Category Archives: Business & Marketing

Average U.S. household credit card debt: $8,000

Posted on by

Seth Godin observes there are more than 3 million millionaires in the U.S. (8 million if you count real estate). In the same post, he says the average household has $8,000 in credit card debt.

I clearly remember when there was no such thing as a consumer credit card. You paid for the things you purchased with cash or a personal check. Perhaps that’s why I have never failed to pay my credit card bill. As soon as the bill came in, I paid it off. Period. And that was true when I was living on small town DJ money back in the early 70’s.

I consider myself fortunate that I come from a time and place where you paid your bills and you paid them promptly. (And if you feel the need to email to tell me I’m an insensitive prick, please attach a scan of our credit card bill. We’ll go over it together.)

I’m just saying… the way we view debt has changed. For good reasons or bad.

“Advertising will go poof”

Posted on by

Does it do me (as an advertiser) any good to force someone to watch or listen to a commercial for my product or service, if they don’t want to? I can argue that my commercial is what paid for the free TV show they’re watching so it’s only fair that they watch it. Doesn’t matter. If the ad is about something I don’t care about (most of them)…Tivo fast-forward.

If you can find a way to show me ONLY the ads I care about, I’ll probably watch them. But Dave Winer says the end of advertising (as we know it) lies at the end of that road:

“When they finish the process of better and better targeted advertising, that’s when the whole idea of advertising will go poof, will disappear. If it’s perfectly targeted, it isn’t advertising, it’s information. Information is welcome, advertising is offensive. Who wants to pay to create information that’s discarded? Who wants to pay to be a nuisance? Wouldn’t it be better to pay to get the information to the people who want it? Are you afraid no one wants your information? Then maybe you’d better do some research and make a product that people actually want to know about.”

I think what Winer is saying is that once you get the right information…about the right product (specifically for me)… you won’t HAVE to pay someone to put it in front of me. I will already have made that happen or have facilitated it. I WANT to know more about your product/service. At that point, it’s no longer advertising.

The point he’s trying to make is a subtle one and hard to grasp if you’ve grown up bombarded by radio and TV ads. For better or worse, we won’t have to wait long to find out if he’s right.

Google makes ad deal with XM

Posted on by

“In its biggest offline media play to date, online search giant Google this morning announced plans to begin extending the reach of its online search advertisers to the nation’s largest satellite radio service, XM Satellite Radio. The deal is the latest development in Google’s push to expand beyond the Internet into the traditional media marketplace, and follows a series of tests with print media and radio outlets.”

— Media Daily News [Thanks, XM Ben]

Web Content Strategist

Posted on by

For the past 6 or 7 years, I have been working with our company’s websites. Sometimes that means designing from scratch. Sometimes we outsource the design and/or development and I manage the project. I support usesrs –internal and clients– on various content managment tools. And a bunch of other stuff. And from the beginning, I’ve struggled with a title for this position.

Some of our folks introduce me as “web guru.” Hate that. Implies a level of mystical knowledge I will never posses. Same for “webmaster.” I’m not even the master of my domain.

I’ve used Online Editor and that’s not bad. Funky Web Monkey and Pile-Drivin’ Digital Daddy are fun but I’m really not funky nor a driver of pile. I fall back on “Web Guy” (Web Boy wasn’t working) from time to time.

Today, I spotted this title: Web Content Strategist. “Strategist” seems a bit grand but I do think a lot about what we’re doing and where we’re going with our growing number of websites. So, maybe.

Why don’t CEO’s blog?

Posted on by

Randall Stross has a nice piece on CEO blogging in Sunday’s NYT. Features Sun Microsystems Pres/CEO, Johathan Schwartz:

“C.E.O. blogging should no longer be viewed as extreme sport. Mr. Schwartz’s example shows that blogging fits quite naturally into the chief executive’s work week. In an exhortatory piece, “If You Want to Lead, Blog,” published in The Harvard Business Review last year, Mr. Schwartz predicted that “having a blog is not going to be a matter of choice, any more than having e-mail is today. My No. 1 job is to be a communicator,” Mr. Schwartz told me last week. “I don’t understand how a C.E.O. would not blog if committed to open communication.”

The Times story starts with: “Chief executives are inclined to avoid activities generally deemed to be high-risk: Sky diving. Cliff jumping. Motorcycle racing. And blogging.”

Learfield Top Guy, Clyde Lear, was born minus the risk-aversion gene. He’ll try anything and encourage others to jump with him. So blogging doesn’t scare him even a little. He’s been travelling a lot this summer and it’s cut into his posting but I think we’ll see it pick up as the summer winds down.

Prediction: Don’t know when… don’t know what… but a day will come when our company will be glad we have the forum that GrowLearfield.com is becoming. You can say you read it here. [via Buzz Machine]