Stephen Palacios — 1 February 2010
With the launch of the AOL Hispanic Cyberstudy this week, we are reminded of several important ideas that relate to serving ethnic consumers. One of these is the persistent belief in old notions regarding the Hispanic market. These worn assumptions are not only no longer valid, but the fact that many marketers still tout them is undermining numerous growth opportunities for companies. Let's take a look at just three of these...
Kelli Peterson — 27 January 2010
Last week Royal Caribbean cruise lines made the decision to continue the journey of the Celebrity Solstice through the beach town of Labadee, Haiti with all 200 passengers on board. The fact that the beach town is just 60 miles from the destroyed capital of Port-au-Prince where global rescue teams were scrambling to bring relief and aid to those hundreds of thousands that did not lay dead under the rubble, seemed to make no difference to those either on the ship or those making the decision.
Kelli Peterson — 26 January 2010
Last week Bill Gates entered the digital publishing world by establishing the Gates Notes - an online evolution of his now annual January letter sharing his thoughts and learnings on the progress of the issues central to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s interesting and symbolic that the next chapter of his life story would include an “open source” platform for sharing IP on social innovation.
Leigh Marriner — 24 January 2010
Google's Android operating system generated 27 percent of mobile ad requests from U.S. smartphones in Q4, according to mobile advertising network AdMob's Mobile Metrics Report for December 2009. Apple's iPhone yielded 54 percent of U.S. smartphone requests in the previous quarter.
One of my co-workers at Cheskin Added Value said, “Thinking about Google’s biz strategy, it makes sense to put out phones not for the sake of selling hardware or truly innovating in the mobile OS space, but for the sake of generating more traffic to their search engine, the cash cow.”
Lee Shupp — 20 January 2010
Virgin America has succeeded in redefining the flying experience for me. This is no mean feat, as airlines have to work within many constraints like FAA regulations, safety considerations, and limited space. But constraints can actually spark creativity, and Virgin has managed to be creative in just the right ways for me. Why am I such a fan of Virgin America?
Kelli Peterson — 18 January 2010
Kraft and the Rainforest Alliance are partnering to bring a premium dark chocolate to a store near you! Cote d’Or will contain coca from farms that meet Rainforest Alliance Certified standards and will first roll out in Belgium and France this year before arriving in 9 other countries including the U.S. and Canada. The sustainable chocolate will also be added to Kraft’s Suchard brand chocolate in Switzerland and Austria.
Leigh Marriner — 17 January 2010
Most of the buzz on the new Google phone is about how sweet the display is, and how the number of Android apps is far behind the iPhone but on a steep growth curve. But the real impact of the Google phone will be its upset of the traditional US mobile carrier control of which phones consumers can use. In many countries phones are “unlocked” and unsubsidized and consumers can buy the phone they want and then sign up for a plan with the carrier of their choice. In the US carriers have fought this model, forcing consumers to only use phones provided by the carrier and locking them into two year plans in order to recover the cost of the handset subsidy.
Kelli Peterson — 13 January 2010
It's been a number of years since we have seen any initiative lead by a power brand in the arena of corporate social responsibility. Today, Pepsi launched one of the biggest corporate social responsibility efforts that we’ve seen since the launch of (RED) in 2006 with the Pepsi Refresh Project.
Good CSR takes strategic development and an early glimpse tells us that Pepsi has hit a home run. Why? Here's ten reasons Pepsi looks to have gotten it right.
Darrel Rhea — 10 January 2010
Since Roger Martin and I co-chaired a DMI conference on Design Thinking in June, I have been hearing and reading a lot of very good designers respond by expressing their discomfort, mounting all out attacks, and some even denying the existence of the subject. While there are a larger number of designers that are enthusiastically embracing the notions behind it, it is clear there is a backlash. Where is this coming from?
Kelli Peterson — 7 January 2010
Over the holiday I saw Avatar in its full glory – 3D IMAX. This film is one of 7 blockbuster films to break the 1 billion dollar revenue mark. The plot line? Saving a spectacularly unspoiled planet from greedy resource suckers. While not exactly an original storyline, its release coincided with the tail end of the United Nations Climate Change Conference. I was briefly elated by this fact then realized that Hollywood for decades has been telling meaningful stories and this powerful movie’s coincidental release may not yield the popular discussion I might’ve hoped for.
At the movies, we watch, listen, we feel, we are momentarily touched because this is after all, entertainment at its finest (2 hours of focused attention surrounded by Technicolor and Dolby stereo!). And then we go on about our daily lives. In 1985, The Color Purple reminded us about the racism, poverty and sexism of our forefathers. Nearly 20 years later, Crash interwove story lines to paint an updated picture with characters afflicted with modern versions of the same intolerances. We watch, we absorb, but do we change our behavior?
Last year we voted in our first African American President. Did these movies directly influence this collective vote? It’s hard to argue that they did. But then it’s hard to argue that they definitely did not. What is clear that after decades of provocateurs presenting their stories, in all formats and channels, our democratic population was finally able to overcome culturally born prejudice in the name of democracy.
It’s 2010. How many more years of blockbuster narratives will be shown before we begin to see the effects of a collective and popularized effort to save a resource rich Networked Planet?
Leigh Marriner — 5 January 2010
Japan has been a leading edge adopter of mobile phone activities for the past decade, in large part based on its early i-mode platform for mobile-internet services and fast cellular networks. Now they are talking on their phones less and using mobile data services (e.g. texting) more. The Economist reports that in 2002 the average Japanese mobile user spoke on it for 181 minutes each month, about the global norm. By early 2009 that had fallen to 133 minutes, half the world average. Whereas worldwide in early 2000 an average user spoke for 174 minutes a month, and by early 2009 that had risen to 261 minutes.
Are the Japanese the canary in the coal mine? There are reasons that the Japanese talk less on mobile phones, one being the strict cultural morays against talking in public places including commuter trains. But the Germans also talk less than Americans, only 89 minutes per month, although perhaps this is because of cheaper land lines and overtaxed mobile networks.
Americans talk an average of 788 minutes per month, almost 10x the Germans and 6x the Japanese. Will we see talking replaced by messaging, as phone bills increase, public annoyance with loud public talking increases, networks become overloaded resulting in dropped calls, and more questions can be answered more easily by social network and internet queries?
Leigh Marriner — 4 January 2010
It was only 6 months ago I blogged about why industry pundits don’t include virtual goods and microtransactions in their lists of up-and-coming business models. And six months later AdNectar ( a small company with 9 employees) announced that it has reached 2 billion virtual goods served from its platform for clients ranging from Gillette and Funny or Die to Jelly Belly and Snapple/Dr. Pepper. For example, over 1 million Malibu Rum branded drinks were sent in two weeks.
Microtransactions are one of the few areas (along with subscription gaming) where consumers have shown a willingness to pay for online content. Microtransactions remove barriers to entry. They don’t feel like a commitment.
Leigh Marriner — 23 December 2009
Cheskin AV has spent a lot of time thinking about how to help clients create meaningful experiences for their customers. Meaningful experiences range from economic experiences through functional experiences and emotional experiences up to the highest level of meaningful experiences, such as wisdom. The most powerful brands offer higher-level experiences that people seek to make their lives meaningful.
CVS recently bought Long’s Drugs in my area. Long’s offered an acceptable functional and economic experience – I could get the job done. It wasn’t a meaningful experience, such as patronizing Elephant Pharmacy might have been if I were heavily into expanding the role of natural cures, but it was OK. Now CVS has managed to actually deliver a negative emotional experience, making me regret every time I shop there.
How did they do it? By printing out miles of coupons with every cash register tape, most of which expire within a couple weeks. CVS has managed to introduce a sense of anxiety into the simple process of shopping at a drug store. Do I need to read all these coupons? Will I remember to carry them with me? Did I miss another expiration date? Now every time I shop I feel like I am wasting money, instead of saving it. This is brand marketing gone awry.
Leigh Marriner — 22 December 2009
Does it make sense that online ad revenue is calculated based on the number of clicks on a site? That is frequency. But doesn’t stickiness on the site make it a more valuable site to advertisers? If a consumer spends 5 minutes on a site rather than 2 seconds, shouldn’t that mean that ad placement is more valuable? I am not an expert on this area, but the current pricing structure apparently doesn’t take the time a consumer spends on the site into account.
Some types of online sites are more sticky than others. Consumers spend more time on social networking, email, and some individually specified pages (e.g. news, traffic, personal blog, etc.) Shouldn’t ads on these pages be more valuable, if consumers tolerate those ads?
Leigh Marriner — 21 December 2009
Once again, this group has given us an excellent, thoughtful analysis of why this change to the mobile internet is so significant – the Mobile Internet Report. The ideas that most impressed me are:
1) Ten years of usage and monetization models in Japan provide one roadmap for the rest of the world.
2) The US has grabbed leadership after being a mobile laggard for years.
3) This is an epic transformation which will shift the face of computing and communication on a similar scale as Windows and the iPhone. The drivers are adoption of 3G, awesome mobile devices, social networking, video and VoIP. We should expect many current leaders to falter (but not Apple because of the depth of its app ecosystem and user experience).
4) Apple’s mobile device/ecosystem ramp has been the fastest in history.
5) Smartphone penetration will stress carrier data networks (subject of my blog last week). Offloading to WiFi will play a big role as will tiered data pricing.
6) More users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.
Leigh Marriner — 21 December 2009
The biggest problem I have with trying to use the social web is how to filter the massive realtime stream. I have recently drastically cut the number of people I follow on Twitter because I couldn’t filter out enough junk to make it worth spending time on Twitter. Robert Scoble may be a “friend” for his comments on technology, but since I don’t actually know him, I’m not interested in his comments on who is having a baby.
Edo Segal published an important guest blog in TechCrunch entitled “Beyond RealTime Search: The Dawning of Ambient Streams”. He is hypothesizing a vision of the future in which technology will be able to sort through the noise and clutter of the current social web and published information, to feed us the information we want when we want it. He points out that augmented reality apps are a small step toward that goal. But although AR is hot right now, it’s only a small step in the direction of having a technological sixth sense. William Gibson outlined some of the potential of jacking his consciousness into cyberspace in Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson did the same in Snow Crash. It’s exciting to be at the point where we can see how the SciFi vision actually could become reality- maybe without brain implants.
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