PardonMyFrench

Have You Been a Victim of The Newegg.com Scam?

A few months back I wrote this post wondering if Newegg.com is running a scam. To recap the Newegg.com scam, someone got my wife's credit card number, address, and email and then ordered a $1000 camera lens. I contacted Newegg.com and yelled at everyone I could speak with regarding their terrible fraud protection.  We received an email to setup a return which we did and when we shipped the item back to Newegg.com it was refused at Newegg.com's warehouse.  So I worked with American Express and put a block on Newegg.com to prevent them, their scammers, the people who try to scam, and even us from ever putting a Newegg.com charge on our cards ever again.  Amex did credit the scammed purchase.

Well you'd think after I wrote that story, Newegg.com would get their act together when it comes to people scamming them.  Unfortunately, based on the comments on my original post, it's clear that Newegg.com doesn't care that there is a scam happening with their platform.  I'd encourage people to just call their credit card company and place a block on Newegg.com so that no charges can be placed on your card from this subpar company.

HOW THE NEWEGG.COM SCAM WORKS

1. Somehow someone gets your credit card, name, address, and email.  Obviously getting your credit card is the hard part
2. This person orders a $1000 item and has it shipped to your house.
3. You get a strange email from Newegg.com alerting you to the scam order. Of course you think it is scam so you probably ignore it or maybe you think it is a "gift"
4. Then the item shows up at your door which you open and to your surprise you are now the owner of some item you didnt order, but to your bank credit card, it looks like you actually bought the Newegg.com scam item.
5. You then call into Newegg.com to tell them you didnt order this.  Of course to Newegg.com it looks like you did.
6. If you are smart and angry enough, you convince them it was the Newegg.com scam and you setup a return. They'll probably tell you that this item was the result of a scammer who got your card and was on their way to pick up the item at your house (don't believe Newegg.com but please call your local police).
7. You'll then setup the return, UPS will pick up the item and then about a week later you'll find the item at your house because it was denied acceptance by Newegg.com
8. Finally, at that point you'll be at the mercy of your credit card company.  American Express agreed with me and reversed the charge.  One of the commenters from my original Newegg.com scam post wrote that Wells Fargo agreed with Newegg.com and they are now fighting with Wells Fargo.

I wouldn't buy an item from Newegg.com. I wouldnt let a friend by from Newegg.com.  I wouldn't ever let a charge from Newegg.com show up on a credit card.  I'd put a block on my credit cards.  If everyone did this, Newegg.com would finally take their scam problem seriously and actually do something about it.  Read the comments on my original post.  You'll see there are tons of people that have been impacted by the Newegg.com scam.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

UPDATE: I'M SHUTTING OFF COMMENTS.  I DONT KNOW WHAT NEWEGG.COM IS DOING.  I DONT ALLOW NEWEGG.COM TO MAKE ANY PURCHASES ON MY CARDS.  I'D SUGGEST YOU DO THE SAME

I Love Siri

Yes I'm in love with Siri.  I didn't need a new iPhone because I have a gently used iPhone 4 but I kept seeing the commercials and reading reviews online.  Plus my iPhone is always near my side while my camera, so I like the idea of having an 8 mega pixel camera close by. So I went online for a few nights right around 9PM to see if I could reserve one.  After a few tries, Jacob got through on my iPhone while we were driving back from dinner and he reserved it.  

I got my new white iPhone and it is awesome.  I already had upgraded my operating system on my 4 but I like the feel, brightness, and camera of the 4s. The battery life seems to be bad, but I read that's a glitch that Apple is fixing.  

However, Siri is awesome and well worth the money.  Sure Apple features some cool features like playing music and searching for locations nearby, but here's what I think is awesome and all done by speaking into the phone

1. I can schedule calendar appointments
2. I can set reminders
3. Siri can read my new text messages
4. I can reply to text messages by speech
5. I can send email by speech
6. I can call people by using their name, Siri gives me the option to choose which phone number
7. It can play different music

This kind of speech technology has been around for a while but nowhere near as good as Siri (see Google Voice)  However, with Siri I'd say she gets about 90% correct plus she can learn. For example, she knows when I want to speak with Mary, Siri dials her mobile.

If you havent upgraded in a while, go get the iPhone 4s.  If you have an iPhone 4 ditch it and get the 4s.  Rely on Siri to take care of the tasks outlined above.  She is awesome.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

JCP&L Failing At More Than Just Electrical Power

JCP&L or also known as Jersey Central Power and Light is unfortunately my forced power supply company in Long Valley NJ.  This isn't the first time I've been without electrical power and those of you that know me for a long time, know how important electricity is to me. However, this is the first time I'm generally angry with JCP&L and it's not due to the lack of power, it's due to their lack of communication.

OK so quick background.  Hurricane Irene blows into town.  We have electricity - no problem through the night and then through most of the day on Sunday.  The kids and I even went outside to play catch in the afternoon.  Then as I was bragging on Facebook our power went out around 3:30.  It's still out  The only reason you are reading this post is that one of our friends in Long Valley lent us their generator (we had more than one person offer us). We didn't plug in our fridges or freezers because they defrosted on the overnight.   So over 24 hours later still no JCP&L but that's not what has me angry.

What has me angry is the utter lack of communications from this company - specifically this "lack of information, restoration chart".  It's inexcusable in a world of texting, internet, Twitter, and Facebook.  How can a company in 2011, not know these tools exist and they are dirt cheap.  Let's take a look at how awful their communications are:

1. That chart has not been updated.  Does anyone in this state actually believe you have NO RESTORATION INFORMATION?  Of course not.
2. When you cruise Twitter, all there is information on how bad their communication process is.  People are downright angry not due to the lack of power but due to the lack of communication.
3. How about a text messaging program or email program to let me know when you have restoration information.
4. Writing about email, PSE&G who I use for the office building in Union NJ has been emailing me once a day since Irene was bearing down on NJ.  JCP&L - nothing.
5. When you visit their website you see a big graphic regarding the hurricane so clearly someone there thought, hmmm, let's throw up a graphic except the clicks to that graphic bring up useless information including links to useless press releases.
6. Oh back to the "no restoration information" map, when you look at power outages in Long Valley the count is going down which means power is being restored, so clearly, THERE HAS TO BE AN UPDATE OF SOME KIND.
7. So, no Twitter, FB, website updates, email updates and no useful press releases.  All of which are cheap and could probably be handled by existing staff.  So what happens? People call into their call center and this drives up costs and actually creates angry customers who have to sit and listen to hold music.
8. Finally, my last rant, I am sick and tired of being told not to touch a downed power line.  Give me something more useful than that

Seriously JCP&L you have to be better than this.  Communications in the digital world aren't so hard and if I was there, I guarantee you I can make a positive business case just by saving on inbound calls.  Please try to embrace some kind of digital communications before the next power failure.  Imagine what would have happened if there was a real disaster.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

HP, Extended Warranties, and The Web

So back in winter I dropped my laptop and it chipped the outer shell and caused some cosmetic piece to pop off.  The laptop turned out to be fine, but I called into HP Customer Service because I had the extended warranty only to discover accidents weren't covered but they could fix it for $298.  However, since I decided to order the iPad when it was available I thought $298 and the loss of my laptop for up to 7 business days wasn't worth it.

Fast forward to yesterday and my "N" key popped off.  I tried popping it back on but it didn't work.  The Control button also popped off a few months ago but I didn't use it so I didn't care, but the N key is a big deal. So I went over to HP support which is always such a "treat" and couldn't find any documentation on how to fix it so I contacted support.  In a nut shell, they would replace the keys for free, but if they found it was due to an accident they would charge me $298 but in either case I'd be without my laptop for 7 business days.  So I started to think, hmmmm, cracked shell with a chip missing, what are the odds they are going to try and charge me $298 for a repair?  If their customer service/repairs department is a profit making unit, pretty good, right?

So I googled "replace key on hp pavilion laptop" and right at the top I found this article on how to replace keys on a HP Pavilion DV1000 which was close enough to my current laptop model.  In about 2 minutes I had the key replaced and therefore didn't need the service.  In fact, the entire online chat with HP's rep took almost 45 minutes to setup the process - too long and too tedious.

So this got me thinking.  How damn hard would it be to put that documentation on HP's website?  How many people have shipped their laptop back for something that took about 2 minutes to fix?  Besides the chat and losing my laptop for 7 business days, I'd have to remove all passwords and backup all of my files - all for a damn key.

You know what I learned from all of this?  Extended warranties are crap.  HP customer service (not the rep) was crap - I get trying to upsell clients but for a damn process that took 2 minutes to fix you couldn't put that on your website?  In this area of transparency, crowd sourcing, and instant satisfaction via web search, couldn't HP do a better job of trying to put easy fixes out there especially for us suckers that bought the extended warranty?  I don't think extended warranties are worth it and perhaps all of the money I pay for a Windows - HP laptop isn't worth it anymore either...

PardonmyFrench,

Eric

Is There Something Wrong at 1-800-Flowers?

Some of you readers are probably thinking, oh here we go again.  You are probably expecting a big rant from me based on the title of this post, but I think you might be a little disappointed.  However, I am fired up enough to rant a little about the problems we've been experiencing at 1-800-FLOWERS.

It started about a month back when my wife ordered an exotic bouquet from 1800-FLOWERS.COM   for one of my relatives in the hospital. We put the order through my iPad, our credit card was charged, and we got a confirmation.  Unfortunately the flowers were never delivered.  So my wife called into their customer service number when we heard from my relative that she hadn't received them.  Let that set in for a second, we got charged on our credit card and if we didn't check with my relative we probably never would have known they weren't delivered.  Anyway, the customer service rep was very professional, credited our account, and we received a letter with a 20% off coupon.

So, we just assumed this was a glitch and placed an order last week for another relative using the 20% off coupon,  Our credit card was charged for a simple flower bouquet with balloons and once again 1-800-FLOWERS failed to deliver.  So my wife called in again and this time was quite upset.  1-800-FLOWERS tried to contact the local florist but failed so 1-800-FLOWERS credited our account again (as of this post we haven't confirmed the credit but we are not worried).

That was the last time we will order flowers from 1-800-FLOWERS.  Their customer service reps are extremely professional and very nice, but based on our recent experiences I think there is something wrong in their order fulfillment process.  It just seems too odd that two consecutive orders from us would fail in similar ways.

I don't think 1-800-FLOWERS is a bad company, just we've had 2 bad recent experiences with their order fulfillment and that usually means to me, that they are cutting some corners that they probably shouldn't be.  Have you experienced similar problems or are we just a little unlucky?  I'd like to know.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric 

Business Week's Obama Corporate Messaging Article - Not Reassuring

In the February 22 BusinessWeek edition, they profile President Obama's Corporate Messaging and shows Obama tries to defend whether he is anti-business or not.  After reading it twice myself, I've come to my own conclusion which is in the best case scenario, I can't figure out what Obama is trying to do and in the worst and most likely scenario, he is firmly anti-business.

• Obama blames part of his anti-business rhetoric on the banks of Wall Street which seems convenient around the current sentiment in the country, but I have yet to see any official marketing by these banks that are anti-Obama.
• Obama talks about restoring a balance between business, government, and employees and then specifically says "if businesses are making record profits but employees are seeing their wages flatline, the puts enormous strains on families.  It puts, I think, a dampening effect on consumers who help drive the economy.  We are going to be better off if everybody feels like they have a stake in growth." First, I don't know how you can read that and think it is anything but anti-business. Second, I don't know how you determine what's too much, which companies are doing it right, and how you penalize companies that you don't agree with.  That's too much red tape and too much Government intervention.
• When asked about bonuses for banks that are in the multi-millions he says "they are very savvy businessmen" which implies that Obama is ok with some companies paying out large bonuses and others he is not ok with and that worries me.  How does Obama determine who is good or bad?
• Obama then talks about baseball players who make more than $17 million and don't get to the World Series and he is shocked by that.  I'm shocked he said that because, look, these guys are entertainers and they get their money in an open market from owners who are willing to pay it. What's wrong with that?  The owners that pay that kind of money did it because they invested in their teams and have large TV contracts.

And that's enough from that article, but there are some interesting other tidbits in it including free trade and how to manipulate China (Obama has no chance to do anything with China).  The simple answer to is Obama anti-business, is yes.  The reasons for that are clear.  Obama believes the role of Government is to regulate which business win and which business fails, who is allowed to pay a lot of money, and who is not, which baseball players get millions and millions and which ones don't.

The facts are based on how Obama has tried to stimulate the economy and how Obama views income, profits are that the Government directs what happens and determines who gets to play correctly.  And, if that isn't anti-business I'm not sure how much worse it can get.  Read the article yourself and see if you disagree with me.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

The iPad Nay Sayers Don't Get It

Yes I'm excited to get an iPad and I'm going to wait for the 3G version.  Why?  The functionality at the start and then the potential to have Minority Report newspapers.   

Right now I'm typing this post on my laptop while sitting in my leather chair and balancing that laptop on my leg.  It isn't comfortable.  What's annoying is that other than playing computer games, I don't need all of that laptop power.  The features in iPad will actually work a lot better for me for what I' currently using the laptop for (entertainment).  I think Apple knows that and knows that a giant size iPhone will actually sell because that functionality doesn't work so well on a small screen while in the house.

Look, I love my iPhone.  I love everything about it.  The one small negative I have is trying to read books or surf the internet while on that small screen.  Yes it works great when I'm traveling but not when I'm home. That's where the iPad comes in.  Bigger screen, similar features, and the ability to leave my laptop in my office.  Even when I'm traveling I can leave the laptop home and load important files up to Google's cloud and access them whenever and wherever I want.

And all of that has me sold and that's before the Minority Report Newspaper and Magazine transformation. You remember that movie right?  Tom Cruise's character is on the run from the law and while on a train a USAToday newspaper headline transforms with the most recent news which is his character is a fugitive. Here's the video in case you forgot.

That's what I think that new Apple chip is for.  That's what makes this product a huge deal.  Get over the big iPhone descriptions and the funny name.  If the bigger iPhone and Kindle killer doesn't do it for you, think about how the iPad will make your newspapers relevant again and how you'll be able to subscribe to Sports Illustrated.  So, instead of reading dated articles as soon as they are on ESPN, you can let SI stay up to date for you.  That's why you should ignore the nay sayers and see what Apple really has planned for this newspaper evolutionary product.  BTW - here's an article from the NY Times' media and advertising section that shows that I'm really onto something.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Can Apple Save Newspapers?

I don't consider myself an Apple Fanboy, I'm definitely closer to a Google Fanboy, but I have to admit I'm kind of excited at the prospect of Apple's Tablet.  Why?  I think a slimmer version of my laptop will make it much easier for me to read books, newspapers, and magazines; plus I'm willing to bet that the idiots that run the newspaper industry will view Apple's tablet as the last ditch effort to save their industry and put some effort behind it.

Personally, I ditched almost all of my newspaper subscriptions primarily because of the waste of paper and the lack of timely news, relying on the internet for information.  However, I do miss the ability to thumb through a paper and with the outside chance that Apple can make newspapers interactive I think it may breathe life into their currently bad business model.  Up until recently newspapers were hoping for federal government bailout, but with everything else going on in Washington there is no way anyone would stomach such a terrible idea.  

Even subscription marketing scams like the one the Star Ledger tried to slip by me, isn't helping them. And, as their paper subscription and sales volume falls so do their advertising dollars which was already decimated by eBay and Craig's List, plus the smart marketers who already abandoned them for their lack of tracking and their lack of creativity.

Up until a possible Apple Tablet launch, newspapers were trying to replace their declining offline revenues with online advertising.  However, the online dollars weren't large enough to cover their bloated payrolls and paper production, so of course they turned to Google.  First they relied on Google to help them with their sales model, but even Google once in a while flops as is the case with Google Print Ads; Google was trying to keep their content farms alive.  Next, Google continued to make improvements with Google News and then Google offered some tough love as to how these newspapers should change their business model to stop whining about all of that great traffic that Google sends them.  However, the significant traffic Google sends them coupled with using Google to backfill unsold inventory still wasn't enough to save them.

Now instead of turning to Yahoo or MSN to fight Google (neither which can), they now potentially have a savior in Apple who can breathe life into their ancient and outdated product; plus they are a formidable competitor to Google.  An Apple Tablet with interactiveness and flashy graphics might bring back subscriptions.  Also, old school agencies actually might be able to start convincing marketers to start to buy ads in newspapers again.  Plus, a Tablet might actually be retro cool as all of us 40+ year olds who actually grew up with paper can be cool reading the news again. 

As much as I love my iPhone it is hard to read news stories and books on it.  The screen is just a tad bit small, but a Tablet might just be able to bridge the gap and give the newspapers an answer to declining revenues that doesn't rely heavily on Google.  I think it actually might work.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. Here's an interesting article in PC World that actually goes into more detail my lines of thinking regarding Tablet rescuing newspapers.

Is The Star Ledger Running a Subscription Scam?

I'm furious with The Star Ledger.  About 2 Saturdays ago, a newspaper was delivered to my home.  At first, I thought it was just a neighbor's paper that was blown over due to the winds on Schooley's Mountain, so I pushed it over.  Then on Sunday the big paper showed up and again I assumed it wasn't mine.  This past Sunday, the paper showed up again but the weather was nice and I got outside early and could see this paper was delivered to me.  The sad thing is, I canceled my Star Ledger subscription a year ago and one of the primary reasons I gave was that I no longer wanted to spend an hour each week wrapping up the newspaper.

So I called into complain.  The rep on the phone told me it was a free trial.  I said "I don't want your free trial, send someone over to pick up the paper."  She said, "well I'm not sure I can do that."  And I said, "Maybe you aren't taking this serious enough.  I canceled my subscription, I never wanted it again, and you guys are littering.  If someone doesn't show up today to pick up your garbage, I will call my friends on the Town Council and have you fined for littering."  Then I asked to speak with her supervisor and they assured me that someone would be there today to pick it up, which did occur.

I didn't want to blog about it because it appeared they took care of my problem.  That is until yesterday when an invoice for Sunday delivery appeared in my mail.  Yes an invoice thanking me for returning and asking for a $9.99 per month payment.  Here's the invoice: 

So you tell me what you think is going on....

1. Weekend papers start mysteriously popping up on my driveway two weekends ago
2. I never asked for these and neither did my wife
3. I used to be a subscriber for a long time but canceled almost a year ago
4. I called in to complain and the rep slips by saying "oh you are receiving a free trial"
5.  And then an invoice appears for a weekend subscription

Simple mistake?  Probably not.  The above is too coincidental to be a simple mistake.  You know what it looks like to me?  Some crazy marketing plan to resurrect previous subscribers and hope they don't notice.

I called into complain and they admitted it was an invoice and I should disregard, but that was after they said it was a promotional letter. Promotional letter?  When was the last time a promotional letter came with an amount due, an account number, a due date for payment, and a big Thank You for Subscribing message across the top.  I repeated to them, this is an invoice not a promotional letter.  They again tried to say it was a free promotion and I should have received a postcard which I don't recall ever seeing.  Still this is an invoice not a promotional letter.

So the question is to you.  Is this a marketing scam to get their subscriptions up?  And if not, then my next question is, should they just start delivering newspapers to you when you haven't asked for it and then follow up with an invoice.  Should they be allowed to notify you with a postcard that could easily be missed and then follow up with an invoice?  Scam or no scam, this is a horrible way to boost subscriptions.  I'm also wondering, how many people paid this invoice for something they didn't want.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Last Giants Home Game At Giants Stadium Was Really Small

By now you know the Giants were blown out at their last home game in Giants Stadium by the Carolina Panthers 41-9.  The Giants were uninspired from the start of the game, so before you think this is a post about how putrid the Giants were today, think again.  This post is about how putrid the send off was by the Maras and the Tischs for the long time Giants fan.

Yes, those that know me personally, know that my family has had tickets to the Giants by way of my grandfather going back to the Polo Grounds.  I've been lucky enough to sit in the same seats in the current Giants Stadium for the past 33 years.  I personally own 1/4 of a row of 6 seats in section 134, row 15 (my family splits the seats with another family and then I split them with my Uncle).  We love to tailgate and as usual we tailgated today by the Pegasus Race Track.  Everything was going great until we started making our way in, so in order of the lamest, most fan unfriendly, cheapest, send off in the history of fan send offs, I give you the disappointments we experienced along the way...

• On our way into the game by Gate A, the ticket scanners broke down so the people checking the tickets started ripping them.  This caused many fans to scream out in horror until security showed up and allowed people into the game without scanning or ripping the tickets.
• The tents that were always setup to sell Giants apparel and gifts were closed up which I found odd because, well, people like buying Giants stuff and they could always bring it over to the new stadium, right?  A Lawrence Taylor throw-back Jersey can sell any day, any where, right?
• On our way in I noticed one of the Giants booth where they sell gifts/apparel was pretty much barren except for the loads of Sinorice Moss jerseys hanging; here's a hint, nobody wants to buy those except his friends and family.
• So at the start of the game, what do we get?  Flyovers by Black Hawk helicopters?  Nope not this week.  Some famous singer?  Nope.  How about some famous Giants players?  Nope.  We got a family with three living generations at the game (nice touch, but if that's the highlight, that's not good).
• The first half of the game was disgustingly bad, but we held out hope for a decent halftime show
• Sadly we were mistaken as the Giants with all of their millions and millions of dollars put on the cheapest halftime show in the history of halftime shows. Let alone a send off for the fans that have sat in these seats for 33 years and many of them forked over $10K per seat (like me) for the new stadium.   Let's look at how cheap and disrespectful they were to the fans with this halftime show...

   a) Bob Papa was the master of ceremonies and while I have no problem with Bob, he's already on the Giants payroll

b) And what does Bob do? He has us turn to the video screens to watch Bruce Springsteen sing Wrecking Ball with photos of great Giants Moments.  The biggest problem was, this was a 99 cent iTunes copy of the song (not sure, but it sure felt like this).  Could the Giants have been any cheaper?  Did you actually think to ask Bruce and family to come as your guests and have him strap on a guitar and harmonica and sing Wrecking Ball live?  Heck send him a car and give him great seats or let Bruce stand on the sidelines.  Come on.  Try something.

c) Then Jason Sehorn comes out representing the greatest play at Giants Stadium but as my wife notices as soon as he is on the sideline he takes off his Giants uniform and puts a coat on (it was in the 40s so he couldn't have been cold).

d) Finally LT comes out, but by the time he arrives on the field there were about 3 minutes left in halftime which is just about the time the teams come back out on the field.  He says nothing.  We cheer for him and that's it.  No greatest hits video on Lawrence Taylor and then the halftime show ended. 

That's it.  No "Derek Jeter" farewell speech.  No cool moments.  It was basically the cheapest  possible farewell to the fans that The Giants could do and still call it a farewell.  We left and went out our usual gate, but sticking with the cheapness of the day, there were no farewell posters for us out our gate.

Thanks Mara and Tisch for the lamest, cheapest farewell in the history of American Sports.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Saving Your Tax Dollars, Bottom-Up | The White House

The President made clear early on that part of the way he intended to change the way Washington does business is by looking in every nook and cranny of government both for waste and abuse, and for ideas on how to root it out. Speaking in the Diplomatic room today, he had a chance to highlight both.   He was joined by Nancy Fichtner, the Veterans Affairs employee who won the SAVE Award contest for the most popular cost-saving idea from a federal employee. In addition to commending her after meeting with her in the Oval Office, he also announced progress on his order earlier this year for departments and agencies to identify billions in saving through contracting waste and abuse:

via www.whitehouse.gov

PardonMyFrench - Typical Obama. Our federal deficit stands at $1.3 trillion in January. So Obama dusts off his messaging playbook. Bash President Bush and then tout how he has a plan to save UP TO $40 billion a year. Notice UP TO. Also the tiny savings versus the Trillions (and climbing) we are in debt.

Back at AT&T one of my favorite VP Jack McMaster when cutting budget always said "focus on the big items" to get the dollars you need. Obama is focusing on the small items...

Obama lists financial rescue as 'most important thing' of his first year - washingtonpost.com

President Obama outlined Tuesday a first-year legislative record that he said rescued the economy and placed it on a path of long-term growth, even as he acknowledged that some unfinished items would probably be more difficult to achieve heading into a midterm election year.

via www.washingtonpost.com

PardonMyFrench - so he counts TARP as his most important thing? Perhaps it avoided disaster but banks are still not lending and have paid back TARP funds while fixing their balance sheets. We have 3 more years of this rhetoric

Still Waiting for Obama's Stimulus Plan in Union, NJ

Some of you know that I own an office building in Union NJ (BTW - if you want good, cheap office space 20 minutes out of NYC send me an email).  Union NJ besides being Artie Lange's hometown is a decent, middle class, blue collar town.  If there was a perfect town that Obama's so called Stimulus plan would help it would be Union NJ.  It is a very Democratic town - having a Democratic Mayor since 1973.  Union is split at the legislative district between Republican Leonard Lance (Lance's district goes way out to my exit off of Route 78 - a long 30 minutes from Union) and a Democrat.  Again the perfect town for a stimulus package supposedly targeted at small business, entrepreneurs, and the middle class.  And it is my ideal litmus test for Obama's Stimulus package.

A casual ride through town shows the beautiful center of town filled with empty shops.  In fact, right across the street on Stuyvesant Avenue from my favorite pork store, Lutz's there is nearly an entire row of vacant stores.  These stores have been vacant for most of the past year.  Sadly there is always parking in the town lots and this was never the case.  The town center is very quiet and while it definitely isn't as fancy as Westfield's center or Red Bank's center, it has good middle class stores, bakeries, book stores, etc. Unfortunately, I can't remember the last time I stood in line for any of them.

My own office building has been about 1/3 vacant for the last year.  It is primarily a dental office building, but I have a few other small businesses in there.  It is the perfect place to start a business  - free public parking, our own parking lot, on Morris Avenue, 1 block from the Center. and cheap rates.  My first new renter starts in January and that was someone who was subleasing some space.  I also have a very strong lead from another dentist which would be my first real new renter in over 18 months.

And that's why the lack of new jobs created by Obama gets me angry.  Yes back to the stimulus which Obama and Biden promised would create jobs.  The stimulus which Obama said the do nothing model would result in high unemployment, yet unemployment has continued to skyrocket.  Obama's lack of stimulus plan has only resulted in increasing government spending.  Sure, some liberals (including Biden and Obama) will tell you that job loss has stopped and while that is true, the Stimulus has failed to create new jobs which is why unemployment remains high.  

I typed in Union NJ's main zipcode (07083) into Recovery.org and you know what I found?  $12.7 million in Obama Stimulus package money and 7 DAMN JOBS CREATED.  7 FRIGGIN JOBS. That's  $1.8 million per job!!!!

How long does the USA have to wait for real job growth?  When is this President going to help real businesses hire people instead of throwing on top of us more risky plans like ObamaCare, Cap and Trade, TARP, etc.  When will the President and his economic advisers going to realize that by giving big businesses money (TARP), they will fix their balance sheets first so they create wealth for themselves and their stockholders rather than hire more people.  When is the President going to understand as one of my tenants said the other day "I've never been hired by a poor person to paint their office" and that instead of taking antagonistic postures to business he should be working harder?

Right now Obama's Stimulus Plan has been anything but a stimulus.  In fact, if Viagra stimulated this little, it could have only been marketed by snake oil salesman and late night infomercials.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Using Disney Parks to Market Princess and The Frog

As some of you readers know, I've always been very impressed with Disney's marketing especially with the way they use their parks.  Well in an awesome display of integrated marketing Disney is really using their parks to pump up their newest movie with their newest princess The Princess and The Frog.   

Now as anyone knows, Wall Street and the media always look at the openings to see how  successful a movie release is going to be.  Disney of course know this too and that's why they are using one of their tools in their arsenal which most movie studios don't have - tens of thousands of people going into their parks every day and the vast majority of them with young kids.   

So what is Disney doing?  Simple - giving away a ticket for each kid with a corresponding adult.  We picked ours up in Disney Studios and using a simple activation code and website, we picked up our free children's movie ticket guaranteeing that we will see the movie the first three weeks it is open - December 11 - December 31.  

I think this is a simple, yet brilliant integrated marketing tactic and costs Disney very little in the way of promotions.  Sure there are cards to print and marketing materials to put out in the park, but compare that with what you'd expect other marketers to do - direct mail, radio, emails, display ads, etc.  We were already in the park, likely to be their target market, and all we had to do was agree to receive the cards at a counter while we were checking out with a purchase.  That's Disney at its best using integrating marketing.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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

*****A NOVEMBER 15, 2011 UPDATE*********

Dear Roblox Wiki clicks,

Thanks for the traffic.  It's been over 2 years since I made this post.  I've moved on and so has my son when it comes to gaming.

Feel free to make your comments to defend Roblox.  Please refrain from parental advice and cursing.  It devalues whatever positive commentary you might have.  I think the folks at Roblox would be very impressed with your love and defense of the site, but now my son chooses other games to play and has never asked me again about Roblox.  

I had considered disabling comments from this point on, but I decided against it because of your passion.  However, as I wrote above we moved on, so while your appropriate, tasteful comments might sway some other parents, it means nothing to me unless he chooses to play again.

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