When a Few Thousand Pounds Isn't Enough (to buy you a laptop connection on British Airways)...

Here I am, sitting on a British Airways flight about to leave LHR and I can't
use my laptop in the "World Traveller" class. I had planned to use the next 5
hours or so to catch up on work. So much for global connectivity...

But alas, my ticket was only $2521. It turns out that World Traveller is just a
posh name for ECONOMY, so no perks with British Airways today. Amazing how
little the dollar buys you these days.

Adding insult to injury, after spending more than $100 to buy an "inverter" to
enable my laptop to connect onboard (plus the myriad phone calls to the airline
to find out which craft I was flying -767- and tail number to find out if the
plane was wifi enabled, as well as a 25 minute head scratching session with a BA
Customer Service Agent at T5 - he graciously thanked me for teaching him
something today), it turns out that my new purchase is completely useless on
board... I'm not sitting in the right cabin.

Ah....

Worse still, the cabin crew were not "allowed" to sell me an upgrade onboard and
I was not permitted to power my laptop in any of the dozen or so empty seats in
front of me.

I'm not in the "right" cabin.

Now for the irony.... I just spent the week in London attending the Farnborough
Air Show, watching airlines place big orders for new craft and then at the
Airline Retail Conference to hear Ryanair's Micheal Cawley tell the airline
industry to "grow up and act like a business," while others talked about the
urgent need for airlines to develop sustainable revenue models that would endear
loyalty. In other words, thinking beyond the baggage fees.

So here's a start.. When a customer is willing to pay more than $100 simply to
plug their laptop into your plane, take their money.. And when a customer is
willing to pay for an upgrade on the plane, take their money too.

You could actually make some money. How novel.

NB - I sat down with the Purser to discuss what happened. The sad reality, she
told me, is that she has less power to satisfy customers than ever before. She
said because of fraud and the airline's inability to implement consistent
policies, she had no idea what the future would hold for her after a 22 year
career with BA, or her fellow flight crew.

Long Live Reading, Digitally and In Print

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that for the first time, electronic books for the Amazon Kindle have outsold hardcover books. The online bookseller averaged 143 Kindle book sales for every 100 hardcover copy sales over the last three months. WOW.

Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the impending death of print. And with it some other things, you know, like cultural literacy, Western civilization, and all knowledge.

Although I own a Kindle (and most recently an iPad), I have hung onto the (obviously) antiquated notion that the tactile sensation of a book in your hands (or, for that matter, of a newspaper spread between them) contributes to the experience of reading. So I am sympathetic to the fear that books will become obsolete; should that happen, a sizable chunk of me will become obsolete right along with them.

But I don’t see that happening.

I was watching Ghostbusters not longer ago, and in a great scene Harold Ramis’s character announces to Annie Potts’s harried secretary that “print is dead.” (This, for fans, is just before Spengler tells her that he collects “molds, spores and fungus” as a hobby. Classic.) The point is, Ghostbusters came out in 1984- more than 25 years ago. Not to make Ramis and Dan Aykroyd (the writers) out to be bad prophets, but print still isn’t dead, despite the tremendous advances in technology that might have rendered it such. I’d bet it continues to survive at least for another generation. Or three.

The Amazon announcement doesn’t refute this belief, either. Look closer at the figures, and you realize that they don’t account for paperback sales, which make up the bulk of Amazon’s total book shipments. They also don’t mention the fact that Amazon is aggressively promoting e-books, to facilitate sales of its Kindle, offering electronic titles for as little as $0.99, versus the $9.99 price of a hardcover new release. And let’s not forget that Amazon is only one retailer. They make a good barometer, to be sure, but as the dominant online bookseller, Amazon is in a better position to facilitate the sale of e-books than a brick-and-mortar bookstore with an ancillary website. All of this indicates that the popularity of e-books is indeed growing, but not necessarily that print is doomed.

If print was doomed, if this did mark the first death throe of the beloved book, would that really spell the end of life as we know it? I’m not so sure. E-books facilitate reading, and in certain circumstances can enhance it. They aren’t printed on bundles of dead trees. They are easier to obtain, particularly through Amazon.

Regardless of the ratio of e-books to hardcover to paperback, the figure that’s forgotten is that Amazon sold more written material this quarter than last. More people are reading. More people are buying authors’ work. More people are interested in divining the wisdom deep within a book.

These are positive developments, and we should recognize them as such.

So let’s not sound the death knell for books quite yet, and let’s not fret quite so much about what happens when we must.

In the meantime, I’m going down to the local Waterstone's bookstore (in Richmond, London) to grab the Stieg Larsson trilogy for both of my kids.

The PR Industry: An Economic Bellwether? / from MediaPost

Happy days are here again. Or are they?

On June 29, WPP, the global behemoth marketing and communications firm reported a significant uptick in earnings and growth. WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell reported that "in the first quarter, branding and identity, healthcare and specialist communications (including direct, digital and interactive) continues to show relatively stronger growth at over 2.0%, followed by consumer insight at slightly over 2.0% and public relations and public affairs at 2.0%." Congrats, WPP -- that is great news for stakeholders, but what about the rest of the agency world?

Roughly six months ago, as the new decade broke, agencies started the year in a cautiously optimistic mindset. And they had reason to; the recession was over (almost), consumers were shaking out the cobwebs from their wallets, the White House promised to put some sort of chokehold on Wall Street, and firms were hiring again. We saw green shoots.

Today, however, that somewhat rosy picture has failed to materialize for a lot of the PR industry and its clients. It was like a mirage in the Gobi Desert. An illusion.

As PR agencies find themselves at the crossroads of sticking to old-school tactics versus the social-media-as-an-everything Goliath, reinventing their model -- and really, trying to stay relevant to their clients, another major hurdle is facing them -- companies say can no longer afford PR. Seriously.

Click here to continue reading.

Mobile's Coming Of Age? For The Hundredth Time, Yes

A recent article on the WashPost website does a great job describing the proliferation of mobile coupons, along with their benefits to consumer and retailers.

Mobile coupons, as our mobile clients have been touting for years, have a threefold advantage over their paper forebears:

1. They provide convenience and ease of use to consumers,
2. Allow consumers and retailers to engage in a dialogue with one another, and
3. Let retailers collect valuable tracking data about their loyal customers and their spending habits.

All of these are highlighted in Ariana Eunjung Cha’s piece "Mobile coupons help retailers track customers," though of course no article of this kind would be complete without a veiled hint of menace (“the convenience…comes at a price: your privacy”).

But it’s the cautionary aspects of this column that are a little bit misplaced.

Now, we’re not complete pollyannas about the mobile marketing movement, nor are we deaf to the intimations of big brotherhood that inevitably accompany the accumulation of vast amounts of tailored, individualized data by large corporations.

But in terms of mobile couponing, there seems to be a very clear-cut trade off that consumers are willingly engaging in. This is NOT an invasion of privacy, but rather accepting an invitation to trade personal privacy for preferential treatment, and even that in a very circumscribed manner. Now Facebook, that is a whole nother story...

What is important to remember here is that the current generation has been willingly ceding aspects of their (our) privacy for more than a decade. When every travail is documented on Facebook, why balk at allowing purchasing behavior to steer discounts your way?

The truth is, very few balk at this. This is the choice generation, we (and they) want our offers to be relevant, tailored just to us, and we want the ability to seize them or let the pass as we see fit.

And this is the beauty of the mobile coupon, an aspect only briefly mentioned in the Washington Post article: the mobile coupon is an ‘opt-in’ offer. There must be an affirmative decision made on the part of the recipient to receive one. This means that if you don’t sign up for a mobile coupon, it’s just like the other coupons in the Sunday paper you never bought; they exist, but they don’t affect you.

Many would rather have access to the discounts mobile coupons provide. And so mobile coupons have persisted, and will continue to grow in popularity.

But of course, if you read this blog, you knew that already.

All Work And No Play....

Makes us very dull people. This is a fact.

I read a great post last week about vacation time on Firm Voice, a PR blog, and the fact that Americans need a holiday.

A recent national survey commissioned by Mondial Assistance, revealed that;

four in ten (39 percent) Americans haven't had a vacation - defined as leisure travel of a least a week to a destination at least 100 miles from home - in the last two years, up from 33 percent who said the same last year. An additional 17 percent of Americans haven't taken a vacation in over a year, meaning 56 percent of Americans haven't taken a vacation recently (39 percent more than two years and 17 percent more than a year).

Tragic, huh?

While I do agree that sneaking off for a "breather" in times of crisis a la Tony Hayward is a really bad move (then again, show me any good Hayward move), I think the guilt factor and perpetual having to be "on" is working against the American workforce.

Personally, I work anywhere from 50 to 80 hrs a week.. It's not ideal, but as a PR agency owner, I have to do what I have to do. When it comes to down time, however, I feel no guilt. Of course, the blackberry and laptop are my travel buddies, yet sometimes I won't respond to emails until a few days later - shock, horror, gasp!!! But these mobility tools allow me the luxury of time away, without worrying about not being connected to the office, or I need to deal with an urgent client matter.

I (try) to take 2-3 one week breaks throughout the year as this length is managable, pre, during and post holiday.

And you know what?

I come back recharged, reinvigorated and creatively pumped to keep going until the next break. And usually a good 15 lbs heavier, but I digress....

No person should feel obligated to spend every breathing moment in the office for fear of not putting in enough face time or losing their job.

That type of workforce is a thing of the past; the one that confuses activity with acheivement. An inefficient worker is an inefficient worker no matter how much face time they put in.

We have been empoeered with tools that allow us to work anywhere and everywhere.

For the sake of innovation, creativity and a healthier, more sane workforce...

TAKE A BREAK!

Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught redux

My colleague at The ThinkTank, Erin Schmidt, asked a great question today....

Can entrepreneurship be taught?

Disclosure - our nonprofit division works with the South Florida chapter of a national organization that helps young people from low-income and disadvantaged communities learn entrepreneurship and business skills in middle and high school. NFTE , which is short for The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, gives these young people the tools to break the cycle of poverty and find their own pathway to prosperity through financial independence and a sense of purpose.

These amazing young kids develop business plans and learn about the value of making it on their own, creating a concept, an idea, a vision and applying those in real-world, real-time applications.

The result is a generation of youth who recognize that jobs are not for life and college is no guarantee of employment. These are the youth that are creating small economic engines in communities all over the country, determined to be the first in their family to finish high school, go to college and start own business - or two.

These youth are our entrepreneurs of tomorrow and living proof that entrepreneurship can indeed be taught. As Erin wrote in her blog, "entrepreneurship should be taught not just within the walls of the university – but in our public school systems and in our communities, so that we can nurture and mentor the next generation of innovators."

You can also read a related post in the New York Times' You're The Boss Blog

On Journalism: The Futility of "Exclusive" Scoops

The futility of "exclusive" scoops in today's media cycle is, well, futile...

Last week, the Daily Online Examiner's article Major Newspapers Claim Right To Keep Scoops Exclusive described the futile and somewhat disingenuous recent filing of a legal brief by a handful of major US newspapers in an effort to prevent rival publications from picking up and putting out their “scoops”.

The argument is based on a case before federal appellate court wherein an online publication published a bank’s stock recommendations before some of the bank’s clients were notified. The larger implication, though, is that mainstream publications like the New York Times or the Washington Post (two newspapers that have joined the brief) would have the ability to prevent their exclusive stories from being reprinted (or, more likely, reposted online) by their competitors.

Good luck with that.

My view is that such an action has no basis and no precedent, and effectively undermines the public good achieved by the rapid dissemination of information, no matter who breaks it.

Journalism has always been in a bit of a bind in this area. It is called the Fourth Estate for its immense public value as a government watchdog, yet to facilitate that function journalism must be as removed from government control and influence as possible. This means journalism must be a for-profit, capitalist enterprise, which in turn means there must be stiff competition.

Once again, this means journalism must be a for-profit, capitalist enterprise, which in turn means there must be stiff competition. Got that?

Exclusives, scoops, and being the first to break a story are ways of achieving competitive advantage in this market, and so of course it's understandable that those organizations devoting the most resources to the gathering of news want to protect this advantage. Finder keepers, losers weepers.

But doing so in this way nearly nullifies journalism’s Fourth Estate status. AJ Liebling once wrote that “the function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.”

The latter part of this dichotomy may be more and more difficult in the internet age, but the former has never been as important.