Tag: profit

The Secret Life of Pets

Posted on by philipdodson

IMG_7989

This afternoon we went to watch The Secret Life of Pets, it’s personally not a film that had been at the top of my wish lists of must-see films for 2016. However, taken for what it is, it had some very amusing moments and I enjoyed the popcorn.

The cinema that we use locally is owned by Cineworld, a national chain of cinemas.

Today I observed an interesting example of experience versus a quick win.

In their wisdom, Cineworld have decided to remove all humans that sell you tickets in favour of machines, which I get, and I always purchase my tickets online and add the QR code thing to my Passbook, so they just scan my iPhone, simple.

The mistake, though, not all people want to buy online or by machine, so in order to satisfy those customers, you can now buy tickets at the popcorn and snack outlet.

The snacks are a huge money spinner for Cineworld, the eye-watering prices for water and the eye-popping price of popcorn tell you that.

Now the queues are even longer for snacks and when you want to just get some popcorn, you have to wait while a group of 8 are sorting out tickets. I observed many people just give up and walk away, I did until I realised we were early for the film, so I killed 15 minutes queueing for popcorn.

But it wasn’t a great experience and made me resent their over-inflated prices 10X more as I stood waiting for the family in front decide which row they wanted, as if there are bad rows in a cinema with a 50 foot high and 100 foot wide screen and a sound system that could be heard from several miles away.

Businesses search for cost savings and shortcuts to making more money, often in the short-term to hit annually increasing revenue targets.

Smarter businesses invest in a great experience that not only gets their customers to return more frequently and also to share the great experience with others.

That’s the thing about today’s world, it’s delivery of an exceptional experience, not short-term manipulations to satisfy internal demands from stakeholders to make a quick buck.

Always play the long game and invest on experiences that your customers will share.

Same action, same result

Posted on by philipdodson

syrian-refugee-crisis

It seems as a human race we go round and round the same circles, never stopping to question what the F… we are doing.

We go around these same repeating patterns of hate, judgement, retaliation, war, violence, and then comment with surprise or condemnation when the event occurs. Well depending on what part of the world it happens in.

We listen to the voice of the media, which is run by the very people who are the cause of what is happening, and we take in the hate, the judgement and fear. That’s how they get us to accept what they do in our name.

Be curious, question and do not accept to be part of it.

We have been sold for decades this neatly package story of the good vs evil. Who decides what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’? Nothing is ever that black or white and it is all a matter of opinion.

In Syria, over 250,000 people have died and 12 million people have been displaced on the side of the ‘evil’. A neat word displaced that has been created by the media to anesthetise us from the reality. How about saying 12 million innocent people have had their lives totally ruined and fucked and for what?

We the 7 billion who inhabit this planet are being fed a crock of shit by the tiny elite who control us all. Stop accepting things, stop believing the good vs evil story and start believing in the human race.

The events in Brussels, Ankara (might not have heard about that one, no white Europeans involved), Paris, and the places that the so-called ‘evil’ live, only here it happens every single day, will keep repeating unless we do something different.

In 2015, The US dropped over 23,000 bombs on Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and other ‘evil’ people. What difference has it made?

Well, apart from the same people who profit from war, it has made things worse.

Same actions = same results.

It is time to stop supporting this and try some different actions.