Cesar Millan and LandRolllers, roller-blades, and why they've missed the boat

I've been a fan of Dog Whisper and Cesar Millan for years. I credit him for my having a fairly obedient German Shepherd. Realizing that I may not have an hour a day to walk him, after reading Cesar's new book which tells me I better walk my dog twice a day for a half hour, it made sense to speed up my dog's level of exercise. How? By getting those cool roller blades, called LandRollers, that Cesar Millan uses on the show.

So I started with a search and found the official makers of the LandRollers. My expectation was that I'd find a retail store nearby and get my hands on a pair. The problem is there are only five retail stores in the country and none withing 500 miles from my house. The next option is to buy them online. That's fairly simple, until you realize that not all shoes or skates or whatever fit the same or have the same size. My Adidas are sized 9 and my Nikes are 9.5. My Cole Haan shoes are 9. While my skis are size 10. Different manufacturing companies produce different sized shoes.

So what size do I pick?

This leaves a lost opportunity for LandRoller. If it were me I'd tell the user if you wear a size 9.5 Nike sneaker you'd wear a sized X LandRoller. Or Adidas, etc. This doesn't just go for Land Blades, but all shoes. I remember going to the mall to try on a pair of Adidas which were on sale online. The problem is that I had to go to the mall then home to buy them online to save $20. By the time I drove to the mall and wasted all that time it probably cost me more than $20. But I had to figure out what size to wear. Adidas could have told me on their web site that if I wore a sized 9.5 Nike than I'd wear a 9 Adidas.

Long story short, I won't be buying LandRollers. Bummer for me, joy for my wife.

The other issue is that LandRoller isn't capitalizing enough on the publicity Cesar Millan brings them. You couldn't get better product placement--because Millan isn't forcing the product into the show. He genuinely loves LandRollers and uses them as part of his training. LandRoller should have put together a deal with Dicks, REI or some retail stores to get Land Rollers out nationally. Then get the retailer to help pay Millan to promote their product. LandRollers could/should be on the feet of a million Americans. LandRollers missed the boat because if I could have gone to REI or Sears and tried these on and rolled around the store than I would have dropped $200 today. Not to mention the extra cash I'd have to spend on a helmet and elbow pads.

Moral of the story, I should been skating around the neighborhood on my shiny new LandRollers right now rather than complaining about them.

Thesis crowdsourcing experiment

I'm working on my thesis and thought it might be a cool social experiment to try to crowdsource for help. Its not about helping me write my thesis, but helping me find studies, articles, opinions and books. I've found a lot of books and studies (I'll list those this weekend) but of course there is now way I could find everything.

I'm not sure if Nebraska will let me do this yet.. crossing my fingers. But it would certainly be a cool experiment. It would also allow me to enlist news readers to vote whether they thought my thesis was correct and answer survey questions. I'll update you on whether I get a yes or no.

Tell Comcast its 2009

Comcast Cares right? So they say. But just because your customer service people seem nice doesn't fix other issues--like poor quality products.

My wife ordered "Twilight" on OnDemand. Halfway through the movie the DVR errored out. We went to saved programs and hit play. It errored out again. The second time we went there it was gone. Ten minutes waiting on a Saturday night for someone to answer customer service and we found out we had to purchase it again. Sure, we won't get charged twice. It was annoying enough to go through this, but what was even worse is how glaringly bad Comcast's DVR is compared to TiVo.

Why doesn't Comcast allow users to fast-forward more than one speed (which is ultra slow fast forward) when in OnDemand instead of four different speeds like it does for regular shows? TiVo lets you jump ahead at different time intervals and fast-forward. It did this 9 years ago!

I've been begging my wife to allow us to go back to DirecTV (we don't have it now because basic Comcast comes with our HOA). But this was the last straw. All I can say is: Thank you Comcast for having such a bad product and proving yourself once again. You just gave me a great gift, my wife finally agreed to DirecTV.

Remember. It's not about how nice your customer service people are. It's still about your product. And an average product doesn't cut it.

How Amazon got smart

Yesterday I downloaded a book to my iTouch via Amazon. It's the same as if you purchased it on your Kindle. It's quite a wonderful addition to the iTouch and frankly anyone who loves reading and wants their books instantly. Even though the iPhone and iTouch are competitors, Amazon just insured itself more and more purchases of ebooks. They just opened their potential buyers on a massive scale. And they did it without worrying about being fully proprietary and protecting their product.

I look at it this way. Google's philosophy is that they do things better than everyone else. And if they don't you'll go use the other companies products. That keeps them pushing innovation. It seems to me that Amazon is smartly thinking the same way. If the Kindle is the best people will still buy it, and if not then they will at least purchase books from them because no one can deliver books better. I only wish Apple would do the same with iTunes.

So why is this so smart? Because it means Amazon just shipped one less book to me while making nearly the same amount of money. Its a simple, but brilliant strategy. They cut out the warehouse, U.S. Post Office and the delay between getting the product into my hands.

I don't buy books for the sake of owning paper. I buy books for the sake of gaining knowledge. Now it just got faster and cheaper.

Fear of crowds

If a crowd is swarming do you run to it or run away from it? I guess the answer depends on whether they are carrying rocks and torches. But I have to wonder why companies often seem to run away from crowds who are carrying cash.

The crowds aren't carrying physical money to your door--but they are potential customers. If you own a company and are on Twitter or some other social network but don't respond to questions or replies you are running from the crowd. If you don't have some form of feedback on your website and respond to that feedback, all the feedback good or bad, you are running from the crowd. And if you aren't innovating based upon feedback then you are running away from the crowd.

You are a lucky company if you have a customer who cares enough to leave a complaint or compliment. Both are good. Why? Because it gives you a chance to interact with someone who is passionate enough to help. How can you ever learn anything if you are always running?

Cinemark off the mark

Nothing is worse than when you want to purchase something online and its hard. Buying anything should be made as easy as possible.. but if you try to use a gift card online through Cinemark good luck.

I went in to use a gift card and then got an error. They didn't have my email on record. Right, because I didn't register and didn't really want to. I just wanted to use my gift card to get movie tickets for my daughter and I. So I'm forced to register and do so. So I go back through the process and submit my information. Opps, another error. My gift card wasn't registered to my email address ahead of time. What? I was putting in the gift card information and they had my registered email--they couldn't do that all in one form? So now I have to go back to my profile and register my gift card with a name. So I registered the user "Charlie." I should have registered it under something silly just to see if it mattered, but I was already losing patience.

So I finally get in and fill out all the information and guess what? I'm told that I have to "You must bring your confirmation number to the theater to pick up your tickets!" which is 13 digits. What year is this? I have a Blackberry so this is easy, but what If I didn't? Does this make any sense? Most theaters you just go and swipe the gift card and get your tickets. This might be the case with Cinemark too but then why does the confirmation email open with the following: "Your Confirmation Number is: and tell me "You must bring your confirmation number to the theater to pick up your tickets!" if it isn't true? This is a fast way to lose business.

The bad news for Cinemark is that I've not used their theaters in Utah but was going to give them a try and if you compare their experience with the other theater there is no comparison. I'm glad I have other theaters in my area so I can avoid this again.

Show that you care

I've had something wrong with my foot for about a week. It felt broken for a few days and then over time its slowly felt better. But I'd have avoided the doctor for as long as possible because doctor's visits are often as agonizing as the issue that brought you there.

But this visit was different. Not only did I not wait a long time, but the doctor spent time with me without feeling rushed. He also asked me to call him back the day that I felt better so he could make note of it and better treat me in the future. Huh? That's never happened to me before, maybe I've just had bad doctors all my life. The fact that he cared about me and what would help future patients was great and wasn't just trying to make a buck off a follow-up visit. I just wish my general practitioner cared this much.

My doctor didn't do this to get me to spread word-of-mouth about his practice, he did it because he cared. But by wanting to go above and beyond he got something better than a happy patient--he'll get future patients. By the way, I found out about him through a referral.

The death of newspapers

Time ran an article recently entitled "How to save your newspaper." It should have been entitled "How to kill your newspaper." Walter Isaacson is under the false impression that all newspaper content is worth buying. He is wrong. Even the great New York Times couldn't make enough money selling their premium content. And don't even give me the Wall Street Journal argument. They make money because those who read it make money by reading it.

Newspapers are desperate to make money any way they can and the only person who is on the right track is Jeff Jarvis with his new book "What Would Google Do?" Some of his ideas are off and they aren't completely original, but they are condensed in a way that even the least web savvy newspaper editor can read it and grasp the concepts.

I work at a newspaper and my goal is to keep it making money. At the same time I'm working on my Masters' thesis which is on the death (or rebirth) of newspapers. The one thing that doesn't seem to sink into the minds of newspapers are the following:

1. If you can do four things great (local, sports, photos, niche) then do it. Don't do 12 things mediocre. The content needs to be great.

2. The content needs to be local. Really local. Hyper local. Micro local. You get the picture. Don't think just because one county has only two new stories no one is going to notice--because they notice. And traffic will suffer. There are always other sources of news. Don't get arrogant. Just remember the Encyclopedia Britannica. That is if you can remember them.

3. You need to own the niches. If you own a newspaper in NYC then you better be printing a lot on tourism. If you own a newspaper in Utah you better be doing an outdoors product. If you own a newspaper in Buffalo you better do a lot of stories on hunting, fishing and the Buffalo Bills.

4. You need to think out to the edges. And example of this would be: if you don't have a staff writer to go to a city council meeting post the agenda online and ask those who attended to work out the details like a wiki article. The same could go for high school sports--supplemented with photos and video from readers. Also, why not allow readers to microblog live from games via their mobile phones onto your site?

5. The lines between the Publisher and Editor should be demolished. It should matter if no one ever reads a writer's stories. If you had an employee who was in the bottom 10% of production at a plant they wouldn't have a job very long. Why is that okay with journalists? The days of guessing are gone. Everyone should write every day as if it is to save their jobs. Those who are on the business end work like that every day--why not everyone else?

6. Reporters should all be plugged in equally that means they:
-know how to shoot video/photos in a pinch
-know how to use twitter and other social network tools
-are willing to do extra things like blogging
-understand web statistics
-think web first
-get breaking news online fast and iterate quickly

7. Newspaper companies need to realize that money follows greatness. Facebook is valued at $15 billion and is free to all of us. We don't even need to bring up how much Google is worth. Why are they worth so much? Because they have great products. Newspapers are in trouble financially but they made their beds by cutting necessary staff while taking more and more wire stories which brings them closer and closer to average.

Newspapers don't have Craig to blame--they have themselves to blame for losing classifieds. They have themselves to blame for losing to Monster. They have themselves to blame for losing to Yelp. This could go on and on. Newspapers need to stop complaining and start creating. And not just in new media. Everyone can get in on the reconstruction of newspapers. I hope that "Take Risks" becomes a daily mantra at newspapers.