Exploring the Art & Science of Marketing
Archive for February, 2006
Lunch squared
Feb 9th
The Apple affair.
Feb 7th
Haitians head to polls
Blaze damage 4 more Ala. churches
GM trims dividens, execs pay
Protests over cartoon continue
Apple slashes iPod price
These are the top headlines on USA Today right now. I think the media has a love affair with Apple that leaves them covering things about Apple that aren’t news. It’s a complaint I have made often about the news media. Whenever Apple makes an announcement (or doesn’t in this case) it gets front page news. It makes no sense at all. It’s one of the reasons I quite reading Engadget as often as I did. Their Apple coverage got so prevalent that it started to feel like blatant promotion and less like journalism. They almost tried to go out of their way to compare everything to Apple products. Gizmodo is almost as bad. CNN does it too.
The day Apple announced a new mouse 6-plus months ago, it made front page CNN news. When in the history of news did a new mouse ever make the front page of the world’s most known news source let alone any news source other than those that would specifically cover this topic?
You will find that when a topic becomes “the thing to cover” in the news media, that they all want to cover it. News judgement gets thrown out the window. It’s the Apple love affair, and some of these news sources are starting to look like lemmings and less like journalists.
Disney Domination
Feb 6th
Did you see any of the Super Bowl ads? If you did, did you notice the Disney dominance during the game, which was aired over Disney-owned ABC. Aside from beer ads, Disney-owned advertisements were the spotlight of the Super Bowl. Let me give you an example.
Cars - The ad for the Pixar film. Pixar was purchased by Disney a few weeks ago.
Disney World – The “I’m going to Disney Word” commercial. They ran another commercial about the Walt Disney World 50th anniversary.
Ford Escape – featured Disney-owned Kermit the Frog about how it isn’t that difficult to be green.
ESPN Mobile – This commercial or some variation of it ran many times. Did you know that Disney owns ESPN?
Mastercard - The mastercard ad featured MacGyver. MacGyver ran on Disney-owned ABC
Pirates of the Caribean – Disney Movie.
These are only examples. I am confident there are more. Question is . . . does Disney give its companies a discount on that 2-plus million dollar 30-second spot?
Does that make you want to gamble?
Feb 2nd
I got an email today from a company we do business with called ShowStoppers. In it, the writer described an experience at an event we also attended while at CES in January 2006. Here’s how it happened for the writer in the email.
“The Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas has the best bottled water I’ve ever tasted. Better than Dasani. Better than Evian. Better than Perrier. It just feels smooth when I drank it. Never had that experience before.
So, when I saw a worker replenish the water supply, I complimented him on the water.
His response? Not — “Thank you.” But — “Does it make you want to gamble?”
Now that’s a mission statement!”
LoveSac files for bankruptcy
Feb 2nd
LoveSac just got . . . well . . . sacked. Now before you get all carried away with the title of my post, remember this: LoveSac has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is worlds apart from chapter 7 bankruptcy. Chapter 11 will allow them time to figure things out and have protection from their creditors during that time. That’s what United Airlines did.
The company apparently has $3.2 million in debt. via [ SL Tribune ]
Environmental engagement
Feb 1st
free eBooks
Feb 1st
Free. We all like that word. Well, how about some free ebooks?
Librivox.org is a project that takes public domain books (books that no longer have original copyrights on them) and turns them into mp3 recordings. Most of them are classics. You won’t find newer books like Harry Potter, but you will find War of the Worlds, the Raven, Jane Austen and others.
Examples of Completed Librivox Recordings:
Pride and Prejudice
A Christmas Carol
Call of the Wild
Treasure Island
The Raven
Declaration of Independence
Examples of Coming Soon:
The Art of War
Tale of Two Cities
War of the Worlds
Dracula
Wizard of Oz
Moby Dick
Robinson Crusoe
