Josh points us to: Clientcopia : Coping with stupid clients
So a client calls me on a Friday – 4PM.
CLIENT: I’m about to talk to the pharma client, I need a computer graphics budget for an interactive CD-ROM.
ME: Great, email me the project details, how many screens, client deadlines, etc.
CLIENT: Well, can’t you just give me a ballpark figure?
ME: A ballpark figure? But, I don’t know any of specs, nor any of the client info. Please send me what you have, I’ll look over it this weekend and I’ll have something for you first thing Monday morning.
CLIENT: Well, we need to send them something today, by 4:30PM. Can’t you just estimate it?
ME: Okay, $100,000.
CLIENT: $100,000! Why is it that much?
June 18, 2007
In a small-minded riff on Steve, John Heilemann writes (hat tip: paidContent.org):
“Less than two weeks from now, when the phone hits the streets, the consumerist pandemonium will likely be hysterical. Once again, Jobs may have fashioned a totemic object that will capture the culture–and cause rival CEOs to have coronary events. No one else in history has pulled of this kind of coup, as Jobs has, with four different products. The Apple II. The Mac. The iPod. The computer-animated feature film. Betting against a track record like that would be a dangerous wager. Especially when you know, deep down, that you want an iPhone. Bad..
…But Jobs has been wrong before. And if the iPhone proves a disappointment, his reputation will take a precipitous tumble: from unerring visionary to just another overreaching mogul. What’s at stake for Jobs, then, isn’t money or power–for no matter how the iPhone fares, he’ll still have both in abundance. What’s at stake is the thing that now must matter to him above all: the ending of his story.”
If you’ve never pushed the envelope of the accepted wisdom, it’s easy to misunderstand what drives Steve Jobs. I can see how someone living in a status quo world would ascribe familiar motivations to him, but it’s just not true. "The ending of his story"? Nonsense. Jobs doesn’t care about his legacy or making more money. He’s addicted to Rifting–he process of fixing problems, of leaping from one broken market to another. Why would he stop?
I wrote about this in Fast Company seven years ago, pre-iPod:
After the death of Walt Disney the man, something happened to Walt
Disney the company. You see, Walt Disney was a three-time rifter. He
was one of the few people who have successfully managed to find a rift
in the continuum of life, to bet everything on it, and to make a profit
by doing so. And he did it three times.
What’s a rift? It’s a big tear in the fabric of the rules that we
live by. It’s a fundamental change in the game, one that creates a
bunch of new losers — and a handful of new winners.
Most people who build important businesses build them on a rift,
usually one that they find by accident, and usually only once.
Sometimes, after they’ve succeeded once, they fool themselves into
thinking that they’re so gifted that everywhere they look, they can see
a rift. But Disney was different: He really was rift gifted. After all,
he did it three times.
[you can read the rest, here].
[Rifters don’t worry so much about being seen as "unerring visionaries". They just keep going.]
Avinash’s new book about web analytics. Someone in your organization should (must) read this. Maybe you?
The "sitting-on-the-floor-is-not-boring, anything-can-be-designed-better" inspirational critbuns.
And a good old-fashioned selling book. (See page 117).
You might not be a regular reader of my Dip blog. New posts are more likely to start showing up on this main blog now, so if you want to catch up, now’s a good time.
Included: images from the book, and dozens of tasty, free posts.
Open Table is an online reservations service. It’s free to use and the restaurant pays a dollar per diner. The company has raised more than 20 million dollars to date. (original Times story).
During the company’s first three years, they booked a million diners (in total). Now, they book two million every single month. Five years ago, they had 1,000 restaurants to choose from, now they have 7,000.
That’s what it looks like when you get through the Dip. They’re a superstar, the only choice.
How did they know it was a Dip and not a dead end? Because they were selling to an entire market, not just one restaurant (Chez Panisse still isn’t a customer). By measuring incremental progress, they could see that the corner was just ahead.
(And a Dip within a Dip–one happy client is Norma’s, a hyped breakfast restaurant in NY. Norma’s does huge business via Open Table, largely because they come up on top of the breakfast ‘bestseller’ list. Like most things that get through the Dip, they’re popular because they’re popular.)
Saw this sign in Boston today. The person behind the counter does nothing all day. Nothing. Never a line.
Why forbid her from being helpful? Why not do the opposite? Why not make her the go-to person for useful information?
Maybe, just maybe, engagement will lead to inquiries which will lead to sales…
June 14, 2007
Marketing works.
Advertising and promotion and lobbying cost money. And organizations pay for it because, by and large, it works. Not all the time, and rarely as big as people hope, but sure, you can influence the public by spending money.
Which leads to the key question: are you responsible for what you market?
Some people will tell you that the market decides. They’ll remind you that most consumers are adults, spending their own resources and doing it freely. That people have a right to buy what they want, even if what they want isn’t good for them (right now, or in the long run). That’s what living in a free country is all about, apparently. Buy what you want.
But wait.
I thought we agreed that marketing works.
If marketing works, it means that free choice isn’t quite so free. It means that marketers get to influence and amplify desires. The number of SUVs sold in the United States is a bazillion times bigger than it was in 1962. Is that because people suddenly want them, or is it because car marketers built them and marketed them?
Cigarette consumption is way down. Is that because people suddenly don’t want them any more, or is it because advertising opportunities are limited?
Others will tell you that if it’s legal, it’s fair game. If it’s legal for Edelman to post a blog called Working Families for Wal-Mart (when it’s really working Edelman employees for Wal-Mart), then they have every right to do so. In fact, they have an obligation to their shareholders to do so. Or so they say.
I believe that every criminal, no matter how heinous the crime, deserves an attorney. I don’t believe that every product and every organization and every politician deserves world-class marketing or PR.
A neighbor was complaining that the baseball field in my town needs upkeep, and wonders why we don’t go ahead and take $100,000 from Pepsi for sponsorship of the field and a long-term contract to put vending machines on site. It doesn’t matter to him that obesity and heart disease are the number one preventable cause of death. He says that it’s a personal choice, and if we can get the money, we should.
Who’s responsible?
I was surprised at how angry I got in an email exchange with John, a reader near Detroit. I wrote, “I’m sorry if I seem like a curmudgeon, but the arrogance and blindness of Detroit’s management really and truly annoys me. Tens of thousands of innocent workers lost their jobs while clueless overpaid company men drove the industry into the ground for decades. These were the guys who had plenty of time to fix their problems (20 years) but instead lobbied hard to maintain SUV subsidies and gas subsidies and on and on. They’re sort of like cigarette companies, but with far more side affects. They’ve let down our country, in my opinion, and just because they are lip synching a bit now, I’m in no hurry to tell you that the problems are gone.”
And now Detroit is marketing hard in DC to fight against mileage standards again, claiming that they make the cars that people want to buy.
There are two problems with blaming the market:
The first is that the market is short sighted. Which means that in a year or two or five, when the market changes its mind and wakes up, you’re left holding the bag. By not taking responsibility for growing and nurturing the market in the right way, you get punished later.
The second is that if you poison your market, it all goes away. Not just your job, but your community too.
Let me be really clear, just in case. If you think that the world would be a better place if everyone owned a handgun, then yes, market handguns as hard as you can. If you honestly believe that kids are well served by drinking a dozen spoonfuls of sugar every morning before school, then I may believe you’re wrong, but you should go ahead and market your artificially-sweetened juice product. My point is that you have no right to market things you know are harmful or that lead to bad outcomes, regardless of how much you need that job.
Along the way, “just doing my job,” has become a mantra for blind marketers who are making short-term mistakes in order to avoid a conflict with the client or the boss. As marketing becomes every more powerful, this is just untenable. It’s unacceptable.
If you get asked to market something, you’re responsible. You’re responsible for the impacts, the costs, the side effects and the damage. You killed that kid. You poisoned that river. You led to that fight. If you can’t put your name on it, I hope you’ll walk away. If only 10% of us did that, imagine the changes. Imagine how proud you’d be of your work.
The amazing thing is that over and over again, we’re discovering that marketers who actually take responsibility for their marketing are actually more successful. Go figure.
TV Guide was purchased for more than $3 billion, back when a billion dollars was a lot of money. At one point, it was worth more than ABC or NBC.
CMP, like many other trade magazine publishers, is busy consolidating, laying people off and closing magazines as they try to move to digital.
Put those two facts together and there’s an opportunity. In fact, a bunch of them.
Who is curating YouTube? Who’s the TV Guide of a world with a million channels?
We don’t need someone to point us to goofy edited scary car ads. What we need are tiny, specialized sites that obsess about specific industries. Is there a good video every day about how to do better real estate sales? If there isn’t, there soon will be. Or for heart surgeons?
For every segment where there is currently a trade magazine, I believe there’s an opportunity to build a blog-like, woot-like, ad supported page that finds the good stuff. Jeff Jarvis, who ironically used to work at TV Guide, is already doing this with politics.
Like most opportunities, this one will be obvious later. And then it’ll be too late for most of us to get in.
Here’s an interview I did that might be of interest to authors and booksellers.
And one for eBay sellers.
I take a shot at stock picking.
And a more far-ranging discussion about The Dip.
Megan wrote an ebook for eBay sellers on Squidoo. (that’s the lens, here’s the download)
And coming in the next few days: Riffs on radio.
June 13, 2007
