Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Short sharp shocks

    Short sharp shocks

    In Atlantic Magazine’s China’s long history of defying the doomsayers, Stephen Platt and Jeffrey Wasserstrom put the case that the Chinese Communist Party is unlikely to fall in our lifetimes.

    China’s military is presently powerful enough and its diplomacy stable enough that the Communist Party faces no realistic threats from outside. Internally, its control over society is effective enough that, while unrest and discontent may be widespread, there are neither well-organized opposition parties nor rebellious armies that might seriously challenge the central government.

    They are probably right, it’s difficult to see any immediate threat to the power of China’s current leaders.

    Although we should keep in mind that only a few decades ago it was inconceivable that the Soviet Union would disintegrate or the Warsaw Pact dissolve.

    Had someone wrote in 1986 that within five years both would happen, they would have been written off as being foolish. But that’s what happened.

    In the stock market it’s said “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and it’s true for any pundit – you may be right that property is overvalued, the US is in decline or the Eurozone will break up, but the powers that be will may be able to kick the can down the road and sustain the unsustainable for a lot longer than any of us expect.

    Steve Keen found this with the ‘walking to Kosciusko” bet where he was railroaded into giving a fixed date of when the Australian property market would fall. He, nor anyone he made the wager with, had any idea of the billions of dollars governments would throw at the market to maintain prices.

    All too often people make the right calls about property markets, economies or the fall of regimes but get their timing wrong.

    In his book The Sun Always Rises Ernest Hemmingway’s character Mike Campbell describes how he went bankrupt – “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

    And so it is with empires, nations, ideologies and even the most powerful corporation. When the change happens it’s sudden and unexpected.

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  • Owning the customer

    Owning the customer

    During the tech boom of the late 1990s the early wave of web developers had a business model that required locking customers into a relationship.

    Having spent thousands of dollars for designing and building a website, a business then found they would have to spend hundreds of dollars every time they wanted to make even a minor change.

    While that model didn’t work out for web designers as new tools appeared that made it easy for customers to look after their own sites, it’s still the ambition of many businesses to ‘own’ as much of the customer as possible.

    Department store credit cards, supermarket petrol cards and airline frequent flier programs are all examples of how big businesses try to lock their customers into their ecosystem.

    Possibly the dumbest, and most counterproductive all, are the media companies with policies of not linking outside their own websites. The idea is to keep readers on their sites but in reality it damages their own credibility and betrays their lack of understanding how the web works.

    The airlines too have discovered the risks in trying to ‘own’ their customers as their devaluing frequent flier programs has irritated and disillusioned their most loyal clients.

    Many businesses, particularly banks and telcos, try to tie you up into knots of contractual obligations with reams of terms and conditions. All of this is an attempt to make the customer a slave to their business.

    Outside of having a legally protected monopoly, you can’t ‘own’ a customer – the customer has to grant the favour of doing business with them.

    They’ll only do business with you if they trust that you’ll do the right thing by your promises; whether it’s delivering the cheapest product, the best service or quickest delivery. The moment their trust begins to slip, you risk losing their business.

    Executives who talk of the concept of owning the customer are either working in organisations with little competition or those steeped in 1980s management practices. If you hear them talking like that, it might be best to take your business, and investments, elsewhere.

    Owning customers didn’t work for the web designers of the early 2000s and it won’t work for businesses in other sectors. The only way to ensure most of your clients keep coming back is to deliver on what you’ve promised them.

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  • Google announces eTown awards for Australian towns

    Google announces eTown awards for Australian towns

    I don’t normally post media releases onto the site, but it appears there’s no posting of the Google eTowns announcement. As I’m writing a story for Technology Spectator on it, here’s the release.

    One thing that leaps out when reading the media reports on this is how many outlets just copy and paste. Only the Fairfax entertainment reporter went to the effort of rewriting the release and adding some additional context. You have to wonder how long ‘churnalism’ can survive given readers are onto this laziness.

     

    EMBARGOED UNTIL THURSDAY 30th AUGUST, 4:30PM (EST)

     

    Perth wins top spot in Google’s eTown Awards

    Western Australia capital beats out eastern states as centre of digital boom

    Perth leads the list of Australia’s top 10 eTowns, Google announced today. This new Google award recognises and ranks those communities which are outpacing the rest of the country in having its small businesses use the web to connect with customers and grow.

    The web is transforming all businesses in Australia, not just those typically considered to be “Internet businesses”. The digital economy is already worth as much as Australia’s iron ore exports, according to Deloitte Access Economics, and it’s forecast to grow by $20 billion to $70 billion by 2016.

    To provide a snapshot of this vital economic activity, Google looked at more than 600 local government areas to analyse which communities are contributing the most to the digital economy. The top 5 metropolitan and top 5 regional eTowns for 2012 are:

    Metropolitan

    1. City of Perth, WA
    2. City of Yarra, VIC
    3. City of Adelaide, SA
    4. North Sydney, NSW
    5. Ryde, NSW
    		 Regional

    1. Byron Shire, NSW
    2. Meander Valley, TAS
    3. Cessnock, NSW
    4. Wingecarribee Shire, NSW
    5. Scenic Rim Regional Council, QLD

    Federal Small Business Minister Brendan O’Connor, who is launching the inaugural eTown Awards at an event in West Perth today, said;

    “The digital economy is fuelling Australia’s economic growth and it’s important businesses of every size are well equipped to take advantage of the potential.  I hope this award encourages other small businesses to get online to connect with people who are actively looking for their products and services.”

    Perth’s Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi said, “Perth may be known for its mining boom but this award shows that our businesses are actively grabbing hold of the digital boom. The City of Perth is proud of its eTown Award and I am delighted to represent an area whose businesses are so connected with both their local community and the entire world thanks to the web.”

    Online advertising is a growing phenomenon and Google, through its online advertising and other services, is in a good position to act as a barometer for the strength of this commercial activity – particularly in small businesses. To come up with the eTown Awards list, Google analysed data on the number of local businesses in each local government area which are advertising with Google AdWords and/or have created a free website using Google and MYOB’s Getting Aussie Business Online initiative.

    Byron Shire, home to the popular holiday destination, leads the regional eTowns list with a high proportion of accommodation, recreational hire and tours providers using the web to drive their businesses.

    Claire Hatton, Head of Local Business for Google Australia said, “The eTown Award winners show that anyone anywhere can reap the benefits of the digital economy. These days being on the web is as important as having a phone. Australians expect to be able to seek out products and services online, and local businesses need to be found to compete.”

    For more information about the eTown Award winners and for case studies on how local businesses are succeeding online and driving economic growth, visit www.google.com.au/ads/stories [NB: website will be available after embargo lifts].

    Media are invited to attend the announcement of the eTown Awards with the Minister for Small Business, Perth’s Lord Mayor and Google Australia.

    Local businesses located in each eTown may be available for interviews.

    Thursday, 30th August at 2:00pm – 3:00pm
    The Yoga Space
    Shop 11, Seasons Arcade,
    1251 Hay Street, West Perth.

    To RSVP to the event or for interviews please contact:

    Redacted

    Notes to Editors

    1. AdWords is Google’s online advertising system which enables businesses of all sizes to advertise relevant text ads next to Google search results. Businesses decide the text and their budget and only get charged when someone clicks on their ad.
    2. The Google eTown award top ten list was created by comparing the number of small and medium sized enterprises that used AdWords in each local government area and/or have created a website using Google/MYOB’s Getting Aussie Business Online. The results have been normalised for the relative population of each LGA.

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  • Mosquitoes of the Internet

    Mosquitoes of the Internet

    Sydney Morning Herald urban affairs columinst Elizabeth Farrelly recently fell foul of one the big fish that inhabits the shallow, stagnant intellectual pond that passes for Australia’s right wing intelligentsia.

    As a result, Elizabeth found her personal blog infested with insulting comments from the Big Fish’s Internet followers.

    What focused their ire was Elizabeth complaining about a delivery truck parked across a bike lane. A bit like this genius.

    The funny thing with the righteous defence of the poor truck driver’s rights to privacy and blocking cycleways is where it the driveways to the gated communities for self-righteous and entitled self retirees that these commenters inhabit were blocked in a same way many of them would be reaching for the blood pressure pills.

    One of the great things about the Internet is that it allows all of us to have our say without going through the gatekeepers of the newspaper letters editor or talkback radio producer.

    The down side with this is that it gives everyone a voice, including the selfish and stupid – the useful idiots so adored by history’s demagogues.

    Luckily today’s Australian demagogues aren’t too scary and the armies of useful idiots they can summon are more likely to rattle their zimmer frames than throwing Molotov cocktails or burning the shops of religious minorities.

    Most of these people posting anonymous, spiteful and nasty comments are really just cowards. In previous times their ranting and bullying would be confined to their family or the local pub but today they have a global stage to spout their spite.

    These people are the irritating mosquitoes of the web and they are the cost of having a free and vibrant online society.

    It’s difficult to have a system where only nice people with reasonable views that we agree with can post online. All we can do is ignore the noisy idiot element as the irritations they are.

    This is a problem too for businesses as these ratbags can post silly and offensive comments not just on your website but also on Facebook pages, web forums and other online channels.

    Recently we’ve had a lot of talk about Internet trolls, notable in the discussion is how the mainstream media has missed the point of trolling – it’s about getting a reaction from the target. In that respect The Big Fish and his army of eager web monkeys have succeeded.

    The good thing for Elizabeth is her page views will have gone through the roof. That’s the good side of having the web’s lunatic fringe descend upon your site.

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  • Empathy and the genius salesman

    Empathy and the genius salesman

    One of Apple’s great successes has been in delivering services through its stores. Tech site Gizmodo managed to get a peak at Apple’s training manual for their in-store ‘Genius’ technicians.

    A word that keeps popping up in the manual is ’empathy’ – as Gizmodo says;

    The term “empathy” is repeated ad nauseum in the Genius manual. It is the salesman sine qua non at the Apple Store, encouraging Geniuses to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,”

    While the Gizmodo writers and many of the site’s readers seem surprised or cynical about this, it’s not surprising for anyone who’s worked in sales or tech support, and the Apple Store Geniuses are doing both.

    Empathizing with the customer or caller gives them confidence and builds trust. For someone in sales, listening and emphasizing is how one finds out what the customer really want. On the support desk, putting yourself in the customer’s position makes it easier to diagnose the problem.

    That empathy a real return on investment – US Apple Stores earn 17 times more per square foot than the average retail store. The next most profitable retailer is Tiffany & Co who only boast have the revenue.

    What Apple again show is that training matters. Every surly computer store assistant, every grumpy flight attendant or bored call centre worker can, with the right training and incentives, be just as effective as an Apple Store genius.

    Sadly too many businesses, particularly retailers, see training as a cost and their employees as naughty children. Those businesses have a serious problem.

    Without empathy – the ability to put yourself in your customers’ shoes – your business is working with a distinct disadvantage.

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