Mark Kolier’s Blog

Archive for February, 2012

I recently sat next to a printing sales guy at a direct marketing industry luncheon. He works for a well-known manufacturer that has been in business for many years. A very bright and engaging fellow, he asked me how I had managed to change the focus of my career from being print-sales focused to that of a marketer – something I told him I began back in 2004. We both agreed that the market for print sales today continues to shrink and what’s left has been marginalized.

Even though he isa few years younger than me, he lamented that in his view I had a more than 7 year head start on reshaping our business model. He feared it might be too late. At the time I disagreed and said it’s never too late to learn new skills. But it was clear to me that the skills he had developed to help him enjoy success were not only no longer as relevant, they would likely not ever be relevant again.

I know this because I have skills that I used every day for more than 15 years that I rarely use today. When I think of what I was doing ten years ago in my day to day business activities it’s hard to believe it’s been only ten years since what I do daily now is vastly different than what I did back then.

A recently as eight years ago were spending a large part of our time helping clients print and distribute (mail, inserts etc.) millions of pieces; there were press form layouts, optimal folding considerations, paper purchasing and delivery considerations. We knew the labor rates and run times for our print manufacturers and could accurately estimate their costs for a printing job and how much paper they would require. In fact many printers would be surprised when we would indicate to them what we felt their pricing should be on a project – and we were right. We were good. Really good. Unfortunately those skills are not required nearly as much today.

One thing I did not do was limit myself to thinking we were ‘only’ a print re-seller. We knew which packages worked and which did not by how often they were printed and if they were altered – or not. There’s no better evidence of a successful control than seeing it run time and again. That insight had us move into marketing strategy and creative that would be used to formulate and execute future marketing plans. It wasn’t easy then and is still not easy today but that transition enabled our company to stay relevant for the time being. Irrelevance is always a possible future for any company.

What will my colleague and others like him do? Well if the current status of many of our 2004 clients (those that were responsible for print production) is any indication, finding another line of work is most likely. All those skills and all that knowledge will be lost in transition. I can’t say it’s not fair since it happens all the time, now more than ever.

Who knew you had to be an oracle in order to have a long career?

Back in 2000 the movie ‘Paying it Forward’ starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment explored the idea of doing something for someone else just to ‘pay it forward’ as opposed to being paid back for a good deed. I stumbled upon the movie over the weekend and found myself compelled to watch again having really not seen it since 2000.

I’ve also seen a number of television spots from Liberty Mutual Insurance from a 2011 campaign they call ‘Doing the right thing’. Here is one of the spots –

http://bit.ly/evcXoB

. I love the music associated with the spots as well as the feeling generated from the good deeds and actions depicted in the one minute spot. There’s also a 30 second spot along the same lines but different music

http://bit.ly/hR9eUU

.

Last week I had my own experience of someone doing the wrong thing, and others doing a good thing. I returned from New York late in the evening and it was raining and I noticed a plastic bag on my windshield. Inside the plastic bag was a note that said “A Subaru Forrester, I think New Jersey Plates ****** could have possibly been Connecticut plates, hit your car in parking lot’. Multiple witnesses. And three people signed their name and gave their telephone numbers.

I stood there in the light rain for a moment trying to process what had happened. It was dark and I did not immediately notice where my car had been damaged. Finally I saw that the front bumper had been scratched but the damage appeared to rather minor. Still, from the initial outrage of how could someone hit my car and just drive away, my thoughts turned to how amazing it was that three total strangers would stick their necks out, take the time to write a note (not everyone has a pen and paper handy) and find a plastic bag in which to put the note so that it would be legible.

I contacted the people that wrote the note and thanked them for their considerate acts. I also contacted the local police department to report the incident but as yet have not heard back from anyone as I left a voice mail since it was hardly an emergency.

So I start my week with the positive notion of keeping in mind what it feels like to be the person who was treated right, instead of the person that was wronged. I hope and will look for an opportunity this week to pay it forward myself. And it should be that way every day, every week.

It’s worth it don’t you think?

One of the great things about watching the Oscars (aside from seeing movie stars decked out in the finest duds on the planet) is that we all watch it at the same time. There are not many events left that are quite like that – the Olympics, the Super Bowl, Grammy’s and as I wrote in 2010 even the World Cup http://wp.me/pJX7l-ca . It should be noted that viewer time shifting (DVR, Hulu or other video sharing services) do not work for sporting events nearly as well as for television programs and movies.

Today when there are major events like the Oscars people watch with their mobile devices, and tweet or post updates to Facebook opining on what they see and think. Brand advertisers love live television events more than anything since the ads cannot be deleted or fast-forwarded through.

The Academy Awards (Oscars) have been held in Los Angeles (mostly in Hollywood) since their inception in 1929. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences AMPAS (I am not sure where the science aspect comes in) has done a great job of managing the awards process for more than 83 years. The U.S. has (rightly) great pride in having created not only the film industry but maybe more importantly acting as a steward for the industry itself.

With the motion picture industry now being truly a worldwide industry could the Academy Awards consider being hosted in another country other than the USA? Would that be heresy? Many movies made today generate more income outside the U.S. than they do in the U.S. How about hosting the Academy awards in Mumbai? The film industry in India is booming as it is in China. The U.K. has been making terrific films for years – how about London hosting the Academy Awards? Since most of the movie stars travel to the awards from wherever they are, location is not a stumbling block in moving the awards.

I am not suggesting every year the awards be held outside the U.S. But maybe once every five or ten years the show could be hosted and rotated into different countries. And English should remain the language of the Oscars. But would it be the end of AMPAS to consider moving the awards out of the U.S. even if only occasionally? Or might it show that the Academy acknowledges (beyond the ‘Best Foreign Film award) the Academy Awards are an international phenomenon and by sharing the hosting of the awards it could strengthen its brand?

I’ve never been to the Academy Awards myself. So the view is the same from my living room every year. Of course holding the awards in India would necessitate the show being broadcast out of prime time – or at 6:30AM in Mumbai to hit prime time in the U.S (8PM). I guess neither is likely and that’s too bad. It would be cool to share the Oscar hosting experience with some other countries.

What do you think?

I admit it I am an unabashed correct spelling snob. I am not proud of this since there are not any good things in being termed a snob. Obviously when people write they should use the correct spelling of a word. Spell check is ubiquitous. Context checking, sadly, is not by the way.

It’s almost as if my eyes scan a document on a never ending search for a misspelled word. I am not thinking this constantly but find myself often shaking my head at how badly people spell. Yet today I received an email back from someone with whom I have rare correspondence and while I noticed a misspelled word in the reply what horrified me more was my own error. And it was not even a spelling error. I wrote “I so deeply sorry”…instead of “I am so deeply sorry”. While that’s not a misspelling and I have been diligently studying Mandarin for 17 months, it is not my intention to speak (or write) broken English.

There are some errors that are regular which are not spelling mistakes – like the use of “their” instead of “there” (or even they’re) which are spelled correctly but misused. I am sure it will be easy to come up with a number of most misspelled/misused words.

What we all know is that people make mistakes. Often those can be simple typing mistakes that may not appear as such. Habitual bad spelling is one thing but turning one’s nose up at a spelling error or two is just bad form. Everyone I know is working longer and harder than ever before and (me included) in our collective haste – we occasionally make mistakes.

So the next time you shake your head at what looks like a dumb spelling mistake think about cutting the person some slack. I am going to try to do the same (but old habits die hard).

In the meantime if you have any shining examples of improperly spelled words please do share – we could all use a laugh or two.

Who’s got more time for social networking? Already I find myself spending less and less time on Facebook. It may seem like I am on FB all the time to some people but I leave the tab open on my computer and take a quick look a few times a day. Still that only has me actively on FB maybe 15 minutes a day. I (like everyone else) get FB updates right on my mobile device and like everyone I can post photos, updates and whatever else I can think of on my mobile FB app. I have a Google+ account but spend even less time on Google + than I do using Facebook.

I spend more time on Linkedin than I do on Facebook since I am working more than I do anything else. Myspace.com is on life-support but as I posted over a year ago http://wp.me/pJX7l-k3 I still doubt Myspace will make it. No news flash there.

For a long time I felt that social networking would be dominated by Facebook and Linkedin, and maybe, just maybe, Google would find a way to get in the game. Twitter is considered to be part of social networking but life streams in 140 characters are not the same.

Recently emerging is Pinterest.com – a site that’s been around for several years and has gained a passionate and dedicated following – both in the personal and professional world. Entrepreneur magazine’s Jason Falls had an interesting piece on ‘How Pinterest is Becoming the Next Big Thing in Social Media for Business’ – http://bit.ly/zkll1c. A revenue model is still being sought (Foursquare is still working on one as well) but the growth of Pinterest has been impressive.

This weekend I read in the New York Times an article on a new ‘sort-of’ social network called Cowbird.com http://nyti.ms/wN5XDk – The article noted – ‘In less than three months, people from around the world have used Cowbird to create more than 7,600 mostly personal stories about people or moments in their lives, using words, pictures and sounds. All pieces are accompanied with a single photograph and some include audio. Some include a few words of text, others more.’

An article on Forbes.com from Kirsten Bischoff the –co-founder of HATCHEDit.com http://onforb.es/yqAumj highlighted the challenges in creating a new social network, and the benefits of smaller social networks. She writes about another small social networking site called Path.com – both of them look interesting and in fact pretty cool.

The problem for me is if I were to get even more into niche social networks – and the sharing networks are interesting to me although there are times when I prefer not to share, (goes back to an old sandbox problem) and I’d most assuredly get even less work done and have less time to actually do things.

This sharing thing easily turns into over-sharing don’t you think? Are you spending more or less time on social networks these days? Got any cool new ones you’d like to share?