Over the past year I have had the pleasure to work with Brad Nuccio at the Saint Louis Science Center to develop the Center for Science.  The Center for Science is based on the concept that a national network of science centers working together can more effectively engage and impact the public that these institutions working completely independently.

Just to give some sense of the potential impact, there are about 38,000,000 visitors a year to science centers and museums in the United States – that is more than the NFL and NASCAR combined.  So what if these organizations started to actively collaborate and expand that collaborative network to include major media companies and science and technology corporations…  You begin to get the idea.

This week the Center for Science launched a beta version of its web site – a well designed and developed site that was made possible through the generous support of Paradowski Creative, a nationally recognized design firm and Contegix, a leading international open source hosting company.  Please take a minute to visit the site.  More on this exciting project soon.

Our friends at HOK have published a very interesting and thoughtful collection of articles that examine global trends and forces changing the world.  Looking out over the next 40 years the team collected some very interesting research and information that is worth the read.

We recently took some time to mentally escape from the day-to-day and explore the “Art of the Long View.” Inspired by Peter Schwartz’ book of the same name, we partnered with our friends at Magellan Consulting and researched what we felt were the top 10 forces shaping our world between now and 2050. As we re-imagine the role of the design community in our global economy, this material has served as fodder for some fascinating conversations across HOK.

What did we learn?  Though the dialogue is ongoing, the idea of resiliency has undeniably emerged as a major theme. Resiliency is the not-so-new idea taken from nature that we can withstand the inevitable shocks to the system, rebuild and continue to adapt and evolve into something better. The key is that resiliency doesn’t just happen – we have to plan for it.  

For HOK, this means forming non-traditional partnerships and alliances and exploring how we can help clients use design and systems thinking to creatively solve new types of challenges. Here’s a link to some resources and examples of where this is already taking place.   What do these trends mean for your organization and the projects you undertake? Share your ideas here.

Ten Forces Changing Our World:

Global Demography and the Population Race:  To say that the global landscape is changing is a seismic understatement. The world’s population is projected to reach approximately 9.2 billion people by 2050, with nearly 60 percent of the new growth coming from India, China and Sub-Saharan Africa.  Where will we house our future generations? How will we feed them, educate them, move them from one place to another? Where will we find the resources to sustain them?

Geopolitics and the New Leaders of the Free World:  Meet the new kids on the block – Brazil, Russia, India, and China.  Appropriately referred to as “the BRICs,” these four countries will become the foundational building blocks upon which future world economies and foreign policy initiatives will be constructed. How will the emerging economic and political superpowers of today perform on the geopolitical stage of tomorrow? Will the world achieve a truly open society?

Social Change in the Millennial Generation: The Millennial Generation is the newest population of the global corporate culture with a unique set of values. Will the rest of the world embrace their same ideals, or will social friction be the catalyst for future global crises? How will education change to accommodate for an unprecedented rate of new information being generated each year?

Life on the City Planet:  The Earth has become a “City Planet” with more than 50 percent of the world’s population now living in cities.  What are the key drivers of this change? Can our current urban infrastructure support the nearly 70 million more that migrate to the cities each year?

Finding the Energy to Sustain Humanity:  As a planet, we are addicted to fossil fuels, relying on them for every aspect of modern life. Can we make the alternative energy transition quickly and effectively without sparking global conflict?  What energy sources will help us achieve oil independence?

It’s Not Easy Being Green: As scientists agree that human activities contribute to global warming, how will the environment react to centuries of abuse? Some say it’s too late to mitigate the effects of the impending climate change on global resources.  Is it possible to achieve a truly sustainable environment?

When the World Runs Out of Water: As populations surge and global warming heats up the planet, future generations will face an impending shortage of natural resources critical. How can we maintain our fresh water and food supplies when more cultures are adopting Westernized consumption patterns?

Limitless Possibilities of Technology:  BANG technologies (Bits, Atoms, Neurons, Genes) promises a future steeped in both unprecedented scientific advancements and looming ethical dilemmas.  What are the ramifications of having every moment of your life stored on a microchip?

Forging Into the Unknown – New Frontiers:  In less than 15 years, scientists predict that human beings will have the technology and resources to successfully inhabit the moon.  How will our future generations approach the discovery and understanding of new frontiers? Can they learn from our mistakes?

Runaway Corporate Growth – the Mega Multi-Nationals: As technology and geopolitics align to create more global opportunities for mega multi-national companies, how can we ensure corporate equity and fair market competition?

Thanks to our friends at HOK for taking the time to develop this project.

Reviewing some SEO work for one of our companies this morning I was surprised to see that last night (according to Google) we grew from about 20,000 pages of content cached to over 3,780,000,000.  What was more alarming was Google now showed under the search result a little note that said “this sight may harm your computer”.  The site was listed as a spam site!  I started to fire off a string of emails to get the technical team working on the problem, tried calling the CEO and then I noticed something even more alarming.

Every single site on the Internet – no matter how big and well established showed the same warning.  Even this blog was showing billions of pages of content and was listed as a malware site.  And every single site had 3,780,000,000 pages of content and no page rank.  Did someone hack Google?

Wow.  Imagine the problems if there was no longer a way to prioritize or search for information.  Imagine the productivity loss and disruption to our communication process.  Every single search would result in a warning screen if you clicked on the results, basically eliminating the ability to use Google to search.

Here are a few screen shots:

And the next page if you clicked on any of the search results:

Around 11am (9:02 Pacific) Google issues a press release stating that human error was the problem, someone had checked the wrong box.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

What?  You can basically disrupt the entire Google search ability if you check the wrong box?  The release goes on to spell out what happened but it is not clear why each site showed up with the same number of cached pages (3,780,000,000)?  And if this was a simple human error as explained, why would it take almost an hour to fix the problem?  If you can quickly revert the file, why would it not have been about two minutes?

One of the more clever concepts in awareness marketing in Japan is starting to get attention in the United States, advertising on the front of small packs of tissues.  Advertising agencies have stuck logos on just about everything imaginable, but how many times in the winter do you wish you had a small packet of tissues handy to take care of a runny nose?

This concept creates an authentic value exchange with the customer – the advertising is giving something to the customer and in return the customer has the option of reading the advertisement, possibly many times.  According the an article in Japan Times, over four billion tissue packs are handed out in Japan every year.

In a recent Internet survey of over 100,000 Japanese consumers conducted by Marsh Research, 76 percent said they accept free tissues. (That’s a much higher acceptance rate than for leaflets.) When asked if they look at the advertisement accompanying the tissues, slightly more than half said they either “definitely look” or “at least glance at” the advertisement. When asked why, many respondents said they hoped to find a coupon or special offer. Yet others displayed a very Japanese sense of obligation for having received a gift, giving answers like “sekkaku kubatte kuretakara (because they were so kind to have given me something)” and “yappari moratta ijo minai to shitsurei ni naru ka na to omo tame (given that I accepted them, I figure it would be rude not to look).”

As you surmised, the concept of tissue-pack marketing was indeed developed in Japan. It dates back to the late 1960s, when Hiroshi Mori, the founder of a paper-goods manufacturer in Kochi Prefecture called Meisei Industrial Co., was sniffing around for ways to expand demand for paper products. At the time, the most common marketing freebie in Japan was boxes of matches, often given away by banks and used primarily by women in the kitchen.

Figuring tissues would have wider appeal (because everyone has to blow their nose, and carry insurance against public toilets with no tissues), Mori developed the machinery to fold and package tissues into easy-to-carry pocket-size packs. The new product was marketed only as a form of advertising and wasn’t sold to consumers. Even now, pocket tissues hardly exist as a retail category in Japan because everyone expects to receive them for free.

Japan is still the main market for tissue-pack advertising, but the practice is beginning to spread overseas.

Off Campus Media, a integrated marketing company focused on the college demographic is planning to use the tissue pack marketing concept on several college campuses this fall.  “We have student ambassadors that are often distribution funny postcards and promotional items to increase awareness for our advertising partners”, said Mark Sawyier, CEO.  “I think the tissue pack marketing idea is great.”

Related Articles:

Too Little Value

The Future of Retail

Why Not Ask Your Customer?

There are many missed opportunities to engage and communicate with your customer regardless if you are a start-up, hospital, retailer, etcc…  As noted in the previous blog there can be great upside when engaging in brainstorming and improving your product.  But there can be a downside as well in how and what your customers will communicate.

According to a study published by Stanford University there is a significant downside to asking too many questions and even placing too much emphasis to the customer on grading the experience.   According to Itamar Simonson of the Stanford Graduate School of Business

…some popular survey methods actually put consumers in a negative frame of mind, hardly the results the companies paying for the survey had envisioned.

The study primarily highlights how creating emphasis on the review of the experience puts customers in a mindset to find fault and that asking questions in advance significantly skews the perception of the experience.  In conclusion  the article’s author Bill Snyder writes:

the costs of surveys taken in advance of shopping exceed the benefits of these surveys by introducing an unacceptable level of bias and producing negative evaluations.

A few suggestions for producing more accurate customer feedback:

1.    Don’t ask questions in advance.  As the study referenced above shows, consumers focus too much on finding the faults in the experience.

2.    Keep questions brief.  Unless you are paying people for their time, value the fact people are willing to share and ask less than ten questions.

3.    Measure what can be changed.  Although there is a great deal of interesting information that can be gathered for research purposes, but only measure what is most impactful.

4.    Ask peoples opinions.  Often surveys attempt to put people in a position to give feedback in an area they have no expertise.  Survey what people are experts in, their own experience.

Additional Reading:
Be Careful What You Ask Your Customers.  Stanford Graduate School of Business News, 2007.

Related Articles:
Why Not Ask Your Customer
Survey What Can Be Changed
89% of Reporters Finding Story Ideas on the Internet

How should we improve our products? What new services should we offer? More often than not these questions are not asked to the customer. Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on market research, data analysis, customer focus groups and often forget to simply ask their customer – what else would you like?

Recently Google, one of the more innovate companies out there, launched an initiative to include its customers in the brainstorming process. Using two new web sites, Google Product Ideas as well as Product Ideas for Google Mobile. Although the concept of using the Internet to include customers in the brainstorming process is not new, it is surprising how few companies develop open lines of communication with their customers as part of their market research and strategic planning process.

Using the Internet and social networking tools can not only serve as a resource for developing new ideas for products and services, but can in almost real time improve customer loyalty and can help avoid costly mistakes. Although it can be difficult to hear that your idea for a new product or service is not good, it is undeniably better to get that feedback before additional resources and investment are committed.

Over the last few years better tools and widgets have continued to make both the solicitation of ideas and feedback on those ideas much easier. From simple voting tools like the thumbs up and thumbs down used by Stumble Upon to more complex ranking systems, there are a wide range of inexpensive and well designed resources that can allow any company to tap into the collective creativity of thousands of people.

Related Articles:

Ask Your Customer, The Downside

Have a favorite book you would like to share with us?

]]> http://dornfeld.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/why-not-ask-your-customer/feed/ 3 dornfeldc http://dornfeld.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/despite-recession-internet-advertising-still-growing/ http://dornfeld.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/despite-recession-internet-advertising-still-growing/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:07:59 +0000 parkviewer http://dornfeld.wordpress.com/?p=101 ]]>

Although the overall advertising market is expected to decline in 2009, several recent reports are still projecting an increase in the on-line advertising space.

Most recently reported in the Wall Street Journal, overall advertising spending is expected to decline from 3% to 7% globally in 2009.  Publicis Groupe media agency ZenithOptimedia expects U.S. ad spending to drop 6.2% in 2009 to $161.8 billion. WPP’s agency GroupM sees a decline of 3% to $157 billion.  UBS sees a decline of 6% in 2009.

And although the overall advertising pie is shrinking the growth of the Internet marketplace is outpacing the contraction in the overall market, pulling advertising dollars away from other more traditional advertising platforms.  According to GroupM, online ad spending is expected to increase 5% in 2009.  Although this represents a significant drop from the 18% growth in 2008, it is still growth.

Patrick Davis Partners, a brand consulting firm (and one of the smartest group of people you will come across) recently published a video “New Priorities for the Post-Agency Market”.  The video covers six high level concepts to provoke thoughts about the future of media and agencies. Worth the watch.

Might also want to watch The Machine is Us.

Interesting article today in the Wall Street Journal by Tom Hayes and Michael Malone highlighting the rapid and significant change in media and the potential impact on how retailers find and connect with the customer.

Retailers now must reimagine a world where consumers experience products in stores but ultimately buy them on the Web: Stores are for experiences, the network is for inventories. And what in turn prepares potential customers for what to look for in stores? Online communities.

Although the statement above is a bit for effect to help lift sales of their upcoming book, it does raise a legitimate and serious question about the future of the retail experience.  With the majority of shoppers checking reviews online before they purchase, the impact of social networks and word of mouth referral can not be overstated.

Studies have shown that people trust information from their peers above any other source – ahead of the government, traditional media and certainly corporations.  Add to the fact the vast majority of reporters find story ideas on the Internet and you have a great deal of traditional media driven by user generated content, influenced by social networks and word of mouth.

Consumers are increasingly organizing themselves into new communities — not just the big generic social communities, but myriad idiosyncratic slices of narrow, passionate interest (i.e., BlackPlanet, Inpowr and MomsCafe).

These new market spaces, or “meganiches,” may seem small, even strange at first. But when they’re efficiently targeted, they can be highly responsive, lucrative and loyal. Well-established meganiche Web sites include Gamefaq.com for video gamers, Dpreview.com for digital photography aficionados, and Howardchui.com dedicated to mobile phone zealots.

With this shift toward self-organization by consumers, national advertising campaigns as we know them will increasingly become a waste of time and money for many companies. The trick for brands is to cohabit social spaces with these consumers. Social media, and its verb form, “friending,” requires entirely new forms of advertising: bottom up instead of top down, personal rather than public, and subtle rather than full frontal.

Although the term “meganiches” is an unnecessary effort by the authors to coin yet another trendy new media phrase, the concept is accurate.  In fact, some would argue that the next generation of technology will take the niche concept all the way to the individual.

All in all, a very good article and well worth the read – hopefully the upcoming book will be as interesting.

Read the Entire Article

Twitter’s PR team must be working late each night because over the past several weeks dozens of articles have appeared in almost every media channel.  Many of these articles examine the twitter business model and try to hypothesize a path to prosperity or failure. 

One of the most interesting articles appeared in the NY times examining twitter through the perspective of is it better to build an audience and then figure out how to make money (Twitter.com) or build a business with a revenue stream  and then scale (Yammer.com).

Yammer’s business model is compelling, Mr. Sacks said, because it spreads virally like a consumer service, but earns revenue like a business service. Anyone with a company e-mail address can use Yammer free. When that company officially joins — which gives the administrator more control over security and how employees use the service — it pays $1 a month for each user. In Yammer’s first six weeks, 10,000 companies with 60,000 users signed up, though only 200 companies with 4,000 users are paying so far.

The founders and backers of Twitter, which has reportedly raised $20 million from venture capitalists, are just as adamant about their decision to grow first and monetize second.

Like the value of the telephone network or the Internet itself, the value of Twitter increases with the number of users. So growth is its top priority, said Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive. “If we spent time monetizing early on, it would have meant we weren’t doing other things that made the product better for users,” he said. Registrations have grown 600 percent over the last year.

Several authors have already announced the decline of Twitter as inevitable with headlines like “Once again, Twitter’s death is laid out. Once again, users will fail to notice”

Caroline McCarthy at C-Net blogs a more thoughtful assessment of the Twitter situation.

With these growing pains behind it and some money in the bank, inching toward profitability is a natural next step for Twitter. The clock is ticking, and industry confidence may start to waver before Twitter puts a business model in place. Some critics have alleged that it’s getting late already, especially given an economic climate that has shortened the shelf life of companies running without revenues.

Twitter is far from dead and the company is beginning to recognize (1)  the first mover advantage to raise (and burn through) capital only takes you so far.  (2) Twitter is a tool (or service), but not a solution.  People did not walk around before thinking “how can I alert fifty friends about what I am doing right now.”  The question is can they develop and grow a revenue stream fast enough to keep them ahead in the microblogging race?  The problem is companies like yammer.com have proven b2b models and there are a whole lot of new microblogging competitors popping up.

Conclusion:  Twitter has a good chance of becoming another Netscape.  Breakthrough technology but not a breakthrough in business strategy.

Popularity or Income? Two Sites Fight It Out
New York Times (NYTimes.com)

Building a Better Twitter
Business Week (BusinessWeek.com)

Once again, Twitter’s death is laid out. Once again, users will fail to notice
Venture Beat (VentureBeat.com)

Twitter’s Evan Williams: Making money through corporate accounts?
C-Net (Cnet.com)