Well with 150,000 views of this video already, I’m clearly not setting any trends by providing this link to you. But here’s a hilarious knock at the technology industry from a YouTube Channel called The Richter Scales.
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Why the MLS Will Be HUGE in Seattle
Ok, this post has been percolating in my head for weeks, and I’m finally getting it posted. But when the announcement was made about the MLS coming to Seattle, my first reaction was, "What a perfect city for pro soccer." Apparently, they already have 9,000 deposits for season tickets, so that instinct was right. Here is why I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
1) The Superstar Factor – I’ll bet you the stack of yellow cards I’ve collected in the last 12 months that the next huge European Footballer to cross the pond will end up here in the Emerald City. The reason – Paul Allen. A man who loves to surround himself with mega celebrities will not miss the opportunity to bring one of them to his own private playground, Qwest Field. Add to this the fact that co-owner Adrian Hanauer really knows soccer and has been able to draw some pretty major European teams over here in the last 5 years. (Don’t quote me, but I believe he was responsible for the Man United v Celtic, Chelsea v Celtic and RealMadrid v DC United games.) Plus, you have a celebrity co-owner in Drew Carry who has a few connections himself. I don’t know who it will be, but the next version of David Beckham moves to Seattle.
2) Seattle Summer Nights – 15 years ago, no one went to Mariner games, even with Griffey. But now everyone goes to Safeco Field to sit in a beautiful stadium on a 65 degree evening and watch a sport they barely understand or care about. And soccer is even better for this than baseball, a sport in which most of the time is spent either waiting for an inning to start or hoping something will happen. People will at least try one soccer game, if for no other reason, that it’s a nice way to spend a Tuesday night in July.
3) Soccer Has a Clock – A soccer game is over in 90 minutes plus halftime. Say the game starts at 7:00. You can absolutely bank on the fact that you can leave the house at 6:00, spend 30 minutes watching pre-game, 105 minutes in the stadium, and have Junior home and in bed by 9:30. How many people do you see leaving the Mariners game in the 7th inning? That is sub-optimal for everyone, especially a kid (who learns that you don’t have to complete things.)
4) Seattle Supports Winners – Seattle is fascinating. There is so much to do, we won’t deal with losers. But we have so much civic pride (or is it an inferiority complex) that we care about ANYTHING that wins. Mariners – sold out during the golden years. Seahawks – Adored statewide. Even the Storm were selling out during their championship run. Now remember that we have Paul Allen. This team will win. The MLS is not a hard league to build a competitor in. This isn’t like an expansion team in baseball where you have the Yankees and Red Sox to deal with. It’s a poor league that’s getting better, and even though there is a salary cap, I suspect Allen and his fellow owners will pour some money into top scouts, coaches and facilities to make this a place that good players want to come.
Now with all this being said, here’s how the owners or MLS could screw it up – which I don’t think they’ll do. But, if they make some of these easy mistakes, it will hurt their momentum.
Danger 1: Qwest concessions /Overall Costs – Football fans put up with the lousy and expensive Qwest concessions because a) it’s the Seahawks, b) They’ve already spent 3 or 4 hours getting lubed up in the parking lot or FX Mc Crory’s, and c) Tickets are already so expensive that getting jobbed for an extra couple of bucks on your beer is made relative. So that works for a sport in which a billion people watch the Super Bowl. And you could probably get away with that and more at a World Cup game here. But to anyone who knows enough about soccer to buy a ticket, the MLS is a minor league, and not a high minor league at that. Sure it’s called "Major League Soccer" but if the T-Birds change the name of their league to Major League Hockey, they’re still 16 year old kids. You can’t ding 23,000 people. You can price aggressively to 5,000 Sounder die-hards who love soccer so much that they skip work to go to the George and Dragon for a Champions League game. Premium pricing is a great tactic when servicing a niche. But if you want to fill 23,000 seats a game, make sure Dad can take his kids and some friends without feeling like he’s getting the shaft.
Danger 2: Acting like Soccer people – I have this debate with a friend of mine all the time. People who don’t know soccer, end up hating soccer when they hang out with soccer mega-enthusiasts. For example, when you are in Old Trafford and 65,000 Manchester United fans are all singing in unison – that’s cool. Better than cool – awe inspiring. When you are at a US vs Cuba friendly, and of the 20,000 people there, 25 guys from Sam’s Army are hammered and singing for 90 minutes straight, that’s annoying. We get it – we’re SUPPOSED to like soccer because the whole world does. We’re SUPPOSED to sing. We’re SUPPOSED to enjoy that the game will be 1-0 or 1-1. But we don’t, necessarily. It doesn’t make us bad people. It just means we need to learn and evaluate. And if I bring 3 friends to their first soccer game and have to explain why the fat guy with the drum is on his 42nd verse of "The Ref is a Wanker," while the guy next to him is on the 82nd consecutive minute of blowing his stupid horn, then I probably won’t get them back to another game. Do all that stuff, but in small doses. Save your uber-soccerness for US National games.
Danger 3: Too much Americanization – I think one of the coolest things in International soccer is when the two teams march out side by side before a game. The music, the drama , the tension. Imagine Seahawks vs Patriots and 90 guys came walking out in 2 lines of 45, with Hasselbeck and Brady walking lockstep trying not to look at each other. It would be fantastic. But at a Sounders game, some poor unknown soccer guy has to run about 90 yards by himself (except he’s usually trailed by 3 munchkins) through a little smoke to the pleasant applause of 5000 people. The American created "Tunnel run" is way cooler when there are 70,000 people and 100 cheerleaders. Americans want to see first class stuff. Don’t give us Domino’s Pizza and call it Italian food.
Ok, my longest post ever. Let me know if you disagree.
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Air America Interview Rescheduled for Next Tuesday
Thursday’s scheduled interview on the Jon Elliott show has been moved to Tuesday, Dec 4 at 8:30pm Pacific / 11:30pm Eastern. I am still unsure whether Seattle 1090 carries this hour of the show on a delayed basis, but you can listen to the audio stream live at Air America.com.
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Movaya Featured on QuicklyBored
QuicklyBored.com is a great place to read about mobile gaming. As handheld devices continue to become a platform for entertainment as well as communication, this site will continue to be a leader in relaying news and reviews to a mass audience. It already has a Google Page Rank of 6, which is testament to the amount of people starting to care about mobile games.So it’s exciting that this industry leader covered the story of Sandlot’s deal with Movaya. It’s a real indicator that more of the mobile games web sites may begin to pick up on the story of Movaya’s emerging technology.
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Japanese Pen Spinning
So just for fun….Thanks to the guys from 2dayblog for finding this
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A Sports Story Every Marketer Should Read
According to ESPN.com, Dr. Robert Cade passed away this week. You have probably never heard of Dr. Cade, but if you have ever played a sport or been to the gym, you have almost certainly tried Dr. Cade’s invention, Gatorade.The story of the birth of Gatorade is one that every marketer should read, memorize and copy into their own campaigns. I’ll leave the entire article for you to read, but the bullet points go something like this:
- Discover a problem that needs a solution
- Create, test, recreate, retest, and recreate the solution until the customer likes it
- Find an anchor customer with influence and size
- When tempted to change the brand, listen to your audience
- Build products because you love the project, not for the money
- When you get bigger than you can handle, take the money and run.
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MyElectionChoices.com Back on AirAmerica Radio
I have been invited back for a return engagement on AirAmerica Radio, this time on Thursday at 8:30pm on the John Elliiott Show.
Seattle 1090 carries one hour of John’s 2 hour broadcast on a delay from 11:00 – Midnight, so I’m not sure if my segment will make it on Seattle’s airwaves or not. But, you can tune in live at www.airamerica.com to listen. More details to come…
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Where is news on the Google China Tax Evasion story?
So, here’s something that’s news because there’s no news about it.
On November 19, TechCrunch reported that Google was being investigated by the Chinese government for a number of tax issues, all of which were too difficult for me to understand or techCrunch to analyze or give perspective on. My initial thought was that this was simply a follow up shot across Google’s bow.
If you remember a few months back, all the U.S. search engines in China had their traffic redirected to sina.com, in what many said was a response to President Bush meeting with the Dali Lama. So now after a "tip" from someone, the Chinese government is going to fine and/or punish Google for some allegedly shaky financial bookkeeping.
Now if you ask me, when a company has more money than it knows what to do with, cheating a few bucks in taxes in a country it desperately wants to do business in would be downright foolish. I simply can’t believe Google would purposely do anything improper in dealing with Byzantine Chinese tax laws when they desperately want to do business in this market. It simply makes no sense for Google to try to cheat the Chinese government out of less than what one of their GM’s is worth in stock options.
But the bigger question for me is, why is TechCrunch the most respected news outlet covering this? On a search on the terms – Google Tax China – there’s no WSJ, New York Times or even anything from the Bay Area papers. Why isn’t anyone writing about the Chinese accusing Google of tax improprieties? Is it part of some U.S. mandate that "We will not question the Chinese government?"
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Blended Ad Banner
CBS Sporstline Fantasy Football has been featuring a neat little ad banner that is constant throughout all aspects of the site. This banner to the right is obviously not meant to be clicked on, but the brand marketers also realize that they don’t need to blast fantasy football players over the head with a loud advertisment on every page. Its subtlety is alomst subliminal, in the way it is omnipresent, but not obtrusive. Online advertising has made some dramatic swings to CPA and CPC models over the years. But this ad shows how a successful campaign can – and probably needs to – incorporate a mix of Social Media branding, banner branding, and then CPC and CPA conversion ads.
I’d be curious what the equivalent CPM is for this sponsorship. But it’s the kind of that can run on a site like MyElectionChoices.com, or other web sites that provide a nice free service to customers, but aren’t really suited for acquisition based ads.
Of course, this doesn’t even take video and podcasting into consideration, which is something that deserves its own post. But according to a study from emarkleter published in February –
"The fastest-growing Internet ad format is video, which will see spending surge by 89% in 2007. When it comes to total spending, however, search advertising rules. In 2007, US advertisers will spend nearly $8.3 billion on paid search ads, $1.3 billion more than they did in 2006."
The net of the message is that when Internet marketers can exercise some subtlety and common sense into their online campaigns, rather than working off a spreadsheet that says "Louder is better," the whole online environment gets a little stronger. We need more creative types that can see and appreciate subtlety, even though there isn’t an absolute ROI attached.
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Are You a Sports Widow?
I’m taking a few minutes to plug a new and exciting idea from two of Seattle’s best Marketing folks. Dave Sharp and Nan Hall have launched SportsWidow.com. The site is focused on aspects of a "Sports Family" and profiled tonight on King 5’s Evening Magazine. Some of the many features include the following:
- Sports Widow Journal & Features – Topical commentary, tips, ideas about coping/ surviving in a house full of sports fans.
- Store – Sports Widow® Wear and Gear
- www.sportswidowradio.com : Pilot Radio Show – This sample 1-hour radio show features interviews with other Sports Widows, Boxer George Foreman and relationship expert Pepper Schwartz, PhD. It includes the Sports Widow Blues theme song by composer/vocalist Chris Sharp and the C. Sharp Trio (yes, she’s Sharp’s wife). www.sportswidow.com/podcasts/theme song.mp3
- Fan Fare – Recipes and entertaining ideas for sports events
- Resources – Book, website and movie recommendations
The team will be looking for content soon. “We plan to connect with Sports Widows through interactive media, traditional media, special events, social network meet-ups and products specifically geared to them,” says Sharp. “To that end, we are searching for partners who share our vision and passion for this subject and market.” Plans to roll out Sports Widow Entertainment, include a radio talk show, syndicated columns, cartoons, greeting cards, books, video games/instructional videos, and a television show.