(really) entrepreneureal

Emergency Rooms have a really bad rap.  Drab, barren of any comfy furniture whatsoever, filled with sick people and, worst of all, usually painted an awful green color.  How fitting.  So when I hit the ER this past week for some stitches to the chin, I wasn’t exactly expecting to have a great time – but just how bad a time, even I would never have guessed.  And interestingly, it had nothing to do with the people – the admin people, nurses and doctor were all more than amiable – but more with the seeming total disregard for basic tenets of design that had gone into the place.  Here, in chronological order, are the design problems I encountered over the course of the evening:

7:35pm

I enter through the front of the hospital from the regular parking lot.  No need for real ER parking, since I’m not about to keel over.  Unfortunately, this means I have to “sign in”.  A quick gesture to my chin grants me automatic access, and I’m off into the bowels of the hospital.

7:37pm

I finally find the ER, which is so unremarkable that I almost miss it.  No sign in desk here, just a huge security desk that is so high I can’t tell if someone’s behind it.  Reminds me of a kids play fort.  Overall, it does nothing to make me feel safe, since I wonder what the security is meant to protect me against.

7:38pm

After looking around the micro waiting room, I eventually notice an unmarked door Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve noticed a trend of late in web design: a shift toward edgier, more unconvential navigation, with a distinct injection of humor, sarcasm, and playfulness.

Let’s take a look – first up is Neutron, a San Francisco branding firm:

OK, this is a branding firm (so we can expect it to be edgier), but in many ways Neutron is flouting the basic tenets of “good” web design: clear language that users expect (and understand), a standard columned layout – all of which make it clear what a user is supposed to do next (i.e. click here, scroll over this or whatever). It gets clearer when you mouse over the text, which is almost impossible not to do (and this is good):

Click on the link, and things start to look more normal.  Standard blocks of text, a more sectioned layout…

But look a little closer, and the quirkier side of the company starts to show through:

Note the non-standard language: “What is” instead of “About us”, “Where is” instead of “Contact us” (which is where we usually find the requisite google map), and best of all… Read the rest of this entry »

I’m currently in Quebec, Canada, and have been having a great time visiting family, seeing friends, and eating poutine.  The one thing I do miss, however, is something I take totally for granted back in San Francisco: connectivity.

Always connected to the web in some way, either through my trusty MacBook Pro, slick – but battered – iPhone, or even those cool internet touch-tables at Tully’s, I’m never far from the trusted internets and Facebook, Twitter, all my blog feeds and gmail.

Arrive in Montreal, and the first thing I notice is how much I hate AT&T for charging an arm and a leg for data packages.  Airport mode and international data roaming off?  Yes please.  Secondly, I’m amazed at how few people have iPhones or other smartphones.  Because mobile internet access is so costly here, the number of people with traditional brickphones is astoundingly high – at least from an afternoon stroll through Montreal.

Get to Quebec City, and it’s even worse.  Read the rest of this entry »

This email was sitting in my inbox this morning:

Now, I’m not one of the rabid users who has a dedicated Facebook tab in their browser window, but I do check the site at least once, maybe twice a day (sometimes many more).  So why does Facebook think it’s at all OK to send me an email reminding me that I haven’t checked in for all of, what, 4 hours?!  And this to remind me that I have a poke waiting for me?

Please. Facebook, get a grip.

Mark Zuckerberg has done it: Facebook is a household name, and is slowly kicking ass and taking names in the social networking arena (or not so slowly, in fact).  Mommas, poppas, grannies and even babies are signing up, and you know it’s a good thing when people can get fired because of their Fb profile shenanigans.

So why does Facebook consistently flout every social networking rule in the book?  From publishing feeds without asking permission (or allowing for comprehensive user control), to selling Fb user habits to help with ad targeting, it seems like the team at Fb is slowly losing touch with reality.  Sure, Fb is a free service, but the social compact that we all enter into when joining Facebook, whether written down or not, can’t just be thrown out the window.

Take Fb’s latest transgression: changing the page layout to make feed/status updates more visible.  Surely a slimly disguised dig at Twitter (and a sadly belated recognition that Fb didn’t realize that status updates were one of its biggest assets), the fact that the company up and changed the entire layout of the platform without asking its users for permission, or provide opt in/opt out privileges, is a huge social networking no-no. If people hated Facebook for first changing its design a few months back even when they were allowed to opt out, did Fb really think the latest layout change would go over well?

Zuckerberg definitely created a new genre of social networking with Facebook, but if he keeps ignoring the unwritten rules of social networking 101, his baby could quickly find itself in trouble.

I was trolling through my feed reader, and came across this article.

I would love to give you a run down of the piece, and provide an in depth analysis of the writer’s finer points, but I can’t.  Globe and Mail wants to charge me CAD$4.95 plus tax for the privelege of downloading the article – and only then for 30 days.

Excuse me?  Has the staff at Globe and Mail been living in a cave? Or gone off the deep end?

Nobody charges for online content, and certainly not $5.  Every heard of iTunes?  The magical $0.99 number is not ideal for a news article, but still better than nothing.

This is the perfect example of how an anachronistic business model is struggling to change with times and will, ultimately, likely be snuffed out.  Building an empire on a foundation of paper just isn’t viable anymore. This is especially true if you have the audacity to charge over $1000 for a yearly subscription.  What do I get with this – the cell phone numbers of the writers, so I can call them up with clarifying questions? Or maybe access to a members-only G&M club with local events?

No, all I get is a big pile of paper (bull).  So sad.

OK, so not exactly genius, but pretty close.

There’s just something about a humorous, tongue-in-cheek ad that gets to me.  It’s clearly a joke, and since there was a similar pamphlet on every neighbor’s door, I can’t be faulted for simply being unobservant.

So other than a chuckle, what’s missing?

A fridge magnet, so that the next time I’m ankle-deep in water from an overflowing toilet, I’m a phone call away from help (and a $20 discount!).

Recent articles (here and here) have highlighted how the traditional marketing community is barking up the wrong tree in its use of social media (thanks to Seth for pointing the links out).  We all know that it’s only a matter of time until advertising hits social media channels full-on, and until then we get to watch the first adopters – like P&G, and Crest – give it their best shot, and sometimes fail.

Not all social media channels are created the same, however.  For example, during the Beijing Olympics, Lenovo and other companies let their sponsored athletes film short video clips, which were then posted to YouTube.  This as a form of social media marketing is relatively inoffensive because it does little to encroach on regular users; in this case, Lenovo puts content up like any other YouTube user, and has to fight just as hard for eyeballs.

However, there’s another type of social media marketing that’s a little different (and it’s the one that’s causing such a ruckus): sometimes a company decides to piggyback an existing community of users, essentially buying into an exclusive club – and buying access to eyeballs.  The problem with this is that oftentimes the users don’t actually want to see ads, they haven’t given permission to be wooed.  In these cases companies are essentially hijacking online communities for their own use – examples include the companies that are coming onto Twitter,  or using targeted Facebook ads, or placing content on YouTube.  It would be like placing ads in hardback novels: people don’t expect to see ads when reading, so when they do pop up, reactions are often negative.

So what does this portend for the future of marketing and social media?  I think there will be a fundamental shift to a new model of marketing, where companies are perceived as people, citizens, individuals – and must act accordingly, or risk being shunned.

Stay tuned for the next post on what I call “action marketing”, where I dig a little deeper into these issues.

Seth just wrote a post on how even seemingly insignificant marketing decisions can be annoying – and illustrate marketing ineptitude (in this case, for the folks at Peets).

My query, however, is this: I wonder if the decision to not challenge Starbucks was A. political, because some exec wants to save their hide (slander! libel!), or B. cultural, where the marketing team (and you know it was a whole TEAM) can’t even think that creatively.

Thoughts?

In keeping with a self-imposed tradition (albeit one that’s only a year old), I am doing my best to make this Christmas a green one.  Yesterday, however, while shopping for eco-friendly Christmas presents online, I was struck with an interesting conundrum: I want to buy green, but why is it so damn expensive?

Well, I can think of many reasons why eco products are so pricey, and they mostly relate to issues of economies of scale and such (mundane) financial niceties. But when faced with choosing a gift for my godson of 2 years, how to justify the choice of a green gift financially when the non-eco alternative will be so much nicer to my wallet?

The case for buying products that are socially/environmentally/dog/cat/newborn/parakeet friendly all comes down to transparency and resonance.  Do I know enough about the product’s origins that I will value it more highly overall (transparency), and more importantly, do I care (resonance)?  The problem I have found is not that responsible purchases don’t resonate with me – they certainly do – it’s that when giving a gift, this resonance is more often than not non-transferable.  You might like those uber-green alpaca socks sewn through with sugar cane and bamboo shoots and essence of ginkgo biloba, but you can bet your pampered feet that hearing the word “organic” only makes your uncle squirm.

I’ve chosen to approach green gift buying this way: buying “green”, whether for ourselves or for others, isn’t really about the stuff.  Sure, an eco-box is nice on gas mileage, and Patagonia jackets last forever, but the real reason I buy green is for the story, the statement it makes to others.  So this Christmas, rather than fobbing-off a green gift with the most minimal of introductions, turn the focus from the price-tag to the stories, and turn the recipients from non-believers into eco-vangelists.

That is your mission, should you accept it.

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