Background Noise

Traveling Man

It's been a while since I did any significant travel, but I flew to Austin earlier this week to meet with a company about a potential career opportunity. As the experience if pretty fresh in my mind, I made a few random observations:

For this trip, my travel arrangements were made by someone else, and I cringed as I saw that the flights were booked on American Airlines. Words cannot convey how much I hate the experience of flying on American Airlines. The first leg of my trip had me flying to Austin by way of the ninth-level of American Airlines Hell: Chicago's O'Hare Airport. With a 45-minute layover. Flying on American is really a lose-lose proposition, especially through Chicago : you are either going to a) miss your connection and be forced to either fly standby on a later flight or the next day, or b) arrive at your destination horribly late. In my case, I arrived in Austin at almost midnight, and then missed my connection in Saint Louis on the way back home and got to spend the night at the St. Louis Holiday Inn Airport West. My only consolation on the return trip, was the good fortune of finding Boulevard Wheat on tap at the hotel bar.

(Why do some companies allow our expectations to be so low when dealing with them as a consumer? Why isn't this the #1 priority of the CEO of American Airlines?? Beyond the expected delays, I could list 20 things that also happened over the course of 3-days that left a bad taste in my mouth.)

It continues to amaze me that I have to pay for wireless Internet access just about anyplace I go on the road. Airports, hotels, Starbucks, etc.. Sure, there are plenty of places that offer free access, but they are in the minority, and you can't always plan your travel around that. Hell...the St Louis terminal didn't give me the option to pay for it. They just didn't have it!

On a more positive note, I had a fantastic experience at the Drury Inn & Suites that I stayed at in Austin. It's clearly designed for the business traveler in mind, and obviously sweat the details. The best example of this is the alarm clock in the rooms, one of the most intimidating and frustrating exercises to the business traveler. The little beauty on the nightstand in my room was a dream. It had 3-step directions printed clearly on the top: 1) Press button A. 2) press the up or down arrows to set your wake time. 3) select the type of music that you want to wake up to (there was four choices, ranging from jazz to rock). That's all there was to it. This thing should seriously be everywhere...had I not been numb from 12-hours of travel, I would have snapped a photo, or at least noted the manufacturer.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...Part I

As I originally alluded to when I started this blog a few months ago, I was on the verge of some changes in my professional life, the first of which has come to pass. I have officially decided to leave my role as Director of E-Commerce at The Finish Line in order to pursue other opportunities. What might those "other opportunities" be? Well, I'm not prepared to say just yet, but I'm definitely excited about the conversations that I've been having, and what the future might bring!

I've been asked by several of my peers about why I decided to leave, and all I will say is that it was simply time for a change. I presided over a period of incredible growth during my tenure, and I'm proud of everything that I accomplished. But in the end, I feel that my professional reputation was being compromised by a final product that I simply couldn't put my name on any longer. There are still a lot of very good people there, and I wish them the best of luck.

That said, I do know that Finish Line is currently looking for a VP of Direct-to-Consumer, so if you are interested in the position, feel free to email me and I can direct you to the right person. I don't have a job spec, but I have seen it and they are looking for nothing short of an Internet/Direct Marketing rock star.

Do we still need professional critics?

I was stumbling my way around the Internet yesterday, and ran across a company called Critical Metrics. They are apparently still in "stealth mode", but not sure what that even means these days, as they have working site and their first application is open to the public. I think the trendy thing to do is call the company in "beta"!

At any rate, it's a fairly interesting idea: By now, everyone knows about the value of the voice of the consumer, and using consumer reviews and ratings as a selling tool. But the Critical Metrics value prop is based on making recommendations based on the collective wisdom...er, tastes of professional critics, and not the general public. Their first application of this algorithm is in music playlists, but their site alludes to future applications as well. I'm not entirely sure I'm sold on this yet, as the whole music recommendation market seems pretty crowded to me, and they have an uphill climb to make this a success.

The bigger question for me, is what value do professional critics have in the media today, especially the Internet? When is the last time you bought music on the advice of a review in Rolling Stone, SPIN, or Blender? Or went to see a movie because Roger Ebert gave it four-stars? Perhaps this is where my version of reality is somewhat skewed by what I do for a living. I spend all of my time on the Internet, so my exposure to consumer reviews is about 100x my exposure to professional critics. The only exception to that rule might be with food and wine, but I think you get the point.

But maybe, just maybe, this is the genius of Critical Metrics: perhaps they recognize that the role itself of the professional critic is gradually shifting to that of a "highly trusted reviewer", and they are not simply aggregating the recommendations of a group of random people, but a group of people who are perceived to be experts at what they are reviewing. Take the collective wisdom of professional critics, and expose them to a customer that may have long-forgotten what value their opinions actually hold. An interesting evolution of the role of "critic", and time will tell as to how this will play outside the context of mainstream media.

On a side-note, the guy behind the idea is a familiar name to those of you that remember the early days of the Internet: Joey Anuff, co-founder of Suck.com. Now that I've dusted that memory off for you, try not to spend the rest of your day reading the archives!