EVERYONE's feeling the recessionary pinch, but online businesses – particularly those selling ephemeral and risk-based products like say, travel insurance, have a distinct advantage.
No glassy storefront, no packaged inventory piled high somewhere in the boonies, no expensive print or TV advertising. Just a website that tells you to click around 'til your eyeballs dry up, and then "add to cart."
There's often a number you can call, but they'd rather you didn't, because that involves getting a human talking – talk isn't cheap anymore.
Don't you envy them? The lighter your boat, the more likely you'll float in a recession.
But online businesses are struggling with the rest of us, and as a Customer Evangelist will tell you, the smartest move you can make is to go back to 100 BC (100 years Before Cyberspace) and offer good, old fashioned personal service.
My 71-year-young mother is coming to visit me in New York.
She spends her days on a ladder stacking shelves at Peter's of Kensington and encouraging Sydney's yuppies and yarries (yuppies who've 'arrived') to part with discretionary income on decidedly non-ephemeral products.
"Recession? Not here. Gentleman came in bought a four-drawer box for his cutlery - $3000 ..." she said (on the phone).
She hasn't the patience to learn the internet, other than to say, "I clicked on the finger and it displayed something." But she's not dead yet, she's still eating, breathing and abluting; she's a potential customer, and she buys her airline tickets from a traditional travel agent – a person she can sit in front of. But realspace travel agencies have costs, and she was initially quoted her $A777 insurance on a $A1300 airfare for a 23 day stay. Whoa, back a full yard!
From a 10,000 miles away I Googled around and found a travel insurance website with most of the information laid out. Rather than post a phone number, they offered that you provide yours ("we only call landlines"). So I asked them to give her a quick call and sell her a policy.
This is the email I got back:
Dear Irene Chiang
Our site is designed to provide all our quotes based on the information
you input. All our policies are displayed on our site. Please return to [site name] then click onto "Get a Quote"
Please follow the prompts and it will lead you to a choice of those
policies that meet your basic criteria. You should then read each policy to ensure you select the one that meets your full requirements ... Once we receive the completed form it will be sent to the insurer for assessment. From receipt of the completed application form, the underwriters can take from 24-72 hours to decide.
They may opt to :
* decline coverage totally (i.e. require us not to sell you ANY
policy)
* decline the pre-existing condition but cover the rest
* cover one or some of the pre-existing conditions but decline the
others
* charge an additional premium
* charge an additional premium and impose a non removable excess
* charge an additional premium and make changes to various
conditions and terms.
If you do not agree with the decision, you have the right to appeal the
decision.
Regards,
What is wrong with this piece of selling? It's the first introduction I get to this company. Does it make you want to rush back to them for all your travel insurance needs?
Futurist Faith Popcorn (www.faithpopcorn.com), when asked about what matters to people in 2009, mentioned some lo-tech things that have never gone out of style: "personal service", "customization", "relationship". These may seem obvious to the service-minded among us, but people do not need to be informed, so much as reminded. We're so busy tweeting instead of meeting we forget there's a human being behind the @.
The above email, of course, is like waving a red feedback form to a playful Customer Evangelist. I replied:
Clearly, [x], you have no idea of what the words 'customer service' mean.
I'm in the USA, you and my mother are in Australia.
She is not internet savvy and can just basically do email and nothing else.
I was hoping you'd give her a quick call as you offered on your site, and quickly find out if the $200+ will suffice vs. the $600 one which you are pushing below.
If your margins are that paper thin you can't be bothered then she might as well go to Flight Center and at least be fleeced by a human being who will give her the time of day. I will be writing about appalling internet customer service like yours on my FastCompany.com blog.
I really thought the Aussies were getting better in the area of CS but I continue to remain disappointed.
Now before you berate me for becoming an insufferably rude New Yorker, I believe companies receive the very widest range of authentic emotion in their mailboxes daily. They should be very skilled at responding. No matter how unpleasant it is to read, it's a voluntary opinion survey, a barometer of customer satisfaction and free market research. Or it's just words.
I expected a response like this:
Dear Lynette, we'll call your mother right away.
Instead, I received a very long reply, none of it designed to entice us to buy a policy:
Mrs Chiang
I trust you will read this reply to your DAUGHTER entirely as I am appalled at her lack of interest in assisting you herself when she has all the necessary tools. As an Italian migrant myself, I expected more from a child - if my daughters behaved like this I would have stern words as they are too old to spank. Regards)
Dear Lynette
You can write what you like HOWEVER be sure of your facts and the LAW.
Firstly we are an internet company and any application has to be via the internet, secondly we provide ALL the documentation to make an informed decision, thirdly we provide both email and telephone numbers for people to contact us or the insurer direct for clarification of any point that is not understood.
We did advise you about a need to complete a mandatory pre-existing form while referring you back to our site to read the appropriate product advice. We also have an FAQ page to answer basic questions which it is obvious you have not bothered to look at ....
Who knows what other items in the FAQ's might not have addressed your unasked questions.
The LAW part
AUSTRALIAN LAW under the Financial Services Reform Act (FSRA) Administered by the Australian Governments Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC) EXPRESSLY prohibit any person in the Financial Services area (including†Travel Insurance) from providing any 'recommendation". To do so would open them to prosecution and termination of their right to sell products in this industry. No policy is worth losing our business for a legal breach of the law.
We handle 4 of the main Australian Travel Insurers and we have NEVER, since 1999 'recommended" any policy to any person any way.
Why? Well it is not a LACK of customer service, but we have no idea about the person requesting the information, we do not know what camera, video or other equipment they have. We do not know what they have wrong with them, what they consider 'adequate' cover and the list goes on. This point is highlighted by your own statement that your mother is not internet savvy other than perhaps email.. I was meant to know that, or did I not read my crystal ball?
We are an INTERNET BASED company, we can answer general questions not made clear by the Product Disclosure Statement that is provided for all the insurers on our website.
YOU have access to the internet, our site, the list of options complete with all policy information booklets and you are internet savvy and you know your own mother, so the information to make an informed decision is clearly available to you for you to advise your mother.
You wish to fob that responsibility off to us, sorry but it does not work that way.
SO if you wish to refer your mother to Flight Centre to be 'fleeced' as you put it then I think it says more about you than our company.
You wish to bog [sic] us , there is nothing I can do to stop you, but I am sure you would not put this reply added to your bog as it would show your inadequacies more than any this company probably has (because none of us is perfect).
I am very sorry that your mother has such an uncaring child and you will note I have forwarded this email to her so she can see your tirade as well as your failings. I am assuming her English is better than my 85 year old mother who handles English better than she gives herself credit for.
Yours sincerely
Well, now! That's a lot of words. I do believe simply picking up the phone and wham, bam, one insurance policy coming up ma'am, would have used less of the company's time. The travel insurance market is directly affected by the travel market, which has declined. The phone and a cheap calling card (for calling cellphones) could help resurrect it.
But at least I now knew there was a real human behind the @, and acknowledged him. Unfortunately, the rep didn't agree, and told me to get knotted:
We all have better things to do with our time. We will continue doing business as we have advised you.
Mother went back to Flight Center and was offered several hundred dollars less than their original quote, bettering even that of the internet company.
Moral: Go the extra nanosecond in this recession. And stay cool. Everyone's stretched. Never get offended by customers. They're offering to help you to continue to be paid. Stay one step ahead of them at all times, but looking over your shoulder. And smiling.
Watch out, online merchants. Your sluggish, expensive offline competitors are closing the gap.
Picture: Even if a customer walks around with a kitchen sponge strapped to his forehead, he has good reasons for doing so and more importantly, enables you to be paid.
Start spreading the news, I'm investing today I want to be a part of it - New York, New York These vulturous CEOs, are going away Banished from the heart of it - New York, New York
I wanna wake up in a city, that gets decent sleep And find I'm part of the solution - not just making a heap
These big town blues, are melting away I'll make a brand new start of it - in old USA If I can make it there, I'll not make it elsewhere It's up to us - New York, New York ...
Recently I became my own micro-manufacturing enterprise, part inspired by soft capitalism.
My product, a special kind of bag, is being made - not in China for a bar of a song, but in the famous yet increasingly impoverished Garment District of New York City.
The base cost of my product: pretty high. The satisfaction of paying that much: priceless.
It was not until I got to know the tireless and exacting seamstress who took on my project, that I reached this economic epiphany.
"This use to be the fashion capital of America," said Caroline, who's made clothes for some big names in couture including Calvin Klein, Baby Phat and Tracey Reese.
Like many immigrants, she worked her way up from scratch to supervising a large staff and knowing every computerized cutting machine in the business. Then, like thousands of others, she was laid off.
"The fashion companies shipped everything offshore, fired everyone - now look what's happened."
The "now look" she's referring to isn't the latest way to team a sarong with a business suit and get away with it.
It's the slump in the clothing sector; the very people who are meant to buy those clothes – the American public – just haven't got the money. According to Caroline, it's because companies are sending labor offshore, and commercial rents are become "luxury-condofied".
In a small, unluxe room in a rabbit warren of a building on 37th St, she sits among the bolts and bobbins of her trade, showing me photos of a dress she constructed for a first appearance by Hilary Clinton.
"I came here with no English and $300 in my pocket," she said. She waves away my probing for more "story".
"Every immigrant has a story," she insists.
Caroline's quote for my project is three, maybe four times higher than it would be if made in vast quantities offshore. In fact, a friend of mine showed me a highly constructed bag he got through his bike club, complete with club logo, zippers, compression straps and numerous pockets "for $6.50".
"I'm pretty sure they were made in New Jersey," he said. We conceded that if they were, someone poor seamstress was being paid in weak coffee and unbuttered bagels.
But if sweatshops still abound in the city, Caroline isn't spending time dwelling there.
"Every country has its situations. I just do the best I can, be honest, be reliable, be of service. The best thing you can do for this country is to do what Obama says – buy local, get things made local. Then people will have jobs, they will have money to buy food, clothes, make this economy stable."
That all sounds impressively logical. Did she read that somewhere? Caroline stabs her temple with a finger.
"No, I've just thought about this!"
She tells me she's making no money on my project – she simply wants to keep her talented understudy occupied - she likes to support personal creative endeavours.
"Work on your own ideas. You get a high paid job, you lose it overnight. When you have your own business, your original thinking, you can make your own business. YOu can make your way."
I can't help relating this story whenever I show my bag. It's the verbal swing tag I have hanging off it (there's no swing tag - saving half a tree). When did you last feel excited and proud to pay a fair price rather than a cheap price for a job well done?
My customers "get it". Without the story it's another gadget. With the story, it's a contribution to society. I've sold all of the original batch in just ten days.
Roll up your sleeve - what ideas have you got hiding up there? Make it in America - for everone's sake - and you will.
Thinking it might provide a palpable insight into the state of the nation for my FastCompany blog, I hastily printed out my resume as required (complete with a nice glaring typo - doh!) and jumped in a cab to make it by curtain call.
On arriving at 1.15pm - the cut off time for entry and 45 minutes before the advertised closing time - I saw a line longer than a queue for free immortality with front row tickets to U2 thrown in.
It started at the 7th Ave subway station and weaved around two sides of a very, very long block.
"GET IN LINE MOMMY, WE BEEN WAITIN' 2 HOURS," said a gal when I tried to politely askif "this really was the line expecting to get in by 2pm?"
I fantasized for a moment about boldly cutting in front of her and instantly biff! pow! aaarrrgh! starring in my own manga comic.
Iwandered all the way to the back of the line - a long hike - gaping at what I saw: people bundled up in the sunny but freezing air, clutching resumes and portfolios for as far as the eye could see. The stipulation about "smart business attire, no jeans, sweats, sneakers" seemed moot.
"It's the first time they've allowed men in," said one man waving his resume. He looked at the envelope in my hand. "Now why wouldja want to fold your resume?"
I asked if I could film him. He suddenly turned steely. "No you cannot. I charge $400 an hour for that." There were teeth.
"Neverseen anything like this before, some peoplebeen waiting since 6am," said a policeman, blowing into his hands.
He pointed to a guy in veryun-business like attire - unless you consider playing baseball a business - but at least the wind wasn't biting at his core. "No-one after that guy in the blue jacket is getting in."
I looked at the long, snaking trail of pure patience following the guy in the blue jacket.
"Why are they still standing there?"
"We told 'em, they're not listenin'."
Well,they say persistence pays off - my friend had been waiting since 11.15am and got in at 1.40pm - with frozen feet that still hadn't thawed by the time she got home to Jersey City that evening. "My feet are still killing me," she said later on the phone.
After filming the line, I returned to the lobby and eavesdropped on conversations as people left the fair.
"Did anyone think that was worth it?" said a women loudly as people spilled out of the elevator.
"Not worth a two-hour wait freezin' your titties off," replied another, out of earshot of the recruiters.
"Tiny room, everyone jammed together, company reps telling us to go check out the website ... what was the point?"
The organizers should have known that in this economy, the event would be utterly swamped, and held it at the Javitz Center or restricted entry - something. What about speed interviewing - like speed dating, allowing each of the thousands of people their 3 minutes? Do the math:
3000 people x 3 minutes/60 = 150 hours of interviews
150 hours/40 companies = 3.75 hours on average for the entire event, plus minus a couple of hours' leeway.
Or, what about having employers bundle up and stroll down the line talking to prospectives, who would hold up a card with their company of choice? What about thinking laterally about this?
Better that than allow people already desperate for work to suffer such discomfort and indignity.
"No solicitation" was the order of the day, yet in this climate, vendors selling hot coffee and cookies down the line would have been welcome, entrepreneurial and entirely appropriate, as is the norm in third world countries. And looking at the length of this line, I could barely tell what country I was in ...
Now, we return you to your $450K job with bonuses.
describes the fallout of the recession at every level - from an impersonal, quarterly earnings figure propped up buy thousands of lives, right down to the coping tactics of a single mother.
Reading through the litany of knock-on effects it made me think, this something we can actually influence just by doing something very fundamental – expecting a little less.
It would start with everyone taking a paycut all the way down and across the board. And I mean everyone, and the banks are a good starting point. (It actually goes back even further with having less sex and less babies, but let's keep it simple).
So a bank cuts a farmer slack, and that saving is then ideally passed all the way up the line to our table where we sit with knife and fork poised. A bank, of course, is composed of individuals like us sitting at tables, knife and fork poised, and so on recursively throughout society.
So where does it fall down? Same old, same old ...
Greed.
Such a system requires consensus, and take that far enough and people cry "communism".
We can't abide being told what to do, and we can help ourselves from sneaking some kind of advantage at someone else's expense when no one's looking.
What causes greed? Fear. Also apathy, which is a kind of "reverse greed" where you hallucinate that the world owes you a living. But at the end of the day, it's all greed.
Greed says: I want more than you. To get more, I need more money than you. I'm willing to do what it takes.
Greed is good to a degree – it motivates humans to strive and make our world if not better, at least more colorful a place.
But what if every sentient being could automatically dial down their greed when times are tough - like now, much like stopping eating before the first rather than after the 5th burp?
What if right now, your rent was halved. Gives you a nice feeling, doesn't it? Also a feeling of calm. "The world is looking after me" is the feeling that comes to my mind.
Also, what if you could sit down and get a great meal for $5?
This would be entirely possible if the cafe owner's staff, suppliers, landlord, creditors, health and other services providers were all on the same page - take less profit. Even walking across a busy street, my sub-sub conscious would tell me if I got hit by a bus, I'll be OK because everyone is cutting everyone slack in the medical world. And so on all the way down and across the board, reaching farmers, distribution channels, raw materials suppliers ...
Visitors to Australia talk about that feeling of "people being relaxed there". It's not just the sun. I believe it's partly the socialized medical system, however flawed. It's not perfect, but your health is one less thing to wake up in fright over at 3am. As Sal "Soft Capitalism" Anthony explained, a good life doesn't have to be free, it just has to feel comfortably challenged.
Am I dreaming?
Several news stories talked about the illogic of laying off people and doubling the work of others. You could call it natural selection, hello Darwin. But it's not a crowded sinking life raft where there are laws of physics in play – everything above the crust of the earth is manufactured consent. We can change that consent, those feelings of expectation, entitlement and obligation.
Of course, someone is always going to try and take advantage, much like looters do in a fire. This is natural selection. Gouging people with high interest is simply modern looting.
But I sincerely believe in hijacking that ripple, also an unstoppable physical phenomenon, but one we can hijack with intentional acts of goodwill.
As Mark Knopfler once said, "you can only wear one pair of jeans at a time."
A single bank executive earning more in 2 days than his employees earn in a year is not cutting people enough slack. Making a giant profit is only really admirable if, at the end of the day, it makes for a better society. Besides, you gotta live in it this stinking society – it's not like you have an extra planetary digs from which you can flee the scourge. Look what happened to the Ceausescus despite their walled-in Garden of Eden.
I challenge everyone to think about, what you can really, honestly, do, to help those around you.
My modest pay has never been adjusted for the cost of living; . I think my last bonus was $42 a few months ago. I now have it paid late if necessary so other people in the company with kids can pay their bills. It's not much, but it's something I am willing and able to do at this time.
I'm also heading down to my local patisserie, the Three Tarts, to have my favorite treat (pictured). I can also support the grocery story by buying the ingredients and making it myself. But someone gave me a discount today so I am taking that money over there. If they stay in business, in a roundabout way, I stay in business.
Can you afford to take a pay cut for a little while? Can you make a million or two less and enjoy the satisfaction and smiles of 20 more more families who don't have to foreclose? As the late George Kaye, GM of Australia's largest chicken business once told me, "what people are paid is not the same as what people earn."
Good times will fall upon us again, in the meantime, let's all try a little kindness - down and across the board.
Social multimediaclast Lynette Chiang aka Galfromdownunder believes the financial world is yet to be revolutionized by Customer Evangelism, which looks not at the bottom right hand corner of a spreadsheet, but at the 1:1 relationships behind it.
It's been almost a month since newly wikified Chesley B. Sullenberger III (one of the guys in the attached photo, don't mind which) executed a perfect duck dive. And unless cross-haired by a man in a tweedy peaked cap, ducks always end up bobbing right side up ...
The media have been harping on and on – and on - about it. After the third day I started getting flustered with the repetition - the pilot made a safe water landing. Isn't that why they get paid the big bucks? Isn't that what the laminated seat pocket card is all about?
After the third week and now talk show appearances, I'm only just starting to understand why it's still headline news: in a recession like this, good news is grrrrrreat news.
This is opposite to normal mass media conditioning. We're bludgeoned into believing that bad news isn't just good news, it's the only news. Recession, Madoff, Gaza ...
Now that the media is as full as an egg of bad news, could it be resorting to shocking us with ... good news?
Is this the Obama effect? Even before he plonked himself down in the chair, his conciliatory manner, "kind eyes" and at least verbal commitment to change bathed us in a wide ray of hope. And change ... who hasn't noticed an increase in black actors and newsreaders*?
As usual, the media can't help itself. When it's not delivering bad news, it's trying to keep churlishness at bay:
"A woman in a fur coat asked another passenger if he'd go back into the slowly sinking plane and get her purse."
Oooooh! What if that fur was as fake as the vest I got at a TK Maxx blowout?
I'd like to be a video-toting fly on aircraft cabin walls right now, recording how many laminated seat pocket cards are being pulled out, studied intently, studied some more, even before butts hit seats and overhead locker fights break out. For once, it will be read more than the SkyMall catalog with its pet iguana ottoman for $39.95 plus shipping ...
YOU SHOW me yours, and I'll show mine. My Obamabilia, that is.
I just watched a CNN story on the Mt McKinley-sized dune of opportunistic landfill featuring Obama's face, "with kind eyes," according to an ad for ornamental plates.
I love to mock those portrait platters with the gold trim that will blow up your microwave. And aren't I a fabulous nobody for doing so - apparently the manufacturer has sold a staggering 700,000 at $19.95.
Obama is already working his economic stimulus magic and he hasn't even uncapped his pen (or turned off his Barackberry).
By allowing his face to be printed, stamped, molded, frosted and die cut on everything edible and inedible to man - sans royalty - he's making a ton of small businesses a small fortune.
But could he, should he, take a royalty, and direct it towards his economic stimulus efforts? That is, put proceeds from the sale of goods bearing his or his family's image in a "Recession Recovery Fund," to be smartly and honestly managed by these people?
Imagine the kudos if he'd announced he was cutting the Inauguration Gala Fund in half and putting it towards the economy, and the gala events became a cheerful cook-out on the White House lawn ...
I bought my Obamabilia right after Nov 5. I paid $10 for a reprint of the 75 cent Chicago Tribune, after hearing that the New York Times' first edition was going for $400 on Ebay – and also discovering the Times site logjammed by orders for its $14.95 reprint.
I bought it because Obama is from Chicago. He lives in Chicago. He was in Chicago when he was proclaimed president-elect. I made this little clip with my camera poking out of a New York City window but I wished I was in Chicago. Surely, my Chicago Obamabilia is better than your Obamabilia?
Here's a sweet little morsel of Obamabilia: loitering with intent in a bakery in Manhattan Chelsea Market I saw these Obama-themed cupcakes and cookies (see photo). I'm not sure about ingesting color copied icing, but they were impressive. When I took out my camera the assistant behind the counter held up her hand. "No photos."
When I took out my camera the assistant behind the counter held up her hand. "No photos." I never understand "no photos". I don't recall Jackson Pollock sending the paintball police around when he came out with "Blue Poles" and he made a lot of money. Some ideas - like Obamacakes - are pointless protecting. Just be the first and make sure everyone including your friendly customer evangelist know it. There's great currency in being - or being seen as - the first. The guy who invented those raised dots for the road isn't suffering. (And then, after you become famous and make a pile, go a step further and destroy your fame and start again, like Banksy could).
Back to my Obamabilia: I confess I bought a couple of those silly Chicago Tribune "press plates" for $25 each and I have no idea why. It's a piece of aluminum with the front page printed on it in plain black type with two holes drilled at the top. I think it's a nod to some old offset printing method, but that's where the usefulness ends. It's got sharp edges, be careful. They've gone into overtime churning them out.
The Obamabilia curator at the Smithsonian sardonically informs us (while turning over an Obama shot glass in a surgically-gloved hand) that "the very definition of collectible means that it's not." Ah, maybe I can use my press plate as a Wobble Board – an Australian piece of "Rolfabilia" – and sing for my stimulus package.
Yep, I'm a sucker too - but hey, I'm stimulating the economy.
The Galfromdownunder would like a decal or skin for her Pearl – who's going to be first to invent it? Here's how her customers celebrated in DC and in Jakarta.And pictured: a picture of a picture of the Obama cupcake, from a poster at Eleni's cake shop, which I hereby mention even though I was told "No Photos." Ah, must be those "kind eyes."
Pictured: Why would anyone want to smurf it up on a tropical island when there's important brainstorming to do? ... you mean this is real pineapple in my pina colada?
I still haven't been able to view that insanely popular site for the Island Caretaker job in my home country. ("Get paid $100K to swim snorkel ...")
Big bucks, bottomless Sex on the Beach (aka Sand Up Yer A**) cocktails, a casual schedule and most appealing of all: no stated requirement that you look like Pamela Anderson in a tanga. It's Work/Life balance (skewed heavily towards "life" for once) on a stick.
It's so jammed, it can't even manage a polite apology like the New York Times threw up after getting crash-tackled for its $14.95 Obama re-print. I suspect that's part of the clever strategy. Keep me banging "Refresh" on my browser like a lab monkey drip fed dopamine, why don't you!
It's a good ad for Australia - far more engaging than Australia.com's bout of cinematic seasickness featuring a dog-paddling VP of Sales limpidly gazing into the camera "coming back as Kate". Unless a character is making a disarming fool of herself, human envy is such that we won't be putting ourselves in her flip flops any time soon. As a straight shooting Aussie, this ad embarrasses me. The Hamilton one, with a big wink in its eye, does not.
As I Googled around, looking for a way to view the application procedure for this 2000-unique-visitor-per-second site, I noticed that no one has taken it on to copy the details.
Imagine the traffic you could be getting, by being the alternative go-to site to the real deal? A bit like those now-annoying USA Greencard Lottery sites, that prey on people those never make it to the dreary governmental portal where the process is essentially free of charge.
Has someone thought to come up with a similar offer too? 6 months in the Bahamas, rent free. I'd say they could dispense with the sweet salary to get the seasonally affected depressed and disorderly clamoring.
Work/life balance is still that holiest of unholy grails, even in a recession, when keeping your job is a blessing.
If you can appeal to that part of us that is arguably the next most desirable thing to sex (it sure lasts longer) you will get discretionary dollar yet.
And I'm not talking about having sandy island sorties to throw around, nor re-inventing wheels. I'm talking about cheap'n'choosy ideas, small but powerful tweaks you can easily implement within your world – and with people working partial weeks, it's the perfect time to do brainstorm.
Let's do it now.
It's winter, I'm sitting here, snowed in, seasonally affected, down and disorderly ...
I'm holed up in my burrows, surfing the web, researching my next new toy. In this case some wool sox that your toes don't poke through after a week. There's something already, sock manufacturers. We hate a perfectly good sock rendered useless by hole, which only returns, lumpier, no matter how much we darn it.
Back to me. I'm on the web, not standing in your store. Unless your Amazon or Ebay, you've probably been saying, "I need to fix my website" for the past year. I know I have. Do it now. Not only is it unselling you as you sleep, you're already losing to the competition economy picks up. Why? A bad website means the product is bad. That's how we think. Unless you're selling toilet paper or tampons, your sales are probably down, so reduce your sales staff and deploy that money towards upgrading your site.
I'm turning up the heat now ... why haven't I seen a better range of S.A.D. lights? Why are they ugly, like something you get your wisdom teeth pulled under? Lighting manufacturers, why not make fixtures look like Artemide classics but lift our spirits at the same time?
My green tea is getting cold ... How about a personal heat pad for my favorite mug to keep it warm and cozy? No one really wants to drink coffee from a paper cup through a hole in a plastic top. Perhaps it could be candle driven? The warmth of a flame ...
I just warmed it up in the microwave, despite being browbeaten by a naysayer from the Toast Oven Lobby. I had to push several buttons before I got it right. Whatever happened to the simple and elegant dial from years back, that you could spin to get the minutes and then hit start? Microwave manufacturers, you're supposed to make my life easier.
I did have to step out in the snow just now, and realized that despite my balaclava, my eyes were being battered with sleet – and it was too dark to wear sunglasses. How about a pair of light winter goggles, cleverly tinted (rose gold?) to protect my eyes and make the day seem warmer? An indoor version would do wonders for my awful fluorescent lit carpeted cubicle ...
Let's move away from cheap'n'choosy products, to cheap'n'choosy MO's:
What about changing your dreary phone menu script? Get rid of "Please listen to the following options as some of them have changed" and say something more conversational, we'll like you for it, and it will make me forget my neighbors either side never talk to me. Voice recognition software is still not perfect, and I'm tired of an electrovoice telling me "Sorry I didn't get that" over and over. Give me a button to push, please.
How about changing your "hold" music to an informative and entertaining listening program, offering tips on how to use your product, stories from happy customers, jokes and so forth. Make it like we're at your dinner table. You're selling to us even while we wait our turn.
And please, doctors, and anyone with a receptionist - fire him/her if he/she is not the most loveable creature on the end of a phone line. That voice is the face of your income stream. I called about 10 doctors and hung up in frustration because the receptionist made it sound like I'd called the wrong number.
Restaurants. Why is your server/waiter giving me the bill before telling me about dessert? I appreciate the concern for my waistline, but enrolling me in the creme brulee is part of the reason you can still pay the rent, and keep your best waiters employed. Waiters. don't take my dish away without asking. Do you want a tip or don't you? And it's a recession. I'm gonna eat that last potato.
The Staples Easy button is one of my favorite cheap'n'choosy ideas.
We want life to be easy, we want it at the push of a button, and we want to play. They captured it in a little non-executive toy.
I read somewhere they've sold millions of dollars of this product. So much so, up to a million dollars each year is donated towards a worthy charity, Boys and Girls of America.
They've made it even easier - you can now download it to your desktop, though I'd like them to add this caption: "Although this is a more convenient, lower carbon footprint version of our famous Easy button, we urge you to buy the real deal, support our Boys and Girls of America, and get your hand off that damn mouse for once."
This is a simple idea, executed all the way to where it counts – our psyche. Yair, I bought one, I don't hit it as often as I should, but when I look at it over there, it brings a smile to my face. A little bit of Work/Life Balance, a little bit of sunshine and sand, a bit of the easy life - while sitting in a snowstorm.
The Galfromdownunder believes that cheap'n'choosy ideas are hard currency in a recession. She likes to celebrate them on her Cheap'n'Choosy blog.
Twice a day my phone emits a little Bewitched-like brrrring.
I don't bother checking it, because I instantly know who it is - and where they are.
The "who" is Rickshaw Dumpling, a Chelsea restaurant I've patronized more times than is decent, for its scrumptious nowhere-found-in-Chinatown Peking Duck dumplings.
The "where" is the exact location of its new, mobile chuck wagon.
The bearer of this otherwise mundane, sub-140-character missive is Twitter, your friendly internet stalking program. It's a bit like the text equivalent of a webcam trained on a college freshman's digs, promising a rare glimpse of her bloomers.
In the morning, the cart seems to loiter deep in the Financial District, wooing hedge fund managers - who've still got a cubicle to call home - with its edamame purses and matching ginger dipping sauce. By lunchtime it pops up a few streets north in Midtown, proclaim "yum yum come and get 'um'. On weekends it competes for "king of the curb" with other carts in the Meatpacking district.
Get this - I don't actually ever go chase it down, which is the whole purpose of the alert.
But every time I hear the brrring, a little smile crosses my face. Occasionally I'll pick up the phone and forward the message to pro-dumpling but anti-twitter friends working in walkable distance from the latest stakeout.
I can't blame my friends – I too, have been slow to adopt Twitter, because the last thing we all need is another tab on our cluttered browsers, right? Rickshaw is the only "tweet" I follow, and no-one's twailing me with any great conviction.
Yet, there goes the brrrrring and it brings a smile to my face.
How the har gow has Rickshaw managed to rent such a compelling corner of my brain?
In the back of my mind, I just like to know Rickshaw is still out there, still making money, still viable in this recession. When I hear that brrring I find myself re-running the story about a Halal cart hell bent on defending its territory with a smoking shawarma. I see the two carts comically cat-and-mousing around the block, dumplings and dona kebabs drawn and cocked.
Twitter is a clever tool, but it's not rocket science. Its value is in reinforcing a basic tenet of Customer Evangelism: make people feel intimately involved and a part of something good, profound, or just pretty durn cool. The resultant community is key to resilience in a downturn.
Not everything is worth tweeting. After stalking several friends, frenemies and a couple of celebs, I got bored with "Now taking a bath", "About to eat dinner", "Watching SNL" "Taking a dump" would have been marginally more interesting for the voyeuristic mental picture it conjures up - even more fun if it was Obama or the Queen - but no such luck.
It was reasonably easy to 'tweet' - ie to send twitter messages - during my travels, and it was only a concern for overloading people following me with excessively trivial messages that limited my tweets ...
I ended up deleting these tedious tweeters from my list almost immediately. Worse, I started drawing all kinds of irrational conclusions about them; that they were actually pretty boring people with nothing much to say, and had somehow hoodwinked me into thinking they were worthy of my friendship. Such is the effect of ADHD technology.
This led me to thinking of Twitter an excellent, free training tool for aspiring advertising copywriters, speech writers and sound bite engineers. Why? Advertising 101 says, unless you want to bore the Crocs off your audience, keep it short and sweet. In 140 characters or less:
ØThe more you say, the less people hear.
or, as Sao Paulo Creative Director Marcelo Serpa put it:
ØSay too much, you lose money
The more compelling your tweets, the more people will appreciate your ability to string letters together and stay on your tail. And who knows – it could lead to a job writing lines surpassing "New. iPhone." for Apple.
To use it as a self-copy training tool, try setting up a second account and follow yourself. If you bore you, chances are you'll bore everyone else unless a) you're a celeb whose fans hang on your every 'the', 'a' , 'but' and space b) you're a jealous or controlling spouse/parent/beau who likes to know your victim's every twitch c) you're a bona fide stalker with the blessing of the stalkee.
I've just set up a twitter account for the company I work for, Bike Friday, and given all staff access. Since our customers love to get the inside dope on us, I'm hoping individuals in the company will tweet about all the interesting things they're doing and thinking, giving followers a "glass against the wall" view of what goes on in the company.
So far, I'm the only one who's posted. I'll wait.
Meanwhile, there goes that brrrring ...
The Galfromdownunder thinks that many adwriters should use Twitter to hone their headlines. She put the above doozy into the Twitter and guess what it came out as?
In a 'bring your doggy bag' of epic proportions, the invitation attracted over 40,000 scavengers to the Miller's farmlands, literally scraping their land back to the earth's mantle.
Google tells me that's half the capacity of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas, which will hold approximately 80,000, but it still doesn't help me get my head around it.
"Everybody is so depressed about the economy," said an otherwise plucky potato picker.
Now swing your Google Earth crosshairs over to the 9th Avenue area between Chelsea Markets and 22nd st in Manhattan, where I polled the purveyors of some of the most delectable comestibles to find out just where dead Financiers (the almond blueberry kind, not the Wall St kind) go, along with bread rolls, croissants, custard Danish and other unbought goods, at close of business?
Prepare to be shocked - that left over Danish doesn't even go to the dogs.
"In the trash."
And you thought there were these charitable "food banks" distributing the abandoned burgers to the needy and deserving ...
It seems it's one of those urban myths that people so want to be true, that it becomes accepted as true, even when it's not.
"Surely you could at least sell it off at half price in the last half hour, like the Fat Witch graciously does in Chelsea Markets," I asked of the proprietors as I overpaid for my frosted folly.
"The owner doesn't want a line outside," said the server in a French patisserie on the corner of 9th and 20th. Not a good look for a boutique bakery for sure.
But hey, this is a recession.
Why not sell it off half price so that a) it doesn't go to waste, and it b) it brings in some income?
A cake shop across the road also admitted that they toss the tiramisu at COB.
"People might think it's not fresh if we mark it down," said the manager.
"Well, I am sure we can let the people decide," I ventured, knowing full well that price is a pretty convincing decider.
A sushi bar owner on 17th and 8th grunted when I expressed dismay that his bento boxes got the boot come 7pm. Would he be willing to sell me one at half price? He gave me a look dirtier than a post dim-sum tablecloth and banished the bentos (not the unagi, thankfully) into a hungry trash bag.
Perhaps they're actually saving our waistlines by being so wasteful – I'd be supersizing my doggie bag nightly at these places if they gave me a half price chance.
Be that as it may, I say, let's band together and tell them where to put their leftovers at the end of the day – in our shopping bags, not garbage bags.
No one's saying you have to give it to us for free – just let us take it off your hands for a nice price - or give it to someone who could really use it.
I just picked up the "Travel Winter 2008" issue of the New York Times Style Magazine. You know, that freebie treebie that slides out of the Sunday edition with a thud on the coffee table, its glossy pages demanding a sniff and flick before your brain can handle the real news.
On the front cover is a stunning image of a glacier. In the foreground, a piece of carry-on luggage floats, corpse-like, in water. I say corpse-like because it's white, and instantly made me think of the Mt Erebus airline tragedy. It's actually a Ferragamo rollaway for $2500, no doubt now worth a water-damaged $20 on Craigslist.
The cover is part of a photo spread within called Frozen Assets, which features more scenery not uncommon in the news these days – our rapidly melting polar caps.
The grand scenery is juxtaposed with more accoutrements of what must be some rich airline tragedy victims, like the $6845 black and white pelt of a mammal formerly known as endangered.
Another page shows a $3195 Chanel bag on a shard of melting ice that a small polar bear would long have fallen sideways off of.
Served on the rocks are two pairs of $2000+ towering stiletto boots made for doing something other than walking. An abandoned GM executive's briefcase glitters on the tundra.
In short, I am utterly amazed at the inappropriateness of this spread. If it was done by Millionaire Monthly and captioned "Sorry, Green Doesn't Go with My Loafers" or "Sod the planet, I'm here for a good time, not a long time," I'd understand it. If it was done by the Onion with the headline "To Hell with Global Warming" I'd applaud it. But the New York Times?
Someone in that glassy, "no bikes allowed" building needs to stop hanging out with the stylists and all their freebie props and do time in the local Salvation Army Thrift Store.
Am I sounding "greener than thou"? As someone who is a militant opponent of rampant political correctness, I don't think so.
"Burberry did a similarly tasteless spread for some magazine recently," said a friend who works in the luxury goods business - but still has a conscience. "They went to India plucking hapless souls from the slums of Delhi or Mumbai to use as models. They photogaphed one holding one of their beyond-pricey umbrellas and others with obscenely expensive articles of their clothes. It just shows out out of touch some people are, that they don't recognize how offensive they are."
And did they, like GM, either fail to consult, or completely ignore, their PR department before um, letting 'er rip, as we say downunder?
"I don't think they even think about that," said Andrew Metcalfe, a top strategist. "Zero strategy - they probably just take pictures of products on cool backgrounds and that's that."
"But did you read the accompanying article?" said a literary friend.
"Why should I?" I respond. "Those images have gotten me so riled up I don't want to waste my rods and cones on it."
My friend took the magazine off me and read the article.
"Hm. Strange. Kind of part travelogue, slight environmental statement, but mostly seems like it's there to justify the photo shoot."
I took the mag off him read the article, scanning for clues.
The ice in Greenland is of course, the global talking point of environmental degradation.
Yup – just look at how fast that ice floe is melting under that hot $2200 Louis Vuitton suitcase ...
As the ice melts, the world waits to see how many billions of barrels lie beneath the frost ...
AHA! Why did I ever doubt?
Oil money and ostrich feather luggage - I knew the Times' famous reputation for timeliness and relevance would never let me down.
