ALWAYS ON

Press On Good Words!

2010-06-18T11:52:00.003-04:00

Hi All - I'm in the process of transferring my blog from blogspot to wordpress. Come find me there for the most current postings:

Geo-Tagging, What Art Thou to Me?

2010-06-15T10:37:00.002-04:00

Those of you who read my blog (much appreciated, by the way) may think that I am obsessed with foursquare. And, perhaps that is true. I am very much looking an upcoming talk by Dennis, but that is beside the point. I am simply fascinated by the concept of this mobile application, how it affects my life, other people's lives, our society, communication, and so on - and how that is evolving with the expanding usage of this tool, Gowalla and other hyper-local activities.

As of this week (this entry was initiated March 20th), foursquare has half a million users. That is up from 400,000 last week due to intense guerrilla marketing at the South by Southwest event (SXSW) last weekend. That, in itself, is noteworthy. From what I've heard, foursquare got the jump on Gowalla last March when it spread throughout the South by Southwest community - demonstrating the power of crowds and of live viral communication. Bring a group together with a passion for social media, and you can increase your audience by 25% in a weekend. Based on a CNET podcast, it also seems that Gowalla increased its user base that weekend with many foursquare users adding that application to their smartphone portfolio.

As someone who often works from home and who has many different "social graphs," i.e., social and professional networks, foursquare has been of great interest to me as it has allowed me to stay in touch with the world beyond West 74th Street, meet new people, feel connected to a range of people and deepen my personal and professional relationships. I am also intrigued by the way in which the gaming aspect of the function affects me. By ranking people based on points and awarding points based on the number and characteristics of check-ins, foursquare brings out my competitive side and consequently influences my behavior. I feel motivated to get out, to go to multiple locations, to get to the gym because Kandace went there before work, and I want to unlock the Gym Rat badge, to check-in on my way to the subway so that I have time to capture that location. It also makes me more aware of my behavior. Until foursquare told me, I had no idea that I had been to a certain location 10 times in 30 days. I thought I went there once or twice a week. I am the mayor of Pinky Nail Salon, Fashion 74 Nails, MaxWax, Andy's Deli, Duane Reade and other local spots; this makes me aware of the fact that I frequent these place and that few other foursquarers do. And when I am dethroned, as with Duane Reade, I sense the expansion of the game's popularity. The first thing I do when I arrive somewhere is check in. The next thing I do is check my ranking.

Each day, foursquare has a unique impact on my day as I watch the way in which it influences my city, myself, and at the risk of being melodramatic, my world. I include my world because I was surprised to see how prevalent it was in Puerto Rico.

Hence, I have decided to keep a little diary of my new life with foursquare:

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

I've just returned home from a long day in Central Park, at a seminar and hanging out with a friend.

Most days that I check in at home, there is nothing trending in my neighborhood, which makes me feel like a bit of a pioneer. Today, there were two places: First, AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13, the huge multiplex theater on 67th-ish and Broadway. That makes sense. And second, a place called, I believe, Bar 460. I say, "I believe" because when I went to double check it just now, it was no longer trending, and I couldn't find it at all. Ah well, I came very close to learning of a new venue in my neighborhood.

Oh, and in going back to look for Bar 460, I saw that the AMC theater had only 5 people. So, that's trending for the Upper West Side. It could be one group of friends. Ah, and voila, at 10:45pm the movie theater is no longer trending. I guess the early show is finished.

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Five weeks ago, I was fresh off the Social Media Week boat (metaphorical) and freshly on the foursquare bandwagon. I was like a person who had just finished the Landmark Education Forum. My enthusiasm was so great that it was contagious. It was at that time that I had a meeting with a senior executive at a major advertising agency. In demonstrating the application - having already checked in at the location - I noted that there was one person at the agency who was showing up as present. A senior Creative executive. The Strategy executive called him to acknowledge his tastemaker status, and I friended him.

Today, I visited the agency again, and there were six people who had checked in. A six-fold increase in five weeks. I should feel good that the religion is spreading, but I am also feeling a little less uniquely "cool."

This evening, as I was walking from one nail salon (closed for the night) to another, I used the opportunity to check in. Glancing down at my options, I noticed a new location that was "Trending Now." The name seemed to be "Sunburned" something and glancing at it as I walked, I thought it was a tanning salon! My observation, therefore: it looks like folks are getting ready for the warmer weather - though I was a little perplexed given the current temperature of 50-something and a less than inspiring weather forecast.

Later that evening, when I arrived home, and my nails were dry enough to remove my iPhone from my pocket, I took another look at the name of the locale - which was still trending on the Wednesday night. It was "Sunburnt Calf." As it turns out, Sunburnt Calf is a new bar and brunch locale - an offshoot of Sunburnt Cow in the East Village and BondiRoad on Rivington Street - wherever that is - and has been open a little more than two months. Perhaps I am back in the know!

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

I've noticed that a my foursquare friends seem to spend a lot of time at airports. Is it a reflection of my group of friends, of people in general (with me as the exception), or the fact that since people have a lot of "free" time at airports they are more likely to check in. I think it is a combination with an emphasis on the latter. I've also noted that a disproportionate number of my friends seem to out of JFK - very few from Laguardia - and often fly JetBlue. Good taste. As I see them checking in at Terminal 5, I try to recall whether I was the one who set up that specific location.

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

The Museum of Natural History has been trending this week. It must be spring break. On a related note, the Shake Shack across the street from the museum has also been trending.

A new person has started checking into Pure Yoga. A man! Quite a feat since I get absolutely no AT&T coverage within the building.

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

25 people at the SOHO Apple Store early on a Saturday morning. Could it be that early adopters of foursquare are early adopters of the iPad. I think so. Moreover, it leads me to ask: What is the ratio of Apple to PC users...

...in general
...on Twitter
...on foursquare
...with iPads - ok, that one is loaded

Tuesday, April 7th, 2010

I'm told that foursquare now has 750,000 users and 16 employees. (I wouldn't mind becoming #17...)

Attended a social media panel at razorfish's NY offices (SMAC) followed by drinks and plentiful bar food at Heartland Brewery. foursquare users abounded - first time for me in a while.

Whoops - almost forgot the most important bit of news! foursquare is rolling out analytics services. The implications for marketers are tremendous!

Oh, and another, Tom C. tells me that the social marketing executive for JetBlue always keeps tabs on who is the Mayor of Terminal 5 at JFK. Smart. As I said above, I think there's a lot of opportunity at airports - captive audience with time to kill away from most of their social graph.

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

One of the more interesting things that Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital and Social Media Strategy for Pepsi, said on a SMAC (Social Media Advertising Consortium) panel the other night was this: While historically, a huge (300,000 people, I believe and hundreds of thousands of products, I believe...) company like Pepsi would find a movement/application like foursquare to be too small to be relevant or usable, their current outlook is that they have the ability to take something like this, if it is truly interesting, and make it big. (He didn't use the word scaleable, but I felt a need to say it... like a trained reflex.) Very interesting.

I am now starting to be ousted as mayor from locations I personally created such as Penang UWS and Andy's Deli on Amsterdam. Isn't that always the case. I'm out there using it when everyone thinks I'm crazy, and then someone else gets the glory. :-)

I've noted that when I am at a networking event and another digital strategist (typically male) is using foursquare, he will "aggressively" take ownership of instructing those not familiar with it and assume that I know less than he, even if I have checked in as well. I've also noted a lot of people who seem to have some personal knowledge/relationship with Dennis or his colleagues but also have some difficulty gaining access. Oh, how I hope my plans to have dinner with him following an upcoming talk that I am co-sponsoring do not fall through. It seems to be a highly sought after privilege.

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

After discovering Burnt Calf via foursquare trending some months ago, I finally checked it out in person on Saturday. It's very close to my apartment and has bottomless brunch cocktails. However, it turns out that brunch doesn't start until noon. So we went elsewhere and sat outside on the lovely day that seems to be preceding a rainy one - still holding out hope for a 5pm tennis game.

There is a young fellow named B.H. who is the mayor of two residential buildings on CPW in the West 90s. His tip is "Live Here." Do we think he's a broker?

I've come to the conclusion that the mayor of the Central Park Tennis Center does not play tennis at all. He seems to be a runner that checks in at each venue he passes. That explains why the overseer at the courts didn't recognize him.

I have noticed that a former colleague of mine was spending a lot of time at the gym (as communicated via foursquare and, before that, facebook). She would check in at 4 in the morning and often check in twice a day. I found out today that she's a body builder! So, it wasn't that she was going to the gym before an early day at the office, she was spending 4 hours a day working out!

A few months ago, when I first heard Gary Vee speak, he asked his audience how many of them had sworn at one point that they would never have a cell phone? And how many swore they would never have a facebook account? When I heard him speak last week at the re-Set conference, he added foursquare and Gowalla to his list of things once forsworn.

Hey! Did foursquare just add back the ability to Shout Out once you're already checked in? It seems that they have.

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Can foursquare hurt your career? As a consultant, and depending upon the specific project, I often work from home and have the flexibility to work whatever hours I like - as clients who have received 3am emails will attest. However, if a client - or potential client - sees that I hit the yoga studio at 4pm or grab a game of tennis at 3, will she think I have too much time on my hands? Or will she think that I have a good work-life balance or level of discipline? This came up in a conversation today with an executive who passed on a job candidate because the applicant didn't have a lot of LinkedIn connections. Personally, I think that is a very valid and relevant assessment. When I interview someone for a job, one of the first things I do is check out the LinkedIn profile - particularly if I want to get a sense of the digital savviness of the candidate. Does use of foursquare signal that you are a vanguard or simply give out too much information?

I am convinced that foursquare needs me to reach their full strategic potential. I'm going to spend the next few days figuring out why.

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Oooh, I'm #15 on my list of friends this week! Usually I'm at least in the top five. Often in the top two by the end of the weekend. This can't be good.

One of my foursquare contacts (Seth H) has gone rogue on foursquare as follows: "I've subverted Foursquare to add Mitzvot in this case Sepharat H'Omer - the Counting of the Omer the days between Passover and Pentecost (Shavout.) It's 49 days so every day I try to put something clever in. I also added a check in for Shabbat. I'm still trying to figure out why I'm not the Mayor of Sephirat H'Omer as I've checked in twenty something times."

Another of my contacts likes to include little sales pitches in her posts. I'm not a fan of this approach.

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Creepy? Maybe. Helpful? Yes. I have a business contact who lives in Boston that I want to meet with when he is next in New York. This morning he checked into Penn Station, Philly on his way to NYC. I sent him a text. This afternoon, he checked into Penn Station, NYC. I sent him a second text. This evening, we are meeting for drinks!

I would estimate that foursquare has a million members at this point.

Monday, May 17th, 2010

I've noticed that the AMC Theater and Shake Shack are often trending in my neighborhood. Could this be related to the fact that both places involve downtime in which you are waiting for something to happen - waiting for the movie to start & waiting in line... similar to why I think airports often encourage check-in.

Came home today to see lots of activity at the Beacon Theater. When I checked in at the fruit cart just south of the stage door, I noticed 47 people checked in. With a little Google sleuthing, I figured out that Fox TV is having their upfront presentation there. I then went onto Twitter to see whether attendees were tweeting about the event. Tried out #fox and #foxupfront. Indeed, they were - though very minimally relative to the number of folks on foursquare.

I then decided to take a look at who is attending the upfront. I clicked on a person and then took at look at her mayorships. It's quite amazing what you can piece together from this little bit of info. You can basically infer where the person lives, where she works, what her family status is and what her interests are. One attendee is mayor of Zenith HQ. Hmmm... a media buyer, perhaps. Another attendee is mayor of Berry Hill Elementary School, the CVS on "Cold Spring Road," LIRR Syosset and PM Pediatrics on Jericho Turnpike. Dr. House would have a field day with this stuff!

Wednesday, May 19th

I noticed that ABC had more check-ins for its upfront presentation at Avery Fisher than Fox did at the Beacon. Around 57 vs. 47. I'm assuming that it was a larger crowd - otherwise, it could mean that the foursquare population is growing over the course of and due in part to upfront week.

5 people checked into the JCC at 1am on a Wednesday morning. Strange...

Created a check-in for "Stuck In Traffic." It had to be done.

Tuesday, June 1st

Foursquare is losing its allure as the time it takes to check in increases. If I can't check in before the subway train arrives, then spending my time on the platform waiting for foursquare to load is not a good use of my time. I understand that check-ins have gone from one per second to 100 per second, so I'll be patient and wait for the foursquare team to catch up, but the situation definitely reduces the fun factor and the usability quotient.

One of these days, I'll start a new entry about the commercial applications of foursquare and location tagging. In the meantime, here is an interesting example from May 3rd of what Pepsi is doing. Recall from a prior posting that the beverage manufacturer's Bonin Bough said on a SMAC panel that if a startup like foursquare has an attractive concept, Pepsi will not dismiss the venture as too small but rather might find a way to bring it to scale. In this case, it looks like Pepsi has gone rogue:

Pepsi to Roll Two Geo-based Loyalty Efforts for Mobile

By Brian Quinton

Beverage maker Pepsi has announced that it will roll out two location-based mobile campaigns to offer discounts and loyalty points to consumers who use them to patronize nearby restaurant partners.

In the first, slated to launch in mid-May, the beverage maker will roll out Pepsi Loot, an iPhone app that will use the geo-location abilities of users’ mobile phones to identify and direct them to nearby restaurants that serve Pepsi beverages, both chains such as Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, IHOP, Popeye’s, Dairy Queen and Arby’s and also participating independents with Pepsi on the menu.

Users who find these locations, or “Pop spots”, with the app and go there will then be encouraged by both mobile alerts and in-store signs to “check in”. Users that check in at three pop spots will earn “Loot” loyalty points that can then be redeemed for music downloads from Universal Music Group, behind-the-scenes video content for mobile phones from Loot featured artists like Jamie Cullum and Katherine McPhee, or discount and free-food offers from Pop Spot member restaurants.

Thursday, June 3rd

56 people were checked into Bryant Park yesterday afternoon. That's crazy! I wonder how many people are at this one square block park at any one time. A sign of warm, sunny, weather and a reflection of how fast Foursquare is spreading on this little island called Manhattan.

Tuesday, June 8th

Starcom MediaVest starting to show up on a regular basis as top trending venue during the day. 15 people today at 11am.

I have been wondering whether the Cirque du Soleil that is currently resident at the Beacon is something I would want to see. Yesterday, when I checked into a parking meter near my home, I got a pop up from Anna O. recommending it - though she did comment on the clowns, and I am more interested in the performance/acrobatics/skill elements of CdS. I will text for more info. That also reminded me that I should check the "Tips" from the Beacon for more info. The only potential downside is that people tend not to leave negative tips, so it will be a bit biased.

Slowness of checking-in continues to be a downer. I guess it's understandable given that foursquare is nearing 1.6 million users

See interview with founder Dennis Crowley from the Mashable social media Summit

Monday, June 14th, 2010

DVR'd Dennis Crowley's interview with Maria Bartiromo. Need to watch and/or record it before Time Warner Cable comes by to fix my cable service.

72 people were checked into the Twitter Conference (TWTRCON NY10) this morning. 50 people were checked in at the Tony's last night. Sometimes 4SQ alerts me to a place for me to go, or motivates me to get somewhere - such as the Internet Week Expo - but sometimes it's too late to make plans for it, or I just don't have the access, which sometimes makes me sad - I admit. Green eyed FourSquenvy.

I realized that it's probably not a good idea to check in somewhere that it's illegal to be such as Central Park at 1am. In theory, the Park police could monitor it. I know that they leave tips about venues within the Park.

I sincerely believe that foursquare could be the next facebook. According to what I've seen thus far of Dennis' interview, they do not yet have a working biz model, but are building up the audience, participation and data to have a truly powerful monetization machine (in my own words).

Tuesday, June 15th

It must be summer in Central Park because I've seen Delacorte Theater (Shakespeare in the Park) and Summer Stage trending over the last week.

Wednesday, June 16th

Today is the day that someone other than I checked into my apartment! It was the second place she had ever checked-in, the first being the cafe where we had tea. This hereby justifies - in my mind - my creating a venue for my apartment building.

Karen's Coins - iTunes Optimization, The Sixth Force and Other Phrases for Thought

2010-06-15T00:17:00.000-04:00

Here Are Some Phrases, Terms and Concepts I've Created and Coined. I hope they give you food for thought:

iTunes Optimization (aka iTO) - The art and science of marketing an iPhone application via the iPhone application store - and within the mobile ecosystem in general. The ultimate goal is to get the application as high as possible on the list of relevant and/or recommended applications. This involves paid mobile advertising, cross-promotion and other tools, as yet unmastered.

Alternatively Application Store Marketing and Application Store Optimization (ASM and ASO)

The Sixth Force - Refers to the importance of "complements" in evaluating the strategic position and approach of a company or organization. The sixth force supplements Porter's existing five forces: Suppliers, Customers, Competitors, Potential New Entrants, Substitutes. When I was a brand manager for RAGU Pizza Sauce, the introduction and declining popularity of Boboli pizza crust turned out to be the most important element in explaining the rise and fall of pizza sauce consumption over a three-year period.

Segmented Media Pricing - Print publishers need to start looking at their business in a new way. Rather than maintaining the print versions of their magazine and newspaper publications as they are, and then deciding what form of walled garden, paid, metered, micropayment and/or freemium model to implement online, they need to unbundle and redesign what they offer - which is news and information, not a printed magazine or electronic replication with enhancements.

(Formerly called Disaggregation Correlations Optimization)

Social Mediaphobe - A marketer, manager or executive who is afraid to expose his brand to the masses - to what the massess might say - in a social forum. He is afraid that consumers might disparage the brand or say something inappropriate - and that, and this is the most common fear - he will be responsible because he sponsored, created, condoned, enabled, facilitated, hosted or participated in the forum. He is afraid of having his feelings hurt or his wrists slapped.

Hold the hands of these Social Media-phobes as they look down upon the icy ski slope. Tell them they can do it. They can conquer the mountain. Tell them not to lean back. Not to look back. That will only cause them to fall. Let them know that they can enjoy the ride. The journey. And that it can be exhilarating and even, well, social.

Beer Diplomacy - The use of beer by the president of the United States to patch up an awkward race-relations situation.

Eccentrepeneur - Simply put, an eccentric entrepreneur. You'll know one when you see one.

Mistweeting - I did not personally coin this and give credit to Michael Herz at NYSSA. This refers to the act of stating or implying that you are doing something or located somewhere and then contradicting that with Twitter updates.
Example:
Spoken Word -- "I will be out of town all summer."
Tweet -- "Just had dinner at a great restaurant in the West Village!"
Oops!

Coffaholic - Someone who loves, loves, loves coffee [you know who you are] and everything that comes with it. Someone who will sit in a Starbucks just to soak in the aroma. Someone who buys every variety of those traveling coffee mugs she can find - even though she really needs no more than one.

By the way, does anyone remember thermoses - with the screw on lids and a cup on top of that? Do those still exist? The ones where you could add a little something to your warm beverage to make the football game a little more entertaining.

Reconnaissance Shopping - A quick walk through a retail establishment such as Loehmann's to keep tabs on the types of merchandise they carry should a specific need arise. For example, recent reconnaissance made me aware of an abundance of very cute low-heeled boots, but I was not in the market for these. However, upon hearing from my doctor that I should stop wearing high heels, I was able to complete a quick, efficient shopping expedition on my way home from her office. Reconnaissance shopping is not the same as window shopping, which is more recreational and leisurely.

Neiphews - Kind of a cop out. Looking for a word that encompasses both nieces and nephews as in, "I have four niephews - three nephews and one niece."

Frolleague - A colleague you would friend (or have friended) on Facebook.

Ovation Inflation - The somewhat recent practice here in NYC of giving a standing ovation to any performance that costs enough that the audience feels they must justify their expenditure by categorizing the performance as one that calls for a standing ovation. Personally, I save my ovations for occasions in which I am so moved, impressed or rendered speechless that I rise to my feet without even knowing it.

The Fourth Dimension - Of course, this term is not new; however, I would assert that via time shifting technology, we have indeed reached the fourth dimension. Deep.

(As it turns out I learned during a dinner with one of the Hadron Collider experimental physicists that digital video recorders and podcasts have not given us access to the fourth dimension. Evidentally, the fourth dimension derives from the Space x Time = Distance equation. Ah, well.)

Foursquenvy - Feeling bad because someone has checked-in somewhere you wish you could be

Calendars... Open! Upcoming Programs, Conferences, Panels & Events

2010-06-14T12:25:00.000-04:00

Here are some programs, conferences, panels and events that I have on my radar that you might find of interest as well.

UPCOMING:

NFL's Commissioner—Roger Goodell: The Business of Sports, NYC

Checking In with the Co-Founder of foursquare, Dennis Crowley (I am co-sponsoring this event)

As social networks and online spaces proliferate, we risk losing contact with the real world. Why go out, when we can access the entire world through Facebook or Twitter? Enter foursquare. Part social network, part city guide, part game, foursquare encourages you to get out and experience your city, while simultaneously participating in online space. "Checking in" to various venues like restaurants, bars, and stores tells your friends where you are and the more you check in, the more badges you can earn. If you have the most check-ins at a particular venue, foursquare names you the "Mayor" -- a distinction many of the New York's restaurants and bars are coming to recognize with special discounts and offers. When co-founder Dennis Crowley checks in to the Harvard Club, he'll give us a special glimpse into foursquare's past, present, and future.

RECENTLY ATTENDED

Internet Week 2010 NYC

Mashable Media Summit - still more to watch via Livestream recordings

From On Demand to Always On - How to Reach and Engage a Mobile Audience. Limelight Networks and MTV Networks Talk Mobile Video -- still available via recorded webcast and presentation

What a difference a year makes. Remember when the iPhone had the app store market cornered? When there wasn't a Droid, or a Nexus One? A Kin, or an Incredible? When there wasn't a Nook, or an iPad, or a Slate? The mobile market is changing, and content publishers face a world of complexity in delivering media to audiences on the go.

Limelight Networks CTO of Mobility and Monetization Solutions Jonathan Cobb and MTV Networks Senior Director of Product Development Todd Kennedy discuss evolving market conditions, mobile strategy considerations, and real-world examples of mobile media success.

The webcast covers:

Media delivery to mobile browsers and mobile apps across a wide array of devices
A range of publisher scenarios from premium television delivery to "how-to" video streams
A list of variables to consider when forming a mobile strategy, as well as recommendations for implementation and monetization
An in-depth look at how MTV Networks has expanded into mobile delivery with many of its well-known television brands

A Conversation with Jimmy Wales, Founder of wikipedia. (I organized this event on behalf of the Harvard Club of NYC in conjunction with the HBS Club of NYC.)

Is it possible to collect the sum of all human knowledge and make it available to every person for free? Jimmy Wales thinks it is. And as founder of the online collaborative encyclopedia wikipedia, he has made that his goal. With 15 million articles in 271 languages and 680 billion monthly visits, wikipedia is the largest, most popular general reference on the web. So, how is the content on this expansive source of information created, maintained and “policed?” Is this open-source resource reliable or biased? And what is the future of this kind of collaborative web culture?

Come find out through a special interview with Jimmy Wales by media expert Adam Klein (MBA ‘79, JD ’87). A former strategy and management professor at HBS, Dr. Klein teaches at Columbia’s Journalism School and as founder of Media Leader LLC, continues to apply his strategy, innovation and change management expertise to the rapidly transforming media industry.
Mr. Wales was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and appointed a fellow of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Linked-N Bergen County Networking Event. Social Media Discussion Panel About LinkedIn. I was one of the panelists. Tuesday, May 18th. 6:30-9pm. Crowne Plaza Hotel, Paramus, NJ.

Registration will be from 6:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m with networking until about 8:15 p.m. And then back by popular demand we will have another panel discussion hosted by Chris Kieff.

The food is being catered by Bone Fish Grill, and there will be a cash bar. The Crown Plaza is located at 601 From Rd next to the Paramus Park Mall and across the street from the Garden State Parkway.

You can register at the link above. The cost is $12 in advance, $15 at the door. There were 84 people at the last Linked-N Bergen County event, and we expect to break the 100 mark with this program.

Saatchi & Saatchi 7x7. Wednesday, May 5th, 2010. NYC

CLEOPATRA: The Most Powerful Woman of the Ancient Mediterranean World, a talk by Dr. Duane Roller, author of a new biography of Cleopatra. Monday, May 3rd, 2010. Harvard Club of New York (my event)

The Future of Publishing by WIMI (Wharton Interactive). Friday, April 30th, full day. NYC.

Traditional publishing models have been disrupted, fragmented and dissolved. For books, magazines or newspapers, new behaviors and technologies have changed the face of publishing forever. Join the Wharton Lab for Innovation in Publishing (part of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, Knowledge@Wharton, and Wharton School Publishing to examine the new technologies and strategies that impact all facets of the industry to help bring actionable answers to publishing executives. Conference highlights include:

Keynote addresses from Gordon Crovitz, Co-Founder of Press+ (a service of Journalism Online) and Martin Nisenholtz, Senior Vice President for Digital Operations at The New York Times Company

Panel discussions spanning the consumer, publisher and delivery of the future, the value of social media in publishing and the mobility of new content with speakers from Hearst Interactive, Google, Simon & Schuster, Condé Nast, Wall Street Journal, Ipsos Mendelsohn, Demand Media, Digg.com, Hyperion Books, Fast Pencil, Open Road Media, Outside.In, NBC Universal, Flurry, and many more
Open forum style where attendees will be strongly encouraged to engage in discussion and brainstorming in the panel workshops

Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media. Webinar with Geoff Ramsey by eMarketer. Thursday, April 29th, 2010

F8 by Facebook. Wednesday, April 21st from 8:30am-5:15pm - Still available via Livestream. Definitely check it out to hear about the open graph protocol and other revolutionary announcements.

How to Lead in Tough Times with Bob Seelert, Worldwide Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi. Tuesday, April 20th. Harvard Club of New York (my event).

re-Set: The Business Models of Tomorrow. Presented by VANITY FAIR and HARPERSTUDIO. Panelists include Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk, Michael Eisner, Tom Peters and Anna Bernasek. Tuesday, April 20th, 8am - noon

Michael Tuts, US physicist in charge of the Hadron Collider. April 12, 2010. Harvard Club of New York. (I was the co-sponsor of this event.)

Social Media Advertising Consortium NYC Salon. Wednesday, April 7, 2010 from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM. Razorfish Offices, NYC.

Marketing an iPhone App - What a Difference a Year Makes in a Digital Media World

2010-06-11T13:47:00.001-04:00

What a difference a year makes! I posted the blog entry below on May 27th, 2009. As I watch the iPad spiral to unforeseen levels of penetration in just a few weeks, as I ogle over the new HTC Droid, as the number of application stores reaches 5+, and as the number of Droid applications is expected to surpass those for iPhones this year, I thought it was worth pulling it up for old time's sake and to notice what a difference a year makes - and also what has stayed the same. So, in the interest of time - as I have important meetings at 2pm and 4:30pm, here are a few data points for thought:

Mobile ad sales accounted for approximately $391 million in 2009 and are forecast to reach $561 million in 2010 (Zenith Optimedia). Of course, this doesn't begin to take into account content revenue: music, video, applications, etc. or usage charges: text messaging, data, voice (remember voice?)

The global market for mobile applications reached $10 billion in 2009. (Didn't see that coming in 2006!) - Juniper Research

Apple sold 1 million iPads in 28 days and more than 2 million in less than 60 days.

It took 74 days to sell 1 million iPhones.

As of May 3, 2010, 12 million iPad applications had been downloaded and 1.5 million eBooks (Steve Jobs)

There are, I believe, 200,000 iPad applications available

Android applications are expected to reach 150,000 by the end of 2010 - though I believe a Motorola executive speaking during Internet Week referenced 40,000 available apps - as she was making the case that WAP sites are even better than apps... Note that iPhone users are more likely to use apps than websites; that's flipped for other smart phone users.

65,000 Android phones ship daily (Eric Schmidt, May 17, 2010 via AndroPhones.com)

Android phones were not around a year ago

Unlike iPhones, Android phones have multiple manufacturers including Motorola, HTC, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and are available through multiple carriers

The term is no longer "iPhone App" but rather "Mobile App."

The term is no longer "iPhone" but rather "Smartphone."

Smartphone penetration reached 21% of wireless subscribers at the end of 2010 and is expected to pass the 50% mark in 2011. (Nielsen)

14% of mobile customers have downloaded an app in the last 30 days. BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile users have between 10 and 14 apps on their phones, with RIM on the low end of the scale. Android users average 22 apps, compared to iPhone owners who devour, as Steve Smith of Mediapost puts it, 37 apps.

As of May 2010, Apple is larger than Microsoft.

And now to our formerly scheduled blog posting:

POSTED MAY 27TH, 2009

I recently attended one of Alan Brody's iBreakfasts - "iPhone Apps & Mobile Platforms." The panelists were Eric Litman from MediaLets, Ken Engels from Curious Brain and Alex Muller from Slifter. And it of course, got me thinking about iPhone apps. So here are some of my thoughts:

FUN iPHONE FACTS

How Many Phones?

There are currently 40MM iPhone and iTouch devices (15)

17MM iPhones had been sold as of March 2009. (1)

Nearly 4MM iPhones were sold in the 1st quarter of 2009 - representing growth of nearly 125% vs. 2008. (8)

During the first three months of iPhone 3G availability (3Q 2008), seven million phones were sold, exceeding the six million first-generation phones sold in 1 1/4 years. (8)

26% of U.S. smart phone users have iPhones (35% have Blackberries). (3)

Where Are They?

iPhone applications are available in 77 countries. (7)

There are 500MM people with mobile phones in India...(5)

How Many Apps?

As of April 24th, 2009, 1 billion iPhone applications had been downloaded - 9 months after the launch of the store. (4)

On June 8th, Apple announced that there were 50,000 applications in the iTunes Store - up from 35,000 in April (7). At the OMMA Video conference on June 17th, I heard estimates of 54,000 by Gordon Borrell and 57,500 by Marketspace Senior Advisor Andrew Heyward.

As of April 15, 2009, 25,000 different iPhone apps had been downloaded. (6)

As of June 12th, 2009, 15 of the top 20 free and paid apps (top 10 free; top 10 paid) were games

The iPhone Applications Store model of centralized distribution is unprecedented.

It takes one to two weeks for a new application to be listed by Apple (if approved).(9)

What's Up with UrbanSpoon?

UrbanSpoon was one of the top applications downloaded in 2008.

Following favorable reviews from Macworld, TechCrunch, and even the New York Times, the free app racked up 300,000 downloads and over 6,000,000 shakes within the first 10 days.

In October 2008, UrbanSpoon began selling advertising on the application through a platform/ad network called AdMob that specializes in mobile advertising.

UrbanSpoon had already achieved 1MM downloads when it was approached by Apple to be featured in the Apple iPhone commercial. One month after the November commercial hit the airwaves, UrbanSpoon's downloads had jumped to 2.2MM. (10)

The UrbanSpoon iPhone application was originally introduced to drive traffic to its website. Its founders estimate that if they had charged for the application, e.g., $1.00, downloads would have been reduced by 90%. (11)

UrbanSpoon was recently purchased by IAC.

How Much Are They?

Most iPhone applications are paid apps. (12)

However, the top 10 free applications made up 7% of downloads as of December 2008. (13)

iPhone paid apps range from $.99 to at least $6.99 (e.g., BeamMe Pro). (14) The average price is $1.00 - $1.50. (12)

Apple takes 30% commission for paid applications. Apple's estimated revenue from app sales is undisclosed, but estimates range from $70 million to $160 million. (14)

What's Next?

Web 3.0 is here. The iPhone 3.0 enables in-application purchases (7)

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MARKETING AN iPHONE APPLICATION

ASO and ASM:

I have coined two new phrases: Application Store Optimization (ASO) and Application Store Marketing (ASM). These are core elements of iPhone application marketing.

Where do people go when they are looking for information and answers? Google - the "Q-Tip" of Search. Where do people go when looking for an iPhone application? The App Store - the centralized, exclusive source for iPhone Applications.

There are two goals: (1) turn up high on the results page of an app store keyword search (e.g., subway map, weather) and (2) be part of a "Top 10" list (e.g., games). 80% of downloads come from the top 100 applications. (16)

If you can't accomplish this organically, then go for Application Search Marketing (ASM) by paying to be a "Featured" application. As with SEM, ASM can be used to jump start organic search.

The key concept to remember is that popularity breeds popularity. Once you achieve a high ranking, take advantage of it. The one time you are guaranteed inclusion in a Top 25 list is when you are introduced, so support your application when you launch it, and focus your efforts.

If you are going to spend money advertising your application, then you are better off with one heavy push, i.e., buy your advertising all in one day rather than by sprinkling it around.

The "What's New" and "Top" lists are said to have rolling 24 hour windows. However, Apple has been continuously changing its algorithms.

Other Applications

A good strategy is to get included in other applications. This can be done by purchasing ad inventory through a third party or through partnerships. Creators of gaming applications often maintain a portfolio of games, using each one as a platform to promote the others. Whatever your application, it's important to target people who like a similar or complementary application.

Website Promotion

If you have an online presence, you can promote your mobile application on your own website. This can include deep links that can be emailed or texted to a mobile device or that links to the iTunes Store.

Social Media and Editorial Reviews

Develop a strategy for getting positive coverage: editorial and user reviews, blogs, Twitter, etc.

Consider Giving It Away

As with other content providers, the developer of an iPhone application is faced with a tradeoff: (a) give it away to get broader adoption (b) sell it to get revenue and recoup costs. Consider giving away your initial version; it will get downloaded by early adopters who are sure to give you feedback in the form of reviews within the Application Store. Once you've refined the application and gotten some word of mouth, transition to a paid model (grandfathering the early adopters). Additionally, you can give your first release away for free and then charge for the 2nd generation premium or "pro' version. BeamMe went from free to $6.99.

OBSERVATIONS

iPhone applications are characterized by the early fervor of a new space, and there are low barriers to entry for a new iPhone application

More than one in four smart phone users have iPhones; Verizon needs to take this situation seriously as it evaluates whether to reach an arrangement with iPhone once AT&T's exclusive contract expires. A Blackberry representative recently told me that because only 7.4% of computers are Apple computers, there is limited incentive to create software for Mac users, e.g., a working program for synchronizing a Blackberry with a MacBook. However, if Blackberry can't offer a viable solution, Verizon will lose customers to AT&T and iPhone, despite the fact that Verizon offers dramatically better phone courage. If Verizon continues to let this happen, they are missing a big opportunity.

HOW'D THEY DO?

In early 2006, I wrote a presentation about the mobile space for a multi-platform publisher that included forecasts of mobile advertising and marketing revenue by a range of media pundits. This is what they forecast for 2009:
- Visiongain: $602MM (55% compound annual growth rate)
- RBC Capital: $1.5 Bn (101% CAGR)
- McKinsey: $250-$750MM
- eMarketer: $434MM (20% CAGR)

(As it turns out, mobile advertising revenue for 2009 was $391 million - Source: ZenithOptimedia, "Advertising Expenditure Forecasts," provided to eMarketer, December 8, 2009 - it seems that eMarketer wins the forecasting contest.)

The wide-ranging projections could not have foreseen the iPhone application revolution, that provides increased opportunity for paid listings, sponsorships, cross-promotion, affiliate marketing and display advertising. That said, the majority of mobile revenue comes from text messaging. (12)

Sources: Eric Litman, Alex Muller, Ken Engels and Alan Brody, Network World, Zueo, Christian Science Monitor, Articles Base, eMarketer, Tata, Steve Wax of Campfire Media, Stuart Farr of Not for Tourists

(1) March 24th, 2009
(2) January 28th, 2009 - while some of the difference between the 15MM and the 17MM numbers may be due to purchases made between January and March, some is likely attributable to iPhone owners who have purchased more than one iPhone - likely trading up from version 1 to version 2
(3) March 2009 - eMarketer, Skype survey
(4) 1 billion as of April 24th, 2009 - Apple.com - remember that iTouch users also download applications --> approximately 22 per device
(5) Tata - 92nd Street Y panel, June 2009
(6) Are there 10,000 iPhone applications that have never been downloaded?
(7) 35,000 as of April 24th, 2009 - Apple.com
(8) Apple financial report
(9) June 8, 2009. Recent applicant
(10) Ethan Lowry, founding member of UrbanSpoon, one of the most downloaded iPhone applications of 2008. Mobile Crunch, December 5th, 2008.
(11) October 30, 2008 - Seattle 2.0, Kevin Leneway
(12) iBreakfast panel
(13) Mobile Crunch, December 5th, 2008 - estimate by Greg Kuparak
(14) ClickZ, May 22, 2009
(15) Apple, June 8, 2009
(16) Gordon Borrell, CEO, Borrell Associates, Inc. - OMMA Video Conference, June 17, 2009

Place the Spot; Spot the Placement

2010-06-09T10:01:00.001-04:00

I can't help it! When I'm watching "The Big Bang Theory," and Leonard's "Mom" holds her soda can just a little too long and a little too high, and the can remains visible for 5 minutes of the show, then it must be a product placement. It's a bit of a game, a bit of an art to spot, so I'm reopening my log of potential spottings. I hope you'll join me.

- Rules of Engagement, June 7th, 2010 - Kiehl's moisturizer on Audrey's nightstand. Could be for character definition. In any case, awfully prominent, as in the only thing on the nightstand, just inside the shot and positioned so that you could read the label.

What do you think? Is Kiehl's helping to define Audrey's character, or is CBS helping to promote Kiehl's?

- Colbert Show, June 8th, 2010 - Colbert wearing a lab coat with a big Lexus logo on the back during piece about Consumer Reports.

- Colbert Show, June 7th, 2010 - Microsoft's Bing search engine agreed to donate $2,500 to a charity of Stephen's choice every time he said the word, "bing." The show raised $100,000 for the Gulf of America Fund.

- Ugly Betty and the Atlantis Paradise Island resort - the December 4th episode was one long, albeit beautiful, advertorial for the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, interrupted only by, well, ads for the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. There was even an entire scene designed around the famous water slide. If it weren't for the MEMORABLE footage of the dastardly but oh so hot Connor Owens wearing minimal wardrobe, it might have been too much. Ugly Betty is a great vehicle for brand integration. And I understand that the Latin American version, which takes place in an advertising agency, milks the product placement cow even more completely.

- Big Bang Theory, September 21, 2009 - new Diet Pepsi can - 3rd act of "Big Bang Theory." The can is - for me - one of five characters in the scene.

Who Will Capture the Flag? The Convergence of Digital, Traditional, Media & PR Agencies

2010-05-27T00:07:00.001-04:00

A recent "AdWeek" article observed that, "digitally centric agencies like R/GA are adding more traditional brand-building capabilities while TBWA and BBDO are trying to apply digital to their orgs."

This article prompted a student of business to pose the following question on LinkedIn: "Who has it harder traditional agencies or digital ones?"

This was my response:

Full service, traditional agencies have longer histories and potentially tighter relationships with major advertisers. Digital agencies have deeper and wider technical skills and experience, e.g., building a rich media site or social media campaign. It will be very interesting to see how things play out, and I think, as I write this and look at the names you have listed above, it may be a case by case situation, i.e., some digital agencies are strong enough to make the transition, and some creative agencies are forward looking enough to make inroads.

One thing that I think both benefits and limits digital agencies is that many of these agencies grew out of the direct agencies of the large media conglomerates. While test and learn, measurement and optimization are important, and while digital realms provide a bevy of data to work with, that kind of mindset can be limiting as the interactive space becomes more and more "upper funnel" - with more opportunities for branding and truly breakthrough creative thinking.

All that said, what is happening on the ground right now is that
(a) creative agencies are seeking to hire talent with interactive backgrounds, particularly from top digital agencies and
(b) both digital and traditional agencies are expanding and changing out their strategy teams. Several major agencies have new strategy heads as of the beginning of 2010.

Who's the Boss? Why Facebook Can't Get Its Head Around Our Privacy Concerns

2010-05-25T22:44:00.020-04:00

I've seen it before. Technology companies that don't understand the customer mindset. Coming from a packaged goods background, I am trained to see my consumer as my most important constituency. But coming from a technology background, Mark Zuckerberg seems to have greater empathy for developers than users.

Last month, Facebook hosted a day of presentations, talks and break out sessions known as F8. As someone in the digital community, I tuned in for a streamed recording of the Zuckerberg's keynote speech, which outlined the dramatic changes that Facebook was introducing to the world including the open graph protocol, greater sharing of data with partner sites and changes in privacy policies. It was an inspiring talk. At the end of it, he spoke about how medical students see opportunities in the world to save people, lawyers see opportunities to bring fairness to the world, and programmers want to make the world a better place. It's a bit late at night, so I'll have to go back to the tape to see whether I've summarized this appropriately, but I recall being inspired by his can-do, why-not, I'm an engineer attitude.

My next thought was the following: This has been an informative and well-produced little presentation. I watched it because I'm a digital junkie, but, what about the other 400 million people who use Facebook? How many of them watched this? And even if they did, would they have understood it? Open graph protocol???? I don't think so. So, I was waiting to see how Facebook would communicate these innovations to its... customers, its users, not its third party developers and programmers, but the folks who give him the data and attention and time that is so valuable to everyone else. Nada. I did not see any plan to do so.

Then I logged into my Facebook account. As you can imagine, when I logged in, I was there for a specific reason. Perhaps I wanted to post something on my wall, or check my inbox or read comments to my profile. As soon as I arrived at the home page, I was met by a huge block of text and choices. It told me that my "likes" would be something-or-othered and I could decide what I wanted to share and not and... well, I didn't have time for it. Click this, unclick that, and I went on my merry way.

Had I not watched the video, I would have been taken completely off guard. As it was, I was thrown off course, but had enough of a backdrop to be cautious about what I did and didn't check. I do recall going to Twitter and expressing concern about whether my name would be posted on the websites of brands I "liked." The Twitter community assured me there was nothing to worry about and went about tweeting about this interesting open graph protocol.

Tune in a week later, and the world has gone amok. Diaspora* is having hundreds of thousands of dollars offered to them to be the David to Zuckerberg's Goliath. Public figures like Baratunde Thurston are publicly closing out their Facebook accounts and asking friends to unfriend them. And Zuckerberg is taking his story to the Washington Post to let us know he "hears us"... but that we really shouldn't be so concerned.

And therein lies the problem. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't think like a consumer. And certainly not like the mainstream consumers that have come to Facebook of late. He thinks like a Gen Y, 20-something programmer. He's never taken a marketing class; he never even finished his Harvard Core Curriculum requirements.

This, as I am waywardly getting to, is my point. Seeing the consumer as the constituent does not always come naturally. Several years ago, I served as interim marketing head for an up and coming website. The year before I arrived, revenue was $40 million. The year I got there, $70 million. And they were on track for $100 million. But they were somehow a little stuck. The content on their site was written by a group of contributors I will call "Coaches." These people are compensated by the website based on the traffic and ad revenue they generate. This group was, up until I arrived, considered to be the company's customer. What about the users, I asked? What about the advertisers? Ah, that was where I could provide insight to this technology-driven organization.

A year or so later, I worked with the website of a major travel and tourism commission. When I visited the site, I looked at it from a consumer point of view and was disappointed. Then I looked at it from an advertiser point of view and was disappointed. Who did the commission see as their customer? Answer: The hospitality industry and destination marketing organizations. Because these organizations were the ones who funded the tourism commission. Hence, if I visited the site and searched for information about ski resorts, I might be served with minutes from the ski resort marketing association annual meeting. Shocking to me, but it made total sense to the client - because we had different ideas as to who the key stakeholder was.

What Facebook seems to be lacking is a true and intuitive understanding of the consumer. The consumer that is the user - not the developer, not even the advertiser, but the individual members of the Facebook community. The four hundred million... people.

Link me In - LinkedIn Tips for Job Search and Business Promotion

2010-05-18T09:31:00.006-04:00

This evening I am sitting on a discussion panel about social media and, particularly, LinkedIn. Last night I jotted down some thoughts with respect to some of the preliminary questions posed to me and thought I might share them here for those who will not be making it to Paramus this evening - though I encourage you to do so if you can as (a) I will surely refine my answers (b) there are two other panelists and a moderator, (c) there will be a Q&A session (d) there will be networking and food for a low price.

As I said, these thoughts are rough and preliminary, and I hope to improve upon them when I find myself in a "procrastinatory" mood. I welcome your thoughts, input, disagreement, personal examples, corroboration and so forth:

JOB SEARCH:

How do I make my profile standout?

- Be true to yourself. I see my LinkedIn profile as part of my overall communication plan. So highlight the things you want to emphasize. I would also recommend that you include any “Brand Names” and “key words” that might be of interest to those you want to “attract.” There are a number of people, including recruiters and HR managers, who use LinkedIn as a search engine. It’s similar to the way things used to be with job sites like CareerBuilder. However, this is better, in my opinion, because you are not obviously, actively looking, so it puts you on more equal footing.

- Include descriptions of your work, not just listings of companies, titles and dates

- Include links to relevant websites, e.g., if you have a personal or biz website, if you have a blog, if you have a Twitter feed.

- Have a nice, professional photo.

- Update things periodically so that your contacts get “updates.” Keeps you top of mind. Use the status update, but use it strategically and cautiously.

Should I make more than one profile?

- No, it will just complicate your life, and it will confuse people. This is what makes LinkedIn tricky, but embraces it as a puzzle to solve.

What are some profile mistakes I should avoid?

- Poor quality or unprofessional photo
- Twitter feed – don’t overwhelm me
- Incoherent overview of what you do – for consultants – don’t give me a list
- [I have a personal example of something I tried but found to be suboptimal - demonstrating that here, as in most digital environments, there is an opportunity to test and change.]

How do I expand my network?

- LinkedIn is a tool to manage your network, so basic networking rules still apply, and I would encourage getting to know people face to face before connecting with them on LinkedIn. When you meet someone at an event that you want to connect to, take their card and connect to them in the next 24 hours to 7 days.

- Groups. Join some relevant groups, and join in on the conversations

- Go through the lists that LinkedIn gives you of people from your jobs or schools that are on LinkedIn. Check back periodically. Once you’ve exhausted that, take a look at the people that LinkedIn recommends to you.

- Go through your non-LinkedIn “Rolodex” and periodically invite people to connect. Consider “refreshing” people’s memories, as needed, e.g., “you may recall that we met at the Bergen County Networking Event.”

How do I request references?

- Probably best to prime the pump outside of LinkedIn, e.g., via email or phone or in person. Then send the invite; make it easy for them.

- Technically: go to edit mode of your profile, go to relevant job, and click on “request recommendation.” The person has to be a LinkedIn connection.

- Think strategically about how many you want. Try to get people from different perspectives, but especially senior people. Ask people who can sincerely write about you.

- Sometimes people will ask you what they should say. Find out whether they want a few bullet points or an actual draft. [interested in what others have to say about this.]

How do I find companies that may not be advertising new jobs?

- Search for people at those companies, including people in HR. Create jobs. Network with people and sell them on what you could potentially do. Set up informational interviews.

- Follow companies… (a new feature)

- Check out company pages.

What can/should I learn about a company before an interview?

- Find out who you are meeting with and check out their LinkedIn profile – take a look at who you know in common – take at look at people’s blogs, company websites and twitter feeds. Be cautious about speaking to people who know the interviewer in common – make sure you’re not giving away a lead.

- I still like Hoover’s

- Set up Google alerts

Should I link my LinkedIn profile to my blog, Facebook and Twitter?

- Blog: depends on the blog; if your blog is something you want potential employers to see, i.e., professional and/or shows off something you want to showcase, then link to it – use the link at the top of your profile – otherwise, no

- Facebook: no

- Twitter: include your twitter name if, as above, you want potential employers to see it, i.e., it’s professional

Should I accept all connection requests?

- No. Be discriminating. I would like to think that, even though I have 700 connections, I could say who each person is, even though it may take some research, e.g., spotlight, notes, address book or need to jog my memory by seeing who we know in common, etc.

- Do not connect to anyone you have not met or had substantive exchange with via phone or email.

- Be somewhat cautious about recruiters – they want access to your Rolodex. Think about whether they can be valuable to you.

Is it recommended that a job seeker use the Q&A section?

- Q&A - now called Answers - is not very commonly used anymore. I would focus on Groups.

BUSINESS PROMOTION

What’s the best way to promote a business on LinkedIn?

- Create and maintain company profile
- Use status updates, events, get involved in Groups
- As above, tweak your profile to stay on people’s update feeds
- Create a blog if you have the time and it’s relevant; link to it. Same with Twitter.
- Encourage employees to use LinkedIn
- Create alumni groups
- Monitor LinkedIn to stay on top of trends and hear what's being said about your company, competitors and your sector

How do we promote a small business? (versus a large business)

- Same as above.

How do we use LinkedIn for local business promotion?

- I think there are some hyper local functions being added
- Join local groups (such as Bergen County LinkedIn and Meetup groups)
- Connect to important people in your geo

Can I advertise on LinkedIn?

- Yes. There is a link at the bottom of the page called “advertising.” There are options for large & small budgets. I think it’s like Google. Pay per click and also banner pops.

Can I use LinkedIn for competitive info?

- Yes. First of all, track down people who used to work at competitive companies and network with them…
- Follow the companies

Should we link our blog/Facebook/Twitter to LinkedIn?

- Same as above: blog if it’s professional. Facebook Fan page if it’s professional. Twitter if it’s professional. But not automatic feeds. I hate that.

Should we accept all connection requests?

- Nope – same as above. Your business is yourself when it comes to social media. It’s all about authenticity and transparency, so it’s hard to draw a line.

Should we create a LinkedIn Company Profile? Pros/Cons

- Yes, it’s quick and easy. No downside, and you can see who is following you. Set it up. You can always add to it later.

Disaggregation & Correlation Optimization - How Print Media Can Be Saved

2010-05-04T12:15:00.016-04:00

Print publishers need to start looking at their business in a new way. Rather than maintaining the print versions of their magazine and newspaper publications as they are, and then deciding what form of walled garden, paywall, metered, micropayment and/or freemium model to implement online, they need to unbundle and redesign what they offer - which is news and information, not a printed magazine or electronic replication with enhancements.

Right now, a consumer has no choice in what they get in terms of a print publication. There is basically one version. You may read only a few sections of the New York Times but, too bad, you get it all, and now you need to deal with disposing of and/or recycling what you don't read or need. It's like saying to a shopper at Costco: I know you came in for diapers, but you also get motor oil with that purchase - for free - because they are bundled together. Well, that motor oil just makes the "bundle" worth less to me. I'd rather have the diapers alone or, perhaps, bundle them with pureed vegetables.

So it is with published content. I might like to have a print copy of the Sunday Arts & Leisure and Style sections as well as daily podcasts of the front page and daily e-mail news alerts about anything having to do with social media. So disaggregate what you offer and rebundle it in a way that is valuable to me. I might be willing to pay more for that combination than I currently pay for the printed publication.

Now I understand that the NYT may not want to create hundreds of thousands of customized product combinations. However, it may be the case that most people who read the Arts & Leisure section also follow social media. Through correlation and cluster analysis, I can get a sense of what individual elements tend to "go together" and then create a portfolio of options that appeal to different consumer segments. Remember that phrase, "consumer segmentation?" Personally I think it is one of the most powerful concepts that can be garnered from a $100,000 MBA education. I'm emphasizing it to you for free! So please don't waste it.

While the New York Times does not seem to have used this disaggregation & correlation optimization approach in designing their new tiered/metered content approach, I'm getting the sense that some other print publications (I won't mention them by name) may be exploring this kind of more sophisticated pricing. I think this could be the answer to much of what ails traditional media - from newspapers & magazines to books to interactive television. Executives have to be willing to take apart their current assumptions and create something that is bigger than the whole. As mentioned in previous blogs, I think that Flatworld Knowledge has done some interesting things in this space. And, based on a pricing strategy engagement I completed - with my colleagues at Abbey Road Associates - for a major equity research company, they also are tapping into the power of this kind of analysis.

Don't miss out. It's powerful stuff. Not easy, not to be done without expert pricing supervision but well worth the effort.

If you'd like to learn more about how Triple Play can help you with this type of pricing strategy development, send me a note via LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook or leave a comment for me here.

Hot Styles Now – A Keynote by Mindy Grossman

2010-04-28T14:31:00.018-04:00

Several weeks ago, I spent the entire day at Macy’s. Not shopping – department stores scare me a little – but attending a conference on Interactive Retailing. The keynote speaker was Mindy Grossman, the CEO of HSN. I say, “HSN” rather than “Home Shopping Network” because one of the modernizing changes she has made is updating the name – kind of like KFC, but with less to hide.

I found this change in name particularly interesting because in 2002, I did quite a bit of work with HSN. I was one of two marketing leads in Hearst Magazines’ Brand Development Group, i.e., licensed products. Products ranging from Marie Claire fashion to Good Housekeeping cookery to Cosmo hair accessories and Country Living quilts were frequently featured on HSN and QVC. Seeking to find a fit between the HSN brand and the Marie Claire flair was tricky, so I coined the phrase “Hot Styles Now!”

Well, it seems that Mindy Grossman has updated the HSN brand to a point where we don’t need either Home Shopping Network or Hot Styles Now. These are some of the things she has done:

Coined the catch phrase: “There's No Place Like HSN."

- Check out the video.

Eliminated $100 billion in product.

- I’d like to know how she selected which product to eliminate. Rationalizing a product line is a valuable and tricky endeavor. You want to upgrade your brand, but you don’t want to alienate your core audience.

- Did she use the BCG matrix – identifying stars, cash cows, problem children and dogs based on market share and growth? Was there qualitative and quantitative research involved? Did she, like Showtime, define the unique look, feel and personality of HSN and then pick products that supported it and simply felt right? Did she segment her target market? I certainly hope and imagine she did. I think that market segmentation is perhaps the most important element of marketing strategy.

- I’d also like to know what led to the transformation. How, as I alluded above, did she evaluate where she was and where she wanted to go? Was it an upfront strategy or more of an incremental evolution?

The end goal and end result was a transition to a lifestyle network.

- That is big. I sounds like she identified the core of her brand and her audience and expanded from a retail channel to an entertainment/transaction vehicle. Very interesting.

HSN added culinary programming noting that the appetite for this kind of programming has not been sated.
Cute choice of words: appetite for culinary things has not been sated… Also quite a statement. Even with a 24/7 Food Network and Food Network spinoff (Scripps re-purposing of “Fine Living).

- In fact, even with food content on Bravo, TLC, the Travel Network, A&E, ABC Family Channel, BBC America, Discovery, Fox Reality, MTV, Style Network, AMC, FX Network, MSNBC, TV Land, Hallmark Channel, Lifetime and Lifetime Movie, Oxygen, SoapNet, WEtv, Comedy Central and Spike TV (phew!), there is still an unsated appetite. (This , by the way, is why I would like to invite Brooke Johnson, President of Food Network, to speak at the Harvard Club, but that is a story for another day.)

In any case, HSN feels that this appetite has not been sated – perhaps, like chocolate, having food content just makes us all want even more – so, "she is going after that."

Mindy started her talk with some key Internet data points:

- Oh, how I love data…

Here they are:

Peer reviews are the #2 source of content/activity after search

30 billion videos viewed each month, ___% on YouTube [darn, missed the # and will have to look it up]

When a person has a DVR, 40-60% of viewing is time shifted

- By the way, I spoke with a physicist working on the Hadron Collider, and he broke the news to me that time shifting is not the fourth dimension. It has to do with the Speed x Time = Distance equation. Oh well.

The web is becoming more sociable than searchable

- Nice alliteration

Facebook had 400 MM users in February of 2010

- Yup, it’s more than that now.

4 of 5 Internet users visited social networking site

11% of time online is on social networks

eBay is experimenting with outlets

- I didn’t know that. I’ll need to search on it when I get a sec.

Online gaming is growing in popularity – 65% of households game! More than 40% of those who game are women. A lot [missed the number] are over the age of 50. 57% are earning or spending virtual currency daily.

- Wow and whoah. 57%! On virtual currency! Take in for a moment that companies like Zynga have figured out a way to turn online value into money! This is worth taking a pause to digest. I’m glad that I’m working on a social gaming speaking event. It’s hot, hot, hot!

The leaders in social mobile networking activity are 35-46 years old.

- Kids, by the way, are pretty much satisfied with Facebook when it comes to social networking.

- Oops – speaking of food content, it’s time for lunch. Gotta run.

- Good news is that Mindy’s people have invited me to do an audio interview, so if you have any questions you’d like me to ask, send ‘em on over!

When You Think "Add;" Also Think "Reduce"

2010-04-21T12:59:00.011-04:00

Something dramatic happened in 2009. Something that might not surprise you today but would have been unthinkable back when I walked the carpeted hallways of Hachette, Hearst or Conde Nast Magazines just a few years ago. Internet advertising revenue surpassed magazine advertising revenue.

Based on ZenithOptimedia estimates, magazine revenues fell from $24 billion in 2008 to $19 billion in 2009, and Internet revenues grew from $18 billion to $20 billion - despite a decrease in total ad revenue across all categories. The line in the sand has officially been crossed, and I can not imagine that it will be reversed. (In fact, Zenith estimates an increased gap in 2010.) While magazines may experience a partial rebirth with the birth of the iPad, their role as a top 3 medium is no longer.

Now, while TV and Newspapers seem to be holding their own, this stability does beg a question for me as follows: Are the interactive ad revenues associated with newspaper websites and tv websites included in the newspaper/tv bucket or the interactive bucket? My most recent perusal of a Veronis Suhler report revealed that these calculations are far more complicated than they may seem. As integrated advertising and media offerings have become more real, bookkeeping has become more surreal. In fact, the strength of TV and newspaper revenues reflects, in part, the strength of their digital offerings, particularly in comparison to the somewhat late-to-the-table magazine industry.

Last night, I sponsored a talk by Bob Seelert, Worldwide Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, author of the book "Start with the Answer" and creator of a short article featuring a list of the "10 Things To Do When Leading In Tough Times." #9 on the list reads as follows: "When you think 'add;' also think 'reduce.' When you think 'create;' also think 'eliminate.'"

Unfortunately, as advertising agencies seek to enhance their digital capabilities, they find a reduced need for those with print expertise. A smart organization will see the need to make this tradeoff, and a long-time print professional had better see the need to stay a step ahead - or at least catch up!

On July 10, 2007, I wrote my very third blog entry. It was entitled, "Don't Do It" and strongly counseled a colleague to diversify out of print and into digital. I hope she heeded my advice:

"Don't do it," I told her. A colleague from my magazine days took me to breakfast to ask for career advice. She has 11 years of magazine experience and is reentering the work force after a maternity leave and a quick detour into non-profit. "Don't go back into pure play print," I told her. If you do return to magazines, make sure you have digital responsibility and interaction."

My colleague didn't think she had enough online knowledge to enter that world. "I don't know about search and all that," she said. But my feeling is that she needs to get up to speed on the lingo, the players and the trends. I suggested that she attend some industry breakfasts such as iBreakfast and NY:MIEG and directed her to paidcontent.org and eMarketer. She has more digital experience than she thinks as she oversees the redesign of her non-profit's website. I like to think that I earned my pancakes.

Why Go Digital - to the Count of Three

2010-04-08T17:07:00.013-04:00

Yesterday, I shared with you some thoughts about measuring payback on ad spending. Thoughts that I am collecting as part of a specific inquiry. Today, I jumped to a later chapter in my analysis for a little diversity and thought therefore, that I would go ahead and begin a fresh post:

Let’s jump ahead for a moment to the big picture. What is it my inquirer wants to know? In sum, she wants to get a handle on the dynamics of the ad market as it transitions from print to digital. She would like to understand why people are moving, why people are staying and how the different users of advertising as well as their intermediaries think about print vs. digital from both the intangible, e.g., business need/presence, and the tangible, e.g., better bang for the buck for banner ad, ability to market to a certain demographic.

The question presents itself to me therefore, which came first the tangible or the intangible? Personally, I think it was the intangible with the tangible playing a part in terms of low risk from a cost point of view. When a client asks me whether marketing dollars should be moved online or to specific new platforms, my reasoning is seldom led by efficiencies. True, the efficiencies are there, and I touted them heartily when writing a business plan for Campfire. (Remind me to share some.) But the reasons advertisers should, have and are going digital include the following:

#1 Your consumers, your customers, your audience is going online. You need to be where they are. As Rishad Tobaccowala once said, “I don’t know whether you are behind your competitors, but I know you are behind your consumers.”

Even if your audience is not quite there yet, I’d rather be there when they arrive than try to find them once I get there. It’s kind of like a party. Fashionably late is not as fashionable when you’re trying to make a good impression and get a jump start. Few marketers and brands are on foursquare. In fact, foursquare has only 750,000 people on it (albeit a 4-fold increase in the last few weeks). But those who were there first – Bravo, Intel, Zagat -- have already made an impression, gotten the press and gotten an advantage.

So, number one, you need to be where your peeps are.

Moreover, you need to be where the puck is going, not where it is now. You may still have a critical mass of your core market watching tv, but what about tomorrow’s market? What about the young mothers who are going online for advice and community, spending more time consuming media on their laptops or mobile devices with less time to spend watching daytime soap operas – to the extent that they still exist? You need to get to know these women in their formative, digital years.

#2 Digital media allows for all kinds of targeting. Not just demographic but behavioral, social, key word, contextual and, eventually (once I understand it), semantic. Moreover, let’s think about the word demographic. With geo-location technology, it’s possible to target at the GPS-level. I mean, I mean, in the not too distant future – if not today – a marketer will actually be able to, finally, really, know that I am leaving my yoga studio and walking by the bakery. Good time for a shout out, no?

So digital targeting is not just specific and flexible, but it’s dynamic. With current prevalent print technology, an advertiser knows that I read “Elle” magazine, but does he know whether I, personally, also read “Wired?” Does he know what I do before and after I read my magazine? At what point do I go ahead and purchase the item advertised in the magazine? Not easily.

With the current geo-location analytics technology, a marketer will be able to know what my literal path to purchase is. He’ll know that I go from my house to work, to lunch to the subway to the gym to the grocery store. Now, how he uses that is a new question, but the fact that this kind of information is available is fantastic.

So, to review, the reasons to spend on digital media include:

(1) that’s where you’re consumers are
(2) there are incredible opportunities with respect to targeting and intelligence

#3 Why Not? Why waste the opportunity? If you are advertising offline, why not continue the conversation digitally. The incremental cost is probably not too big in the scheme of the campaign. It extends the impression – both in time and depth – and it offers an opportunity to capture information. It’s a move from one-to-many to one-to-one. “Thanks for coming to my party, now tell me more about yourself.”

Now that I have brought up this third reason, I’d like to go back to part of the original question, i.e., why are some people staying and some people going, and what is the dynamic of the market as it transitions from print to digital. Well, at the risk of getting touchy-feely, this third reason suggests that an advertiser extend his or her buy by adding a digital element. These platforms can and should work together. Is digital cannibalizing analog, or is it possible that the whole will be bigger than the pieces, yielding a bigger payout and thus additional dollars to fund the whole campaign. Well, that’s high math (and cost accounting) but certainly something to think about.

Dream Cover

2010-04-08T16:18:00.008-04:00

A colleague of mine asked me to provide some bullet points that she could incorporate into a note she is writing on my behalf. I wrote something quite mature and professional and then let loose with the following. I think it's actually quite appropriate and simply need someone to post it on my behalf on LinkedIn. Or maybe not... In any case, here's what I've written this exceedingly warm afternoon:

Karen is the most impressive, coolest, prettiest, nicest, most generous, incredible person I know. Her mind works in ways that others can't fathom. She is selfless and makes those around her feel like they are walking on sunshine. Any client she works with experiences immediate dramatic revenue growth. I have considered moving my practice to NYC just so that we could work together more often. She is also a proposal writing machine.

In addition, Karen is the best house guest you could imagine. I have thought about getting a second home on the East Coast just so that she could visit me more often.

And most important, dogs love her. When she looks at them, their fur immediately becomes soft and smooth and straight as if it had been brushed for hours, and their teeth become minty clean and bright.

Measuring Advertising Returns

2010-04-07T13:51:00.008-04:00

This blog is about advertising returns, in particular gauging the efficacy of different types of advertising campaigns. It was inspired by the questions asked me by a client seeking to understand how retailers and advertising agencies view payback on ad investment through different advertising vehicles.

We began with catalogs. Now catalogs are typically considered to be a “lower funnel” or direct advertising tool. While a well-done catalog can positively impact brand perception and equity and can stimulate upper funnel results such as awareness, interest and desire, most catalogs are judged on tangible results.

What then are the tangible results we are looking for? A smart marketer will begin his or her campaign with that question, rather than measuring them after the fact. In direct marketing, these are referred to as Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. In the case of a retail catalog, these KPIs will reflect specific desirable consumer actions such as: making a purchase, visiting a website, returning a business reply mailer, signing up for a mailing list. Most enticing, of course, is sales volume.

How then, do we link consumer activity to a particular catalog mailing? There are a number of tactics that can be used. Here are some examples:

1. Create and include a dedicated telesales phone number for each catalog.

2. Send catalogs to different geographic areas on different dates. Then keep an eye on traffic and spending, in store and online, during those periods in those geographies. The geography of an online shopper can be estimated based on the user’s IP address. (An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes.)

3. More to come…

I welcome your thoughts!

If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Take You There

2010-04-03T22:45:00.000-04:00

Later this month, I am hosting a talk by Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide Chairman Bob Seelert. In preparation for this talk, I am reading his book, "Start with the Answer." This afternoon, as I basked in the peaceful exhaustion of a Vinyasa class listening to a mellow arrangement of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" in the "pink" area of the Pure Yoga studio, and reading through Mr. Seelert's two-page chapters punctuated and summated by a chapter-specific "Bob's Wisdom," I sat up suddenly with a compelling need to tweet one of these takeaways: "If You Do Not Know Where You Are Going, Any Road Will Take You There." Like Porter's, "You Can't Manage What You Can't Measure," this struck me as a key leadership tenet worth sharing with the tweetosphere.

But as I continued to read the chapter, I realized that it was much more. It was the holy grail. As a strategy consultant, and particularly in situations where I am the sole strategist leading the way on the development of a digital strategy roadmap or an overall marketing strategy, I find myself mired in the following question: What is a strategy, and what is a tactic. On a recent such project, I recall harkening back to my days as a pasta sauce brand manager when I was given the clear, organizationally-approved framework of objective, strategy, plan. Or... was it strategy, objective, plan? No, surely the first.

But in these new situations, what I saw as a strategy, others might see as a tactic, and vice-versa; and no one was really sure what the objective was. In fact, was the starting point an objective or a vision? Hmmmm... In one such situation, I found myself reaching out to Wharton classmates, Booz & Co. colleagues and other strategic gurus - only to find myself once again mired in the discussion of what the client viscerally responded to as a strategy vs. a plan.

Now, this is admittedly, not as clear cut as my three tiered delineation above. There is sometimes a cascading effect such that a high level "plan" might turn into a lower level "strategy" as the organization gets closer to implementation. I recall having this discussion with Charlie McKittrick at Ogilvy & Mather who nicely summed up his definition of strategy as: "a plan for the allocation of limited resources over time to reach an objective." And in a note to him, I reiterated my comments above that "what may be a tactical element of a high level business strategy can also be the starting point for a marketing strategy (which in turn informs a creative plan and execution)."

All of that said - and serving as a sufficient preamble to allow me to shamelessly reprint what Mr. Seelert outlines in his book, here is a supremely clear cut, General Foods trained, overview of objective vs. strategy vs. plan:

"As a chief executive, it is your job to set a direction for the enterprise. Working with your team, you need to establish a clear vision or better yet, an inspirational dream that is specific to your situation and communicate it to everyone in the organization as often and as thoroughly as possible.

This also sets the stage for mapping objectives, strategies and plans that bring your directions to life and focus the efforts of your people. The first questions to clarify are: What is an objective? What is a strategy? What is a plan? Organizations can become tied in knots if they do not get this simple structure right."

Hallelujah!!! I have been to those knots, and I have seen how tangled, turned around, and derailed a team can become.

"An objective can be described as a goal, an outcome, or an 'end.' It must be measurable."

Hallelujah! B School 101: "specific, measurable results." Anything can be measured - with enough creativity, "can-do" determination and cooperation.

"A strategy describes the boundaries you operate within to achieve the objectives. As such, they represent the 'means to an end.' A plan then is a set of action-oriented steps, taken in conformance with the strategies to achieve the objective."

QED. Quite simple really.

"If the objective is to 'build share of market,' the supporting strategy might be, 'utilize promotional incentives to generate trial among non-users.' A plan flowing from this could be, 'circulate a direct mail coupon of 'x' value on 'y' date.'"

The key here is the simplicity of the objective: "build share of market." Simple but defining. Something that will keep you on track. An overarching framework by which all strategies and plans can be reviewed.

"Setting strategies is particularly important. By establishing boundaries, strategies help channel the organization's efforts in the right direction and minimize the unfettered thinking and actions. They provide the mechanism for evaluating the strength or sensibility of plans as they come forth. The simple question to ask is, 'Is the plan on strategy?'"

Hallelujah! So long, that is, as a company is willing to take a stand on its objective. That requires decision-making and consensus. "A well-defined problem is 90% solved." - Einstein

The New Semester Begins Now

2010-03-22T14:38:00.033-04:00

For a number of months, I have been sharing with you courses, panels, seminars, workshops, etc. that I have found to be worth my attending. Perhaps you do too. Well, the list was getting quite long, so I think it's time to unwrap a new notebook, as it were:

[I have moved the upcoming events to a more recent posting.]

Recently Attended:

"The 10 Laws of Enduring Success.” An exclusive one-on-one interview with Maria Bartiromo. Sobel Media, Wednesday, March 31, 7pm. Samsung Experience, NYC.

Everyone wants to attain success. But what is success? How do you get it, and how do you keep it? The events of recent years have prompted many of us to rethink our definition of success. In “The 10 Laws of Enduring Success,” Maria Bartiromo shares personal insights developed on the front-lines of the financial crisis, as well as ideas from in-depth interviews with notable Americans, including Condoleezza Rice, Joe Torre, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, and Goldie Hawn. "The 10 Laws of Enduring Success," will be released on March 30th. Catch her on The Today Show with Matt Lauer on March 31st, then join her in person with us at The Samsung Experience for an exclusive one-on-one conversation with Frank Radice.

Wharton, University Pennsylvania Interactive Retailing 2010 Conference. Tuesday, March 23, 8am-3pm. Macy's Herald Square.

Keynote Speaker: Mindy Grossman

The internet opened up a new channel of distribution for retailers. Now, social networking, online communities and mobile commerce have the ability to transform the industry yet again. To be effective and impactful these new tools must have the flexibility required by retailers: interactivity, ease of use and the ability to influence buying behaviors.

What are the potential opportunities and challenges for retailers who embrace these new technologies?
When should you embrace them?

Can the industry effectively utilize new e-commerce tools to improve their business models and drive sales?
What are the most promising technologies on the horizon?

These are just some of the topics that will be discussed as retail industry executives and academics meet as the Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative and Wharton Interactive Media Initiative present INTERACTIVE RETAILING 2010. This conference will focus on existing technologies that work and how to synergize emerging technologies to position your firm for the future

Professor Nouriel Roubini: THE WORLD ECONOMY – WHAT’S NEXT? Monday, March 15th, 2010. Harvard Club of New York

The New York Times has described him as “the seer who saw it coming” – “it” being of the housing bubble and the ensuing economic meltdown. Professor Nouriel Roubini, who earned his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard and now teaches at New York University, is pre-eminently the economist who made his predictions in public and was right on the money. Now, after earning the right to say, “I told you so,” he is coming to the Harvard Club to talk about the economic future.

The Changing Economics of News and Print Media. Thursday, March 4th, 2010.

An intimate dinner and interactive conversation with media thought leaders to discuss the future of internet and social technologies and their impact on the changing economics of news and print media. How internet and social technologies have irreversibly changed the economics of news and print, and the implications for traditional and emerging media businesses: (a) Consumer consumption habits and trends across multiple platforms, (b) Crowd-sourcing, citizen journalists, and the cost of content creation, and (c) Aggregated vs. reported, free vs. pay.

(Excellent discussion.)

Social is the Next Search: Is Your Site Ready? Thursday, March 4th, 2010. 2-3pm ECT. Free webinar by Gigya

(Excellent presentation, materials, best practice examples)

Shorty Awards. Wednesday, March 3, 2010. NYC - via Livestream from The New York Times Center.

The Shorty Awards are unique awards for the Twitter community, by the Twitter community. Online voting is public and democratic, culminating in an awards ceremony that recognizes the winners in 26 official categories as well as those in crowd-sourced ones.

(Of course TweetDeck won.)

OMMA (Online Media, Marketing and Advertising) Behavioral conference. February 25, 2010. NYC

OMMA (Online Media, Marketing and Advertising) Metrics and Measurement conference. February 24, 2010. NYC

Multichannel News Advanced Advertising: The Future Is Now. Monday, February 22, 2010. NYC

Uncorking Gary Vaynerchuk: an in-depth interview with Ellis Henican of Newsday and Fox News. Sobel Media. Wednesday, February 17, 2010. NYC

Eventcamp 2010. Saturday, February 6th, 2010. NYC

EventCamp 2010 was the first industry gathering of its kind, offering an intimate and low cost alternative to the large annual conference and allowing attendees the option to generate their own content, encouraging participation and allowing for a more interactive environment. Approximately half the session topics were be pre-determined, and aimed to assist planners in utilizing social media and technology in event and meeting planning, execution, business development and networking. All levels of Social Media, Technology, and Event enthusiasts are welcome and encouraged! There were Social Media and Technology rockstars on hand to help participants get started or answer questions.

Whole Foods Market Presents: Afternoon Snack. A New York New Food Media Panel as part of Social Media Week. Friday, February 5th, 2010. NYC

Unleashing Social Media on the Sports World, hosted by the New York Times as part of Social Media Week. Friday, February 5th, 2010. NYC

Crowdsourcing, hosted by the New York Times as part of Social Media Week. Friday, February 5th, 2010. NYC

Is The Future F#cked? - a part of Social Media Week. Thursday, February 4, 2010. NYC.

The Prince of Silicon Valley: Frank Quattrone and the Dot-Com Bubble. Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010. NYC

Before subprime housing melted down in 2008, there was the dot-com bubble and meltdown a decade earlier. The Pied Piper of the Internet bubble was Frank Quattrone, the era’s most successful banker. From Cisco to Netscape to Amazon, he took some of the biggest names in technology public. In 1999 and 2000, his group at Credit Suisse led the most hot initial public offerings, which lifted the entire stock market to record heights. Take a walk down Wall Street with Randall Smith, an award-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, whose articles chronicled the investigations of Quattrone’s firm by
regulators and federal prosecutors. Quattrone’s 2004 conviction for obstruction of justice was overturned in 2006, and the banker recently returned to the securities business. Smith will share the tale of a Wall Street Icarus who flew too close to the sun, an absorbing noir detective story of those investigations and trials. His book, The Prince of Silicon Valley, traces Quattrone’s rise from the back streets of South Philadelphia to the peak of finance as the highest paid banker on Wall Street. (This was my event.)

Pass the Matzoh, Please! The Timeless Tradition of Live Storytelling.

2010-03-20T23:15:00.000-04:00

With Passover around the corner, I thought I would dust this posting off from April 14, 2009.

The other night I attended a marathon seder... hmmmm, that's actually a redundant phrase as anyone who has perused a 95 page Hagaddah that tells the history of a 6,000 year old people may have observed. In any case, this seder, which was sponsored by a group called Romemu and attended by 150 people, ran from 6:30-10:30pm - followed by an additional hour of chatting with the people at my table whom I had not met before that day but with whom I had bonded through bitter herbs, plagues, songs, poems, questions, meditation and gefilte fish.

Well, a little over three hours into the seder - after I had accidentally drenched our tablecloth with matzoh ball soup and inadvertently set on fire two plastic bowls by placing them too close to the tea lights on the table - I started to get a little distracted. Reflecting on the many seders I have attended, I began to jot down thoughts for a blog post about the cultural, developmental and educational aspects of the holiday's practices.

A seder - which means order - not only tells the story of Moses and the escape of the Jews from Egypt, but teaches all kinds of values and skills that are inherent elements of the Jewish culture. One of these is discipline and patience, as it can take many hours of deprivation and light symbolic snacking before you get to the meal. Until then, you must subsist on horseradish, wine, a little bit of matzoh and other allegorical items.

The seder also shines a light on the youngest members of the family, requiring them to read aloud and, in the case of the youngest child, to ask the famous four questions. With respect to this, I observed that I felt a commonality with the other "youngest children" at my table. All of us adults, all of us having experienced that unique responsibility. (They hated it; I loved it.) This, in fact, led me to observe that the seder reinforces the birth order.

In addition to learning to speak in public, young people at the seder learn to ask questions. To challenge, question, discuss and analyze. (Does the combination of public speaking and questioning shed a light on the prevalence of Jewish comedians?)

Through the search for the Afikomen, the children learn about work and reward and, in some cases, they learn about the art of negotiation as they determine the payment they are willing to accept in return for the matzoh they now hold hostage.

As I jotted down thoughts in and among the poems and prayers of my seder booklet, one of my table-mates took out a small notebook and began to write. Intrigued, I asked to see what he had written. It was not a blog but a poem. This is what he wrote:

Between God and soul lies a plan that is vast
Deserts seem small
Oceans like ponds
This space vast, it must be passed

With prayer given to the all that is
Joyous singing
Quiet thought
Actions speak loud, to do good is bliss

Smiles and laughs and breathing in deep
Ears that are open
Eyes that can see
Running and jumping, faith calls for blind leaps

The gap isn’t true
There’s no space between
We are all connected
By smiles and by seams.

(Written by Douglas Karson, April 9, 2009)

Early Check In - with foursquare

2010-03-16T20:34:00.055-04:00

In July 2009, I wrote an entry called "Who's Tweeting Now" that chronicled various observations about a new rage called "Twitter." Yes, that was less than a year ago. Twitter was hitting public awareness with a bang, and I was being asked by social media skeptics how this new obsession could possibly be useful. So, I decided to string together short Twitter observations into "macro" blog entry.

Now, eight months later, and one year after its launch, foursquare is beginning to penetrate public consciousness. The first week in February, I was asked by a client to pull together some social media elements to be incorporated into a proposal for a B2B financial services client seeking to improve the impact, effectiveness and engagement of its trade show marketing. I did some research into whether this marketer's clients have smart phones and use digital media and whether other major B2B players use Twitter (and Facebook). My initial finding was that this audience was not the iPhone carrying Gowalla using audience that those in NYC might think are the American norm. Some trade show organizers were experimenting with hash tags, and a number of B2B companies had huge numbers of Twitter followers - and even Facebook fans, but my sense was that the social media aspects of this campaign needed to be relatively simple.

I recommended therefore, a number of ways for the marketer to use Twitter - before, during and after each show. And I gave them overall guidance as to how to develop, maintain and optimize their Twitter presence. That done, my client and I decided to go for it, to be crazy, and to incorporate location-based social media into the equation. I looked into developing a mobile application either independently or in conjunction with the trade shows, themselves. But this was really too aggressive. It meant developing an application and then getting trade show participants to adopt it. In other words, it required creating a market. Not easy.

So, why not foursquare? An existing application, with a growing adoption rate and functionality that allowed us to incorporate our promotions and marketing into the existing framework. See, for example, what Intel did at the Consumer Electronics Show. See also what your local retailers are doing. And look at the pop up recommendations that Bill Sobel has left for those who use foursquare in and around New York's upper west side.

I developed the plan and incorporated it into the deck. After finalizing the deck, I called my client to discuss next steps. One of the things he asked for was a more in depth conversation about foursquare so that he could better understand and represent the concept to his customer. Joe, I said (I call all my clients Joe...), keep your eye on this thing - this foursquare. Your client may think it's niche or obscure now, but six months from now, they'll note how ahead of the curve we were. The bigger foursquare gets, the more appropriate our recommendations will be, and since the customer's program is ongoing, they can incorporate it at any time.

There is something about it that is very reminiscent of Facebook back in 2006. Friends and relatives thought I was crazy, or at least, eccentric, when I joined Facebook. (One even said that it was "sad" that I had to go online for friendship...) When I joined there were 6 million people on Facebook. Today, there are close to 400 million - including all those friends and relatives I mentioned. (As of this week, Facebook consistently attracts more daily visitors than Google - CNET.) In 2006 - and even today - there are those who can't imagine why you would want to share private or personal information about what you are doing online. Today, they are scared of the risks of posting information about where you are into a public mobile ethersphere. There are even spoof sites that beckon thieves to "rob me now" when your foursquare status (geotag) shows you are away from home. The number of foursquare participants is low, but the passion of those using it is high. (In actuality, foursquare reached 500,000 participants this week - March 19th, up from 400,000 last week due to intensive guerilla marketing efforts at South by Southwest last weekend.)

Yesterday, I called my client to check in (not in a foursquare sort of way, just a phone call). The first thing he said was that since we had spoken, he had seen and heard about foursquare over and over in the press. It wasn't gradual, and it didn't take six months. It was immediate.

My heart began to beat as I observed the amount of hype this new trend is getting - fast. And so, the question arises again, "how can this new obsession be used - and why?"

Now, I wear a number of hats. I am a "user" - of media, that is. I am a consultant to media and entertainment clients. And I am a consultant to marketers. So, my introduction to foursquare posed at least three sets of questions.

First, how and why should I use it? How can I improve my life by joining foursquare?

Second, what's the plan for Dennis Crowley, founder of foursquare, and his partners? How are they going to monetize this? And, wow, these guys have something hot with a lot of potential. Oh and how might Apple limit or enhance this potential - specifically, Apple recently announced that they would not allow hyper-local advertising on their platform. Uh oh, that seems limiting.

Third, how can marketers exploit this great new technology, growing social trend and incredible treasure trove of consumer behavior information? And in using the word "marketer," I reference a huge range of players, from your local ice cream shop to the Bravo network ("America's Top Chef" program) to major global marketing brands.

And fourth, how can other constituents partner with and leverage foursquare. For example, the University of North Carolina and Harvard College announced foursquare programs this December and January, respectively; and Zagat announced a content partnership shortly thereafter.

And so it goes that I must take up the mouse again - to create a repository of foursquare marketing uses that I observe, identify and generate...

Be sure to check in to see what I uncover.

Is Watching TV a "Yesterday" Thing To Do?

2010-03-04T21:50:00.006-05:00

When I consume my video media, I like to be sitting in my livingroom, with my MacBook Air in front of me, my iPhone within easy reach, a bottle of water nearby and some kind of food at the ready. Yesterday I watched the Shorty awards on my laptop, and it was tiring. The day before I watched “Up” on my 15” LCD screen, and it was suboptimal. When I watch TV, I want to lean back. I want to unwind. I want to give my eyes, maybe not a rest, but a change of scenery.

So when people say that livingroom TV watching is going away, that “Gen Y” does not watch television, and that their behavior will take over our world in the not too distant future – 3D TV be damned, I don’t fully buy it.

As someone who considers myself to be a “young [insert age here].” I do feel somewhat embarrassed saying this out loud. Is it because I straddle two generations – as a Gen Xer tucked between young Boomers and the seemingly endless millennial generation? Well, tonight I had an epiphany! It didn’t actually come to me organically but was vaulted at me by a very self-confident HBS I-Banker, who by the way, had no idea what FourSquare was and was irate to find that it did not come up in his Droid app store when he typed in “4.” But I digress.

This erudite MBA pointed out to me that, as someone who often works at home, I am in a unique sub-segment of the population. So the rule that “people watch tv on the best screen option available to them” is not completely false. It’s just that I typically have a better screen available to me than my office- and classroom-tethered brethren. Hmmmm… Duh.

Calling a Spade a Spade at the OMMA Behavioral Conference

2010-03-02T21:42:00.030-05:00

Thursday of last week was a messy, mushy wet day here in New York City, but the ballroom at the Marriott Marquis, home of the OMMA Behavioral conference, was warm and comfortable. That is, until Rishad Tobaccowala of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi gave us all a tough talking to.

His theme: collaboration – and our lack thereof.

“We believe we’re in a share game when we’re in a growth industry,” he said. We fight tooth and nail for $1.2 billion while overlooking $240 billion that is “lying there.” We need to focus, he said, on the customer, not on each other.

So what is it the customer wants? Six things:

Clients want:

(1) Continuous Improvement
(2) Service
(3) Collaboration

How do we score?

(1) Continuous improvement: We pass!

(2) Service: Well, that’s a 50% score

(3) Collaboration…. “We do this horribly.”

Leave it to Rishad to say out loud what we all know to be true, particularly from the client’s perspective. Clients are faced, he said, with a choice between best of breed agencies, that don’t play well together or a mediocre but collaborative combination of vendors.

Most sobering, Rishad wrapped it up by saying that these are the requirements that determine whether an agency stays or goes: “You get fired for these things,” he said.

The spade that Rishad called a spade is something that has surprised and perplexed me – particularly when looking at the situation from the client’s point of view. The client wants an overarching look at how its marketing dollars are working. But an increasingly common refrain is: “We can’t get access to that data because it belongs to an agency that is not part of our group.” Craziness… but hard to fix.

How are clients fixing it? They’re taking it in house. “Clients are much smarter today than they were 5 years ago,” he said. “They are taking a lot of things in house to avoid the drama.”

Rishad brought this up in response to my question about how we can address this problem in the short term. And I’ve had it corroborated by recruiters looking for agency people to work directly for advertisers. Uh oh, if we don’t play well together, we’re going to have our very expensive toys taken away from us.

So that’s why agencies get fired. Why do they get hired? What can we do to catch the eye of a prospective client? As is often the case today, the answer came in “I's” – three “I’s.” They are: (4) Insights, (5) Inspiration and (6) Ideas. Sounds sexy.

So… how are we doing? The story starts well:

(4) Insights: What industry is better suited to provide insights, Rishad exclaimed. Good point (if we do it right, of course...).

(5) Inspiration: Maybe not so good. Eloquent as always, Rishad explained, “We give perspiration, desperation, hallucination…” but not inspiration. Well, that’s a bummer

(6) Ideas: [hmmm.. I’ll have to go back to the recording to see what he said on this topic].

As I said, at the end of Rishad’s uplifting talk, I asked what we could do in the short term. His response:

Treat people like people. “If you are answering a question with PowerPoint slides,” he said, “you have already lost. Take your clients out to a drink and recognize that they are actually people.”

And with that, I’m tempted to put my keyboard down and get a drink but…. the last bit of what Rishad said was intriguing. “All of TV,” he said,” is going to get like digital.” Hmmm, that may be coming but not in the immediate future. Though… I must say that the satellite providers are offering some very cool interactivity with respect to remote DVR programming. This is how they differentiate themselves, and they are ahead of the curve. They are not tethered by a patchwork of acquired cable providers and corresponding remote controls.

And, he said, if the iPad succeeds, it will be the same for magazines.

Food – and drink for thought.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock. The Digital Clock.

2010-03-02T19:36:00.001-05:00

Tick tock, tick tock. I'm back on the clock.

What does it mean when a man includes this in his dating profile:

"I'm tired of playing games."

What does it mean? I'm going to ask...

I can't help it, this blog writes itself:

Headline: "your best friend and lover"

Opening line: "My name is M___. I’m a vivid camper and hiker."

Our educational system has failed us.

Finding My Digital Identity

2010-02-28T23:22:00.000-05:00

This blog posting came up in a recent discussion of Four Square and whether I am an influencer of some kind, so I thought I'd bring it back up into the light of day. It was originally posted April 21st, 2009.

I was born into the television generation. I cannot deny it. Much of my childhood was spent watching reruns of "MASH" and "Gilligan's Island." And I once asked Carol Burnett to air her show earlier in the evening because my mother wouldn't let me stay up to watch it. (Ms. Burnett did write back to me, but did not reschedule her show.) These were the days of purely linear television. Do you remember? Even before VCRs with their flashing clocks that were so annoying to program.

And thus, I will never be a digital native. I cannot run for president of our digital nation. But yet, my identity is in flux. In 1985, while I was still watching shows like "LA Law," I was also using instant messaging and e-mail via a proprietary system used within IBM, where I worked during summer vacations. At the end of that summer, I bought my first personal computer, an IBM PC with floppy drives and an amber (or green?) screen.

In 1993, I discovered e-mail, and my friends soon learned that to communicate with me effectively, they needed to follow suit. In 1994, I purchased a Motorola cell phone after running out of gas on the Merritt Parkway, hiking up a snowy hill and knocking on people's doors asking to use their phone to call AAA. Can you even imagine that today! Cell phones would have ruined "Rocky Horror Picture Show."

In 1994, I also worked with a stroke victim, helping him use a software program that enabled him to turn mouse movements into spoken words. I also wrote e-mails for him that traveled through an extremely clunky internet client. In 1995, my employer had to add an additional server to handle the e-mail volume produced by me and one of the firm's partners.

In 2003, I joined "Friendster!" (Ugh) and sometime thereafter "MySpace," where my niece let me become her friend - something that will not be repeated on Facebook now that she is a teenager.

At the beginning of 2006, I signed on to FaceBook as one of two people in my college class. The social network had 7.5 million users at the time. (Yes, you read that correctly; that is in contrast to today's number - February 2010 - of 400 million users.) I urged my client - a leading business magazine - to utilize FaceBook, which was just starting to experiment with sponsored programs. In fact, I recommended that they seize what turned out to be a "do it or lose it" opportunity to create a branded FaceBook for MBA students.

To sum things up, I have deemed myself an "early settler and highly assimilated digital immigrant." Perhaps I can become governor of Motorati Island.

Advanced Television: The Future Is... Coming

2010-02-28T15:05:00.011-05:00

My client base, let alone my collection of personal interests, is, well, diverse. I work on the media/entertainment/publisher side, the agency side, and the marketer side. To keep up with all of this - and because I love them - I attend a lot of conferences, panels, programs, webinars, etc. And it is quite fascinating to note the differences - not so much in the content of the talks but the culture of the organizations and communities.

Three weeks ago, I attended six days of non-stop social media events. The attendees at each stop on this massive media crawl uniformly carried Apple laptops and at least one Smart Phone - typically iPhone or Droid. They all had blogs and Twitter accounts, and most - it seemed - had Foursquare and/or Gowalla personas.

Fast forward to an event on February 22nd sponsored by Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable. The topic, Advanced Television: The Future is Now. Well, when, after checking my coat, I circled back to find out whether I needed a wifi password and whether there was a Twitter hashtag, I realized I wasn't in Silicon Alley anymore. The answers: no wifi and what is a hash tag? Ok...

I took my seat and booted up my nifty MacBook Air. Around me... a few PC laptops. Gosh they looked heavy - even the portable ones. I checked into Foursquare. One other person within the Roosevelt Hotel was there. I suspect he was not at this event. Ok...

And finally, the attire of those around me - not jeans and sneakers - which I would not wear anyway - but... suits and ties. Well, after all, there were a lot of ad salespeople, business development folks and senior executives, so that's no surprise.

So, putting aside all these cultural observations, what did I learn in school today. Well, to start, as you would expect, different cable/satellite operators are at different phases in their adoption of advanced technology. The leaders - as far as panelists - Cablevision and DirecTV - though Time Warner Cable's sizzle reel was far and away the best, highlighting some very nice consumer offerings and interfaces including its highly touted "start over" function and an expansive VOD library. A point of commonality. Digital. 94% of Cablevision's subscription base has digital cable, and all of DirecTV's base (by definition of it's being satellite) is digital. A digital footprint allows you to do cool things.

So, what is Cablevision doing? A number of cool things. Some of it with Seth Haberman's company Visible World. You may have read about their foray into addressable television over a year ago. It sounds like that, or at least part of that, was for Cablevision itself. Not a bad idea - test it out on yourself. And, also, a good test subject because they knew so much about their subscription base and were able to segment them by product line, e.g., TV only, Triple Play, TV and broadband, etc. Well, it sounds like the testing went well because they are rolling it out to other clients. The key statistic, if I understood it correctly was that consumers who were served targeted ads were 32% (i.e., one-third) less likely to turn away from the ad. Well, that makes sense and is quite a nice stat. Of course, I'm all in favor of relevant advertising. Even magazines get that concept. But, I wander.

So, consumers like this stuff. In a recent Forrester/ANA study, 78% of advertisers said they want to target better. However... only 59% said they were willing to pay a premium for it. Sound familiar? Think behavioral advertising. One explanation came from Seth Haberman. First, he was curious to know who the 22% were who did not want to target better! Secondly, he pointed out that media buyers are trained to say, "I want to spend less." It's like a reflexive response. They have no control.

So, Cablevision's next foray is with Pillsbury (my client!) and Zenith (a wonderful agency to work with - particularly my key points of contact Neil and Colleen). They are creating a dedicated Pillsbury VOD (video-on-demand) channel in the Cablevision footprint. It will be paired with "Power 30s" (I believe Barry Frey said he had copyrighted that phrase), 30 second ads that are tagged to bring people to the VOD channel. But, now we're getting technical.

So (big fan of the word "so' today), what were some of the key takeaways:

(1) It's not their fault. Television is a large, capital intensive, fragmented (albeit a number of big cable & satellite provider fragmented) industry. To accomplish any advanced television initiative, you need a cable, satellite or telco operator; an advertiser and a technology partner at a minimum. There are a lot of different platforms and technologies and ideas and tests and legacy systems out there. It's not easy to move that ship.

Contrast this with Dennis Crowley's simple little iPhone app. An iPhone app can be created for as little as a few thousand dollars. Even a $100,000 app is nothing compared to the television industry. Even $1 billion in online video advertising is less than 1.5% of TV ad dollars.

(Forrester estimates $40 billion in broadcast and $30 billion in cable TV ad sales in 2010 - January 15, 2010. Mediabrands' Magna division estimated that online video advertising will reach $1 billion by 2011 - MediaPost, April 27, 2009)

(2) As a point of comparison - according to Seth Haberman - only 3% of video is consumed online. So, while these numbers are growing astronomically, and while new generations are simply not watching traditional television, it's still a HUGE market.

(3) "Sight, Sound and Motion." These are the watchwords of the television community. This is what differentiates them from all other media. The POWER of the sight, sound and motion they can deliver. The web, said Rich Forester, VP of Ad Sales for DirecTV, is our closer, but it's big video that gets them there.

(4) For some, Advanced TV is more "now" than for others, but all-in-all, it won't be here for 5 years. Advertisers - and media buyers - are simply overwhelmed. The biggest need, from what I heard, is for EDUCATION. There are too many new technologies, new technology companies and options.

Moreover, advertisers want to know what they will get for their investment in this new, premium, advanced type of advertising. But that's the problem with being part of the vanguard, we just don't know. Hence, many brands are waiting it out. There are tests, successful tests. But nothing scalable.

Ultimately, advertisers need something at a national level, and MSOs need to sell the rest of their inventory as well as these special programs. As DirecTV's Forester said, we're happy to create these targeted programs, but we have thousands of thirty-second spots that need to be supported. The inference is that you don't get to do an advanced campaign unless you do a large traditional media buy.

Is that a good place to stop? Does it cover the 3 hours of panels and schmoozing of the afternoon? Well, I think it hits on the highlights. Moreover, it's time for my regularly scheduled program.

Until next time, good night and good luck.

Measured Behavior (& Social Graphs) - OMMA Metrics & Measurement Conference

2010-02-28T14:47:00.001-05:00

On Friday night I ate corn bread, a popover, Caesar salad, lamb and heavily buttered spinach. On Saturday, I followed up my yoga class with Pad Thai at Penang. Sunday morning I had an all you can eat brunch that started with a preparatory spin class, fruit and couscous but progressed to French Toast, a cheese and vegetable omelet and a little chocolate cupcake. Sunday night, I buried my exhaustion in a never-ending progression of Chinese food in belated celebration of the new year. On Monday, I warmed up leftover Chinese food on my way to my Advanced Television seminar. And Monday night, I finished the binge with Ethnic Cuisine organic yet spicy Pad Thai.

Early Tuesday morning, I regretted and repented.

On Tuesday I ate only an English muffin, rice pudding and an apple. But by Wednesday morning, I was still not recuperated enough for a full day of OMMA Metrics and Measurement beginning at 9am. Hence, I did not make it there until Vipin Mayer’s keynote at 1:45.

Since I had an abbreviated day, I am going to start out with a cheat sheet of buzz words noted over the course of the afternoon that will give you a kick start at sounding like a digital metrics enthusiast!

(1) Social Graphs (also a key word during Social Media Week):

As it turns out, this concept is one that has been written about extensively and from many different angles over time and gained prominence in the last few years when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg used it in his May 2007 announcement that he was opening Facebook to third party application developers.

According to Zuckerberg, a social graph is “the network of connections and relationships between people.” The existence of this network, or graph, is what underlies the success of Facebook and the power that Facebook offers to third party developers. By appealing to a single person on the Facebook platform, an application can be introduced to an entire lifelong collection of that person’s connections.

A more technical – and visual description – of a social graph is as follows: If one were to render the various ways different people in a particular community were connected into a data structure, it would be a graph. In a social graph, each person is a “vertex,” i.e., node or point, and each relationship connecting two people is an “edge,” i.e., line. There can be multiple edges connecting people, e.g., Sue and I worked at Booz Allen, Sue and I are Facebook friends, Sue and I live in Manhattan). Edges in the social graph have a label that describes the relationship.

Bringing these two descriptions together into a helpful explanation is the “WhatIs” definition as follows:

“A social graph is a diagram that illustrates interconnections among people, groups and organizations in a social network. The term refers to both the social network itself and a diagram representing the network.

Individuals and organizations, called actors, are nodes on the graph. Interdependencies, called ties, can be multiple and diverse, including such characteristics or concepts as age, gender, race, genealogy, chain of command, ideas, financial transactions, trade relationships, political affiliations, club memberships, occupation, education and economic status.

Services such as Facebook facilitate the exchange of information, news, photographs, literary works, music, art, software, opinions or even money among users. In this environment, the social graph or for a particular user consists of the set of nodes and ties connected, directly or indirectly, to that actor.

When portrayed as a diagram, a social graph appears as a set of points or dots connected by lines. The points represent the actors and the lines represent the ties. A small-scale social graph can be drawn with a pencil on a sheet of paper. However, because of the complexity of interconnections between individuals, a social graph is typically too massive to fit on a single page and can be rendered only on a computer equipped with specialized application software."

In 2007, Zuckerberg said that the social graph is "changing the way the world works... As Facebook adds more and more people with more and more connections it continues growing and becomes more useful at a faster rate. We are going to use it spread information through the social graph."

There are those who criticize the current system of recreating one’s social graph across multiple social platforms as inefficient and open to error. Starting at around the same time as Zuckerberg’s declaration, Plaxo began to offer a service that automatically merges your online networks.

Personally, I prefer to maintain my networks manually. In fact, I – like many I know – have slightly different, although sometimes overlapping, graphs depending upon the online platform. For example, friends & family on Facebook, professional contacts on LinkedIn, digital media enthusiasts and experts on Twitter, and a random assortment of people on my IM buddy list.

However, Facebook Connect allows you to carry your social network with you. (I believe this is what Google was talking about doing two years ago; I believe I heard about this on Cynthia Turner’s Daily Digital Podcast – now sadly defunct; and, I guess this is what Google is belatedly seeking to do with Google Buzz.)

Well, it seems that “social graphs” is, not surprisingly, a topic in and of itself. Hence, I will have to leave it to you to investigate and ponder the meanings of some of these other buzzwords:

(2) Earned media platforms

(3) Engagement mapping

(4) Attribution

(5) Beaconing

Time to get ready for bed to rest up for tomorrow’s OMMA behavioral conference.

All I Want for Christmas Is a Foursquare Merit Badge - that I can pin on my coat!

2010-02-20T11:37:00.024-05:00

I woke up this morning to the following news report from Mashable:

"Remember those real-world merit badges based on the virtual achievements you get for checking in to places using Foursquare that we told you about? They’re approved and on sale now.

The 1.5-inch embroidered badges have Velcro on the back for attaching them to your jacket, backpack, or whatever other fabric you want to decorate. Options include Mari Sheibley-designed badges 'Local,' 'Superstar,' 'Crunked,' and 'Super Mayor' for $5.99 each.

Seller Nerd Merit Badges is also offering a 17-inch laptop sash with several badges so you can show off your location-aware cred at your next meeting or social media conference."

It’s unclear whether Foursquare is deriving any revenue from this recent development, but it does demonstrate that there is an opportunity for digital media companies to garner revenue from, don’t say it, consumers.

Generally speaking, there are three sources of revenue for media and entertainment providers: (1) advertising & sponsorship (b) consumer and (c) strategic partnerships, revenue share, etc.

In the past ten years, nearly all digital media companies abandoned the subscription model and with it consumer revenue as a viable and substantial source of income. (Not so their cable programmer brethren who, for now at least, have two sources of revenue - advertising and carriage/license fees.) But for digital publishers – and, particularly offline publishers going online, it seemed that Internet users would not pay for content, and advertising could carry the load for high quality and/or highly popular content.

But Foursquare seems to be learning from the missteps of those before it. Albeit, it is also benefiting from the change in mindset created by iTunes and mobile gaming companies who have conditioned mobile (and iTunes) users to make micro-payments – little payments of 99 cents and up that add up to BIG dollars.

Not only is Foursquare inspiring a (non-subscription) consumer-based line of revenue – 3rd party for now, i.e., the physical patches, but they are also developing high profile, high level strategic partnerships and custom programs with big name brands like Bravo, Intel and Zagat – giving it credibility, buzz, and access to the huge consumer bases of these mega-brands.

Foursquare is an especially exciting platform because it takes social media back and forth between the physical and virtual world and directly touches the retail world. The potential value of the information collected by Foursquare about your day to day activities and the ability of retailers and other businesses to influence consumer behavior immediately and at a relevant, targeted level is immense.

A few days ago, I heard Gary Vaynerchuk lambaste Facebook for letting virtual, social gaming organizations like Zynga make billions of dollars on Facebook's platform. They should have ensured themselves a piece of that, he said. But Facebook, like Google and YouTube had an idea without a business plan - although it certainly (fortuitously?) worked out well for Google in the end. Dennis Crowley and his colleagues at Foursquare seem to be a little more aware of creative monetization options from the start.

Chris Anderson famously talks about the Fremium model - a cute word for an age-old concept that seemed to have been forgotten or abandoned or not viable for the last 10 years – in the digital world. Is that what these badges are? Well, sure. You can earn a virtual badge for free. But for $6, you can get a real one from Nerd Merit Badges. But, you might say, don’t you remember the Twitter and Facebook pillows? Well, no, I don’t – but I just read about them… anyway, what differentiates Foursquare is the gaming element. That’s what makes a physical merit badge more desirable than a Friend Feed Pillow.

Adam Penenberg, the author of “Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves” – and the Forbes.com guy who broke the “Shattered Glass” story, said recently that instead of consumers spending billions of dollars on virtual items in online games, advertisers should be giving us real items for our online accomplishments. (Hmmm… sounds kind of like loyalty clubs, but now we have the platform to make it truly scalable – you didn’t think I could go a whole entry on this topic without saying scalable, did you? – but I digress) Well, he’s on to something, but Nerd Merit Badges has turned Adam’s idea and currently practices on their heads. What is happening is that a virtual game is crossing over the real world. Real dollars are being spent on real goods that are the physical manifestations of virtual items.

It's all pretty exciting. I hope that traditional media companies are watching and learning.

p.s. Last night I unlocked the "Gym Rat" merit badge for visiting the Harvard Club 10x in the last 30 days. Unfortunately, the club is not a place I go to work out but rather to eat... so I'm probably not getting the physical fitness benefits Foursquare thinks I am.

Content Is the Salt and Pepper. Social Media is the Steak.

2010-02-17T21:04:00.037-05:00

I've just walked home in my doctor-disapproved pointy toed boots from a Bill Sobel event at the Samsung Experience featuring Gary Vaynerchuk, aka Gary V.

I didn't start taking notes until 15 minutes into the talk because I was recording it and attempting to single-process by giving him my full attention. But after a bevvy of great tweetable takeaways, I broke down and pulled out my Moleskine notebook.

As with other such entries, I apologize from the start for not having digested and synthesized this, but such is the world of the blog.

All that said, here are some witty, gritty takeaways from Gary V.... Oh, but I forgot to tell you who Gary is. Now the super-digital among you will know who he is, but since I personally did not appreciate his fame (aka know who he was) until last week, I will give you a little background (from wikipedia):

Gary Vaynerchuk was born in Belarus in 1975 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1978. From a platform as co-owner and Director of Operations of Wine Library, a wine retail shop in Springfield, New Jersey, Vaynerchuk gained fame as the host of Wine Library TV, a daily internet webcast on the subject of wine.

Vaynerchuk's informal style, described as "unpretentious, gonzo approach to wine appreciation" is in contrast to conservative wine industry norms. Vaynerchuk refers to his followers as "Vayniacs" and "Vayner Nation." Conversely, his hyperactive on-screen delivery has caused criticism from some of the wine purist audience.

He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Time, and has been a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Ellen. Vaynerchuk has been described as "the first wine guru of the YouTube era," "the wine world's new superstar," and "outside of Rob Parker, probably the most influential wine critic in the United States."

He is scheduled to be a (or the?) keynote speaker at South by Southwest.

Ok, so all that said, here are some undigested Vaynerchuk nuggets:

We live in a day and age when you can care first.

This comment really made me pause and think. It's something we've observed but that has not been communicated so authentically. What does he mean? Well, we are all familiar with the Twitter marketing practice of reaching out to a Tweeter who mentions your brand or yourself via a Twitter reply. Comcast set the standard, turning its reputation around from the YouTube image of a repairman napping on a customer's sofa to the now-famous Comcast Cares program. I personally have experienced it when Zappos responded to a tweet about my positive experience with them by tweeting back that they hope I enjoy my new sneakers, and when American Express replied to a tweet about a payment mistake I had made (directing my payment to an inactive AMEX card and therefore becoming delinquent on a current one) by offering to sort out what they said was a pretty straightforward situation.

Well, this is all good business, but the way that Gary described it was much more personal. He spends, what he casually quantifies as "15 hours a day" on social media. He built his personal brand by responding to twitter inquiries about wine. "Trying to figure out what wine to serve with..." someone might write. And he would respond with a recommendation. So, good business, good marketing, yes, but what really turned my head was his description of this action, as I said: "We live in a day and age when you can care first."

Internet people don't buy stuff.

You know, I don't remember the context of this, but it stands on its own with all kinds of implications and "a has."

We live in a thank you economy.

People bought his book as a thank you for all the free stuff he had been giving them - videocasts, advice, blogging, etc. He had built a powerful loyalty and following.

If you don't like people, you can never be a brand in social media.

He attributes much of his success to the fact that he simply loves people, which he sought to demonstrate by saying "hi" back to each person during Q&A - by name.

I am East Coast for East Coast.

I'm hoping this stands on its own - it resonated with the upper west side audience.

The Internet is only 15 years old.

Pause and digest.

Advertising campaigns should always include an interactive element to extend the story and capture the data.

Why couldn't I have been as eloquent when asked that question, i.e., should ad campaigns include a digital element, by an advertising agency executive today?

I am obsessed with geolocation. Sound familiar? If you can make people show up at your store if you give them something, that's worth a lot. McDonalds knows this.

Gary has invested in Gowalla.

Pownce could have won out with Twitter if its founders had not put all their attention into Digg.

This was in response to my question about FourSquare vs. Gowalla. His response to that question was that there may be room for both players, that FourSquare has embraced the strategy of associating itself with high profile brands (Bravo, NYT, Zagat), and Gowalla has some things in the works...

And this comment about FourSquare also followed a discussion of a partnership between Starbucks and Burger King. These brands, he said, are smart enough to see the value of leveraging each other's audience.

Smart TVs are coming.

So, summing up the trends to watch: Smart TVs, 3D TV, geolocation, augmented reality, the semantic web.

Companies need to have patience [an attribute that has served him well]. It's about dating not hooking up. These companies are acting like teenage boys. They want to buy a company and then cash in. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Look at the difference in brand recognition between Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Mashable vis a vis Fast Company, Inc. and... [I can't remember the third.] The distance is shrinking quickly.

Regarding Google Buzz: Let's check out the neighborhood.

This in response to clients who frantically want to know what they should be doing with Google Buzz.

Regarding the iPad: Consumers are trying to figure out how to use it - that's real brand equity.

So true. As Galbraith said so many years ago, supply creates demand. People know there must be something special about it if Apple created it, and they want it, they're just not sure why.

Ok, the comments below are brilliant.

When asked by a client, the NHL, how they would be able to measure the success of a social initiative, Gary said, "We're gonna feel it." Evidently, the client was not convinced.

This led Gary to point out that we still haven't figured out how to measure the value or success of traditional media. Now we all know the now hackneyed expression about knowing that half your ad dollars are wasted, etc. but Gary got more specific. How do we measure out of home/billboards? By calculating the average number of cars that drive by. But today everyone is on their hand held devices when they are driving.

A valid point. I think equally valid for pedestrian traffic. The people on the streets of New York can hardly navigate the sidewalks while talking on the phone let alone looking at a hand held device and also noticing the billboards in Times Square.

Ok, there's more to say, but I'm exhausted so... hopefully... more later.

A Few Great Buys in Social Shopping

2010-02-04T13:05:00.019-05:00

Just returned home from another great panel for Social Media Week, a Social Shopping Panel sponsored by Porter Novelli (full description at the end of this blog entry). This panel stood out as one of the best I have attended this week. Thank goodness I sent an email at midnight last night asking whether a seat had opened up. My other favorites were:

The Future of Space & Time hosted by Wired.com: Exploring trends in lifecasting and the proliferation of location based services.

Social media & Haiti

and, one tier down:

Crowdsourcery Potions 101: Why Some Marketing Potions Fail and Others Thrive. JWT

Digital Cocktails: Keys To Social Media Success: Expert panelists in the field of social media and viral communications offered insights and guidance to what works and what doesn't in creating successful social media and viral campaigns. A discussion of tools, techniques and ideas from the "masters."

So, I have about 1/2 hour that I have carved out between this morning's panel, this afternoon's business meeting and tonight's panel (Is the The Future F#cked? at Deep Focus with Ian Schafer). Please excuse, therefore, the business casual state of these notes:

More data was created in 2009 than in the entire preceding history of the Internet.

This was also mentioned on Tuesday night's Digital Cocktails panel.

In the Sex and the City film, Carrie wore a custom made, one-of-a-kind dress created for the specific dimensions of her body. In contrast, an online retailer recently made 140 wedding dresses available exclusively online

I don't know whether these were copies of the Sex and the City dress or whether Charlotte - the speaker - was contrasting the Sex and the City example with the current willingness of women to buy high end, important fashion sight unseen and off the rack."

Charlotte Kim, Founder of CovetedList.com:

The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing, and combining information on the web."

There are three types of queries that represent the evolution of online information

Not sure whether these map to Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0; that seems to be the case:

1.0: Reference Query, e.g., Google

2.0: Group Think. What do others think? Example: Amazon. Puts you in a group of people with similar attributes or interests or buying behavior and tells you what they think as a group.

3.0: Me-Based Query: What is best for ME? That's what's enabled by the semantic web.

That is what will be possible through CovetedList.com: Social Shopping.

This is VERY cool!

So, as an aside, I have now been vindicated and, in fact, recognized as a personal innovator ahead of my time! for something I have been doing on Facebook. Starting in November of 2009, I discovered fabulous deals on designer dresses. I was picking up Missoni and Diane von Furstenberg dresses at Intermix and the DVF boutique for 70 and 60% off. Proud of and excited by my purchases, I created a photo album on Facebook, where I uploaded photos of the dresses that I tracked down via Google Image searches.

This proved to be a useful resource as I was able to get the input of friends when deciding what to wear for a specific occasion. Note that I was not asking for shopping advice; I had handled that myself, particularly because these dresses were on sale and in short supply. But I did solicit advice post purchase.

Later on, I did have opportunity to receive pre-purchase input when I uploaded a photo of an IKEA desk I was considering and was talked out of it by a (male) B-School classmate in LA. In addition, I used this tool to recommend a Fujitsu high speed scanner that was a life changing purchase for me. When I started doing this, I had some concern that Frolleagues - business colleagues who had also become friends at some level - might find it too "eccentric," perhaps or personal, but I took the chance. I also had to suffer the comments of someone who thought it quite odd and a newcomer to Facebook who was asking to be my "Friend" asked, "Do other people do that???"

Aliza Freud, Founder and CEO of SheSpeaks (http://shespeaks.com)

Back in the 70s - did she really go back that far, or did I misremember - "no one" thought that people would be willing to shop online.

Open Discussion:

As with any online marketing, RELEVANCE is crucial.

This also has a common refrain over the course of the week as this population, in contrast to "Muggles" finds behavioral and other personalized marketing to offer benefits rather than being "creepy." Muggles, by the way, refers to an entertaining terminology utilized in the Wired panel that differentiates "Techies," e.g., early adopters from "Regulars," aka "Muggles."

DESCRIPTION OF THE SOCIAL SHOPPING PANEL

Consumers have always sought out advice from their friends and trusted networks when it comes to shopping. In today's networked world, social media is becoming an integral part of that experience. An increasing number of sites that offer community advice and reviews are gaining traction. Feeling good (or bad) about a purchase has become a public experience. Join us as we explore the intersection of social media and the shopping experience!

Panelists include:

Brooke Moreland, Co-Founder of Fashism (http://fashism.com)
Brooke Moreland is the founder of Fashism.com , a site that let’s users get instant crowdsourced feedback on their style and fashion purchases.

Aliza Freud, Founder and CEO of SheSpeaks (http://shespeaks.com)
Aliza Freud, a recognized expert on marketing and women’s insights, is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SheSpeaks, Inc. (www.shespeaks.com). SheSpeaks creates and operates consumer communities for brands that drive insights and brand advocacy.
Following more than a decade in corporate, global brand management, Ms. Freud is acutely aware that in this era of increasing consumer control over media, marketers need to be smarter about winning consumers’ attention and about integrating rapidly-evolving social networking tactics into the marketing mix. She was inspired to create SheSpeaks in 2007, based on the principle that women would thrive in a dedicated online community where they could gather, connect with others and see the power of their voices in action. Since then, SheSpeaks has worked with leading brands, including Pepsi, P&G, Garnier, Heinz, Food Network, Philips, AOL and more, to launch, evaluate and generate buzz about their products and services among target audiences.

David Reinke, CEO and founder of StyleHop Corp (http://stylehop.com/enterprise)
David Reinke is a versatile general manager with over fifteen years experience in brand marketing, sales and operations within the consumer products and apparel industries. Currently, David is the CEO and founder of StyleHop, an innovative company that leverages social networking and specifically fashion enthusiasts to help retail apparel companies make better style-level inventory investments. Prior to founding StyleHop, he spent five years at Liz Claiborne. He was hired by the CEO after completing his MBA and accelerated through roles in operations, production, strategy, sales and planning. His last job at Liz was Vice President of DKNY Jeans where he managed a $70mm budget authorizing and negotiating all trade spending. While completing his MBA at Harvard, David was the President of the Retail & Apparel Club. Before business school David worked at Procter & Gamble in sales and brand management.

Charlotte Kim, Founder of CovetedList.com (http://covetedlist.com)

Moderated by Stephanie Agresta, EVP, Global Director Digital Strategy and Social Media at Porter Novelli (http://porternovelli.com)
Stephanie Agresta has been a force in the online marketing industry for nearly 15 years. An expert in social media, affiliate program management and Web 2.0 strategies, her mission is to connect people, ideas, products and services using digital technology in new and inventive ways. Stephanie has been instrumental in developing innovative digital media strategies for Fortune 500 brands including Microsoft, Windows Mobile and PepsiCo. Stephanie started her career with iVillage, a women-focused Web destination and one of the first sites to build community online. She went on to hold prominent sales, marketing and business development roles with Internet powerhouses such as Barnes & Noble, Register.com and SpaFinder. With Commerce360, a search marketing firm funded by First Round Capital, she launched an affiliate marketing division and served on a management team alongside nationally recognized technology executives. Stephanie comes to Porter Novelli after five years of developing her successful personal consultancy, forging partnerships with digital thought leaders and emerging technology companies. Representing the best of both worlds, she is known for combining innovation and insight with the accountability, focus and superior execution that Fortune 100 brands demand. Stephanie holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s from Luther College. She blogs at internetgeekgirl.com and affiliate-karma.com/blog, and she tweets @stephagresta.

They're Listening

2010-02-02T15:12:00.018-05:00

Because I wrote a post the other day about hyper local media, I have been contacted by entrepreneurs in this space - which is actually kind of exciting. I have also made an apparent splash by asking a question about the topic at today's Social Media Week panel at the Time & Life Building

The first communication I received came from the developers of PlacePop, who wrote the following note:

"I enjoyed your reading your recent post about the advent of hyper-local targeting." Flattery will get you everywhere with me, and reading my blog is flattery on steroids.

"Since you have an interest in location-based services, I thought you would be interested in learning about a new app called PlacePop.

PlacePop is a new entrant into the geo-social networking space. Like Gowalla and Foursquare, PlacePop uses a check-in mechanism to connect people with the places they go to, anywhere in the world. However, PlacePop is designed to offer a much simpler user experience that provides value without such a strong focus on gaming elements. Our app is also designed to work well anywhere in the world, small towns and major cities alike.

As an early adopter yourself, I thought you might be interested in taking the PlacePop app for a test drive. If you have some time to try it out, I would really love to hear your feedback on the product we have so far.

You can find the app (free) here in the iTunes store: http://itunes.com/app/placepop

You can also use PlacePop on the web at http://placepop.com"

Prior to receiving this note, I had had the opportunity to discuss my dislike of Gowalla with Ian Schafer, the CEO of DeepFocus, and he encouraged me to give it another try as he, personally found the gaming element of it - specifically the ability to drop and take things from locations - alluring. (Ian had been a speaker at the opening Press Conference for Social Media Week.)

Having had these two interactions and having heard FourSquare referenced nearly as frequently as Twitter and Facebook during the first two days of Social Media Week, I was convinced that hyper-local social media was indeed the next great thing, and that Four Square is the Facebook and Twitter of the space. As it was with LinkedIn and Facebook when I first joined, I find myself friending people I don't really know in order to develop some kind of critical mass. And I know that as time goes on, I will become much more particular and possibly even jettison these connections if they prove to be creepy. In fact, I have already found myself ignoring requests from people to whom I see no ostensible connection except that they might perhaps like my photo. The challenge here is that I have not yet found a way to respond to these people to ask whether I actually know them. Is that functionality available?

On the other side of the coin, I have sent friend requests to panelists that I see have checked in at the location of the event - although I follow up by introducing myself live and giving them the heads up.

Near the end of today's Social Media Week panel about defining the Social Media Editor Role (sponsored by Time Inc. and entitled "Networked News Gatherers"), I posed the following question to the panelists: What do you see as the intersection of hyper-local behavior and social media, and how will this impact you in your role as a social media editor. Rachel Sklar, Rachel Sklar, Business/Project Development, Abrams Research and Writer for Mediaites, answered that while she had been an enthusiastic member of FourSquare for a year (oh, how behind the times I feel), she did not yet see an application for it other than as a way to enhance her relationships with her friends. She did say that somewhere in a basement, a brilliant mind was developing an application that would expand the capabilities and role of the application - in the same way that Twitter evolved.

Cyndi Stivers, Managing Editor, EW.com then added that a key attribute of FourSquare (and, I imagine Gowall), is the gaming element. And this made me realize that hyper-local targeting does not stand alone as the next great trend, but that the intersection of gaming and social media is integral to the development of this space - a la Farmville.

Following the panel, I was approached by Phil Thomas Di Giulio, the founder of the pegshot mobile application - who, by the way, was lucky enough to be trapped in an elevator with Ann Curry at the conclusion of yesterday's panel about the role of social media in the recent events in Haiti. Phil introduced me to this application and also uploaded photos of me, one of the speakers and himself - among others - to the site.

Talking About My Education: New Media and Other Conferences, Seminars and Events

2010-01-30T13:15:00.018-05:00

If President Obama is a nerd, then I am definitely a geek. In elementary, middle and high school, I dutifully followed my father's direction to do any and all extra credit. In college, having calculated the cost of each individual course, in fact, lecture, I opted to take four extra classes - one more per year than required. And now, I have become the guru of "continuing education," industry conferences, topical seminars, webinars, podcasts, you name it. Here are some examples:

Upcoming:

Social Media Week: February 1st-5th, 2010

The Official PressLift Launch Event

Recently Attended:

The New Age of Social Media, Monday, February 3rd, 7-9pm. SLC Center - 352 7th Avenue, 16th Floor - New York NY.

This event, in conjunction with Social Media Week, featured a panel that discussed the "truths and myths of social media." They were:

Eric Hamilton - Author, Social Media Branding in the Age of Obama
Ellie Nieves - Founder, Leadership Strategies for Women, LLC
Orietta E. Ramirez - Lawyer, HR Professional & Employment Blogger
Mike Street - Director of Social Media Marketing, Zezza Network

Moderator:
Anthony Quinones - CEO & Chief Creative Officer, Q Ball Media, LLC

Branding The Future With Social Media, sponsored by Pepsi Refresh, Monday, February 3rd, 2010, 10:30am - 12:30pm. New York, NY

The opening session of Social Media Week will focus on a top-level discussion of the increasing importance in utilizing social media to grow and develop corporate brands in the twenty-first century.

SPEAKERS:

Brian Morrisey, Digital Editor at AdWeek, will moderate this panel with panelists,

Lauren Hobart, Chief Marketing Officer of Sparkling Brands, for Pepsi-Cola North America Beverages,
Max Schorr, Co-founder of GOOD, Inc.
Facebook VP of Sales Tom Arrix
Frank Cooper, Chief Engagement Officer of Pepsico.

Social Media Week Official Press Conference, Monday, February 3rd, 8:30-10am. The Paley Center for Media - 25 West 52nd Street - New York, NY

Screening of "The Paper Chase," Friday, January 29th, 2010 - Harvard Club of New York

Baratunde Thurston, America, Race, and One Year Into Our Nation’s First Half-Black Presidency. Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Breaking Business Books: "The Power of Many" by Meg Whitman, Former EBay CEO, on Life and Business, Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

"Over-Under, Sideways-Down" - screening of the 1979 film followed by discussion with director-producer Steve Wax

Keynote speech by Louise Richardson, Principal and Vice-Chancellor University of Saint Andrews - expert on terrorism, January 21, 2010

iPhone workshop at Apple Store, Upper West Side - Monday, January 19, 2010.

Aperture workshop at Apple Store, Upper West Side - Monday, January 18, 2010.

Meeting of the Minds Webcast Series: 50+ Metrics Every Marketer Should Master (an Update)

Sponsored by American Marketing Association and MarketingNPV

Paul Farris of Darden School at UVA will offer an update on the new 2nd edition of 50+ Metrics Every Marketer Should Master – and discuss the additions and changes to the key metrics shaping marketing measurement. He’ll also share with us some new research into who is using which types of marketing metrics and how.

· Which metrics matter most?
· The evolution/update of marketing metrics
· New metrics for marketers to know

Speakers:
Paul Farris, Landmark Communications Professor, Darden School, University of Virginia; Author of 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master
Pat LaPointe, Managing Partner, MarketingNPV (moderator)

-- January 14th, 2010 @ 1pm ECT

Meeting of the Minds Webcast Series: Effective Marketing for the Economic Recovery -- Presented by: American Marketing Association in cooperation with MarketingNPV

Speakers:
Dave Reibstein, William Woodside Professor of Marketing, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Author: Dynamic Competitive Strategy
Pat LaPointe, Managing Partner, MarketingNPV (moderator)

Dave Reibstein of Wharton will share his learnings on effective marketing during the economic recovery. Should we be waiting until the recession is all the way over? Should we be returning back to the original spending levels—slowly, immediately, or even exceeding the previous levels? Should we be spending differently in the recovery stage? Dave will discuss how spending should rise or fall as economic conditions vary, and when marketers should look to reallocate spending between acquisition and retention based on the type as well as the length of the recession.

* Recessions - what type of effects are being felt in your industry?
* How does a recession affect your total spending?
* What steps should you take in the allocation of spending between customer acquisition and retention?
* Should you wait until the recession is over to start increasing your spending?

-- December 15th, noon CST

"Market Forecast: The Economy and Markets at the Crossroads" NYSSA (New York Society of Security Analysts) - The stock market rally that began in early March sparked hope that the global economy has seen the worst of the recession. Yield spreads have moved closer to normal and credit has begun to flow with greater regularity. Yet, there remains significant doubt among many investors that the rise in stocks and the return to some semblance of normality in the credit markets is justified by the current and future state of the economy. Additionally, a high and rising level of concern of many investors is the degree of government activism exhibited by the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress. Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

"Understanding Social Media: An Introduction." Fridays with Vistage - Social Media Webcast with speaker Gini Dietrich. Friday, July 17th, 2009. I thought this would be kind of elementary as it was promoted as an intro to social media for executives. It definitely started out that way and reinforced most of what I already knew from my own experience, from Steve Wax at Campfire and from OMMA Social - among other social media sources; however, as Gini got more specific, there were some interesting tidbits, and I always find that the more you immerse yourself in a topic, the more knowledgeable, fluent and comfortable you become - even if it's your area of personal expertise. Moreover, I discovered after the fact a Twitter discussion community full of social media fluent participants and a total audience of 1,000 people according to one tweet. I'm looking forward to next Friday's installment (and hope to post some key takeaways).

"Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29: A Screening and Q&A with Director Kevin Rafferty '69." Harvard Club of New York - Wednesday, July 15th, 2009.

Advanced Investing Committee Meeting. NYSSA (New York Society of Security Analysts) - Tuesday, July 14th, 2009.

"Inter-Ivy Comedy Night." Penn Club of New York - Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

"What is Twitter, Facebook? LinkedIn? Hulu? And Why are They Important to You?" Harvard Club of New York with speaker Shelly Palmer - Later revised to: "What is Twitter? And how did it become a force in Iranian politics?" - Organized by Karen Levine, Program Committee, Harvard Club of New York

"Advanced Excel for Data Analysis" New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) - Streamline your number crunching process and conduct more in-depth analysis with sophisticated techniques. Minimize manual labor, save time and perform more detailed analysis quickly. Develop more efficient ways to apply commonly used formulas. Discover often overlooked Excel formulas. Analyze data using functions such as pivot tables, sumif, sum+if, transpose, working with arrays, vlook-up, subtotals, and regression analysis. Enhance your spreadsheets with data validation techniques, automation of alternate row shading and much more! Increase your Excel efficiency up to 75%.

"6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times" New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) with speaker Whitney Tilson - During recent years, a flood of liquidity fueled a worldwide asset bubble, in which the most significant element was the Great Mortgage Bubble in the United States. The unwinding of this bubble remains the primary driver of the credit crisis that is reverberating through the global financial system. Value investor Whitney Tilson, co-author of the recently released book More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times, will share an in-depth analysis of the state of the housing market and a prediction of what the future may have in store. This session will conclude with an overview of the current opportunity set, discussing what has already been priced into securities and where the best opportunities can be found on the short- and long-side.

Inaugural Meeting of the Wharton Marketing Professionals Association (WhAM) -- Presented by Wharton Dean Tom Robertson and Marketing Professor Dave Reibstein. Wharton Dean (and former Marketing Department Chair) Tom Robertson launched the Wharton Association of Marketers (WhAM!) in New York on Tuesday, March 17th. Sponsored by the Wharton Club of New York -- WhAM! is the first Wharton alumni program of its kind -- an exclusive network dedicated to the professional, career and personal growth of the best trained, most elite group of marketing professionals in the world -- Wharton Marketers!

In his launch address Dean Robertson also provided an update on the state of the school, followed by Professor Reibstein's update on the University's latest developments and initiatives in the field of Marketing - March 17, 2009

It's Heee-rrre: Hyper-Local Targeting

2010-01-29T10:31:00.016-05:00

6 months ago I wrote that the next most important trend in digital and social media would be hyper-local targeting (or micro-geotargeting, if you will). At that time, the poster child was Yelp! With Yelp and a handy-dandy GPS-enabled smart phone, you could walk out of your office and ask the Yelp! application to tell you the closest place to get your keys copied or have a manicure or find out whether there are any dance clubs on the Upper West Side for your friend who wants you to throw her a bachelorette party. A neat concept in June 2009.

The concept did not, by any means, start in 2009. Back in early 2006, in a report I wrote about the mobile landscape, I included the practice of targeted SMS mailings in which a retailer such as Subway could send a text message to a consumer passing by the store at around noon offering a right-place, right-time promotional code for a lunch special. The concept was perfect. How much closer to recency could you get. The logistics were a little clumsy or perhaps hypothetical or vague - involving opt-in mailing lists and limited #s of messages per month from a community of 3rd party advertisers, but the idea was exciting.

I also read, at the time, about a practice in Vegas, whereby your hotel would ask you to sign in via your mobile device when you landed at the airport to expedite your check-in. The hotel was then able to track you as you moved about the strip and send you messages luring you back on-site with offers of free meals if you wondered off to another casino. A little creepy, but pretty cool.

Then, a few years ago, Google introduced the ability to keep track of your friends (or children, as my sister-in-law enthusiastically observed) via Google Maps and the GPS chips on their phones. Slightly creepy, again, but reminded me of the magic map in the first Harry Potter book, so, again, kind of neat - though I did not participate, in part because few, if any of my friends knew about this.

Fast forward to the new decade. I've been using UrbanSpoon since it first burst onto the scene via the iPhone commercial and have dabbled with Yelp! on occasion. In addition, I've become a big fan of the iPhone MobileMe functionality whereby you can locate your phone using its gps chip should it be stolen or lost. And I've been using the GPS function of Google Maps for ages to find myself, find my way out of Central Park, find my way to a restaurant a few blocks away in East Hampton, etc. It all started with my Blackberry, at which time, I found it to be a very neat feature. And, now, with the iPhone, the graphics make it even better as you watch your little blue dot get closer to the little red pin of your target destination.

And now, I have been introduced to "FourSquare" - an iPhone and also Droid application. With this application, you sign-in to a location when you arrive. This act then sends a notification to your friends as to where you are and also tells you which of your friends are at the same location - as well as telling you who is the "mayor" of that venue, meaning that he or she is there the most often. Well, the implications of this application for marketing - both local and behavioral are tremendous - as you can see from the discussion around Chris Brogan's posting on American Express' Open Forum entitled: "Get Ahead of the Location Game." (The link to this article was sent to me by a friend WHILE I was writing this posting!)

The FourSquare application is not yet high profile as far as I can tell, though I am am sure it will come up many times during Social Media Week next week. I heard about it from a recent grad on the Program Committee at the Harvard Club and found that Matt Blank, CEO of Showtime was already aware of at, whereas a senior executive at a major ad agency was not. So I predict that it is something that will be become better known in the next few months. And, of course, it will be come more powerful with more participation.

Some people will scoff at the start, finding it to be odd that you would want to share that information with others - these are the same people who scoffed at Facebook when I joined in 2006 and now spend 6 hours a day with it. And, as with Facebook, I will be careful as to the people with whom I choose to share this info - likely friends and Frolleagues. (Frolleagues are colleagues with whom you are friendly enough to connect on Facebook).

As with Facebook, by the way, a not so ideal impact of the application is that I am regularly reminded that a Frolleague of mine goes to the gym once or twice a day while I... well I go less frequently.

In addition to signing in to locations and tracking your friends' moves throughout the day, FourSquare invites you to comment on nearby venues - it gives you a list of options based on your GPS - and to read tips from others. It also gives you visibility into twitter feeds from people in your nearby location.

As I was writing this blog in my head, I logged onto Yelp! on my iPhone and, of course, they have the same functionality in terms of signing into a location, so there seems to be a coming together of Yelp! and FourSquare. I am not sure of the business models of these apps, but the potential is huge and, after all, Google didn't have a business model for nearly six years!

"The Power of Many" - Life Lessons from Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay

2010-01-26T16:14:00.013-05:00

In preparation for attending a recent talk by Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and current candidate for Governor of California, I did a little background reading. Here are some of the highlights from what she has said or written that I feel are worth sharing:

“Try something. You can always recalibrate and adjust later.”

This reminds me of one my FAVORITE musical lines – from Sondheim’s “Move On” - I chose and my world was shaken, so what? The choice may have been mistaken. The choosing was not.

Focus on the good things can come from an action rather than worrying about what might go wrong.

She was on Goldman Sachs’ board but didn’t feel she had a lot of financial services expertise. She resigned Goldman’s board and joined P&G’s a few days later. She started her career with P&G as a brand assistant for “Toilet Products” including Head & Shoulders. Her first project was to recommend the size of the opening on the shampoo bottle. The answer came from the consumer. They wanted a smaller opening so that could “have more control in the shower.”

Talking about her days at eBay:

The regulation (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was that if you do not police your site, you can’t be responsible. Her laywers, therefore, advised her not to police the site even though she knew that bootlegged copies of the “Cop Killer” videogame were being auctioned. Henry Schultz of Starbucks, who was an eBay board member, advised her as follows: “Don’t let the lawyers run your company.” I believe that advice came from Schultz; in any case, it’s good advice. Nonetheless, the seminal question that defined eBay going forward did come from Schultz and was as follows: “What do you want the character of your company to be?”

Good question, and the one that every marketer should ask himself. This was a question I asked The California Travel and Tourism Commission, when I worked with them. In this case, the question was about who their audience was. Was it the hospitality industry, tourists, advertisers… Their website did not have a voice. Their printed materials came from Sunset Custom Publishing. I recommended that they look to Sunset for their editorial voice.

This is also one of the key questions a marketer should ask when developing a social media strategy. What is being said about me now? What do I want my personality or character to be? What role do I want to play? Advisor? Helper? Expert? Advocate? Access to inside info and deals?

Meg graduated from Harvard Business School (HBS) in 1979. While this was not the trailblazer generation of female MBAs, women were definitely in the minority. When she joined P&G, she was one of perhaps four women in a class of one hundred. When she started, women were not authorized to travel for business because it was not deemed to be safe. She and her female colleagues got this policy changed!

Sunday night, I saw a film called “Over-Under, Sideways-Down” at the Anthology Film Archives here in New York. The film was produced and directed by Steve Wax, one of the founders of Campfire Media and a client of mine. It was set in 1979, which was obvious from the attire, cars, technology and mindset. When the wife of the protagonist suggests that she get a job as pursuit of a new job seemed fruitless, the husband rejected the idea out of hand. “Who would take care of the children,” he bellowed. “They need their mother.” The film, by the way, which was dated in terms of historic setting, rang completely true and relevant in the context of the economic situation in Detroit, middle-America, and even here in NYC. It was actually quite depressing in its claustrophobic tone.

Meg’s advice: “Always deliver the results.”

“If you are always in the neighborhood of good results, you will always get the credit.”

This last bit of advice came from Mitt Romney, one of her mentors from their days at P&G. (Gives some insight into her choice to go into politics.)

At eBay, she could gauge the state of her eBay community based on the number of emails she received in a day. She had a one-to-one dialog with her consumer base. If there were 200 emails, all was well. If 5,000… well, there was a problem that was pretty easy to identify by scanning a few email headers. Hence, her overriding theme: “The Power of Many,” which is the title of her book, subtitled, “Values for Success in Business and in Life.”

iPhone, iApps, iTunes, iFacts

2010-01-19T12:38:00.001-05:00

Several weeks ago, I posted a blog entry about iPhone/iTouch applications that included Fun iApp Facts, Tips for Marketing an iPhone App and Other iApp Observations. As I have attended OMMA conferences, Digital Downtown and had direct interaction with iPhone Apps, I have been updating this blog. However, the entry is getting longggggg, so I am starting anew - appropriately at the same time that Apple is launching a new iPhone. I am blogging live from the OMMA Social conference as a starting point and may also include up-to-date facts from "Marking an iPhone Application."

As of January 5, more than 3Bn iPhone apps had been downloaded - 18 months since intro of app store -- 77 countries -- 100MM+ apps available. (Apple.com)

1Bn apps downloaded between September 28th and January 5th alone, i.e., within 3 months! (Apple.com)

There are predictions that the Android will have 150MM applications by the end of 2010. (January 2010)

300 million Americans have some kind of wireless device. (December 2, 2009 - CEO of Verizon Wireless via Ad Age podcast)

Apple was the first company to market its device in some kind of meaningful way. Up until that point, wireless devices were typically marketed by the wireless carriers. It was during that period that Verizon focused nearly exclusively on its "Can You Hear Me Now?" campaign. Once Apple broke this barrier, consumers started to choose networks based on devices rather than coverage. Verizon Wireless then turned its attention away from the coverage message. However, in the last few months, Verizon has introduced the "We've Got a Map for That" campaign, which I personally think is extremely witty - particularly as someone who has suffered as an iPhone user who had to make the switch to AT&T and has nostalgic feelings for my old network, i.e., Verizon. This, together with the Google Android phone will begin a new chapter in this story so stay tuned.

Personally, I am sticking with the iPhone because (a) there are 100,000 apps - though, really, how many of those do I use? This question echos the fact that although I have up to 1,000 digital television channels, I watch only a handful on a regular basis. Still I do like to know the other TV networks are available to me should I need them (b) as someone in digital media I must use an iPhone or iTouch to stay in touch, and the iPhone is far superior (c) I have nearly two years left on my contract with AT&T (d) I love the Apple stores, and there is one that opened up 7 blocks from my apartment (e) There are a LOT of things I like about the iPhone and its operating system and intrinsic applications. (December 2, 2009 - opening thoughts based on CEO of Verizon comments on Ad Age podcast)

There are now more than 100,000 iPhone applications (November 16, 2009)

6 out of 7 people do not have a smart phone. This offers a potential market for the just released Twitter-only device that taps into local cell phone networks with no monthly fee (New York One - November 5, 2009)

AT&T has renewed its exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone. However, Verizon Wireless' answer to the iPhone — the Droid — will go on sale Nov. 6 for $200 as the company taps the growing appetite for smart phones that go far beyond making calls. The Droid could help Verizon retain its status as the nation's largest wireless carrier and contribute to a turnaround of its manufacturer, Motorola Inc., which hasn't produced a hit since the wildly popular Razr phone in 2005. The new device also could give a boost to Google Inc., which used the Droid to unveil mapping software that could challenge standalone navigational devices, sending GPS gadget maker Garmin Ltd.'s stock plunging. (Pioneer Press, October 28, 2009)

BusinessWeek reports that there are 1 million mobile applications across 12 mobile application stores, i.e., there are 15MM non iPhone apps and 11 non-Apple application stores (October 23, 2009 - BusinessWeek Behind the Cover Story podcast: The Apps Economy)

100MM people are registered in the iTunes store. 70% (confirm) are in the U.S. (Matt Blank, October 14, 2009)

Showtime keeps a very high split of each dollar spent on a Showtime series purchased on iTunes. (Higher than what Kliavkoff reported for NBC a few years ago.) CEO Matt Blank is thrilled that consumers beyond the network's 17MM subscribers now have access to their programming - for monetary purposes, branding benefits, and word of mouth marketing. Showtime does not monetize programming in the same way as non-premium networks that run advertising. A good Showtime program builds the Showtime brand, which then drives subscription revenue. Showtime was once criticized for this single source of revenue model, but it seems to be serving the network well in these challenging times, particularly given the outstanding lineup of distinctively Showtime original programming. (based talks by Matt Blank, October 14, 2009 and George Kliavkoff, June 15, 2007)

Less than one week after introduction Apple had already sold 1 million iphone 3GS (June 23, 2009)

B2B Social Media - in progress...

2010-01-14T16:17:00.006-05:00

Ok, so I kind of leave off mid-sentence and needs some editing, but I have to get some deals on holiday cards at Papyrus before I meet a contact for drinks in Alice Tully Hall and then meet a friend at the ballet. By publishing this to the world wide web, I know I completed something tangible today.

Social Media

What Is Social Media? Social media is a collection of online applications, platforms and media that aim to facilitate interaction, collaboration and the sharing of content. It uses Internet and other digital technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). Social media is intrinsically connected with what is called Web 2.0 in that it facilitates the creation and exchange of user generated content (UGC).

Social media may sound daunting, but is really nothing new. The world wide web had its start on message boards, chat rooms and peer to peer communication. Social media tools are easy to access and not particularly technical. They are fueled by innovations in web development, computing technology and broadband proliferation.

Social media is often associated with the “consumer” space, either being used by consumers for their own purposes or used by businesses that are using it to communicate with their consumers.

However, social media is also used by B2B marketers such as Intel. It is used by companies to increase internal communication, involvement and insight. One of the most powerful aspects of social media is that it allows companies to have dialogs with their constituents and to listen in on conversations among those people. Hence the use of internal social media not only facilitates greater coordination among employees, it gives senior management a better understand of their employees and access to how their messages are being received and to what’s really happening “on the ground.”

Social media has also become an integral part of industry conferences, sales meetings, networking events, seminars, webinars and other professional interactions. Here are some examples:

(1) A leading business school recently rolled out a virtual learning series to its alumni worldwide. Participants call into a conference line, where they listen in on a talk by a professor on a topic of interest. They are able to submit questions for the speaker via email – collected and curated by the moderator. And at the close of the call, they are invited to continue the conversation via the alumni LinkedIn group.

(BTW, I would love to create this program for my own MBA alma mater - so if you read this and went to my school and make it happen before I do, please don't forget about me...)

(2) The American Marketing Association hosted a webinar this week about...

I'm back online - more online dating nuggets

2010-01-01T22:12:00.000-05:00

Last night I reconnected with a classmate from college and his wife of three years. Where did they meet? Match.com. More and more often, I am meeting couples who met online. So.... I'm giving it ANOTHER shot. This works out in your benefit, because you get to share some of my favorite excerpts from the online dating ecosystem...

...Starting with this headline:

MY MATCH WOULD BE SOMEONE INTELEGENT ATHLETIC AND CONFIDENT

hmmmm... well I guess there's something for ying and yang.

Chemistry.com tells me that "adventurous, risk taking men and women" - of which I am evidently one - "are not comfortable with public displays of affection."

I cannot quite reconcile the relationship with those two items and welcome your suggestions! That said, I do find it quite interesting. This sheds light on the disconnect I often feel on first dates, when my counterpart expresses surprise that I would share personal information on a social website but demonstrates no reluctance to kiss me in public within three hours of meeting. My comfort levels are, as you may have guessed, the inverse. I had up until now attributed this mismatch to a difference between Gen X and Boomer - albeit young, which may be a factor as well.

I sent a "wink" to someone on Match.com that looked like he might be interesting. I admit that this is a very lazy attempt at online dating, but, hey, I was probably watching TV and eating at the time, so I had limited typing ability. In any case, the response below started out well, a few allusions to my profile, but devolved into a form letter. My dear suitor, (a) less is more; quit while you're ahead, (b) don't underestimate the value of spell check and (c) if you're looking for a long term relationship, don't refer to it as a "L.T.R."

"I am so impressed I think John Bolton is propably the most knowlageble guy ( Or Gal ) when it comes to forign policy . I love tennis aswell and im sure if we ever played I would kick your butt . Im looking for a L.T.R a keeper a woman I wake up next to and think how lucky I am to have such a special lady in my life . A woman who loves to curl up together on the couch for a movie or a show , but loves to be active in all ways . A woman who loves to dress up in something sexy takes my hand and we hit the town , or just stay home in sweats and a tee shareing a pizza and some wine over a great conversation . A woman who enjoys a good physical relationship , im not looking for a buddy never the less friendship is probably the most important part of any L.T.R . A woman who loves children and knows all is right with the world as were lieing in bed between our children as i read them a bedtime story . I always thought a woman like that must be special , what do you think ?"

Why Teach? This Is Why.

2009-12-29T05:59:00.042-05:00

In 2003, I taught a number of classes at the Katherine Gibbs School of New York. These included Advertising, Sales, Finance, Economics and Mathematics. Having attended college and graduate school with some of the hardest working, most highly motivated, most competitive students in the world, and having just taught a class at the prestigious Stern School at NYU, it was a culture shock to encounter a classroom of students whose attitude towards school was, for many, jaded, wary and frustrated.

While virtually all of my classmates and students at Harvard, Wharton and NYU saw their attendance at these schools as part of an educational plan created years ago and never questioned, my Gibbs students had graduated high school but had not gone on to college. Enrolling at Gibbs was, for them, a first step towards getting a college degree, or a way to actualize a dream to own their own business, "become a CEO," create a line of licensed products, or simply move out of their role at the checkout counter of a retail chain.

Teaching these classes - particularly the large ones - was often frustrating and surprising. There was cheating, lying, real or forged doctors' notes for missed classes, no-shows for exams, and in-class cell phone usage, talking and eating to contend with. In addition, there were competing drains on their time - families, work, and, in one case, an unwanted pregnancy. But, as many teachers will tell you, among the frustrations, there were also gems. Students whose lives were truly touched by their interaction with me and my enthusiasm and commitment. Students that I exposed to experiences that were commonplace to me but first-time opportunities for them - such as seeing a video of a ballet dancer (I don't remember the context) or even an office environment. And many were affected by the opportunity I offered them to excel - without cheating.

At NYU, I often drilled students with practice questions for exams. I made a game out of it. During these Jeopardy review sessions, I would go around the room, presenting each student with exam-type questions. I would continue to feed each student questions until they got one wrong. Then I would ask the rest of the class to try to answer the problem and teach the topic to the rest of the class. If no one could adequately explain the answer, I would take some time to review that topic - therefore pinpointing the subjects that needed the most explanation. And, of course, there was candy involved, thanks to the generous budget of the Marketing Department.

At Gibbs, I would drill a student until he or she got the question RIGHT, keep score and reward the high scorers with magazines and other loot from my publishing jobs. And for the Gibbs students, not only were they given the questions in advance in the form of problem sets but ALL the exam questions came from these problem sets. So if they mastered the problem sets, they could master the exam. In fact, for my first class, the largest, I provided the actual exam in advance. Students had a direct roadmap to acing the exam (some with a 100% score) if they so desired. Many did not, which was disappointing and somewhat perplexing, but some did, which was a confidence-boosting, elation-creating and often first-time accomplishment for the student, one that did not come from cheating but from preparation.

Another opportunity I offered for success was extra credit. Seeking out and taking advantage of extra credit was a no-brainer for me - a habit my father had instilled in me at a young age. It still shocks me that there were students at both NYU and Gibbs that did not answer extra credit questions on exams - particularly because they were usually giveaways in which it was hard to give a wrong answer.

Well, in my current endeavor to digitize all paper in my apartment - a daunting task that initially freed up a lot of shelf space in my closet that is now populated by shoe boxes, making me wonder whether my purchase of a high-end scanner was an enabler or gateway for shoe purchases. But I digress. The point of this 6am entry is to share with you some of the interesting and inspirational responses I received from my students to these extra credit questions and to the questions I asked at the beginning of the semester in an effort to get to know the students and have them identify a goal towards which they were working.

Without further ado, here is a sampling - as written including spelling. But one last caveat, these papers do not include the questions, so I will have to surmise them from the answers.

1) What did you learn from this class and how will it help you professionally?

"I have definitely learned that listening skills are important. In the past, I was a bad listener. I would interrupt a relative or a friend when they are in the middle of their sentence. And at the job, I definitely did evaluative listening because I tried to listen but did not try to understand. Since I started my "Principles of Sales" class, I am practicing active listening; I must say that it is difficult, but it will get easier with practice.

Professor, I was not practicing active listening when you told the class about the elevator [I pointed out that two bells means the elevator is going down, one bell equals going up], but I will try to remember. I would also like to tell you that you have truly been a great influence on me. You have patience and tolerance and therefore, empathy. This I have also learnt in this class.

This will help me in my professional life because I want to have a sales career; I am in a sales career, and I will need to practice active listening so not only will I hear the words of my customers or prospects but I will also feel their emotions and sence their thoughts. I will be aware. This will help me personally because now I wouldn't get yelled at by my relatives and friends for interrupting them."

"From this class I have learnt to deal with customers in a better manner and how to explain the feature benefit and the advantage. I also understand what is takes to be a good salesperson not only wanting to make money but to satisfy the customers with what they need."

"Before I took this class, marketing is very abstractive. For business, most important things are production and selling. Those are what I have though before I took this class. But I have learned selling is a part of marketing and we can not separate marketing from any business."

What's Old Is New Again

2009-12-16T11:07:00.000-05:00

In 2001, the publisher of the five-month old LUCKY magazine asked me to write a presentation addressing the question: "Why Launch a Magazine about Shopping at the Beginning of an Economic Downturn?" I gave her three answers: (1) Consumers are ready for the combined benefits of fashion magazines, catalog shopping & e-commerce, (2) Twenty something women who love to shop... love to shop! and (3) When times are good, you should advertise; when times are bad, you must advertise.

As part of the presentation, I included a line chart showing the decline of the Dow Jones from 11,600 to 9,200, which I then covered up bit by bit with expert opinions supporting the importance of maintaining marketing budgets during a recession. These were the following:

- "Companies that increase their marketing activities during the recession are more successful than companies which cut back." PIMS database of 1,000 companies.
- "Economic downturns reward the aggressive advertiser and penalize the timid one." Strategic Planning Institute
- "The most successful companies [maintain] their advertising investment when the economy slows down and weaker competitors cut back..." London Business School
- "During an economic downturn, a strong advertising/marketing effort enables a firm to solidify its customer base, take business away from less aggressive competitors, and position itself for future growth during the recovery." Coopers & Lybrand
- "Maintaining 'Share of Mind' costs much less than rebuilding it later on." American Business Model

I have always felt a sort of sympathy for car manufacturers spending millions of dollars on television advertising that was bound to get lost in the clutter of two to three automotive commercials per commercial pod (one national, one local and, more recently a second national ad separated from the first by some kind of "pod-breaker"). Personally, I found myself forwarding through automotive ads on a somewhat regular basis despite my being generally inclined to watch TV commercials. But it was a no win situation for automotive brands. While magazine publishers tried valiantly to impress upon them the value of print advertisements, car companies could not afford to take money out of TV so long as their peers were still there.

Fast forward to 2008 and 2009 and a sudden automotive silence within TV commercial pods. It was eery and a bit scary. Careful what you wish for - one might say. And then came the Super Bowl. During the game, there were two brands who dared to pony up the money for multi-million dollar spots: Hyundai and Audi. Audi, the insurgent brand that has often been willing to take risks, positioned its brand against other luxury autos through years, coming out as the only one with the performance attributes worthy of a James Bond. Hyundai, meanwhile, showed compassion for a country of would-be consumers paralyzed by their fear of losing their income. "If you lose your income, we will allow you to return your Hyundai," the announcer promised. Quite daring. Now, American Express will reimburse you (up to $300, I believe) if you break something you buy with the card or change your mind and are unable to return it. And that strategy has often given me the piece of mind that allowed for the indulgent impulse buy. But this is taking that concept to a whole new level! And rightly so. Truly brilliant, I think, to address the problem head on. To remove the roadblock on the path to purchase.

So the message was smart, but equally as important was the audacity on the part of both car companies to see this calamity as an opportunity and to finally gain the unique benefit of television advertising without getting lost in the clutter. Did it work? Yes, it did. Both Hyundai and Audi have experienced increased sales in 2009 - an achievement not to be underappreciated.

-- Originally posted May 14, 2009

Hot Buttons

2009-12-07T22:30:00.014-05:00

One of my co-workers had a dramatic reaction to an energy drink at work today. She was shaking uncontrollably, got faint and couldn't move. By the time I came out of the conference room, the entire office had circled her desk. They had tucked her into her office chair with a blanket and were feeding her little bottles of water. Her left leg was like restless leg syndrome to the max, but I was told she was doing better than when this started. There was someone from building security who was on his walkie talkie, and they were all waiting for EMS to arrive.

Well, on a few occasions, I have had to call 911 while at home - once for an accident, once for a fire and once for a fainting spell - and the fire engine always arrived in about 7 minutes. However, in this case, it took forty-five minutes for the medics to arrive. My colleague didn't have a doctor to call, and my doctor wouldn't give advice to a non-patient. So, we were all kind of paralyzed, waiting for help. In any case, this extremely long preamble is an intro to some of my hot buttons, i.e., things I wish people didn't do:

I hate it when...

(1) People don't get out of the way for ambulances.

(2) People don't move into the train to let other people get on.
(I WILL mow them down if I have to...)

... I'm sure the others will come to me

The Anti-Foodie...

2009-12-07T21:57:00.013-05:00

My Favorite Foods:

I often find myself saying, "This is one of my favorite foods." So I thought I would see whether I can limit my favs to a list of 10. It's not a very healthy list, but oh so good!

(1) Hot fudge sundaes - I don't care how many fancy desserts there are on the menu, this is the best - especially at Cafe Luxembourg

(2) Macaroni and cheese - I lived on this in business school. The real thing - Kraft. Now it's Smart Ones and Amy's soy cheese...

(3) Cherries - better than candy, and because they're available only a few months a year, I never get enough

(4) Chocolate covered strawberries - milk not dark

(5) Jicama - picked that up at Canyon Ranch - doesn't seem to fit with the others, does it...

(6) Brownies - the kind made from the box; none of that fancy stuff - and no nuts

(7) Veal parmigiana - fabulous at Becco - although it's hard to find bad veal parm

(8) Malted milk shakes - Ronnybrook in Chelsea Market - to DIE for!

(9) Brussel sprouts - do you believe me? It depends completely on how they are prepared.

(10) Caramel apples - they have these Wollman Rink. Oh so good.

What are your food favs?

The Elevator One-Sheet

2009-12-03T12:15:00.010-05:00

With each client engagement, my elevator speech gets more complex and lengthy. At this point, I need a ride to the top of the Empire State Building to do it justice. I specialize in doing something that has not been done before - or that I have not done before. I excel in defining and addressing the unknown. In driving revenue growth and profit improvement. In creative problem solving and in bringing structure to chaos or opportunity. And so, I have attempted to summarize this in a one page graphic.

Does it resonate with you?

The Digital Wave and the Google Tsunami

2009-11-22T16:20:00.006-05:00

I have 25 1/2 hours to finish Ken Auletta's new book "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It" before I meet him for drinks and oversee his speaking engagement. I've read about 8 chapters so far. That leaves a couple hundred pages to go. In the meantime, here are some tidbits I found worth writing down (or the digital equivalent thereof)

Notable Nuggets

Preface

Google is run by engineers, and engineers are people who ask why: Why must we do things the way they’ve always been done? Why should all books ever published be digitized? Why shouldn’t we be able to read any newspaper or magazine online…

Founded in 1998. Started turning a profit in 2004

Messing with the Magic

Google in 2002 had scanned or indexed 3.1 billion web pages, about 80% of what was then www. By early 2009 there were an estimated 25.2 billion web pages.

Google decides whethere the link is relevant and assigns it a value. The quantified value is known as PageRank, after Larry Page.

AdWords – allows potential advertisers to bid to place small text ads next to the results for key search words.

The minimum bid per keyword is set by Google. A commonly searched word or phrase like eBay or JetBlue might cost only a penny or two, while a more esoteric phrase like helicopter parts might fetch fifty dollars a click.

In a second advertising program, AdSense, Google served as a matchmaker, marrying advertisers with Web destinations. If Intel wanted to advertiser on technology blogs or a hotel in London wanted ot promote itself on travel sites, Google put them together via a similar automated system.

Google performed several hundred million daily searches in 2003. Today the number is 3 billion.

Google helped advertisers target consumers not just by age, sex, income, profession or zip code, but by personal preferences for leisure time actvities, frequently visited locations, product preferences, news peferences, etc.

From a peak daily newspaper circulation of 63MM in 1984, circulation slid an average of 1% each year until 2004, when the drop became more precipitous.

On a typical night in 1976, 92% of all viewers were watching CBS, NBC or ABC; today, those networks (along with Fox) attract about 46% of viewers.

Old media companies were atrapped in the “the innovator’s dilemma,” what Clayton M. Christensen described in his book of that name, and well-managed companies that, confrtoned by new technologies or new business models, floundered by fierceley defending their existing business models and not changing fast enough.

“Don’t be evil.”

The number one network television program in the 1988-1989 season was “The Cosby Show,” which was watched by 41% of HHs with TV sets; 20 years later, the top show was “American Idol,” it reached just 1/5 of those watching TV.

Most employees are alotted a day a week, or 20% of their time, to work on projects they feel passionate about.

Burning Man – the annual anarchic –animistic retreat in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert that cultimates in the burning effigy of a giant wood and dessert brush “man.”

Starting in a Garage

Bill Gates in 1998: “I fear someone in a garage who is devising something completely new.”

Innovation is usually the enemy of established companies.

Page and Brin met at orientation for incoming Stanford graduate students – 3 years before founding Google in a garage.

Their fathers were college professors, and their mothers worked in science. Both attended Montessori elementary schools.

People

Messing with the Magic

Eric Schmidt - Chairman and CEO
Sergey Brin
Larry Page

Stacey Savides Sullian – Dec 1999 - #50 – chief cultural officer
Hal Varian – chief economist

Terry Winograd – Larry Page’s graduate school mentor at Stanford

Anne Wojcicki

:

Pricing in a Downturn

2009-10-15T09:16:00.003-04:00

The following excerpt is from a whitepaper written with two of my colleagues at Abbey Road Associates. Abbey Road is a business consulting firm that specializes in pricing strategy. I work with Abbey Road on a project basis. If you would like to read more of this paper, please contact me at karenlevine@abbeyroadassociates.com.

"Quick Checklist for Pricing in a Downturn"

Which pricing strategies address falling demand in an economic downturn? The pundits generally say ‘wake up, pay closer attention to customers, and be more targeted in your pricing.’1 Good ideas certainly, but what should you do specifically? Which price initiatives do, or do not, work?

From working with clients in industries which entered the recession early (e.g., print media, construction and commodity capital goods) we believe there are five key strategies, generally requiring intelligent use of tools, to combat falling revenues. The key to success, in all cases, is not to assume that market-facing management becomes magically smarter. You may need tools to change behaviors.

So, the answers occur in strategy + tool combinations. Most of them focus on understanding the customer buying decision, which is the driver of price sensitivity.
Know the decision, and you can optimize your pricing.

Strategy 1: Adjust your understanding of value and its capture.

With the downturn, the value of your offer has changed both in aggregate, and by component. For many industries the value of your after-sale service has increased, while the value of new widgets has fallen. This is a direct consequence of your customers feeling poorer, or having their budgets cut. While such cuts will preclude purchase of new units or services, the old units are now integral to customers’ businesses, and so must be maintained, recession or not.

Evidence of this sort of shift comes from recent IBM earning results. Unlike its more manufacturing-oriented peers who experienced sharp revenue declines, IBM exceeded earnings because it had shifted its business to over 60% service and lease revenues—which were less subject to capital expenditure cuts.

The tool required to best propel a change in focus is a quantitative assessment of your offer components’ value. That tool may take three forms:

-- A detailed model of your customer’s business, showing how they make financial and purchase decisions
-- Conjoint or other analysis of customer views, or
-- Best of all, a rigorous analysis of customer behavior and testing of purchase/price behavior through regression or similar techniques.

The sooner you understand which categories of spend must continue, and which categories will be cut, the sooner you can adjust your price structure. We have found this analysis produces the best programs for preserving revenues. Often, a price increase on less price sensitive offer elements will offset reduced demand for former flagship products.

In simple terms: assuming your “normal” revenue mix is 70% new sales, 30% follow on, and the recession causes new sales to fall by 20%, we find that often you can make up much of that fall by raising follow-on prices (by as much as 50% in some cases!) Naturally, to avoid customer rebellion, finesse, messaging and superior bundling techniques are required to pull that off.

Strategy 2: Improve the value message.

This strategy is linked to the first strategy; in a nutshell it says that customers do not always realize the value of what you offer. While many sales forces say they sell value, in fact most do not. This is because in good times, in many industries, a sales rep does not do best by selling value. Rather the rep does better by raising awareness and inserting themselves into a buying process. In a downturn, the value communication role becomes more important.

The tool required for this role is to equip and train the sales force with specific messages and evidence of your product’s or service’s value. For instance, surprisingly few companies engage third party evaluators to compare their product with competitors. Credible third party evaluators are plentiful: often university professors will evaluate your product for little more than the cost of samples. Evaluation organizations such as J. D. Powers are very important elements of a value message when customers are parting with their money with increasing care.

Strategy 3: Make a third party pay, e.g., the IRS.

Many companies believe that once the product or service has been delivered, the pricing process is over. Wrong. We find that many buyers are able to obtain reimbursement of their costs, and that a majority of buyers can be educated on the tax consequences of their purchase. You as the seller impact both taxes and reimbursements, and you neglect an important element of net realized price if you ignore these impacts.

The means to effecting this is to understand your customer’s tax or reimbursement opportunities. For instance: if you sell to lawyers who can obtain client reimbursement of electronic research but not books, sell your electronic and print research in bundles and on the invoice allocate most of the price to the electronic. For instance: if you sell bundles of telephone and video services, do not allocate them equally on the invoice. Allocate more of the bundle price to the potentially tax deductable telephone line, and educate customers on why you have done so. A final example: if you are a not-for-profit performing venue selling 10 performance season tickets for $300, and individual performances for $50, then grant season ticket holders who donate back tickets for a performance they cannot attend a tax credit of $50, not $30.

Strategy 4: Better identify customer price sensitivities.

In some cases, a high priority should be to better understand a particular customer’s price sensitivity and the possibility of cancellations and defections. This will identify when you may need to offer a greater discount to retain the business, or when a discount is unnecessary. It takes segmentation and moves it to a more granular level.

The tool is a “risk scorecard” which rates the likelihood of customer cancellation due to price. It takes the collective wisdom of your best sales managers, and some quantitative testing, and distills the 4-6 key measures which precede a cancellation. Such measures might be usage, your price relative to competitors, or the process by which your customer makes buy/cancel decisions. Use of such a card is simple: sales management answers the 4-6 questions, and you get a score which says “Discount X%, Y% or None at all.”

We recommend a simple execution of this tool. The reason for this is that humans know more about key customer price drivers than do your systems. Frequently, the most important inputs to such a tool are known first by sales representatives or brand managers. For instance, a key factor could be a change in how purchases are approved, such as the switch between single decision-maker and committee, or a credit crunch in a particular geography or end user industry.

The benefits of this tool can be enormous. We repeatedly find that less than two-thirds of cancellations are price driven, so should not be addressed through price. Indeed, lowering price can sometimes destroy trust and set in motion further purchase reviews.

Footnotes:

1 For instance, the current McKinsey & Company January 2009 Quarterly We suppose the pundits include us, as we wrote Chapter 6. “Boom and Bust” in Winning the Profit Game. Smarter Pricing, Smarter Branding (McGraw-Hill, 2004).

2 The idea is that context sets price. While the customer may buy the same thing as always, the value and ability to price are different. For instance, while the orchestra may be the same, the price of a single performance is not the same as a series. So, if the season pass holder turns back in a single performance, it’s worth $50, not $30 ($300 divided by 10 performances.) This is hard-nosed value assessment.

If you would like to read more of this paper, please contact me at karenlevine@abbeyroadassociates.com.

Copyright Abbey Road Associates 2009

Dear Bloggitor...

2009-09-30T20:43:00.004-04:00

From Edwin Scholte on September 23rd, 2009:

Dear Karen,

Since this did not fit the response box on your blog, and also because I do not want to spam your blog, I am sending you this response by mail.

Thanks for sharing your point of view and experiences about developments in the media industry, very interesting. Allow me to add to the mind-sharing process with a short point of view about how the traditional media industry is faced with a challenging, but exciting quantum leap change in customer demand, while the subsequent required quantum leap change in business model, in many cases, appears to lag behind.

One of the most significant developments in my opinion is the growing divorce of distribution from content creation in the value creation process. This evolution became most visible with the entrance of iTunes into the music industry. The enforced role change of traditional industry players that used to fulfill a dominant role in the entire supply chain of artist intellectual property creation and distribution to end-users, resulted in a halo-effect on related industries in which value creation is (or: used to be) dependant on the connection of intellectual property creation and supply chain control.

Another, but similar, example is the upcoming rise and increased acceptance of e-books in general, and the delivery mechanism thru Amazon’s Kindle in particular. While e-books are not a new phenomenon, the increased acceptance makes this a transformational development that forces traditional book publishers to structurally re-think business models.

It is obviously easy to perform post-mortem analyses that rationalize why things happened the way they happened, however the key forward looking question remains how these developments are truly going to change the game of content creation and distribution in the future.

Most new entrants choose a business model that focuses on either content creation, or distribution. Besides differences in required resources and capabilities, this also makes sense from an investment perspective since both operating model and risk profile of these two structures are fundamentally different from each other. The former business model is mostly being structured around relatively stabile intellectual property driven revenue streams, such as licensing. The latter business model is mostly being structured around relatively volatile traffic driven revenue streams, such as advertising.

On the other hand, most existing players continue to exploit a business model that is a hybrid of structures. Rather than strengthening competitive advantage thru innovation within the core, many mature players in the media industry decided to expand into adjacent sources of non-competitive advantage driven value. Publishing businesses that entered the seminar and conference business form one example, while adjacent advertising models form another example of a commonly exploited incremental revenue generating tactic. As could have been anticipated ahead, in many cases these adjacent value creation tactics turned out to be non-sustainable under pressure (as seen in current economic downturn).

This seems counterintuitive because theoretically established players should be better positioned to win when the core game is changing. The hurdle however is that it would take a ‘strengthening by elimination’ type of strategy to unleash this potential, and such a strategy is usually perceived as a high risk strategy.

When ranking the utility of a ‘doing nothing’ scenario against the utility of making the wrong transformational decision, the typical course of action is a risk-averse staging strategy. This strategy, which parallels the ‘dollar cost averaging’ strategy as known from the investment industry, may be perceived as less risk-full but in fact lacks efficiency and fluidity to take advantage of rapid changes in a value accretive way. Consequently, the only option to end at the winning side of the table is to go all-in with a strong commitment to succeed. Said differently, there is no such thing as being a little bit pregnant.

At the end of the day the ultimate question however remains if existing mature players will be able to pro-actively enter the new game with a credible confidence to win, rather than a re-active participation to protect value.

Behavioral finance learns that the fear of losing typically outweighs the desire to gain, but time will tell.

Best, and look forward to read more of your point of views. Edwin.

The Mystical Woman with the Camera

2009-08-24T21:24:00.016-04:00

As I was walking home from a disastrous date on the opposite side of Manhattan, comforting myself with a podcast of the Rachel Maddow Show, a woman came rushing up to me frantically asking, "Where is the cross town bus? On what street is the cross town bus???" Well, I recognized her from the Harvard Club, but she didn't know me, and I didn't let on. "I don't live on the East side," I said. "I'm sorry" and pulled out my iPhone in a futile attempt to figure out the bus system.

"I'm in a rush," she said. "I have to go see a celebrity." "Oh, who is it?" I asked, not really that interested. "Darryl Hannah," she joyfully replied. "She's at Barnes & Noble."

"Hanna Montana?" I said. "Oh, Darryl Hannah. Yes, my nephew has a photo with her... or is that Bo Derek?"

"Well, how are you getting to the west side?" she asked anxiously. "I plan to walk," I said. "In the dark?" she exclaimed. "No!"

Just then, another ear-budded woman came into my companion's orbit, and she repeated her question, "Where is the cross town bus? Is it on this street or 67th?" The woman couldn't answer her interrogative and so my new companion dismissed her in a way that quite annoyed and antagonized the woman, who exclaimed that she should get a map!

But this did not deter her. "Come with me," she said, as she accosted other people on the street. Finally someone from a crowd yelled after us, "It's on 67th Street."

"Come with me," she repeated, and we hurried to 67th Street. Just as we got there and were trying to ascertain whether there were in fact bus stops on this thin, dark street, I glimpsed a bus, a block away, making its way up the narrow thoroughfare.

With my park-crossing sneakers on, I made good time to 67th and 5th, where I reached the mythical bus-stop. And just as she caught up to me, the bus pulled up and opened its doors. She wasted no time, stepping in front of the patiently waiting bus-riders, and got onto the bus.

At Columbus Avenue, she jumped off the bus and started heading north. "But the entrance is right here," I called after her. "No," she said. "She'll be HERE."

As we turned the corner to the less than savory street, she spotted a town car. Not a very nice one, but nonetheless a black sedan with an ethnically head-dressed driver. "This is it," she said. "All these people are autograph hounds." I looked around at the sparse collection of somewhat seedy individuals.

Just then, a garage door opened that I didn't even know existed, and an entourage of people with incredibly high heels emerged - including Darryl Hannah. The autograph hounds descended, and my new companion nicely asked, "may I take a picture?"

"Of course," said Darryl Hannah, who seemed sincerely sweet despite her stiletto heels. And my friend took three lovely, lovely photos.

With that, my partner in adventure headed south where, she said, the Jonas Brothers were likely to be found. And I walked home in awe of this mystical woman, who seemed to know exactly where to be and when.

More Mortgage Meltdown: Noteworthy Nuggets from a Talk by Whitney Tilson

2009-07-28T14:22:00.020-04:00

I've just attended a very interesting lunchtime talk at the New York Society for Security Analysts (NYSSA) and found the speaker not only smart, knowledgeable, informative and interesting but also a source for a number of pithy statements worth sharing. Below are some of my key takeaways and notations:

- The average annual income is currently in the low $40Ks, up from the low $30Ks in the 1990s (I had thought it was $55,000 back in 2005).

- At the peak of the housing bubble, a consumer could borrow 9 times his or her income, so long as the money was going to buy a house (or home), of course. (I included "home" because condos and coops were the first to default.)

- At the peak of the housing bubble, the requirement to demonstrate your income went away. "Literally, if you had a pulse, you could get a mortgage of several hundred thousand dollars."

- Prior to the bubble, 2% a year was the worst increase in home values. The change is now SIGNIFICANTLY negative.

- Mortgage resets are what started the surge of defaults. Following the first few years of "teaser" interest rates, mortgage payments reset to much higher rates. If a home owner couldn't refinance anymore, he or she would default. As home values fell, consumers had trouble refinancing.

- An audience-member from Britain reported that 40% of Americans "in this non-socialist country" do not pay taxes - as part of a question to Whitney during Q&A.

- "Wells Fargo is the Walmart of Banking..."

- "If Wells Fargo is the Walmart of Banking, Citibank is the K-Mart of Banking."

- Wells Fargo securities are likely to double in 4-5 years. (Don't quote me, i.e., Karen, on this.)

- The Borders Group hit 35 cents at its low and reached $3.53 today - a ten-fold increase. (What does that say about the outlook of traditional booksellers and/or Borders' preparation for the digital world - there, I got my allusion to new media in.)

- Mortgages were the largest debt market at the peak of the bubble. Everyone (bankers) wanted in.

- The housing bubble was much bigger than the Internet bubble.

- High end investment bankers, e.g., Merrill Lynch - and particularly CEOs and those in Fixed Income (i.e., securitized loans) were making multi-multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses. 2,000 people were sharing an enormous bonus pool. The average was $5MM, and I-Bank CEOs were earning $35MM a year. There was no way they were going to point out the dangers (and lack of sustainability) of what was going on: "They're gonna ride this horse until it keels over!" (That was one of my FAVORITE quotes from the talk.)

- California accounts for 10% of homes, 33% of foreclosures and 43% of home value. (43%!!! Seriously? Did I hear him correctly? That's out of control.)

- GDP is made up of Consumer Spending, Corporate (Business) Spending and Government Spending. (Wow, I remember those macro-economic equations - good old friends). The ratio is 70:10:20. That is the logic behind the stimulus spending, to make up in some way for the lack of consumer and corporate spending. Saving rates are way up. (As Jeff Sachs said when he spoke at the Harvard Club, we want people to spend - need it now - but we want people to save - personal debt, i.e., over-spending or deficit spending, is what fueled the fire.)

- Sales of new homes were up last quarter - that's because home builders were cutting prices on new homes to get rid of inventory: "Home builders dumping homes are not a green shoot in my opinion." (I like the "green shoot" terminology."

- "Jim Cramer [who says we have hit bottom] is right, but about a year too early." We are halfway through total losses. (Oy Vey.)

And so it goes. Excellent talk.

With All Due Respect...

2009-07-24T23:46:00.000-04:00

With all due respect and in my humble opinion, this is something I would advise against including in a dating profile:

"...I love making out, have a passion for running, cooking, baking & movies."

It seems to me that a person should "love" making out with a particular person, not as a independent concept - with all due respect.

Somehow, however this works:

"...I like sex, pizza with real olives, dogs, enough money for a good coffee, accordions, handmade things, good art, bad art that is better than good art, books..."

Women are desperate for men with a sense of humor - that and a good golden parachute.

I must say, I really like turn of phrase at the end of this self-description:

"I am bright, creative, grounded and realistically idealistic."

On the other hand, when a 55 year old man (seeking a woman 35-50) uses the pseudoynm "YoungAtHeart," it doesn't make him seem youthful - in my humble opinion.

It seems that there are some men who feel that there are some women who have misled them through their online dating profiles:

"So I've been on a few dates with women that say they are petite... Being 5'2" or under doesn't constitute petite. Then there are the athletic/lean/fit types. Again...ladies....that means present not 10 yrs ago. And speaking of 10 yrs ago....even if you look younger than you appear... please use today's age not the one represented in your old picture. Now please understand, I'm not perfect nor do I represent perfection...however... what you see is what you get....visually and on paper."

Hmmmm... I wonder what kind of success he's having with that siren's song?

Are these sites spreading love or fueling the jadedness of the local NYC population? Have these online personas become their own bad will ambassadors?

In my case, I seem to benefit from this mass misrepresentation as the men I meet in person profess stunned amazement that I resemble my photos and physical description. One wonders but must be optimistic in the face of such sad, sad tales. On the other side, there are the increasing number of happy couples who are rumored to have met online. Are they the exception or the possibiity?

Spot the Placement, Place the Spot

2009-07-20T13:35:00.001-04:00

As promised in a previous blog posting, I have created a repository for potential product placement spottings:

(1) My Name Is Earl - a few weeks ago -- QVC open heart necklace

(2) The Wrestler - no obvious product placement; possibly Tylenol or RAM trucks

(3) Sierra Mist on Colbert, Jan 8, 2009 (as you may know, he makes his placements "humorously" obvious)

(4) Elle Magazine on Ugly Betty. This is an ongoing plot element. Is it possible that HFM is paying for this? - Jan 8, 2009

(5) in Zohan: Sony Erickson phone, possibly Moishe's moving (local brand?), possibly Sony, itself. - Jan 6, 2009

(6) In "Taken:" Audi automobiles. Somewhat subtle in that the cars were moving so fast that the grill was a little fuzzy, but still obvious to those of us sensitive to this kind of thing. Confirmed in the credits. Positioning consistent with Super Bowl ad, and cars looked good in silver. Audi and Hyundai are two brands taking advantage of the reduced clutter in automotive TV advertising. It will be interesting to see how it plays out., February 27, 2009

(7) Stephen Colbert, March 11, 2009 - Sierra Mist

(8) Frito Lay on The Daily Show - March 2009 - Jon Stewart suggests sponsored medals of honor. Frito Lay is owned by Pepsi; there seems to be a bundled purchase incorporating brand mentions on both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert shows. I remember when sales executives could not fathom the idea of value added packages a la the magazine world. It was 2003.

(9) Stephen Colbert, first week in April -- mention of Sierra Mist during interview with head NAA (Newspaper Association of America) - suggested that newspapers incorporate product placement, e.g., "Obama, while enjoying a refreshing Siera Mist..." (Note that, like Doritos, Sierra Mist is owned by Pepsi. Doritos officially sponsored the "Hail to the Cheese Stephen Colbert's Nacho Cheese Doritos 2008 Presidential Campaign Coverage.)

(10) "United States of Tara," April 5, 2009 -- Gene Stuart (Nathan Corddry) asks Kate (Brie Larson) for a Sierra Mist - is it coincidental that Sierra Mist is showing up on Colbert and Tara -- do they have a brand placement strategy, or is it coincidental? Or does Sierra Mist suggest a particular type of personality for Gene -- different than a Coke kind of guy?

(11) "ER," April 2009: In exchange for an undisclosed amount of money from the Gates Foundation, ER's producers agreed to a plot line centering on a kidney transplant for one of the leading characters. Promoting organ donation is one of the Gates Foundation's causes.

(12) Viacom, April 2009 -- The Gates Foundation struck a deal called "Get Schooled" with Viacom (MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET, etc.) in which the networks will incorporate messaging that promotes education and healthy living.

(13) Jon Stewart, April 15, 2009 -- uses Tostitos and Buick as hypothetical brand sponsorship. (The Tostitos brand is owned by Frito Lay, which is owned by Pepsi; Colbert's Pepsi chip of choice is Doritos.)

(14) Procter & Gamble - in-school sexual education programs and materials: Old Spice, Always, Secret brands.

(15) Stephen Colbert - Pepsi (I think this mystery has been unlocked long ago.)

(16) Hasbro has upcoming films based on its Transformers and G.I. Joe brands set for release this summer, and Monopoly, Clue and even Stretch Armstrong films are in development. In addition, Hasbro will pay Discovery $300 million for a 50% stake in a new network which will replace the existing Discovery Kids (60MM homes), making Hasbro the first kids' marketer to create a branded cable network. (Ad Age)

(17) KFC Grilled Chicken - "Gary Unmarried" - May 6, 2009 -- not even a little bit subtle. 2 bags, one bucket - huge branding/logos. 60 seconds of dialog about the chicken and the "herbs and spices" including, "doesn't taste like KFC." "It's the new Grilled KFC." The KFC thread follows us throughout the episode including a follow up discussion about the new grilled chicken between Gary and his brother on the floor of a Las Vegas casino.

(18) Stephen Colbert -- Sierra Mist, Sierra Mist, Sierra Mist - consumed 5+ cans over the course of the hour and even offered it to his guest - an expert on healthful eating... That said, Colbert does not sell out as he makes fun of the beverage industry's objection to the currently proposed soda tax.

(19) The Chinese Ugly Betty is evidently out of control with Unilever brand placement of its Dove products. Because the show is set in an ad agency rather than a fashion magazine, there are extensive opportunities for brand integration - much along the lines of our "Mad Men."

(20) Starbucks sponsorship of MSNBC "The Morning Joe" for $10MM (June 5, 2009)

(21) G-Force film in Gary Unmarried episode July 2009 - Gary given the nickname "G-Force" followed within minutes by an ad for the film in the next pod of commercials.

(22) Desperate Housewives - Sprint (Edie's shopping bag) and Lexus (nearly an infomercial by Bree)

(23) During season 6 (Jan. 16 May 23, 2007), American Idol featured 4,349 product placement occurrences. As of March 31, 2008, the number of placements featured during season 7 was surgingAmerican Idol had already racked up 3,291 occurrence (Product Placement News)

(24) Product integration/media buy for final episode - $3MM for 2 minute integration and 30 second spot (iMedia podcast - but I'm blanking on the brand at the moment)

(25) When an athlete, e.g., Tiger Woods in U.S. Open, wears a sportswear brand, the manufacturer enjoys a 10% bump in sales. (July 20, 2009)

Who's Tweeting Now?

2009-07-07T10:29:00.001-04:00

This is a Twitter-like blog post about who's doing interesting things with Twitter:

- A program called TweetDeck purports to integrate social net platforms. (Jed Dineen, April 16th, 2009)

- Love this video created for Sprint Now network (4G) http://tinyurl.com/db26ho - cool stats, visuals - "233,267 people just twittered. 26% of you have no idea what that means." (April 7th, 2009)

- Twitter founder interviewed by Stephen Colbert: http://tinyurl.com/cmbqoz (April 3rd, 2009)

- Caldwell and Banker paintings have facebook pages, blogs and twitter feeds (April 1st, 2009)

- Met someone who is creating a twitter-based dating service (April 1st, 2009)

- 100 Twitter tools: http://tinyurl.com/bbkxtb (via @addthis) (March 11th, 2009)

- Evidently Twitter traffic jam was due to Skittles making its home page its Twitter site (March 3rd, 2009, Facebook salesperson)

- I'm told that "tweeting" is the term used for posting a Twitter entry, while "twittering" is the term for reading posts - Cathy Smith, May 2009

- Ian Williams (Twitter co-founder) talking about Twitter's origins and evolution, which has been driven by the way users have adopted and adapted the technology - TED conference, February 2009

- Twitter Value application puts a value on on a Twitter-er based on the quality of the person's network of followers - very interesting BusinessWeek cover story: What Are Friend's Worth. (I've listened to the podcast with journalist Stephen Baker and editor-in-chief John Byrne.) Interesting observation: Yahoo! found that people who IM with each other (via Yahoo) are four times as likely to click through on the same ad as someone outside this circle.

- Dennis Leary asks us to use our "Tweety Pages" (as well as our 'Facey Spaces" and "Bliggidy Blogs") to tell our "book wormy anti- boob-tubey" friends about Hulu so they can watch free TV on the "one screen you drag around with you everywhere." Well written, well executed, thought provoking campaign with a variety of star-driven executions.

- On May 30th, I tweeted the following: "Recently discovered & love this website/podcast series/service: http://www.yogadownload.com/ 20 mins of yoga when I don't have 2 hrs for gym." Almost immediately, the following Twitterers started following my tweets: "Everything Yoga" and "Snack Sound." I, in turn, checked out what they had been tweeting, found it of interest, and started following them. Pinpoint targeting based on behavior and proclaimed interest. Clearly, these other Tweeters have filters in place that notify them when someone uses a relevant key word. And that's how it works.

- 10% of Twitter users create 90% of Twitter activity (Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2009 )

- Onion Web Editor and Huffington Post Blogger Baratunde Thurston created a satirical Twitter Feed called @The Swine Flu and executed an integrated campaign that included FaceBook, which he said is more viral. I have embedded the video "Everything I Needed To Know About Social Media, I Learned from Being @The_Swine_Flu" from InternetWeek; however, I should warn you that it has explicit language:

- Twitter.com had 17.6MM unique visitors in May 2009, up from 600,000 in 2008. This compares to 70.3MM unique visitors for Facebook and for MySpace (17.28MM and 17.25MM respectively). (ComScore, June 15, 2009)

- Putting Twitter into Banner Ads: "Volkswagen banners include a Twitter evaluator that will match users to a VW model based on the content of their Tweets. After you enter your Twitter name, the banner trolls through your recent updates, even floating recent keywords in the banner before arriving at a car." Crispin Porter campaign - summarized by Brian Morrissey, Ad Age, June 18, 2009

- Determined to change the negative perceptions about the plastics industry created by its critics and opponents, the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. is getting ready to launch its social media-based Internet campaign aimed at the 50 million people in the millennial generation. The major thrust of the multifaceted educational and outreach campaign will be Internet-based and social media venues like YouTube, flickr, myspace.com, reddit, dig, friendfeed, twitter and blogs to provide information and create conversations among 18-28 year olds. (June 22, 2009 - PlasticNews.com, July 7, 2009 - Ad Age 3 Minute Podcast)

- A Twitter conversation between Coke and Pepsi... (more later - heard about it from a colleague at Razorfish)

This post was originated April 16th, 2009 and is being continuously updated.

The First Nerd President of the Modern Era

2009-06-29T19:43:00.022-04:00

As those of you who follow my blog regularly - and I know there are at least five of you... well, at least two... gee, it could be as many as eight-five... but I digress.

Those of you who follow my blog know that one of my favorite means of consuming information and news is the podcast - a medium I enjoy as I travel around the city via subway, bus, and foot - saving me from doing no fewer than two things at a time.

I partake of all kinds of podcasts: AdAge 3 minute casts, Cynthia Turner In Your Ear Cynopses, NYT Front Page, etc. It's like the Cliff Notes of news, except that I don't have to know how to read.

Well, one of the podcasts on my top-ten lineup is "Green 960 - Rachel Maddow," and this afternoon, I had the good fortune of having a business meeting on the east side of Central Park, which compelled me to walk home through the Park. And, hence, I had the opportunity to hear Maddow's rebroadcast of John Hodgman's talk at the Radio and TV Correspondent's Dinner last week.

Barack Obama, with a photo of himself in front of a Superman statue, and a deep knowledge of Star Trek salutes and facts, seems to be the first nerd president. A nerd president being to a jock president what a blogger is to a radio talk show host, gravitating toward "complexity and bookish rumination" rather than "gut instinct, intense confidence and surety." But yet, he plays sports. And not just bowling, but basketball - making Mr. Hodgman's assessment of the president somewhat more complicated. After spending four days in deeply red country as a supremely ill-qualified defender of liberal politics, this was a refreshing return to the familiar territory of satirical blue humor - not to mention a quite comfortable temperature in the 80s rather than the high 90s.

But let's get back to safer territory - for example, Hodgman's direct allusion to social media. Within his overview of the nerd culture, he notes that it has come to pass that "the state of Iran is somehow deeply entwined with the sleep schedule of the programmers of Twitter and Youtube." Phew.

And with that, I hereby share with you Hodgman's quite smart, quite witty, dare I say thought provoking talk at the TV and Radio Correspondent's Dinner. Live long, live hands-free, and prosper:

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Making the Big Time at OMMA Social

2009-06-24T09:47:00.027-04:00

It seems that one of my early morning questions at the OMMA Social conference yesterday prompted advice that merited a mention by MediaPost. As a business and marketing strategy consultant, I work with clients that range in size from $1MM in revenue to multi-billions. From "Not for Tourists," Campfire and ning to Time Inc., Pillsbury and Scripps Networks. And I work with organizations that are completely immersed in the newest, most bleeding edge innovations to those who are thinking about developing their first digital strategy or figuring out how to translate their print assets to an online environment.

When I attend conferences such as those sponsored by OMMA, CEA and iBreakfast, I am in a world where Twitter, Facebook, iPhone, hash marks, retweeting, and hyper-localization are part of every day discussion. Then I meet with a client in the financial services industry who reminds me that employees of large financial institutions can not access any of these tools while at work due to compliance regulations and Blackberry servers. And I work with another client who feels strongly that the people using these tools and websites are not her core Baby Boomer consumers.

So, how do you bridge that gap? To what extent should we recommend that marketers and publishers who are new to the Internet, let alone social media, focus on these high-impact but low-penetration tools. Twitter has 18MM monthly uniques - with 10% of users creating 90% of content, and there are 17-18MM iPhones worldwide (each is about 6% of the U.S. population) with relatively low median ages - though not as low as you might think.

Well, I've had success with some of my own approaches, but I was interested to ask panelists at the OMMA Social conference this question. And my early morning question to the participants of the panel "Creating an Authentic Brand Dialogue Using Social Media" warranted coverage by MediaPost's Joe Mandese (which I discovered via my daily Google Alert):

"How To Convince Clients To Embrace Social Media: Try Search.

That was the advice Ro Choy, Chief Revenue Officer, RockYou , gave Karen Levine of Triple Play Consulting, when she asked the OMMA authentic panel how she could convince some traditional clients to embrace social media.

Another way to drive that is to do a search for Twitter on your product, Choy said, noting that those clients would see plenty of conversations about their brand taking place on Twitter, and then they could decide for themselves whether they need to be proactive about it or not.

Choy said he recently conducted exercises like that for the Snickers brand, and for the term cat food, and found plenty of discussions taking place that were ripe for social media marketing and sponsorships."

Well, after I heard this very powerful response, I proceeded to Twitter and ran a search on "Harvard Club," which I then forwarded to the head of the Program Committee of the club. Why? Because I wanted him to know that Twitter is not only relevant to Iranian politics but to the members (especially the young members) of the club.

This evening I will have more than 100 members coming to hear Shelly Palmer speak about social media. Some of those members needed to call the Program office to learn how to log onto the new website to make a reservation. Others were born squarely into the digital generation. In fact, this particular program is prompting members to bring their 20-something children to the event, which will lower the median age significantly. I am very curious to see how Shelly addresses this broad set of skills, understanding and objectives, but have little doubt that he will do so successfully.

Can You Summate in 140? Top OMMA Social Takeaways

2009-06-23T20:42:00.047-04:00

I've just emerged - well 3 hours ago - from 9 hours of live immersion in social media at OMMA Social - the Online Media, Marketing and Advertising social media conference. Ah, the bliss and the exhaustion. I feel compelled to share my joy with those of you I met today - physically and virtually - and others in the blogosphere. So, I have set myself to creating a list of key takeaways. It will not be easy, I know. But nothing worth doing ever is - or so they say.

I am going to post this blog as a work in progress. And I invite those who were there with me in the Crowne Plaza ballroom - or have watched the video stream - to chime in. You can also relive the live conversation at #OMMASocial on Twitter.

WHAT'S NEXT:

1) The big next thing is hyper-local targeting - particularly via mobile.

SOCIAL MEDIA, IN GENERAL:

2) You have to "have your brand out there" because conversations are going to happen, and if you're not a part of them, "you're going to get left out."

3) Authenticity is crucial. If you don't have it, they will know it.

4) Need to define your personality as a brand in the social media ecosystem - especially important for Twitter.

5) Executive (C-Level) buy-in is essential - need resources to have an effective social media presence.

6) Enroll your entire organization in your social media initiative - strength in numbers.

TWITTER

7) Run a search of your brand or category on Twitter to demonstrate to management that your brand is already part of the conversation.

8) Use Twitter to track comments about your brand and then reach out directly and personally to those who have tweeted, particularly those with problems and complaints.

9) Twitter is a better tool for brands than is Facebook - you can't search "Updates" on Facebook.

FACEBOOK

10) Use Facebook Connect to get information in not out.

Twitter is a better tool for brands than is Facebook:

You can't search personal updates on Facebook.

Twitter more dynamic - what's happening NOW, and it's less of a build it, and they will come. Once consumers have signed up to be your friend or fan, it is hard to keep them engaged.

While Twitter has 18MM unique users to Facebook's 70MM, it is growing fast. While 10% of Twitter users create 90% of Twitter content, they are influential and passionate.

Facebook users are coming to Facebook to socialize...

"You have to have your brand out there because conversations are going to happen, and if you're not a part of them, you're going to get left out."

In so doing, know that you have to be comfortable being part of the tone of the conversation, "snarkiness rules the day, so you have to be comfortable being part of a snark." (Andy Mitchell, CNN)

This reminds me of an recent cover story interview by BusinessWeek - "The Risk Takers: Hunting for Growth." The author being interviewed compared navigating the economic crisis to driving on ice. The worst thing you can do is slam on your brakes. You have to be willing to give up some control and go with the flow, as it were - hmmm... perhaps I should not attempt to be articulate after 11pm. In any case, I wrote about a related topic in a previous blog about the value of advertising during an economic downturn - based on work I did in 2001.

Authenticity is crucial

Walmart's claim to be green was immediately questioned by the "Mom" blogging community. Just didn't resonate.

Now, this may not be new to you. In fact, Robert Scobel and Shel Israel spoke about this in their 2006 book "Naked Conversations." However, it is crucial.

A powerful way to utilize Twitter is to track your brand and then reach out directly and personally to those who comment, particularly those with problems and complaints.

Craig Engler (Sci Fi Channel - soon to be ScyFy) told a story of Craig Newmark contacting him directly when he posted a tweet about a craigslist problem.

Comcast is the poster child for this practice with their Comcast Cares program - a far cry from the YouTube video of the serviceman sleeping on a customer's sofa. Later in the day, we got to hear from Frank Eliason, Director of Digital Care at Comcast, directly.

It kind of makes you feel that every brand should do this - as a consumer.

Run a search of your brand or category on Twitter to demonstrate that your brand is already part of the conversation.

As Steve Wax of Campfire said on a different occasion - understand what is being said about your brand and then insert yourself into the conversation.

All that said, we need to always keep in mind the self selectivity of Twitter. These are opinion leaders and influencers, yes. But they are also a younger, tech savvy slice of the population, and 10% of those who tweet create 90% of content. For example, when I search for "Harvard Club," I find tweets from recent grads complaining about the dress code. Definitely good insight for those planning for the future of the club, but a biased sample.

Use Facebook Connect to get information in not out.

One of the most powerful uses of social media is research. The listening post application. This reminds me of the days when, as a brand manager, I would periodically listen in on calls to consumer service. You don't want to know the kinds of usage questions that consumers asked about Vaseline skin care products!

...more later

How Do I Monetize Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.

2009-06-12T09:20:00.006-04:00

A sneak peak at what's to come...

I Want My Allman B - And I'm Willing To Pay!

2009-06-09T12:43:00.047-04:00

How unreasonable is the idea of getting paid for your digital content or services? Let's see who's doing it:

Moogis: Video streaming of Allman Brothers concerts - $125 annual subscription, $15 for individual concerts. Moogis offers subscribers streaming video access to entire live concerts, both in real time and on-demand from its archives. Moogis.com provides a gathering place for subscribers, a social website where fans can create their own profiles, join discussion groups, hang out with like-minded folks and "share the communal experience that music inspires." Quote from one subscriber: "I was able to get an early bird discount of $100 when it first came out. It was the best $100 I've spent." Clearly, people will pay for value and for things about which they are passionate. (June 2009)

Flat World Knowledge: Offers free online college text books and charges for premium options and services. Students can review the books for free or pay as little as $20 to print out a tome or $30 to download an iPod-ready audio file. Other paid services include open source student-generated study aids fueled by creative-commons licensing. Teachers can also customize text books for a fee. As of October, the company had signed contracts with 29 authors to write some 20 books. It recently raised $8MM in venture capital funding. Keep your eye on this. It's extremely exciting and disruptive. (June 2009)

ESPN Magazine: Put everything behind a paid wall as explained here - "ESPNTheMag.com and ESPN Insider Merge: ESPNTheMag.com has hooked up with the folks at Insider to create a sports content supergroup, where Insider's traditional next-level analysis is paired with ESPN The Magazine's unique storytelling and insight. As of Friday June 5, ESPNTheMag.com ceased to exist as we know it, but the site's signature pieces and voice continue to live on the Insider page." Existing Magazine subscribers can upgrade to ESPN Insider at no extra charge. Non-Magazine subscribers are invited to, "See what you're missing at ESPN Insider." (June 2009)

Guide to Trekking Locations in the U.S. (Gorp?): $50 per year - I am told that a printed guide book turned out to be more helpful (e.g., finding hiking trails that are dog-friendly). Only benefit to online subscription is being able to print out a few pages rather than carrying or photocopying book. Also, info about other regions of the country, but that was not relevant because the hiker I spoke to only hikes locally. Net, net, it wasn't worth it for her. It's all about execution. (June 2009)

20 Minute Yoga Download Podcasts: Voluntary micro-payments via paypal go to charity (May 2009)

Weight Watchers: Weight Watchers Online is a customized online weight loss plan that you follow step-by-stop completely online. You manage your results at your own pace, on your own time. It (a) includes a set of interactive tools to help its members stay on track, (b) manages weight loss daily and (c) provides customized sites for men & women to meet individual needs. There is a sign up fee of $29.95 and a monthly fee of $16.95. (June 2009)

Teri's List and Grocery Game: Teri’s list provides “rock bottom” prices on a range of grocery products each week and matches them with the manufacturer coupons to help the user get the best savings at the user’s local supermarket. The Grocery Game utilizes databases that track manufacturers’ coupons along with weekly sales and specials, both advertised and unadvertised. It then presents this analysis in a quick reference format on the Internet each week. Members log in to access and print the info and offers. Here's an explanatory video. (June 2009)

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

2009-06-01T21:02:00.047-04:00

My high school Latin teacher, Mr. Fiorella, used to say that a day in which you don't learn something new is a day wasted. Thanks to the my continued addiction to audio podcasts, I am continuously learning. These are a few of my favorite pods:

INDISPENSABLE

Advertising Age's Daily "Three Minute Ad Age" and other audio reports
- I fall in love with these a little more each day.
- Recommend "Inside the Mommy Blogger Business," which includes a discussion of the Walmart Eleven Moms blogging hub.

Cynopsis Digital:
Alas, this was discontinued making it "Can't Have."

20 min. Yoga Sessions from YogaDownload.com
LOVE it. Can actually find 20 minutes for a yoga session - as opposed to the 2 hours required to take a 90 minute class at the gym.

New York Times Front Page:
GREAT way to stay on top of top news stories in the five minutes it takes to go from the doors of my elevator to the doors of the 1-2-3 subway line.

IMPORTANT

MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer - New Media News - Audio:
Be sure to adjust your volume level for this enthusiastic daily report

CABLE TV

Cynopsis In Your Ear:
Crucial daily update if you're in the cable TV space. If I had not listened today, I might have canceled my HBO subscription, not realizing the Bill Maher is coming back on air this week.

Satellite Guys.US - Satellite Guys Podcast:
Long and rambling. Essential when I was working on a pricing strategy for a cable TV network. Not highly relevant at the moment.

HELPFUL

Apple Quick Tips:
Very helpful - video - short & sweet

A LITTLE LONG... BUT IF YOU HAVE THE TIME

BusinessWeek -- Cover Stories:
LOVED "What's a Friend Worth?" story that puts a dollar value on an individual's social network (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
"The Risk-Takers" is worth a listen
"Could Google Fix Detroit" is a very interesting interview with "What Would Google Do?" author Jeff Jarvis

Today's Business:
Useful.

On the Media:
Many of these are about journalism rather than the business side of media; however, there was a very interesting piece about Twitter last summer. Bob Garfield is always entertaining and interesting - and super nice in person.

Weekend Business:
Long, in depth.

IF YOU HAVE THE TIME - LIFE

The Economist:
Always good to get a non-American perspective

Green 960 - Rachel Maddow:
Long but interesting

The Kelly Morris Yoga Podcast

President Obama's Weekly Radio Address:
Often captures key addresses

Real Time with Bill Maher:
Loses something without the video

The Tudors:
Good to have when you're waiting to be served at the Time Warner Cable office - video version. iTouch has incredible video quality. Not as visually explicit at the TV version, however. (Tudors is a little like soft porn.)

60 Minutes Podcast - The Full Broadcast:
A little difficult without the video.

Really???

2009-05-17T14:30:00.008-04:00

A few more tidbits from the digital dating ecosystem:

Ok, gentleman, humility and even self-effacement can be nice, but I advise leading with something stronger than this:

"If you're a single woman who wants to have children and isn't looking for the perfect guy, I may be exactly what you need!"

And this - an e-mail received by a colleague of mine - is not a good tactic - though it is a good example of a phenomenon in which people feel comfortable writing something in an e-mail that they would not say in person (or so I hope):

"Greetings - So - how goes it? It's me... the tall, slim gentleman who was blatantly hitting on you yesterday evening as we both exited Cafe Luxembourg. Yes, I thought you looked quite sexy and enticing in your hat and halter top (or was that a kind of semi-halter top?) Anyway, your face, your hat, and your boobs all looked quite appealing (ha ha ha). I hope to God you've got a sense of humor.

At any rate, I certainly enjoyed our brief flutter of conversation, and, speaking for myself at least, I'm sure I would enjoy making acquaintance with your face, your hat, and your...um...halter top sometime soon. Coffee at a coffee shop that appeals to you perhaps? Un verre du vin rouge over at Luxembourg perhaps? Whatever suits your fancy - and I look forward to hearing more about [your job]. Please feel free to e-mail me at the above Columbia University address, or, better yet, feel free to ring me.... Many thanks for being relaxed and, perhaps, receptive et cetera..."

*As a minor point, my colleague was wearing a plain old tank top - no halter involved.

Dear Senator...

2009-05-01T11:11:00.016-04:00

I was recently invited by the Fibrous Dysplasia/McCune Albright Syndrome Association to contact my Congressmen as well as those on the Appropriations Committee to encourage economic support of research related to these physical maladies. I must admit, other than a "Friend of the Court" brief I submitted to the Supreme Court in high school, I do not recall participating in this kind of effort.

My mother took the request very seriously. She spent a day and a decent amount of money on postage writing these letters, printing them out and mailing them. Another recipient of the request agreed to write the notes, e-mailed them to my mother and asked that she submit them. There must be an easier way, I thought. And so there was.

When I scrolled down to the bottom of the request, I found links to the websites of each of the relevant Congressmen. These took me to a form in which I could cut and paste my note. (I later took this opportunity to teach my mother how to cut and paste.) Some of the Senators asked me to categorize or tag my note according to a pre-set or fill-in-the-blank set of topics. All in all, it was somewhat enlightening.

This is what I wrote:

FY10 Appropriations for National Institutes of Health & NIDCR

Dear Senator/Representative __________:

I’m writing to thank you for your service to me and your other constituents and to ask for your support and for your recommendation that the NIH expand research on fibrous dysplasia and McCune-Albright syndrome (FD/MAS) within the NIDCR, as well as, through trans-NIH initiatives.

Fibrous Dysplasia/McCune Albright Syndrome is a rare genetic non-inherited syndrome caused by a chance mutation in GNAS coding for the protein Gs alpha. FD/MAS is characterized by fibrous dysplasia (fragile bones), endocrine and other problems and café-au-laits. It’s progressive and has no cure. Practically speaking for bones there is no treatment outside of surgery that in severe cases oftentimes fails.

My nephew, Dylan Levine, was diagnosed with Fibrous Dysplasia at the age of three. He had been suffering with it for years but was too young to communicate with us about the pain he was in. We realized at that young age that he had a break in his bone that was almost impossible to detect. It was the first of many broken bones as this disease spreads within his bones and makes them fragile - they can break due to physical stress or for no apparent reason at all.

At the age of 16, Dylan has had more than 30 major surgeries. Often, he is confined to a full or partial body cast during the period of excruciatingly painful recovery. The last time he had surgery, the metal rod that was prepared to be inserted into his leg to strengthen it was the wrong length, and within a year, the surgeons had to break his leg again and reinsert a new rod. I am told that Dylan is in extreme pain nearly every minute of every day, something that I cannot imagine, and something, which, he somehow hides from me when I see him.

Despite all of this, Dylan has become an incredible wheelchair athlete and an inspiration to able bodied and disabled children and athletes around the world. Still, it saddens me every day to know that he is in a wheelchair, that the disease may spread or get worse at any moment, that he is in ongoing pain and that at any point, he may need to go in for another major operation and recovery. It grieves me further to know that we know so little about this disease - how it came about and what can be done to control or cure it. Because it is such a specific disease, it is not profitable for the private sector to invest in its research. That's why your support is so important.

I seek you help for all children and adults living with FD/MAS. Equity of care and better treatments will only happen with research, symposiums and greater medical awareness and collaboration – and who knows what opportunities and new possibilities for discovery might come about.

Specifically, I ask that you
(1) Increase sustained funding for NIH beginning with a 10 percent increase for FY10 to ensure that the medical research supported by the $10 billion in stimulus aid is as far-reaching and life-changing as possible,
(2) Recognize and thank the scientists, researchers and scholars of NIDCR for their significant work on FD/MAS,
(3) Request that the NIDCR continue and expand their intramural and extramural research on FD/MAS, and
(4) Request that the NIH continue and expand trans-NIH initiatives on FD/MAS. I appreciate so much what you’ve done for FD/MAS in the past, please continue your support and fight for these children and adults.

Should you feel so motivated, I invite you to submit your own letter - feel free to cut and paste as much as you like from my own - to members of the Appropriations Committee and/or your own Senators and Representatives. (I would be happy to provide you with the links.)

I hope you will help.

The Future of Print and Other Ponderous Questions

2009-04-21T13:20:00.051-04:00

I recently spoke with a senior editor at a top business magazine that is just now co-locating digital and print editorial staff. (Something the NYT found to be of great value several years ago.) He commented that he did not find this integration necessary, digital is for daily news reporting, and magazines are for deeper analysis and insight. He explained that writers should work their way up from digital to print in the same way they graduate from news reporting to feature stories.

Steeped in tradition as that sounds, I think that online writers should learn to be more insightful in their writing, bringing something more to the medium than reporting, which makes their site easily substitutable. The challenge becomes how to offer added value online without "stepping on" the deeper, more sophisticated content of the magazine. After all, we do want a reason for people to continue buying magazines. It's good to have a stronghold in both media; at the very least, this allows for multiple touch points and mutual cross-promotion.

Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of "The Daily Beast" and an industry veteran who has made a stupendous transition from print to digital. Tina spoke with me recently about the importance of preventing magazine content from leaking before the publications hit newsstands - and the difficulty of accomplishing this. This is an important consideration for magazines that invest heavily in newsbreaking stories. I think, for example about Vanity Fair's unveiling of "Deep Throat." This is challenging because of the extraordinary lead time of magazines, one element of which includes the week or so it takes to print and distribute the "books." I recall a controversy a few years ago in which a woman gained access to BusinessWeek stock picks before they became public and made quite a bit of money leveraging this information.

So, how do we protect the unique value of the printed journal - recall Conde Nast's positioning of "Portfolio Magazine," a daring introduction to the Business Magazine space a few years ago - while also providing differentiated online content - differentiated from the magazine and from other online news sources? This remains one of several "ultimate" questions that face us in the 21st century:

"How will we turn the tremendous value of the Internet into tangible value for its (initial) creators?"
"Do we need professional journalists - of the kind that win Pulitzer prizes - and, if so, how will we be able to afford them?"
"What is the meaning of life?"
and
"What is the right media mix for an advertiser?" - hmmm... I digress

Returning to one of my earlier posts, the question is currently facing us regarding the possibility of consumer-supported content. iTunes has succeeded with "micro-payments." However, will people be willing to pay for "disposable" content? They might pay for a song or musical collection (formerly called "CDs") that will bring them continued enjoyment, often for decades. And they will pay (at least up until now...) for books, which offer hours of enjoyment and may be written in, passed along and reread. Will they pay for an article they might prefer skimming and that has an ephemeral value?

Publishers like The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Advertising Age have demonstrated that it is possible. As have information providers like Hoover's, Consumer Reports, eMarketer, Forrester, Lexis Nexis, etc. What differentiates these publishers from The New York Times, which has struggled with this question for years? The answer is, indeed, differentiation - at least part of the answer. The Wall Street Journal and The Economist have differentiated themselves enough that if they put the content behind a walled garden, their readers will feel a loss that can not be substituted for by another publisher.

This is similar to the loss I have felt since Cynthia Turner discontinued her daily digital news podcasts. I have attempted to replace this news source with Shelly Palmer's broadcasts, with NYT podcasts, with Ad Age Three Minute reports, but I continue to be less informed and less satisfied than I was. It seems that Cynthia tried to support this content/investment through an advertising model but was not successful. Personally, I would have paid for it. But are there enough Karen Levines to have supported it. Perhaps not. Perhaps the content is too targeted. Perhaps it was not promoted to enough people that share my need for it.

In any case, the WSJ, the Financial Times (I believe) and The Economist offer something to a loyal reader base that they cannot find elsewhere. Another factor that comes into play here is the relative investment required. I believe that all three of these come for free with a print subscription. Perhaps the subscription line of revenue for these publications is larger than newsstand. I would certainly find this easy to believe for The Economist as all the Economist subscribers I know watch their mailboxes longingly a day or few before the magazine is scheduled to arrive. (One actually bought an issue at newsstand on an occasion when it was available there first.)

So, in those cases, there is no incremental cost to those who subscribe. And those who pay the money to subscribe do so because the relative expenditure is low given the value. For example, many of these readers are affluent or are able to expense or write off this expenditure.

Now the New York Times does not have this luxury. If it puts its massive amount of content behind a wall, readers will find substitutes. And although some elements of the paper cannot be substituted for, e.g., Frank Rich's column, which can often be accessed via unauthorized sources such as blogs - something pointed out to me by Frank Rich. (Of course, this can be addresses via the right technology, a lengthy and expensive investment that accounts for the success of some of the publishers mentioned above.)

And there you have my thoughts for the day on just one aspect of the ponderous question of the ages: "How will print publishers adapt and survive?"

In my Semi-Professional TV Watcher Opinion

2009-04-10T00:16:00.006-04:00

A few thoughts:

"Surviving Suburbia" is hard to survive - just painful

"Better Off Ted" is quite good - quirky, good ensemble

The stalker wanna-be boyfriend in "United States of Tara" is getting a little corny

"The Tudors" is verging on soft porn. It's getting a bit repetitive - marry, celebrate, behead, invite to court, ban from court, invite back to court, sleep with Lady in Waiting, behead someone else - but it's still FANTASTIC - oh, and educational - all that English history and such

I believe that "In the Motherhood" originated as a webisode series on MSN - shame it's already been canceled; though it was good, not great; if the woman from "Curb your Enthusiasm" has a a teenage child, why doesn't she know how to take care of a baby?

I am repeatedly shocked at the sexual allusions on "Two and a Half Men." I don't think this would have existed on primetime 5-10 years ago. Do younger people get the jokes, or is it one of those things where the dirty jokes can go over the head of the highly impressionable? Why is it that we never see Charlie Sheen's bare feet? All that said, GREAT show. Terrific ensemble.

Why has Bill Maher reduced the number of people on his panel? Does he have trouble getting guests? I really "admire" conservatives who have the nerve to go on the show.

Waiting for "Californication," "Dexter," "Diary of a Call Girl" and "Weeds" to return. Showtime has developed quite a lineup. Not sure what's getting me to keep my "HBO" subscription. Just Bill Maher for the moment. The series with Edie Falco (Showtime?) looks like it will be a lot of fun.

"The New Adventures of Old Christine" is wonderful. Glad to see one of the Seinfeld team making it work. Great ensemble. Lots of warmth and humor.

"Gary Unmarried" is really cute. Good chemistry and timing. And the daughter is quite beautiful.

"The Mentalist" is super. As is "Life on Mars." The only crime shows I watch. Both lead actors are worth the time spent watching. Another talented actor who masters an American accent ("Mentalist" and "House").

I'm afraid I ODed on "House" during the endless marathons over the last six months. I hear I missed quite a dramatic plot twist last week. I see that the actress who died last season has been reincarnated on "Big Love" - one of HBO shows I watch.

Hmmm... might I be watching too much TV?

The Cat's Meow

2009-04-01T23:32:00.019-04:00

I met a beautiful, smart, single woman today while eating dinner at one of my favorite places. I mentioned that I am single, and she asked what type of man I am looking for. I gave her a few high level thoughts, and she encouraged me to develop and write down a more specific list of what's important. How can you achieve something that you haven't defined? she asked. I asked to see her list, she had it on her Blackberry, and this is what it said:

35-45 6'0" 175lb Well-built 'David' type Dark hair Athletic
Brilliant Sweet Funny Caring
Responsible/accountable
Wonderful Generous Spontaneous
Loving Passionate
Loyal Faithful
In love with me/my fam
Wants children now
Successful Wealthy Business-oriented Self-sufficient Self-made
Can help me with my ambitions
Great/aggressive in bed
Talented Loves music
Good family Good b/g/education
Interesting job/life
Euro-friendly
Masculine with a sensitive side
Extroverted
Makes me feel laugh
Doesn't hold grudges
No emotional or psychological issues

Thinks I'm the cat's meow

-- An interesting approach. Maybe I'll give it a try.

On My Lap or by My Side

2009-04-01T09:27:00.023-04:00

I have increasingly become a person who cannot watch television without my Macbook on my lap or closely by my side. Last night, I was watching "Better off Ted," or perhaps it was "The Mentalist," when I glimpsed in less than a second of footage what looked like a Diane Von Furstenberg dress that I own. After reviewing the spot on my DVR, I went immediately to the internet. Searching on "AT&T" and the name of the song used in the ad, I immediately found the AT&T "Brewery" ad on both YouTube and an advertising commentary website. I paused the video on the moment when you would see the dress, saved a screen grab to my desktop and uploaded the photo to a little fashion gallery I maintain on my Facebook profile.

A few weeks ago, I did the same thing with an Ikea ad in which the woman in the ad was wearing a DVF wrap dress I had just purchased in December. It was really quite fun to see the dress play a prominent role throughout the thirty-second spot as the leading lady slammed cabinets and drawers in her kitchen taking out her frustration with her "idiot" boss. I guess the dress I had purchased represented what a career woman would wear to work. I noted how she adjusted the sleeves to make them seem three-quarter length, assessed whether the actress (or wardrobe-ist) had pinned the front of the dress to keep it closed - I will never fully understand the logistics of a wrap dress, and considered whether the blousiness I had experienced with the top of the dress seemed to be part of the design. In this case, I uploaded a link to the video to my Facebook Wall.

A few months ago, I heard a wonderful song at the very end of an "Ugly Betty" episode. I quickly went to YouTube in an effort to find the song. Alas, it did not come up in my search based on the key phrases, so I went to Google. Already, I found several chats and Yahoo! Answers exchanges in which co-fans asked each other for help in identifying this song and shared what they remembered of the lyrics. Alas, no luck - a terrible missed opportunity on the part of the musical artists and their managers/promoters. (I did circle back and find the song several months later after letting these other zealots continue their investigations.)

More recently, I heard a song on 'Grey's Anatomy" that I quite liked. In this case, I shortly discovered websites - hosted by ABC, I believe, that provided all the pertinent information for individual episodes, including the song titles associated with particular parts of the show, e.g., "the montage when..." After realizing that I had confused two episodes - as I was catching up on several weeks of drama at once, I found the song - quite easily - went to iTunes and purchased it. I then looked for other songs by the same artist, but found little available.

I attended a panel the other night organized by Bill Sobel's NY:MIEG that featured panelists involved in fashion and music. They discussed why it was that musical artists today are so quick to "sell out" by making their music available for commercial use -- TV shows and commercials -- when it was so taboo years ago. My answer, the artists today are up and coming and still being "discovered" by the general population. The television producers are using the songs to set the mood for their shows, but the musicians are gaining just as much, if not more, benefit by (a) being associated with "cool" programming or products - think about Feist and Apple (b) getting exposure to millions of viewers in one fell swoop - not only for free (I believe) or, more likely, with compensation.

Years ago (and still today), musicians paid and wrangled to get their music aired on the radio. The radio is no longer the medium. In this case it is television - and yes, mass, multi-million viewer, broadcast television. However, it is a terrible missed opportunity if the music is not immediately available online and easy to find. I personally am always on the prowl for something new to add to my iPod lineup.

When Viagra was first introduced, the demand was so unprecedented and unexpected that there was a shortage of product. In fact, it was unfortunate that media plans could not be changed in time to hold off on advertising until new product could be manufactured. In any case, the age old lesson is that product needs to be available at the time that it is promoted. In the case of Viagra and of the Ragu Pasta Sauce I used to market, this is much more complicated to do as there is physical demand to forecast and physical product to manufacture and distribute. In the case of the Internet and music, the product must be easy to find and easy to obtain.

When I worked for NBC at the "turn of the century," I used to call or e-mail my friend in the traffic department - who was always at the office until very late at night - to comment on what was happening or what clothing was being worn on the currently aired episode of "Friends" or "Seinfeld." In the age of TiVO and the DVR, I can no longer expect that others are watching TV shows at the same time I am - alas. There are, however, chat rooms and Twitter exchanges I can go to afterwards - as I have usually watched the program after that fact - to see whether others agreed that a twist of the plot seemed very strange.

And so it is that I have become not only addicted to my TV and my DVR but to my laptop - as an inseparable entertainment combination.

The Facebook Page Lives On

2009-03-24T18:49:00.001-04:00

I just ran into a friend and former colleague at the gym. She broke the news that one of the most beloved executives at McCann Relationship Marketing had died suddenly this weekend, just two days ago. She told me there was a group on Facebook with the plans for a memorial service, and so I logged on to see what I could learn.

By rote, I searched for him in "people" and visited his page. Wow. His Wall was overflowing with testimonials and messages. The first from his niece this weekend. The most recent just a few minutes before I logged on.

It is something to see the kind of digital testament to a man's life and legacy that can exist on a website that has been in existence only a few years. My colleague is gone, but his Facebook page continues to evolve. It's a place where his friends, colleagues and family are writing to him and about him.

His profile photo is joyful and poignant and uniquely him. And his latest posts... In his second to last post, he wrote, "I had one last chance this past weekend, but the weather gods rained on his parade. Killington sucked." His final entry reads, "I wonder what life will be like in three years."

I wish I could write on his Wall, but I had not friended him yet on Facebook - only on LinkedIn, where his photo seems hardly the same person. Perhaps it is a new lesson in life to "friend" more people we care about while we have the chance - even those who are "professional" contacts.

User-generated... revenue???

2009-03-17T22:50:00.009-04:00

"At midnight The New York Times stopped charging for its content online. It’s even handing out refunds to any online subscribers who paid for it in advance… strongly repudiating the idea that newspapers can earn big profits by hiding their online content behind a "pay wall" which can only be accessed by web surfers who pay a subscription fee." (September 17, 2007 - Tech.Blorge)

"The New York Times is ... looking at the possibility of charging for some of its online content, whether that would mean the news that most people read or special select content is unclear." (March 15, 2009 - Tech.Blorge)

Over the past few years, the general consensus has been that a paid content business model is untenable, that advertising dollars are what make the world go round, more eyeballs mean more money, and walled gardens mean fewer eyeballs.

However in an era in which Netflix was the one shining star in the last round of investor reports, Apple's iTunes maintains a highly profitable electronic-sell-through (EST) model, and overall advertising revenue is expected to fall 13% in 2009 (including a 1.2% decline in display ads and 7.5% drop in auctions and other non-search/lead generation digital advertising), there is renewed interest in the online subscription model.

In recent days, Newsday announced plans to end distribution of free online content, Disney's Bob Iger discussed a possible subscription-based online video club, and MLB and ESPN entered into a partnership to offer premium web services for $130 per year via a co-branded package. The package includes live streaming of every regular season MLB game and exclusive ESPN text and video content.

In addition, both Time Warner Cable and Comcast, announced plans to create (or recreate) walled gardens (now called user authentication programs), through which television programs will be available via broadband to the cable operators' respective subscribers.

More commentary to come...

Riding Crimson Coat-tails

2009-02-04T22:16:00.002-05:00

One of the advantages of going to an elite Ivy institution is that you get to study with world-famous professors, and, in my case, that included Professor Jeffrey Sachs. As a fearless freshman, I went to the office hours of Professor Sachs, the youngest tenured professor at the university, and asked to be his research assistant.

Professor Sachs explained that his RAs were all graduate students but finally conceded to let me check in periodically to see if he had a need for my skills. After months of persistence, I wore him down and became his undergraduate research assistant.

This meant that I had an excuse for one-on-one meetings with Professor Sachs throughout my four years at Harvard. I remember coming into his office one day, with its wall-to-wall books and well-worn Turkish rug, to hear the end of a phone conversation in which he mentioned that he had fixed Bolivia's hyperinflation. Surely he was exaggerating, I thought. But he was not.

My work turned to tracking Latin American bond prices as he helped the governments of several developing countries sort out their out of control inflation or solve other massive economic problems. And as a senior, I had the honor of having Professor Sachs grade my thesis - in language that sounded like he was critiquing a colleague's book - and giving it an overall positive review!

When I graduated from college and moved to New York, I would often open the New York Times to see a picture of Professor Sachs, who was now being called upon by the leaders of Russia and Poland to help them transition from socialist to capitalist economies upon the break up of the Soviet block. Once again, I boldly called upon Professor Sachs to help me get involved in this historic period, and he generously referred me to a colleague leading a team of business consultants to Warsaw to work for the Ministry of Finance!

Since then, Professor Sachs has become the Director of Earth Institute at Columbia University, where has has the simple charter of ending world poverty. I now see and hear Professor Sachs being interviewed by Bill Maher (who thought “Dr. Sachs” was a medical doctor), Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, NPR and Good Morning America - sometimes along with Angelina Jolie or Bono - while also serving as advisor to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan.

This time I e-mailed Professor Sachs and invited him to speak at the Harvard Club of New York. In preparation for the event, I downloaded and viewed a number of podcasts of prior lectures, taking note of how others introduced him. I then streamed MTV footage of Jeff and Angelina in Africa (on my iTouch) and watched interviews of him on various MSNBC shows on my laptop.

The event which was entitled, "Where Do We Go From Here," drew a record-breaking 409 people - what Jeff might term an "overpopulation" of Harvard Hall. Over dinner, Dr. Sachs consulted me (!) on how LinkedIn and Facebook could be of value to him in his work. (He is already an extensive user of Skype for multi-national lecture series.) How far we have come.

Who's the Enemy? Who's the Friend?

2009-01-01T11:00:00.010-05:00

Cable operators and TV affiliates complain when programmers put content online. Programmers put content online because that is where viewers are going. Music producers ignored this "where I want it, when I want it" trend, seeking to protect their business model, and were leapfrogged into impending demise by iTunes. NBC Universal cites Hulu as a huge success story, but CEO Jeff Zucker fears that the web will turn "analog dollars" into "digital pennies." Online ads may garner high CPMs and may be growing at rapid rates, but they are still dwarfed by broadcast.

Viacom, owner of MTV Networks, has for years sought to create a "360 degree" media presence that hinges upon the Internet. They now have a huge army of digital employees. Cable operators complain that hits like "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" are available in long form on Hulu. But who is benefiting now?

Viacom is asking for a 25 cent increase in monthly subscriber fees (25 cents more per subscriber per month) from Time Warner Cable across 18 Viacom networks. Yesterday, a crawler at the bottom of the screen for each of these networks warned of an impending blackout at midnight. (I rushed home at 1:20am to see the blank screens, but alas no MTV Armageddon.)

Now I watch Comedy Central more consistently than any other non-premium cable network (I love my Showtime - twisted as it may be), and my loyalty to the two programs above is on par with that for broadcast network programming such as "60 Minutes" - most other programming ("Eli Stone," "Grey's Anatomy," "Ugly Betty") comes and goes. I am proud and embarrassed to say that I get most of my news from Mr. Stewart and, to some extent, Mr. Colbert. So, what will I do if Viacom goes dark? I don't envision doing much.

First, I don't watch any of the other MTVN networks. I used to admire Viacom for its segmentation strategy, i.e., different networks for different age demos, but now what that means -- for me as a single New Yorker, at least -- is that I watch only one of their networks. And, as mentioned above, the two programs I count on are available on Hulu. In fact, Time Warner Cable is promoting to its subscribers where they can access Viacom programming online should it go dark on TWC. So, to whose advantage is the online platform now? Ironically, Viacom has made itself less indispensable to TWC - at least in the short term.

It reminds me a bit of our strategies in the middle east. We train the enemy of our enemy, even though that force was or could become our direct enemy. A bit of an extreme comparison, perhaps. But the question remains - to whom is the Internet a greater threat and for whom is it a greater advantage? Programmers? Distributors? Both? Neither?

Business minds around the world have not yet come up with a way to turn the enormous value of the Internet into a tangible, substantial monetary value. True, digital broadcasts of the Olympics, of SNL (Tina Fey) and of prime time programming do drive stronger TV viewing of these programs -- something that was not necessarily anticipated. But, what is the long term business model? How can the television industry identify and transition to a new business paradigm? And, how will they accomplish this in light of existing carriage contracts and - even more specifically -- Most Favored Nation (MFN) clauses that make change even more cumbersome?