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I want to give a recommendation out to Bullseye, a CNBC program that runs from 6pm to 7pmET. It is hosted by Dylan Ratigan, who gives the program a distinct personality. I think he asks great questions and gets to the point quickly with his interviews.
The segments are also unique. To give you a flavor, some pieces I have seen recently are a professor talking about Wi-Fi for farming, an interview with Tom Wilson (president and CEO of Palace Sports and Entertainment, owners of the championship Detroit Pistons and Tampa Bay Lightning), and a test drive of the Cooper Mini in their parking lot. The mix is eclectic and interesting.
Some night next week, when you are tired of the network talking heads, switch over to Bullseye and give it a look.
I am linking to these posts to make sure I don't lose them. Both are by Anita Sharpe at Worthwhile Magazine.
The first was called Six Things That Inspire You. I starting writing this entry last week when this was orginally posted. For some reason, I have had a hard time finding six things. Taking five days is also probably not the point of the exercise, but I think my standards are pretty high for things that truly inspire me. I think it is because I am very practical and for something to move me it has to be amazing. So, here are my five things are:
And it hit me: while there is certainly no excellence without talent, it's over-the-top enthusiasm that makes the real difference. True excellence fueled by passion doesn't have to be outwardly encouraged, even in children. It doesn't require "motivation" -- at least as we commonly practice it.True excellence is about finding that one thing that you do well and want to do many hours a day...
Buzz.
Everyone wants it. It's generally free. There is always people motivated to jump in.
I mean who wouldn't want the buzz Clinton was getting last week. The National Journal has a good essay on that very subject. Writer William Powers' question is "What if you can't trust the buzz?"
The Wall Street Journal has the bi-yearly "Why Apple Is Going Down the Tubes?' article (the article is actually called Is Apple Losing Its Sheen? [sub.]).
As recent Apple convert and follower of all that is business, the article drives me nuts. The first half of the article is how their share numbers continue to slip. This is nothing new is added to the discussion.
They then talk about how people aren't in a hurry to buy new hardware. I haven't seen any numbers on this, but I think the lifecycle of an Apple is longer than that of a PC. It will be three to four years between purchases for me versus my old two years. So, again I am not surprised.
The other thing I noticed is that they talk to resellers to get a sense of what it going on in the market. I think the Apple Stores are hurting resellers. When I was buying my PowerBook, everyone told me there was no advantage to buying from a reseller. So, I bought from the Apple store here in Milwaukee.
They also try to bring out the point that iPods will not bring Apple new customers. Wrong. That is exactly what happened with me. I got the iPod, loved it, and when I needed a laptop, I was deciding between an iBook and PowerBook, not between a PC and a Mac.
My last comment(s) is this. For those of you who have been thinking about making the switch, take a really long look at Apple. The biggest thing you will save is time and you can't know what I am talking about until you have one. My Apple doesn't crash. Start keeping a log of the number of times you have to restart your PC.
The other thing I love how well everything works together. We downloaded some video from our Sony camcorder the other day. All I had to do was plug the Firewire cable into the computer. iMovie immediately recognized the camera and I could control it remotely through the software. My Nokia 3650 talks directly with PowerBook via Bluetooth. You have no idea how much time you will save.
Scott Rosenburg discusses his comments from Supernova. He takes a less optimist view to the adoption of blogging by the wider corporate world. I have to agree. If companies don't have time to talk to bloggers, how can they be putting any importance on having internal folks creating blogs?
Ben Sliverman at PR Fuel tells companies how to let your customer be your evangelist.
I got my Business 2.0 yesterday and the interview on pg. 34 is with Jeff Angus. He runs a blog called Management by Baseball.
First of all, I love new biz blogs. Second, it is great to see a blogger being used as the source for an article in a major business magazine.
"Okay. Sixty-three-thousand, one hundred and forty minus one sixty-three, plus one twenty-nine zero thirteen fifty-six forty-eight ninety-seven, minus zero zero five, ninety-nine, plus zero zero zero zero zero, plus four seven zero one six, one seventy-seven one forty-three zero zero zero November Alpha, plus zero zero one ninety-seven forty-seven zero twenty-five fifty-one four sixty-eight eighteen twelve twelve eighty-three two fifty-seven zero twenty-three."He took a breath, then continued. "Up two sixty-three, left seventeen, plus eleven ninety-five, minus one sixty-five zero zero one twenty-six eighty-three three fifty-six zero eight zero fifty forty-seven zero five, north stars, zero sixty-eight zero ninety-seven three fifty-six, no ullage"
-The first course correction radioed from Ken Mattingly to Frank Borman during the Apollo 8 mission. Borman was writing the instructions down and then repeated them back to Mattingly to confirm accuracy. Jim Lovell then entered the numbers into the on-board computer to program the rockets that needed to be fired.
[from Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 by Robert Zimmerman (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998)]
If you haven't seen it, Scoble decided we was going to single-handedly fix Microsoft's marketing. Fellow employee Kevin Schofield took issue with the easy as which Robert thought he could fix everything. John Porcaro added his thoughts and there were probably others.
I'd like to add my belated thoughts. I think marketing is hard too.
For two and a half years, I worked in the family business with my father. Going in, I knew that marketing was going to be key in taking the business to the next step. Everything my father had done for the prior five years was through word of mouth. The thing we had going for us was once we started a relationship with a customer it lasted forever. He still does business with his first customer from 23 years ago. We needed to get prospecting for new customers.
Our first campaign was based on replicating success. We focused on industry segment that we already did alot of business with. The segment was relatively small (about 1000 companies). We decided to use direct mail as the delivery method based of the widely varying use of technology within the industry. We created a list from in-house information, industry guides and a few purchased mailing lists.
The package was simple. We had a doubled sided four color sell sheet designed and printed. The envelope was clear (similar to the ones magazines sometimes come in). We thought seeing the sell sheet was improve the chances of it being opened. This was also around the time with all of the trouble at the U.S. Capitol with anthrax. Besides the sell sheet, there was a personalized introductory letter and two business cards.
We started mailing them and saw immediate response. We kept very detailed records of response rates and conversions rates. We would average between 6% and 12% response rates on the mailings. The customer conversion rate varied widely, but I can tell you we doubled our customer base in about 12 months. We were very happy with the results.
We decided to look at another industry segment that we had experience in and duplicate the campaign. We decided to use the same delivery mechanism. We produced second sell sheet with visuals and text to match the new market. The short story is the second campaign flopped. Our response rate measured in the tenths of a point.
Some days I think I was lucky with the first campaign. I do think I understood that market and who we were talking to. I clearly didn't understand the second market. I think I was tried to sell similar products to what we made for other people and I should have been selling the services we could provide. I am still not sure.
Marketing is hard.
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