PeppercomBlog

Rooting for Baseball, Inc.

Posted by Matt Purdue

Huge company takes gigantic risks in an infamously volatile market. Huge company gets enormous help from the government in the form of tax breaks and other favors. In the face of all this, huge company is now making piles upon piles of cash.

Are you rooting for this company, which has obviously figured out how to work the capitalist system to full advantage, to succeed or fail?

It’s not Citi or Goldman Sachs. It’s Yankees Global Enterprises, or YGE. This holding company owns both the New York Yankees and the YES cable television network. And when the World Series ended last night, with millions of people screaming until purple in the face, did they know or care that everything in the lead paragraph is true about their beloved conglomerate?

Leveraging My Cutting-edge Digital Platform

By Matt Purdue

They’re called clichés: words and phrases that have been overused to the point that they have become almost meaningless. Businessspeak is rife with them, and it’s time to end them. Look, I’m sure at some point a phrase like “leverage best practices” was new, may even clever. But now it—and its clichéd cousins—is just nauseating. 

I propose that we immediately retire:

Platform—Unless you work on an oil rig, you don’t have to worry about platforms. It’s not a communications platform; it’s a plan or, if you want to get fancy, a strategy.

Dig deep—Stop trying to pretend you work a blue-collar job. Besides, this should go without saying because clients pay us to conduct in-depth research. When is the last time a client asked you for a bit of shallow, perfunctory research.

Drill down—See above. What is it with the PR sector and references to oil, gas and mining industries?

Leverage—When did this become a verb? Leverage “use” instead.

Path of Least Resistance

By Milos Sugovic 

Competitive differentiation is about survival. Your success depends on how your business is positioned vis-à-vis its competition, and rests on your ability to answer one simple question: “Why are you better?” Most companies struggle with communicating their niche and opt for the easy way out by taking their competitors head on.  

But why do businesses readily forget about the easiest route of all - or as it’s know in physics - the path of least resistance? What’s interesting about the path of least resistance is that it describes why an object or entity takes a given path, usually a motion forward through a system, as a result of resistance levels in its environment. As a metaphor for personal effort, it implies least confrontation - a person taking the path of least resistance avoids conflict in order to survive.  

Balloon Boy: Not the First, Not the Last

Posted by Matt Purdue 

 A strange craft is seen floating over the skies of the United States. Immediately, the authorities and the news media mobilize. An entire nation is riveted by live reports of the ship soaring through the lower atmosphere. Millions of people are caught up in the excitement. 

The craft lands in a quiet field, and the police and media descend, falling over each other to uncover if what’s inside is a nightmare. 

But, in the end, we’re all fooled. This real-life drama has very little to do with reality. It’s all a fraud. 

J.D. Power(less) & Associates

Posted by Milos Sugovic

Do you know the definition of “statistical power?” Don’t count on the guys at J.D. Power to know; it seems like they don’t really care about all that. So I’ll take at shot at this one: The power of a statistical test is the probability that the test you’re conducting will find a statistically significant result.  So what’s the statistical power of a J.D. Power customer satisfaction study? Well, let’s leave it up to them to figure that one out. 

In the meantime, I call your attention, once again, to the importance of statistical significance. Either it’s becoming an obsession of mine, or there’s something seriously wrong with the set of studies I’ve come across recently. To be fair, it’s probably a combination of the two, but that doesn’t excuse the latter. 

I said it last week and I’ll say it again: Before you let anything affect your business plans, read the fine print. Look at this J.D. Power Customer Satisfaction Study, among many others, which ranks appliance retailers. Now look at the fine print if you have the eyes to read 4-point font. If not, I call your attention to the following statement: “Rankings are based on numerical scores, and not necessarily on statistical significance.” Interesting. 

Lack of Confidence in Consumer Confidence

Posted by Milos Sugovic

U.S. consumer sentiment rose in early September, according to the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey, with index values increasing from 65.7 in August to 70.2 in September. Hallelujah! Consumers are finally optimistic, they’ll start spending, and the economy will recover in a jiffy. Oh wait, there’s one caveat: the change in index values is statistically insignificant and therefore useless. 

Here’s why: it’s called “margin of error.” 

If you haven’t heard of it, here’s a good place to start. The Reuters/University of Michigan Survey is based on a relatively small sample size of roughly 500 respondents. So if the sentiment of these 500 respondents is projected onto the U.S. population, that gives us a margin of error of +/- 3.3 index points. 

That means in August, we were 95% confident that the actual or “true” population index value was between 62.4 and 69. In September, the confidence interval was between 66.9 and 73.5. Note the overlap.  

It’s 9/11. Does corporate America care?

Posted by Matt Purdue

Walking to work this morning on Manhattan’s East Side, I passed the fire house on East 29th St. I’ve passed this firehouse dozens of times, not thinking much about it unless one of the firefighters was out testing the heavy-duty circular saw they use for rescues. This tool sounds not unlike a chainsaw, and whenever I hear it I would wonder what the neighbors must think waking up to this racket.

But today was different. The crew of this firehouse, home to Engine 16 and Ladder 7, was standing at attention in the mouth of the firehouse door, in their dress blues, silent. I figured today was inspection day or something. But then, halfway down the block, it hit me. Today. 9/11. The emotion literally stopped me in my tracks. Although I don’t know any of the men and women of Engine 16/Ladder 7, I know they suffered deeply on 9/11/01.  Ladder 7 lost, yes, seven firefighters that day.