Category Archives: Humor

An Open Letter To Justin Bieber (re: Prepaid Debit Card)

Yo J-Man:

You don’t know me from Jack, but I’ve got some advice for you regarding your newly announced prepaid debit card, so I hope you’ll hear me out.

I may be a lot older than you, but we have a couple of things in common:

1. We’re both great singers. Of course, you sound great on a stage in front of tens of thousands of people. I, on the other hand, only sound good singing in the shower, with the water running. Naked.

2. Females scream when they see us. With you, they’re screaming out of some kind teen adulation and idolatry. They scream at me because I’ve done something wrong, or because I was singing. Naked.

Despite our similarities, there’s one big difference between us: I understand the world of financial services. And I’m betting you don’t.

Your prepaid debit card isn’t going to succeed and — out of the goodness of my heart — I’m going to tell you why, and offer you some advice on what you could do differently to improve the odds of the card’s success.

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First off, I really can’t blame you for getting into the prepaid debit card business. Piece of cake, isn’t it? You lend your name and image…and other people do the rest of the work. $3.75 million for 14 months of doing nothing must make Joe Biden really jealous. He only earned $375k in the past 14 months for doing nothing.

You don’t happen to know Kim, Khloe, and Klueless Kardashian, do you? You might want to take a look at their botched prepaid debit card initiative.

The overwhelming reason why your card won’t succeed is that you don’t understand who buys prepaid debit cards. It’s not the 13 year-olds with whom your brand name and draw is strong.

Four types of people drive the prepaid debit card market: 1) People can’t get checking accounts; 2) People who can get checking accounts but don’t want to (the Debanked); 3) People with a checking account who use prepaid debit cards as a tool to help them control their spending; and 4) Parents who want to give their kids a payment mechanism.

In markets like the cereal and toy markets, kids heavily influence their parents’ choice of products. Not so in the prepaid debit card market.

In other words, no one who actually gets a prepaid debit card cares that a card is sponsored by you, J-Dude. Oh sure, there are parents who will evaluate your card, but when they see the fees associated, they’ll probably turn somewhere else. Lots of cheaper alternatives on the market, and coming on the market. In other words, your star power won’t be enough to overcome the weaknesses of the offering.

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The CEO of the card company was quoted as saying that the card gives teens “freedom and independence while also teaching them the fundamentals of financial responsibility.”

As the father of a teenager, about-to-be teenager, and a former teenager, giving teens more “freedom and independence” isn’t a goal I’m particularly fond of.

But the need for better financial education, literacy — and even more importantly — discipline, is real. I would be a big fan of a card that can deliver that. But I really don’t see how your card does that. Your quip about watching one’s spending whether one has $100 or $100 million is nice, but are you really planning to provide any ongoing financial education around the card? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

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So here’s my advice to you. Do one of the two following things:

1) Pull a “mea culpa” and back out of the deal. Make a public statement that you’re pulling out. Blame it on your advisors, your agent, your parents, whoever, for getting you into a deal that capitalizes on your name at the expense of families who can’t afford the fees associated with the card. Yes, I know that the CEO of the card company said that “most fees are avoidable” but did you ask what percentage of existing cardholders are able to earn their way out of fees? Just because other fees charge an inactivity fee doesn’t mean your card should.

2) Really commit to being a spokesman…er, spokesboy…for teen financial literacy. What often passes as “financial education” is sorely lacking. Static web pages and brochures that lecture people about spending too much isn’t effective. Simplistic advice about “foregoing Starbucks once a week” and how it will save hundreds of dollars a year isn’t what’s needed by most teens (as well as adults). Teens need hands-on tools and real-life experience managing money in order to develop financial literacy. If you’re really committed to doing this, then revamp your card’s fee structure, make sure that the tools (online access, PFM, receipt management, etc.) are either in place or will be developed by your partner, and get out there and sell this thing. 

It’s your call Jay Bee. But thanks for hearing me out. 

p.s. Can I get an autographed picture of you? It’s for my daughter. Really.

Proud To Be The 1%

Over the past couple of years, it’s become unfashionable to be considered part of some segment of consumers called the “1%.” 

I don’t know what the all fuss is about. I’m part of the 1%, and damn proud of it. 

Here’s how I figured out I was part of the 1%:

An organization called Public Policy Polling wasted somebody’s money by surveying consumers to find out that the following percentage of people believed the following things:

28%      The planet is secretly ruled by the New World Order
15%      There's mind-control technology hidden in TV signals
14%      Big Foot exists
14%      The CIA had a hand in the 1980s crack epidemic
13%      Obama is the Anti-Christ
6%       Osama Bin Laden is alive
5%       Paul McCartney died in the mid-60s
4%       Society is ruled by Lizard People
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99%

There’s the 99%, folks. I’m damn proud to be part of the 1%. (Although I am a big fan of the Lizard King).

Gen Yers Spend All Their Free Time Social Networking

At least, that’s what I would conclude after seeing the results of a survey which found that people under the age of 35 who use social networks (isn’t that all of them?) spend an average of 3.8 hours a day social networking.

I thought that number was huge, so I tried to estimate how people spend their day:

Activity       Hours spent
Sleeping          8.0
Working           8.0
Eating            1.5
Commuting         1.0
Prepping          1.0
Bathrooming       0.5
               -------
TOTAL            20.0

It’s quite possible your allocation is a bit different. Perhaps you eat your meals a bit more leisurely. Maybe your commute is longer. Maybe you put in more than 8 hours a day working (not readers of this blog). If you spend more time in the bathroom, there are other blogs you should be reading.

With 20 hours of the day accounted for by the listed activities, this leaves the average person with 4 hours of free time.

Of which Gen Yers spend 3.8 hours.

This means — if this is all correct — that Gen Yers spend 12 minutes, per day, of their free time doing something other than social networking.

I guess you can get a workout in in 12 minutes. Not sure you’ll get past the first hole on the golf course, though. With just 12 minutes, though, you’re not even catching half of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

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The reality, of course, is that social networking is not a separate activity from the activities listed above. Except for maybe sleeping. Sadly, many of you sickos actually sleep with your smartphone so you can text and post to Facebook the second you wake up.

But this reality is disturbing and troubling.

Disturbing: You better not be reading this blog post (a form of social networking) on the can. Or while driving on your way to or from work.

Troubling: How effective/productive can you really be at your job if you’re multi-tasking between your job and social networking?

I know that Gen Yers pride themselves on their so-called ability to multi-task. The bad news for them is that the key to being successful is FOCUS (you should read The Twitter Generation’s Delusions Of Productivity). 

I said, the key to being successful is FOCUS (I repeated myself because I know you were distracted by a tweet announcing that your buddy is now the mayor of some stupid store that no one else ever goes to).

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Some marketers will look at the research results and conclude that, if people spend this much time on social networking, that they should focus their marketing efforts on social networks in order to reach their customers and prospects. 

But they’re mistaken. People on social networks are doing a gazillion other things while they’re social networking. There’s no mental bandwidth left to notice or pay attention to ads. 

I, on the other hand, look at the research results and can only conclude this: Some of you really need to get a life, get your priorities straight, get back to work, and for G*d’s sake, get your hands back on the steering wheel.

And some of you may need to wash your hands after you finish reading this.

Love And Hope And Sex And Dreams

Actually, no, this post isn’t about love and sex. But it is about hopes and dreams.

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Rolling Stones fans will recognize the title of this post as a line from the band’s song Shattered.

The band is enjoying a resurgence of popularity as it closes out its tour celebrating their 50th year of existence.

That any band can make it that long is truly amazing. That Keith Richards is able to function as a semi-coherent human being is truly amazing.

The history of the band is well known to music fans, but how the group got started was not clear. Until now.

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Some 50 years ago, Mick Jagger walked into a bank in England (I think they’re called Building Societies, but what do I know), looking to open an account.

A bank teller asked Jagger what his dreams and goals were.

He told her (allegedly), “I’m going to be the biggest rock star and sex symbol in the music world!” I say “allegedly” because no one really understands what Mick is saying when he talks, but this is the commonly agreed upon version of the story.

The bank decided to fund Jagger’s dreams, helped him finance the purchase of new instruments and amps, introduced him to Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, found the band some gigs to play at in their hometown of Manchester, England, and even provided managerial advice and guidance in those early days.

The rest, as they say, is history.

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The anecdote above is utter and total fiction, of course.

No bank funded Jagger’s equipment purchases.

No bank introduced Jagger to Wyman and Watts.

No bank got them gigs anywhere, let alone Manchester, which isn’t even their hometown.

And, most importantly, no bank helped the Rolling Stones achieve their hopes and dreams.

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I made up this story to underscore a Twitter conversation that happened the other day. I came across the following tweet from @jrwlay:

Why don’t retail banking people ever ask their customers what they dream of?

My response:

If a bank branch person asked me what my dreams are, I’d tell them to go to hell. Politely, of course.

@aplusfcu responded that:

We don’t think we’ve had that response online, but we’ve had people say no thanks when asked @ events.

@julieferg’s take on this was:

If employees build rapport, have passion, and care – members share.

And in response to a @stessacohen question if the teller window was an appropriate place to ask the question, @julieferg replied:

Yes, tellers know the members better than anyone.

@Clagett admonished me:

Don’t hung up on the word “dream”. Try goals. Needs. Objectives. Long term or short term.

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A great conversation. My take on the matter:

Hopes and dreams are way too personal a topic for discussion. With the exception of a qualified financial advisor, no one in a bank is even remotely in a position to ask me about my hopes and dreams  – or even goals and objectives, long or short term. I don’t think it’s just me that finds it an inappropriate question. Brass Media published research on Gen Yers. When asked what they needed most from banks, they said things “the ability to talk to a person if I need help” and “I need bankers that are patient and can help answer my questions.” The did NOT say “someone to talk to about my hopes and dreams.”

Tellers are the last people I’d tell my hopes and dreams to. And I don’t mean any insult by that. I go into the local branch more than you’d expect, usually to deposit/cash checks. There’s a teller in the branch who lives in town and has a kid the same age as one of my kids. So my wife knows her (I know nobody), and she knows who I am. I always go to her window. There was one time, back in October 2009, when there was somebody in the branch at the same time as me, and I let him go in front of me, so I could wait until this particular woman’s window was free. She’s a very nice lady, and I’m sure that if I swiped my Stop N Shop card and four random numbers in the card reader, she’d still cash the check. But: 1) There’s no way in hell she knows me better than anyone else at the bank; 2) She is in no way qualified to talk with me about my financial goals; and 3) A check cashing/depositing transaction is the absolute wrong time to ask me (or anybody else) about my financial goals.

Banks aren’t in the dreams business. If you must know — my “dreams” aren’t about money. So how is a question about my hopes and dreams from my bank relevant to what it does? Oh, you don’t mean dreams, you mean financial dreams or financial goals. I (and many others) still don’t think that’s the business the bank is in. According to research conducted by Aite Group earlier this year, just 13% of U.S. consumers want their primary financial institution to help them manage their finances. That’s right, just 13%.  So where do banks get off thinking they should be asking customers about their hopes and dreams?

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Bottom line: You have got a helluva lot of work to do before you’ve earned the right to ask a customer (or member) what their hopes or dreams, or even goals or objectives, are.

And you better damn know what to do with the information if you get it.

A few years ago, I was doing a web site review for a large bank, and noticed that after registering for online access, the site asked customers about their short-term (12-18 month) product needs. I thought this was pretty cool, and in a conversation with the SVP of the online channel group, asked what they did with the information.

Silence on the other end.

“‘I’m not sure,” she said. “Let me ask my team, and I’ll get back you.”

She called back a while later. “I don’t want this in your write-up, but — believe it or not — we don’t do anything with the information, because no one on the management team (of the online channel group) knew we were even capturing the information.”

To their defense, the team was relatively new, having replaced a prior online channel management team. But it just goes to show that the information was not only not being used, but that the collection of the information wasn’t even well documented.

Alright, enough of this chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter about shmata, shmata, shmata. 

Bogus Social Media Metrics Should Be Criminalized

A MarketingProfs article titled The Top 20 Social CMOs of the Fortune 100 [Infographic] caught my attention. I was curious to see how they determined who the top 20 “social” CMOs of the F100 are, and how they managed to put it in a infographic. According to the article:

“BusinessNext Social conducted a study of the CMOs in the Fortune 100 to see which of them were most socially active. To rank the CMOs, the company used a formula created by the BusinessNext Social conference director Mark Fidelman. The study considered such metrics as Twitter followers, retweet frequency, social engagement frequency, social mentions, KRED scores, and Klout scores. Weights were assigned to each factor.”

My take: The methodology is totally bogus, and the infographic is…well, not exactly an infographic.

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My first thought upon reading this article was “Aha! So that’s how you create a social media. Take every publicly available social media metric, randomly assign weights to the score, and — voila! — social media metric created!”

My second reaction was “What was the maximum score, and why are there 27 stars under the so-called leaders’ names?” The most “social” (damn, I can’t write that without putting quotes aren’t it because it’s so damn bogus) CMO earned a score (I not sure “earned” is a very good verb to use here) of 2650, and 26 and a half out of the 27 stars following her name are filled in. Is 2650 good or bad? Is it out of 3,000 or 30,000? And what the hell do the stars mean?

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The number 14th ranked CMO is Jim Wilkinson from Pepsico. Technically, he’s not really the CMO, he’s the EVP of Communications, so the infographic (and article) title is a little misleading.

As of this morning, Jim has 623 followers and has tweeted a total of 168 times. Two of those tweets were retweets that were sent out in the past 24 hours, but before that his last original tweet was October 27. During the month of November,  Jim only retweeted stuff, like @@MoClaiborne tweeting “Game day!” and Interstate 80 Tahoe tweeting “CHAINS: 1 MI EAST OF BAXTER To TRUCKEE (01:16).”

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The article doesn’t actually rank all top 20 CMOs — six of the execs get “honorable mention.” According to the article, “5 of the 6 Honorable Mentions are social, but not consistently.”

One of the six is Tom Noland from Humana. Tom has 29 followers, and has tweeted a total of 20 times, the last of which was October 16th.

Another is Alan Gershonhorn from UPS, who has 269 followers, and has tweeted 10 times, most recently on March 13th. I’m not sure which year, though.

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Bottom line: What a totally bogus metric and article.

Was there any lesson learned here from the social media behavior of CMOs (and senior communications execs) in the Fortune 100?  Is there a benefit to a corporation if the senior marketing executive is active in social media? (I see no proof of that here).  Do companies like Pepsi and Humana suffer if their top marketing execs are not particularly active tweeters? (I don’t think so).

The bottom line here is that this article was written simply to draw attention to MarketingProfs and whoever created the totally bogus ranking.

And we need to do something about these bogus social media metrics.

That’s why I’m proposing we criminalize them.

Look, we need to maintain a balance in our society. With so many states decriminalizing marijuana, our law enforcement personnel are looking to keep busy. I believe that hunting down and incarcerating people who create bogus social media metrics is a good use of law enforcement’s time, and our taxpayer money.

p.s. In no way should anything I wrote here be seen as criticism of Wilkinson, Noland, or Gershonhorn. They can choose to participate in Twitter in any way they choose.

Big Data: Most Annoying Buzzword Of The Year

In 2011, I awarded the Most Overused Word in the Marketing Lexicon award to “analytics.” A year ago I wrote:

“If analytics was overhyped and overused in 2011, just wait until next year. 2012 will be the year of Big Data.”

Sure enough, Big Data is the most annoying buzzword of 2012.

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Do you have a spreadsheet with 100 rows and columns? You’ve got Big Data!

Do you monitor mentions of your company in social media channels? You do Big Data!

Do you know how to spell the word data? You’re achieving cross-channel synergies by deepening customer relationships and radically improving marketing ROI through Big Data!

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Ironically, you’re not likely to find a bigger fan of data- and analytics-driven decision making than me. But every use of data is not an example of Big Data.

There are two questions you should be asking yourself:

1) What the hell IS (and isn’t) Big Data? and 2) Why haven’t more managers become more data- and analytics- driven before?

I’m not going to bother trying to answer #1. That’s for consultants to demonstrate their thought leadershi+.

But question #2 deserves some analysis (pun intended).

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For ages, marketing has been dominated by the branding and advertising disciplines — and not by database, or quantitative marketing.

So why, all of a sudden, would the availability of heretofore unavailable (e.g., social media) data change this?

The answer is that too many marketers are searching for the next new thing, or silver bullet, that will solve all their problems, and create order of magnitude improvements in marketing performance.

Which never happens. Never. Ever.

That doesn’t stop marketers from searching, and it certainly won’t stop consultants and technology firms from coming up with buzzwords in order to find stuff to sell to marketers.

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There’s another reason why Big Data isn’t what it’s trumped up to be.

It may be an simplistic way of looking at marketing, but the two components are Sense and Respond:

“The ability to sense consumer needs and intentions based on their behaviors and actions, and to respond with appropriate advice, guidance, and offers.”

Predictive analytics (which is what Big Data is supposed to deliver or provide) can certainly enhance marketing’s ability to sense.

But there’s another part of the equation: Responding. In which of the multitudes of channels that consumers use should be a message be delivered? When? And in what sequence?

Throwing more data, and types of data, at the problem is no guarantee that both sides of the equation will be improved. 

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An adjunct to the whole Big Data mishigas (look it up) is the discussion regarding the rise of Data Scientists.

Apparently, this is the hot new job title/career field, and according to one clueless blogger, data scientists will grow up to be CEOs in the near future.

Yeah, right.

Question: How many people have gone from Market Research to the C-suite in large organizations?

Answer: Not a whole helluva lot.

There are a lot of reasons for this. One of which is this: People who rise to the c-level in large organizations generally have P&L responsibility in their background — especially where the P is a lot greater than the L. A finance background is probably the exception to that rule, but there’s a close connection to overall financial and stock performance in that job, so it helps those folks get to the c-level.

What P&L accountability does — and will — a Data Scientist have? None. We’re talking about glorified marketing researchers here. Not that I’m disparaging that (or them) one bit. I’m not just the president of the Data Scientists Club, I’m also a customer.

But we’re not getting to the CEO level in any business organization that exists on this planet. The skills required to lead organizations are very different from the skills needed by data scientists.

Oh, and if you propose the creation of a Chief Data Scientist Officer position, I will hit you in the head with a hockey stick. Because it’s a stupid idea, and because I miss hockey. Basketball sucks.

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So, is Big Data totally useless? Of course not. 

There are plenty of opportunities to make smarter business decisions by using new and different types of data. 

But it will take years — years — for companies to develop and integrate “big data” competencies in their companies. The claims of Big Data ROI that are thrown around are BS — complete and total BS. 

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Congratulations, Big Data. You’re the winner of the 2012 Snarketing 2.0 Most Annoying Buzzword of the Year. Here’s hoping you don’t repeat in 2013.

Snarketing Or Die

My take:  Businesses must understand that those that don’t invest in snarketing will get left behind and die.

Snarketing enables marketers to formulate more relevant micro-segmented strategies, identify peer influencers, achieve customer intimacy, and enslave customers instead of wasting money on traditional marketing efforts like mass media, email, and Facebook.

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Organizations on the whole are aware of the benefits of snarketing, but the extent of implementation and competency varies.

For those struggling to handle snarketing, it is not due to a lack of knowledge of what snarketing entails, but figuring out how to best align any snarketing investment with their company’s business KPIs.

To establish a real business case, they have to be able to answer the question of how does better understanding snarketing change anything for the business.

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One company that has experienced the benefits of snarketing is First National Chartered Bank.

According the bank’s Chief Snarketing Officer, snarketing is a big enabler for the organization’s aim to be the world’s best consumer bank. The bank’s internally-developed snarketing app, which reads the minds of consumers and makes them do what the bank wants them to do, helped improve sales (well, on a particularly Tuesday in July, that is).

The idea to have a snarketing tool first came about in 2008, which the bank says was part of figuring out how to beat customers into submission, and to stop pretending to be nice to people and acting like the bank really cared about them.

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According to industry analysts, waiting until the competition has started getting results from snarketing can put a company at a disadvantage for between 12 to 180 months. 

The time a company’s rival has realized the returns from its snarketing investment, it becomes their competitive advantage. [I realize that this sentence makes no sense. I lifted it from a ZDNet article, and used it near-verbatim to demonstrate how poorly edited some of this crap is]

Bottom line: Get snarketing or get left behind and die.

p.s. Feel free to substitute your favorite buzzword (social media, big data, word-of-mouth marketing, etc. ) for snarketing in this post, and post it as proof of your thought leadership on your own pitiful little blog. 

Five Not-So-Best Practices For Banks On Facebook

While researching an upcoming Aite Group report on What Bank Marketers Should Do With Twitter, I stumbled across an article on Mashable titled 5 Best Practices for Financial Institutions on Facebook (no link deserved). After stumbling across it, I fell face down in the pile of cow dung that the article is. The article list five best practices for FIs on Facebook:

1) Don’t just talk about banking; 2) Host contests; 3) Offer career advice; 4) Be cool; and 5) Show off your good work.

My take: To call something a “best practice” implies that it produces a positive, desirable business result. If you can’t prove that it does, you need solid reasoning and logic why it should. Unfortunately, the Mushable (intentional slur) article does neither.

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Let’s examine these so-called best practices one by one:

1. Why shouldn’t you just talk about banking? People have a million places to go online to interact on the millions of things that occupy their time. Why in the world would they go to a bank or credit union Facebook page to watch a soccer video? It’s not that it’s wrong to talk about things other than banking (which I would broadly define as things related to managing one’s financial life). But with the choices available, FIs need to train customers to expect certain kinds of content on their Facebook page. Random content about non-banking things won’t get people to come back often.

2. Hosting a contest can’t be bad, can it? For most FIs, hosting a contest on Facebook is like promising a friend you’re going to take her to a great party, then driving out to some god-forsaken barren, deserted place, dropping her off and leaving. So you’ve lured your customer to your Facebook with the promise of winning a contest (which, if they had a brain in their head, they would know they wouldn’t win), and then after they get there, you do nothing to keep them there, because the content on your Facebook is just a bunch of irrelevant drivel, rehashed from marketing messages dreamed up by some marketing intern. Nix the contests.

3. Bank of America is where I always turn for career advice. No better place to turn for career advice than to companies going through their own RIFs. If you take career advice from a bank, or ask a bank for career advice, I hope I’m never stuck in YOUR line at the cash registers at Frenchy’s Adult Book Store.

4. Be cool. Dear Mashable: Telling a bank to “be cool” is like telling Joe Biden to “be articulate.” And a bank does not qualify as cool just because it used the word “huzzah” on its Facebook page.

5. Show off your good work. I’m actually inclined to agree with this one. People who interact with their banks on Facebook are highly engaged in their financial lives.  They’re not their to chit chat, watch soccer videos, or talk about whether or not they should quit their jobs. They’re looking for a deeper connection with their chosen FI (I know that’s hard to believe, but they are the minority), and want reinforcement that they’ve made the right decision about who to do business with. So go ahead and toot your horn from time to time.

What Would Happen To The US Banking Industry If Texas Secedes?

Growing interest among Texans to secede from the union got me wondering: What impact would that have on the US banking industry?

Based on my consumer research, here’s what it would mean:

1. The Unbanked problem would go away. OK, that was worded a bit too strong. The Unbanked population wouldn’t go away entirely. But among the other 49 states, the percentage of consumers that are unbanked stands at 6%. Among Texas residents, it’s 50% higher — 9% are unbanked. If, however, Texas takes Arkansas with them, then we’d really make progress at eradicating Unbankedness in our lifetime!

2. Bank loyalty would be negatively impacted. Among the residents of the other 49 states….hold on a second here….

It’s getting tedious referring to the two groups as “residents of the other 49 states” and “residents of Texas.” For the sake of convenience, let’s just refer to the two groups as “Real Americans” and “Fair-Weather Americans.” You OK with that?

Now, as I was saying: Among Real Americans, 10% switched banks last year. But among the Fair-Weather Americans, only 5% switched banks. I have no data to prove that they were too lazy to do so — you’ll have to make that call yourself.

3. Satisfaction with credit card rewards programs would improve. When we asked consumers about their levels of satisfaction with various aspects of credit card rewards programs — e..g, how quickly rewards are earned, variety of rewards earned, dollar value of points earned, etc. — Texans, oops, I mean Fair Weather Americans were less satisfied with those programs than Real Americans. Why? One could guess that it’s a result of Texans’ unrealistic expectations of those programs, but I have no data to corroborate that.

4. Community banks and credit unions would suffer. Among Real Americans, 43% would prefer a community bank or credit union for their next banking purchase. Among Fair-Weather Americans that percentage drops to 37%. Maybe Fair-Weather Americans don’t know what credit unions are. It’s possible.

5. Awareness of banks’ P2P payments offerings would magically improve. More than half of Fair-Weather Americans (52% to be exact) aren’t aware whether or not their bank offers P2P payment service. Just 43% of Real Americans are unsure. If Texas goes, overall awareness of banks’ P2P payments capabilities goes up. Just like that.

As you can see, a Texas secession would be a mixed bag for the US banking industry. 

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In case you were wondering, if Texas secedes, AT&T and Sprint will suffer. In the other 49 states, 24% of consumers say they do business with AT&T Wireless, and 8% have a cellphone plan with Sprint. Among Fair-Weather consumers, however, one in three are with AT&T, and 15% are with Sprint. So go ahead and leave, Texas. I don’t like AT&T and Sprint anyway. Actually, I don’t like any of the telcos. 

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Now I know what you’re thinking: “Hold on there a second, Snarketing-boy. Texas is just one state. Removing them from the mix wouldn’t change the overall numbers that much.”

That’s true. But don’t tell the Fair-Weather Americans that. They think their influence far outweighs their actual numbers. 

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On a personal level, it would be really cool if Texas secedes. I could then brag that I “studied abroad” to get my MBA, and that I have “international work experience” based on the two years I lived after graduation. 

This post is dedicated to @chrissandoval. Gonna be sad to not be able to refer to him as my “fellow American.”

Out-Of-Office Messages

When you travel for business, or take vacation time, do you turn on the out-of-message auto-response in your email system?

If you do, people who send you an email are likely to get something like the following from you:

“Thank you for your email. I am out of the office until Tuesday November 13 with limited access to email. If this is urgent, please contact my assistant Fred at fflintstone@mycompany.com.”

If you do this, I have something to say to you, and I’ll apologize up front for being blunt and direct: You’re a f**king liar.

It’s 2012. The only people who truly have limited access to email any more are those who go on missionary jaunts up the Amazon River and my buddy who goes fishing in Alaska every year and really does leave his cell phone at home.

The out-of-office message is the 2012 equivalent of your mother’s note which got you excused from school on a day that you could have gone in, but didn’t because your mother was too busy to fight with you that day.

The out-of-office message is simply an excuse for not responding promptly to emails.

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Personally, I’m thinking of leaving the out-of-message response on permanently.

Out of 1,000 emails I receive, here’s the breakdown by category:

Basically, there’s a less than 1% chance that an email I get is going to benefit me.  That out-of-office message buys me time to respond to the endless stream of requests from people who want something from me. 

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Is the most frequent intruder on your time your boss? And does your boss know when you’re in the office, and out of the office?

You’re screwed.

You might want to take a look at the post I wrote about the joys of working from home. 

Whether or not you work in an office or work from home, if you want to try the Out-of-office Message Work Avoidance Strategy, you have to be smart about it: No Facebook posting, and no tweeting!

If you’re going to claim limited access to email, you better not be on social media.

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We should really just be more honest. Instead of saying we have limited access to email, we should tell the truth. Here’s what my next out-of-office message will say:

“Thanks for your email. I’m currently attending a conference, so there’s a pretty damn good chance that as you read this, I’m on my sixth glass of Macallan scotch, and I’m simply in no condition to respond to whatever it is you want from me. You’d be better off finding another sucker to do your work for you.”

If you’ve got a good idea for an out-of-office message, let me know. I’m always looking for good ideas to steal.