We’re All Connected

Everyone knows the “Six Degrees of Separation” theory – that anyone in the world can be connected to anyone else through 6 or fewer intermediate acquaintances.  And its spin-off game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” - attempting to link any actor or actress who ever lived to Mr. Bacon through other actors or actresses whom they have appeared in the same film with.

Several years ago, a University of Virginia student, Brett Tjaden, created the Oracle of Bacon, an online service which will calculate the “Bacon Number” for any actor, living or dead.  The Bacon Number (let’s use B# from now on) is the count of relationships someone has to go though to get to Kevin.  So as an example, Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit  with Edward Asner, who was in JFK  with Kevin Bacon.  Elvis and Kevin never worked together.  So Elvis has a B# of 2, and Ed has a B# of 1.  Kevin himself, of course, has a B# of zero.

Then Tjaden went further and calculated the B# for every one of the 800,000 or so people in the Internet Movie Database.  It turns out the the average B# for all members of that database is about 2.8.  So, on average, every movie performer in the world, can be linked to Kevin in 3 or fewer steps.

So, if you can link YOURself to anyone in the movie industry in 3 or fewer steps, you can claim a B# of 6 or less and (kinda) prove the Six Degrees theory.  I tried it for myself, thinking of one Hollywood connection I have: my friend Rob Williams has a brother named Steve “Spaz” Williams, who was a technical effects guy and director for movies like Spawn, Eraser, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park.  I plugged Spaz into the Oracle, and his B# is 2: he directed The Wild, which starred Dominic Scott Key, who was in Saving Angelo  with Kevin.  So my B# is 4: Rob, Spaz, Dominic, Kevin.

I tried it with some others, like Cindy Crawford (whom I chatted with on a plane for 3 hours once).  But Richard Gere (her husband at the time) only had a B# of 2 as well, so no better than Spaz.  Then I thought of Robin Williams – I had a beer with him once at a convention in Vancouver.  Robin’s B# is 2, so mine is 3 through that route since I “know” Robin directly!

So give me 40 acres while I turn this rig around to marketing again.  I’ve mentioned the “she told 2 friends, and she told 2 friends, and so on, and so on,” phenomenon before, and how effective word of mouth between trusted acquaintances is as a message propagation technique.  But 2 raised to the sixth power is only 64 people.  Imagine if everyone told ALL their friends – I could get a message to Kevin in three or four iterations, and theoretically everyone in the world in just 6.  It would be implausible using traditional communication techniques, but some of those wacky Facebook kids out there can share their thoughts with hundreds or thousands of friends instantly.  What will it be like when we’re ALL that connected?

24

Whales Were Watched

And the award for worst marine mammal photographer of the year goes to:  “Me!”  Believe me when I tell you that this is the BEST picture of the few dozen I shot on Saturday afternoon.  It shows two Finback whales side-by-side, one just exhaling while the further one is already starting to dive again.  The little bit of lighter colour in front of the plume is the lower jaw of the nearer whale.  The further one was about 70 feet long, the closer about 50.  That’s another whale-watching boat in the background.  We were just off the northeast corner of Campobello Island.

Here’s my defense for the poor photography:  I only used our lower end digital camera with non-optical zooming for these shots.  I have a nice film camera with a nice telephoto lens, but I learned long ago that trying to shoot transient, distant, moving things through a viewfinder means frustration and a depreciation of the whole experience.  It’s way easier to just wave your digital in the general direction of the action about 50 times and actually capture the whale 10 or 12 times.  So, in this case, I believe the substandard quality of the whale pix was worth the additional enjoyment I got from the moment.

Here’s a better quality shot of Bishop with a live Starfish.  (The crew was very smart with hot soup, face-painting, pirate costumes, and the live ocean critter experiences they offered on the way BACK, when the excitement of the whales had worn off and it was getting FREAKING cold.)

The whole flickr photostream is here for fans of blurry dark objects surrounded by pixelated blue water.  Oh, and sunsets and beautiful girls.

 

Who’s Counting?

Back on September 16, in this post about Wal-mart, I noticed that my last three pieces in a row had titles that began with “W”, and wondered how long I could keep that streak going.  Well, this is number 22.  Has anyone been noticing?  Surely the extremely awkward title, “Whence Your Cortlands, Sir?” must have alerted folks that something weird was going on.

I’ve been prolonging this experiment in a lame effort to create a sense of anticipation for regular visitors.  Kind of like when Ken Jennings was on his 74-match winning streak on the game show Jeopardy!.  The show’s ratings were much higher during the streak, because everyone wanted to see if this would be the night he finally lost. 

So are people hanging on the edges of their keyboards every weekday waiting to find out how long I can keep it up?  What if I can overcome the gargantuan intellectual challenge and keep going for ever?  Will people grow weary of the artificially manipulated language that will be required?  Maybe I will become famous as, “the blogger who starts all his post titles with a ‘W’”.  And where should the period go at the end of that last sentence?

Anyway, creating a streak is a great marketing tool when it really does keep people coming back to see if it can continue.  What could you do in a bar that would create that kind of anticipation?  I remember a long time ago, on TV, or in a movie, or in real life maybe, there was a bartender who could not be stumped on ANY sports trivia question.  That would be a great streak to try and keep alive – every night at 10:00 a predetermined person (if you set a schedule beforehand, than the questioner has to show up that night) gets to ask the bartender a question that he and at least one other person know the answer to.  If the bartender gets it right, cheers all around and the big board with his correct nights in a row streak gets incremented.  If he (gasp!) is stumped, the house buys a round for everyone there.

I’d go.

Whales Will Be Watched this Weekend

This weekend, we are going to beautiful St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, NB, to go whale watching.  We will be sailing out into the Passamaquoddy Bay (part of the Bay of Fundy) on the Jolly Breeze, a 72′ gaff and square rigged cutter.  We will be staying at the only accomodation in town that has an indoor swimming pool (for my daughter’s pleasure), the St. Andrews Motor Inn.

I had a wide range of choices to select from, all the results of a series of quick Googles.  I probably shortlisted 4 or 5 whale watching outfits and 6 or 7 B&Bs and other accommodation options out of the dozens of (relevant) hits I got.

But the thing is, there are dozens more of both kinds of operation that were completely invisible to me because they didn’t show up in the first two pages of the Google searches.  It’s as if they don’t exist. 

If you bothered to click on the links to either of the businesses, you’ll note that their sites are no great shakes.  But they were sufficient to get on my radar, and that’s why they’ll be getting our business.

ASIDE #1:  The large structure up on the hill on the Motor Inn’s main page is the Algonquin Hotel, where I worked as a lifeguard in the mid 80s.  We’re not staying there because their “pool” is a beach on a private cove, and probably a tad nippy right now.  They also have a regular outdoor pool, but not heated.

ASIDE #2:  Because of this trip, there will be no post here tomorrow.  And none on Monday, either, because it’s Canadian Thanksgiving.  Happy Turkey!

What’s Your Hurry?

While walking through my quiet, residential neighbourhood last night, I was dismayed at the number of cars that were racing around corners at well over 50 km/h.  It brought to mind the scene in the film The World According to Garp, where Robin Williams (on foot) catches up to a truck speeding though his neighbourhood and basically beats it up, explaining that his kids live and play in the area.

I am not as much of a vigilante, but I did get to thinking that some kind of outré road sign might get people to think twice.  Everyone is aware of the famous “Don’t even THINK of parking here” signs.  I presume that they are more effective than regular “No Parking” signs.  So what kind of message would get people to slow down a bit (even if it’s costing them up to dozens of seconds of their precious time), because they are entering a neighbourhood that is thick with young children?

Unfortunately, my first few ideas all employed profanity.  I thought a big sign at the entrance to the neighbourhood that said, “SLOW THE F*** DOWN!” would be effective, but the city sign painters probably wouldn’t be amenable.  Likewise with the slightly less risqué, “Hey Asshole, Kids Play Here – Slow Down.”

My next line of thought involved reasoning with the people who drive too fast.  Along the lines of, “If you are driving, and a child darts out in front of you, and you kill that child, no-one is going to care that it was really the kid’s fault – so in this neighbourhood, you should slow down to a speed that will allow you to stop on very short notice.”  But that’s a lot of text for a road sign, especially for one that is meant to be read by people who are moving quickly.

It really is a marketing dilemma.  We all are trying to convey the importance of our message through visual means every day.  Whether it’s the design and copy of your print ad, the sign on the front of your establishment, the “above the fold” layout of your home page, or the way you make your business cards look, we are trying to get across something that’s very important (at least to us, and the people we want to do business with), in a very short period of time.

The sign on the left would seem to do that, but it obviously doesn’t work in our neighbourhood.  Perhaps they are so ubiquitous that they’ve lost their impact.

So here’s my idea: get one of those portable automatic radar-photo traps and let the folks who live in the neighbourhood take responsibility for it.  Families could keep it for a couple of days at a time, then hand it on.  The family with the trap deploys it in some random location each day.  Then put a sign at the entrance to the neighbourhood that says, “If you exceed 30 km/h in Centennial Place, you WILL get a ticket.”

It’s the simple marketing technique of making a promise or offering a guarantee.

Waiting in Line

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned the long line-up we stood in to get to the apple trees.  I also mentioned that we went as a large group of families.  Well, one of the families, comprising 5 people, actually got there about 45 minutes before the rest of us, and was consequently already well-progressed down the line.  The rest of us (14 people) took our place at the end of the line, then noticed the early arrivers way up ahead.  We debated joining them, but decided it wouldn’t be fair.  (Ironically, when the last of our group, 5 more people, arrived 20 minutes later, we had no qualms about letting them join us – I guess it’s a ratio thing: 5 people letting 19 in near the front of the line is wrong, but 14 letting 5 in, close to the back of the line, is OK.)

Anyway, normally I would not have blogged about this, but I just wanted an excuse to share this piece by Dave Barry with you.  I VERY rarely actually LOL (laugh out loud) while surfing the Web, but I did when I read that.

And while we’re at it, for some reason I LOL every  time I read this.

Whence Your Cortlands, Sir?

Yesterday, a bunch of families in our neighbourhood got together to engage in an eastern Canadian fall tradition: we went apple picking.  We all piled into our family-friendly gas-guzzlers and drove 20 km out into the country to a place called Belliveau Orchard, the undisputed king of U-pick facilities in the Moncton area.

It was a beautiful day – mostly sunny and about 15°C – perfect fall weather.  So perfect, in fact, that every other ambulatory human in southeastern New Brunswick also decided to go to Belliveau Orchard at the same time as us.  So we had to park in a field across the road from the orchard, then stand in line for 90 minutes to get onto the charming tractor-drawn wagons that took us into the area of the orchard that amateurs are allowed to forage.  All of which we did cheerfully – there are piles of hay and piles of pumpkins that the kids have a ball playing in while the adults hold the spot in line.  But still – an hour and a half wait to give the Belliveaus our money?  The mom of one of the families in our group, recently immigrated from Toronto, asked the perfectly reasonable question, “Aren’t there any other orchards around here?”

Frankly, if we hadn’t been so entrenched with our 20+ people already deployed in haystacks, pumpkin piles, cafés, washrooms, etc., we probably would have cut and run.  But as it was, we stuck it out.  And it was a golden opportunity to watch a business resolutely resisting the opportunity to separate people from their money.  There is a store on-site where they sell cider, wine, apples (duh), pies, pastries, and a bunch of other stuff.  They also sell pumpkins, squash, gourds, and other decorative (and edible) autumn fruit.  These are all outside, of course, but you have to pay for them inside the store.  So they had hundreds (thousands?) of people milling around waiting for their chance to pick apples, obviously in the mood to make apple- or autumn-related purchases, and exactly ONE cashier.

The line-up at that cash register was at least 30 minutes long.  Bishop (my daughter, pictured) usually selects her Hallowe’en pumpkins during our annual trip to the orchard – but there was no way I was going to stand in line that long to pay for them when they have just as good choice at our local supermarket, for the same price.

Anyway, end of rant.  The day was wholly enjoyable and we ended up with ½ bushel of primo Cortland apples that cost us only $10, and 150 tonnes of fun that we got for free.  Belliveau has the whole marketing thing nailed – they just need to work on their money-collection process.

Which Would You Choose?

Most of you have probably heard the math-class fable of the father who offered his son an allowance of $10 per week, to which the clever boy replied, “How about I only take one cent this week.  But you have to double it each week, so 2 cents next week, 4 pennies the week after, etc.”  The father quickly agrees to this bargain.  Within 6 months, the boy has amassed over $670,000.  The power of exponential growth is the lesson.

Another example of this is one I read in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point:  take a sheet of paper, and fold it in half.  Repeat this 50 times. 

(I know that it’s impossible to fold a piece of paper in half more than 7 times – just suspend your disbelief for this thought experiment.)

How tall would the resulting stack be?  Some might say a foot, some might say the height of a fridge.  The actual answer is that it would stretch upwards almost to the sun.

People have a hard time understanding exponential growth, but as a marketing tool it can be very powerful.  As I wrote about here, it can dramatically grow a customer base.  But, as Gladwell points out, for something to grow exponentially, it has to be “contagious.”  Or to put it another way, “sticky.”  Or, in the context of marketing, “REMARKABLE.”  It has to be a product or place or service that is so good, people REMARK on it to their friends.

We Won’t Have to Buy “Stuff”

The object to the right is what is called a “3D printer.”  It can create any object out of plastic with nothing more than a digital description of the desired result and some composite material.  The way it works is that successive cross-sections of the object are “printed” on top of one another until the whole piece is completed.

These machines currently cost 10s of thousands of dollars, but that cost is falling fast.  And the implications of universal affordability are almost Star Trekian in their extent.  Imagine if every home had one.  Anything - ANYTHING – made out of plastic could be printed instantly, as long as you had the digital design of that item.  And digital designs will be like MP3 files – an artist (or designer) creates the original model, then digitizes it, then sells it to a few fans.  But soon, it’s available for free on dodgy file “sharing” sites like Limewire.  So anyone can download the design and replicate it in their home for nothing more than the cost of their substrate material.

Granted, it will be a while before you can print yourself a Ferrari or even a frying pan.  But think of all the cheap plastic stuff we have to pay for now that we could print:  picnic utensils, plates and cups; Hallowe’en masks; cheap children’s toys; storage bins; clothes hangers; flip flops (maybe even Crocs!).  That last example is telling: the raw material in a pair of Crocs probably costs about 2¢, but they cost upwards of $30 to purchase.  A little bit of that money goes to compensate the company that designed them (analogous to the musician in our MP3 example), but that vast majority of the mark-up goes to the cost of paying the people to make them, the transportation from China, the redistribution to various retail outlets, and the retailer’s margin.

So even if you paid  the designer, say 99¢ (the same as a song at iTunes), and considering the cost for your liquid polymer substrate, say $1, you can have a pair of Crocs instantly, in your home, perfectly fitted, for two bucks.

So to all you retailers out there, take a lesson from barkeepers:  people can easily drink at home, but they choose to go to bars.  Once people can get anything in your store at home, what are you going to do to get them to come to your store?

Where’s My Daughter’s O Canada?

My daughter goes to a great school.  One of the things that makes it great is the respect that permeates its halls: respect for teachers, respect for students, respect for neighbours and the community in general, respect for past and present members of our armed forces, respect for police officers and firefighters, and respect for our nation.  The latter is demonstrated each day by the playing of O Canada  every morning over the school’s PA system, and the fact that EVERYONE, whether they are in a classroom or an office or a hallway; whether they are a student, teacher or parent; stops and stands still during the duration of the song.

Except my daughter’s grade 2 class.

You see, due to expanding student enrollment, the school had to add what we used to call a “portable” classroom — although this one looks pretty permanent.  And that’s my daughter’s classroom.  This addition was one of a series of construction projects that happened over the summer and are still happening.  And to quote Rodney Dangerfield, it seems that this classroom, “can’t get no respect.”  So they don’t yet (a month into the school year) have proper furniture, for example.  Or a connection to the school PA system to hear important announcements or the national anthem.  And, ironically, the room that would have been theirs, but was scheduled to be converted into administrative offices, still sits empty and untouched.

I fully understand that when there are multiple projects being worked on by a finite set of tradespeople, not everything can happen at once.  But wouldn’t you think that the students  would come first?  I have a theory for why this particular class is being de-prioritized:  it has consistently the strongest support network of parent volunteers of any class in the school.  It was true when most of the same kids were together two years ago in kindergarten, and it was true last year in grade one.  I think that the school administration is (likely subconsciously) figuring that that particular class can withstand hardship better than other groups in the school, so they get bumped down the to-do list.

That kind of makes sense on the surface, and is a prevalent theme throughout society – the silent get little attention, while the “squeaky wheels” get greased.  But it’s BAD MARKETING.  You should treat your BEST customers (or parents or students) best.  Then they become even more rabid fans and spread the joy and the message and infect even more people with zeal and excitement.

Think about it – if only complainers and whiners get what they want, soon everyone will learn to complain and whine.  But if the promoters and the cheerers and the helpers and the fans get all the best, soon (almost) all the people will be on the bandwagon.