Kids, Stay in School!

Seriously, I mean it: stay in school! What kind of school isn’t really important; if you like plumbing or drywall better than math and liberal arts, then by all means, find a good trade school and stay in that. Given the crumbling infrastructure in this country, having more people around who actually know how to build things, fix things, and keep things running smoothly would be wonderful, and it’s much easier to get the really good jobs in any field if you know what you’re doing. On the other hand, if you don’t, you might be faced with having to dress up as a Smurf and travel around the world advertising costume sales…

A story being reported this week on the Daily Telegraph website tells the strange but true story of Ian Tomkins, an employee at a costume shop in Newbury (England) whose employer decided to buy a huge lot of Smurf costumes from a manufacturer in China. Unfortunately, while there as a market for a few dozen Smurf costumes in Newbury, 500 of them was a bit much for this small business to move. So the owner decided to have Mr. Tomkins travel around the world in a Smurf costume and have his picture taken in front of various international landmarks. Which he then did…

Now, I’m not saying that getting paid to travel around the world on business with no duties or responsibilities beyond having your picture taken isn’t a good gig, all things considered. Nor am I criticizing the business itself (or the owner) for attempting such a stunt. It turns out that there are apparently thousands of people in Europe who like dressing up as Smurfs, and apparently all of them are now buying their costumes from the shop in Newbury, which has placed several repeat orders for bulk Smurf costumes, selling them by the thousands. I’m just saying that, all things considered, when the time comes to determine whether you have the job of wearing the Smurf costume around the world or the job being the guy who orders someone ELSE to wear a Smurf costume around the world, I know which job I’d going to pick…

Probably the ultimate case of this syndrome appeared before me a few years ago, when I was working in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. I was driving between survey assignments (long story) when I noticed a guy dressed up as a submarine sandwich standing on a street corner handing out flyers for a nearby Subway shop. At the time, my job included scaling the outside of apartment buildings without a safety line in order to check their line-of-site for microwave signal repeaters, but there were still three reasons I preferred my job to the sandwich guy’s job: 1. I got paid about 6 times what he did; 2. It was 106 degrees, and he was wearing about 45 pounds of heavy, shaggy costume, and 3. two small kids kept trying to kick him in the backside…

I’m not saying that he’d have been better off staying in school; a lot of people with college degrees can’t find work at all, and I’ve actually had jobs that were worse than that even since I’ve had a Master’s Degree. But you’ve got to admit that if you want to avoid wearing a stupid-looking costume in public and actually get paid a living wage, dropping out of school probably will not help…

Suspension of Disbelief

Regular readers of this space will recall that once upon a time I was going to be a literary scholar and probably write lots of books about English lit that no one was ever going to read (except for other literary scholars), in sharp contrast to my current career arc in which I’m going to write lots of books and journal articles about Strategic Management that no one is going to read (except for other Management scholars). It’s progress, believe me, at least for a certain definition of “progress.” In any case, there’s a news story this week that makes me wish I was still deconstructing fiction, because then I could claim to be a legitimate expert on suspension of disbelief – that convention where you, as the audience, KNOW that the story you’re reading isn’t/can’t be true, but you suspend your disbelief for long enough to enjoy it…

Unfortunately, this story appears to be true. A report appearing in the Daily Kos website indicates that while the Republicans were spending the summer beating the drum for new and better drilling rights in environmentally sensitive parts of the U.S. so that the big energy companies could lower the price of oil and gas, the Department of Energy was contracting to sell off enough natural gas to run 1.4 million households annually to the Japanese (and other Pacific Rim nations) from the Alaskan reserves we already have. That’s right, folks; at a time when prices here were crippling the economy and leading to what is being called the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, your government and Big Oil (it was ConocoPhillips and Marathon, if anyone’s counting) were working together to export energy reserves and maintain artificially high prices…

Now, this blog is about business, not politics, and I’m not going to start writing about the excesses of the current regime (I’m a doctoral student; I don’t have time for that). And in fairness, we should probably all remember that the Daily Kos isn’t exactly the most moderate and well-balanced news organ around. I’m just going to note that if this story is correct (and it checks out so far; I’ll keep you posted) then what we have here is some of the most unethical business practice I’ve seen in at least two or three hours, and false advertising into the bargain…

You know all of those petroleum industry television commercials, where they talk about how much oil and gas we have right here in America? It sounds great, doesn’t it? We could totally drill out all of our own oil and gas, tell the OPEC nations to take a flying leap, and have total freedom from little issues like international finance or economics. Or reality, apparently. What these ads seem to be ignoring is that energy is an internationally-traded commodity, and the oil companies are going to sell their product to whoever will give them the best price for it, just like anyone else. Which probably seems unpatriotic, or at least heartless, in the current climate, but as I’ve noted before in this space, the alternatives are worse. It’s just that the natural gas move detailed above is, well, stupid, for a number of reasons…

First, it’s a colossally bad public relations gesture for an industry that is already having severe image problems. People didn’t need more reasons to hate ConocoPhillips and Marathon, especially with winter coming, but this will be a good one. Second, there’s the potential for political fallout. If enough of the voters decide that this is yet another case of the Bush Administration putting their friends in the oil business ahead of the American people it could easily contribute to a Democratic majority in Congress as well as a Democratic President being elected, which will probably not be a good thing for the petroleum industry and its plans to acquire new cheap drilling rights. And third, if the high price of energy contributes to the current economic crisis, then people will have less money to spend on things like gasoline and huge wasteful vehicles that squander it…

It’s said that a rising tide lifts all boats. If that’s true, then the converse must also be correct: pulling the tide out from under the consumer will come back to bite the people doing it in the long run. The fact is, even if you ARE a stockholder in one or both of these oil companies, this is still not serving your interests. And if you’re a Republican of any kind, particularly a political hopeful, you’ve got to be sitting there shaking your head in disbelief…

Shorter Commercials? For Real?

It sounds obvious, I know. But a report this week on the Washington Post Online states that when a television network puts fewer – and shorter – commercial breaks into a show, the viewers like it more, and better still, are less likely to surf away from the channel. This cuts way back on the chances of those viewers finding something more interesting on the other channel and not coming back after the commercial break (all 3 minutes 16 seconds of it) is over. Apparently, telling them how long the commercial break will be (e.g. “Bob’s House of Spackle will return in 73 seconds”) works even better on both dimensions – the viewers are pleased to hear it, and less likely to surf away. Particularly if the announced break is really short…

Why this isn’t actually obvious has to do with the primary misconception that television viewers have about their programs – and the commercials, for that matter. You see, however much the viewing public may think (or hope) otherwise, television exists mainly for the purpose of selling advertising time. It’s sort of an unwritten, unspoken contract between broadcasters and the viewing public: you watch our 14 minutes of advertising and we’ll show you 46 minutes of entertainment, free of charge. This is why old-time cable channels charged money for their content: because they weren’t showing you ads, they had to make money some other way. Or, to look at it another way, instead of you watching the ads, you were just giving them money for the content directly…

Unfortunately, as the years passed people started messing with the contract. Television stations and producers started following the example of Hollywood movies and putting ads for products (called product placements) directly into the programs, and cable channels started to realize that people would still pay extra for their exclusive content if there were ads, and started selling ad space just like the broadcast stations. Worst of all was the “program crawl” concept – little animated ads or previews running along the bottom of the screen while the program was in progress, distracting the viewer and sometimes even blocking out critical parts of the picture. Viewers fought back with VCRs, editing out or fast-forwarding through commercials, and spending more time on DVD movies and the Internet. The introduction of digital video recorders like TiVo and television downloads for you iPod completely upset the balance, and today the broadcast networks are growing desperate to bring back their lost viewers…

Which brings us back to the concept of shorter, less invasive advertising. If the networks can demonstrate that shorter and less annoying commercial breaks result in more people watching their ads, they should be able to justify charging more for those ads and retaining the same revenue while improving their relationship with the viewers. It’s a better answer than those “sponsored by XYZ Corporation, with no commercial interruptions” concepts, because those shows usually open and close with hordes of XYZ Corp. commercials that no one watches, because the viewers know they’re coming. If the broadcast networks can back it up with some quality programming, they might even be able to turn the tide and restore their traditional contract with the viewers...

Therein lies the problem, of course. The viewing public has gotten a taste of programming on their schedule, of what they actually want to see, and without having to bother about advertising interruptions at all. It’s possible to regain their attention, if you have something new, unique, or at least interesting (I note here things like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, which are neither new nor unique, but seem to interest a lot of people), but it’s going to be hard going to attract an audience without at least one of these elements. Regardless of how short your commercial breaks happen to be…

Get a Rope

We’ve been hearing so much about bailouts lately that one could easily get the impression that our entire government was spending most of its time down in the (metaphorical) bilges with a (metaphorical) bucket. Or, for that matter, that the Great Depression Part II was premiering, and our government was stepping in to prevent runs on banks and similar financial disasters that might end up with a third of the country out of work from now until the next major war. What’s actually happening is that the Federal government is taking a trillion or so of your dollars (that’s $1,000,000,000.00 if you’re keeping track at home) and giving it to the same people who created the current financial crisis, on the principle that not doing so would be even worse…

All right, I know it’s not actually the gift to the extremely wealthy that the far left would have you believe, but neither is it the populist measure for the greater public good that the far right is trying to describe. The situation does have at least some similarity to the financial crisis that President Hoover inherited in January of 1929, and it’s probably just as well that our current government is trying to come up with a better answer than the one the Hoover administration used (running around the Oval Office in circles making little shrieking noises and then pretending that nothing was wrong until the current term was up), since that didn’t work all that well last time. But the fact that none of those involved are going to be charged with criminal wrongdoing, none of those responsible are going to pay for their incompetence, no new legislation that could prevent future disasters like this one will be passed, and the people who made huge fortunes on predatory lending will now make even more money being bailed out from the resulting crisis is enough to make any thinking person want to get out the torches and pitchforks and storm the castle…

Then there’s the recent shenanigans from AIG, which may just make you want to get a rope. According to a story being reported today by ABC News Online, “Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California.” The company spent more than $440,000 on the retreat, including over $200,000 for the rooms alone, with another $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for spa treatments. Now, in fairness, I imagine that screwing things up badly to require an $85 billion government bailout must be very stressful, and a nice week at the spa probably made these corporate criminals feel a lot better. But I resent them being permitted to do this on MY dime, and I hope you do, too...

Meanwhile, the article goes on to note, the corporate executives responsible for this outrage have all be given millions in termination benefits ($15 million for the ex-CEO alone). This would be disgusting in any time, frankly; it’s a complete violation of the trust placed in these swine by the stockholders, and they should all be tried for various criminal offenses. But coming as it does during a time of financial crisis, when many Americans are losing their homes and their fortunes, it’s completely infuriating. In the long run, this will probably get lost in the $700 billion we’re going to spent to make sure that the rest of the financial industry doesn’t implode and take our economy down with it, and in a few years probably nobody will even remember these corporate a-holes getting manicures on the public’s expense…

But somehow, I just can’t help but wish that they run across some of the people they’ve ruined in a dark alley somewhere – and that those aggravated Americans have a nice length of rope with them…

Go With the Cat

I’m not sure how many of you follow this sort of feel-good news on the Internet, but the story of the stationmaster in Japan who is actually a cat hit about a year ago. It seems there was a station on a Japanese light rail system that decided to adopt a cat as a mascot to improve customer relations. So they chose a tortoiseshell cat that had been born next door and lived around the station, made her an honorary stationmaster, and produced a cat-sized version of a stationmaster’s cap for the cat to wear. It was cute, and it did in fact both improve customer relations and bring some much-needed favorable publicity to the failing rail line…

A few years later, the cat’s station was converted over to an automated facility because the line was losing money, and all of the human personnel were transferred to other locations, but the cat stayed on (as cats are wont to do) – still wearing her cap (as cats are somewhat less wont to do). The rail company apparently figured that people in the area would go right on feeding the cat, and people who rode the line would go right on enjoying having the cat there, so why mess with a good thing? The cat became the only remaining employee of the station, and no one thought anymore about it. That is, until the traffic on that rail line started to pick up…

According to the story being reported on ABC News Online, approximately 55,000 additional passengers used the light rail line in 2007 alone – specifically to travel to the automated station and have their picture taken with Tama the tortoiseshell. This has resulted in an estimated $10.44 million US (about 1.1 billion yen) flowing into the local economy, just for fiscal 2007, with an even bigger impact expected this year. Of course, part of the effect is being attributed to the children’s books and other tie-in merchandising about the cat, but it’s still rather a large impact for an animal mascot to have on a local economy. Apparently the Japanese like cats a lot more than anyone realized…

Now, I’m not suggesting that your business could duplicate these effects just by “hiring” a cute animal and dressing it up like one of your employees. People in the US don’t have quite the same attachment to anthropomorphic animals that the folks in Japan have, and are unlikely to travel out of their way for a photo opportunity with one, let alone an actual animal dressed up in human costume. Animals of various types have been used as business mascots for decades in North America, and no one is likely to think there is anything particularly amazing about a bookstore cat or a library cat, to take the obvious examples. Even more to the point, most businesses in this country will have health code issues if they keep a live animal on the premises. It’s the principle that we should be looking at in this story…

Adopting a cat and equipping it as a stationmaster didn’t require a lot of money or time, and yet this change in the routine was enough to catch the imagination of the rail line’s customers and bring them flocking to see her. Eventually, it was enough to catch the imagination of the general public and bring people from all over the country to see her. So I have to ask you: is there something that YOUR business could do to cut through the clutter, attract attention, and maybe even improve your relations with your customers? Something that might put a friendly face on your operations (even if it’s a cat’s face) and make people want to come and see you? You might want to look into the idea…