When people are sharing more and more with each other and strangers, when audiences are splintering, when the relationship between a company and it’s customers is far more measurable, spending millions of dollars on “brand awareness” would seem hilarious – if it wasn’t sad.
In other words:
Thanks to Hugh for sharing.
“Don’t ever allow yourself to believe that there is only one way to make ideas real.” – Scott Berkun
Stated more traditionally, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
The great thing about roadblocks is they force an evaluation of goals.
For example, you’d like to publish a book and are continually rejected by publishers. Is is that you want to have a physical book on Barnes & Noble’s shelves or that you want to share your ideas with the world?
One answer says mold yourself to what publishers want and wait for them to like you. The other says start a blog over lunch.
A month or so back I got a knock on the front door. It was a couple high school kids asking for donations for the marching band’s new uniforms. I wasn’t thinking about the marching band at that moment. Nor was my wallet right next to the front door.
Tonight, moments before Jen and I sat down for an after dinner movie, there’s marching band faintly in the background. Our town’s 4th of July parade route is a couple streets away and considering it’s Flag Day, I thought nothing of it.
The marching band was getting closer. After pondering it for a few minutes, I went outside, looked down the street, and here comes the St. Anthony Village High School Marching Patriots. Right down my street – not a typical parade route.
Initially, I thought it was a parade (Flag Day and all) yet, as they got closer I could hear the coaches shouting out orders and I noticed all the kids were wearing normal clothes.
It stuck me – this is when to ask for donations. When I can hear the band members, all tattered and worn, trying their hardest to walk and play instruments at the same time.
Yes, other neighbors came out to watch, and yes, they made a second lap. I’m not sure there’s a better time to ask for community support. Yet they didn’t.
Yes, I will contribute five dollars each to five podcasters who don’t use paid sponsors.
Help show a listener-supported model will work and add your name to the pledge. If you’d rather just support a podcaster, might I recommend:
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?
I bought a car last week. We’ve been looking for another one for some time and not been real happy with what’s available (anything under 20 mpg just seems irresponsible). My father-in-law has a fantastic, nearly 15 year old relationship with a dealership. He’s purchased every car I’ve ever seen him drive there. When Jen and I wanted to buy our first car, we went there.
Jen found our new car online. We’d been looking at imports and this was a domestic. We were looking at cars twice as expensive. This was exactly what we were looking for and it was at this dealership. She asked her dad to check it out. He calls back with the whole story, everything sounds good. All we need to do is drive the 4 hours to pick it up.
Perfect.
Then, like the story Christopher Carfi quotes, the warranty salesperson got involved.
We don’t know him. We know the car salesman, we know he guys in the shop. We don’t know the warranty guy. More importantly, he doesn’t know us.
He doesn’t know the kind of drivers we are, what we find important, or that we wouldn’t be there without the aforementioned 15 year old relationship. Then he attempted to sell us an extended warranty for a car we all knew would be fine for as long as it mattered.
Everything else about buying the car was perfect.
When putting together a prototype for usability testing, it’s best to use realistic data. If you’re evaluating the readability of a search results screen, put in the actual results. If you’re evaluating a check-out process, make all the information throughout the entire process real.
Then, after, tweak the data just slightly. Make it humorous, make it unrealistic, throw in a knock-knock joke.
I’m a big fan of this. It’s an excellent way to find out what people pay attention to and what they completely disregard.
In his post, Amazon’s Time Machine, Seth Godin ponders:
“Why don’t they slip in ridiculous items or funny descriptions? It’s not like they’re going to run out of shelf space or have a problem with inventory.”
It’s an interesting question. Ridiculous items or funny will polarize customers. Some will love it, some will hate it. It’s a big company that can walk away from disenfranchised customers.
“If your paper is worth so much (and it is), and you want to charge for it, how about charging for fresh news, and giving away the stale stuff?”
The ‘more-for-new-less-for-old’ model is a good one. Let’s take a look a couple industries where it seems to work well:
Back to the newspaper business. If I want the latest, most up-to-date reporting, I turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper, or more likely, head to a news-provider’s website via Google News. Always free (if not heavily subsidized). If I want to link to their specific article in this weblog, you (the reader) will need either register or pay to have any context.
This is a disincentive for me to link to the newspaper’s articles. Thereby artificially limiting the useful life of the article (what’s being called the long tail).
This is fine if newspapers are actually in the fish-wrap business. In that case, the paper itself is the most valuable. The usefulness is not in the reporter’s words but in the fish, birdcage, or compost bin the paper eventually lines. Not a message I would send to the beat reporters.
A few months back, I heard the president of Schwan’s Foods talk. From his perspective, Schwan’s isn’t in the frozen food business as much as the food delivery business. Just like Amazon & Wal-Mart not being in the retail business, more the logistics and fulfillment business.
These slight shifts in perspective make a huge difference in your implementation and customer relationship.
If newspapers are in-fact still in the news business, the need to explore avenues that customers readers (not advertisers) will finance. Along the lines of Jupiter Research. Otherwise, they’re a history lesson just like the recording, oil, and airline industries.
A couple days back, I wrote a half-formed rant on the current state of department stores (Picky Customer or Circling Vulture). This morning, while skimming my blogroll [opml] in search of a pick-me-up, Hugh McLeod 1) knees me in the groin 2) points and laughs. He did both in his Cheapest or Best post.
First, his enigmatic business card cartoon:
“if the f’r doesn’t cost you your life, it isn’t a quest.”
Hugh, thanks, I needed the reminder. Today especially.
Second, the post reads like a better Picky Customer, with fewer words. Actually, I should just replace that post with these 2 thoughts from Hugh:
“You have no automatic right to revenue.”
“We are now moving into a world where you have two basic survival choices:”
- “You can be the cheapest.”
- “You can be the best.”
“There is no middle option.”
Amen. Why are department stores, commercial radio stations, hub-airlines, and advertising agencies failing left and right? In Hugh’s list of survival options, they are neither.
Choosing either cheapest or best will give people a reason to do business with you more than once. As an added Free Prize, it will inspire passion (positive and negative) all around – in customers, employees, the press. Passion always means people care and that’s why we’re all here.
UPDATE: Brand Autopsy dissects JC Penny’s Missing Middle strategy. While McLeod and current market conditions are promoting cheapest (Wal-Mart / Target) or best (Neimann Marcus / Nordstroms), JC Penny’s is firmly planting themselves in the middle. Short term, it seem to be working for them (year over year sales up 3.3%), long term it sounds like a strategy to be bought by Kmart’s real estate arm.