Ian@work

Creative Control

What if Microsoft designed packaging for the iPod? This might be the result.

links for 2006-02-25

• Strategic Public Relations: 10 Flickr Hacks
  (tags: flickr hacks photography)

links for 2006-02-24

• Technology, Technology news, Times Online
  (tags: DRM opensource software piracy)

Net Promoter Score

What's your company's score? Do you measure it? Do you even agree that it's the number to monitor?

More.

Biz Lit

The folks at InBubbleWrap.com have been too kind. Four additions to my bookshelf, so far. If you haven't signed up, it's not too late.

At the moment, however, I'm deep in Naked Conversations. The subtitle sums it up: "how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers." It's worth a review, and once I'm finished I'll post one. Check back.

I'm a longtime, avid reader of business books. During a couple of phases in my professional life I sent out periodic reviews of relevant biz books to colleagues and friends. Apparently these adhoc e-zines were a hit, since I got many (generally positive) comments and some encouragement to keep doing it. My interest might seem out of place for a guy who studied Southern US literature in college, but the whole business genre has spawned some excellent reading. It's fertile ground - ideas, passion for the subject and good writing come together to create engaging books. 

There's also a load of vanity-driven dreck (I'm thinking of you, Jack Welch), but that's easy enough to avoid. What's the alternative? Here are a few I've found particularly worthwhile:

• The Great Game of Business, Jack Stack. Forget the all-too-easily-forgettable Who Moved My Cheese? The Great Game pointedly shows that while crisis is a great motivator, it's better to change before you have no other choice. Not to mention the empowerment that results from giving employees responsibility for their futures, and a share of the rewards.
• Leadership is an Art, Max DePree. A brief, simple, and very human look at the qualities of a leader from the founder of Herman Miller.
• The Eng@ged Customer, Hans Peter Brondmo. It was written in 2000. It's about email. Not too relevant anymore, right? Nope. The underlying ideas are still valid.

Agency Dirty Laundry

I noted, with some curiousity, the stories surrounding Howard Merrell & Partners decision to decline the NC Lottery contract that it won just days before. Agencies aren't in the business of putting hundreds or more hours into a major new business pitch, only to win and then decline the business.

But it turns out that they apparently didn't clear a detail with Interpublic Group of Cos., their holding company, before pitching. Interpublic wasn't up for posting a $1MM bond to guarantee vendor payments, which effectively quashed the deal. HM&P, which to put not too fine a point on it, was pissed, aired the intercompany squabble to the media. Interpublic struck back, with one observer translating their response:

Nyah, nyah, nyah: You're a non-strategic asset. So shut up.

Or something like that.

Questions:

1. Anybody think Interpublic is going to have more to say about this to HM&P? Will they be half as polite as in their public statements to date?
2. Isn't this the kind of not-so-minor detail that should be settled before pitching the business? I've been involved in responses to state RFPs, and performance bonds or other guarantees are not unusual.

Google Underperforms?

MarketingSherpa.com reports on two research studies that suggest that Google search results have less influence over online purchase decisions than AOL, MSN and Yahoo! The studies aren't definitive - for example, there is no indication of whether the AdSense network is included among Google data - but two key points are clear:

1. Don't focus your search and PPC marketing on a single search engine.
2. Don't allow search engines to measure your conversions. Keep your metrics independent.

Loyalty Versus Profitability

Jeff Zabin pokes a hole in the overused notion that customer loyalty equals profitability:

The profitability component is a key part of the value equation. Unfortunately, in their quest to drive customer retention through bigger and better loyalty programs, marketers sometimes lose sight of the fact that loyalty doesn’t always translate into profitability. They make the mistake of viewing “loyalty for loyalty’s sake” as a goal. In fact, the economic question they should always ask is: “What is the return on the cost of maintaining that loyalty?”

His example is Netflix, which has been in the news of late for its practice of "throttling," or reducing the flow of rental DVDs to its customers who use the service most. And by uncoupling the (ostensibly legitimate) practice of throttling from how it was communicated to customers, he makes an important point: Although Netflix has a highly satisfied customer base, more forthcoming communication and a better pricing model for the least profitable customers would have quashed much of the controversy before it hit the mainstream media.

Godin on Dissatisfaction

Marketers, take two minutes to read Seth Godin's riff on our culture of dissatisfaction. It's worth your time.

Lately it's seemed that Godin gets it more wrong than right, but this time he hits the nail squarely on the head.

No Particular Place to Go

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that ~40 million Americans were surfing the Web just for fun on a typical December 2005 day. This is up from ~25 million in November 2005. Does this indicate a migration from TV/couch to the Web, increased surfing at the expense of other activities, or nothing at all?