try some retention

i'm not denying the importance of acquiring new customers as that equates to a higher baseline revenue stream for a company, but i've not understood why more efforts are not put against retaining existing customers. never are we made to feel more special to a company as the day we enter into their fold. after that, we're relegated to second class citizens, despite being the ones who fuel their ongoing revenues.

i will assume that there is some formula out there that asserts a new customer is more valuable than an existing one at the point of renewal. perhaps it's just as simple an equation for companies to say that we already got the existing customer's money, they're already invested in us and likely won't switch anyway, so who cares.

when you think about it, a new customer comes in and signs a contract much like an existing one would renew a contract. dollar value of the contract being equal, why is the importance on the acquisition and why is more effort made to seal that deal? take the case of the wireless category that spurred this post to life. in a situation where both a new and existing customer are signing up for the same three year contract, the plan fees and prospective monthly revenue to the company is identical. so why is it that the new customer gets their pick of all the phones, at significant discounts and other incentives to their monthly fees, yet the existing customer doesn't get all those phones to choose from and certainly not the discounts on them either, nor on the plan fees themselves?

we live in a what's-in-it-for-me society where incentives reign supreme. there isn't a lot of that on the side of customers renewing. however, continuing to be a new customer doesn't make a lot of sense either. sure there are some who wouldn't mind having a new phone number every 3 years, but for most, it's not a great option. same goes for other industries and services.

a company's approach to customers is universal; acquire them, and over the course of their term with you, maximize the revenue you can garner from each individual one. with this in mind, the customer should have the upper hand but you wouldn't know it. especially if the company has not yet recouped what they spent to acquire you. while it's not impossible to get comparable incentives to the new customer, you have to raise a stink to get it. this leaves the relationship contentious and opens the door to dissatisfaction and another company luring you away.

companies need to do more to keep their customers than send a direct mail piece every now and then, which ends up in the garbage anyway. we need to feel that we are valued by companies and for right or wrong, that often times comes down to when we're renewing. at that point when we have the opportunity to get out, it's not always apparent that a company wants us to stay. it's not enough to just thank us for the business as we hold our decision to stay in the same light as our decision to come to a company and that equation is heavily imbalanced.

multi-post #5: ken griffey jr, hillary clinton, jon lajoie

ken griffey jr. joins the 600 club


i will join in the chorus of merited applause and congratulations, for one of the most deserved athletes in reaching such a hallowed achievement in the game of baseball, to you ken griffey jr.

i like so many others having been waiting for griffey to reach this milestone for far too long. it wasn't that long ago that grif was ahead of hank aaron's pace for breaking the home run record, but then real tragedy struck in the form of a string of injuries that only merciless baseball gods could inflict on one of their brightest stars ever. i hated watching kgj's career getting derailed by injuries for over three years straight. it pained me to watch such a talent be sidelined by seemingly freak injuries. i hated watching a star, who was still in his prime, become forgotten and irrelevant. that he has been able to return to the game and still produce is a testament to his prowess.

griffey sits 163 homers shy of owning the home run record, something that at age 38 seems too far out of his grasp. bonds hit 149 in the 5 years after he was 38 and aaron hit 82, playing another 4 years after his 38th. with those benchmarks and griffey's already ravaged body and declining production, reclaiming the hr record for the side of dignity and honesty is a pipe dream.

i'm reminded of an article on the onion sometime last year entitled "... we wish it were you hitting 756 home runs." while it is a satire site, the sentiment is abundantly clear. i can't think of anyone better that baseball or the public in general (me especially) would rather have as their home run king. someone who has remained a pure talent and never once linked to steroids or cheating of any kind in his career.


hillary's presedential prophecy

now that hillary clinton has officially given up her bid for president, i'm reminded of a small bit, from a small show that a small part of me wanted to see the irony of it coming true. the show was TekWar anyone remember that one? it was william shatner's brainchild that lasted 3 seasons ('94-'96), focused around a crime unit that was trying to rid the world of an extremely addictive drug called tek. you see, there was a little bit in the background of one episode where a tv report was mentioning something about "... president hillary clinton..."

meant to be just a slight against the then first lady and her domineering way, who would have thought it could actually be a reality. but when you so poorly run a election campaign and drive it into the ground from such a dominating start, the irony of it all can't catch up to you. i don't know why that little bit of inconsequentia has stayed with me for about 14 years, but it was so outlandish, that it did. and now it's just as outlandish as it was before hillary clinton ran for office.


jon lajoie - canada's hidden comedic gem

i don't know how i stumbled upon jon lajoie, but am happy i did. i don't rave about too many people so effusively, but in this case, i was so smitten by jon lajoie's comedic mind that i had to. i think it's because he does what i am unable to do. i love to write extremely crass songs and sing them for people, but my ditties so pale to the genius of jon lajoie it's embarrassing.

case in point, this is the song that sold it for me. its' sublimely funny, clever and creepy. do yourself a big favor and hop on over to youtube to see his body of work. there are no misses.

a call for clemency to us duffers

i think us average joe duffers are a little too hard on ourselves. we don't shoot the score we want, we miss some putts, we don't hit the fairways, and we can't seem to stick our approach shots on the green. skill level or a factor of where we have to play? a combination of the two in my mind. i offer a modicum of relief we can all take to ease some of the pain in our shortcomings as golfers.

what i'm positing is that we don't have the luxuries pros do. sure, they have the problem of total yardage to worry about, but they have so much more terrain for forgiveness. look at what we usually have to play on. courses where the fairways are about as wide as a hallway and greens that have the diameter of a wading pool. contrast that with the broad expanses of a six lane highway for fairways and the lake sized span of greens the pga tour features.

okay, i exaggerate for effect, but it's pretty obvious. they have a lot more real estate to play on than we usually do. we are certainly not granted any forgiveness for even the slightest mishit to the left or right. not only is there more real estate to play on, but often times the way the golf course is laid out into the plot of land it has poses some interesting if not abnormal approaches.

not only just the width of the fairways or size of the greens, but general course conditions overall we unwittingly tolerate. i mean tee areas so hacked up you can't find even a small patch of grass for your tee. fairways that have been scorched by the sun so that they more closely resemble the cart path. greens that are a patchwork of barren areas and unrepaired divots. throw in the mix the usual proximity to a well-traveled road or train tracks to subvert our concentration and we falter more. let's not forget the caliber and nature of the other golfers we have to play alongside too. people who don't repair ball marks, cut huge swaths of turf out of the fairway, suddenly forget the word 'fore', and the bane of my particular existence, slow players and/or overcrowding.

this is no knock on any course in particular or the state of a lot of courses out there. a number of factors are at play, but primarily it's simple economics. your local course either didn't have that much land available to them or in order to service a certain part of the golfing population, kept the land smaller for less costs to pass along (land tax, maintenance, etc).

when we mis-hit a shot and it goes astray, we pay a far greater penalty than the pros. if we don't hit the fairway, we don't have a nice second cut of rough, it's right into the fescue or deep rough we contend with. no favors there to help us recover. if we non-pros hit a somewhat errant tee-shot, would that land us on the edges of a tour fairway as opposed to the rugged shoulders of the courses we normally play? does that approach shot land on the fringe or is it just a green in regulation on a tour stop with a long putt to follow?

let's also not forget that the pros have about 50 marshals and countless members of the gallery on every hole to help them find an errant shot or. i think most of us would appreciate even one person, other than our companions, who can be down the fairway watching every ball struck to locate its position. sometimes you think you know where it is, but mystifyingly it disappears.

i guess we could shell out the extra bucks for some much more well manicured courses that have more terrain, but golf is expensive enough and we all can't play at the top courses. some of us just like getting out there to hit a few balls or are more cost conscious. in some respects, it's as if you're paying for some measure of leniency from the golf gods when you play these swankier courses.

i think all this makes us better golfers though. forces us to play a tighter game. teaches us greater precision. instills in us a measure of humility. emboldens perseverance. golf is a game of momentum and confidence. how can we build either when we stand in the face of conditions that hold us back? rather than practicing good golf play, we are practicing our save shots or hitting a ball 8 inches above our feet. doesn't promote anything but frustration does it?

it frustrates us to no end that we are more acutely punished for the courses our lot in life grants us access to. the sport is frustrating enough as it is. that we can't always take the kinds of chances we want because the penalty is too high. i understand the game of golf is about penalizing us for the errors we make. but comparatively, the punishment is seemingly more severe for those who need the greatest alleviation and mercy from it.

i'd like to challenge the pros to take a shot at some of the local courses we play on and see how they fare. they may tear the course up, but they may also stumble on some of the idiosyncrasies of a course we blithely submit to every time we lace up the spikes. those drives that go a little astray and fringe-bound on the tour, are now in the woods. the approaches that are 30 feet from the pin are now a wedge shot for an up and down to the pros. i think it would be interesting, at least in a prove-me-wrong sense.

by no means am i saying that the pros have it easy. it's a career to them and they have a lot more at stake and a lot more that they have to put in to remain competitive. but that's not us weekenders. it's not our livelihood. we can't put in the time and money to play at that level, we have day jobs. i just think there is a big gap in what our skill level affords us and that required to play the courses we do.

so golfers, don't be so hard on yourselves. look at the conditions you have to play on, you're bound to err. take a deeper perspective of your golf game and say to yourself "yeah, i'm playing pretty good all things considered."

happy anniversary designated hitter

today marks the 35th anniversary of the dh rule in the american league. not an anniversary i particularly am pleased exists as i'm ardently against the the dh. this article over at si (itself and excerpt from the book 'change up: an oral history of 8 key events that shaped modern baseball) documents how it came about and the key players in the dh's inception. truth be told, i thought the dh as much older than 35 years and defined the difference between the american and national leagues a lot longer.

straight-up, without my own personal biases, i now understand how and why the dh came about. while i still don't agree with it, i know the purpose it did serve. i don't believe that purpose still exists, but the position (if you want to call it that) is too entrenched in the american league to go back now. you have teams that have for years based their whole system on the dh rule and they're just not going to relent on the matter.

to condense the history down, 1973 was a year dominated by pitching and the owners needed to make a change to balance the game more. and don't think it was purely about the sport being balanced either, their ledgers needed to balanced as well. see a pitching dominated league was less interesting than an offense dominated league, so revenues ebbed downward as people came to the ballparks less because it wasn't as exciting to watch. so the owners got together and instituted the dh, though not an original thought. the notion had been around since the early 1900's. and so on april 6th 1973, ron bloomberg (pictured above) of the yankees became a footnote in the annals of baseball as the first designated hitter.

my biggest beef with the dh is one of athleticism, both in symmetry and versatility. a baseball team should consist of 9 players who on the defensive end, take to the field to collect three outs and then offensively take turns batting. there is a completeness and tradition of players and teams who do this. in terms fo value to the team, a specialized player who can only bat really detracts from a team in a lot of situations where other skills are required. essentially, a dh takes the spot of a player who can provide more value to the team in situations outside of just hitting.

in reading this article, i found it interesting how the dh role has evolved over time. it started as a way to generate more offense and make the games more interesting. of course, this was still at a time where the fundamentalist approach of the game was still in fashion. that being get men on base, move them over and bring them home. that compared to the power game of today which has players thinking the long ball. so the dh of old would have been something i could be on board with. they were athletic type guys who drove in runs, got on base themselves, hit for a high average, and otherwise put up all-around decent numbers.

fast forward to today where designated hitters are all about power, with home runs being the key stat to mark a decent dh of today. that's only one facet of the game, and outside of fan excitement, one that has less on-field value than other stats. homers are still rarities (in perspective to other types of hits) so banking on that one long shot every so often isn't as good a return as a solid hitter, who when not clearing the bases those few times is contributing in other ways, like getting on base himself or moving other runners over.

as i will always do, there are points to support the dh, which i will share. it extends a players career, provided that they were a good batter. look at george brett or paul molitor, they got a couple extra years by moving over to dh. now tis point is only reserved for those players that can continue to perform at a high level at the plate. no one should extend a career if it is out of vanity or ego or something else if they aren't performing, so becoming a dh to extend your career better be for the right reasons.

proponents will also say it alleviates the demands on the pitcher as they are the only ones on the field who do as much constant and tiresome work. i'll give em that, but today's pitchers are a lot more coddled than in the past when they did have to bat. so perhaps they could toughen up some. besides, no one expects the pitcher to really do anything at the plate anyway, so get in there and take a couple swings.

to quote the movie bull durham, kevin costner's character says: "there should be a constitutional amendment outlawing astroturf and the designated hitter." i couldn't agree more. it's a hack rule that further babies half the pitchers.

multi-post #4: shortest story, earth hour

the shortest story

sometime in the 1920's, ernest hemingway bet some of his contemporaries that he could write a short story in just six words. he did so, and collected his proceeds from them. he considered it his best work. having read it, was truly impressed at just how much he was able to convey in so few words. that he did in fact tell an entire story, evoked emotion, words ebbed and flowed and took the reader on journey in the most mcluhanist way. here it is, unabridged:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

how i found out about this was through a recent article on wired where they approached 30 writers and 5 designers with the same task. the results mixed in my opinion. none really achieving the same essence as hemingway. while all good efforts and did capture each writer's own persona, they fell short in comparison.

here's my equally as feeble attempts at this exercise. i encourage anyone reading this to add their own in the comments for all to read.

"all computers gone. how to communicate?"
"brought a knife to gun fight"
"should've had sex before getting married"
"screeched to a halt. too late."

earth hour is upon us

today at 8pm-9pm, the world is to shut off the power. a noble pursuit, no doubt, and one that i support for whatever small difference it makes. it's more about the world banding together than it is about the small effect of turning off your lights will have. please don't get me wrong in the words below, i'm not belittling this effort, I just think it could have been executed better or sent a stronger message.

the first issue is that this is being done on the weekend. granted, at least it IS being done, but for a greater impact, it should have been done on a weekday when more electricity is being consumed. i understand it's about getting the everyday citizen involved, but isn't it the corporations that are really driving global warming? also from the perspective of corporate involvement, it says a lot more to shut down operations and offices during the weekday than on the weekend.

secondly, don't limit it just to the lights. turn everything off. hell, i may just turn all the breakers off at the source, but at the very least, i won't limit myself to a few lights. i know a lot of people will go above and beyond, but in our minimal involvement society, people will do just that and still feel good about themselves.

third, government support needs to be escalated. citizens can do all they want but climate change is a largely political issue. it's about the government stepping in and enforcing regulations that will put a halt to these negative environmental shifts. the ontario government, who is supporting earth hour, and all other levels of government need to do more than this symbolic gesture of preserving our planet. i'll give credit to them for taking the step, but it needs to go further to actual legislation.

i'd also like to see more corporate involvement and more vocal support for earth hour. my friends at molson have gone the extra mile and declared that they will be shutting down all operations for the hour in a number of their facilities. very commendable and an example of taking this effort to heart and going above and beyond. i hope that more corporations are doing the same, but i'm skeptical that they will be. and if they are, that it is genuine and not just a pr play.

i guess baby steps is the m.o. on this one. we haven't been able to radically change people's perceptions or habits in this matter, so i guess we need to start small and build from there. here's to a happy earth hour, and to it being bigger in the future.

multi-post #3: rem, scaling the schedule, 10,000 bc,

r.e.m. is superserious about new music distribution


in an effort to maintain relevance and youngster cool, rem announced they will be releasing their next album, accelerate, on iLike six days before the official release date of april 1st. fans will be able to embed the band's tune's on their facebook, myspace and bebo pages through the ilike application (aka widget).

i don't mean to dog rem because i'm a big fan. but many claim them to be dinosaurs, no longer relevant to the mass music scene and past their prime, the best music behind them. i don't agree with all that, but the band is no longer on their top rung anymore. and who cares. i have a new perspective on the band having just completed their semi-authorized biography entitled fiction. it tells of a band interested in the art of music, not the celebrity of it. and however cliche it sounds, each album being an exploration into art and music that changes and never becomes homogeneous. and in that regard, they have been a success story, despite their waning sales and perceived misses. they make music they want to hear, not what the masses dictate.

back to the release of their new album, i do think the iLike effort is a ploy for more youth relevance. but i also believe that it is something rem want to explore. we're talking about a band who have been making music for nearly 30 years together, have witnessed and explored everything along the way from there. this technology is just one of the latest stops that curiosity has brought them to. this experiment follows in the footsteps of their seemingly successful dabbling with youtube and their website to give fans access to video content so they can make their own music video. see the gallery here.

the first single is a winner in my books. a great return to the hard edged rock and roll that made them famous. here's the video for supernatural superserious:




scaling the schedule

read an interesting article that seemed obvious, but teams are only now starting to realize it an implement it. for years the notion of 'scaling the house' has been in play. that the 'house' (ie. stadium, arena, park, stage, field, grounds, venue, etc.) charges different prices for seats depending on where they were. the closer, the more expensive. what is starting to take hold is the idea of not only doing that but also scaling the ticket pricing depending on who the opponent is.

inherently some of any given team's opponents are going to be bigger attractions than others. that is unless you are the yankees or red sox, in which case, you are the biggest attractions. those games are likely going to have a greater attendance, so why not charge more for them, thus increasing your revenue. people are going to see them even if the tickets cost a little more. why should those yankees and sox be the only one to capitalize on their fan base and status? conversely, cheaper tickets for lesser teams might encourage greater attendance, and thus greater revenues.

being an ardent baseball fan and regular attendee of the blue jays games, i see this every year when the yanks or sox come to town. it's almost guaranteed that attendance will be double. in many cases their fans outnumber the home team's. as an owner, i'd love that revenue increase. it could do wonders for the team in better players or better fan experience (or just likely the bottom line). my gut tells me that people are willing to pay the premium and will do so because, well, they're fans and they want to see who they like. living in the most expensive hockey city, i see all the time people will to pay top dollar to see their mediocre team play anyone else.

some independent firm analyzed the numbers and came to the conclusion that there is a windfall to be had in doing this. i'd gladly take a greater sum of money from all the new yorkers who cross the border to come watch their precious yankees and use it against them by way of better players. i think it will help sports become more competitive and smaller market teams be able to thrive.


10,000 bc (big crappy)


i had the good fortune of seeing 10,000 bc last week at an advanced screening. i say good fortune only in the sense that the tickets were free and that the movie was only an hour and a half. otherwise, misfortune abounded. i went in thinking "oh this might be an okay movie. see some dudes battle saber-tooth tigers, kill mammoths and fight over territory in an epic, prehistoric way." what i got was puzzling.

it's a love story! that's right, a love story. the entire movie is about a man chasing after a kidnapped woman. there's not even a good battle scene. most startling of all is the complete and utter neglection of historical fact. i'm all for being entertained, but there are some things i just can't overlook. sure, with sci-fi i can chalk up any disbelief to the fact it's science fiction and that is license to do what you want. but a period piece, you can't ignore the facts and history. let me recount the most grievous liberties they took:

1) complex language - the people spoke english, and good english at that. i'll give that up to making it accessible and english representing whatever language they did speak. but wait, was language around then, or was it grunts and gestures? i can't easily answer that, but can't assume that there was that much of a language around at that time. even more, the vocabulary they used was sizable. if they had words, there weren't that many.
2) forged weapons - the dominant race/tribe in the movie who did all the pilaging brandished swords. i can say with most certainty, that humans were incapable of fashioning weapons like this at that time. in a similar wein, these poeple also tamed horses which i think is quite the stretch too
3) building technology - the aforementioned dominant race/tribe was building a friggin pyramid. that is easily 7,000 years prior to the pyramids that actually exist in egypt. they also used technology and means of creating them that we are still speculating if the egyptians even had so many years later.

the movie could have been so much more, so much better. instead it was a colossal failure. there's a formula for these types of moveis, and the producers didn't bother following it. that may sound like propogating the same aold crap, but it's not. each retelling of a similar storyline has new twists. in this case, it's the prehistoric setting and the cool beasts that lived at the time.

tax time again

as always this time of year, filing your taxes. wish it could be simpler? it could be. as i started my preparation, i remembered an article i read about a flat tax that the fraser institute had put a news release out on. by no means is this a new idea, i just wasn't aware of it until now. but it seemed pretty compelling.

the reader's digest condensed recap of all this is we are currently operating under a progressive tax system where different income levels are taxed at different rates. with this of course are all the shelters, loopholes, deductions, and exemptions that make actual payment of taxes perhaps less mandatory. a flat tax is exactly that, an equalized tax that applies to everyone regardless of their income level. there's a lot more to the theory and to the practice of flat tax, but i'll leave that to wikipedia.

what the fraser institute proposed was a 15% tax across the board with an exemption altogether for the lowest income earners. the tax form itself would be the size of a postcard and have about 10 inputs. that's it. no complicated forms, no receipts, no h&r block, fuss whatsoever. quite an appealing proposition for the layman. beyond the new ease of filing, they also mention a savings of roughly $30 billion in costs to maintain the current tax system and cite the economic benefits seem to be a huge boon as well. to quote the fraser release:

One of the most significant changes under the proposed flat tax is the full exemption of savings and investment from taxation. Income put back into the economy in the form of savings or investments would not be taxed under the flat tax, which would encourage more savings and investment and lead to a more vibrant and wealthier economy. The changes would also make Canada much more attractive and competitive internationally.

the greatest appeal for me is that under this system, the government will make the same amount of money, but in a much less complicated way. the other big appeal is that my tax rate would lessen from what it is now. and as the fraser institute states, more money for me to spend and put back into the economy. but aside from myself, i like that the people who traditionally weasel out of paying taxes, the highest income earners, no longer can avoid paying what they should. so no longer does the middle class bear the burden of funding this country, we all do equally.

the next question is, will this come to fruition? will someone in parliament or yet to be elected take this to the house? i can't imagine a mass populace will not want this to be a reality. if we live in a democracy and we are all supposed to be equals, at least on one level, a flat tax will make us all equals.