Laura's Blog

Still just a bunch of monkeys?

According to the Economist, yes. At the risk of violating several of Polina’s axioms of blog popularity ;) , I am not going to write about Google, and I am going to recommend you read an article (http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176775) from last week’s Economist about Facebook, primates and something called the “Dunbar number”. In case you don’t like reading articles, the point, in a nutshell, is that as humans we are cognitively limited to about 148 (round it up to 150) as a stable social network. According to the article, “Many institutions, from neolithic villages to the maniples of the Roman army, seem to be organised around the Dunbar number. Because everybody knows everybody else, such groups can run with a minimum of bureaucracy.” And now comes the interesting part…The Economist asked Facebook’s “in-house socialist” (seriously) to see if our networks on facebook are in line with this result…no surprise that the average number of friends is 120. Also in line with the Dunbar research is the fact that despite these legions of “friends” we only really interact (in digital terms this would be one-to-one messaging, email, comments, etc.) with a much smaller number of people. So, as it is in real-life, so it is on the facebook…we like to have a wide social circle (150 of our closest friends!) but actually only have solid relationships with far fewer people. I can certainly understand that, and I’m sure we’ve all found despite the rapidly multiplying facebook networks of the past almost two years in business school (wow.) that it is only really possible to maintain so many close friendships within a broadening circle. This closing line of the article is the kicker: “Put differently, people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances”.” Ha!! What do you think - check out your facebook page - how many friends do you have and how many people do you regularly message or leave comments for? Most social monkey wins!!!

I ♥ e-commerce

Based on this week’s discussion in class about e-commerce, it seems to me that my husband’s comment that “no one loves shopping online as much as you do” may not have been as much of an exaggeration as I otherwise would have claimed. So, I thought I would devote today’s post to online shopping, and offer some observations and lessons learned from a customer perspective. My first foray into online shopping was when I had just moved to Washington, D.C. after university. Being Canadian, I have an embedded inferiority complex about the U.S. and this was only reinforced by our inability to import clothing from the U.S. without getting slapped with huge fees from Canadian customs. So the ability to happily order whatever I wished from J.Crew and have it show up two days later without an extra bill for the privilege of it having crossed an international border was a revelation. It has always been my experience that international transactions are more difficult, time-consuming and costly than those within national borders… Lesson #1 Despite the innovations of the internet, the realities of international borders make it more expensive and inconvenient for international customers to buy across borders. It seems to me that both sales and delivery are more easily executed within jurisdictions than between them. (Why do you think so many eBay sellers only want to sell to people in their home country?) It is possible that I got a bit carried away with the online shopping after that first purchase, and inevitably ended up with some less than perfect items arriving at my doorstep. So the next, somewhat obvious, revelation was that when you don’t try before you buy, the clothes may not fit, the colour may be different than what you expected, or you might just change your mind. What now? Lesson #2 Returning unwanted items can be enough to put a girl off online shopping forever. Those companies who make it as hassle free as possible are most likely to get your repeat business. I am a huge fan of the zappos.com “free shipping both ways” policy, but I realize this isn’t feasible for all businesses. For others, things such as a pre-printed label (yours to use for a fee off of the refund) makes the process easier and much less of a hassle. At the most basic level, a full refund policy (not exchange or store credit) takes more risk out of online shopping, and is more likely to induce purchase. It was sometime after this revelation that I moved into a much smaller apartment building with no security guard or other helpful person to sign for and hang on to packages while I was at work. The specter of having to trundle out to some distribution depot in the suburbs (without a car) was enough to curb my enthusiasm for online shopping altogether until one day my boss had a full set of Italian pottery delivered to our office (long story), which I felt was a clear go-ahead on having my things delivered there as well. This was fine since it was a small office and very informal, but the problem of the actual delivery does linger. Many of the online grocery shops in the UK seem to have picked up on this with the one-hour delivery windows, etc., but until the majority of delivery services can offer something more specific (not to mention convenient) than 9-5, Monday-Friday… Lesson #3 The actual delivery of your purchase can be a serious hassle unless you (or someone else) is around during the day and able to sign for packages. Many companies are finding new an innovative way to comes to grips with these challenges, and are enhancing the online shopping experience in such a way as to minimize the downside for customers. If you’re not an online shopper, I’d urge you to give it a try and see if you agree with these observations…for the experienced among you, what are your top lessons?

Is Google your one and only?

Based on our previous discussions in class, we are all heavy Google users….and based on the stats we’ve seen, we’re not alone in that. Along these lines, a recent New York Times article, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/22digi.html?ref=technology , talks about Google’s growing dominance in the United States and the potential for anti-trust concerns to rise in parallel with it. The article references a comScore statistic showing that Google’s market share is now at 63 percent as compared to Yahoo!’s 21 percent. This has some obvious implications for the competitors who are still standing, but also of course for users who may become increasingly locked in as other options disappear. The article notes that “Google maintains that its lead in the Web search market is tenuous, saying that with a simple click of a mouse, a user’s loyalty could evaporate at any moment.” That may be true, but it seems to me that because Google isn’t just search anymore, in many ways, its not actually as simple as “a click of the mouse” to move away. Many of us have gmail accounts, and I certainly use Google Maps as well as Google Docs on a regular basis. My homepage is also Google. I’ve chosen all of these things because I think they provide the best service to meet various needs, so in one sense, I don’t mind if Google dominates in search - and perhaps eventually other areas - if its the best. Of course, the implications for both competitors and users are broad: but in the internet era, when users vote with their mouse - or with their willingness to provide personal information, photos and intimate details of their lives (ahem, facebook) what role do and should regulators play? Has the web changed how we look at dominance and should it change how regulators view it? What do you think?

Does this make you want to buy a chocolate bar? How about a mug?

We’ve discussed the Cadbury gorilla in the past, but this week I saw a new (and possibly more peculiar) Cadbury ad involving two kids and their crazy eyebrows.  (Check it out online at: http://www.aglassandahalffullproductions.com/#/paddock/portrait ) 

I actually came across it when I was uploading some pictures to photobox and they had a promotion where you can get your own Cadbury Eyebrow mug. 

(Want one?  http://www.photobox.co.uk/shop/cadbury )

Its got me thinking about viral marketing and how it has changed in the past few years.  Specifically, the fact that Cadbury and Photobox have decided freakathon (their word, not mine) eyebrows are a great fad and they should create spoof mugs to sell.  The websites link together and you can view the whole ad on the photobox site.  

This is in contrast to some of the earlier viral marketing which seems to me to have been more authentically participative.  My personal favorite was the Dove Real Beauty campaign example.  An ad agency in Toronto created an ad called evolution, which I really encourage you to watch:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U) 

There are two interesting points about this to me.  One, it was released first on youtube – Tim Piper with Ogilvy posted it and it became a viral sensation.  It was the first time something like this had been done, and was hugely successful for Dove, and of course for Ogilvy.  The free PR alone more than covered the cost of producing the video.  

The second interesting point in this context is that lots of people then created parodies.  This one, entitled “slob evolution” is my personal favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-kSZsvBY-A&feature=related 

The Cadbury ads got me thinking about this because while they have been successful virally, the fact that they’ve pre-created the opportunity to have a “freakathon eyebrow” mug suggests that they were always trying for this to be viral rather than consumers deciding that the ad was funny and creating “bootleg” mugs or t-shirts or whatever. 

To me, the fact that the company has set this up makes it somewhat less authentically viral.  What do you think?  Have you created your own eyebrow freakathon mug?

Personally, I like the gorilla.

An ad-free Google search?

Following on the discussion in class today, and in a possibly futile attempt to prove I’m not nuts, I’ve looked into the question as to whether Google would ever show you an ad-free search result page.  According to their website (http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html):

6. You can make money without doing evil.

Google is a business. The revenue the company generates is derived from offering its search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on Google and on other sites across the web. However, you may have never seen an ad on Google. That’s because Google does not allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they’re relevant to the results page on which they’re shown. So, only certain searches produce sponsored links above or to the right of the results. Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find.

So…does this mean that its possible to search for a term which would sometimes have an adword and sometimes not?

Yes, it is.  I’ve tried from a bunch of different computers and with different search terms, and I believe it proves that Google does in fact choose NOT to show ads even when advertisers do have keyword searches set on them.  The images follow below, but I’m including two examples of keyword searches.  What do you think?  How often so you search Google without seeing an AdWords placement? 

Here are a couple.