Not having any fun yet - a thought on how to battle back

Like many of us I have good friends and close business associates that have recently their jobs. And since the end does not seem to be in sight we all have to get up every day and trudge back to work and watch the bad news come and go hour by hour.

Sure we can get leaner (and definitely meaner) and cut back. But my sense is that people have been doing that for the better part of six months anyway. One area I think can be looked at is your child's college education. I have a son in college and daughter in high school so the subject is close to my heart - and wallet! Our son did a year at a university and did not care for the school that much. Consequently he has returned home (very common these days) and is working full time and taking courses at a local community college. He seems much happier and will likely take a full course load come January while continuing to work. The benefits are many. Let's start with the difference of about $ 18,000 per semester! I cannot believe how we parents have bought into the fact that college can cost families upwards of $ 160,000 for four years. What made us sign on to this??? Is the education one gets at a community college decidedly worse than a 4 year university? The professors and teachers at community colleges often have credentials just as impressive as those in universities.

Even getting a 2 year associates degree could save a family more than $ 75,000 prior to a student deciding what he really wants to do and where he wants to go. And by the way college age kids get their information and learning from so many sources that they are informed in ways I could never imagine working.

So hang in there and think about how you could roar back at that declining 401K and college fund. What was does not have to be what will be.

Two seasons and the sounds of silence

The past week and change has been a true roller coaster ride in financial markets and landscape of the financial sector has been forever changed. I have been saying for quite some time that the country had to survive a hard 'winter' if we were to truly appreciate spring and it seems as if we are in a constant blizzard of late.

But there is still freezing weather to come. This shake out is far from over and the impact is far reaching across a broad range of socio-economic strata. I think that the working world as we know it is going to change as a result. More entreprenuers will arise out of the ashes and people will work differently and more collaboratively than ever before.

Yet before we see an economic 'spring' there will be frostbite and some people will be frozen out of their homes and old life. And what of the marketing world implications? How about Ogilivy and Mather who had won the Wachovia account as recently as last week? Now Citibank takes over that relationship and O & M is out in the cold too. Add to this the constant cold wind that advertisers are pulling back on their budgets as a response to the continued tightening of consumer purse strings.

On the other hand advertising clutter stands a great chance of being dramatically reduced. What this means is that advertiser messages have a much better chance of getting through. Now the trick is to make that message RELEVANT to the target market. No doubt priorities have changed and so should the messaging. The right message combined with the right audience will mean your product or service has a better chance of making big strides in the quiet of this economic winter.

So we will be working with our clients and prospects on getting the right message out there NOW! Besides - Groundhog Day cannot be too far off.

One big direct response world

I had occasion to spend time with an old friend over the weekend and in another life he was a general agency 'brand' guy. He was talking about his current company and how he is delivering video promotional content for television and the internet. The content message changes depending on the medium and what he was excited about was the fact they could truly measure the response for each channel to determine which approach performed better.

It was both interesting and rewarding to know that even from the brand side the opportunity to better analyze and understand performance is now becoming the standard. There is no reason we can't all get along in the coming age of more complete measurabilty. Creative efforts will be just as important if not more so but listening and understanding what people respond to will make us all produce more relevant content as well as be better marketers.

I like PC guy more than Mac guy

And apparently I am not alone. The recent bizarre Microsoft ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates are a prelude to a series of ads to come (the Seinfeld/Gates ads are done for the time being) where Microsoft/PC will be taking on Apple/Mac head-on. Maybe it's about time but I cannot tell if the fact that it went on so long was a smart show of restraint on Microsoft's part or confusion on how to counter the Mac vs. PC TV, print and web spots.

I kind of like PC guy. He is always trying something new and Justin Long's smug, superior attitude was funny the first time or two but devovled into arrogance that is sometimes typical of Mac users. I have nothing against Mac as a platform and we use it for some of our business applications in the art area. But Mac users like Mac guy seem to have to needle how wonderful their machine is and how much better Mac's are than PC's. True the Vista operating system has not had the impact that Microsoft had hoped but they have worked out the problems and it is a stable and well-featured operating system. What has Macintosh done lately to improve its operating system? Oh you can have one of the Mac in-store technicians transfer your PC files to your Mac. Wow. At least PC guy makes me feel they are trying to improve and are aware that things are not perfect. As for the Mac guy - I feel like he could use a good backhand slap or two.

The reality is that both PC and Macintosh are good operating systems that always could use improvement. And we the people only want the choice to buy the one we want. But you cannot easily put a PC operating system on an Apple machine nor can you easily put a Mac operating system on a PC. Yes you can have both but it is messy and for the most part impractical. And it shouldn't have to be that way.

Why is premium gasoline SO much more expensive?

I realize that the current thinking that most cars do not even need premium gasoline since performance is only marginally impacted with its use. But I recall that in the not-too-distant past premium would be something like $ 0.20 more than regular. When I went to the gas station over the weekend I noticed regular gas at $ 3.89/gallon (hey I live in very expensive Connecticut) and Premium was $ 4.37/gallon. That's almost $ 0.50/gallon more! What gives?

I tried to remember that when gas was $ 2.50/gallon (not all that long ago) premium was $ 2.70 (or thereabout). Less than a 10% premium for premium. But today it is close to 13%. Since it weighs the same the delivery cost should be the same. Can the refining of gasoline to 92 or 93 octane vs. 87 octane really be worth $ 0.50/gallon? Or are the oil companies trying to get us to give it up entirely (my view). It has to be easier for the oil companies to have only one type of gasoline to inventory and deliver. I see 'plus' gasoline going first and then premium slowly will be less and less available.

So we now live in a world that in contrast to what one would think, has situations where fewer choices reign instead of more choices. Maybe the scam all along was that premium gas was never needed in the first place. But both of my cars have lettering saying 'Premium gasoline only'. I kind of like being defiant when I put in that regular gas! But I still would like to have a choice...

A Social Networking Community at its best

I have mentioned LinkedIn and Plaxo (and the fact that they should merge) and have stayed away from comments on Facebook and Myspace but I am a big proponent of social networking. When done right a social network can offer a high level of user engagement and at the same time be genuine. What is evolving is a there huge number of social networks on sites like Ning.com (check it out) that offer micro-communities for those with shared interests even if the topic is narrow.

I have an associate who runs a company in Connecticut called Environmental Data Resources (www.edrnet.com). They offer data records on the history of environmental conditions primarly for commercial properties. What the company decided to do was start a social network www.commonground.edrnet.com where members (costs nothing to join) can ask questions related to environmental issues - WHETHER THEY ARE AN EDR CUSTOMER OR EVEN A COMPETITOR! I love this idea and its forthright approach. Competitive contributors feel compelled to offer relevant content so they can be recognized as a resource by the community as a whole and anybody can say pretty much whatever they want (profanity excluded of course) within the network community. Yes there are blogs, discussions, podcasts and events. It truly exists as a resource for what might be considered a narrow worldwide community.

Are they making any money? Well it does not appear so to me at moment and that only further is evidence if the genuine nature of this social network. Maybe they will be able to find ways to charge for premium content but what makes Commonground special is its trust in the contributing members and the hands off-approach on letting it exist in true organic form. This has many extensions across a broad range of industries. All it takes is committment to updated content and a willingness to trust those in the community to self-monitor. This is where we are headed folks.

On-Star Scores big during Gustav

I was reading this morning that GM's On-Star operators (the in-auto emergency satellite service) handled 76 million calls on Sunday (in USA Today 9/3 - but didn't the storm hit Monday?) during Hurricane Gustav's sojourn through Louisana. It was noted that that was double the normal call volume. So that means that on a normal day On-Star handles 38 million calls or so. WOW! Talk about Customer Controlled Communications (TM)!

But what are these people calling about on a non-hurricane day? Surely they cannot all be car accidents, flat tires and other car mishaps. On-Star is marketed as a safety net that deploys automatically say when an airbag inflates during a car accident. But people are using it (among other reasons) for directions, places to eat on the road and a way to reach someone if their mobile phone does not have service.

When we leased a car several years ago it came with a three month or one year (I cannot remember) On-Star trial. This was fine but when it came time to pay $ 9.95/month (maybe it was $ 12.95?) my wife and I declined the service. Part of the reason was the big brother factor of having our car monitored wherever we went. They probably can still do that anyway since the signal still exists we simply did not pay for service. And to think what they could see if they kept track of our travels - trips to soccer games, the mall, the grocery store!

I am rethinking On-Star however and it may be a worthwhile investment although like Satellite radio if it were $ 6.95/month it would be a true no-brainer. Maybe On-Star and Sirius/XM should do a partnership deal and package their services for a better price and single bill option.

In the end I do like the idea of 38 million or more as in the case Sunday having the ability to call into On-Star and get the service, information or help that they need. But it also makes me wonder how many On-Star operators there are at any given time. 76 million calls works out to more than 3 million calls per hour or 50,000 calls per minute. That would require a substantial amount of operators at the ready at any given time. Impressive to say the least.