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Focus on the Customer, Not the KPI

Should a business focus on its customers, or the ROI of the strategies it implements and the KPIs their employees are responsible for monitoring and exceeding? I’m sure this is overly simplistic, and perhaps these need not be mutually exclusive, but I gravitate towards the former. An obsessive focus on those you serve often results in delighted customers, positive word of mouth (still the most powerful form of advertising), and bottom line results.

I was reading this short post about Apple, and found a passage that resonated with me and aligned well with my work past.

Focusing on the customer/consumer resolves all the horrid debates people from different departments have, especially when the people around the table have to meet their own individual KPIs, quarterly results, or agendas etc. If not properly managed, these debates often result in compromises in strategy and watered down solutions.

That says it all for me. When departments fight over territory and compromise so it’s a win-win for everyone, that often results in a vanilla solution. Which is totally awesome if your company makes vanilla! Not so good otherwise.

You can’t give away the farm, but taking really good care of your customers should trump the findings of a committee. If I go over and above for a customer and therefore blow a KPI because I spent too much time with said customer, I believe I’m measuring the wrong things. Data is great and more power to you if you want to measure everything, but I’m just not wired that way. Delighting one’s customers is still the most important strategy in my tool kit (yes, way more so than social media).

Boston National Anthem That You Won’t Forget

When humanity works together as one, we’re undefeated.

Compendium of Spammy Blog Comments

My new ChrisReimer.com site is less than two months old, and the deluge of spammy blog comments has already begun in earnest.

I don’t understand spam. You see it, in all of its forms, and you think, “Well, they wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t work.” I can’t believe that’s true, though. Brute force marketing means you throw everything and the kitchen sink at the wall and see what sticks. But where’s the thought? The strategy?

These oddly worded comments, and the all-important outbound links lurking behind them, are pointless and worthless – a disturbance in the natural order, a horrible waste of time. Someone had to sit down and write these. And for what? Some Google Juice? And the language used… it’s actually a concerted effort vs. the blog comments of the past where you’d just paste a link into the comment field. They’re trying. And this is the result.

All of these comments went into moderation, and none made it to my site.

By the way, I considered the SEO implications of creating one blog post containing all of this spammy jibberish. I guess I just don’t care. Google AutoBot, if you can understand this, the stuff below is not spam with regards to my site, but to a bunch of other sites. Don’t index or care too much about it or whatever. Cool?

HERE WE GO:

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We Used To

We used to sacrifice humans to appease the gods.
We used to think the Earth was flat.
We used to have witch hunts and we’d burn the ones we caught.
We used to practice bloodletting, extracting tiny quantities of blood from a patient in order to cure disease.
We used to often lobotomize crazy people, and shock them with electricity too.
We used to enslave Africans.
We used to take some of those slaves as concubines.
We used to allow children to work long hours in factories.
We used to prevent women from voting.
We used to involuntarily sterilize people for eugenic purposes.
We used to have teachers that would hit the backsides of unruly students with rulers.
We used to throw people in internment camps.
We used to tell consumers smoking was cool.
We used to make black people drink out of a different drinking fountain and give up their bus seats to white people.
We used to ban interracial marriage.
We used to do all of these things, and more.

Why don’t we do these things anymore? Why not?
Why were these things so right, until they were wrong?
Does the human race just get progressively smarter as it moves along?
We thought we were just in our beliefs, and some kicked and screamed as these practices were changed or abolished.

What are we doing today to marginalize our fellow human being?

 
 

The Bud Light Blind Date Ad – Yay or Nay?

As Mark Reardon sat in front of his TV watching the first and second round of the NCAA basketball tournament, he claims to have been tormented by the spectre of the Bud Light ad you see above. He contacted me and asked what I thought of the ad, and I told him we likely had a disagreement on our hands.

I like the ad, as it is devoid of slapstick humor and flatulent horses. It shows two attractive but normal people in a nearly normal dating situation. They’re not purposely ugly or purposely knockouts. The ad is upbeat, contains smiles, and is not demeaning to any race or sex. However, Mark and I agree that the ad was in notably heavy rotation this weekend, and likely caused some consternation when it aired for the 50th time. So not a ringing endorsement from me, but like I said on the air, I know the entire ad by heart now. I should not possess this knowledge.

Reading the YouTube comments and some other forum comments, I think we’re getting overly cynical. Thanks to some newfound tools of expression, we have YouTube comments and biting Yelp reviews and fake Facebook profiles and MY OPINION MATTERS. Social media offers us so much flexibility. Now, we all have a voice. If we choose to rip on the woman in the ad because she has short hair (seriously, do not go read the YouTube comments), then we’re exercising our freedom of expression in kind of an ugly way.

HAVE A LISTEN HERE and let me know what you think.

p.s. Gotta admit, I miss the Miller Lite “Man Law” ads:

Birth of a Meme – Why Did The Harlem Shake Take Off?

In a scant eight days, the Harlem Shake went from a song that was released in August 2012 to an crowdsourced international YouTube phenomenon. One can claim to be sick of this meme, but 1 billion YouTube views and over 300,000 versions later, I’m thinking that all of us watched at least a few Harlem Shake videos. (I never made one, and I’m sort of proud of this).

I posted this article from Social Media Today that explains what happened over those eight days. My good buddy Mark Reardon from KMOX saw the article, and asked if I wanted to come on to discuss. I cannot say no to Mark.

Have a listen here, and let me know what you think in the comments below. In the off chance the link does not work, here’s a link to the story page on KMOX’s website.

LinkedIn Has a Sense of Humor, Doesn’t It?

(thanks @ErinE)

The Harlem Shake – Discussion with Mark Reardon and Kenny Wallace

My appearances on the Mark Reardon Show on 1120AM KMOX Radio are supposed to be debates. Mark and I are supposed to disagree on something, and then we appropriately agitate each other for eight or so minutes. However, when it comes to the Harlem Shake, we are in agreement. We’re tired, weary, we want it to end. Just make it stop!

So we decided to just have a discussion where we would agree that the Harlem Shake cannot exit the public consciousness fast enough.

And then, he springs a surprise guest on me! Actually, he kind of hinted at his intentions.

All’s well that ends well. 🙂

***** CLICK HERE TO LISTEN *****

 

The Power of In-Person Networking

I met Michael at the Dubliner as he was covering Mayor Slay’s reelection and the resulting party for KMOX.

I’m half joking, but three quarters serious. Tis better to have met Michael in person than to have merely remained Twitter friends.

Interview with Nick Ruiz of Recycled GoGetter

I was pleased to do this nearly one hour interview with Nick Ruiz of Recycled GoGetter. Enjoy!

(link to his post, in case the embedded video above does not cooperate)