The video contains a bit too much profanity for me to feel comfortable posting it here, but the video is shown publicly before previews in the theater chain.

The PSA was then picked up by CNN and held up as a shining example of this company being a “hero”, which undoubtedly created a lot of PR for the theater.

Jackie writes that,

standing up for your principles and your best customers, at the expense of bad ones, is a smart loyalty strategy.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with a company standing up for its principles, and I do think it is a good idea for a company to protect the experience for its customers, but this particular case is a bit more disturbing to me.

While I totally get what the business is trying to do in this case from a marketing point of view, I can’t be in agreement with Alamo’s behavior.

Privacy

They are essentially ignoring their customer’s right to privacy.  Just because a customer complains, does not give the company a moral right to embarrass the customer or share that information with others. A paying customer has a special bond with the company that takes his money.

Imagine, what if you were flying on a plane, felt nauseous, and threw up in the bathroom?

Sure, you technically broke a rule on the plane, but…do you really want the airline to add a video of that, or call you out during their safety procedure skit?

No, of course not – you would be mortified. A much more constructive resolution would be a flight attendant understanding your troubles, and trying to make you feel comfortable, and preventing you from being embarrassed at all costs.

Us vs. Them

Creating an “us vs. them” environment is great for branding because it makes your customers feel you are “authentic” and “the real deal”, but it often backfires over time and creates a tyranny of the majority.  People in the “us” group end up feeling so stressed about conformity (lest they be labeled one of the “them”), that it really creates a bad atmosphere with a lot of finger-pointing.

What if a customer we’ll call Joe, who just dislikes another customer we’ll call Jane, claims Jane texted when she didn’t in fact?  Will you throw her out? What evidence is necessary? It’s a slippery slope.

It’s a much better policy to treat ALL paying customers with courtesy, and if someone is ruining the experience for the remaining customers it is wise to go up to the customer and privately ask them to stop the offending behavior, so as not to embarrass them.

Most customers are not trying to cause a problem – they might just not be aware of your policy, or have an emergency reason for doing what they are doing.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but the overall purpose of an establishment is to serve the customer, and I can’t help but feel that this kind of behavior gets the establishment further from that goal.

Not all industries are the same. Some have built-in advantages for companies looking to sell through affiliate / commission means. We last looked at how to find a good commission job, and now we can explore which factors impact the industries best suited towards this pay structure.

Some Industries Have Advantages

Certain industries tend to have strong advantages to going the commission / affiliate marketing route — but that doesn’t always work out best for the affiliate. Here’s a look:

Cosmetics, Internet Services, Credit Card Processing, Amway, Vitamins & Supplements

You are probably asking, what do those have in common?

Actually, quite a bit, as far as the sales process and the customer usage.

Cloudy Competition – When consumers aren’t sure of the differences between brands, it leads to a long consumer search period for a provider, and often the personality of the salesperson ends up being the deciding factor.

Think, for example, about your local commissioned cosmetics seller who is an “independent distributor”. Most people know very little about the differences between the ingredients, features, and benefits of Avon vs. Arbonne Cosmetics. Often, the commissioned salesperson is able to use geography, family, friends, and understanding the local palate to close the deal. These are tools that the company pitching product cannot usually acquire cost effectively, so it is “outsourced” to the affiliate/commissioned salespeople.

High Engagement – When consumers need a lot of hands-on help and explaining, being sold on a “lifestyle”, and need repeated instruction, commissioned salespeople represent the lowest cost to a company to deliver that high level of engagement between salesperson and customer.

When I consulted for restaurants, I was often amazed that the second most frequent visitor type to a restaurant after hungry customers was actually credit card processing salespeople…often selling completely or almost entirely on commission. I once asked one of these credit card processing folks what the reason for this was, and his response stuck with me:

several reasons, first, I need to constantly explain to the staff how to operate our machines (which keep getting updated), second, I am constantly called in to explain the various unclear statement charges which obscure their actual costs, and third, I’m terrified of anyone else like me coming in and showing them they can save money by switching to his company.

If the credit card processing company had to worry about such things, they wouldn’t be profitable. So the risk of high engagement working or not working is placed on the commissioned salesperson.

Churn and Turnover – When a company sells services or products that get finished or change often yet do not lend themselves to brand loyalty, you will find a lot of commissioned salespeople. The reason for this is that virtually 99% of the market share is always “up for grabs”, and just about anyone willing to “roll up their sleeves” and endlessly nudge a potential customer will be able to pick one up.

The net effect of this is quite similar to the game Othello, where the strategy is to “turn over” as many of your competitors circles as possible while keeping yours from being vulnerable.

A good friend of mine runs a sizable web hosting service. I’ve personally used his service and am quite fascinated by his excellent customer service. Yet, despite this, he and other top notch web hosts out there know that every single one of their accounts is always one “downtime” or renewal away from getting poached by a competing service. Aside from a few well known web hosting companies, the massive industry still has relatively few household names, and often decisions on who to host with boil down to a customer just happening across a service that seems OK.

I hope you have enjoyed my analysis of commission jobs and the factors that impact them. I’m eager to hear your thoughts, comments, or questions!

Choosing A Good Commission Job Isn’t Impossible

Now that we have looked at what makes it so hard to make money in a commission-only job, let us explore how to evaluate a commission-only job to see if it is likely to be profitable for you.

Here are the factors you will need to look at:

High Pricing Flexibility – price is a huge reason for lost sales. It pits your interest (to get the sale so you get the commission) against the company’s interest (to get a profitable sale). You want to look for a product line that gives you a lot of flexibility on pricing so that you can do what you need to do to close the sale.

Full Product Line – as mentioned above in PART A, products that are orphans, or lack an entire selling line, don’t leave many opportunities to “roll-over” a sale to a different product if the customer isn’t interested in the first product you tried to sell them. Having a full line of product can make the bottom of the funnel wider, so a higher percentage of customers could potentially buy from you.

Solid Communication – it doesn’t really help to get the lead if the company doesn’t actually do a good job of following up and completing the sale, and being prompt with answers. For example, if your customer asks you whether your electric toothbrush will work in the shower, and the company doesn’t have an answer, or takes days to get back to you, they have likely just lost you your order. Look for companies that have one person in charge of supplying sales support, and be sure s/he is an energetic person.

Marketing Collateral – a good company will provide you with the marketing tools (business cards, flyers, brochures, competitive landscape, etc.) to get the highest interest rate from your prospects. Absent these items, it would be like asking someone to hunt ducks without a gun. Your marketing collateral is your gun.

Education – a good company will provide you with a learning environment to continue getting more and more knowledgeable about the product line, thereby increasing your odds of persuading a customer to buy. This pays off wonderfully for the customer, since he knows what he is getting. It pays off for the commissioned worker, since he closes more sales, and it pays off for the company because they get more predictable sales volumes due to higher closing rates.

Honest Tracking / Exclusive Territory – many companies set up their commission / affiliate programs with many “loopholes” which enable customers to inadvertently get around you and go direct to the company, thereby costing you your commission. Try to find companies that provide a “dashboard” for you to log and see your results in a transparent fashion. Seek out companies that provide exclusive territory, such as a complete state, city, or selling channel. These will make it easier for commissions on sales you rightfully earned to be credited to you.

Long Customer Contracts – working with products or services sold to serious customers in long-term contracts works out very well for commissioned salespeople. The reason for this is they get rewarded for a long time for their long hunt for the customer…effectively earning an extending “return on investment” of their time. Often these long-term contracts include various things like additional tech or training support agreements which can be lucrative. You’ll find a lot of these types of contracts in the technical fields such as enterprise software.

The next and final part of this series will explore which industries have built in advantages to offering commission / affiliate jobs.

We’ve all seen job ads at some point that advertise the “potential” to make thousands a week, only to find the words “salary: commission only” somewhere further down.

We all wonder, can we actually make that money? It often seems like a scam or a company looking for “free labor”. Often it is, but there are ways to separate the good situations from the bad.

First, let us explore why it is so hard to make money in a commission-only sales job.

The Funnel Concept

It is helpful to imagine yourself as a funnel, with all of the customers you are actively engaging coming in through the wide lip of the funnel.

PART A of the funnel:
Here you are selling just one service/product line, so 95% of the people you encounter will never have a use for what you can earn commission from.

For example, you sign up to sell a line of electric toothbrushes. Most people you talk to already have a toothbrush solution, whether it be an electric one or not.  The market is saturated with toothbrush brands and types, and you are trying to convince people to buy your specific line.

After a long week of work, you find only about 5 people out of every 100 are interested in an electric toothbrush at this time.

PART B of the funnel:
When you finally manage to get 5% of the people who ARE interested in your product or service, your company only closes a meager 10-20% of them…

So, using some simple math: you only get cash from 1% of your encounters with prospects.

There are many reasons for Part B to be such a low percentage.  It could be the company charges too much (building in your commission at the customer’s expense), or has lousy followup, or is out of stock, and so on.  The reasons don’t matter as much as the fact that 1% of your efforts are fruitful.

This is why so many commission / affiliate workers quit after a short time – they just can’t make it worth their time. The results are most surprising with online affiliate programs that require a minimum amount be earned before the affiliate can “cash out”.   The vast majority of affiliates give up before reaching the minimum, and that results in a lot of free sales for the company running the program.

Next up, I’ll have some tips on how to find a good commission / affiliate job…so stay tuned!

A lot of buzz has emerged about Groupon, a website that allows retailers to offer a “group” coupon to many customers at once.  A certain number of customers must sign on to the deal before it is active.  Once the deal is over, Groupon sends the business owner a check, and the business owner provides the goods and services to the customers that signed up for the deal.

This sounds great, right?

Some businesses have not had great experiences with Groupon, and that has scared off other small business owners from jumping in. Others have sworn it is the best thing that has ever happened to their business. With such a wide spectrum of results, it can be overwhelming to look into. Groupon claims that 97% of businesses that run a Groupon event want another one, and one must admit that is an extremely impressive percentage.

So how do you know if Groupon is right for your business?

Groupon is better for some businesses than others, and is a tool.  It is not good or bad – you just need to know how to use it.

1. Local Brick and Mortar Retailer

Groupon has separate deals running for each and every city, every day. You’ll first want to check that Groupon has a section for your business’ metro area. Groupon is always increasing services to new cities, so don’t despair if you can’t find your location yet.

If your business is a local brick and mortar retailer, Groupon can get a lot of people into your store and give you great statistics which you might not be keeping for your store currently – such as how many people redeemed your coupons.

While Groupon will not turn over it’s mailing list to you, there is still a great benefit to you.  Simply have a newsletter form in your store during the coupon redemption period, and gather emails that way to be able to communicate directly with the new customers you have just picked up from your Groupon sale.

2. Manufacturer vs. Reseller

Groupon is a site based on discount deals. High percentage-off deals. On top of that, Groupon takes its cut.  If you don’t control the means of production, it will be very hard for you to even break even. Your challenge is finding an item that customers will like, at a price that makes you money, and still is a deal for the customer.  That challenge is easier to meet when you have a much higher total margin.

For example, say you run a cupcake store that sells cupcakes for $1. Your store does not actually bake its own cupcakes, but rather purchases them from a bakery for $0.25 each. You aren’t leaving much room for profit, Groupon’s cut, AND a huge discount for Groupon’s customers.

On the other hand, if you bake your own cupcakes, you might produce them for $0.15 each, and be able to make a much more compelling Groupon event. Remember, there are likely MANY cupcake stores in your city, and some of them will manufacture their own goods instead of buying from a provider. Can you compete?

3. Frequency of Purchase

Some businesses, like Dunkin Donuts, can count on the same customers coming in virtually every day of the week.  Others, like car dealers, might not get the same customer back in their store for several years.

Why does this matter?

Because if the car dealer offered 50% off a car, he might get a lot of people in, but he would be left with no cars, 50% of the money, and wouldn’t see any of the customers again for several years- if ever.  Cars are the same at every dealer of the same brand, making the purchases price sensitive, above anything else. That would surely be a losing deal.

Dunkin Donuts, on the other hand, can give 50% off a coffee, because that represents a very small portion of the customer spending in a given year at a coffee shop (and, coffee’s profit margins are astronomical).

Groupon therefore is biased towards helping companies with a high frequency of repeat customer purchasing, since they can often afford a “get them in the door special” that low frequency purchase businesses can’t offer.

4. Perishable Goods & Services

Plenty of events have sold tickets on Groupon.  You are likely saying:

“Hey! But that’s a low frequency purchase”

And you are right – but, that is also a perishable good or service. The event is not so focused on maximizing every dollar, but rather trying to avoid theoretical loss (similar to when hotels discount room-nights drastically when they have last second capacity).  The event is happening at a certain time, and most tickets are sold, and any empty seat in the venue is of absolutely no value…so even $1 per ticket will earn the event planner money.

5. Closeouts

Groupon is a good place to get rid of closeouts, assuming you have enough quantity left to offer to a significant number of people. Remember, Groupon will only “activate” the coupon if a certain number of customers take advantage of it.  If you have 150 leftover halloween costumes in your store, you may be able to get rid of them through Groupon, but keep in mind Groupon buyers aren’t “suckers” – they know how to bargain hunt, and are usually interested in finding something that is “current”.

If your goal is just to turn inventory and get some cash, go with the closeouts.  If your goal is to invest in as many long-term repeat customers as you can get, opt for something everyone will be excited to buy, instead of sticking them with the “leftovers”.

6. Experience

Everyone likes trying out new things, feeling special, and sharing in that discovery with friends and family.  If your product or service enables Groupon customers to do any of those, you will stand a good chance of getting new customers who keep coming back.

I like to use Medieval Times as an example of a successful experience.  They offer “experiences” at about a handful of places across the country that bring you back to the middle ages where jousts and knights were common-fare. At their stadium, you sit back, watch a great show of sword-fighting and jousting on horseback, while you dine like a king.

There are many daily deal types of sites out there.  Most feature some electronics or gadgets.  Customers come to Groupon for more than just that. If you can offer an “experience” instead of just a product or a basic service, you will find great success on the Groupon platform.

7. Ability to Scale Up

A lot of the negative experiences small businesses have had on Groupon aren’t actually due to Groupon being to blame, but rather small businesses not accounting for just how important planning the logistics and service related to a Groupon event.  If your cupcake store sells 50 cupcakes per day, and 1,200 Groupon customers sign up for your coupon, you’ll need to serve a much higher number of cupcakes than you are used to.  You’ll need to have additional help making the cupcakes, have more cupcake ingredients on hand, more help at the cash register, and other customer service issues.

Since you are hoping to earn some of these customers as repeat customers, it is very important that your store is still running smoothly, even though the extraordinarily high quantity of customers makes it tougher to do so.

8. Shifting Behavior

One way to use Groupon to your advantage is to combine the Perishable Goods & Services tip with the Ability to Scale Up tip in order to shift the customers’ behavior.  You can offer a coupon that can only be redeemed at a certain time or on certain days, taking advantage of your slow business days.  This way, you won’t need to hire additional help, and it will even out the traffic into your store.  After all, when your employees don’t have customers to take care of, they are the perishable service.

9. The Gray Area

Like other coupons, gift certificates, and non-cash paper and plastic, some of the profit retailers make on Groupon events comes from the fact that not everyone who purchases a coupon actually redeems it.  Some people forget they even bought it.  Others simply lost interest in the activity or product they bought.  So, in a way, the true discount a retailer offers is always lower than advertised, once you average out the folks who don’t redeem their Groupon coupon.

The Consumer Federation of America reported that 10% of gift cards are never redeemed, costing the consumer about $5 billion dollars last year.

10. Audience

As with any marketplace, there are certain common shopper demographics on Groupon as well.  All other things being equal your Groupon event will be most successful if you cater to college educated women, from metro areas, who go out twice a week and are single. Stores like restaurants, places to hang out or go on a date, accessible by subways or buses are obvious hits.  If your business doesn’t generally get many people from that demographic, take the time to think about how you can interest that demographic by branding the event differently.

Here are few free options for doing your own demographic market research.

In summary, Groupon can be a fantastic tool for your business to grow.  By considering your business along all the dimensions I’ve written about in this article you can have the best shot of making your event a success, and establishing realistic expectations of how your event will perform.

If you have run any Groupon events for your business, and have thoughts on this topic, please feel free to add your comments below!

Vitamin D is one of the most misunderstood vitamins, yet one of the most important. Vitamin D helps your body absorb Calcium, regulates minerals in your bloodstream, and has been shown to improve immune system function. Lack of Vitamin D has been linked to Rickets (soft bones).

Some doctors want you to take a supplement to get enough Vitamin D.  Others recommend eating Catfish or Sardines, which naturally have some Vitamin D. But the reality is that Vitamin D is only readily available in enough quantity through the Sun.

However, even then, your body can’t always get enough UVB rays from the sun to convert into Vitamin D.  Most people have heard “if you just get 30 minutes a day of sun” you’ll get enough Vitamin D – but that isn’t necessarily true.

Instead, remember this more useful rule of thumb:

 If you go outside in the sun, and your shadow is shorter than you are, that is an opportunity to get Vitamin D

The science behind it: This happens when the sun is at more than a 45 degree angle in the sky, when UVB rays are able to reach you through the atmosphere.

It is important to note that not all cities receive enough of this situation throughout the whole year.  For example, the southern U.S. receives this sun for more of the year than the northeast.  In these cases, you should take a supplement during those months.

Final note: Wearing sunscreen or blocking the sun with clothing will prevent you from absorbing the UVB, so be sure to have your arms and face exposed.

We’ve all seen the 20% off coupon oversize postcard Bed Bath & Beyond sends each week, right? Well, what you may not know is, other retailers aren’t sending customers the same offers all the time. Welcome to the world of favoritism by retailers.

A reader on The Consumerist (a popular consumer watchdog site) wrote in, saying that she receives ad mailings of past tenants occasionally, and she noticed that this time

there were two packs of Target coupons. I opened one of them to flip through the coupons. It was mostly name brand stuff, the majority of which didn’t interest me since I tend to buy store brand items. I put both packs on the dining table and ignored them until the weekend. I picked up both packs on my way out, intending to do some grocery shopping and pick up some cleaning supplies, and I notice that the packets have different coupons in them. One of them promises “over $43 in savings,” and the other one only “$20 in coupons.”

Not only did Target send her past apartment tenant an ad for higher savings, it also was less restrictive of the products the coupons could be used on.

What does target know about her previous tenant that makes him more valuable as a customer?

Retailers often target different messages to different demographic and geographic audiences, but is this the new trend?

I’m interested to hear from consumers and marketers alike, in the comments.

If you’re a consumer, does this anger you? Will this change how you go about finding coupons?

If you’re a marketer, do you think this is ethical? Do you have a story about segmenting the direct marketing offer in a way that gives certain recipients an advantage over others?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about growing your business using LinkedIN, and shared those tips with Brynne Tillman, a sales and business development coach, who had some tips of her own for finding and closing sales prospects on LinkedIN.  I’d like to share those tips with you today.

Share Events

If I am attending an event or business card exchange I will often share the event with a prospect.  It’s a great reason to reach out with a soft approach and another way to get in front of them.

Be Present in Discussion

Leave a comment on a LinkedIN discussion that is relevant to what you do, so as others comment you are emailed updates and often those folks are prospects or referral sources.

You can find discussions in LinkedIN groups, and here is a screenshot of how it looks:

An Additional Point of Contact

Make LinkedIn your follow up to every contact you’ve made networking offline. By adding the contact as a follow up you’ll “solidify” your connection to him/her by that

Keep Track of Who’s Attending

When invited to events that you can not attend but are relevant to your business, mark them as “interested” to keep track of folks who are attending…they are often prospects or referral sources.

Do you have any tips to add? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

One major indicator of the health of our economy is the state of the automotive industry. Since cars are one of the largest purchases we will make in our lifetime, we tend to put a lot of thought into it, and can generally afford a new car only during good times.

Being that times are not so great for the Detroit 3 and car sales are dropping, let’s look at some strategies that can help dealers sell cars more efficiently. This will hopefully be interesting to everyday people, and vital to car dealers to read.

The inventory of most dealers consists of new and used cars. Although it seems counter-intuitive, dealers usually make a larger profit per car on used car sales than on new cars.

Car Manufacturers

The car manufacturers try to control the amount of a certain model of new cars sold in a given month by:

• national advertising campaigns, to increase interest
• rebates and discounts, to compete with other vehicles in the same class
• offering incentives to dealers, to encourage them to push that car and sell more

Aged Inventory

Car dealers are most stressed out about the car that has been on their lot for the longest, and are wondering when they will finally manage to sell it. This often leads them to corner a potential customer into taking that car, and salespeople push it aggressively.

This is exactly the wrong approach to take, because it is a tactic that is very likely to leave the customer unsatisfied, and there is no faster way to lose long-term business from him.

If the shopper is coming in looking for a Ford Edge, and you were so focused on selling him a Ford Focus, the shopper is likely to leave your dealership, and go to a different dealer who can focus on selling him a Ford Edge.

Dealer Advertising

Furthermore, if we take a look at most advertising that car dealers do, they are advertising the cars they just can’t wait to get rid of…a car in an unusual color, 30 days or more in inventory, without the options most customers want (such as no power windows).  True, you’ll find some dealers pushing new leases, but for each ad like that, you’ll find 15-20 pages of used cars being hawked, and many more of them packed in per page.

So the car manufacturers are pushing millions of dollars to convince John Doe to come into your dealership to get the “wonderful” Ford Edge, and then, instead of satisfying that need, and being consistent with the national advertising – you go and try to sell him something different.

Manufacturer Advertising

Manufacturers usually advertise a lot for two different reasons.

The first one is to push a wildly successful car, and the other one is to try to get rid of a terrible car, that no one wants. As a dealer, you need to make sure you have a good grasp on just which one they are doing. Stay away from the terrible car – resist the urge to advertise it yourself.

Consistency in advertising is key – I can’t emphasize that enough. Unless your car manufacturer is trying to “dump” a certain car by advertising it when they know that people don’t want it, you are ALWAYS best off running the same car in your ad.

The Winning Strategy

The better way to sell is to realize some facts. You know, on average, about how many of a certain car will sell in a given month in your target area. You know this because your manufacturer tells you how you and your competitors did each month for each car. Add up all of the sales of a given car in your market for the month, and you’ll know what the market is in a given month.

If you spend, say, $20,000 a month on advertising it will make more sense to advertise the same car as the national advertising (assuming it isn’t a “dump” as I discussed above) instead of your oldest stocked cars.

The reason is, your $20,000 PLUS the accumulation of advertising from the national campaigns your manufacturer ran, PLUS the already present intention of your car shopper to end up in that car will make it a much easier sell.

On the other hand, you will find yourself spending much more time trying to convince the shopper that what he really wants is the old stock you have (that for some reason 500 other shoppers that month didn’t want).

I will pre-empt the dealers who will say that they need to purchase the bad cars as well as good cars from the manufacturers due to their franchise agreement, by saying that while that is true in some cases, you will still come out ahead in profitability by pushing the better cars and the specific cars your informed customer came in looking for, and either selling the bad car to another dealer, or just having it sit on the lot.

I was recently reading Ari Herzog’s post about how avatars changed online, and I thought he brought up some excellent insights that you would enjoy.

According to Wikipedia, an Avatar is

 a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities.

In the early days of the internet, there was much fear of the internet, and the openness of it.  Additionally, slower modems handled small avatar graphics much better than large graphics. These were also the days where internet dating was laughed at because of the unreliability of the photos people did post.

During those days, it seemed safer, and more “fun” to create a fantasy avatar, that either loosely reflected yourself, or was your idea of an ideal self (i.e. – despite your office professional job, your avatar had an electric guitar and you had long hair).

Over the last few years, the mood online has clearly shifted towards using your actual photo instead of an avatar. Here are some suggestions on how that happenend:

Social Networking

Facebook, Myspace, Flickr and other social networking sites made it cool and fun to display our real photos, under the understanding of having protections to our privacy in place. The idea made sense in most people’s minds, and they felt safe enough to post (in some cases, very) private real photos.

Culture of Being Real

Americans have been getting a steady dose of reality shows with “average Joes” leading a very public life. Personal branding experts have been shouting from the mountain tops that “being real” is most important to connecting with and growing your following. Because your personal brand is actually you, it was bad marketing to waste your visitors eyeballs on a mere avatar, instead of branding your true self.

Indeed, many bloggers even use their real name as their domain name, and broadcast their current location from their twitter profiles.  All of this has created a very strong preference for being real, being authentic, and being public about it.

Big Pipes

As internet connections keep getting faster, and storage keeps getting cheaper, websites that relied on just small avatars are opening their doors to full size photos.  It is now easy and painless to browse a full album on Flickr or Facebook, for most internet users, and the users clearly have a preference for getting to know the real person behind the account they are looking at…right down to their favorite TV shows or color preferences.

Ari had a great phrase describing the change,

Goodbye mystery, goodbye intrigue, goodbye transformation.

Is this a good change, in your mind? or a bad one?