Want a Real Person?

I have written before about how much I hate IVR systems and the drain they are on society’s productivity.  And I recently shared a tip that defeats an IVR barricade about half of the time: just keep hitting zero until you hear the phone ringing.

Turns out there’s an entire Website called gethuman devoted to collecting the “secret” ways to navigate around the computer and get to a live person at each company with an IVR system.  In many cases, the answer is just to keep pushing zero, but there are many more complicated , including this advice for calling MSN: Say “agent” at each prompt, until offered a representative; say “yes.”

There is also an interesting little soap opera about the site’s owners, if you click on the “Info” link.

And just to let you know that I acknowledge that there are times  when IVR is more efficient – just today I renewed a drug prescription over the phone in about 15 seconds, which is faster than a person could have done it.

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World-saving Technique

Let’s say you’re a James Bond-like secret operative, and there’s an evil genius about to enslave all of humanity.  But you know the one chink in his armor: he has epilepsy.  So you send him an email that links to this page.  Bam!  World saved.

[UPDATE]  Someone must have complained, because now there is a big warning page; you have to scroll down and click “Proceed.”

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Wired for 150

Primates have huge brains.  And one part of the brain, the neocortex, is remarkably larger in primates than in every other mammal.  The neocortex handles complex thought and reasoning.

The neocortex as a percent of total brain volume varies widely, even among primates.  For a while, it was thought that that was because some primates were just “smarter” than others, or the ones who had learned to use tools had developed that part of their brain.  It turns out that the proportionate size of the neocortex is most closely correlated with the number of other primates you know personally.

Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolutionary biologist postulates that because managing relationships is an extremely complex skill, the larger the group you live in, the larger the neocortex you require.  Think about it – if you are in a group of 4, you have 6 relationships to keep track of: the 3 you have with the others, and the 3 they have with each other.  If you live in a group of 20, there are 190.  So Mr. Dunbar crunched some numbers, and it turned out he’s right – for 38 types of primates, there is a high degree of alignment between the “neocortex ratio” and the size of communities those species tended to form.

So what happens when you run the neocortex ratio on Homo sapiens?  You get 147.8, which is commonly rounded to 150 and called, “Dunbar’s Number.”  There are plenty of examples where this has proven out – the size of prehistoric villages and primitive, remote villages today.  The Hutterites religious sect splits its communities when they reach 150.  Gore Associates, the company that makes Gore-Tex, always builds a new plant when the employees in one get to 150.  None of these things happen because they read about the Dunbar Number, it just “feels” right.

Up to 150 people, you can know everyone in the group, and even have a pretty good idea about how each of them feels about the others.  Beyond that, it’s too much, so people develop smaller groups — they become literally divisive.

So, shoot for 150 regular customers when you plan your bar.  If you start to get more than that, either make the club more exclusive, or open another location.

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Wet for 75 Years

In my last post, I referred to the Great Depression and the year 1932.  Oddly enough, the date of that post (Dec 5) is the 75th anniversary of the end of prohibition in the U.S. in 1933.  For 13 years, all through the roaring ’20s (ironically, the biggest partying decade of all time, with the possible exception of the ’70s), it was illegal to drink alcohol in the states.

Why would an intelligent, free, progressive nation make it a crime to enjoy a glass of wine, and mug of beer, or a dash of spirits?  Simple: over-reaction.  The same reason an intelligent, free, progressive nation would invade and occupy a country that posed them no threat, but let’s not go there.

Sometimes, when people drink, they drink too much.  Sometimes, when people have drunk too much, they say or do things they otherwise wouldn’t.  Often, the things they say or do are more funny or more insightful or more honest than if they were sober.  But sometimes, drunk people do mean, stupid or embarrassing things that they later regret.  Is this a valid reason for completely banning booze?  You might as well criminalize swimming because people occasionally drown.  Or pot, but let’s not go there either.

But there is a lesson here for bar owners.  If you let someone get so drunk that they are embarrassing themselves or making others uncomfortable, you are hurting your business in several ways.  Although you may have sold more drinks to that individual, and made more money, you have made your establishment one where poor behaviour is permitted (as I alluded to here), and therefore, eventually, a place people will avoid.  Even the person who got too drunk will probably avoid your spot.  The people he or she bothered certainly will.

There’s a reason why the phrase “cut him off” exists in bar parlance.  Don’t be afraid to do it, even if it costs a few dollars in booze sales.

ALERT!  BLATANT CHAUVINISM FOLLOWS!  To the 10 ladies in that photo, the only way you’re getting any is if the dude has serious beer goggles on.

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Where Were You in ‘32?

<rant>

Are you a big-3 American automobile manufacturer?  Are you suddenly faced with a huge inventory of gas-guzzling SUVs that no-one wants to buy anymore?  (Which is a curious phenomenon, now that gas is less expensive than it has been for years and shows no bottom – maybe people are finally getting serious about the environmental aspect?)  Are you asking your federal government for a $24 billion to save your skins?  Here’s the answer to your woes!

I wonder if they’re doing credit checks on the people who take advantage of this offer, or if it’s another sub-prime crisis in the making.  “Sorry about losing the house, honey, but look at this great new truck I got!”  Three months later: “Sorry about losing the truck, honey, but look at this massive federal deficit our children got!”

It took about 40 years for people to forget the lessons of the Great Depression and start using credit cards and other, progressively more inventive, ways to spend more money than they had.  That’s what fueled the roaring ’80s until the crash in ‘87.  Then people did the same thing, except with tech stocks in the ’90s, until the bubble burst.  And now the present sub-prime fiasco.  It has always been a case of too many people buying something which is going to decline in value with someone else’s money.  Which is exactly what Ford is offering you now.

</rant>

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When I worked at the Algonquin Hotel…

… in beautiful St. Andrews, NB, in the early ’80s, there was one spot that was the undisputed best place to party – a bar/restaurant called the Brass Bull.  The Algonquin is a seasonal establishment, opening in May and closing after Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.  Most of the 400 or so staff members are from out of town and live in 3 big dorms behind the hotel.  So it’s very much a party atmosphere.

Therefore, the Brass Bull was almost always full of 20-something people with tip-money in their pockets and binge-drinking on their minds.  It was a blast every night of the week.  I have some great memories of dancing the night away to Prince and the Police and Eurythmics.

Anyway, when we were in St Andrews last month whale watching, we went to the Brass Bull, which is now called The Gables, and the dance floor is now a family-friendly dining area.  It has completely changed the way it markets itself, and consequently, its clientele.

I spoke to the owner of the establishment (who was tending bar) about my nostalgic recollections of the old Brass Bull.  It turns out he used to work there during that time, and shortly after my summer there, actually bought into it and eventually became sole owner. 

He told me that things changed during that period – his younger crowd of customers stopped being gleeful drunks and started turning into nasty drunks.  After a while, he decided it wasn’t worth it any more, and turned the place into a restaurant around 1990 and it has remained that way.

He’s happy with his decision, but I have to wonder if he wasn’t surrendering in a way.  He let the customers control the “story” about what the Brass Bull was all about, instead of creating  the story and having customers self-select if they liked that story.  I’d like to think that he could have preserved the fun party-place, instead of throwing up his hands and letting a bad crowd run him out of business (or rather, into another business).

It reminds me of a story in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, about how the NYC subway was transformed from a very dangerous, crime-ridden atmosphere into the relatively pleasant place it is now, in a very short time.  They didn’t put thousands of cops down there, or put security cameras everywhere, or any other kind of force majeure.  They did two things – eliminated graffiti, and arrested everyone who jumped the turnstile instead of paying.  They created a story of a place where small acts of bad behaviour would not be tolerated, and this in turn created an atmosphere where people were much less likely to perform greater crimes.

If the Brass Bull had handled its marketing/story better, could it have remained a fun bar?

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Word coined: Advertainment

In yesterday’s post, I linked to an entertaining video that I thought you might enjoy.  I don’t feel bad about that, even though I was essentially telling you to watch an advertisement for Seagate, the maker of hard drives and other storage devices.

Granted, the blatantly promotional content is at the very end, and only lasts for a few seconds, and could even be interpreted as a thank you from Seagate employees who are grateful to their employer for letting them have fun on company time.

But it IS an ad, developed by the creative agency Sniper Twins.  If you check their site, you’ll see that they are already producing their next geek-rap video, and are looking for a cell-phone company to sponsor them.

I think this is smart.  First of all, by doing the creative before they have a client, they have pure control over the content, which probably makes for a better (and therefore more viral) product.  And I also think it’s smart for the sponsors – 99.9% of people who watch the Seagate video don’t give a rat’s patooty about hard drives, but the 0.1% that do just might buy something from them.  It’s the same model as TV ads: you watch something entertaining for a while, then they insert a pitch.  The trouble with TV is that: the ads are intrusive in that they interrupt your entertainment; the pitch:entertainment ratio is 4:15; and buying airtime is frickin’ expensive. In the Seagate video, the pitch is at the end; the pitch:entertainment ratio is about 1:50; and the broadcast cost is ZERO (unless they paid a site like this to get the ball rolling).

I was so proud of myself for coming up with a new word for this phenomenon: “advertainment.”  But of course, it’s already out there – 133,000 Google hits, and even a blog by that name.

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Watch This Video

It’s hilarious, especially if you know (even a little) about computers.

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What’s Your Secret

Seth had a post a few days ago about the Catch 22 of sharing your favorite things with other people.  It could be your favourite store, Web site, hairdresser, nightclub, physician, mechanic, restaurant, whatever.  If you tell your friends about it, it could become too popular and you could get squeezed out, or have your experience downgraded by overcrowding, or have the price of the thing go up.  All bad.  But if no-one promotes it, it could cease to exist – go out of business, move to a different market, or change to attract more business.  Also bad.

Seth concludes with:

It’s simple, I think. In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

• If you don’t like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change

and

• If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business.

We get what we promote.

Remember that when you design your own company’s promotion tactics.  Make it easy for people to spread the word about you if they like you.  If you own a bar, try giving free drink coupons to your best (happiest) customers.  But write their names on them, and they’re not allowed to use them for themselves.  And they only become valid the day after they’re issued, and expire a week after that.  So your customer will give it to someone else, who will come in themselves; or the customer will have to bring a buddy when he comes back.

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