Tag: language

Picture Perfect Langauge

MIKELeave a comment

“It’s about having a conversation with the consumer,” said advertiser Linda Kaplan Thaler. In their language.

Legibility affects our understanding. In the alpha erosion, words mean competition and market mechanism posts we looked at this idea from a producer’s angle. If a business earns excess returns it attracts competition. It’s the non-repeatable processes that allow a business to remain dominant. That is, are the advantages legible to competitors?

Another application of this idea is product development. Customers hire jobs to be done to make progress in their lives and successful product development follows the legibility of customer wants.

Thaler recalls one night on The Johnny Carson Show when an actress commented about needing her camera for a “Kodak moment”.

I looked at my team and asked if we had used that before. No, everyone said, that’s brand new.

Bingo. That’s customer language. Linda’s team had the Kodak account and making Kodak moments legible is what they sold.

Successful businesses hide legibility from their competitors and find legibility in their customers.

Open 24 Hours

MIKELeave a comment

What do you want? is the wrong question.

Customers speak in the language of problems.
Businesses speak in the language of solutions.

When Netflix asked customers what they wanted, the customers said more new releases. So Netflix bought more. Then they looked at the data.

Engineers compared churn rates for customers who got new movies quickly with those who didn’t and the results were indistinguishable.

What customers wanted were faster movies. If customers got a movie within a few days of returning the previous they were less likely to churn out than customers who had to wait longer. Bingo. Netflix’s solution wasn’t more new releases, it was shorter shipping times.

Good for Netflix – but what about us? What about businesses that don’t have data engineers?

“From 1984 to about 1987, I proselytized about the wisdom of staying open for 24 hours,” Paul Orfalea writes in Copy This. Orfalea was a unique manager.

Rather than spending time at the office, Orfalea was on the road talking to Kinko’s partners, customers, and anyone who found something that worked.

“I’d met a convenience store owner who found his overall sales jumped 50 percent when he decided to stay open for 24 hours. At first, the increase seemed like a mystery. His foot traffic wasn’t great during the overnight hours. But his customers liked knowing they could patronize his stores any time day or night. They never had to worry when he was open or closed.”

Bingo.

Kinko’s business wasn’t selling copies – it was managing emotions. Customers needed help. Kinko’s helped them get jobs, celebrate moments, or create the brochure that needed done yesterday. Being open 24 hours helped.

Influential Words

MIKE3 Comments

Could: a verb used for clicks as in, this <insert news> could have these economics effects on your portfolio.

More: a pronoun used to show relative position, though the original may not be stated, as in, Laura got more for her money at Herr’s.

Deal: a noun used to show relative rather than absolute spending. As in, I got a great deal on my new SUV.

Largest increase or fastest growing: an adverb/verb combination demonstrating increase in a small group. As in, pickleball is America’s fastest growing sport. Antonym: Large N, small p.

The theme here is relativity. People are relative thinkers; see corporate greed or cheating college. Words matter because they frame our approach. Listen closely. Consider the focus. Do the words hint at who was at fault? If this were a movie why is this the script? Need to change how people understand something, or apply some extreme ownership?

Part of the reasons pickleball IS so fast growing is my participation. Thanks too to Tim for a conversation long ago that planted this seed.

“Online” Banking, “Traditional” Celebrity

MIKELeave a comment

In one of the business classes I took in college (2000-2005) a professor used online bill pay as a way to demonstrate up-selling. A bank charged clients for the privilege to pay bills online, up to so many a month of course. That feature looks to become commonplace around 2011.

Related is brands and “traditional” celebrity endorsement, a topic between Connie Chan and Tiffany Zhong (more on Zhong here).

First, something is a thing; a celebrity. Or it’s a verb; dating or bill paying. Then, with a new way to do it, its explanation is modified

  • traditional celebrity rather than influencer
  • online bill pay rather than mail the check bill pay
  • online dating rather than dating
  • e-learning rather than school
  • social media rather than media
  • “iPhonography“

This post will be a marker along the way then, when we noticed the world shift slightly, from one of many paths to another. That celebrity must be modified.

“If you use Tinder, you do not do online dating, you just do dating. If you get in an Uber, you’re not doing digital car sharing, you’re just getting somewhere.” “People now behave in a way where the internet is background to everything they do.”

Tom Goodwin, 2018 YouTube

Feel free to add others in the comments.