Mindshare Marketing

I don’t know if you realize this or not, but we seem to be in the midst of the second dotcom boom.  Everyone has (or can easily have) their own website, most brick-and-mortar organizations are mirrored online, and now the organization that manages domain extensions like .com and .org (ICANN) has announced they will be relaxing their regulations and allowing ANYONE to apply for their own top level domain extension.

I own several dotcom addresses.  As a matter of fact, I even own a dotus address.  I purchased these in the hopes that, someday, I would be able to sell them for a profit.  From the looks of things, this won’t be likely.  Why would someone pay me for “SmarterBranding.com” when they could register “Smarter.Branding” instead?  No dotcom to confuse people, and they could ’sublet’ sites like “Better.Branding,” “Successful.Branding,” and “LearnAbout.Branding” to make even more of a profit!

For those of you still having trouble understanding the issue, compare it to real estate.  Right now, all of the ownable land in the US is claimed.  You either have to buy or sublet from a private landowner - in this market, usually at a loss to them.  The ICANN announcement would be akin to the US government announcing that anyone could instead just take up a chunk of real estate in any national park, for pennies to the acre.  Current land owners and home sellers would be devastated!

Am I upset about ICANN’s decision?  No.  For all we know, my application for .Branding might be the one accepted!  What top level domain would you choose for yourself?  For your company?

We have an in-ground pool in the back yard.  It’s a great thing to have on 95+ degree summer days, particularly when we’re trying to save money to keep fueling the cars.  In Oregon, though, the other 364 days of the year (yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much…) make maintaining a pool quite a hassle.

Our pool has two drains that feed into the pool filter - the “main drain” on the bottom and the “skimmer” at the top.  The skimmer is one of the most important parts of the pool because it keeps the surface nice and clean.  It’s also the drain we plug the vacuum hose into so we can clean the bottom of the pool.

Well, the skimmer’s broken.  It actually has been for some time.

We noticed last year that it wasn’t getting very much suction.  As a matter of fact, it ran dry last month and burned up our pump.  Obviously, there’s a hole in the line somewhere letting in air.  Rather than fixing it when we first noticed, though, we invented a series of steps to take when turning on the skimmer so we can vacuum.

1. With the skimmer’s valve closed, turn on the filter and let water in from the main drain
2. Once the filter has built up enough pressure to circulate, slowly open the skimmer valve
3. Wait a few minutes to be sure the filter maintains pressure … if not, close the skimmer valve and start again
4. If there is enough pressure, very slowly close the valve to the main drain
5. Wait a few more minutes to see if the filter maintains pressure
6. Start vacuuming, but check the filter every 5 minutes to make sure it doesn’t lose pressure

When we’re not vacuuming, we obviously leave the skimmer closed.  It makes for an interesting day when you want to use the pool.  Spend an hour cleaning it, 10 minutes actually swimming, and then another hour trying to seal the cover back up to save cleaning time the next time.

I tried cleaning the pool yesterday and our ritual didn’t work.  Instead, the filter blew a bunch of sediment back into the pool and actually made things worse.  Now with an ineffective filter, broken skimmer, solid layer of sludge on the bottom of the pool, and shimmering slime on the surface we’ve decided there’s a problem.  I spent almost three hours today digging between the skimmer and the pump house only to discover that the pipe to the skimmer is under the concrete surrounding the pool rather than conveniently under the dirt.

In summary: we knew there was a problem last summer, but waited until this summer to investigate it.  Now with a hot weekend (and guests!) coming over this weekend we have an unusable pool and a large excavation project on our hands.

Your business is probably very much like a pool - it takes hard work to run properly and involved just enough complexity to keep you and your management team consistently on their toes.  Take a minute to ask yourself: when you see a problem, do you create a quick-fix work-around to ignore it, or do you invest time and energy as appropriate to repair it immediately?

Most businesses look back on their mistakes in hopes to avoid the same pitfalls in the future.  My recommendation is to not look so far back that you gloss over minute issues today that could potentially swell up to inconvenient delays and costly strategic maneuvers tomorrow.

Does your “pool” have a leaky pipe?  How long are you going to wait before you fix it?

Yesterday, I was sitting in a coffee shop chatting when I ran into the most interesting issue.  The woman at the table next to us was on the phone, and her conversation became a little heated.  Since it was a personal call, she decided to excuse herself from the shop and finish the call outside.  Turning to our table, she asked how long we’d be there and if we’d be willing to watch and “make sure no one runs off with my coffee.”

“Sure, we’ll be here for a while.”  Then she ran off with her phone to her ear out the door, leaving her coffee … and brand new laptop computer … sitting behind on the table.  We stared for a minute, then confirmed with one another, “she said to watch her coffee, right?”

The west coast undoubtedly a coffee culture.  Home to Starbucks (Seattle), Seattle’s Best (Seattle), Stumptown Roasters (Portland), and Peet’s Coffee (Berkeley), we take our brewing very seriously.  It’s no wonder that many of us frown on $4 gas prices while unflinchingly holding out our credit cards for the daily $5 mocha.  When people give their morning cup-of-joe priority over their computer, though, it makes me wonder if the coffee is … well … underpriced.

Back in January, I started talking about the difference between “luxuries” and “necessities.”  Most people use the term “commodities,” but I choose “necessities” instead for two reasons: 1) To avoid confusion with commodities markets and 2) for sake of the definition below.  This is a perfect example of two products switching categories.

A luxury is a product carrying a high margin that is in no way needed (or thought to be needed) for everyday life.  Luxuries offer consumers momentary escapes from reality, allowing them to believe they live in a higher, more care-free tax bracket that can afford to buy luxury goods as if they were piled in the discount bin.  Jewelry, sports cars, and high-end perfume all fall into this category - arguably, your life would be unchanged if any of these products were removed from it.

A necessity is a product with a razor-thin margin that is absolutely necessary for maintaining your current standard of living.  Necessities are often taken for granted and included as line-items in a monthly budget.  Food, transportation, and living space are good examples of this category - keep in mind that these represent bare minimums for a specific standard of living … a Honda Civic could be considered a “necessity” for a middle class household, but a Jaguar-while still providing transportation-would not.

For many in earlier generations, coffee was a necessity of a fast-paced 50+ hour workweek.  It was the only way to keep ahead of the eight ball while working from sun up to sun down and still maintaining a family life.  Computers, on the other hand, were reserved for the very rich or the academics because their practical use in daily life had yet to be established.  Coffee cost pennies to make, and about just as much to buy (or was provided for free) while computers were outlandishly expensive and impossible to afford.

Today, computers are priced “competitively.”  Bargain-basement brands carry the same mechanics as designer (Apple?) ones and are still relatively close in price on the store shelf.  They are mass-produced and can be purchased from a distance (online) in bulk.  Many people point out daily that their workplace would collapse without computers and their lives (remember, we’re talking about specific standards of living) would come to a screeching halt.

Coffee, is a different story.  We pay more for coffee than we do for bottled water or even gasoline.  An espresso drink is hand-made to your custom order while you wait, in person, for the barista to finish.  When strapped for cash, one of the first things to be eliminated from the budget (or at least downsized to a “tall”) is the daily “venti” cappuccino.

Which of these two products in the luxury in today’s market?  Which one is the necessity?  How exactly do you think they swapped categories?  Is there a way your “necessity” brand can shift into the “luxury” market?  What effect would that change have on your bottom line?