Questions? Comments? Interested in contributing content? Please contact Vi Paynich, Editor-in-Chief, at vpaynich@retailing.org or 909-606-3406.
The ERA Minute is a new feature where ERA members can film marketing tips that will be distributed throughout all of ERA’s channels and social networking outlets. If you’re interested in making the next ERA Minute, contact Peter Howson at phowson@retailing.org. In this ERA Minute, MicahTek’s Marvin Jones shares thoughts on custom queue messaging: how to sell to your customers in your call center queue.
What do you think call center reps should discuss with customers in the queue?
There was much ado made about the current Olympics, specifically about how NBC was planning to bring the Olympics into the information age and allow advertisers to get an incredible insight into how viewers were using new media like broadband mobile and web video. I included several articles in the ERA e-Weekly Newsletter written by experts and intelligent pundits who know the space, and can probably rattle off a business plan to justify all of this in less than five minutes.
Of course all of that is very valuable, and as a marketing professional, I can thoroughly understand the appeal of getting more accurate and far-reaching metrics on how my media dollar is translating to eyeballs. It still tells me nothing about sales, but at least I can go to the suits and say that the share for our media buy was X points and that means Y households saw our messaging.
Since I am also a media consumer (and, germane to this rant, a sailor), I assumed that to back up this vast sell of the metrics, there would be a corresponding increase in the quality and breadth of coverage. This was based on the assertion that NBC was becoming a new media company and, while coverage on its broadcast and cable properties would be as it always has been (swimming, gymnastics, sprinting, volleyball and soccer); the doors of the vast media portal would swing wide to reveal a wealth of other sports including judo, rowing, badminton, sailing (of course), and the other 25 odd disciplines out there. Maybe NBC would even have deigned to cut away to the U.S. women’s sweep of the Saber competition in fencing once Michael Phelps had broken the Olympic record in his opening heat, or perhaps found a few seconds to squeeze in a mention that the all powerful Ben Ainsley had finished 10th in the Finn class in sailing. Even the synchronized swimming aficionados would have the opportunity to watch their event in its entirety! That is, if they couldn’t find some paint that was drying (just kidding!).
This would be the most complete Olympics coverage ever undertaken by a media entity since the invention of radio; a shining beacon of media convergence, television, the Internet and mobile, marching in lock step into the New Media Future—a beacon throwing out a light illuminating the Brave New World of convergence, offering consumers unparalleled access to information and a depth of content that would make the mind swim and sate even the most glutinous Olympic appetite! A glowing moment in media history that shows the whole world that America not only embraces the world and enjoys competing in it, but THIS is how you cover the Olympics, damnit! Take that, BBC!
And yet, as is so often true, the execution fell far short of the promise. Looking at the TV listing, I was not surprised to see soccer, volleyball, swimming, beach volleyball…and on CNBC on the Saturday morning of the Olympics’ opening week, believe it or not, paid programming. Meanwhile, the sailing video I watched live at 3 in the morning was just the Chinese media feed (not terrible camera work by the way) without any commentary or added value from NBC. (more…)
As frequent visitors to the blog may have guessed, there has been some inter-generational chit chat at ERA about what is appropriate for Facebook postings. As I have somehow managed to survive to age 40 in spite of a seriously misspent youth, I fall somewhere between the portion of the office who remember the impact of the first fax machines and those who can type out a Shakespeare sonnet in under 5 minutes using just their thumbs, I find myself in a slightly unique position of coming down a little on both sides of the fence.
On the one hand, I think that the “kids†(sorry, Pat and Katie) have this bizarre notion that anything they did prior to entering the work environment should not be held against them. What’s most interesting to note is that when they discuss this problem, there is a sense of ownership of Facebook. Sort of “What are these old people doing in our Facebook?†I think itÃs worth noting for the record that Facebook is open to everyone. Leaving photos of yourself from that one horrific frat party on a public Facebook profile, particularly when you put that profile on your resume, is no smarter than showing up drunk to a job interview. My point being, there is an expectation that you should know how the world works at your age and if you want to get ahead in a world that puts a value on appearances, then you need to take ownership and manage your image. In my book, itÃs probably not the inappropriate photos that are going to get someone into trouble, but the fact that they were stupid enough to not set their profile to private.
On the other hand, to the older folks (and if you think I’m going to name names for that group, think again), I have to go back to my favorite line from Stripes: “Lighten up Francis.†I “came of age†just after we discovered that sex really could kill you and, to paraphrase Bill Cosby: cocaine is a personality enhancer, but what happens if you’re an a**hole? So it’s ironic that the generation that reveled in wanton sex, drugs, Rock nà Roll (or worse, disco), and junk bonds not to mention some really questionable fashion statements in their 20’s should be so concerned about a few pictures of college juniors having way too much fun at Mardi Gras.
In short: If you are applying for a job and you are foolhardy enough to put your Facebook profile on your resume, don’t be surprised if the picture of you and the goats at your buddyÃs bachelor party become the deciding factor between you and an equally qualified candidate. If you’re on the hiring end and you canÃt ignore Facebook, just remember that testing boundaries is one of the things that makes this country great. If that doesn’t work, think about the stupidest thing you’ve done in your life (if you can remember it) and ask yourself this question: Is THAT the event that defines who you are, or is it the other 99.999 percent of your life?
Peter Howson is ERA’s director or marketing.
Every morning I listen to the radio while I’m getting ready for work. Today was kind of interesting in that there were several sound bites from the president and would be presidents about various ideas to solve the “energy crisis.†While I have chosen a specific candidate for whom I am rooting, I have to say that my candidate’s response did not impress me. In fact, none of the proposed suggestions impressed me. Each seemed to be a half assed suggestion designed to get votes that would end up costing us more money in the long run and would not present a real solution to the problem.
After the politicians got done railing about things government could do to solve the problems, there was another story that caught my attention. It seems the Rockefeller family is demanding that Exxon Mobil invest more money into research on alternate fuels sources. You see, the Rockefeller family has a $4 billion stake in Exxon Mobil and they have this crazy idea that maybe the company should do a little work to develop potential revenue streams in case the public has actually gotten the notion that dependence on a finite resource for all of their energy needs is sort of a bad idea, or in case that finite resource reaches the ultimate fruition of its finiteness. While this is obviously an instance of the Rockefellers wanting to remain rich (and who can blame them?), it is refreshing to see someone stepping up and saying “Hey, you know what, we have a few billion dollars in record breaking profits this year, let’s get ahead of the curve, stop waiting for government subsidies to support this research and let’s just knuckle down and build something.†In other words: getting America back to the business of doing business, instead of hiding in a corner bitching about foreign competition, waiting for someone to hand them a subsidy, a tax break, and a tariff to cover their ass…
By now you are sitting there thinking, “What the hell does this have to do with electronic retailing?†Well, hearing about the Rockefellers take action made me wonder: Although I don’t have $4 billion invested in a single chunk with a company I can influence, let alone $4 billion, I started wondering if there was stuff I could be doing that would make a little dent in the fuel situation. The consensus seems to be that fuel prices are being driven higher by demand. So, the solution would be to stop buying gas. Well that’s all well and good, but I already use public transportation to get to work (a luxury we have in DC), so the only reason I ever really use my car is to go shopping.
That was when it occurred to me that shopping online or over the phone is the equivalent of carpooling to buy stuff. Here’s the scenario: on my street there is never a parking space… (more…)
That is to say, after a 50 plus-year reign of supremacy, has broadcast media begun to slide down a slippery slope to be consigned to history with the telegraph and Morse code? More and more evidence seems to be mounting that broadcast is facing troubled times. First, the market was segmented when cable came of age. The “Big three†were suddenly faced with actual competition and they lost significant numbers of eyeballs. This didn’t do a lot for programming initially, the song “500 Channels and Nothing on†sort of summed up the early cable landscape (with the possible exception of MTV, in the early days). But eventually, the industry found its footing and went the way of the magazine industry with channels dedicated to niche markets—think the History Channel for old men, the Food Network for people who like to eat, the Travel Channel for people who want to see the world without leaving their house, and Animal Planet for people who can sit through six hours of Ron Reagan commentating the riveting action of a dog show.
And while radio has always been a bit of a wild-west environment, the world reacted to the homogenization of content with satellite radio and our friends (soon to be friend) XM and Sirius (maybe Xirius, quick run out and register that URL). Once again we have channels that are designed to appeal to a much narrower demographic based on the inescapable logic that there may not be enough of an audience to make a radio station devoted entirely to the delta blues genre in any one metropolitan area, but if you take all of the people from all of the metropolitan areas in the country and add in the smattering of people in between those places, suddenly you have a potential audience that rivals the legions of Britney Spears fans that used to exist. And Clear Channel had to go running to a judge to make sure its leveraged buyout isn’t plagued by nit picky questions from a lot of bean counting bankers.
So, we see the broadcast universe moving to a model of medium-casting, with content appealing on different channels to smaller groups of people. But where do we go from here? (more…)
In my role as editor of the e-weekly news from ERA, I end up reading a lot of articles about retailing statistics (I know, heady, glamorous stuff) and there are two things that keep popping up: retail sales generally are growing at around 4.8 percent while online purchases are making up a bigger percentage of sales this holiday season (20 percent to $39 billion, according to Jupiter Research). If you extrapolate that to figure out total holiday sales, we know that Americans will be spending $195 billion. But there is one factor that is lurking in the background that throws the whole equation into turmoil. Thirty-three percent of consumers planned to buy gift cards to the tune of a staggering total of $26.3 billion
You may be asking yourself, “Why should that matter?†Well, for one thing, $26.3 billion is not being recorded as part of the holiday shopping season, because that revenue is not recognized until the gift cards are redeemed. Or to look at it another way, the actual total collected by retailers if you throw in the gift card number will be $221.3 billion. So if $195 billion without gift cards represents a 4.8 percent increase, the math says that $221.3 billion represents a 19 percent increase in revenues over last year. Of course, that doesn’t include gift cards from last year. So while the analysis of the holiday shopping season is all glum and foreboding, the nay saying should be taken with a $26.3 billion grain of salt. (more…)
