Archive for June, 2007
Feature Creep
In the May 28th New Yorker, the excellent business writer James Surowiecki had a particularly good essay on “feature creep.”*
While I’ve generally heard (and used) the term in association with all kinds of out-of-spec goodies being added to the specification list for a software release (without, of course, extending the release cycle), Surowiecki gives it a more [...]
Attack of the Branding BS
The organizing committee for the 2012 Olympics in London has unveiled its logo for the games. My initial reaction: ugh. But that is neither here nor there.
What’s interesting, in a car-crash kind of way, is what committee chair Seb Coe had to say about it:
“This is the vision at the very heart of our brand,” [...]
A Link in the Value Chain
This article about the latest front in the music industry’s war against its customers got me thinking about the tough spot that record labels are in, and about how value and viability work in other markets.
The latest news, if you’re curious, is the appearance of state laws that treat people selling used CDs as if [...]
Apple Gets Ads Right
I’ve been pretty critical of Apple’s advertising in the past, particularly the “I’m a Mac” ads: I think they’re examples of the company’s self-absorption, smug and sometimes inaccurate, with that annoying hipster guy that makes a Mac user like me want to go hang out with Steve Ballmer. So I think the new batch of [...]
En Garde! "What to do when customers attack"
Over on iMedia Connection, Tom Hespos has a good article entitled “What to do when customers attack.” It’s pretty high level, but it’s certainly worth all marketers giving it a look. (Just in case.)
Tom points out the importance of being proactive in figuring out just what’s being said out there in-the-world-where-you-have-no-control. For starters, he advocates setting [...]
The Hostage Theory of Pricing
Josh Hallett wrote about the price of wifi at a hotel recently - a price that, like so many hotel charges, seems unconnected to either a service’s value to the customer or cost to the provider. (In this case it was $1600 for three people to use wifi in a meeting room. Yes, you read [...]
The Blogocratic Oath: First, do no harm.
Robert Lindeman is a Boston-area pediatrician who was recently in court fending off a malpractice suit brought by the parents of a 12 year old boy who died while under Lindeman’s care.
Lindeman is also a blogger named Flea, with a fairly well known blog “drfleablog” (now - at least temporarily - taken down).
Which turned out [...]
