Archive for December, 2008

As far as I’m concerned, I’m not going to shed a tear that 2008 is
one for the history books tonight. Been a rough year, any way you slice
it. Enough said. It’s time to look forward, and not agonize over the
immediate past.

To all the readers of this blog, may you have a
happy and prosperous new year, filled with success, security, and
sanity, in an insane world.

Godspeed…

GEICO has been using multiple pitch-persons for some time now. “Persons” is something of a misnomer…they’ve used cavemen, a variety of celebrities (my faves are Don LaFontaine, Peter Frampton, Michael Winslow, and Mrs. Butterworths) and, of course, the GEICO Gecko.

The very cockney gekko has been around since 1999, making him one of the more successful of insurance mascots. As he’s a 3D animated pitchman, he’s not changed much in the last 9 years (which is more than I can say for most of us.) While the cavemen went on to a shortlived series, the gecko has stayed true to his commercial roots. Interestingly, the gekko commercials have actually been both very consistent, and if anything, better over the years.

The latest one manages to poke gentle fun at GEICO itself, without making the viewer feel as if they’re being conned, and without the humor making us think less of the sponsor, just to get a laugh. That’s pretty amazing. Read the rest of this entry »

Sex is not the first thing I’ve thought of, when it comes to fast food – particularly not in relationship to Arby’s. The roast beef vendor is to fast food what the guy is at your 20th high school reunion, who’s name you can’t remember – he didn’t letter in anything, had no real accomplishments, but somehow, seems somewhat familiar, even 20 years later. You just don’t remember why.

Arby’s has an identity problem, in marketingspeak. (You’d think that being the last franchise standing that features “roast beef sandwiches” – as opposed to burgers or fried chicken – would be enough to stand out. Apparently not.) So, of course, their answer is to take the low road and use sex to sell sandwiches. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’re in retail, the period between December 25th and the Monday after January 1st is, effectively, the Doldrums. From a business point of view, it’s the equivalent of being on a schooner or square-rigger, in the middle of the ocean, with nary a breeze in sight. Nothing happens. 

If you’re in outbound sales, you might as well reorganize your desk, update your files, weed out old contacts, et cetera. 

If you’re in marketing and advertising, it’s time to catch up on all the sleep you lost in the big run-up to the Christmas selling season, as nobody’s going to do anything until next year. 

As for me, I’m catching up on business plans, marketing plans, and strategic plans. 

Which brings up another question…what are your plans for next year, and how do you plan to adapt to the Brave New World of economic reality?

Every so often, the media latches onto the Next Big Thing. It’s usually hearalded by some book (which has a P.R. firm working overtime), with an author making the talking head TV show circuit. These writers prognosticate in grave tones about the future, and predict Where The Planet Is Going.

Feh.

Most of these clowns are wrong, in that they use the local TV weatherman as their performance model, as opposed to, oh, say an Old Testament prophet. (For those of you not hip to Bible prophesy, the Bible itself offers a one-stop litmus test to determine if a prophet is the real McCoy or a fraud. The Bible standard is 100% accuracy. Given that this is something of an exacting standard, it’s easy to see why the scribes would seek out a little less demanding spec.)

I’ve seen books on future trends (“Futuretrends”), books on the environment (“Earth in the Balance,” by that noted environmental scientist, Al” I invented the Internet” Gore), and even prophesy (“The Late, Great Planet Earth.”) All have proven to be a mixed bag – a mixture of outright mistakes, exaggerations, missed cues, distortions, and a fact or accuracy thrown in for good measure, just to see if we’re paying attention.

The sad part is that the media (and that portion of the general public that lets the media do their thinking for them, which at last count would be “most of them”) run around after these authors like the crowd Chicken Little gathered after he began loudly proclaiming “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” (Much of what is wrong with this world can be attributed to the fact that the leaders of New Education scrapped reading classics in empirical thinking like “Chicken Little” and instead foisted upon our youth such scintillating fare as “Heather has Two Mommies.”) They latch on to the latest trend like a life ring thrown to a man overboard upon the Seven Seas, and cling to it like white on rice…that is until the next trend comes along. Which is why we were all worried about Global Cooling in the 60′s (along with “nuclear winter”) and Global Warming in the “aughts.” Sigh…

I’m here to tell you, however, that there ARE trends you can latch on to, but they are driven, not by authors wanting to make a buck, but consumers wanting to save a buck. Read the rest of this entry »

No. I didn’t see any signs like that today. But I might just as well have.

“All Merchandise 60% Off!” 

“Storewide Savings! Up to 80% Off!”

“Everything Must Go!”

“Save Big! Save Now!”

“Everything marked down today through Jan. 12th!”

Um. Yeah. Like I believe THAT.

Here’s the problem(s)…since desperate retailers already marked down their merch before Christmas, they didn’t have much in the way of margin to deal with after Christmas. No problem…now they’re simply taking a loss on everything, just in order to move out the old merch to make way for the new. 

“Collosally stupid” doesn’t begin to describe this. Read the rest of this entry »

Did some last-minute Christmas shopping today. Three of the stores we visited had large promotional banners, proudly proclaiming “Lots of Gift Ideas for $10 or Less!” And they did. What in year’s past would have been considered “loss leaders,” are this year’s “hey, at least we got them to pry open their wallets for a 10 spot” gift.

I realize that things are tough all over. I do. But I wonder at the logic of staging massive sales now, when shoppers have been trained to wait for a slew of after-Christmas bargains. If you’ve already put stuff on sale before Christmas, how low can you go after? I’m guessing here, but I’ll bet it won’t be low enough to get shoppers excited.

I guess we’ll see. I don’t worry about places like Walmart and Sam’s Club, or even well-run chains like BestBuy. It is Christmas, and even in a tight economy, there are gifts that will be bought. Guys like Circuit City, Bed Bath & Beyond, and a bunch more players that are “on the bubble” financially are going to have some rough sledding between now and the February doldrums.

Just a guess here, but it seems the guys with the reps for the best customer serivce, most liberal and consistent return policies, and fair prices seem to be weathering the storm just fine, thank you. Wonder if there’s a lesson there?

I recently (four days ago, to be exact) updated the software this blog runs on, to the latest and greatest version – i.e., WordPress v.2.7. The upgrade was surprisingly easy to do, and by all appearances, went off without a hitch. Um…ALMOST without a hitch. Seems that one of the things that got trashed along the way was the settings for my Google Analytics code. Whoops.

I usually check my GA stats on a daily basis, just to see what’s going on. Check more often, and it will drive you nuts. Less frequently, and you stand to miss a trend…or a problem.

It had been four days since I’d checked my GA account. Color me “surprised” to learn that I’d (according to GA) gone from a significant readership to ZERO hits for the last four days. That’s like going from 60 to zero in, oh, about 0.0 seconds.

Once I saw the stats, I knew something was wrong. I dialed up the New! Improved! control panel, and found that my GA settings were pooched. No code – no tracking. No tracking – no results. No results – unhappy blogger.

I’ve restored the tracking code, and all should be right in my world.

But I’ll keep checking. As Joe Bob Briggs (Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas) says, “Without eternal vigilance, it can happen here.”

I grew up working for my Dad. He owns a music studio (a teaching studio) that had a small counter, where he’d sell strings, drumsticks, picks and a few books. No big deal. When I came along, I had visions of turning his operation into a “real” music store, complete with lots of stock, drumsets, keyboards, synths, guitars, amps – the works. My Dad was somewhat indulgent, but quite a bit less enthusiastic when it came to opening the wallet to buy stock. He was a child of the Great Depression, and believed that caution and prudence were rules to live by. No floor plans and going into debt for him, certainly not on the hopes and dreams of some kid who thought he knew everything. Turns out the Old Man was pretty sharp, for in the intervening years, I’ve seen more music stores than I care to think about asume room temperature when faced with recessions, big store competition, and lack of forecasting the fickle tastes of John Q. Public. 

What I learned, working retail for my Dad, could fill a book (and perhaps, someday will). One lesson that was brought back to mind today was what it was like working retail for Christmas. In many ways, they are some memories I’d rather forget. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve ever been to what we now refer to as a “classic” rock concert, I’m sure  you’ve seen the lead guitarist turn and face his wall ‘o amplification, standing in the sweet spot, to get what amounts to infinite sustain out of his guitar. Stand in just the right place, hit just the right note, and the amplifier will push enough air, just right, to keep the string vibrating forever…or at least as long as you have power going to the amp, and a guitarist willing to stand there doing nothing else. 

We professional musicians call this a feedback loop – where the sound we play triggers a what amounts to endless amounts of sustain. The problem with feedback loops is that eventually, they’re not very interesting, because there’s no fresh input. You’re just observing a perpetual motion machine of sound. 

Once upon a time, it was a novel thing to see a “real” product in a movie or TV show. Legions of art directors paid art monkeys dozens of dollars at a time to come up with fake packaging so that you’d never see your favorite sitcom star tacitly endorsing Wheaties or Corn Flakes to an unsuspecting audience. Not any more. Read the rest of this entry »