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    Thinking Apps.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Slide 4 in Mary Meekers’s Morgan Stanley presentation entitled “Internet Trends 2010” shows the pace of mobile internet adoption.  It compares iPhone/iTouch to that of  AOL’s desktop, Netscape desktop and NTT docomo iMode; laying out growth by users, by quarter from launch.

    iPhone’s Internet access tipped 86 million users in its 11th quarter – less than 3 years.  Let’s just say the others never came close to coming close. (Check out the chart on slide 4.) Smartphone growth is hockey sticking. Motorola is starting to get it. HP bought Palm and should buy some corporate share.  Blackberry is too big and too rich to fail, even though they’re getting a little paunchy around the middle. And we haven’t even started to talk about the software guys Google (after its trivestiture), Microsoft (drawing a blank) and carrier switch provider Alcatel-Lucent.

    Ladies and germs, smartphones are the future of computing, commerce and community. They will dock next to monitors and keyboards, but they are the device.  Think about the iPhone4’s new videoconference app. Wait for fingerprint apps, and galvanic skin response apps, sobriety apps….   Cool times, these.  Marketers, put on your thinking apps (I mean caps), innovation awaits! Peace!

    Redeeming Miles (on Twitter).

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Miles Nadal is probably the biggest name on the scene today in the advertising and communications business.  His holding company MDC Partners has been the only one with a positive stock performance during the global downturn. His spending on minority positions in small and mid-size shops with great leaders is what has built this empire. While the big holding company officers are watching their stocks depreciate, debating assets to sell, and arguing of which employment contracts to void, Mr. Nadal was roaming the planet seeking out smart people. The marketing business has always been powered by smart, forward looking people.

    I’d love to go to school on Mr. Nadal and have followed him on Twitter for a while — but he is an awful Tweeter. His tweets are inspirational quotes from others.  Aristotle?  Come on Mr. Nadal!  Building a business by finding and enabling smart people is one thing, extending that into Twitter may feel an “authentic” brand play, but it’s so disappointing.  Better to quote your own hires.  Better more, quote yourself. Posting other people’s stuff is a rage but from people like you we need original thought. Personal Twitter accounts are best when steeped in one’s personality. Give us some of dat Mr. Nadal.  Peace!  

    Think Bigger.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 3 American adults is obese. Excuse the pun, but that’s a huge market.  Are airlines doing anything about it?  Yep, seatbelt extenders.  On a plane in coach when the person in front of you puts back their seat, if you have a big belly, you can’t open your laptop. You can’t open your laptop if you have a medium belly.

    Besides clothing there are a ton of products that can be redesigned to fit the big form person. Beach chairs, lawn chairs, living room chairs.  Moving theaters should provide adequate seating for larger adults. Big is big business…just ask NBC.

    Wal-Mart or JC Penny’s would be smart to create a store brand catering to the big. Peace! 

    Road to a Trillion.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    A couple of weeks ago it was mentioned here that in order for Facebook to become the world’s first trillion dollar company it had to nail the privacy issue. Well, my fact-checker has determined that with the world’s largest company, Royal Dutch Petroleum (Forbes 2009) worth less than half a trillion dollars and only 6.8 billion people on the planet, the trillion dollar company thing is a pretty far reach. 

    Bah, fact-checker. If Facebook can get everyone on the planet to fork over $147 U.S. they can do it.  One way to get to this number is to offer Facebook users an opt-in paid for account that is completely private.  No ads for tracking. No sale of collected personal data. No cookies. Like Ocean Beach, NY back in the day – the proverbial land of “no.” 

    For $147.00 a year, Facebook actually might start themselves on the road to a trillion. Every journey begins with one schlep.  Or was that step? Peace.    

    Ford For(war)d

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    It’s a new world at the Ford Motor Company, or at least it should be.  The recession changed things.  The oil economy is changing things. BP has changed things. It’s time to let the Ford Explorer go. The move would be more than a symbolic gesture to the world that smaller, efficient cars are our future — it would give the company major cred as an agent of change.  I know the new redesigned 2011 Explorer will target 25 miles per gallon on the highway, but those are not exciting mainstream numbers anymore.  And touch screens aren’t a reason to buy a car.

    The Ford Escape is your future in this class.  It has a nice design, momentum, and it’s in synch with your other newer smaller offerings, the Focus and Fiesta.

    Make the 2011 Explorer your swan song.  A collectors piece for loyalists.  Then put your engineers on to designing the next forward looking new model… one that captures the imagination of the U.S. buying public.  The next Mustang. The next T-bird. A car that will lure back Toyota buyers. You have been playing offense and winning. Keeping the Explorer alive seems like defense. Peace!

    Hire The Higher Ups.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    In a recent blog post, Paul Gumbinner, a friend and advertising recruiter, suggested NY unemployment in our sector is around 15%.  At one point I read there are 275,000 advertising jobs in NY which suggests about 40,000 are on the beach.

    Between that, reduced budgets and digital and earned media shops rightfully requiring pie, one can safely say there has been a retrenchment in the ad biz.  As hard as it is to say, it has improved the business. The work product of ad agencies is improving; it’s more creative, meaningful, idea-based and friendlier — with the exception of all those ads about hitting on the Super Bowl.  Even the new work out of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese’s new agency Crispin Porter seems more wholesome. Roots! (Perhaps it’s all the bicycles and mountain air in Boulder.) And if you are watching a good TV spot and smiling, there’s a good chance you’re watching something from JWT. Quite a renaissance for them.  

    It seems that all the pink slips got rid of many marginal players and a ton of haters.  The latter group can now be found commenting on Adweek and Ad Age posts.  Disruption (sorry Mr. Dru) has given way to heartfelt selling and that’s a good thing.  Money is creeping back into agency pockets and human resources calendars fill up — let’s hope we hire higher up the food chain. Peace.  

    Can’t We All Just Get Along?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Here’s the thing: In marketing, part of winning is understanding your competitors’ weaknesses. Some marketers spend time shooting arrows. Others focus on building and presenting strengths — a less overt negative focus.  When I worked at a big NY ad shop with mondo-million dollar budgets, if the client wanted to do a formal acquisition program and use our direct arm, the agency begrudgingly agreed and teamed it up. It wasn’t quite Yankees and Mets — more like Mets and Binghamton Bisons (the farm team.)

    As we saunter forth into the digital world we’re seeing more marketing silos grow daily. The silos will come down but it will take a while and a good deal of wealth redistribution in the meantime. Just as media was once siloed (print, TV, radio, OOH) and now better integrated, online and offline will come from one house.  Smart business people recognize this and are trying it out.  Ouch, they say, as the arrows hit them. Other smart business people are going negative, protecting their silos and they’re making money, if not friends. The web is often about removing boundaries. The sooner siloed ad, digital, direct and PR shops get on board, the sooner client market ROI and ROS (return on strategy) will hockey stick and change will really occur.   Peace!

    New Car Smell?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Joel Ewanich landed at GM with guns blazing.  GM’s new marketing head left a similar job at Nissan without having been there long enough to find the coffee machine. And his first act at General Motors was to replace Campbell-Ewald and Publicis with Goodby Silversten and Partners as Chevrolet’s agency of record.

    Many of the snarks are saying “Why not hold a review?” and “He never even met with the old agencies” but the reality is Mr. Ewanich knows Goodby from their time together on Hyundai, be wanted Goodby, and he is in a hurry.  If he wants Goodby, why pretend to put the business up for review and waste everbody’s time and money?  Whether this decision turns out to change the market share for Chevrolet is still to be played out but I’ll give Mr. Ewanich credit for strong leadership. He didn’t vacillate publically or do the politically correct thing — he made a decision and is getting to work.

    Goodby is a great shop. It knows consumers.  Gareth Kay was the planning leader at Modernista when Hummer was humming.  I don’t know Mr. Ewanich from Adam and though the Hyundai advertising may not have been crazy memorable, it absolutely delivered solid marketing ideas and results.  This move makes sense to me. But as fast as it was done, it can be undone. We learned that already.  Peace!

    NYC Cool. Brooklyn Cooler.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    As cool as New York City is – Brooklyn is cooler. New York still has the international cachet, the hotels, skyline and a commercial buzz, but Brooklyn is where gravity is pulling the next generation.  Young families, grads, the skinny black jean set are spending their time and Benjamins in Crooklyn. It’s where a good deal of our urban culture (euphemism for black) is born. Biggie!  Brooklyn still needs renewal, still has much poverty and crime but it is home  to many generations of Americans.  (Both my parents were born in Brooklyn.)  As a brand planner I always loved to study the borough of Queens, thinking of it as America’s perfect living breathing melting pot, but now I’m stuck one borough south.

    Brooklyn is a brand. 

    The New Jersey Nets are moving to Brooklyn and Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov is their new owner and the face of the franchise. There is a big Russian community in this borough so the purchase is in exciting harmony.  Basketball is the haps in Brooklyn: Boys and Girls, Lincoln, Dwayne Pearl (Washington), Chris Mullen….   The Nets will be Brooklyn’s first major franchise since the Dodgers left and will not only unite the borough but elevate its stature around the global.  Mr. Prokhorov probably knows this, but he has invested in one of the world’s great up-and-coming brands. Do you think Spike Lee will buy a seat courtside in Brooklyn? Hell no!  He’s a Knick fan.  But his kids will! And that’s the future. Good luck Mr. Prokhorov. Enjoy the ride. Peace!

    Yahoo’s Bold, Expensive Move.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Yahoo is buying Associated Media and its federation of 380,000 writers (Posters) who according to ComScore generate 16M monthly uniques.  Yahoo is paying $100 million for the ability to advertise to Associated’s audience and the deal also includes some technology which allows for the monitoring and prediction of reader content proclivities. This is a big move for Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO, and shows she is putting money into the content strategy.

    I look at content portals like Yahoo and AOL a little bit like big retail malls. A good portal, like a good mall, has lots of tenants but there is always what is called an anchor tenant — a big store that draws in lots of people.  In my view, this $100 million play is more about finding an “anchor” tenant (or ten) among Associated Media’s writers who will propel Yahoo’s numbers upward, rather than a crowd sourcing effort to generate mass.  It’s like putting a seine net in the ocean to catch krill but finding some big fish.  Yahoo needs next generation big fish. Big Posters. It’s a very expensive move, but should work for them.  The portal story, IMHO, is about quality not quantity.  But that’s just me.  Peace!

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