I hate New Years Resolutions. I have written at length about them and so I won’t do that despite my yearly protests, you will probably make and break a handful because we are being marketed to that this is the best thing we should do at the beginning of the new year. So instead I will offer my take on some resolutions you should try and keep. I offer them without commentary; make of them what you will:

1. If you take something out, put it away
2. If you make a mess, clean it up
3. Pay yourself first
4. Read something everyday
5. Take dead aim
6. Call your mother, she needs to hear your voice
7. Drive with the radio off at least once a week
8. Spend more, on less.
9. Pet your dog every day
10. Stand at your desk
11. Find the right speed. No one ever looked good in a hurry.
12. Make bread from time to time, it will teach you patience
13. Share a sandwich with someone
14. Drink more water
15. Shut off your phone every once in a while
16. Go in that museum. 30 mins will change your life.
17. Be an owner not a victim
18. Save early, Save often
19. Always know where the nearest exit is
20. Go for a walk
21. Put off buying something, pay with cash
22. Listen to someone else talk
23. Start an emergency fund
24. When things get tough… Close your eyes and think of England.
25. Make something
26. Cook your friends dinner

A couple of words from Rilke:

“When your daily life seems barren, do not blame it; blame yourself rather and tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the creative worker knows no barrenness and no poor indifferent place.”

And from Teddy Roosevelt:

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Happy New Year

-Jeremiah

This is not a paid endorsement; this is my way of saying let’s try and expand our horizons.

I was going for a run tonight and it was rainy out so I didn’t even hesitate to grab my jacket a hoodie from TAD gear. It reminded me of an exchange between two friends, Colin and Danielle on twitter from last week that started with this little tweet.

If this North Face is not the new startup founder uniform I don’t know what is refer.ly/aX2Q

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) October 18, 2012

While I should probably worry that the startup world might be engaging in group think, I am a little more worried that Danielle might be right that North Face is just everywhere. I used to joke that when you joined Microsoft they must give you a black North Face Jacket and the keys to an Audi A4. All things you would see everywhere on campus.

So for your consideration, I thought would share some options that are not North Face.

Triple Aught Design (TAD Gear)

For me when it comes to being warm and dry and I think almost exclusively first about TAD gear, these jackets look good but they are not about fashion. Founded in 1997 by Patrick Ma TAD Gear jackets and apparel are designed for real outdoor use and live up to it. I live for back country hiking and snowshoeing and my Ranger Hoodie is the go to jacket for days when a hard shell is too much. I have several other TAD products and next on my list is this Stealth Hoodie, it is the best of both worlds and a go to jacket when you want to be warm and dry.

If you were planning on buying a North Face jacket but want to stand out in the crowd and have kit that lasts a long time in hard outdoor use or just riding the bus from your office to the bar for happy hour this is really is so much better. Plus every comparable North Face jacket is guaranteed to pill and wear in the seams. This will last!

Acronym by Errolson Hugh

So on the less technical front but super cool, Acronym is a great brand that is totally out there but has found a way to make gore-tex look cool. The jacket above was designed as a collaboration for last years Herno collection. It doesn’t have a hood but it will keep you dry. For something similar, check out the GT-J22 hardshell with gore tex. I promise you will stand out in this jacket. An Acronym jacket is on my list for this year. Check out the video below for this years collection. Cool Stuff.

Aether
Another good option is for the SF and Pacific Northwest crowd is Aether, they make a wide variety of performance clothing focused on the city dweller who needs outdoor kit that doesn’t fall apart. I have never owned any, but everyone I know who has says that they fit great and look good. I like the hood and cut of the F12 Altitude and the waterproof zippers are huge pulse.

Moncler
  
One option if you want to skip a rent payment or mortgage payment would be to go really old school, is a clothing company of French origin founded in 1952 by French entrepreneur René Ramillon that manufactures high-end down jackets and sportswear. You will need to drop a grip if you want anything from them, but I can personally guarantee that these jackets will keep you warm and dry and looking way better than anything that North Face will ship. I really dig this Moncler Grimbert this jacket is really different from the other suggestions I have made but it looks great. There are also a wide set of down options that will keep you warm and dry.

Some other options:

• Isaora Tech 3L Riding Shell
• Mission Workshop Orion Jacket

So now you have no excuses. Friends don’t let friends buy North Face.

-Jeremiah

Any one who knows me knows I enjoy a little Best Coast. Sorry this has nothing to do with the usual noise I post here, but this is a great video of Bethany from Best Coast and Kendrick Lamar in Portland last night. So watch and enjoy.

H/T: Fader

-Jeremiah

Here’s a good example of luxury marketing that works. (Although the use of flash kills me.) Everywhere I looked this morning I saw links back to this great example of how to pack your bag the Louis Vuitton way. The site makes great use of the brand and ties luxury and walks you though how they see you can pack efficiently.

I would argue that you could be more efficient than they propose since the bags in the example could hold more clothes but the concept is that you can do it in a way that the clothes are less wrinkled. This may be accurate but there are other techniques that work as well. However, they make it look pretty sexy. Check out the video below and of course go and check out the site.

-Jeremiah

I have heard the following quotes more times that I care to repeat.

“When will the site be finished?”

“We have redesigned the site X times in Y years, when is it finished.”

My response has always been, “Welcome to the internet.” this is my snarky way of saying why are you complaining about the job security built into your job. But I have started to think about the fact that I few the world from an iterative lens and not everyone does. So I wanted to build a case for my thinking around being the owner of a website.

Redesign is costly, We should be optimizing.

There are good reasons to do a ground up rebuild of a website. Some that come to mind is a massive branding shift, a CMS transition, or many other deeply structural concerns. Often however it seems that a redesign isn’t driven by one of those reasons, instead it is driven from the fact that the visitors needs change over time and your business goals also change and your current site doesn’t meet those expectations.

Perhaps in the early days of the web, your site was created to be a catalog or a brochure for your company and despite many iterations your digital team has not made the transition from one mental model of the web to the most current. So you are stuck with the equivalent of an electronic handout or magazine ad. Now however the requirements have changed. You handle support, marketing, e-commerce, and PR. The catalog approach to the world won’t work and more importantly your consumers are always changing their expectations as they get used to how the web is changing.

You must begin to structure your team and your resources to be a few things:

1. Always testing
2. Focused on Voice of the Customer
3. Move away from the conveyor belt mentality and onto iterative processes.

The Conveyor Belt

For most companies that offer a product or service a lot of effort is spent in making sure that as products are shipped the online materials like any other “asset” for that product launch is in place. This is the dominant effort for the website. Web copy is produced in the same fashion as the copy on the box or anywhere else.

Because of the weight of this, the experience of the site is often measured after the fact. While not an incorrect approach it doesn’t leave room for a digital team to implement and improve the experience of the site until that effort required reaches a certain crescendo. A tipping point that gets upper management involved and the default solution is to redesign. But the 18 months it will take to get out the door is a lifetime in the world of the web.

Additionally I believe that agencies that are brought in to fill a void in our ability to do root cause analysis follow a business model that doesn’t really support the idea of continuos improvement against measurable KPIs. Instead they move to quickly create recommendations that are based on a need to make a client happy. So we see redesign after redesign that is mostly cosmetic and doesn’t even begin to touch the customer journey. And in the case of the SEO firm, they focus on rankings which are temporal and push to create a redesign for the same reasons but aimed at solving only one part of the problem the content or technical issues affecting SEO performance.

The alternative to this seems to be a patchwork of projects that run in parallel to the conveyor belt executed by stakeholders internally. But often this creates a lack of predictability and an ever slipping schedule. Worse it seems that we have a difficulty in measuring and improving on our ability to commit to and deliver on time. How can we estimate when there are so many moving parts? How can we agree to things that are so out of our control? Believe it or not most Marketing teams do not realize that the website they own is still at the end of the day a piece of software and engineering excellence is as important as any other aspect of the work.

No one wants to be like the Four Seasons with their 18 Million Dollar redesign, but we also don’t want our companies to become stale and lose out on the dollars sitting on the table waiting for us to snatch them from customers looking to spend. So what are we to do?

Marketing and Iteration

There are many parts to a solution that I think will help but for brevity I am going to distill them down to a couple of big rocks.

1. Transparency: Start being honest about the amount of work being done.
2. Respond to Change: Put systems in place that facilitate adapting to change
3. Focus on impact

There is a big movement to bring agile development models to the marketing department and I am a fan. The benefits of these methodologies its their ability to help us focus on what matters and learn to improve how much we can get done by forcing us to make decisions about what really matters. For a good example on this thinking check out this presentation by ants eye view on the subject:

With more agile methodologies we should be working to evolve our website rather than get stuck in the patterns of large scale evolutions. The biggest impacts to the bottom line can be found in the smallest changes that can be learned from A/B testing, VoC and through improving against the short head.

This doesn’t mean that a new look and feel won’t ever drop into your lap or continue to be a dominate method of change, but the outcome should be that the fix is based on data not on the assumption that the only way to improve is to scrap what you have.

-Jeremiah

So people who read my blog are going to start thinking I am writing a blog about stand up desks, but I so adamant that this is how we should work. You feel better and you will live longer. That said the desks are notoriously boring and ugly. This is because they have only really been made by the same people who make our cubicles. So I am on the hunt for the beautiful and modern looking and I found another to add to my collection.

The following Focal desk designed by Martin Keen is really designed in such a way that it would be a brilliant transitionary desk. A sit/stand setup with more adjustments than I can tell so I will let the video show you how you could use this desk. I love the metal lines and the wood look.

At a base price of $1150 for the desk and $650 for the chair this is not the cheapest or the most expensive setup, but having made several investments in standing desks over the years I can tell you the odds of finding a desk this good looking for cheaper are pretty rare.

I hope I could one day give this guy a try. They are pre-ordering now so if you are looking for a great piece of furniture this could be the one.

BTW…

Marketplace Money did a nice article on standup desks and is accepting pictures of your stand up desk

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/stand-or-sit-work

-Jeremiah

Thought for the day:

“You are the owner of your meetings, not the victims of your meetings.” Lance Binley

Think about that for a minute.

-Jeremiah

I am a lazy shopper. A friend sent me a link to a sale at Lacoste and I like one of their button down styles (the so called modern fit), so I opened the link on my iPad and of course like many websites I was forced to the mobile site. Not responsive, but for a experience that was meant for a mobile phone. This is annoying, but it isn’t what I am writing about. This is again another example of a brand that sells its product to the aspirational/affluent and can’t seem to get a digital strategy that works. Let me show you what I ran into:

On loading the link to the sale (http://shop.lacoste.com/) I was redirected to m.lacoste.com. There I was faced with the following user experience:

Apparently you are not allowed to view the Lacoste site in landscape view. My preferred method of surfing on my iPad. Honestly, I have never seen anything like this. It seems so odd and it performs this way on the iPhone and the HTC one X.

So after being forced to turn the device to landscape I get this:

I walked away for a few minutes and nothing changes, nothing loads. So I click the button in the upper left which is a clear ripoff of the Facebook interface. And sure enough a menu slides out just like you would expect.

However, not a single link works or did anything. So they have a live, broken experience while in the middle of promoting a direct to consumer sale. I am hoping this is a glitch and not that someone there thinks launching half an experience is ok or that didn’t fully test the experience. More than the fact that it is broken when I went to the website on my MBP I was able to load the site and I can’t see any reason that site would not work on a iPad (Flash elements being the exception to the rule.

I think it is a lesson to aspirational brands that you need to understand your audience and I imagine based on the available data that your audience loves their iPads and may be visiting your site. Not to mention the issues I imagine your products have being found in search. Lets fix this.

-Jeremiah

So if you didn’t know already I am a huge fan of standup desks, but they have one critical flaw in an office like mine. The need to look good. Since I stand a majority of the time I have looked for a machinist table at sites like Factory20 or at local industrial salvage shops here in seattle, but haven’t found the right piece yet.

Then this week I came up on an adjustable standup desk that looks beautiful enough to show off. The Adler desk created by OHIO Design, a designer and builder of modern furniture and interiors based in San Francisco, CA, this it is the most attractive stand up I have ever seen.

More importantly than its look it still retains the adjustable functionality that I love for those times when you just need to sit for a minute. I love the fact that they use these industrial gear to perform the function and the shiny steel just pops.

Like all adjustable desks this one does not come cheap. You can order yours for $1925. I have officially started saving. Donations are welcome.

H/T (Remodlista)

-Jeremiah

I got this fun mail this weekend from AT&T and I was a bit amazed by it. The following is a notice that AT&T wants to let me know that unless I tell them otherwise I am opted in to share my CPNI data with whomever they choose whenever they choose. At first I almost ignored this mail, mostly because it was written in a way that just didn’t come out and say it. Here is how it should read:

We want to share data about who, where and when you call and any other information that appears on your phone to anyone we want. We respect your privacy so much that we are letting you know we are asking you to call us or go to some website to tell us if you don’t want that.

I am not a paranoid person and as someone who works in marketing I understand we trade our data for services all the time. But I pay for AT&T, they should not be asking me to let them know if want to opt-out… this should be opt-in only.

There are limits placed on telecommunication companies based on the 2007 FCC CPIN order and it seems like this email does comply with the letter of the law (note: not a lawyer) but I am not sure it is good for business or following the spirit of the regulations and law (1996 Telecommunications act 1996)… frankly it is creepy.

I think we could all be a little more conscious of how we leverage the available data on our consumers behavior and if you are creating a product or service I am beginning to think that opt-in should be the rule of the day. Image and print copy below:

Dear JEREMIAH ANDRICK,

Regarding Your Account: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

The protection of our customers’ privacy is of utmost importance to the employees and management of the AT&T family of companies (AT&T)*. Please take a moment to read the following important message about the privacy of your customer information.

AT&T companies that provide telecommunications and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service (which permits VoIP customers to both send and receive calls to/from customers with traditional telephone/telecommunications service) would like to share your customer proprietary network information within the AT&T family of companies for our own marketing purposes, including using that information to offer you additional products and services.

What is CPNI? Your CPNI includes the types of telecommunications and interconnected VoIP services you currently purchase, how you use them and the related billing for those services. CPNI does not include your telephone number, your name or your address. Protecting the confidentiality of your CPNI is your right and our duty under federal law. As an AT&T customer, you can restrict the use of your CPNI even within the AT&T family of companies.

To allow AT&T to use your CPNI, no further action is required. AT&T will not use your CPNI to offer you other products and services until at least 33 days after this notice was mailed to you. AT&T and our authorized agents will not sell, trade or share your CPNI with anyone other than those who are in the AT&T family of companies or are AT&T authorized agents, unless required by law.

If at any time you would prefer that AT&T not use your CPNI to offer you additional products and services, you may:

– Click here to submit your request electronically
– Call 1.800.315.8303 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and follow the prompts
– Call 1.800.288.2020 and speak to a service representative

Your decision to permit or restrict the use of CPNI will remain in effect until you decide to change it – which you can do at any time without charge. Restricting our use of your CPNI will not affect the provision of any AT&T products or services to which you currently subscribe, nor will it eliminate other types of marketing contacts.

Thank you for choosing AT&T. We appreciate your business.

*The AT&T family of companies are those AT&T companies that provide communications-related products and/or services, including the AT&T local and long distance companies, AT&T Corp., AT&T Long Distance, AT&T Internet Services, AT&T Mobility, and other subsidiaries or affiliates of AT&T Inc. that provide, design, market or sell these products and/or services.

Thank you,
AT&T Online Services

-Jeremiah