For as regulated as some industries are, I am continually amazed by the brazen obscenity with which auto insurance companies treat its customers.

My insurance rates went up this month.  Yet I have not personally been involved in an accident, received a ticket, moved or purchased a new hummer.

Instead, someone filed a fraudulant claim on a minor fender bumping that occured when someone else was driving my car.  The driver of my car reported the claim as fraduluant, since there’s not a physical way for an Acura to demolish a trucks’ back bumber while only denting it’s own license plate.  This is an obvious case of a guy with a crappy beat up car taking advantage of a tap on is back. 

But the insurance company’s response is, "Too bad.  I know we shouln’t have paid it out, but we did, so the owner of the car is responsible." 

Any advice? 

ESPN the Magazine came out recently with the "Ultimate Standings."  In it, they rank every pro team in the 4 major sports (yes, they included hockey) on a number of characteristics,including ownership, players, stadium, value, beer prices and more.

Unsurprisingly, the Seattle Sonics ranked 111 out of 121 teams.  Until now, I really hadn’t thought about the Marketing efforts the Sonics have undertaken lately, but would you repeat these if you were running a company:

1) Alienate your evangelists by moving your games off of the sports station and onto a conservative talk radio station. 

2) Allow an executive (in this case the head coach) with 20+ years in the organization to leave for an arch-rival.

3) Have 50 of the most influential sports fans in town cut ties with the team, and make a killing on their investment.

4) Ask fans who enjoy some of the closest seats to the court, to give those up in order to pay higher taxes, sit further away and drive to Renton.

5) Take arguably the greatest play by play caller in the NBA today, a guy who can paint a picture of a basketball court in 4 words, and move him to TV to be replaced on radio by a guy that drives some fans crazy (honestly, I actually like Locke as a reporter but I see why he drives some guys nuts).

6) Now, couple all this with a sub-standard product

You either need a great product or great salesmanship to get people to buy something, and unfortunately the Sonics have failed to show much of either.  Now the strategy seems to be to threaten to leave. 

So, given that the Sonics owners are smarter than I am, I see a different view.  We’re simply not the target audience.  They don’t really care about what we think.  The target customer is the representatives in Olympia that can get a deal done without our vote and the corporate sponsors who will spend money to fill up the luxury boxes and acreage of advertising. 

That’s not a bad strategy I suppose.  But when your target market is legislators and business people, it’s not hard to imagine how you become 111th on the list of sports franchises.

This article about Internet Advertising from the TimesOnline.co.uk is definitely worth reading.  Here’s an excerpt:

Advertising on internet soars as world follows British lead

The internet will overtake radio by next year and become the world’s fourth-largest advertising medium, a year earlier than forecast.

Global spending on internet advertising increased from $18.7 billion in 2005 to $24.9 billion (£12.6 billion) last year, according to ZenithOptimedia, the media-buying agency.

The Middle East and Asia are driving a boom in global advertising spending. Zenith predicted a spike of 7.7 per cent in spending in Asia in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Only in Vegas.

I’m not sure why I’m so late to the game on Prosper.com, a web site designed so that people who need loans can receive funds from ordinary people who are looking to make a return on their reserve cash.

The concept is pretty simple, people with money become parts of "mutual fund-like" loans to individuals who can’t or don’t want to go through a bank.  There is research that people are more likely to repay loans when they know there is a human behind it, and they know who those humans are. The lenders get good returns – 10-25% and their money is spread among a bunch of different loans so the risks are mitigated.   

My initial thought was that there is an issue where people who need the loans may not have the broadband or even Internet connection to take part, but that’s probably a subtle qualifying factor.  If you can’t find a broadband internet connection these days, I probably don’t want to loan money to you.   

From the Seattle Times:

Summarized: John Cornwell graduated from Duke University last year, and built a refrigerator that can toss a can of beer to his couch with the click of a remote control.  It took about 150 hours and $400 in parts to modify a mini-fridge common to many college dorm rooms into the beer-tossing machine, which can launch 10 cans of beer from its magazine before needing a reload. With a click of the remote, fashioned from a car’s keyless entry device, a small elevator inside the refrigerator lifts a beer can through a hole and loads it into the fridge’s catapult arm. A second click fires the device, tossing the beer up to 20 feet — "far enough to get to the couch," he said. In developing his beer catapult, Cornwell said he dented a few walls and came close to accidentally throwing a can through his television. He’s since fine-tuned the machine to land a beer where he usually sits at home, on what he called "a right-angle couch system."  For now, the machine throws only cans, although Cornwell has thought about making a version that can throw a bottle. The most beer he has run through the machine was at a party, when he launched a couple of 24-can cases.  A video featuring the device is a hit on the Internet, where more than 600,000 people have watched it at metacafe.com, earning Cornwell more than $3,000 from the Web site.

I love it.  Guy builds a totally usueless contraption.  Films himself using it.  Posts it online – makes $3k for his troubles.  Also, talk about something that doesn’t make any sense – a guy too lazy to walk 10 feet for about 15 seconds of travel time, spends the equivalent of a week building a solution to the problem.  And they say American ingenuity is dead…

Update:  He also has his own Web site: www.beerlauncher.com