I just finished reading my good friend Chris Anderson's book titled The Long Tail on my overnight flight and was very excited to see how it turned out. I remember spending time with Chris on Sundays at a San Fran Starbucks, trying to assemble the mountains of information he collected for the project into a readable book.
I highly recommend the book. In a nutshell, CA describes how our traditional views of supply and demand economics need to be updated to a world where anybody can produce a good, and anyone can buy it. If you think of books, the typical Borders contains a massive 100,000 book titles within its walls. Amazon’s online inventory contains 3.7 Million titles. In the book world, 25% of book sales are from products that simply aren’t available in offline retail stores. Chris provides example after example of where this new long tail of products is creating a whole new approach to business.
One item that stuck with me while sipping double-grande lattes with CA was this term, The Recommendation Age. One could argue that we always lived in a recommendation age, with word of mouth referrals pointing us to the hot restaurant or jazz bar. But the Information Age exposed us to information from a fire hose. With a few clicks, we can be at the digital storefront of almost any vineyard around the globe, no longer stuck with what our local wine shoppe chose to carry. But now with access to all of these options, we can’t choose. We now look to recommendations to help narrow the field, where previously we let the shoppe owner do that.
As we continue to help clients unlock their information and bring it to the web, we need to think about how they present it to their customers. Sometimes a well formulated recommendation for a good Malbec is better than a list of 10,000 wines.
One item that stuck with me while sipping double-grande lattes with CA was this term, The Recommendation Age. One could argue that we always lived in a recommendation age, with word of mouth referrals pointing us to the hot restaurant or jazz bar. But the Information Age exposed us to information from a fire hose. With a few clicks, we can be at the digital storefront of almost any vineyard around the globe, no longer stuck with what our local wine shoppe chose to carry. But now with access to all of these options, we can’t choose. We now look to recommendations to help narrow the field, where previously we let the shoppe owner do that.
As we continue to help clients unlock their information and bring it to the web, we need to think about how they present it to their customers. Sometimes a well formulated recommendation for a good Malbec is better than a list of 10,000 wines.
08/29/06: Getting Wiki With It
I'm being asked more and more about Wikis from my business colleagues. This latest question came from a surprising source, a dear friend of mine and CEO of a Turkish fuel company. My dear friend, Jan Nahum, invited me out to spend the weekend watching the Turksih GP, which his company, Petrol Ofisi, had recently begun sponsoring. On the way to the race, he had the driver take us downtown by a billboard he was particualry proud of. I loved it and took a picture.
While we were watching the race from his great VIP area, he started asking me about Wikis and whether they were useful in business. Wikis are an approach to allow many people to easily edit a page. The term Wiki is a Hawaiian term for 'fast'. While anyone can edit a wiki page, those edits can be easily rolled back and are traceable to the specific editor.
Back to the race and Jan's questions. While I was busy devouring the delicious lamb kebobs, Jan proceeded to tell me about a pilot project they were allowing employees to create a best practices wiki, where employees could add, update and edit best practices for all employees to use. In the pilot, the managers were uncomfortable allowing just anyone to edit these pages. Falling back on a command and control management style, the managers wanted the wiki to be modified to allow submissions to be reviewed and approved. Jan wasn't sure how he felt about this, so he asked me for my thoughts.
Taking a final sip of my Raki, I shared with Jan a few guiding principals that I have for Wikis. I thought you might appreciate reading them as well:
1- Allow accountable editing by all – anyone should be able to contribute, and everyone should be able to know the source of those edits. Public accountability will ensure that contributions are useful
2- Feedback rather than feed forward control – Wikis make it just as easy to make changes or roll back changes. Wikis allow you to see each change and even compare prior versions. The value of the contributions by as wide an audience as possible far outweighs the issues associated with loss of control.
3- Train potential contributors on the system – Wikis are bit different than other content management systems, be sure to show people how to use it
4- Highlight high contributors – people need to know that their contributions are being recognized. Wikis make it easy to measure contributions.
Back to the race and Jan's questions. While I was busy devouring the delicious lamb kebobs, Jan proceeded to tell me about a pilot project they were allowing employees to create a best practices wiki, where employees could add, update and edit best practices for all employees to use. In the pilot, the managers were uncomfortable allowing just anyone to edit these pages. Falling back on a command and control management style, the managers wanted the wiki to be modified to allow submissions to be reviewed and approved. Jan wasn't sure how he felt about this, so he asked me for my thoughts.
Taking a final sip of my Raki, I shared with Jan a few guiding principals that I have for Wikis. I thought you might appreciate reading them as well:
1- Allow accountable editing by all – anyone should be able to contribute, and everyone should be able to know the source of those edits. Public accountability will ensure that contributions are useful
2- Feedback rather than feed forward control – Wikis make it just as easy to make changes or roll back changes. Wikis allow you to see each change and even compare prior versions. The value of the contributions by as wide an audience as possible far outweighs the issues associated with loss of control.
3- Train potential contributors on the system – Wikis are bit different than other content management systems, be sure to show people how to use it
4- Highlight high contributors – people need to know that their contributions are being recognized. Wikis make it easy to measure contributions.
I've been having a great time at the Copenhagen Fashion Week. I'm always amazed at how people can take what we see on the runway and transform it to something we would buy at Nordstrom's. My friend and exquisite fashion designer, Stella Nova, was featuring her new line at Fashion Week and asked me to attend.
Stella and I took our morning jog around Enhave Plads before heading over to the Bella Center for Fashion Week. As we went by the fountains, we saw a sea of Blue Rubber Ducks. At first I thought it might have been some protest against down pillows, but upon closer inspection, I saw a very creative geurilla marketing campaign for the local Adidas store.
The ducks had the famous Adidas logo and a note which read: "I've swum too far - help me get back home!" And on the bottom it says "Reward for my return at adidas Original store". Stella remembered hearing of the new Adidas store opening around the corner, so we each took a lost duck back to the store. Once at the store, we received a free t-shirt. Never passing up on something free, we each took a shirt while we continued to look around the store.
The next morning Stella and I had to laugh as we both appeared for our run in our Adidas shirts!
08/10/06: New Zealand Knows Advertising
Just a quick note. I decided to take a trip down to Hawke's Bay New Zealand at the invitation of a long time friend Paul Mooney, the winemaker at Mission Vineyards. While in the hotel, I saw this great commercial for Hyundai and just had to pass it along. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
08/01/06: Getting your customers to work for you
If you don’t get a receipt, your purchase is free… and other ways your customers can help you.
It seems that I have been spending a lot of time in airports lately, which offers plenty of access to convenience stands for snacks. While there are few airports that I actually look forward to jetting through, I am pretty sure that Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport ranks as my least favorite. The architect Paul Andreu must have had kids when he was designing it, because the tube tunnels appear to be an homage to the Habit-trails where children keep their pet hamsters.
Trying to keep my time in the CDG than time to a minimum, I grabbed an espresso from a local merchant while on layover in Miami, a city certainly familiar with a good espresso. A sign on the counter offered a free purchase if I didn’t get a receipt. Proprietors do this to enlist the support of customers to make sure that the cashier handles the transaction appropriately through the cash register rather than her pocket. Every customer becomes a free security guard of sorts, helping the shop owner keep everything on the up and up. I started thinking about how this can also be true on the web.
Some web sites enlist customers already. Amazon has a link where you can report finding the product cheaper somewhere else. They don’t guarantee a price match, but this makes it easy for them to keep on top of the competition. MySpace, YouTube and other sites that thrive on postings from the public feature options for visitors to report offensive or copyright protected content. As long as the companies treat these reports seriously, this tends to shield the companies from legal issues.
As you are creating your web site, think about how you can enlist the support of your site visitors to make your site and your business better. From competitive monitoring, site performance checks to adding new features or products, interested site visitors are willing to offer free support. One important item to consider: be polite. If someone takes the time to help you, be sure to thank them personally.
Trying to keep my time in the CDG than time to a minimum, I grabbed an espresso from a local merchant while on layover in Miami, a city certainly familiar with a good espresso. A sign on the counter offered a free purchase if I didn’t get a receipt. Proprietors do this to enlist the support of customers to make sure that the cashier handles the transaction appropriately through the cash register rather than her pocket. Every customer becomes a free security guard of sorts, helping the shop owner keep everything on the up and up. I started thinking about how this can also be true on the web.
Some web sites enlist customers already. Amazon has a link where you can report finding the product cheaper somewhere else. They don’t guarantee a price match, but this makes it easy for them to keep on top of the competition. MySpace, YouTube and other sites that thrive on postings from the public feature options for visitors to report offensive or copyright protected content. As long as the companies treat these reports seriously, this tends to shield the companies from legal issues.
As you are creating your web site, think about how you can enlist the support of your site visitors to make your site and your business better. From competitive monitoring, site performance checks to adding new features or products, interested site visitors are willing to offer free support. One important item to consider: be polite. If someone takes the time to help you, be sure to thank them personally.
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