Archive for December, 2006
New NBA Ball Fouls Out
On October 11th, I blogged about the new composite-material basketball that was being rolled out in the NBA. Two months to the day, the NBA announced that the new ball was getting bounced. According to the NBA’s official announcement:
“Our players’ response to this particular composite ball has been consistently negative and we are acting accordingly,” [...]
Citizen Marketers
I just finished reading the new book Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. (You can also check out their blog, Church of the Customer.)
McConnell and Huba take a look at the fast-growing phenomenon of consumer-generated marketing content, and the best thing about the book is that you get a sense of just [...]
New Customer Service Technology: You Still Need to Provide Actual Service
There’s no question that technologies like web chat and automated attendants can lower cost of service and help people get what they need quickly. All too often, however, companies buy the technology but then don’t actually have the staff to provide the service. As this blog post points out.
I’ve used the guilty retailer of this story (Red Envelope), [...]
Getting a Buzz On
From Forbes, a piece about a company that didn’t get a spot at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Summit - and took things into their own hands and found that got better results anyway.
Mashery failed to make the cut for prime placement at tech’s hottest conference of the year, the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Summit in November. [...]
Mythologize Me!
Seth Godin wrote the other day about Brand as Mythology. (And a nod to Maura Welch at Boston Business Filter, who had a brief post on this today.) Here’s Seth making his case.
Most of us remember the mythology stories they taught us in school (Zeus and Thor and the rest of the comic-like heroes.) [...]
Buzzkill
Have you been following the latest fake blog story? This time it’s Sony with a PlayStation blog. And it’s so mind-numbingly bad that I was convinced at first that the whole thing was a hoax to make Sony looks bad.
Sadly, no. Go look at the blog, if you dare; I will warn you that [...]
I’ve Been Tagged
By Mary!
(In case you’re not aware of this phenomenon: tagging is one of the ways that bloggers keep themselves amused. It works like this: you compose a post according to a formula (what are the last five songs you listened to? what’s your favorite book? etc.) and then “tag” other bloggers to do the same [...]
Brand Control
I’m in the middle of reading Citizen Marketers, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s new book about content creators unaffiliated with a company and how they’re becoming a powerful force, and noticed that so far the book has focused on the positives of understanding these folks. But what, I wondered, are the dangers? Well, here’s one. [...]
Today’s Customer Service Villain is eFax
I wrote the other day about how my fax to email provider upset me with “no-reply” emails. Today’s experience with them was even worse - so I’m naming names!
I have been using eFax for ages, but when I got an email about a 30% price hike, I decided to investigate alternatives. I discovered that there are lots, and they are [...]
In the News
Squarevox got a nice mention in this USA Today story about “microbusiness.” It’s an interesting piece about the new ways of forming organizations and virtual teams which really reflects the way that we work.
(And that’s my self-plug for the day!)
