The Lines are open, but no-one is listening

I rarely watch Free to Air TV, not because it doesn't sometimes (okay hardly ever) have good content, but because of the quantity and (lack of) quality of the advertising - most especially those ads which aren't.

I really question, having sat through the Blackadder marathon last week on one of them, whether the advertisers actually think they are getting value? I'm sure the metrics are telling them yes - but if I was an Advertiser, I'd be querying it anyone remembered my brand halfway through a 4 minute ad break? Maybe that's the sweet spot for someone coming back from a piss or getting another Beer?

Anyway, I turned off most of Blackadder, as even that humour was getting abused by the shit it was being associated with.

I say, let them put as much cross-promotion and advertising as they like all day every day. The 'majority' of the population which currently watches these channels will soon realise there are myriad alternative ways to get Blackadder which no longer involves having to sit through 7 or 8 ads in one break for every 5 or 6 minutes.

Having an online complaints mechanism is very modern, but if there are no penalties and the outcomes are ignored, what's the point? Let them all kill each other anyway, they're all dead already. They advertisers which keep them alive just don't know that yet.


Fuck it, lets just cross-post our twitter hastag for Hey, Hey when it comes back to the Online complaints page.

That'd be awesome!

the Robin Hood tax

via katiechatfield.wordpress.com

unfortunately the banks will just pass the tax back on onto their customers

Posted via web from franksting's posterous

Terms and Conditions

Recently I've had some work done by a trades company who, in fairness, seem pretty straight up and did the job reasonably well. A couple of weeks later, we realised there was a problem. From a regulations perspective, a serious one. One, for example I wouldn't be able to sell my house with, if we didn't fix before that time.
Because it was a recently installed job, and the regulations were breached, I made the assumption they would come back and rectify the issue without any further charge.
How wrong was I. Even though I was quoted for the the work being done in full "fixed price", they had their Terms and Conditions to fall back on.

Terms and Conditions

Businesses use them to cover their arses in the event of something going wrong or guarantee or income. In the odd case, and probably forced upon most businesses, they provide cover to the purchaser for screw ups or otherwise.

So thanks to Terms and Conditions, I've been presented with a Bill for the additional work performed to (in my opinion) complete the job satisfactorily. Up to now I've refused to pay it due to my opinion of the nature of the work. The Vendor has come back to me with a series of excuses as to why they need to charge me, and anyway Term 7 says;

"No allowance has been made in this quotation for any unforseen circumstances or extended delay due to forces beyond xxxxxxx’s control. The quote is based on reasonable consideration of the required site preparation and earthworks. Additional work is costed at an hourly rate; equipment hire is at market price."

Pretty wide ranging, you'll agree.

Their major claim is some of the previous work they needed to interface with was non-standard, unforeseen and impossible to detect. I personally call their site survey lazy and half-arsed incapable. I've now got a completed job, an unasked for xxx, some half removed xxxx and a bill for the labour involved in finishing the job to satisfaction.

All thanks to a wide ranging term expunging them from all responsibility for an incorrectly completed job.

Is this standard practice? Do you know any other service which gets away with that? I'll pay the bill, because I imagine the legal costs associated with them chasing me down for a few hundred dollars would be more. But I'll let them know I'm doing it under protest, and I'll certainly be checking the terms and conditions more closely the next time.

And perhaps writing a few of my own.

Dear Foxtel

updated 31/12/09 following call received from Rihanna at Foxtel on 29/12

It was a pleasant experience to get the call and we had a good conversation. It was nice to get something positive out of this experience, however, Foxtel still need to go a way to, in my opinion, introduce value back into their offerings. Stopping discriminating between customers and focusing on the Customer Experience rather than Marketing would be a start.

See my understanding of their responses to my specific questions below. I hope what they appear to have committed to actually comes through

To: Shona Bishop
"Executive Director, Customer Service and Installations
Foxtel"

Dear Shona,

A couple of weeks back you sent me a letter to tell me you were completely incapable of doing simple calculations and forgot I had a 'loyalty bonus' already before telling me the price cut I thought I had actually was an Increase in Price.

Actually I'm going to just quote what you wrote here, because I'm assuming what I wrote above is what you meant to get across. But as with Barnaby Joyce's recent effort at Blogging, it doesn't appear to be written in any kind of English I understand;

PWNED

Watching Tonight's Media Watch I was imagining Gary Linnell and David Penberthy choking on their Schooners right at the end there. Oh actually, all I have to do is to read this from the aforementioned Penberthy to find out what he thought. If they were reading the #pwnednudierun twitter feed it generated they may have chilled out somewhat, though I doubt it.

Ideally, however, they would be hard at work coming up with a Smart Position on deflecting how amateur they have been made to look over recent weeks. It's one thing for Uncle Rupert to be claiming to be charging for their 'Unique' Content, its another thing to do it while his key Masthead in Australia's biggest Market have been played for fools something around 10 times this year. Most ominously when they were sucked in by Godwin Grech but also the Pauline Hanson Photos and, as highlighted on tonights Media Watch, the blowtorch torture affair - still online (as soon to be charged for original content) here.

So what should they do tomorrow? Ignore it and it will go away? Write a story about and laugh it off? Something more clever writers than I might come up with?

Juding by Penberthy's humourless ripostes on Twitter tonight, somehow I doubt it. Most likely they will be sucking on Lemons and getting Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen et al to join them in 'conference'* so they can call Jonathon Holmes and the ABC names or continue Uncle Ruperts inane ramblings on them 'Stealing' Content. I'm waiting for the flurry of muck from Tim Blair, Piers at al to appear on The Punch and in the Tele any time soon.

If that is the only content you have to offer, News, I doubt they want to steal it. I know I don't

Balancing Need and Want in the Product Development Process

I just read Matt Moore's most recent post over at Engineers without Fears.
I was inspired enough to comment as I felt his argument covered a key challenge of the Customer/Product Relationship.

As organisations which develop and Sell Products and Services, we need to sell to make ourselves relevant. In order to ensure we get and keep our customers we sometimes have to perhaps emphasise parts of the service which we know are going to appeal more to specific customer segments. That's called Marketing and PR, I think. The question is though, is that a form of prostitution, or just fulfilling a real need which actually exists?
As with most things, the challenge is to find the balance between creating a need, filling a need which exists. That's probably more sustainable than creating 'wants' in order to fulfill over zealous forecasts to keep the Shareholder happy.
(note: Image sourced from http://www.zazzle.com.au/)

Creating Intangible Value in the Climate Change Debate

I just wrote a rather lengthy blog for blog action day in which my basic tenet was the conversation around Climate Change had to change to be more postive. Conincidentally I've just watched Rory Sutherland on TED discuss in gallingly wonderful terms on how to create 'intangible added value to replace actual material value'.At about 6'45" in the video he touches briefly on the Climate Change Debate in which he nails my argument exactly. He posits that this is what Climate Change Campaigners should be doing and then moves on to the rest of his presentation. No more needs to be said.
I heartily recommend this 16 minutes to all. Best Ted video I've seen since Ken Robinsons on Education

The Pillars of Retail

Sometime ago, I wrote about the segmentation of markets and the inherent gaps there are in that Segmentation when people don't 'fit' the model. In my day job recently I've been doing a lot of thinking about Retail, which is not really a subject I know much about. And recently I've had the experience of some hideous customer service (which I'll write about at length in a follow up article). So I've been thinking about how all those thought processes overlap.

I conceptualised some time ago in an earlier draft of this article what I thought where the definitions of a successful retail offering. While this article is semi-educated OPINION, developed by being a customer for well, a few years now, I think it is important to defer to experts in the field. So I have been canvassing directly or indirectly input about Retail (i.e. Bricks and Mortar) sales outlets. Especially when it comes to the Key Pillar of that channel - Customer Experience.

As part 1 of this piece, let me share my opinions on what I believe a retail business should, at the very least, offer a customer.

Patents; killing innovation for 100 years

*Updated
Apparently a company called Techradium is suing Twitter (read about it at the Inquistr and ARN) I read it with a mixture of concern and contempt.
Concern because, even though Twitter often gives me the shits, I use it on a daily basis. It has become the ONLY way I communicate with some people and it has allowed me to meet a huge number of great people along the way.
Contempt because, as I wrote as a comment on the ARN site;

Someone has done something better in an open way, which beats what someone else
has done. That's called capitalism...if you haven't monetised your system
already and made it essential, shut up shop and move on

So with respect to Techradium, and without deepdiving into the specific Patent, I almost wish they would 'go away'. This is because I believe any company which relies on Patents to make money in their business really shouldn't exist anyway. Patents appear to me to have become something which have changed from being a protector of innovation to a killer of innovation.

From reading the technology 'press', it has become my understanding the majority of the Patents which are being granted these days, especially in the USA, appear to be for something so minor as to prevent any form of innovation from possible competitors - real, imagined or even unknown.

Specifically, with so many patents being granted or having been granted in the past, what is any company supposed to do with their start-up or R&D cash? There must be some concern among VC people that much of their investment will be spent on legal fees to search out any or all tenuous or actual patent conflicts there may be. I prefer an environment where if you create something, patent it and bring it to market, you should only be protected for the patent in the case where someone deliberately breaks your patent in a way that directly impacts your business.

In the case we are referring to today, and of course I'm not a patent lawyer, neither of the above seem to be the case. Indeed the Techradium rent a sue writes;

"It appears that Twitter's core functionality is squarely within
the technology described by TechRadium's patents."

Nothing about deliberately seeking out and reusing Techradium technology there or even Twitter directly going after Techradium's business.

It seems to me Techradium were once the popular kid in one corner of the school yard. Now some other kid has appeared in the other corner and has attracted all his fans cos he's a bit 'same but different'. And they are pissed because they've lost all their cred and want to get the other kids back. But they've moved on and its too late.

Bottom line, Techradium, enhance your service, make it more desirable to your existing and potential customers. Either that, and just like in every business - Local Coffee shop to Nortel, move on and find something your customers want to pay for.