getFreshMinds.com | Ideas so fresh--they should be slapped!

South China Mall: Pushing the envelope too far...

A friend sent me to an interesting mini documentary about the world's largest shopping mall - South China Mall in Dongguan, China. It's a fascinating video, because it turns out that the largest mall in the world is not. 

The mall has space for over 2000 tenants, plus a replica of the Arc de Triomphe, a replica of Venice's St Mark's bell tower, a canal with gondolas, and an indoor-outdoor roller coaster.

Unfortunately, the mall is 99% unoccupied.  And unlike most other "dead" malls, South China Mall never was filled with stores.  (Or even close to a quarter filled!)  It was stillborn from the very beginning.

What really struck me from the video was when someone mentioned that the giant mall was the first mall people in that area had ever seen.  Not just the biggest one they'd ever seen - the very first mall they'd ever seen.

And that was probably the problem. The whole idea of a mall was so far beyond the normal everyday needs of the people in that area that they simply didn't get why they should go to one.

That's the risk with pushing the envelope... there's a chance you can go too far.  In order to fully appreciate a great new idea (and make it a success) it has to have points of reference in its customers' current lives.

It's the difference between giving people a radically new way to carry around their favorite music (iPod) versus needing to convince them that they want to bring it with them in the first place. In the first case, people see the value instantly.  In the second case, they might never see it.

If you're interested, watch the 13 minute mini-documentary on the South China Mall here.  It's spooky how deserted the place is - especially for what looks like such an amazing mall (for us mall-lovers here in the snow-covered north!)

Jobs seekers... please restrain your creativity!

It's no secret that finding a job right now is tough. And when times get tough, the tough get creative!  Right?

Today I ran across the results of a survey from CareerBuilder that says 20% of hiring managers are seeing more people try to get their attention in unusual ways.

Some of the things people are trying?

• Sending in a shoe with a resume to "get my foot in the door."


• Staging a sit-in in the lobby to get a meeting with a director.

• Washing cars in the parking lot. (No reason given for this.)


• Sending a resume wrapped as a present and a message that said his skills were a "gift to the company."


• Handing out resumes at stoplights.


• Delivering a cake designed as a business card with the candidate’s picture.


• Going to the same barber as the Chairman of the Board and asking the barber speak on his behalf.


• Arriving at an interview dressed in a bunny suit because it was near Easter.

Some of those ideas are cute... but I wonder if they're actually effective.  And I wonder how many of them actually turned the hiring manager off of the candidate.

Using "creative" tactics in your job search is risky (in my opinion). Unless you're applying for a really innovative company with a reputation for loving those tactics, it could easily tell the interviewer that you're either (a) crazy, (b) not a serious candidate, or (c) desperate.  None of those sound like a good option to me.

Plus, even if you're trying to show that you're extremely creative, it might not work.  A creative job search tactic only works once.  Once people have heard of a tactic, it's no longer creative - and then you're just a copycat.

My advice to job seekers is to stop with the tricks and gimmicks and figure out ways to show your value.  That's not nearly as fun, but it is probably a lot more effective.

There is a time for blatant creativity and a time to tone it down.  If you're looking for a job, you should probably err on the side of not looking ridiculous.

(Unless, of course, you want to send me a cake with your resume on it.  I won't guarantee I'll hire you, but I'll definitely scarf it down!)

Why Ford deserves to fail.

There's a lot of talk about the Wall Street bail-outs.  $700+ billion dollars to rescue financial institutions from a crisis they created themselves. And that probably won't be the end of it.

But there's another bail-out that people aren't talking about much - but probably should. 

Not long ago, while flying home from Germany, I read a small article buried in USA Today about how American automakers are begging Congress for a bail-out of their own.  They want $25 billion in loans to upgrade their plants for production of more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Recently, the House authorized this loan, and it will go into effect soon.  And automakers are already talking about wanting another $25 billion next year.

Ford's CEO has been saying it's not a "bailout", but a lot of analysts believe that things could be touch and go for US automakers without the $25 billion.  So, you can draw your own conclusion there.

When I read that article, and when I looked up more information about the bailout, I had a strong reaction.  "Let the US automakers go down," I thought.  "They certainly deserve it!"

(I know they're an essential industry in the US, but hear me out.)

US Automakers have been digging their own graves for years.

They have absolutely refused to innovate and come up with new ideas to stay competitive - all the while spending millions on lobbyists who whine to Congress that if automakers are forced to meet new standards, it will destroy them (and their workers.)

US automakers have been so successful at resisting change that their vehicles get barely better gas mileage than in the 1970s.  In fact, the average mpgs have been going down in the last few years!

Please don't even try to tell me that it's impossible for them to make significant improvements.  Other industries have made huge strides in the same amount of time.

The laptop I'm writing on right now (which hasn't been new for a while) has more computing power than the giant room-sized computer that sent Apollo 11 to the moon in 1969.  My phone is a lot smaller than the monstrosity my parents made me carry "just in case" in high school.  As for my music collection, I can now carry it in my pocket.

Maybe it's true that the internal combustion engine has reached its limit, but that is no excuse. 

If innovators had simply focused on breeding a faster horse, the car never would have been invented.  It's about figuring out a better way to accomplish the same purpose - not giving up and letting the world pass by.

Honestly, what has Ford done lately?  Everyone knows of their innovative assembly line--but that was nearly 100 years ago.

What have they done in the last 10 years that is remarkable?  What about the last 20?  Simply supersizing their vehicles does not count as innovation.  Anyone can make something bigger.  That doesn't take fresh thinking.

In fact, all I ever hear from Ford and the other US automakers is their whining about the market being tough.  And how buying American is the patriotic thing to do (for people who love our country.)

Who else isn't impressed?

The fact is, Ford has chosen not to be innovative. 

And by doing so, they've dug a big hole that they're now scrambling desperately to get out of.  And they expect us to help them - which we will mostly likely continue to do because their (well-deserved) failure would hurt a lot of people.  Apparently 1 in 10 workers in the US depend on the automakers.  (Can we say hostages?)

If Ford came out tomorrow with a strong call to innovation, saying,

We are going to use this loan to really do something remarkable.  We are going to exceed the new MPG standards by 2015, instead of 2020.  By 2020, we will have done even more. We're going to do this because we want to be a world-leader again.

Then I'd feel a lot better about the US government loaning them the money.

But we all know what is going to happen. 

Ford will beg for this hand-out and then proceed to make incremental improvements only after their competitors have paved the way and Ford is forced to do so by law. 

They'll continue insisting that new regulations will ruin them, and threatening to destroy the lives of their workers if they don't get more hand-outs. 

Then next year, they'll get another emergency "loan" and the cycle will repeat itself.

I really want to be more optimistic about Ford, and I'd love to feel confident that they (and the other US automakers) are going to lead automobile innovation into the future.

But unless they radically change from seeing themselves as victims to being proactive innovators... I don't think that's going to happen. 

It drives me crazy that we keep giving US Automakers a life-raft every time they dig themselves in over their heads.

Companies should be rewarded for being innovators, and should have to face the consequences if they choose not to create the future. They shouldn't entrench themselves in the past, while holding the lives of their workers as hostages.  It makes me furious that the US automakers do this.

In my opinion, there are so many more effective ways to use this money. 

• What if we spent $25 billion to retrain autoworkers and invest in education?  Then, when the Big 3 threaten to cut jobs, workers will be able to get better ones and help the US economy in the process.  (And the Big 3 would lose their hostages.)
• Or what if we offered a series of big prizes for innovators who come up with drastic improvements for automobile technology?  First challenge: $100 million for whoever can come up with a 100+ mpg car that can be mass produced.  Contests can do a ton for innovation.
• What if the US government created a Manhattan-style project with the money and recruited the top engineers in the field to create the automobiles of the future.  Ford, GM and Chrysler could send their top inventors over in return for use of the technology.

But instead, we're handing over an obscene amount of money over to an industry that has done nothing to deserve it, and who will only squander the funds.

Absolutely infuriating!

There's danger in thinking within the box.

Everyone who talks about creativity goes on and on about "thinking outside the box".  But what does that really mean?  And why is it so important?

Well, learning to think outside the box can really make a huge difference.  Trust me on this.  I know!

A couple years ago, I suffered through a horrible, torturous reminder about how important it is to think outside of the box.

Here's the story!

It was one of my first times visiting Germany, and I understood almost no German.  So, every time we went out to eat, I had to spend a ton of time poring over every single menu item with a dictionary in hand.  Then I'd ask my friends to translate - and of course, forget half of the menu by the time they finished.

It always took forever.

One night, we decided to order pizzas and, rather than spend my normal 30 minutes staring at the available toppings and making my German friends translate everything twice, I decided it would just be easier to order a normal, old-fashioned Pepperoni pizza.

I should have been warned when everyone asked me, "Just pepperoni?"

But no, being a confident American who has successfully ordered pizza hundreds of times in the US, I charged blindly ahead. 

"Just pepperoni!"  I said with a smile (thrilled there was a type of food I could order easily in Germany.)  After all, how hard could it be?

Then the pizzas arrived and boy, was I in for a surprise!

When I opened the boxes... I didn't see any pizzas that looked like mine.  Of course, there was a very simple explanation for that. 

In German, "pepperoni" does not refer to the style of pizza we Americans normally envision.  No, in Germany, a "pepperoni" is the topping you see on the right.

Wikipedia explains the source of my confusion:

Pepperoni is frequently used as a pizza topping in American-style pizzerias. It is the most popular pizza topping in North America....Pepperoni is a corruption of peperoni, the Italian plural of peperone, referring to the bell pepper, so that ordering "peperoni" pizza in Italy is often an unwelcome surprise for North American tourists." (read it here)

Exactly. I was just a little surprised!  It never occurred to me that pizza toppings were different in different countries.  My thinking was so stuck inside the (pizza) box that I couldn't imagine anything else was possible.

This is exactly the sort of thinking that happens in the real world too.  Most people never think beyond what they already know.  If you had asked people what they wanted most in transportation options at the beginning of the 20th century, they probably would have said they wanted a faster horse.

So, while you hopefully won't ever end up in the same situation as me - picking minuscule bits of hot pepper out of your overly-spiced pizza while your "friends" roar with laughter - remember that thinking only inside the box can blind you to the possibilities that are really out there.

(And, if you're ever in a foreign land, and your friends ask "are you sure you want that?"  PAY ATTENTION!)

Have you heard about Starbucks' latest bad idea?

Big news in the world of coffee yesterday.  Starbucks has apparently decided to offer $2 coffees to reward loyal patrons. The Associated Press reports:

Looking to bring more value-seeking consumers through its doors for a late afternoon caffeine fix, Starbucks Corp. said it will now offer its morning customers any iced grande beverage for $2 after 2 p.m.

The price is a big cut from the normal price of most grande-sized iced drinks.... To get the discount, customers must present a receipt from their morning Starbucks visit.

Does this sound like a good idea to you?

To me, Starbucks represents a more exclusive atmosphere - with coffee that costs extra because their branded cup says something about the person carrying it.  It's a group that doesn't welcome all comers - only the ones who are willing to pay for the privilege of using their internet and drinking their coffee.  It's for successful professionals who have the disposable income to go there.

It hasn't been for me, but part of that's due to the fact that I recently spent a long time in college without much disposable income.  I couldn't justify joining their club.

But now, it seems like Starbucks is throwing the doors wide open for all comers.

They're passing out discounts right and left.  In addition to this new promotion, Starbucks offers discounted drinks on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in some cities. 

It even did the newspaper coupon route in NYC, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and Detroit: Customers got a free 12-ounce iced coffee on Wednesdays with a voucher from newspaper inserts.

Granted, the US economy is not doing too great right now, and customers want to get more for their money.  Nor is Starbucks doing too great right now - and they would definitely like to get more of customers' money!

This is what happens when a company stops generating its own ideas and just starts copying what works for everyone else. 

Discounts on coffee work for McDonalds and Dunkin' Donuts, right?  And customers also go to McDonalds and Dunkin' Donuts in the morning... so it should work, right?

Except it won't.  Because Starbucks sells an experience, not coffee.  People don't pay extra just for what's in the cup. 

Discounts and promotions might give Starbucks a boost for a while, but they risk implying to customers that their coffee isn't worth full price.  And if Starbucks' customers are no longer willing to pay premium prices for their coffee, the chain is in even bigger trouble than before.

Instead of revitalizing their brand, Starbucks could end up completely devaluing it. (And I'm not the only one who thinks so.  Great post on Brand Autopsy about this!)

That's not the kind of thinking they should be doing.  Starbucks should be thinking of ideas that can strengthen their image and attract more customers from their target markets.

It's not that hard.  I'm not a huge coffee drinker, and I immediately had an idea for them.

What are your ideas?  How would you revitalize Starbucks without offering discounts?

(Remember, comment for Kudos this month!)

A Mark of Distinction

On this blog, I work really hard to see the value in each and every idea.  It's far better to look for possibilities in a "bad" idea, than to simply dismiss it outright and walk away.  After all, who knows where a really awful idea might lead.

But sometimes I run across an idea so awful that it makes me cringe.  Not often, but it happens.

Like when the phone rang last night during dinner.  We're on the Do Not Call list, so I assumed that it would be a friend.

Nope.

I picked up the phone to hear a click, and then a mechanical voice.  "Please hold while we connect you to the next available representative."

Sadly, I didn't stick around long enough to get a name that I could point fingers at.  It was dinnertime, after all, and my food was getting cold.

On some levels, I can see what thought process someone used to come up with this marketing system.  After all, it lets them operate with a smaller number of employees, and ensures that they don't have to waste their time calling people who aren't home.

Seriously though!  Why would anyone ever think it was a good idea to combine dinner-interrupting calls, telemarketing, and waiting on hold?

One the other hand, I might be just looking at this the wrong way.  Maybe their goal wasn't to sell, but to come up with an extremely effective way to truly alienate their potential customers.

In that case, well done!

When an idea isn't better pink!

Over at Learned on Women, Andrea reminded her readers that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month--and that it's also the month that companies make everything in pink.

Everything?

Yes. Everything.

That, by the way, is a pink 20-gauge Remington 870 Junior shotgun.  With matching pink hat.

(From the BrandBuilder Blog.)

Products like that come about because a company decides that they want to appeal to women shoppers.   But ideas like that are designed to fail because the only thing new about them is their color.

Cosmetic changes don't get attention from new customers, or inspire renewed loyalty from loyal patrons. 

People, whether they're men or women, want to be impressed by how a new product or service will improve their lives.

Helping someone look cute out hunting is not enough incentive to make a purchase.

Helping someone be more visible (e.g. with the bright orange) so that they're less likely to be mistaken for an animal by another hunter IS a good incentive.

When companies decide cosmetic changes will make a product appeal to a new demographic, they're being lazy. 

It's easy to paint something pink and say it's for women.

It's hard to develop a new product or redesign an old one so that it genuinely benefits a different customer.

But, if creativity were easy, the benefits wouldn't be so great.

(And there would be significantly fewer pink things to buy every October!)

So, please, stop thinking pink when it comes to making things for women.  We know that it's just a layer of paint.

That goes for products for men too.  After all, how many guys want to buy traditionally female-focused products like lotions?

It takes more than a cosmetic color change to interest guys.  They want to see the specific benefits for them too.

So don't be mentally-lazy and think that easy things like changing color will make a great idea.  Start thinking of what would make people actually want to buy a product!

When it's not worth innovating for more features.

One of the posts I wrote in August, What products drive you insane and how could they be improved? had a great comment from Jon Burg that is definitely worth sharing.

Jon, of the Future Visions blog wrote:

I've said this time and time again, more doesn't equal better.  Ultimately we utilize technology to drive towards a goal, for the voice function cell phones it's communication, for digital cameras it's about preserving a moment, for a computer mouse it's about interface and elemental control.

There is a rash of new "2.0" companies offering "more", but few are truly delivering "whatever you're doing now, do it with us better - read: easier and more naturally".

Find yourself wanting to argue with him?

I did at first.  It's easy to be seduced by the lure of flashy new technology and a slew of sexy new features. Every month, the internet is buzzing with the latest gotta-have-it product that does everything anyone could every want it to do.

But does that every-thing-but-the-kitchen-sink purchase actually do what you really wanted it for?

Three weeks ago, a good friend of mine purchased a new cell phone, the Nokia N73.  It has a fantastic zoom on the camera, the ability to edit phots and upload them to Flickr "on the go", a music player, email capabilities, pc back-up functions, online games and even a barcode scanner.

It was pretty impressive.

Fast forward two weeks.  My friend wakes up in the morning to discover that his brand-new phone--that had been sitting untouched on the table all night--won't work.  Why?  The large, formerly-drool-worthy 2.5 inch color screen had cracked overnight.

And, without that fabulously technologically-advanced screen, the phone is completely useless. Not only can't my friend do any of the fancy stuff, he can't even call others.  If the phone rings, he can answer it.  That's it.

This is exactly what Jon was talking about.  My friend was seduced to buy a flashy new phone that "does everything" on top of being a phone. 

But, when Nokia tried to make the phone do "more", they concentrated so much on the additional features that they neglected to make the phone reliable. 

One tiny glitch, and my friend is left with a useless device that cannot fulfill his need for a phone.

Innovation is marvelous, but is it worth adding on so many features that the most important function of a technology--in this case, the phone's ability to send and receive calls--is endangered.

A phone can have all the fancy bells and whistles, but if it doesn't help people communicate, it's still a miserable failure.

Why they just don't care...

4 out of 5 customers agree... calling a company's customer service line is a frustrating experience.

5 out of 5 companies agree... they don't care.

The last time I helped my parents sign-up for a cell phone plan, we were the lucky recipients of 3 defective (but brand-new) cell phones.  Even after following the activation directions to the letter multiple times, I couldn't get even get one to work.

So began a 3-day long adventure of customer "service".  After a significant amount of time trying to get through to a human, multiple long waits, 5 different people telling me 7 times the exact same directions to activate the phones--and numerous wishes for a punching bag--one customer service rep finally admitted to me that my new phones *may* have been shipped without any software.  As a result, they simply couldn't be activated!

Happily, they were able to send us new phones in just a couple days (that worked right off the bat).

But why did it take so long (and so many activation requests) to figure out the problem? 

Quite simply, because I was no longer a priority to them!

Let's face it, when we sign-up for a cell phone service, it ceases to be about us the moment they charge our credit cards.  We don't need to be wooed anymore and they don't need to convince us that they're a great company to use.

From that day forward, they can count on 24 months of constant paychecks and the luxury of knowing they can charge us fees for choosing to change to another provider too soon. Many customers even receive network-specific phones, and others will lose their telephone number if they change providers.

They have us right where they want us.

Now that we're stuck in a 2-year contract, the courtship is over.  And that's why calling customer service lines can feel like torture.  They have all the power in the relationship.

So if bills are wrong, or mysterious charges show up, or the service simply doesn't work in an area... it's not the company's problem.  It's up to the customer to get issues resolved because the company doesn't care if people get what they're paying for.  They make money when customers don't contest extra charges, or when customers pay even though the service doesn't work for them.

In response to (multiple) comments on her post about Sprint, Becky Carroll writes:

I have a sneaky suspicion that Sprint call center reps are doing when they are incented to do: get customers off the phone quickly. Until companies change their metrics to be more customer-focused, it will be very difficult to see true customer resolution of issues...

...The telecomm industry has a very high turnover rate, mostly due to the fact (I believe) that customers are “hold hostage” to their carrier or cable company. Many times, there are not a lot of choices, or customers are locked in with huge fees for leaving...

...Sprint did not value the customers it fired, for whatever reason.

Of course they don't.  Why should they bother making changes when the majority of their customers are shackled to their service agreement? Plus, poor customer service is an industry standard in the US cell phone business. (Even though Sprint is rated as the worst.)

In Sprint's view, they have no incentive to change to a more customer-focused system.  Until they really feel negative results from their behavior, they’ll probably just continue what they’re doing.

After all, "With over 53,000,000 subscribers, Sprint will feel no pain over losing 1,000 "demon" customers."

(By the way, the only way I reached a real live person when calling the helpline was by clicking through to the sales department and pretending to be confused!)

Does thinking of customer service as a negative blind companies to new opportunities? (Part 2)

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that many large companies hate giving customer service.  To avoid talking to their customers, companies outsource, automate, and even (if they're Sprint) send break-up letters to their most challenging customers.

But is customer service the horrible beast many companies make it out to be?  Or do opportunities lurk just past its frightening exterior?

Yesterday, in Does thinking of customer service as a negative blind companies to new opportunities (Part 1), I challenged the belief of companies like Sprint that customer service calls are negatives that should be avoided.

Here are a couple more "What If" questions that Sprint should be asking.

Question 3: What if Sprint benefited from customers calling the service line?

Many many companies spend a lot of money on market research, paying big bucks to find out what their customers want.  They do surveys, gather focus groups, and pay other companies to tell them what customers are saying.  It's not an easy thing for them to get quality input.

At the same time, customers calling the service lines are often faced with long, boring waits where they listen to elevator music and head the same advertisement over and over and over.

Hmmm.  Can something be done to improve both those situations?  What if customer who called the help line were invited to help the company with a little market research while they waited?

Customers could complete a survey, evaluate a radio advertisement for its effectiveness, or even share their ideas with a representative.

Although many customers would do it for free (just to avoid the horrible hold music), the company could offer incentives to increase participation.  Perhaps a 10% deduction on their next bill, or a coupon code to buy phone accessories on their website, or maybe even a shorter wait?

Market research would get access to a large number of subscribers, customers would not be so irritated at the long wait and the company would be able to write-off some customer-service expenses as a development initiative.

Question 4: What if Sprint only paid for customer service representatives when they were needed?

One major disadvantage for large companies like Sprint is the cost of running a large customer care center.  Unlike restaurants, customer care representatives cannot just be "phased out" when call volume drops.  Call center workers expect to work their full shifts.

Or could a customer care center be run more like a restuaruant? What if Sprint changed the traditional call center structure to give it more flexibility in staffing by (a) decentralizing it and (b) hiring more part time workers.

(A) VoIP technology allows people to answer phone calls where ever, whenever with the same line.  This could enable Sprint to set-up many smaller call centers around the world that would all be accessible by the same number (which might already be happening) OR it could allow call center representatives to work from home.

Which brings up (B) hiring more part-time workers.  The issue with having a large center is that workers expect to have full shifts when they come in to work.  If workers are allowed to work from home, or from smaller close-by centers, however, they might be willing to come in for shorter shifts during peak hours.

College students might be very interested in a job where they could come in for just a couple hours to make some extra money.  Another possibility is stay-at-home parents.  Airline Jet Blue currently homesources its entire reservation service to approximately 1000 housewives in Utah who work an average of 25 hours a week.

By moving to a system like that, Sprint wouldn't have to pay for a full staff of customer service agents during their slow periods, but would still be fully-staffed during their busiest times.

So, there are a couple more ideas about how Sprint could turn their customer service calls into a positive.  Sometimes, even the "worst obligations" can harbor opportunities.

But... if Sprint prefers the monster, they are perfectly welcome to continue down their deep dark path to see what waits for them at the end.

Note 1: I say Sprint because they just grabbed headlines by firing 1000 of their neediest customers... but it could be any company that hates customer service calls.

Note 2: Special thanks to Thiago and  Jean for the Godzilla photos!