You Think You’re Cynical?

I had it out with my dog this morning.

She barked at the dormant lawnmower, and then looked up at me.

I was like: You’re only doing that for the attention…

And she was like: Woof.

And I said: I can’t believe I actually thought for a second that my dog thought she was sneaking something past me. Her actions are pretty transparent. Of course, she’s occasionally sneaky, but when she is it’s for food or attention. And she’s just so cute when she does that.

Anyway, I put my cynicism in check and officially started my day over.

Music solves a lot of problems for me. In this case I was humming “I Just Want to Celebrate” from Rare Earth before I even got back in the house. I’d moved on to U2’s “Beautiful Day” by the time I was pouring the food in Maggie’s bowl.

Now? I’m going for another cup of coffee.

Mid-Sized Marketers Get Their Due

Imagine a spectrum. On one end you’ve got Apple, Coke or any of the Forbes 500. On the other end you’ve got your local mechanic, accountant or any of the small businesses you pass on the way home. One end employs marketers-o-plenty, and maybe even a Chief Marketing Officer. While small businesses have the marketer/owner - the barber or bartender. Al Ries and Jack Trout write for one group. Jay Levinson writes for the other. This is for the big space in the middle: the mid-sized marketer.

I’ve read Guerilla Marketing, Marketing Warfare, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. I’ve read how GM has worked to be/stay #1, how Miller and Budweiser duked it out in the 70s and the dot coms spent billions of dollars buying Superbowl ads and vinyl wrapped cars. But it takes some effort to find the nuggets in there for the mid-sized marketer. And that’s strange, because I think the number of mid-sized marketers outnumber mammoth marketers.

I for one, after living in Bellingham and paying attention to local business media for ten years, am occasionally surprised by another $10-15 million company within five miles of my house. They are all over the place. And they are surprisingly small, say 20-30 people.

If you walk down the aisles of your favorite Best Buy, Wal-Mart or Fry’s, once you get away from the TVs and cameras, you’ll stumble on tons of products from mid-sized companies all over the country and the world. Greeting cards, vitamins, glassware, candles, ladders, the list reaches into every consumer interest category.

Let’s look at some traits I’m assigning to companies of this sort:

• National, if not International.
• Not too concerned with local media, since their market is not concentrated in the local population.
• Want to play with the big boys by building a web presence.
• Might outsource some marketing, public relations or advertising.
• Quite possibly a marketing department of one.

There’s a lot to be said about a marketing department of one. It’s not all good, but there is a lot to be said about it. Your work is high profile, but there’s also some confusion about what you do in the company. You get a lot of credit and a lot of blame. You get to be both creative and analytical.

I’m going to spend some time here in the next few weeks and share some things I’ve learned as a mid-sized marketer. The freedom I’ve garnered, the successes I’ve managed and the flops I can call my own. And this is because I don't think there are enough props shown to the humble mid-sized marketers of the world.

So here it is. Here’s the well-deserved shout out to the mid-sized marketer. There are more of us than you think.

Web-adword-seo-blog-podcast-videoblog-myspace

Every other month there’s a new technology trend that marketers are supposed to jump on, corrupt and make dirty. That’s not how marketers talk about it, but that’s what happens. Marketers have a long history of soiling new technologies. Mail service has its junk mail. The telephone has its telemarketers. TV has commercials and (shiver) product placement…

But the web has made it easier for everyone with an idea to try to make some money (check out Commission Junction and Constant Contact). So everybody’s a marketer. I read this marketing trade magazine called B-to-B. And there is a predictable series of articles about any new tech fad.

Check it out. This new thing exists.

The smart people are doing this. Are you?

Everyone should be doing this.

Why isn’t everyone doing this?

Slow down, Bessie. It’s not all about technology, remember the marketing part.

That last one is usually written in a condescending tone by some young marketing professional who “gets it” that this Blogging-thing is actually not the best thing since duct tape.

Podcasting is cool and new. I have a few friends who created their own. And now people are asking if Podcasting is the next great medium for advertising. And the extension of Podcasting, Video Podcasts like Ask A Ninja and Rocketboom are a lot of fun. But they are little tiny TV shows. In fact, RocketBoom was available for your iPod Video before The Daily Show. Keep in mind Jon Stewart’s audience is way bigger than Amanda Congdon’s, but holy cow is it smaller than Brian Williams’. But who is going to watch all of those Podcasts? I’m reminded of the 500 cable channels I was expecting, which are now consolidating into nine because of lack of an audience. (But here’s a thought, are Video Podcasts the bush league for Network TV and Cable).

I’m thrilled people can find a way to support themselves by making these great little clips. But once you put the plastic Coke glass in front of you and start talking about how great those Reebok shoes feel, the luster will come off. There are only going to be a few people making money, and most of those are the people already making money in other mediums.

Most new technologies are shinier versions of stuff we’ve been working in for a hundred years. Yeah, there are variations: the web is the perfect micromarketing tool, mass-customization, viral marketing and such. But after the first two weeks of marketing’s invasion, none of these technologies are any different in that decades-old marketing principles should take hold. Look at some of the best web advertisements. They look startlingly like the best magazine advertisements. Look at the web-only commercials that take the world by storm. First of all, they reach no where near the audience of even the crappiest commercials shown on network television. But secondly, of the most memorable ones, people don’t remember what product the commercial was for. That’s crappy marketing.

Yes, technology is cool and fun and all that. You can get creative and get exposure for little money, but just remember that little sock puppet from Pets.com. I saw him doing a commercial for a cut-rate car loan place on early morning Comedy Central yesterday. So, everyone calm down. Technology is fun. Play with it. Pet it. Love it. But control it. And make sure you’re paying attention to how it affects and complements your brand and your other marketing efforts.

NOTE: Yes, I do realize that as a marketer, I am at this very moment participating in the sullying of a perfectly good technology tool: blogging. Hello, everyone. My name is Jeff, and I’m a recovering hypocrite.

Cingular Took My Phone

So a couple of years ago, I was a Verizon customer. I’m not going to link to their homepage, because a) you can probably figure their web address, and b) I’m still mad at them.

I was having phone problems (it was not working) and I still had three months before I could get a phone upgrade, and Verizon offered no help, even though I was not able to use my phone service. So, I calmly waited for my contract to expire, and walked over to a friendly Cingular store. I have since learned a few things about the meanings of the contractual obligation, and the eBay options for getting a new/used cell phone, but that is for another day. As well, I’m sure there are several people who have just as tainted view of Cingular, as I have of Verizon, but whatever, this is my blog.

The main thing I learned in my Verizon experience is this: the warranty on a new cell phone is for one year, but the commitment to the cell phone company has grown to two years. So for that second year, please, please, please, little cell phone, please don’t break. Otherwise you’re hosed, and need to find a solution with no help from the service provider.

So, on my switch to Cingular, I first got a Nokia phone and was not satisfied. Inside of two weeks, I exchanged it for a Motorola V551 That was 11 months ago. In general, I’m very happy with the phone, but for a couple of minor quirks.

V551 problem number one: I could no longer hear the person calling me.
V551 problem number two: the screen sometimes didn’t work.

But, here’s the good news. I am still within the one year warranty. So I thought I’d try something. I thought I’d get a new cell phone for the second year of my commitment. And Cingular made it so frickin’ easy.

I clicked on a link on their web site, and faster than I could have ordered a new book on Amazon, I had requested a replacement phone. Two days later, the UPS man dropped a little brown box on my porch. Check out these contents. New (well, reconditioned…) phone, return shipping label, reprogramming instructions… everything. They even included a strip of tape to reseal the shipping box. They solved my problem and didn’t even make me work for it. Sweet.

Cell phone companies get a bad rap, frequently because they tend to be large uncaring corporations that are only concerned with their absolutely huge bottom line, and the occasional spurned customer will not really have that large of an impact. And even if someone at Cingular was not personally concerned with me and my phone problem, they’ve got this thing down. They’d rather send me a new phone immediately, rather than deal with the ten half-hour telephone calls that would have ensued. One visit to their web site, and a happy customer am I.

Let’s pencil it out:
Happy customer with problem immediately solved = cash in the bank and good karma for all.
Satisfied customer with problem talked about, bantered about and marginally solved = Cash until contract runs out and bad blog entries-o-plenty.

Looks like Cingular has won a customer for at least another year or so. At least until my contract runs out in May 2007. Even then, I’ll give them first right of refusal…

Why do I do triathlons? Stairs.

My goals of running sub-eight minute miles, cycling at a 20-mph average and swimming for an hour all originate from one Seminole moment. One day in the spring of 2005 I jogged up a flight of stairs and was out of breath. And I’m not a big guy (6 feet, 190 lbs).

I was breathing hard, I was disgusted at how little it had taken and I had a new goal. I wanted to be able to jog up a flight of stairs and not be winded. So I started running four or five times a week around my neighborhood or Lake Padden. Twenty minutes, a half-hour, maybe 40 minutes if I was feeling crazy.

But the goal of not being winded when I jog up a flight of stairs got old. It’s not that exciting. And on days when I wasn’t feeling up to running, it was easy to put it off because there was no hard date, or ultimate test of my efforts. So, then I started thinking about races. And I started getting a little bored with just running. I started cycling. This was made a little easier by the fact that the company I work for also owns Softride, a bike company geared toward triathletes. So I got a great bike, pretty affordably. And co-workers told me about a local Triathlon at Lake Padden. So I also started swimming-cycling-running, just to see if I might feel up to racing in a competitive triathlon.

Well, I did it. Last year I participated in two Olympic distance triathlons. Lake Padden and the Baker's Breakfast Cookie International. I would have done a couple more, but I had scheduling conflicts and whatever. I even hunkered down for the last couple of months of 2005 and toughed out my first running marathon in Seattle.

I have plans for more this Summer, at Lake Padden, Tri Without Borders and maybe Lake Stevens, Black Hills or Black Diamond. The Disneyworld one would be awesome.

So now my goals have become to post better times than I did last year. For example, in the Baker’s race, the Bellingham Herald, our local paper, published the top 15 finishers in each age group. I finished 16 out of 23 missing the top 15 by one minute and 23.5 seconds… or so. No newspaper ink for me. This year I want to be in the top 15!

Just so we can keep track, my goal of posting an Olympic-Distance Triathlon time under 2 hours and 40 minutes stems directly from my goal to not be winded after running up a flight of stairs. Make sense?

Bathroom + TV = Absolutely, Amazingly Genius

I remember sometime in the early 80s, my Mom threw a huge Superbowl party. As I remember it, it was really fun. But one of the things that made it so was that she arranged to have a TV in every room of the house, including the two bathrooms. Now if I remember correctly, this involved extension cords and a couple of old school 13” black-and-white TVs. To me, as a 10-year-old child, this was an absolutely, amazingly genius addition to the bathroom.

Flash forward to last weekend, and I was out at this little Indian restaurant in Vancouver called Rangoli: great food, cute place. On the way out, I stopped in the restroom to take care of some business. What did I see? A little 6” TV buried in the wall behind the bathroom mirror. It was beautifully positioned so one sitting on the throne is at eye level and able to watch the esoteric music videos of Indian influence the restaurant was showing. I immediately thought of hanging out in the bathroom as a child watching the Superbowl, and as an overly-connected adult, I was stunned at what an absolutely, amazingly genius addition to the bathroom this was.

Now granted, a flat-panel TV hidden in the wall of the bathroom mirror seems like a pretty high-end household accessory, but I’ve made a decision. I’m officially high end. I’ve got a little handy-man skill going for me, so I can set it up myself. And that combined with my meager salary is enough to make me eligible for high-end additions such as this. So we have a pretty serious remodel planned for one of our bathrooms in the next year or so, and this will definitely be part of it.

A little research led me to these three options.
1. Philips MiraVision ($1000 and up)
2. Seura Television Mirrors ($3000-ish)
3. Twowaymirrors.net with this 7” LCD TV from Pyle (total about $250). Hmm. Choices, choices.

Now my morning routine is pretty streamlined. Shower, brush teeth, step out to pick out the clothes for the day, step back in to put some goo in my hair, to make it look like I just don’t care. We share the room with our cats’ food and litterbox, so I don’t just hang out there for fun. But I’m thinking for the combined total of say 15-20 minutes per day, plus the occasional extended visit, I can have background noise of CNN or Jon Stewart to keep me informed. Granted a very big issue to be resolved is coming up with a sanitary way to deal with channel and volume changing. Hmm.

I like the idea of having only one TV in my house. It’s in the media room. If we want to watch TV, we go in there and watch. If we want to not watch TV, we go into one of the other five rooms of the house. And having this TV in the bathroom mirror won’t change my feeling on that. Even though I did spend more time than necessary in the black-and-white TV bathroom of 1982, as an adult the bathroom TV will only serve as ADD-style entertainment, distraction and information that one might get in the car on the way to work. And since my work commute is only 7-10 minutes and I hardly get anything good in that time, I’ll be more informed.

But that sanitary remote control is an issue. I will have to research that.

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, Hurry! Choose a side!

It sure seems there is a whole lotta yellin for something that’s not going to mean anything for a few years. In the realm of DVD players, that little laser that read your disc is red. But with the advent of HDTV, now all the talk is about blue ray high-definition DVDs. The main players in this game are Blu-Ray, backed by Sony, and HD-DVD, backed by Toshiba. I know this sounds a bit familiar. It’s a format war reminiscent of Beta/VHS and DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW.

But let’s clear something up here. This is not a Betamax v. VHS situation. In the early 80’s you had no other choice. If you wanted to rent or record a movie, you had to pony up the dough and choose a videotape side. That’s not the case today. You can keep getting DVDs delivered in the mail from Netflix, back-up your computer on a 4.7 G DVD, and not have any idea that industry giants are kicking each other in the groin trying to get in front in this battle for “format dominance.”

Lest we forget, the landscape is littered with failed forms of media and even a few other format wars that no one really noticed. Who can forget the mid-90’s battle for digital tape format dominance (DAT v DCC)? Or MiniDiscs (Yeah, thanks again, Sony)? Or Super Audio CDs?

These had their place, and in some circumstances they were better than the mainstream media format, but that’s not good enough to be the default. What about DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD-RW? In 2002, this drove people nuts, but it’s been so long since I’ve heard nary a complaint, I forgot there ever was an issue.

But I digress. Back to high-definition DVD. There is a bit of a connector conspiracy going with it. And here’s why. Standard DVD players are seeing very little market growth, because there’s not much reason to buy a new one unless your old one stops working. And it doesn’t help that you can buy new ones at Wal-Mart for $30. DVD technology has been one of the most quickly adopted technologies ever. In terms of household penetration, it is now right up there with Color TVs and telephones, around 90%. So a lot of this development into high definition DVDs is simply to give you a reason to upgrade and buy a new player.

But that’s me being a cynic. The industry line explaining the development is that with so many HD-Ready TVs being sold, the consumer demand for better looking, feature-packed DVDs is huge. This is of course because so many of us ran out and signed up for HDTV service through our cable or satellite service provider.

But, I disagree. DVDs look pretty fricking good on large screen TVs. HDTV is great because it actually makes broadcast television look better on large format TVs. Comparatively, regular TV broadcasts, even on cable or satellite, look a little like VHS playback when compared to HDTV. It really is quite a difference. But as great as HDTV is, the Consumer Electronics industry is having a horrible time explaining it. I’m looking for people to dig on HDTV before they start thinking about changing their movie collection format over to blue ray high definition whatever.

But here’s an interesting angle. On opposite sides of the battle/argument/whatever, you’ve got Sony (Blu-Ray) and Microsoft (HD-DVD): two corporate technology behemoths. Now think of it in the context of Playstation and Xbox. Ahaaa… Gaming and high-definition DVDs…. Sony is planning to incorporate Blu-Ray technology into the Playstation 3, while Microsoft will offer an external HD-DVD hard drive for its Xbox 360. The odd thing is that the game discs themselves will stay with the previous red laser DVD technology we all know and love. So the blue laser will just sort of hang out until someone notices. Regardless, gaming consoles could lead to the first appearance of blue laser technology into many consumer households, since stand-alone high-definition DVD players/recorders for either format are expected to go for $1000 and up for a couple of years.

If you ask me, Sony’s name appears in this whole brouhaha quite a bit. They have a way of wanting to change the whole world in their favor. So, if anyone asks me: it’s all Sony’s fault, what with their dementia-induced world domination plans, and all.

Who needs a mouse pad, Part Two.

Whether you use a roller ball or optical mouse, there are plenty of benefits in using a mouse pad. Some are technical, some are not, but they are benefits nonetheless. Let’s put aside the reasons that some feel mouse pads are no longer necessary because: they’re cheap, they’re not needed for optical mice and they’re cheap.

A mouse pad can serve a number of roles in your daily computing. So let’s take a look at the non-technical perks.

The first, and this is a big one, is having a nice clean open area on your desktop to use your mouse. In this era of the internet, it is quite common to use the computer mouse as often as or more so than the keyboard. So you need it ready to go at all times. Without a mouse pad to reserve mousing space, you’ll find the area quickly cluttered with catalogs, paper clips, junk mail and receipts. So, a mouse pad creates a sort of mousing refuge on your desktop.

Another benefit that may seem superficial is the sound and the look. Try mousing on a wood surface for a few minutes. I tried it, and it’s noisy. From the scraping, the bouncing, the clicking. A mouse pad dampens that sound a bit. And for a minute think about what that scraping and bouncing is doing to the surface of your desk. Why not let a mouse pad take that abuse, instead of scratching up your desktop, counter or dining table.

And finally, one of the reasons so many mouse pads have sold is the novelty value. Some people just like having a picture of puppies and kittens on their desk. Or beach scenes. Or pictures of their kids. Or any number of image mouse pads available on the market. Like refrigerator magnets, mouse pads have become a way of expressing ourselves. Like the stationery market, this is enough to keep the product category alive and kicking for years.

So, what now of those technical benefits of mouse pads? Seriously, there are some benefits.

First of all, some of us are celebrating more than 20 years of computer use. That’s 20 years of typing, mousing, spread sheeting and more. These have not always been the most posture-friendly positions, and a word that’s been thrown around quite a bit in years of late is: ergonomics. That is the science of reducing unnecessary or awkward postures and motions. A quick way to jumpstart you on the path to an ergonomic workspace is with an ergonomic mouse pad. These let your wrist rest on a little pillow while you’re doing your mousing to keep your wrist at a more natural position and to keep the blood flowing. It’s a simple concept with some complicated variations, but it can make a difference.

Also, for PC gamers and professional graphics people, there is a need for an ultra-smooth consistent surface. For gamers this is a life-or-death situation. For graphics professionals, we’re talking about cash. For people who are just really picky about accurate cursor movements, it’s simply peace of mind. Optical or roller-ball, you still need a flat, smooth surface: kind of the definition of a mouse pad. On a going-over-the-edge side bar; I’ve heard of gamers going so far as to put silicone pads on the bottoms of computer mice and spray coatings of Pledge on their mouse pads. Whatever it takes, baby.

I’ve heard of a little talk that a reflective surface can help optical mice work better by conserving the battery of wireless mice. The juries still out on this one, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Who needs a mouse pad, Part One.

Mouse Pads aren’t rocket science. And actually they aren’t computer science either. Mouse pads are a strangely non-technical thing directly associated with a highly-technical thing. It’s kind of hard to believe that you need a rubber place mat to use your new Dell Computer. But there are reasons you do and reasons you don’t. It’s quickly becoming a matter of preference.

Initially, mouse pads had an actual physical value to computing. That little roller ball inside of your computer mouse works better when it has just a little bit of surface friction that a mouse pad provides. This was true in 1969 when the computer mouse was invented. It was true in 1984 when the Apple Macintosh brought the mouse into the home. And it’s true today when the majority of computer mice out there are still the roller ball-type.

But mouse pads have gotten a bad rap for a quite a while. And that’s really for a few different reasons.

First, at the most basic level, a mouse pad is cheap to produce. You can just take a flat piece of rubber, slap a piece of fabric on it and voila: a mouse pad. Because they are cheap to make and because they score some great visual real estate on your desktop, mouse pads are one of the most popular promotional products (along with pens, T-shirts and key chains). You don’t have to work very hard to find a free mouse pad printed with a manufacturer, auto parts or website logo. This has helped to create a dime-a-dozen mentality when some consumers think about mouse pads.

Secondly, it is not technically necessary to use a mouse pad with an optical mouse. Manufacturers, like Microsoft and Kensington, tout their optical mice as only needing a flat smooth surface. So this has led some people to chuck their mouse pad out the window and go commando on the desktop. However, if you still use a roller-ball mouse, don’t give your mouse pad the heave ho just yet.

Lastly, people perceive mouse pads as cheap. I know this one’s pretty similar to the first reason, but stay with me. Nowadays the price range for mouse pads is literally $.50 to $30 or more. While the majority of mouse pads are made from cloth and rubber, you can also get them made from plastic, glass, metal, leather or wood. I know. We sell them at Allsop. Some people get it (Gamers, Graphics Professionals, really picky people who want accurate cursor movement…) and some don’t (those who proclaim: “mouse pads cost like $.50!”).

Whether you use a roller ball or optical mouse, there are plenty of benefits in using a mouse pad. Some are technical, some are not, but they are benefits nonetheless. And I’m not talking about the kitschy, novelty benefit of having a picture of Spongebob on your desktop.