The Kmiec Ramblings

I’m a little late to the party on reviewing Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture.”  It’s a fantastic book and well worth the money.  I finished the book in about 2 hours and plan to read it again later this week.  The writing style is straight-forward and almost conversational.  The chapters are short and almost make you want to keep turning the page.  The lessons in the book aren’t offered in a preachy manner.  This isn’t even really a lecture as much as it is a simple set of guidelines for getting the best out of you and the people you work with.

The Last Lecture

The actual lecture that the book is based on can be seen here. Join the nearly 6 million people who have watched the video already.

I love the new joint partnership between Heineken and Krups.  They created a mini-keggerator that they are calling the Beertender.  The Beertender accepts ONLY Heineken 5L mini-kegs.  The kegs are kept cold and the beer is dispensed via tap; just like beer should be.

Beertender

There are several things to like about this joint venture:

1. They’ve created a new category: The Home Bartender
2. The partnership is exclusive.  So if you like the idea of being a Home Bartender, you’ll be buying Heineken and Krups.
3. The size of the unit makes it portable and versatile.  It’s much easier to use and less messy than a traditional keg.
4. All of the replacement and maintenance parts, like the tubes, are ONLY available by Krups.

This is the primary TV spot running to promote the idea.

It was developed by Wieden + Kennedy.  No surprise that the work is spot on.

The thing I’m struggling with is if this is a smart long term move for Krups. If they keep the partnership exclusive they’ll be narrowing their audience tremendously. I personally don’t care for Heineken, which takes me out of the market. But, if the Beertender supported other beers and ciders, like Sam Adams, they’d have me sold. Hell I’d buy a few so I could have 3 beers on tap.

The Beertender sells for $279.99 or $299.99, depending on the model you opt for.

Literally blogging right now from my iPhone. Downloaded the WordPress application from the iTunes App store. It took about 2 minutes to configure. As cool as the app is, it still doesn’t make typing on iPhone any easier.

I know a lot of you out there have drank the Apple Kool-Aid. In your world Apple can do no wrong. In fact I feel like we give them a pass. Perhaps it’s their brushed aluminum exterior and “cool” black squared-off glasses that mesmerize us.

Earlier today, my good friend Chris Miller tweeted, “writing article on: Iphone more computer then phone. leading with the bad, it crashes like a computer but the good out weights this.” There ya go, it’s a perfect example of how we forgive Apple for shortcomings and things like DRM, but we punish, flog, and tar companies like Microsoft.

Check out Noah’s Brand Tags project to see exactly what I mean regarding Apple.

In general this hasn’t been a good week for me when it comes to customer service. Let me tell you about my recent Apple store experience.  I purchased a Airport Express on Wednesday for $99.99.  The service at the store was great and it took me ONLY 7 minutes to install it at the house.  I tweeted about this that very same night.  The next day though, I realized I needed more than an Airport Express; I needed an Apple TV.  On Saturday I went back to the Apple store to return my Airport Express and then exchange it for the $329.99 Apple TV.  I had my receipt, the box, all the packaging, and of course the item was only 3 days old.  The Apple store rep explained to me there would be a 10% restocking fee, because there was nothing wrong with the product.

Think about this for a second.  I’m not returning it and asking for my money back.  I’m returning it, upgrading, and electing to spend $229.00 more with Apple.  According to the sales rep, that doesn’t matter.  Rules are rules and that’s the end of the story.

A few things struck me about this experience:

1. Even a car dealership will accept a NEW car back, with no penalty, so long as you’ve had it for less than 30 days and 500 miles.
2. What does it say about how Apple view me if they want to ding me $10.00 even though I was already prepared to spend $229.00 more?
3. Why did I end up buying the Apple TV and eating the $10.00?  It’s something I wouldn’t normally do.

polldaddy lets you create polls and surveys.  The interface takes a little getting used to, but I think it’s a better tool than Survey Monkey and Zoomerang.  You can create a free account and even choose a free level of service.  The major difference between the free service and paid service are the number of answers you can capture.  I’ve only come across 1 drawback; the survey/poll builder interface does not work in Safari.  Check out this poll I made in 2 minutes.

Wow.  ECO-SAFE was very responsive.  After asking me what song I wanted as my free gift, they responded with this email 1 hour after I shared with them my song request.  You can read more about my ECO-SAFE experience here and here.

I don’t understand how Ticketmaster continues to operate in the way they do.  In this country we are anti-monopoly.  The government will strike you down if you even think about owning too much market share.  Yet, Ticketmaster continues to be ONLY viable option for tickets.  How can this be?

Let me give you 3 recent examples of why Ticketmaster sucks:

1. Ordered Neil Diamond tickets for a gift.  Chose the option for Retail Location Pickup; that means I can go to a Ticketmaster location and have them print out my tickets.  I go the nearest location, which is inside a Macy’s.  The system is down/will not work.  After waiting for 30 minutes plus, I finally ask the associate, can I take a look at the “terminal?”  She says, “go for it.”  It took me all of 5 minutes to fix the problem for her/them, which allowed them to print off my tickets.  Here’s the kicker…Ticketmaster charged me a $1.00 convenience charge to pick up the tickets.  Shouldn’t they have paid me?
2. Ordered Peter Frampton tickets for myself.  Chose the option for Retail Location Pickup.  Between the time I ordered the tickets and went to pick them up, Discover (my credit card of choice and the one I used to buy the tickets) had issued me a new care and new number.  I think you know where this is going.  I present my receipt, my driver’s license, and my new Discover credit card to the associate.  Despite ALL of this documentation they can not print my tickets, because I did not have my old Discover card with the my old number.  After dealing with them for over 30 minutes in person and via phone, Ticketmaster agrees to send me my tickets via United States Postal Service.
3. Ordered Ringo Starr tickets as a Father’s Day gift for my dad.  The concert is in NY, I live in MN.  I use the Retail Location Pickup locator on Ticketmaster’s site.  It shows me that the nearest location is a Macy’s about 5 miles from my house.  Taking my lessons learned from the above situations, I come prepared with my license, receipt, and credit card that I used to purchase the tickets.  I present all 3 and of course we have a problem.  Ticketmaster locations in Minnesota are unable to print tickets for events in New York.  The associate’s recommendation was to pick them up in person in New York.  Seriously.  Think about that.  Sir, can you please drive 1,800 miles to pickup your tickets?  So I call Ticketmaster who agrees to ship them to me via UPS for a charge of $14.50.  Now this gets better.  On the day of the show, I receive an alert from Ticketmaster to my iPhone.  The alert informs me the concert is canceled and I will receive a refund.  I then receive a follow up email that says “Your credit card will automatically be credited the ticket price and convenience charges, and should post to your account within 7 to 10 business days. Please note, the $3.00 per order processing fee and any ticketFast or UPS delivery charges are non-refundable.”  So the $14.50 that I shouldn’t have had to pay in the first time is now a sunk cost and Ticketmaster keeps their order processing fee.

If you are like me, then you’re saying to yourself, “Adam, if you think Ticketmaster sucks, and they screwed you over the first two times, why did you go to the well again?”  Good question.  Because there was NO other alternative.

In total, for all 3 transactions Ticketmaster charged me the following:

• Tickets: $392.00
• Building Facility Charges: $4.00
• Convenience Charges: $55.30
• Order Processing Charge: $11.34
• UPS Delivery: $14.50
• Retail Location Pickup: $1.00
• Tax: $2.78

I’m open to ideas and suggestions on what to do in the future and how to shine more light on Ticketmaster’s short-comings.  Thoughts?

I’m a life long BMW fan. I worked on BMW while at Fallon. I’ve owned a BMW. I tell anyone that will listen that they should by a BMW over a Mercedes, Lexus, etc. I think BMW should give me a new M3 Sedan. By doing so they’d be making money on me. Don’t believe me? Let’s do the math.

In looking at the math, we’ll use rough numbers, and only look at things that I can quantify easily. So what does that mean?

1. I offer BMW 1 blog post per day, 10 Twitter updates, and 10 Facebook Statuses. I can’t even quantify the verbal offerings This means BMW gets 21 touch points from me per day.
2. Over a 365 day year, they’d garner 7,665 touch points.
3. This site gets about 1,000 visitors a day
4. My Twitter stream is seen by about 4,000 people a day
5. My Facebook status is seen by 100 people
6. So that means my reach (not including overlap) is 5,100
7. That means 5,100 people would be exposed to 7,665 messages for a total of 39,091,500 impressions.
8. Using a VERY conservative $5.00 CPM, BMW would be getting $195,457.50 in paid media
9. Let’s round up the cost of a M3 to $70,000.
10. With a $70,000 investment, BMW would net $125,457.50

That’s the deal of the century because not only would make money on the deal, you’d have an owner for life, and possibly a bunch of new owners…that of course depends on how persuasive I am. For those of you that know me, you know how persuasive I can be

I decided to test my theory and sent a note to BMW.  I’ll eagerly be awaiting their call.

I love watches.  I don’t do jewelry, but I definitely do watches.  I don’t collect them for collection’s sake and I don’t buy based on brand.  For example, it’s doubtful you’ll ever see me with  a Rolex.  My latest pickup is The Oris Artelier Skeleton.  I wanted a skeleton watch for some time, but finding one that looked good, told good time, and was under 10K was pretty damn tough.  There’s really only 3 choices:

1. Corum Bubble Skeleton
2. Maurice Lacroix Masterpiece
3. Oris Artelier Skeleton

I’ve had a Corum Bubble on my list for a while so I didn’t want to kill two birds with one stone.  I actually prefer the look of the Maurice Lacroix more than the Oris, but not 3X the dollar amount more