Tales of Hoffman

Merry Christmas. Blogging will be

Merry Christmas. Blogging will be light until the new year....

I'm a little bit

I'm a little bit of a disclaimer junkie. It always fascinates me to see what the lawyers for any given business feel they need to put in writing. Things like the the warning on the McDonald's Apple Pie (Warning: Contents Hot!) make me giggle, and often the side effect warnings on television DTC drug commercials are funnier than the show during which they appear.

In this spirit, I offer the disclaimer of the month. This time, it's funny on purpose. Courtesy of Mark Schubin's Monday Memo, here a disclaimer that appeared in the holiday catalog of Bjorn's, a San Antonio-based home theater retailer. Good to see that they think disclaimers are funny too:

"...TV screens are measured diagonally, and not a single photo of one in this catalog is actual size.  Some models are similar to the ones illustrated, but we're still trying to
figure out which ones those are.  Most HDTV's available today don't have Digital TV tuners built-in, but we weren't planning on telling you that until after you gave us your credit card.  Digital TV reception varies by location.  16:9 is really wider than 4:3....  We're sorry if we haven't offended everyone equally during this overly long disclaimer.
We'll try harder next time."

Send your best disclaimers by clicking the email icon to the right, and we'll see if we can make this a semi-regular feature.

As someone who spent

As someone who spent roughly 8 years of his professional life in the Public Relations industry (don't ask!), I know just how valuable spontaneous, third party endorsements can be. We used to work our behinds off trying to get mentions in the media.

Of course, nowadays, blogs are media too! So in that spirit, let's help out some 5th graders with a business idea...The Sock of the Month Club. Give this cool, funky gift to someone and you'll know that for at least one day a month, they will not need to root around under the bed looking for footware. Pretty cool! And I must say, the "site" sports an interface even Jakob Nielsen could love. By the way, it's definitely legit, since it appears the "VC" for this one is Jacob Reider of Family Medicine Notes.

Let's see if the blogosphere can get a hold of this one and make it a success. All I ask is some "Friends and Family" shares when the IPO hits....

I don't often flog stuff

I don't often flog stuff on Medscape, but since the whole Smallpox thing is very important and seems to be a hot topic in the Doc Blogosphere, take a look at this package of news, information, polls and discussion groups on the topic on the site. We try to cover this stuff from a healthcare provider's perspective -- with no political agenda attached. That's something I'm fairly sure is hard to find anywhere else.

Is Google too powerful? It's

Is Google too powerful? It's a tough question. There's no doubt that getting your listing higher on Google is akin to spending a bunch of money on marketing and the resulting traffic is obviously good. (All I know is that if it weren't for people looking for information on Google about Offenbach's most famous opera work, I'd probably have 1/8 the traffic on this blog that I have now!) So far, I think they've done a good job of walking the line, but the potential for them to abuse their Google-opoly is certainly there. Here's a really good story that outlines the challenges faced by Google from Wired.

Sometimes Apple is Really Just

Sometimes Apple is Really Just About Steve Jobs Trying to Be Cool....

Selling Madonna's autograph laser imprinted on the back of an iPod? Really, now, Steve. Pull yourself together.

Thanks to Richard Winters, I've

Thanks to Richard Winters, I've discovered Q Fever. Some pretty funny medical humor here. Kind of like The Onion, but for physicians. Us folks at Medscape better look out for their innovative "Journal Watch." Take a look. ;-)

BusinessWeek publishes an article on

BusinessWeek publishes an article on how usability effects profits. Wow. Maybe people are finally starting to get it. I still think the "usability" is too narrow a definition. The focus should be on "Customer Experience." A small distinction, but an important one. I see usability as only one element of overall customer experience, that also includes:

• Graphic Design: Does the look of your product match the intent of its functionality and the image of your company?
  
• Product Design: Does your product offer the right feature set for your audience?
  
• Marketing: Is your marketing aligned with your product and its features, or does it make promises you can't keep?
  
• Support: No product is "perfectly usable." Do you have a support system in place that provides the best experience possible for those who can't figure things out?

There's many more elements to this, but -- along with usability -- they all add up to the customer experience that you provide. To focus on positioning of menus or not using red type on a blue background gets you part of the way there, but not all the way. (None of this is original thinking, by the way -- if you want to learn more, get thee to www.creativegood.com.)

If you are an Amazon.com

If you are an Amazon.com customer, you probably already know that they recently added clothing to the mix -- from such stores as Gap, Eddie Bauer, etc. And being a cool, customer focused company, they decided to have a little fun and use their famous "Recommendation Engine" to promote some of the new items they were offering. When I first saw that people who bought a book I was looking for also bought "Clean Underwear," (screenshot, thanks to Mark Hurst) I was taken aback for a moment and then thought, "How clever. These guys have a sense of humor and I like that."

Apparently, not everyone has as finely a honed sense of humor as yours truly. The Wall Street Journal, in an attempt to fill space on what, I guess, must have been a slow news day decided yesterday to write a "tell all" about this little promotion -- as if they were uncovering a malicious business practice on the same scale as Enron's fake energy trading. Hey guys, it's 2002. People understand the Internet enough to "get it." Or, judging from this article (WSJ subscription required), maybe not. Here's one quote that really made me chuckle:

Huston Smith, author of "The World's Religions," which Amazon marketed alongside clean underwear and other items, called the cross-promotions "a perverse act of consumerism ... that pulls the rug out of one of the book's principal messages, which is that man does not live by bread alone."

Mr. Smith, who has taught religion and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Syracuse University and the University of California, Berkeley, added that "I don't like the thought of Amazon using books such as mine to promote what I deem to be overblown consumerism."

Oh, my gosh, Mr. Smith. Get a life.

Marketing gurus slay me. Here's

Marketing gurus slay me. Here's a quote from an article at Wired today about Apple:

"Without the brand, Apple would be dead," he said. "Absolutely. Completely. The brand is all they've got. The power of their branding is all that keeps them alive. It's got nothing to do with products."

Um,.....huh? When will these guys understand that all the marketing and brand power in the world does nothing without products that work, excite people and fit in with their lives. It all goes together. Does effective marketing help keep me as an Apple customer because I identify with the brand? Absolutely. Would it have any effect at all if my iBook or iPod was a cheap, lousy product that was hard to use? None.

Without a product to back it up, "branding" is just a bunch of ad execs standing around thinking of ways to spend money.