Rockets!

Wow, it has been over two months since I last posted. In some ways, I feel bad about that, but it's really just an indication of how busy I have been at Parallel Path.

Because of this busyness, I was determined to spend the Thanksgiving weekend 'unplugged' and not working, and to get in some quality time with my family. And it worked out just as I had hoped, with lots of throwing the football around, playing kickball, and generally goofing off. One of the highlights was on Friday, when the boys and I (and some other family members) spent the day shooting rockets. It was a beautiful, clear day with no wind; perfect for rockets.

As regular readers of this blog know, for many years I put on Big Science Saturday for the boys. That has waned quite a bit, but we still seem to find time for fun and practical applications of science, and launching rockets is a perfect example. We have been launching rockets (of theEstes variety) off and on for a couple of years now.

What was particularly fun about this launch is that we have started to experiment with getting the rockets to do fun things they weren't necessarily designed for. By doing so, I hope the boys start learning about some of the basic physics involved in rocket flight.

This weekend we experimented with launching an 'astronaut' in the rocket. The astronaut was made from Legos, and you can kind of see him in the lower left of

this photo (thanks to Pawel for all of the pics):

The Lego astronaut had his own parachute that deployed separately from the rocket's recovery chute. We then went through several launch cycles, first by Maddox:

... then by Ryan:

I'm not sure the boys learned much about rocket physics through the activity, but they did learn what happens when you don't put enough protective wadding between the rocket motor and your astronaut. We ended up with a very scorched astronaut dude:

Overall, a tremendous day.

More Mac Hijinks

Yes, yet another Mac vs. Windows post. Sorry, but I just keep stumbling across interesting stuff.

A while ago I posted on the Apple TV ads that beat up on Windows. Well, it turns out that Apple doesn't confine their shots to their advertising. I stumbled across a subtle shot embedded in my new Snow Leopard operating system update.

One of the few new (visible) features in Snow Leopard is that the cover flow view is integrated into the Finder window. This provides a cool way to quickly view the files and subfolders in a folder. Here's an example:

Today I was looking for some documents on our corporate network using this Finder view. When I viewed the network, I saw several servers in the Finder window:

The first couple of times I saw this view, it didn't occur to me that these images were intended to represent Windows servers. When I realized this, I wondered what the text might be on the screens, so I blew it up:

You may not be able to see the detail, but it's the Windows blue screen of death!

They never miss an opportunity to take a swing. I love it.

Twitter silliness

I use a web monitoring tool called Filtrbox to search for certain phrases across websites, Twitter, blogs, and other social media. It provides broader and fresher results than Google Alerts, which I used to use, and makes Filtrbox a terrific real-time market intelligence tool.

One of the keyword phrases I monitor is my employer's name, Parallel Path. The daily results of this search have highlighted a thread that has been going through Twitter for weeks that is unrelated to my company. The following phrase has been tweeted hundreds of times over the last several weeks:

"There's a parallel path between friends and enemies, and wenever u cross it u make frienemies"

It appears in various forms of grammatical construction, but the concept is always the same.

I have to admit that I don't get it. At multiple levels, I don't get it. But clearly, the following people do:

@MzCitaBaby

@GuapGang619

@AdotdaDon

@mrslovexlabels

@redd_foxx (I thought he was dead. Tweeting from beyond the grave?)

@BackOnMyBest

@WhYYuOnMy****GG (Word removed by FCC censors.)

@Beauty_Badd

@itisIAnthony

@jstFOLLOWmee

@sKAY_shesPoppin

@KikiFarah

@LondonCee551

@rell007

@prettydamnnbadd

@ShAnNaBaByy

@fashioNeCca101

These are people that have tweeted the phrase in the last few days, some several times. The first tweet I saw of this was on July 18, so this has been somewhat viral for over a month.

Quantcast estimates the current demographic profile of Twitter users as follows:

Clearly, I'm not squarely in the demographic center of Twitter users (as compared to the Internet average). I'm not a female African American and I'm on the older side. When I look at some of those Twitter account names above, that mimatch is certainly reinforced. My Twitter account, @tearles, just doesn't fit on the same list with @sKAY_shesPoppin or @MzCitaBaby.

I guess that explains why I just don't get it. (But it highlights to me the beauty of Twitter as a communication medium and marketing tool. That's for another post ...)

Microsoft v. Apple - They Both Win

(I know it has been a very long time since my last post. The main reason for that is that my work, which I am enjoying immensely, is keeping me very busy. However, I have been thinking about this topic for a while, and it's time for me to actually post about it.)

I had a recent experience with my Mac that reminded me why I own one. But before I get to that, I'd like to discuss what I like about Microsoft or, more specifically, what I like about their new advertising campaign:

Almost a year ago, I posted that I enjoyed and appreciated the "I'm a PC" campaign from Microsoft, a campaign created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky. Crispin Porter excels at communicating both the essence of brand and the value a product delivers to customers. In this case, they're doing the latter, highlighting the configurability of Windows-based machines, so you only pay for exactly what you want. In every commercial, they take a direct swipe at Apple by pointing out that, to get just what you want from Apple, you would need to pay much more than a PC would cost. It's a powerful campaign, and does what I have always tried to do in marketing: highlight my product's strengths while moderating its weaknesses.

Here's another thing that I enjoy about these new ads. I love that Microsoft and Apple are actively bashing each other. Apple has been plugging away at Microsoft for a long time with their "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, and this is the first example of an effective counterpunch from Microsoft. Why do I like this? Because this kind of competition is great for consumers like you and me.

Now, will these ads make me buy a PC? No way, and a recent experience will show why. My wife's sister-in-law celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary, and the family was asked to submit video wishes to the couple. We decided to make a goofy video about an episode from the couple's past. We shot about 10 minutes of very loosely scripted video, and I imported that into Apple iMovie. I then edited it down, inserted opening titles and closing credits, overlayed intro music, and inserted transition effects. I had never done anything like this, and it took all of about an hour. If you'd like to see the video, here it is. (However, it's full of family inside jokes, so I'm not sure you'll appreciate the humor.) [I just noticed that the embedded video doesn't format correctly in either Firefox or Safari. If you'd like to see it on the YouTube site, you'll find it here.]

How does this illustrate why I wouldn't own a PC? Couldn't I do this on a PC? Sure. But I'd have to research the software required to do movie editing, go buy it, install it, figure out how to use it, make sure I had the correct drivers for my camcorder, etc. With a Mac, it was all there, it all worked, and it was intuitively easy.

This was all done on my work laptop, by the way. If I were one of the people on the PC commercials, I would have defined the ideal work laptop for me, which means I never would have included something like Mac's iLife suite. But the fact is, my work laptop is my only computer; it has to do everything in my life. If I had to equip a PC with every application that I MIGHT need in the future, like photo or movie processing or creating PDFs, it would cost at least as much as my Mac, and it wouldn't work nearly as well. Apples-to-'apples' price comparisons have been done many times (like here and here), and generally conclude that Macs and PCs are about the same price, when similarly equipped.

Macs are complete machines, amazingly well designed. And not more expensive than PCs, when measured 'apples' to apples.

Customer service, done right

Recently, I complained about an experience my wife had at 24 Hour Fitness. On the same day I posted, a senior member of the company submitted a reply to my posting, attempting to make the situation right. There was a bit of piling on by other commenters, but at least 24 Hour Fitness's Harry was trying to do the right thing and provide a remedy. I don't believe Gina ever took Harry up on his offer, so the situation was never completely resolved, but at least he tried.

Similarly, I recently had an interesting customer service experience with Proflowers. I had little or no experience with ordering flowers online, but my favorite local flower shop went out of business and I need something for Mothers Day. I remembered reading an article about Proflowers' unique business model that ships flowers directly from the grower to the customer; something about by eliminating the local retailer middleman, the flowers can be a little cheaper and, more importantly, arrive at the customer's home with more of their useful life remaining.

(From a marketing perspective, it also helped that I was constantly reminded of Proflowers through their advertisements on ESPN radio. Remember, in a post last year I both admitted that I listen to sports talk radio and commented on radio advertising effectiveness. This is another example of radio's effectiveness [although I can't comment on the ROI associated with radio advertising investments].)

I decided to give ProFlowers a try, ordering a bouquet of Gina's favorite flower, tulips, to be delivered for Mothers Day. Well, their arrival was very disappointing. It was basically 15 flowers in a cardboard box. No decorative paper, no flower food, no little water bulbs on the stems, and two of the stems damaged. After we put the flowers in water, they all laid over and never looked right.

I shot off a quick email to their customer service and received a near-immediate response, apologizing for my disappoint experience and offering me a free order, including free shipping. I ordered the same thing, 15 tulips, to be delivered the next week.

When the second order arrived, it was a completely different experience. This time there was flower food and the flowers were wrapped in paper. Most importantly, the flower came with instructions on how to put the flowers in water and support them initially so that they don't lay over. The flowers turned out great.

After the pleasant second experience, I'm willing to assume that I was just the unfortunate victim of a random, errant shipment and give Proflowers another chance.

If they had just offered me a discount on my next order, I would never have made another order because there would have been too much risk associated with it. They removed all risk by providing the second order completely free. They did so because they recognize the lifetime value of a customer, rather than the value of a single sale. It's amazing that some companies focus solely on the value of the sale.

Knowing the lifetime value of a cusomter is good marketing, and can lead to very good customer service.

The future is difficult to imagine

I came across the following thought-provoking video:

I apologize if you have already seen it, since it has been out about six months. But one thing about the video that struck me as relevant to this blog is the statements it makes about children, that we're training children for jobs that don't even exist yet, or that they will hold so many jobs before their mid-30s.

Is there a stronger statement of generational differences? And I thought there were a lot of differences between my dad's generation and my own.

Why is this relevant to this blog? Because of what I have said about Big Science Saturday and why I do it. (Or, more accurately, did it.) I can't say that my boys are going to be scientists, nor do I care. But I want them to be able to evaluate situations in a structured, critical way, since there is no way we can predict what they'll be faced with.

On a related note, it is Science Fair season at Crest View Elementary. Ryan's is required this year and Maddox's* is optional, although they're always required at the Earles household. Ryan's not a fan of Science Fairs, maybe because I have required his participation every year when only a few of his classmates also participated. However, we found a topic he enjoys, and we made it a little more interesting by suggesting he blog about it. Feel free to read his posts and comment. He loves getting new comments.

And who knows, maybe he'll really take to blogging. Gina and I are trying to use his blogging as an opportunity to teach some writing techniques, grammar, and spelling. But, even if he gets none of that from blogging, it's still fun to see him put himself out there.

*One of these days, I need to learn how to properly write the possessive form of Maddox: Maddox' or Maddox's.

24 Hour Fitness just doesn't get it

This morning, my wife met her friend at 24 Hour Fitness to take some kind of cardio kickboxing class. Her friend was a member and had a free guest pass for Gina to use.

This 24 Hour Fitness facility is pretty new in north Boulder, having been open only a few months. As with any of these types of facilities, they have a fairly large, aggressive sales staff, since gyms make the most money off of sales to new members. (Of course, they hope these members don't use the facility so they can oversubscribe their asset base.)

When Gina showed her free guest pass, the salesman began giving his pitch. He asked if she was currently a health club member, to which she replied that she was and that she wasn't interested in joining 24 Hour Fitness. He then told her that she would have to leave!

He explained that they only give out those guest passes to those that are willing to go through the sales pitch. Gina pointed out that the pass said nothing about that, but that didn't seem to matter to him. Since she wanted to attend the class with her (now very embarrassed) friend, Gina agreed to listen to his pitch after the class, since it was about to begin. She ultimately just walked out after the class.

The whole thing just left a very bad taste in her mouth for 24 Hour Fitness. Do you think she's going to recommend that anyone else join that gym? Rather, she's probably going to go out of her way to tell potential members to avoid it.

Would it have been very difficult for the salesperson to say, "We normally provide those guest passes for those that may be interested in joining. However, please enjoy your visit today and make sure to tell your friends what you think?" The incremental cost of allowing her to visit was effectively zero. The incremental cost of trying to apply a rule that should not even have been in place (if you're going to have a rule, state it on the pass) was creating an annoyed, but well-networked, active health club member that knows a lot of other health club members. Seriously dumb.

How's this for a different approach? My friend David (his blog Bluerant is here) markets a kids' TV show called Big Green Rabbit. He saw that some fans posted a video from the show on their blog, so he sent them a little thank you package. Here is their response. What do you think that package cost BGR, maybe $20, including shipping? What do you think the value of that family's BGR evangelism is worth?

Businesses are built one delighted customer at a time. They can be torn down quickly by a handful of people with negative feelings.