I've written another article for Wisconsin Technology Network in the ongoing series in the Buzz Networks series of columns. The article "Nowhere to hide: buyer behavior in a connected world" discusses the impact of the Internet on buyer behavior.
Paul Gibler
Earlier this week I was one of the keynote presenters at the 2nd annual National Conference on University and College Conference Centers. The topic of my talk was what Fortune magazine is calling Conference 2.0. For these Conference Centers being able to add value to their University clients as well as for outside users of their centers is something that is being sought. The use of web 2.0 tools like social network groups on LinkedIn, Photo Sharing on Flickr, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts etc. are all part of creating engagement among conference attendess and making meeting planners happy. As Seth Godin says, you don't want your attendees to say "I flew all the way here for this".
The slides that I used at the presentation were posted on SlideShare and are available here for your reference.
I write two blogs - the Web Chef's e-Bytes and PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques. There are occasionally topics that merit consideration in both blogs. Today I've posted on YouTube video conversion and insertion in PPT presentations, a topic you might find interesting. Here's the link to the posting.
If you have other topics of interest, please drop me an e-mail or post in this blogs comments section.
Paul Gibler
Are you interested in animation? If so, you might want to take a look at MyToons.com, a social network for people interested in the animation industry. There could be potential applications for corporate presenters looking to "spice" up their presentations with an appropriate animation from one of these very talented animators.
Here's a recent animation "Awareness" that uses claymation that was posted on the site.
Today's my birthday.
Yup. I've turned the ripe old age of 52.
I'm proud to have been an early adopter of the web starting with my first exposure to its potential when I was introduced to AOL in ~1993 and when I later worked on a first generation corporate website in 1996. It is amazing to see how far things have come since that day. At the time, I worked for Ohmeda, a medical equipment company, long since gone, after first being acquired by Instrumentarium, a Finnish company and later by behemoth GE Healthcare. While working on that first generation web site, with a Washington, DC-based vendor, I took the time to learn the basics of html. I can remember having to beg for a second phone line in my cublicle so that I could dial in to the Internet. At the time, this was a rare request and considered somewhat unorthodox within the organization.
I can also remember how we took a novel approach to organizing our information assets. Instead of presenting the overall multi-divisional organization by its legal boundaries and component parts, we organized the web site by looking at the products and services and allocating them based on the audiences that they served - pharmacists, anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, neonatalogists, hospital administrators, etc. This re-engineering of the content was quite a struggle given the divisional barriers that were based on product technologies rather than customer type. Needless to say the web site was launched and was considered to be a success for its time.
Fast forward to today - I've continued to learn and share my perspectives on the continuing evolution of the Internet through this blog, as a teacher, as a consultant, as a professional speaker and as a frequent columnist. I hope that these insights and resources provide you with additional tools to continue your development.
I'm not only an e-marketing consultant and speaker, but also a marketing consultant that looks at an organization's approach to connecting with customers at all touchpoints throughout the customer engagement and retention process.
One of the dismaying trends that I have seen happening in much of America is the adoption of a police state approach to the purchasing fullfillment process. Taking their cue from the Federal Government with their intrusion on privacy; retailers and hotel chains continue to intrude on American privacy and stretch the limits of good customer relations.
Here in Wisconsin, we see this with the ill-advised decision by Copps Grocery Stores and SuperValu to require their cashiers to see the government issued photo IDs of ALL their customers regardless of age when they are buying cigarettes or alcohol. This ridiculous policy made me laugh when I saw an 80 year old woman being carded for a pack of cigarettes. Needless to say, I've written to the company (never to hear a word back) and continue to make my protest strong by refusing to purchase any liquor at Copps; a bonus for Steve's Liquor, Neil's Liquor and Cost Plus, three retailers that realize carding a 50+ year old doesn't make much sense.
Today, I faced another "carding" when I purchased kitty litter at Pet World. The price was right given their $2 off an over-priced bag of litter, but their customer contact approach left much to be desired. The clerk told me she had been trained to card people because credit cards could be stolen. I can tell you this, if I stole a credit card, Pet World, would definitely NOT be the first place I'd go to rake in the booty. Plus my signature is all over the place, so her visual inspection comparing items from my wallet has about as much validity in verifying a match as flipping a coin. To top things off, she didn't try to see if my signature on the receipt matched either my driver's license or my credit card.
The third example I have is during a trip that I took a couple of years ago for a client where I was making a presentation in Little Rock, AR. The client had pre-paid the hotel room and I arrived very late to the Holiday Inn. I told them who I was and was asked for my photo ID to prove that I was me at my 11:00 PM arrival time. Welcome to the USSR. You can have a credit card but the photo ID is an intrusion. The clerk had the last word by charging me on my credit card for the pre-paid room requiring me to have to spend time with the client getting things ironed out before I got paid.
In another trip for a client, the desk clerk at the hotel I had been walked to (another story of lousy customer service - overbooking room) insisted they needed to make a copy of my drivers license for their records or else I wouldn't be able to stay in their hotel. I was livid and wrote to the chain never to hear from them.
Are these examples of a customer service orientation?
I've got a few presentations scheduled for the next couple of months, some PowerPoint related and others looking at e-business and technology. Among the presentations currently scheduled:
Looking for a speaker or trainer?
Please contact me for one of my standard or custom presentations on a broad range of marketing and communications topics.
Paul Gibler
the Web Chef
