I knew of a few people who were struggling with how they use social media, but I really took notice when Erin Middleton, a brand planner, wrote a piece titled, “changing the rules.”

“So how are we supposed to function on Facebook when my Director at work can see that I’m ‘recovering from a hard night out’ or that my relationship status went from ‘in a relationship” to ’single?’”

She concluded that this transparency shtick might cross the line into “Too Much Information” for her business contacts, and her business musings might be too dry and boring for her everyday friends.
Thus, she created a separate account for her business contacts and one for her personal contacts.
Then David Reich documented the mistake of a businessman who made this post on Twitter: “True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I’d scratch my head and say ‘I’d rather die than live here.’”
The problem was, he was in town for a business meeting with a client …. FedEx …. and they caught wind of it and took offense.
A fine PR pro himself, David said:

“It’s easy to get caught in a situation like this, since Twitter is about friendly dialogue–But what you write is going out there in public, and Mr. Big Agency Guy should have had a bit more sense and sensitivity.”

Over the next few weeks, the Internet was abuzz with people who pondered or took notice of the ramifications of their prolific use of social media tools:
From CK:

From Jeremiah Owyang:

Yes, folks, it appears Facebook is becoming mainstream. And even though that opens up lots of opportunities for marketers, it is replete with risks.
As of this writing, I have 312 friends on Facebook. I’m not trying to brag …. I’ve never even met a lot of them. Many of them are people I connected with while we were all trying to get a sense of how we could use these tools. As a whole, they cut a wide swath across political and religious spectra, and given my own strong beliefs, I know I’m bound to at some point rub somebody the wrong way.
Does that mean I must create separate accounts for friends who won’t be offended by discussions about Christianity, politics, business, and economics?
I don’t think so. After all, Facebook updates are easy enough to ignore, especially when your friends also have upwards of a couple hundred friends, themselves. Besides, that’s what groups are for.
The right answer for you probably depends on how you want to use the various platforms together.
However, it’s always wise to be mindful of what you say and how you say it. This is true if you’re talking to a group of friends or to a roomful of associates. And considering the fact that it’s much easier to document conversations that occur in the public space online, this is exponentially more true for what you say on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.
Mind your manners. Obey the Golden Rule. But find that nuance that still allows you to reveal your winning personality. And even if you’re a power user, try not to dominate the conversation. Listening is still twice as valuable as talking.

I have to hand it to the two Viewzi hotshots. It’s apparent from their collections of spinach labels and IRS forms that they have been gathering material for this presentation for a long time. Strangely enough, one of the homework assignments got me thinking about the airlines’ principal marketing dilemmas: how to increase customer satisfaction and build brand loyalty.

The assignment was to more effectively organize and prioritize airline confirmation information. We were allowed to invent our own contexts. This is what it looked like:

(Thanks to Jared Farnum for scanning it.)

Unless you’re a computer, the above example is a
complete mess. The designers apparently didn’t think it was important
enough to allow people to easily find what they are likely to look for.

After all, the customer already bought the ticket. The airline got their money, and
now the passenger must walk the crucible of airport security and
undergo every examination short of a body cavity search just to visit
grandma in Chicago.

Mapping out this problem from an information design perspective requires we understand what the user is looking for. This is determined by the context of his interaction with the information.

Thinking through this, I sketched something out in class, but my work always seemed to resolve into an airline ticket. I guess that’s just where my head was, but since we were allowed, I followed that thought and came up with this rough design for the same fictitious flight:

Though I’m not much of a designer, I did a few things that Stephen and Travis recommended, and at first blush it seems to have worked out well. 

• Deleted information most people don’t need
• Grouped like information
• Prioritized the content according to the context
• Utilized icons to aid scanning

There is probably someone who thinks I shouldn’t have deleted something that I did. To that I say, with the deepest respect:

"That’s why these things shouldn’t be designed by committee. Now shut your mouth and go design your own ticket."

Kidding! Kidding! I can take the criticism. Maybe we can design a stop sign next. That isn’t the point anyway. The brand-endearing idea most useful to marketers comes next, and I didn’t even use a single logo.

If your ticket actually has it, the stub just repeats a lot of the information that was on the proper ticket, but in shorthand format and with greater emphasis placed on the seat number.

However, since these stubs are not used much anymore, I imagined what would happen if the airline decided to do something remarkable. Something memorable. Something endearing.

(The gray area in the lower right represents a bar code.)

Can you imagine printing off your ticket at the airport kiosk and seeing that message? It would be like winning a golden ticket from a Wonka Bar.

They wouldn’t have to do it for every passenger — that would be impossible. But the airline (in this case, American Airlines) under this hypothetical program would need to reserve 1-4 upgraded seats, depending on the size of the plane, on every flight, and give it to a random passenger (or group of passengers, if possible, to keep families together).

In the event the passenger was not one of the chosen few, he would be offered something else. Let’s look at these options:

• A 15% discount to a restaurant located in the arrival city.
• $3 off his next FedEx shipment, good for the entire time he’s there.
• 50% off a 15-minute chair massage upon return home.

Every one of these options can be relevant to the passenger, and the airline wouldn’t need any more information than is already on the ticket.

Even better, except for the upgrades, the airlines wouldn’t even need to pay for all of these promotions themselves. The companies who want more business from travelers would consider it an advertising expense.

It’s simple, unexpected, concrete, credible and perhaps even a little emotional. Plus, everyone who gets a free upgrade will tell his story. (Sound familiar?) Who would want to fly with anyone else?

Of course, this wouldn’t solve any management or customer service problems the airlines have. It would just build a lot of buzz and generate stronger loyalty and more paying customers.

That can’t hurt — whatever their other problems are.

What do you think?
Assuming it were technically feasible and the airlines went along with it, would it work? Why or why not?

This made me wonder about not only newspapers, but also all content publishers in a world filled with information foragers who are more likely to reward link aggregation utilities like Google than the actual creators of the content. It is in these moments of reflection that I must ask with all sincere empathy, "Is this model sustainable?"

Before we explore the topic, though, we should retrace our steps to figure out how we got here.

The old model of publishing

1. Attract an audience through compelling content.
2. Sell advertising to those looking to reach your audience.

When the audience consumed the content, sometimes the advertising worked, and sometimes it didn’t. But whatever the case, the content publishers were able to sustain themselves and grow because companies found it worthwhile to invest in the effort.

When people started getting more advertising messages than they could possibly be asked to remember, they tuned most of them out. Instead of adapting then and there by giving people what they wanted (partially due to the immaturity of the industry) , companies instead chose to advertise in greater quantities as well as more intrusively.

As a result, when innovators with more heart and vision than (arguably) concrete business sense offered people the opportunity to pay attention to something else, people gladly took it.

Arising out of that came the expectation that certain things are free, and they could, in most cases, ignore most of the ads they were served. Anyone who insisted on forcing ads upon them could also be abandoned for someone else less intrusive.

It became apparent, then, that in order to be successful as a content publisher, a company must learn the most basic attributes of their common audiences.

What is with these people?

1. They dislike being interrupted by advertising.
2. They don’t want to pay for things that have customarily been free.
3. They insist advertising be appropriately labeled as advertising.
4. They sometimes appreciate finding out about some unique products that will benefit their lives.
5. They don’t want to tell you more about themselves than is necessary to tactically deliver something that uses their information to deliver.

The publisher’s paradox

Points 1 and 2 suggest the answer is to sell advertising as content, but this violates point 3.

If we are to rely on appropriately labeled advertising, point 4 suggests we harness the ability to deliver exactly the right ad in exactly the right way to exactly the right person at exactly the right time, which up until now has been impossible without gathering so much information about the consumer that we effectively violate point 5.

Understanding all of this, we have a choice. We can either stand and curse the situation or seek to do something about it.

We can strive to shift consumer attitudes about the acceptability of interruption advertising, shift attitudes about how advertising is labeled, or rely on a different form of marketing that is (pulling from my memory of at least one of Seth Godin’s books):

1. Invited
2. Welcome
3. Expected

Shifting attitudes about anything, particularly advertising, is a fool’s errand. Attempts to change the way people think or to "perfect" humanity have unerringly led to failure, so from an advertiser’s view, the prospective ROI is reduced proportionally to perceived risk at the attempt.

Therefore, to compensate for the realities of points 1-5, companies look for ways to get the word out through other means, including by PR — with getting mentioned in a bona fide news article in the New York Times being the Holy Grail of such efforts, or by (albeit reluctantly) publishing their own content and developing a more direct relationship, at some level, with the audiences themselves.

Both of these options potentially reduce the income of the publishing companies, which without severely reducing operating costs, is not sustainable.

The final option is to sell something tangible that people value.

The marketplace has changed. The sooner we marketers get that through our thick skulls, the better we can serve our customers.

The marketplace can no longer be driven by simple, traditional advertising but will instead be driven by content and the slow art of the customer seduction. Exceptions abound, but in general your prospects and loyal customers are not interested in a one-night stand.

Making the ads bigger, more plentiful or more intrusive is not going to help us solve the paradox. Barring some global paradigm shift, we cannot  count on people changing their attitudes and acceptance of advertising. Therefore, we have to rely on our wits to change the way we approach them.

At first that may sound scary, but it’s far less scary than relying on a system that by design is fundamentally unsustainable. – Cam Beck

I always am a little amused when people express shock that relationships can be built and can thrive completely online. After all, I have been meeting people I previously knew only online as far back as 1996 — long before Match.com or any of these other social sites sprung up explicitly to bring people together and keep them in touch. Of course, once tI got to New York City to take part in Blogger Social ‘08, I was quick to discover that, as is usually the case, I didn’t know half as much as I thought I did.

Because I’d done it before, when CK and Drew conceived and pitched the idea of Blogger Social, I was on familiar ground. Stand toe-to-toe with people I chat with all the time? Sure. It’s the only natural next thing to do.

I didn’t expect it would draw in people all the way from Australia and Belgium.

I also didn’t expect the event to be put together so well that what was presumably so familiar would be so new and rich to me.

When we read what people write — on blogs, in newspaper editorials, etc., it’s easy to take for granted our knowledge of that person and the concept of a shared experience. The truth is, though, that it is an interaction that often takes place only in our own minds, and as wonderful as the Internet is and is becoming at bringing people together from vast distances, nothing compares to meeting face to face.

And an open bar.

Here’s the point. The heart of social interaction is participation, and the root of participation is will. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, and I hope that, if you hesitate in joining the conversation, you find it in yourself to overcome any fear you may have.

The world is, as CK said, getting smaller, and at long last we are starting to act like it.

All I can tell you is this: If you’ve read these articles on MPDailyFix or on various blogs and you’ve enjoyed them but haven’t joined the conversation, you’re not only missing out on a great opportunity to meet and know wonderful people, but you’re depriving them of the chance to meet and be enriched by you, too.

You never know what may come of it.  We’d love to talk to you.

Photo credit of Luc Debaisieux and Arun Rajagopal to CK.

* * * * *
A common worry among designers, when building a website, is that the many affordances we make for usability limit what the designer can do to make it look good or to make it “cool.”
It turns out, though, that those affordances create opportunities for greater creativity and more usable experiences for people other than the designer. As easy (and fun!) as it is to blame designers for being stereotypically stubborn, the problem lies not only with them, but with everyone too familiar with their company and unfamiliar with the power of creative constraints.
Thanks to the book, Made to Stick, I learned that one of the most difficult things to do when you know something is remember what it was like to not know it. This is of particular importance when you are building websites for someone other than you. This was brought into clearer focus when I finished reading The Design of Everyday Things, which explained that not only must websites be attractive, but they must also help prevent errors by creative and constructive use of design constraints.

The usability of a pencil

Certain tools are built with few meaningful constraints, and they require the expertise of the user to put it to good use.
A pencil, for instance, is a simple yet elegant tool. I’m not sure, but I suspect that it is pretty clear after seeing it used one time that the pointy end goes on the paper, and that dragging it across the page with a little pressure makes a mark.
However, a pencil is most useful to people who already know how to write or draw. It has one function with many uses. The quality of the work depends on executing a set of variables among infinite possibilities within the constraints the user deems necessary to achieve a specific end.
The difficulty is that the pencil gives no indication of what those constraints are.

An example

I am a novice illustrator. It’s a casual hobby for me that I haven’t practiced in many years. Give me a pencil, and the results wouldn’t be that striking.
My brother, on the other hand, has been studying and practicing art for decades. A pencil in his hands can be magical, meaningful, or just plain funny.

He’s able to use a pencil so well because he is an expert with it. With the same tool, I couldn’t accomplish the same thing without years and years of practice.

What you know can kill your site

Obviously, your audience will know how and be able to read (or will have workarounds). But that doesn’t mean they know the internal or industry jibberish you sometimes use when you communicate with your associates. So, by design, do not use it, as much as possible. If you must use such nonsense, do your best to explain them clearly.
Put another way, you must constrain your vocabulary intentionally to make sure what you write can be and is likely to be read by your intended audience.
The reason is this — Except in certain rare cases, your website isn’t going to be used by just experts.

Build for your audience, not for yourself

You have to consider the larger audience. Therefore, you have to do more than create a tool (like a pencil) that can be used in one way (your preferred way) out of a million — You have to ensure it can be used only in the way it was intended, which means designing meaningful and intuitive constraints.
The more complicated the task, the more difficult this is, but in the end, your site should be more like color-by-numbers than a pencil.
To be effective, the constraints must be visible and easy to understand, so that the users can easily predict what can be done and what results they will get.
This will build your users’ confidence in your site, and therefore you. Once that confidence is built, your users will understand that it is risky to go to anyone else to buy what you have to sell. Therefore it is important that you implement these principles quickly. Confidence, once lost and found elsewhere, is difficult to regain.
Image credits:
Pencil by Big-E-Mr-G
Drawing table by ArSiSa7
Caricature sketch by Gannon Beck
(used with permission)

* * * * *
You must admit — marketers have a curious way with language. For decades it was the industry’s goal to “target” an audience, as if to say the only way to make money was to treat consumers as objects to be destroyed. More recently, although we are using more 2.0-friendly language for interactive marketing, just as often we still use “target” and “engagement,” both of which project the consumer as an adversary.
Though it seems strange and disjointed, the language isn’t actually the problem. Even when we use the “right” terms — or at least terms the hypersensitive have less to be offended by — too often to be ignored, the problem is that our goal is still the same as it’s always been.
Consumer Electronics: An Analogy
Imagine walking into an electronics store in search of some speakers for your home entertainment system. You don’t know exactly which ones you want, but you’re pretty sure you’ve got an idea about how to narrow your choices. You just have a few questions you want to ask about the ones the store has available.
You track down a salesperson and explain what you’re looking for and what type of system you have. Easy enough.
A normal person would expect to be given helpful information, but the head of marketing, hip to the whole “Information Superhighway” thing that’s all the rage with the kids these days, meticulously trained the sales team on how to approach prospects. Thus, instead of giving you the answer, the salesperson hits you with a thirty-second explanation about how great his company is. Worse yet, there is no skip button (Not that
one would help).
Sound like any splash pages you’ve seen?
Beyond Appearances
This is what clueless people think passes for “marketing 2.0.” For all our ruminations and advocacy on the blogosphere, the goals of marketing today are the same as they’ve always been: Interruption and
Transaction. They are just dressed in a different garb.
Today’s marketers call what they do “engagement,” “interaction,” “relationship-building” or worse yet, “encouraging the customer to experience the brand.” However, substitute “brand” with “Tabasco enema,” and you can picture the usefulness of such tactics and how uncomfortable your audience is with them.
The sad news is that your company’s brand isn’t nearly as important to your audience as it is to you. Unless you’re the only provider available online, which is unlikely, it’s very easy for your audience to find someone else. No amount of “brand engagement” you pull out of your magic hat is going to make people think more about you than they do of themselves.
So don’t fool yourself about this “brand experience” thing. It’s important, and it can be done, but it isn’t going to happen because you dressed your marketing up with prettier language or pictures.

CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) laws dictate that companies must provide consumers a means to opt-out, and any U.S. company seriously desiring to avoid a lawsuit and punitive action has complied. However, the way they have chosen to do so reflects, at best, a serious misunderstanding about why such laws are necessary in the first place, and at worst, outright apathy or malice towards the consumers’ desires.

–See laws for commercial emailers at the website for the Federal Trade Commission (here).–

A few months ago I opened a Bank of America account because my wife sung the praises of the online banking features the company offered. It didn’t take me long to see what she meant. They are impressive! From a Bank of America login, I can view balances and statements, pay bills, and transfer cash from one account to another. It has, without a doubt, made my life easier, and they should be praised for seeing the value in adding value to the consumer.

Friday morning I logged on to pay a few bills before I went to work. This has never been easier! Having already set up my accounts to be paid, I was able to do it with one hand (my non-writing hand) while I attempted to placate my little girl by bouncing her on my knee (and stabilizing her with my right hand). The process had its hiccups, though, and though it didn’t upset me terribly, represents something about a lot of marketers that upsets me across nearly all industries that are represented on the Internet.

After I logged in, I was asked to confirm my email address, and things started to go downhill. The email address was already correct, and I started to suspect they had no reason to believe otherwise. It had only been a few months since I opened the account, after all.

I was provided with two opt-out messages before I confirmed the address. There were two checkboxes; one of them, regarding marketing messages, was unchecked, and the other regarding statement updates, was checked.

Getting increasingly suspicious and feeling the sinking need to look closer, I noticed that the language of the first (already unchecked by default) told me to check the box if I did NOT want to receive marketing messages. The language on the second (already checked by default) told me to check the box if I WANTED statement updates. In other words, within the same form and context, they provided different ways to opt out.

Bank of America followed the letter of the law, but they did so with a method that can only be described as misleading since people typically don’t read those sorts of messages, and the action required to opt out changes from one email message to the next within the same form.

I’ve been in these sorts of debates before: The marketing managers are presumably concerned that their bonuses will be partially based on the number of people who sign up for emails. I can think of no other reason they are so adamant that they find some way to ensure people get marketing spam they don’t want.

Although Bank of America didn’t ask for my mailing address (which they already have, because they have a legitimate need for it) at this stage, many marketing managers will ask for all the information they can get, just because THEY want it, not because they need it to deliver anything of value to the consumer. In usability tests, I’ve observed that users gripe about the extra fields (not noticing that all of them aren’t required) even as they fill it out with fake information.

Many times they tell us that they wouldn’t even fill it out, if we weren’t asking them to, because the site is asking for information the company doesn’t need. This is a problem in and of itself to marketers, who are trying to establish brand affection and loyalty.

In light of that, why do so many of us presume this is the way to build a brand …. to annoy our customers while we get fake information that has no use to us?

If information really has value to you as a company, don’t manufacture methods that end up confusing people about what they’re getting and what is required of them. Instead, engineer a process that either legitimately will require it or would make consumers want to give it to you because they know they will get something of value as a result of your using that information they freely gave you.

Email can be a viable and effective marketing medium, but the more email users get that they really didn’t want, the less effective it will be for everyone. Don’t send emails to anyone who hasn’t indicated a desire to receive it. Ultimately, it’s better if your audience gets an email that they are expecting AND WANT than to get an unwanted email only because you wanted to force it on them or trick them into accepting them …. regardless of what the law says.

In anticipation of the backlash, McDonald’s promised to reduce the amount of money it spends on advertising to kids, and this MSNBC article says, “The study will likely stir more debate over the movement to restrict ads to kids.” [emphasis mine].
First of all, that extraneous details influence our perception is nothing new. The authors of Made to Stick cited a study conducted in 1986 that demonstrated how irrelevant details can make ideas appear more credible. At a wine-tasting gala in Germany back in 1991, our host explained that the reason a yellow tablecloth was used was because it gave customers the sense that the chardonnay tasted better.
Second, and most important, when are we going to stop looking to government to fix our inability to say “no” to our kids? I really don’t care how much money McDonald’s spends on advertising to children, because three things are true:

1. One Big Mac or Happy Meal, when consumed properly, is not going to kill me or my kids;
2. Thus, marketing them is not an inherently immoral act; and
3. I can always say “No” to prevent excess.

Coincidentally, my son asked me just this weekend if he could have McDonald’s (or Chick-fil-A, Wendy’s, or Whataburger) for dinner, and I simply said we wouldn’t. We had good, healthy food waiting for us at home, and there was simply no reason to buy and eat fast food, no matter how tasty it might have seemed to either of us at that time.
Note to parents: It wasn’t difficult.
I understand that a diet consisting solely of Big Macs and Happy Meals is a sure path to obesity, and I understand that obesity is a serious problem. But I don’t know of any advertising that advocates obesity. Ads, as they should, advocate the consumption or use of a product or service. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, but in the end, there is no mystery about what we’re getting when we buy fast food. It is our responsibility to make sound decisions concerning our own diets and lives, and the diets and lives of our children.
When we ask Congress or any other regulatory agency to interfere, we are admitting the people do not have the capacity to make sound decisions about their own lives (We rarely, if ever, apply the same logic to ourselves — It’s always the “other people” who have the problem and thus must be governed by outside sources). This creates an interesting paradox, since those same people who can’t make sound decisions when confronted with a convincing ad are responsible for electing members of Congress, who appoint the regulatory authorities to which we must answer.
How can we claim the capacity to make decisions about our laws and representatives while at the same time claim that we don’t have the capacity to make good decisions about how we react to advertising? If we cannot resist the temptation to eat fatty foods (or say “No” to our children) because the advertising makes it too appealing, we cannot logically claim that we have the discernment to preserve the very liberty that puts the reins of power within our reach.
I do believe companies have a responsibility to not only create products and services that are not innately harmful, but also to market them ethically. But at some point all of us, as consumers and as citizens, have to take responsibility to govern our own decisions. The implications of behaving otherwise go far beyond how we market Big Macs, Happy Meals, or anything else.
It means we can’t be trusted with anything at all.

Apparently, in business, former members of the military are often typecast as perpetually angry people who manage as authoritarians and can get people to do what they want only through yelling and the threat of force. Not only does MSNBC report on this inaccuracy, it helps perpetuate it. Veterans can be, in fact, some of the most clever, loyal, and courageous employees you could hope to hire.
It’s true that in the military, there are a few specific situations where yelling as a leadership tool has a legitimate purpose. Certain types of training fall into this category. So does combat. There are other times when yelling is just necessary to be heard, such as when trying to speak to 120 people spread out over a wide area at one time, or when trying to be heard over the piercing whine, roar, and rumble of an aircraft engine.
The MSNBC article snidely informs us that not only is saying “Yes, sir,” a detriment, but so is the entire mentality that motivated it. Additionally, the author claims that servicemembers’ most admirable universal qualities are confined to being reliable, having the ability to follow orders and being able and willing to fight for their lives. But, the author goes on, “Can they write a resume, network for a job or master the interview process?”
Without a doubt, resume writing and networking are very important skills in business, but far more useful, in my mind, are the ingenuity required to get a broken Humvee running again using only boot laces and the courage required to navigate a minefield.
Specifically to the author’s point, a little politeness and respect never hurt anyone, and instead of trying to get people in the military to conform to a society where decorum seems to be a lost art, one should have the decency and self-respect to acknowledge and return this respect in kind. It truly boggles my mind that anyone would believe otherwise.
Second, members of the military are required to do more than just “follow orders.” Besides being required to know the difference between a lawful and unlawful order, leaders are customarily given objectives, but not instructions to achieve them. They must determine the best way to accomplish that objective. Specifics are pushed as far down the chain of command as possible. As such, conveying intent and purpose often carries a greater weight than giving a specific set of operations to accomplish. In sum, they are not just encouraged, but required to think for themselves, not just follow orders.
Third, it is not just one’s own life people in the military are fighting for. Everyone has their own reasons for joining, but once the bullets start flying, they fight for each other. That demonstrates an admirable loyalty. Of course they want to stay alive, but to boil it down to self-preservation is terribly — if not maliciously — misleading.
Furthermore, consider this dramatized conversation based on the real-life experience of Eddie Trumble, Jr., who, after retiring from the military, where he earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees, he had difficulty finding a job:

Sure, Eddie. I see that, while you were serving your country for twenty years, facing the constant threat of unexpected and frequent deployments, living in some of the most stressful environments imaginable, you managed to finish your bachelor’s and get an MBA.
But what I really want to know is, can you write a resume?

Let me give a quick message to the hiring managers who passed on Mr. Trumble: The next time someone with these qualifications comes by your desk, and you decide to pass on him, please send him my way. If you lack the imagination to find a place for him in your organization, I’d be glad to take him off your hands.
See my bio for a full disclosure.

He appears to be genuinely glad to answer any and all questions the parents have, and he doesn’t make it seem as if he’s heard the same question a million times, as he probably has. Interacting with him directly is always (dare I say it?) a fun experience.
I just hate going to see him.
I won’t necessarily lay the blame squarely on his shoulders. I’m sure he does the best he can. It’s just that on certain days and at certain times, I get to see him for only 15 minutes of the 2 hours I’m there. Spending that time trying to comfort an increasingly fussy baby for twice as long as I expected to be there is nearly enough to make me want to actively seek a new doctor.
The problem is, I haven’t met a doctor yet who has so little to do that he can actually keep his appointment times consistently. At least not for the amount I’m willing to pay. Thus, in my case, changing pediatricians won’t really solve the problem. It would simply change the location that problem occurred. By changing, I would give up the certainty of having a good pediatrician for a hope that defies all reason and experience …. that is …. that the waiting time situation will change by switching doctors.
Bearing all that in mind, what can be done? It seems that any of the available choices are, in one way or another, prohibitive. One option results in a continued waste of time and discomfort, and the other introduces uncertainty in the quality of care I can expect my children to receive with no corresponding benefit to compensate for that uncertainty.
Assuming similar prices, levels of care, and “bedside manner,” a better waiting room experience might tip the scales with many patients. Improvements I’d look for could be pretty simple, but it means expanding the office’s repertoire beyond just magazines and a single TV playing a single kids’ movie over and over again.

1. Office staff should provide an explanation to the patient when once they are able to anticipate a delay over, say, fifteen minutes.

2. Make refreshments available for the wait.
3. Waive the copayment fee (whatever it is) when the wait is longer than 30 minutes.
4. Provide interesting content that may be relevant to the visit. There are only so much one can get out of reading the posters over and over again when the patient is stuck waiting for anything more than 15 minutes.

Although it seems the supply available doctors seems to barely, if at all, meet the demands of patients, the medical care industry as a whole has an incredible P.R. problem that is about to get worse due to the upcoming release of “Sicko,” a movie created by Michael Moore, who is no stranger to …. fairly or unfairly …. drumming up controversy with and animosity toward his intended targets.
If there was ever an incentive to improve their patients’ perception of their health care providers, this is it. Although probably too late to dampen the immediate impact of “Sicko,” it’s never too late to pay closer attention to the comfort and requirements of a company’s customers, regardless of the industry in question.

If we’re to successfully implement these tools, we must first acknowledge that the tactics marketing should never take the place of marketing itself. Marketing is not about merely the effort to match the right people with the right product or service, but it is also about doing it in the right way. Your message, in fact, is strongest when it occurs at the intersection of ethics and the strongest passion you share with your audience, which, assuming a sustainable business model, naturally results in sales of whatever you are peddling.