Open letter to Amazon

Dear Amazon,

Since I bought the marvelous Amazon Kindle, I can't stop buying Kindle books. I certainly buy more ebooks than I can possibly read (even though I am a hell of an avid reader, but I digress...). Here is the deal:

STOP SENDING ME E-MAILS ABOUT BOOKS THAT I WANT IF THEY DON'T EXIST IN KINDLE FORMAT.

I don't buy paper books anymore, haven't your smart CRM system noticed? It is damn smart to know which books I like (thus the good suggestions I receive in my e-mail), but it is not smart enough to know I only want ebooks?

I really don't want to opt out from your e-mail suggestions system, but I am starting to get annoyed by this.

Fix it, please.

Rework - book review

Rework is a smart book with an uncommon business logic, very little jargon and a lot of personal experience from the founders of 37 Signals. They challenge everything, from the need of being big (they don’t want to be) to doing more than the competition to win market (they preach their products do LESS, so the niche market who wants simpler stuff will choose them).

The book is well written, smart and interesting, but, sincerely, doesn’t quite pack a punch. Lots of good advices and personal sharing is nice, but in the end, it seems it lacks “substance”. Maybe the book is too superficial, I am not quite sure. Probably I am just comparing it with my favorite last books (which were very in depth and useful for me to take action, while this one is interesting, but I don’t see it as so useful).

Or maybe it is just that I am naturally more aligned with a “strange” way of working, like the belief that meetings should only involve the people necessary and should be as short as possible. 

My final comment: for the buzz it received, I was expecting more.

Or am I wrong? Anybody out there that used Rework to fundamentally change the way you/your business work?

Why Groupon sucks (for businesses)

For the ones out of Earth (or at least out of the net), Groupon is a website that offers local deals for a limited amount of time if a minimum number of people buy it. Example: a burguer restaurant offering 60% of if 100 people buy the discount. There are loads of websites just like Groupon, but this was the first (or the first to become really popular, I am not sure).

While this is cool for customers, it sucks for (most) businesses.

It sucks because if you need to cut prices to get customers, your value proposition is probably not great. There is always someone who can make things cheaper. This leads to the race to the bottom, as very well explained by Seth Godin - a spiral of death.

For most business, the effect of Groupon is: 1 - lots of people come, 2 - you get less profit this time because you sell cheaper than normally, and 3 - they never come back (unless there is a new Groupon offer).

There are only 2 business types that can benefit from Groupon:

Walmart like giants that have enough buck to back their business model of selling cheap stuff to loads of people. (But anyway, if you are a Walmart like giant you don’t need Groupon).

The 2^nd type is if your product/service is so awesome (yet maybe unknown/untried) that people would come back to buy more (subscription based definitely is a plus). World of Warcraft, the addictive subscription based online game, is this kind of business (and they used promotions much before Groupon anyway). This businesses of the 2^nd type are just like drugs: you give a good deal today, so the customer will pay more later for the same product.

For all the rest of businesses (including you, cheap and unremarkable burger restaurant), Groupon is just a waste of profit masked as a nice cash inflow.

Update: a quote from an article in HBR:

In my study sample of 150 businesses that ran Groupon promotions between June 2009 and August 2010, 42% said they would not run a Groupon promotion again. Their main reasons were that a significant proportion of Groupon redeemers are extremely price sensitive, barely spending beyond a discounted product's face value. Not surprisingly, repeat-purchase rates at full price were also low — just 13% — for these businesses.

We all want to be young

A great movie made by Box 1824 (a Brazilian research center on youth consumer and behaviour trends) on what is to be young. If you are somehow involved in communication, advertising, marketing or even lead young people, that is a must see.


We All Want to Be Young (leg) from box1824 on Vimeo.

Gamefication 101 with Gabe Zichermann

It's not about games, but about using game-like mechanics to make things better (one old example of gamification is the "collect 10 coffee stamps, get one free" or similar). From Foursquare to Farmville and from Nike to the Navy, game mechanics like points, badges, levels, challenges, rewards and leaderboards are being used in ever greater numbers. But what does this mean for "traditional" marketing & UI/UX and how do you leverage this trend in your engagement strategy? Moreover, how do we measure success, and why will every company have a Chief Engagement Officer in the next few years? Find out more in this in-depth discussion with Gamification Expert, Gabe Zichermann - author of "Game-Based Marketing" and the Gamification.co blog, and Chair of the Gamification Summit.

The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer)

Spot on Seth Godin's semi-rant against the traditional higher education (especially the schools with tradition). Since I am both a fan of Godin and a criticizer of traditional educational system, that's my recommendation for you to read it.

And one thing that one of the best leaders I have the pleasure to work with always told (about his own delays with his education): "Steve Jobs never finished his degree."

Women versus men pay - a question of behavior, not sexism?

I just read an intriguing article that suggests that women earn less than men not because of gender inequality, but because women tend to have a more "soft" and less "Machiavellian" approach then men, which are more prone to be aggressive, lie, cheat and do whatever to raise profit. The article concludes that for a better pay equality between the two genders would be to punish more bullies and cheaters.

Does this make sense? I don't know, but I have a twist for this logic: we are (slowly) walking to the path of sustainability, thinking on consequences, CSR and more compassionate way for business success. Would this mean that, when this trend is on its highest, women would earn more than men  because they are much more prone to thinking like this?

Why my bachelor thesis was about viral marketing? Because of Seth Godin

Get a review copy of my new book
by Seth Godin

There used to be one hundred people who mattered.

That's true in a lot of industries, but particularly in books.

One hundred people who could make a book a hit. These were key buyers at bookstores, reviewers and editors at newspapers, the person who booked time at Oprah or the Today Show.

So publishers courted these people. If the one hundred loved it, the book launched as a hit. Of course the 100 all get free copies. Lots of free copies.

Today, of course, those one hundred people matter a lot less. And who matters more? You.

You, because you have a network. You blog. You tweet. You talk things up at meetings or recommend things to friends.

And there are a lot more than a hundred of you.

One solution is to give everyone a free copy. Publishers and authors could do this and try to make money doing something else. Another solution is to let the best of this group, the most committed, the most interested... let them stand up and identify themselves.

So, that's what we're experimenting with on Linchpin. For a select group of motivated readers, I want to send you a copy of Linchpin (at my expense) three weeks before anyone else can buy one. My US publisher is not sending free review copies to magazines (the few that are left), newspaper editors, TV shows, any of the usual media suspects. Instead, we're allowing people like you to raise their hands and, if they like the book, asking them to tell the world about it in January.

How to choose? I can't afford to buy a book for everyone, so I needed to come up with a filter. Here it is: The first 3,000 people who make a donation to the Acumen Fund (at least $30) get one at my expense. The money you pay goes directly to Acumen, you get the fun of making a donation and get a tax deduction before the end of the year, and I figure out which of my readers most want a copy of my book.

If you're excited about getting a first look, I hope you'll check out this page for all the details. And thanks for your support, every day. It means a lot to me.

Please hurry, since once they're gone, I probably won't be able to offer any more.

Readers outside of North America should click here please.

[UPDATE: After 9 hours we've sold half of the reserved books and raised more than $70,000 for Acumen. Thanks guys.]

That's why we call him a marketing guru. Well, I would call him in fact a viral marketing shaman, but that's just a personal joke.

Problems with hiring great people? I have a hint where to find them

If you own a business, you are probably facing this: it's harder to hire good people. And if you are a student, you probably are having some difficulties getting a good job.

In hard times, people lay off first the dead meat or the ones closer to that and they stick as hell to the A players, those stars that can make anything happen.

So if you want to hire dead meat / cheap labor, suit yourself, the market has tons of it sending CVs to you. But if you want to hire great people (especially because you don't have so much fat to spend in so-so people as in good times), what do you do? As you can see in "Why hiring is paradoxically harder in a downturn" says, if you post a job offer, most likely you will get tons of C players CVs, which are virtually indistinguishable from the few A players around.

Then you spend lots of money with tons of tests and interviews to find some good people. But shouldn't you be saving some money in a downturn? What about making the process more efficient?

The most simple solution is go to great talent sources and convince people there to meet with you (which is not always easy if you don't have a great reputation as an employer also - which is in fact the only long term solution, be an employer of choice to A players).

Where? Companies that traditionally only hire great people, competitive universities and, of course, AIESEC.

AIESEC?

Yes, AIESEC.

What AIESEC does is basically recruit the top students in the universities we are present in (and also some we are not present in, because some students seek for it) and offer them opportunities to develop leadership and tons of soft skills, such as presentation skills, team management, time management, planning, strategic thinking and so on. AIESECers are not normal students, they don't ask questions normal students do, they don't act as normal students and they don't seek normal jobs as normal students. But you don't need to trust me, you can hear some of AIESEC partners talking about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt0DxJqidwQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Biz6wTwRTxY


As a business, you can interact with AIESEC in a variety of ways. Two of the most common ways are:

1) the AIESEC internship program - where you get some talented AIESEC member from another country to work as an intern in your organization. With this you get 2 things in one, first an AIESECers with all the qualities an AIESECer usually have, second an international to bring diversity and cultural awareness to your business.

2) Being an institutional partner of AIESEC - by being present in conferences, branding your name, delivering workshops, having special student events, etc, you can brand yourself as an employer of choice for both national and international students.

Most business that partner with AIESEC do both, of course, they know what they get and they are really interested in it.

What about you? Is your business in need of some young great people? Why not to try AIESEC?

If you are a student, maybe you want a great job and is not getting it? What about standing out from the crowd and get some invaluable skills while on university? Join AIESEC.

More information on www.aiesec.org or, if you are in Norway as I am, www.aiesec.no

Google plans to destroy (reinvent) the advertising industry

I am 26 and a fair amount of my life I've spent storing bad karma while working in the advertising industry (from 2001 to 2008). Damn, I even had my own advertising agency for almost 3 years. It's not something I am very proud of (nor ashamed), but it was fairly useful to understand a little about how the big advertising agencies had been sucking blood from their clients. I say this because most ad agencies survive not by creating memorable campaigns, but by buying media to their clients so thet can massively distribute it. That's the main revenue generator for any normal jurassic ad agency - that's why they are only interested in big clients that massively advertise on TV, because that's where the biggest cut is.

But we all know times are chaning and then the new (visionary) agencies started to charge not anymore for the media, but for the ideas, the communication strategy and planning, marketing positioning, the creativity, the campaigns and all that is in fact generated by the agency and is what makes great agencies great. These people clearly understood times were changing, mainly because of technology and how people are fed up of being interrupted by traditional advertising. I was one of these dudes who were charmed by the possibility of change, for example, just read my final paper to university, which the name would be something like: how to use digital videos on internet as a tool to viral marketing.

Still, the old agencies are alive and kicking, because this takes take time. Maybe they will survive much more with this jurassic model, but hey, now we have a major player that will probably start to change the minds of people: Google. With Google's experimental TV-advertising auction, some dude spend only US$500 to reach 330,000 Dish Network subscribers tuned in to the Oxygen, ESPN2, or WPT channels. That's more super cheap for those not into ad business. See more here.

If this goes on (and I believe it will), we will have a large chunk of advertising revenue going from the hands of the ad agencies to clients, small entrepreneurs, freelancers, artists and who knows what more. I think this is healthy - in a future where everyone will have access to media, ad agencies won't be recognized by the amount of people they reach, but by the quality of their message and communication strategies. That will be extremelt healthy for the good professionals, while very dangerous for the bad (or too big and lazy to adapt) ones. But, hey, who cares about bad and lazy people?

It's Google big balls changing the game (again).

The Economy of Free

I was reading the Wired mazine, more precisily an article called Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business, which explains why is possible to "sell" things for free (from razor blades to flight tickets) and I came across a very interesting example from Brazil:

On a busy corner in São Paulo, Brazil, street vendors pitch the latest "tecnobrega" CDs, including one by a hot band called Banda Calypso. Like CDs from most street vendors, these did not come from a record label. But neither are they illicit. They came directly from the band. Calypso distributes masters of its CDs and CD liner art to street vendor networks in towns it plans to tour, with full agreement that the vendors will copy the CDs, sell them, and keep all the money. That's OK, because selling discs isn't Calypso's main source of income. The band is really in the performance business — and business is good. Traveling from town to town this way, preceded by a wave of supercheap CDs, Calypso has filled its shows and paid for a private jet.

I wasn't aware of that, this is really smart. You can't stop piracy, so rely on it. Free sample is an old marketing trick, but the way Wired is discribing, it will come soon a kind of free sample 2.0 wave.

By the way, Wired is totally for free to read on the internet. And I remember when I made a subscription and cancelled secounds after - because the fine print said that price was not for people in Latin America -, they sent me anyway one Wired issue. The result? Everytime I come across a paperstand, I ask "is there a magazine called Wired?" (which I usually hear "What?" in answer).