It’s all about the customer
“We have entered an empowered era in which humans are God, because technology allows them to be godlike. How will you engage God?“
I’ve used these words from Starcom’s Rishad Tobaccowala (2004) many times in my work, and we continue to see evidence of it in the modern-day business world. The latest example is the travails of Circuit City, and I wanted to highlight a paragraph from a Marketwatch story about their stock problems. Best Buy is succeeding where Circuit City is not, and the woman referenced here is Stacey Widlitz, and analyst for Pali Research:
While Best Buy opened up more registers when store managers noticed a big line, Circuit City would have just one register open even if there was a line of customers waiting, Widlitz noted from her store tours.
In the web world, I’m increasingly convinced that those who consider the user costs of interaction will ultimately be the winners in any content play and that the new killer ad model will likely come from this paradigm.
How will you engage God?
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 at 11:51 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:53 pm
I will never understand why stores like Circuit City (and my neighborhood Staples) make it so damned hard to check out. It’s not for a lack of employees - you see them around the store, often talking with each other. It’s like they figure “once we’ve talked them into buying the stuff, they can wait.” This is what absolutely killed the CompUSA in my area, too. I have had to ask register employees to call for more help. How they can’t recognize that with a line five deep is beyond me.
On the other hand, the Circuit City in my area is usually damn near empty compared to the Best Buy. (So it’s fun to shop there if you’re in no rush to check out.) I suspect they won’t have this problem much longer.