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Archives for November 2009

Motorola Droid says iDon’t to Apple’s iPhone

Today is the day!  Verizon Wireless is rolling out the Motorola Droid with the hope of winning back market share from customers who defected to AT&T Wireless and the Apple iPhone.  With the Droid, backed by Google, Verizon Wireless just might have a chance.  Where the Blackberry Storm failed, Google and Droid might succeed.

Verizon Wireless is certainly attacking the iPhone head-on with its new Droid ads.  Check out one of the commercials below.  There is no doubt what the message of this ad is.

Of course, it’s just Day 1, so the verdict is still out, but smartphone consumers have been waiting anxiously for Verizon Wireless, considered to have the best network in the United States, to catch up to AT&T and the iPhone.  Can the Droid on the best network compete with the coolest phone on a substandard network?

Keep in mind, Verizon Wireless had the opportunity to be the “it” wireless carrier.  The company was given the chance to pick up the exclusive iPhone deal with Apple, but the company passed.  The result?  AT&T stole some market share and Verizon Wireless hasn’t been able to recoup those customers yet.  Without its superior network and the continued hold on the business marketplace by RIM’s Blackberry, Verizon Wireless would really be in trouble.

Fortunately, Verizon Wireless realized that the clock was ticking.  The Storm might not have delivered (although rumors of a new version of the Storm leave some consumers hopeful of improvement), but the Droid just might.  Let’s face it.  There seems to be a battle to take over the world in terms of brand dominance.  For the tech-related world, Google and Apple are leading the pack but in very different ways.  Now, they’re poised to battle somewhat directly.  Who will win?  This should be fun to watch!

And that brings me to my question — what smartphone would you get?  The Droid on Verizon Wireless’ network or the iPhone on AT&T’s network?

Two Simple Rules for Better Job Descriptions


Decoder Ring

I recently had occasion to look at a job description for an IT contract position.  I could recognize a lot of the words, but the way they were put together gave me almost no clue what the company really needs someone to do.  So I called a friend who’s pretty far up the IT food chain and read it to him, just in case I was being dim.  Neither of our secret decoder rings was up to the task, however, so we could only speculate about what the job might really be—or who could do it well.

This description came from a big company and went through a reputable recruiting agency.  In this case, of course, part of the problem relates to the process itself, since in many cases outside recruiters cannot talk to the hiring manager in order to clarify the description and requirements.  So if the hiring manager—or whoever wrote the description—is not very good at describing jobs, an HR intermediary may not know the difference, and the mystery document will just get propagated out to the recruiter(s) and passed on to the prospects.

Internal processes can be just as problematic–and when a confusing or inadequate job description makes it onto the Careers site or the job boards, job-seekers are at a considerable disadvantage, since they have nothing else to go by.  In these days, when applications are many and keywords often rule, applicants have to figure out how to highlight their qualifications; and that’s tricky when the requirements are not clear.

In the description that prompted this post, I found several common problems, such as:

  • Requirements that just say “Understanding of X”.  (The spectrum of interpretations that can be applied to “understanding” is broad indeed!  Define the word?  Know X when you see it?  Eat, sleep and breath X?)
  • Requirements that seem to be repeating other requirements in different words.    (Is there a subtle-but-important distinction?  Or just two different authors?  Perhaps a careless revision?)
  • Requirements that use names in a vague way, and/or acronyms.  (Is the requirement referring to ” X the product” or “X the methodology”?  Is that unfamiliar acronym a variant, a typo, an internal reference, or just something that hasn’t made it to Wikipedia yet?)

I could go on.  But the net result is that candidates for this position will not have a good idea of what’s involved in the job until/unless they get as far as an interview.  Therefore they won’t be able to make an informed decision about applying or not.  They won’t be able to tailor their resumes appropriately.  Et cetera.

And the manager(s) will spend unnecessary time looking for the “right” person, who might not even be found.  A lot of misfire hires result from failure to define and describe a job effectively.

People can learn to write better job descriptions, and they should.  But in the end, there are two really basic practices that will make a huge difference:

  • Use simple sentences.
  • Use simple words.

Just following those “simple” rules will eliminate ambiguity most of the time.  And don’t take my word for it.  Get some good advice from HRDailyAdvisor.  (Yes, they’re selling something, but the advice is good anyway.)


(Want your own “decoder ring”?  Get it from the Exploratorium.)

Traackr: Spotting the King-Whisperers

Noon here means nearly breakfast time over in the States…

How heroic, then, of Derek Skaletsky to spend an hour taking us through the Traackr system – before breakfast.

And what an interesting hour it was for us. Traackr – in case you haven’t had the opportunity of a demo yet – launched their Authority List product at DemoFall09.

influencer social webWe all know that people are talking about you and your products online, or at least about your market and their issues with your competitors – or even just complaining about the problem that your product or service is intended to resolve.

Listening to what they’re saying is highly recommended. You can find out what they like/don’t like about you or your products, and about those of your competitors. You can maybe even uncover what the real problem is that they’re trying to solve – and how you can improve your product to meet that need. It’s like having a full-time focus group.

But who are your target audience listening to?

We all also know that some people have more powerful voices than others. These come in a variety of guises: some people are broadcasters, with a wide reach; others are conversationalists, who spark discussion; some are expert commentators on a topic, and seen as authorities in their area; others are connectors, who put topics and people together in an interesting way. Some are just plain mavericks, who touch on a topic briefly and move on to the next. And the different outlets people find to share their views have an effect too – some people have a strong video voice and impact but don’t use the written word; others talk a lot on one network about your topic, but very little on another.

And even the smallest voice can have a big impact online – if it whispers into the right ear.

This is the idea at the heart of the Traackr system.

The origins of the Authority List lie in a tool that was available a few years ago to help people assess their own influence on the internet. I’m sure you know the kind of thing; we’ve almost all played with tools like that to see how we’re perceived. (What, no-one’s even done an ego-search on Google? Not sure I believe you there.)

Then someone had a inspired idea: turn the thing around so that it could identify the people with influence, and sell that information to those who need to know.

That’s you. The business that needs to know what is being said out there, so that they can then connect with those people, and maybe influence them in turn.

Gaining the ear of the king

a word in the ear

This isn’t a new idea: if the customer is king, finding the right online influencers is like dealing with the royal favourites and courtiers, who potentially have influence over the king.

There’s been much debate about how objective online influencers can be when presented with goodies and freebies, so consider carefully your approach to the influencers, and bear in mind that courting the courtiers has always been a complex and sometimes dangerous affair in the cross-currents of a royal court.

But Traackr looks like a good implementation of a solution to make finding the right influencers possible – even easy.

You, the client, set up a project, agree how many influencers you want to identify, and work with the Traackr team to identify relevant keywords. (Not always as easy as it sounds).

The Traackr search engine then finds people who discuss these topics online – and then tracks those individuals across all their other outlets.

This, I think, is the really exciting bit: pulling together all the places where that person has an online presence to provide a unified view on that individual.

When complete, the information is available via an online dashboard. You can see a list of influencers, and a breakdown of type (activist, reporter and expert) and location. Each influencer has a profile page, detailing their latest posts, which social outlets they use, the extent of their network and their score (reach, resonance, and relevance). It’s up to you to make the connection, but you can note on the profile how well the contacts have gone, and what your next steps might be – the beginnings of a relationship management system.

Traackr doesn’t assess the sentiment of their discussions about you/your products, but at this point you know who the key relevant influencers are, and since you’ll need to tailor your contact approach to each influencer, you’ll want to check them out individually yourself anyway. And you do need to know the bad as well as the good news…

Questions?

Can you track the effect of your contact/s with the influencers? That’s the point of Traackr’s Performance Report, which tracks the changes in coverage from those people from week to week.

Can you change your keywords? Once the report is generated, you get an interface to the Traackr system which lets you run a live search on keywords before setting up a new campaign, to be sure that you’re picking valuable keywords.

Are the influencers self-selected? Only by dint of their own efforts to become influential – the influencers haven’t volunteered to be included. All the material on their profile is publicly available, just not all pulled together in one place like this. As I said: this is the most exciting element of this tool, and Traackr does have plans to provide access to these pages for the influencers, so that they can make use of it too.

Wouldn’t it be helpful to have some idea of sentiment? I think it would, and this isn’t provided by the Authority List. I think you’d like it all: who the key influencers are, whether they are generally positive, negative or neutral about your keywords, and how this view changes over time – and even what triggers the change. Your contact with them, some independent event, a contact with a competitor, a discussion with another key influencer…?

Couldn’t you do this yourself? Well, yes of course you could, though it would be time-consuming. And the Traackr team have found that their system has identified powerful influencers in places it wouldn’t necessarily occur to you to look. You just need a bit of imagination to work out how to approach these unexpected influencers in ways they’d appreciate…

Thanks Derek!

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 6: Eye Candy for Stock Charts

The old adage is that a picture is worth a thousand words. When you translate that into stock charts, you can rephrase that to come out, “A well constructed graph is worth a thousand data points. (For people really interested in this stuff, see “The Visual Display of Quantitative Data” by Edward Tufte, Graphics Press, or visit www.edwardtufte.com.) The thought behind all this is that there are a number of things that companies can do to make their stock price charts more informative.

First, some contradictory thoughts: Avoid the overuse of color, and, consider the use of color to help highlight information. By this I mean that good visual design for charts often means first stripping away meaningless color that junks up the chart. Once visual clarity has been achieved, the judicious use of color to draw attention to information that might otherwise not get noticed can be helpful.

EADS

I’ve set out the share price chart from the EADS site. It’s quite nicely done in that it has a clean, white background with a faint grid to help the viewer orient themselves as to price and date. Below that, the volume chart uses color to illustrate the volumes on days when the share price rose (green) versus days when the share price fell (red).

Note also that the page allows for a number of viewer options, including choice of time periods or customized dates, comparisons to indexes, competitors and major customers, scale and moving averages. To top it off, they even provide for downloading of historical quotes, all in one neat and efficient package. To me this is a very well designed page. Everything is where you can see it, eliminating the need to go through menus and click through pages.

Cadbury-chart

Another chart that utilizes an element I like is the Cadbury share price chart. (In this case it is emphatically not their use of color, although I am purposely steering clear of the color issue here as I learned earlier that criticizing Cadbury’s use of the color purple is a hot button with certain U.K. readers.) Cadbury builds into their chart an interactive feature that pops up the date, price and volume as you scroll over the chart. Given that the graph draws a vertical and horizontal axis as you scroll, Cadbury could even eliminate the grid on the stock chart, faint though it is. Now if they would just add in a feature that also popped up major corporate announcements had been made, it would be close to perfect.

In this series:
Previous post: Historical share price information
Next post: Financial information

Is The World Bank Gaining An Ethical Tinge?

South Africa Government Mining FiguresAn interesting story from South Africa has caught my eye. It demonstrates how fraught the introduction of sustainability related legislation could be, and perhaps contains a signpost as to what the future may hold.

In an unprecedented move the International Centre for Investment Disputes (ICSID) at the World Bank has allowed non-disputing parties (NDPs) to give evidence at a tribunal and ordered the parties in dispute to reveal their evidence and conclusions to the NDPs.

This implies that while the ICSID may feel itself competent to rule on purely business grounds it needs additional input to ascertain the “softer” issues in the case: in this case, the human rights of South Africa’s long oppressed black majority.

[Read more…] about Is The World Bank Gaining An Ethical Tinge?

7-Eleven Debuts TV and Pushes Private Label

7-elevenIn a series of strategic and tactical moves, 7-Eleven has announced its plan to boost private label product shelf space and debut in-store television to help suppliers promote in-store specials and brands.

Just last month, 7-Eleven launched 15 new private label products and announced its plans to launch 40 more by the end of 2009.  With 200 private label products in production, 7-Eleven also announced that more private label product roll outs will happen in 2010.

One might wonder how suppliers of branded products feel about 7-Eleven’s private label push.  For some reason, I don’t think the introduction of 7-Eleven TV which should roll out to 6,200 7-Eleven locations by the end of 2010 is going to fully appease them.

7-Eleven TV will play a loop of 4-minute messaging (the average time consumers spend in 7-Eleven), which companies can pay to advertise on. 7-Eleven private label brands will be promoted on 7-Eleven TV in 7-15 second commercials every 4 minutes (20 spots will run per hour).  Content will also be provided by news and weather organizations, RSS feeds and other partners and will be timed to air at the most relevant times of day.

No word on how much it costs to advertise on 7-Eleven TV.

Of course, it makes sense for 7-Eleven to introduce more private label brands.  Companies typically make more money on sales of private label branded products than products from other companies.  Why not fill their store shelves with as many private label products as possible?  And why not fill 7-Eleven TV with ads about its own, higher margin, private label products?

But what will suppliers think?  Do you think they’ll mind the potential loss of sales at 7-Eleven convenience stores?  Already, 7-Eleven reports seeing sales of some of its private label products, such as chips, at higher levels than popular brand names.  If you combine the horrible economy with a private label push, is the 7-Eleven business model poised for a major change?

What do you think?

Read more about the private label trend in these Corporate Eye articles:

Image: Flickr