Archive for July, 2005

July 30, 2005

Several Voices in My Head, All Talking At Once …

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Whew, what a week. Thank god the heat broke. A few random observations, links, questions and ideas that I’ve been meaning to post this week but haven’t had the chance:

1. Sue Pelletier thinks she’d rather work with someone who’s nice but not-that-skilled than with someone who’s a talented jerk. It’s admittedly a very false dichotomy, but I’ll take the bait and say I disagree.

More representative of my thinking on this subject is the following line I read in Tom Peters’ latest self-important “manifesto”:

They say they favor a “team” that works and lives in “harmony.”
I say, “Give me a raucous brawl among the most creative people imaginable.”

Amen. The list of visionary, brilliant, world-shaking, innovative, creative, dynamic people who are also “nice” is woefully short. Now, as I said, this is a false dichotomy, and just as there are levels of niceness there are levels of “jerkitude.” Are you talking about someone who’s brusque and determined and tends to hurt other people’s feelings, or someone who’s planting lies about you in the ears of upper management, or, you know, slashing the tires of his enemies?

But get a roomful of talented and creative people (who are by definition also opinionated — very, very opinionated) together, and let them fight it out, and in the end you’ll probably wind up with something — something a lot more interesting than you’ll get from a roomful of perfectly pleasant people chatting through things with a professional consultant writing those things down on a flipchart.

Personally, I’d rather spend my weekends with nice people, but my weekdays working with and learning from brilliant, talented people — whether I like them or not is immaterial (as long as they’re not slashing my tires).

(Actually, the tire-slashers can make for some fairly interesting weekends, too.)

2. I’ve added a couple new association-sponsored blogs I found to the blogroll. I like keeping track of them here, so if you know of any other blogs officially sponsored by trade associations or professional societies, let me know and I’ll add them.

3. Saw Murderball. Loved it. Go see it!

4. Bob Bly asks, “Are customer surveys a waste of time?” He points to the fact that the Gap embraced focus groups and customer surveys only to see their sales fall like a stone, so former employees and analysts claim the company has moved away from the “instinct and emotion” that makes clothing companies successful.

I’ve said before that it’s dangerous for associations to overrely on customer surveys. In a lot of organizations you hear about the “annual member survey” as if it’s somehow impressive that once a year the association asks its members for feedback. Your system should, in fact, allow for the capture of member opinions/data on every single interaction between the member and the association (including external partners), and that data should be quantified and measured (not stored in a Word document somewhere).

However, I think it’s a big mistake — and one that companies and organizations make all the time — to base huge, momentous decisions about programs, structure, benefits, etc. on ideas garnered from a focus group or survey. “Instinct and emotion” isn’t just good for the clothing industry. It’s good for any industry, including (perhaps especially) a “knowledge-based” one like the association industry. Customers don’t know what they want until you surprise them with it.

July 26, 2005

Scratch That Niche

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Yesterday Slate posted an interesting article on Geico’s marketing strategy. Its seemingly scatter-shot approach — considering its ubiquitous commercials can vary wildly in approach, from reality-show parodies to painfully dull talking lizards — is actually based on the fact that they have a singular product and a broad market:

“Geico’s scattershot approach makes more sense when you think about their customers. Car insurance has perhaps the broadest target audience of any product. Who is Geico selling to? Pretty much everyone—man or woman, gay or straight, black or white, hip or hick. If you drive a car, they want your business. Even extremely broad brands, like Coca-Cola, still have niches they’re trying to dominate (it’s mostly young people who drink sugary sodas, for example). But car insurance companies know no niche. We all drive. We all have insurance (I hope). And we all stay insured through every stage of our lives—no matter our mood or marital status or income.

“As a result, Geico needs to air a range of spots that will appeal to many different people. Some ads are straightforward and tame (aimed at older drivers), while some are absurd (the kids seem to like this). All for a single product.”

It’s an interesting consideration for associations, particularly trade associations, as we deal with broad markets: Is it a matter of providing specific services for specific niches? Or is it a matter of marketing like we do? Or (probably) some combination of both?

A single “benefit” we offer may be of value to different sub-segments of an industry. That doesn’t mean they’re going to respond to the same message.

July 23, 2005

The White-on-Red Text, Part 2 …

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Chris says he liked the old look better and I should take some Excedrin. So, let’s make it work for everybody: now you can choose which look you want to use (helpfully named “White Cow” or :”Red Cow”) by selecting the appropriate look-and-feel on the right. Or, you can select the blog’s default theme for an even simpler look or if you hate cows. Ain’t WordPress cool?

Okay, enough playing around….

July 22, 2005

The White-on-Red Text …

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… was giving me a headache. Let’s try this look out for a bit.

July 19, 2005

Extreme With an “E”

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The ASAE Conference blog is now officially launched and is located at www.xtremeasaeblog.org. Sue at MeetingsNet thinks the “X” is tired; Dave Gammel agrees and, well, I guess I do, too. But despite the fact that the conference theme reminds one of makeovers and Mountain Dew (and will make anyone snicker who has seen the movie “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”), there’s great substance there. And the blog promises to be a lot of fun, too.

July 16, 2005

This Is Not a Blog

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So Nielsen/NetRatings has unveiled a study showing 2/3 of people who read blogs don’t realize they are reading blogs, according to Jonathan Carson. They either don’t know what a blog is, or claim to have heard of them but don’t really read them. That’s because they’re not reading blogs — they’re reading websites!

You know what’s the most interesting thing about this survey? It’s the fact that the common-sense response to the finding can only be … “Who cares?” Who cares if people know that what they’re reading is called a “blog” by a bunch of consultants and geeks? Jonathan Carson wonders if “blog” will become a “b2b term” not used by consumers. Probably. It doesn’t really matter.

Blogs are just a tool. The bigger issue in play for organizations is how the use of language is changing on the web, and how conversations have been enabled which makes them inevitable. Tools enabling this trend include blogs, RSS, wikis, audio, you name it. There’ll be more new tools coming down the pike, but they are all being driven by the larger trends of conversation, collaboration, and community.

Asking “people on the street” if they read blogs is like asking them if they view websites that are fully XHTML-compliant.

Of course, even taking into account these people who read blogs without knowing it, the “blog-reading” public is still a minority. That’s going to change — not because people will suddenly start reading self-proclaimed blogs (like this one). It will change because more and more websites will be “bloggified.”

(Via Steve Rubel.)