Jeffrey’s House of Magic.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Eric Schonfeld talks about Jeff Immelt’s management of innovation at General Electric, and how it’s turning the company into a marketing power player.
GE researcher Anil Duggal is working in a cramped, darkened lab on a replacement for that iconic invention. Duggal holds a flat, glowing 6-inch square that illuminates his face. The light is created by a thin layer of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) sandwiched between two glass plates. Duggal hopes they will eventually be printed on plastic so that flexible lighting surfaces can be incorporated into wallpaper or furniture. Just as the OLEDs convert electricity into light, they can also do the reverse, and thus could someday become the basis for inexpensive plastic solar panels. They could be produced much like newspapers—“and newspapers are so cheap, we throw them away,” Duggal says. Think of the possibilities, adds his colleague Sanjay Correa. “What if your rooftop were made of a cheap material that creates electricity, and then inside, your ceiling could take that electricity and turn it into light,” he muses, a broad smile spreading across his face.
Small annoyance is that Business 2.0 requires that you register to read the entire article online, but I thought it interesting enough to list.
A Hospital of Ironies.
Friday, July 02, 2004
I was at Sentara’s Norfolk campus today, with my family, as my brother went through a pretty painful medical process that’s going to help keep him healthy. He had just finished getting CT scanned, and his drip had failed; he was starting to feel pain again, and we wanted to get him back to his room so that the drip console could be reset.
We asked the nurse who was sitting at the desk outside the radiology holding area how we could get him back to his room; she said that “transport” had to do it, and they’d have to be called.
I asked her if she’d mind calling transport. She said that she was on her lunch break, and the gal who’d take over for her could make the call. Then, she proceeded to make a short personal phone call.
When the replacement arrived, she made a call that lasted less then 10 seconds. Transport arrived shortly after to take us away.
Customer service, no matter how well promised, has a single point of failure: in the decisions that the reps make at every point in their days, depending on how they feel. I understand the logistics and the CYA behind our original nurse not being able to make the call—she probably has long days, and she doesn’t like her lunch period to be ruined. But keep in mind that for every one of those decisions, there’s someone, somewhere, who ended up making a mental note… not of the person, but of your company, or organization.
Free Long Distance.
Friday, July 02, 2004
I just checked into the Sheraton in Norfolk, Virginia. I’ve gotten used to Marriot’s and Westin’s “one business rate” deals, where I can pay between 10 bucks and 16 bucks a day for unlimited use of their high-speed Internet and make unlimited domestic long distance phone calls.
Of course, it all started with Wyndham throwing down the gauntlet, and launching the superb Wyndham ByRequest program: a personalized, service oriented customer appreciation program that realized that business travelers would probably never use “points” to make weekend plans at other Wyndham properties, for leisure. So, instead of making you carry a card that’s loaded with points, they give you a personal note along with an amenity of your choice when you come in, unlimited long distance, and free high-speed Internet connectivity.
So, anyway: I’m surprised that mid-way properties and brands like Sheraton don’t follow suit. As a frequent business traveler, I can attest to the pain of having to enter all the numbers in my calling card just to get through to my office voice mail. Unlimited domestic long distance could be the best sticky program yet.
Packaged.
Gizmodo has a story about some fruit juice packaging recently unveiled in Japan. Sometimes, you do judge books by their covers. How the hell do you not pick one of these up?
Apple recently set the standard for what I call Luscious Packaging. Where every box, fold and slick, glossy cover has enough sex appeal to fell a celibate hermit. Product design that oozes “touch me"s and “feel me"s. Packaging is an ignored art in driving true marketing potential.
Leave it to the Japanese to remind us.
A Report on the Best Rewards Programs for Shopping Rebates
I don’t know “Becky” over at CompareRewards.com, but she reminds me of a “That’s Incredible” story I saw several years ago, about a woman who had gotten so adept at finding deals through coupons, that she had saved herself over a million dollars in 10 years of shopping.
Well, that lady in the story may have met her online equivalent. Becky’s blog is truly scary in how it goes in-depth into the exact science of breaking down every type of rewards/rebate program that exists for online shoppers. Her Feb 9 post on the best and worst rebate programs in the marketplace makes for fascinating reading.
Equally fascinating is her breakdown of the dollar value of a point for various rewards programs.