Yearly Archives: 2009

Non-American health care

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Good old American health care is all I’ve ever known. I remember when the family doctor made house calls. I think I even remember when the insurance company existed to help us (but that could have just been a dream).

We can’t really call what’s happening a national “debate” on health care — more of a national shriek– but there are those who think we have the best health care in the world. Since I haven’t been a lot of places in the world, I decided to get the opinion of some of my over-seas pen pals.

Keith Povall lives in or near Birmingham, UK and has recently had more of their national health care than he would have liked. You can read his full assessment in the comments, but here’s an excerpt:

“In modern times, much criticism has been leveled at the NHS because there is a lot of truth in the opinion that it is a monster grown out of control. It is the largest employer in Europe for example and many say / believe that there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians (to coin a phrase). Over the years, governments have thrown billions at it and the monster gobbles up the cash. It is believed governments would like to introduce a private service to replace it, but in the main “the people” love the NHS, something that is there as a safety net for when they need it and whilst you will hear complaints about income tax and stealth taxes, no one complains about their NI contributions.”

Peter is a psychiatric nurse in the Netherlands and –as a health care provider– might be less than objective on this subject. On the other hand, he has first-hand knowledge of his country’s system.

“The insurance companies want to control everything; they even want to control what professionals like me should do or not. The basis of their policy is not what the clients want (those who put money in the big jar) but what the shareholders want. Their goal is not good health care for their members, but profit and big bonus for a couple of hotshots. A very bad development which surely will be changed the moment the issue is hot again and elections are due. As you see we are quite a normal country in this.”

Again, I hope you’ll read Peter’s full email in the comments.

I’m still waiting to hear from a friend in Belgium and will add her thoughts if and when we get them. My thanks to Keith and Peter for taking time to respond to a serious inquiry from me. Something they are rarely called upon to do.

“No surprises”

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I love the novels of Neal Stephenson and find that I can read them again and again, always discovering something new and fresh. The excerpt below is from Snow Crash, written in 1976. published in 1984.

“The people of America, who live in the world’s most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman’s March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs and bungee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture.”

It means nothing out of context, I suppose, but this is where I put things I want to find again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Neal Stephenson do an interview but perhaps I just missed them.

A video from the CEO

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Learfield CEO Clyde Lear started blogging in March of 2006. And he’s been very consistent since then, writing or rewriting every post. This morning he asked me to come to his office to help him add a video to a post he was working on.

clyde-videoHe shot the video by setting his Casio Exilim on the window sill (to get the best light) and ad libbing his post in one take. By the time I got there, he had the file on the desktop of his iMac and just wanted to know best way to trim the front and back. I showed him how to do that in iMovie and then gave him the login to my YouTube account.

You can watch the video on his blog if you’re interested. I think the quality is pretty darned good.

Equally impressive –to me– is Clyde’s use of his blog and –in this instance– video to communicate something to the entire company. This is the next best thing to him walking into every employee’s office and talking to them, one on one. The entire process took maybe 30-40 minutes.

So there are two things at work here. First, our CEO wants to let us know why he does the things he does. He cares that we get it from him “directly.” Second, mastering the tools and skills needed to do this.

Am I making too much of this? Maybe. But had he had someone write (and rewrite) a script that he “delivered” to a crew who gave it to some editors who ran it past some lawyers and PR types… the message would have been a different one.

Digital marketing no longer experimental

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At Forrester Research they “…interview as many marketers as we can about their plans, identify trends and project future likely conditions, and then we put together some numbers to make a projection.”

That’s the way Josh Bernoff explains it in a recent blog post that focuses on a five-year interactive marketing forecast. A few tidbits from the study:

“Unlike the last recession, digital marketing is no longer experimental. Now it looks more like advertising is inefficient, relative to digital. More than half of the marketers we surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.

The result is that digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets will decline.

This is huge.

It means we are all digital marketers now, since digital is at the center of many campaigns anyway.

It means media is in trouble, or at least in the middle of a transformation. For example, online video ads, which will be about $870 million this year, will grow to over $3 billion in 2014. What will this do to networks plans to put more of their shows online in places like Hulu. How will it accelerate some newspapers plans to become more and more centered around online?

And it means that social “media”, which will account for $716 million this year between social network campaigns and agency fees, will generate $3 billion in five years. And this doesn’t even count displays ads on social networks (which are in the display ads category.) Of all the parts of digital marketing, social network marketing one is poised for the most explosive growth.

Pundits have been declaring the end of mass media and advertising for years now. From my 14 years of experience analyzing this stuff, I’ve learned that things die very slowly, but there are real trends you can see. If you’re in advertising, you’d better learn to speak digital, because that’s the way the world is going.”

This was the point I was trying to raise in a company meeting earlier this year when I asked if any of the attendees could imagine a time when there was no advertising.  That “advertising” and marketing as we now know it would probably be unrecognizable at some point in the not so distant future. And are we ready for that?

Never answer the phone while having intercourse. Texting is okay.

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July is Cell Phone Courtesy Month. As with all such months, there’s a list of cell phone no-no’s. There are a lot of lists. As I scanned them I saw that I was guilty of a couple of the more venial sins. I still catch myself talking too loudly and I answer the phone in the middle of a conversation. I’ve chalked these up to still being something of a newbie to the cell phone experience and plan to break these bad habits.

Nathan Waddell is the director of sales for U. S. Cellular in Missouri and a nice PR lady named Susan arranged for me to talk with Nathan about this important topic.

AUDIO: 15 min interview (MP3)

Radio stops with the listener

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What do you do when someone sends you a good video, a photo, or a link to an interesting news item? You share it. Maybe with a link on Facebook or Twitter; a blog if that’s your thing; or you simply email it to everyone in your address book. And some of them will do the same. It seems quite natural after 15 years of life on the net.

Now, what do you do when you hear something interesting, amusing or important on the radio? Assuming you’re not recording, your options are limited. You could call a friend, but by the time you reach them the song/interview/comedy bit is likely to be over.

All the good stuff you hear on the radio (or TV) pretty much stops when it reaches the listener. That never bothered me before because… well, where else _could_ it go after reaching me? There WAS no practical way to share it.

The web changed all that. Even the dumbest cat photo goes on and on and on.

Before hitting the record button or opening the mic, we should ask ourselves, “Can anyone link to what I am about to create?”

Short list of must-have tools for journalists

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  • A laptop computer that the journalist maintains and for which the journalist takes responsibility
  • A digital still camera capable of shooting video that’s usable on the Web
  • A digital audio recorder capable of high-quality sound for use online
  • A blog or content management system to which the journalist can upload reports from the field, including audio, photos, and video
  • Social networks, blogs, RSS, and other means of staying connected to the community and the world
  • Software applications used for editing audio, photos, video, etc.; also software used for managing projects and information

From a post by Mindy McAdams that attempts to answer the question, “Why does anyone major in journalism?”

“a zero billion dollar business”

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I’m almost finished with Chris Anderson’s Free – The Future of a Radical Price. It’s hard for us old dogs to wrap our minds around how free can be a real business model but Anderson makes his case with lots of compelling examples and insights. Here are a couple of my favorites:

“Venture capitalists have a term for this used of Free to shrink one industry while potentially opening up others: “creating a zero billion dollar business.” Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures, explains it like this: “It describes a business that enters a market, like classified or news, and by virtue of the amazing efficiency of its operation can rely on a fraction of the revenue that the market leaders need to operate profitably.”

Gulp. And then there’s this little conundrum:

“The nature of the advertisement is different online. The old broadcast model was, in essence, this: Annoy the 90 percent of your audience that’s not interested in your product to reach the 10 percent who might be (think denture ads during football games).

The Google model is just the opposite: Use software to show the ad only to the people for whom it’s most relevant. Annoy just the 10 percent of the audience who isn’t interested to reach the 90 percent who might be.”

Watching or listening to stupid ads that had no relevance for me never bothered me when there were no alternatives. I just tuned them out. Now I find myself thinking “why am I watching Billy Mays scream at me about gluing my pants back together?

“four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass”

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My pal Mal points us to this brilliant Craig’s List ad. I’m tempted to buy the car just to meet the man (?) who wrote this.

“OK, let me start off by saying this Xterra is only available for purchase by the manliest of men (or women). My friend, if it was possible for a vehicle to sprout chest hair and a five o’clock shadow, this Nissan would look like Tom Selleck. It is just that manly.

It was never intended to drive to northstar mall so you can pick up that adorable shirt at Abercrombie & Fitch that you had your eye on. It wasn’t meant to transport you to yoga class or Bath & Body Works. No, that’s what your Prius is for. If that’s the kind of car you’re looking for, then just do us all a favor and stop reading right now. I mean it. Just stop.

This car was engineered by 3rd degree ninja super-warriors in the highest mountains of Japan to serve the needs of the man that cheats death on a daily basis. They didn’t even consider superfluous nancy boy amenities like navigation systems (real men don’t get lost), heated leather seats (a real man doesn’t let anything warm his butt), or On Star (real men don’t even know what the hell On Star is).

No, this brute comes with the things us testosterone-fueled super action junkies need. It has a 265 HP engine to outrun the cops. It’s got special blood/gore resistant upholstery. It even has a first-aid kit in the back. You know what the first aid kit has in it? A pint of whiskey, a stitch-your-own-wound kit and a hunk of leather to bite down on when you’re operating on yourself. The Xterra also has an automatic transmission so if you’re being chased by Libyan terrorists, you’ll still be able to shoot your machine gun out the window and drive at the same time. It’s saved my bacon more than once.

It has room for you and the four hotties you picked up on the way to the gym to blast your pecs and hammer your glutes. There’s a tow hitch to pull your 50 caliber anti-Taliban, self cooling machine gun. I also just put in a new windshield to replace the one that got shot out by The Man.

My price on this bad boy is an incredibly low $10,900, but I’ll entertain reasonable offers. And by reasonable, I mean don’t walk up and tell me you’ll give me $5,000 for it. That’s liable to earn you a Burmese-roundhouse-sphincter-kick with a follow up three fingered eye-jab. Would it hurt? Hell yeah. Let’s just say you won’t be the prettiest guy at the Coldplay concert anymore.

There’s only 69,000 miles on this four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass. Trust me, it will outlive you and the offspring that will carry your name. It will live on as a monument to your machismo.

Now, go look in the mirror and tell me what you see. If it’s a rugged, no holds barred, super brute he-man macho Chuck Norris stunt double, then contact me. I might be out hang-gliding or BASE jumping or just chilling with my ladies, but I’ll get back to you. And when I do, we’ll talk about a price over a nice glass of Schmidt while we listen to Johnny Cash.

To sweeten the deal a little, I’m throwing in this pair of MC Hammer pants for the man with rippling quads that can’t fit into regular pants. Yeah, you heard me. FREE MC Hammer pants. Rock on.”

If this is reality, I’ll take virtual

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I feel like the mom that left her child in the car to run into the mall “for just two minutes” and comes back to find the cops standing around her car with stern looks on their faces. It’s scary how quickly a couple of days can slip by without a blog post. There’s no question in my mind that Twitter and posterous have resulted in fewer posts here.

And since this is not a real blog post, who the fuck are Jon and Kate? I keep seeing their names pop up and have determined they are/were the “stars” of a reality show but now have broken up or something?

I have this theory that the people who insist they have never heard of blogs or Twitter are exactly the same people who made Jon & Kate household names (to everyone but me).

How empty and vacuous must your life be that you would find J&K’s live worth watching?