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.

watch out SF we are here

Well the important things have been done - my first locally brewed beer from San Fran has been consumed - unfortunately it tasted just like a crownie, so a bit of an anticlimax - here it is before the first sip...

Tomorrow I visit AAA NCNU to meet the team I will be working with and to say hi to all those people that have helped me get to this point. I am a little nervous and excited at the same time. This is also because they give me the keys to a car tomorrow, which means I drive a left hand drive car for the first time, and my first journey will be through the centre of a very busy city.

I have to say first impressions of SF are great, really relaxed vibe, clean (at least where we are) and all the mod cons within a stones throw. We have also found the corner shop (which is basically a fully fledged supermarket, pharmacy, bottle shop in one) also sells a large range of gluten free, which is great as my 4 year old daughter is coeliac and so this is a big worry off our mind. When we were in Salt Lake City there was practically no other option than grilled chicken for her - so thats all she ate for lunch and dinner over four days - no complaints - she is a trooper.

I am still buzzing from the conference we had in Salt Lake City, there were so many relevations that came from it. Particular for roadside assistance. If all of the clubs could combine their strengths into a single package this market would be sewn up and would be amazingly profitable. The highlights were pricing discussions with British Columbia Automobile Association and the New Zealanders shone again with their rewards package - such a nice program. Another really good club to watch is AAA Mid-Atlantic, they have really tied together the marketing machine and the analytics/database marketing - I really hope we can continue to learn from them through the relationships created. I also like the way the AA in the UK thought, their private equity ownership allows them to think a little more clearly - particularly when it comes to financially viable propositions. The trick with all of these is to understand the uniqueness of each market. By the way, the conference actually gave me a huge amount of new insights from the other Australian clubs - we have to continue to work on our australian collaboration, it is seems a little silly that we need to fly to the other side of the world to learn from each other (and I am certain I was not the only one who thought this). It is fair to say however that the conference was a key reason for the level of sharing, it was structured well, had the right people in the room (really formidable knowledge about the clubs in one place), and everyone wanted to share openly - no baggage, which not always the case in the domestic setting. A huge thanks to the AAA for creating this environment.

Anyway time to sign off, I hope I get to give another post tomorrow night - if there isn't one, then assume my driving wasn't a success....

First day of conference

Today was the first day of the conference. The content was all about the status of various initiatives between the AAA on MRM deployments and a key note talk from a Dinsey executive. One interesting starting clarification was that MRM has moved on to another acronym MMR - Member Managed Relationships, which signifies the power in the relationship rests to the consumer.  I think this is a good shift, but I guess we should stick with MRM for now, as the organisation is still grappling with that. Along the same theme was a philosophy presented by Disney's Senior VP Global Customer Relationship, Tom Boyles, he had many inspiring things to say including "no one owns the guest, but someone always owns the moment". Good food for thought.

by the way - if you were interested Tim won the bet, in the allotted 5 minutes, the beer cooled to 10 degrees celcius, so not within the perfect range in time - that took a further two minutes.

Other food for thought for RAC for the day were:

• the concept of automatic membership renewals, which are very prevalent in the US and simply involve taking credit card details and implementing a process to follow up on expired cards - evidently really good improvements to retention rates follow, and there is not much issue with rejected cards. I will find out more details in the coming days and weeks
  
• integrated member / employee engagement - that is measuring members and staff in the same way. the broad concept here is that alignment will lead to greater unification of staff towards a positive member engagement if they are more engaged themselves on the same basis. Early days yet, but I will follow up with the presenter on the results. By the way if you are interested this clubs' (AAA Arizona) engagement measure is based on a book called Human Sigma, written by John Flemming of Gallop - more reading for me for the plane!

There was lots of other interesting bits an pieces which I will update later. Need to run now.

Time to go

I am sitting down now at my desk at RAC on my last day in the office before I fly out on Sunday. I still have a mountain of "filing" to get done - I suspect that will entail opening a drawing and pushing everything in. I am really going to miss working with the Insights team, who constantly make me laugh. It is a really great combination that we have in the team with very high dedication to the job, balanced with an easy relaxed approach to working with each other.

One classic example of how this team "challenges" each other was "the bet" from yesterday, which erupted from some innocent comments on the best way to chill beer - a classic dilemna we all face from time to time. This team can take the most basic of challenges and turn it into a scientific experiement - see the conditions of the "the bet" below.

The Toadfish Rebecky has made a bet that he can get a room temperature beer, and turn it into the ideal drinking temperature within 5 minutes.
He will be using a mixture of Ice and Salt.

Conditions of the bet:
Ideal Drinking Temperature = 8 degrees Celsius for a bottom fermenting beer is assumed to be the ideal drinking temperature.
Room Temperature = within the range of 20 to 23.5 degrees Celsius
A stopwatch will be used to time the ‘submersion of the beer.’
The beer will be taken out of the refrigerating vessel at the 5 minute mark, and poured directly into a glass chilled to 8 degrees Celsius.
A thermometer will be placed into the middle of the glass (without touching the sides), and after 30 seconds the temperature will be recorded.

Harry loses if the recorded temperature is above 8.5 degrees Celsius… and also if it is less than 7.5 degrees Celsius (obviously too cold to fully appreciate the beverage).

It is this sort of precise thinking that gets applied to challenges of the RAC.

Anyway better get back to that "filing".

A new beginning

It is now only five days before my family and I fly out to the US. Initially we are going to Salt Lake City where I will be attending two conferences organised by the American Automobile Association (AAA) for the Global Response Roundtable (GRR) over three days : firstly a conference on Member Relationship Management initiatives looking at international club activities of relationship management systems; and an International Membership Symposium (IMS) discussing member engagement initiatives.

During the IMS, RAC WA will be presenting on its Market Research program, including some recent work completed on development of a Member Engagement Index. This index looks at the relationship that a member wants with the organisation and then assesses if that relationships expectations are being delivered upon. The really interesting element to this approach is it does not assume that a member of the RAC wants to be highly engaged, it only looks at if they are getting what they want. While is this facinating for me and the research team it might be a little dry for the attendees and unfortunately for me an the audience this presentation is in the after lunch session on day three. To keep the audience awake I am using this clip to demonstrate why we need to research - and to keep them interested!

I hope you like it.

Also I started a blog a couple of weeks ago on tumblr - jaminhirte.tumblr.com - however it did not allow comments, so I have moved onto blogger so you can post back to me. I hope to hear from you all!!