HDTV: Cheap

I'm beginning to understand why Circuit City is going out of business. I was there yesterday with about 1,000 other people who dropped by to pick the bones of the erstwhile electronics retailer.

It had been a long time since I'd been there. Not because of the selection; I think most retailers have exactly the same stuff, in similar price ranges. I never went to Circuit City because it was generally an unpleasant experience. The store is sort of dark and it is laid out funny. A cross between old and new, sort of 1980's RadioShack meets 2005 BestBuy.

Yesterday, for probably the first time ever, the parking lot was full. I entered the store and saw a line of customers waiting to check out with all sorts of merchandise in their carts and in their arms.

(Kudos to the Circuit City employees working yesterday who couldn't have been more polite or helpful.)

I stood in line with my bargain under my arm (a 19" television that weighed about 7 lbs. - amazing!). I was there for about 15 minutes before I realized that: a) there were only two cashiers working, and b) the line was not moving AT ALL.

So then I began to notice that each transaction took 4 to 5 minutes. Four to five minutes to scan, swipe, sign and pay for each and every transaction. What the ... ? There was a lot of scanning and keystroking and talking. A lot.

When it was finally my turn, I saw that this was the most manual-labor-intensive checkout process I've seen from a modern retailer in a long, long time. A scanning gun must be used. More keystroking. An ID is inspected with each credit card (that's good, I think). A phone number must be given. A street address and ZIP code must be given. The paper register receipt had to be manually slid under a thin strip of plastic before I could sign the credit card receipt. The receipt then was pulled out from under the plastic signing pad, and the register tape had to be manually stamped, twice, with an inky stamp that said something-or-other.

It was all coming back to me. I remembered exactly the same process the last time I was there, which was Christmas, 2004. Nothing had changed.

Why would a customer subject themselves to this if they didn't have to? It seems minor, but it's really a pain. And you could just go somewhere else (Best Buy, Target, Amazon) and get the same merchandise for a lot less hassle.

I subjected myself to it in order to get a Sharp HDTV for $260. But that's the only reason.

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What is News? (And why isn't it what I think it should be?)

I think this is something that everyone thinks from time to time. Especially with the proliferation of media outlets: it seems any flunky can get his own talk show and any soap box is good enough to televise.

This morning, I was having a discussion about what constitutes news with someone who thinks it strange that the Chicago papers gave front page treatment to the deteriorating economy pre-election; now that the election is over, the Chicago papers are running front page stories about President-elect Obama's family members and his choice of advisors.

When I was in journalism school, more than 20 years ago, one of the first things we learned were the five things that constituted “news.”

Timeliness, significance, proximity, prominence, and human interest were the five. And the stories that meet those five criteria will vary depending upon the media outlet, the location, the readership, etc. Proximity is a big one: meaning a story that is either geographically “close” to the readers or a story that has special significance for most of the readers of a publication.

So, for the Chicago papers and Chicago readers, the Obama girls and the Obama cabinet positions meet all five of the standards for a local audience, most of whom are not c-level execs. Many of them probably fall into the 250,000 people who showed up downtown on Tuesday. Hence, the front page treatment of Malia and Sasha and Rahm.

However, today's Wall Street Journal’s above-the-fold headlines are these:

“Global Push to Beat Economic Downturn”
“Hedge Fund Selling Puts New Stress on Market”
“A Snowblower Maker Braces For Slump’s Blizzard of Woe”

Those articles meet the five criteria for the WSJ readers, many of whom are c-level execs or business-owners, people who are definitely interested in the economy before anything else.

None of this implies that coverage is impartial in any media outlet. The days of any media outlet being impartial are over. Every publication writes for its own readers; and we, as readers, seek out the publications that please us, interest us or meet our own standards, and we read them. It’s called custom publishing, baby.

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Keywords for Life

What are your keywords?

I've spent the better part of the last few days brainstorming keywords for the www.imaginepub.com website in an effort to boost our search engine optimization, or SEO. It's part of the way that search engines, such as Google, find a website and list it/rank it.

The whole point of keyword selection is to think about how your customers or your audience would search for products, services or information that you provide. Sound easy? Not so much. You're faced with the fact that a lot of other companies already may have optimized their own websites around keywords/phrases that you'd like to use.

To use a fishing analogy: You cast a wide net; then you dump out most of the fish that may belong to someone else or are too small to keep anyway.

Then, you work with what's left: Keywords that accurately describe your offering, which also are not used by a bunch of your competitors, which also happen to be words/phrases that your potential customers actually search on.

I'm totally into this project.

But I started thinking: what would my own keywords be? Michelle O'Hagan's keywords?

What would yours be?

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Viral Marketing - Don't Vote

I just came across this video. Titled Please Don’t Vote - Tell 5 Friends, its content is clever, funny, urgent and--best of all--relevant. It also contains no fewer than three calls to action.

It is the definition of viral marketing.

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