Cinema chair punches viewer in the face
Movies. Puppies. Business. Marketing. SEO. And Pizza.
Last month was our wedding anniversary and we took the afternoon off and went and watched the movie Black Widow.
But we didn’t just watch it in a cinema… we watched it in a 4DX cinema!
What exactly does that mean?
Basically it means we watched it while on a fairground ride. The seats move, there’s wind and mist in the cinema, there’s simulated bullets (using jets of high powered air) that come out of your seat, the seat kicks you (literally) in the back, and there’s some weird plastic that’s mean to tickle your ankles (don’t really understand what that’s all about!).
It was great, but there were a few things that were irritating, aside from the many parents who seemed to think bringing four and five year olds to the movie was suitable.
Without any doubt, the moving seat was awesome. It was, by far, my favourite part. If you haven’t seen Black Widow, it starts with a plane chase and the seats moving with the chase was epic.
The wind and mist were also very effective, as was the bullet sound (the first few times). The problem was, there are a lot of bullets in that movie and it got kinda irritating to have a jet of air shot past your ear every time one was fired.
Ankle ticklers, or whatever the heck they are, I didn’t even notice, and the kicking in the back just got a bit uncomfortable. It also didn’t make sense. Someone got punched in the face, and you got pushed in the back.
I understand that it wouldn’t be seen as the right thing to do for a cinema chair to punch it’s occupier in the face, but the disconnect between what was happening on the screen was too big for it to make any improvement to the enjoyment of the film.
Which sums it up excellently. They needed to do less, because it would have been waaaay better if they had. Stick with the moving seats, wind and mist and I would be a raving fan, prepared to pay the extra next time. Unfortunately the other elements just made me think it was a good experience, one I probably won’t pay for again.
This approach to products, this simplicity is something I think is really important. Something I’ve not always been successful in doing myself, but am trying to do more and more of.
I’m in the process of working with a friend to help him set up a business. Over dinner last night we started to look at the customer avatars, and began to give life and visualisation to how it was going to work. We kept coming up with all the things we’d like to do, and every time I kept pulling back saying… “that’s great, but this is our core goal, what is the minimum we need to have to achieve it” because too much makes something worse, not better.
*** three day pause ***
I had to take a pause in writing this newsletter, during which time I kinda lost my thread a bit!
More importantly, during that time a friend of mine I’ve not seen for a while sent an email saying that she was moving over to Substack.
Her newsletter is called Swagger & Soul, and I’d recommend you go subscribe at:
In her most recent newsletter she said that she completes the phrase ‘I’m so lucky in life, Today I’m really grateful for …’
I’ve only tried it for the last two days, but I can already say that I LOVE it. It’s a mental refreshment.
I’ll be continuing to use it from now on. If you want to know the why’s and wherefore’s, you’ll need to go check out her newsletter on the link above.
This week is going to be insanely busy because we’re going on holiday next week.
There was a time in my life when a holiday meant going to my grandparents house in Spain. Then there was a time when a holiday meant travelling for a minimum of four weeks to somewhere I’d never been before.
For a while a holiday was going away with Holly to somewhere hot for a week or two.
Now… we’re going to Edinburgh.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Edinburgh, but I’m not expecting to be sitting on the sun lounger sipping cocktails. It’s more likely that we’ll be chasing two children through the rain and jumping in puddles.
Which, if I’m totally honest, sounds pretty good fun.
The point of this though, is that it means this week is going to be busy. I’ve got to get a lot of things in place for One of many, the company I am working with, as well as find a UX designer for my own company.
I’m about to embark on a new phase of learning. This phase of learning is going to be in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). I’ve always steered away from it because… well… because… it’s always seemed like very hard work to do it properly.
If I’m going to do something I like to do it 200%. Instead of SEO I went the route of paid traffic (advertising).
But I’ve had a niggle for a while. A niggle that it’s possible to compete with some of the biggest sites in a niche when those sites are getting their traffic based on historic branding, are not agile and are a blunt instrument in today’s digital world.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, some of the keywords I’m looking at are ranked in the Hard category on AHRefs. Those are the keywords that are big niche names. But there are some classified as ‘easy’ which get as much as 933,000 clicks per month.
I’m sorry… say that again…
There are some classified as ‘easy’ which get as much as 933,000 clicks per month.
Holy shit.
Now I’m not so wet behind the ears to believe that it’s going to be easy. But there’s a reason nobody’s going for these, and I don’t think it’s going to be a problem for me.
A third place for that keyword is 65,310 clicks every month. For one keyword!
To buy that kind of traffic is tens of thousands of dollars a month, so I figured it was worth learning how to do SEO properly.
There’s a lot of education out there on it, I’m personally following Glen Allsopp (amongst others), most of it seems to say the same thing but there’s very little structure to what they’re teaching. Maybe that’s just the way my brain works, but it feels like I’m going to have to do a whole bunch of testing to see what works for me and what doesn’t.
The downside is that it can take months and years to get to those positions in Google. But with good tracking, we should be able to track whether there is improvement.
What I’m not so great at is building out a content marketing schedule. However, I’m hoping to be bringing in an expert on that count.
So it’s an experiment, and I’ll keep you posted. If you can recommend any training on SEO then please let me know.
*******
I’m going to wrap this letter up because I’m trying to stop Ivy (our puppy) from eating the children’s food while we watch Vivo, which if you’ve not seen you should because it’s amazing. As soon as we get her away from the snacks the kids are eating, she then goes for the toes, get her away from those and she goes for mine.
Frustrating. A little bit. But at least (for the moment) we don’t have any screaming children at the same time.
The moments when Ivy is nipping and both children are screaming are the kind of moment in life when you’d like to press the pause button, go grab a drink (or four), and then fast forward before pressing play again.
Instead we live with the harmony of tantrums and barking.
To be fair, without that harmony, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea at 9pm wouldn’t have the same level of satisfaction!
With that satisfaction in mind I will go and join Holly as co-conductors in our own private orchestra, and love you and leave you.
Until next time.
Michael Wilding
P.S. Don’t forget to start every day by finishing this sentence… ‘I’m so lucky in life, Today I’m really grateful for…’ I reckon you’re going to be pretty pleased that you did.