Getting to know the team

Over the last week my experience at AAA NCNU started really take shape. It was a great week for learning and also getting to know more of the team here. I was fortunate to join a leadership update conference call (which was directed at the top 40 or so leaders of AAA NCNU) and also spent two days with Market 5, in what is know as the Marketing Bootcamp - more about that later.

Let me start by introducing the team I am working with - this photo was taken for our Radiator magazine - it is almost all of the Enterprise Strategic Consulting (ESC - as in the key on your keyboard). As I have said before they have many similar functions to RAC Insights, including direct marketing activity and business analysis.

The team is far more advanced than we are in terms of their process disciplines and documentation, which includes a fantastic intranet site (using Sharepoint) as the hub of all project activity and report publication. What I particularly liked about their publication approach was the reuse element - as every project was outlined in detail and all of the correspondence about that project occurred via this intranet site and therefore remained available on the intranet site. Awesome approach to knowledge retention, it no doubt has some short term costs to develop, and even initially maintain, however the long term return will deliver many efficiencies for AAA. They also suffer the same challenges on data consolidation - and in fact are working through the challenges of building a better single view of the member for the front line - and just like RAC, are considering how this process should interact with the unique customer identification process used for their enterprise data warehouse. There is much common ground here - from debating the best definition of retention and products per household to MRM design.

As I mentioned above, I also joined their leadership update, which went through the key strategic priorities for AAA NCNU, and outlined in detail the financial performance of the group. Like many US companies, they are facing significant challenge due to the changing dynamics of the US economy. The thing that impressed me the most was the integrated approach to financial reporting, which deeply intertwined a financial reporting lesson (explaining the composition of profit/loss and balance sheet) and at the same time explained the implications of the results and the controllable and non-controllable contributions to performance - and this was done on a teleconference. Like the RAC, they work towards both an annual budget and longer term plans (in this case three year). As this is a "public forum"on the blog I won't go into details on their strategic challenges, but if you are interested just send me an email at my RAC address - jamin.hirte@rac.com.au.

I also made contact during the week with their VP of creative services. This is a team that is kind of like putting 2 dozen Jo Carson/Colin Daly blend's together and making them responsible for the majority of brand design work, including interior design. They are very interested in finding out more about our head office, with their up coming relocation mentioned below. As with everyone I show, they loved our advertising and brand positioning. I really do think that RAC is on a real winner here.

Then on the last two days of the week I was invited to join a "Marketing Bootcamp" with Market 5. There are six Markets in the AAA NCNU, all based on geographic areas, Market 5 is responsible for San Francisco and what is effectively the west bay areas. This is one of their most mature markets where their household penetration is the highest. The marketing bootcamps are an initiative designed provide the sales network (the "Markets") with a greater understanding of the services provided by the Brand and Marketing division for them. I can honestly say that these session are a really great collaboration that would certainly lead to improved returns for the network - and better understanding of the functions of some of the strategic business units.

Firstly, it is worth noting that at AAA insurance is a bureau business model - that is each branch runs their own book of insurance, which they are responsible for, both new business and retention. It is clear that this model creates strong passion and ownership by all of the sales team - in many ways it actually felt that I was attending a franchise owners meeting - not a meeting of sales managers.

So that this post is not too boring I am just going to provide a quick bullet point summary of some of the ideas I received from the session:

• Group Memberships - where they target employers to make membership part of the employment conditions. Might be a good approach to growing membership for RAC. Of particular note in my mind is the potential to target Show Your Card and Save partners - this would then also assist in bringing RAC top of mind - encouraging front line employees of these organisations to ask the question - "Are you with RAC?".
• The branches are very active for outbound calling - based on their own customer lists, but also using lists generated for them to assist in prospect marketing to their "highest potential" prospects.
• The AAA have developed a formula which is largely demographically based, which enables them to score the entire population as High, Medium or Low prospects - which does not consider profitability, only their propensity to buy from AAA. They then look at each area to see what % of that category they have captured. This allows then to very accurately predict market opportunity. They are working now on how this translates to products per household and then profit. Note they already do score profit at each household - it is only the forecasting they are working to integrate.
• They provide opportunity maps (showing retention, new business, cross sell by product, etc) down to the postcode level for all markets, and then do a case study with the Market sales managers on targeting and marketing funds allocation. This was a great exercise to cement in the understanding of the data analysis components - contact me if you would like to see the case study - excellent approach!

So please contact me if you would like to know more. Very impressed!

On a more social note - the AFL Grand Final night was great fun - largely due to the efforts of the local chapter of the Australian American Chamber of Commerce. It was at a night club called Mezzanine - reminded me a little of Metropolis Fremantle. They had Cooper's Pale Ale and meat pies (American made, but still the real thing) - so it felt a little like home. I took Paul Airoldi from AAA along for the experience - and it was a real compliment for him to say that he felt like he was on holidays - I think for a very small amount of time everyone there felt like they were back in Australia!

This weekend we caught the ferry across to Sausalito - which was really nice, super touristy, but hey thats what we are right now. It was a little like Margaret river + 20 years, lots of galleries (with nothing I can reasonably afford), restaurants and boutiques. The girls and I tried to walk around to a hands on museum, the bay area discovery musuem - which we did not make it to, as was too far away (I now look at the website with thanks, as I read it would have been closed - that would have been annoying after a 5km walk with children!!!!!). While the girls and I were walking to no where (that was open) - Deb went looking through the boutiques and I am please to report did not buy anything!!!

We discover the local temperature variations today. It was a beautiful 26 for SF today and we decided to venture across to the Presidio to Julius Khan Park. The park is the best we have found so far for children - really cool and very safe, but it was freezing. So while Mission Bay (where we live) was a toasty 26, he Presidio was 16 degrees at best. This is simply because this area was covered in fog - one lesson for the unwise.

The other thing about this area is that is super ritzy - a bit like Peppermint Grove in Perth. My wife would like to live here if she had a choice. I explained to her that she would first need to choose to upgrade her husband - as this one was not going to be buying real estate in this area (I checked afterwards and the going rate is about $10M US). Lucky for me she is not upgrading, at least that I know of.....

Last experience for the day was making a mistake on a short cut. I decided to cut across the city - down 9th, and then along Folsom. However little did I know that there was a festival on Folsom today - known as the Folsom Street Fair (I suspect RAC Websense may have issue with this link.... and not for the faint hearted) had blocked the street. As a result Deb and I have now seen grown men walking down the street with leather chaps and studded collars (and very little else).  It is good they have a place to express themselves (but as per the website - not suitable for pets or children....)!!!!

On that note, time to say goodbye.

Redwoods and Seals

Great day today with the family, after a traumatic day being dragged through shopping malls yesterday - I can certainly say I am not a good shopper!!! Back to today, on the suggestion of my new colleagues, the family and I headed up to Muir Woods, which is only about 25km north from the centre of San Francisco. Muir Woods is a secluded valley that is practically untouched, and is largely forested by giant Redwood trees, several of them that we saw were more than 4 metres across. The photo with the family is one tree, that was easily 6 metres from one side to the other.

We walked about 3km into the forest along the paths and boardwalks provided by the National Parks Service. On the walk we saw about 4 deer, including a reasonably mature buck, a river otter(which I unsuccessfully tried to label as a beaver - wrong apparently as they have the platypus like tail - one to Deb, none to me....) and a chipmunk (which was the favourite of the family) plus lots of birds, trees and banana slugs (not a family favourite). 

The forest floor was really cool and damp, to the extent that my wife's freshly straighten hair was curly again by the time we left. Truly a spectacular little part of the world - and so close to the city, we will definitely come here again. It was possibly the most peaceful time we have had since arriving in San Francisco, other than the occasional group of swedish tourists, fresh off the cruise ship loudly walking past sounding like a gaggle of mad chefs from the Muppets.

From here we drove back into the city and down to Fishingboat Habour to see the sea lions on pier 39. These guys are a comedy act, with all sorts of antics ranging from sleeping in the most uncomfortable looking ways possible (this accounts for about 95% of the seals), then the remainder fighting for their little space in the sun. We had a nice lunch looking over the bay, and then walked down the pier for an ice-cream and some trampolining by Grace.

In all it was a really nice way to finish the weekend. We are certainly starting to work our way around the city and are enjoying it very much. Back to work tomorrow!

Settling in

Before I get into how the whole work thing is going I need to share this little element of gold with you - you will probably need to pick it up at home as it is a link to youtube, but all I can say is I love the ninja cat. For the record I found this while logged on at home - no slacking in the office for me.

Well back to work. A couple of interesting snippets to start with:

1. AAA NCNU (and most of the US clubs) rely heavily on direct response advertising. Supporting this they have thousands of campaign numbers so they can track every promotion individually. As a result they can relatively easily identify the response rate of any promotion. I am going to investigate this one further as I would question how much wastage might occur due to the potential customer not having recognition of a common number - but then again would a prospect simple look up the phone directory anyway?

2. The team I am working with, Enterprise Strategic Consulting, does almost all list extraction for direct marketing - including all of the copy magazines (their primary magazine is called VIA), and all email contacts. Thats a lot of lists! Having said that one of the things we are going to be working on together is a more complete contact strategy. Like RAC there is much to be done to ensure the right customers are contacted for the right things at the right time. 

3. The club is right in the middle of planning a move to a new head office - which is expected to occur in about 18 months time. I will certainly be providing contacts to some of the people at RAC that made our big move three years ago so successful.

So that is the "work" things. Now onto practical matters, I have sourced great coffee just around the corner. This proved to be much harder to do than I first expected - they all drink "drip coffee" here, and for the most part like it sizzling hot. This place understand how to do a perfect rosetta, and as a bonus roast their over beans - check them out here Blue Bottle.

Also we made another important discovery - an Australian/NZ restaurant just around the corner (South Food and Wine Bar). The importance of this discovery is that they do a mean pavlova (and they also agree that the pavlova is categorically first made in Australia - so that argument is settled). My daughter Grace was in heaven, as she has truly been asking for pavlova since about day two.

On other matters I have been sent an invite to the American Australian Chamber of Commerce AFL Grand Final party. The time difference means that the final is on Friday night - but the game won't start until about 11pm, could be a problem....

More to come next week. 

1 day down, 89 to go

Well finished my first day in the office. No major reports, just that there are many of the same challenges that we face at the RAC. I have a look more to learn, but sense that AAA NCNU is potentially a little more siloed than the RAC, but are heading on the same journey as the RAC to break that down. And on the employee engagement side they have an extraordinary engagement score of 83%, so much for us to learn here.

Today I was given the admin tour (ie here are the toilets, here is the kitchen, caffeteria, etc) and met with my new boss Paul Airoldi, who like me has come from an investment markets background prior to joining AAA. Paul's team, Enterprise Strategic Consulting, has a very similar mandate to RAC Insights, excluding the management information reporting and market research components. They have moved further down the path of propensity modelling than we have, but have a little less control over the data - but more on that later once I truly understand the structure of the business and how the various teams work together.

I also got to meet 3/4's  of Paul's leadership team, who were able to demonstrate the same level craziness of the Insights team. Obviously there is a certain mold that matches this type of work, slightly mad combined with very clever thinking seems to be the mix. I am looking forward to getting to know them all better. 

Over the coming weeks and months I have a few challenges to keep me going including helping to find ways to reverse a downward trend of Membership retention and also working to get the business to universally subscribe to contact management - indications are they currently have very little central control over member marketing contacts.

I have also been invited to many of the executive team meetings, so I am really excited about getting the insights from the core decision makers in the business. 

More to come over the next week.

A working we shall go

Been a little while since my last post, too much crazy theme park action to have the energy left at the end of the day. Well I am now back in San Francisco, having driven up the inland north-south highway 5. Less scenic, but far more efficient - about 6 hours driving versus 10ish hours if you drive the coast. I would certainly still drive the coast every time if I wasn't in a hurry.By the way I am assured that you should now be able to post comments (while at the RAC), so please get in there and let me know that I am not just typing to myself. So for this post I will give you the wrap on my theme park experience and also what I planning for ahead of my first official day in the office with AAA NCNU.

Theme Park Heaven

Let me start by saying that we were extremely lucky to come at this time of the year. This is the first two weeks after the school summer holidays in the US and as a result the parks were practically empty. In addition the weather at this time of the year is almost Perth in April, without the vicious weather that appears from time to time. Every day in Anaheim (the "city" where Disneyland is based) while we were there was between 24 and 28 degrees celsius. In effect we had perfect weather and no lines. Over the whole 7 days that we visited theme parks we did not line up for more than 20 minutes for any ride - and that only happened twice. Read between the lines - travel take note - this is the time to advise people to visit Disneyland.

One of the early highlights of the holiday was Seaworld - and sitting in the "soak zone" of the stadiums, which is where the animals (dolphins, seals and killer whales) have developed very advance audience splashing techniques. Soaked was absolutely right, however I have no photos, as I was too busy trying to keep the camera dry. Lunch with Shamu (the name for the killer whales - they have 4 in the show) was great - thanks to Harry for the recommendation, you sat pool side and chowed down while the trainer bought the whale right along side for photos.

The dolphin discovery show and the killer whale shows are an absolute must - and as said definitely sit in the soak zone, it is half the fun, but be prepared to get wet.

As a footnote to my earlier post on Legoland - don't bother unless you have children under 10 years old. The park is definitively run down, once you have the chance to see how it is supposed to be done. Kids under 10 however will love Legoland.

From here we spent a couple of hours at San Diego Zoo. I was very impressed, it is a great zoo and we got to see Pandas, Tigers (including two very playful cubs) and Gorillas very close up. It was great to also note that Perth Zoo is no laggard by comparison - a few less headliners, but I think that most of the displays and enclosures were at least as good, and in some cases better.

We did not spend as much time here as a would have liked, but you can't do everything!

Then it was on to Disneyland (and Universal Studios). We spent 1 day at Universal and 3 days at Disneyland. There is no doubt that when it comes to entertaining children (and the adults that accompany them) Disneyland is king. Absolutely everything is thought of.

We started the second half a little rough, as our girls are very girly and a little"fragile" when it comes to thrill rides. Unfortunately this meant that the Universal Studios "Studio Tour" was a bit too full on for both of our girls, at the end of it we had them both sobbing uncontrollably (started by the shark, followed by the subway and then topped off by the mummy set). The result of this was that any ride with a minimal thrill level (and any darkness) was almost too much. At the barely acceptable level was the "Snow Whites Scary Adventures" and "Pinocchio's Daring Journey" and unfortunately (as we found out through testing) Splash Mountain did not pass - it was also too much (we only "burned" Grace on this ride).

However before we started to traumatise our children we got to meet a few characters, including Shrek, see the picture (I am the one on the right and Shrek is in the middle - in case it is hard to tell...). This was at Universal.

Even though the children were a little scared of the big rides I was still able to give most a go. On the first afternoon at Disney the kids were a little exhausted, so Deb took them home and I did all of the big rides, my personal favourite was Californian Screaming, which saw me doing a full loop - but I am assured by all of the hardcore rollercoaster aficionados that this is lightweight compared to the rides at Knotts Berry Farm (we did not make it to there). I did like the Twilight Zone in the Hollywood Hotel, which simulates a escalator free falling in the dark - definitely recommend having a go at this one.

Overall everything about Disney was magical, and every time we ordered food they had plenty of gluten free options for Millie - if the server wasn't sure whe went and bought out the chef who more often than not made food specifically. Really great service, and just one small example of how well Disney do the details.

It was easy to see why this is a worldwide favourite, my girls lost the art of walking, they literally skipped everywhere they went - seriously! it was so cool to watch their inescapable joy. At the end of day two Grace even complained that her cheeks hurt because she had been smiling too much.

Of the many characters we met, Eeyore was Millie's favourite (Max - Goofy's cousin was a close second) and Mickey remained a sentimental favourite for Grace.

Grace tried to take out King Arthur's Sword - no luck I am afraid, but she certainly gave it a good go!

So onto the work stuff...

Tomorrow I start. I am not really sure what is planned for me yet. I will be meeting with my contact first thing in the morning and going with the flow for the day. I have noticed that there have been several recurring meetings already booked for me, so I have no reason to fear any loss of my daily meeting fix....

At this point it is kind of strange, I am in that I have just been on holidays state of mind and I need to get back in to "work brain", except this time I have the added challenge of a new place of work, a new culture and new job (and no team to do the work for me.... Insights & Ed watch out for the incoming requests). I am pretty excited about the idea of a fresh start, with the usual fears of whether I will be up to the standard, but like Grace going for the sword, I know that I am going to give it everything I have got!

Well time to cut my hair, iron a shirt, and generally get ready for my first day. I will start to write more regularly reporting back on all the new things I find.

Legoland is done

Today the family cruised up to Legoland, the first stop on the Hirte theme park whirlwind. Overall it was a really great way to start.

We got there at about 9:45am for a 10:00am start. We have been extraordinarily lucky, as this is the first week following school holidays in the US, so the park was practically empty - no lines anywhere. First stop was Grace getting her drivers licence at the Volvo Driving Centre, just like her dad, safety first.... The great news is she is a great little driver, and unlike her mum is not afraid to drive on the other side of the road. She was so good that she got two licences!!! Here she is in action:

From here we flew helicopters, airplanes, and even manned a pirate ship. The pirate ship came equipped with water cannons - which I am fitting to my car when I get back - driving would be so much more entertaining with these things and for the passengers, shotgun would become a whole lot more meaningful and fun!

The park itself is pretty impressive, with many millions of lego bricks worth buildings, cars animals, well anything really!

We even went and had a look at how they made lego, on the way out we met a "model citizen" (the name for theme park staff), and this lady spotted our accent, asked where we were from. Once we told her Perth, she went on to tell us that she had travelled to Perth in the 70s and was rescued by a bus driver who ignored waiting passengers to race her to a departing cruise ship she was late for. As a result of the connection to Perth she then gave us about 50 Legoland Factory tour bricks (instead of the two that you would normally get for the kids). Being from Perth has it's advantages it seems!

In the end we walked the whole park (about three times I think) and everyone walked away happy. Here is the final photo of the day, for their cousin Sam, who is 2 years old and a major Bob the Builder fan (btw the monkeys were won in the amusement park).

thats it for today - time to sleep and prepare for Seaworld tomorrow.

Hello Pismo Beach

Today we took off heading south for the land of theme parks, Disneyland, Legoland, Seaworld (the real one, ie not on the gold coast), Universal Studios, etc, etc. This is the holiday we are having before I start with AAA on the 15th of September.

We decided that highway No 1 was the go. This is the highway that basically hugs the western shoreline of the US. I am a convert - if you plan to come to the west coast of the states and want to see some spectacular scenery and to drive some crazy roads, then this is the thing to do. From Monterey through to San Luis Obispo there is about 70 miles of unrelenting cliff hugging roads. The route adds about 3 hours on to the journey south but well worth it. Here are some of the pics we managed to get.

Due to the extended time it has taken to drive we have stopped half way at Pismo Beach - today we drove for about 6 hours, with a stop at Big Sur for lunch - my first chicken burrito in the US 

amongst the giant redwoods. For those of you who were getting worried today was a beer free day, small victory?

At Pismo we did the beach walk thing as a family and the kids chased the light surf - easy entertainment and wears them out as a bonus! Here is a pic for those of you that don't believe I am here with my family, and yes they look like their mum (lucky for them)...

You can see in the photos that the fog was coming in. We saw a lot of fog along the cliffs and then as we came into Pismo Beach - it was nice and cool on the beach, but not too cold. I think fog would work on Perth beaches...

Anyway seem to have run out of things to say. Ciao

survived the drive

It is a holiday weekend in the US, for labor day. We chose to use the day to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. I would have to admit that short of looking at the photos I did not really see the bridge - I was concentrating too hard on not driving on the wrong side of the road, drifting into the lane to the right or anything else stupid that I could do on the road. Here is the evidence that we were on the bridge, taken by Deb from the passenger seat.

We simply got to the other side exited the highway and turned back around and paid $5 to cross back into San Francisco. The public holiday made all of the tourist spots looks to chaotic to even consider, maybe another time.

From there we went back to the apartment before heading out to try to find a good inner city 

playground to wear out the girls. Todays effort was mixed, we found a park really close (South Park - the name should have warned us...) and the playground was OK - but there were quite a few homeless people hanging out, so it did not really suit - particularly as Deb will need to take the girls by herself once I start working. 

But all was not lost, just up from the park was a small microbrewery called 21st Amendment, which a friend had recommended before we left. It was only as a result of checking out the park that we came across it. Great thing is this place is practically my local. I tried two beers while the girls managed to eat 1/2 of a sunday between them - everything is so huge when it comes to food. First off the list was the Wheat Watermellon, disturbing sounding beer and not such a great taste either - the beer was OK, but just had too much of that fermented fruit overtone to be enjoyable, there was a slight nori taste underneath that was OK though. I followed this up with a classic India Pale Ale - very nice. Here is the menu - check out the IBUs on the IPA :

From here we caught a bus up to the Yerba Buena Garden kids park, which is on the roof of the Moscone Centre in the heart of the financial district. Strange place for a kids playground, but the best we have able to find so far and the kids like it. Tomorrow we head to the bay to check out the parks down there.

I head back into the AAA tomorrow, still not starting with them until the 15th of September, but they have arranged a Magellan for me - which is one of the major GPS brands in the US. This is certain to make driving a little less traumatic for the family - be nice to have confidence in where we are going! We also enroll the kids in art classes tomorrow at Fort Mason, so slowly but surely our life over the next 4 months is being set up.

As sick as it sounds I am very keen to start work, going a little stir crazy in an apartment (very nice apartment - thanks AAA) with no yard.

Anyway time to sign off for now.