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    Meep Meep!

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    When I drive my Prius into a gas station and start pumping behind a big American car that is already pumping, I get a look of acknowledgement. Not positive or negative, just a look. When I pull away before they’ve finished fueling the look turns a hint envious.  They get. And some of these big car people aren’t even filling up…they’re just getting $20 worth.
     
    Remember how you could always tell a European movie by the size of the cars in the street and the high pitch of their horns? Meep meep! Well we are getting very close to that environment here in the States. The tipping point is here. The day of the huge car is really over. Pickup truck sales are down, SUVs are down and new cars are getting smaller and smaller. It has taken a while, but most of the size queens are starting to realize they look a silly driving around in big, gluttonous vehicles.
     
    The energy and resource consumption of the average American is 30-times that of a person in an emerging country. Marketers who recognize the future before consumers will be the winners. Toyota did. 
     

    Happy New Year!

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
    I can’t think of a more exciting way to start the new year than with the Iowa Caucuses. As a student of brands, I have always paid close attention to the marketing of political candidates and/or the lack thereof. It seems as if many candidate handlers try to sell the person, not the person’s views. It’s therefore hard today to compare candidates and see notable differences. There are some grays, but no real policy differences.  (Edwards today, declared he would have us out of Iraq in 10 months. That’s a difference, but it is one of a fading candidate.)
     
    If all candidates have similar views on healthcare, global warming, conservation, immigration and Iraq, then on what are we to judge them?   
     
    In brand building you create a single position or promise for the brand and then array beneath it key supports. In candidate building, few want to stand for one thing — they want to stand for everything. What’s left on the table for the people to judge is then solely the candidate’s TV persona. That’s what many in America vote for. Who in the debates made the most sense and looked most comfortable? Who acted presidential?  Who seemed the smartest? It becomes about the person, not the policy. 
     
    If one managed a brand the way candidates are managed the whole store would be filled with generics. The best candidates stand for something. Let’s see if anyone steps up?
     

    Strike Two

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I think the Writer’s Guild of America strike is going to end very shortly. Why? Because a number of shows like Colbert, Letterman, Leno and The Daily Show are going back on the air without writers. And when these show do well and media companies realize that, economically, less can be more, things will start to change and snowball fast.
     
    Do you really believe the aforementioned talk show hosts can’t pull off 60 or 90 minutes of interviewing without a bullpen of writers feeding them jokes? I’m betting between the entertainers’ smarts and the smarts of the people they interview we’ll see some fine television. Who knows, maybe some of the drama producers and actors will pick up pens and bang out a vamp or two. 
     
    We are close to the end of the strike. Happy holidays all!
     

    f

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    “Free Professor Lewin”
     
    There is an MIT physics professor by the name of Walter H.G. Lewin who broadcasts his classes to the masses over the internet. The videos are available on iTunes U and http://ocw.mit.edu
     
    Professor Lewin is a “one percenter.” That is, he is in the top one percent of his craft. Because Mr. Lewins courses are so powerful, well-crafted and thoroughly demonstrative, his kids learn physics with ease. Check out the article in today’s NYT at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/education/19physics.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
     
    This presents a dilemma for MIT. Right now the online lectures are free. But once they become in such great demand (they are currently being viewed in India and China) and student prefer professor Lewin over their own college professor, MIT may find itself educating everybody. Unrestricted, kids could use the internet to find the best college professors in the country and just simply learn from them. What would that do to all the professors who are only mediocre, tired, and/or waiting on their pensions?
     
    Sadly, MIT and other courseware providers of this ilk are soon going to have to restrict this type of free education. So get this stuff while you can. 
     
    Walter H.G. Lewin, MIT, whats the idea, New York Times, iTunes U
     

    “Free Professor Lewin”

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0
     
    There is an MIT physics professor by the name of Walter H.G. Lewin who broadcasts his classes to the masses over the internet. The videos are available on iTunes U and http://ocw.mit.edu
     
    Professor Lewin is a “one percenter.” That is, he is in the top one percent of his craft. Because Mr. Lewins courses are so powerful, well-crafted and thoroughly demonstrative, his kids learn physics with ease. Check out the article in today’s NYT at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/education/19physics.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
     
    This presents a dilemma for MIT. Right now the online lectures are free. But once they become in such great demand (they are currently being viewed in India and China) and student prefer professor Lewin to their own college professor, MIT may find itself educating everybody. Unrestricted, kids could use the internet to find the best college professors in the world and choose to learn from them. What would that do to all the professors who are mediocre, tired and/or simply awaiting pensions?
     
    Sadly, MIT and other courseware providers of this ilk are soon going to have to restrict this type of free education. So get this stuff while you can. 
     

    Egg On Your Book. Again

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
     
    As fast as Facebook is growing and as many smart decisions as it has made technologically, I am amazed by some of its miscues. The latest is to passively allow a research study of an unnamed East Coast college over Facebook. Conducted by Harvard and UCLA, this study will report on users’ social networking values, behaviors and attitudes. 
     
    I work for a social computing property called Zude. Our reason for being is to promote user freedom, so internally we often find ourselves in discussions about what we should allow users to do on the site. We most always decide in favor of freedom. So, were this research project to take place on Zude, you would think I’d be okay with it. Wrong.
     
    In my view the project should be allowed, but the users should be alerted they are being studied. Let them decide whether or not to participate. As far as I can tell from the press the Facebook study has received, the unsuspecting college students don’t know they are being monitored and that is an invasion of their privacy. 
     
    Shopping malls let research people in to conduct research but you see them coming a mile away. Would they allow researchers in with surveillance cameras? I think not.
     
    Facebook, college kids are your franchise. You have just found another way to piss them off.
     

    Cap This!

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
     
    CapGemini is a very good IT Consulting company. A large chunk of its revenue is tied to outsourcing. I have had the pleasure of working for Cap as a marketing agent and they have always had a good product and a good strategic angle but their communications strategy, especially in the U.S., has faltered. It is nowhere more evident than in their latest outsourcing print ad campaign.
     
    This stuff is “we’re here” advertising at it very worst. “We’re here” advertising explains what business you’re in and gives customers a way to get in touch. No selling. No art. No emotion.
     
    In today’s ad, adjacent to a cartoon of a hotel employee dressed in desert fatigues collecting car keys from a couple getting out of a car is the headline “In our hands, your system will never get out of hand.” The metaphor, apparently, is “your car is in good hands, while in the hotel.”  OMG! The copy prattles on about outsourcing giving you the freedom to do what you do best, or some such nonsense.
     
    I did some planning for the outsourcing group at Cap and they are way smarter than this. The top bosses may not be, but the line general certainly was. This is a disgrace. Who would want to outsource their business to a company who can’t communicate clearly.
     
    In case anyone is reading the business press: Capgemini is in the outsourcing business. Woo hoo!
     

    Old School Boards Vs…

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
    Kids growing up in the U.S. today are listening to rock and roll and so are their parents. That cultural divide is behind us. But a divide still exists in the area of technology and media consumption.
     
    It is for this reason that boards of directors at large consumer companies need to begin including younger blood. Most boards need at least one 20-something member to add a more contemporary worldview. And they need to listen to them. The time has long passed when women and people of color were added to the “wild eyebrow” set, now it’s time to get younger.
     
    If kids in their twenties are capable of building new media empires with billion dollar valuations, I figure they are old enough to sit at the table with 20th century captains of industry.
     

    The Wall Street Journal or The Journal?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
    I’m a brand guy. I like to know what a brand stands for and what its mission is. If people on the inside know what a brand stands for, presumably people on the outside will too. The Wall Street Journal has always stood for financial reporting and analysis. Rupert Murdoch, as it was reported in the New York Times this morning, 
     
    has been pondering upping the content on hard-hitting news and political reporting in the Wall Street Journal when the News Corp ownership becomes formal. Indeed, he is considering the removal of the Marketplace section of the paper next year.   Marketing is a component of financial news — certainly a driver of it, in many cases — so that section of the paper is on message and on brand. Replacing it with something more general, in my mind is a mistake. Competing with the New York Times and other more generalist media properties will water down the WSJ mission, also a mistake. Mr. Murdoch’s new plans might make the “Journal” (yes, there have even been discussions about removing “Wall Street” from the title ) more profitable near-term, but it is not be a good long-term solution. 
     
    Should they to move this route, in will step The Financial Times to fillthe void and the Journal will get really dinged. Stay tuned.
     

    Boeing, Boeing, Gone.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
     

    Are you one of those people who really, really loves to fly? One of those people who has never had the thought that the only things keeping you from free fall at 30,000 feet are a bunch of nuts, bolts, wires and metal? If you say “yes” then read on. 
     
    Following are some heart warming quotes from the lead story in today’s Wall Street Journal about the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This may be one of those cases where it would have been better for Boeing to have gone all George Bush and keep this information from the public. (Please note the use of some of some very special verbs and adjectives.)
     
    “Boeing Scrambles To Fix Problems With New 787. Hostage to Suppliers. Fuel-sipping jet. Build much of the plane from carbon-fiber plastic instead of aluminum. The first jet in Boeing’s 91-year history designed largely by other companies. To lower the $10 billion or so it would cost to develop the plane solo, Boeing authorized a team of parts suppliers to design and build major sections of the craft, which it planner to snap together at it Seattle-area factory. The supplier problems ranged from language barriers to snafus that erupted when suppliers themselves outsourced chunks of work. The first Dreamliner to show up at Boeing’s factory was missing tens of thousands of part….”
     
    Stewardess, another beer please?  
     
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