Carlsbad Cavern Photos
It’s been a while since I uploaded any new photos, but here’s a small set from my visit to Carlsbad Caverns in August, 2007.
Speak of the Devil
Right after writing my own article about legalese standing in the way of good marketing, Seth Godin writes on the same subject with a post titled After the Lawyers. The conclusion is exactly the same: align your legal needs with your messaging. The two should align and never conflict. Every lawyer should learn this and every manager should know this.
You Suck at Photoshop
“Because you’ve only used like $75 worth of Photoshop and this is going to open you up to like $250 worth of Photoshop.”
Sit back, take a Prozac, and let someone with more problems than you show you why you suck at Photoshop.
This is probably not 100% safe for work. Or marriages.
Here’s Part 1:
Try More, Buy More
The dominant grocery company in San Antonio is called HEB and there’s practically one on every street corner. HEB isn’t a bad grocery chain, almost reaching Wegmans in many ways. They understand low prices, good service, and quality stuff. Recently, the one nearest to my apartment has almost finished an expansion and renovation where they expanded from the older traditional grocery store layout to one that is bigger, more open, and more upscale. One such addition was a bulk food aisle.
You’ve probably seen these sorts of bins pop up in some of the newer grocery stores, especially in places like Whole Foods or Wegmans. They contain all kinds of stuff ranging from trail mix to pasta to mixed nuts. From the store’s point of view, there are a couple of advantages to these things.
- They’re lower cost - the store can buy food in bulk with no unnecessary packaging
- They look premium - don’t ask me why, but people view the contents of these plastic bins as fresher and healthier
Unfortunately, there are two things that work against these big bins. The first is Choice Paralysis. Too many choices can make shoppers uncomfortable, leading them to avoid the section entirely. “Do I want mixed peanuts or salted almonds? I give up, it’s not worth it.”
The other is a lack of trialability. All too often, when you do encounter these big plastic bins of stuff, you also see signs that say “please ask before trying” or “no samples allowed.” Stores have these policies for a number of reasons, but whether they think their shoppers are thieving scavengers or they’re just trying to lower their costs, preventing people from trying before buying is always the wrong policy.
Consumers love to try things, and for most consumers trial is the first step to becoming an established customer. The lower the barrier to trial, the easier it is to attract customers. What’s more, customers who try and are even somewhat satisfied are more likely to stick around than those who never try at all. On the other hand, when customers spend money to purchase something they want to try and then find the experience unpleasant, they may be permanently lost.
HEB gets this. Spread throughout the bulk food aisle are little cups for holding samples. Customers are encouraged to take tastes of whatever they want, and clerks are happy to remind you that they want you to be satisfied. I can’t be more emphatic: this works! My bulk food purchases have gone through the roof, and I have only begun to taste the different offerings. What’s more, by promoting trial, HEB has even done away with some of the choice paralysis. If I can at least test some of the many offerings, I can start to eliminate the ones that don’t matter and focus on the ones that do.
The other day I tasted about five or six different kinds of bulk sea salt. I’ve never really cared about sea salt in the past because there’s too much choice and I didn’t want to buy something I wouldn’t like on my food. This time I tried and I was able to reduce my selection down to about two: one that tasted “oceany” and one that had been smoked and tasted savory. I bought the oceany one and plan on buying the savory one the next time I cook fish.
The lesson is to trust your customers, give them the benefit of the doubt, and let them explore your product before forcing them to buy it. They’ll be happier with their purchases and more likely to become repeat customers.
Next time: what HEB is doing wrong.
Trend Spotting
I haven’t done many random links lately, but I did want to highlight trendwatching.com. The site features a mix of paid and free content about various trends in the consumer and technology sectors, including a selection of free briefings. Their most recent article on the Expectation Economy is a great guide to how consumers are more frequently embracing brands that better fulfill all of their expectations while scorning ones that are merely adequate. Specifically:
“The EXPECTATION ECONOMY is an economy inhabited by experienced, well-informed consumers from Canada to South Korea who have a long list of high expectations that they apply to each and every good, service and experience on offer.
Their expectations are based on years of self-training in hyperconsumption, and on the biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources, curators and BS filters. Which all help them track down and expect not just basic standards of quality, but the ‘best of the best’.”
Also, check out their article on tips for spotting trends yourself.
Outstanding website!
We’re #32
Yesterday Fortune Magazine released their list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2008, and Rackspace made the list at #32! Fortune requires that companies have at least 1,000 employees to enter the competition, so this is the first year Rackspace has been eligible. What’s amazing is that we could simply jump on the list at #32 with our first entry into the competition.
What’s also interesting is the list showing top companies by projected job growth. Rackspace comes in at #4 with 38% - a number that is simply huge when you think about it. To put that in perspective, we have something like 2,100 people this year while last year we had fewer than 1,000.
We’re all excited, and I’m not kidding when I tell people this is a great place to work.
#107
tylenol taken
wait begins for headache help
throbbing brain slows time
Photography and Realism
In the December 10th issue of Newsweek, writer Peter Plagens asks the question Is Photography Dead? Many might be taken aback by this question wondering how that could possibly be true especially when cameras are found on more devices than ever. However, Plagens argues that with the advent of technologies like Photoshop, photography has become too fanciful and the public will eventually tire of its lack of reality. To quote:
Film photography’s artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera.
Readers of Suan Sontag, especially her book On Photography, will rightfully cringe at that quote. Plagens falls into the very trap that a serious photo critic shouldn’t: the belief that photos are somehow recordings of reality. Photography has long seduced the viewer into this trap by its very nature of recording a scene on film, but in actuality reality was never something film could truly capture. A photographer makes choices about the framing of a photo, the focal length of the lens, the exposure, and the final editing that can profoundly alter what was captured and what actually happened. Plagens thinks that the loss of realism in photography is to be mourned, but quite honestly realism never existed to begin with. Sontag was quite correct when she described photography as a form of “surrealism” in the 1970s. Photoshop is a continuation of that truth rather than the beginning of it.
The article concludes with:
The next great photographers—if there are to be any—will have to find a way to reclaim photography’s special link to reality. And they’ll have to do it in a brand-new way.
No photographer who is any good has ever expected a level of realism in their works. The next generation will be no different, only perhaps more skilled at deceiving the viewer into thinking a photo is truly an accurate representation of an event. The far greater danger is the one Sontag elaborated upon in Regarding the Pain of Others - that our weariness of so much imagery combined with the propaganda value inherent to photography’s lack of realism will discourage us from connecting with others, especially when it comes to wars, death, and human destruction. As wealthy Americans, she feared that we would no longer see the misery of others and that we would ignore photography entirely. There’s nothing new in that - she said the same thing for almost 30 years. Plagens, on the other hand, is late to the party with the wrong costume.
Apple - Yikes!
As TechCrunch, BloggingStocks, and others have reported, Apple’s stock price fell hard both during and after Steve Jobs’ keynote (summary here). Reasons vary for the now $12 drop, but certainly part of this is related to the overall market drop today on the Citigroup news. However, BloggingStocks hit on three other distinctly Apple reasons:
- The iPhone quite frankly hasn’t done as well as expected. Selling 4 million units so far isn’t bad, but they promised 10 million unit sales in 2008. Given that there were no updates to the core product itself (3G support), the expectation for a boost in sales this year beyond that figure will be hard to come by. Expect Apple to make their target but not kill it. End result: the stock is probably overvalued because it’s priced with higher expectations.
- The price drop for the Apple TV lowers its margins. I’m not so concerned about this, mostly because it’s a dirt cheap system to begin with, its specs aren’t dramatically changing, and it’s demand curve will likely change in the coming year because of the new movie rental deal.
- Nobody is really sure about the Macbook Air. It’s a cool product, but at $1,799 it almost seems overpriced. At $3,000 when equipped with a 64GB solid state drive, it definitely seems overpriced. My take is that it’s a gorgeous product as usual, but there’s nothing here to dramatically shift the market for lightweight portables. The people who bought thin notebooks before will find this interesting, but the average buyer will find more value in a regular Macbook at a far lower price point. Expect this product to do well, but not stellar.
End result: the stock just doesn’t have that much to go on. The biggest news from a revenue point of view is the iTunes rentals, but Apple makes very little off of traditional iTunes sales. If this boosts Apple TV sales, that might be nice, but it’s still an unproven product with a poor track record. Rentals might sell more iPods or notebooks, but all that is probably already baked into the price.
On the other hand, someone who thinks the Apple TV will be the next iPod could make a very nice purchase on AAPL today.
What do you think of the Macbook Air?
Macbook Air?
- Need one (25%, 1 Votes)
- Want one (0%, 0 Votes)
- No thanks (75%, 3 Votes)
Total Voters: 4
Loading …Managing Your Lawyers
Imagine that after you’ve been skiing or snowboarding for a week, you stop by a nice warm spa to relax and take it easy. You’ve booked a room in advance and made a reservation to spend some quality time in some volcanically fed springs. You arrive expectantly and walk up to the check-in desk where the clerk starts the conversation by rudely thrusting a very long, ugly, and complicated release in front of you. “You have to sign this before checking in.”
After a nice ski trip, this actually happened to us. I won’t say where (let’s just say “somewhere in New Mexico”), but that’s not what’s important. The issue here is about managing the complex relationship between your brand image and your legal obligations. Let’s reexamine the details. What’s important to a spa’s image?
- Treating the guests to the best possible time.
- Promoting complete guest relaxation.
- Taking away all their cares in the world.
What do the lawyers want?
- For their clients not to get sued.
The United States is a pretty litigious society and lawyers serve a valuable purpose, however from a marketing point of view, a spa should never lose the image of a warm and caring place where the world is lost in soothing mineral waters. So how should a customer feel when they arrive to read things like this:
2. …… Bathing in hot water can lower blood sugar and cause dehydration, especially due to high elevation. If many hours have passed since the last meal, or consumption of water, a person from a lower altitude may experience a loss of consciousness.
3. THE NATURAL MINERAL WATER THROUGHOUT THE FACILITY IS NON-POTABLE. WE STRONGLY DISCOURAGE INGESTION OF THE MINERAL WATER.
4. No residual disinfectant, such as chlorine or bromine, is applied to our pools or waters as a means of prevention against contamination.
8. XXXXX assumes no responsibility for damage or theft of personal property or for the offensive, tortuous, or criminal acts of third parties.
9. Patron desires to use the facilities of XXXXX with full knowledge of the inherent risks and dangers and the physical and emotional injuries that could result and hereby agrees to assume the risk of any such injury.
(Emphasis added.)
Loss of consciousness? Non-potable? Contaminated? Torture? Physical and emotional injury? I just want to relax in a freaking spa. This kind of language has no place in a spa setting, and certainly not when it’s rudely jammed under a patron’s nose first thing at check-in.
Obviously the spa has certain concerns the patron must know: don’t drink the water, don’t use the spa if you have a health condition, lock up your belongings, etc. However, a release from liability is a terrible way to communicate these things. Most people don’t read them, and quite honestly we would have ignored this particular one as well if it wasn’t so abruptly given to us in the very beginning. What’s worse, all of this was printed in a very legal way on a single sheet of paper with a small font and signature lines at the bottom. This was the work of a lawyer with no business direction.
So how could a spa manager have handled this better? Scrap the legal agreement and put together a highly professional looking sheet of paper with “Important Spa Information for Your Comfort.” Get a graphics artist to do the layout, and make sure the spa brand is heavily emphasized. Beneath, list a series of “spa tips” for getting the most out of your trip. Mix in both important information and helpful tips. For example:
- Remember, fresh towels can be found at both the front entrance and in the locker rooms. If you would like your towel warmed, please ask!
- The water here at XXXXX is all natural. For your well being, we do not treat our water with any chemicals. Soak all you like, but please don’t drink the spa water. Bottles of fresh water are available at the front desk.
- If you have a health condition, like a heart problem, please ask the spa attendant before using the spa.
At the bottom, the sheet could include “Rules” like “No running,” “Lock up your belongings,” and “Don’t drink the water.” A really paranoid manager could even get the guest to sign a sheet saying they’ve read the rules and agree to abide by them.
Remember, even with legal agreements it’s possible to align them to your brand image and make the guest feel at home while still communicating the key messages. A good lawyer should actually be aware of this, but even if they’re not, a good manager should guide all guest interactions to be on message and aligned with the brand.
What do you think?
Loading …Added 1/14/2008: I would be remiss not to point out that marketing guru Seth Godin has written extensively about making every customer interaction a marketing interaction. His most recent post on the subject is titled What’s the point of this interaction?
Every time you interact with a customer, you’re engaging in marketing. Doesn’t matter if you’re instituting a policy, gaining some data, delivering an invoice… it’s a marketing interaction.
Every customer-facing legal agreement should keep this in mind. Legalese can be marketing, too.