Let’s hope the retroactive price hike on Tesla Roadsters isn’t a sign of panic from a company about to go bust. Unfortunately, pissing off 400 customers who already put down their 50K deposits, by raising the cost of the vechicle they signed up for - is a sign things are not going well.
Either that, or chairman Elon Musk isn’t a believer in word of mouth and ambassadorship… and quite frankly, he must be.
Gary Vaynerchuk may be annoying to the point where you want to tell him to just shut up.
But he’s also a guy who not only knows a Syrah from a Merlot or a [insert wine of choice], but also how the world is turning in terms of marketing, brands, viral, word of mouth and [insert web 2.0 buzzword of choice].
Listen to his annoyingly hyperactive analogy between web 2.0 and giving a presentation. Clever, clever.
The CO2 Inquisition has found and trialed another heretic. Are you stting down? Please note the following is not absurd fiction, but the result of dedicated scientific research.
It’s Google.
Apparently, a search on Google produces 7g of Carbon Dioxide. The CO2 footprint originates in data centers where disk drives are spinning, fans blowing, etc, etc.
Oh man, how future generations will look back at this and shake their heads. Just bear with me for a second here:
The average human CO2 footprint is 900-1000g per day. But, if you excercise, you produce much more.
Carbon Dioxide Emission per Person (m3/h) cu metres/hour
So, let’s say when jogging you produce at least 10 times more CO2 than when resting (planet killing joggers!)
Your normal CO2 footprint in an hour would be about 40g, but by running for an hour you actually produced 400g. Are you stupid? You could have googled 51 times and produced the same amount of planet killing gas.
51 things you could have learned, instead of just… being a human being doing human being things.
Kids, you heard it here first. If this ridiculous CO2 witch-hunt nonsense doesn’t stop soon, someone will sooner or later propose a tax on jogging, or we’ll at least feel bad about ourselves for not lying perfectly still on the floor, breathing slowly.
What’s the use of hedonic regression when measuring CPI? Let’s say I buy a new laptop computer at the same price as my old one, but it’s twice as powerful. According to the arbitrary guidelines of a hedonic regression model, prices must then have fallen, driving CPI down. But, in nominal terms I spent the same amount of money for a laptop. I’m pretty sure I can’t even find one on the market with the components I got last time even if I wanted to.
It seems to distort the fact that I spent a certain amount of money buying a computer, period.
Ah, you say, but with this new and sleek machine you must be twice as productive, or derive twice the pleasure. Well, you know, what if all I do is e-mail and play Tetris? How am I more productive or experiencing stronger sensations of pleasure now, because I have more empty disk space?
I think The Illusions of Hedonics, is well worth reading.
If math worked like economics, 1 + 1 would in fact be able to equal 3, if you could prove you got an extra 1 worth of pleasure out of it.
I want to share a quote from a book by Dan Kennedy, with you.
“… the vast majority’s interest in improving, but only if doing so requires no change, discomfort, or initiative. That’s why, in every field, a few out-earn the huge ‘mediocre majority’ by giant margins.”
Blunt, and true.
I’ve always (since the dawn of time, or at least since 2004) been advocating the end of the concept of an online marketing budget for any online business where you can measure results.
The concept of a budget is faulty and precisely opposite to the approach you should take.
Scenario A - you spend a dollar on AdWords, and get 1.20 back.
Q: What should you do?
A: BUY AS MANY CLICKS AS YOU CAN
Scenario B - you spend a dollar on AdWords, and get 0.80 back.
Q: What should you do?
A: STOP BUYING
Notice how the concept of budget doesn’t really fit in?
In fact, it’s a pure cash-flow excercise.
If you want to make the lines a little fuzzier, go ahead and apply factors such as inventory management and alternative channels. Sure, you’ll need to time your marketing right if you’re selling momentarily finite inventory like, say, hotel rooms. And, you’ll have to consider if you can attract a specific customer or customer group even less expensively in another channel, etc, etc.
But the general idea is still - if it works, do as much of it as possible. If it doesn’t work, stop doing it.
If that’s not a blinding flash of the obvious, I do not know what is - and still, there are online marketing budgets.
Be an Ocean Wave
Change and Direction in One
All follow its lead
Just finished listening to the audiobook version of Tribes by Seth Godin.
I recommend it to all future tribe leaders.