Examine Your Own Habits

I'm writing this on Friday morning. Do you know what I watched late last night? I watched salmon jumping Brooks Falls in Alaska, dodging hungry bears. It's the third summer I've watched this feed (click here).

Not watching Colbert. Kimmel. Gutfeld. Seth Meyers. Fallon. None of 'em. For me, that ended in 2015 after Craig Ferguson and Letterman exited stage left.

One can say that the current political/bribery-incented environment killed the Colbert show, and one would probably be right. You are smarter than that, however. You are not a Lemonhead. Here's a tidbit from Prof. Galloway's recent newsletter (click here).

If somebody ... anybody ... was watching late night comedy-based television, ad revenue would not have collapsed 50% in six years. Here's another peach of a comment ... catalog brands lived through this situation (because they didn't adapt to changing customer behavior), and are now saddled with a retired customer and limited/no access to a younger audience because the products they sell do not appeal to a 33 year old living in a condo in downtown Bellevue. Here's the comment.

• But less than 10% of The Late Show’s audience is between 18 and 49 years old, that coveted demographic still in their mating years and making irrational, high-margin purchases. 

One of my favorite books of all time (click here), written decades ago, talks about how industries evolve. Thousands of startups compete, two or three or four win and control the market, only to be nibbled away at by thousands of startups who take a different approach to solving the original problem.

The salmon/bears at Brooks Falls are one of the thousands of startups nibbling away at legacy/linear programming.

Twenty-five years ago catalog marketing (the establishment) was nibbled away at by e-commerce. Today catalog marketing is long gone. You will hear otherwise on LinkedIn.

Today e-commerce is about to be nibbled away by AI. Seriously. Many in e-commerce just don't realize it yet.

You will have a front-row seat for the madness. We will measure your new customers ... daily in many cases ... trying to understand how the upcoming madness impacts your business. You will not be a Lemonhead arguing in 2030 that an omnichannel approach to AI and e-commerce is the path going forward.

Examine your own habits. How have you changed what you watch for entertainment? What do you listen to for entertainment? How do you shop for what you want/need? How do your behaviors align with the company you work for? What does your company need to do to change? Is your company capable of changing? Is your boss a Lemonhead?

You might have noticed a preponderance of Lemonhead photos in recent posts. Outside of the obvious reason for publishing those images (use of AI, the preponderance of actual Lemonheads in the wild), you respond to them. Oh do you respond to them. You click on them. You are 2x-4x more likely to click on a Lemonhead image than you are to watch a video of me telling you what to specifically do to be more profitable. I'm examining your habits, and am changing my messaging in response to your habits. How are you changing in response to the habits exhibited by your customers?

Did you hear that Microsoft is laying off 15,000 people this year? AND THEY'RE WILDLY PROFITABLE!!

The age of human beings "working" is ending (yes, I'm exaggerating). We all have to be so much better than a computer that can program itself, or we don't have a purpose. What can we offer that a computer cannot offer?

In the near future, you'll outsource most of your e-commerce tasks to AI. AI will decide who your customer is. That's why you and I are going to partner on new customer measurement ... we HAVE to ... somebody has to demonstrate that technology is making the right decisions.

Ready to go?