Earlier this month, I wrote a blog post that addressed the AIG bonuses. Somehow, Harvard Business School did a slightly better job than I did explaining what could or should have been done. This article was written by Columbia Business School professor, Rita McGrath, who is much more qualified than I am to talk about it! AIG:Why the facts don’t matter
After seeing this picture, the marketing pholks at Phish.com have a little better idea of who they should market hard to.
Dudes. Those little red triangles are over the heads of the ladies in attendance. Some rough estimates have put the male to female ratio at around 72:1. So besides the knowledge that no man should try to pick up a girl at a phish concert, it gave the people that market to phish fans a very cut and dry example of what sex the majority of their fanbase is. It has been known for quite some time that most “jam bands” have a much larger male following than female, but little has been done to market directly to the male fanbase. Before touching on that, it makes sense to consider why the fanbase shakes down like this. For arguments sake, I’m going to throw out a few very broad generalizations on this.
1. I know very few girls who would drive or fly 9 or 10 hours to see a concert
2. Girls typically have more sense than to sit in front of a computer and refresh livenation.com for 3.5 consecutively in hopes of getting a single ticket, to a single concert. They’re much smarter with their time!
3. Guys, in my humble opinion, are a lot more willing to see the same band three nights in a row. Phish doesn’t play the same songs on back to back nights, and it is rare that they will repeat a single song over the course of 3 concerts (which is a big reason why people will try to see them multiple times in a row).
Anyways, phish now has hard evidence that their fanbase is predominantly male. So why not make their concerts/products more guy friendly? How can they do this?
-Convert a few extra ladies bathrooms to men’s rooms.
-Come out with more “guy specific” merchandise items. IE sporting goods, golf balls, frisbees, coolers, gas grills, etc with the phish logo on them. Despite it getting away from their hippy roots, if they took a few cues from professional sports teams, they could tap into a large market of untapped revenue.
Now I’m rambling on like a 25 minute phish song. Basically phish marketing guys, you did a great job on twitter by live-tweeting the songs as they were played at the last 3 concerts you put on. Your whole fanbase appreciates that you gave away the MP3′s of the complete concerts for free the morning after the concert. And yesterday when I pre-ordered tickets for some of your upcoming concerts, I had the ability to pre-order the MP3s of the shows I want to attend at the same time I bought the tickets. Those MP3′s by the way, are also cheaper than what phish’s jamband contemporaries charge for theirs. You had 75,000+ people try to get tickets to a venue that held 14,000 for three nights in a row. If that doesn’t tell you something about the demand for your “product” and how hard your fanbase will try to acquire your product, than you haven’t been doing your homework! You know they’re out there, and you know who they are, and what they will do. Change the game, give them a product they have yet to see.
Ok AIG, this is getting a bit ridiculous. I understand how some of your key executives had specific bonuses figured into their salaries and contracts, but come on. Your company has already been bailed out by the US Taxpayers to the tune of 173 billion dollars and posted a 67.1 BILLION DOLLAR LOSS IN A SINGLE FISCAL QUARTER. Yet somehow you still have people working for you that feel they deserve a bonus because it was in their contract? Call me a whiny uninformed taxpayer, but typically people receive bonuses for a job well done, not for driving a company into financial ruin. Let those bonuses be paid retroactively to those who help AIG get back on their feet, not to the ones who take their bonuses, retire and are never held accountable to the American taxpayers. This goes double for you London derivative traders.
On a somewhat unrelated note, check out this link that shows what a trillion dollars worth of 100 dollar bills looks like, and put that in the context of what the American public gave to AIG.
http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html
Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for that pun, yet somehow Madoff is planning on taking “all the credit” for the ponziest of ponzi schemes. At this point, the court proceedings are a few hours away from starting, and Mr. Madoff is going into it as the only named defendant. I in no way endorse his actions of fleecing people out of all their hard earned savings, nest eggs, and whatever else he stole from them, but it is somewhat noble that he is taking the entire fall for everyone involved in his scheme. Yes, I know that he was the mastermind behind it, but it is unfathomable that one man would be able to scam, trick, and misallocate FIFTY BILLION dollars without a little help. I mean come on, it took at least 11, 12, or 13 people to pull of the heists in the Ocean’s 11 movie series! Mark Cuban wrote an interesting post right after the Madoff news broke about the software that made the whole scam work. Breaking Down Bernie Madoff. Haven’t seen anything come of this theory yet, but it raises a very interesting point IMO.
I can’t help but chuckle when you read things like “his family had no idea”. I know he was an extremely wealthy individual well before executing this scheme, but to play the ignorance card in this case is extremely unbelievable. I mean what’s the point of embezzling that much moolah if you’re not going to buy some extravagant yachts, gold plated toilets and a couple of waterfront properties in Dubai? Somebody had to know what was going on. I can imagine at this stage of the game, that Ol Bernie knows that he’ll be spending the rest of his life in jail, but it still begs the question of where is this 50 billion? It isn’t hidden in shell companies anymore and according to the recent testimony, his wife and kids haven’t seen it either. What I’m getting at, is that he had to have some end game to this whole scheme. What would be the reasoning behind doing something on that scale if you had no intention of cashing in on it? It wasn’t like he was a nobody that was running some chain letter scam, he was the former-chairman of NASDAQ! Even if he never spills the beans on who were his partners in crime, it will be interesting to watch him go down in flames and hopefully return some of his assets to the people he stole from. Where do you think the money is, and do you think we’ll ever see any of it turn up?
Just got back from lunch at the local Panera and this is what I overheard the manager saying to an older couple who was also dining there. The manager was beaming when he said this, which indicated to me, that even though they never seem to be hurting for business, at least during lunch, that today’s crowd was larger than normal. There weren’t any free sandwich giveways or new sandwich premieres, yet the store was packed. I didn’t attribute this to the economy as much as I did the beautiful weather we are having today, but it made me think that in light of the recent economic woes that we are facing on a day to day basis, that a little sunshine and above freezing temperatures can do a lot for the public’s mindset during a recession/depression or whatever the talking heads are calling the economic crisis this week. It would seem, at least on the surface, that people are beginning to accept that although things going on around us(many of which are way out of any of our control) aren’t the best, that everything doesn’t quite fit the doomsday scenarios that the national news are shoving down our throats on a daily basis and that we can still, as a nation, afford to treat ourselves to a soup and a salad and not worry about missing this month’s rent or mortgage payment.
http://danphelan.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/danphelan_its-…e-had-all-yeardanphelan_its-the-busiest-day-weve-had-all-year
If I have some free time during the day, I like to lurk around on some of the various contracting industry message boards. Often times, I will come across something that someone else is doing, that I think could help one of the contractors I work with. Not quite the case today. As I toggled between “never see techs at the supply houses” and “last steelers/cardinals thread…ever” I stumbled across a thread called “good things about a bad economy”. That was the subject, as well as the set up for the joke.
I’ve noticed a good thing about the bad economy: …when you go in Lowes or Home Depot someone will walk up to you and ask,”may I help you?”
This led to a slew of smart ass answers such as commentary about “how great the language skills of fast food workers has become since we went into a recession” and in regards to the lowes/home depot zinger; “i went into a store today and the employees had to out number the customers 4 to 1, and someone did actually ask me if i found everything i was looking for. i thought maybe he thought i was trying to steal sumthin.”
Doesn’t speak very well to the state of chain stores, if a financial disaster is the catalyst for your employees to start interacting with customers! Chalk this post up as another one that has nothing to do with insurance or construction! That being said, if you’re in need of a retail sales/customer service trainer; I am available on nights and weekends. 555-867-5309
Top 10 lists seem to be pretty popular with the internet kids these days. And since it’s Friday, and I’m feeling a little unmotivated to write the next great-American blog post this afternoon, here’s some timeless rules for surviving an unpredictable world with dignity. From the book The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
1 Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
2 Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
3 It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
4 Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behavior. You will always have the last word.
5 Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
6 Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.
7 Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
8 Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants… or (again) parties.
9 Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
10 Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.
If you liked that list, and want to buy the book, go see the nice folks over at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400063515/downandoutint-20
This has become the biggest issue to come up this week about the current incarnation of the proposed U.S Stimulus Package. As someone who works with the construction industry on a daily basis, the final outcome of this bill will have a profound impact on my business as well as my clients’. It’s not the first time this type of bill has slipped across the desks of the American legislature.
Back in the 1930′s, during the Hoover administration, a similar bill was proposed by two Republican congressman named the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. This act raised the tariff on over 20,000 items and did some pretty good bridge burning with several of our trading partners at the time. A similar act happened during FDR’s administration, but this time it only applied to items being purchased by the federal government. On one hand, I would like to see the stimulus money help my clients in the short run by having all the construction that is proposed be completed using American made commodoties, parts, and workers, but not necessarily at the cost of ruining our trade agreements already in place. Especially if it causes our allies and trading partners to raise their tariffs in a retaliatory fashion. Should we do the patriotic thing and build it American, or save face and maintain positive relations after we dig ourselves out of the recession?
If you are one of the four people that read my last post that centered around whining about customer service, buckle up cuz here comes another one.
I filled my car up with gas on my lunch break today. During the winter months, when my car is jammed up with salt and miscellaneous road grime, I like to clean it off a little while my gas is pumping. My attempts were thwarted by my two biggest and only pet peeves at gas stations.
1. The nozzle doesn’t have a locking mechanism, so I can’t multi-task(throw away garbage/clean the windshield) while my gas is pumping
2. The squigee that one would normally use to clean a windshield is firmy stuck in an icy bucket(it was close to 50 degrees out).
There are much bigger things I could complain about, but I have several choices of gas distribution centers during my daily commute, and this particular Shell station will not see my salty purple-ish Camry again. These are the thoughts going through my head as I stand on a pile of ice and pump my gas. Along with “I wonder how much a general liability suit would settle for when a senior member of the community falls on this ice and cracks a hip”.
Then I thought that this gas station and it’s owner could be in a lot worse shape than my whining warrants.
He/she could be the only member of the staff, and he/she is working 20 hour days to keep their kids fed. They’re barely able to pay for the gas they sell, nevermind replacing the lazy switch on the gas pumps or paying $100s of dollars to have someone plow the driveway everytime it snows. This is one end of the spectrum, whereas laziness is the other. Most people aren’t on either end yet, so there is still time to save your customer’s experience before it drives your customers to your competitors, and drives you to the unemployment office. Especially if you’re hawking commodities, the little stuff counts and is noticed.
I subscribe to a daily email from UrbanDictionary (www.urbandictionary.com. Still working on how to correctly insert links.), today’s “word of the day” is:
Land it in the Hudson. An expression used to encourage yourself or someone else when it appears an endeavor is headed for a disastrous outcome (due mostly to external conditions). Based on when Sully averted tragedy by successfully landing US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. See also, “Land it like Sully.”
We are in historic times right now. The path of the US economy is on the same course as Flight 1549, minus the geese of course. If our government does everything right from this point forward, good luck Mr. Geithner, we won’t get as close to averting disaster as Captain “Sully” Sullenberger did.
But suppose for a second that miraculously, we do Land it in the Hudson. How would our way life be? Would anything change? Would we go back to doing things just like we did in 2007 with rose colored glasses on? Would more government sanctions be put in place on financial institutions? Will closer monitoring on people like Bernie Madoff be the norm? If somehow the stock market rebounded this afternoon to previous highs, and banks started issuing credit/loans tomorrow, how would you proceed? What would you do the same? What would you do differently?
