Jonothan Stribling

I found out today that Myer have started to offer free shipping in Australia. This is a welcome step and a sign of the maturing of online retail in Australia.

The large department store and big box stores have largely ignored ecommerce for the past 15 years and have started to act after being faced with changing consumer behaviour and declining profits .

There is a long way to go. The David Jones online store has made big improvements but is a great example of getting a lot wrong.

Some retailers like Bunnings offer only store location tools and catalogue downloads. The catalogues are a prime example of Australian business taking the easy way out and not thinking about what’s good for the customer.

Who wants to navigate a printed catalogue online? It is a horrible user experience and only encourages customers to look elsewhere for better service and value.

I applaud Myer for being bullish about online retail in Australia and going for $50 million in annual sales. It is a great target and shareholders, customers, and the business will all benefit.

A small business I provided some advice had launched a website in a space with low competition and high margins, and the results were pretty good for a small investment.  They had knocked up a site, launched some paid search ads, put in some rudimentary processes for managing enquiries, and like the results. The problem was that the site had stopped growing.

What was missing was the kind of consistent maintenance and content creation to engage buyers, rank well in Google, and learn from your mistakes.

I find many people not familiar with the intricacies of online marketing and ecommerce are surprised that making a website successful can be hard work. Even more express dismay when they discover that integrating an online channel into an existing business requires a rethinking of all processes.

This is common in any business small or large. I think some people are sold on the internet fantasy of “build it and they will come” or think that the internet is technical stuff which is best left to the guy who runs the servers.

The fact is that online takes work. Like any business it needs to be planned and the plan needs to be worked.

Customers need to be identified and spoken to, marketing plans drawn up, search experts engaged, if you’re shipping goods fulfillment needs to be sorted out. Most importantly you need to know how you’re going to be successful. What are the metrics you will use to work out if strategy is working and what tactics you need to change?

I don’t mean to make it sound impossible but without a commitment to do the work, make mistakes, and learn, it is almost difficult to make an online channel successful. The secret sauce is not technical, it is an passion for learning. I remember listening to @sammartino, the founder of rentoid.com, talking about how he  launched the website with no web design skills at all. What he had was a hunger to build something and make it successful. As an ex-web developer who can get caught up in technical wizardry, it was a very useful lesson in what really matters.

With passion, energy and a keen eye for solving customer problems, any online business can be successful. I recently helped a neighbour and friend fix her wordpress site she developed almost single-handed to launch her hanging glass vase business. I love this kind of enthusiasm to use the web as a tool to build a business. I’m sure that she will be successful because she understood she needed to put the work in to make it work.

I think there is a place for an ecommerce mentor who helps with strategy, measurement, optimization, and coaching. The future of small to medium business is in embracing online technologies to reduce costs and grow their businesses. They just need to be shown that the skills that made their existing business successful is all they need to make their online business successful.

How can you help someone be successful online?

I was reading about Christine Nixon criticising the 2009 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission and it struck me that we all have different ideas about leadership.

Nixon had claimed that the Royal Commission was the “worst kind of kangaroo court”. The media, in particular the News Ltd papers had taken a dim view of Nixon having a meal in a pub on Black Saturday, likening her to Emperor Nero, eating while Victoria burned.

Nixon had previously said about leadership on the ABC:

“But I think there’s a line about leadership for me that I think’s really important and it’s not about privilege, it’s not about rank. It’s not about popularity but it is about responsibility.”

I think that claiming leadership is about responsibility and then criticising the Royal Commission which said that “elements of the leadership provided on 7 February were wanting” is a little transparent. Delegating or abdicating authority in a crisis is not responsible and it is poor leadership.

Nixon made a point of talking about leadership during her time as Police Commissioner and appears to be trying to resurrect her career and create some controversy to sell some copies of her book. She strikes me as being the worst kind of hypocrite. It would be better if she wrote about what she learnt about leadership throughout the Royal Commission and how she realised that true leadership was about stepping up and helping other people feel like leaders. Or whatever she realised but isn’t saying.

So what is leadership really?

For me, it is an over-used corporate weasel word. Leadership group. Team Leader. Senior Leader. Leading edge. Leading the way. Bullshit most of it. Leadership is about showing grit in tough times and inspiring others to show the same grit and be leaders themselves. The leaders who have inspired me have motivated me to act against my better judgement and avoid reflecting on any perceived short comings,  they have shown me that I have within myself the capacity to lead and inspire others.

Is that what Christine Nixon was doing when she left her deputies in charge at the emergency Response Centre on 7 Feb 2009? Perhaps that is exactly what she intended. The shame is that it didn’t work. According to the Royal Commission report, there was no one really in charge. The situation called for someone to show a way forward in a difficult situation and in that Christine Nixon failed. Having a quick Chicken Schnitzel dinner sent the wrong message and was not the right thing to do.

One of my favourite quotes about leadership is from George W. Bush:

“I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.”

Or perhaps a better quote from Michel Foucault is:

“The strategic adversary is fascism… the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”

For me, leadership is about acting and enabling others to act without threats or violence.

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When I was just starting out in the web game in the 1990′s, I met a bloke just back from working in London and about to open a restaurant. He wanted to change the way Melbournians ate fine food. There would be no mediocrity. Every ingredient would be individually sourced and the finest available. The staff would approach hospitality as professionals, not as students with a part time job. The sommelier would be a verified expert at pairing the finest wines with the finest food. The venue, whilst humble would be in a great location, have parking and be easily accessible to his customers.

So what happened? Well today that man is one of Australia’s most successful restaurateurs, is regularly featured in the social pages, occasionally appears on a certain TV cooking show, and has a number of very successful restaurants.

So what does this have to do with online success?

It’s all about vision. My mate defined his vision and worked tirelessly to see it realised. He knew that in the high end market he had to do something different and be 100% committed to quality. He bought the best French butter available, he arranged Melbourne’s first degustation menu, and promoted himself whenever and wherever he could. It didn’t happen overnight but people discovered that he was doing something different and offered a suburb culinary experience.

Pretty soon word of mouth spread and the little restaurant took off.

The point I am trying to make is that the recipe for online success is not about tools, products, or a new PPC or social media strategy, it is about vision and drive.

Sure you need to get the products right, understand your market, build a great brand, and have efficient processes, but without a vision and the drive to realise it you will struggle to successfully build a great online business.

With the web, it’s easy to become enamoured by technology and bright shiny tools. Everyone has some great advice about a web host, PPC,  SEO, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, taking payments, colours, design, layout, the size of your font, your background colour, your logo, delivery and fulfillment, email marketing, CSS, YouTube, link building, Google Panda, Facebook pages, PayPal, PHP, .NET, jquery, and so on.  That’s all bullshit. My advice is to forget the tools and focus on the vision. Once your vision is written in huge letters on your wall start looking at which technology can help you realise it.

My mate wanted to change how Melbournians ate fine food by introducing a new European style of dining, what’s your vision?

I just saw a new Australia Post ad promoting their parcel delivery services to small to medium businesses in Australia. The ad encourages businesses to “zing their thing” and apart from being a little trite (zing = speed), I liked the ad.

It tells the story of a small business that makes Zing and becomes wildly successful. And guess what, they need a flexible delivery service to meet the needs of their rapidly growing business. The ad is backed by a website http://www.zingyourthing.com.au/ which builds on the idea that Zing is every product, every idea, every dream, which is of course delivered speedily by Australia Post.

The ad invites people to search for zing. So being an obedient consumer I did exactly that. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there were no results for Australia Post or their campaign sites on page 1 of Google.  There was a paid search ad. This is another case of agencies getting only half the campaign right. If you’re going to invite people to search for a low competition term like zing then spend a couple of weeks ensuring you rank for it. With an estimated 2% to 10% of Google searchers clicking on paid search ads, Australia Post are going to be missing out on a reasonable amount of traffic. Admittedly, Australia Posts click-through-rate for the ad will be higher than most terms, but it is still a poorly executed campaign. Some users will wonder if they are in the right place and move on.

It is a shame because the rest of the campaign is really great. The campaign site is one long page and has a beautiful scrolling background. The call to action is front and centre, and the privacy policy is easily found. Before the digital geniuses in agencies have a great idea like, “Why don’t we just ask them to search for quirky product term”, they should make sure they cover off organic and paid search.

When Google+ was launched a few weeks ago I saw it as another Google Buzz writ large. Google Buzz was of course a lamentable failure after hype of dizzying proportions. Now I think Google+ may be different. In a little over 3 weeks the service has amassed 20  million users and seen the social media stars and blogger experts jump on board and make all sorts of wonderful claims. My favourites are:

• Personal blogs are no longer needed because Google+ allows maximum engagement;
• This will kill twitter and people are already bored by twitter;
• The 140 character limit is limiting twitter;
• This will kill Facebook;
• Google are playing favourites with brand pages and demonstrating how unethical they really are;
• Google+ will change how brands interact with social media;
• Google+ will not change how brands interact with social media;
• Twitter is still a better mobile tool;
• Google+ is a better curation tool;
• Google+ sucks;
• Google+ is like Friend Feed;
• Google+ vs Facebook is like Facebook vs MySpace circa 2005.

Some of the views above are not entirely crazy (apart from redirecting your personal blog to your Google+ profile), but people really need to calm the fuck down.

Sure Google+ is great and shiny and new. It is like the latest spring fashions from Paris, the new BMW M5, a latest Nike’s, or a new diet drink made from a substance found deep in the rainforest which magically makes you thinner, better looking and smarter.

In other words Google+ is simply fashion.

Geeks, techno-bloggers, and social media experts are flocking to Google+ so they can be part of the cool-set.

And Google are of course building a massive new data-set to crunch some data and sell advertising. I have no complaints about that, it is after all just business. My problem is with people magically forgetting that Google are not a charity creating some really innovative cool stuff to make everyone happy. They are building honeypot to make lots and lots of money because they have been watching Facebook pull in more than $1 Billion a year in advertising and have a massive share of Internet users invisible to Google.

The great thing about the world is that there will always be room for something new and innovative. And if Apple or Google are in business there will always be uncritical acceptance of whatever they do from guileless fools.

Oh, you can find me here if you want to follow me on Google+

I have a few memories of Amy Winehouse.

One is in Norway, which is an awful coincidence given the terrible shootings there this weekend. It was at a recovery BBQ for a Wedding, the weather was warm, the party attendees nicely drunk or hungover when “I don’t wanna go to rehab” came on the ipod mix. My brother-in-law, who has long struggled with his own demons, jumped up and said they’re playing my song  and started to dance; wildly, crazy, and free. The more senior members of the party looked at the ground or studied their wine glasses. The younger, more inebriated of us just laughed.

My other memories are purely tabloid. Amy drunk. Amy sad. Amy drug-fucked. Amy OK. Amy not OK

That Winehouse died alone (I’m guessing) after 10 years being a poster-girl for wasted youth, and a spectacle eagerly consumed by tabloids is a tragedy.  A look at Winehouse’s twitter page is instructive. One of the similar users is tabloid disgrace Perez Hilton.

Winehouse was the same age as my sister, who also died alone, a victim of addiction and destructive  hedonism. My sister’s battles were largely personal, unshared with her family and friends. Winehouse’s battles were a public spiral into the gutter which sold a lot of magazines. The end result is the same. Another life wasted because of drugs, alcohol, and desire.

Our society doesn’t tolerate wastedness very well except at mandated public events – Christmas, New Years, Melbourne Cup, and if you’re under 30, every Friday night. Being wasted on a Monday morning is to gaze into the Nietzschean void and loudly declare, “Fuck you all. Fuck corporations. Fuck your God!” To do it on a Friday is to be a joiner, a team player, or great bloke. The fissure between the two modes of behaviour is almost non-existent. A Friday drinking can turn into a wasted Monday for someone with poor support structures, depression, or a baggage too painful to bear alone.

The death of Amy Winehouse forces us to remember those who’ve also died too early, alone, and a victim of a Nietzschean rage at the world and themselves.

We should be able to do better for them.

Photo credit: Crikey

When I was a university student I loved French Philosopher, Gilles Deleuze for his complex and almost impregnable ideas which busted open the traditional pillars of western thought.

Deleuze approached philosophy as an outsider.

“What got me by during that period was conceiving of the history of philosophy as a kind of ass-fuck, or, what amounts to the same thing, an immaculate conception. I imagined myself approaching an author from behind and giving him a child that would indeed be his but would nonetheless be monstrous.”

There is a lot to learn from this kind of approach to life. Rather than accepting life as it meanders along from study to work to marriage to retirement, you can make the rules and break the rules. We should embrace the schizophrenic, the multiple, and the edge of the limit over the awful and doddering established truth.

Deleuze and his collaborator Felix Guattari wrote a magnificent book called Capitalism & Shizophrenia where they introduced the concept of the rhizome. The rhizome is the Internet imagined before the Internet. They write:

Let us summarize the principal characteristics of a rhizome: unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible to neither the One or the multiple. It is not the One that becomes Two or even directly three, four, five etc….It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills. It constitutes linear multiplicities with n dimensions having neither subject nor object, which can be laid out on a plane of consistency, and from which the one is always subtracted (n-1). When a multiplicity of this kind changes dimension, it necessairly changes in nature as well, undergoes a metamorphisis. Unlike a structure, which is defined by a set of points and positions, the rhizome is made only of lines; lines of segmentarity and stratification as its dimensions, and the line of flight or deterritorialization as the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes metamorphosis, changes in nature.

Comparing the rhizome in relation to the transformational possibilities of the Internet is very useful. Just as the rhizome is neither the One or the multiple, the Internet is a non-linear series of inter-connected networks which grows, changes in nature, and is subject to multiple dimensions. Whilst the Internet may have become inherently commercial and an abject expression of the lonely desires of billions searching for meaning on facebook, ebay, and Google+, it remains a fragile place easily disrupted. Pre-Internet commerce was interrupted by natural disasters, 747s dropping out the sky and bombs blowing up in pubs. Now a malevolent 14 year old can bring down a billion dollar business with a script.

The terrifying possibility of the Internet’s metamorphosis was recently demonstrated by the erudite, talented, and scary hackers from @LULZSec. After their June 2011 campaign of terror they wrote:

For the past 50 days we’ve been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could. All to selflessly entertain others – vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It’s what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.

Now if that’s not shizophrenic, I don’t know what is. Deleuze would have been proud.

This morning I noticed that GoDaddy and NetRegistry had almost identical facebook posts.

First GoDaddy posted:

Then a few hours later NetRegistry posted:

Is it just the domain registrar Zeitgeist or is there some copycat marketing going on? .xxx is a curly issue for many in the industry so there is a chance that some market probing (sorry) is underway by both GoDaddy and NetRegistry. However, I have my suspicions that NetRegistry was scratching for relevant content for their Facebook page and were inspired by the big Daddy.

Malcom Gladwell must be wondering what went wrong.

In October 2010 the award winning New Yorker writer penned a piece that tried to address the hyperbole about so-called twitter revolutions and suddenly he was the most hated man on twitter.

The response was spectacular. Twitter erupted into outrage, Biz Stone co-founder of twitter responded with a thoughtful but dense piece in The Atlantic Monthly that promoted twitter as a force for fostering relationships and creating meaningful change. For Stone the power of twitter lies in its ability to empower people through communication. He finishes his defence with:

Rudimentary communication among individuals in real time allows many to move together as one–suddenly uniting everyone in a common goal.

Now the idea of “rudimentary communication” happening in “real time” seems to me to be no different from me having a conversation with a stranger whilst waiting for my morning coffee, but I think I know what Stone was getting at – there is power is connecting heterogeneous conversations and rapidly distributing information. This is after all one of the revolutionary aspects of the Internet.

Interestingly, as far as I can tell, the Zuck and the gang at Facebook were too busy making money to respond.

What interests me about this is how thin-skinned the twitter fans appear to be. Gladwell was the subject of many vitriolic and hateful tweets that accused him of being part of old-media player and a right bastard. The debate was reminiscent of many techno-religious debates like Apple vs. PC or. NET vs PHP. Now the reductive fissure is social media vs. history, or twitter vs. Facebook.

Gladwell’s piece is problematic. He deliberately collapses issues with tools so as to be controversial saying:

Where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools.

I don’t think anyone could have easily missed what the activists in Egypt were rallying for or defined them merely assuming Facebook fans. It just so happened that Facebook was the most useful tool for communicating and organising the revolutionaries. In fact the only one defining activists by their tools is Gladwell.
Gladwell also takes issue with the claim by the US State department that cyber-activists are “the best hope for us all” dismissing the role of social media in the Moldovian and Iranian protests.

It is important to note that The New Yorker article was published in October 2011, well before the Egyptian or Tunisian revolutions.

Gladwell was right that about soneof the grandiose statements being made about how social media was enabling dissidents to protest in new ways. Whilst acknowledging that twitter was not the magic bullet against dictators, Time Magazine breathlessly proclaimed

But there’s no question that it has emboldened the protesters, reinforced their conviction that they are not alone and engaged populations outside Iran in an emotional, immediate way that was never possible before.

Wow. Little old twitter did all that? How’s this comment about a post in techmeme:

If Twitter stumbles, dictators, totalitarians and other thugs the world over will rejoice. The losers will be the people under their thumbs.

Clearly there was some hyperbole about twitter and social media that spurned Gladwell to write his slightly antagonistic piece.

Gladwell’s basic thesis is that social media creates what he calls weak ties. He did this after conveniently setting up the concept of social activism being dependent on what he called strong ties. He builds a lovely binary opposition of social activism = strong ties vs. social media = weak ties. Therefore social media is not a useful tool for activism.

That social activism is a dangerous activity involving much personal risk that requires courageous feats is not in dispute here. What is wrong with Gladwell’s approach is the overly simplistic and reductive dualism of real world vs Internet world. For Gladwell the Internet is a transient, temporary place whereas the physical world is real, robust and trusted. He seems to ignore that the Internet exists and is a reflection of the “real world”.

As a journalist Gladwell is blinded to the politics of information. For him politics is big boy stuff where information is controlled and disseminated by journalists, academics, politicians, and judges. Information is something formal which is produced and passively consumes. The idea of a heterogeneous sphere where information is distributed at the speed of light and old-world models of producer-consumer are obliterated are an anathema for a journalist whose strong ties have built an influential career.

Information, like power is always local. We are all subject to it and entwined within its grip. It can be distributed in multiple heterogeneous ways like a whisper on the street, by a bloke with a placard, by a blog, by a newspaper, by a teacher, or by an angry mob protesting against a repressive regime. Technology like the phone, the Internet, twitter, facebook, and mobiles can transform how information is distributed and transform structures of power.

I do feel to Gladwell, he has become the pinup boy for ludittes everywhere who bemoan the democraticisation of the distribution of information as being an irritating leach on corporate profits and political control. However, he really only has himself to blame, as he has acted the genius contrary clown in order to prove himself an original thinker. A debate on the true transformative and revolutionary impacts of technologies deserves better.

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