About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
First Amazon, now Dorothy Lane Market ends advertising and focuses on offering customers value.
“We realized that we couldn’t give club members the deals that we wanted to give them if we continued spending $5,000 to $10,000 a week on print advertising”
More in this Fast Company article: Dorothy Lane Loves Its Customers
Gene Oberpriller, who runs the 1-on-1 Bike Studio, gives us the skinny on his shop/gallery/cafe, the 15 year-old bicycle junkyard in the basement, and the history of Minneapolis’ bombastic bicycle culture.
Links Mentioned:
Intro: Bill Boulger from IndieTickets.com
Listen to Minneapolis Bicycle Culture [28 min]
Leave your audio comments at: 206-20-BEAN-1
A conversation with Ben Tesch, the creator of RIAARadar – a website that suggests non-RIAA artists and MixMatcher.com – a media-player-independent song playlist sharing site.
Links Mentioned:
Intro: PodCat from PodCat’s Daily Best of Podcasting
Listen to RIAARadar.com Creator Ben Tesch [45 min]
Leave your audio comments at: 206-20-BEAN-1
Featured in PodCat’s Best of Podcasting Dec 9 – 13
Had some technical difficulties publishing this episode – all should be better now.
My tea kettle attacks me. Then, I go off on the news of the Uptown Borders going union – until I get that first cup of the morning. Then, peace and harmony.
Links mentioned:
Intro: Bill Boulger from IndieTickets.com.
Leave your audio comments at: 206-20-BEAN-1
Listen to Twin Cities Borders Unionized, Garrick Goes Off [17 min]
The news reports that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfled had an opportunity to inspire, motivate the US troops during a recent question and answer session in Kuwait.
Based on this exchange, I can’t say he succeeded in addressing the troops concerns let alone inspire them to go back into battle. That is unfortunate.
“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?” – Army Spc. Thomas Wilson
Rumsfeld replies, “You go to war with the Army you have.”
Related to my earlier post about saying ‘No’ (Some of the Passengers, Some of the Time) fed up computer programmers at Electronic Arts are suing their employer over “extreme job stress and health problems”.
NPR had the story this past weekend on Weekend Edition.
Employees are gaining more control over their work conditions with each passing day. And if a specific employer doesn’t allow employees to have control over their schedule, environment, and work – they should prepare to see a similar suit against themselves shortly.
Ricardo Semler outlines how to structure a supportive and profitable organization in, Maverick. I can’t say enough good things about his book.
Get more details at the Social Customer Manifesto.
“Go back in history. One of the first decisions an airline had to make was, Should we carry passengers or cargo? Whenever an airline came to that fork in the sky, they took both forks…” – Doc Searles
Doc makes an excellent point. Very few companies can successfully be all things to all customers. The big airlines are proving right now that this strategy is road paved with good intentions.
Contrast the airlines’ “both forks” strategy with this recent Business Week interview with Steve Jobs:
“…it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”
Tomorrow, say ‘No’ to keep focus on an ever expanding project, say ‘No’ to keep your company’s niche, and most importantly – say ‘No’ so you can spend dinner with your family this holiday.
I’d like to thank the PseudoDictionary for accepting a ‘metrollectual’, a term Darrel Austin and I coined over instant messaging a while back.
Special Guest: The Winter Blanket. We talk about the last 4 miles of the Hiawatha LRT opening today – from downtown to the airport to the Mall of America, winter striking Minnesota this week, and the band’s upcoming Polar Bear tour. We close with a live premiere of their new song – Neil Young Blues.
Links mentioned:
Intro: PodCat from Daily Best of Podcasting
Eminent writer Bob Bly dissects the difference between direct marketers and non-direct marketers.
In my experience, his analysis is spot-on.
I had a client where both mentalities struggled for dominance. The incumbent mentality (non-DM) was all about branding, impression, design, and well known for it. A team of direct marketers was brought in to handle the website. They brought measured click-throughs, ROI, incremental A/B test, all that.
These new tools brought success – but at the price of completely disenfranchising the non-DMers. Not good, at all. In fact, it’s a huge lost opportunity considering the internet gives non-DMers these DM tools out of the box. This means, the brand managers and advertising buyers can know – exactly which 50% of their ad dollars are wasted. About time.