Last week I had a pair of the brand’s shoes comically and awkwardly disintegrate on my feet during a long day of meetings.  I wrote a post about it and did not name the brand.  I did not think it was relevant.  The shoes were old.  Although it was a dramatic “footwear fail,” I figure these things do happen. Further, my co-founder Joanne used to run product development for the $380M Keds brand and she told me the shoes were possibly an early use of a new material, so they likely were not cured correctly.  As a product designer, I kind of cheered Stuart Weitzman for taking the risk.

Whatever.  I just shared the crazy shoe experience because it was bizarre.

But then I Tweeted my post to Stuart Weitzman, figuring we’d have a little fun banter.  Here is my Tweet:

I waited a day.  The Tweet went unanswered. I found my good humor waning.  So I gave them another chance:

Now two days after this Tweet, the silence is becoming deafening.  Expecially because Stuart Weitzman is Tweeting A STEADY STREAM OF INANITIES.  But look at how this Twitter profile is set up:

“The official twitter?”  “Global press office?”  An intern at Daily Grommet would know better than to set up a corporate Twitter account that way. But Stuart Weitzman looks like “those people” with blue Tintin silhouettes on Facebook,  whom we affectionately indulge because they are our Luddite friends who have not learned to upload a photo.  This is not the best image for a contemporary fashion brand, however.

But this is not a rant.  Stuart Weitzman is at least showing up at Twitter, and they will find their way.  Their 13,000 followers will expect that.

The fact that I am having this ridiculously annoyed reaction at their silence is the real news.  It is admittedly a bit insane, but many of us expect every company to respond nearly instantaneously, no matter our choice of medium:  Phone, email, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, blog comments, product reviews.   This shift is dramatic and fairly recent.

The dirty secret of social media is that it is incredibly laborious.  But worth it.

I saw this first-hand when I did direct customer service at Daily Grommet in December for two weeks.  We got in over our heads with growth, and it was “all hands on deck” to help our ops team make sure customers were happy.  But we were choking on the volume and did not perform perfectly.

Here was the predictable pattern.  If we did not answer a phone call, a customer email on the same topic immediately appeared.  (Which immediately doubled our work load and further buried us.) If that email was not answered quickly, a second, more impatient one, appeared.  And our customers were right.  They deserved very prompt responses.  They were making holiday gift purchases and they had to be perfect.

I learned more in those two weeks than in the prior two months.  So maybe I am a tad bit sensitive about Stuart Weitzman’s silence, working on the assumption that they have a heck of a lot more bandwidth than Daily Grommet.  Our team starts collectively twitching if a Tweet or site comment goes unanswered for an hour.  Maybe we are crazy.  But our customers seem to love that brand of crazy.

It’s not hard to understand.  Connecting with a human being in a distant company is satisfying.  It can turn a bad situation into a great one.  But being simply ignored is aggravating.

In the old days you would not let your customers ring through to an answering machine at your business if you could help it.  It was rude and unprofessional.  Not responding to modern media is pretty much the same thing.

My favorite recent experience happened at home in Lexington, MA.  My son was catching me up on his high school buddies’summer work and told me, “Jeremy’s landscaping business really took off last year, so he’s adding a bunch of new crew members.  He told all of the employees that whoever could bring in the most business will get the best assignments.  He asked if you could post something on your blog about his business.”

This request delighted me.  We’ve successfully employed these guys several times so I have no problem endorsing their work.  (My son already has a full-time job driving a catering truck so this is not some thinly-veiled ploy to get more Pieri income in the door.)  These guys are strong, enthusiastic, reliable and perfectionist.   (And the founder Jeremy Moss is a fellow Wolverine, so I know he is True Blue.)

Of course the “JTK Landscaping” guys are indeed handing our flyers, and getting plenty of old fashioned word-of-mouth.  But beyond co-opting parental blogs, they have their own very fine website with a helpful rotating photo gallery of the crew and past jobs.  I admire these trust-inspiring initiatives.  And I admire Jeremy’s chutzpah in asking about my blog.

I liked these other two initiatives I saw at a neighboring town’s annual street fair yesterday:

A woman is aggregating all the local blogs in her town.  She told me most of them are actually for small businesses, sharing their work.

I’ve been hearing great things about Patch, the hyper-local news vehicle being developed by AOL.  I was surprised to see them manning a booth at the same town fair.  The guy under the tent is a full-time employee–clearly a huge investment is being made in the 1,000 towns being covered by Patch.

It’s really fun to see the fluid interplay between real world (landscaping, town fairs) and creating community through easy online tools and platforms.  Speaking of which, here is Jeremy’s contact information: jeremywmoss@gmail.com, (781) 572 – 7264.  Hire these boys and get them working hard for your yard!

But I am most grateful for my clever band of readers.   I especially appreciate this, given that I violate the cardinal rule of blogging:  to be focussed and deliver reliable content on a narrow-ish topic.  (Like CakeWrecks.  Just crazy, funny, amazing cake photos.)

Re. my blog traffic, I have always been amused at how popular the search term “Innocent High” is.   The blog post of my son’s “Not-So-Innocent High School Video” must be a real disappointment to people who are searching for long-lost classmates.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 61 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 234 posts. There were 249 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 556mb. That’s about 5 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was August 10th with 184 views. The most popular post that day was What it is REALLY like to get your picture in The New York Times.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were dailygrommet.com, facebook.com, whjwc.org, twitter.com, and digg.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jules pieri, tech logos, italian easter eggs, prosperity hens, and innocent high.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

What it is REALLY like to get your picture in The New York Times August 2010
17 comments

Jules Pieri Profile May 2007
20 comments

Places where things get made; Pittsburgh March 2009
6 comments

Not-so-innocent high school video class assignments April 2009

Raymond Loewy: Father of American industrial design? December 2007
8 comments

Level 3, a sponsor of SXSW, does this cool travelling series of “Red Couch” interviews.  It’s dead simple.  They ask you a few questions and off you go.  Here is my version.  It pretty much tells you where my head is at these days.

Click on the image to view the video.  Tell me if you have trouble.   (I had trouble getting this posted.)

]]> http://jules.dailygrommet.com/2010/03/26/2393/feed/ 3 julespieri Screen shot 2010-03-26 at 11.59.18 AM http://jules.dailygrommet.com/2010/03/21/quick-wind-up-of-sxsw/ http://jules.dailygrommet.com/2010/03/21/quick-wind-up-of-sxsw/#comments Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:21:28 +0000 julespieri http://jules.dailygrommet.com/?p=2374 ]]>

Boston crew assembled at The Thirsty NIckel at SXSW

Now that I’ve been, I realize that dissecting SXSW is a time-honored “aftermath” sport.  Makes sense…this is THE social media crowd.  OF course they are going to pound the blogosphere etc. before, during, and after.

I don’t have unique insights on how to navigate or embrace this behemoth of an event.  But I liked this balanced write-up by Carla Thompson of Guidewire Group.  I’m flattered she even quoted me in this post.

As for how Joanne and I specifically fared, here you go:

• We really didn’t get our sea legs until more than halfway through our four day stay.  It’s just so massive, with 24 simultaneous panels and events running all day, and about the same number of parties at night.  We were greatly assisted by Susan Strausberg, founder of Edgar Online, and recent Austin transplant.  You have to get into some of the private events in order to make this scene manageable.  Susan did that for us.
• We enjoyed a Boston folks meetup, pictured above.  It was sort of shocking to feel like Boston had such a small presence at the event.   Of course the photo only includes a tiny slice of New England attendees, but still…
• We had a good time at the Accelerator showcase party the night before the big day.  I never even wore my black hat at that party–because no one else did!  But people were good humored, and the event was (uncharacteristically) a good size.
• Alas, we decided to do some defensive eating just before the Accelerator cocktail party, and grabbed a burrito at a total dive, in a hurry.  Big mistake.  I got food poisoning.  To put a not very fine point on it, I puked my guts out all night and nearly up until the time I had to hit the stage for my presentation.  As such, I walked into the Hilton like some blond, pale Michael Jackson persona (head down, sunglasses, don’t talk to me please) storing up every molecule of energy for the talk.  I did fine.  But it took five days before I really ate another full  meal.

Bottom line.  Very glad to have seen the legendary event, and to do it with my co-founder Joanne.  If we go again, we will practically be pros.  And at least we will know where NOT to eat.

I’m thrilled Daily Grommet was asked to present at the upcoming South By Southwest Interactive conference.   It’s a huge honor and opportunity.  SXSW is an enormous 24 hour party wrapped around a conference.  And the place where Twitter really got lift-off when they presented.

If I could pick one place to take our show on the road it is there.  Why?  Because it is a giant, young crowd that believes in the power of people (and technology) to change the world.  It’s the right place to expose Citizen Commerce to the world.  My presentation is going to be more MLK Jr (I wish!) than Bill Gates.  But I do have a huge sense of excitement about evangelizing this message with Millenials, rather than the usual crowd where I present (Baby Boomer investors).  Millenials have such an attractive combination of idealism and pragmatism when it comes to business.  I won’t have to say much.  I will just have to show that we are the real deal, and they will “get” it.

Prepping for this is unlike any other conference.  I am told to:

• Scour the list of parties and RSVP to as many as possible.  In other words, be sure to see and be seen.  I have to admit that I am overwhelmed by this seemingly attractive task.  I delegated it to Jeanne.  “Please just tell me and Joanne where to go.”
• Be prepared for the crush of almost 20,000 people who are energetic, dreamy, and slightly confused by the huge scene.
• The official PR team required a coaching session and one of their main pieces of advice was: “Instead of trying to rise above the noise, you instead work to work the system from inside by being helpful, altruistic, conversant, and open to serendipity.”  I think some hallucenogenic drugs must be dispensed at the door to make that advice more actionable.

Anyway, I am SOOO looking forward to hitting Austin next month.  I’ve never even been there.

And…if you plan to be at SXSW, please let me know.  And, as always, please tell me about any potential Grommets I should scout on this second trip–ever, in my whole life– to Texas.

A recent study , written by by John Tierney, of the most emailed New York Times articles yielded some unexpected results.  Here’s how it was conducted:

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, checking it every 15 minutes for more than six months, analyzing the content of thousands of articles and controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page.

Here’s what they learned:

…it turns out that readers have more exalted tastes [than predicted], according to the Penn researchers, Jonah Berger and Katherine A. Milkman. People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics.  Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list.

Makes perfect sense to me.  So much of our culture can be dominated by cynicism and sharp edges.  But in their private moments, people want to be inspired, to believe in joy and possibilities, and greater purpose.  Sure, some of the emailed articles were done so to “show off” (the long, intellectual ones).  But for the inspirational ones to lead the pack is downright, well, inspirational.

Image from Moloco.com

But it made me think…this Twitter list thing would be a terrific way to get someone’s attention.  To let them know you are interested in their thoughts or expertise.  In other words, putting someone on a Twitter List could become a new way to “flirt” professionally, or personally.  The flattering list I am on fits most definitely in the “professional” category.  (I have to be 1000% clear on that important point!)  In the professional “flirting” vein, I can imagine courting biz dev prospects this way.  Or investors.  Or customers.  Or future employees.  Or partners.  (Now I myself can’t actually do that, since I just blew my cover.)

On the “personal flirting” side, I don’t know a single teenager who uses Twitter, but if the high school crowd ever goes there en masse,  I am quite sure they could get up to all kinds of list-making hijinks.

A central reason for doing Daily Grommet is to help the “good guys” win.  Our vision has always included helping the Grommets to really get lift-off–because of the power of our community and story distribution.  We really do believe we can harness Oprah-like power and reach, some day.  We’re on our way. Here’s a roundup of some of the big events happening for Grommets and their hard-working creators, all of which happened as a direct result of their Daily Grommet feature:

• Laundry Tree SoapNuts.  Contacted to be included in a celebrity swag bag at one of the big Oscars parties.
• Pacific Shaving, Maine Flame, Jill-able Vases, Pearl’s Premium Lawn Seed, Food Should Taste Good, Living Proof Innovative Hair Styling Products , True Body all caught the eye of various QVC reps who asked us to make the connection to these companies.
• Times Square Mirror.  Featured in an iVillage Back to School roundup article.
• Jillable Vases secured two new wholesale accounts.
• Pacific Shaving attracted the interest of an investor.  (I wrote about this before.)
• Argand Cooperative was asked to be part of a celebrity gift bag for the Emmy’s
• Food Should Taste Good added over 400 new people to their fan club.
• Twist Cleaning Products will be given out at a large conference to all the attendees.  (I wrote about this before.)
• Jillable Vases was featured in the Christian Science Monitor Sunday magazine, print and online.
• Blush Topless Undershirts attracted a TJX Corp buyer’s attention.

These are just the events of which we are aware (and I can specifically recall as I write this post.)  We really don’t hear about many huge outcomes until long after their happening.

Beyond these events, we also do a lot of ongoing promotion of Grommets via our partnerships with large publishers like Yahoo! Shine.   You can see how we work with them here.  It would be really hard for an individual Grommet supplier to get their story told on Yahoo! Shine, so our relationship with the site is very powerful for building awareness of various Grommets.   We’ve had dozens of them already featured there, and on other influential sites like Divine Caroline.

We keep re-surfacing the Grommet stories to new audiences, every day.  With some upcoming site redesign we will also be able to do that more effectively on our own site.

All of these special events make me really happy.  I want to see these inventive but lesser-known companies succeed.  And I deeply appreciate the support that everyone in the Grommet community lends by spreading the word.  It sounds vaguely Socialist to say so, but I really do think we can put the power to decide which products succeed in the hands of “the people.”   You. Me.  Us.

One week later update: Both Living Proof and Pearl’s Premium were featured on “Chronicle”, a well-beloved New England news program.  They found Pearl’s while researching another show, but I am pretty sure we tipped them off about Living Proof.  (I only wish they would have let people know about Daily Grommet….next time.  We could get them a great story every week!)

5.) Send paper cards. This has been great lately, this trend of people sending personal cards in the mail. I got one from Beth Dockins at Scotts and I felt so happy. It was very personable. I just ordered 100 blank note cards and will buy stamps so I have no excuse not to send them.

I was delighted to see Chris highlight this wonderful, trusted way to maintain a personal connection with someone.  In my early career I used to follow every phone call to a sales prospect with a personal hand-written letter.  It was time consuming, but I was always remembered afterwards.  And my sales numbers in that job spoke for themselves….those letters helped.  So this is just not a “make your grandmother happy” insight…Chris is also talking about building meaningful business relationships.

For that reason, I always keep a stash of note cards handy, both at home in the office.  I hear that Jackie Kennedy was a world-class thank you note writer, by the way.  I try to channel her when I am trying to be appreciative and articulate at the same time.

And as these things go, just when you are thinking of a topic, it comes across your path.  Minutes ago,  Joanne and I had a front porch chat with Karen Battles of B Designs, the creator of our very early fourth Grommet…the charming letterpress note system,  Desktop Caddy.  She said,

I’m on a mission to help people keep paper and note writing in their everyday lives.  That’s why I keep our cards small.  It doesn’t have to be a big long old-fashioned letter.  Just two lines is enough to make someone really happy.

Two lines.  Anyone can write two lines, no?