Chapter 12 focuses mostly on measuring relationships with salespeople. Obviously, it's important to find out just how well they're selling your product, as well as their overall satisfaction. For many large companies, this can be difficult. Often, money is thrown at the issue without any knowledge of just how useful the data being collected is.
It can also be a problem if there isn't both a clear message and a clear objective in all communications. This is particularly a problem with franchisees, since they may cater to a different audience than the company as a whole. The solution the book proposes is to focus on the commonalities in the message. Also, it's important to have a measurement program in order to find out what is being said and what image is being created.
This chapter was interesting because of its focus on communications within a company rather than with those outside of it. It's easy to forget that companies rely on many others for their success, and they may often have their differences with those people. The book definitely provides some useful advice in how to overcome those differences and be successful as a company.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Love-Bombing North Korea
A Swedish underwear company, Björn Borg, held a poll for what country was "in most need of love and seduction." North Korea won. The problems here should be apparent already, but it only gets worse. Apparently, the company thought it was a good idea to have a journalist drop the underwear from her balcony, calling them "weapons of mass seduction." The fact that few people would actually find this joke funny in a highly repressive dictatorship that is actually devoted to developing nuclear weapons apparently escaped the people making this decision.
This was a pretty serious PR mistake to begin with, but the company has done absolutely nothing to rectify it. Instead, their marketing director released a statement in which she said she was "proud" of the effort. Unsurprisingly, the move has garnered criticism from human rights groups, in light of both its insensitivity and the fact that it mostly just created an embarrassing situation.
If the company thought this would be a good way to promote their brand, their judgment is stunningly poor. They also seem to have yet to realize that they now have a PR crisis on their hands that should probably be dealt with by issuing an apology rather than doubling down on what was an imprudent idea to begin with. Whether they will actually realize their mistake has yet to be seen.
This was a pretty serious PR mistake to begin with, but the company has done absolutely nothing to rectify it. Instead, their marketing director released a statement in which she said she was "proud" of the effort. Unsurprisingly, the move has garnered criticism from human rights groups, in light of both its insensitivity and the fact that it mostly just created an embarrassing situation.
If the company thought this would be a good way to promote their brand, their judgment is stunningly poor. They also seem to have yet to realize that they now have a PR crisis on their hands that should probably be dealt with by issuing an apology rather than doubling down on what was an imprudent idea to begin with. Whether they will actually realize their mistake has yet to be seen.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Week 13
This week was mostly a lesson in the dangers of procrastination. I had an essay due for English Proseminar, a paper due for Philosophy and Film, and a story due for Intro to Creative Writing. I knew about all these things by Monday or Tuesday, and I decided I should probably do some work on them, but I didn't. By Thursday I still hadn't started any of them.
By Thursday afternoon, it was pretty clear that I needed to get started if I wanted to have any chance of finishing what I had to do. I started off with the paper for English Proseminar, which was only supposed to be about two pages and which I finished pretty quickly. Next was the paper for Philosophy and Film, and that's where things started to get difficult. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing, but it quickly proved difficult for me to meet the wordcount I was supposed to, and I found out I'd written maybe the first half of it wrong. So that took me several hours to do.
When I finally finished that paper, I moved on to the short story. I'd only figured out what the story was going to be about earlier that day, and I was mostly kind of making it up as I went along. Since it was the middle of the night by that point, I decided to go to bed and wake up early the next morning to finish it. So I was going on about five hours of sleep on Friday, but I only had one class so that worked out okay.
By Thursday afternoon, it was pretty clear that I needed to get started if I wanted to have any chance of finishing what I had to do. I started off with the paper for English Proseminar, which was only supposed to be about two pages and which I finished pretty quickly. Next was the paper for Philosophy and Film, and that's where things started to get difficult. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing, but it quickly proved difficult for me to meet the wordcount I was supposed to, and I found out I'd written maybe the first half of it wrong. So that took me several hours to do.
When I finally finished that paper, I moved on to the short story. I'd only figured out what the story was going to be about earlier that day, and I was mostly kind of making it up as I went along. Since it was the middle of the night by that point, I decided to go to bed and wake up early the next morning to finish it. So I was going on about five hours of sleep on Friday, but I only had one class so that worked out okay.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Measure What Matters: Chapter 9
Chapter 9 of "Measure What Matters" focuses a lot on maintaining a good relationship with communities. By communities, the book really just means the group of people with whom a company will interact. It uses two opposing examples when talking about this: first, the previously discussed Amazon example where the company had to remove books from its users' Kindles due to copyright issues; second, an example where PETA attempted to start a "free the whales" campaign against SeaWorld.
As previously noted, Amazon got a pretty poor response from their actions. Their customers saw them as acting unilaterally, without telling them properly about the problem, and they were understandably angered. Amazon damaged its relationship with its community by acting without letting them in on what was going on, and they had to apologize for it ultimately.
On the other hand, SeaWorld maintained such a good relationship with its community that PETA's campaign fell flat on its face. SeaWorld's visitors and community were willing to defend it against the charges of the animal rights group, and ultimately the "free the whales" campaign went essentially nowhere. SeaWorld had maintained a good enough relationship with its community that it avoided a crisis.
Ultimately, I think these examples illustrate the point pretty well. In business, as in many other things, it's good to have as many friends as possible. If this policy can help ensure that companies actually treat their customers well instead of as sources of profit, that's all the better. Unfortunately, it seems as if in many instances there's sort of a general agreement among companies not to treat customers too well, but only well enough that they'll come back. I think if a new company came along to challenge the current ones by actually treating its customers with full respect, then, as the book has laid out, it would probably enjoy a great deal of success.
As previously noted, Amazon got a pretty poor response from their actions. Their customers saw them as acting unilaterally, without telling them properly about the problem, and they were understandably angered. Amazon damaged its relationship with its community by acting without letting them in on what was going on, and they had to apologize for it ultimately.
On the other hand, SeaWorld maintained such a good relationship with its community that PETA's campaign fell flat on its face. SeaWorld's visitors and community were willing to defend it against the charges of the animal rights group, and ultimately the "free the whales" campaign went essentially nowhere. SeaWorld had maintained a good enough relationship with its community that it avoided a crisis.
Ultimately, I think these examples illustrate the point pretty well. In business, as in many other things, it's good to have as many friends as possible. If this policy can help ensure that companies actually treat their customers well instead of as sources of profit, that's all the better. Unfortunately, it seems as if in many instances there's sort of a general agreement among companies not to treat customers too well, but only well enough that they'll come back. I think if a new company came along to challenge the current ones by actually treating its customers with full respect, then, as the book has laid out, it would probably enjoy a great deal of success.
The Obamacare Snafus
Anyone who follows the news at all closely has probably heard about the problems going on with the new healthcare law. There's the website, for one thing, which seems to be suffering some pretty serious problems at this point in time. Then there's the fact that President Obama told people they would be able to keep their plans and yet their insurers are now cancelling their plans, leading some commentators to accuse Obama of dishonesty.
Recently, in response to these issues, Obama gave an apologetic speech addressing what he called "fumbles" in the rollout of the law and in regards to the cancellation of policies the healthcare law has caused. He admitted that, of course, something more than just words was needed to solve the problems, and promised to help the people negatively affected by the problems that have been occurring. He also recently enacted a change of procedure that will allow everyone to keep their current plan at least through 2014.
Obama probably said the only things he could say in the speech he gave, and I don't think there was much else he could do. In terms of the website, it seems pretty clear at this point the preparation for it was insufficient, which was obviously an error in judgment. I also fault the president for doing a poor job of explaining the situation with the new regulations; overwhelmingly, people will be able to keep their current policies, but some will be cancelled by the providers due to new regulations (the regulations don't require these policies to be cancelled, but they do indirectly cause it at times). The president should have simply been completely honest about the situation and made an argument for the regulations in question. The delay of them really probably won't gain him much credibility and just puts off enforcing regulations that I believe are important, so I think it's a mistake.
Recently, in response to these issues, Obama gave an apologetic speech addressing what he called "fumbles" in the rollout of the law and in regards to the cancellation of policies the healthcare law has caused. He admitted that, of course, something more than just words was needed to solve the problems, and promised to help the people negatively affected by the problems that have been occurring. He also recently enacted a change of procedure that will allow everyone to keep their current plan at least through 2014.
Obama probably said the only things he could say in the speech he gave, and I don't think there was much else he could do. In terms of the website, it seems pretty clear at this point the preparation for it was insufficient, which was obviously an error in judgment. I also fault the president for doing a poor job of explaining the situation with the new regulations; overwhelmingly, people will be able to keep their current policies, but some will be cancelled by the providers due to new regulations (the regulations don't require these policies to be cancelled, but they do indirectly cause it at times). The president should have simply been completely honest about the situation and made an argument for the regulations in question. The delay of them really probably won't gain him much credibility and just puts off enforcing regulations that I believe are important, so I think it's a mistake.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Week 12
I seem to say in pretty much every one of these blogs that I didn't really have an eventful week. I'm sorry for how repetitive that must be at this point, but it's still true this week. My week wasn't boring for me, but I didn't really go and do a whole lot. So, I really don't have much I can write about here, I'm afraid. I just figured I would give that disclaimer before I talk about the usual things.
For Intro to Creative Writing, we once again discussed pieces of writing that students had done. This week, all three were poems. As I've said a few times before, poetry isn't exactly my strength, but it wasn't actually too difficult to comment on these ones. On Wednesday, one of the students in the class also gave a presentation about Japanese puppetry, which was random but relatively interesting.
In Philosophy and Film we watched a film based on a play by Shakespeare, which was honestly fairly difficult to follow. English Proseminar was pretty much how it's been when I mentioned it before, which is to say that we discussed a method of literary criticism that was complicated but fairly interesting. I did have an essay I had to write for that class this week, but it was pretty easy. Hopefully, the fact I thought that doesn't just mean I'm going to get a terrible grade on it and find out I did it completely wrong. Anyway, as the beginning paragraph insinuated, that's really about it.
For Intro to Creative Writing, we once again discussed pieces of writing that students had done. This week, all three were poems. As I've said a few times before, poetry isn't exactly my strength, but it wasn't actually too difficult to comment on these ones. On Wednesday, one of the students in the class also gave a presentation about Japanese puppetry, which was random but relatively interesting.
In Philosophy and Film we watched a film based on a play by Shakespeare, which was honestly fairly difficult to follow. English Proseminar was pretty much how it's been when I mentioned it before, which is to say that we discussed a method of literary criticism that was complicated but fairly interesting. I did have an essay I had to write for that class this week, but it was pretty easy. Hopefully, the fact I thought that doesn't just mean I'm going to get a terrible grade on it and find out I did it completely wrong. Anyway, as the beginning paragraph insinuated, that's really about it.
Monday, November 11, 2013
"Measure What Matters" Chapter 6
Chapter 6 of "Measure What Matters" focuses mostly on how to get numbers that accurately reflect important factors. It starts out by advising the reader to use search settings that are sure to yield relevant results. Next, of course, those results have to be reviewed and tracked, as to eliminate anything irrelevant and get a good sense of the substance of the results.
After a month or so, it should be determined what outlets matter. That is to say, it must be determined what outlets mention the respective product the most, which get the most comments and so forth. Having done all that, eventually one must make a judgment on what the market's opinion is not only for one's own product but for one's competition as well. Lastly, the information that's gathered--particularly in regards to the competition--has to be used to gain the advantage, of course.
The chapter finishes by noting that it's important to find a way to quantify things like feelings by carefully selecting what to monitor and when to do so. All in all, the chapter is pretty short, but definitely packs a lot of useful information. It's easy to see the importance of everything it lays out, but it isn't stating the obvious because of how precisely it lays these steps out. I feel like it managed to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time without making the reader feel lost or confused.
After a month or so, it should be determined what outlets matter. That is to say, it must be determined what outlets mention the respective product the most, which get the most comments and so forth. Having done all that, eventually one must make a judgment on what the market's opinion is not only for one's own product but for one's competition as well. Lastly, the information that's gathered--particularly in regards to the competition--has to be used to gain the advantage, of course.
The chapter finishes by noting that it's important to find a way to quantify things like feelings by carefully selecting what to monitor and when to do so. All in all, the chapter is pretty short, but definitely packs a lot of useful information. It's easy to see the importance of everything it lays out, but it isn't stating the obvious because of how precisely it lays these steps out. I feel like it managed to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time without making the reader feel lost or confused.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Guns & Ammo's Gun Control Editorial
Recently, in the magazine Guns & Ammo, readers were surprised to find an editorial endorsing gun control. To be more specific, they were not generally pleasantly surprised either. The backlash was so bad, in fact, that the contributing editor who wrote the editorial has been fired, and the magazine's editor has apologized for including the editorial in the issue at all.
The whole situation is, on many levels, unfortunate. The magazine's editor seems to have believed that the readers would appreciate debate on a relevant issue, and he wasn't irrational to believe it. The editorial was not anti-gun, but only presented an argument for some sort of restrictions on who can own a gun and how easy it is to get one. Unfortunately, it seems the average reader wasn't quite able to muster the appreciation expected.
In the end, it seems that the decision to publish the editorial has to be seen as a mistake from a practical standpoint. The magazine did not know its audience well enough to anticipate their lack of appreciation. The editor's apology suggests this wasn't any sort of stand on principle in any case. In the end, it's unfortunate how badly it panned out but not exactly surprising.
The whole situation is, on many levels, unfortunate. The magazine's editor seems to have believed that the readers would appreciate debate on a relevant issue, and he wasn't irrational to believe it. The editorial was not anti-gun, but only presented an argument for some sort of restrictions on who can own a gun and how easy it is to get one. Unfortunately, it seems the average reader wasn't quite able to muster the appreciation expected.
In the end, it seems that the decision to publish the editorial has to be seen as a mistake from a practical standpoint. The magazine did not know its audience well enough to anticipate their lack of appreciation. The editor's apology suggests this wasn't any sort of stand on principle in any case. In the end, it's unfortunate how badly it panned out but not exactly surprising.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Week 11
In terms of classes, this week doesn't have a whole lot worth writing about. Everyone got their drills back in English Proseminar, and I think basically everyone had gotten 100 percent. Everyone was pretty baffled by this, but there wasn't any weird catch or anything like that. Aside from that, the class was pretty interesting this week given our discussion of philosophical concepts. There was definitely some pretty technical stuff being talked about, but I personally found it interesting.
For Intro to Creative Writing, we got to critique poetry--which was not especially great given my lack of knowledge of poetry--and fiction this week. The fiction was a little easier for me. It is fairly interesting to see the work of the other students in the class, and I look forward to submitting my own work for the class.
Other than that, I really didn't have much at all. My Philosophy and Film class was cancelled this week, which means I didn't have it for two weeks in a row. Screenwriting Workshop wasn't too eventful, and of course we know what happened in Social Media for the past week. I do think I have some papers coming up, however, which means a change in pace for sure.
For Intro to Creative Writing, we got to critique poetry--which was not especially great given my lack of knowledge of poetry--and fiction this week. The fiction was a little easier for me. It is fairly interesting to see the work of the other students in the class, and I look forward to submitting my own work for the class.
Other than that, I really didn't have much at all. My Philosophy and Film class was cancelled this week, which means I didn't have it for two weeks in a row. Screenwriting Workshop wasn't too eventful, and of course we know what happened in Social Media for the past week. I do think I have some papers coming up, however, which means a change in pace for sure.
Monday, November 4, 2013
"Measure What Matters" Chapter 2
I said after reading the first chapter of "Measure What Matters" that it didn't make any particularly new points for me, but I did expect the rest of the book to be more informative when it focused on how to measure rather than why. This chapter did seem to validate that view, as it was definitely more informative for me personally than the last.
This chapter focused mostly on the actual questions that need to be asked to get good data. A company has to know exactly what it's looking for before it measures and why it's looking for that. The chapter lists 10 questions that focus on objectives, audience, messages and so on. Admittedly, none of this seemed particularly surprising or revolutionary to me, but the book did lay it out pretty neatly to its credit.
The chapter also lists 4 ways in which bad data can be gathered: "Incomplete Assessment of Variables," "Relevancy of Content" (or irrelevancy more accurately), the fact that commercial services omit results, and "The (In)accuracy of Content Analysis." (from pp. 26-28) This does seem like a good approach to me--that is, to list the ways not to do something as well as the ways to do it. Overall, the chapter did seem to introduce some important and noteworthy ideas.
This chapter focused mostly on the actual questions that need to be asked to get good data. A company has to know exactly what it's looking for before it measures and why it's looking for that. The chapter lists 10 questions that focus on objectives, audience, messages and so on. Admittedly, none of this seemed particularly surprising or revolutionary to me, but the book did lay it out pretty neatly to its credit.
The chapter also lists 4 ways in which bad data can be gathered: "Incomplete Assessment of Variables," "Relevancy of Content" (or irrelevancy more accurately), the fact that commercial services omit results, and "The (In)accuracy of Content Analysis." (from pp. 26-28) This does seem like a good approach to me--that is, to list the ways not to do something as well as the ways to do it. Overall, the chapter did seem to introduce some important and noteworthy ideas.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Toronto Mayor's Crack Scandal
Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, Canada, has already faced criticism and media exposure over the fact that a group attempted to sell a video of him smoking crack. Now the Toronto Police Department claims to have a copy of said video, though apparently not enough evidence for drug charges at this point in time. In any case, the news was enough for reporters to gather on the mayor's lawn and for him to later hold a press conference discussing the accusations.
By pretty much any standard, his handling of the situation would have to be called very poor, considering that he first actually got in a physical altercation with a reporter on his lawn, and then said he wouldn't give in without a fight and that he had done nothing wrong. Obviously, getting in fights with reporters is not helpful to having a professional public image to begin with, but further, it's probably a bit late in the game for Ford to claim he's done nothing wrong, as even the Police Department in indicating otherwise.
Probably the only defense that can even be made for his actions is that no matter how well he handled this, it would probably not end well for him, as it probably still won't. However, he could have maintained some semblance of professionalism if he had stepped down far earlier than this, since by now the original allegations seem undoubtedly true.
By pretty much any standard, his handling of the situation would have to be called very poor, considering that he first actually got in a physical altercation with a reporter on his lawn, and then said he wouldn't give in without a fight and that he had done nothing wrong. Obviously, getting in fights with reporters is not helpful to having a professional public image to begin with, but further, it's probably a bit late in the game for Ford to claim he's done nothing wrong, as even the Police Department in indicating otherwise.
Probably the only defense that can even be made for his actions is that no matter how well he handled this, it would probably not end well for him, as it probably still won't. However, he could have maintained some semblance of professionalism if he had stepped down far earlier than this, since by now the original allegations seem undoubtedly true.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Week 10(?)
This was a fairly uneventful week for me, in terms of what went on here in Ada. On Monday, I had a drill for one of my courses, which was made slightly interesting by the fact that we had the choice of interpreting a Britney Spears song for one of the prompts. I didn't actually do that, though, although I did end up reading the lyrics out loud for the class, because they insisted on this.
I actually missed my film class on Tuesday for a concert I went to back in Columbus, which I didn't get back from until close to 2 a.m. The concert was pretty good, although I still need to watch the movie I missed by not going to class that day. The same class that I had the drill for Monday made things interesting (though fairly depressing) by focusing on Marxism for Wednesday and Friday.
I did get to adapt a few pages from a novel I wrote for Screenwriting Workshop on Thursday, which was pretty interesting. I did enjoy getting feedback from everyone about ways to build the story and make it work in a different format from what I'd originally written it in, so that was pretty cool. Other than that, it was a mostly pretty calm week.
I actually missed my film class on Tuesday for a concert I went to back in Columbus, which I didn't get back from until close to 2 a.m. The concert was pretty good, although I still need to watch the movie I missed by not going to class that day. The same class that I had the drill for Monday made things interesting (though fairly depressing) by focusing on Marxism for Wednesday and Friday.
I did get to adapt a few pages from a novel I wrote for Screenwriting Workshop on Thursday, which was pretty interesting. I did enjoy getting feedback from everyone about ways to build the story and make it work in a different format from what I'd originally written it in, so that was pretty cool. Other than that, it was a mostly pretty calm week.
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