Ameel's career & MBA exposition (blog)
Professional blog of Ameel Khan. This started off as a blog about my MBA from Melbourne Business School, but now it’s about continuous learning, careers, technology, the internet, and social media.
Facebook may finally have served me an ad that actually targets my browsing behaviour!
I read a couple of articles on Lifehacker Australia about shaving and the very next day I saw an ad on Facebook about the Dollar Shave Club. I'm going to consider this a case of successful ad targeting.
Time for another round of Facebook ad analysis. Though, frankly, there wasn't much analysis to do today because most of the ads I got served were very generic. Oh well.
Ever wondered how you're tracked online? In my continued research on online news sites (e.g. here's a chart on how much they traffic they get every month) here are a couple of charts that tell you which tracking tools Australia's top online news sites use.
This list was generated using Ghostery so it covers everything from web analytics tools and beacons to ad serving tools and social network platform connectors - basically, anything that's capable of tracking you on the web.
You can find out more about these tools in this Digital Trends article and in this 'Tracking the trackers' map by the Guardian (part of their larger 'Battle for the internet' series).
Source: Ghostery tracker alerts on each news website
Pro Tip: To view full-size, right-click and open image in new tab
Source: Ghostery tracker alerts on each news website
Pro Tip: To view full-size, right-click and open image in new tab
As someone who works in social media I look at the ads I get served on Facebook with a professional interest. Given that I haven't actually put that much information about myself on Facebook, it's fun to see how good (or bad) a job marketers and ad buyers have done in targeting those ads to me.
Of course Facebook does have a lot of my demographic data as well as my detailed social graph (though I do keep getting asked to "complete my profile", which is entertaining). It also has a history of all my likes, comments, and shares; each of which probably has multiple keyword and category associations.
So, in what I'm hoping is the first of an ongoing series, here are the ads Facebook served me today and my thoughts on them:
What ads do you get served on Facebook? And are they any good?
While trying to decide whether I’d sign up for a Fairfax Digital Subscription or not (I ultimately decided not to) I thought it would be fun to document my news media consumption habits. (Being a nerd is so much fun!)
Here’s what I came up with.
Where do I go to get breaking news?
When a news tory breaks the first site I check is Twitter.
I then move on to Reddit to see what news content has been aggregated and bubbled-up by the online community. There I get both first-hand news and news that’s been collected by various outlets.
Next I check the BBC because they'll always have the most reliable and least biased story.
Finally, I go to Google News because that service quickly aggregates lots of news stories from multiple online sources, covering multiple angles.
If the breaking news is Australia- or Melbourne-specific I also check the Age and the ABC (though, in most cases, their news stories get captured pretty quickly by Google News anyway). I sometimes also check the online streaming versions of ABC News 24 and a few radio stations like ABC NewsRadio, 774 Melbourne, and 3AW.
What if I want more depth?
When I want a little more depth to a news story my first stop is usually the BBC. Those folk not only excel at presenting an overview of what’s going but they also give a bit of background and then flesh out those bits of the story that are important at the time. (I usually follow this up by a few quick searches on Google and Wikipedia if I want more information.)
However, if want a much deeper analysis or some high-quality editorial opinion on a particular topic or story then the sites I go first to are academic news outlets like the Conversation, a bunch topic-specific blogs (I subscribe to a lot of blogs via RSS), and sites with strong editorial voices and traditions like the Guardian and the Economist.
I then visit a bunch of independent news outlets or, categorizing them more broadly, sites from which I get smart, well written, and mature news reports, opinion, and discussion. These include ProPublica, The Global Mail, New Matilda, Salon, Slate, the Atlantic, and a handful of others.
Aside from those major sources I also read some blogs and feature pieces on the ABC and Fairfax websites (e.g. stuff written by Lauren Rosewarne or Sam de Brito). However, ABC and Fairfax don’t have the depth of coverage that the sites mentioned previously do; nor do they have as many contributors whose editorial opinions I value that much.
What if the story is local?
When a news story is local my preferred sources are the Age and the ABC (including, as mentioned above, the online streaming versions of ABC News 24, ABC NewsRadio, and 774 Melbourne). Though, increasingly, the Guardian with its new Australian edition is becoming a bigger part of my regular local media consumption.
Meanwhile, 3AW and the Conversation, while good sources, don’t cover as much as the Age and ABC do.
Speaking of my regular media consumption, these are the news sites I check on the tram both to and from work every day and also on weekend afternoons:
The top four are the important ones: I check the Age for updates on what’s happening in the city and around the country. I check the BBC and the Guardian to find out what’s going on in the world. And, I check the ABC to read more about what’s going on in both Australia and the world.
If I have time left in my commute then I then close that folder and check Reddit (the app in the background in the top left hand corner).
And if after that I still have more time I sometimes check my RSS feeds via NewsBlur and occasionally read the stories I’d saved earlier in Pocket.
As you can see, restricting my Fairfax consumption to thirty articles per month isn't going to be difficult because Fairfax is already a pretty small part of my news media consumption mix. This despite the fact that I check the Age website every morning because, when I do, I only occasionally click-through to read a whole article - I usually just skim the headlines.
So there you have it, my media consumption preferences. What sites do you visit to get news and opinion?
On 2 July 2013 Fairfax Media will launch its digital subscriptions and erect a paywall around its two major newspaper websites, the Age and Sydney Morning Herald. From that day onwards Australian visitors to those sites will be able to read thirty free articles per month but, should they want to read more, they’ll need to sign up as paying customers.
I won’t be one of those paying customers and this mind map explains why:
Today is the much-hyped-in-the-media Click Frenzy sale. Here are my 0.4 cents [1] on this ‘event’.
Cyber Monday, which Click Frenzy is based on, was a term coined after US retailers noticed a spike in online shopping on the Monday after Thanksgiving. That is, this behaviour (the increase in online sales) existed before the term describing it (Cyber Monday) was coined. That term ended up reinforcing this behaviour, yes, but I think it’s important to remember that the behaviour came first.
The folks behind Click Frenzy, on the other hand, are trying to create a behaviour. They are trying to lightning rod a lot of October and November retail sales into a single day because, as consumer behaviour research tells us, people respond positively to time-limited offers (regardless of whether those offers are genuine or not) as well as sales (regardless of whether those sales are good or not).
Creating behaviours – particularly online behaviours of this kind – is difficult.
The organizers of Click Frenzy do have a few things going for them, though:
For starters, they’re using Cyber Monday as a reference so the whole single-day-online-sale concept isn’t something they have to explain to consumers in too much detail.
They have a lot of brands on board so, at the very least, they’ve got everyone’s attention.
They’ve also built a bit of hype around the event – which is crucial if you want to change behaviour. A lot of that hype is offline, though, and that is both good (they’ll have reached a larger audience) and potentially bad (a lot of that larger audience might not be the online shopping type).
They have a single point of entry for these sales which should, in theory, make it easier to find the deals you’re looking for. (Unless, of course, that single point of entry becomes a bottleneck.)
They also have a bunch of things going against them:
While being secretive about actual sale details works well for building excitement and curiosity, the fact is that we don’t know what deals will be on offer and how good they will be. Online shoppers are smart enough to shop around.
The way I understand it, most online shoppers in Australia buy stuff from overseas retailers because:
So, for Click Frenzy to be truly successful it will have to give Australian shoppers all of these benefits. That is:
Why? Because I don’t quite trust the Australian retail industry to get it right.
They’ve already demonstrated that they don’t understand ecommerce all that well (aside from a few possible exceptions). If they did, they might not have participated in Click Frenzy in the first place. (For more analysis on one aspect of this topic I recommend you read Michael Pascoe’s article in the Age called: ‘Myer, DJs’ online plans: tell ‘em they’re dreaming’).
I am also of the opinion that many Australian retailers simply aren’t all that good at marketing. They seem to be much more sales-oriented than marketing- or brand-oriented. That is, instead of deeply understanding and then tightly targeting their chosen customer groups, they tend to adopt a warehouse approach to selling stuff. That’s great if you’re selling in bulk (e.g. you’re Dan Murphy’s) but not so good otherwise.
My fear is that Click Frenzy is a bunch of retailers jumping on the ecommerce bandwagon without basing their decision on a proper, well-researched, well-thought-out, innovative (for them) approach to online selling. Because of this lack of understanding and lack of underlying strategy these retailers won’t have a suitable online offering during Click Frenzy and, as a result, they won’t see any benefit from participating in future Click Frenzies or, worse, ecommerce in general. I sincerely hope that’s not the case, but I have my doubts.
The other aspect of Click Frenzy that doesn’t bode well is that it seems, once again, these retailers’ strategies revolve around an increase in sales being the solution to their problems. Participating in Click Frenzy certainly won’t help them target their customers or build their brands. So while this might give them a short term boost in sales, it’s probably not a good long-term fix.
On the other hand, there is hope. If Click Frenzy does go well this might encourage retailers to finally hire the right people and lift their ecommerce game. We might finally get a good proportion of quality online stores with a decent ecommerce strategy behind them.
I’m not going to hold my breath, but I’m not all that jaded and pessimistic about the whole thing either. Here’s hoping.
Here are some other thoughts on Click Frenzy that are worth reading:
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[1] 0.4 cents is 80% off from my usual 2 cents.
The Australian Financial Review’s (AFR) BOSS magazine has, once again, ranked the Melbourne Business School MBA at number one in Australia.
According to these rankings, the top five MBAs in Australia are from these business schools:
BOSS conducts this research every other year and its results are based on two components: an alumni survey (weighted 55%) and data supplied by schools (weighted 45%). 21 business schools participated this time and 19 of these made it into the rankings (two didn’t, due to insufficient alumni responses). 1,600 b-school alumni from the graduating classes of 2008-2010 (inclusive) took part in the survey.
Looking more closely at the results:
The two most notable international rankings of business schools come from the Financial Times and the Economist. In their latest rankings:
FT will be kicking off research for its 2012 b-school rankings later this month.
The American retail company Gap recently changed their logo. They went from sophisticatedly classic to amateurishly craptastic:
[Source: Brand New]
To quote the Brand New blog (‘Don’t Mind the Gap, or the Square’):
I’m not one to critique something by saying it looks as if it were done in Microsoft Word but this one is just too unsophisticated to warrant anything more than that.
I couldn’t agree more.
Fortunately, the Internet responded and Brand New have followed up with another post: ‘Follow-up: Gapgate’.
I never expected the Gap logo to be such a lightning bolt of attention. Yes, it’s bad and yes it’s a popular brand, but to have captured the attention of the whole internet, even reaching meme levels wasn’t something I ever expected the grilled chicken of retail brands to achieve.
:)
Speaking of the Gap logo meme, check out:
Also check out Your Logo Makes Me Barf’s reaction – ‘New Gap Logo is a Box of Fail’ – and call to action – ‘Tell Gap to take their Spec and go to Hell’.
The next few days and, indeed, weeks and months should be interesting.
I gave a quick overview of the ConnectNow conference in Part 1. Here are my thoughts and notes – along with links and other information – on each of the talks given during the first two days of the event.
Gavin Heaton
Katie Chatfield
Tara Hunt
For example, truth, beauty, freedom, and love are not usual business values; though notable companies like Google, Apple, Craigslist, and Zappos (respectively) present exceptions 
Hau Man Chow
Brian Solis
Laurel Papworth
Jim Stewart
Darren Rowse
Gary Vaynerchuck
Deborah Schultz
Stephen Johnson
Panel DiscussionBig ideas:
Last week, on 6 & 7 April, I attended the ConnectNow conference in Sydney.
ConnectNow is a spin-off from the MarketingNow conference and it focuses on social media as a business, marketing, and communications tool.
I was fortunate to be sponsored by Melbourne Water to attend the event. Though, even if I hadn’t been, I would have gone there on my own anyway.
How Was It?The conference was excellent and definitely worth the attendance.
For MoreI’ll be writing my thoughts (based on my notes) on each of the talks in Part 2.
Meanwhile, check out:
Scott Arbeitman, who is nearing the end of his MBA at Melbourne Business School, has started writing a series of blog posts in which he’s reviewing his time there.
Last week he wrote about the core (i.e. mandatory) and elective (i.e. optional) courses offered during the MBA:
FYI: What I call ‘courses’ are called ‘subjects’ at MBS.
His posts make a great read for anyone who is doing, or thinking of doing, an MBA because the issues he’s talked about are relevant to pretty much all b-schools degrees out there.
(By the way, I wrote my end-of-MBA post almost two years ago. I didn’t realize it had been that long!)
Melbourne Business School (MBS) was founded in 1954 through the University of Melbourne, and its graduate degrees have been ranked in the Financial Times’ list of Top 100 Global MBAs since 2005. The school wanted to strategically align its brand positioning message, ‘Global. Business. Leaders.’, to every facet of its business. Its well intentioned but departmental approach to managing data on students (called ‘constituents’) hampered efforts to deliver services and develop relationships to a standard that was commensurate with its brand. In 2007 MBS began a comprehensive process of organisational change. It introduced a customer relationship management (CRM) system based on Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 4.0 and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. By introducing a common platform for data management and taking a life-cycle view of constituents, MBS improved communications with applicants, students, participants and alumni and projected a more professional image.
I took a number of marketing courses in my MBA at Melbourne Business School (MBS) and it was during my Consumer Behaviour course with Brian Gibbs that we got the best, single-page overview of the marketing process.
Gibbs called this the ‘Framework for Marketing Management’ and it’s an excellent summary of how marketing is done:
[Note: The diagram above is one that I made based on my notes from the course.]
It works like this:
As you may have gathered, a good way of remembering the entire marketing process is to think of the just the three Cs and four Ps. However, if you want to distil it further, you can bring it all down to positioning.
Positioning is a summary of the first part (analysis & strategy: the three Cs) and a guide for the second part (planning & implementation: the four Ps).
From the consumer behaviour point of view, it is also the psychological epicentre of the marketing process. That’s because positioning – with the help of the four Ps – is what translates the ‘actual product’ into the ‘perceived product’ within the consumer’s mind (they are often not the same).
So while a Montblanc pen is in essence just a writing instrument, in the mind of the consumer, it is much more than just that. And it is the pen’s positioning that will determine what qualities above its ability to put ink on paper set it apart from its competitors.
This one-page overview of the marketing process is useful in many ways:
Oh, and if you’re a job seeker, it’s particularly useful because it provides a good framework for when you get asked questions about the company’s products or services.
Al Ries recently wrote a good, quick overview (with examples) of what marketing is all about:
What’s the No.1 principle of marketing, at least as far as we’re concerned?
It’s the principle of focus. You narrow the focus in order to own a word in the mind of the consumer.
Without a focus, it’s very difficult to build a strong brand. And without a strong brand, any company’s future is in doubt.
While "focus" should be the key ingredient in any marketing campaign, it’s not the whole story. So we developed an acronym called "FOCVS" which does sum up our key thoughts.
You can read the rest of 'The Principles Of Marketing' on the Branding Strategy Insider blog.
For an overview of the actual marketing process, however, stay tuned for my next post.
Finally, there’s a study that shows empirically what most of us have known all along: personal Internet usage at work actually boosts employee productivity.
The study was conducted by Dr. Brent Coker from the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne and you can read about it here:
According to Coker’s research:
“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t.”
It’s About More Than Just Productivity
But it’s not just about productivity, as Specht points out, it’s also about trusting and respecting your employees.
I personally dislike companies that prohibit what Coker calls Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) with the justification that when you’re at work, you should be doing nothing but work. That’s just silly because it’s a completely unrealistic notion of what work is. Work is a subset of life, not the other way round. So you can’t exactly ignore the rest of your life – or, indeed, the rest of the world – while you’re at work.
[There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. It’s okay to apply principles of Taylorism to, say, when you’re working in the kitchen at McDonalds. It’s just that you shouldn’t extend those principles to when your employees are not doing those specific kinds of tasks.]
The problem with a lot of companies is that, while they understand this basic principle (i.e. that there is life outside of work, even between the hours of 9am and 5pm), they aren’t tech-savvy enough to see that this also applies to using the Internet. Companies will, for example, do things like allow flexible working hours so you can do your banking during your lunch hour or go as far as to provide coffee machines and televisions in their kitchens and lounges so you can take a really good break during the work day. And yet, these same companies will block the use of webmail services, social networking sites, and online video sites which, to people like me, are pretty much the virtual equivalent of the kitchen and lounge (and sometimes the preferred equivalent).
So What’s the Problem?
Part of the problem, as has been pointed out in the past, is the generational disconnect between the Baby Boomers, Gen-X, and Gen-Y. That is, there exist numerous members of older generations who don’t understand that, for some members of the younger generation, a good work break could be eight minutes of e-mailing and checking on your social networks, four minutes of going through photos of your newborn niece, and three minutes of watching the latest viral video that’s making the rounds. And this disconnect is understandable. However it is then the job of middle managers to convince senior managers that this kind of personal Internet usage is actually okay.
Another part of the problem are the reports written by generally Internet-clueless analysts on how much companies are “losing” by letting employees access social media or online video sites during work hours. What tends to happen is this calculation:
Company executives look at this calculation and exclaim: “What?! We’re paying our employees $1.25m to access Facebook and Gmail! Block both those sites!”
The problem, of course, is that while the calculation is essentially correct, the reasoning behind it is flawed. The reasoning being that you are paying your average employee exactly 41.6c per minute to work for you and that every minute this employee does something other than work your money is being wasted. Now if this person was working on an assembly line, your loss-per-minute-not-worked calculation would be valid. But for every other employee, it’s not.
Why is it not valid? Because your employee is human – who has human wants and needs – and it is unreasonable to treat this person like a work-producing automaton upon whom you can do this kind of dehumanising calculation.
To Conclude
My point, then, is that studies like Coker’s are really useful because they empirically demonstrate that you can’t blindly apply principles of scientific management (i.e. Taylorism) across an entire organization.
And because these studies come from a business department of a large and well-respected university – and they use terms that businesses understand (specifically, ‘productivity’) – they will probably do some good.
If nothing else, reports like this tend to make their way into business magazines and give executives something to think about. This particular study may not get companies to unblock access to webmail services and social media sites, but it’s a start.
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P.S. What’s almost funny are the companies that are so completely disconnected for what’s going on online that they don’t even know what Facebook is and therefore don’t have a policy on whether they should block it or not!
Four new MBS Leadercasts have been published recently and they’re all worth a watch:
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia