Alex Krupp points us to this neat post from Jackie & Ben: Church of the Customer Blog: The 1% Rule: Charting citizen participation.
The upshot is that for many organizations, the top 1% do 80% more of the contributing. The fascinating Wikipedia example (fascinating for me, anyway) points out that after about three and a half years, Wikipedia had just 15,000 contributors. But 4,000 or so of them did almost all the work.
Often, it’s easy to imagine that big companies like Hallmark and British Airlines and Coke are selling lots and lots to everyone. In fact, a tiny slice may very well be the difference between success and failure.
May 14, 2006
Listening to Car Talk over the last few weeks, I’ve heard a similar refrain. Something like, "my car is paid off so I’m ready to buy a new one." Today, it was, "We need to decide which car to sell–my husband’s or mine, because we need a minivan. But mine is paid off and his isn’t."
Of course,
a. when making the decision to buy a new car, it’s irrelevant that your old car is paid off. Just because you’ve finally paid it off doesn’t mean you should automatically go into debt again.
b. and debt is fungible, so you can sell either car and pay off whichever debt you need to.
American consumers have persuaded themselves that buying something is one thing, going into debt something totally different.
May 13, 2006
Just got a phone call from someone in the UK. He was in Buffalo, NY, excited to share the news about a meeting he just left. This was the beginning of his breakthrough, he said. 400 stores around the country would be carrying his new product (up from zero). It was (about to be) a home run.
Except it hadn’t happened yet. He hadn’t gotten final approval from some executive that he hadn’t actually met yet.
The home runs you almost hit don’t count. The home runs you almost hit don’t add up, they don’t accrue. As marketers, most of what we see are the home runs, the appearances on Oprah or the Facebooks of the world. The giant home runs that change everything.
Except that marketing success stories almost never happen that way. They happen on the back of singles, one after another. That’s how Wal-mart became Wal-mart and Boingboing became Boingboing.
Singles are less thrilling and require way too much work, but they build on each other. Over time, if you grow by 10 or 15% every week or month, you grow, reliably. And that steady growth transforms into every faster growth.
Any marketing plan that is nothing but a series of attempted home runs has a problem. The problem is that the odds don’t get better as you go along.
May 12, 2006
"Can you show me all our error pages?"
That’s what you might ask your web team.
If you have one that looks like this, perhaps you could fix it. Usually, it takes just a few more words of text, or some clear navigation instructions, or a little kindness even.
Five minutes, you’ll be done. Worth a shot.
May 11, 2006
Racquetball is a fast game because a ball shot in any direction rebounds and bounces off one wall after another.
Marketers often talk about silos with some disdain, because they represent disconnected thinking and broken communications networks. But silos are also like racquetball courts.
Because your idea is far more likely to bounce around, it’ll spread faster. Everyone inside the silo is going to learn about an important idea faster, precisely because they are inside the silo.
It’s so tempting to create products and services that link silos, that jump outside prescribed definitions.
But it’s not that easy.
An idea that might resonate inside of a silo might just wither away.
Corey Brown points us to the latest: Google Trends: malcolm gladwell.
The stuff presented is fascinating. The links to press releases and news don’t mean much, but over time, they doubtless will.
The presentation is so clear, it’s a delight to play with. Not sure what you’ll learn, but it’ll be fun.
What happens when youtube gets selective and focused?
TurnHere.com ~ The video insiders guide to neighborhoods across the world.
The billion channel universe is here, and collecting the best stuff is a great opportunity.
The Chinatown and Pizza videos are especially good. Thanks to Craig and Erik.
May 10, 2006
Hugh gets us thinking again, as usual.
I want to extend this from "advertising" to:
- Customer service
- Copywriters
- Telemarketers
- Angry customers
- Government agencies
- Senior management
- Critics
- Bloggers
In fact, just about any situation where the speaker is either uncomfortable and/or hiding behind a bureaucracy or anonymity.
The next time you get all formal or obfuscatory or snarky, ask a simple question, "If I knew this person and we were eating together in a restaurant, would I speak to them the same way?"
If the answer is no, why not?
Okay, both of my seminars, certainly the last ones before the summer, are now posted. The less expensive NY seminar is here: Seminars: The June 15 Seminar.
I hope you can make one or the other if you’re interested. I’ve already gotten some great applications the June 1 gig.
May 9, 2006
(not a typo).
Want to guess what these musical acts have in common?
The Rolling Stones
The Eagles
Elton John
U2
Paul McCartney
They each made more than $50 million last year, according to Forbes. They accounted for 40% of the top 10 acts. The long trail is what happened.
Same with products like Quicken, websites like eBay and chefs like Wolfgang Puck.
We’re so busy celebrating the hit of the moment that we forget that the real profit often comes from the long trail.
It’s easy to persuade yourself to shortchange the design of a product, or your investment in its engineering, or to manipulate the launch to maximize the short-term box office appeal of opening weekend. But the long trail proves you wrong.
The web compounds long trail thinking. A website might spike with short term traffic hits, but a great website builds on its traffic, rises in its search rankings and continues to bring in traffic, year after year.
The long trail explains why so many unprofitable movies turn a profit when the DVD comes out. The Shawshank Redemption got seven Academy Award nominations when it was released, but disappointed at the box office. Now, after more than 1.3 million reviews at NetFlix, it is one of the most enduring DVD hits ever.
The long trail is a reminder to invest like your product might just be around in ten years.
