Andy Boyer

Category: Marketing

  • Interview With Facebook Execs at “All Things D”

    I found these interviews with Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg & Mark Zuckerberg at FaceReviews.com. The interview was part of the All Things D Conference.

    Very interesting interview that runs through the Facebook goals and vision, some insight into what they thought was important as they went from a 3 man side project to Media powerhouse, how FB applications will evolve, and some looks to the future.



  • Polls Made Easy, with Vizu

    Vizu is a neat little app that you can use to add a touch of functionality to blog posts and the like. It’s probably been around for a while, but recently hopped on my radar screen thanks to a friend in the ad industry who uses it for quick polls. I don’t know how they make money, but for the rest of us, it’s a pretty slick little tool.

    If I had to nitpick, I’d ask for a few more size options. In the case of a short blog post like this one, the Vizu poll doesn’t really fit. So, even after playing with table widths, I still need to drone on and on just to fill up some more space with copy so the poll fits in better.

    But on the plus side, you do have plenty color options, so it can work it’s way design-wise into just about any web template. And it’s a breeze to use. The whole process takes less than 2 minutes.

  • Sounders Show Off New Microsoft Uniforms

    sounders.jpgThere will be no jokes about the Sounders having to restart the game every 30 minutes to reboot.  Nor will anyone talk about them having a bloated team of 476 players.  And certainly no one will complain that every MLS team must have 10 players from the Sounders roster included with every installation.

    No, we won’t make those jokes because despite getting Microsoft money, the Sounders now have the coolest sponsor in the MLS and the best uniforms in the league.

    In fact, I may go as far as to say that the MLS has the coolest sponsor in all of Professional soccer, with the announcement of Xbox 360 deciding to be the face (or chest as it were) of Seattle soccer.

    Think about the great teams in Euro soccer and then think about their sponsors:

    • Manchester United: AIG Insurance (On a scale of 1 to 100, they score 130 on the boring meter)
    • Arsenal: Emirates Air (borrrrring)
    • Chelsea: Samsung (boring, but at least they are technology)
    • RealMadrid:  BenQ Siemens (more technology, but from Taiwan)
    • Bayern Munich: T-Mobile (yawn)
    • Inter Milan: Pirelli Tires (ok, that’s pretty cool I guess.)
    • AC Milan: Bwin.com (online betting is pretty cool too I suppose)

    But until I see Sony, Gucci, Rolex, Ferrari, Gulfstream, Prada, or BMW on the front of a jersey, I’ll take Xbox 360 as the coolest sponsor in soccer.  (How does Apple not get that they need to do this…) 

    Even better, the sponsorship and company are here in Seattle.  And tell me it’s not a great looking jersey.  Just tell me how to order and I’m in.

    (This photo was taken by Courtney Blethen of the Seattle Times, and I grabbed it from this article. Seattle Times: If you need me to take it down, please just let me know.)   

  • Wall Street Journal Scoop – Agencies are Offshoring Creative

    I tell you what. You hear complaints about the mainstream media being out of touch at times. But thankfully the Wall Street Journal is able to restore my faith in their relevance by coming up with scoops such as this: 

    More Digital Ads Are Produced Offshore
    Marketers Ship Work To Costa Rica, Bulgaria; AvVenta Reaps Rewards

    Really?  People are offshoring their creative?  I had no idea.  I mean, when I used elance.com last month to have 35 ad banners made for $400, and 25 different firms bid on my project, I just thought I was unique.  It never dawned on me that there was an actual industry around connecting American companies to leverage affordable and talented creative folks from abroad.  Thanks to the WSJ, my eyes have been opened to this 5-10 year old phenomenon.

    Among the many sad parts of this article, is the fact that the story was obviously planted by a firm called avVenta Worldwide.  So not only does this WSJ writer, Emily Steel, make it appear that she just found out about creative outsourcing, she also makes it appear that she thinks that avVenta Worldwide is somehow revolutionary in the space.  The article basically tells this story.  "Agencies needed a way to cut costs and bill their Fortune 500 clients the same amount.  So they hire avVenta Worldwide, who has a team of creatives in Costa Rica, Bulgaria and the Ukraine. The agency margins grow, avVenta Worldwide margins grow and no one knows the difference."

    Well, no one knows the difference until your PR team gets an article placed in the WSJ and all of those Fortune 500 clients who thought they were paying for Madison Avenue heavyweights with Masters in Graphic Design say, "Uh, WTF?"

  • Monday Night MLS Soccer

    Dear MLS,

    I must admit, I’ve been trying to get excited about watching your games this year in anticipation of Seattle’s entrance to the league next year.  But I’m having a hard time tracking you down on the TV dial.  Also, it seems like your games are generally on in the middle of weekend afternoons, and frankly, there’s just too much other stuff to do.

    May I offer a quick suggestion that would fit better with my schedule?

    Monday Night Soccer.  Remember the old days of Monday Night Baseball?  Think back before ESPN, when the only ways to watch baseball were Saturday’s Game of the Week with Kubek and Gariagiola, and then MNB with guys like Cosell. Drysdale and Michaels.

    Here’s why this works.

    1. Monday is a travel day for most basbeall teams, which leaves sports fans with not much to watch.
    2. You can start every game at the same time.  You only have 14 teams so it shouldn’t be hard to build a schedule to get everyone within a timze zone of each other so that all the games kickoff at 6:15pm PST for West Coast Days and 5:15pm PST on days when they play on the East Coast.  If you start 7 games at the same time, and lets say there’s 1.5 goals per game, then you are showing goal highlights  from other games every 9 or 10 minutes.  Every American can appreciate goals being scored at that pace.
    3. Here’s your opportunity to build some personalities into your broadcasts.  I’m sure we all appreciate that the guys who used to play U.S. soccer need jobs now, but you have a sport with a lot of dead time.  Where is soccer’s Howard Cosell?  Bring me someone who can spin tales for 90 minutes.  He should be able to quote from TMZ, Perez Hilton, the London Times and LeMonde in successive sentences.   There would be no better place to have a real "character" to promote the games into living rooms.
    4. Monday is a huge day for adult soccer leagues, and these teams go to bars after games.  Make sure your TV broadcast partner replays the broadcast, so guys who get done playing soccer can sit around watching MLS highlights rather than home runs. ESPN 2 should have no problem with this.

    Monday Night Soccer.  Excuse the mixed metaphor, but this is a slam dunk.

  • Hong Kong Marketing and Ads

    Since this is supposed to be a marketing blog, here are a few ads I saw in Hong Kong.  (I only have a few minutes, so I’ll add more later)sDSC00091.JPGsDSC00069.JPGsDSC00037.JPG


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  • Report from the UW Business Plan Competition

    One of my favorite things over the past four years has been the UW Business Plan Competition.  As a grad student, in 2005, I had two ideas and we went nowhere.  In 2006, I jumped on another student team and we won "Best Consumer Product."  Last year, I was a first round judge and merely observed the rest.  And this year, thanks to the kindness of some of my favorite people, I was invited to judge the tradeshow round.

    Quick moment of clarification for those who don’t know anything about this.  Every year, about 60-80 teams submit a business plan.  Some teams are made up of 4 students, some teams are established companies with a student consultant.  It’s a broad range, so you see a lot of neat ideas.  These 60-80 teams are whittled down to 32, who then fill a room and pitch their idea to about 100 judges in a tradeshow type setting.  That list gets cut down to 16, then down to 4, and a winner is chosen.  So, Wednesday, we had the tradeshow round of 32, and our job as judges was to "invest" 1000 fake dollars into at least 5 companies.  You are free to split that 1000 however you like, as long as 5 or more companies are given money.  The 16 teams who receive the most money move on to the next round.

    Now, my favorite part about this whole competition is that since most of the people you talk to are undergrad, MBA or PhD students, they still have this sense of optimism and naivety.  For example, you ask an undergrad with a dream, "What’s your exit strategy?" and his response is pure and good.  He says, "Exit?  We’re going to make this a profitable business.  I don’t want to sell it.  This is my idea, and it’s going to work."  Wow, as a human being, you love hearing that.  But then you have to crush his hopes and dreams, and invite him to join the real world.  You have to tell him, "Well, here’s the thing.  If I’m a VC, and I put money in, there better damn sure be an exit.  Because I’m not really in the business of giving you a bunch of coin so you can build a company that doesn’t make me rich.  You will sell, and you will sell when I tell you to."

    Anyway, the whole thing is great.  Wide eyed, naive students getting creative and coming up with some crazy cool ideas.  It’s the kind of place that you walk out of wishing they all would get the money they need to build the product they want to build.  Sure, there were some plain dumb ideas – but only dumb from the standpoint that they were unfundable.  Every idea itself had merit.  Even the ideas with terrible business plans and execution were at least interesting ideas.     

    I’m being lazy and not going through the whole list of companies.  But here were some ideas that stood out for me.  I’m not saying all their business plans were great, but the ideas stuck in my head

    • A way to deliver medicine through the nose to the brain, to get cancer medicine pas the blood brain barrier.
    • A company who developed a new strain of algae that they could farm for oil.
    • An exercise device specifically tailored for people in retirement homes.  A kind of "soloflex" for people in wheelchairs.
    • A system for capturing excess carbon from buildings to decrease heating costs.
    • A career web site specifically tailored to kids right out of school.
    • A "match.com" for tradeshow attendees, where you fill out a profile, and the site suggests other people attending the show you should meet with.
    • A company that produces organic clothing.
    • A sunflower village in Kenya so villagers can earn money.
    • A Web site for coaches to help them manage their teams.
    • And other cool ideas….

    Congrats to all the teams who made it to the next round.   And I hope those teams that didnt make it, continue to tweak their plans and shoot for success.

     

  • Some Random Notes from Ad:Tech SF

    Well alrighty.  My first trip to Ad:tech San Francisco is in the books.  They claimed to have about 300 companies exhibiting, and I think I talked to more than my fair share.  So as promised, here are a few companies I thought were pretty interesting.

    1) Without a doubt, the guys at AdReady.com were the hit of the show.   A well funded company with a simple solution for a common problem.  That’s a pretty good formula for success.  Plus, I got to chat with a Senior VP.  When a Senior VP is schlepping time on a show floor, it shows something about the caliber of people they hire.  Check them out if you have a few minutes.

    2) Before I go into all the companies that I walked away from thinking, “Wow, that’s cool,” let me throw out a caveat.  There were a lot of future unemployed people at this show.  My bubble alert would go off every time a company claimed they were a “revolutionary way to optimize your ad budgets” and you talked to some 25 year old who had just cut his teeth as a junior media buyer at a 3rd tier ad agency.  I saw a lot of companies, none of which I’ll name, that seemed to have the strategy of, “Well we have a Series A, and we’ll get some Series B funding in 2010.”  Except, there may not be any VC funding in 2010.  Plus, everyone seems to have a strategy of selling to Google, Yahoo or Microsoft in 2 years.  I think the best job you could get right now is a M+A guy at one of those 3 places…  

    3) Ok, some things I liked:

    • SeeSawNetworks – Rep firm for all types of weird ways to advertise
    • SproutBuilder – I didn’t quite get the full concept, but looked like a cool way to make widgets 
    • LSNMobile – Serving Mobile Ads, but in a cool way and they are profitable.
    • IdeaLaunch – There were tons of companies offering Landing Page Optimization services.  I can’t remember why, but I liked these guys.

    4) Affiliate Programs and Networks – It was fascinating to me how many new affiliate networks are out there these days.  Equally fascinating was the fact that all the big guys didn’t bother to attend the show. 

    5) Final shout of annoyance: I’m going to express a little displeasure toward the Rubicon Project.  Only because, I RSVP’d for their party and they didn’t have me in the database, so I couldn’t get in.  Probably my fault for not noticing the lack of a confirmation email.  You see, since they weren’t sure if anyone was going to come to their party, they invited EVERYONE in the world.  Then when more people showed up than they expected, they had to adhere to the RSVP list, which caused an issue of portraying themselves as an internet company who had a internet sign-up form that didn’t work.   Now, I’m a nobody, so leaving me stranded outside is no big deal.  And there was plenty of stuff to do so I didn’t really care.  But here’s where I thought they looked kind of unpolished – the door people even refused to admit an extremely well connected CEO of a pretty strong VC backed company, while their own Marketing Coordinators and their friends drank free Grey Goose.  Bubble alert – when your junior level guys are getting drunk at a party you are hosting, and you don’t have anyone senior enough at the door to let in a CEO of a company you should work with, you need to re-evaluate why you are throwing a party.  Let your guys get drunk at home.  Use Ad:Tech to talk to the CEO that wanted to talk to you. Or, I guess you can be that cocky and see if it works for you.  I guess I just wouldn’t be that cocky in a recession.

    6) Final note: I can only hope the Seattle light rail will be as efficient as the BART.  I was off my plane, on the BART and in my hotel in like 45-50 minutes, for a $5.00 fare.  Compare that to the $50 cab ride I would need to take to get home from Sea-Tac today.  Love that BART.

  • Airline Queues

    Ok, one quick rant before I leave, because I’ve been meaning to write this for months and always forget.

    I’m leaving for San Francisco tomorrow.  There is absolutely no reason that I shouldn’t be able to logon to the Sea-Tac Web site and see the following things:

    • How many total people have tickets bought for all flights leaving from my Terminal during the 2 hours before and 1 hour after my flight?
    • How does this number compare to other days, and what % of capaicity is this?
    • How long have the x-ray line queues been over the last 7 days at the terminal I’m leaving from?
    • How long have the x-ray queues historically been the last 3 years for the 2nd Monday in April?
    • How many people total have flown out from Sea-Tac this week, in comparison to previous weeks?

    Why do I want to know this?  Well, they have all the data.  And I want a better idea whether I need to be there 2 hours early or 30 minutes early.  I want to know if I’m going to be driving all over Sea-Tac looking for a parking lot that isn’t full. 

    The point is, an airline ticket is a luxury item, and here’s a really easy luxury service that costs almost nothing on a cost-per-customer basis.  This shouldn’t be hard data to track and post.   I mean, if it takes 1 man year of development time, and the airport serves 2,000,000 people, this comes out to something like a nickel per flyer.    And I don’t see why or how it’s a national security risk. 

    Plus, think how it would aleve stress on the workers.  The only stressful flyers are those who are surprised by long lines and who think they are going to miss their flight.  These are usually the same people who are stressed at work and want to leave at the last possible moment.  So why can’t we log-in, check out how long it’s "likely" going to take to get through the line, and decide when we need to leave?  Heck, I might even start choosing flight times based on how long historically the lines are at different times of day. 

    Anyway, that’s my idea.   Can someone get on this?  Thanks.

  • Mickey Mouse Marketing

    So, I was down in LA this past weekend for the wedding of an old college friend.  A beautiful beach ceremony and a long day filled with great people who know how to have an even better time.  So on Sunday, we had a day to kill and were looking to do something that would be much less destructive on our livers.  And suddenly, we were in Disneyland.

    Now you may laugh, as I did when we were heading there.  Disneyland?  What a cliche.  Do the rides even still work? 

    But for the purposes of a marketing blog, Disneyland could not be a greater case study, and it’s time we all took a quick look at their marketing machine to pick up a few tips.

    So, think about Disneyland as an amazing trendsetter back 50 plus years ago.  But today, their image has morphed into one of family entertainment.  Somehow along the way they realized they could not compete on a basis of building the world’s greatest roller coasters every 3 years, so they took their established product line and expanded it to the next generation.

    I remember being much much younger and seeing Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, the Matterhorn, Pirates, plus all the tried and true Disney characters like Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Pluto.  Well now you walk around Disneyland and those same rides are still appealing to dads and moms in my generation, while their kids are all over the newer characters walking around and the Buzz Lightyear ride. 

    You see this devotion from Yankees and Red Sox fans. Disneyland has doen such a great job of being cross-generational, that the revenue stream can almost be considered recurring.  The brand loyalty is just amazing.

    But what are some other aspects of this marketing plan:

    • Price:  $66 for a day at the park.  Spendy, yes, but you get 10 hours versus the 3 you get at a football game.   And for families who live in LA, spending $129 for a year long pass is almost a gimme.
    • Product: Realistically, in those 10 hours you are on rides for about 20-30 minutes.  But the detail is in the way they hide you in buildings and give you things to look at while you are waiting in line.  Very few people walking around the park leave with images of long lines.  And those 20-30 minutes are packed with cool stuff.
    • Place: Close enough to a major destination that you randomly pick up folks like me.  Far enough away that you need to spend all day there.  Tons of hotels across the street, and for some reason $11 for parking if you drive there doesn’t seem ridiculous.
    • Promotion: The brand is ubiquitous.  Every Disney movie promotes a Disney theme park which promotes another movie.

    So since this post has taken no real shape or form, here are a few fun Disney facts we learned from riding with a Disney employee on his day off.

    • Disneyland can hold 70,000 people, at which point they stop letting people in.
    • Total # of "Cast members" is about 5,000.
    • Every ride in Disneyland has at least one "Hidden Mickey," meaning if you look hard enough, you can see a Mickey Mouse face in every ride.  True story – this guy showed us the one in the Indiana Jones ride.
    • The Disney Pillars (in this order) are Saftey, Courtesy, Showmanship, Efficiency.
    • Best time to go is late January and February.  It’s the only time when all kids are in school, and all parents are paying off Christmas debt.  The park is empty.
    • People do get hurt in rides.  What they do is shut the ride down, tell everyone it’s broken, get the paramedics in quickly and quietly.
    • There is also quite the underground city which includes a full cafeteria, and other rooms for cast members.

    And now here’s something else I found amazing.  I’d estimate the crowd was 30-40% Hispanic.  Remember, this is LA.  Yet Disneyland does not have a single sign in Spanish.  This is a park wher Safety, Courtesy and Efficiency are three main pillars, and they are making it difficult for a sizeable percentage of their audience to understand what they need to do onthe rides.  i couldn’t decide if the company is telling Hispanic Americans to learn English, or if the company is just too ignorant to realize how much of their audience base may not be English speaking.  I can’t believe it’s the latter.

    Anyway, I had a blast there, despite the prices, the lines and the amount of strollers that were trying to knee cap me.  There’s just something about the Disney model that works.  They aren’t the best rides, it isn’t the cheapest thing to do, it isn’t the most convenient place to get to, and you have to wait around a lot.  But it’s great.  So there must be something to learn from them.