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    The world’s simplest video recorder will change the world.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Technologies, less than a year old, is making it so just about anyone can carry a video camera.
     
    The Flip costs $120 and is the equivalent of a point and shoot camera.  But easier. As David Poque of the NY Times says, this camera is not burdened with “feature creep,” so anyone can master it. Or as we like to say at Zude the market extends “from geeks to grandpas.”  When you make something easy for everyone to use (read Nintendo Wii,) market share follows. The Flip already owns 13% share. The Flip has no tapes or disks. No menus. No settings, video light, special effects, headphone jacks. It just works…and works well.
     
    The instructions read: Recording videos: 1. Press record button to start/stop. 2. Press up/down keys to zoom in/out.  Playing videos: 3. Press play button to start/stop. 4. Press left/right keys to play previous/next.
     
    Technology companies are beginning to catch on that simplicity is in great demand. Now everyone can play a video game. Everyone can make a video. Everyone can build their own website.
     
    As more and more Flip Videos make it into pocketbooks, backpacks and pockets, we are going to find that video recording of events will grow exponentially. Unit sales will soar, the universe of buyers will increase, and we’ll see some things that will make your hair curl. 

    One idea or two?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    As you may know, I’m a big advocate of the “idea.” Most advertising usually goes way beyond one idea, trying to stuff 3 and 4 key take-aways into an ad, which invariably makes the advertising fail. 
     
    Ford Motor Company is trying desperately to work its way out of a tail spin. Truck sales are still keeping Ford alive, but the new leadership has recognized they need to focus on cars to make a come back. The smartest thing I’ve read about Ford in the last twenty years I read today. All Ford advertising is charged now with doing two things. Not one. And though that makes me a little uneasy and will require great creative discipline, I like what I read. 
     
    Ford ads must make drivers “feel something” about Ford and “do something” about Ford. These simple directives are important because they allow the ad makers and ad approvers to look at the work before it’s produced and ask those 2 questions: “What does this ad make me feel? And what does this ad make me do.” If the answer is unclear, the work should be killed. Not having written the brand plan for Ford, I can’t say what the “feel” planks are, but this directive is a great start. And, frankly, oh so simple.  
     

    Opting Out on Paper

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’m in Austin at SXSW Music. It’s part Mardi Gras, part Woodstock,
    part college cut day. All fun. Musicians from all over the world have come to
    be discovered and signed…and drink a little Shiner Boch. REM played at a
    barbecue place last night.

    The city is filled with taste-makers. Every kid with guitar or
    pair of drum sticks is betting his or her career on the art they’re performing
    down here. Lots of edgy people. One trend I picked up on is fan dissatisfaction
    with paper. In the convention center, not too far from where the welcome bags
    are given out, is an alcove filled with printed paper. When I say filled I
    really mean strewn. It looks quite cool but is definitely a protest.

    My SXSW welcome bag must have weighted 8 pounds: It had 3
    newspapers, 7 magazines, and countless flyers and cards. Kids and smart adults
    today don’t want to see paper wasted. They want to opt in to paper, not
    opt-out.

    Functional anthropologists might attribute this opt-out statement
    to people not wanting to schlep the weight around, but the pile’s prominent
    display says protest and speaks to the preference for all things digital.

    Oh yeah, and there were also many CDs in the welcome bag. In a couple of years,
    they, too, will make the pile.

    AIDA

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    AIDA. Not the opera, steps to a sale. Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. That’s what marketing is all about. If you are hiking and come off the trail parched and hit a roadside store for water this process goes very quickly in the water section. If you’re shopping for a car, it goes much more slowly and thoughtfully.

     
    Targeted selling has changed through history. Not to go all pony express on you, but from storefront to catalog, to door-to-door and print media, then electronic, DR and now online — things keeping creeping toward targeting perfection. As the large cable companies get together through Project Canoe trying to figure out a way to maximize ad serving on TV, the business is on the verge of another whoosh in ad ROI.
     
    We at Zude (the social computing platform I work for) have in our future an even greater plan for targeting ads. Each Zude page contains a multitude of objects. Text is an object, pictures are objects, video, audio, etc.  By knowing what these objects are and analyzing them, we can serve up pretty tight ads. An example: if you have a Zude page with lots of hiking pictures (many labeled “trail”) we might serve up a tent ad. We promise to make it non-obtrusive and welcome.  More efficient ad serving, shrinks the AIDA process down, and gets consumers to Action faster.
     

    Apple just Facebooked Mark Zuckerberg.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I have a picture of a tee-shirt on one of my Zude pages that reads “I Facebooked your mom.” 

    Well, it looks like Steve Jobs just Facebooked Mark Zuckerberg.  Jobs and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins announced yesterday that they are setting up a $100 million fund to support software developers who create apps for the iPhone.  Okay, maybe Jobs borrowed the idea from Mr. Zuckerberg, but in a true senior, capitalist moment he has created a more tangible monetary incentive for independent coders which should bring them and their sticker bedecked laptops scurrying to the iPhone. 
     

    Put away those cow tossing apps. Put away those nuisance invitations to join the best haircut club, or the “Who has the best gap-tooth smile” group.  Now you can make some serious. Money.

     

    Approved iPhone apps will go up on a new service called the App Store (Get it? App, as in Apple.)  Apple will keep 30% and I’m not sure if the remainder goes to the developer or if Kleiner keeps some points, but it is sure going to beat counting cows.

     

    That’s a nice first day on the job for Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s new COO. More on her later.  Peace out from Canadian Music Week!

     

    Blogs don’t kill people…

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Paul Tilley, the creative director for DDB Chicago, tragically took his life last month and it has been said by many in the blogosphere that nasty bloggers were the cause. Nina DiSesa, chairwoman of McCann-Erickson, went on record as saying that the cowardly acts of anonymous bloggers in the ad biz taking pot shots at public figures has to stop.
     
    I like Ms. DiSesa, I do. When my father passed away, Nina wrote me a long note, both warm and touching. She was the creative director at McCann at the time, I an account geek. Big hearts make big ads and that is why Nina has been so successful over the years, but I’m not sure I completely agree with her on this blogger thing. Creative people need to vent. It’s their release. They vent positively and they vent negatively. Paul Tilley knew this.  I’ll bet even he was a venter.
     
    Mean people suck. Sticks and stones. The fact is Mr. Tilley and other people for whom suicide is the only option, will do what they do. Nina is right that we need to be less mean to one another. We need to vent in more constructive ways. But let’s not blame some anonymous mean-spirited rants for Mr. Tilley’s death. 
     

    One hit, I wonder?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    48% of kids did not buy a CD last year. iTunes is now the number two music retailer behind WalMart. The times they are a changin’.   
     
    I just spend 2 days at Digital Music East in NYC and there were a bunch of people walking around with nervous stomachs. Here’s an example of why: one panel on marketing to teens and tweens comprised 30 and 50 year olds, drawing analogies and making references to Led Zeppelin and terrestrial radio. It was silly. The industry has lost touch, it seems. 
     
    Back to digital downloads. The real problem with digital downloads, and I’m sorry for sounding like a broken MP3 on this subject, but it’s just too easy to pay for one song — the so-called good song. Fans can’t get to know bands and create affinity with bands through one song. One song is the short story. The album, the novel. Record companies need to sell full albums not single songs. That’s how you build up a fan base. Single songs sales lead to burn-out and one hit wonders.
     

    Machines Don’t Make Good Coffee

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
    At Starbucks, there has always been a trade-off between fast and good. The best drinks at Starbucks require a fresh grinding of the beans, filling the espresso brewing cup (for lack of a better term,) the clunk-cluck of the cup to level the coffee, the twist of the heavy device into place as it is readied for the aromatic brew. This process, this aroma made Starbucks famous. But it took time. To do the work twice as fast, as crowds grew, they needed twice an many baristas and machines, so the made the business decision to  automate. Now espresso “shots” come out of a “two in one” machine that grinds and brews.
     
    Howard D. Schultz complains that the breakfast sandwiches cover up the smell of the coffee. He is right, so say goodbye to breakfast sandwiches. But it’s also these new machines. The 3-hour training session last night was a brilliant stroke. It told the public “we care.”   But saying as he did in his training video “This is about the love and compassion and commitment that we all need to have for the customer,” is 21st century marko-babble. What he should have said was “passion and commitment” to the product. Make a great product and customers will line up.
     
    Were Mr. Schultz to toss out all of the new automated brewing machines — putting them at the curb – he might no have to close 100 stores. And he might even be able to keep a breakfast sandwich or two.
     

    Mission Yahoo

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The moving forward strategy for Yahoo has been something I’ve pondered the last couple of years as Yahoo the portal, start-page, search engine company has been losing steam.  In a post a few months ago, I noted Yahoo should invest its money in the best online beat writers out there and make Yahoo the premiere content source on the web. Get the best sports writer, fashion writer, political analyst, etc. and using the language of the web and bloggers, turn Yahoo into the “first” read of the Web. In thinking this way  I ceded search to Google, but I have always been a “content is king” guy.

     

    Jerry Yang today announced his intent to not go quietly in the area of search, introducing Buzz which will improve Yahoo’s search capability and the richness of its results. This is a fight, and a focus, they should have had a couple of years ago. Yahoo is still all over the place. Ford makes cars and trucks and can’t get out of its own way. Imagine a company that has 3 or 4 missions. 

     

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