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    The General News Journal

    By
    Steve Poppe
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     Rupert Murdoch is at loggerheads with The Wall Street Journal’s top editor Marcus W. Brauchli, and it looks like Murdoch is going to win.  They are at odds over the direction of the paper.  Mr. Murdch wants to compete with the New York Times and increase coverage of general news and politics.  Mr. Brauchli and the Bancroft Family, the Journal’s previous owners, wish to see the paper stick to its financial roots.  As do I.
     
    If you take Wall Street out of the Journal you have a newspaper without a conscience.   Wall Street is like no other street in the world.  It and the financial industry need its own newspaper. Money is important. And ever shall be in America. Mr. Murdoch, it’s okay to make little satisfying changes, but this overhaul needs to stop. And, please leave the “Marketplace” section alone. It’s quite good.
     

    Stop watering down Coke.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’m a big Coke fan. I don’t drink it all that much, though I had a couple of swigs of my wife’s Diet Coke last night, but I certainly follow it as a marketer. Coke is an amazing brand. Having worked at McCann-Erickson the ad agency that did Coke’s best work, I saw first hand the brand at work and the hold it had on its drinkers.
     
    But Coke marketing has become watered down. Not the formula, God forbid, but the marketing. Coke has too many brand extensions, too many internal competing products (waters, juices, energy drinks) and an overall loss of brand commitment. But Coke is still Coke and after consumers have tried all that other stuff, they still come back. So why does Coke continue to compete with itself.  It’s silly. It used to be the world’s most recognized brand. Now it lies fallow.
     
    Were I the head of Coke I’d get rid of all the waters, juices and energy drinks. I’d get McCann back and rekindle the “thirst” of Americans and those in need of refreshment the world over. I’d take the money from all the sold off non-Coke properties and put it with the legions of displaced marketing executives on something new. How about a healthy fast food restaurant chain? Or a new sport? (That’s right, a new sport.)
     

    Questions As Ideas.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    HSBC is a bank among banks. Their branding idea, however, is actually pretty inventive.  It struck me first when viewing some wonderful outdoor advertising in NYC. Developed by JWT, the outdoor showed the same picture multiple times with alternating headlines. One series showed the same colorful shot of a piece of sushi. Beneath one shot was the word “tasty” the next the word “nasty.” 

     

    The idea behind the advertising is points-of-view alter everything. I spoke with the planner at JWT who confirmed that the bank is “digging deeper with customers” to really know what’s on their minds. This one execution did a great job of conveying that premise. Most banks say things like “our bankers get to know you like neighbors” or some other fluff, but that claim is so stale it doesn’t process. HSBC’s spin is fresh. 

     

    Communication and Usability.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’ve seen the entire history of the Internet and Internet marketing unfold and it’s fun to compare selling and marketing techniques across media and over time.
     
    Before the Internet, print was a very strong selling medium. Newspapers and magazines provided marketers with long-form communications vehicles through which to sell goods and services. Research was employed to help gauge a print ad’s selling effectiveness, telling marketers if an ad was seen, remembered, read partially, or read completely. Rarely, though, could one determine if an ad was acted upon. 
     
    One of today’s dominant sales channels is the Internet, and with so many people comfortable buying over the Internet (32% of web shoppers have been doing so for 7 years) it’s amazing that marketers are only now beginning to ask some of these same selling questions. On the Internet there are numerous techniques to find out what is working and what’s not. Techniques to find out what web pages people are visiting.  How long they are staying. What they acting upon. What they are sharing. What they are filing away. And most important, what they are buying.
     
    Research departments in the 60s and 70s would have killed for this type of information, yet today many companies are still not asking the questions or using the tools. The tools are all related to usability and communication.  Come on people, let’s use them.
     

    Sony, not the one and only.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’m a Sony guy. If I see the name Sony on an electronic product I’m predisposed toward purchase. Quality, fidelity, and craftsmanship are a couple of the qualities I assign to Sony products. I’ve even written here about Sony’s lead in TV, and how its TVs are superior. 
     
    Well lo and behold, Sony’s flat panel LCD TV business is unprofitable with a market share lead in the US that is fractional. Who is nipping at its heals? Visio. Who? Visio.
     
    Ever shop at Sam’s Club or Costco or a similar warehouse store? If so, then you’ve probably passed some Visio TVs.  More likely than not you’ve passed them in carts rolling out the door. These flat panel TVs are about half the price of the big brands like Sony and Samsung and people are buying them with their 50-packs of toilet paper.
     
    Contract manufactured in Asia, with spectacular targeted marketing, companies like Visio and Olevia are biting off some serious share. 
     
    If you market where the price shoppers are – and today, who isn’t a price shopper – and offer a product that is half the traditional price, you are likely to gain consideration. Perhaps not the first time, you walk past the TV on the way to find your groceries, but the 4th or 5th time. So long as that TV is still pounding out brilliant pixels, it is wending its way into your heart. Sony better get with the price program.
     

    Facebook, the people.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Sheryl Sandberg was brought in to Facebook as COO to help stabilize the ship. Facebook is cruising along nicely, don’t get me wrong, but the ship is bobbing and weaving. By bringing mainstream business acumen to Facebook, Ms. Sandberg has in a matter of months created new procedures and business practices to make Facebook less of a college dorm company and more a grownup company. 
     
    Her other functions are to help Facebook make more money than it spends, and fix the advertising model. But as the “suits” infiltrate Facebook (remember the Beacon program) Facebook will lose more and more of its identity. What made Facebook so unique was that it was run by millennials for millennials. I don’t begin to know Mark Zuckerberg’s personally but I’m guessing he was pretty democratic in his approach to building Facebook. (The idea to open up the API to developers, being one example.)    
     
    Facebook is what it is today because it was not a product built by a few business people with a business vision. It is a platform built and evolved by many for many. Facebook is successful because the “people” are running the show, not the suits. IBM and AT&T could never have followed this model, Facebook must. I wish Ms. Sandberg luck in her endeavor but suspect she will have a torturous couple of years before her. 
     

    A Senior Moment?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Rupert Murdoch seems to be having a senior moment. One day he’s meeting with Jerry Yang in an effort to align News Corp with Yahoo and Google, the next he’s talking about working with Microsoft to take over Yahoo. Either way it sounds as if he’s trying to get someone who knows the space to handle his Fox Interactive Media, owner of MySpace. 

     

    I’m getting the impression Mr. Murdoch is more interested in “the deal” than the “vision.” Frankly, he knows how Microsoft makes money, so I’m betting that the Microsoft play is where he’s likely to land – if he does land. And that’s debatable given some of these tactics. Maybe his recent dinner with Jerry Yang was strictly intell gathering. If it was, I bet Roy Bostock was not at the table.

     

    PS. I wrote some time ago that Mr. Murdoch’s purchase of The Wall Street Journal, would lead to creation of the world’s biggest business social net. That would have been vision. 

    PPS. For a fun look at a Visual Guide to the Yahoo Mating Dance, click on the Dan Farber link: http://www.zude.com/index.htm?pg=MAIN&btnbar=3&pgid=62208041108532417674

    Posters and Pasters

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I really like Charlene Li of Forrester Research. She’s smart, has immersed herself in the social networking/social media category and she is the “go to” analyst in the business. But if “to a hammer everything looks like a nail,” then to a research analyst everything requires a segmentation study.

     
    Charlene’s new thing is Social Technographics. It’s a nice branded name for a segmentation study identifying people in their different levels of social networking adoption. Buy the book Groundswell or employ Forrester and learn how to market your product to consumers anywhere along this adoption curve. The six segments are: Inactives, Spectators, Joiners, Collectors, Critics and Creators.
     
    Here’s my segmentation study. Posters and Pasters. This is the Ying and Yang of social media. The Mutt and Jeff. The Perez and Paris. Posters are the creators of new and original content. Pasters are the organizers and repurposes of that content. Pretty simple really. Short book. And free. 
     
     

    Eee pc

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0


    There is a new type of notebook computer in town which some are calling the netbook. It is so named because it is light, fast and Internet-centric. Many of the notebook providers have these computers either on the drawing boards or heading to a store near you. The price points are low and manufacturers are betting that netbooks will create a larger user market and not cannibalize margins of the current market.

     
    Kids and business people are very used to small qwerty type devices, and with iPods and portable DVD players in great favor it’s not a stretch to see small $299 netbooks showing up in backpack’s and bags across the country. Think of them as supplemental portable PCs. 
     
    One of the ways netbook manufacturers are keeping prices down is by selling them with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems. By dumbing these devices down and providing “easy” tabbed operation the “greatest generation” may find netbooks agreeable and become more wired. Easy is as easy does. And that will grow the market.
     
    So let’s see: a small, low price-point computer that will appeal to current computer users and a device that will appeal to “never bought” owners. Sounds like a plan.
     
    Check out the Eee Pc netbook at http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=24. Also read about the category in the Marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal 4/8/08.
     
     

    Digital Distribution Empire

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
    There was an ad campaign a couple of decades ago by a major Chemical Society that asked the question “What in the world isn’t chemical?” Well today that question might be better asked, “What in the world isn’t digital?”   
     
    One company poised to corner the digital distribution business is Amazon. Known for books then CDs, Amazon has evolved into a distributor of many different type of products, from electronics to tools, to health food. But as Amazon make inroads in digital music downloads, it has moved into digital books (thanks to the Kindle,) and has a digital download movie business called Amazon Unbox. Ultimately, they will sort through all the permutations of distribution, usability and rights management and strengthen their play in these categories — in which they are currently underperforming. And when they do they’ll have one supreme advantage: price.
     
    As Amazon begins to cross-sell its various digital products it will be able to amortize costs and offer discounts which will be hard to copy. Buy two digital movies and a digital novel by Nelson DeMille and we’ll give you Shelby Lynne’s new single.
     
    As Amazon becomes the online store for all things digital, they will be the Exxon Mobil of this generation.
     
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