The Long Tail and behavioural economics

I've just started reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson and it's a stunning read as far as I've got.


For anyone who doesn't have it on their bookshelf (for shame!) it's a look at the changing world of online retail; where niche products deliver greater profits than traditional popular 'hit' products due to the reduced cost of supplying a vast array of goods.

In doing this Anderson considers retail right back from local stores through catalogue purchasing up until the arrival, and subsequent monopoly, of the supermarket chains. At each stage in this retail evolution the choice available to consumers multiplied hundred-fold up until the era of iTunes and Amazon when shoppers are able to select from a range of literally millions of products. This will then beget a broader range as consumers choices become increasingly niche.

So the lesson to be learnt it would appear, is that consumers will spend more money given a greater choice of products.

Well, a recent article in the Guardian would massively disagree. It looks at the negative impact of supermarkets providing an increasingly niche slection of mainstream goods, such as jam and cheese. The article discusses how choice can actually inhibit consumers spending.

And to attack the cliche that people always want more choice, he deploys ... jam.

"Economists know all about choosing jam," he says, ambling down an aisle with 73 varieties. He describes an experiment where academics set up a tasting booth in a store in California. On some days they put out six kinds of jam, on others 24. When the booth had 24 types, it was mobbed - "there was more colour, more excitement". But it was the sales that were truly remarkable: with six jams on show, 30% of customers bought a jar; when 24 were out, only 3% did. "Jams are hardly complex things, but people saw 24 stacked together and thought: 'I have no idea how to deal with this.'"

I'm not sure The Long Tail is likely to be undermined by the work of the behavioural economists in the article but it's certainly food for thought.

A great quote

I went to a comedy gig in Brighton on Sunday. The guy on stage was someone I've posted about before; a genius called Daniel Kitson. Anyway his material is really cleverly interwoven, which makes it incredibly difficult to repeat back but one snippet that jumped out at me was this:

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions but, although no-one talks about it, so is the road to Heaven, which tells us nothing except that good intentions are a great material for paving metaphorical roads."

A presentation what I wrote

Career2.0

From: DomW

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The cycle of agency love

I was in a taxi with a colleague recently, talking all about our agency and previous agencies that we'd worked at. We talked of the similarities between agencies and the differences; what compelled us to stick around and what forced us to leave.

Over the course of my short career, I've been at two or three agencies and the one thing that fluctuates more than any other isn't the processes, the style of management or the salaries; it's the love and attention passed onto the employees.

HR is a massively important part of agency life and yet so many PR firms don't appear to factor it in as an important role. I've worked at agencies where there hasn't been an HR person, or where the role has been carried out by the FD. I've worked at agencies where the HR person has been such a divisive factor that staff left in droves and I've worked at agencies where that same role was filled by a member of staff so beloved that when they resigned, staff cried as if their mums had died.

I've spoken with a few PR people about updating their agency websites - making them more Web2.0eey - and having staff profiles on the site, or allowing employees to write on the agency blog under their own name. The vast majority were wholly against it on the basis that their staff would get cherry-picked by bigger or more interesting firms. What a pile of crap.

Recruiters don't turn people from being dedicated agency staff into plyable commission fodder. When people are tapped up by other agencies it is because either it was the right time for them to move on or because they already had one foot out of the door. Agencies are totally in charge of their employee churn. If you want to keep your staff, show them some love and they'll love you right back.

Of course salaries play a part, especially when you're getting to parent age, but an agency that looks after its staff will make the decision to leave for financial reasons an incredibly hard one for its staff to make.


It's more than that though, employee engagement has a serious impact on the bottom line...it has to.... surely? To demonstrate this, I drew a little diagram - yes another one - showing how HR feeds into the agency cycle of love.




The cycle begins with the agency account team showing the client some love, this isn't limited to - but probably should be - love of the non-tactile kind.

The client's cockles are warmed by the demonstration of affection from the client team. Not being fully briefed on how to respond to such emotions the client reciprocates with the only kind of love that MDs respond to; the kind you can bank.

The MD, unused to clients upping their PR budgets, gives their HR manager a nice cosy hug to thank them for pulling together and training such a clever PR team.

Finally, the HR manager - radiating with love - makes each of the client team a steaming mug of cocoa, implements a weekly duvet day and raises bonuses by five per cent.

The account team - who feel like valued members of staff - work like stink to keep the client happy and the agency thrives...

Anyway that's my theory...thoughts?

The music-video long tail

Two cracking videos I haven't see in ages that I came across via the wonders of YouTube....





....enjoy!

The flow of client crap

I heard a brilliant explanation of the way that crap gets distributed across PR account teams when delivered by clients and thought I'd plagiarise it, with a couple of additions and amends on my part.

Apologies for the rough-and-ready sketch below but without it my explanation wouldn't make much sense.

You'll probably need to blow this up to see the full artistic detail.

1. So the client is pissed, really pissed as it happens, and their righteous indignation instigates a an avalanche of crap flowing downhill towards the agency

2. The crap avalanche hits the MD first (a), but the MD figures, "I don't have to put up with this crap!"...and the avalanche rolls on by

3. The flow, which by this stage has picked up quite some momentum, smacks into the Account Director (b) but the AD isn't able to step out of the way quick enough and is left covered in a thin veneer of crap. Incensed by this the AD adds a little crap of their own into the mix as it flows down to the layer below.

4. As the avalanche descends into the Account Manager's gully (c), created by the Crest of Ignorance on the other side, the crap has nowhere to go and the levels rise until the AM is up to their eyeballs in crap.

5. The Account Executive (d), protected by the Crest of Ignorance, is able to shelter from the avalanche - until the crap they've been storing in the Cave of Unreported Issues (e) begins to ferment and is smelt by the AM above.

6. The vicious smell emanating both from the pool of crap in the gully and the fermented crap below sends the AM into a fury - causing them to jump up and down in frustration on the weak soil underfoot.

7. The weakened soil eventually gives way and the AE is showered with the accumulated weight of crap. And the best thing...they never even see it coming!

8. The sensitive eco-system eventually recovers from this natural disaster and order is restored..for another 20 minutes at least.