Bits of Kelly

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Language wrestling: the sport of international travelers

February 28, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Ever been in a foreign country and trying fairly competently (or not) to speak to someone in the local language, only to have the other person reply in English?  Perhaps you even reply to their reply in the local language again, but when it’s their turn they insist on going back to anglais.

The back and forth exchange can continue for quite some time, but usually one party or the other eventually throws in the towel and concedes.  I call this ‘Language Wrestling’, and I play to win.

Look, speaking a language that’s foreign to you but local to where you are takes as much guts as it does technical skill and practice.  But as long as you’re willing to look and sound like an idiot (I’m happy to do both), then this can be good fun and you’ll likely improve your language proficiency to boot.

The hardest language wrestling matches to win are those fought against service personnel (waiters, hotel employees etc.) on their own turf, in mid-range establishments frequented by plenty of tourists.

I guess you can’t blame these folks; many probably wish they were doing something else, and their limit for enduring butchered requests for the exact same product or service probably ended about 10,000 times before you showed up that day with your phrase book vocabulary.

My tip to win a language wrestling match in these cases is to throw your audience off by starting a dialog having nothing to do with where you are.  So as you’re about to order dessert, ask in the local language if the waiter can settle an argument about ‘whether Night Rider is still in re-runs in this country.’   That might just throw them off enough that you have a chance of winning at least one round.

I’ve found that employees in higher-end establishments – the very people who are often college educated and fluent in English (and generally several other languages)- will usually back down pretty quickly during a language wrestling match.  Sometimes they won’t switch to English at all.

Hold on, though.  I don’t consider this a true language wrestling win, because usually this is sort of a “pity forfeiture.” The front desk manager at the Paris Intercontinental probably attended the Sorbonne (or maybe the Hotel School at Cornell) and likely speaks and writes English better than many native English speakers.  But they learned in management training that’s it’s good practice to humor bumbling tourists who can later tell their companions, “See, honey?  I just asked for a 2nd room key, and she understood me!”

The real and fairest language wrestling battles are fought long and hard on the street (asking for directions) or in restaurants that are frequented primarily by locals and which have only local-language menus.  And then there’s that most challenging and intimidating battlefield of all: the dreaded local language phone call.

A few tips: know your opening, cold.  Be prepared to literally understand only half of a local language reply (and hope that context can fill in the rest; credibly fake it to your mono-lingual traveling companions if you can’t).  When you’re about to panic and break down, go back to your primary sound bite again, a la “It’s the economy, stupid.”  Eventually you may just wear down your target and score a point.

Good luck on your next match.  HOOrah.

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US airline industry sinks to new low as CO ticket agent flosses teeth while servicing customers

February 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Let’s start with the good news.  Paul and I took a flight Friday from New York to Geneva in Continental’s “Business/First” cabin, and the flight was great.  It was a newish plane (767) with roomy seats that had a significant recline.  Service was excellent, food was pretty tasty, there was decent (and plentiful) wine, and the cabin crew was friendly and professional. The flight also left and arrived on-time.  For a “legacy” American carrier this was pretty darned good all around.  No complaints.

The check-in experience in Newark was a little different, though.

Continental has a dedicated area in Newark for international business check-in.  Besides the agents who were behind the check-in counter, there were a handful of additional agents mingling with passengers to offer assistance with the self-service check-in kiosks.

I noticed that one of those agents (let’s call her Janice) who was walking around had her hand near her mouth; I thought she must be coughing or sneezing.  But it turned out that she was flossing her teeth.

Janice would periodically remove an 8 inch-or-so long piece of floss from her mouth to answer a customer’s question.  “The lounge is to the left after security!” she’d say with a white-teethed smile, waving the soiled floss in her right hand as if it were a 4th of July sparkler.

At one point I saw Janice tuck the floss away in her pocket, only to pull it out again a short time later to resume the task at hand.  I suppose you have to applaud her conservation efforts in this rough economy.

I mentally prepared the email I might send to Continental.

“Dear Continental: As the son of a dentist, I can certainly appreciate the need for good oral hygiene.  However,…” or “Was Janice just trying to make us feel orally inferior, since there was in fact no floss in your on-board amenity kit?”

But alas, I ended up just making this blog entry, instead.

I suppose there are a few things (comments, please!) that a customer service rep could do that are more distasteful than this. But think about it – it seems like flicking rotting food out of your mouth while you’re on duty for a major airline serving the traveling public has got to be pretty high up the list, right?

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

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Hunch Vids + Dog Report

February 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Lots of good things happening at Hunch these days.

We just published a major report called “Like dog, like owner?  What our pooches reveal about us.“  It relies on Hunch data to explore the distinct characteristics (personality, media choices, many others) among fans of 44 different dog breeds.  It’s a fun read.

A videographer also produced a couple of short music videos inspired by Hunch topics about NYC Neighborhoods and Public Art in NYC.

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Explanation revealed for Bureau of Labor Statistics Jobs Miscalculation

February 5, 2010 · 1 Comment

I knew it!   Reprinted from the Washington Daily Tribune:

Explanation Revealed for Bureau of Labor Statistics Jobs Miscalculation

Washington — The Bureau of Labor Statistics, under fire for miscalculating last year’s job losses by more than 824,000, explained today the source of the error:  A junior analyst forgot to press F9.

Apparently the analyst was using an older computer to run the Bureau’s forecasting models, and the Excel model he had built to forecast the nation’s employment figures was taking too long to recalculate.

“I used to have to go to lunch after changing some of the assumptions because the model took so long to update,” said analyst Marty Woodsby. “Even then, half the time I’d get back to my desk and have a blue screen because Excel had crashed.  So I turned auto recalc off.”

“We applaud Marty’s initiative in attempting to improve productivity by switching to manual recalc,” US Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a prepared statement.  “Still, it appears that some of the follow-up procedures fell through the cracks in this case.”

The White House has called for a sweeping review of F9 practices throughout all government agencies.  The initiative is expected to create more than 31,000 new jobs.

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Be wary of very early stage startups that casually offer you equity in return for your services

January 25, 2010 · Leave a Comment

A friend of mine (let’s call her Alice) recently left a senior marketing job at a well-respected company in order to start her own marketing consulting business. Alice has a solid reputation and proven track record as a marketer; I have no doubt she’ll do well in her new venture.

Alice came to me with a question. One of her contacts was starting a new venture and wanted help creating a PR plan and a launch plan for their site. They couldn’t offer any cash for her services (she estimated she would have normally charged about $10K for a comprehensive plan plus about $2K/month ongoing) but were willing to give her an equity stake in the venture. Yet their site wasn’t built and they couldn’t produce a business plan, a list of backers to date, or even a scope document about exactly what they wanted her to accomplish.

“Should I do this?” Alice asked. My immediate and unequivocal answer was: “Run.”

The granting of equity should normally be considered as a trade for critical components that are essential to a startup’s success. ‘Critical components’ would generally be an exchange for significant financing or a part of the compensation package to attract and retain key employees. But trying to use equity as a way to avoid relatively low cash costs for temporary contract workers? That likely reveals a fundamental lack of experience that should set off warning bells.

Before an entrepreneur starts hiring paid contract services, he or she should have created a solid business plan, put in some of their own money, and probably raised some “friends and family” money to cover the initial basics on a cash basis. So if an early stage company says they have no cash to pay you, yet they are casually offering equity, it sounds like they haven’t done their homework and the equity won’t amount to much, anyway.

This general rule isn’t 100% watertight, though, and there have been some famous exceptions, like a consultant who refused to accept some Google shares in lieu of cash.  If you are convinced that the company has a good team and a solid plan for a product you believe in, and if you can afford to give up any prospect of money for 3 years or more, make sure you get the one and only number that really matters for equity grants: your percentage ownership.  The grant should also come with an option plan document (professionally prepared by lawyers) which you should run by someone who has experience interpreting the legalese.

Summing up: You know the old Groucho saying of “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member?” Similar line of reasoning goes for early-stage startups tossing around equity offers to most anyone who comes their way: “If you’re offering me equity this casually, it’s probably not equity that I want.”

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Search techniques in action: the big head, long tail, broad match, phrase match, and exact match

January 25, 2010 · 1 Comment

One of my blog entries which has received significant traffic involves 19th St. Gym, a local entity which abruptly shut down for several months before recently being bought by a new owner.  This post isn’t about the gym itself but rather the search terms which led people to find my post about it.  I’ll also discuss the missed opportunities of local gyms to use this as a marketing vehicle.

My blogging platform, WordPress, indicates that a total of 24 different search phrases led people to the blog post about the gym.  Just 2 of these phrases accounted for about 50% of search traffic: 19th street gym (where my post ranks about #5 on Google’s SERP) and 19th street gym closed, where I rank in roughly position #3.  These are the proverbial “big head” terms.

The first observation I’ll make is that Google’s organic ranking algorithm worked pretty much the way you’d hope in this case.  The blog entry contained a relatively large amount of unique content related to one specific topic; the content was dynamic (because I kept adding updates and readers added relevant comments); several relevant/fitness-related forums linked to the post, adding to its credibility.  As a result of these factors, Google ranked the post well for the term ‘19th street gym’ and related phrases.

My second observation is that local gyms are missing an opportunity to bid on the term “19th Street Gym” to offer alternatives (more on that in a minute).  The only gym showing an ad is Anytime Fitness, a Minnesota-based outfit whose nearest gym to Manhattan is 18 miles away in West Caldwell, NJ.  Exactly 0% of New Yorkers clicking on that ad are going to end up joining Anytime Fitness.

Here are all the variations of search terms which people used to reach my blog post:

The 24 search phrases people used to find my blog entry about 19th Street Gym

On the one hand, you could argue that all these terms are variations of “19th street gym”.  On the other hand, if we examine all the variations, this provides a pretty good example of how search behavior tends to work in general.

The graph of the cumulative search volume is a classical example of the “big head”, “long tail” phenomena you hear so much about.  (My graph is flipped vs the way this is often shown, but the logic is the same).  Roughly 8 phrases (33% of all phrases) account for about 80% of total search volume.  The lowest volume 11 terms (46% of all terms) have only a combined 10% of total search volume.

"Big Head" and "Long Tail" search terms leading to 19th St. Gym blog post

It’s interesting to note some of the minor variations in the search phrases:

  • 3 terms (representing 6% of search volume) contain a question mark.  This suggests opportunities for creative search marketers to structure their ad copy (and landing pages) in a way that answers a specific question as opposed to just shouting general benefits or features.
  • Only 5 terms (13% of search volume) include a geographical reference to either NYC or Manhattan, suggesting most searchers may take it for granted that Google will figure out the context of where a search applies.  Google deals with this well but not perfectly; it’s something for website owners and search marketers to consider.  Note that as of December 2009, Google actually allows sites to tag themselves for geographic relevance (at the country level) to make this more clear in organic results on the SERP.
  • Even though these terms are all variations of “19th Street Gym”, the subtle variations in the phrases could still create opportunities for you if you were bidding on them for paid search.  For example, by bidding specifically on ‘19th Street Gym closed’, a competing gym might create specific search copy (and a corresponding landing page) referencing that they’ll give a special deal for former 19th St. members:

Broad, phrase, exact, negative match?

Let’s say you were a competing gym and wanted to use AdWords to reach 19th St. members. Depending on how you structure your keyword, your ad could show for a few, most, or all of the 24 different search phrases.  There are pros and cons to each method.

1) Broad match terms entered in AdWords as standard text, ie 19th Street Gym

Using the default ‘broad match’ keyword phrase of 19th Street Gym would have likely picked up every one of the 24 terms above.  But this has a disadvantage: some of the terms would have probably generated the wrong type of traffic for your ad.  For example, people searching for “19th St. Gym bond” were interested in finding out if the gym was in compliance with its NY State bond requirement (it wasn’t), and people searching for “19th St. Gym Kelly” were clearly looking for my specific blog post.

2) Exact match terms entered in brackets, ie [19th Street Gym Closed]

Bidding on exact match terms gives you the opportunity to target specific ad copy and potentially have a lower cost per click for the specific phrase than you would have paid with phrase match or broad match.  But the specificity means that volume will typically be much lower, and you’ll need to create many more specific search phrases for your account, which takes time and effort.

3) Phrase match terms entered in quotes, ie “19th Street Gym”

This would have triggered your ad for any search phrase which contained “19th Street Gym”, which was most of the variations.  In this example it doesn’t provide a lot of benefit vs. broad match, but in general, phrase matching is a good compromise between the low targeting of broad match and the low volume of exact match.

4) Negative matches preceded by a minus, ie -bond

Negative match terms can be used in conjunction with broad terms to eliminate specific phrases you want to avoid, while still generating strong volume.  As an example, adding -bond to the broad match phrase 19th Street Gym, would prevent the phrase 19th Street Gym Bond from triggering your ad.

Tony Soric wrote a good primer explaining match types in an Oct 2009 Search Engine Land article.

Summing up the info and examples above:

  • Unique, changing, compelling content that others link to should eventually receive good organic search ranking.  (this is, of course, every website’s dream)
  • Keep in mind the large number of variations in search phrases, even when they contain common elements.  Consider ad copy and landing pages which address specific cases.
  • Use match types to find the right balance for your business between targeted leads and volume.

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Dear Brian Moynihan: could BofA’s and ML’s back offices work together, maybe just a little?

January 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment

It’s been just over a year since Bank of America closed on its acquisition of Merrill Lynch, but you’d never have an inkling that the two entities have anything to do with each other based on a transaction I conducted this morning.

You two are connected? Really?

So here’s the scenario: I wanted to move some money from a Florida-based BofA checking account to a Merrill Lynch brokerage account.  My name is on both accounts.  The ML folks gave me some instructions to initially have the money go to a New York BofA branch rather than directly to them.  Ok, already a little convoluted, but should be straightforward since this would be a BofA to BofA transfer, right?  Not so much.

Here’s how the subsequent transaction unfolded at a local NYC BofA retail branch:

Time-Pressured Customer Late For Work (me): I’d like to transfer $x from a BofA checking account to a NY BofA account in Merrill Lynch’s name.  Since this is “all in the family”, can we avoid a wire transfer?

BofA rep: No, this will have to be a wire transfer, and there’s a $25 fee.

TPCLFW: But it’s a transfer to your own bank!

BofA rep: Yes, but it involves Merrill, so there’s a fee.

TPCLFW: On the phone yesterday, the 800# people told me the fee doesn’t apply for a BofA to BofA transfer.

BofA rep: I could show you the fee schedule.  Or maybe you could try to get the fee reversed after it hits your account.

TPCLFW: Ok ok, I’m in a hurry.  Let’s just do it.

BofA rep: Please fill out this form.

TPCLFW fills out long form and returns it.

BofA rep: I’ll need your driver’s license and your BofA debit card.

TPCLFW: I don’t have a debit card for this account.

BofA rep: That’s ok, we’ll give you one.

TPCLFW: How will you do that?

BofA rep: Just type your social security # into this screen and we’ll generate a card.

TPCLFW: But I don’t want a debit card.  Can’t I just give you my social as ID and you can use that to proceed with the transfer?

BofA rep: No, because we need a debit card number for this form.

TPCLFW: <sound of teeth grinding>

Lots of typing happens, many forms are printed out, and I’m given a debit card.

TPCLFW: How long until the funds are available in the receiving account?

BofA rep: 24 to 48 hours.

Then I was given the canary carbon copy (I kid you not) of the long form I had filled out, and was asked to have a nice day.  I suppose at that point the rep used the branch’s telegraph to communicate the subsequent instructions to someone else.

This whole exchange took approximately 30 minutes.

Ok, so let’s summarize: I’m moving money from one account to another (both accounts in the same name) within the same umbrella financial institution.  It took 30 minutes to fill out the paperwork, will take 24-48 hours for the transfer to happen, it cost me $25, and it involved my getting a debit card that I don’t want.

Current BofA CEO Brian Moynihan was actually the executive in charge of the BofA/ML integration.  Hoo-boy.  Mr. Moynihan, you’ve still got your work cut out for you.

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McNeil’s Tylenol recall hurts all branded drug manufacturers

January 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Most branded over-the-counter (OTC) medications offer one primary benefit over their functionally-equivalent generic alternatives: a consumer perception of superiority in quality and safety.  This is why McNeil’s most recent recall of Tylenol and 5 other medications, driven by both quality and safety issues, is a blow for all manufacturers of branded OTC drugs.

McNeil’s current recall is a result of an unusual moldy, musty, or mildew-like odor in the 6 different affected products (plus line extensions).  The smell was also associated in some cases with nausea, stomach pain, vomiting, or diarrhea.  The cause is attributed to a chemical applied to the wooden pallets used to transport packaging material.

This is, of course, not the first recall for Tylenol.  Its most famous recall was in 1982, when 7 people were killed by Tylenol that was deliberately laced with cyanide.  Whoever caused the issue was never caught.  Even before Johnson & Johnson (McNeil’s parent company) knew the cause of the problem at the time, they aggressively pulled all products from retail shelves in a move that was long heralded as a model for crisis management.  A smaller and less serious recall ocurred in 1986.

This time is different.  For one thing, J&J knew about complaints of the funky odor and resulting illnesses it caused as far back as 2008.  Yet they failed to either follow up aggressively or notify the FDA.  And the FDA is none too pleased about that, leading to the recent issuance of a scathing “warning letter” which J&J must address within 15 days.  In addition, unlike the 1982 case of deliberate tampering, this current issue seems to have been caused by sloppy manufacturing and logistics practices, plain and simple.

When you’re dealing with complex, regulated products and complicated distribution systems, occasional safety issues are bound to arise from time to time.  But when quality and safety are the very aspects of differentiation on which your branded product relies, slip-ups like McNeil’s current ones can really create some serious brand vulnerability.

Generic OTC products offer absolutely equivalent efficacy to their branded cousins.  So if the pricier brands aren’t perceived as truly safer than the generics, what’s left?  (devil’s advocate for a moment: the branded products do tend to innovate more often with packaging and delivery system innovations…but even these functional attributes, when successful, are always quickly copied by the generic manufacturers)  So fundamentally, branded OTC medications are primarily relying on their reputation and their perceived safety and quality.

There’s an old rule of thumb in advertising that it takes about 3 ‘impressions’ of a message before it starts to sink in for consumers.  It’s not implausible to apply that same logic to brand crises.  With at least 3 quality & safety-related recalls to date, Tylenol is beginning to send a real message that may start to sink in for consumers: branded OTC medications may be just as prone to safety issues as their generic equivalents.  And if that message sinks in, its good news for OTC generic manufacturers and bad news for the branded pharmaceutical industry in general.

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Former 19th St. Gym to Reopen as Complete Body & Spa

January 17, 2010 · 21 Comments

It’s official: after shutting its doors last November, the former 19th St. Gym is finally scheduled to reopen on February 1st under new management, and will be called Complete Body & Spa.

Alex Reznik, the CEO of Complete Body, called me tonight and we spent 40 minutes discussing his background and his plans for the gym going forward.

Alex comes from a personal training background.  He’s Russian and spent time in Russia’s special forces, specializing in “hardcore, Army bootcamp training.”  He moved to the US 20 years ago but his company still manages personal training at several gyms internationally including the gym in the Moscow Ritz Carlton and a small workout studio in Paris.  He also plans to open a gym in the near future in Tel Aviv, which is where most of his family resides.

Alex Reznik is the new owner of 19th St. Gym, now Complete Body & Spa

Alex is openly gay and has done his research about what many people cited as the most appealing aspect of 19th St: the interesting mix of people.  He’s the first to admit that he doesn’t want to compete against David Barton or Equinox, but rather to try to have a unique space and attract an eclectic mix of interesting people.

At one point Alex asked me about lighting: “Do you find it too bright or too dark?”  (my answer: “A good compromise; DB is so dark that you can’t find your locker, and NYSC and Equinox are so bright that you feel like you’re in an operating room.”  He concurred).  In fact, Alex asked my opinion about at least half a dozen other aspects of the former gym.  And he said he’d like to hear from more 19th St members about what worked well and what didn’t.  So please post comments below to share your thoughts.

Rough prices for memberships will be about $999/year for new members and $799/year for 19th St. members, with additional months for former members credited on a “case by case” basis (former members will be asked to show proof of their contracts).  Memberships would also include towel service and a few personal training sessions.  A nice new perk is for laundry service, where you turn in a bag (typically containing 1-2 days of workout clothes) that the gym will launder and place back in your rented locker.

Alex says that his target is to get 500-800 members (“1,000 max”), after which he will try to throttle memberships by requiring members after that number to only come with a personal trainer.

When asked how aggressively he would honor the contracts of former members, Alex says: “You have to realize that the former gym was $100K+ in default of rent and aggressively selling cheap memberships in the weeks just prior to closure.  That former entity no longer exists, and my new rent is even higher.  So while I’d like to honor those renewals, it’s just not feasible from a business perspective.  But I’ll work with people on a case-by-case basis to do what I can.”

There will be a “pre-sale” opening on the gym’s premises starting January 20th. The gym will then open to former members on February 1st, with the main opening on March 1st.

Alex is planning a “couple hundred thousand dollars” in renovations, including turning the mezzanine level (reached from the staircase at the end of the entrance hallway) into 3 spa rooms.  Spa services will include facials, massages, scrubbing, and waxing- “just not pedicures and manicures,” Alex says.

The Southernmost area of the gym (with the speed bag and the punching bag) will get a wood floor for classes, which will likely be offered at a nominal supplemental charge.  Cardio equipment will be replaced, a limited amount of weight-resistance machines will be replaced in the short-term, and bathrooms/locker rooms will be upgraded on a “medium to longer-term basis as the gym becomes profitable,” Alex says.

Complete Body also has a location at 80 John St.  Members at the 19th St. location will have access to the 80 John St. location, and vice versa.  Alex also plans new gym openings on the Upper East Side and Upper West Side, of which one location will include a pool.  Once open, these will also be available for use by members.

Alex has had only limited interaction with the former 19th St Gym management (and in fact hasn’t yet gotten access to the member database).  But he is planning to meet next week with Brian Moss, the original owner of the gym when it was known as “Better Bodies.”  His goal is to try to recreate some of the elements of what made the gym unique, including things like posting original pictures such as the one below.

The former 19th St Gym was originally known as "Better Bodies."

L to R: Steve Kauffman, Building owner; Brian Moss, Original Better Bodies owner; Alex Reznik, Complete Body & Spa owner

Finally, just for kicks, I set up a brief, 5 question survey to see how many former members are planning to come back.  This takes all of 30 seconds to complete, so please give it a go and I’ll publish the results.

Update 1: January 29, 2010

The comments below certainly express a fair amount of skepticism among former members.  But let’s take a look at the survey results to look at what people are saying in aggregate.

42 people have taken the survey so far; you might or might not recall from a basic stats class that this is (just barely) enough to be statistically significant if the people taking the survey are representative of all former members.  Well, they’re not (necessarily), so the first thing to keep in mind is that the survey reflects only the people choosing to take it, so opinions could vary substantially among those who didn’t take it.

This was also an ‘open’ survey, in which responses were not controlled by, say, a verified email address to ensure each person participated only once.  That said, I did quickly browse through the IP addresses of the responses and there were only two sets of duplicates.  That’s quite plausibly explained by two former members in the same household, for example. (and one of those two dupes was my own, since Paul and I share the same computer).  So my point is that while this is not a scientific survey by any means, there’s no obvious indication that anyone was trying to ‘game’ the results.

Finally, I filtered the survey’s results below to include only the 39 people who indicated they are ‘clients’ (as opposed to ‘trainers’ or ’something else’).

Enough with the caveats.  Here’s what the data says.  And apologies for the small font sizes on the charts; maybe I’ll improve that at some point.

1) Bad news (for new management): Most former members had more than 6 months of membership remaining on their active membership when the gym shut down.  This probably translates into a lot of grumpy people:

2) Better news: Only 13% of respondents had a pending renewal which had not yet begun.  (side note: I was one of those, but I’m happy to say that AMEX did finally refund 100% of what I paid)

Only 13% of former members who took the survey had a pending renewal which had not yet begun

3) Mixed news: About a quarter of respondents have not joined a new gym since 19th St. closed, 40% have joined one with only a short-term or month-to-month commitment, but the remaining 37% have joined another gym with at least a one year commitment (that’s the group where I fall):

4) The net ‘pretty good’ news (for the new management): Nearly half of the survey’s respondents indicate that they would come back “right away”, assuming “reasonable pricing.”   26% say they’ve simply “moved on”.  The remaining 25% fall somewhere in between.

Now that actual pricing has been announced and former members are able to find out exactly how much the new management may work with them, it’s possible these numbers could change some.  If they do change significantly over time, I’ll post another update.

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Don’t forget to turn off your IMs during presentations

January 12, 2010 · 2 Comments

We have a board meeting today and I’m reminded about a memorable board meeting a little over a year ago when I was presenting Hunch’s marketing plan.

Paul and I had just gotten a new puppy (warning: video will cause severe nausea to anyone who’s not a dog lover).  She wasn’t fully housetrained yet and wasn’t yet ready for a dog walker, so we were taking turns going home at lunch to walk her and spend some time with her.  Whoever had lunch duty would check in after the walk via a quick phone call or IM. “No mess at home, quick #1 and #2 outside- all good!”… that sort of thing.

So anyway, here I am presenting Hunch’s marketing plan to the Board, projecting charts and recommendations on the wall of one of our conference rooms.  We’re going back and forth between Powerpoint and the Hunch site, so I have a live internet connection.  And all of a sudden, this appeared:

Fortunately everyone has a sense of humor (and some have dogs so they understood the situation perfectly).  So besides getting some serious ribbing for being called “ding dong”, this was no big deal.

But not every situation or audience would have been so accommodating.  And what if the message had said something else?  You know, like: “Are you finished yet with those clueless clowns from the Board of Directors?”

Lesson learned.  Before giving a presentation, turn off your IM clients and any application which might give an uninvited alert.

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