We Have a High Dilbert Ratio
We Have a High Dilbert Ratio
Don't boo... Vote!
Happy “GO VOTE EVE”! Today we start with engagement marketing and move into Understanding Musk or Dilbert. After a break, we dive into how Press Worthy, our publisher, would be if he went missing. Throw in our favorite Go Vote video and finish with some Rock & Roll Hall of Famers. That should be enough to get your week started!
Bigmouth Strikes Again:
Stories | News | Music | Art & Design - With A Shout (out)
Big Stories
Airbnb Moves Out
Airbnb recently announced it would cut its ad spending, focus on brand marketing and public relations (PR), and expand news coverage of the business. The C-Suite is optimistic the changes will not affect growth and that most of the traffic received on the website already comes direct, which means someone types “Airbnb” into a search engine or browser to reach the website.
The longer a company has been around, and the brands’ name recognition is top of mind, it’s worth adjusting overall marketing goals. In the case of Airbnb, the product is personal; a customer is putting a house on a temporary market for another customer to live in. This requires the ultimate level of trust and means Airbnb must make an enormous commitment to making both customers feel safe and covered if any problems arise. Public Relations (PR) are part of the product at Airbnb, whereas, in other companies, PR is only needed if something unforeseen breaks down. Why not use this as a feature in your marketing?
The WSJ expanded on this and the thought process Airbnb uses to decrease Search Advertising. Here is a quote from CEO Brian Chesky
“We think of performance marketing as more of a way to laser in to balance supply and demand rather than a way to just purchase a large amount of customers.”
— CEO Brian Chesky
Time will tell if the adjustment will pay off.
Dilbert Ratio
After a busy week, Elon Musk took a Red Eye to the Baron Funds Conference and sat for an interview with Billionaire Rob Baron. Baron is one of Tesla’s largest shareholders. We watched the interview several times, taking notes and trying to piece together a few thoughts that didn’t add up.
Genius
Musk is a genius; he talks in the interview about Tesla and Space X, Baron asks questions that dig into both of those companies, and the answers give some insight into how Musk has been able to produce the most popular EVs on the market and rockets that land themselves.
First Principals
In a section of the interview that starts at approximately 9:23, Musk talks about First Principals, not the textbook First Principals of engineering; these are Musk’s first principals. He is talking about issues he wanted to fix on the Telsa assembly line, to improve the number of Teslas rolling off the line. Here are Musk’s first principles as we understood them:
Make the requirements and constraints as written and explained, less dumb.
If you don’t do this first, you will get the correct answer to the wrong question. [OK, Yoda?]
The requirements must come from a person instead of a department, so you know who to go to with questions.
After you have improved the requirements (made them less dumb), then you can try to:
Automate it
Accelerate it
Delete it
Musk goes on to explain two examples of how this was happening at Tesla, and after he applied the principles, he eliminated significant bottlenecks in the assembly process. In his explanation, we were both impressed and confused. This story came after talking about how he slept at the factory and slept on the floor of his office for years. This would make sense when he was building PayPal, not when he is the CEO of Tesla and Space X (oh yea, and now Twitter).
The Dilbert ratio is also something Musk said you have to look at after you use First Principals to fix your factory. Impressive and eccentric, we track the interview this far. Musk goes on to talk about Space X and creating the possibility of interplanetary travel. This goes way over our heads, but in business terms, Space X can potentially cut the cost of space travel in half quickly. Again, he is a genius.
Off the Ruby on Rails
To Musk’s credit, Baron did ask about Twitter, and they discussed it for 15 minutes. This back and forth, combined with linking to conspiracy theory websites and announcing layoffs via email and locked offices, leaves us shaking our heads.
Cleaning up twitter with the engineering genius Musk and team brought the EV and rockets makes sense. Charging people to use a cleaned-up version of Twitter that could reduce bots and trolls. Giving the appearance that, in the interim, hellscape would be an improvement doesn’t add up.
Make the requirements less dumb, and try not to make it look like a Dilbert cartoon.
Stranger Things
Press Worthy
We have been fans of Columbia Journalism Review for years. Today we took this interesting walk through a program presented by CJR called Pressworthy. Once you get to the website, you can answer a series of simple demographic questions, and the site will tell you, based on data, what press you could get if you went missing.
All Things are Not Equal
Our publisher Johnny was the test pilot; his result is below. Johnny is not a white woman in her early 20s; we still hope his family and friends would go looking for him if he went missing. The office was split and determined that day of the week and approaching deadlines would be considered before alerting the authorities.
All kidding aside, this is a fascinating look at how demographics go into news coverage. CJR is an excellent publication, and we encourage all to support their work.
Spotlight
VOTE!!
You get what you vote for.
[Music Notes]
Rock The Halls
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation Inducted the 2022 class of performers. A couple of first ballot hall of Famers included; Eminem, Duran Duran, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, and Carly Simon. 2022 was also Eminem’s first year of eligibility, and the artist’s first record must have been released 25 years ago to be eligible for the Hall. Even if rap isn’t your preferred musical genre, Eminem has something special, Lose Yourself, for the win! Earlier this year, Dolly Parton admitted that she didn’t think she was all that rock & roll; she kicked off the event by singing a new song called “I’m a Rock Star Now.” Oh, Dolly! For more info on 2022 Hall, check out Hall’s website.
[More New Stuff]
Don’t Tell A Soul
Secret Links to Cool Stuff:
Words | Music | Art | Unknown
Jukebox Shuffle
Thoughts on Music
It’s tough not to run or work out to this one.
Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.
Words from Gen X
Words from Gen X in age or spirit.
“We need democracy, not because it will give us the best government, but because it will allow us to take down the worst.” - Will Saletan.
Thank you for spending a few minutes with us!
With A Shout Team