Yesterday I posted here David McCandless’ fascinating 18-minute talk on data visualization, in which he puts up charts and graphs as a window into patterns and relationships in numbers.
Watching that talk led me to discover his Information is Beautiful blog, which is a great source of ideas and insights.
For example, the chart shown here, from that blog, titled The Science Behind Wikipedia’s Jimmy Appeal:
That’s just one recent example. Fascinating stuff.
Annoying, yes, but does it work? We all assume spam works because it keeps on coming, right? What about putting fake comments on blogs, faking reviews at amazon.com and elsewhere? We all hate those tactics when we see them, but the real question for today is whether or not those tactics actually work. Are the culprits better off?
Of course it’s hard as hell to get good data on a question like this, but I decided to track one case just to satisfy my curiosity.
There is a book for sale at amazon.com that was promoted last month by sneaky fake trackbacks on blogs. I’m not going to mention the book or its author because I don’t want to throw good publicity on bad.
I discovered the fake by accident. The same identical trackback appeared overnight on both of the two blogs I moderate, this one and Up and Running. Otherwise I might have just approved without checking because it was cleverly engineered to look like a legitimate link from another blog that was discussing my post, with a generic tag line like “good discussion on this issue here.”
Because of the coincidence, I clicked the link to check it first before approving it to show up as a trackback below the post. Instead of going (like it should) to a discussion that referenced my blog post, it went straight to the sell page of the same book on amazon.com. And it’s not a book related to the subject. It’s just a book on amazon.com.
I was annoyed. I bookmarked it to check back later.
I’m happy to report it doesn’t seem to have worked very well. Six weeks later, that book is ranked 996,133 in books.
And the book has three reviews, all five-star raves. And (no surprise) two of the three reviews are by people who have reviewed only two books in their life – this book and another book by the same author. They are allegedly by different people. What do you think? Are these just fake reviews? I think so.
I admit it. I want that book to fail. I want those tactics to fail. Seems mean, why wish ill on anyone, but still…
Talk about letters of resignation! Burning bridges? Well, maybe one of these bridges needed burning. Still, maybe we need to review the 1950s blockbuster movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, on the merit of burning bridges. There is job satisfaction, and end-of-job satisfaction.
There are two great quitting stories in today’s news (or maybe just quasi news) as I write this. First, the girl with the white board quits spectacularly well, an amazing piece of work (fiction or not). Second, the Jet Blue flight attendant who fought with a passenger, cursed all the passengers on the PA system, grabbed a beer, and exited via the emergency chute. Stories like these just have to be told.
If you haven’t seen the girl with the white board, take a minute, click the link, and see it. Have you seen the movie Love Actually? Do you remember the scene in which the guy stands at the door with written messages for the girl? It’s like that, but (if it’s real) different, maybe even better (but only if she ends up with a better job). As I write this I don’t know for sure whether it’s staged or not. I kind of hope it’s fiction, because if not, then she’s had a miserable time and he deserves to be dragged in the muck. But it could be a well-staged hoax. Here’s a link to part of that discussion.
And then there’s the Jet Blue flight attendant’s spectacular farewell. Here is the New York Times summary:
After a dispute with a passenger who stood to fetch luggage too soon on a full flight just in from Pittsburgh, Mr. Slater, 38 and a career flight attendant, got on the public-address intercom and let loose a string of invective.
Then, the authorities said, he pulled the lever that activates the emergency-evacuation chute and slid down, making a dramatic exit not only from the plane but, one imagines, also from his airline career.
On his way out the door, he paused to grab a beer from the beverage cart. Then he ran to the employee parking lot and drove off, the authorities said.
Another Web story said what the NYTimes called “a string of invective” including telling the individual passenger to f*** off, and then, microphone in hand, over the PA system, telling all of the passengers the same thing. Then the beer, and the exit chute.
And the third story is one of my own, from way back when I was on the night desk at United Press International (UPI) in Mexico City. This was in the early 1970s. We communicated via the same teletype machines we used to send the news. The rumor, or company legend, was the guy in some Midwest bureau who walked off the job after sending the following as his last transmission to the wire: “too much work, too little money.”
Which brings me back to the theme of burning bridges. I’ve always believed that you should never ever burn bridges when you leave a job. My advice is never to complain about your last job when looking for a new job. It just sounds bad.
Still, in the case of Jenny with the whiteboard, and what she describes as her work situation there, I think that could be the exception that proves the rule. And, furthermore, she’s done it so spectacularly well that I expect she’ll get a lot of much better job offers as a result. That’s already coming up in the comments to her pictures where they were posted on thechive.com.
And the UPI story? Rumor has it he had another job waiting. So he got some end-of-job satisfaction, for sure.
But with the Jet Blue story, he did get some fame out of it, including his name and picture in national media; but he also got criminal charges, and I think we pretty much call that a bridge burned. Or dynamited, perhaps, like the one over the River Kwai. Maybe he’ll get on reality television?
(Image: a screen shot from theChive.com. Click it for the original.)
I’m dealing with a very difficult question today. It’s about an email I received. 
It starts with this:
I need a blue chip Business Plan Writer. My objective is to introduce [some related] Legislation globally and then to use that legislation to [help a family member].
Obviously I’m leaving out details. I assure you it’s a good cause, a tough problem, and very hard on the writer of that email. Saying more than that is inappropriate in this case. I’d like to help.
She goes on:
It is a complex task. I do not need to borrow money and I can pay for the best Business Plan ever. I do need a Business Plan that will attract three top level legal/financial CEO’s from major business centers like London, New York, Singapore. I want a name like ‘McKinsey’ for the Business Plan and plan to use them to recruit.
But here’s the problem: I don’t think you need so-called “blue chip” business plan writing. I’d bet, without knowing for sure, that you need convincing ideas and a team to match. It’s not the words, the writing, the formatting, or the presentation of the plan that matters; it’s the content. It’s what is supposed to happen, along with who does what, when, and why, and how much it takes in time and resources?
Yes, you might need some blue-chip allies to help you give form and substance to your ideas, but if so, they aren’t business plan writers. And they aren’t management consultants. They are business and political leaders, idea influencers, and door openers.
I feel your pain, and I hope you succeed. I wish I had better advice to offer.
(Image: Tom McNemar/Shutterstock)
Has this happened to you? Somebody does you wrong, and you take the high road, decide to forgive and forget; but even so, that person avoids you from then on? So you really don’t even have a forgive and forget option? It seems so ironic. And quite common.
Help me. I need a name for this. Double-cross double whammie? Twice-baked business mistake?
Here’s a true story. It happened so long ago that I don’t mind telling it. The guy in question, 
call him Guy One, was a distributor of Apple Computers in Latin America, and I was business planning consultant to Apple’s Latin America group. Once, over a couple of beers, I told him I was thinking of starting a business localizing major software products for Latin America.
He said nothing significant at the time, but within two months he’d started a business intending to localize software for Latin America. It was pretty much the business I’d described. So much so, in fact, that I learned about it when a mutual friend remarked on my having partnered with Guy One on that localization business.
I told him no, I hadn’t done that. He answered: “well then, Guy has done it on his own, and it sure sounds like exactly your idea and your basic plan.”
The truth is that I was miffed for about five seconds, but I let it go that quickly because 1.) I’d never really convinced myself that it would work; 2.) I was more interested in keeping the business I was already doing; and 3.) (Practicing what I preach) I didn’t own the idea. Nobody owns ideas, so if he did it first then more power to him. That’s business, and the idea belongs to whoever builds a business around it.
But from then on – and this is my main point here – Guy treated me like his enemy. I didn’t treat him that way, but – and note the irony – he did to me. I guess he was embarrassed. He started avoiding me, causing some business awkwardness in my consulting business. As soon as I guessed the problem I called him and told him that I’d heard he was doing the localization business and that I was fine with that; I wasn’t going to do it anyway and I would even be happy to help. I made it clear I didn’t care. But the business relationship never recovered. Hence, my use of the double whammy: first, a business double cross; second, a business problem you can’t solve by letting bygones be bygones.
Since that time I’ve seen it a lot of times, and in regular life too, not just business. The aggressor ends up avoiding the victim, causing the double whammy. I guess they don’t want to be reminded. But it is ironic.
Or could it be that his localization business failed? That came a couple of years later.
Has this happened to you? Can you think of a good phrase for it?
(Image: 1000 Words/Shutterstock)
Speaking of paradox and contradictions (as I did with my post here last month), how about the good news/bad news mess of mixed-up emotions with the increasing personalization of advertising.
The good news (well, sort of) is less of the traditional shouting and interrupting types of advertising we all grew up with. Nobody really likes the ads that interrupt the flow of television and radio shows. We tolerate ads where we can just not click, or turn the page.
I’d like to think that this is happening because of the gradual growth of the business impact of social media and similar phenomena, in which word of mouth multiplies organically, replacing advertising with relationships and authenticity. That seems like a relatively pleasant scenario.
The bad news is more of the personalization that smacks a bit of 1984 and Big Brother and paranoia. This is what the New York Times called Ads Follow Web Users, and Get Deeply Personal:
“The result is a sea change in the way consumers encounter the Web. Not only will people see customized advertising, they will see different versions of Web sites from other consumers and even receive different discount offers while shopping — all based on information from their offline history. Two women in adjoining offices could go to the same cosmetic site, but one might see a $300 Missoni perfume, the other the house-brand lipstick on sale for $2.”
I have mixed feelings about privacy, particularly when it’s “Privacy” as political motivator and campaign slogan. I’ve seen it used as justification for all kinds of crazy ideas, such as somebody ringing my phone in my house being able to block caller ID (if you don’t want to be identified when you intrude, don’t intrude. Seems simple to me). By the way, have you asked yourself the relationship between privacy and authenticity? In social media?
I also have mixed feelings about our national confusion between ideas, speech, and commerce. I don’t think commercial messages (much less corporations, but that’s a different matter) need to be protected by the Constitution. I don’t think the Constitution gives a damn about which perfume the women see on the commercial site.
And this 1984 queasy feeling… does it still hold when it’s not an evil government controlling thought, but a cosmetics vendor optimizing sales?
Which brings us to the simple discussion of business. Is it good business to customize messages, even business offerings, to match very carefully defined and tracked consumer characteristics?
You could call this post the taxonomy of trolls. I thought there were fairy-tale creatures, ugly and mean, living under a bridge, interfering with innocent travelers. It turns out, though, they’re real. Just like in the three billy goats gruff fairy tale, they are hiding along the way, jumping out to cause trouble.
I like puns and I like the potential double meaning with trolls. First there’s the beast or character of the troll, like in the fairy tale. And then there’s the verb, trolling, which I think of from 50 years ago when my granddad took me fishing. We’d put the baited hook into the water and move the boat slowly, trolling for fish.
I’ve happened upon several kinds of trolls in business. Maybe you’ll recognize some of these. Better yet, maybe you can avoid them on your travels.
- trolls will always be trolling
- critics rarely create
- they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
- professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.
(Photo credit: by John Bauer, via Wikipedia)
I’ve posted about the Charter for Compassion before. In this post about a year ago, I said:
Do you want to help solve one of the world’s great problems? This has to be as important as clean energy: religious fundamentalism turning into violence and hatred. The darker side of humanity seems at its worst when powered by misguided religious fervor.
“Misguided” is the active word there. All major religions have some variation on what I learned as the golden rule — do unto others as you would have others do unto you– at their core. Despite that, some religiously oriented groups preach violence and hatred.
And now it’s just about a year later, and I stand by those words. And that organization, the Charter for Compassion, is now organizing a second annual global event, for Nov. 12.
Can we think about compassion for just a moment? Compassion is caring for other people. It’s very easy to translate into a business context if you just think about caring for customers, employees, vendors, and owners. There’s no down side. Right? I’ve called it empathy on occasion and posted here and here on this blog about how empathy can help a business.
And of course it’s even more obvious that compassion is essential to happiness, good relationships, mental health, and the survival of the human race. Right?
Why then does it feel oddly out of place to be writing about compassion here, as if I’m getting too “touchy-feely” or something like that? That’s weird, isn’t it? Is there anyplace where compassion isn’t a good thing?
The two-minute video here is very eloquent. And if you don’t see it in this site, there are links below to take you to the source.
CHARTER FOR COMPASSION TRAILER from TED Prize on Vimeo.
Compassion isn’t liberal or conservative, or Western or Eastern, or about one particular god or many gods. It’s not a code word for something else. It’s the human condition. I hope. Here’s more from the site:
There is an urgent need for a new focus on compassion.
Bringing together voices from all cultures and religions, the Charter seeks to remind the world we already share the core principles of compassion.
On November 12, thousands of people across the globe will listen together.
Participate and engage with the Charter now at charterforcompassion.org
Comedian Robert Klein has a routine where he grabs a consumer fruit drink that claims “contains 10% fruit juice,” and asks: “What about the other 90 percent?”
And the graduating class of Harvard MBAs last week had a special new code, A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality that 20% of the graduating MBAs signed. The New York Times reported:
Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.
And I can’t help asking: what about the other 80%?
The boom in social media, my happy association with some very smart Generation Y people, and a good book or two (Me 2.0, among them, and Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz) have me very intrigued with a broader application of branding.
I was taught to think of branding as a collection of visuals that should work together: logo, letterhead, signage, packaging, business cards, newsletters, websites.
More recently I’ve started to see it as something much deeper than look and feel; something as core to existence as identity.
Several religions incorporate a consciousness of a soul or something like it, that carries a person’s life deeds around on it like a permanent record. I was taught a Roman-Catholic-in-the-1950s version that had to do with sins as stains on the soul. I see it now as more of a Zen-Karma-like thing. But those two, and your idea of the same, don’t really contradict each other.
And I like that idea as it applies to companies, particularly your company and my company, small businesses, and personal businesses. Every small decision you make, every interaction with customers, every product detail, every financial transaction, is your brand. Cut corners, cheat people, stretch the truth, and it changes your identity as a company. Your accumulated brand, over time, isn’t what you say it is; it’s what you actually do that affects people and the world.
I am not just asserting as true something that I’d like to have be true. I’ve seen it in business over and over again. And I see it more than ever, these days, with the new business landscape making our businesses more transparent every day. Reviews, tweets, comments, it’s all something like word of mouth but magnified, like word of mouth cubed.
You want proof? Me too. All I’ve got so far is the increasing evidence that green environmentally and socially conscious companies do better on the stock market, in the long term, than the opposite. And lots of anecdotal evidence about companies that treated customers well, or badly, and were paid in kind.
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