As I get ready to begin my role as CEO of Biz360 tomorrow, I reflect back on my decision to leave a leadership role with a very successful business enterprise and move my wife and two young daughters more than halfway across the country away from our friends and family. Really, it was an easy decision for us to make.

I am fortunate to have spent time working with many different world-class organizations. My career consists of more than 15 years of building successful sales and marketing organizations for both small and large companies. Much of my career has been spent with technology-based organizations. As a Partner in the Management Consulting Division of The Gallup Organization, I helped executives use scientific research to develop business strategies for engaging their employees and customers.

As I learned more and more about Biz360, I realized the tremendous market opportunity facing the company. With the increasing levels of media coverage and explosion of social media on the Internet, even the most advanced companies are struggling to measure and manage the fast pace of changing perceptions in today’s digital society. Biz360 has been and will continue to be a leader in developing innovative technology to measure and interpret market perception.

The company has the talent and the technology to deliver the full service offerings our most demanding clients require. From real-time insight to analyst services, Biz360 has the foundation to lead the way for years to come.

On a personal note, my wife and our two young daughters will be joining me in the Bay Area in November. After meeting the people at Biz360 and studying the business opportunity, we knew this was the right move for us. Personally, we love the outdoors and welcome the chance to live in a great place like the Bay Area. It’s an easy decision to make this level of commitment when you feel so confident about the opportunity.

You can expect great things to come from Biz360. And I look forward to your thoughts along the way.

How many criminals does it take to steal McDonald’s brand? A trick question you say…

McDonald’s has built one of the world’s most durable brands around efficient, consistent and low-cost food. People save time and money going to McDonald’s - and they know what to expect from the experience. Of course, four men robbed a McDonald’s in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, last Saturday by gunpoint providing an experience far beyond expectations. At other locations, you might have a McDrug Deal, get carjacked in the parking lot and or shot on your way home. The security at a high school in Philadelphia can monitor the McDonald’s across the street. Why? Because you might be shot at McDonald’s for showing disrespect (this one happened in London, so it’s not just us, but it may be Western culture’s own brand of extremism).

It’s not just in the news. Bloggers are talking about these things. So much, in fact, that blog posts on crime at McDonald’s outweighs conversations about its breakfast menu (there is some overlap though, like this blog post talking about someone who was run down in a McDonald’s parking lot after eating breakfast there).

Share of Key Issues and Messages for McDonald’s
3 Months of Blog Postings

And while analyzing the Blogosphere is a great way to get a sense of public discourse, there’s nothing better than good old-fashioned news media to pinpoint where the problem areas are (this may change soon, if geotagging takes off).

Top Publications Covering McDonald’s and Crime
3 Months of Media Coverage

But don’t expect local issues like crime to stay local. A local news attack at a Grand Prairie, Texas, McDonald’s was posted to You Tube where it was viewed 3,685 times in the four months between when it was posted (8/2/06) and when I checked it today. And it doesn’t stop there. Bloggers, like Dread Egos, post the You Tube video to their blog. A Google search for “McDonald’s” and “sucker punch” turns up 32,600 results. That’s not many compared to the 16,900,00 results that come up for McDonald’s, but “McDonald’s” and “crime” turns up 1,750,000 results (NOTE: the actual search results for McDonald’s, the company, would be less than a pure “McDonald’s” search and the content having to do with crime would be greater than the results from a simple “crime” keyword search).

Since McDonald’s is everywhere and crime is everywhere, you have to expect this is going to happen from time to time. But, is there any brand impact? And what could McDonald’s do about it? Knowing that it’s a topic of discussion greater than many of the products and messages being promoted is a big red flag that you might need to take action. Using local PR strategies to balance out negative perception is a good start, but in world connected by social media, that’s not enough. In the absence of a full-fledged corporate strategy to minimize crime at the stores, going beyond messaging to show some level of action is always ideal (in-store metal detector perhaps, remove shoes, toss liquids…).

I looked for some research on this topic and found a great article on the impact of corporate crimes, but not on the occurance of crimes during the brand experience. I’d like to conduct a study to find out what percentage of people who have experienced a crime at McDonald’s first hand will no longer eat there. Then ask the same question to people who heard about a crime from someone else? What’s the fall-off rate as you add more degrees of separation. You would have to take into account the number of times someone has heard about a crime, over what period of time and whether the negative impact was per location or at the brand level.

Ultimately, you could figure out the ripple effect of each crime and how many it would take to significantly impact McDonald’s brand. Then you could answer the question - how many criminals does it take to steal McDonald’s brand?

We held our 3rd Engineering Hack Day here yesterday and, as usual, I can’t wait for the demonstration session this afternoon. For us, hack days are opportunities for all developers to suspend their normal work and devote time to projects of their choice that:

1. Are relevant to Biz360
2. Can be prototyped in 24 hours
3. Would be fun to implement

Biz360 has a long history of innovation, and many of our key product features were initiated through these kinds of prototypes. So, after reading about the experiences of two other Silicon Valley companies, we decided to formalize our own hack days.

In prior hack day events, our engineers have come up with Ajax-based enhancements for richer user experiences in Market360, search/discovery mashups for ad hoc analysis, real-time system monitoring visualizations, and several other interesting projects. Several of these developments were selected for further refinement, and are now in the hands of our customers.

I was fortunate to be able to attend Yahoo’s open hack day a week and a half ago, which was also a great experience. The basic idea is the same—developers building and demonstrating working prototypes in 24 hours—but on a completely different scale. At Biz360, we listen to iTunes; at Yahoo, they brought in Beck. At Biz360, we pick up a few sandwiches; at Yahoo, they brought in hundreds of pizzas and Krispy Kremes. At Biz360, the best hack earns a gold-painted hacksaw; at Yahoo, they gave away a 32″ LCD TV.

So far, there has been no shortage of hack day project ideas, because our technology involves text analysis, real-time reporting, grid computing, and content acquisition … with scalability requirements throughout. In fact, I believe that the fact that we offer so many interesting technical challenges is one of the major reasons why we’re able to recruit and retain top-notch engineering talent here at Biz360.