Clark's Spot

I’ve been reading The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott. (The graduate research continues.) Parts of chapter 12 struck me as very similar to the Cluetrain Manifesto. And my analytical mind enjoyed his analysis – first published in this post – of certain phrases of gobbledygook.

The entire point of the chapter reminded me of a lesson from journalism school: avoid jargon. Don’t use fancy phrases or industry language to make a point. It confuses the reader, and the reader’s eyeballs will glaze over as they lose focus on your writing.

I was amused and happy to read that point – and to see it quantified and graphed.

I had too much fun writing this review for my profile on Goodreads. (I read it as part of my research for my PC for my graduate degree.) I just had to cross-post it here as well. Check out my review below, the cluetrain website, and the book.

Expanding on their website launched in 1999 (actually, expanding on the book published that expanded on the website), the four authors add additional commentary to their original work(s) and review how the Internet has changed business.

There are some good nuggets aboard this train.

First, you have to get past the voices. Oh, the writers are very proud of their voices. They explain how humanity hid its voices for The Corporation. They explain how the Web will free voices – has freed voices – and how if you don’t find A Voice and talk in A Voice, then your business will fail.

Perhaps they’re making up for lost time for their many years of hiding their voices. The voices must be stretched to check for their limits – the same way a 42-year-old at his college reunion tries to tailgate the same way he did as a senior.

You must also get through the tone, which can rail against business the same way a jilted lover proclaims all the failures of his or her beloved.

At times, the authors strike a tone similar to teenagers who sneaked into the office, turned on the P.A. system, and barricaded the doors – determined to have as much fun as they can squeeze into their minutes in the Sun.

That said, I’m convinced that markets are conversations. I’m convinced that conversations sound humans, and that ignoring those conversations means missing opportunities. I’m convinced that hyperlinks mean that networks can be as powerful as hierarchies within organizations. That smart companies can connect conversations that occur inside and outside the corporate firewall. That one of the changes wrought by the Internet and the World Wide Web is the lack of scarcity. That this abundance and this connectedness offer unique possibilities and challenges for all of the “people of Earth” – business and market.

So don’t misread my warning about voice and tone. Set those aside as you read it. This book offers four viewpoints (eight, now, with the new chapters and forward) of how to use the power of the Web to listen and to speak with your customers.

During a road trip this past Friday, I grabbed a magazine from the unread pile to catch up on some reading. Turns out my Outside subscription has expired. (I’ll get a renewal/resubscribe in after getting my next check – or I’ll go back to reading it online.) And it turns out I was way behind on my reading. The issue I grabbed was September 2008, which was great – it had an article that coincided nicely with the Hot, Flat, and Crowded book that I had read.

The article is the written exchange of two of the magazine’s editors in a competition to track their energy use. I had downloaded my electric bill about a month earlier, and I decided to join in the comparison a year late (and without the technological gadget). Without the special software, I would only be able to estimate my daily use. That’s still good enough for me to begin to understand how much power my wife and I use compared to other households.

First, I checked out PPL’s website, which lets consumers access special tools to understand their electricity use. I downloaded the account history and looked at the kilowatts used. Big increases in the winter months and valleys in the summer. Our rented half-double has no insulation (we’ve bugged the landlord about it to no avail – and without much opportunity to look for other options). That means the heating unit uses plenty of electricity trying to keep the old house warm during the cold winters. We topped out at 693 kilowatts in February 2008 – before we began dialing the thermostat way down during the day. Our best full month was July 2007 when we used 336 kilowatts.

An easy spreadsheet formula gave me the number of days in each billing period. From there, it was easy to track the average kilowatts per day. The Outside article (if you didn’t follow the link) says the average American household uses 30.25 kWh per day. The most we used was 23.1 kilowatts in February 2008, and our best month was 10.5 kilowatts in July 2007. The two competing editors fell between about 8 and 18 kilowatts. I have some work to stay in their league. My median was 14.86 kWh, and the mean was 15.28 kWh. There aren’t big fluctuations in our energy use except for a few key months when it really spikes.

Average daily electricity use

I wondered what the trend was from year to year. I took a few minutes to reconfigure the chart to map out the monthly use over the course of 2007, 2008, and 2009 – and I checked the mean for each of the 12 months. So far in 2009, we’ve been below the monthly average every month except for January.

I’ve actually followed the average pretty closely for most of this year. August heat and air conditioners have driven up our electricity in the past – that’s something we haven’t done this year with a cooler summer. Look like the windows are staying open this year, and I’m looking for ideas on how to winterize.