Ten or twelve years ago, I used to buy stuff from Paper Direct. They sell preprinted sheets that you run through your laser printer to make brochures and business cards and such.
In those days, when laser printers were still a little rare (and only printed in black toner) this was a neat way to make a sole proprietorship seem a little more professional.
I got their catalog in the mail today and browsed through it. I was stunned. The stuff they sell is exactly the same. The same pastel colors, boring designs, slightly cheesy look and very cheesy fonts in the examples. The market has changed radically but the products haven’t changed a bit.
Today you can print astonishing color on a $200 printer. You can do professional short run printing on an Indigo machine. But Paper Direct is still selling design from the 1980s. It sort of screams, "home office!"
My bet? I think that every time they try to introduce something more hip or effective than "PC1606 Tropical Fish Postcards", their audience doesn’t buy any. As a result, they slavishly serve their existing audience. Which is no doubt profitable, but how can they grow?
The organizations that have the most impact and grow the quickest are those that frequently alienate their existing customer base.
Hundreds of designed printable border papers, brochures, certificates at PaperDirect..
March 18, 2005
Let’s say you run an airline with a horrible cost structure and you’re facing bankruptcy on an almost daily basis.
Why on earth would you waste money on marketing like this?
Do the folks at American believe that some harried New Yorker is going to choose to fly to Tokyo on the spur of the moment for sushi and because American is the brand that prompted them, fly there on American?
Where’s the ROI?
I just got back from the New York International Auto Show. They’ve scaled way back on the buxom blondes, but there’s still plenty of lying going on.
A car, after all, is an extremely expensive device with a fair amount of utility. But that’s not what they sell at the show. The going price for utility is $15,000 or maybe $20,000. Figure $25,000 if you want a Prius. What they sell at the show are cars that cost many times that, or cars (like the one being hawked at left) that are totally cool but not particularly useful.
Unless you define “useful” to mean, “useful at making me feel sexy and young and filled with energy.” Because that’s what they’re selling and that’s what we’re buying. The fact that it can also get us somewhere is slightly irrelevant.
Tom Peters reports that
In England more people are employed by Indian restaurants than in steelmaking, coal mining, and ship building combined!
Think about that for a while.
I’ve gotten a lot of heat about my "don’t get an MBA" post–(Harvard did those guys a favor when they didn’t let them in). Here’s one: Life Beyond Code :: MBA or no MBA??.
Let me make my point in a more MBA-esque sort of way:
What if an MBA cost $2,000,000?
What if an MBA took five years?
Would it would be worth it then? Of course not.
So my question really is: is the marginal value (in terms of opportunity cost, time value of money and capital expenditure) higher or lower than the current cost? I think it’s pretty close to a no brainer.
Phil Yanov sends us this great fine print lie.
Link: The Gripe Line Weblog by Ed Foster.
Transfer Fee: If you wish to transfer your Subscription to a different Sirius Receiver during the term of a prepaid subscription or committed subscription period, we may charge you a transfer fee of up to $75.00. You may not transfer a lifetime Subscription to a different Sirius Receiver.
The bottom line: Sirus sells you a $500 “lifetime subscription” that applies not to your life or even Sirius’ life, but to the life of the radio itself. If you want to buy a new radio, tough.
Let’s think about this lie for a second. Why on earth would you want to alienate the most loyal, highest spending customers on your list?
March 17, 2005
I think there are two blog/RSS frontiers worth considering… whether you manage a project, a church or a brand.
The first is the idea of the micro-blog. Ed Brenegar got asked to help a small group understand word of mouth and turned it into a blog: University of Word Of Mouth. Now, as he gets new groups to work with, he can repurpose the blog. I did the same thing when I produced a musical for an elementary school last year. I made a blog for the parents to use to keep up with the news about the play, with the schedule, with photos of each rehearsal.
Blogging doesn’t have to mean "talking to anonymous strangers."
The second is what BaseCamp is doing (Link: Project management and task management software: Basecamp.) This is project management software that uses RSS to alert the people who need to be alerted whenever something is up… and they can ignore it the rest of the time.
RSS is like email, except there’s no spam, the loop is closed, the media that’s available is far wider and, best of all, the recipient can configure a host of readers to present the info in the way they want. Thinking like this led to podcasting, and it’s going to lead us in a bunch of new directions now.
If you’re already using RSS, please skip this post.
Otherwise, you really need to read it.
RSS is the next big thing. Find out about it here: FeedBurner – About Feed Syndication.
Even better, click below and you’ll be automatically subscribed to updates about this blog. Instead of having to go from blog to blog to find out if there’s anything new, you can just go to bloglines.
Diego Rodriguez writes:
What’s more powerful than a designer who thinks like a marketer who
thinks like a designer?
Link: 800-CEO-READ Blog: Design Thinking Books.
My friend Lynn with a new galley.
Let’s hope Otto gets his fair share of Goodnight Moon.
Link: Seth Godin – Liar’s Blog.
March 16, 2005
