendance problems. Mark Cuban suggests focusing on the customer also. Though, perhaps even movie theaters are already catering to niche audience; those that don’t find DVDs from Netflix good enough.

On the Silicon Valley Gillmor Gang, Robert Scoble complains that while Adam Curry’s early Daily Source Codes were addictive (that’s why I started podcasting), Curry’s PodShow on Sirius Satellite Radio isn’t interesting in the least. Proving that podcasting is unique from radio, just as blogs are unique from newspapers, and videoblogs are unique from television.

Nothing in podcasting requires it to be a stepping stone to mass appeal. It could be, and this is a benefit – especially to broadcasters. But podcasting can in-fact be the end game. Independent and ignorant of broadcasting’s constraints a podcaster could build a small (less than 10,000), loyal, and passionate listener base by fulfilling an extremely specific niche. A successful podcast – though a failure by broadcast measures.

iTunes Top 100 Podcast list (counting the number of times in 24 hrs the ‘subscribe’ link was clicked), the Feedster Top 500 list, and every other Top X listing is an attempt at shoehorning. As Dave Slusher eludes, these rankings assume all blogs and podcasts are competing for the exact same audience. If you’re looking for a blog or podcast on gardening in the Upper Midwest or learning Japanese, these lists don’t help. More on the “Evils of Head-ism” at the Long Tail including the fantastic, “Nobody cares if bananas outsell soft drinks.”

Ultimately, I’m talking about 2 very different mentalities:

  1. The market is a mass of nameless, faceless consumers with the same basic needs and the goal is to make advertisers happy.
  2. The market is made of individual customers, each with very specific needs and the goal is to build a deep, unique relationship with them directly.

Considering customers now regularly blog about their market experiences, I recommend option number 2. As does Seth Godin in his recent ‘Clueless’ post

Sunday, 14 August 2005

The Second Difference Between Consumers and Customers

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on The Second Difference Between Consumers and Customers

“There’s no time of day that would be good for me. I don’t plan my days around a radio or TV schedule because, quite frankly, I don’t need to. I have an iPod and I can listen to what I want, where I want and when I want. And given that there’s already more good programming than I have time for, anyone who doesn’t make it easy for me by providing an RSS feed with enclosures simply won’t make the cut. Even in my car, unless it’s just a trip to the grocery store, I no longer tune in a broadcast station.” – Doug Kaye

Friday, 29 July 2005

A Case for Attention.xml

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on A Case for Attention.xml

A couple months back, I was shopping for a new car, Jen and I spent hours combing automakers websites looking at their models, the model’s specs, comparing it against the car we wanted to buy.

Ford knows I went to their site. Honda knows I went to their site. Both know which models I looked at, which pages I loaded, and where I left. If they don’t…well…that’s a different post. They don’t know what of their competitors’ offering I studied. I’m happy to share that with them and anyone else interested. Ford might just glean I’m intrigued with the Honda Element but feel its mph is irresponsible. Honda might just glean that Ford still doesn’t have anything interesting. You might glean I’m looking for a stylish 4-door wagon-type vehicle with decent mileage – and might be able to make a recommendation.

At the transaction level, all I’d let Ford and Honda know about me is: in Minnesota, on a Mac, currently owns a Dodge Neon. No other personally identifiable information – unless they gave me a reason to offer it. You on the other hand, may know more about me. You might even have my email address, phone number, and some other bit of information both unique to me and integral to my car buying.

Notice the difference between in the information you, my friend and loyal reader, have and the information I’ve given the automakers.

What would the automakers have to offer me for the same level of information I’ve offered you?

Welcome to the Attention Economy.

Steve Gillmor’s Not Kidding about it. He’s started the non-profit AttentionTrust to prove it. Seth Goldstein is on board, and concisely states the need for an Attention marketplace,

“Our attention establishes intention; and our intention establishes economic value. Once one recognizes the value of one’s attention, it is shocking to see how cheaply most people offer theirs to companies looking for their business.”

Attention.xml, or something like it has huge implications for measuring the success of a conversation. It has the potential to solve the problems of Nielsen ratings, web metrics, and counting a podcasts listeners.

Tuesday, 5 July 2005

We Edit Each Others Media in a Post-Filter World

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on We Edit Each Others Media in a Post-Filter World

Previously, I’ve talked about the a Business Model for Abundance and what price means in an age of abundance.

Seems like a meme going around.

“Soon everything will make it to market and the real opportunity will be in sorting it all out.” – Chris Anderson

Yes, I see Attention.xml playing a big role in this. And I’ve got the napkin sketches to prove it.

Sunday, 26 June 2005

RSS Feeds to Replace CDs

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on RSS Feeds to Replace CDs

To this point, musicians need to press bits of plastic (records, CDs) each time they want to share music with their fans. This means, enough music has to be ready to make pressing bits of plastic worth the cost. These bits of plastic are then shipped at an additional cost to stores where hopefully the fans, after hearing about the new bit of plastic via the marketing campaign, will purchase it. Passing little bits of money back to all intermediaries on the return trip to the artist.

I see two weak links in that process;

  1. Musicians needing to have a number of tracks ready at once.
  2. Fans paying musicians at the end of the process.

With a podcast, musicians can release whatever they’d like, whenever they’d like; demo tracks, rough tracks, experiments, final edits, interviews, conversations about the song writing process, anything their fans would enjoy. All of it delivered automatically to their biggest fans.

To access the podcast feed, fans pay up-front, or along the way, or at the end. Doesn’t matter. Passionate fans will pay for access to an empty RSS feed, thereby financing new work, while new fans pay for access to previous feeds, just as they do with previous albums today.

Faster publication and distribution helps musicians refine their work more quickly and gives fans a sense of being involved in the creation process. Two big wins.

What do fans lose when RSS feeds replace CDs? Aside from the physical artifact and the costs of designing, creating, moving, and storing the physical artifact? Very little. Cover art and credits are in the ID3 tags and the feed itself.

Friday, 24 June 2005