Irreverent Thinking

I read a great comment on the foot of Getting Real: “Done!” (by 37signals) about the value of execution. So good I thought I would re-iterate it here:-

Be An Executioner

It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an nda to tell me the simplest idea.)

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

• Awful idea = -1
• Weak idea = 1
• So-so idea = 5
• Good idea = 10
• Great idea = 15
• Brilliant idea = 20

• No execution = $1
• Weak execution = $1000
• So-so execution = $10,000
• Good execution = $100,000
• Great execution = $1,000,000
• Brilliant execution = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.

That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas. I’m not interested until I see their execution.

I think neatly sums up where we are with VITES™ with some clients. We just need to get it executed, working, installed and not worry too much about getting the idea fully-formed and fleshed out. Clients like to try to drag us down a “what are we going to get” route when in reality they should be asking when and how is it going to be delivered. So much of the clients thinking is focussed round creating something that has a “finished, delivered” flavour to it when the winning approach is to get something, anything, delivered and then refine it later.

Olive Riley briefly held the record as the world’s oldest blogger. At 108 she didn’t actually type herself but she generated a phenomenon all by herself. Last week she shuffled off her mortal coil and I spent a good hour or so reading her ‘The Life of Riley‘ and it represents a rather remarkable insight into a rather normal (if you can call a woman who lives to 108 as normal) old lady. Well worth a read.

My Favorite Serious Game: Prius really made me chuckle.

Anyone who knows me even a little will agree that I am a petrolhead, through and through. I simply love engines, power, speed and the freedom that cars gave the world a hundred years ago. They are the greatest invention for the common man, I know that is an exaggeration but to a petrol head it rings true.  For years I  charged around in fast cars and bikes and generally helped a great deal to ruin the planet.

My last stab at global warming was my old work car, a 185mph Audi S8. 4.2 litres of burbling V8 packing nearly 350bhp. This was how I traveled the 3 miles to work, at 15mpg. It’s not clever, responsible and with petrol now touching £6 a gallon it’s also none too bright.

Last year I changed my car and got a puny 3.0 diesel Audi and rather than flying around everywhere at mach 1 I started playing a game. The MPG game, the Audi A8 is a little special considering it’s size and I manage to get over 45mpg on most journeys. Better than that I also tow my race car with it….the old V8 struggled to get over 15mpg at (ahem) decent towing speeds yet the new one sees nearly 30mpg when I am towing 2 tonnes of trailer and race car.

Whilst I don’t have the rather natty display that the Toyota has I do have a selection of mpg-based computers telling what I am doing and how many miles to the next fuel stop. My crowning glory was a moment a few months back where the computer told me I had another 930 miles in the tank and I had traveled over 80 since the last fill. Am I sad? Yes, probably. But I am using far less fuel, drive far better.

Signed,

An ex-petrolhead

I’ve never been a huge fan of Flash animations but at the moment they are becoming a real pain. My venerable old Sony seems to be suffering a huge slowdown and this seems, in part, to do with the number of *big* flash adverts running on sites. Urghhh.

I know there is a place for Flash but a quick search on Google revealed a large community of people who really dislike Flash, and a whole segment of the market is appearing which produces applications that remove annoying Flash.

Firefox 3 is going on my computer today (hooray!) and I will be installing the rather natty Flashblock when it’s completed the installation. Bye bye to intrusive flash advertising

The now famous viral explosion of BlendTec’s “Will it Blend” site nicely explains why and how the consumer is taking over the market. Without the use of an agency, or even a marketing department, the founder of the company created a YouTube Channel and started uploading videos of odd things being stuffed into his company’s blenders. It ignited like rocket fuel. The shock video nature of the idea, along with the anti-marketing approach, was summed up in this explanation of how one of the best viral campaigns of 2007 was created:

“Once the concept was determined…..we began to create a strategy about how this should work.

We spent $50 on a white lab coat and a few items to blend, set up the camera and invited Tom to demonstrate some extreme blending. Kels took the footage and created the first episode of Will It Blend along with the music and the basic format. Ray Hansen created the website along with the blog, RSS and the suggestion of what to blend next. Many of the catchphrases simply evolved from the first day of filming. I had determined that the campaign would be called Will It Blend. “Will it blend? That is the question” was an unscripted comment by Tom.”

No agency, no committee, no idea of success (or not). Love it? I do!

I’m really very fortunate to work with some of the most forward-thinking companies in the UK, but sometimes they just plain don’t understand this Net thing.

This week I had a meeting with a large client who has spent over £10m on his web strategy since 2005. Big money, big ideas and huge amounts of success. Ace.

As part of the (large) strategy is a very successful forum, it’s the only one in their space and it stands large and dominating. They rarely have to moderate it and have a great community of about 6,000 registered users and around 50,000 lurkers every year reading 20,000 posts. It cost less than £5,000 to setup in 2003 - what a bargain!

It’s a great opportunity to communicate to their ‘family’, their customers, their messengers. It could be the most influential element of their brand. In the world of semantic trust, social networking, link-sharing and search engines it offers a unique (in their marketplace) opportunity.

Last year they spent less than £500 and 1hr a week looking after it. Not surprisingly it’s dying. That is dysfunctional marketing.

Put simply, they just don’t get it. What a waste.

In a monthly e-commerce “conversion olympics“, the winning team achieved a 24% conversion rate. Not bad: in fact its 10 times the average of 2.4%.

The figure of 2.4% comes from shop.org. According to their survey, if you are converting at better than 10%, you are in the elite top 7% of e-commerce websites.

That’s at the top of the table. At the bottom end of the food chain, plenty of sites are chugging along at below 1%. And an interesting 9% of websites do not even know their conversion rate.

Possible reasons behind this are:

• Don’t know what conversion rate means.
• Don’t know their own conversion rate.
• Do really know - but it’s a secret.

In fact for a lot of e-commerce firms, their conversion rate is their big competitive advantage. If you have similar gross margins as your rivals, similar costs, then the only thing left is your conversion rate. A better rate means you can bid more for Google AdWords, run more banners, send more e-shots. This means it’s a good idea to keep it secret.

So the measure of a good conversion rate is: better than your competitors, and trending up. Maybe think of a bricks-and-mortar supermarket: what’s their conversion rate. 99% ? 99.9% ?

I’ve been a little quiet on here over the festive season so I just thought I would wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2008. I’m back in posting mode now

The business version of Facebook? Probably not as it won’t get as cluttered or generate as much social drama with it’s pure for business approach. I like it so far and you can find me here - I’m still new though - and I can recommend the expert section where you can ask questions and get (mainly) good answers.

I’ve just been away for a week on the rather beautiful Greek island of Kefalonia and on the transfer back to the airport the rep handed out the inevitable questionnaire with a supporting set of instructions that said I had to rate each of the questions as follows: 100-76% Excellent, 75%-36% Good, 35% to 5% satisfactory and only if I rated any of the items less than 5% should I mark it down as unsatisfactory.

Now, we all know these survey and reports form the basis of people making decisions of where to go but I couldn’t agree with a 7% rating as being satisfactory. I kept the questionnaire and plan to drop an email to the CEO of Going Places so I visited their HELP page to find….erm, no section for post-holiday communication and no way to speak to the man - this contrasts with this site which shows you how to contact all the top brass, okay, it doesn’t show the persons name but you still feel it will get to the desk of the person you want to talk to.