When Wining a World Series Is Not a Priority

I have always been a HUGE fan of the Red Sox. Living in Colorado, I don't get to see many games at Fenway anymore like I did growing up. Needless to say, when they broke the 86 year "curse", I was beside myself with joy. In fact, during the last game of the series, when things looked good (always a relative term for a die hard Red Sox fan) I woke up my kids to witness the event.

My daughter fell back asleep. Didn't care unless the Wiggles were in attendance.

My son, who was too young to walk, was barely awake as I held him in front of the tv to watch the last 3 outs of the game. Given the Red Sox history, this may be the only time he would see them win the World Series in his lifetime! And for the record, I did shed a few tears that night as I danced around the house.  

This morning I ran through my daily ritual of checking my favorite Red Sox blogs: soxaholix, boston dirt dogs, over the monster, etc… I saw a couple of references to this story by Dan Shaughnessy. The synopsis: the Red Sox haven't "gotten around" to re-signing boy wonder Theo Epstein as GM.

For those who have interests outside of baseball, Epstein was responsible for bringing a new approach to locating and retaining talent to the Red Sox. He based decisions primarily on player statistics. Without going into detail, he analyzed many different stats, and variations of stats to determine which combination metrics would best indicate the performance and value of a player. Not an easy accomplishment for a team steeped in traditional baseball management.

So I was shocked to read that after his much publicized departure and renaissance to the team, the Red Sox owner and CEO haven't gotten around to formally signing him up. Hmm, you don't want to sign the guy who brought together the right players and won baseball's top prize for the first time in over three generations.

Just watch, Theo will get fed up and go to the Yankees.

Engagement: The New Black

Yesterday I wrote an email to Jim Meskaukas, the President of the online division of Omnicom. The email was in response to an article he wrote in Media magazine, which is one of the trade publications put out by Media Post. (On a side note, you think a site that caters to media would be better organized and easier to navigate. But nooooooo!).

Jim's article focused on Engagement as a potential replacement for frequency. He was on the right track but his article missed a critical point: Engagement must take into account the actual actions of the target audience as well as how often, and in what context, the target audience engages with your brand/product.

Here's what I actually wrote to Jim:

Greetings Jim,

Just read your article on Engagement. Great points made.

One quick question to push the concept of engagement even further:

Does engagement tacitly demand that some action must result from the engagement?

I would argue yes it does, and it can be measured, within certain mediums.

Since you head up the online media group at Omnicom, I don’t need to pontificate about the web and measurability.

My theory on engagement can be broken down into 5 macro perspectives:

1. Did you reach your target audience (t.a.)?
2. Did your message resonate with that t.a.?
3. Is your t.a. repeating, and in a sense “forwarding”, the message?
4. How many times is the message being repeated and by whom?
5. What actions come about because of number 4?

I design products for understanding and tracking the blogosphere. We’ve developed a measurement of engagement by looking at two components:

1. Are new or existing bloggers talking about you (brand/product/message)
2. If so, how many times, and with what sentiment?

Of course the next logical step (predictability) would be, what action did those engaged (in this case) bloggers take? That’s a product we’re developing and will have ready in the near future.

Again, great article.

Regards,

Michael

 

I haven't heard back from Jim, but will follow up when I do.

Early To Market?

Everybody already knows Google is building their own wifi network. They probably won't be alone. Soon, others will have the opportunity to bid on pieces of the wireless spectrum.

Whether or not they go at it alone, or form a loose consortium (which they should), the opportunity is not the actual bandwidth/transport, it is what rides on top. Obvious, yes. But what could they put on top to better serve users?

Google/Amazon/Ebay/Microsoft: go ahead, borrow this idea. Tie in the ability to make voip calls on my mobile device, with search (must be local as well) and tie in a social media that allows me to see what other people near by think, on the same network. And, if you want to get creative, build in the ability to view the consolidated/aggregated opinions on topics of interest to me. A "no brainer", so add this as well.
If wifi is the connector, how do you as a business, keep users securely connected to your network, and, be able to use their online behavior to better serve up revenue generating ads? Enter a company like OTO Software. OTO is a Boulder/Austin based company. "Rumor" has it they may be in the market for funding to blow this out big time. In my spare time, I brain storm with the COO about ways to increase revenue and target on specific markets. This is an idea I ran by him not so long ago. OTO faces the classic connundrum: there is a huge demand for their product, but, the market is not aware of the "pain"; thus, while the market upside is huge, it will take either time, or a paradigm shifting event, to awaken demand for their product.

Clearly they are not going to fund the education and creation of demand in the marketplace. The should let their competitors do that. What to do if the market is inmature? Include your product as part of a widget in a well known product/application. Focus on the revenue retention/savings/generation you can create for someone else. Sales cycles will be longer, but you certainly don't need to burn valuable cash trying to educate a nascent marketplace.
One day someone like Qwest will wake up and realize that OTO's product could dramatically reduce customer churn and, save lots of money on customer service calls (usually during wireless DSL gateway installs). Heaven forbid they would actually like to improve the customer service and hold on to the only product still generating them lots of money.

Really, How Important Are Blogs?

Our CFO and I were discussing the importance of blogs. More specifically, will blogs continue to grow in number and prominence? Indirectly, how important are blogs as an evolving medium of opinion and information dissemination?

Of course from a job preservation perspective, I should have jumped in and defended the growing importance and acceptance of blogs as a way to convey information and act as a more spontaneous, less packaged, form of opinion and insight. But I didn't jump. I didn't want to just fire off the list of reasons why blogs are important. Instead, I slept on it. (And of course, I read some of my favorite blogs). Paul Miller has a good rebuttal to a FT piece done a few weeks ago with good articulation and rational.

I've been thinking about it and have arrived at this conclusion: we are only beginning to understand the importance of blogs. Blogs are representational of a larger evolving information dissemination system. It just so happens that the low barriers to entry, ubiquity in opinion (everyone has them), and the willingness to opine make blogs a great source of insight. And that word, insight, and the sharing of insight, is the key to the continued prominence of blogs specifically, but social media as a whole.

The bloggers over at USV hit it right on today:"The continued growth of blogs and of micro-chunked media is driven by the attention economics of a society populated, increasingly, by time starved, curious people looking for efficient ways to learn more about subjects they already think about every day".

So as long as there are time starved, curious people, we will expect to see the continued evolution and importance of consumer generated/social media.