As the title of the entry implies, I did a little more digging on the subject I covered in my last entry. The author of the story I originally quoted, Kaihan Krippendorff, mentioned that he would be writing about his interview with ePrize founder, Josh Linkner, over the course of a week so I sought out the other entries. In one of the entries, Krippendorff links to the audio of his interview.
There were a couple things of note. First was a promotional service (starting around 23:00) he designed to be affordable and accessible to the owner of “Jimmy’s Pizza Shop.” ePrize’s clients essentially pool their money in order to syndicate participation in the pool drawing of promotional prizes. Presumably, you can’t promise a Ford truck if you aren’t investing as much money as Coke does (or maybe you can, I won’t make any claim of being an expert on the business model.) The small business owner can log on and guided by a web based program, design their own promotion in about 15 minutes and have it immediately go live. The drawing is legal in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
If it is as easy as Linkner says, this could be a great resource for arts organizations. You could offer subscriber and employee rewards and perhaps even show related promotions.
Back on the topic of their invented rival, Slither, Linkner verifies that my suspicion of Krippendorff taking poetic license was completely unfounded. Slither did indeed “invade” the company to commit sabotage and espionage (starts around 33:00).
There were some things said in the interview which expound on the concept of how useful an invented enemy can be to a business. One benefit to corporate culture Linkner cites is that it allows open conversation that can circumvent office politics. Normally, he says, one might be hesitant to suggest that a policy is flawed for fear they will insult the person who created it. In a meeting Linkner says he may ask how Slither approaches a problem or to talk about the one thing a Slither counterpart does better than him/her. This allows conversations about weak spots in the organization’s processes and policies and how to improve rather than criticizing something specifically and marking it for elimination.