Horsepower Marketing’s Jeff Najar tracked me down for a 15-minute podcast at Dealernews’ 39th Annual Dealer Expo. During the Q&A we talked about differences between my first recollections of the ’60s card table and construction paper events and today’s massive shows.
I was also given a soapbox to reflect on the impact contemporary marketing techniques can and will have on consumer powersports buying as they’re exposed to effective point of purchase strategies.
Hot on the heels of Google’s mega-buck (what isn’t these days) takeover of YouTube comes the not totally unexpected revelation that Google will begin filtering content to protect © material using new technology to head off disputes.
Practical effect, not much. Workarounds are available to view that bootleg video. In the end it could have a positive impact by cleaning up posts from non-content creators.
The KTM Adventure Tour crew of Scot Harden, 2006 third place Dakar podium finisher Chris Blais and Mike Lafferty graced the Techmount booth with a bike and plenty of stories about adventures past and yet to come.
Chris is a tremendously gifted athlete whose representation of the United States in the recently concluded Dakar is a credit to his country and his sport. Chris plans for ’07 include the SCORE Baja 250, next month, and a pretty active race schedule throughout the rest of the year.
A winter wonderland welcomed over 20,000 attendees to the 39th Annual Dealernews Powersports Dealer Expo in Indianapolis February 16th-19th. Winter wonderland? Winter deepfreeze, which earlier in the week virtually shut down surface transportation throughout the area.
[Manipulated image, left, uses pro tricks and Photoshop’s built-in filters to even out flaws in original, right.)
Even though art directors always want images shot on a two-wall cyc, it’s not always that easy. For those difficult shots to make it into print, it’s Photoshop to the rescue.
That was the message displayed on one t-shirt as the 7th Annual V-Twin Expo hit Cincy February 3-5, and the forecast was pretty obvious. It’s back to baggers as booth after booth featured what it takes to get Granpa’s sled past the rope line. Paint, pipes, bags, fairings, seats. Even talk of open belt primarys — of course with floorboards — all with one goal in mind. Reclaiming some degree of practicality without sacrificing style. And with all the additional real estate, paint’s got a lot bigger canvas to take advantage of.
The smoke out who’s yr daddy cats are putting it together for another round. The 8th annual horse/bc’s homage to roots rock and chops kicks off next June, perfectly timed to coincide with the onset of N. Carolina’s balmy summer season of sweat.
It’s a $30 ticket before the show for two days of ass-kickin’ tunes, OEM women and a house card of builders fresh and familiar.
Event info:
www.horsebackstreetchoppers.com
It’s a cold world out there, where creative free spirits are forced to subject their warm and fuzzy intuition to the hard logic of the bean counters instruments of measurement.
Sensory Logic, a research developer, offers clients that Next Big Step beyond focus groups — emotional metrics that combine the warmth of a lie detector with the certainty of the Apocolypse.
Actually, it’s not that bad. Subjects are hooked up to various feedback sensors — patches over the eyes and on the cheeks, and a band around the hand — and then exposed, over the course of a half hour or so, to various “stimuli”, i.e., designs. The resulting involuntary responses are tracked against conscious reactions, giving clients a way to record reaction to either entire displays or portions thereof.
You say potato, I say patato. Bottom line, how big’s the sample have to be before the results are whim or trend?
yes, it certainly was
BCS final: University of Florida 41 — Ohio State University 14
national champs times two
2006 Division I National Men’s Basketball Champs
2006 Division I National Football Champs
2006 Southeastern Conference Champs
it really is great to be a Florida Gator! Go Gators!
If it’s January it must be Dakar on cable. For my money, and if you saw my cable bill you’d agree, the best produced sports show on the tube — period. Slo-mo, helicopter, POV, remote and static shots are edited and fed around the world for near-real time consumption.
Today’s New York Times Technology section leads with the cost-benefit to firms attending the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, which runs this week in Las Vegas. The pros and cons are laid out, and with the powersports industry’s main events just a few weeks away (V-Twin in Cincinnati, Dealer Expo in Indianapolis) the timing for an overview couldn’t be better.
This piece is on the heels of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, where manufacturers annually roll the dice on billions of dollars of market share, and parallel to MacWorld in San Francisco, where Apple’s rumored to introduce the long anticipated iPhone – a potential seismic event in the entirety of digital interconnectivity.
Interesting from the marketing perspective is how much more willing some industry segments are to acknowledge the role exhibit and collateral design plays in marketing to the audience in shows like CES, NAIAS and SEMA, to name a few. As competition and economics get tougher, those who grab and hold the high ground will understand the relationship of perception to performance, whether in the dealers mind or the consumers.