It is incredibly sad to hear yesterday that the Mars Petcare factory is planned to close and my heart goes out to its local management and staff and to all of the local support businesses who will be affected.
It is encouraging to read of the support for affected staff and also organisations such as Whanganui and Partners at the ready. However, this is a stark case of how world economic competitive forces can force change on local businesses. New Zealand with its higher wages, stricter regulatory environment and simple proximity to world markets will continue to be challenged by low-wage, high-volume competition.
With that said, the plan this week was to write about a developing story in the world of entertainment. I am one of a number of punters who have not dipped into their pocket for Spark Sport and the coverage of the Rugby World Cup. I'm a BIG rugby fan and have a tremendous interest in the tournament but I am not going to spend extra on a service which I used to enjoy on Sky and even (going way back into the past) on free to air TV.
READ MORE:
• Premium - Russell Bell: How to maintain your edge in a competitive market
• Russell Bell: Do you know what your business is responsible for?
• Business Zen with Russell Bell: The Citadel shows the Whanganui way
• Premium - Russell Bell: Right skillsets and experience most important for election candidates
Now, I'm all for competition and the theory is that such should increase availability and quality of product or service. However, this goes out the window when there are only a few players on the market – the result here (as it is with other markets with similar oligopolistic structures) is that you end up paying a significant net increase in costs for a similar service which cost less and delivered more in the past.
So, in spite of the temptation of English Premier League Football and the RWC, I'm not going to jump on board. It is also interesting to read the accounts of users who have been having issues with the streaming platform and more interesting to see the spin doctors going crazy trying to make a bad situation look, well, less bad. You even had the CEO learning the hard way when tweeting about awesome success of the platform the day before the real "test" (ABs vs Springboks) that some tweets don't age well and web statements (like diamonds) are forever.
Kudos to Spark for putting some of the games on free to air while it sorted out issues but downplaying the issues in the media didn't sit well, as I know of people in my circle of friends who had mixed experiences. Even today, as last night Twitter was alight with people having negative experiences, Spark continues to say it's "all good". Although the "It's not us, it's you" line is probably spinning it in the wrong direction – all the user has to think is "How often did I have to turn Sky off at the wall?"
I remember a movie back in the 90s which had a team of people tell the truth about products in advertising slogans ( it had lines like "Volvo, boxy but safe" I recall) – how refreshing it would be if, instead of spin, we actually had these mega businesses telling it like it really was. Perhaps Spark could use "Streaming All Black pixels, it's power switching good".