WayTooEarly

Gotcha

Monday night (Jan 29) was one of New York's great networking events, the Genesys Dinner, which Jim Kolleger holds each year prior to the Information Industry Summit, Aside from great conversation, some nice words about Esther Dyson, including a plaintive plea for just one more PC Forum (not happening, alas), the evening ended with an important five minutes from  Mark Walsh.

Mark has transitioned from the straight business world (Verticalnet, etc.) into the more political sphere. He was one of the key players behind Air America, the liberal radio talk network, and is now a commentator on MSNBC and XM.  He was decrying the movement in our political society toward sensationalizing "gotcha" moments. 

George Allen's Macaca moment was just one example, and the pouncing of the press on small individual statements, made in settings that thirty years ago would never have been reported, has led to a mean spirited trashing of people.

But Mark's key point is that in marketing, politics leads business.  Be prepared to see the "Swift Boating" of GM, on a site like www.gmisevil (not a real site I hope), paid for anonymously by one of their competitors. Smear tactics have become one of the unsavory and unfortunate weapons in the arsenal of political candidates. Alas,the Lincoln Douglass debates are no more. While the unexamined life may not be worth living, the fully examined life - each and every minute logged on cell phone cameras and uploaded, may be even worse.  And if businesses try to enhance themselves not with better products, but by trashing their competitors, we'll all suffer.

I think Mark is right that the "Gotcha" blogging and journalism will lead to more divisiveness and bitterness. In keeping with this blog's philosophy, Mark is hopefully a little too early with respect to corporate marketers, I'd like to think we can still avoid some of it.

There are ways of pointing out problems in a constructive way - see Mark Hurst's great www.thisisbroken.com site that let's you post stuff, and posts  FIXED buttons when the vendors fix things.

Perhaps a way too early warning will help - and examining one's own behavior.

Information May Be Free - But You'll Pay

I've always admired Fred Wilson's style of thinking about issues.  As the uber venture blogger, he's made the decision to live a largely blogged life, so we readers know about his musical tastes, his family, his travels and his thoughts about politics.

His latest talk, given to the Information Industry Summit in NY yesterday, is an excellent view of how to make money if information is really free. We're trying to do this with some of our companies at First Round and Idealab as well, but I've rarely seen it articulated this clearly.

See the pdf for the slides and his comments on the Union Square Ventures blog. Highly recommended.

Lenovo is Setting The Table

At Fred wilson's suggestion, I just finished reading Danny Meyer's Setting The Table, a wonderful book about his management philosophy in creating a number of New York's great restaurants, including Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and the Shake Shack.  Since my office was on the Gramercy Tavern block, I have had many a tasty lunch there.  The book is really about the difference between service and hospitality, and building a culture that engenders good will with employees, customers, the community and investors. Done right, as he has, it leads to a virtuous circle.

I arrived here at CES Las Vegas yesterday afternoon, and realized soon after that I had left my Lenovo T60 power supply at home.  I love the T60, and kept trying to figure out how I could live for 2 days without it. The Blackberry would show me some of my email, but it would be hard to get my thrice daily crossword puzzle fix, and even harder to blog about CES.  Since the T60 supply has a different connector than the old IBM T and X series, none of my colleagues power supplies had cables that would fit.  I looked in the CES directory to see where the Lenovo booth was, and, to my surprise, there was none.  They had decided not to exhibit.

In this funk, I attended the ShowStopper event, a non-sanctioned, but fun party where sixty or so companies each have a 2 foot long table to show their wares to the media.  There is of course, free flowing drinks and food as well.  Right there on the left was a small Lenovo display.  So I went over and asked if I could plug my machine into one of their supplies to at least get some power.  Without hesitation, the Lenovo representative said, "Wait one minute, maybe we can do better." an almost exact quote from the Danny Meyer method of dealing with customer issues.  She returned a minute later and handed me a power supply with a smile, "glad you're a loyal customer."  I have been, and certainly will continue to be. Any company that has its staff focused on great customer experience deserves my business, and yours.