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    New York Times Troubles

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    In one of the world’s largest cities, in on of the world’s greatest newspapers, there is a serious recession going on. A recession of content. On Sunday February 24th and today, February 25th , the New York Times Metro section contained 8 pages. That’s 2 broadsheet folios. What’s up with that? Does the Times not have enough metro reporters to write stories? We certainly have enough people, neighborhoods and stories to generate many more pages. Are New Yorker’s looking to the Daily News and NY Post for their local news? Is ad revenue so far down that the Times can’t fill up 12 pages in the one section devoted to the New York area? 

     
    Also, when I was a kid in the business, the most prime real estate in the Times was the back cover. One day late last week not one section of the NY Times had a back cover ad. Those babies sold at an extra 20-25% premium over regular full pages. No one was buying. 
     
    Lovers of the New York Times beware. 
     

    My geeze is showing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    There has been much talk about mobile phone advertising over the months and years, but none more disturbing to me than that on the subject of ads being served up in realtime to phones based upon where the phone owner is geographically. For instance, if you are walking down the street approaching two competing donut shops one might “feel” you coming and server up a promotional ad.
     
    CBS and Loopt a social network with GPS technology are dabbling with this application, which sounds like a major nuisance. The only way this can work will be if ads are served up on an opt-in mobile channel, but I’m guessing not enough people will opt-in to an ad or deal-centric channel to make it worth the while. So expect it to be served up in an intrusive way.
     
    Call me a geeze, but I don’t want ads on my cell phone. I don’t want to be telemarketed on my cell phone and, frankly, I don’t want to be called on my cell phone to chat.  “Hey Steve, I can see your house from here.” If I’m not near a land line, I’m doing something. 
     

    Google’s Biggest Announcement in Years

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Google has finally come out with a new program that supports its core brand competence. No, the program is not the newly announced ability to serve third party video ads, it’s a venture with the Cleveland Clinic designed to help patients take greater control over their medical records.
     
    The idea of creating and aggregating one’s health information into a single patient profile (Where have I heard that word before?) is a core competence based on search that Google seems to have forgotten. If they can pull this off with the Cleveland Clinic and we can find measurable positive results in patient outcomes, Google won’t have to spend millions on other silly ideas like allowing people to place radio ads via the Google platform. This idea is big. And it’s ownable. 
     
    I have long ranted that Google has lost focus in product development. This announcement gives me hope that there are actually some people at Google with their eyes on the real prize. Google’s initial mission, for those who never knew or forgot it, as articulated by co-founder Sergey Brin was “We deliver the world’s information in one click.”
     

    What’s the deal with HP?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I can’t for the life of me figure out Hewlett-Packard. When you think they make a good move, it doesn’t work. When you think they make a bad move, earnings rise. You read about new marketing focus, bad press follows. You read about board tumult and unrest at the top, earnings kick butt.
     
    This company is an enigma. Never a Carly Fiorina fan, and I actually did call the downturn under part of her watch, I must admit I may not have given her credit she deserved for long-term planning. Today, 70% of HP’s revenue comes from outside the U.S. – the source of a good part of today’s positive earnings report — which I am going to attribute to the Compaq purchase she engineered. 
     
    HP is doing well in printers, brilliantly in computers (who knew?) and, I suspect, well in services. It’s going to take a Harvard B School case study for me to figure out this company, but at the moment I’m digging their staying power and blocking and tackling.
     

    Something borrowed, something blue.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    According to Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist for The New York Times, J. C. Penny is launching a new clothing and home furnishings line called American Living. Using product designs by Ralph Lauren, whose name and sub-brands will not be associated with the new brand, the American Living launch will look and feel like Polo ads and be shot by Bruce Weber the photographer who has established Ralph Lauren’s consumer face.

     
    This approach is so rear view mirror. Rear view mirror planning looks at things that have worked in the past and simply repackages them. Penny is not looking into the future with this approach and, frankly, neither is Ralph Lauren whose brands should take a hit due to the closeness of this new campaign. Brand dilution will occur.  
     
    And the name “American Living,” could it be a more predictable pander? It’s straight out of the Lauren playbook, which if you ask me is beginning to get a little old. If Bruce Weber gets hit by a mattress truck (God forbid) both brands will be in serious shape. J.C. Penny is doing the right thing here, but they are looking through the rear window instead of the windshield. Their new customers are younger and out in front….waiting for something new. 
     

    Come Back Baby.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    One of the reasons U.S. Airways has had such a rocky time over the years is because of all its purchases and mergers.  In order to strengthen itself, U.S. Airways allied with various other carriers with different regional and national strengths, but those multiple mergers proved its downfall.  It was always hard to manage all of the different planes in the combined company.

     

    When new airline carriers start from scratch they purchase one, maybe two types of plane. The parts work for all the planes, the maintenance for all planes is the same, engines come from one manufacturer, training for pilots is simplified, and there is less complexity in the day-to-day management. It is a very efficient way to run an airline.  U.S. Airways, on the other hand, was the maestro of a cacophony planes, maintenance operations, equipment, and people trained in the various aspects of this patched together airline.  Not efficient.

     

    Ford Motor Company has made a decision to manufacture one of its car models — the Fiesta — the exact same way in every country around the world. That’s efficient.  For the most part this is how Toyota does it and Honda does it.  With efficiency as job one, I’m betting Ford and the Fiesta, in particular, will begin a comeback.

     

     

    Let’s get over on overeating.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Obesity is an epidemic. Americans and many Europeans continue to over-eat even though they know it’s not good for them. Like the experimental rats that continue to ingest cocaine until they die, many people continue to eat until they are the butt of jokes at school, or their arteries clog in middle age, or other major health issues like diabetes occur late in life.

     
    In England, a very large percent of the population is clinically labeled obese and the government has decided to do something about it. They’ve earmarked millions of pounds and enlisted a number of ad agencies to help create a media campaign that will highlight the problem and work to deter it. 
     
    Like the “Truth” campaign in America which has had great success helping to squelch cigarette smoking by kids, let’s hope the Brits with this campaign makes a difference in healthy eating. Then maybe we’ll bring the same program to the states. 
     
    Advertising can change opinion. It won’t be easy to change this addition to over-eating, but it has to start somewhere.
     

    Yahoo Plus Danger Equals…

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Danger, the maker of the coolest of the cool in mobile handhelds, has just agreed to be purchased by Microsoft. Microsoft played it quietly throughout the negotiations making sure not to look too eager, but it was a very strategic purchase. Should the Yahoo deal go through look out for Microsoft to kick into high gear in the mobile category. I don’t know Yahoo’s full mobile offering but bet there is more in it than meets the eye. I smell something going on, perhaps with an already secret Microsoft initiative, which could put Microsoft in the middle of a mobile, social, messaging, internet, advertising play of market-changing proportion.

     

    And not to be too paranoid (hee hee) but do you think Research In Motion’s (RIM) messaging outage yesterday – the second major service disruption in 12 month — could have had anything to do with this deal? Hacker nation?

     

    Stay Tuned. (Does anyone under 30 know what that means?)

     

    Bostock or Nostock

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    There was an item in the Wall Street Journal today about Roy Bostock, Yahoo’s new Chairman of the Board, and how he will be instrumental in managing Yahoo’s response to Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid.

     

    The article ends “As directors absorbed the offer that day, someone in the room joked that Mr. Bostock has been chairman for only half an hour and had already increased the company’s value more than 60%.”  This is the type of hero worship that can really cloud the picture. 

     

    Mr. Bostock is 67 years old. He is a career ad guy. Yes, he played roles in the a number of high-level mergers of ad companies and knows his way around ad holding companies.  But these activities, though they may have been big, were certainly not market-changing. Some were with networks on the downswing. Mr. Bostock may be a great one to help facilitate merger activity and he may be a good intermediary between buyers and sellers of advertising, but I wonder about his Silicon Valley chops and ability to see the future of social media.

    Wal-Mart Dabbles in Healthcare

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
    Okay, well maybe dabble isn’t a good word, but Wal-Mart has been allowing medical clinics on premise to dispense minor healthcare for a while.  And now it is ramping up this business practice with plans to have 400 store clinics up and running by 2010.
     
    This is a very interesting notion, but one that makes me a little uncomfortable and I suspect will make shoppers as well.  If someone is shot in the parking lot, where will they go? To the clinic. Want less drama? How about a parade of sniffling, sneezing, cold-soar be-spotted people wait in on line to get into the clinic. Or shopping in the store while they await their number to be called. “Attention, sick Wal-Mart shoppers?” How about insurance-less people who just need a little aspirin and warmth in the middle of winter?
     
    Then of course, there is always the litigation associated with dispensing healthcare. Wal-Mart doesn’t need this type of headache. Retail medicine’s time may have come thanks to the overcrowding of hospital emergency departments, but selling lawnmowers, tires and clothing under the same roof as in-patient care is a little scary.
     
    Hillary? Help please.
     
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