They’re sold the same way to the same types of consumers.

Luckily, the wine and iPhones haven’t hit the spam-bucket the way watches have recently. Watch spam is probably running a close third to 419 spam (“Esteemed sir, I am requesting for urgent business relationship….”) and [...]]]> What do fake Rolexes, overpriced wine, and iPhones have in common?

They’re sold the same way to the same types of consumers.

Luckily, the wine and iPhones haven’t hit the spam-bucket the way watches have recently. Watch spam is probably running a close third to 419 spam (“Esteemed sir, I am requesting for urgent business relationship….”) and fake ED drugs. That said, the subject or opening lines of Rolex spam are instructive:

Cheap watches that still elevate your social status.
Tired of being jealous of your friend who owns a Submariner SS model?
Your friend will recognize the Rolex on your wrist.
Watches for people who want to live a luxury life but spend less.

(I read spam so you don’t have to!)

It’s easy to see that these fakes are aspirational goods.

Actually, a real Rolex is an aspirational good too. It keeps time no better than a $15 Casio, though it’s a tad more elegant… and considerably heavier. But the price is so out there — $8,000 and up, I think — that even the biggest poseurs recognize it’s an aspirational good. They’re not fooling themselves.

Fake Rolexes, overpriced wine, and iPhones are little marketing marvels of self-deception.

A friend who’s a high-end wine distributor, and who knows good wine, recently attended a tasting of “mid-price” wines, bottles that might sell for $100 in a restaurant. My friend wrote about the various wines (ellipses omitted)

Dull, a bit thick. Their Chablis was tasteless…also dull. Horrible. Are they kidding? Many of the wines were not sound, going through a secondary fermentation. Many were oxidized. The guy next to me was raving about a chardonnay that was oxidized and [expletive deleted]. The emperor has no clothes.

That’s the way of the world sometimes. The Emperor’s clothiers did rather well, as I recall.

The shop in question is in effect selling iPods and iPhones. Both of those devices are glosses on stuff that had been done before, wrapped in nicer packaging and sold as aspirational goods. People want them — and pay a premium for them — because of the cachet that attaches to them. It’s market positioning that Steve Jobs is brilliant at. I may knock the products as overpriced, but I’m truly in awe of Jobs’ marketing savvy and sense of what consumers desire… or can be convinced to desire.

To most people, wine is an aspirational good, like iPhones, like (fake) Rolexes. People aspire to possessing and using (consuming) it, not just as a visible signal to friends, acquaintances, and random observers, but as a symbol to themselves that they have achieved a certain level of fulfillment and status. For many people buying wine, as long as the liquid is not actually vinegar, the label is what they’re consuming; the product in the bottle is secondary.

No one buys the cheapest thing on the menu, as my friend has reminded me a few times. Pick a price point for an evening out. “I would pay $80 for a bottle of wine at this restaurant.” It’s the aspirational thing, not a particular $80 wine. Show the purchaser the menu, and many who think $80 will buy the $90 or $100 bottle. They’re celebrating something — themselves, basically — and they don’t want to buy the cheapest celebration.

The wine shop figured this out. I’m sure the owner knows the wines are overpriced for their quality level. He also knows that it’s a small number of people who understand that quality level, people such as my friend (I sure don’t when it comes to wine).

He’s selling them a vision of their level and status as reflected through some fermented grapes. The skill with which the grapes have been fermented is only a small part of what he’s selling. Think of it as a different version of love-him-or-hate-him wine guru Robert Parker’s rating scale,where wines he likes score 90+ on a 50-100 scale. In the aspirational wine scale, 90% of the score is aspiration and 10% is actual wine goodness. If a wine hits 100% on the aspirational scale and 20% on the taste scale, it gets a score of (90% x 100) + (10% x 20) = 90 + 2 = 92, which Mr. Parker would consider a fairly good wine.

That, I think, is the kind of rating scale people use in evaluating any non-necessary good; the functional aspects are only part of the score, sometimes a small part. Otherwise a Casio and a Rolex would score about the same… or maybe the Casio would score higher, since it doesn’t drag your wrist down. (On the other hand, I recall a James Bond story where Bond, James Bond wrapped his Rolex around his knuckles to punch someone out; maybe for those in a certain line of work the Rolex would get some points as a weapon. I hear Robert Ludlum’s next book is called The Bourne Chronograph.)

A fake Rolex, an iPhone, and a $100-at-a-restaurant bottle of mediocre wine represent three different colors across the spectrum of aspirational goods. The fake Rolex is just that, a fake; the intent to deceive is outward only, the aspiration naked. The mediocre wine contains both self-deception and outward deception; the buyer pays for something where price (a/k/a reputation) is pretty much the only indicator of quality the buyer understands. The iPhone is a quality device that works rather well; the buyer is overpaying a bit for the cachet, and often self-deception (“I’m cool, I have an iPhone”) is greater than outward deception (“there goes another iPhone geek”).

Indeed for some the iPhone is the new Rolex, a fashion accessory as well as a utility device. The difference is that the spread between utility cost and actual price is thousands of dollars for the Rolex and a few bucks for the iPhone.

If you’re on the marketing side, positioning your product as an aspirational good, if applicable, is a great way to increase profit margins, though it may or may not maximize total profit.

If you’re the buyer, it never hurts to consider explicitly how much extra you’re willing to pay for cachet rather than pay for play.

=============

For the record:

• I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have a wool-and-cashmere sport jacket I wear on some client visits that is priced above utility cost.
• I know very little about wine, though I can tell the difference between Two-Buck Chuck and an extraordinary 1988 Chateauneuf-du-Pape my friend shared with me last month; I rarely buy a bottle in a restaurant, but if I do I’ll keep it under $40 because I simply don’t know enough to warrant spending above that point. I’m content with the quality of most wines at that price point, even when I can tell the difference.
• I do not have a Rolex, real or fake, but I do have a Citizen watch that cost $129 fifteen years ago; I bought it because part of the money went to support Dennis Connor’s America’s Cup team. Yup, that’s why I bought it. Really.

So I certainly fall into the aspirational-good trap myself. As I get older, though, I try to be more aware of it, more cognizant of how people are marketing to me.

And if I see one more newspaper article that confuses cachet (ka-SHAY, positive reputation) with cache (kash, a store or stockpile), I’ll scream.

A lot of discussion centers on the complex chart topping the NY Times article. Ex-McKinsey consultant and PowerPoint guru explains (and partly defends) [...]]]> There’s a lot of brouhaha today stemming from a report in the New York Times about PowerPoint negatively affecting the US military apparatus. Super-smart graphics maven Nancy Duarte, for example, chimes in here.

A lot of discussion centers on the complex chart topping the NY Times article. Ex-McKinsey consultant and PowerPoint guru explains (and partly defends) the chart here.

Most of this noise, I think, is sadly misguided.

First, PowerPoint is being used synonymously with “presentation software,” with an undercurrent of Microsoft-bashing. Exactly the same charts, good and bad, can be created with Apple’s Keystone, Open Office, and so on.

Second, presentation software doesn’t make us stupid. Taking that comment out of context is more stupid than the comment. It’s a great sound bite, but like most sound bites it lacks substance. It’s like someone quoting the Bible with “money is the root of all evil.” The original quote is “the love of money is the root of all evil” — and even that appears to be a mistranslation of “the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil.”

No, what’s making us stupid in the field of presentation software — and I don’t argue the “making us stupid” part — is twofold. Bad presentation design is making us stupid. Bad presenters are making us stupid. The use of bullet points without verbal explication and detail is making us stupid. Most of all, our relying on this stuff unquestioningly is making us stupid. To wit:

Bad presentation design is making us stupid: Nancy Duarte touches on this aspect, as does Edward Tufte. PowerPoint and its ilk are tools designed to support a presentation, not replace it. As numerous presentation specialists have said, presentation software works best when the images augment and provide a visual context to what the presenter is saying. Presenters who expect the presentation itself to carry the content are part of the problem.

Now sometimes there is deep content that goes up on the screen. Whenever I reviewed budgets or sales numbers in a group, for example, I threw them up on a screen, whether from Excel or PowerPoint. (I used Excel if we were working solely on the numbers, PowerPoint if this data was part of a larger discussion.) And then we took considerable time to understand, study, and comment on the data. Having it onscreen helped me or others point to specific items with everyone in the room understanding what was being pointed out. In other words, even here the data played second chair to the discussion. I didn’t flash this stuff and move on.

Likewise, it’s been years since I used bullet points for anything other than a meeting’s-end (or training-session’s end) summary. Bullet points are fine in this context, because the people in the room have context. They don’t present information; they help people organize information they already have received.

If you’re presenting, you carry the message. Let the visual image augment it and help make it stick. The exception is detailed data — which should also be available to participants in print or on their laptops, if possible, so they don’t have to squint at the screen.

Bad presenters are making us stupid: If you read your slides to the attendees, shame on you. But that’s only part one of a two-part sin….

The use of bullet points without verbal explication and detail is making us stupid: If you put up information-bearing bullet points without further explanation, shame on you. (A summary has — or had — further explanation; so does an agenda, which also might look like bullet points.) Bullet points are like headlines; use the headlines to highlight the story, not replace the story. I like Twitter, but its 140-character streams don’t carry a lot of information; look behind the sound bites, or texting bytes.

Here’s where the military, according to the article and the quoted book Fiasco, got in trouble. Bullet points aren’t information; they are the headlines surrounding the information cache. If you can’t open the cache, there’s no “there” there.

If you need to convey highly detailed information, the best format is a written document. That’s Word, not PowerPoint. If you’re trying to motivate people, encourage discussion, or convey core information, then use your presentation skills — which is not PowerPoint, but youPoint.

Our relying on this stuff unquestioningly is making us stupid: Sound bites make us stupid, because we stop thinking, stop analyzing, stop looking into them. Too many PowerPoint presentations, unsupported by the speaker, are nothing more than a succession of sound bites. Above, I called shame on the presenters for doing this. Here, I call shame on us for allowing it.

That doesn’t mean you have to interrupt, though sometimes you should. Rather, make sure you recognize that you’re hearing/seeing a sound bite; if that’s all the presenter is giving you, make it your business to go behind the screens and gather the information yourself before making a decision, whether that means exchanging mail or having an offline discussion with the speaker or going to the source material.

It says Mailing Address in big red letters. Then it says Mailing Address in bold black letters. The cursor goes automatically to the first edit box.

So what do I — and I suspect most other folks — start typing? My mailing address, [...]]]> I was filling out an online form today when I came to this section:

It says Mailing Address in big red letters. Then it says Mailing Address in bold black letters. The cursor goes automatically to the first edit box.

So what do I — and I suspect most other folks — start typing? My mailing address, of course.

Designers, it may technically be part of your “mailing address” database table, but we humans on the other end of the screen don’t automatically think, “you want my name here” when we come to an area boldly and colorfully (and redundantly) labeled “mailing address.”

(By the way, this form was the gateway to a site whose core product is known to anyone who travels even occasionally; it’s not a one-off, one-person operation.)

I’m impressed.

It wasn’t perfect, but the subject matter was very abstruse. However, it nailed all of the normal-speech parts of the conversation.

Based on experience, my guess is that most voice messages are fairly straightforward. [...]]]> One of my business lines is tied to Google Voice. Today I got a voice message that was automatically transcribed by Google.

I’m impressed.

It wasn’t perfect, but the subject matter was very abstruse. However, it nailed all of the normal-speech parts of the conversation.

Based on experience, my guess is that most voice messages are fairly straightforward. When will you be home? Is Joe coming to the meeting? Please call me back. Hi, this is Joe Blow, and I’m running for Congress.

There are two huge advantages to transcriptions.

1. You can read them on your computer or SmartPhone — and people generally read a lot faster than they listen.
2. Reading is silent; there is little more annoying than people in a conference room or shared office trying to listen to voicemail.

Transcription isn’t perfect. However, when there is low clarity, you can go back to the voice version… which isn’t always all that clear either.

We’ve come a long way since Garry Trudeau singlehandedly killed off the Apple Newton!

It started with this one.

There were more in the series, but this is considered the classic.

He nails four issues around believing that data = truth:

It’s a good post, but it oversimplifies in a few areas. More specifically, it falls into the trap of “all meetings have the same purpose.”

Ain’t true.

Buck’s comments are dead on for many meetings, but there’s [...]]]> Andrew Buck over at the Project Hut has a post today on Meeting Behaviors: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

It’s a good post, but it oversimplifies in a few areas. More specifically, it falls into the trap of “all meetings have the same purpose.”

Ain’t true.

Buck’s comments are dead on for many meetings, but there’s more than one type. Here’s a chart I’ve used in various talks:

Meetings are either to inform or discuss, and the content involves either many or few of the participants; see below. (This is a bit of an oversimplification, of course. It also excludes classes and training, which are meetings of a sort.)

Meetings-to-inform can indeed benefit from Buck’s suggestions. These are the most common type in corporate America… and the most frustrating, because the participants know it can be better even if they’re not sure how to get there.

Dilemma meetings should be “taken outside.” When two or three participants spend time debating an item that doesn’t concern the others in the room, the person with power in the room should cut the conversation off — politely — after a minute or two, suggesting that the participants take it up separately.

What if the person with power is one of the participants?

• Good leaders recognize the situation and move themselves to table the matter after a few minutes.
• Occasionally it’s both urgent and important — and this is the only time the participants will be together in the near future. A good leader should briefly explain and apologize before continuing with the dilemma… but a good leader also builds a good team that probably recognizes the situation.
• Sometimes the administrative assistant  can actually step up to note that the leader is getting off on a tangent. This works only if (a) there’s an agenda or (b) there’s a clear purpose; see below.

So-called strategy meetings — a/k/a brainstorming sessions — need not an agenda but a purpose, almost a vision for the meeting. The chair of the meeting should not be the leader; the leader and facilitator roles should be kept separate in these types of meetings. In addition, it may take considerable time to try to formulate a point; what may seem a “windbag” in a status meeting can be highly valuable thinking aloud in a brainstorming session.

Three Mistakes

1. All meetings are structurally alike, or should be structurally similar. See above.
2. All meetings need a detailed agenda. (The “agenda” for a brainstorming session may technically be called that, but — other than reminding people of the time limit and the purpose — it’s not a meeting agenda.)
3. Meetings should end on time.

#3 is a trick answer. Most meetings should end at least five minutes before the scheduled end time. Give people time to get to their next meeting, give some time to clear the conference room and get the folks for the next meeting in place to start on time, and recognize that post-meeting sidebar conversations or colloquies themselves will take a few minutes and should be allowed for.

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Bill Gates used to hold a regular meeting with his leadership team that was really a rolling series of dilemma meetings. Five or six people/groups would in turn present an item and discuss it with Bill, Steve Ballmer, and some other key senior execs. Here it was understood that (a) it’s hard to get all these folks together and even harder to get your idea in front of them; (b) you could learn quite a bit by listening to Bill and Steve critique or discuss someone else’s idea; (c) it would have been distracting for different groups to come in and out at different times, and Bill wanted agenda flexibility so they could have extended dilemma discussions if need be; and (d) people wanted to see if Bill was going to tear into someone… other than them.

Actually, I never saw Bill tear into someone… just into their ideas. Even that was more mythical than commonplace. (One of my all-time favorite Microsoft internal videos — not available on YouTube, unfortunately — was a funny sketch showing a team trying to sell Bill on Version 2 of Microsoft Bob. He didn’t say a word, and you never actually saw him, but it was priceless watching the team’s faces as they realized the presentation perhaps wasn’t going… um… quite as well as they’d hoped.)

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Here’s a transcription of part of one of my talks discussing the graphic shown above .

I want meetings where everyone comes out at least a little bit smarter. To get there, we need to recognize that not all meetings are the same. On one axis, what’s the purpose? Is it to inform, or to discuss something? On the other axis, how many participants does it involve? Most everyone in the room? Or just two or three of the attendees?

The high-value quadrant is a rich group discussion. Strategy and planning sessions. Brainstorming. Group budgeting or resource allocation. There’s an art to making these meetings effective, and it starts with everyone understanding the purpose.

So let’s look at the next quadrant. Here one person is informing the others in the room. Perhaps a manager sharing news with her reports, or the group comptroller with a budget update. To be of high value, the news must concern most of the attendees. There may be Q&A and discussion, and meetings in this quadrant may sometimes gracefully slide into the upper left – as long as everyone is aware of the shift.

Lower right is low value, but not zero value – as long as these are short. The most common form is an employee sharing information with peers. You don’t want too many of these, but brief sessions are effective at keeping the team on the same page. Consider stand-up meetings for this quadrant – where, literally, everyone is standing. Keeps the meeting short! Stand-up meetings have become quite popular in agile software development. Just don’t do too many of them, or drag them out.

Detailed discussions involving just a few of the participants – that’s bad news. Don’t drag the whole group into colloquies or dilemmas. Keep dilemmas off the agenda. If you realize a discussion or update or report-out is turning into one of these soul-swallowing monsters, deflect it to one-on-one time.

5. New 1LMs should “shadow” senior 1LMs for a significant period of time. (“1LM” is [...]]]> Tom Peters (a/k/a TomPeters!) has a terrific post today about building great first-line managers. I won’t repeat all 20 points here, but I want to call out a few specifically because they are so often overlooked in lists of this sort:

5. New 1LMs should “shadow” senior 1LMs for a significant period of time. (“1LM” is his shorthand for first-line manager.)

12. “Business” training should also be a central part of 1LM training.

13. 1LMs should be treated as the company’s principal “culture carriers” and principal “change agents”—and be treated and trained and “used” accordingly. [emphasis in original]

18. …[T]he quality of the 1LM portfolio should, in turn, be a central element in the evaluation of the department head and division head.

My only issue with this list hearkens back to Peter Drucker: Too many objectives is no objectives. Shorten the list, Tom!

Here’s my short version:

1. Spend as much time selecting – and evaluating and culling — managers as you do on any other core aspect of your business. 1LMs make or break your business.
2. Use mentoring, shadowing, and coaching to develop managers at all levels.
3. Develop great training – and insist that execs put skin in the game by (a) taking the training themselves and (b) speaking regularly to the training classes.
4. Make understanding how the business works a major and ongoing component of managerial training. Every manager should be able to explain how both the business and the specific division make money or otherwise contribute to the bottom line.
5. The most important skills are “people” skills (leadership) and cross-functional abilities. They’re harder to build or select for than functional skills. (And don’t confuse cross-functional with politics; they’re opposite sides of one coin.)
6. Never forget that managers carry your culture.