Andy Boyer

Category: Big Businesses

  • Is Google trying to Affect Politics?

    So, here’s an issue that only matters when you are a company serving 40% of the ads on the Internet.

    According to an article written by someone named Robert Cox, founder of the Media Bloggers Association, Google is not allowing a Republican senator to run ads that denounce MoveOn.org. 

    According to the article, the banned advertisements said, “Susan Collins is MoveOn’s primary target. Learn how you can help” and “Help Susan Collins stand up to the MoveOn.org money machine.” The ads linked to Collins’ campaign Web site with a headline reading “MoveOn.org has made Susan Collins their #1 target.” The Collins Web site claims that MoveOn has contributed $250,000 to her likely Democratic opponent and has run onine ads against her costing nearly $1 million. The Web site also displays MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad.

    So, is this paranoia?  One one hand, a company should be able to run whatever ads it wants.  But on the other, if you are the ad serving technology running ads on millions of blogs and web sites, doesn’t the line get blurry if you are banning ads you may not agree with?

    Google uses the argument of, "You don’t have right’s to MoveOn’s Trademark so you can’t use it in an ad."   But that’s a pretty slippery slope, and I’d be shocked if every other ad in Google Ad Sense avoids using an unlicensed trademark.  In fact, the article states, "Google routinely permits the unauthorized use of company names such as Exxon, Wal-Mart, Cargill and Microsoft in advocacy ads. An anti-war ad currently running on Google asks “Keep Blackwater in Iraq?” and links to an article titled “Bastards at Blackwater — Should Blackwater Security be held accountable for the deaths of its employees?”"

    If Google’s not careful, long term these kind of issues could turn into a reason for the DOJ to start looking into whether Google is a monopoly that needs to be broken up, using the same logic they used on Microsoft a few years back.  Exept this time it’s not a piece of software Google isn’t allowing to be distrubuted, it’s censorship of speech. If a single entity that controls 40% of the online ads decides to censor those ads to affect public policy, even the non-paranoid might get a little spooked.

  • C’mon, Someone Thought This Was a Good Idea?

    (Note: Correspondent Garrett Galbreath contributed to this article)

    This actually made me add a new category to the blogroll, one for "Dumb Ideas."

    In an apparent attempt at global expansion no matter how little common sense the idea involves, Taco Bell will be entering Mexico.  However, the company must change some of its marketing.

    First, they will not be selling Mexican food.   In fact, an ad reads, "It is a new fast-food alternative that does not pretend to be Mexican food."  Instead their brand will be, ""Taco Bell is something else."  Hmm, it’s lunch time, I feel like ordering "something else."  

    Second, there will be some unusual items, with a menu that projects a more "American" fast-food image by adding French fries — some topped with cheese, cream, ground meat and tomatoes.  So basically, nachos, but using fries instead of chips.

    And third, no tacos – the hard-shelled items sold as "tacos" in the U.S. have been renamed "tacostadas."

    Why all the changes?  Let’s ask the executive in charge.   "Taco Bell wants to take advantage of the perception that if something comes from the United States, it tastes better, that a country that has been Americanized is willing to Americanize food that is central to its cuisine," Monsiváis said. "It is an absurd idea, and given that it’s so absurd, it may just be successful in upper-class areas."

    In case you are wondering, YUM shares are struggling.  Perhaps it’s because people are walking into the CEO’s office, announcing they have an "absurd idea" and having that idea greenlighted. 

    Now you might be saying, "Andy, you’re being way too hard on these guys.  Why not try something, and if it doesn’t work, put it in the scrap heap and forget it ever happened, just don’t do it again."  Well, I agree.  So for a kicker – "Taco Bell failed with a highly publicized launch in Mexico City in 1992, when it opened a few outlets next to KFC restaurants."

     

  • Do You Need Cable Anymore?

    So, like everyone lese in the blogosphere, I wanted to make sure I passed along the news that Joost had finally come out of hiding and was in a public beta.  If you don’t know, Joost is the new venture from the guys who built Kazaa and Skype.  It’s a real attempt at "TV on the Internet."   But, I wanted a different angle, so I’ve been waiting a few days as I figured it out.

    Well, after scratching my brain a while, I believe Joost may be the straw that allows me to ask this question. "Do you need cable TV anymore?" 

    Let’s think about what I would watch on my Cable TV:

    1) News: Realistically, I can read online everything I need to know.  And every story that matters generally has a local or national feed I can watch.

    2) Live Sports: I may not be typical, but I rarely watch sports by myself.  If I care enough about it, it’s generally a social event.  So, it sucks that I can’t host a party for the Seahawks game, but I certainly can find a place to watch it.

    3) SportsCenter:  So far, this is not replicable online.  Score one for Cable TV.

    4) Movies: $4 for a DVD.

    5) Prime Time Shows: Many are now available online the week they air (or the week after). Since my TV Drama and SitCom watching has already shifted from "Live" to "Tivo," waiting a week isn’t a big deal.  

    So now let’s do a dollar for dollar comparison.  For my $70 per month to Comcast, I would probably let the news run about 40 hours in the background, catch 2 or 3 movies, watch about 4-8 hours of Tivo’d material and catch a few episodes of Sportscenter.   Without Cable, I lose out on the background news, am forced to the Video store for movies, have to go to a bar to watch the MLB playoffs, and have my selection of sitcoms and dramas cut down by some percentage, unless I want to buy them from iTunes.  It really probably comes out a wash.

    So is Cable dead? No, of course not.  It’s a wash, not a landslide.  And I’m probably atypical.  But the fact that it’s a wash should be somewhat scary to Cable companies.  Which is why this whole Net Neutrality thing becomes an important issue for us to keep an eye on.  The Cable guys aren’t dumb, and they aren’t going to just let $70/month from 100 million households walk out the door.  But that’s a different topic.

  • The Battle of Shareholder Value vs Environmental Concern

    So back in the 90’s, it started becoming en vogue for Corporations to donate profits to charitable organizations.  This started a very interesting debate about whether companies should simply deliver value to their shareholders, or be responsible for bettering the communities in which they belong.

    An easy argument was to drop the charitable giving money into the overall Marketing budget and call it "Community Relations."  If a giant bank sponsors runs for Leukemia and Breast Cancer research, then one could argue the CPM was worth the donation.  It’s a pretty compelling argument that you can get a lot of community goodwill on your side, which then helps with non-tangibles such as recruiting, brand management and corporate morale.

    Fast forward to 2007, and the magic bullet is in going "Green." Companies are denting their bottom line to use recycled paper, advanced heating and cooling systems, subsidizing public transportation for employees and other efforts.  And shareholders seem to be ok with that.

    But what about Google’s latest announcement.   According to a Google release, "Google.org is committed to finding innovative transportation solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming…As part of this initiative, we are issuing a $10 million request for investment proposals (RFP). We plan to invest amounts ranging from $500,000 to $2,000,000 in selected for-profit companies whose innovative approach, team and technologies will enable widespread commercialization of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, electric vehicles and/or vehicle-to-grid solutions."

    Now, you can look at this 3 ways:

    1) Google makes $10 million in an hour, so it’s irrelevant to shareholders.  Great PR move.

    2) This is a completely for profit effort for Google, stemming from their M+A group, and Google Shareholders should benefit down the road.

    3) This $10 Million is nice, but why is an online search and media company investing in Transportation, something they could not possible know anything about?  Shareholders should be annoyed.

    On a lighter note, what happens if Google ends up building the killer transportation app?  Will everyone be commuting to the Microsoft campus on the Google Mobile?

     

  • Supreme Court Ends 96-Year-Old Ban on Price Floors

    I haven’t seen too much of this floating around the blogosphere yet, and maybe it’s my paranoia kicking in, but this morning’s Supreme Court ruling piques my curiosity.

    From the New York Times: The Supreme Court on Thursday abandoned a 96-year-old ban on manufacturers and retailers setting price floors for products.  In a 5-4 decision, the court said that agreements on minimum prices are legal if they promote competition.  The ruling means that accusations of minimum pricing pacts will be evaluated case by case.  The Supreme Court declared in 1911 that minimum pricing agreements violate federal antitrust law.  Supporters said that allowing minimum price floors would hurt upstart discounters and Internet resellers seeking to offer new, cheaper ways to distribute products.

    So, why is this interesting to the Internet and Ecommerce world?

    What’s unclear from the article is how far the price floor extends.  Let’s use Harry Potter books as an example.  Even though the franchise sells more books than anything else being published, retailers actually don’t make that much profit on the sales.  Thanks to major chains like Wal-Mart and Amazon selling the book at discount as a way to get people into their stores, the retail price hovers below other books. 

    But now it seems that the Harry Potter Publisher could set a minimum price if it wanted, effectively stopping Amazon from pricing below the competition.

    This has further reaching effects if you start taking into account all the Amazon Associates and Ebay sellers out there.  These companies have done a great job creating as close to a free market economy as you can get.  Now, the law looks like it’s going to allow the stifling of that free market, putting the power back into the hands of producers, who can now decide the prices before they even reach the market.  And I don’t have any idea how this affects the secondary market for items.

    Another example is a widget system like Mpire.com whose whole reason for being is to help consumers find the lowest prices on items being sold on the web.  Well, if this "lowest" price is being set by the manufacturer, how does any small discount retailer make any noise to grab a customer?

    Unless I’m reading into this wrong, this appears to be a strike at Internet Ecommerce.  Manufacturers don’t like when there is little surplus in their supply and demand graph, and have now artificially manipulated the system to get that surplus back.  I’m sure there will be more to come on this.

  • Hey 7-11 Marketing Guy – This is What We Call a “Slam Dunk”

    Seriously, how come marketing opps like this don’t land in my lap…..   Hello 7-11 PR guy.  Please send 3 machines, along with cameras from Jay Leno or Jon Stewart show, immediately to the quartermaster.  Start collecting emails from your boss and stockholders about what a good guy you are.  Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Is this really that hard….

    From the AP

    Frozen drinks in the desert: Soldier’s mom trying to send a Slurpee machine to Iraq

    ALBANY, Ore. — An Albany woman with a son in Iraq is raising money to buy his 82nd Airborne unit a machine that makes "Slurpee" type frozen carbonated drinks.  Sharon Crary said her son, Pfc. Preston Crary, 21, a chaplain’s assistant, asked for a machine that could make enough drinks to serve up to 100 soldiers at a time. Preston told his mother the machine would be a "great morale booster." It would stay in Iraq when Preston rotates home in March or April 2008. His Army unit is a mixture of infantry, medics, mechanics and other support soldiers.

    Because of red tape involved in raising the money and sending such a large item overseas, she has joined up with Give 2 The Troops, a nonpartisan, nonpolitical group formed to support deployed troops. Members try to get letters and care packages to soldiers in war zones.

    "Working with the organization enables us to purchase the machine wholesale and provide a tax-deductible receipt to those making donations," she said. "The machine costs about $1,600 with shipping and supplies, such as flavorings and cups. I figure the total cost will be about $2,500."

    Sharon Crary teaches private English speech improvement classes but is taking time off for the project.

  • Tragedy at V-Tech; Facebook Emerges as Vital Communication Tool

    The U.S. found a new tool in how to communicate on a one to many way in times of crisis today.  On this national day of sorrow and disbelief, Facebook.com proved that the world of social networking extends past sharing pictures and music tastes.

    One LA Times Article includes the following paragraph.  "University of Southern California sophomore Charlotte Korchak received a call from her mother in Maryland — Virginia Tech, she learned, was a death scene. Rather than tie up the cellphones of friends who attend the school, the 19-year-old history major checked their pages on Facebook, the social-networking site. ‘I was able to immediately find out who was OK,’ she said. ‘Without Facebook I have no idea how I would have found that out.’"

    The site has also become a place for people to share support.  One group has over 1,300 members.  This condolences group contains over 2,600.  Here’s a prayer group with 2,100.

    In real time yesterday, Bryce’s Journal was a source of up to the minute information, which led to an interesting moral argument.  The CBC TV network posted to his blog comments section asking him to call and provide his account on the air in addition to the blog.  This became a source of hostility for the blog readers, who felt that their reading the accounts was not voyeurism, but that a major TV network relaying those accounts would be exploitation. Bryce’s Journal continues to be a source of pretty startling emotional writing.

    There’s little doubt that this tragedy could have been avoided if news of the first shooting, and warnings to get off campus, could have been conveyed in a more efficient manner.  I think we can look at social networking, especially in the mobile space, as something to considered for emergency response.

  • A Future History Lesson On Market Forces

    So Don Imus is fired.  After meeting with Jese Jackson and Al Sharpton, CBS President Les Mooves fired his top rated radio host.  Many people cheer this.  The villain was vanquished, the evil doer thwarted, the racist cast back to the cave from where he belongs.

    And the rest of us will get to watch a first hand example of how capitalism works, how market forces behave and how money and opportunity trump all.

    First, you’ll have the legal settlement from CBS.  It’ll be done quietly, but you don’t dismiss a formerly beloved radio personality with millions of dollars on his contract remaining, and not have to send any more checks his way.  Plus, you have to pay him to stay OFF the air, because WCBS is not the only station in New York.  And there are lots of stations with call letters you have never heard of that would be happy to take a little heat for giving Imus a "Second Chance.’

    But it’s not just traditional radio.  Tell me Mark Cuban isn’t already sitting in Imus living room saying, "You’ll be on HDNet, podcasting as well, and your first guests will be the Duke Lacrosse team, and your topic can be about how the media goes in for the kill.  Or we’ll do a show – The News accoring to Dan (Rather) and Don (Imus). Plus I haven’t annoyed David Stern for a while so we’ll let you do some play by play for the Mavericks as well."

    And sitting next to Cuban on that same couch are the CEO’s of Sirius and XM radio, one guy saying, "Compete against Howard again" and the other guy saying, "Back to back Howard and Imus – you can say anything you want on our network."

    So Imus gets punished – but watch how the market reacts in the coming months.  If the one thing this country believes in, it’s second chances – and grabbing the opportunities to invest in them.   

  • Amazon Blocks Statsaholic

    Here’s what happens with highly paid people with big egos and small imaginations make decisions – They solve problems that don’t exist.

    Amazon.com, rightful owner of Alexa.com data, shut down the very helpful Statsaholic.com Web service.  Statsaholic only exists because the people at Alexa weren’t building all the features that people wanted to use.  Now Amazon has blocked Statsaholic, and are copying those features into Alexa.com.   

    In a MBA Case Study (especially a Harvard one), this is probably the smart response.  And in 2 years, will anyone really care?  But we start losing innovation when the "Microsoft problem" permeates across other companies.  When people think, ‘Well it’s useless to do something new because someone big will just steal it from me later anyway," the whole web economy takes a step backward.  Out of all the challenges Amazon can go solve, I don’t get why "Screwing Statsaholic" should be at the top of the list.  Plus, marketing guru Seth Godin is somehow associated with Statsaholic, so I’m not sure why you would want to make an enemy of him.

    In the meantime, there’s a Mozilla hack that gets Statsaholic working again.  Check it out here. 

     

  • Does Amazon Want You To Fight Roosters?

    Ah, remember when having the world’s largest selection of merchandise was a good thing?  Well apparently Amazon.com’s decision to offer magaiznes catering to the Cock Fighting crowd has – in what will be the most overused pun in a decade – ruffled some feathers.

    The Register UK and Computerworld report the Humane Society has slapped Amazon.com with a lawsuit.  The action specifically concerns "The Underground Pitbull Breeders Association, StreetHeatDVD.com, and the publishers of The Gamecock and The Feathered Warrior. Also targeted are the DVDs Unleashed: The Realest Pitbull Action Caught on Tape and Hood Fights Vol. 2, The Art of the Pit, both "depicting illegal dogfighting".

    According to the Humane Society, "At issue in the case are four items which the HSUS has repeatedly asked Amazon.com to drop from its sales list because they depict and promote cruel dogfighting and cockfighting events in violation of federal law. Amazon.com is the sole retailer of subscriptions to the animal fighting magazines and the only outlet for animal fighters to obtain subscriptions over the internet. Similarly, Amazon.com is one of only three sellers of the dogfighting DVD and the easiest seller to locate on the web.  A Humane Society review of the last 12 months of The Gamecock and The Feathered Warrior found that more than 90 per cent of the magazines’ advertisements are nothing more than a solicitation to commit a crime…and uncovered evidence that such magazines are published for the express purpose of promoting unlawful animal fighting and are found at more than 75 per cent of the animal fighting operations that have been raided by law enforcement officers."

    So in one corner, you have the Humane Society using a legal argument to try to quell a market that by all terms of human decency, shouldn’t even exist.  In the other corner you have Amazon.com, standing behind a 1st Amendment argument of, "Hey we sell everything." Now as easy as this decision might seem, its likely they are sticking to this argument so one day they can’t get forced into a corner either by the religious right or liberal left over whether or not to sell, "How to Fix your Gay Friend" or "Jesus was a Sex Addict."  Saying, "We Sell Everything" when it comes to literature on cock-fighting gets you about as far down the reprehensible spectrum as you can go.

    And let’s not forget, Amazon doesn’t create the marketplace for this material.  Someone is writing the articles, someone is publishing the magazine, someone else is selling the ads, someone else is buying the ads and still someone else buys the magazine.  So as awful as it sounds, this isn’t all Amazon’s fault.

    Now the marketing side of this is a little grayer.  It’s a fallacy for Amazon to say, "We Sell Everything."  "24 Ways to Attack Paris Hilton" would not be listed amongst their catalog.  Amazon is grown up enough that they need to come out and be strong, and say, "This sport isn’t right.  It’s so off the radar in terms of social acceptance, that this is not a 1st Amendment issue.  There are bounds of good taste, and while we do not believe that we should be the arbitrator of good taste, we have enough common sense to know this does not live up to the standards of the 1.6 Billion other products we offer."