Andy Boyer

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Category: Personal (Page 13 of 47)

Looking at the Opposite Side of Statistics

January 3, 2012 /

Digital Buzz Blog is one of my favorite reads.  And they recently posted some stats which I believe came from Media Bistro.  Now, after you read the stats below, I’m going to give them to you in the exact opposite way.  Tell me if any of the story seems any different.

Version 1:

It was a huge year for Social Media and here is a great infographic that rounds up the key Social Media Statistics to kickoff 2012. It’s pretty impressive to see that Facebook has grown to more than 800 million active users, adding more than 200 million in a single year. Twitter now has 100 million active users and LinkedIn has over 64 million users in North America alone.

A few interesting take outs for social media statistics in 2012:

Facebook Statistics 2012:

  • An average Facebook user has 130 friends and likes 80 pages
  • 56% of consumer say that they are more likely recommend a brand after becoming a fan
  • Each week on Facebook more than 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared

Twitter Statistics 2012:

  • 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter
  • 55% of Twitter users access the platform via their mobile

General Social Media Statistics 2012:

  • 30% of B2B marketers are spending million of dollars each year on social media marketing
  • Nearly 30% of these users are not tracking the impact of this marketing
  • 20% of Google searches each day have never been searched for before
  • Out of the 6 billion people on the planet 4.8 billion have a mobile and only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush
Version 2: Just for a Devil’s Argument Sake

Facebook Statistics 2012:

  • An average Facebook user is only connected to 130 of the people in their rolodex, address book, company phone tree and email database, and are only fans of 80 of the brands which they purchase or evaluate
  • 44% of consumers say that they are NOT more likely recommend a brand after becoming a Facebook fan
  • There are roughly 800 Million Facebook users, and each week on Facebook more than 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared, meaning the average person shares just 4 pieces of content per week.  With 1 out of every 7 online minutes spent on Facebook, lots of people are lurking but not sharing. 

Twitter Statistics 2012:

  • 66% of marketers have NOT generated leads using Twitter
  • Almost half  (45%) of Twitter users cannot access the platform via their mobile, and are limited to using it on their personal computer.

General Social Media Statistics 2012:

  • 70% of B2B marketers are spending LESS THAN a million dollars each year on social media marketing
  • 80% of Google searches each day are repeat searches

Occupy Seattle Described as a Poker Game

December 26, 2011 /

You won’t see this analysis written anywhere else – this content comes from part of an email chain where a bunch of people were discussing the differences between the original Occupy Wall Street and the local spin-off versions such as Occupy LA and Occupy Seattle.  It all stemmed from an LA Times article that explained it would cost Los Angeles $2.3 Million to clean up the park which had been Occupied.  I’ll keep the whole email from this anonymous person for context, but the paragraph with the poker analogy is the one I found most compelling.

Note: At this point the discussion had moved to talk about whether the movement, or the offshoots of the movement, would be successful on getting student-debts absolved.  (And no offense to puppetry and history majors.)

People take risks and develop new and improved goods and services because they believe that they will profit from it. That is at the root of our free market economic system. That is exactly what Adam Smith wrote about all those years ago. Plus, where do you think all that money comes from to pay off people’s debts (whether student loans or mortgages or bank bail outs or whatever)? Government takes in revenue through taxes. The inhabitants of a country pay the taxes. So, if one group of people want money from the government (and that is exactly what asking to have your debts payed off is- getting money from the government), in essence those people are asking other people to pay for their choices. Why should I have to pay for the choices that another person made (that is the root of the whole social contract and the obligations of citizenship)?

For example, I am OK with helping to pay for education in general- most people are. That is why we have free public K-12 education. It is an investment in the future. I am also OK with student grants for college kids who can not afford college. That also helps society and is an investment in the future. But if some guy takes out a massive loan from a private business (i.e. a bank) to fund his two years in college to get a masters degree in literature or history or puppetry or what have you, and then the guy can’t get a job with his worthless degree, why should I have to pay to get his loan written off? That guy is in essence begging money from me. He better be able to explain why and persuade me to pay off his loan, or I will not want to pay it off for him. And if his first attempt to persuade me to pay off his loan is to “occupy” the park down the street from my house and threaten to stay there until I pay for his loan, then frankly he has failed at making his case from the get go.

To put it in poker terms,  imagine if some guy at the table made big risky bets over and over, chasing long odds on flush draws hand after hand, borrowed money repeatedly from other players to buy in on more hands, and when he finally craps out and has no more money, he demands that everybody else pony up money to pay off his debts. How would you feel about that? How would you react to that? How would the other players react to that? Now imagine if that guy- rather than to try to logically explain why you should pay off his debt- decides to go sit in the bathroom and “occupy” it for several weeks. He messes the place up, refuses to clean it up, disturbs other people who are just trying to use the bathroom, refuses to leave even though he is on private property and the owners ask him nicely to leave, and becomes belligerent when the police to evict him. How would you react to that?

 

 

So What is the Next Xbox/Sounders Sponsorship Worth?

December 3, 2011 /

It’s hard to think back to 2008, back before the Seattle Sounders officially existed in anything more than everyone’s imagination.

The Sounders were to become the 16th team in a league with a couple of marquee names in David Beckham and Landon Donovan. LA, DC and Toronto were the only teams to draw more than 18k fans a game.

So when the Sounders announced that Xbox was going to commit $20 Million bucks to the team and the league, it really seemed like – and was – a large sum of money to risk.

But now as we look at the end of the 3rd year of the deal, it’s the Sounders who can’t wait for the contract to expire. Unfortunately for them, they still have 2 more years of the deal. When you look back, the Xbox media team made a heck of a deal.

At $20 Million over 5 years, you are looking at a deal that is only $4 million a year. For that 4 million Xbox got rights to the front of the jerseys, signage in all MLS stadiums, naming rights to Xbox Pitch at Qwest (then Century Link) Field, and TV spots on all broadcasts.

Let’s look at some of the other deals in the MLS (sourced from The Brotherly Game):

  • Red Bulls: Red Bull @ $50 Million total, including stadium naming rights. But they also own the team.
  • Real Salt Lake: Xango @ $5MM per year.
  • Galaxy: Herbalife @ $3.5 – $5MM per year.
  • DC United: Volkswagen @ $3MM per year. (A few other deals are in this range, like Philly/Bimbo, San Jose / Amway.)

    • So if we assume the national value to the Sounders sponsor is roughly the same as the value any other team’s sponsor receives, the delta is in the value at home. So lets say maybe 1/2 – 2/3 the value is in national exposure, and 1/3 – 1/2 is in local. If that’s the case, then the national value is about $2 million for each team.

    So in those terms, the local value of DC United’s sponsorship would be about $1 Million per year. For Salt Lake, it’s $3 Million per year. Now the 38,500 fans per game in Seattle just about doubles everyone but the #2 LA Galaxy at 23,000 per game. So if the Sounders drive 2x more fans than Salt Lake, and 2x the TV impressions, you’d have to estimate the local value is at least $6 Million per year (2x Salt Lake).

    There are probably more scientific ways to figure this out, but we don’t have access to impression volumes, jersey sales and hard stats. And we haven’t included the premium that Xbox pays for being the local guys recruiting employees, and the international value of having the team play across Central America and Mexico, or the fact that they’ve gotten a smoking deal the last 3 years.

    So let’s ballpark a number of $9 Million per year to start the new deal in 2014. ($2 Million National Value, $6 Million Local value, $1 Million Premium.) How does that look?

    Recapping NWEN’s First Look Forum 2011

    October 19, 2011 /

    I always enjoy attending business plan events such as NWEN’s First Look Forum, the UW Biz Plan Competition, Startup Riot, etc… I tend not to call them competitions, and lean towards words like “showcases.” Sure the teams may be competing for a prize, but what they are really doing is showing the public the amount of work they’ve done on taking an idea from imagination to execution.

    The real inspiring part of days like this is to see people striving to reach or exceed what is generally concluded as their “potential.” For every 100 people sitting in Westlake Park complaining that the world is unfair and out to get them, there was 1 person in the NWEN First Look Forum pitching an idea that they believed would create jobs and money. If I had my way, that would be the 1% / 99% ratio we should be trying to change.

    This was the first year I was involved with a team (Relaborate) that made it through the process, even succeeding down to the final 5 companies. And now I’l use the term “competitor” because from the team’s viewpoint, making it from 37 to 20 to 12 to 5 really is a gauntlet, and you do feel a measure of success each time your name is called to advance.

    But when you look at the other 11 companies, you can’t call it a competition, because I don’t know how any consumer would ever be making a choice between any of our products.

    • BAM Testing, What’s your athletic potential.
    • FanZappy, “Social-to-Store” service attracts social fans to local businesses and further converts fans to repeat in-store customer via our mobile app.
    • Glacier Peak, Nature does nothing uselessly.
    • Green Simian, Renewable Mobile Power.
    • Grid Mobility, Connecting Power to People.
    • Lacuna Systems, Expert Web Performance Management.
    • MotoVolta, Inc., High Performance Electric Motorcycles.
    • Mountain Logic, Halves heating and cooling costs for 100 million homeowners with central forced air by only conditioning occupied rooms.
    • Phytelligence, Smarter plants.
    • ProtoSec, Creating the next wave of Internet and Web vulnerability detection giving enterprise customers novel and low-cost vulnerability information about their applications, helping them meet compliance and security requirements.
    • Radiate, The Future of Internet Radio.
    • Relaborate, Blogging Made Easy.
    But no matter what, here are 12 people – from an original list of 37 – who are attempting to build and create jobs, not protest that no one is creating jobs for them.  Maybe not all of these will turn a “profit” some day, but if you are looking for ways to stimulate an economy, I think these are the kinds of events and people you should be investing in.  They may not all show a return, but at least there’s a chance.

    A Small Business Owner’s Thoughts on the Economy

    October 9, 2011 /

    There’s no question that we are in some ridiculously bad economic times. And when you look at the system as a whole, the problem certainly seems unfixable. Now there is a lot of rhetoric on each side of the political aisle but here are the few humble thoughts from a small business owner.

    1) There are actually jobs out there – This may seem like an inflammatory comment to my unemployed readers. But when we spun off our new company, Relaborate, a little while ago, one of the first things we needed was a developer to help us flesh out the prototype. And let me tell you – that developer was really hard to find. You may not want to code. But if you want a job, learn to code. You won’t be the best coder in the world but the economy needs more coders.

    2) The Unemployment system is horrendous – I’d like to hire more people to full-time, full benefit roles. However, our clients aren’t always signing 12 month deals. So often that means contract/project work. And too many times, I hear the following positively ridiculous statement: “How long is the gig? I’m not sure I can do any work or get paid for doing project work, because it will mess up my unemployment benefits.” That’s insane. The entitlement system provides incentive to not do part time projects, which could lead to a full time role. The system actually discourages productivity. Sure, someone could argue that I should just give the person a full-time job. But that’s not always an option. If I have a specific time-bounded project that I need someone with a specialized skill set to help me with, I’d like to pay a fair market wage to someone to help me with it. The system shouldn’t be stopping that person from being able to say yes. Someone should be able to fix this.

    3) The labor “Supply and Demand” Curve is out of whack – This goes back to the point about developers. The Universities need to do a better job of controlling how many degrees are given out in each field of study. If the country only has jobs for 10,000 Art History majors, the Universities shouldn’t pump out 20,000 new Art History majors a year, paying $40k a year in college tuition. I know it would take a little foresight and research to make these projections, but I kind of assume the Universities should have the collective intellect to pull this off.

    4) It takes a little effort – A friend of mine recently offered to help someone with some connections. The job seeker sent a Facebook Wall post asking for those connections. No resume, no personal email, no phone call…just a Facebook Wall post. The entitlement generation needs to figure out a few things about professional behavior.

    Now the point of this post is not to be a rant. It’s actually optimistic. Every day I work with people who are hungry to work more. I see entrepreneurs trying to build companies that will enable them to hire people. I see people who are under-employed wanting to work. But I call upon the high schools and universities to push students towards careers where there is demand, I urge the politicians to fix the arcane unemployment rules that make it hard for people to take short-term project work, and I strongly encourage the under-employed to think about what kind of roles people are desperate to hire. I want to be Commissioner of Baseball. But there’s already a line of people more qualified than me for that role, so I’ll have to keep doing these Marketing jobs. It’s just the way it is.

    In a lot of ways, we are all our own small businesses, and we are all selling a set of services to someone. We all need to have something that people are willing to pay for.

    McDonald’s “I Spy” Interactive Video Campaign

    September 18, 2011 /

    Another nice find by DigitalBuzzBlog.

    This McDonald’s campaign asks you to watch a :50 YouTube video and look for a certain character hiding in the scene. If you click on the character, you move on to the next level.

    It’s actually a little hard at first, so don’t lose your patience the first time to get to the end without spotting Grimace. It’s a neat gimmick for a campaign, and definitely something you could replicate if you have the creativity and motivation.

    I Suddenly Understand Home Depot

    August 31, 2011 /

    I’ll admit it. For years, I’ve felt pity on guys who have told me they need to go to Home Depot to get some stuff for the house. I was confused when they talked about how they were actually looking forward to it. I’ve never understood it. Why would anyone WANT to go shopping fo ranythign, much less home repair stuff?

    And in the last 2 months, the light bulb has come on. I get it.

    If you’re not living with your girlfriend/fiance, you may occasionally get asked to do some work on her place, just to fix something dumb like a picture frame. Otherwise, it’s her landlord’s problem. And if something breaks at your house, it usually can be solved with duct tape and by moving a dresser in front of it.

    But when you have a “domestic partner” things change. (This is where I’ll lose the single guys.) Especially if you own your place. Suddenly, if something is wrong with the house, it’s something that is wrong with you.

    But there;s a huge difference. If you are fat, it will take you months to get in shape. If you are losing your hair, you’re going to lose your hair. If you have a lousy job, there’s a whole career issue you have to tackle. What I’m saying is, these are things that could be “wrong” with you that take a long time to fix.

    But when your pipe starts leaking, you have Home Depot. One day, and you are fixed. It’s a miracle.

    Plus, you realize that when you are a guy in Home Depot, you are among friends. The help is helpful. The customers are friendly. And the rows and rows and rows and rows of toys. Exquisite. You want one of everything, but you realize you don’t need it. Because when you do need it, you can just run down to Home Depot and get one.

    And another side effect – women are scared of Home Depot. They won’t admit it. But watch the wives in the building. They’ll slowly gravitate to the sections they feel most comfortable in. While we start exploring the intricacies of the different types of screws available, the women want to get the task done and flee.

    Thus, you often get to hit Home Depot on your own. And there’s no Home Depot in your neighborhood. So you have to get in your car, turn the football game on the radio, and take a nice long drive. You can easily get in a 1/2 quarter one way and a 1/2 quarter back. It’s beautiful.

    So in a nutshell – I apologize to the guys I’ve questioned before. I get it now. The only thing I don’t get is why they don’t have a chicken wing bar behind the lumber section…

    Chocolate + Augmented Reality =

    August 25, 2011 /

    Leave it to a 100 year old chocolate company to create a truly innovative interactive campaign utilizing augmented reality and an app called Blippar.  I don’t have these candy bars in front of me, so I can’t vouch for the game yet, but I’ll try to pick some up on my next trip to QFC.  (Video via DigitalBuzzBlog)

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