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    Microsoft. Over_think.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Microsoft is a pisser. I once heard you couldn’t work for them unless your IQ was like a zillion. And you had to pass some sort of gnarly logic teaser tests. “If a train is going 60 miles an hour….”  Microsoft has spent so much money on marketing over the years one would think they’d know what they’re doing, but my take is they over_think too much. Everything is so complex.

    Here’a an example. I read a leaderboard display ad in the business section of NYTimes.com. It read: It’s everybody’s business to think globally. Does your enterprise software know how people really communicate? Ask for people_ready unified communications. (Note the hyphen/underscore). Upon click it took me to not a landing page (a time-tested lubricant for creating action), but to big portal page filled with many choices – 23 in fact. The main choice was an article presented, thankfully, in executive summary form entitled “Working in a blended world.”  But I didn’t just leave the world’s greatest newspaper site for an article written by Microsoft, so I moved on. Another choice which seemed "on" the leaderboard message was in the form of a badge which asked “Are you spending your time the right way?” Check out Harvard Business Ideacast. I clicked there and it led me to copy about a productized offering (I think) called Time-Boxing, which actually was somewhat intriguing, but it was way buried and it took forever to find it.

    Then I went to read an article on the portal and it offered me a PDF reader of something called .XPS, the Microsoft version of an “enhanced” reader. I clicked on the XPS, out of curiosity, and was asked to download the application. I clicked out using the red “X” and it wouldn’t let me leave. I had to close the window using a "close both tabs?" button. Frustrayshhhhhh.

     

    News is money!

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    What’s the idea with The New York Times?

    Over time, The New York Times Corporation has borrowed $1.1B to help fund its money making efforts and the notes are coming due.  From the funding of internet property About.com to investment in the Boston Red Sox baseball team to ownership and leasing of a brand new building in New York City’s Times Square, the management of this glorious news corporation through lack of focus has allowed itself to falter. With a cash infusion of $250 million from Mexican mogul Carlos Slim Helu – talk about angel investors – the Times Corp. may live to see another day.

    I wonder how many senior Times executives looked at Samuel Zell’s purchase of the Tribune Company and foresaw that crash and burn. I’ll bet many. Yet did they not see what was happening to their own organization?  This lack of focus and defined business objective should have been obvious to any good financial reporter. 

    By managing so many different and diffuse businesses, the Times Corp. took its eye off the real prize: Become the world’s best, most ubiquitous news organization — enabled by the Web. Warren Buffet would agree that news is money. The Times has so far missed the opportunity. Peace!      

    IBM is back.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    What’s the idea with IBM?

    Well, it’s nice to see IBM advertising on TV again. I watched a couple of its ads during the NFL playoffs yesterday and there was something reassuring about them.  (It’s been a while.) One ad talked about the computing power of a pedaflop, whatever that is. IBM’s new editorial-like “Think” campaign is intended to get people thinking about solving the planet’s problems. And this thinking, they infer, will be best supported by massive, raw computing power. It’s a nice idea. And timely. The print works better than the TV and though the TV doesn’t mention the “Think” device, the idea holds together.

    IBM is making money. It is making big ass computers. And it’s making some noise. In a tough economy, this is good to see. Especially after all those dollar menu ads by McDonald’s. Peace!

     

    With Original Content Yahoo Can Win

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    What’s the idea with Yahoo?

    Many of us have been waiting for Yahoo to make a move. The appointment of Carol Bartz as CEO is part of that move, but now the strategy must change.  Were I Ms. Bartz, I’d block all calls to Redmond on the corporate PBX and announce that search will never be sold. Never! My goal would be to become the #1 content site on the web. Like the New York Yankees, I’d create a hit-list of the world’s best writers, bloggers and social media experts (e.g., Perez Hitlon, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, David Carr, Thomas Friedman, Beppe Grillo, etc.) and pay them big bucks to sign on.

    Advertising is not a strategy, it’s the price of doing business, it’s infrastructure.  Content is a strategy. Yahoo needs to be the world’s most sought after content site. It once was and can be again. I would put the money into content and the search and ads will follow. Peace!

    Running barefoot.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The next big thing in running shoes will be bare feet. You heard it here first. Going commando below the ankles.  It’s so Amerind, so American (with a little Kenyan mixed in). When Under Armour decided the footwear and sneaker category is “dormant” and in need of another marketer, I knew I was right. 

    I’m no physician, but you’ve got to know that running barefoot (gum, nails and glass aside) is better for your feet than running in some cheesy Chinese rubber and lace concoction. Runners who toughen their feet over time and go shoeless will enjoy better foot health, look way cooler and save money. It will happen. It’s just a matter of time. Don’t tell Nike. Peace!

    The New York Times Buys (into) USA Today.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    What’s the idea with The New York Times?

    I posted yesterday about our culture being so ADD. Americans, especially kids, multitask their media and therefore have a hard time concentrating.  Tweet tweet. You’ve got mail. Beep beep beep. Ring ring. Long form, analytical media is hurting (read magazines) so we are shorten it. DVRs allow us to put our TV on hold. We buy single songs. The world is not only flat, it’s freakin’ frenetic.

    I can live with most of it — it’s just culture — but there’s one example that really bothers me. It’s pages 2 and 3 of the New York Times newspaper. Sacred pages once, they are today filled with 50-word digests of the paper’s stories. Designed to take best advantage of the reduced amount of time readers are willing to spend with the paper, these pages are nothing more than a geezer search engine. The founders are flipping in their terra.

    For me these two pages demonstrate a defeatist mentality on the part of The Times. Where’s the serendipity in the exploration of the paper? The voyage? It is not that I’m a traditionalist, but seriously, when did the NY Times turn into a better-written USA Today? 

     

    Digest This.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Steve Rubel writes in his Micropersuasion post today that on the Web "text is king." It’s searchable, scannable (quickly perused), easy to forward, and works well on mobile platforms. This fits perfectly with my thesis that today’s media habits are ADD-driven. For instance, this weekend I was reading an article in the newspaper about school budgets and realized my high school basketball team had a game the night before. I stopped reading and picked up the laptop to search out the score.  How many times have you been reading something interesting and wiki’ed it online?  How many meeting are you in that are stopped by people answering phones or texts, or Blackberry emails or IMs? James Patterson, the leading fiction writer in America, writes 2 page chapters. Wall Street Journal articles are shorter by 20%. Technology puts media in all its forms at hands reach putting our head are on swivels.

    That’s why text is king. It is easily digestible, searchable and burstable. It also feeds our ADD behavior.     

    Subscription is the Business Model.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    My head is spinning this morning having just read David Carr’s smart column in the New York Times which lead me to ponder the future of online content. He so right when he implies we will all be paying subscription fees for our online content soon. Good newspapers are paid for — compared to bad newspapers, which are free – because advertising alone can’t keep them afloat. And it’s not just the paper that adds to cost though that is a factor. It is the news gathering and editorial infrastructure. The science and the art requires a premium.  

    And then I read about AOL and started to realize what is killing them is not only their lack of focus and “master of none” strategy but horrid usability. Usability is the driver of online business. (I worked for company that didn’t no shizz about usability and we failed quickly.) AOL’s email, browser, and portal business had to be free –it was so poorly designed no one would pay for it. Rather than fix what was broken, AOL decided to go commando. Free.

    Venture money often screws up internet businesses by keeping them afloat while management tries to figure out “the model.” Are you listening Mr. Zuckerberg?

    Carr’s right, the model is subscription. Make something people are willing to pay for and you have a business. There. My head stopped spinning. Peace!

    Kaplan University’s Revolt

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I watched a good ad on TV the other night that really caught my attention. About Kaplan University, this :30 was extremely well-written and nicely produced. See the spot here. It was powerful, gripping and true…a trifecta. At the end though, past the promise of "a different kind of university,” I felt a little cheated to find out it was an online university. Cheese factor.

    Today, I read a bold print ad by Kaplan on the same idea, but it is a little more focused. It discussed the notion that traditional graduate education is not available to everyone and how it is sucking talent out of our economy. The headline reads “Every year in the United States billions of dollars’ worth of talent goes to waste. What does that mean for you?”

    I love revolutions and that’s what this branding idea and this advertising is all about. The product, price and educational experience had better deliver, though.  Revolutions can go both ways. 

    The agency is  Ogilvy, so says the blog Make the Logo Bigger.  Great work! David would be proud.

    Tropicana and the B Team.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    What’s the idea with Tropicana Premium Orange Juice?

    I’m okay with updating the Tropicana Orange Juice carton, which Omnicom’s Arnell Group just did, but not to the point where it looks like a milk carton, which they also just did. Losing the trademarked orange with protruding straw was a mistake.  That icon was the fastest, easiest way to convey positive feelings and associations about the product. And it helped differentiate Tropicana from all the water and flavor-added orange drinks. A glass of juice does not bring forth great images from the recesses of the mind the way an orange does. Ahhh orange blossoms.

    The new idea using the word “squeeze” as its center point is a dual strategy. It is meant to make up for the loss of the orange and at the same time drive consumers to thoughts of wonderful human images. Nyet! I do love the new cap on the carton though, shaped as half an orange. It would have been a great accent on the old carton.

    Seems like Tropicana may have gotten the “B” Team while Mr. Arnell and his people were off logging hours on the Pepsi redesign.

     

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