Storytelling and selling

By
Steve Poppe
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0
News flash! The click-through rate on banner ads is shrinking. Hee hee. Even clicks on large size ads like the leaderboard will continue to wane. The creative is getting better, as is the targeting, but let’s face it, the units are not very compelling.
 
The best creative talent in the selling business is not at online ad shops. The best storytellers, most “abruptive” thinkers, funniest writers and best artists, are not graduating college saying “I want to work at Organic.”
 
Ad agencies ceded the online business to the digital shops and are about to take it back. Digital shops grew not because they knew how to do banners, but because they could develop landing pages, ad server strategies, tracking metrics and optimization plans while the rest of us said “Say what?”
 
As social computing continues to take the lead in online traffic growth and banners become last year’s model, I look to the boutiques, then big agencies to take back creative storytelling and selling on the Web. Tom Carroll, are you listening?
 
 

America has Voted. Finally.

By
Steve Poppe
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0
Yesterday I wrote about the next big thing. Well, here’s an even bigger thing. America woke up last month and started buying smaller cars en masse. Out with the Tahoes, out with the F-Series, out with the Rams. Twenty percent of all new car sales in April ’08 were compacts. All the size-queen car buyers are beginning to see the light. But that’s not the next big thing.
 
The business you want to be in is SUV and heavy duty pick-up truck disposal. In one year’s time, our country streets will begin to look less like Lubbock and more like Milan. So long as our cars don’t go meep-meep when we honk, I’m cool with it. JK.  In my minds eye, we’ll need a state the size of Delaware to dispose of all the SUVs and truck being traded in.  These big honkin’ machines have to go somewhere. I suspect they will be melted down for metal – a good thing – but what will we do with all the plastic?
 
The business to be in is SUV and Truck recycling. And the day hasn’t come too soon. Take a deep breath.
 
 
 
 

Mobile Uploads.

By
Steve Poppe
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0
I posted yesterday about predicting the future, well here’s one. It may not be the next big thing but it’s coming. There are a lot of video bloggers out there today but only a handful of bloggers who like to post video in real time. My favorite blogger is Robert Scoble (www.scobleizer.com) and he loves posting video on the fly. He wears it like a badge. You can often hear him say during an interview “you can’t take that back the bits are gone.”  
 
The time it takes for one video blogger to get home and upload a video file is the time it takes to get scooped, so more and more serious bloggers are looking for ways to upload in situ. Mr. Scoble uses a service called Qik. It’s probably the best option out there but the quality is sometimes sketchy. The ability to perfect mobile uploads of video, is the next big thing. 
 
At Web 2.0 Expo, it was fun watching Robert walking down the street with one hand on his Nokia N95 video phone, the other on his battery charger — a necessity for any video blogger — watching the video send bars build. His eyes twinkled as he sent his message to the masses.
 

GM Can’t Spin

By
Steve Poppe
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0
Poor General Motors. They are cutting production, the second half of this year, of 140,000 heavy duty pick-up trucks and SUVs. What visionaries! What news! 

I’m sure they’d prefer to be holding press conferences and issuing press alerts about some brand new energy efficient models and efforts in alternative fuels, but noooooo. GM is in the papers for announcing cutting car models that nobody wants. 

 
Mr. Wagoner, McCann-Erickson, why are you hiding the good news? I know there must be some good news in there somewhere!
 

Web 2.0 Expo — Old and New School.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Just got back from Web Expo 2.0 in San Francisco. Zude had a booth and it was packed all three days, and even one night with Robert Scoble stopping by http://scobleizer.com/2008/04/24/exclusive-first-look-at-new-zude-mashup-capabilities/. Zude is a social computing platform that lets users of any technical stripe create and manage their own web presence.  Web 2.0 Expo is an enterprise show favoring IT types, so it was pretty cool to see all the people lined up at the booth interested in our consumer web application.

 
Zude recently attended two consumer shows: South By Southwest and Canadian Music Week, the demographics for which were generally younger than for Web 2.0 Expo. Two interesting observations about the demographic comparisons: the IT community was much more interested in social networking and social media than I had expected, perhaps even more so than at the music shows. And secondly, IT people still love paper. At SXSW the attendees were almost defiant in their desire to stay away from paper, yet at Web 2.0 Expo, we had to run out to Kinko’s a couple of times to reprint data sheets. Old school and new school. Interesting.
 

Two Americas?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m in San Francisco at Web 2.0 Expo and the price of regular is a millipede under $4.00. Yesterday’s newspaper reported that MacDonald’s monthly same store sales slowed for the first time in 5 years. Hmmmm. So, I posit, the price of gas and the lagging economy are taking a toll on the lower rungs of the demographic ladder. Less $4.00 lunches due to $4.00 gallons of gas. 

 

Today’s paper says Apple had its best quarter ever. Mac sales are soaring. The iPod category is maturing, so says Apple defensively, sales were somewhat flat. They only sold 10.9 million units this quarter. Yahoo reported strong earnings and I keep hearing luxury car ads on the radio. Okay, they are used luxury car ads, but luxury nonetheless.

 

The Economist says explorers may have found the third largest oil source in Brazil and that scares me.  

 

We need a new president. 

 
 
 

Newsday’s Upside

By
Steve Poppe
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0
Newsday, Long Island’s daily newspaper, earned $80 million dollars (before taxes, etc) last year. The Tribune Company is selling the property and Mort Zuckerman and front- runner Rupert Murdoch are its pursuers. Mr. Murdoch has reportedly offered $580 million for Newsday and it’s a very good value. 
 
The paper, you see, has monopoly status on Long Island, home to some of the highest wage earners in the country. At one time Newsday was the 6th leading daily newspaper in the U.S. but it never really delivered on its full potential. With some proper handling and if it expunges its NYC envy, the paper has amazing upside.
 
Long Island is a unique place. Many unique places, if fact, and writers who love and live here if given a targeted mission are likely to double the circulation of the paper in no time. And let’s not even get into the web side of Newsday’s future. With smart care and feeding of Newsday.com, it could dwarf the paper in 10 years.
 
I hope Mr. Zuckerman wins the battle. The future will look rosier for Newsday if he does.   
 

The General News Journal

By
Steve Poppe
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0
 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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0

 

 
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.)
 
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