Marketing

One more on the ‘Superbowl’

This entry was posted in Marketing Sports on by

I wasn’t going to say more about yesterdays marketing event that had a football game scattered through it but then I read Andrew Cline’s post and thought I’d just react to it. First:

I believe my nine-year-old daughter should be able to watch the Super Bowl with me without being exposed to Janet Jackson’s boob or Kid Rock’s desecration of an American Flag.

Yep, we should have been warned and all this talk of the boob baring being an accident…I don’t buy it one bit. Why else did he reach across her chest and grab on? On the other hand, we did not have young children in the house at the time and were more surprised then anything else.
We also were not amused or entertained when Kid Rock appeared wearing a flag. It did not lend anything to his, for us, mostly unintelligible performance and seemed to only serve to insult a large part of the audience.
Next:

The game was boring until the end.

I enjoyed the game and think it would have been much better if I’d used a TIVO or some such and watched it without the commercials. And they did seem to create more then the usual number of opportunities for commercials.
Yes, the commercials. I didn’t pay enough attention to them. My laptop was open and I was working on some financial statements that needed to be done yesterday. However, I did kind of listen and Andrew sums up the high point of the event nicely:

The funniest line of the entire evening wasn’t meant to be funny. In the list of side effects for the erectile dysfunction drug Cilas was this dire warning (paraphrased): If an erection lasts more than four hours, seek immediate medical attention.

My wife and I were both ears only at this time but it got our attention, our laughs and several minutes of amusing discussion.
Update: Tegan has a complete rundown of all the ads. Counting the ad package at the end of the game there were 29 breaks. Somewhere there was an American football game….

Morning Entertainment

This entry was posted in Marketing on by

If you have nothing better to do at the moment, and I hope you do, you can check out Pepsi’s opening salvo in their new rock the world ad campaign.
It features Enrique Iglesias, Pink, Beyonce and Britney who “…dare to be challenged and encourage their fans to do the same.” Sure they do…for a small fee of course.
While this is visually work friendly you will probably want to turn the volume up to fully appreciate the ad.
Via Ghost of a Flea.

Gazing at Blog’s Navel

This entry was posted in Blogging Democracy Journalism Marketing on by

Whither blogs? is a question posed by both PinkDreamPoppies, Alas, a Blog, and Bilmon, Whiskey Bar. Bilmon writes after attending a session on blogs at the World Economic Council in Davos.
If you are interested in such things go read the posts. In the meantime here is a bit from each. First, from PinkDreamPoppies

I’ll make a prediction on the future of blogging: We’ll see fewer and smaller independent blogs as large, corporate-sponsored blogs eat up the readership, and in some cases the writers, of smaller blogs. And that’s all I’ll commit to. I think that, as Bilmon fears later in his aforementioned post, the Golden Age of free-for-all blogging is just about up.

Now Bilmon may fear this but I don’t think he expects this:

I suppose the key question is whether the technology of the Internet will be enough to keep the blogs from going the way of the ’60s counterculture. Rock bands and radical writers could be squelched or bought off because the corporations controlled the means of communication — the record labels and the magazines and the major publishing houses. But while the Man can, if he wants to throw some money around, buy up individual blogs, he can’t buy the blogosphere. New voices can always set up shop to replace those that move to the Dark Side.
At least that’s what I hope. The potential of blogging is something I’ve come to believe in passionately — as passionately as I once believed in the mission of professional journalism. I’d hate to be wrong twice.

There is more in these posts then just this. They also take a look at corporate marketing, political power, the future of journalism and more.
Oh and take a listen to The Blogging of the President 2004 where Atrios, Josh Marshall, Andrew Sullivan, Jeff Jarvis, Jerome Armstrong, Ed Cone, Gary Hart, Richard Reeves, and a few others discuss the impact of blogs on mass media and the presidential campaign. Doc Searls blogged this show live.

Not for my Sherriff

This entry was posted in Culture Election 2004 Internet Marketing on by

The opponent telling him to drop out looks right on:

A candidate for Denton County sheriff who posted faked pictures of “friends and supporters” on his campaign Web site has replaced them with pictures of animals.
The original series of pictures on John Dupree’s site showed people in various settings holding signs supporting the Republican candidate. They were taken from Web sites that offer generic photos of people holding up blank signs, Dupree said.
Dupree said his webmaster told him the fake pictures were being used as placeholders until they could be replaced with pictures of real supporters. The webmaster didn’t think to include a disclaimer, he said.

If this wasn’t just an ‘innocent’ mistake this guy doesn’t have the sense or the ethics to be anyone’s sheriff. And, his webmaster(s) should get a permanent note in their resume that they screwed up royally as well.
Via Charles Kuffner.

Rental Car Blues

This entry was posted in Capitalism Libertarianism Marketing Taxation on by

More often then not folks renting cars are in a hurry. For instance, your plane just landed and your luggage is waiting, etc., so you do not read all that fine print in the contract and, of course, the fine customer service rep working with you has likely been trained to only say things that might maximize revenue. What happens next?
Well, Dan Gillmor tells us

about a man who was charged more than $3,000 for a car rental because he took the car out of state without realizing that would violate his contract. How did Payless, the rental company, know? It was using satellite-assisted tracking equipment to spy on the customer.

The original article is here.
The charge of $1/mile for driving outside the state of origin is surely excessive. I do not even understand the logic of the charge. And it is not nationally common. Example, fly into Cincinnati I mean Kentucky to go to Cincinnati. I have done this quite a few times and not been charged anything extra.
Sure, the guy should have read the contract. But I argue that failure to disclose and explain potential extra charges in big print on the front page may be deceptive given the context of the typical rental transaction.
And, the Oregon proposal (mentioned in the comments) to use GPS to calculate your driving miles as a basis for taxes is just broken before it gets out the door.