Value
Dear Airline Industry, Being “Least Awful” Won’t Save You
Each day it seems there’s a new headline about the latest “amenity” for which an airline plans on charging us, which, of course, causes a ripple effect as every other airline chooses to follow suit with a justification that comes across as, “Well, now that Airline X doesn’t have to give you free water, neither do we.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this sound like the opposite of the effects competition is supposed to create?
Like us, many of you are frequent fliers and are concerned about these trends. So when Jeff Eisenberg pointed out a site that highlights the fees associated with this growing phenomenon of sacrificing service to maintain pricing, I thought I’d share it with you.
For me, this illustrates a couple of things.
1.) We have surpassed the number of elements it takes to trigger over-choice behavior (aka “analysis paralysis”). Before, it was just price, departure/arrival times, and brand that influenced our flight-booking decision. Now, with so many other factors involved — multiple bags, bag surcharges, seating, drinking, and the (in my eyes) completely unforgivable “minimum stays” United just announced — has caused consumers to be put in the position of having to make a very complex decisions, which typically causes people not to choose*. The way I see it, the airline industry is headed right back to the time of the travel agent, paying someone to make sense of the mess.
Unless the travel sites can quickly adapt and easily incorporate these new elements to their functionality.
2.) The airline industry is devoid of real positive differentiation and unwilling to compete beyond price. As Jeffery pointed out in our conversation, airlines will become completely dependent on their ability to market being the “least awful.” One Philadelphia newspapers even launched a spoof of this concept last week with ads for a fake airline called Derrie-Air, which supposedly charges passengers by the pound. (Hat tip to the Influential Marketing Blog for spotting this.)
Normally I would say, “Market-capitalism to the rescue!” and insist that open competition will allow the fittest to prosper. But amid government subsidies and an apparent lack of interest by carriers to compete on something other than price, I’m skeptical this will right itself. So this is my open call to airline owners (yes, even Virgin Airlines) to reposition their fleets by differentiating themselves by meeting or exceeding customers’ wants, not just the bare minimum expectations we’ve grown accustom to by the current state of the airline industry at large.
My question to you, dear reader, is this: What ideas would you bring to bear on this problem? How would you change the company, product, or marketing to better meet the consumer’s needs, as well as the health of the industry?
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*From Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” presentation at TED.
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About the Author: Brian Bond is VP of Marketing and Product at FutureNow, Inc.
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Written by:Brian Bond
See Like An Outsider In 3 Not-So-Easy (But Worth It) Steps
If you’re already an insider, this won’t be easy. Once you’re “inside the bottle,” reading the label on the outside requires serious mental contortions.
Or an outsider to come and open the bottle for you. In fact, their outsider perspective is a huge part of any consultant’s or outside copywriter’s value – so long as they’re willing to call you to the carpet over your unseen assumptions and un-named elephants.
But if you can’t bring in an actual outsider, any attempt you make to understand your reader’s or customer’s perspective will give you an edge over the head-stuck-up-their-own-bottle competition. Now for those painful (but worth it) steps…
1. Change your context
Through repeated association, things that typically go together often become fused in the mind, as if they’re supposed to go together — even if their relationship would strike an outsider as coincidental or weird. Transplanting these relationships from one context to another can allow you to see the strangeness of these connections that familiarity has made invisible to you.
This training video does an admirable job of giving insiders an outsider’s perspective. By directly comparing the medical care of a man and his dog, events and procedures that would seem normal to hospital workers (the video’s target audience) suddenly appear ridiculous because the context for evaluating them has been changed from hospital to vet’s office. The incongruity that a man is receiving worse care than a dog forces viewers to re-evaluate the “supposed to” nature of hospital procedures, as they no longer seem quite so “normal.”
Joel Greenblatt also does a nice job of this in The Little Book That Beats the Market. By moving from the stock market to of the context buying a small business such as an pizza parlor, Greenblatt liberates us from the illusion of “normalcy” that we have about wild swings in share prices. If GE’s share price moves from $25 to $50 and then back down to $25 within the span of 8 months, we think nothing of it. But that’s like saying a pizza parlor could go from being worth $10K to $20K without any major changes in the business. Changing the context allows you to see how weird stock price fluctuations really are.
So use this same technique by pretending you have to explain the Unique Value Proposition of your product or service to your grandmother or a 6th grader. Describe things through metaphor or parable, then pay attention to what doesn’t “map” well from one idea to another – especially things that strike you as odd or comical when placed into this new context. The “that’s funny” moments will become your portal to an outsider’s perspective.
2. Frame ideas like Martin Scorsese
Movie directors frame their shots in order to force viewers to focus on the intended point of action, while live stage theaters literally spotlight performers. They both make it easy for the casual observer to know exactly what to focus on, to know what’s important at that moment.
Experts and insiders benefit from a “big picture” awareness that provides similar focusing cues and mental spotlights. But outsiders, lacking the big picture, tend to see the most prominent, high-contrast stuff. In order to replicate their experience, you’ll need to mentally block your normal area of focus, to turn off your mental spotlight - so you can notice everything else.
Picture yourself as a man from Mars, with no background information whatsoever, who just landed at your website for the first time.
- What’s most visually prominent? What’s high contrast?
- What’s the most kinetic or fast-moving element?
- What parts of the experience would confuse you if you didn’t already know the back story?
- What would seem jumbled or overwhelming?
Describe the scene, website, etc. in the voice of your man from mars – and do this out loud to another person or a voice recorder.
- Where are you led astray?
- What false assumptions do you make?
- Where does confusion or uncertainty cause you to abandon the task at hand or to seek help?
And before you write this post off as hokey, keep in mind that a HUGE portion of FutureNow’s success at improving client’s conversion rates stems from this exact mental exercise (except we do it with personas instead of Martians).
OK, now that you know where the outsider will miss the important stuff and become flummoxed, go back and provide your visitors with a mental spotlight to guide their attention. Be explicit, and purposefully frame your shots – create mental images from a can’t-miss-it perspective. Be sure to tell your readers how to engage their x-ray vision to look past the merely attention grabbing to see what’s really going on.
A great offline example of this is What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The second pregnancy feels so way different because 2nd time moms know what to expect – they’ve got their mental cues in place. The book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting has become a perennial best seller and must-have for first time mothers, precisely because it does such an admirable job of providing that 2nd time experience to first time mothers.
3. Do the “which means ” exercise, then ask “Why?”
Copywriters frequently do the “which means” exercise to draw out the benefits from features and to understand the customer’s real motivations.
This compact car is a hybrid, which means it uses 25% of the gas as your current SUV . . . which means you’ll feel like gas prices are back at $1 per gallon . . . which means you can go back to eating steaks instead of ramen noodles.
What they sometimes fail to do is realize that an outsider might not know WHY a hybrid uses 25% of the gas of an SUV and will therefore ask “Why is that?” at the first “which means” statement.
Copywriters for skin care products make this mistake all the time. For example, I’ve seen plenty of skin product websites which will tell me that increased cellular turnover will lead to younger looking skin (so they’ve done one level of “which means”), but they frequently forget to add copy explaining WHY cellular turnover has this effect, leaving skin care outsiders scratching their heads, unconvinced.
So there you have it, three not-so-easy (but worth it) exercises for gaining an outsider’s perspective. Perhaps you’ll only get one or two insights per exercise, or you might get an avalanche of “a-ha” moments, but the point is that even one or two insights from an outsider’s perspective can dramatically improve the persuasive power of your website.
. .
About the Author: Jeff Sexton is a professional outsider (aka, Persuasion Architect) at FutureNow.
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Written by:Jeff Sexton
How to Pitch “Value” to Everyone But Paris Hilton
Consumer Reports almost never endorses the same products a niche enthusiast magazine would. They rarely pick the same car that, say, Car and Driver might. Likewise, most serious skiers — like those on Ski Magazine’s editorial staff — tend to select different skis as “best buys” than the ones Consumer Reports chooses each winter.
Why is that?
For one thing, Consumer Reports tries to objectively calculate the “sweet spot” on the Quality-to-Price Ratio. Enthusiasts, on the other hand, generally give more weight to subtleties, refinements and other semi-intangible qualities; things like aesthetics, ergonomics and brand affinity. Such things aren’t as big a factor for Consumer Reports when they’re trying to help you find “the most [whatever it is] for your money.”
Enthusiasts go beyond the point of so-called diminishing returns because, to them, the return doesn’t feel diminished.
The Perceived Value Curve
In case you still don’t know what I’m talking about, I graphed it…
Consumer Reports thinks in these terms. They look for products that sit neatly on the inflexion point; that spot on the curve just before it gets too steep. They do this because their audience wants an objective, substantiated and dispassionate analysis of the product for which they might — just maybe — exchange their hard-earned (and devalued) dollars.
They’re looking for those 85%-as-good-but-half-the-price products because, for them, there’s no joy in spending a dollar more than they can objectively rationalize.
From “Consumer” to Enthusiast
Unlike the Consumer Reports crowd, enthusiasts are more conscious of a product’s refinements, or lack thereof.
The enthusiast’s minimum standards are higher than average. Audiophiles can distinguish between a CD recording and a 192-bit encrypted MP3 file. Driving enthusiasts appreciate the smooth clutch and slick jolts of a great manual transmission. Wine connoisseurs can anticipate the blackberry notes and soft minerality of their favorite Cab Franc.
This is why acquiring a taste for expensive wines, stereos and cars can sometimes “ruin” you for lesser quality goods, because as Kathy Sierra insists, “Learning increases resolution.”
Enthusiasts continue to perceive noticeable — and substantially increased — benefits well beyond the normally perceived point of diminishing returns. So, if can’t substantiate your product’s superiority in a no-nonsense Consumer Reports-style manner, your best bet may be to write copy that evokes the Enthusiast’s experience.
When you create a high-resolution experience with your Web copy, you help the average, uninitiated consumer picture themselves as enthusiasts.
The Fuji F30 Camera is a good example. The F30 is compact digital camera with rather unimpressive specs (6 megapixels with a 3X zoom) that’s supposedly been supplanted by the newer F40 and F50 models — but it’s STILL selling for between $220 and $300, which is as much or more than either the 12 megapixel F50 or the 8 megapixel Canon SD850.
Why is it commanding so high a price? Because enthusiasts have embraced the little camera for its unmatched ability to take high ISO and low-light photos. It’s the only pocket cam that’s able to take really great low-light shots. And as soon as you “sell” a consumer on that ability, the lower megapixel count stops mattering so much. A smart copywriter would focus in on this “hidden” ability of the F30 in order to raise its perceived value.
Roy Williams gives an example of copy that does just that:
“The prettiest camera in this price class has a shutter speed of 1/15th of a second. But the shutter speed of the ugly Canon PowerShot S500 is a superfast 1/60th of a second, allowing you to take fabulous photos in low-light situations. Your indoor photos will look rich and vibrant when all the others look dark and grainy. And your nighttime photos will make people’s eyes bug out. Beautiful contrast and luminance, even without the flash. This camera can see in the dark. Take a picture of your lover in the moonlight. It will become your favorite photo ever. And that superfast shutter speed is also very forgiving of movement. That’s why no one ever replaces their PowerShot S500. Go to your local pawnshop and see if you can find one. We’re betting you can’t. But you will see several of that “prettier” camera available cheaper than dirt. So if you’re looking for a great price on a sleek-looking camera, that’s probably where you should go.”
Who wouldn’t want a camera like that?If copy alone won’t do the trick, think about staging live events, webinars, streaming videos… whatever it takes to show a glimpse of the hi-res experience. (Here’s another example from Kathy Sierra.)
Don’t lower prices. Stay ahead of the curve by building perceived value with your Web copy.
. .
[Editor’s note: Jeff Sexton can show you how to add value to your website. Join him on March 28th in San Francisco for the first-ever West Coast edition of our popular crash course on Persuasive Online Copywriting.]
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Written by:Jeff Sexton
12 Marketers Pick Year’s Most Valuable Online Videos
The smart people at Twist Image have built a gorgeous video site to showcase 2007’s most valuable online videos, according to their “most influential friends.”
Paula Gignac, Seth Godin, Ken Wong, Joseph Jaffe, David Weinberger, David Usher, Jackie Huba, Shel Israel, John Gustavson, Christopher Loudon, Mary Maddever and our own Bryan Eisenberg were each asked to share their favorite video of the year.
Which videos were your favorites?
(To Mitch Joel, Mark Goodman, Mickael Kanfi, Aubrey Rosenhek and the entire team at Twist Image, joyeuses fêtes à vous tous! Thank you for helping to shape good ideas, as always.)
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Written by:The Grok
How to Leverage “OPM” (Other People’s Mistakes)
Lots of people who’ve spoken with either Jeffrey or me know how uncomfortable we are with being called “experts,” despite our books and nearly 10 years of focus on marketing optimization. I’ve said it before: “Gurus are a dime a dozen on the internet.” The problem with taking pundits’ advice is that it can end up costing those who follow blindly a fortune. I need your help to prevent that.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe hardly any of the folks who people consider online experts are acting in bad faith. They tried some tactics, it paid off, and now they want to share them with others. But true experts never achieve any level of certainty without a deeper understanding of all the circumstances contributing to their success. To reach “expert” status in other industries — say, the medical field — it takes well over a decade of experience focused in one specialty. Most cardiologists would be hesitant to give you dermatological advice, as they know it’s outside of their domain. It’s why Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr once said, “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
Sharing your missteps and learning from other people’s mistakes is the surest path to online success. Are you up to helping your fellow entrepreneurs or future clients?
Have you ever taken bad Web advice from a so-called expert?
The challenge we face as marketers is that there’s no solid set of criteria to hang out the shingle and say, “Congratulations! You’re a marketer.” It can be frightening when clients say they plan to use some very specific tactic before the strategy’s been clearly defined. Usually when that happens, if you ask where they got the idea, it’s from an “expert” who may have a technical or other background but certainly not a marketing background.
We’ve all seen designers or developers who are now preaching “expert” search engine marketing advice. While design and code have something to do with search engine optimization, the bigger issues are usually marketing-related. The same is true about conversion optimization advice. While conversion has something to do with usability, multivariate testing and web analytics, the bigger overarching issue is almost always marketing (read: persuasion)-related. When our clients have a challenging search-related issue, we refer them to a search marketing firm we trust. Are there really any social media experts yet (although we may be getting there)?
We’re looking for these types of stories:
- Did you get blacklisted from a search engine for following bad advice?
- Did you spend a ton of money on a tool no one uses?
- Did you do a “redesign” and get poor results?
- Did you create a “viral” campaign that nobody noticed?
- Did you invest in the latest and coolest Web 2.0 initiative only to see a small return?
How You Can Help + Get Published
We (as in “you and I”) are going to publish a free ebook. (No need to kill trees on this as I’m sure it will keep evolving with the Web).
We’re not looking to name names or discredit anyone. And of course, sometimes, good advice gets executed poorly. But with your help, we’ll take all the stories and distill them into a collection of truisms, then list the horror stories on so-called expert opinions and freely distribute How to Leverage “OPM” (Other People’s Mistakes): Online Advice from People Who’ve Been There and Done That. If you wish to share a story anonymously, it must be verifiable, so we can keep you anonymous.
Will you share your “expertise” and stories?
If you’d like to be included, tell us your online marketing-related stories either as a comment below or in an email to: feedback [at] grokdotcom dot com
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Writers: The Most Undervalued People Online
Anyone else enjoy life 3% more when The Daily Show isn’t in reruns? Well, if you think TV’s gotten bad since the writers’ strike, just wait until online copywriters wise up. In fact, copywriters and bloggers should consider picketing right along with the TV & film writers. (Notice I didn’t say “screenwriters.” In today’s media, a screen is a screen is a screen.) This strike isn’t about television or film. It’s about high-profile screenwriters — as high-profile as unknown gets, anyway — insisting that online content has value.
Don’t think copywriters are undervalued? Show me a marketing budget without a serious chunk of cash set aside for Web copy, and I’ll show you a website that doesn’t convert, sell, or even explain why it exists in the first place.
Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, who decided to follow his script-writing dreams until he realized what an awful gig it can be, makes some great points about “What Web Writers Can Learn from the Writers’ Strike.” Lucky for us, 10 years later, Brian’s selling content online — and he decides which of his content is free; a real advantage over Daily Show writers like this guy:
(If video doesn’t load, click here.)
As you can see, one of the more telling points about about the writers’ strike is that these “traditional media” writers really do know how to leverage the Web. They’re even taking a cue from the “Save Jericho” campaign and mailing boxes of pencils to the media moguls.
For most organizations, copywriting is an afterthought. And surely, the web design community would agree. When businesses don’t take copy seriously, they’re the ones who get fired when the site doesn’t do its job. Consider this recent snapshot of a slide at the Future of Web Design conference:
Businesses can optimize their online content all they like, but stale copy leads to poor sales and limp branding. The good news is that if a company’s text doesn’t persuade in the first place, they’ll never know how much business is being left on the table. But the bad news is that if their text didn’t persuade in the first place, they’d never know how much was left on the table. So unless you’ve invented an iPhone that doubles as a teleporter, and you can show all of that with some press clippings and a Flash demo, you’re better off not being cheap with your words.
It may look rough at the moment, but the floodgates have opened, and the real value of online content has become clear. So if you’re writing for television or film, and want to control what your words are worth, now’s a good time to become a persuasive online copywriter.
[Hat tip to Tim Miles for sharing the “Not the Daily Show” clip.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
How Amazon Lost Me (and My Money)
One word: Fulfillment.
I recently purchased a set of Sony Ericsson earbuds from Amazon.com. I already knew the type of earbuds, which color, and even the model number I wanted to order. (That’s what we call a “late-stage” visitor.) Amazon didn’t have to do much to convince me to buy. All I wanted was a clear product image, showing what I could expect with my purchase.
I didn’t just want a new set of earbuds; I wanted the Sony Ericsson brand earbuds, since they’re specific to my phone. The product image confirmed that I was receiving a genuine Sony Ericsson product, and I was further convinced by the product title and description. As a repeat Amazon customer, I expected to receive what I was shown (see thumbnail pic).
You’d think Amazon fulfilled my expectation, but no. Here’s what happened…
The headphones were delivered in a flimsy envelope — not quite the bubble wrap-protected box I imagined. The shabby packaging, held together by a piece of tape that looked 10 years past its prime, was an unwelcome surprise. Where was the original Sony Ericsson packaging I saw on the site? It took me about 15 minutes just to be sure this was actually what I ordered (”Is this even an authentic Sony Ericsson product?”). These types of situations are what have kept me away from online auction sites.
Granted, this was a small, $10 purchase. But imagine ordering an expensive watch or handbag online, or even a gift delivered to a loved one. How can you be certain that the product is authentic or will be appropriately packaged and well-presented? We can’t. Instead, we rely on past experiences, product images, and brand recognition to do the job..
I’ve been spoiled by some great e-commerce sites, including Amazon, over the years. They’ve made my shopping experience delightful from start to finish by delivering the product as I imagined it, almost every time. And I’m a loyal customer to those sites. But now I’ve got a strange feeling about Amazon. They’re the industry leader for a reason. They revolutionized online order fulfillment. In fact, they’re supposed to be the gold standard of e-tailers.
Am I expecting too much from e-commerce sites? I don’t think so. In fact, I’m verbalizing what all people who purchase online are thinking — no, expecting. Consumers demand an easy and delightful shopping experience, from the first click to the time the order is in our hands.
I won’t give up browsing on Amazon just yet — they still have great product details and customer-generated reviews — but they’ve lost me as a paying customer for now. And regardless, I don’t see myself buying electronics from them anymore.
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Written by:Peter Lee
Spirit Air: You Don’t Have to Turn on the Red Light
Spirit Airlines used to have great customer service. It was refreshing, actually. In the late 90’s, you could fly round-trip from, say, Detroit to New York for about $120 in a hand-me-down jet staffed with friendly people. It was a great, low-cost airline that was always able to surpass its customers (even lower) expectations.
But all that’s changed. Today, they have a brand-spanking-new fleet of mid-sized jets staffed with would-be friendly people who, bound and gagged with corporate red tape, can’t do much to help the customer even when they want to. Sure, the fares are lower than ever, but even with off-peak flights for as low as $1 (yes, really), it’s still not worth it. Why? Because, according to their current CEO, Ben Baldanza, the customer is always a cheapskate — and wrong.
Maybe it’s time to put a dimmer on those red light specials. They say that “a fish stinks from the head,” and if there’s ever been any proof, its this email Mr. Baldanza sent to a customer by accidentally hitting “reply to all” on his BlackBerry:
“Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”
But, wait! There’s more!! Here’s their Director of Communications, Alison Russell, on a separate incident where blogger Alex Rudloff told readers, “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines“:
“We wouldn’t respond to a blog post. This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great.”
Oh, really?? More on my horror story with Spirit 2.0 in a moment. But first, let’s see what Google has to say about the company:
Here’s what Rudloff had to say in his blog post:
“So, instead of losing $5 on a customer who has every right to be angry, I’ll write this blog post and tell all my traveling buddies to add Spirit Airlines to their growing list of airlines to avoid,” Rudloff wrote on Aug. 4. “If Google works their magic like they usually do, at least one of the 4,931 daily searches for “Spirit Airlines” will turn up this result and save someone the headache (and hopefully end up costing Spirit Airlines $6 or more).”
Rudloff later told the Orlando Sentinel that:
“I think ultimately that customers have to speak out and they have to engage in word of mouth . . . That’s what the market responds to.”
Cool! What a great segue…
All Spirit, No Soul
Last May, I was flying from New York (LGA) to Detroit (DTW), as I often do for Memorial Day weekend — my favorite time to vacation in Detroit. I was running late. The car service was half an hour late, and traffic wasn’t moving, thanks to jackknifed truck on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. After paying top dollar to sit in a car for two hours, it was clear that I’d miss the 30-minutes-before-departure check-in deadline. So, I called Spirit Air’s 1-800 number, only to find there was no “customer service” option. So I waited on hold for, say, 20 minutes until I eventually hung up and called back, pressing a random — and incorrect — selection in hopes of reaching a human who could tell me what to do about the situation. When I finally reached a customer service rep, she told me to go to the airport and speak to the agents at the check-in counter — where I waited for (you guessed it) another 30 minutes.
After all of that, I got to the airport just before the 30-minute mark, but there was a line — a long one — and not enough agents to serve it. When I got to the front of the line, the agent told me that nothing could be done. If I wanted to book another flight, there was one leaving in an hour, but it would cost as much as my entire round trip. I kindly informed this person that I’d be willing to pay a charge — as is typical with other cheapskate airlines — to switch the ticket, but that buying a whole new one, just for a one-way leg of a round-trip flight was absurd. Then, when I asked for a number for customer service because I wanted to complain about the event — after all, I’d been a customer for 10 years — the guy hands me a card with the same freaking number I’d used earlier to get someone who couldn’t help me! When I brought that to the agent’s attention, he said, “I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do about it” — a common refrain at today’s Spirit Air.
So, Northwest Airlines to rescue (for once), and I was on my way to Detroit with a pounding headache and the world’s dumbest $200 missing from my bank account.
On the way back to New York, I was actually looking forward to flying Spirit. “If this isn’t a good trip after that nonsense,” I thought, “I’m so going to blog this.” Checking in with a smile, I handed the agent my ticket. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gorell, but we don’t have a seat with that name on it for this flight,” he said. I told him that was impossible and that I wasn’t imagining the ticket in my hand. Then it hit me: They’d canceled my entire round-trip ticket because they couldn’t serve me in time!
Turning beet-red, I calmly told the agent of my snag in New York. As I retold the story, one-by-one, all four agents at the desk came up to me, visibly upset by what I had to say. I let them know I was a blogger for a company that specializes in planning and optimizing the customer experience, and that I couldn’t believe the airline had tied their hands from doing anything of value for its “passengers.” Then a crazy thing happened. They actually encouraged me to blog about it! As it turned out, everyone at the counter seemed upset with the company’s new policies, too. I could tell they were biting their tongues, until…
“We used to be #1 in customer service,” said one agent. “Now we can’t help people.”
Her co-workers looked me in the eye and nodded. It was such an honest moment that I actually bought a one-way ticket from them… for the flight I’d already, supposedly, booked. (Oh, and since this was a last-minute one-way flight to NYC, you can be sure I got red flagged for security screening.)
For months, I let it slide. After speaking with the good people at Spirit in Detroit, I worried that blogging about the experience might put their jobs at risk. That is, until I saw Mack Collier’s post, which hipped me to the fact that a lot of other bloggers out there are also convinced that Spirit’s CEO — and not its employees — is what’s putting their jobs at risk by causing this fish to stink:
Sorry, Mr. Baldanza, but you can’t fly faster than word of mouth (or blog).
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Michael Dell’s Lousy Investment Advice
“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
Michael Dell said that about Apple 10 years ago.
Pretty, pretty…bad advice!
Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports:
Apple’s (AAPL) market capitalization today is more than double that of Dell (DELL):
Apple: $140.4 billion
Dell: $62.27 billion
But don’t shed a tear for Micheal Dell. According to a list of the 400 wealthiest Americans published last month, his net worth is more than triple Steve Jobs’.
Michael Dell: $15.5 billion
Steve Jobs: $4.9 billion
I’m not crying for either one but I just finished syncing my iPod with my MacBookPro. Apple marketing is brilliant but the company is very far from perfect. Apple’s brand is eroding and it missed a huge opportunity to make more headway into the business market because it insists on pursuing a broken distribution model.
Are you a better fortune teller than Michael Dell? Please let us know where you think Apple and Dell will be in 2017.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Radiohead Lets Fans Choose How Much to Pay for Album
Remember when people thought Prince was crazy for selling his music exclusively online?* Or the time when William Morris Agency Worldwide Head of International Music Ed Bicknell scoffed at me for asking why any band in its right marketing mind needs a major label? Well, it looks like Radiohead is putting its money where your mouse is.
Arguably the most influential band of the past 15 years, Radiohead has decided to release its next album online. But here’s catch: You choose what to pay.**
According to Time Magazine:
The ramifications of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want experiment will take time to sort out, but for established artists at least, turning what was once their highest value asset — a much buzzed-about new album — into a loss leader may be the wave of the future. Even under the most lucrative record deals, the ones reserved for repeat, multi-platinum superstars, the artists can end up with less than 30% of overall sales revenue (which often is then split among several band members). Meanwhile, as record sales decline, the concert business is booming. In July, Prince gave away his album 3121 for free in the U.K. through the downmarket Mail on Sunday newspaper. At first he was ridiculed. Then he announced 21 consecutive London concert dates — and sold out every one of them.
Now that’s confidence. In fact, that’s the point. Just like countless bestselling book authors who make most of their money from speaking engagements and new business, musicians generally make more from live performances than they do albums.
Besides, isn’t it time to stick it to the major labels? On his Lefsetz Letter blog, Bob “the most feared man in music biz criticism” Lefsetz had this [expletive deleted] to say:
It’s not like Radiohead’s living in a different world. But they’re playing by a different rule book. One that says the money flows from the music, that people have to believe in you, that you’ve got to treat them right.
[expletive deleted], you can barely get a ticket to a Radiohead show. The venues aren’t big and the demand is incredible. They’re doing it all wrong, don’t they see??
Well, obviously they don’t.
This is big news. This says the major labels are [expletive deleted]. Untrustworthy with a worthless business model. Radiohead doesn’t seem to care if the music is free. Not that they believe it will be. Because believers will give you ALL THEIR MONEY!
This is the industry’s worst nightmare. Superstar band, THE superstar band, forging ahead by its own wits. Proving that others can too. And they will.
Amen, brother.
A longtime Radiohead fan myself, I intend to pre-order In Rainbows at full iTunes (over)price, right after I convert £’s to $’s — which, the exchange rate being what it is, I reckon will be more painful than actually spending the money. Oh, and if anyone from the band is reading this, I just want you to know that I downloaded Hail to the Thief for free. It won’t happen again.
If you’re still wondering what a band like Radiohead can teach you about creating win-wins for you and your customers fans, perhaps it’s time to revisit “The ROI of Free“.
[*Author’s Note: Whether you still think Prince is nuts for changing his name to that bizarre symbol icon in the 90’s is another story. But, hey, he made more money on a song called “Let’s Go Crazy” than most of us will make in our lives, so who are we to judge?]
[**Unless you forgo the download and buy the delux box set version — limited edition vinyl, posters, goodies, etc. — only available from the Radiohead website.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
