Monday, March 22, 2004

The New Ride Over the last week, we sold the VW and leased a new BMW. I test drove an Acura TSX a few weeks ago, and left rather unimpressed. With 200 horsepower but only 4 cylinders, it just didn't jump when I said boo. It certainly has a ton of features standard, and the price is good... I just didn't love it. Fortunately, while my heart and my mind argued, BMW started advertising an aggressive lease offer for their 325i model. With the VW was sold, we decided to lease for a few years, then re-evaluate our car needs, rather than committing to a 4-5 year loan and 6+ years of ownership. (That's not to say we won't need a car in 6+ years, we just might not need two cars.) Plus, we'd need less money up front, and our monthly payments would be lower. And so, with J & P out in NY, and my heart and mind in agreement, this last weekend was the perfect time to go get a car. I went down right at their open, and found a nice enough salesman to test the car. One word: sweetbutter. OK, I cheated, that might be two words, but goddamn it is sweet like butta'. Sure it has less HP than the TSX, but it is, by far, much more nimble and responsive. The interior is plush, and the body lines are sexy. It purrs in idle, and growls in the acceleration. It handles like taffy on shoes, which is in wild contrast to the Jeep. So far, I love it. For the first time in a long time, driving into work today was actually fun. Imagine that! I can hardly wait until P & J get back to see it. 10:34:51 PM    trackback []

	Sunday, March 21, 2004

'All marketing should be permission marketing'... 'All marketing should be permission marketing' : Ten years ago, Procter & Gamble CEO Ed Artzt gave a now-legendary speech shaming the ad industry into innovating and embracing new media. I was starting online then and it made waves. Now, 10 years later, another P&G exec, Jim Stengel, gives a followup speech to the industry and gives them a bad grade, a C-, for their efforts so far. A few good lines: In 1994, we anticipated an explosion in TV channels, resulting in significant fragmentation in viewers. Today, the average U.S. household has more than 90 TV channels—this is up from an average of 27 channels in 1994. Share for the big four networks during primetime has dropped from 52.4 percent to 30.6 percent. Specialized networks offer advertisers access to more segmented audiences, but in much smaller volume. And we’ve lost whole segments of consumers whose needs aren’t being met by today’s programming. We must accept the fact that there is no “mass” in “mass media” anymore, and leverage more targeted approaches. And I especially like this: All marketing should be permission marketing. All marketing should be so appealing that consumers want us in their lives. We should strive to be invited into consumers’ lives and homes. When we think of permission-based marketing, most of us think about opt-in online newsletters. We really need to expand this mentality to all aspects of marketing. We must develop creative that both maximizes the channel and appeals to the consumer. For each element of the marketing mix, we should ask ourselves “would consumers choose to look at or listen to this,” and let that be the benchmark. I like that: All marketing should be permission marketing. Right. Yet I think he's still not looking at that from quite the right perspective. Almost, but not quite. He's still thinking about all this in terms of old-time creative and old-time media: Is our commercial good enough to show you? Instead, they should be thinking: Is our information good enough to serve you? And he can even start to think about having mutual friends (see Chris Locke's Gonzo Marketing on the idea of underwriting citizens' media). For this new medium offers more than eyeballs. It offers relationships. And, more important, it offers the consumer control. So rather than trying to create a commercial you force upon a consumer that so darned good he might tolerate if given a choice, realize instead that consumers do now go to advertising when it's useful: I go to Handspring's site to learn about and buy their phone. More important, I go to fellow consumers -- with whom I have a relatsionship of trust -- to learn about products. I went to the TreoCentral forums to learn more about Handspring's phone before and after I bought it. That's a helluva different from happening to see a good commercial about the phone. That's the future of marketing. As Fred Wilson said one morning, "The push model of advertising is over. It's over. It's just a matter of time before people realize it. It's toast." [BuzzMachine] 12:58:26 AM    trackback []

	Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Netflix And TiVo? Perfect Together This one is for Tony Gentile: A long, but interesting, look at Netflix's business. The article points out, accurately, that Netflix is going to be a strong competitor for any online "video on demand" outfit - as they basically are a video on demand outfit that just takes a bit longer to deliver - but comes with much more freedom for the end user. However, the company clearly realizes that their biggest threat doesn't appear to be the recent copycat attempts by folks like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, but the future of video on demand. Unlike most companies that miss the boat on disruptive technologies, Netflix is already trying to figure out how they'll compete in that space as the technology gets better. They haven't given up much in the way of details, but are working on tests of video on demand systems they can offer as an option - allowing for a gradual transition when (if!) people want their movies delivered over the internet. At the end, the article makes one interesting prediction: Netflix and TiVo should team up to offer some sort of combined solution. The article doesn't specifically discuss what that solution should be, but it could make a lot of sense. Offering up an easy way to "download" the video of your choice to your TiVo could be fairly compelling. [Techdirt] 6:10:36 PM    trackback []

	Monday, January 26, 2004

Review: Nestle Butterfinger Hot Cocoa Mix Why does this make me laugh? Perhaps because it feels like one of those late nights in college, when you'd heard yourself say something like, "hey, what would this and that taste like together?" and your buddy says, "well, let's find out." Whatever happens, do not consume this product. Even if a Nestle representative has a gun to your head, I recommend carefully weighing your options before making your decision. Nearest approximation: Melt a Butterfinger candy bar in a wood-burning stove. Blend the chocolately, peanut-buttery ash with 8 oz. water. Serve boiling. To say that this "peanut-buttery" cocoa tastes vile is to do a disservice to vile things everywhere. To drink it is to ingest a steaming mug of Satan's vomit. Avoid. [~stevenf] Poor Nestle, being introduced to the power of weblogs like this... :-) 9:45:22 PM    trackback []

The Myth of Google I thought this was worth amplifying: I'm sure you're aware of Orkut, Google's new social networking application. It's definitely generating a bunch of buzz on the Net today. The way that Google released the news about Orkut, and the story that is spreading around it, is very telling of the nature of Google as an organization. If you know about Orkut, you are also aware of the fact that Google allows its engineers to spend 20% of their time on personal projects. In the old days of the new way, we would call that bit of information a "meme"--some idea that gets passed around. That bit of info is really not relevant to the features or benefits of the Orkut system itself. Rather, it helps to illustrate something about Google: that, at its core, it is a company of smart programmers doing cool things with technology. Social networking is hot, but Google gets into the fray not because of board meetings and strategic consultations. Rather, they are into it because--from the depth of their technology group--someone came up with a cool implementation. ...or, at least, that's the story. And stories are brands, and brands are the basis of relationships between companies and consumers. The fact that the community of consumers are the ones currently perpetuating the story, in the form of the 20% Time Meme speaks volumes about the strength of the brand. [Gary Stein] 8:51:27 PM    trackback []

	Monday, January 19, 2004

Esther Dyson, queen of comedy The echos of WishClick reverberate: I know I know - it is like poking a rattle snake with your foot. But I am feeling feisty this morning. Now that Esther Dyson doesn’t really have anything to say about anything (smart guy in her company is doing his own thing), she has decided that comedy is the next big thing. Dyson got the biggest laugh by suggesting a business model for Sunnyvale-based Friendster, the popular social networking service and a company that has yet to collect any revenue from its users. Populated by lonely singles looking to line up dates, Friendster should start a personal gift registry, Dyson said. The bottom line would be: “If you want to date me, this is what you’ve got to buy me.” (San Jose Mercury News) Yup, that’s a new business model, so new that every generation has been doing the same since Adam and … [Om Malik's Broadband Blog] 3:13:06 PM    trackback []

	Monday, January 12, 2004

Contribute named Best Dev Tool for 2003 PC Magazine has named Contribute among its Best Products for 2003, under the category of Development Tools, alongside Macromedia Studio MX, FileMaker, and JBuilder. 1:38:24 PM    trackback []

	Sunday, January 11, 2004

Why the delayed release of iLife '04? Could Steve Jobs & Co. really be crafty enough to purposefully delay the release of iLife in order to build buzz and salivation-al anticipation in the market place? 9:26:27 PM    trackback []