Thoughts From The Cake Scraps

It has been some time since I last posted on Twitter.  I have only used it for a few months but I feel like I can safely split Twitter into 4 types of Twitter users.  The User, The Contributor, The Talker, The Streamer.

The Streamer is the Twitter user that feels like they need to post every update in their life.  They use it like a combination of an Away Message and an IM to the world.  The problem is that, on the whole, most people don’t care.  And if they do, they probably already are in contact with you in some other way.  The other defining characteristic of The Streamer is the frequency of updates.  If The Streamer would only post once or twice a day then the Tweets could be interesting, even if they are just about general life.  The problem arises when this is done with an annoyingly large frequency.  Of course the threshold of annoyance will be different for different people so you will have to self-define that limit.

The Talker is the Twitter user that shares every link they come across if they can justify sharing it with a single follower and often times even when they can’t.  They retweet as often as possible.  Again, as is the case with The Streamer, each user will have their own threshold for how many retweets are too much.  The Talker will also have conversations on Twitter that really should be done in a Direct Message or some other communication channel.

The Contributor is that perfect blend of everything.  The Contributor shares only a few links, but great links.  The Contributor will share helpful tips.  The Contributor will share an interesting event in their life.  But really, they only share the cream of the crop and will direct their tweets with DMs and @replies rather than full on blasts to all their followers.

The User is person that is following a ridiculously large amount of people.  They are the user that only follows you hoping that you are a brainless sheep and will follow back even though you have no interest in what the person has to say.

Of course these are generalizations and things like TweetDeck help manage these sorts of things, but it would be nice just to have people use common sense.  It makes it better for everyone involved.

People can’t read what you tweet if you are tweeting 20 times a day because they don’t have the time for that.  Then multiply those 20 tweets by 50 followers and you start to see just how silly and, ultimately, less useful these people make Twitter.

Which Twitter user are you?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.  If these posts interest you, follow @TheCakeScraps!

Diamonds are not the only thing that is forever anymore. It is no secret that Google will dig deep and find things on a person that the person has long since forgot about. Individuals that are active on the internet are pumping out a HUGE amount of information that is then on electronic record.

It could be a post in a blog, a comment on a blog, a Tweet, a Facebook wall post, a resume on your college club site, etc. The list of places that your name might show up grows almost every day.

I was most recently reminded of this by an interesting site, Cursebird, that tracks curse words used in Tweets. It even gives a real-time stream. Not only that, but you can search by user and it gives you all the tweets that the person used a curse in and ‘rates’ them based on which and how many curses they use.  If you check it out, @TheCakeScraps has no results.

While you may know all of this, and it may all seem pretty common sense, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded every once in a while. I will leave you with the short – but great – post from Seth’s Blog:

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person’s name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, “binge drinking.”

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, “I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings.”

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don’t have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.

What are your thoughts on the legacy you leave on the internet?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

What do you see when you look at this picture?  Do you see a game of Jenga nearly complete?  Do you see a tower of block about to fall?  Do you see the next block that you would take out and add on top?  It all depends on your perception.

Many people will just see the picture as a game of Jenga.  Passive.  Just a picture.  That may be true, but what it represents is opportunity.  Yes, there is risk in taking the next block out.  But – as they say in a casino – you cannot win if you don’t play.

The economy is in an interesting state right now.  Things are a little wobbly.  But the interesting part is that we can change it.  All this is is economics.  As business pull back and cut ad spend that means that if you were to buy what they are leaving behind it will not only cost you less, but you will gain market share.

This won’t work with all businesses and all products.  Some things just won’t sell with things as they are.  Then go somewhere else.  Wal-Mart is growing.  McDonalds is growing.  Thrift stores are growing.  It is easy to just dismiss these things as obvious.  Resist the temptation.  What they are really doing is providing a service that people are seeking out right now.  Yes, in this case it is value, but it doesn’t have to be.

Really think about how your business can fit a need for the modern customer.  If Lands’ End had never expanded into apparel, would they still be around?  BMG is canning its mail-order membership.  I just got my “Final Mailing” because they are getting out and moving into a discount model rather than a mail-order model.  (On a side note, did you know that if you forgot to decline the ‘Featured Selection’ you could just write “Return To Sender” on the box and they have to ship it back and don’t charge you!)

The point is that people still have needs.  Visualize how you can help morph your current business to fit a need.  It may be as simple as shifting your marketing to promote value.  Or if you are doing that maybe you have to highlight the value and some other feature that the product has.

Winners and losers are being determined as you read this.  Which side is your company on?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

An interesting thing happened to me the other day. I was having diner with a friend at a Mexican place and I had a craving for a quesadilla. I scoured the menu for quite a few minutes and came up with nothing.  I sat there thinking to myself “how can a Mexican place not have quesadillas on the menu?  Perhaps they don’t actually eat quesadillas in Mexico and this place is hardcore authentic.”

Now I have no idea if they actually eat quesadillas in Mexico or not.  Frankly, I am more interested in food that tastes good than if it is placed into the “correct”category.  That said it was still a let down.  I had settled on something else and was ready to order, but I made a comment to my friend about how bummed I was.

It took him about 10 seconds to locate them and point it out to me.  What, you might ask, was my problem?

I’m not sure if it is from reading too many blogs, going to too many websites, or just filtering out stuff just because but I missed the whole section.  After looking at it a bit closer I think I figured out why.  It was made to stick out.

That might sound a bit counter-intuitive at first, but its not.  I skipped it because it had a different background then the rest of the menu.  It was colored to stick out.  But for whatever reason my brain just skipped it.  Near as I can figure, it is just because if the menu was a webpage that is where the advertisement would have been.  Or at least it was blocked off and so my brain just read it as advertisement even if it was in the wrong spot to make sense.  I just ignored the whole section.  Keep in mind that this is while I am activly searching, trying to find something in the menu and I still skipped the whole thing.

For me it proves how cluttered the world is.  It proves how hard it is to stand out.  It proves that the game has changed.  What used to stand out and draw attention no longer works because people’s brains have been overstimulated with advertisements.  Do you even notice the product placement in moves/shows?  Sometimes it is painfully obvious and you can’t miss them (and then it just looks dumb) and the other times you miss them entirely.  Too much clutter.

Do you ignore clutter?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

When looking at a web site process, such as registration, it doesn’t take much testing to figure out that the answer is always less.

What information should we collect?  Less.  What questions should we ask?  Less.  How many steps should there be in checkout?  Less.  Less.  Less.  You get the idea.  The reason is that each step or bit of information, or whatever is another obstacle that the visitor has to overcome to convert.  Why add things that actually prevent the visitor from taking the desired action?  Because you’re greedy.  That is the only answer.  If you do not have a guest checkout, you’re greedy.  If you force someone to put in their address when signing up for an account to access ‘premium website features’ you’re greedy.  You only need an address to ship.  Don’t be greedy.

I was looking over a Slim-Fast package and saw this box that lets you “customize your weight loss journey”.  It sounded interesting.  I’m not overly concerned about my current weight, but was curious anyway so when I had a chance I decided to check out the site.

This custom weight loss plan is on the homepage.  Like dead center on the homepage.  You can’t really miss the red “Register Now” button.

The Slim-Fast Homepage

At this point, for me personally, I was already a bit hesitant.  I’m thinking to myself, why are they calling it “register” and not “Get Your Plan Now” or at least something that doesn’t sound as impersonal as “register now”.

Anyway, because I was interested I click through anyway.  Point them.  But look at the ridiculous amount of information (click to enlarge) they demand from the visitor (in this case me):

So here I am, all interested is seeing what Slim-Fast can do for me and this is what they give me.  It is about the worst possible experience I could imagine.  But, I pressed on.  I really wanted to see what this “customized plan” was going to be.  So, like any person who has no interest in giving out tons of information for no reason, I filled in the stuff with a bunch of junk info.

Boy did they get me.  After I took the time to fill the whole long form out (albeit with bad info) they don’t even give me the plan.  They e-mail it to me.  Well, I didn’t put in an actual e-mail address so it when to some random person.  At that point I just lost interest.  I could not go on.

So with all of this in mind, what was Slim-Fast looking to gain with all of that information?  Would they mail me crap I didn’t want?  Just e-mail me the coupon.  What could they possible need all that information for?  Invasive marketing was my only thought and that is why I gave them bad information.  I don’t want to be invaded upon any more than I can help.  But the bigger miss here is what they lost.

Sure, they lost my interest but they lost something much more than that.  They lost my money.  Imagine, here is a customer all set to lose weight.  They not only want to lose weight, they want to lose it with Slim-Fast.  And beyond that, they not only want to lose it with Slim-Fast, but they want a diet plan from Slim-Fast that will – in all likelihood – contain a fair amount of Slim-Fast product.  From snack bars to meal bars to shake powder to a shake-in-a-can.  And then different flavors of all of those things.  This was a free pass for Slim-Fast to sell a lot of product to a customer that wanted to be sold to.

Instead of taking this easy money, instead of helping me toward my personal weight loss goal – and using Slim-Fast to do it, which I would certainly tell my friends about -, instead of any of that they got a visitor that was just pissed at them.  I wrote them a letter telling them how bad of a site they had and pointed out the huge opportunity they were missing out on.  After several weeks I have not got a response.  This is not how you build your brand.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Give information about your product freely.  Get a customer to engage with your product for free.  If you are a quality product they will be more than happy to give you the rest.

In fact, this is a perfect opportunity to quote the late founder of Lands’ End – Gary Comer (who was a billionaire – so yes, it works):

Take care of the customer.  Take care of the employees.  The rest will take care of itself.

Do you agree?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

You don’t have to look very far or for very long to find a slew of people doing predictions for 2009.  If you look around, many of those same people made predictions for 2008.  And just before they posted their new 2009 predictions they reviewed the 2008 predictions.

The interesting thing to look for here is what story are they trying to tell.  How many predictions did they get right?  Or, more imporantly, how many did they get wrong?  It is not about laughing at the wrong answers but rather evaluating why they got them wrong. 

If they are right on all accounts then where is the vision?  Where is the reach in the predictions?  This is not to say that a person needs to make outlandish predictions, but a key element is stretch.  And if you have sufficient stretch in your goals then you will get some wrong and that is a good thing.

With all of that said here are my predictions that I am coming up with as I write this.  I have no idea what is going to come next.

1. There is going to be a massive, and unexpected, rise in coffee consumption which will be the indication that the economy is on the uptick.
2. A 62″ TV will be priced under $1,000 and a Blu-ray player under $100.
3. Microsoft will be sucessful in rebranding itself while Apple will stagnate.
4. Some new type of TV show will compete with reality TV and crime shows.  This will not be on a major network.
5. Clothing companies will start putting buttons on boxers – or put them on again since they took them off.
6. Netbooks become not only a status symbol – but significanly impact laptop sales.
7. I will win.  Not sure at what, but some large victory will be mine.

So there you have it, 7 baseless precitions for 2009.  Have a great year all.

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps

If you do any sort of marketing, for your blog, business, or otherwise, the question that you should always have in the back of your head is “How will this be perceived by my customers?”

You can have variations such as “How am I presenting my brand to the customer?” or “How am I enriching the customer experience?” or countless others but the bottom line is what is your customer going to perceive.  It doesn’t matter what your intent is.  It doesn’t matter what you think you are saying or how you think you are presenting; only what is perceived matters.

I was purchasing a plane ticket recently with NWA – which had some really great fares by the way – and was all set to pay when I saw this:

Protect yourself against loss of non-refundable fares and change fees (up to $3,000) by purchasing Trip Protector. Trip Protector offers coverage for you and your traveling companions in the event you have to cancel or interrupt your trip due to unforeseen injury, medical emergencies, accidents or other covered reasons. See price details and terms and conditions

Now I can see the intent behind this note.  I can see that they are trying to be helpful (as well as make more money).  For me this just doesn’t do it.  Let me explain why.

First of all, my ticket was just over $200.  I am not really worried that fees could be $3,000.  That just doesn’t make sense.  I would be better off just not flying and buying a ticket from a different airline.  But lets pretend for a moment that NWA is the only one that flys to where I am going.  And lets say that I do have to make a change to my flight.  And lets say that my fees are $3,000 (in case you didn’t catch on, all of this happening at once is not very likely).  I am going to be really upset at NWA.  I won’t care that I could have purchased this protection.  I am just going to be upset.

My real problem with this is that NWA is choosing to use a hard-sell scare tactic.  “You could be charged $3,000 if you don’t buy this.”   Interesting.  Who exactly is going to charge me this fee?  Oh, that’s right, NWA is.  They are trying to scare the customer into paying for this service or else they are really going to get your money later.  It is just like insurance except that at least with regular insurance you don’t pay the insurance company if you get hurt with out insurance, you pay hospitals.  Here NWA gets money either way.

I understand that it does cost an airline money when you want to switch tickets.  I understand that there can and should be fees for changing.  I just don’t think they should try and scare a customer with $3,000 of fees on a $200 ticket.  It just seems odd that a company sells a service to avoid their own fees when they could change the pricing on their fees at any time.

For NWA it is probably simple.  This probably works.  People probably buy it more often.  But I just don’t feel as good when buying the ticket.  Can you really love the enforcer who comes around asking for money or else you may really pay extra for it later?  And if I don’t love the company, why come back?  The race to the bottom on price only gets you so far.

Do you ever buy “Trip Protection”?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

I said I was going to post about this, and true to my word, I will.

While viewing my credit card statement online I noticed a charge from IGN Insider (no link as a disservice to them) – a service I had signed up for last year to get some info.  Silly me.  Anyway, I did not want to pay for it again.  All the info is out on the internet and is FREE.  Just look for it.  As a side note, that is why I forget that I even had this account.

Needless to say they were not helpful at all.  In fact, the ‘customer service’ provided very little of that.  Here is a company that just doesn’t get it.  Instead of just giving me back my $20 and sending me on my way they just hid behind their Terms of Service and basically told me to shove off.  Being polite the entire time – normally good but just aggravating when they have no intention of helping you.

You can find the whole dialogue below.  Each paragraph is a different speaker.  Paragraph breaks in the actual communication have been removed to conserve space.  Let me know what you think.

Me: I have canceled my account with IGN. It was just charged to my card. There was no e-mail receipt, there was no notification that the payment was coming due. Nothing. I am outraged that IGN, who clearly has a means to contact me, would just charge my card without any verification. That is just poor. Please remove the charge from my account. As it has only been days since the charge there is no reason that this would be a problem. Regards, David

Them: Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding your subscription account. I am sorry for any delays responding to your support request. We do see you have already turned off your auto billing (cancelled) your subscription.It will remain open until the end date described on your cancellation confirmation email. A renewal email was sent to this email address on 11/27/2008. Sorry you missed this email. All of our subscriptions renew automatically, We offer it in our Terms of Service twice during the subscription process and you agree to it while subscribing. http://corp.ign.com/user-agreement.html We appreciate your email however we do not issue refunds for subscription services except in the case of demonstrated fraud.  Kind Regards, Julie

Me: I think it is sad that instead of providing customer service you cower behind a ToS. In a world where each individual now has a voice via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media you would think customer service would be paramount for a company like yours. Instead you are content to take your $20 – nothing but a drop in the bucket for you – and let me share my poor experience with the entire internet community. It no longer takes a newspaper to pick up a story, but an individual. Your response, while I’m sure technically correct, completely misses the mark of providing customer service. Given my experience with what you term ‘customer service’ I am sure this will fall on deaf ears to you, but perhaps not to the many that will read of my poor experience. I strongly believe that you are making a poor choice for your company, but at least you have $20 more in the bank. So shortsighted. Also, per your statement that an e-mail was sent, I did not get anything. I checked both my inbox and my spam folder – which has e-mails prior to 11/27 in it – and found nothing. Since I don’t delete anything from my inbox, I just archive it, I am more than a bit skeptical that the e-mail was sent. When I do a search for IGN in my mailbox the only communication prior to me filing this issue was the day that I originally subscribed to IGN insider. Can you verify it went out? Also, why would I not get an e-mail informing me of my payment (the day my card is charged)? Thanks, David

Them: Hi David, We do appreciate your feedback regarding our refund policy. I can confirm that an email was sent out on 11/27/2008 to XXX@gmail.com. We apologize if you missed this email. I”GN/GameSpy Services Annual Renewal Notification It’s been a great year!We hope you’ve been enjoying the past year with us. We’re sending you this email to remind you that your annual subscription is scheduled to renew on December 11, 2008.” During the original purchase it is agreed that the subscription is auto billed. Unfortunately, we do not send out renewal invoices. A renewal notice is sent out. Please let me know if you have any further questions. Kind Regards, Julie

So in summary they appreciate my feedback but will not do anything to show it.  They tell me that they did send the e-mail and that they are sorry that I missed the e-mail.  So let me make this clear: I don’t delete anything from that e-mail address and I rarely even check it therefore if it is not in my inbox and not in my SPAM folder (which had e-mail prior to the date they claim they sent it) then I did not get it.  Then Julie includes the text of the e-mail they claim to have sent as if it is either a) “verification” or b) “helpful” of which it is neither.  She then states AGAIN that I agreed to it in the original purchase.  I never argue this point.  All I wanted was some notification that it was happening!

Needless to say I am not very happy with IGN or IGN Insider.  So I ask you, what are your thoughts?  Was I over the top?  Not angry enogh?  Or should I just not care?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

If you have not watched a video by Gary Vaynerchuk you are doing yourself a disservice.  The man is amazingly passionate about what he does.  I wrote about how great he was at building brand, but it really hit home today.

This guy cares.

I have heard him say it may times on garyvaynerchuk , at winelibrarytv, and at a few things I have watched/listened to him on ustream: “Care about your people.”  He says that he responds to every e-mail he gets.  The guy has tens of thousands of people (last I heard about 80k a day) watch his wine show.  DAILY.  The guy gets several hundred e-mails DAILY.  He can’t respond to it the same day but he does respond.

Today I got verification.  I sent him an e-mail.  It was 10 days ago and his response could have fit inside a @TheCakeScraps on Twitter, but he did respond.  Amazing.

This guy has personal brand equity.

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

So what does a brand mean during a recession?  That is the real question.  Does your brand gain or lose value in a recession? Have you positioned yourself to be seen as a “luxury” that can be done without, a “value” brand that everybody needs, an “affordable luxury”, or as a brand that “is worth the price” because your customer doesn’t have to repurchase every week?

Certain companies have stood by their luxury brand – such as A&F – and that has not yielded the greatest results.  On the flip side you have Wal-Mart that is doing very well because of how they have positioned themselves from day one.  Both brands are sticking to what they feel their brand stands for, which makes sense for Wal-Mart and takes guts (and deep pockets) for A&F.  It is interesting to note that Wal-Mart has tried to position itself as more like a “Target” in recent years and now they are back to the basics.

How does all of this relate to what I term “MBA brands”?

With the economy as it is companies are going to hire “Smart people who get things done“, not just anybody.  They are focusing the available resources so that every dollar is well spent.  Efficiency is key when resources are limited.  These are basic statements that I think everybody should be on board with.  That leads me to my next point:

MBA brands, the school you are attending for an MBA, become more important as the economy declines.

Let me break it down how I see it.

When everything in the economy was good, companies loved to hire the MBAs and were basically going under the assumption that a certain skill set was going to come with somebody that had an MBA.  There was, and is, a premium placed on the top schools and companies were not always willing to fork over the extra money.  Companies, overall, had the school of thought that an MBA is an MBA.  Sure one may be slightly better than another, but not all that much.

In a down economy there is much talk of people going back to school because they no longer have a job.  Clearly this will saturate the market with MBAs.  How does a company filter out people?  There are many criteria, but I think that the brand of the MBA will increase in importance.  The brand of a top MBA program tells a company that this person is, in essence, “guaranteed” to be a quality candidate for the job – at least in terms of experience and skills gained from an MBA.

I think this is interesting because it is fundamentally different than how people spend their money during a downturn.  They tend to do away with the brand they normally pick in favor of the store brand or “Sam’s Choice” sort of goods.  They are willing to sacrifice a little quality to get more with the money they have.  The “Great Value” peanut butter is basically the same as “Jiff” but costs less.  Why not get it?

With a company, the company is going to put an increased focus on the quality of the MBA more so than in the past.  The brand, both your individual brand and other brands you carry with you, such as an MBA, will make or break deals.

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.