Churbuck.com

Me, and the aptly named Fisher, with our matching father/son wahoos, an aptly named fish.

Four days in Florida, now back in North Carolina, easing my way back north tomorrow from 75 degrees to 60 to 40.

2.26 – Florida (vacation)

2.27 – RTP

2.28 – NYC

2/29-3/3 – Cotuit

Apologies for light postings, been hanging out with family in Fla. and working on my sunburn.

In the 1970s a little, relatively unknown company in Freeport, Maine broke into the national consciousness when its signature product — a half-rubber/half-leather boot with a chain-link tread became a  preppy-driven status symbol. Invented by Leon L. Bean, the boots weren’t especially high-tech, were a bear to walk over ice with, but they looked weird and before long everyone had to have a pair. One thing was said of L.L. Bean: they would replace a product, no questions asked. I never had a chance to put this to the test, but the legend went that if you walked into the Freeport store with a broken something, the clerk would get a new one and hand it over.

Sears Roebuck is legendary among mechanics and carpenters because of a similar policy with their Craftsman line of tools. Walk into any Sears with a broken Craftsman tool and walk out with a new one. No questions asked. (I have never tested this guarantee either.) According to the Oracle of Wikipedia:

“Craftsman® is ranked by men as the No. 1 brand in America for overall quality, according to a recent brand survey. Consumers in general ranked Craftsman No. 2 in terms of quality – preceded only by Waterford crystal. (Source: Nov. 2002 EquiTrend(SM) survey by Harris Interactive).”

I did not know that. Doubtlessly some of that reputation comes from the lifetime guarantee.

Guy Kawasaki used to tell the story of Nordstrom’s during his days as Apple’s evangelist in the 80s, extolling the legendary customer service that would see Nordstrom employees making good on products the department store didn’t even sell. Again, No questions asked.

I’m sure there are other examples of brand that don’t argue, don’t quibble, don’t point at the fine print, but who simply suck it up and hand over a new one of whatever. Of such stuff are marketing legends — perhaps myths made. I bet it feels great to work for such a company.
I started thinking about this yesterday afternoon as I boarded a JetBlue flight from Boston to West Palm Beach. The plane was packed. We left on time. We arrived on time. I was happy. Was I offered a second bag of Terra Blue Potato Chips because the attendants were told to? An act of junk food contrition?

Once I was in line at a Best Buy and the guy in front of me was given the usual upsell for an extended warranty on a disposal piece of electronics. His answer was a classic: “Why? Will it break? What’s wrong with the warranty that comes with it?”

We’re entering a new age of consumer empowerment. The Better Business Bureau can move over. Bills of rights, class action law suits, hate blogs … the megaphone is in the customers’ hands and I suspect only a very select few brands are ready to handle the revolution.  Mark Hopkins has a  about the coconut cake — I suggest anyone in marketing or customer service read it. It’s about the extra mile, something only a select few can do, or afford to do.

ForbesOnTech: Bifurcating the Convertible PC World and Marketing– the New HP Way

“I’m waiting for other notebook makers to realize that the biggest potential buyers for their convertible computers are students and that students really want computers that can be used for academic and entertainment purposes. When that happens, watch out, because this category is going to really take off.”

Jim Forbes has been an advocate of evangelists focusing on specific segments — he’s a fan of the fact that HP has a tablet-advocate focused squarely on academia.  I agree, evangelism is a great way to gain market intelligence and feed it back into the organization as well as a focused way to get the message out.

New dynamics of crisis management (The Net-Savvy Executive)

Nathan Gilliatt has a great post on passengers finding their voice during a customer service melt-down. This is in the context of the American Airlines incident a few weeks ago, and probably applies to last week’s JetBlue debacle.

“Today’s lessons:

1. Blogs can give anyone a voice, even non-bloggers. Comments on an easy-to-find blog can become a platform for angry customers.

2. Angry customers can use social media to organize themselves against you.

3. Mobile phones give customers access to mainstream media now.

4. Camera phones are everywhere (and digital cameras are standard issue for vacations). If anything visually interesting happened on those planes, someone probably took pictures. Don’t be surprised if they pop up on photo-sharing sites soon.”

Just received the word that WoodenBoat — the bible of … wooden boats — is featuring Cotuit Skiffs on its cover.

I need to track down a copy.

I was scheduled to participate in a panel discussion tomorrow at the Triangle Interactive Media Association (TIMA), but a touch of the winter bug has grounded me on Cape Cod. I wish I could have made it as the other panelists were very illustrious and it was on a topic I like to talk about — customer service and blogging.

Nathan Gilliatt, who blogs at the Net Savvy Executive,  organized the panel, which included Andy Beal — he of the Marketing Pilgrim — and Cindy Akus from Crossroads PR.

I’m being covered by Mark Hopkins, the true force behind Lenovo’s blogger support initiatives, who blogs most eloquently at Markitude.

MediaPost Publications – Sirius And XM To Merge – 02/20/2007

I’ve been a loyal XM customer for two years. I’ve often wondered how two players would compete for wallet-share. Now I know.

“AFTER MONTHS OF SPECULATION, SATELLITE radio rivals Sirius and XM have agreed to a merger with the goals of offering greater variety to subscribers and reducing costs, which have kept both companies from profitability. Under the terms of the agreement, announced Monday, Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin will become CEO of the new combined entity, and XM chairman Gary Parsons will serve as its chairman. XM’s CEO Hugh Panero is expected to step down after the merger is complete.

The new company, whose new name has yet to be announced, would have total assets worth about $13 billion and a shared debt of $1.6 billion. Combining XM’s 7.6 million subscribers with Sirius’ 6 million, the new company could have a total subscription base of well over 16 million by the end of 2007, if previous projections are accurate.”

tecosystems » Not Done With JetBlue

Stephen O’Grady at Redmonk writes about his continued allegiance to JetBlue. I too am unswayed in my happiness with the airline, but as Stephen says, I wasn’t on an airplane for eight hours on the Kennedy tarmac.

“Speaking of JetBlue, a couple of folks have pinged me to see if my opinion of the airline – I’m a longtime fan – has changed in the aftermath of this ice-storm precipitated disaster. The answer is pretty much no. It’s easier for me to say that, of course, because I wasn’t trapped on a plane at JFK for nine hours, but ultimately the reasons that I fly JetBlue – as opposed to, say, United – haven’t changed. Yet, anyway.”

My wife and son flew to Fort Lauderdale yesterday morning out of Logan, and said the airport, even at 6 am, was still a bit chaotic in the aftermath of last week’s weather-induced travel cancellations. I guess it was truly a perfect storm coming right before a major school vacation. As I posted earlier about the “vomit comet,” the scene at Logan on Thursday night was pretty bad. I am happy not be flying until Thursday evening.

GottaBeMobile.com – Another “Oh-No!!!” moment for the Lenovo X60 Tablet – Your Tablet PC and Ultra-Mobile PC news source

Why is it that when I read about some poor soul dropping their notebook I immediately cringe and feel a pit develop in my stomach? This came up in my morning scan from Gottabemobile.com:

“While hanging out (in bed) this past Saturday morning, checking out the latest posts at my favorite tablet PC and UMPC news source, GottaBeMobile.com, it happened again. Yes, to the very same Lenovo X60 tablet. I was enjoying my coffee in bed, checking out the latest news/posts and answering a few emails when the phone rang. Just like I have done soooooo many times, I carefully put the coffee down, and reached over to my wife’s side of the bed for the phone; that’s when it happened. A quick scuffing sound, and then BBLLLAAAAMMMM! The X60 slid off the lapdesk and onto the floor from about 3 or so feet. From the sound of it, I just knew I had just ripped off the display, and destroyed not one, but two hard drives. I was so preoccupied with the crash, I can’t even remember who called or if I even answered the phone.”

2.19 – 2.22 Cotuit (working from home due to cold/flu/Ebola)
2.20-2.22 – RTP

2.23-2.26 – 4-day weekend in Fla.

Tribe recognition comes at a cost (February 17, 2007)

I live in a village on Cape Cod next to the town of Mashpee, an interesting place that was regarded as somewhat backward when I was young in the 1960, a run down town without a high school or much in the way of development, just a lot of scrub pines and oaks, ponds and bays, with a big high end golf community on the oceanside.

As I grew older I learned that Mashpee was the Cape home for the “praying Indians”, those members of the Wampanoag tribe that had converted to Christianity in the 17th century. Their church, or meetinghouse, is about two miles from my house. In the 1920s, one Red Shell, “Cape Cod Indian Historian” wrote a series of historical articles in a local newspaper. Of the meetinghouse he wrote:

“Shearjashub Bourne, a white man, purchased from Chief Quachatisset of the Mashpee village in 1684, a tract of land which is now Mashpee Centre. In payment, he agreed to construct a house of worship in the fashion of the white man for the Wampanoags of Mashpee. He built the church at Bryant’s Neck; near Santuit Pond. The Wampanoags of the upper Cape offered prayer there to the Great Spirit until 1717, when it was moved to Indian Hill, where it has remained ever since. There is an open register within the church where tourists from all parts of the world have inscribed their names and the dates of their visits.”

While the church has stood there since 1717, the descendants of Chief Quachatisset have not been recognized as members of the Wampanoag tribe until this week.

I won’t go into the history of Mashpee. I feel it is outrageous the way the tribe and its descendants have been treated over the past three hundred years, caught up in court and screwed in the typical cliche of land screwings that seem to bedevil every native American tribe.

Well, now they are official, and that means they are, in fact, a sovereign nation. Now the neighborhood is holding its breath, concerned that a casino could come into town sometime soon, a reasonable fear given that this piece of information in the Cape Cod Times this morning:

“Herb Strather, a Detroit real estate and casino developer, is leading the pack of outside investors. Strather has given the tribe $15 million since 1999. It’s not known exactly how the money has been used. That’s one of the reasons prompting a lawsuit filed by four Wampanoag, who are suing the tribe to make financial records public. In particular, the plaintiffs want to know exactly how much money Strather gave the tribe to help secure federal recognition.

Strather’s contribution to the tribe doesn’t come without a price.

”It certainly forces the tribe to give up some of their economic sovereignty to some degree,” said Gavin Clarkson, an assistant professor of Native American studies at the University of Michigan.”

Stay tuned.

Every industry has a specific, almost canonical metric it pays attention to and benchmarks its participants against one another. I wanted to take a few seconds to think out loud about the basic ratios that guide me on a daily basis.
Some business cultures emphasize one financial and operational ratio over another. In Switzerland and Asia, inventory turnover is a big deal. In NASDAQ-listed tech stocks its price-earnings as a measure of value and expectations (P/E). In other industries it’s revenue per employee, while others focus on average revenue per user (ARPU), and then there are operational, specific ratios such cost-per-click.

I live in a world of expense-to-revenue, or “E2R“, expressed variously as “e:r,” “e/r,” and “e|r.” As a relatively green marketer, I assume this is the prevailing canon for measuring marketing effectiveness and efficiency: for every dollar spent in market, what revenue is received, and what budget should be fenced off based on the top line to support a marketing expense. In dummy terms, “How much did I spend to make $X?”

A 1:1 e-to-r means I spend a dollar to make a dollar; that comes out as a 100 percent E/R. We can call that a wash. A negative E:R is when I spend two dollars to make one dollar. This is a 200% E/R and means I’m looking for a new job. A good E:R is when I spend one dollar to make five, a 20% E/R, or as Warren Buffett would say, buying dollars for twenty cents.

This applies in interactive marketing on ad tactics and assumes perfect insights into the purchase of an impression (based on cost-per-thousand impressions, or CPM), yield click-throughs (measured by click-through-rates or CTR), and ultimately ARPU, or average revenue per user (or unique visitor). If I am able to track the user from the first purchased impression to the final checkout, then I can credit the tactic with the sale.

Still with me? This is predicated on that user accepting the tracking beacon, or cookie, from my metric system, a cookie that the user gets when clicking on the search term or the banner ad I’ve purchased for N. If the user permits cookies — in my case one deposited by a script on every page of our website that will permit our metrics tool, Omniture SiteCatalyst to follow that user across multiple visits — then, if our commerce guys have successfully done their job, the user will buy something and I will be able to credit the original marketing tactic with the sale.

Sounds hard and imprecise? It is, but compare it to a newspaper ad. If I buy a full page ad in the Daily Planet and it is seen by a theoretical 100,000 readers, and sales from the zip codes where those 100,000 readers live goes up by 10 percent can I declare the ad a success?

This is the old handgrenade-and-horseshoes school of marketing — the famous I-know-half-of-my-advertising-works-but-which-half” school of marketing.

So back to what I worry about, which is interactive advertising: the interesting thing in assigning expense-to-revenue ratios to a particular tactic is knowing what the intent of the original message was, and second, knowing what it yielded.

Those tactics are pretty simple. Search engine marketing, which is very precise in that I am purchasing clicks through an auction model, but which is usually promotion driven by non-brand tactics like “cheap notebook” or “fast PC.” Then there is display advertising — banners, buttons, IAB standard graphical units — and that is arguably either pure branding or can be pure promotion, but generally are a hybrid of the two. Success in assigning an E/R ratio depends on accuracy in following a customer through multiple visits to my store, because in my market, where I am selling products for $500 to $3000, the customer is researching, comparing, and considering before hitting the purchase button.

We can do this, the rest is pure optimization, arbitrage, and discipline. It’s actually kind of cool and very fun, and a nice feeling at the end of the week to say, “I bought a dollar for twenty cents.”

The harbor has been frozen for two weeks, I’ve been invited ice fishing twice, and trying to find a set of new ice skates is impossible. While this winter started slower than any others, setting early January records for warm temperatures, February is colder than usual.

So yesterday afternoon, as the sun was setting, I took a tour of the waterfront with my cousin. It was 23+, but the wind was howling and who knows what the windchill was.

It’s not often you can walk on salt ice, but as my cousin says, people have been doing it for years in the Arctic. I won’t do it — something too flaky about harbor ice to tempt me out there.

I stay on solid ground, like this jetty sticking out into Nantucket Sound. The tide was extraordinarily low, I believe it is called a “neap tide” and a lot of sand bar and spit was exposed and covered with ice cakes.

This is what happens if you decide to leave your boat in the water. Not good. This is the same cove shown in the header image of the blog — Ropes Beach. In four months I’ll be swimming here.

This just popped up in my Skype chat. This is a first — instant message spam with a twist on the usual 419 Scam – instead of money stuck in Nigeria this is about tsunami victims and the added novelty of customizing the name of the deceased with my last name.
“Dear David Churbuck,

My name is Clifford Benson, an attorney based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A deceased client of mine, by name Mr. Alfred Churbuck, who were in after shall be referred to as my client died together with his family in December 24-2004 as a result of the Tsunami Disaster.

I have contacted you to assist me in claiming the money left behind by my late client before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this deposit valued at $6.5 million United States dollars was lodged.

The bank has issued me a last notice to contact the next of kin, or the money will be confiscated and his account closed. My proposition to you is to seek your consent to present you as my late clients next of kin and beneficiary of the funds, since you have the same last name, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you in your country. Then we can share the amount on a mutually agreed percentage.

All legal documents to back up this claim as my real late client’s next-of-kin will be provided. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through and transparency during process.

The process and transfer will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you and myself from any breach of the law.
I must use this opportunity to
implore you to exercise the utmost indulgence to keep this matter extraordinary confidential, whatever your decision, while I await your prompt response.Please contact me at once to indicate your interest. I will like you to acknowledge the receipt of this e-mail as soon as possible via email this transaction will be treated private with absolute confidentiality and sincerity.

Please contact me at once to indicate your interest via email giving me your contact number for faster communication.When i get your reply, i will send you a detailed explaination and my full contact information.
However if this business proposal offends your moral values,do accept my apology.

Best regards,

Clifford Benson, Esq .
PRINCIPAL ATTORNEY
clifford.benson@yahoo.com”

Tom Wolfe, in The Right Stuff, disclosed the astronaut nickname for the converted cargo plane the Air Forces uses to induce temporary weightlessness for the training of astronauts.

I rode in one last night courtesy of JetBlue.

On the approach into Boston, into 40 mph howling arctic winds, the Embrauer was … very interesting. So interesting that I started to wonder how many times you can flex the wings of a plane before they tear off. I tightened down my belt, noted the reassuring presence of the barf bag in the seat pocket, closed my eyes and went into full Swami mode, meditating through the weightlessness and re-swallowing my stomach contents about ten times. Yummy.

Those who have fished with me know that I am usually the first to get seasick, but that I instantly recover, rally, and am fine for the rest of the trip. The art of seasickness is getting it over with quick, staying above decks with an eye on the horizon, and swigging ginger ale. Airplane rides are not so easy. Open up the air jet full blast, try to find the horizon out the window, and practice deep breathing

I have yet to use the doggy bag and am determined not to.

When I finally got off the plane and staggered through the terminal, I thought of getting it over with, but no, hung on.

This morning I still feel nauseous. Maybe it’s a flu. I dunno.

The flight home is delayed due to weather up north, so I checked out its status at Jetblue.com and found this — which for some reason I think is very cool and one of the most useful Google Map mashups I’ve ever seen.

This sort of says it all. No silence. No vague predictions of arrival. Just an icon of an airplane in range of the airport.

I was pinged by Charles Dubow at Businessweek.com who pointed out this post by Mark Potts at Recovering Journalist re-arguing that there is indeed a viable market for paid content and publishers who charge for their content in print should have every right to do so online.

Charles sent the url under the subject: “What do you think?”

He asked this because I went to the mat in 1995 to make Forbes.com a free online publication, arguing in the face of Dow Jones’ decision to go out with a subscription model for the Wall Street Journal that traffic and scope beat restricted and paid. Forbes.com certainly wasn’t the first free online presence, but it resisted registration and a subscription model for the five years I ran it. Today the site is a traffic monster, with its CEO predicting it will overtake the print parent in revenue sometime soon.

So, 12 years after its launch, should Forbes.com (or any free and open version of a paid print publication) convert to a paid subscription model? Can a publisher take back what was given away and start charging for it?
My argument for a free model comes to a single word: fungible. 

Fungible means interchangeable. My fungible test is this: take a story, say an earnings report for a major corporation. Get the versions written by Bloomberg, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, etc. Print them all out on ordinary paper with no logos, no bylines, nothing that would identify their source.

Then show them to an educated reader and ask them to identify which version came from which source. What value does Reuters offer over Bloomberg for straight forward news? Value in news comes from accuracy, clarity, and speed. Let’s assume they all get to the glass at the same time, or close to it (and for traders they are always going to pay for realtime, so let’s not infer that web media models should follow financial feed models)
If  news is a commodity (something a veteran journalist like Potts should rail against), then there is always a probability that some low-cost or no-cost provider will come along and undercut whatever fee another publisher may try to charge. This is occurring, to some extent in print, as free metro/commuter rags begin to compete with incumbent print products, but it was and still is a massive issue with online products, where availability of the low cost/no cost alternative is but a click away.

So commodity news is not a strong basis for a paid content model. Therefore, let’s look at unique content, such as opinion/op ed type of content, the sort of thing the New York Times is charging for behind the Times Select cost wall. Potts says this is a success. On what basis?  I subscribe to the print version of the Times and get to read Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd the way the Sulzbergers wish I would. I am annoyed, to no end, that I need to verify my print subscription to get to the online versions. The Times has become, as was once said of the Wall Street Journal (whose online version I have subscribed to since it launched) irrelevant, and find myself subconsciously avoiding them altogether, continuing my subscription primarily out of lazy inertia and automatic renewals.

As I avoid them, their traffic lags the free fungibles. So Dow buys Marketwatch and tries to have their cake and traffic too. Yet in this day and age of splatter marketing, large numbers beat niche numbers as long as banners and other online ad units deliver horrific performance numbers measured in basis points. This is why I left online media — until a better ad model is developed — both the paid and the free sites are going to suffer.
The proper question is not whether a paid content model is viable. Sure it is. Porn proves it. And I am not being glib. The bigger question is whether a new generation of readers — the college students of today — are going to pay for the mainstream media brands their parents learned to respect in a paid print model and were willing to pay for on the glass? I doubt they will and that a fungible alternative will always be a click away.

Does anyone seriously believe that registering yourbrandsucks.com is a winning move? I have no argument with registering a brand domain across multiple countries and extensions as a trademark play, but the old defensive tactic of the mid-90s, when PR people and lawyers went nuts trying to nail down mercury, is still with us today.

The first thing an interactive marketer should do upon arrival at an organization is find out who owns the list of registered domains. Find that list, and take a red pencil and start crossing off the ones you won’t be renewing. Sure, it’s short money to own yourbrandreallysucks.org but how about yourbrandreallysucks.net, .gov., .tv …. I’ve seen lists with several hundred names on it. Domain costs and management can begin to add up.

This reminds me of the dirty word filter lists we used to install in online forums so the community couldn’t develop a case of potty mouth: the list was actually incredibly creative and inspirational and has enriched my toilet tongue immensely. My favorite variation on domain names involve animals and suggested acts that are illegal in many states.
Yet still some people think locking down the obvious terms is a winning proposition. I tell them to follow old King Canute down to the seashore and start yelling at the tide not to come in.

Now a more interesting discussion is what to do if a hate site does pop up? How do you defuse it? Ignore it? Or … encourage it?

The New York Observer Media Mob: Times’ Sulzberger: Newspaper Will Be Around For a Long Time

The item reported in Ha’aretz — the Israeli newspaper — based on an interview with NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger at Davos, is sparking a clarification.

“So let me clear the air on this issue. It is my heartfelt view that newspapers will be around–in print–for a long time. But I also believe that we must be prepared for that judgment to be wrong. My five-year timeframe is about being ready to support our news, advertising and other critical operations on digital revenue alone …whenever that time comes.”