Category: Uncategorized

Google says:

“Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.”

More here.

Doc writes:

“We need an instrument of demand that works from the demand side, outside of any of the media’s own systems. We need something that works in a free-range way, by and for individuals. Something independent. We need something that expresses the user’s or the customer’s intentions.

Think about it as Vendor Relationship Management — and the reciprocal of Customer Relationship Management. It’s what Drummond Reed calls CoRM, for Company Relationship Management.

It’s vigin territory. And you can’t get to it from the sell side. You have to approach it from the buy side. From the customer’s, or the user’s, side of the relationship.

Obviously, this is a development project. In fact, it’s the project I’ll be working on with the Berkman Center over the next year. I was thinking in that direction during this interview, but we made a lot more progress in just the last few days. I’ll be writing more about it this week, mostly in Linux Journal and IT Garage. Naturally, I’ll be looking for help.”

In June of 2005, I wrote:

“What’s been broken with so-called ‘Customer Relationship Management’ systems so far is that, well, they don’t really focus that much on the customer, do they? Under the rubric of ‘CRM,’ there have been three primary classes of systems: sales force automation, customer service and call center automation, and marketing automation. All of these look at the world from the seller’s point of view. And all of them focus on how the vendor can crank more customers through a particular process in a given unit of time. They don’t necessarily help to truly build relationships between individuals. In fact, they are more likely to commodify it.

There has been a considerable amount of research done in this area, and there in an increasing body of data that suggests that building this kind of ‘enterprise social network’ has measurable benefit for both customers and vendors alike. Perhaps the cornerstone of recent work in this area was done by Lichtenthal and Tellefsen, and is called ‘Toward a Theory of Buyer-Seller Similarity.’ L&T write: “These findings suggest that internal similarity [perceptions, attitudes, and values] can increase a business buyer’s willingness to trust a salesperson and follow the salesperson’s guidance, and therefore, increase the industrial salesperson’s effectiveness. In contrast, the literature also indicates that, under most circumstances, observable similarity [physical attributes and behavior] will exert a negligible influence on a business buyer’s perceptions or a salesperson’s effectiveness. Thus, the key finding is that it is more important for buyers and sellers to ‘think alike’ than ‘look alike’.”

To date, there just haven’t been tools like this aimed at the enterprise, that take this idea of creating real relationships between individuals and providing a means for customers to explicitly state their case, and determine with whom they want to do business at a real, interpersonal, non-synthetic level. So, we built one.“

Of course, what we built to address this problem is now widely known as Haystack networking.

So, it’s not quite virgin territory, but we, as both customers and as an industry that connects customers to the people and things they need, certainly have many miles to go before we sleep on this. Doc, greatly looking forward to the work you’ll be doing on this at Berkman.

The unfortunately named MyWetStuff.com (tagline: “Help us get the wet stuff you want!”*) was launched last week in response to the United States government’s ban on many common items such as toothpaste in airline carry-on baggage. From the MyWetStuff.com website:

“MyWetStuff.com strives to provide the frequent traveler with the broadest possible array of single-use and travel-size personal care products. Our product catalog will continue to expand as more and more products are packaged for maximum convenience and minimum waste.

As we ramp up a brand-new company for a brand-new market need, deliveries will begin on September 29, 2006.”

Today, Forbes reports that the government has greatly reduced these restrictions.

“The government is partially lifting its ban against carrying liquids and gels onto airliners, officials said Monday.

Most liquids and gels that air travelers purchase in secure areas of airports will now be allowed on planes. That means that after passengers go through airport security checkpoints, they can purchase liquids at airport stores and take them onto their planes. The new procedures go into effect on Tuesday.

New procedures also were announced for toiletries and products like lip gloss and hand lotion that passengers bring to the airport. Previously, those liquids have been confiscated at security checkpoints. Now, these products will be limited to 3-ounce sizes and must fit in a clear, 1-quart size plastic bag. The bags will be screened and returned if they are cleared.”

Reminder to self: never base a business model on capricious policy decisions.

* – yes, seriously.

Congrats to Paul, Greg and the rest of the Coghead team! Business 2.0 just named Coghead in a list of “11 companies that are changing the world.” The key line from the article:

“Coghead could completely upend the balance of power in the software game — putting users, and not coders, in ascendancy.”

Yup.

(disclosure: Coghead is a client)

Some new product packaging warning labels folks would like to see, via Make:

You think marketing has a marketing problem? Can’t help but see these and thing of the McDonald’s / Hummer incident of a few weeks back.

Just listened to the most recent podcast from Jeff Hoyt, which addresses the frustrations of call center hell. Hoyt’s an accomplished voice actor, and presents the topic in an interesting way…sort of a Seinfeld-meets-This-American-Life sorta thing. (This is helped by the fact that he sometimes gets into the interesting situation where he is forced to listen to himself tell himself that his call is very important to him, since he is actually the recorded voice on a number of these type of systems.) Check it out here.

Overheard yesterday at the little guy’s school:

Little Guy (whose shoelaces had come undone, and needed help tying them): “Why don’t you double-knot it?”

Teacher: “Because if I double-knot it, you won’t get better at tying them.” (smile)

Just because something doesn’t work, it’s not always a “failure.”
Sometimes it’s just practice.

They didn’t.

They DIDN’T.

Yes, they did.

Edelman’s “news trough.”

(Let the porcine puns commence! More here, btw.)

(photo credit: http://umichangallery.clarence.com/)

According to RonaldMcHummer.com, McDonald’s has given away 42 million Hummer toys as part of their most recent Happy Meal promotion. Not surprisingly, a number of individuals who view the Hummer as a symbol of rampant eco-destruction have made a shrill outcry. Some parents may find the choice of toy to be upsetting as this isn’t a suitable toy for a child to be playing with. Alternatively, parents could opt for a healthier meal elsewhere before going home and playing with their child helped by watching a nursery ryhme on youtube. This would be an educational play time compared to your child playing with a grease stained hummer.

Now, from a marketing and customer interaction perspective, the interesting bit about this brouhaha is not the outcry itself, but rather the McDonald’s response. Bob Langert, Vice President for Corporate Citizenship and Issues Management at McDonald’s, has put forth an interesting bit of NewSpeak on the McDonald’s Corporate Social Responsibility blog, regarding the promotion. Langert states:

“Our company, including my staff, is deeply committed to the whole scope of corporate responsibility issues, including environmental protection. So I polled my staff who have or had children. One of them said her children enjoy the little Hummer replicas as toys, just as many kids like toy trucks, regardless of make or model. She drives a MiniCooper, walks with her children to get groceries, bicycles with them on weekends, etc. Another said her grandchildren absolutely love the toy Hummers–that they’re fun.

Of course, there’s nothing scientific about this poll, but I think it makes an important point. Looked at through children’s eyes, the miniature Hummers are just toys, not vehicle recommendations or a source of consumer messages about natural resource conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.”

 

Bob, you dropped the ball here. Big time. There are about a dozen comments on your blog on the matter, none of which you’ve addressed directly. You’ve given a pat, Teflon-coated response to an issue that is of concern to many of your customers. In fact, the response you’ve given isn’t even a response — it’s a mis-direction and a diversion.

Without stepping up and giving a real answer and providing some real direction, you are doing nothing more than using a new medium (blogs) to reinforce the negative perceptions that already exist about your organization. In fact, you are solidifying those perceptions further.

(Thanks to Jay Rosen for the tip.)

Others in the conversation:

http://www.emergencemarketing.com/archives/2006/09/more_people_unhappy_with.php
http://funnybusiness.typepad.com/funnybusiness/2006/09/mcdonalds_vice_.html
http://www.enviroblog.org/2006/09/mcdonalds_responds_to_hummer_p.htm
http://cityhippy.blogspot.com/2006/09/news-mchummer-ok-say-mcdonalds.html
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/mcdonalds-responds-to-the-happ-002240.php
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2006/09/mcdonalds_blog_.html

Barry Parr’s Coastsider reports:

“A vendor has been selected to set up a free wireless Internet service, using wifi, that is supposed to cover San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties and to stretch “west to Half Moon Bay” according to some reports.

The vendor, a partnership of Cisco Systems, IBM, SeaKay and Azulstar—still has to come to agreements with local governments.”

The San Mateo County Times adds:

“At no cost to the cities involved, Metro Connect intends to make its money back through advertisements and through charging user fees for faster connections. The service will be free at one megabyte per second downstream and 50 to 60KB upstream, and is primarily intended to be used outdoors.”

Awesome news, if it gets approval. (Although with the slow upload rates, it’s going to take Scoble a long time to upload his movies.)