Tuesday, December 1, 2009

We're Here To Serve - sort of

I'm in the midst of a job hunting campaign. I went onto a job site that I haven't used before.

Almost immediately after I arrived on the site I was informed that I had an unsupported browser (Firefox - 3.5.5).

These folks are supposed to be on top of the IT Industry but their system only supports Internet Explorer.

As of the end of October 2009 Firefox had a 48% adoption rate versus 38% for IE 6.0 - 8.0.

Not sure why I have to accommodate their system. Shouldn't they be keeping up to date?

Friday, November 20, 2009

Don't Do as I do!

I was recently invited to participate in a webinar on the effective use of email for marketing purposes. The focus of the discussion was on the need to utilize CRM data to tailor emails thus avoiding the spamming shotgun email campaigns so loved by so many.

I logged in providing my name and email address at the appropriate time and listen intently.

The next day I received an email saying - "if I had been unable to attend..."

Huh! I told them I was there - so what happened to data collection and targeted response?

A bit of a buzz kill for sure.

Hey folks - if you're going to be a rainmaker - make sure you demonstrate that you can make it rain!

Monday, January 12, 2009

(Un)Conventional Wisdom

I recently came across an example diagram of a social graph. Its intent was to show the relationship that a person has with others in their life both directly and indirectly.

It was a series of circles and interconnecting lines. The circles got smaller as the relationships became more distant. Much in keeping with the current style of such diagrams. Then they got creative.

The circles had coloured backgrounds. In the legend for the diagram it said “Orange is for Male “ and “Purple for Female”. Nice colours, but for most of us through our entire lives the colours Blue and Pink have been used metaphorically for males and females respectively. As it turns out there is no consensus as to why these colours were chosen but they have become de facto standards.

It’s hard to say why the designer of this graph did not adhere to such a well established convention. Changing it required an explanation as to the use of the colours. While there is no guarantee that the Blue/Pink colour scheme would have been understood by all, it’s a safe bet that for most of us it would have been intuitive. So why not use it. Changing the metaphor added no value to the diagram, in fact, it may have reduced its effectiveness.

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