Louise McGregor Business

End of an Era

Today is the last day for Icelanders to eat at their local McDonalds. It’s a direct consequence of the crisis, Iceland’s isolation combined with fairly dire financial situation means that it’s no longer possible for McDonalds to import their supplies and sell burgers profitably. Apparently burgers at the Iceland McDonalds were above 5USD, almost the most expensive in Europe.

The venues will be taken over by a local business, they’ll be rebranded as “Metro” and offer a more local menu.

But today I suspect Icelanders will be lining up for their last fix of fries and flurries.

Louise McGregor Buzzword

Cutting Edge

“We want to be smart innovators – not cutting edge” said my colleague. I still not exactly sure what distinction he was trying to make, since avoiding cutting edge sounds like a need to avoid risk – but innovation requires that you take a risk.

But what does “cutting edge” come from? And what does it refer to?

Now days it means something new, so new that it might not be fully tested or fully know.It’s often used to apply to technology.

In terms of origin I only find information that it come from the idea of a knife’s blade – the cutting edge – leading the cut.

To take the expression to extremes someone has come up with the phrase “bleeding edge“, maybe that’s what my colleague meant.

Image apples via pixabay

Louise McGregor Leadership

Shining Eyes

How do you know if you’re engaging and inspiring your team? According to Benjamin Zander you know when their eyes are shining.

I reviewed “The Art of Possibility” written by Benjamin Zander and his wife Rosamund Stone Zander earlier this year, since then I’ve given copies to colleagues and friends. I mentioned it to a friend who lives in the US, she replied that her husband and seen him speak and recommended this talk from TED. It’s funny and inspiring – not just my word it’s according to almost 5000 ratings.

 

Louise McGregor Editorial

Three Cheers For The Geeks


Being a Geek makes you more productive, according to Chris Garrett, whose own geek credentials are impeccable. He points out that thinking about systems applies to problems outside computer systems, and that outsourcing to give yourself more think time is a great approach and not lazy at all.

My first study was in science (Biochemistry if you must know) and I have long held that the analysis skills and process thinking from this study have helped me since then in unrelated fields. I work with geeks and given that a lot of my job is about designing and managing websites I’m sure I have a small and happy inner geek.

So I’m really happy to see a positive take on what Geeks may bring to work.

And if you’re not sure whether you qualify as geek try this online test to check (hint being female automatically scores you extra points).

Image: Geek

Louise McGregor Communication, Marketing

Building Buzz via Exclusivity

ABC is launching a new show, a comedy called “Modern Family” and one of the ways they’re creating buzz is by giving a preview of the show to a relatively small group – just 20,000. This elite fan group are the “Inner Circle”, recruited by the station in earlier marketing campaigns, and they’ll get a code that lets them see the pilot programme on their ABC Player.

The marketing plan behind this is that those in the “Inner Circle” will create a lot of buzz around the programme, particularly on social media tools, and ABC hopes the key will be shared.

Google did a similar thing with the launch of gmail, initially you could only get an account if you were invited.

What is interesting is both companies are promoting something that has potential to reach an unlimited audience.  Once broadcast the TV show reaches all subscribers to that channel, and since it’s invitation-only release in 2004 gmail now has more than 100 million accounts. However they’ve chosen to create “scarcity”.

Why would a business do this? Simply to create a greater demand, basic economics says that if a supply is limited while demand grows then the price the supplier can ask rises. This is why strawberries are expensive at certain times of the year – it is not connected to the cost of production but a reflection on what pricing the market will permit.

In the case of ABC the higher price would translate as larger audiences leading to greater advertising revenue.

I’m curious to see how this will work out for ABC – will the buzz from 20,000 of the “Inner Circle” be enough to create a critical mass and win the ratings war? The show should be screening now, it will be interesting.

images champagne,  graph from Wikimedia Commons

Louise McGregor Customers, Marketing

Pay what you think it’s worth

Years ago my parents when to a concert to raise money for musicians in Sarejevo, the tickets were free. You had to donate to leave. It was brilliant, everyone there was already ready to show support and by the time they’d heard the music they were in a good and generous mood. I’ve always wondered what the ticket “price” really was. I’ve also wondered if anyone else had tried this model.

Today I read of some other cases that have; a taxi driver, a chiropractor and a law firm.  It is another alternative payment structure like “freemium” – where a free model is available, but you pay a premium to get all the features.

I think it works under two conditions.

(1) when you are providing a personal service where clients and supppliers meet each other during the profession of the service, where both parties trust each other and have learnt to communicate. In other words where there’s an existing relationship.

(2) where it’s easy to compare the market price for the service, in the Concert example the attendees were all regular concert goers so knew roughly the price of a ticket. I’m currently having rather massive dental work done, it’s time consuming and complex. Although I know what a regular treatment costs I would probably underestimate the costs of this work.

I think it’s less likely to work where the service is anonymous, for example a retail relationship where it won’t be necessary to return to that supplier, or a service provided by an anonymous corporation – for example an insurer.

I’d like to be wrong, but I suspect without the relationship our own self interest will take over.

photo cello

Louise McGregor Communication

Internet for content

I firmly believe that content is the most important part of a website, and that visitors are more likely to repeat their visits to your site for new content rather than great design or cool widgets. So when I read “CHART OF THE DAY: The Internet Is Finally, Primarily A Content Platform” I was cheered.

I opened up the chart, at first glance it seemed great, but when I squinted at it a little more I wasn’t so sure.

So I went through their figures of actual time spent on each of their activities and my graph looks a little different.

It seems to me that some of the “communications” we were doing in 2003, we are in 2009 doing under the community category. This makes sense; my sunday brunchers sort out time and place via facebook – whereas once we would have used email or in really ancient times called each other. I use flickr rather than email to share photos (although I might still email people the link) and aren’t we all tweeting now?

I also took a look at the change, and here the obvious winners are community and content.  Community has gone from zero to 181 minutes per month of our online time. Of the 413 extra minutes per month that we’re spending online 196 of them are in consuming content. If this change continues it won’t be long before content really is king.