The Acquisition (a parody of a parody) I just spent a great 4th of July with my brother Michael, one of the finer and funnier people I know. Among other things, we treated ourselves to about the 18th viewing of Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I on DVD. One of our favorite moments in the movie is the Broadway musical version of “The Inquisition” (lyrics, download MP3). Since both of us work in the online marketing industry (Michael is a marketing manager at search agency Did-It), Michael came up with the brilliant idea of a parody of a parody…so here goes, all in good fun. The acquisition, what a show The acquisition, here we go We’re on a…
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Business
What An Ugly Way to Use Email
What An Ugly Way to Use Email From our friend Andy Sernovitz comes this tale of horror about how Vonage is using viral email. Talk about creating NEGATIVE word of mouth. Yikes! This qualifies Vonage for my customer service Hall of Shame with Verizon, United Airlines, WebEx, and FedEx/Kinko’s. Thanks to my colleague Margaret Farmakis for the inspired headline.
The Very Unfriendly Skies of United, Part II
The Very Unfriendly Skies of United, Part II In Part I, I described United’s horrendous customer service as it holds its customers hostage to pay an extra $44 to get out of a complete unsittable seat into a slightly better seat at 6 a.m. in the morning for no good reason. Tonight, I am pleased to report that I have landed at LaGuardia on United, an hour late already and nearly 1 a.m., only to have them tell us that we have to sit on the tarmac for an hour because they can’t get their act together and open up a gate for us. Boy, is this fun. Frontier, anyone? Jet Blue? Even American with a connection in the dreaded…
Book Short: Shamu-rific
Book Short: Shamu-rific I re-read an old favorite last night in preparation for a management training course I’m co-teaching today at Return Path: Ken Blanchard’s Whale Done! The Power of Positive Relationships. I was reminded why it’s an old favorite. It has a single concept which is simple but powerful. And yes, it’s based loosely on killer whale training tactics. Accentuate the positive. The best example in the book is actually a personal one more than a professional one. The main character of the book has a “problem” in that he chronically works late, then comes home and gets beat up by his wife about coming home so late. The result? No behavior change — and probably even a reinforcement…
How to Impress Your Boss
How to Impress Your Boss No matter what area of the company, non-profit, or public sector you work in, ask yourself these three questions every time you are about to review something you did with your boss: What am I trying to accomplish with this piece of work? Is this the best/only way to accomplish that mission? Is this my best work? I guarantee you two things if you get into this habit. First, you will frequently stop and do more work on something before handing it into your manager. Second, you will get a raise and a promotion sooner than your friends. And yes, it really is that simple.
The Very Unfriendly Skies of United
The Very Unfriendly Skies of United The 6 a.m. flight from LaGuardia to Denver is unpleasant to begin with, but the idiots who set customer-facing policies at United seem to have found a new way of making it even less pleasant. I’ve long-hated United’s “Economy Plus” seating, which gives the first 5-10 rows of coach a huge amount of leg room at the expense of all the other rows in coach. American, by contrast, has more leg room in all rows of coach, so I can actually work in any seat on an American plane, laptop and all. On United, the seats in the majority of coach are almost unworkable. United used to just automatically put you in Economy Plus…
Silly, Silly Patent Nonsense
Silly, Silly Patent Nonsense Some news floated around the email marketing world yesterday that is potentially disturbing and destructive but highlights some lunacy at the same time. I hope I’m getting enough of the details right here (and quite frankly that isn’t a joke, which it feels like). Tom DiStefano of Boca-based PerfectWeb Technologies is suing direct marketing behemoth InfoUSA for patent infringement of a business process patent for bulk email distribution that he received in 2003. I will first issue my disclaimers that I’m not a patent lawyer (nor do I even play one on TV) and that I have only quickly read both the legal complaint and the patent. But my general take on this is that it’s…
Marketing is Like Baskin Robbins
Marketing is Like Baskin Robbins A couple years ago, I wrote that Marketing is Like French Fries, since you can always take on one more small incremental marketing task, just as you can always eat one more fry, even long after you should have stopped. Today, inspired in part by our ongoing search for a new head of marketing at Return Path and in part by Bill McCloskey’s follow up article about passion in email marketing in Mediapost, I declare that Marketing is also like Baskin Robbins – there are at least 31 flavors of it that you have to get right. McCloskey writes: I submit that the über marketer who is expert in all the various forms of interactive…
Book Short: Crazy Eights
Book Short: Crazy Eights In honor of Return Path being in the midst of its eighth year, I recently read a pair of books with 8 in the title (ok, I would have read them anyway, but that made for a convenient criterion when selecting out of my very large “to read” pile). Ram Charan’s latest, Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People People Who Perform From Those Who Don’t, was pretty good and classic Charan. Quick, easy to skim and still get the main points. The book lost a little credibility with me when Charan lionized Verizon (perhaps he uses a different carrier himself) and Bob Nardelli (the book was published before Nardelli’s high profile dismissal), but makes good…
I Hope I Didn’t Make You Sick, Too
I Hope I Didn’t Make You Sick, Too Fellow entrepreneur and MyWay blogger Chris Yeh takes me to task for my post last week entitled Humbled at TED. Although his blog post was pretty harsh on me — saying essentially that I’d lost my brain and made him sick by fawning over celebrities (which I didn’t do) — his comment on my blog was a little more measured, just reminding me that people like Bill Clinton is human and puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. I think Chris missed my main point, and since he decided to go public blasting me, I’ll repeat here what I emailed him privately before he…
An Execution Problem
An Execution Problem My biggest takeaway from the TED Conference this week is that we — that is to say, all of us in the world — have an execution problem. This is a common phrase in business, right? You’ve done the work of market research, positioning, and strategy and feel good about it. Perhaps as a bigger company you splurge and hire McKinsey or the like to validate your assumptions or develop some new ones. And now all you have to do is execute — make it happen. And yet so many businesses can’t make the right things happen so that it all comes together. I’d guess, completely unscientifically, that far, far more businesses have execution problems than strategic…