Monthly Archives: February 2011

Fiat Chrysler Omelette.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Chicken or egg?  What comes first, consumer demand or product building intended to create demand?  Most media socialists would say the former.  I favor the latter.  Case in point: For as long as I’ve been blogging I’ve railed about the American car business, its focus on gas guzzlers and how that focus has driven Detroit into the ground. It took a national melt down and a global economic recession for De-twah to find the new smaller car path.

Chrysler has a neat new European-sized car (beep beep) called the Fiat 500 which will be in the States soon. You can see it driven by a professional driver on Owen Mack’s Cobrandit.com site. Owen is a whazoo videographer, by the way.  Fiat has been building this type of car for years. Small, economical and with a more reasonable environmental footprint.  Short of the VW Beetle and Mini Cooper few companies in the states made an effort to play in this market space.  It was a mondo opportunity zone.

Customers weren’t demanding the cars, but automobile makers should have been creating that demand. They didn’t like the margins. The oil companies bought them too many dinners. The designs were funky.  May all three.  What I do know is this — had a car company gone all egg and seen beyond the dashboard, they would have known small cars were going to be a growth market.  That’s why I like the Chrysler-Fiat combination.  Fiat will help Chrysler step up to this current market need.  A few years too late, but it will happen and off we go. Egg it up. Peace!

Only as Good as Your Next Refresh.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

In the reporting today following the AOL purchase of Huffington Post there were two points of note worth highlighting.  One suggests that since AOL purchased TechCrunch traffic to the TechCrunch site has increased 30%.  I’m not sure if that as a good or bad thing.  Was the reader gene pool slighting diminished by that add?  I suspect so.  But if TC holds to its editorial mission, that growth may find its proper level.

Secondly, Tim Armstrong was quoted as saying “We are essentially two years away from a growth business on the Internet.”  Hello? It’s the Inter-neck.  It’s a content strategy.  In the content business you are only as good as your next refresh.  I understand about building a mission and infrastructure and team and all that, but if Egypt can change a country in three weeks, I think AOL with some imaginative thinking and mad content posting can add some readers in less than 2 years.  BTW, did anyone read the AOL memo from Mr. Armstrong circulated on the web about his plan to turn the business around?   Maybe that’s why he said 2 years.  Dash that plan and start dialing up the original, thoughtful and creative content. (Oh, and Patch isn’t it.) Peace it up!

Smiles at AOL.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

AOL’s purchase of the Huffington Post 8 hours ago was very smart.  I Googled my blog  (whatstheidea+AOL) to see if I predicted said purchase but did not. Maybe I should use Bing.  (Full disclosure, client. Hee hee.)  Anyway, if AOL’s strategy is to provide the best content on the web, this is a great move.  And I loved Arianna Huffington’s quote in the paper paper — her first as head of the new media property group — that she won’t let her politics get in the way of her job.  Yeah right. That’s what makes the Huff Post great.  She can put on her transformer hat when overseeing other media properties, but don’t change a thing on the Huff Post. Ima (pronounced eye-mah) have to start reading I guess.

And, oh, by the way, this story was not on the front page of the NY Times business section, it was on the front page.  Just under the mast head.  Geezer for important.

Tim Armstrong articulated the strategy to be a content leader… and he is delivering.  Yahoo articulated the same strategy and is not. Nice move AOL. Nice move.  Even Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) is probably smiling.  Peace!

Apple. An opt-in monopoly?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Apple has decided that ebook publishers and retailers, whose books make their way onto Apple devices, must allow the books to be purchased via Apple.  If you are an iPazzle owner and go to Amazon to buy “The Help” there must also be a link to purchase that book from iTunes/Store as well.  Apple will earn 30%.   Sony an ebook retailer has already balked at this dictate.

Apple is not saying you have to buy from them, just that they deserve equal access.  Seems fair enough.  Apple Fanboys and girls may wish to give their hard-earned to their favorite brand, as is their right, but where will this taking a cut of the content stop?  Will Apple at some point want a penny for every phone call that lands on an iPhone?  And how would you sell that to your custies? “It goes to R&D to help design better products?” Might work.

Apple, already an opt-in monopoly of almost cult-like dimension, is creating a platform (read Steve Lohr’s article in The New York Times) that stretches beyond hardware and software and into that amorphous area of services.  They had better be a bit careful though. Opt-in is one thing…dictatorship quite another.  Peace!

New Facebook Ad Program :-(

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The Like button on Facebook is an opt-in endorsement. It was a good idea for these fast-twitch social media times.  It was also a way for Facebook to serve smarter ads without looking like privacy hacks (both meanings).  But that monetization things is getting in the way again, and it coming to Facebook in the form a something called “sponsored stories.”  I don’t know all the nuances of the advertising offering but I do know that if you “like” something or “check-in” somewhere, Facebook is putting your face on a product endorsement.

Can you say slippery slope?

This one, IMHO, will have a shelf life of about 2 months.  I don’t see it working and can imagine quite a backlash.  Both for FB and the sponsoring advertisers.  Time will tell, but this one doesn’t feel right. The influentials will have field day with this.  And blame in on the ad guys. Peace!

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