PardonMyFrench

Revisiting Roblox

A few months ago I made this post called Is Roblox Safe? Not Sure So I Blocked It and I've received a lot of traffic from this post.  Some from parents looking for answers and some from Roblox supporters as you can see from the comments in the post.  Usually my answer to these comments is that I have little kids and I don't want them that involved with consumer generated content.  Also, don't forget that the trigger for my further investigation was that my firewall-antivirus software Bit Defender flagged the site as not child friendly.

Well last Friday I received an email from the CEO of Roblox David Baszucki.  He was kind enough to want to talk with me about my blog post.  I guess that means that either a) someone sent him the link or b) he or his marketing team was watching Roblox's google results.  We spoke within the hour of his email...

1. He wanted to talk about which software I was using to protect the laptop (Bit Defender) and they were going to consider adding it to the software they test.
2. He wanted to reassure me that even though the content is consumer generated they flag obviously offensive ones and remove or if something is marginal, but gets flagged as inappropriate they investigate immediately.  
3. He spoke with me about the ads I was seeing and told me that they carefully monitor what appears on the site
4. Finally he wanted to know why I thought they were associated with Lego because they are extremely cautious.

Anyway, I thought he was very professional and that they do try hard to monitor the site.  As I wrote earlier, then later in replies to the comments, and then when I spoke with David, I have little kids and I don't include Roblox on the list of sites they can visit.  I do think Roblox is a lot more professional then when I wrote that post, but for Jacob and Kaela it isn't for them.  When they get a little older - perhaps around 13 I will probably change my mind, but right now, no; I don't even let them on YouTube without me.  

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Jason Calacanis' Case vs Apple Foretells Case vs President Obama

I read Jason's post-email regarding his case against Apple in 5 Parts and before I go through my thoughts quickly, all I kept thinking about is, is this the type of long term buyer's remorse a lot of Independents will have when it comes to their Obama vote?  Jason's rant for the most part is a lot of buyer's remorse and changed expectations from someone who has spent a ton of money and time engrossed with Apple's products as well as competitor's products,  So, I can't help but think is President Obama the Steve Jobs of Presidents?  Let's take a look at Jason's 5 points, my thoughts on his Apple points, and why it reminds me of President Obama.

1. Destroying MP3 through anti-competitive prices - Basically Jason rants, since Apple doesn't allow other MP3 players to hook into iTunes they are uncompetitive.  Jason wrote this classic line which reminds me of President Bush-President Obama; imagine if President Bush had asked people to report "fishy" emails to the White House like President Obama did?  Where is the outrage from main street media: 

   Why, then, does Steve Jobs get a pass?Steve Jobs gets a pass because we are all enabling him to be a jerk. We buy the products and we say nothing when our rights are stripped away. We’ve been seduced by Steve Jobs: he lifts another shiny object over his head with a new eco-friendly feature and we all melt like screaming schoolgirls at Shea Stadium in ‘65.

2. Monopolistic practices in telecommunications -  Basically the argument that the iPhone only works on AT&T's network and while I personally don't like that, I don't think this is anti-competitive.   Now this isn't an easy to stretch to Obama, but what reminds me of Obama is the logic that a few people in Washington know more than the people out in the real world.  That's basically the logic around Obama's spending plan which has NOT don't anything to stimulate job growth and is in fact, woefully behind their own forecasts.  Even when a seemingly good # comes out which is then debunked, they still tell you our way is working great.  You try and tell them no, that's not right and you're called unAmerican.
3. Draconian App Store Policies - Basically every application has to be approved by Apple.  I don't have any problem with that because well it is their store and there are ways around this, but he does make a good argument.  Again it reminds me of Obamacare and the mandated use of exchanges to only allow health insurance plans that conform to Government minimum requirements (as of right now your current health plan can be grandfathered until a change is made)
4. Being a Horrible Hypocrite by banning other browsers - Jason is 100% correct here and Apple should allow other browsers to be used.  He wrote this paragraph which again reminds me of Obama's no vote against Justice Roberts but when Republicans voted against Sotomayer they get ridiculed - i.e. Obama being a hypocrite when it comes to a supreme court confirmation.  Apple was more than willing to pile on after Microsoft’s disasterous inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows. In fact, what Apple is doing is 100x worse than what Microsoft did. You see, Microsoft simply included their browser in Windows, still allowing other browsers to be installed. In Apple’s case, they are not only bundling their browser with the iPhone, but they are BLOCKING other browsers from being installed.
5. Blocking the Google Voice Application - same as #3 above but he does write this which reminds me of President Obama deciding which businesses and industries are too big to fail and instead of letting the free market decide he extends plans like cash for clunkers.  Let people have three or four phone services coming in to their iPhones and perhaps charge a modest licensing fee for those types of service. Or, just simply stop being jerks and let the free market decide how to use the data services they’ve BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. That’s the joke of this: you’re paying for the data services that Apple is blocking. You pay for the bandwidth and Apple doesn’t let you use it because, you know, they know better than you how you should consume your data minutes.

Anyway, I thought whether you agreed with it or not, Jason's post was very insightful.  I personally found it very foretelling of the buyer's remorse Independent voters may have if all of these Washington knows best programs don't do what is advertised.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Obama Car Jacks Consumer Choice

This post is dedicated to my good friend Chip B. whom I got into a big discussion about a month back on this very subject.

This is a picture of my brand new car.  We bought it in the middle of March and it is our third car,  The gas mileage on it sucks.  Right now we are averaging 19 miles to the gallon, but for all you tree huggers out there - we've only filled the tank up once. 

I love driving this car.  It is so much fun that I've never run so many errands in my life. In case you are wondering - it is a 4 seat, Toyota Solara Sports Convertible with an in your face bright red paint job.  Mary and I loved this car so much that we took a ride in March when it was 44 degrees outside - yes we had our winter coats on.

Anyway back to my post dedicated to Chip.  A month back late night at his house we got into a big discussion on fuel efficient cars.  My argument went like this...

• Only tree huggers want these small crappy fuel efficient cars; the vast majority of consumers don't want them.
• The car companies can't manufacturer these tree hugger match boxes efficiently
• Without Government intervention these cars are more expensive to buy when compared to similar match box crappy oil burners.
• The Government will have to use tax dollars to bring these cars down in price - again using the wealth distribution process.
• When the US Companies (exception is Ford) blew themselves up, the Obama Administration used this opportunity to swoop in and save these companies to put other tree hugging loons in control to build the cars that not enough people want unless you're in the Obama Administration or your last name is Pelosi.
• If car companies built powerful, beautifully designed cars that people wanted and they were fuel efficient  - that would be a win.  However, the only way today to get fuel efficient cars is to build them no bigger than a shopping cart.

Now on May 19th, Obama introduced new fuel efficiency standards.  As a goal I think they are good ones - I believe the timing is terrible. I also think standardizing them nationally is good too.  I don't agree with tax subsidizing them.  I don't agree with increasing costs of car manufacturing.  I don't agree with forcing consumers to buy crappy little cars because that's what the Government wants.  If car manufactures can build cars like my new one above and make it fuel efficient - than great but that ain't happening by 2016. 

For my friend Chip, here are links to Wall Street Journal articles backing up my argument.  This standard is nothing but bad news for consumers - unless you were planning on buying these crappy cars anyway...

Obama Says New Car-Fuel Rules Generate Certainty - A good summary of this leftist agenda item with this great line that proves my point about how the Obama Administration now controls these American Car companies so they can do their bidding "But the rules also will raise the cost of manufacturing new vehicles at a time when the auto industry is struggling, and Chrysler LLC is in bankruptcy, where it may soon be joined by General Motors Corp. Still, car makers have signaled support for the new standards,

Obama Would Support Auto Incentives for Consumers - This article includes a few tire busting nails like these all based on wealth distribution and ignoring true consumer needs:

1. We fought for the $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles in the Recovery Act," the official said, and "our administration remains committed to policies to help bring the costs down" for consumers.
2. The administration estimates fuel-economy regulations will add $1,300 on average to the price of new cars by 2016, but President Barack Obama on Tuesday said fuel savings would offset those costs for the typical motorist in three years
3. If prices are $4 per gallon, I think the math is pretty straightforward for consumers," said Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade group that participated in the negotiations that led to the fuel economy agreement. "If we don't have prices like that, government is going to have to provide more incentives to help overcome the upfront cost differential of this new technology

Obama's Official Remarks -  It includes of course well written lines that slip by the average voter like this one "If you buy a car, your investment in a more fuel-efficient vehicle as a result of this standard will pay off in just three years" - yeah?  At what price per gallon and how many miles driven?

Anyway these new guidelines are so filled with bad agenda items that you should have woken up and dug a little deeper before you voted this guy into office.  Sure, it sounded good cheering for change in the fall when he painted great pictures of fuel efficient SUVs and Sports Car, but that's not what you are getting here.  You are getting shopping carts with engines, more expensive cars, and wealth distribution so folks can purchase cars that nobody wants right now.  Thanks (yes I'm bitter in this post).

PardonMy "Low Carbon Footprint" French,

Eric

It's About Creating Jobs Not About Saving Jobs

*****BTW - NY Times has an article this morning on White House Forecasts NO Job Growth Until 2010*****

I'm still very upset about this saving jobs metric that President Obama based his entire trillion dollar budget/stimulus plan on.  This is my third post on this and I got fired up on the "save job" metric this morning when I read this article in USA Today called White House Defends 3.5M Job Forecast.  My first post was called AT&T Lessons for Obama on Saving Jobs and a second post called Are You Sure You Understand How Obama's Plan Will Save Jobs?  The USA Today article shows the smoke and mirrors that the Obama administration is using/used to sell the "save job" metric (my comments in bold):

• 3.5 million create or save job forecast is based on a relatively conservative rule of thumb (I'm sure the forecast mechanism is conservative, the create a job metric you are forecasting is a bogus metric)
• Many Republicans have criticized the administration's projections as untrustworthy and politically motivated.(They key is not to attack how they made the projections, but attack the actual type of number they are trying to forecast)
• The figure of 3.5 million jobs saved or created, the report says, is the difference between the projected number of jobs during the last three months of 2010 with the stimulus and the projected number of jobs without if there had been no stimulus plan (You see the create "job metric" is the variable derived from two forecasted numbers one of which you can't ever accurately measure)
• The report also offers a new measure of the stimulus law's economic effects: 6.8 million additional job-years between the signing of the legislation and the end of 2012. A job-year represents one job held for one year. (Obama adds a new number that sounds huge to confuse people and have idiots argue over a new number that is derived from another bad number - saved jobs)
• The administration's practice of discussing jobs saved as well as created is "a very clever device for providing future political cover," The 'jobs saved' part was a way for them to say, 'The economy is still shrinking, but it would have shrunk faster but for the good things that we did.' (What I've been writing all along).

I worked at AT&T for 10 years and 4 years in an internet measurement, analysis group that was part of Bell Labs for a while.   At AT&T the retention game was trying to estimate who was likely to leave (a saved job) in order to get retention funding.  Winback was easier to measure because you actually so the customer return to AT&T (a created job).  SAVED CUSTOMERS WERE DERIVED NUMBERS AND EVEN BELL LABS COULDN'T ACCURATELY FORECAST THAT.  WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT CAN FORECAST A SAVED JOB?

Obama can not forecast A SAVED JOB because you'll never know what would have happened if we didn't spend money to help the economy.  It is a completely derived, fictitious number that was undoubtedly created using proven statistical techniques, but at the end of the day, we will never know how many jobs we would have lost.

This is the only talking point that matters for Republicans.  This is the smoking gun for the Obama administration.  The news will continue to report actual job lost or actual job created (still losing jobs and the Federal Reserve said it may hit as high as 10% and remain high for years).  This is how we should market ourselves and attack the administration in 2010.  Actual jobs created or not, actual spending, and how the administration sold the created jobs number as a way of passing the stimulus plan. Any other talking points that don't involve jobs and unemployment will fall flat on the masses of people and doom Republicans in 2010.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Senator Cardin's Bill to Save Newspapers Is a Waste of Ink

Before I slam the point of Senator Cardin's bill to make newspapers non-profits, let me set the record straight.  If you haven't guessed already, I'm over 40 years old and I only have one newspaper delivered to my house - my weekly local paper The Observer Tribune.  I believe advertising in newspapers is the most wasteful form of advertising any marketer can do and it just isn't due to the declining circulation numbers.  You can't properly target the ads.  You don't know who actually sees your ad.  You can never capture all of the traffic generated from an ad to your site.  Finally, the ads are boring.  I once got kicked out of a meeting with the Bank of Montreal because I argued so much against spending crucial dollars on a wasteful ad campaign in the WSJ.

Senator Cardin's bill to allow newspapers to reorganize as nonprofits to gain tax breaks is an example of the Federal Government's sticking their nose in the free markets where it doesn't belong.  This quote found in the Reuters article that I linked to shows how the reverse logic of Congress works:

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."

Advertising revenues are down because marketers have finally woken up to the scam that is newspaper advertising.  Circulation numbers are down because people can get news faster and in more appealing manners than paper.  The cost structure for newspapers is bloated; these dinosaurs are so slow to react to changing economies that they didn't reorganize fast enough to become smaller and more nimble.

Look people.  If you like your newspaper, that's cool with me.  As my wife noticed the other day we are the only person on our block that doesn't have a daily newspaper delivered.   Do I miss reading the Sunday Paper while eating breakfast?  Nope.  My iPhone works just fine in my house and I don't need to recycle the papers any more. 

Senator Cardin, let the free market decide their fate.  Newspaper's in their current form is nearly dead and that's the way they should be.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric 

Avoid The Scam Artists from 3869855500 or The Account Services Company

Today in a fit of rage I picked up the phone with the caller ID number 386-985-5500.  On the end of the phone was a recording that said "this is the last chance to lower your interest on your accounts."  Press 1 to hear more or Press 2 to be removed from our list.  Realizing that this call was probably a) a scam and b) a VIOLATION OF THE NATIONAL DO NOT CALL program since I've been on that list from Day 1, I decided to Press 1.  The other reason I pressed 1 was to try an old AT&T trick we used to use when we received a call from MCI or Sprint.  We used to keep the caller on the phone for as long as possible so they'd incur calling cost.

Pressing 1 got me one of the most UNPROFESSIONAL call reps I've ever had the displeasure of speaking with.  He was rude and crude and couldn't answer any questions.  I asked him what account they were calling about.  He said well this is about your Visa, MasterCard, Discover (that crappy card?), and your American Express cards.  I then replied, yes but what account?  And he answered the same way again, getting more frustrated.  I said well what company is this for?  He said The Account Services Company. 

Well this confirmed that this call was a total scam.  I said, I don't have any business with an Account Services Company.  To which he replied well we work with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express.  I then said to him, well I'm still confused and he started getting frustrated as he probably figured out I was onto him when he told me, "Next time we call, just press 2 to removed yourself" and then he hung up.

I tried calling back 386-985-5500 and I received a message saying the number has been changed to 386-985-5467.  That number had a message saying the number has been changed to an unlisted number.  Googling both of these numbers turned up a place to lodge complaints and everyone on these complaint sites had the exact same experience.  I Googled account services scam call and I got this great site which also documents the same scam call experience.

I spent 10 years at AT&T and ran both Outbound and Inbound calling promotions.  If someone willingly violates the National Do Not Call list, pretends to have a relationship with you, offers to lower rates without any financial suitability, and they are constantly hiding their phone number, you have to assume they are a SCAM.  Read other complaints - see that you are not alone.

These phone scammers are trying to prey on people that can't figure this out.  They think they can hide, but we can screw them over via the internet.  Link to other posts.  Write headlines that people search on so when people try to find if they have any credibility they find posts like this one.  Account Services and calls from 386-986-5500 are nothing but scams, beware.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

ION Turntable Might Bring Your Records Back to Life

So after my son had a travel soccer game in the rain (Long Valley Nitros won 2-1), we were home bound so I decided to crack open one of my Hanukkah gifts  - an ION USB Turntable.  And you know what - it actually works if you have a clean record.

The instruction manual could have been a little clearer with better tips on the different weights on the needle (yes I wrote a needle).  I'm still not sure how much to put on and lets not forget the balance on the bottom of the turntable.  I wasn't even sure it was there until I got desperate and moved it.  However after about 1 hour of playing with it I was able to get my record going.  The record I pulled out was Gary US Bonds' Dedication which has Bruce and the E Street Band on it and included hits like Jole Blon and This Little Girl.  The record played well and the software that came with it was very easy to use.

The frustrating thing is, was that the manufacturer focused on the software and not with actually playing the record.  I mean it has been 20 years since I played a record.  How do you clean it?  How perfect does the record need to be?  So I called my father who gave me some advice on how to clean it (I just used water and a t-shirt) and then I started to play it again and I got all the way through Jole Blon and then about 3/4 of the way through This Little Girl and it started to skip.  And then it skipped throughout the rest of the first side.  Dad called back and asked me how I did so I told him.  His advice - toss the record out because it is scratched.

So after about 3 hours I'm stuck.  A record with a scratch, software that works, and a properly balanced turntable.  My other records in the house are way more scratched than this record so they aren't even worth trying.  However, if you have clean records and want to transfer them, the ION USB Turntable works great.  Thankfully we've moved past vinyl technology even though the music from records sounds better - they'll sound better if you can actually get them without scratches.  OK - now onto another project.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Go See Iron Man

You long time blog readers know that I am a comic book fan.  I own almost every Amazing Spider-man comic book printed and as I tell my son I am a walking encyclopedia of comic books.  So Jacob, one of my best friends Jim, and I went to see Iron Man yesterday at 7:15 PM.  Now, I won't give you a big professional review, but let me tell you why I liked the movie besides the acting, music, CGI, and etc.

1. It stayed true to the comic books.  Sure Vietnam was replaced by the Middle East, but the story line was very similar.
2. Every character truly came to life just like Stan Lee's comic books.  Pepper the professional assistant who really has a crush on Tony, Happy Hogan in the background, Rhodes, and Stane.
3. Pepper was especially great starting out as the plain Jane, capable assistant but turning into the sexy, smart assistant Stark knows that she is (why else has he kept her around).
4. There were hints about possible upcoming movie tie in.  Rhodes (in the comic books) gets to wear a set of armor (War Machine), Shield and Nick Fury, Avengers, and really one thing that is a story line from recent books; Tony Stark's ties to the Government.
5. Hints of Stark's alcoholism.
6. Obadiah Stane's as the turn coat and real back stabber.  As I recall that happened around Iron Man #200 (for you novices Iron Man #1 is not the first appearance of Iron Man; that is is Tales of Suspense #39).
7. Robert Downey Jr. perfectly plays Stark as the playboy, brilliant inventor.

I put this film right up there with Spider-Man #1 and #2 which is saying a lot since Spidey is the comic book I collect the most.  Unlike Spider-man #3 which drifted too far from the comic book (Sandman involved with Uncle Ben's shooting, etc) Iron Man delivers in a huge way.  I think I'll go to see it again.

BTW - I wonder how much Burger King paid for the awesome product placement in the movie?  When Stark is brought home he wants an American burger before his press conference and the burger he eats is from Burger King.

My only wish for Marvel is to always remember when making movies - STAN LEE is a GENIUS.  DO NOT TRY AND DRIFT AWAY FROM HIS STORY LINES.  Just update them.  Some things are just better as the original.  Stan Lee the inventor of these stories really is a genius. 

Excelsior,

Eric Frenchman

Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. Welcome to The New Local Market.

I read the following Business Week article called Good-Bye, Cheap Oil.  So Long Suburbia? and I kept thinking to myself something is missing.  According to the article James Kunstler hypothesizes that the automotive age is almost history and will destruct McMansion living.

It reminded of a Yahoo Money conference a few years back when one of the speakers said "we told people to move out to the suburbs and now with the price of oil we are going to tell them to move back?"  Simply put, that's basically what the article implies.  Here are some quotes from the question and answers in the article:

• Cheap oil is what made suburbia possible. But we'll run into problems with spot shortages
• It's not that we're driving the wrong cars. It's that we're driving cars of any size, incessantly.
• I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.
• Of course, I'm a self-employed author and don't have to commute to work.

We'll come back to that last quote in a second.  What was missing for me are questions and answers about our digital society.  As broadband in the US increases (currently at 58% among US households and 90% for internet users) I can't help wondering if there isn't a new local market.  The local market of your home or local business center.

How many actually commute 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year?  Is that declining now?  How much of your work can be done locally?  Haven't big companies been pushing for telecommuting for decades now?  The more I spend working from the home office the more I find other people just like me.  It isn't just for the sales person, but many executives, managers, and consultants power their businesses from their local area. 

So why does suburbia have to die with rising oil prices?  Can't it still survive at a very local level?  Where is the impact of broadband penetration on Mr. Kunstler's analysis?  How many people in the US just need a wireless connection, a PC, and a phone and they can conduct business anywhere? 

Perhaps Mr Kunstler just didn't get to answer a question like that or perhaps he did and it didn't make the final article, but I'd like to know why can't suburbia be transformed by millions of small business, telecommuters with broadband increasing at a high rate?  Aren't there more people like Mr Kunstler who describes himself as a self-employed person (author) that doesn't have to commute?

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Ford's New Ad Slogan "Drive One" May Drive Store Traffic

I found this article in the Wall Street Journal called Ford's Latest Better Idea really interesting.  Again you can read the article yourself (I don't like restating articles), but what I found fascinating is that the latest slogan "Drive One" was built with dealers at the marketing table. 

Ford puts a lot of weight into their slogans as witnessed by the chart in the article which tracks them going back to 1979's "Quality is Job 1".  Me, I think the slogan is brilliant as well as what I can guess their strategy is too, but in the end I don't think this will save Ford.  Cars are expensive and people want to make sure the product is up to their par.  Allow me to explain why I think the marketing strategy is brilliant but will fall short.

Back in my brokerage days we were competing with E*Trade, TD Waterhouse, Fidelity, and Scottrade.    Scottrade was always a bit of a mystery to me because they spent big bucks and they couldn't be converting new accounts at the rate Harrisdirect was.  It wasn't until we dug into their competitive advertising that we realized their strategy was to use their marketing to drive qualified traffic into their branch managers who did the follow up sales closing.  The online advertising director was only concerned with driving quality traffic into the correct branch manager and that's it.  I always thought that was pretty sweet.  Now back to Ford...

Guessing by what I read in the Journal I'm thinking that Ford is borrowing from the Scottrade play book.  I could just imagine those meetings with the dealers where the dealers said to the marketing team "just drive traffic into our dealerships and we'll take care of the rest". 

Ford had two slogans from 1979 - 1998 and then from 2000 - 2008 they've used a whopping 6.  If a marketing campaign doesn't drive awareness which in tune drives purchase interest than clearly there is a problem before a dealer (or website site) can sell a car.  If those ads weren't doing their branding job than that would manifest itself in low dealer traffic and dealerships complaining that the marketing campaigns aren't working.  Now enter "Drive One".

"Drive One" to me not only conjures up driving a car but more importantly coming in to the dealership to test drive one.  This tactic drives traffic into the dealer's hands but in turn puts more pressure on them to close sales.  Not saying they are not up to it, but really that's the point of having a physical location.

I think Ford's new campaign slogan is brilliant and if the strategy is to put pressure on the dealers to close sales than that's where it should be.  Let the marketing build awareness and drive interest and the physical locations close the sale.  Unfortunately for Ford the product is where their issues are and I wrote that back when I critiqued their Bold Moves website.  If their car products are good the new slogan will work, if they continue to be below average it won't help them.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Newspaper's Declining Circ Numbers Hopefully Speed More Ad Dollar Shifts

Here's a news flash, newspapers continue to have declining circulation numbers over the past 4 years courtesy of editor and publisher.  It totals about 1.4 million per day and with the exception of USA Today and the NY Post these guys are getting killed.  WSJ which I still subscribe to ($99 for both paper and online) lost 3.8% but some of my favorite losers were NY Times at 7.2 and LA Times at 20.2.  One I still subscribe to also The Star Ledger got whacked by 13.6%.  Me, I think it couldn't have happened to a nice bunch of laggards than the newspaper industry.

I've hated print advertising for years for its lack of direct tracking, lack of animation, and lack of visual pleasantness.  If you are spending money for a print campaign you are 100% better off online and it has been that way for a while.  You can track, finely target, run better looking ads, and you are guaranteed to have your ad shown to people.  Print, none of that is true. 

I've actually been thrown out of a couple of meetings because I argued so hard against print.  The only valid reason I've ever seen for wasting money in print ads is that our executives want to see the ads on the back cover of Barron's or some paper.  The only real exception I'd make for print advertising is your local community newspaper, but even that is going away especially when they do a nice site overhaul like my local one just did over at the Observer Tribune.  For fun and to revisit a post I made a few years back check out this oldie but goodie post I made called Ketel One Marketers Need to Go Back to The Drawing Bar and read the comments where I was under fire from agency folks defending their livelihood. 

So what do I think is going on?  Simple.  You get your news faster online, RSS feeds, Twitter if that's your flavor, and round the clock news on TV.  It isn't that the content is bad (unless it is filled with garbage like The NY Times these days) it is really yesterday's news by the time you get it.  Something like the Journal still interests me because I get in depth analysis and the print format of the WSJ is preferable to me than online.  The Star Ledger, well that's my early morning read and men's room read, but I'd give it up in a second if NJO.com wasn't so archaic.  USA Today and The NY Post deliver that quick news story and their format feeds America's need for news as entertainment.

Newspaper circulation has been disappearing for years and will continue to dwindle.   Move your ad budgets out ASAP and put them to work in a better medium like the internet.  It is about time you did.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Disney Still The One To Beat On Customer Service

So the Frenchmans are back from our annual pilgrimage to the house that Walt Disney built in Florida and I usually come back with some marketing factoids that I notice that Disney Corp does better than anyone else.  This year was no exception, but pretty much the marketing tips centered around customer service, marketing, and defending your competitive turf.  Seriously, year after year I don't really looks for these things, but as is the case with Disney they pretty much smack you in the face with their marketing prowess.

1. Personalized Service That Makes You Feel Special - After the second full day in the park which was spent at The Animal Kingdom we went to one of our favorite restaurants Boma.  Boma is the only dinner buffet we will ever go to because the food doesn't sit at all in chafing dishes, the food is unique, and is brought out fresh as soon as it is finished cooking.  We noticed the head chef TJ making the rounds in the dining area and he stopped by our table when we told him how special we thought Boma was.   Next thing we know TJ sends out a special plate of ribs and a version of mushroom tempura for us and then later on he sent us a dessert he made for us.  We didn't realize it but evidently Disney considers him their best chef and he refuses to go anywhere else but Boma.  He said we have a new friend at Boma and we should ask for him next time we come in - I can only imagine how many people TJ has told that to in a year.
2. Pirate and Princess Party In The Rain Shows Their Training - So the last two times we went to Disney we paid an extra fee (yes) to go to a special party at the Magic Kingdom at night.  They close the park early and then in order to enter the party you need this special pass.  Sure they hand out cheap beads at special locations marked via an X, but the park is virtually empty and you can walk on rides as often as you want with no wait (unlike Magic Hours).   This year it started to rain about 2 and half hours into the party chasing us and a bunch of other families.  However, the Cast Members went right along with their jobs and business not even flinching when the rain was slamming them.  Personally, I thought it was a masterful example of their training and the focus of their employees;  I think 99% of companies would crave for that level of dedication.
3. They Listen to Customer Feedback - One of the many complaints over the years with Disney Dining was that they didn't have your typical reservation system and you were often seated within 15-30 minutes of check-in which most people (your truly) complained about; it always reminded me about that Seinfeld skit (taking a reservation is easy, holding the reservation is what counts).  This year I noticed that they took no walk-ins and we were always seated within 2 minutes of checking in.  Clearly someone figured out that the old reservation system was upsetting the people who planned in advance while walk-ins were treated on the same level unlike any other restaurant scenario (tough luck).  Not saying it is right, but that's the way reservations work outside Disney.  BTW - they also improved the Magical Express service, but more on that below.
4. Protecting Your Customer From The Competition - On the way back to the airport (we took a cab to spend more time in the park), I noticed that the cab driver was not taking I-4 back so I asked him why not.  He explained that as part of their Disney training, they are told not to take I-4 back to the airport because the other highway is just as short and you don't take the customers by Sea World or past Universal billboards.  I thought this was brilliant on Disney's part but what I thought was even more amazing was that this cab driver had Disney training.  According to the cabbie, Disney's Magical Express, the cabs that are found on property, as well as any limos you may rent are all owned and operated by Mears Transportation.  You remember Mears, don't you?  They were the bus transportation company that you thought Disney put out of business with Magical Express.  Nope.  They are the exclusive ground transportation for Disney.  Talk about a) getting a sweet deal for both companies b) making sure that the Disney customer is cared for to and from the airport c) making it seem that Disney does not have complete control over you, when they ummm really do.  Brilliant!

There weren't many things to complain about.  Heck the concierge had access to the latest radar readings to help us make an informed decision about spending extra money to go to a water park.  Since Disney seems to have their Mouse Ears up - here are three things I'd like for them to fix for me besides lowering the cost....

• Equip people with some sort of text message, social network space, early warning system so that we can make informed decisions regarding which park to travel to.  One day Disney Studios was invaded by a cheerleader competition swelling the park population so I could be heard mumbling "I used to like cheerleaders..."
• Instruct parents that every kid that has ever been to a Disney park has been cute at least once in their life.  I was so annoyed with a father who let his younger kids sit in a wheelchair row with the look back to the crowd of "look how cute my kids are I can't control them".  EVERY KID IN DISNEY HAS BEEN CUTE AND YOUR LITTLE CRITTERS ARE NO DIFFERENT (actually the complaint is to please leave the wheelchair accessible rows open until instructed by a cast member.  No person who can sit there should have to ask someone who should not be there to move)
• More butter and less margarine.  One day for breakfast at the counter service location in the hotel (a deluxe one) I decided to have pancakes.  All I could find were some chemical enhanced butter substitutes which really upset me.  Come on Disney.  How much money do I need to pay per day to have a friggin pat of butter.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

(BTW - if I seem off tonight it is because I had to put my 15 year old cat to sleep today.  RIP Puglsey)

Circuit City Is In More Trouble Than The WSJ Portrays

So this weekend I decided to replace my old Sony Cybershot 5.0 Mega Pixel camera.  It was a total impulse buy otherwise I would have shopped online.  What caused this impulse?  I was upset that during the McCain Hamilton NJ event I just didn't get enough good pictures out of my camera and the delay between shots with the flash on was taking an eternity.  The kids were at a birthday party so Mary and I ran a few errands and one of our first stops was Circuit City in Ledgewood NJ.

The camera sales person was very helpful and steered me away from the latest Sony cameras over to the Canons.  Based on my needs he recommended the Canon Titanium 12 MP version but sadly after "closing the sale" he had no inventory.  He also "sold me" on the 8 MP version too, but gave the nod to the casing on the Titanium version.  Not wanting to give up, he checked all of the Circuit Citys (note:  Do you spell that Cities or Citys since City is a proper name?  I too comfy in front of my fireplace to go look that up).  Guess what none of them had any inventory either and didn't have any inventory on the 8 MP versions either.  So, we walked out without a camera.

After we picked up the munchkins we headed down to my Father's house and stopped off at Best Buy in Bridgewater.  The camera sales man there was not as helpful and when I walked in asking for the Titanium he said they didn't carry them because it was too expensive.  And guess what?  He didn't carry the 8 MP version either because it was too expensive.  So, we left Best Buy without a camera.

So like a good internet junkie I researched the cameras on CNET and found that not only don't I want the Canon Titanium, the Sony camera still had the annoying slow delay, and some of the newer Sonys had touch screens which were not recommended.  So even though CNET recommended one of the non-touch screen Sony cameras I was going for the Canon Power Shot 8 MP. 

OK, now I'm back to the local Circuit City in Eatontown where they not only didn't have the Titanium or the 8MP they also didn't have the Sony.  Mind you they were showing all of these cameras but didn't have any inventory.  The inexperienced sales man tried to sell me a 7 MP Canon that was on sale, but I just walked out totally frustrated and confused by Circuit City.  Besides the sales process which can be hit or miss, they had no inventory yet continued to try to sell me cameras.  Seriously, what's the purpose of a retail store in 2008 if you can't make an impulse purchase?

All was not lost and I walked into the 6th Avenue Electronics who had inventory and the smart sales person closed an easy sale (me).  They sold me camera case and a 2GB memory stick and I was out of there in 15 minutes with the camera that the original Circuit City person introduced me to - the Canon 8 MP camera that I'm playing with right now.

I was perplexed about Circuit City's sales process and obvious inventory problem until I read this article in today's WSJ called Can Circuit City Survive Boss's Cure?  The entire article talked about cost cutting, layoffs, and closing stores.  Based on my experience this weekend, I give an enthusiastic answer of NO to the article's question.  At least now I have the answer.  Circuit City with its beaten down employees and cost cutting have cut too much inventory, too much experience, and ruined what is the only reason to shop at big retailers in today's internet world - an impulse shopping experience. 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

AT&T's TrueVoice Wished They Got The Light Bulb Treatment

I saw this article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal called Bye Bye Light Bulb and it got me thinking about AT&T's TrueVoice "product".  Basically the article says how lucky manufacturers like GE and Phillips are that the US Government passed a law to outlaw the old version of the light bulb in favor of energy saver versions by 2012/2014.  These new bulbs already available on the market costs $3 instead of the 50 cents for the old ones, but theoretically save you money in electrical bills.  According to the article:

"Yes, the $3 bulb lasts longer. Yes, it cuts your electricity bill. Mr. Moorehead says that when every one of those four billion light sockets has an energy-saving bulb in it, the country will be saving $18 billion a year on its electric bill. That's $4.50 per bulb -- and the bulb makers are standing by to make sure a substantial portion of those "savings" get transformed into profits for them."

Wow isn't that convenient.  A product that nobody wants (5% market share) convinces the government of passing a new law and wham, you have instant product sales.  Now, the problem (and the link to TrueVoice) is that their selling proposition is that these new bulbs will help you save money on your electrical bill.  Pay more upfront for future savings, but if the savings was so good why aren't the sales there now?  Perhaps the American public doesn't want to pay for phantom product results.  Now to AT&T TrueVoice.

When I first came over to the marketing side at AT&T they were promoting TrueVoice.  TrueVoice which as I recall was being promoted by a new AT&T Marketing VP Dan Clarke as producing better call quality from your home phone.  This call quality proved by Bell Labs would allow AT&T to charge more money for a long distance call.  Problem was customers didn't think their home call quality was bad and when compared with the competition MCI and Sprint (remember them) the difference wasn't discernible.  Sure Bell Labs could prove it, but people just didn't care.  And, AT&T stopped promoting it because it didn't make a difference.

Unlike the light bulb guys, AT&T couldn't have the government mandate acceptable call quality.  Think about it.  Companies that have products that you just buy and are tough to differentiate (milk, light bulbs, pencils, coffee filters, home phone service) just need to somehow convince the government that it is to the American people's benefit to own their new product instead of the old one. Think Organic Milk industry.    Having the US Government speak up on an industry's sales woes is a true voice that anyone can hear a difference in.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Springsteen's Radio Nowhere is Everywhere but The Radio

On my favorite Springsteen fan site Greasylake the rumors were running everywhere about NY's Q104.3 (yes that old classic rock station is back) playing Springsteen's new song Radio Nowhere.  Sadly, it didn't occur on Monday but they were able to play the song on Friday.  In addition to that, Little Steven's Underground was also supposed to play it tonight, but even though I registered for the site to listen on the web, I'm not tuning in.  What gives?  Have I become disappointed with Bruce and the band?  Heck no, I'm even more Badlands fist pumping excited over a new E Street Band CD and tour to follow.  I just think the folks at Springsteen Inc ought to have a New Media Strategy.  You see relying on radio stations to debut a song is a waste of time for Bruce and a waste of time for you when you can easily find it on the net.

Late last week, you could have downloaded the song from BitTorrent, but let's say you are like me and don't really want to leave a footprint.  Sure I'll trade bootlegs because Bruce and the Band have given their blessings over the years (bootleggers start your tapes), but downloading a studio, copyrighted song, no way.   However, about 2 days ago you could have found the song uploaded on YouTube which is really the uploader's and YouTube's problem.  As of this writing, approximately 45K plays of the song has occurred on YouTube.  That's 45K times that a listen occurred without a radio station.

Now of course I benefited from not wasting my time listening to commercials and songs that a DJ or program director thought I should listen to and for that I'm thankful.  It just points out the sad state that radio is in especially classic rock stations when a classic rock star like Bruce puts out a new song and they can hardly cash in on it.  Does Bruce have a new media strategy?  I don't know and I'm not sure if he cares.  The folks that posted it don't look like they are official types, but who knows maybe the song was leaked to them.  Will he lose sales from posting like this?  Sure, but I don't think anyone should cry because a tour to follow up the release plus merchandise will guarantee Bruce and the Band hundreds of millions of dollars.

If the song was leaked, then why not cash in on the search activity and runs some pay per click ads to drive even more traffic.  How about a free download of his site?  Perhaps he can't because of his contract and if that's the case will Sony now come after YouTube?  It clearly points out that a rock star like Bruce, even with an aging audience has to have a new media strategy.  Anyway, I L-O-V-E the song; nothing is better than listening to a new song by Bruce and The E Street Band to make you feel new again.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

American Express - Killing You Softly with Fees?

Yes I ranted regarding all of the direct mail that American Express generates as the Junk Mail King and begged them to try email out.  Well, I've been receiving weekly emails from them now, but all of them come from their Rewards group which I think is perfect.  Besides getting on board with this email thing, using email/web for Rewards program is key because you don't have to print up pages and pages of junk to describe all of the redemption options.  However, just like their sign and travel options and hosts of other fees, you MUST READ THE FINE PRINT on Amex's offers.  Case in point, take a look at this offer I received this morning.

The email looks very enticing and tells you that you can pay your business taxes online using American Express.   Basically the pitch is "hey pay your taxes with your Amex card and get get rewards points that you can use to get valuable prizes."  It also direct you to "officially" approved websites to make payments.  These websites of course have that schlocky US Government looking graphics and titles like official payments or 1040.  Its enough to fool anyone except for those footnotes.

The first footnote at the top which I'm sure the Amex lawyers insisted on putting above the fold says "These tax payment companies charge a convenience fee of approximately 2.49%. This fee may be tax-deductible. Check with your tax advisor".    Well, I did at the end of tax season and my accountant told me, why would you want to pay that fee.  So, as a service to you readers, I checked over with the IRS official site and here's what I found regarding the fee: "Credit card service providers charge a fee for their service.  This fee can be deducted as a business expense, when paid or incurred by the business."  Ok, so the fee is charged by these "official" looking companies that can assist with your tax payments.

So, here's what we know.  1) Use your Amex card to pay your taxes and get whacked with a 2.49% fee  2) The IRS says  you can deduct this as a business expense 3) According to American Express you can get an $100 Amex Gift card for 20,000 points.  4) Depending on your card you earn 1 point for every $1 spent; there are other options but that's the base card. 5) I'll come back to that earning points thing because it is very confusing.

Let's do some math.  In order to get 20K points you need to charge at a maximum $20,000.  If you paid $20K in taxes using this offer it costs you $498.  However, you may get some tax benefit since you can claim this is a business expense, so lets knock 30% off that $498 to get some tax savings.  Therefore charging $20K in taxes costs you $349 and that gets you $100 in cash from Amex.  Woot, that's some losing proposition and that's on the low end assuming you get 30% in tax savings.

Now to be fair to Amex since I used the lowest points earning option lets see what your break even points earning option you would need to pay for these fees.  I personally can't figure out the levels because the pages on their websites are confusing, so let's stick with the math. 

Let's keep the tax benefit the same at 30%.  So, in order to break even on the $100 you need to have a cost of $143 charged on your Amex card for the service ($143*.7=$100.1).  To get a charge on your Amex card of $143 you need to have paid $5,743 ($143/.0249) in taxes, but in order to get the 20,000 points on that $5,743 charged you need to earn 3.48 points per dollar charged (20,000/5743).

What am I missing here?  Unless you know for sure that you are earning at least 3.5 points per dollar charged, this is a lose, lose scenario for you just like my accountant told me a few months back.  Are you earning 3.5 points per dollar spent?  Do you even know what you are earning or can you even figure it out?  Looks to me for the convenience of not writing out a check you are getting hit over the head in fees.  Seriously, did I make a mistake?  Is this wrong?  I'll be more than happy to correct this post, but it looks to me like this is not a good offer at all.  Some things are just better the old fashioned way - PAPER and CHECKS; that is until that fee comes down!

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Are You An Idiot If You Pay for Shipping on Amazon.com?

I had to have this before the summer was over.  It was more Jimmy Buffett CDs which the whole family loves listening to especially on our back deck in the summer.  So which Buffett CDs did I have to have?   They were a 4 CD box set called Boats, Beaches, Bars, and Ballads and a single disc called Feeding Frenzy.  That's a lot of songs to download at 99 cents per and I don't subscribe to a monthly service because I don't download a lot of songs - mostly listen to a few artists and then Satellite Radio for the rest.

So, I went to the only place to buy CDs now which is Amazon.com and placed an order, Friday at 9:12 PM EST which qualified for free super saver shipping.  As I recall, to get the CDs with next day delivery would have cost me $15 or so, but I wasn't stupid.   The CDs arrived today at around lunch time.  That's 4 days including the weekend.  That's really, really fast and the best of all it was FREE with no taxes.  Seriously, I got two day (business) delivery for free.

I wonder how much faster it would have been delivered if I would have paid for it.  There's no way I would have received it on Sunday, so maybe Monday at the earliest?  So, the next time you buy at Amazon, DO NOT PAY FOR SHIPPING if your order is large enough because you are just flushing dollars away. 

No wonder my old favorite record store, Scotti's Records is only down to a few stores.  How do you compete with such a large inventory and almost instant gratification without the download?  You can't.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S.  Thanks Jackie for the comments before this post!!!

Jim Cramer A Modern Day Paul Revere in The Housing Bust?

I saw this link over at Drudge yesterday and I thought I'd include it in a post.  It is Jim Cramer from The Street.com ranting on TV about how the Fed is clueless about the problems in the housing market.  I mean he literally goes off as you can see from the video.  The show was from Friday, but sorry, I get busy with work.   As of today it had over 785K views so clearly people are paying attention to Cramer.  In a nutshell Cramer believes that of the 14 million mortgages written between 2005 and 2007, that 7 million of them are in trouble because of teaser loan rates and the Fed doesn't seem to care about these people losing their homes.  For a follow up as to why Jim made the call see this link from The Street.com TV when he offers a much calmer explanation as to why he made the call on Friday.

Now I'm not in the habit of offering advice, but it is hard to not pay attention to what Jim Cramer said.  I don't know about you, but I've seen homes that used to sell in a week in my development sit unsold for months.  Homes down in Avalon NJ where we were just on vacation are also not selling (that's not the over $3 million home range which sell any time) and how many of you don't know someone that didn't take one of this gimmick mortgages.  In fact, a few years back I was ridiculed by friends for not refinancing my mortgage instead of doing what I did which was take a rate modification down to almost 5% fixed while leaving the years left on the mortgage the same.

I met Jim Cramer two times over the years when I was a Managing Director at Harrisdirect.  I have two signed copies of his books and I read the religiously.  I saw his radio show in-person twice and got to meet the man who is actually very soft spoken in person.  At one point, I looked into getting a job with them, but it didn't work out.  I think he is genuinely looking out for the average, small investor and his major upside is generating advertising dollars from increase site traffic.  So, I believe him that there is a problem and people aren't paying attention, at least the Fed who left interest rates the same.

His blow up was an ominous warning.  Will he be right?  Who knows because there are so many outcomes that can occur.  I for one believe the problem is as bad as he screamed, but hopefully people with some authority to make changes and perhaps a future President realize this is a bomb that is exploding.  I believe Jim, I believe, now go back and relax in your Summit NJ home.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

So Your News Is Slanted - Wow That's News

I'm so sick and tired of the issue of whether Ruppert Murdoch/News Corp is going to keep the journalistic integrity of The Wall Street Journal now that he has purchased it.  Please, this is just sickening.  Here are some links to articles where The Journal had to point out that it will maintain its journalistic integrity that you've come to enjoy.

• Reader's Hopes and Fears....
• Dow Jones Deal Faq with an explanation of the independent editorial committee
• The Bancroft Family Statement
• A New Owner
• And, not to be out down, The New York Times weighs in

I love The Wall Street Journal and read it every day.  I never felt that the news articles were slanted, although the editorial pages slanted to the political right.  However, if you watch enough news, read enough blogs, or read enough newspapers, one thing is clear. 
Every writer, editor, news reporter has their own slant to the story.  They have their own reasons for writing what they write.  Sure some writers, reporters, and bloggers are way over the top and you can recognize what their motivation is, other it is not so easy. 

For me I always keep in mind that all main stream news channels are in it to make money.  They are not there to serve the public good, unless the public is a shareholder.  I stopped subscribing to The New York Times because I couldn't stand their National, International, and Editorial pages; I just thought the news perspective was slanted too much left and even anti-Israel.  I do miss the Sports, Business, and Entertainment, but thankfully I can pick up free RSS feeds.

I'm reading a book right now called The White Tecumseh which is a biography of General Sherman.  One of the things inside the book is the abuse General Sherman and General Grant took from newspaper reporters.  In fact, Sherman had reporters banned from his army and when one of subordinates allowed one to follow that subordinate around he had that general brought up on court-martial charges.  The news reporter even admitted to publishing incorrect statements but didn't care.  Why?  He was in the business of selling newspapers and knew what his public wanted to read.

 

Even back then your news was slanted.  Surprised?  You shouldn't be.  The best way to get your news is via the internet where you can quickly get different viewpoints and hopefully you can form your own conclusions.  Figure out what that person's Blogging Storey is, that way you know what their frame of reference is; I've even noticed a difference between political bloggers versus bloggers with the political bloggers definitely having their own political motives.  Me, I set up Google News Feeds on my favorite political subjects (John McCain) and see both sides of the political spectrum.  That's the only way to get a better picture.

I hate to say it, but family owned newspapers are a thing of the past.  If journalistic integrity is important to you, stick to reading just the associated press or spend more time online where you can now get a better view.  The story of The Wall Street Journal standing up to News Corp because of integrity just seemed to me to be a little self-serving as they tried to hold out for better terms or more money.  I still love them though!!

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Hey Eric, What's With All of The LinkedIn and Facebook Invites?

So the last few days I expanded my Facebook and LinkedIn network and I got a bunch of emails and instant messages from people asking, umm why? Well a few big name blogs (yes people have more traffic than I do :-) like Jason Calacanis (yes my tough commenter on bloggingstocks.com) has declared Facebook Bankruptcy and Social Networking Exhaustion.  Robert Scoble countered back with pro Facebook posts and now recently posted around his favorite Facebook apps.  Also I saw this link I believe from Scoble on 12 ways to use Facebook professionally, so I decided to give it another try.  However, with a different twist which is how it compares to LinkedIn for professionals.

So, I'm giving both a go and here are my quick observations from the past few days:

• I have many more people in my professional network on LinkedIn.  I have 116 real contacts at LinkedIn and a whopping 18 on Facebook.
• Both were very easy to upload my Outlook contacts and then look for friends on both; however, I don't know about you but trolling through LinkedIn's add a contact  has always been very tedious while Facebook is actually kind of fun and easy to use.
• LinkedIn's format and profiles are very bland even for a professional site and reminds me most about those old Who's Who in American Business books that you try and get sold on.
• While Facebook has that underlying feeling that people are kind of there to find a date (notice the questions on your profile: relationship status, looking for...), LinkedIn feels like an easy place for recruiters to look for their next job applicant.
• Facebook of course has a ton more applications and is much more dynamic when it comes to current status and updates.  Plus, by being able to join Central NJ as a network I get to see what is happening in my local area; posted by other Facebook peeps.

Net, net to me LinkedIn just feels like something you have to do in order to be a professional and feels like a safe step for busy management types (the people I used to work with for 10 years at AT&T and 5 years at Harrisdirect) who want to test networking online.  It isn't something that keeps you coming back and checking on people unless you need to look for a job or connect to people that could be hiring.  Most people that I've talked to use it as part of their job search and for finding recruiters in a quiet manner - again it reminds me of that coveted directory of professional recruiters that you used to need in your job search.

However, Facebook is really a fast grower for professionals because there is more to do and as Jason Calacanis pointed out, more ways to spend time (or waste time).  Searching for people is fun and it is easy to leave messages for people.  You can look for people in past jobs, past schools, or in and around where you live.  It is the perfect mash up of MySpace and LinkedIn - it is becoming professional enough for co-workers not to look down on you, yet it has a much safer environment for more social past-times.  It is definitely less creepy and less raunchy than MySpace which I have very little use for; my favorite past time is to look for neighbors who really get into MySpace.

For me Facebook looks like a real winner long term while MySpace as I've written before is just the year 2010 version of GeoCities.  If LinkedIn doesn't up their applications and usability it will become as useful as the Who's Who in American Business reference books of the past.  I'm starting to believe in Facebook again, even if I don't have a ton of contacts and you can definitely waste a lot of time.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

I Guess My Flying Experience to Norfolk Wasn't The Worst

Wow, I read this article in the WSJ called Summer Flying Turns Ugly and then I watched this video on a flight to Dallas from NY that took 10 hours and I think I should consider myself lucky for not being stranded for so long. 

After reading that WSJ article it is clear to me that the airlines are going way over the top in making sure they are over booking flights that cause problems when one is canceled, making sure that every flight tries to take off so it doesn't cost them money, and squeezing every last ounce of profit by taking away our dignity on a flight (no food on the plane - come one). 

Just watch this video it could happen to you.  That's why whenever I can I'd rather ride the Acela to Washington DC or Boston.  You take a flight to one of those cities from the NY area, and you are a LOSER! :-)

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Don't Fly Continental Airlines from Newark to Norfolk

This is a true story, I don't exaggerate at all.  On Tuesday I had a two hour meeting in Norfolk Virginia, so instead of taking the train from Edison NJ to DC and hitching a ride with a co-worker, I thought it would be faster and cheaper to fly round trip.  Little did I know that Norfolk has a pact with Continental Airlines to cause people to stay over night there.  So here's my tale of woe....

My meeting in Norfolk ended early and I was dropped after at the airport.  I put myself on the 5:30 flight instead of my original 7PM flight and by the time I got through security and walked to the gate, they canceled BOTH flights.  Good old Continental couldn't have warned me before I rebooked myself?  <sigh>. 

So I turned around and walked back to the ticket counter and stood in line with a bunch of angry New Jerseyans and angry people trying to get to Seattle.  I couldn't go the eTicket route and of course good old Continental only HAD 2 PEOPLE working the counter.  So, after standing in line for 25 minutes behind a bunch of sweaty angry Jersey guys, I was able to rebook my flight to 1PM on Wednesday.  You see, I couldn't fly anywhere else BECAUSE CONTINENTAL ONLY FLIES TO CLEVELAND, NEWARK, AND HOUSTON FROM NORFOLK (reason #1 to never do this again).

I then got a room in the Norfolk Airport Hilton for $169+taxes but to my surprise, the restaurant in this Hilton was an upscale version of Ruby Tuesdays (yuck).  I also was without any clothes or toiletries and unfortunately I can't walk anywhere around the hotel because there are NO sidewalks (reason #2 to never stay here again).  So, I grabbed a $20 cab ride to Virginia Beach for a great meal on the bay at a place called Lynnhaven Fish House.  I had their she-crab soup, baked scallops with crab and some cheese, salad, dessert and of course a few cocktails.  My waitress also was from a town close to Long Valley NJ so the company was welcoming.  I then hopped back in a $20 cab ride but this time to stop at the ONLY clothing store in the area, Walmart (reason #3 to never do this again).

I ran into Walmart and bought a $10 pair of brown leather sandals, a $10 black Spider-Man tshirt, a pair of boxer shorts, and what I thought was a $14 pair of size 36 denim wrangler shorts.  When I got back to my hotel room and tried everything on, the shorts were so big that I pulled them up to my neck.  Always useless Walmart had a pair of size 48s on a size 36 hangar.  Sigh, I had to wear the same pair of black dress pants with my brown sandals and Spider-Man tshirt for a second day in a row (YUCK and boy did I look special).

On Wednesday, I checked my flight which was on time for the moment and worked in the hotel all morning.  By the time I got to the airport at 11:15, I was told that Continental had canceled both earlier flights and both later flights so that there was only 2 out of the original 6 flights running.  Why is that?  Well a nice Continental employee told me that Continental picks on Norfolk because it is a) small and b) it is in the flight path coming from the south into Newark so that if other flights got priority they CANCEL THE FLIGHTS FROM NORFOLK (reason #4 to never do this again).  To save my fingers, here's the rest of my story in bullet form:
                                       Reasons #5 to #12 to never do this again

• My flight was delayed because "they needed a plane".  Yeah right they were just staggering the flight.
• Norfolk only had one security lane open so I stood on line FOREVER
• We finally boarded but that was after people got bumped from the flight because it was over booked.
• I heard the same complaint about Norfolk's bad luck in getting bumped from numerous stranded people
• We waited 30 minutes on the tarmac but were first in line adding to my staggering point
• I was sandwiched in this small plane between the curve of the window and a very large woman who's left thigh I ended up getting intimate with because the plane was so small
• We circled for 30 minutes because - well they never gave a good reason
• When we finally landed it took another 30 minutes at our gate because our gate was changed and we had to wait for the other plane to move out

I got home at 5PM with what was supposed to be an hour and 15 minutes in the air.  It was terrible.  Oh and if you think I was the only one, check out the line at Continental's customer service counter when I walked by.  Morale of this story is to:

NEVER FLY CONTINENTAL AIRLINES INTO NORFOLK VIRGINIA FROM NEWARK, EVER.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Hi ad:tech I'm Sam Negin

********This post was also cross posted over at The MadAve Journal********

I was thrilled that the folks over at The MadAve Journal asked me to be one of the bloggers to write about the upcoming ad:tech. They gave me the topic of the personal side of technology, how it helps people in their lives, and how companies balanced personal and professional goals.

Sponsors were given a list of 6 questions and the folks at The Madison Avenue Journal collected the responses. Between these responses and my own answers to the questions, I've written this commentary, but you are probably wondering who Sam Negin is and why I named him in this post.

Sam is one of my college roommates from Rutgers (year withheld to protect my age) and when he graduated he joined a program with the Army that paid for medical school with the tradeoff that he had to spend time in the Army as a doctor. Sam always wanted to be a doctor to help people and even offered the roommates charter membership in a medical plan called the Samo in exchange for beer money.

Anyway, the Army deal seemed to have been a good one except that he was shipped off to serve in Iraq to help injured Iraqis as well as our own soldiers. Oh, in case you think this is a sad story it is not - Sam is back from Iraq and is currently stationed in Germany

[Check out: Evening Keynote: Old Warriors Don't Die! Wednesday, April 25, 5:00pm-6:00pm]

However, this doesn't diminish the fact that he gave up years of his life to serve our country so that when he finally paid his dues he can practice being a doctor; not for making money, but to help people which is the kind of person he really is.  I've had numerous careers since Sam and I shared a Silvers apartment at Rutgers and of course I thought that all of them had improved people's lives. Looking back, I can see clearly now when I've impacted people in a positive way and when I was just buying into a company's strategy to deliver a return to their investors or as I like to say, playing the role of George Jetson as a money making cog at Spacely's Space Sprockets.

[Check out: Gamer Nation: Strategies and Tactics for Brand Immersion in the Gaming Universe Tuesday, April 24, 10:45am-11:45am]

While you might think it would be tough to find responses for this subject from technology and online advertising conference sponsors, they were there and their responses really do prove that technology can impact people in a personal way.

Eliminating the Distance Dimension

"Distance no longer has a hold on my life", declared Organic Chairman and Founder Jonathan Nelson and this short quote speaks volumes as how technology impacts every day lives. No more are you tethered to an office or a factory to earn a living and the 9 to 5 days are becoming the latest extinct corporate beast.

[Check out: Mobile Marketing Ecosystem Thursday, April 26, 12:15pm-1:15pm]

My wife Mary once complained "the kids and I don't know when you are working, reading email, or playing World of Warcraft because you always look the same - typing away on your laptop." I work more now than when I did driving to an office and I'm always on; I'm on when I coaching my kid's soccer team, on when I'm looking at hot tubs on a Saturday, and I'm on the night of my daughter's birthday as I type up this post.

[Check out: Tales from the Bleeding Edge: The New Mobility - A Hands On Experience, Tuesday, April 24, 4:00pm-5:00pm]

"Technology often gives us more time to do more work, so the time saving idea is a fallacy," is a quote Harold Mann President of Mann Consulting provides that proves my point with a caveat that while you might not save time, you can squeeze more into the day without wasting your life on Route 78 commuting to NYC.

[Check out: New Media Universe, New Consumer Behavior Thursday, April 26, 12:15pm-1:15pm]

While on the surface it looks like a return to a sweatshop brought about by investors looking to squeeze more minutes out of an employee, it really is the exact opposite. You can work anywhere now and be more efficient. This lets you spend more time, not less with your family and friends. Commuting will (as it has for me) become a thing of the past, allowing you to be instantly available.

Need to attend a teacher's conference - done, because you can make up your time later during the day. The technology companies of today truly make your personal lives better by giving you the ability to reach out and touch the people important to you whenever and wherever you want. My kids no longer remember what it was like for me to commute - they really believe that Daddy has been home forever.

Someone Has To Make Money

Maybe this part of my post sounds very impersonal and perhaps the people that provided me the quotes that I'm referencing are cringing slightly to be associated with it, but I really enjoyed reading the more realistic responses. Stripped away were the party-line responses and left were blunt honest assessments that we provide a service that people or companies need.

And you know what, there is nothing wrong with doing a service or providing a product that as Dana Todd co-founder and principal of SiteLab International Inc wrote.... "We're here to make money for the company and for our customers. Our ability to continue to provide a great environment depends wholly on our ability to stay profitable." It may not be something that as Dana wrote, "reduces carbon emissions", but providing people with opportunities in a fun environment does make them have better personal lives.

[Check out: Publishing in the Digital Era: Feast or Famine Thursday, April 26, 12:15pm-1:15pm

"While the dream of becoming a .com millionaire is a driving factor for innovation throughout the internet... without investors desire to make a buck, Google, YouTube, MySpace and other sites would never have gotten off the ground," William Rice, President of Web Marketing Association pointed out. Providing products that don't necessary save the world or solve global warming, but enrich people's lives including the company's employees is a contribution to society. 

 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Amex My oh My

I really wonder why American Express is changing their advertising them from My Life My Card to Are You a Card Member?.  According to AdWeek, their agency Ogilvy is changing their tagline and of course their print, TV, outdoor and online campaigns.  In the article is this quote from John Hayes Amex's CMO:  "The new campaign continues the tradition of defining the value of belonging to the American Express community by showcasing some of our most exceptional cardmembers and the ways in which membership works for them," said AmEx chief marketing officer John Hayes, in a statement. "But the challenge we put forward in our latest campaign ('Are you a Cardmember?'), not only reaffirms for existing members why they belong, it calls to non-members to consider becoming a cardmember."

I'm actually not being terribly critical, but I liked the My Life My Card campaign because it featured famous people in silhouettes while they featured card benefits.  According to the quote, I don't think it changes that aspect of it, but of course the biggest change is the call to action which is much stronger to non-card holders.  I just think it is a little too subtle for the audience, plus when big behemoth marketing companies advertise it takes a while to make the big elephant dance.

When I was at AT&T (the older and better version), I saw plenty of super large advertising campaigns.  I remember the iPlan (still don't know what the heck that was), True, OneRate, and Personal Network.  We spent hundreds of millions of dollars behind these campaigns and while I can't claim to  being part of the marketing communications team to develop these campaigns (I either built offers or ran tactical marketing plans in support of them), I did see how long it takes for a company and employees to embrace the new platform.  Plus, lets not forget the army of copy writers, script writers, and designers employed at multiple agencies.  All of this takes time and of course money.

The best execution of this was AT&T's True strategy.  All of our calling plans, company awards, network, direct mail, creatives, inbound scripts, rewards plans, stationary (you get the idea) were branded True.  TrueVoice, TrueUSA, TrueRewards, TrueChoice (calling card), and of course our highest award TrueSpirit (on a side note, I'm still pissed off at Joe Nacchio for moving the awards ceremony, the year I finally won the award, from exotic get aways for your spouse to a dinner at the friggin New Brunswick NJ towers in the scenic area off of Route F&CKIN% 18).  However, these executions take time to reach all aspects of the company.

Back in the True days, we advertisers didn't have to fight for such a small share of our audience's attention.  The net was dial-up, DVRs were not around, satellite radio wasn't around, folks actually read the daily newspaper in paper form, and people actually had to listen to our ads.  Now it takes time to reach your audience and you have to do it well across multiple channels.  It isn't as simple as dropping a few hundred million dollars on network TV and then watch the cash register ring.

So, the short question is, I really wonder what is driving Amex to change their campaign other than change for the sake of change or tweaking a giant ad campaign with a new call to action?

PardonMyFrench (sm),

Eric

Music, YouTube, and Making Money

A very interesting article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today called Sales of Music, Long in Decline, Plunge Sharply.  I can't help but thinking this foreshadows the big TV versus YouTube and other video sharing sites battle.  However, before we jump into that, here are the high or low lights from the article:

• CD sales declined 20% this year and they account for 85% of music sold
• 800 music stores including 89 Tower locations closed
• Apple sold 100 million iPods proving that someone still listens to music :-P
• Digital sales of music has picked up by 54%
• According to one source, one billion songs are downloaded illegally

The article also talked about how individual CD sales are declining for folks like Norah Jones.   However, those individual declines can easily be explained if you believe in The Long Tail and that record companies should no longer be relying on mega hits.  This also explains the decline in retail stores and shelf space where storing music and songs online and downloading what you want, legally, is more efficient and cheaper than stocking shelves and betting on a hit.  BTW - I don't feel sorry for Norah Jones because she stole a Grammy from Springsteen for The Rising.

Enough background and back to my post.  Do I care about retailers?  No and I don't care about the music industry having to change how they produce music because the term hits is quickly fading as individuals determine what they like and join communities around their music tastes.  What I do think is interesting is that the music industry has paid to produce the CDs and paid the musicians who made the CDs.  That gives them rights to protect their product just like Viacom in their battle with YouTube.

Who are we to say how someone makes money?  If a musician signs on with a label who produces their music, why should they have that stolen from them.  Who are you to say how someone makes a living?  Don't give me - well tough, they should tour more or figure out some other way to get paid.  Or, the classic, well take less money.  Who is to tell you how much is too much money? Isn't this America where you can plot your own way?  Last time I checked it was.

If you want to distribute your music for free, good for you.  If you think you have a better revenue model that gets you paid what you think it is worth; then go for it.  How about a share of the advertising revenue from the downloading site?  Great.  If you sign on with a record company because you believe it is more efficient or you'll get paid more;  great, but guess what, they are going to want to protect their investment which means your fans may get in trouble for illegal downloads.  Or, sometime in the near future your contracts will get smaller and smaller.

This is simple.  A company produces your work, they want copyright protections which means places like YouTube and music download sites have to pay attention.  Why should the dollars involved with this transaction (viewing TV clips or listening to music) be shifted from going to the legal copyright owners to the sites that facilitated the transaction? 

Advertising revenue is generated because someone paid the site owner who stores the information and makes it easy to download; what gives you the right to determine how the transaction is paid?  Last time I checked, nobody should tell you how much you should sell your product for or how to push it out.   Again, this is simple - it is about how someone gets paid and their rights to determine that method.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Only The News That's Fit to Sell

This morning I did my usual routine - helped my son get ready for school and then I sat down to read newspapers and my RSS feeds while my daughter watched Sesame Street (BTW - I like the Mr Noodle version that was eaten by a dinosaur in Jurassic Park 3).  Anyway buried on page 6 of the Newark Star Ledger in a page with snips of Associated Press articles was this title White House board clears surveillance, which I of course read.  The small article with little fanfare wrote about how the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board setup to investigate the White House's electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking found that the White House did not violate citizen's civil liberties.  Now whether this board did a thorough job or not, I can't tell from this article, but what I can see is that this wasn't featured on the front pages of newspapers.  Hmmm?

Not to hold the Star Ledger up as a pillar of fair news reporting, I looked in the WSJ and found nothing.  How about the NY Times?  Well, I did find an article with a little more meat in it called Privacy Board Clears US Spy Programs, but that was only after I searched for it.  It had no link from the main US News page.  How about the USA Today that was involved in reporting of the wiretapping story?  Nothing but the AP article and once again only after I searched for it.  Am I missing something here?  Maybe because this wasn't a scientific experiment and just a casual browsing of news sites.

People, the news world has one mission in life  - to sell more advertising by upping circulation numbers and only articles that can do that get your attention.  There must be so much pressure to go after falling circulation numbers and advertising revenues that perhaps the news you are reading is not as perfect as you once thought it was.

Just like the blogging world where one of your best tools to get an audience is to be controversial, the MSM has to do the same.  Call it the J.Jonah Jameson of Spider-man fame (hyphen included as that was the original version of the name) strategy.  Jonah would only print articles or photos that he thought would describe Spider-man as a menace, whether he really believed it or not.  Why?  Because he was solely focused on selling newspapers.

Am I writing that you should ignore main stream media (MSM)? No.  What I am writing is to not stay so focused on reading only one source of information.  To really be involved in a subject try reading multiple media sources in a day including blogs and other online news sites.  Perhaps with enough versions of the same article, you'll actually get a better view of what is the truth.  Reading multiple views of the same subject (liberal and conservative) will only help you understand and see the only truth which is that All The News That's Fit Print Are The Ones That Are Fit to Sell.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

BTW - on the front page of the Star Ledger is an article about a pretty wife's trial for murder and dismemberment of her husband.  Very interesting article and one that I've been personally following.  The title of the article is No one saw her chop him up, state admits - nicely done.

Xm and Sirius - Still Fired Up

I'm still fired up today on a few articles found in the WSJ called Sirius-XM's Fate Hinges on Definitions and How Sirius-XM Deal Would Affect Listeners.  Both articles screamed to me that folks that don't like this merger or say it isn't in the public's interest don't live in the real world.  As I sit and listen to my XM radio, I don't understand how the FCC could allow SBC to buy Bell South and say that is in the public's interest and this deal is not.  If Kevin Martin and the rest of the talking heads at the FCC would realize is that when you buy a new car it comes equipped with AM (free), FM (free), CD player (free), Tape player (free but who cares), and Satellite Radio (costs good money per month). 

Looks to me like there is plenty of competition right?  Satellite radio costs money while everything else, umm, does not.  Seriously, how many of you continue to pay for Satellite after the promotional period is over?  Not many when compared with new car sales.  Unlike the telecommunications arena, which the FCC seems more than happy to re-write who competes with who and what is in the public interest or not, they seem to be resistant to this.  I wonder why?  Maybe you can use the following reasons mentioned in the first WSJ article:

• The radio industry opposes the deal
• The FCC could seek eventual return of some FCC-awarded radio spectrums
• The Howard Stern problem

Well, if these really are issues that the FCC wrestles with as part of this deal, it looks to me like the have other motives.  Howard Stern and indecency?  Please, that's ridiculous.  I have little kids and they drive in my car.  Do you know what I do?  I make sure XM's comedy channel is NOT ON when they are in the car.  Same as any parent should do.  WE DON'T NEED OR WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO TELL PARENTS HOW TO POLICE THEIR MEDIA.  As opposed to the Janet-Jackson Super Bowl problem when a football game burst into a boob-fest (parents not expecting this), these channels are well-known by the consumers of satellite radio.

Radio spectrum and the radio industry, hmmm, I wonder what kind of influence this has on the decision making, but if the radio industry opposes this, doesn't that mean they are in the SAME COMPETITIVE industry?  Please, this will simplify things for consumers, collapse content so I can get the NFL, and have limited impact on prices paid because these two don't compete with each other they compete with the free equipment that has like 100 years of experience under their belts.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

XM and Sirius, Perfect Together

So, of course you have heard by now that XM and Sirius want to merge together to form one company, but the folks at the FCC, according to the WSJ, will face a high hurdle due to the 1997 ruling that created the industry.  I also watched the interview found on the same WSJ article with former FCC Chairman Michael Powell and he provided good insight into what can occur.  What I don't get is, why the FCC can't see that this is good for consumers?

I've been an XM subscriber for 3 years and have a second one installed in my office.  I'm hooked and don't mind paying the monthly fee, so very often I'm asked about the service.   Very often I'm asked about the differences between the two and other than the content offerings, I don't think there is much difference between them; a few years back I helped out one of my agencies of record with a pitch for Sirius (they didn't win it but I got a free lunch out of it). My car came loaded with XM so that's why I have them.  If I had to choose over again, I'd probably pick Sirius because of the NFL package and unique programming channels.   

In fact, I owned both stocks up until about 6 months when I cut my losses with XM and used the proceeds to by Archer Daniels.   When people asked me which one to buy, I'd always say both because they were the only two in the category.  I kept Sirius because I believed they had more mojo, but that was it.

Now, if the FCC doesn't let them merge because of competition or what's best for the consumer, I think I'll vomit.  Found on the Powell video was a screen shot from the LA Times that showed that there are 80 million FM/AM users and 14 million satellite radio owners.  If that doesn't prove that there is competition than I don't know what will.

How can the FCC approve SBC to buy AT&T and then Bell South and stand behind that as good for the consumer?  XM-Sirius doesn't have pricing power because, well AM/FM is free and access to those waves are free - this is the direct opposite of telecommunications and net neutrality.  The RBOCs have pricing power which is what scares people on net neutrality; they also own the pipe (with cable companies) while radio does not.

According to the 1997 FCC report and order, the FCC wrote "in the Notice, we pointed out that satellite DARS will face competition from terrestrial radio services, CD players in automobiles and homes and audio services delivered as part of cable and satellite services  and asked whether these delivery media, coupled with fewer than four DARS providers, could ensure an effectively competitive audio services market."  I don't understand why 2 is competitive but 1 is not when you compete with the services the FCC wrote about way back in 1997.

As a big user of satellite, I think this is great for consumers and will simplify their choices and provide even more content.  Unlike the telecommunications world, I don't see how this harms consumers....

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

New Paper WSJ All About Shrinkage?

I know you are hoping for a big bang coming out of the gate for the New Year, but I just don't think that way.  Other than our annual New Year's Eve Party, I don't try and make a big deal of the new year.  I don't like or read annual recaps and refrain from making resolutions.  If I had to pick a start for a new year it always feels to me that September is the start of the year when school starts again after the end of summer.  Plus, in politics that's really the final push.

Anyway, so I just finished reading today's paper (yes I wrote paper) edition of the Wall Street Journal which launched a redesigned print edition and all I keep thinking is that it just seems smaller.  Don't get me wrong, I like the smaller size.  It seems to have less advertising and can be navigated easier.  However, with all of their hoopla over the redesign it didn't seem much different.  I saved their recap for the end so I wouldn't be influenced, but other than the size the only other part I noticed was the summary box in the articles that now gives me a little more information as to whether I should jump in on a particular subject.

My read through it felt exactly the same, if not a tad bit faster with the summaries.  It used to be I'd judge an article's worthiness based on the title and the first paragraph, but now I can use a summary/title combination.  So, either I missed something, or the design was very smooth and tailored to me, or the paper just got smaller.

Judging from the amount of editorial and articles written by L.Gordon Crovitz the WSJ's publisher on their mission to report news and their history/tradition I can only conclude that their fear was that people would think a smaller design equates to less worthy news.  Their FAQ page in the paper seems to support this conclusion.  Under So What's Different the first three out of 7 FAQs deal with size and the other 4 are pretty high level.    The rest of the changes called out with graphics don't seem different to me.

So, either the design was tailored just for me and the changes had little impact on me or the WSJ proves that it is all about size.  Which isn't a news worthy event because George Costanza already alerted us to the shrinkage issue.  Anyway if their goal was to shrink the paper, drive more online readers, cut printing costs and if turn raise print advertising rates without disturbing the readers, I'd judge it a success from my read this morning.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

The New Green Scare

A little historical back drop for you.  Back in 1947, Ronald Reagan, President of the Screen Actors Guild was called to give testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee on communist activities within SAG.  A quote from Reagan is important to be reminded of today regarding Microsoft Vista/IE 7(stay with me)..

In opposing those people (communists), the best thing to do is make democracy work. In the Screen Actors Guild we make it work by insuring everyone a vote and by keeping everyone informed. I believe that, as Thomas Jefferson put it, if all the American people know all of the facts they will never make a mistake.  Whether the party should be outlawed, that is a matter for the government to decide. As a citizen, I would hesitate to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology. However, if it is proven that an organization is an agent of foreign power, or in any way not a legitimate political party -- and I think the government is capable of proving that -- then that is another matter.

Back to the present keeping in mind that phishers=communists and Microsoft=HUAC.  According to the article in the December 19th edition of the WSJ called Software to Spot Phishers Irks Small Concerns Microsoft seems to start a new Green Scare.  In this case Microsoft is trying to be the judge, jury, and executioner of what is a legitimate site or not without the whole picture (opposite of Reagan's quote - "if people know all the facts, they will never make a mistake".)  Unfortunately, according to Microsoft they won't know all the facts.  What that means is that if you don't have a green bar you could be avoided.  How do you get a green bar?  I don't know, ask Microsoft but if you are a small business and not an LLC, partnership, or S/C corp you will not be in the green zone for a while (according to the video link found on the article, maybe 6 months).  And, when you couple this with phishing filter you could end up worse off with a yellow bar.

Sure Microsoft says this is all in the name of protecting consumers from terrible phish sites, but how about the legitimate small business trying to make a buck on the internet?  What happens to them?  Don't they get to participate in the Long Tail?  This certainly puts a burden on small business, but boosts big e-Commerce sites like eBay and Amazon.

Seriously.  What do you think?  Is it fair to hammer small business in the name of protecting you from phishing?  How about Microsoft setting themselves up as the final arbiter of what is a legitimate site without complete information.  I think I can guess what Reagan would have said on this issue...

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

***********UPDATE 12-27**************************

Well, just when I rip on my own post for not getting any love over at Marketing Profs (I think it just has to do with timing), I receive a nice link from The Street.com.  Thanks James!!  As some of you readers know, I've always been a fan of The Street.com and my Mother might be Jim Cramer's biggest fan.

Shop, Shop, Shopping All Day Long at the Catalog

Flashback a few days ago at my house...

Ding Dong.  "Herumff", I grunted, doing my best J. Jonah Jameson (of Spider-man) imitation,  There's the mailman again.  "Marrrryyy!!! Could you get the door?  I'm busy."

"Yes hold on", as Mary rushes to the door and opens it.  "Hi!, oh these are for us?, Mary asks the mailman.  "Let me ask you something.  Why do you keep coming to the door instead of dropping it in the mailbox?"  The mailman who speaks broken English and is obviously in a hurry, just hands her a stack of catalogs and jogs back to his truck.

"Mare, he rings the doorbell everyday and leaves a giant stack of catalogs.  And, it is getting worse everyday.  With all of the shopping you do, these catalogs are multiplying like rabbits right before Easter."  End of flashback.

It is true, the amount of catalogs have exploded at my house. At first I thought it was because we put ourselves on the national do not call list a few years back, proving out a warning my father in-law gave me when he said "the amount of catalogs will explode once you land on the DNC list."  My only guess now is that the retailers, especially the catalog intense ones, have tied their catalog sales tracking with their e-Commerce.  And, besides that, even above average on the tech scale people like my wife, don't walk around with the laptop glued to their, well...lap.  So, some people actually flip through tons of these and as my wife says, "it is a lot more convenient than slogging through the internet" or another one which is "the internet is just a means to an end, an ordering end."

To further prove my wife's shopping habit is more the norm than not, comes this article in this week's Business Week called Catalogs, Catalogs, Everywhere.  Interesting points in the article are:

• # catalogs mailed in 2005 grew 5.5% from 2004
• Victoria's Secret mailed out 400 million catalogs or 1.33 for every American and their online/catalog sales accounted for 28% of all sales.
• More progressive retailers are using catalogs to promote imagery using big glossy pages with resolutions that are not approachable by most home PCs.
• These same retailers don't print every item available, just the ones to paint the picture and then use the web to offer everything else.

My wife is the typical big-time shopper of 2006; use anything including catalogs and the web to get holiday gifts.  The catalogs are everywhere, but we really do go through them because they are easier to flip through and get ideas.  The internet as Mary said, is for completing the sale once you know what you want.  Catalogs are not dead and I'm sure all postal carriers are rejoicing with the new weight reduction program the shopping community has put them on.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Marketing Rapid Fire 6-5-06

Lots of good articles out there today and a couple of old ones I didn't write about.

1. Leading off is Bill Tancer over at Hitwise, who tracked searches of Barry Bonds versus Babe Ruth and guess what? The Babe still rules when it comes to search activity.  I wish Bill would humor me and check out the Pennsylvania Senate Race.
2. Charlene Li my favorite Forrester Analyst and the one that I was saddened not to see at the NY conference last week, looks at how much her corporate blog was worth.  Charlene blurted out in a forum that her blog could be associated with $1 million worth of revenue, but as she points out, that's how much she thinks it is worth to the company due to increased revenues from the client base.  I think she discovered for herself what i figured way back when in the post What Came First The Chicken or the Blog.
3. Top 50 Online Advertisers according to ClickZ.  Vonage continues to pour money down the toilet with their unending advertising spend. while Financial Services advertisers make up a lot of the top 50 spenders.
4. Google is launching a web competitive version of Excel.  This was announced by the Wall Street Journal but more information can be found over at Google Blogoscoped.

That's it for Marketing Rapid Fire. 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

GE Goes Back To The Future

I just really love this idea for GE's new advertising campaign called Got A Second.  As reported by Stuart Elliot in The New York Times article, Got A Second?  G.E. Has A Quick Message, GE has created 1 second commercials about a behind the scenes look at recent filming of commercials.  Now, besides being humorous, DVR owners can expand the ads so that they can view more of the  "show" and myspace users can also link to Elli the elephant star of one of the commercials.  After searching what was mostly strictly Rate R entries, I did find Elli's homepage and she now has 10 friends; sorry, I refused to link to her.  The myspace page for Elli is http://www.myspace.com/ellifont and here's a picture of the star of the commercial.  Finally, there is a website where you can view the ads and get a little more information on their strategy.

I love this approach for a number of reasons, but most of them all revolve making the commercials pass what I simply call the TiVo Test.  Whenever I reviewed ads as part of an upcoming campaign, I was frequently the only one in the meeting with a DVR.  BTW - my daughter just turned 4 and she has NEVER watched TV without TiVo.  Anyway, I took it upon myself to voice my opinion on whether the concept we were looking at would pass my own TiVo Test; most of them did not, but the concept that GE is running right now will pass for the first few times.  I love the concept because it:

• Tightly integrated with the web
• Allows you to create a friendship with Elli, if you are so desperate that you need one friend
• Takes advantage of the DVR owners and lets them watch an interesting commercial if they want
• Re-introduces marketers to an old, but effective advertising technique

Back in the old days as referenced in the NY Times article, advertisers sponsored shows and were tightly integrated into the content - the article even references GE Theater that was hosted by then actor Ronald Reagan.  With all of the talk now about product placement in TV shows, video games, user generated commercials, and etc I think GE is leading the way back to the future where major advertisers sponsor an entire show and effectively roadblock out the competition.  In fact, while surfing TV last night when nothing was on, my wife and I watched a re-run of Jerry Maguire on TBS.   What was fascinating about the  re-run from an advertising perspective was that before they cut to a mainstream boring commercial, they focused on Tom Cruise and his upcoming Mission Impossible movie.  The mainstream commercials resulted in me either pounding through them with TiVo or when it was live, reading my book or surfing the internet.  However, we always watched the focus on Mission Impossible.

I love the GE ads and for a few times they will pass the TiVo Test.  I'm not sure about becoming friends with an elephant, but if that's what floats your boat make sure you bring plenty of virtual peanuts.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

MySpace Letter

To: Ross Levinsohn , President of Fox Interactive Media
Fr:  Eric Frenchman
Re: What to Do With MySpace

Mr Levinsohn,

I read with interest Sunday's NY Times article regarding MySpace and then I subsequently wrote a post on my website titled My Those Are Low CPMs at MySpace.  It occurred to me that while you probably read with interest the NY Times article, you probably missed my personal post so I thought I would take a different tact since my post was more helpful than the article from a strategy perspective. In that post, I wrote that you bought a conversational marketing place with MySpace and you should stop trying to force-fit the kiddies of your site into a nice bunch of consumers of typical marketing messages.  Why do I think I can offer this advice?  Simple, I buy a ton of media and most recently I managed the online media buying for Harrisdirect the 17th largest US internet advertiser; plus, you work on MySpace so you are open to conversations, right?

MY THOSE CPMs ARE LOW

According to the article, you are currently selling banner advertising at the rock bottom price of 10 cent CPMs which is really, really pathetic.  You probably think you have a lot of big name advertisers like E*Trade, Verizon, Cingular, University of Phoenix, but my guess is that these advertisers are not really MySpace direct advertisers but part of a media buying network like Advertising.com.  I have no inside knowledge, so I could be wrong, but I doubt it because these companies need credit worthy, over 18 customers and MySpace is not a site that they would normally fish in.  Sure, they probably grab a customer once in a while with your 70 million or so profiles, but then again if I dropped a fish hook in the ocean with no bait I'll eventually catch a fluke.  Instead of dreaming of getting higher CPMs from traditional advertisers, try a different strategy and use the strengths of your group of consumers.

MySpace STRENGTHS

Obviously you have a ton of traffic every day since you are the second largest server of pages on the internet behind Yahoo, but who is using your pages and why are they there?  Simple, you have a social network which makes it very easy for kids, 14 years and older, to quickly build a homepage and list their likes and dislikes, post photos and videos, find and connect with friends, and check out and meet new people.  I set up a page myself and you know what, you really don't gather enough information to really know who these people are.  So, stick with what you know, these kids are there to socialize not be a shill for deodorant products.

CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING ONLY

Kids, of which my wife says I'm still one (plus I do have two little ones) socialize regarding music, video, downloads, latest gadgets, cool toys, movies, clothing, video games, comic book superheros, World of Warcraft, sports, baseball cards, friends, dating, and maybe even latest cell phones, but that's stretching it a bit.   Plus, depending on the age, politics.  In fact, my 12 year old nephew and I discussed his distorted view of the President during Passover Seder.   Kids don't want to sell for car manufactures,  banks, online discount brokers,  toothpaste, deodorants, or any other traditional internet advertiser.  Any dreams of gaining higher CPMs from that group is just a pipe dream. 

Stick with  fun, social marketers  and build  web portals for these types of companies plus sponsorships.  Let kids link to these profiles and push what their likes and dislikes are.  You could also let marketers test products, make special music releases, special invites for concerts, and etc.  Also, these marketers crave data and information on who is using their product and when they fall in and out of popularity, so of course you could provide it to them for a fee.  You could create a new metric called YourBUZZ which measures popularity of a product with your MySpace participants.  You get the idea. Think of the rates and dollars you could generate from this model and if you have a few billion leftover impressions, you would now be able to sell them at a higher rate because you'll have more demand and less supply.  See how easy it is to make money on the internet?

Ross, I hope you found this memo helpful.  You seem like a very bright executive with a lot of pressure and sometimes marketing executives have trouble seeing through the forest to the trees, so I thought I might help.  Stick with what you bought, a social network for kids and stop trying to turn it into Foxnews.com.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric
April 25, 2006

My Those Are Low CPMs at MySpace

In Sunday's NY Times Business Section, there was a huge article on MySpace.com called Making Friends Was Easy. Big Profit Is Tougher and I found it eye-opening.  If you don't know what MySpace is, let me give you a quick synopsis.    MySpace is owned by News Corp who bought it last year for $649 million and has over 70 million profiles. These profiles are personalized webpages created by mostly under 30 types where people can link to friends, post likes and dislikes, video, interest, pretty much anything that could describe you.  For the corporate types that read this blog, think of it as LinkedIn for kids. 

Now let's ignore some of the issues with MySpace (see Business Week article) which includes sexually explicit posts, trolling for minors, and etc because MySpace is a social network place for over 14 year olds.  According to the NY Times article, MySpace taps into 3 passions of young people: expressing themselves, interacting with friends, and consuming popular culture.  I'll revisit the social impact a little later on because that's the only place MySpace can make money.  Right now, MySpace is displaying more web pages than everyone except for Yahoo and theoretically can be targeted to users based on interest.  However, who is buying these ads?

Quoting the article, "the company will have $200 million in revenue this year" and later on it points out that it is charging around 10 cent CPMs for such ads.  That rate is pathetic and when you spend time on MySpace you get a ton of ads from E*Trade, Univ. of Phoenix, Verizon, Napster, etc the usual cast of characters you see on pay for performance network buys that are probably charging back to these MySpace advertisers on a CPA (cost per action) basis or a CPC basis. Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media says, "if we can raise that by 10 cents, think of the upside". Yes, and if my cat had a college degree, he'd be a professor.

MySpace has plans to expand the advertising opportunities, letting advertisers create MySpace pages so that kids can link to them.  Say, have an advertisers put a page up for cute deodorants and then let kids link to them saying this is what I use to cure bad odor.  Another idea that Fox has, according to Mark Jung, COO of Fox Interactive, is to let a car dealership create a page and then sell enhancements to attract business. 

Both these ideas, plus selling plain old banner ads at a pathetically tiny CPM misses the point of a social network.  To throw more cold water on these grandiose revenue ideas, MySpace ran testing with Google and Yahoo for search ads and then tried to get into a long term deal with them.  You know what the search companies told them?  You guessed it, no thanks, and according to the article, MySpace users are not the best prospects for most marketing since these kids use MySpace for socializing not buying.

Now what?  First of all, if you are one of these marketers and you need credit worthy customers, you should probably stay away from running typical banner ads on MySpace.  Personally, I'm a little surprised that any financial services companies are directly advertising in MySpace; I know that when I ran the 17th largest US internet advertising program, I NEVER WOULD HAVE DIPPED A TOE into MySpace.  It is the wrong demo target, even if it was a CPA deal.  I wouldn't even run on a CPC basis because there was nothing I disliked more than a clicker deal that didn't convert.  However, there is something to social network or conversational marketing if you are in the broadcast, movie, music, clothing, video game, and etc business. 

If I was marketing a musician or a TV show, targeted at the Youth market, this is where I would advertise.  Sure, I'd even run banner ads at 10 cent CPMs, but I would create pages to link to MySpace users.  I'd also want to know how many people are linking and what they are saying.  MySpace would not only provide great advertising opportunities but a wealth of information and market research for their advertisers.

Creating MySpace pages for a toothpaste advertisers, seems like a bad idea that the youth of America won't get fooled into playing along with.  I think they can figure out a commercial from a mile away.  Using MySpace for pushing out TV shows, movies, music, new music downloads, etc is really where social network advertising could work especially by providing critical market intelligence.  Mr. Levinsohn should forget about doubling his pathetic CPM with traditional advertisers and embrace what News Corp bought, a social network opportunity for the youth market the best the internet has seen since AOL from the 90's. 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Can Bloggers Make Money - Yes With A Little Help From Friends

So, you think you are going to get rich on the internet by starting a blog?  Hmmm, I think not, but you really should figure out why you want a blog.  This goes back to a post from way back called What Came First The Chicken or The Blog, but before we revisit that, I thought you’d enjoy this online discussion that I found over at the WSJ.com called, Can Bloggers Make Money.  It is an online debate between Alan Meckler, a longtime Internet entrepreneur and chief executive of Jupitermedia Corp and Jason Calacanis  CEO of Weblogs Inc.  I’m not even sure you would call this a debate because Meckler pretty much wipes the floor with Calacanis’ argument. 

As you can read for yourself, Calacanis says that if you get enough monthly traffic, say 500,000 pageviews or so, you’ll be able to get fair value on a CPM rate and get a few $1,000s per month.  Plus, if you are a well-known blogger perhaps you can get rich.   I can tell you true-believers, that in order to get any decent amount of traffic takes either hard work or an already decent following due to a prior occupation.  In the above discussion, Calacanis talks about if noted WSJ technology columnist Walt Mossberg starting a blog, he’d probably have huge traffic to start.  So unless you are a well-known person already with a huge following or some technology angle than why start a blog?  Do you think that people really want to read about your daily dog walking habits?  You are probably asking yourself, how about all of the hype with Myspace?

I had a very interesting breakfast meeting with a very, very well known blogger/writer named Rich Galen who runs a website called Mullings.com.  As you can see from his bio and writings, he is a Washington insider (Surgeon General’s Warning:  it is NOT a liberal blog, so if that makes you sick, you read it at your own risk J) and is very, very good at spinning a yarn.   In our meeting we talked about why we blog and by the way, he does have a tremendous amount of traffic. 

Against my better judgment, I retold the story of my sister selling decorative chicken eggs online and how she had trouble competing with the Hallmarks of the world in Google.  I told her, start your own blog on raising chickens, build enough traffic up, and cross-sell to your decorative egg site.  Unfortunately, NYChicken woman hasn’t blogged in a while because she got a real job, but the reason I brought this up in the morning meeting is that making money solely on blogging is hard work even when you have a following and good traffic.  So,why blog?

You need to understand that building traffic is hard work, especially now because of the proliferation of blogs on the internet.  According to a study at Technorati I just saw, there are 75,000 new blogs started every day and 50,000 blog post per hour.  That’s a lot of stories about people picking up laundry.  So what’s the point? 

It is really about what you are trying to do with the traffic (yes –it is all about monetizing your traffic).  Are you promoting yourself for a particular position?  Are you selling something?  How about using it to keep customers informed of progress on a certain project?  What ever it is like anything else in the business world, develop your own strategy and remember, blogs are just another communication tool that should be used wisely.  You won’t get rich trying to have people figure out what you should wear for the day – oh wait, someone already thought of that.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Celebrate When Online Spending Hits 10%

I'm surprised this is news, but it is after a long weekend.  On the front page of the Wall Street Journal there is a featured article called Once-Wary Industry Giants Embrace Internet Advertising, where it describes how package goods advertisers are racing to the internet to reach their audience.  The embrace they are describing reminds me of the one I received from my Senior Prom Date after I ditched her about halfway through the dance. 

The article uses terms like winning converts, cranking up online spending, the shift in spending, and boosting online sales.  However, the one sobering chart found on the front pretty much kills the premise and shows that package goods companies, for the most part, are just playing around.  Here's the chart.

You know what the chart shows - almost 6% of US advertising spending was spent online and, now hold your breath for the big news, package goods advertisers spent a WHOPPING 1.6% of their advertising online.  And, if I get out my magnifying glass it looks like it jumped from 1.25% in 2004, which was a giant leap from 1.1% in 2003. 

For now, let's put aside the 6% numbers because that's not the point of the WSJ article, but they did correctly outline that the number is mostly driven by personal computer and financial services companies of which I used to work for (Harrisdirect).  Do you know what 1.6% looks like on a modest $10 million advertising budget?  Let me do the math for you  - that's $160,000 or $13,333 per month.  On a $100 million advertising budget true believers, that's $1.6 million.  For an annual spend of $160,000 you maybe get a decent search campaign and one modest online advertising program that your traditional agency probably threw the creatives in for free.  WAHOO.

You want more reasons from the same article why these numbers are nothing to celebrate?  Just look to page 2 of the article for this nice chart.  It shows that the internet has the third largest amount of time spent in use  at 15%  which is behind radio at 23% and TV at 51% for people aged 12-64 for use between 6am and midnight.  That means that 15% of consumer's time is spent on the internet while the package goods companies are spending 1.6% of their budget on reaching them.  That's some big effort in reaching their audience.

There are a few CPG companies that are true pioneers in this space.  One of them is Pepsi that is prominently featured in the article.  I think the internet marketing at Pepsi is far ahead of the average online advertisers.  In fact, I've been invited to Yahoo! Creativity Summits every year for the last 5 years and you know who is always there either on a panel or giving a presentation - Dave Burwick, former SVP and CMO Pepsi North America.  Pepsi was also smart enough to test  a Yahoo service called Consumer Direct which allows them to correlate internet spending with actual consumer purchase at the store.  Pepsi is far ahead of their competitors.

Do you know what the conversation is like in a marketing organization when the online spend is less than 5%?  It goes like this.  First, you talk about the overall strategy for the campaign.  Second, you review the media spend.  Third, the team examines key messages and the offline campaign.  This is where the meeting peeks because it is always a lot of fun to review creative.  Next, you look at budget and tracking requirements including criteria for success.  And, if there is still time left in the meeting, you take a look at that online thing.  The CMO probably says something like "Oh Eric, what is the online spend and do me a favor, speak quickly because I have to run to another meeting in 5 minutes." 

Until the internet reaches a true tipping point of around 10%, let's not celebrate how well the medium is doing by shifting dollars around.  15% of time is spent online but advertisers only spend about 6% demonstrates a very, very light embrace.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Last Few Feet to The TV Box

You've probably already seen the announcement, but Disney plans to offer many TV shows for free on the web.  Literally, this is the BIG news of the day, even making the front page of the Newark Star Ledger.   There are a ton of articles out there including The Wall Street Journal's Disney's Web Move Shakes Up Decades-Old TV Model, Ad Age's ABC Readies Non-Skippable Online Video Commercials, and MediaPost's Disney Launches New Site.  The Wall Street Journal also reported that Disney gained 26 cents, or nearly 1%, to $27.79 and wrote "the test marks the first time a broadcast network has made multiple prime-time shows available free online to consumers."  Wow, this is pretty exciting, isn't it?

You can read the articles for yourself and draw your own conclusions, but let me point out a few interesting factoids found in the above:

• The ads will not be skippable and will be specifically designed for the web
• The shows will be available for free the day after they air on TV
• The shows don't appear to be available for download devices so people that want to watch them on their iPOD will still have to pay a fee up to $1.99 per show.
• People that miss their favorite shows (and who don't have a DVR) can catch them on the web for free
• According to Albert Chen, EVP of Disney-ABC TV Group, technologies for moving video between PCs and TVs are still too complicated.  "We can certainly provide the content, but at the end of the day it's about how to make it easy for consumers."

In the same Wall Street Journal from today, there was another article called Sony, Samsung Bet Big on LCD-TV Demand that you probably missed, but thank goodness, yours truly found it for you. The article talks about how Samsung and Sony are betting that the market for big TV (more than 40 inches) will grow sharply.  Big TVs, HDTV, etc are hot consumer electronics right? 

Hmmm - let me throw a little cold water on the BIG Disney announcement.   The TV shows and commercials will be retro-fitted for the web, but the Sonys of the world are building bigger and higher quality TV.  Doesn't something have to give here? (TV reference - I'm in this contest and something has to give, right)

You know what I think? This is all about the last few feet to the TV box and until someone figures out how to get great quality internet broadcasts on those big fancy beautiful TVs, this will be confined to mobile viewers.  Sure, if you are traveling or stuck in an airport or a long boring meeting, you can catch your show on your laptop. 

Personally, I'm betting that until you can get that last few feet to the TV set issue solved, this is all about shrinkage.  When I'm home, I have my BIG TV set with a DVR and when I'm traveling I have the small screen.  Anything in between is just a waste of time for now.  Enjoy the big announcement, at least someone is trying to move in the right direction.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric 

It's About Times

Well, hopefully you already experienced it but the New York Times just finished a new redesign of their website and I think it looks fantastic. The website is now wider with more columns and the homepage has a real newspaper feel to it.  Plus, I love the RSS feeds jumping out all over the place and they somehow managed to squeeze in more advertising space.  I also love the streaming video on the front page and now with better content below the fold, it gives you a reason to actually scroll down the page; however, I think the buttons way below the fold are a complete waste of space.

Now, I'm probably the last person you think would care to review them, but I have a lot of experience buying advertising from NYTimes.com.  DLJdirect had an advertising deal with the site back when it was originally launched and I inherited the deal when I joined the brokerage firm back in January 2001.  In fact, one of my  first meetings was with the NY Times account team to discuss our advertising campaign with them.  Over the years, I kept that deal in place, even when I had to completely cancel all other deals due to 9-11.  It also survived the chopping block when accounts fell off the cliff when we added in MSN which had a huge overlap with them.  In fact, at the beginning of 2005, Fidelity bought my favorite position which was the button positions below the Markets Graph on the homepage (since now removed).  Not to be deterred, I switched my deal to the Search Sponsorship, so Harrisdirect appeared on EVERY PAGE of the site and after E*Trade acquired Harrisdirect, they assumed that button buy, too.

Why did I go through all of this trouble to keep my deal in place?  Was it because I liked the news or did I get a free subscription?  Both answers were no and I had other uses for the website.  First of all, a huge percentage of my current and former customers were big subscribers to the site.  Second, the deal itself helped position Harrisdirect as one of the largest advertisers on the internet (17th largest US to be exact).  Next, the account team, led by Hayward H. was really focused on our business and tried to make a win-win for both sides.  Finally and most importantly, I believe the site with all of the national and international viewers was a big driver of brand awareness for Harrisdirect.  In fact, when anyone said they noticed a Harrisdirect ad, it was often an ad on NYTimes.com.  You see, I do believe in brand awareness on the internet  (you probably thought I was just a CPA kinda guy).

Now, as opposed to Jack Shafer over at the Slate.com who is canceling his print subscription due to all of the changes on the site, I'll still hold on to my Sunday subscription.  I already cut back on my daily subscription years ago because I couldn't stand wrapping up all of the paper and I had figured out the internet was a decent place to get your news.  The Sunday NY Times paper edition is still a lot easier to read at the breakfast table and a lot more civil than opening up the laptop.  Besides, the kids like smacking the paper in my face when I have it open to read and doing that to the laptop would definitely make a harsher sounding noise when it bounces off the floor.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Bring Out Your Dead

Very interesting article over at the Free Press today by Molly Ivins entitled Newspaper Suicide.  In it she describes what's ailing the print industry, expanded media outlets, why bloggers need to interview eye witnesses in an accident before they can cover an election, and what I describe as the evils of papers living up to Wall Street's forecasts.  Molly also writes how she wouldn't mind if all newspaper people shifted over to the Internet and did the same thing over there.  Hmmmm it seems that advertisers, well at least the smarter ones have already done that.

Now, I read two newspapers every morning and even though I have online subscriptions to them, I still love sitting down at the breakfast table with the newspaper.  Don't you think it is a little hard to sit with a laptop on the kitchen table or in your favorite reading room? 

I don't think newspapers are dead, I just think their advertising revenue are in a death spiral.  I once asked Tom Messner in a conference in front of a room full of people, why should advertisers spend good hard to get money on something that is limited in color, can't animate, and really has limits on tracking of results?  His answer was, because you need to advertise to people when they are using various forms of medium during the day.

I guess I didn't buy his answer.  At Harrisdirect, I was known as someone that hated advertising in newsprint and would argue until I was asked to leave, that all of that money should either be earmarked for the web or TV.  You know what my justification was besides the cool colors and animation - you got it true web believers - data.

Going back to my time at AT&T, I have NEVER seen print impact sales, visits to the website, branding, pretty much any significant metric.  And, I tried all forms of tracking the results, unique URLs and phone numbers, special offers, regional test, etc.  I always received the same results - no impact at all.

Instead of cutting back on paper resources, I think the papers should follow a little pricing game which is DON'T lower rates, keep them high for the people that still want to advertise there.  Make it your cash cow and take the money and spend it elsewhere.  Newspapers need to invest and become the very liquid newspaper version found in the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

If You Say Online is at a Tipping Point, Shouldn't It Tip A Little Faster?

One of my old sales execs while I was at Harridirect used to talk to me about how "effing exciting it is to be in online advertising because we are at a tipping point". (BTW - I didn't edit out the obvious anti-FCC word, that's how she says it)  She said that about a year and a half ago and then I heard that phrase a few months back at a Yahoo! Creativity Summit, but without the obvious emphasis on exciting.  I guess I'm still waiting for the tipping point that is moving at glacier like speeds.

Case in point.  As reported over at ClickZ in the article ANA Marketers: Our TV Spots are Tanking, a new Forrester poll released at the Association of National Advertisers found that 78% of marketers said the potency of their television ads has declined in two years and once DVR penetration reaches 30 million households, 24% said that they plan to shift at least 25% of their dollars to online, product placement, and my favorite category, other.  80% of these advertisers said that they will invest more in web marketing and 68% said that search marketing was a future source of spending.  Let me repeat that last point 80% will invest more in web marketing and 68% said search marketing was a FUTURE source of spending.  Those numbers look a little scary to me and certainly suggest the tipping point is a little further out.  The 133 advertisers surveyed included Charles Schwab, Colgate, Dunkin' Donuts, Johnson & Johnson, Mattel, Pfizer, and Verizon

Need some more, check this out over at ClickZ which is a list of the top 50 spenders in online media for January 2006.  The top advertisers are still your traditional online acquisition marketing players with the exception of ABC.  What do these companies at the top all have in common? A strict focus on return on investment (ROI) as well as demanding that their campaigns are delivering much needed sales.  They also all have what I personally describe as acquisition machines which means that these are committed, longer length marketing campaigns with a long range outlook on results.  I ought to know because I built two of these programs - one for AT&T which is number 21 and Harrisdirect which was ranked 17th until E*Trade acquired us.

If the tipping point is here, then why don't you see more of these traditional advertisers that were part of the survey on the top 50 list?  You know them - the 68% of responders that feel that search marketing is a future source of spending.  We need to do better jobs of education and working with the traditional marketers and speaking their language.  With search, display, big units, Flash, video, and behavioral targeting the tools are there to get this point tipping in the right direction.

If the tipping point is here we wouldn't see the type of survey results shown above.  This current tipping point version reminds me of Karen Allen's role in Raiders of The Lost Ark when she is in a drinking contest and takes her time tipping over before righting herself to win the bet.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

To Run With The Big Yahoos, Get Off The Launch

So, after yesterday's big launch of Google's finance page, everyone naturally started thinking and writing about Yahoo!'s response.  What is poor Yahoo! going to do and how are they going to respond? 

As written in MediaPost, Yahoo! Readies Response to Google Finance, I think they unfairly make it seem like a response is coming.  Well, I know the folks at Yahoo! Finance very well because I bought millions of dollars worth of online media as Managing Director, Channel Marketing for Harrisdirect and I know that they are not responding to the Google Finance launch.  You see the team, led by Richard Kosinski, is always constantly trying to improve the Yahoo! Finance page, but they do it in a methodical, planned approach.

Was the team at Yahoo! Finance surprised by Google Finance?  I don't think so.  Yahoo already knows that they are the number 1 finance destination on the internet and like Google in the search category, maintains that leadership position by carefully planning out changes and balancing the needs of marketers and users. 

As a marketer that tried to buy the quotes results button year after year, I can tell you that what makes the site powerful is the consistent traffic, information, message boards, and constant placement of positions and ad units.  You know something else about Yahoo!, the quotes results button package is the most coveted position in the finance category.  I had the privilege of testing it (yes I wrote privilege) for a few months as the mythical fourth button before they implemented it and I received fantastic results.  I just didn't have the marketing budget to compete with the current owners of the buttons to pull the trigger on a much larger ad buy.

Can Yahoo! Finance use a few tweaks?  Sure. It should add in more news feeds from their own search platform as well as blog posts to already go along with the well used stock message boards.  Plus, some bells and whistles with Flash could be useful provided the users don't revolt.  I think this quote in the article best sums up Yahoo!'s strategy for managing the finance section.

"Along with balancing our relationships with users and advertisers, the most important thing for us is making sure we're relevant to marketers," said Richard Kosinski, category head for business and finance at Yahoo. "We have to provide marketers with the best solutions, and part of that is helping them understand user behavior on our site."

The media buys in this category are large enough to add in another key channel and if Harrisdirect was still in existence, I would be convincing my Google account team to let me be the first advertiser to test the new finance page.  And, if you are the internet czar of a large financial advertiser, take my advice and beat your competition to the punch and make those calls now. 

Google's announcement and baby step into the Finance category is welcome, but until they start making more improvements and add in some advertisers, folks should try starting the comparisons with finance sites that are a little lower on the food chain. 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google Finance Launches

Today, you can start checking financial quotes and news over at Google as they launch a beta version of Google Finance.  I have to be honest, when I heard this was on its way I thought to myself, great another Google product, what is next Google Cola? 

Well, I gave it a test run and it is a pretty good tool.  I'm not sure if I will use it as a primary source, because well, if you are going to buy stock, you should be using more information besides just news.  However (and that's a big emphasis on however), I really like how they organize all available news including blogs.

I tested it using a quote on the New, New, New, and Really It Is New AT&T and I found the organization of the information impressive.  Plus, it pulls in all available news feeds, not just the ones that have a news feed deal with the publisher.  I like the mouse overs, especially the ones on the executives which pulls in insider trading activities from Yahoo Finance.  It also puts AT&T's competition right on the page so you don't have to guess.  Finally, the lower left hand side of the dashboard has other resource links including Yahoo!, MSN, and The Street.com.

Of course the beta version has no advertisers, so it is a little unfair to start design comparisons with Yahoo and MSN.  However, I like the dashboard feel and the organization of the page. I think I would use it as part of stock research because I'll get more information, but I don't think it would become my primary research.  That still would stay with Fidelity.

From a marketing perspective, if you are an online broker, I would be beating down the door to run advertising in it.  I used to purchase stock quotes as part of a search buy and this is now far superior to the results of the past.  If you are Yahoo! Finance or other finance publishers, I'd study it to see what improvements could be copied, err sorry, researched, but I wouldn't be jumping through hoops.  You already have a huge competitive advantage with your consistent organization, advertisers, and existing traffic

Google Finance - a pretty good product, just not sure if it will rule the world on its own.  I think people managing their finances are more sophisticated than the average Google user and use a variety of sources.  However, as part of a looming Google dashboard - very interesting and a worthy baby step into organizing financial data.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Fidelity Gets Amazoned

Did you now know when you shop on Amazon for books and DVDs you can can also drop an IRA account into your shopping cart?  Well, not exactly, but in a move that is very surprising to yours truly, Fidelity entered into an agreement with Amazon. 

Now you can access Fidelity products from Amazon by either hitting the Fidelity logo on the home page or scrolling ALL THE WAY DOWN on the left margin to hit a link that says Financial Services.  This deal looks like someone way up in the rafters at Fidelity decided that dealing with Amazon is a great idea, but is it really?

Well, I don't know the terms of the deal, but I can make a very educated guess.  Why?  Simple, for two separate companies I personally investigated doing a deal with Amazon; the last one was on a personal hunch and not directed by any company.  You know what I concluded both times?  To deal with Amazon becomes a very expensive proposition with very little room for customization.  You have to confirm to their website and marketing strategies and give up creativity.  In fact, as you can see from these two screen shots below, if you have a my Amazon page (which most users do), the link is not found at the top of the tab, but buried on the margin (hence the reason for two screen shots).

Wait a minute you say to yourself.  Amazon has that cool  1:1 marketing engine that brings offers to you.  As far as I know, that 1:1 marketing engine won't legally work in the financial services arena (ex, Amazon recommends you buy Fidelity stock) and a watered down version would actually be better off coming directly from Fidelity.  Wait, you say there is a ton of traffic?  Sure, but are they shopping for financial services while looking for a book?  Nope.  Check out that top screen shot - looks pretty busy in the financial services page, plus I read somewhere that the deal is NOT exclusive. 

This reminds me of a story when I first joined CSFBdirect.  I was trying to do some re-marketing to customers and my old COO/Lawyer Mike Hogan pulled me into his office.  He listened to my proposal and then turned to me and said it won't work for a variety of reasons.  To quote Mike, "We are not selling telephone service or books here", so those ideas were filed away for another day.

I really like Fidelity and I hope the deal works out for them, but I have a feeling it won't.  They probably would have been better off carpet bombing the internet with their new 60's retro style IRA campaign much the same way the New, New, New, Really New AT&T did with their campaign.  I guess it is really great to have a ton of money sitting around in corporate money market vaults.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Online Marketing Rapid Fire 3-17-06

It is time for this week's version of online marketing rapid fire. 

More on Net Neutrality

As I first started writing about in Sometimes even Route 78 is Jammed and continuing in Net Neutrality or More Traffic Issues, there is an explanation from Verizon as to why government intervention is not needed.  You can read it in the article courtesy of Business Week called Say No to Net Neutrality Rules. My thoughts on this, I think they are protesting too much and offering too many explanations for why Net Neutrality Rules are not needed.  I don't know about you, but I may have found their argument more compelling if they touched on how recent telecom mergers would impact or not impact Net Neutrality.  Imagine the pricing when there are only two providers of broadband service.

Speaking of Telecom Competition

With the announcement of AT&T's desire to acquire Bell South, I wrote a series of posts as to why this merger is not a good idea for competition and offered facts and real-life examples as to the lack of telecom competition today.  You probably thought I was crazy when I wrote that VOIP is not as great of a threat as AT&T makes it out to be.  Well, in a report from CNET titled VOIP, Are We There Yet, it seems even Bell South agrees.  Check this quote out from the article :

"We don't see VoIP as a major threat to us losing residential customers," said Steve Zimba, director of converged services for BellSouth. "We see more degradation of the business due to wireless substitution. However, we think VoIP will be an important part of the future."

And Finally, More on Click Fraud

Are you still having problems with Click Fraud?  Well you may not be the only one as reported in the Washington Post article In A Game of Click and Mouse... As I wrote a few days back regarding the Google Settlement (found on right), if you are not using post-click conversion tracking to justify your spend, you don't have a clue as to how to market online.  Sure there is click fraud, but if you are hitting your Search metrics from an ROI perspective, why not worry about something else.  Unless of course you are a marketing genius and have no other problems to deal with.

That's it.  PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Amazon, Toy R Us Lessons Learned

An article in today's Wall Street Journal titled Judge Says Amazon Played With Toys In A Childish Way, points out how the judge admonished Amazon for unscrupulous manipulation of terms in a contract.  As you probably know, Amazon lost the lawsuit and Toys R Us can rip up the contract.  You can read for yourself how Amazon used buzz words in the contract and ended up circumventing what Toys R Us believed was an exclusive right to distribute toys.  However, this reminds me of my own personal tips for negotiating contracts, which I'll write for you below.

ERIC'S TOP 5 CONTRACT TIPS

1. THE CONTRACT TERMS ARE NOT FINALIZED UNTIL YOUR JOHN HANCOCK APPEARS.     I owe this tip to Glenn Tongue, former President of DLJdirect and I'm very upfront about this when I negotiate big contracts.  What this means is, up until the last possible moment I will make changes to the terms.  What I do is take my time, sleep on the signing, and wait until as long as possible before I sign.  This protects me from any changes that may occur in the normal flow of business.
2. IT'S THE OUT CLAUSE STUPID - You won't believe how many times I've picked up contracts from fellow employees and they did not contain an out clause; worse yet, they auto-renewed.  In fact, a very large contract that DLJdirect signed had an auto-renewal in it which was triggered for another year because the person that signed it did not pay attention to the dates.   Personally, I always ask for a 30 day any reason out clause and if I don't get it, I default to 45 day.  The only contracts I've ever signed without an out clause were with Yahoo! due to the generous prices I received and contracts that were less than 60 days in length
3. BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO - I know it sounds mean, but you have to at some point when reviewing the contract imagine if something goes horribly wrong and you need to cancel for breech.  And, then negotiate these terms.  Remember, this is not a personal negotiation, it is between your company and another and the terms when something goes wrong can save your job.
4. NEVER SIGN ANYTHING WITHOUT LEGAL REVIEW - This goes for the smallest contract/IO because there are legal mumbo jumbo terms that you are not aware of.  Since I've gone out on my own, I've had an eye-opening review of legal terms and believe me you need someone that is familiar.  Right now, I have a contract that says Best Efforts in it because I didn't let my lawyer review it before I signed it.  Finally, even if your favorite sales person gives you an IO and says "It is the same as the last one", please check it.  I've had that happen and guess what it was not the same.  I told my sales person, look give me the same one or I'll send this one into legal review.
5. JOHN HANCOCK IS YOUR MOST POWERFUL WEAPON - Until you sign, you still negotiate.  Sure the other side will say, look we have your competitors ready to sign, but you know what my reply is? "Great, why don't you have the other people sign it then".  Don't be rushed.  Take your time.  Until there is a signed contract the other side does not have a deal.  Don't understand terms in the contract? Get it in writing what it means so you can pull it out later in case of a problem.

Finally, never, ever sign the first deal or term you get.  Ask for changes because 9 out of 10 times you'll get what you want.  Don't end up getting Amazoned in a deal.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

IBM Is Not So Special

Have you see the new advertising campaign called What Makes You So Special? I have and I wouldn't use any special or innovative words to describe the campaign.  Personally, I like boring and waste.  I've seen the campaign in the paper edition of The Wall Street Journal  for the past three days and the only ones who could possibly consider it  special are IBM's Advertising Agency and the bureaucrat at IBM who approved the campaign.

The campaign, found in today's Wall Street journal, is a colorful 3 page campaign which tries in a very lengthy and boring manner to describe the innovations that IBM brings to businesses to help them succeed.  Unfortunately, they are not extending that innovation to advertising.

The copy is long and boring and other than the copy writer at the agency, nobody can possibly read it.  I'm sure they thought they were so clever to make it appear like an article in the paper, but that trick has been tried and I can't imagine the folks that IBM is trying to target are falling for it.  The creative is also busy with images of books, houses, skyscrapers and asterisks that pepper the lengthy copy.  Finally the media buy must be very expensive because it is three full pages in the WSJ.

I often wonder why marketers who claim to work for innovative companies don't try and spend that same money on the internet where a story like this could be easily told.  Instead of copy intensive paper campaigns, they could have teased the target audience into digging deeper into the message by using a very rich media intense mini-site.  They also could have used online media to drive people to the mini-site or if they insisted, they could have bought more efficient paper buys that drove to the site.

The link found at IBM.com/innovation does touch on some innovative techniques, but fails to deliver on the special message by using very copy intensive creatives and a long url. Clearly the advertising team at IBM has special needs in both offline and online marketing strategy.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Embarq - The Worst Brand Name Ever?

Mary and I just returned from eating dinner at the best restaurant in Chester, NJ - Redwoods.  Just as I was getting ready to relax and maybe play some computer games, I decided to open my mail and what did I find?  A letter from my local services provider Sprint who is renaming their company Embarq.  I have to tell you the name itself conjures up a certain memory of my stomach virus from last week.

As part of the Sprint/Nextel merger, they are spinning off their local and long distance into a separate company that will trade on the NYSE. It will be managed by former AT&T Wireless CEO Dan Hesse, who if memory serves me correctly, is the architect of Digital OneRate calling plan which launched the current pricing schedule of a bucket of minutes.  Unfortunately, for Dan he did not get the best results out of his brand agency because the name should make most consumers sick to their stomach and their logo conjures up memories of cheap paper airplanes.  Coincidentally the agency's name is Salt as in the salt poured into the open wound of a company that is being split off from their wireless division.  Finally, adding to the sickness in my stomach is the use of green in the logo.  ' Nuff said.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's $90M Fraud Settlement, Interesting But How Relevant Is It?

Not sure if you saw this, but Google settled a $90 million lawsuit over click fraud.  The search business of Yahoo!, Walt Disney Co., Lycos Inc., LookSmart Ltd. and Findwhat.com Inc., which is now known as MIVA Inc. were also included in the lawsuit.

As defined by Google, click fraud "implies deliberate deception. Our aim in fighting invalid clicks is broader and includes clicks that we suspect may have been deceptive or malicious, as well as clicks that we deem invalid for other reasons, such as accidental double clicking on an ad".

Some marketers claim that click fraud is a real problem and that as much as 30% of clicks are not reliable (noticed I used that term).  However, that was based on a study from MarketingExperiments.com  that examined three Google campaigns with alleged click fraud between 8% and 30%.  So, should you care?  Answer - it depends on how your search campaigns are evaluated. 

First of all, nobody wants to pay for wasted clicks, especially ones that are fraudulent and since you pay for search on a cost per click basis, the wasted expenses add up.  However, are you using post-click conversion tracking?  Let's take a look at the two possible scenarios:

1. Just tracking clicks to your website or page - then you should care a lot because the only method for evaluating success is how many clicks did you drive to your site.  However, you have much deeper marketing issues.  Are you tracking email subs - add a conversion tracking to that page.  Are your trying to get sales  - you need a conversion tracking code in your shopping cart.
2. Tracking sales, enrollments, applications, etc - I wouldn't care that much because you should be worried about ROI.  Is search meeting your cost per actions/sales? Yes?  Go find some other problem to deal with.  If not, check your creative, landing page, and bid management strategy first then look at fraud.

Look, I've been buying search since 1999 and I NEVER worried about click fraud.  Sure, I might have been overpaying for clicks, but search was my best performing component of my ad campaigns. It consistently was my lowest CPA (cost per acquisition) and had my highest conversion rates from clicks.  Did I have a problem?  I don't know and I didn't care.  Like you I had MUCH bigger problems to deal with and I had much worse performing buys that needed my attention.

Click fraud a problem?  Sure, but if that's the most important problem you have to deal with, then you are a marketing genius.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

By Squinting You Can See Some Telecom Competition

Ok, so the news is everywhere regarding the New AT&T's acquisition of Bell South and what's really interesting is all of the reporters, especially the ones who write for the Wall Street Journal who talk about all of the competition.  Their argument goes something like this "The world is different since Ma Bell was broken up and with the cable, VOIP, and wireless companies the old remaining members of Ma Bell face a ton of competition".  In fact, there's a "nice" chart in the article What The AT&T Deal Means for Consumers, but this chart includes promotional prices that expire after a year (AT&T).  Also, the area where these bundles are offered go from the size of New York Metro to 27 states. Hmmm, the last time I looked the country was a lot larger than that.   So, of course, there is fierce competition.

Really? I can't find the competition at all.  Am I looking in the wrong place?  I live in Morris County of NJ, so it is not exactly rural City, USA; plus it is a nice 25 minute ride to the old AT&T's corporate headquarters which coincidentally will soon be Verizon's corporate HQ.  Surely there must be some competition out here right?

Old Wireline Competition

Can't find any here.  I have a choice of Sprint as my local service provider and that is it.  Plus, Sprint has a nasty habit of charging for their service PER phone line so even if I wanted to bundle my long distance with my Sprint local it would cost me MORE money.  Speaking of LD, my choices have gone down haven't they?  I use AT&T, not because I am a big fan, but their unlimited plan is for the whole house not per line and I get calls to Canada for an extra $5 per month.

Wireless Competition

Ok there is A LOT here, but unfortunately I can't get a good enough signal in my house to make my new Treo 700w courtesy of Verizon Wireless my only phone.  So, a lot of competition, just not enough quality to switch out my wireline plan for my wireless phone.

TV Competition

I have a GRAND total of 2 to choose from in my town - Comcast and DirectTV.  You know who I chose - DirectTV because their prices are cheaper, I get digital service, and a ton of channels.  Plus, my bill stays the same AMOUNT month after month unlike cable.  Don't agree - check out this screen shot from Comcast for my competitive prices in my area.

Broadband Internet Access

I have two choices but it is like deciding when I get sick what would I rather have - a stomach virus or the flu?  I can choose between DSL from Sprint and Comcast Digital.  That's it, unless I want to fool around  with narrow band access.  Comcast charges $42.95 per month for download speeds up to 6 MBps for Comcast customers and $57.95 for non-customers.  I had to choose Sprint because I went with DirectTV for TV.

Let's stop here for a second.  I know some of you are saying "well, you picked DirectTV dummy, so you eliminated a viable option", but that's my point - real competition is not choosing between a rock and a hard place right?

VOIP

Sure, there is competition here from AT&T, Vonage, and others, but if you pick DSL you are out of luck.  Don't believe me, visit Vonage's page on DSL which basically says you are out of luck.  Well, you could order a second   line or switch to cable if you want Vonage VOIP, but then again that would cost more money or headaches from the cable companies

That's it friends.  I can't find much competition here in Morris County, NJ.  Some of you are saying, well it is coming and I agree with you, but when?  Up until real competition, this merger allows monopoly styled pricing.  They get to be uncompetitive (prices, service, products) in areas they choose not to compete in while be competitive in the small areas where they want to test products.  Looks to me like a sweet deal for the big telcos and a raw deal for consumers.  I can't wait for real competition. 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric