Category Archives: Personal

A collection of personal thoughts and stories

Keillor and Altman Fans Rejoice!

I’m very excited, and it has nothing to do with anything online. A Prairie Home Companion is now playing. I’ve always been a huge Garrison Keillor fan, for 3 reasons. First, I grew up in a Norwegian prairie town (Sundre) that seems to be the Canadian equivalent of Lake Wobegon. Secondly, I started my career in radio. And third, he’s probably America’s greatest living humorist.

So when I heard he and Robert Altman were teaming up on a movie version of a Prairie Home Companion, I couldn’t wait. And what a cast! Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones…those are four of my favorites right there. Granted, it also has Lindsey Lohan, but apparently she’s pretty good in the role.

Not sure how many share my tastes, but if you do, check out the website.

Tales of Mobile Woe

First published June 1, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

On Tuesday night, I was wondering aimlessly through the streets of Old Montreal, staring in hapless confusion at my Pocket PC. Prior to the trip, I thought I had passed into the elite of the technologically advanced road warrior. With Pocket Maps loaded, my hotel location pinpointed and a plethora of enticing little dots to explore, I set out on the cobblestoned streets, secure in the knowledge that the entire streetscape of Montreal was magically captured in my trusty iPAQ.

Exploring old-world Quebec, new-world style

I’m a pretty savvy traveler. I have a great sense of direction, usually study a map ahead to get the “lay of the land,” and can keep north and south straight in my head. My wife’s family often wonders how I do it, as they have no sense of direction at all.

I remember one trip to Vancouver with my father-in-law. I was heading for the Second Narrows Bridge to cross over into North Van, and was on the street that would take us right onto the bridge. My father-in-law asked where I thought I was going, and when I told him the bridge, he said I was way too far west; it was at least two miles further east. As we stayed on the road and eventually ended up on the bridge, he harrumphed and said they must have moved it. Obviously one of those migratory bridges.

So, with this innate ability, enhanced with my newfound technical navigational advantage, I figured there should be no stopping me. This was the trial run for a family trip this summer to France and Italy.

 

Input and output: kaput!

 

I got one block from the hotel and was totally lost. I had no idea where north and south were. The tiny 2.5- by 3.5-inch screen held no clues for me, as I zoomed in and out and helplessly panned around, looking for a street with which I could get my bearings. Street names sometimes appeared, and sometimes didn’t.

And the huge church in front of me, which I recognized as Basilique Notre Dame, one of Montreal’s most famous landmarks, for some reason didn’t show up on my diminutive map. Instead there was a little blue dot labeled “Vieux Seminare,” practically obliterated by hundreds of restaurant and hotel icons. I scratched around helplessly with my stylus as I slowly walked down the street, trying to pan to a section of map that looked familiar.

If you’ve never tried using a stylus while walking, be forewarned, you need the steady hands of a brain surgeon and the dexterity of a Cirque du Soleil performer. It’s not for the faint of heart. I would just get to a section of the map that looked promising when I would have to look up to avoid running into a lamppost or person and suddenly my stylus would leap across the screen and transport me to the nether regions of Montreal, miles from my current location. Once it accidentally opened a map of Manhattan, and I was halfway to Times Square before I realized what happened.

As I reached a square, I saw a map of Old Montreal conveniently placed for tourists, a real map, 3 feet by 4 feet, with icons that didn’t disappear and street names I could read. It was at a scale where I could look at more than a block of the map at a time and still see the points of interest. I pocketed the iPAQ, got my bearings and happily explored the rest of the Old City (which is fabulous, or as they say here, tres merveilleux) as the iPAQ dozed silently in its holster. Its wandering days are over.

And here we have the biggest problem with mobile. Getting information into it, and getting information out. We are not Lilliputians. My fingers can pretty much wipe out an entire family of BlackBerry keys in one swipe. And my thumbs are even more dangerous. This was not the way a 6-foot, 220-pound guy was meant to communicate. Give me a durable, beefy keyboard that can take my not-so-subtle advances.

The only thing meant to be seen on a 2.5- by 3.5-inch screen is Dr. Phil, because just when he gets to the peak of his self-righteous “I can’t help you unless you help yourself” diatribe, you can pretend you’re squishing his head between your thumb and forefinger. This also works with Donald Trump on “The Apprentice” and Simon Cowell on “American Idol,” by the way.

I dream of a heads-up display embedded in my eyeglasses, and a workable voice interface. You say what you want, and it instantly springs up in front of your eyes. Now that would be sweet. Hey, if anybody out there is working on this stuff, let me know. I’d like to buy stocks.

The wireless ransom

My first lesson with mobile data roaming came soon after getting the iPAQ. We hopped in the motorhome and headed to California. Of course, we experimented on the way with how nifty it was to check e-mail, look up Web sites and, for my wife, to chat on Messenger for several hours between Lincoln City and Florence (Oregon, not Italy) with her sister back home. We reached San Francisco and, in trying to locate Molinari’s delicatessen (a place you just have to get a sandwich, by the way), we just searched for the Web site, found the address and walked right to it. This was what being wired was being all about!

Then we got home and found out what being hosed was all about. We got the mobile bill: $800 in data charges for two weeks! Looking up the restaurant probably cost us more than the meal itself. I figure each of my wife’s Messenger chats averaged about 30 dollars. Since then, I’ve learned to not keep bringing up this point in domestic discussions.

Until we get some broadband upgrades, standardized rates and roaming agreements that cost less than the GNPs of most small countries, we’re scared to death of going online on a mobile device. It’s like going into your lawyer’s office. You get in, get what you want to say said, and get out. You don’t comment on décor, mention children or bring up holidays. At 300 bucks-plus an hour, it would be cheaper to call a 900 number and chew the fat about female self awareness with Jenn and Barbie at Dial-a-Date.com.

Convergence soon, please!

The third leg of the mobile conundrum is the usefulness of the apps you use. At first glance, they look great, but anemic features, lack of computing power and restricted storage space make you realize their limitations all too quickly. The concept is great; the execution leaves a little to be desired.

Case in point: although you can find points of interest in Pocket Maps, you can’t link them together with suggested routes. I realize the data to calculate the routes is a little much to expect from a Pocket PC, but why does it have to be that way? Isn’t technology here to solve our problems? Anyone trying to create an itinerary on the fly will soon give up.

Also, the points of interest and landmarks you find just give the title and address–nothing else. Even if they did give you a Web site link, you’d be afraid to click on it because Web sites get totally hacked on the small PDA screen, take forever to load and cost you a small fortune to access.

The promise of things yet to come

I want a smarter mobile navigational and search experience. I want to be able to indicate my starting point on my GPS-enabled mobile computer, feed in my interests, get a real search online function to help me find locations (Pocket Map’s 2006 is an improvement over 2004, but leaves a lot to be desired), have the best routes indicated, give me one-click access to information, menus, entertainment, prices and reservations for restaurants, integrate reviews and best- of lists like CitySearch and TripAdvisor, and switch to a satellite view if I wish.

Better yet, I’d like to indicate times I’d like to take a sight-seeing tour, a time I want to stop for supper, and have my PDA work as a smart assistant for me to take my likes and dislikes and provide me with a list of suggestions for my approval. Upon approval, it would lay out the best route and point out landmarks I should look for on the way. As always, search will be the functional layer that ties it all together.

Or think what shopping with a super-smart PDA would be like. You are in a shop and see something you absolutely love. You scan the label with your PDA and see if there are any others in a four-block radius at a lower cost. There is, in a store two blocks east (the map is already drawn) and in different colors. You send a request to the store to set them aside. You start delivering mobile functionality like that and you’ll leave desktop -bound PCs in the dust.

I’m sure most of the capabilities I dream about lie here and there in development, tiny little fragments of a yet-to-be-integrated solution. When it comes, it will be a wonderful thing. But for now, when I’m on the road, the iPAQ will probably spend more time in the holster than out of it. I haven’t totally given up yet, though. The Bluetooth GPS receiver I ordered from eBay is on its way, if it didn’t get lost!

Canada’s Wired!

It’s been a few days without a post, so I thought I’d get a quick one in tonight before I call it a night. I’m in Montreal for the InfoPresse Search Marketing Event (catch my Search Insider this week for more adventures from Old Montreal) and as luck would have it, happened to see an article from MarketingSherpa about how wired Canadians are. I’ve been trying to tell people this for years. I read somewhere that Canadians were the best shoppers in the world. We research more before the purchase than anyone else. We also have more broadband penetration than the US. Add this up and it seems like a match made in heaven for search marketing, but Canadian business has been slow to jump on the bandwagon. The big brands are either not present in search at all, or are just toying with it. The good news is that Canadians marketers are beginning to wake up, as was seen by high interest rates at SES Toronto and at today’s event in Montreal.

Well, I’ve got an early flight tomorrow, and it’s almost midnight, so I’ll cut this short. Just wanted to thank Thomas Gobeil at Infopresse for the invite. The city was amazing and I’d love to come back. Thanks to all who attended the session as well and who bore with me through my acute unilingualism. Also had a chance to meet Mitch Joel from Twistimage and had a spirited discussion about “melt your brain” ideas that keep us both up at night. Check out Mitch’s blog. And thanks to Jonathon Markoff from Acquisio for the conversation over dinner. A great visit, all in all!

 

Day of Reckoning Coming for Big Brands; or, to Hell and Back on United

I’ll start with a caveat: I’m PO’d. I spent a night from hell on Tuesday trying to get to Toronto from Chicago. But I hope in the midst of my spouting I get a valid point across.

First, the story of why I’m PO’d. I was flying United on what was supposed to be a one hour hop from Chicago to Toronto. By the way, United asked over $500 for this hop.

I start off by grabbing a sandwich at a little express counter by the gate from a place called Reggio’s To Go. A basic ham and cheese cost me about 8 bucks. This is an airport, so I’m not expecting great things from the 8 dollar sandwich, but even with those low expectations set, I was surprised by how abysmal the sandwich actually was. I had to check twice to make sure it was the sandwich I was eating and not the packaging. It tasted like it had been sitting in the display case since the early Bronze Age. I happened to glance at the sign for Reggio’s, which is obviously a franchise. The brand message is “Fresh and Ready to Go”. “Ready to go” in the garbage seems to be what they meant.

We’re on board by 6:15, the scheduled departure time. The plane is packed, leg room is negligible, and to make matters worse, the person sitting to my immediate right is just coming back from Japan. There’s no room left in overhead, so she tries to jam a roller suitcase, a backpack and a large shopping bag under the seat. None of the 3 fit, so she piles them on the floor between her legs, hoping no one will notice. Nobody does..or at least, nobody mentions anything. This makes the already scarce leg room even more restricted. By this point, I’m resigned to a miserable one hour trip, but then again, it’s an airline, so I didn’t really expect anything more.

The plane is unbelievably hot, but no worries, we should be in the air soon, and hopefully the plane will cool down. We wait, and wait, and wait. After what seems like a century, the pilot comes on and let’s us know they’re having a problem with the fuel gauge. They’re going to try to fix it to know how much fuel we actually have, and then we’ll be on our way. I think it was about this point I passed out from sheer heat exhaustion. After another 20 minutes or so, I woke up, my neck screaming in agony, my legs dead from the waist down, and sweat starting to drip from my forehead. The fuel gauge is still not working, and there’s no progress in sight. After another 30 minutes, it appears that the fuel gauge is thwarting the best efforts of United’s top maintenance crew, so they at least let us off the pressure cooker, 90 minutes past departure time and no closer to Toronto. Somebody insightfully wonders aloud about what they used for a fuel gauge on the flight in?

We get to the gate and are told to stay close for updates. The passengers with connections try to get rebooked. They’re understandably upset. But United’s gate agents seem to think the best approach is to meet rudeness with rudeness. The agents are short tempered and surly, snapping at passengers who have the nerve to see if they can somehow get to Toronto before the clock strikes midnight. “Is your luggage checked? Yes? Sorry then, I can’t do anything for you. Go sit down.” I swear to God, that’s the exact quote I heard.

After another hour and a half at the gate, the recalcitrant fuel gauge gives in and we get back on the plane. We finally get in the air by 10, almost 4 hours after the scheduled departure time. The pilot came on to thank us for our patience and assures us we have 3 of United’s finest flight attendants looking after us. There’s nothing wrong with them, but there’s nothing very right either. There was absolutely no attempt to make it up to us. No gesture of apology. If these are United’s finest, the hiring standards must be pretty low.

As we touch down in Toronto, the pilot comes on again and thanks us for flying the friendly skies. Friendly skies? Frat house initiations are less painful than what I just went through!

And here’s my point. Brand messaging has to be more that a cool line for your ads. It should be a promise. It should drive every aspect of the company. It should embody the unique value you offer. I had the chance to share the keynote spotlight at a recent show with David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue. David quipped at the beginning that when they started JetBlue, their goal was to raise the bar of the airline industry. Quickly they realized that within the industry, the bar was set so low that you could crawl over it. They soon had to look outside the industry to find examples of best practices that meant something.

The brand relationship should be built at every customer touchpoint. I had a number of touchpoints with the United brand on Tuesday, and the sum total left me feeling like I’d been mugged. If United really believes they offer a friendlier experience, then every employee should embody that attitude. None of the ones I met yesterday seemed to have been let in on the secret. The attitudes ranged from indifferent to downright surly.

United has probably spent billions getting their brand message out through advertising. But do you think they could spring a few hundred bucks to treat us all to a drink, or even a free cookie when it really mattered? Brand is built on the front lines, face to face with a customer. It’s delivering when the chips are down. It’s taking responsibility for a positive customer experience, and doing what it takes to fix it when it’s not. United abdicated this responsibility, so their brand message became nothing more than a brand lie. It’s worthless to me. In fact, it’s worse than that, because United just dug a hole for themselves with me that they may never get out of. I will avoid United like the plague from this point forward.

The same is true, to a lesser extent, with Reggio’s and the world’s worst sandwich (somewhat ironic, because I had one of my best sandwiches in Chicago the day before). If their slogan is to be any more than another brand lie, then they have to deliver edible food. The brand has to mean something. How do they expect it to mean something to the consumer when the company itself doesn’t believe the brand message?

Up to now, companies could get away with this. You could screw over the consumer and their circle of influence was limited. Sure, they’d complain, but as long as you kept bumping millions into slick TV ads painting idyllic pictures of brand nirvana, you could keep the ruse going. It was the “sucker born every minute” approach to advertising. But those days are coming to an end. Now, when I call bullshit on a brand message, I have an expanded reach through the internet. Some call it consumer generated media. I call it Bitching 2.0.

There’s a new ecosystem developing online. Marketing theorists have long known of mavens. Mavens are a key component in social epidemics, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in the Tipping Point. Traditionally, they’re the ones that have been entrusted to keep brands honest. They are the uber-consumers that the rest of us look for guidance to. They tell us what’s good, and what’s not. Traditionally, they needed social connectors to spread the word.

But what happens when you give a maven a blog? Suddenly, connectors are built into the infrastructure of the web. I would argue that the new mavens are the ones with the most read blogs. They’re thoughtful, they’re well informed, and many of us have them pegged in our feed readers. Suddenly, the scope of their influence expands exponentially. As an example, my blog is only a few weeks old, but most of my posts are read by hundreds of people. If I get a link in another blog, the viral impact starts to take over. My rant against a bogus brand message could reach thousands. And there were at least a hundred other passengers on that United flight, just as PO’d as me, any of which could be a blogging maven. The web puts the spread of word of mouth on a dramatically expanded scale, on a compressed timeline. Also, it makes word of mouth, traditionally a fleeting thing, into a permanent fixture online. This blog post will live in perpetuity on the web, searchable by any search engine. Suddenly, the big brands can’t take the reach of a single consumer for granted.

To me, this shift of power to the consumer is one of the most exciting aspects of the web, and it’s long overdue. Now, we have the power to force corporations to keep their brand promise, or perish.

And to the staff of United Flight 1110, let me pass this along. The definition of “friendly” is:

  1. Of, relating to, or befitting a friend
  2. Favorably disposed; not antagonistic
  3. Warm; comforting.

Please pass it along to every United staff member you know.

Notes from Chicago

My session is over at ACCM and the crowd was pretty search savvy. The show is the Annual Catalog Conference and the search sessions were slipped in before the main show started. Also, the search track was relegated to a room that was pretty much in the back alley of the McCormick Center. Seems like search is still having difficulty gaining respect. You’d find it hard to believe based on the profile at this show that this one channel is driving the majority of online spending of the attendees. Still, great to see some old friends, including Detlev Johnson, Matt Bailley, Bill Hunt and Mike Moran, the incredibly perky Heather Lloyd-Martin and the ever thoughtful Amanda Watlington. Kevin Lee also kept us on the edge of our seats right to the last minute as he got held up at the airport. Kevin is obviously still adjusting to “Dad Time”, where it seems you’re perpetually late for everything. Still, Kevin’s got a great reason to be late.

By the way, if you’re in Chicago, try out Potbelly Sandwich Works on State. Slipped in for a quick Italian sub yesterday and it was awesome.

Off to Chicago

Next week, I’m in the windy city for the Annual Catalog Conference. Fair amount of search on the agenda. I did the show last year in Orlando and found a real mix of expertise, but I’m constantly amazed at the difference a year can make in the “savvy index” at these non-Search focused shows. I’ll try to get a post or two in between the Giordano’s pizza.

Speaking of shows, just traded emails with Jakob Nielsen who’s busily getting ready for his Usability Week Summit Series. Jakob and his team are wrapping up a pretty extensive eye tracking study. I’m hoping to catch up with him at the San Francisco show to compare notes. The agenda looks amazing, so if usability is your thing (and it should be) you might want to check this out. We’re sending Cory Bates, our usability consultant and eye tracking go-to guy to soak up some wisdom.

Finally, a weekend wrap up note from SEO PR’s Greg (“have I mentioned I’m a Democrat?”) Jarboe. Upon learning that I finally started blogging, Greg gave me the following stat:

According to Technorati, there’s a new blog created every second — and 55% of new bloggers are still posting three months later. So, the trick isn’t becoming a blogger. It’s finding something new to say 13 weeks down the road.

I’m not at 13 weeks yet, but I’m a week and a half in and this is post 13, so so far, so good

Danny Sullivan: Tim Horton’s Poster Child

Us Canadians have long known the pleasures of donuts and coffee from Timmy’s (Tim Horton’s) but this week at SES Toronto Danny Sullivan became a true believer as he stocked up on his typical conference diet of donuts and Diet Coke. Danny’s verdict: better than Dunkin’ Donuts, and there are few more experienced donut afficianados than Mr. Sullivan. If you’re not familiar with the chain, run the name past any Canadian, any where in the world and I guarantee it will generate a fond grin!

We’re Jet Setters, But Where’s the Paparazzi?

First published April 27, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

April has been a tough month. At last count, I’ve been in nine different cities (not including my home), a ski resort, on four different airlines for a total of two dozen flights and connections, in eight different hotels, at six different shows, and have also packed in assorted client and organizational meetings. I’ve been spending more time with search marketers than my family, and that can’t be a good thing. As lovely as Anne Kennedy, Greg Jarboe, Kevin Lee and Dana Todd are, I’m pretty sure we’re not related in any way. And I actually had to nix at least two shows from the agenda. It could have been worse!

My perception of reality is getting a little skewed. When you do too many industry shows in a row, you get a distorted sense of your own importance. In SEM circles, I’m fairly well-known. People tend to come up to me in the halls after a presentation and introduce themselves. Many are readers of this column. So, in my own, insignificant way, I guess I’m somewhat famous in search circles. But a rude awakening comes when you actually step out in the real world. The average ticket agent for American Airlines doesn’t really care that I helped define Google’s Golden Triangle or have spoken to standing-room-only audiences at SES in New York. It doesn’t get me a first class-upgrade. Those accomplishments also hold little weight with my wife, just in case you were wondering. The line “Do you know who I am?” usually lands with a decidedly flat thud whenever I try it.

The division between the search world and the real world has led me to postulate on the life of the average search marketer. We seem to be always jetting to some search hotspot (it’s not as exciting as it sounds; one hotspot happens to be Chicago in December). Our lives are lived on laptops and PDAs. We have all the trappings of a high-powered celebrity lifestyle, without the celebrity or the accompanying discretionary income.

If you’re part of the “circuit,” there are no shortage of speaking opportunities. There are search sessions everywhere, including a brand-new crop springing up to join the venerable stalwarts such as Search Engine Strategies, Ad:Tech and Webmaster World’s PubCon. Increasingly, there are cross-country “road shows” as well as demand for search-savvy speakers at other vertical industry shows. One could probably make a full-time job out of speaking, if one chose to. Just in case you’re interested in this job, the busy seasons are the spring and fall.

In part, this reflects search’s current status, caught somewhere between big business and cottage industry. The proliferation of speaking opportunities reflects the growing interest in search, and the demand for speakers is indicative of the relatively small number of thought leaders in the industry who are used to speaking in front of crowds. The ones who have proven themselves tend to find themselves a hot commodity. And for the most part, we do it for free, often covering our own travel costs, in return for raising our profile and hopefully attracting new business to our respective companies. We go from city to city, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged, promoting the gospel of search for all who care to listen.

From the outside, it looks to be an enviable position. In fact, some grumble that we in SEM’s elite “inner circle” unfairly use our connections to grab all the plum promotional opportunities. I understand, because I was once on the outside, looking at how to get in. I used to stalk Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman at the shows, trying to figure out how to grab a spot on a session panel.

I can certainly share what worked for me. Come up with something different to talk about. For us, it was search user research, and we’ve invested thousands of dollars and man hours in different studies to give us the content we speak about at the shows. Be original, because it’s tough to be a thought leader when you’re just echoing other people’s thoughts.

But a word of warning: be careful what you wish for. Sure, the life of a search marketer may appear to be fast-paced and glamorous, but underneath it all, we’re really just the same as you, very humble and ordinary, and really, really sleep-deprived.

Of course, I’m probably just tired and grumpy. Did I mention that it’s been a tough month?