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.
Every year in Orlando for the past two the Performance Racing Industry’s brought their Ringling Brothers behemoth of a trade show circus to the Orange County Convention Center. The exhibits stretch from wall to wall, north to south, east to west. Over five miles — MILES!, thank you — of aisles lined with every imaginable product and service dedicated to the science/hunch of speed.
This year, in somewhat timid defiance of the rather inane prohibition on photos and videos, I snapped a few pix which will show up in a web site combo roundup of SEMA and PRI. But as usual, even more so, visuals alone don’t bring home the total experience of walking row after row of automated grinders and state-of-the-art cncs, booths dedicated to the art of forced induction, endless tables of the latest in valve technology, and the race trailers. Oh the trailers. Yeah boy, if I only had a spare half-mil or three laying around.
I came away with a clear understanding of the importance of linear suspension measurement. A handful of really useful Oil-Dri mats that decorate the delicate space under my Shovel. And an eye-opening education in how the mundane task of header fabrication can be transformed into a predictable, repeatable and accurate process by using a brand new product from icengineworks that looks like Legos and works like a million bucks. See it to believe it — and say so long to coat hanger templates.
It was a great three days of basking in Mickey’s shadow, learning new twists on old technologies and taking in the latest and greatest on the performance scene. Attending both SEMA shines in the desert and PRI back-to-back is an experience to be savored leisurely. Until next year.
I read today of another camera store closing, up in Cambridge circa 1955. Ferranti-Dege called it quits last month, and I’ll resist the temptation to label the passing as another victim of the digital (now nearly complete) revolution.
What struck a chord was that this article caught me slap in the middle of cleaning out my collection of haven’t been used since I don’t know when roll film cameras. Both 35mm and 120 format have been dug out from an inch-deep layer of dust, originally destined for eBay (I kid myself) but more likely Hospice, where someone else will list the items on Planet Auction.
What a rush of memories. Anyone out there nostalgic for a 17mm f4.0 wide angle, or as we knew it then, fish eye? My favorite over the years was a 35mm f2.8, which eventually became an extension of my thoughts and seemed to know where the action would be coming from next.
Auto aperature was the big deal. Focus was manual. Exposure was calculated and set. F-stops and shutter speeds. Natural light or artificial. Tungsten or strobe. Shots were considered, though the guys with the Canon 8-frames a second motor drives and a 250-exposure bulk magazine didn’t suffer.
I don’t recall what got me started in photography. Maybe the Kodak Hawkeye my grandfather gave me when I was 10, but it wasn’t until college when the bug really bit. Coincidentally that’s when SLRs became the rage, quickly elbowing out rangefinders and sheet film users as 35mm expanded the photographer base well beyond the snapshot threshold.
A huge part of the magic was what happened in the darkroom. I enjoyed the mechanics of threading a roll of b&w onto a developing reel, working in the dark, feeling your way. I still have my darkroom equipment, including an eight-roll Nikor tank that could develop, what, nearly 300 images at once?
Agitate, invert, wait a minute, repeat. Pour out the developer, pour in the stop bath, then fixer, then a 20-minute wash before being hung to dry. My darkroom world was perpetual red light.
Once dry the negs were cut into strips, proofed, then stored. All very Zen. Not like today. Insert memory card. Insert fresh batteries. Shoot away. Photoshop. Post online.
The article contains several quotes that accurately relate the camaraderie of pre-digital photography to the very much individual pursuit it’s become. Today I use a do-it-all point and shoot with built in zoom, menu driven exposure compensation, lighting prefs, and perhaps my favorite extra, a not too bad video mode. I enjoy the convenience. And I miss the discipline.
New York Times ad critic Stuart Elliott’s November 13th column takes a look at Suzuki’s innovative car campaign, themed “It’s gonna be a great ride,” now running in print, on cable and over the web.
The campaign, which so far does the tongue-in-cheek thing with the road captain rider removing “his” helmet only to shake out a huge extension — didn’t know you could fit that much hair under a helmet — as she and her Rodeo Drive wild thing pack surround the previously threatened car driver to return his left behind cell phone. Great line, “You left this at the diner. It’s got a new number in it,” proves the point that women, even those who ride in packs, get all gooey for men in like branded cars.
I think the spots do a good job of getting across the idea that Suzuki makes both bikes and cars. Or is it because I already knew that? For the average consumer, it might make the point. Or just muddy the water.
As one of only three (Honda, BMW) bike builders who also make cars Suzuki makes good use of cross product pollination. And they are fun, continuing a rich tradition among advertisers of setting up any group of two or more riders as potentially hazardous until proven otherwise.
Operating from the position that it’s always easier to show than explain, here’s a fascinating – and amusing – sub-3 minute YouTube anecdote on the creative theory behind packaging titled “Microsoft Re-designs the Ipod Packaging”.
The basis is Apple’s iPod. You’ve probably heard of it. The setup is a perfectly on target demonstration of how Microsoft would handle “shelf presence”. (I know, consumers now have a choice: iPod, or the weirdly branded new Zune. I can do almost everything a ‘pod can, but not as well.)
Take a minute or three to explore this perfectly simple example of why bean counters can’t sell. And why they shouldn’t be allowed near a box of crayons.
Just back from my first SEMA shuffle, and it was a huge eye-opener. More later over on the site, but between diamond encrusted Merc SLs, Tahitian hula dancers, enough booth chicks to open a club, audio that can bounce sound off the moon, and more customs and concept cars than I’ve seen in a lifetime all gathered under one roof, I came away a believer.
I didn’t get a big roller-coaster adrenaline rush from this powerful first impression. And my prefs are still for two wheels, not four. But for sheer spectacle and marketing horsepower, SEMA sure got my motor started.
I’m not the show’s audience — dealers are. I attend (most) trade events on behalf of clients and to run down the marketing efforts, new and old, that work, and that don’t work. How to tell? If the booth’s buzzin, something’s working.
This trip to the desert was worth the effort, and more. Organization, representation, depth and breadth. Something for everyone, and if your focus isn’t from the dealer perspective with attention given to a few areas of interest, it meant miles and miles of aisle hiking. And that still wasn’t enough.
But it was enough to have me looking forward to next year, and a better organized personal tour itinerary inside the walls and through the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
“Always low prices” bites the dust. So how did the newly formed agency DraftFCB and partnering Carat win the nearly $600-mil plus account away from agency of 32-year record Bernstein Rein? According to Ad Age, agency head Howard Draft, up-to-date on Wal-Mart’s senior vp-mar com Julie Roehm’s penchant for really expensive cars, invited her for a spin around the block in his spiffy econo-car Aston Martin.
The expensive and cantankerous import wouldn’t light and had to be towed – towed! – but his spanking new shop gets the account anyway. Other behind the scenes strategies that apparantly paid off? Actual shopping trips to selected Wal-Marts by agency execs with, get this, real Wal-Mart shoppers! And they actually brought in one of their experience guides to run the focus group gauntlet.
So I guess if they’d been after Disney, it would have meant a walk down Main Street with a Disney obsessive adult in denial as their ersatz seeing eye dog metaphor. Anyway, it’s going to be clever campaign that convinces Target afficienados to switch allegence and park out by the RV patch for a less subtle selection in a less swell environment.
What’s the point? Nothing much. But the fact that Wal-Mart’s going through a rough patch on a couple of really sensative points, and that their core audience is pretty well defined, still has me stumped as to what in their previous behavior, brief that it is, gave DraftFCB a boost over the bar. Data management expertise is cited, but what does the car thing have to do with it, other than status? And if so, isn’t that rather oxymoronic for this ultimate anti-status behemoth?
Wal-Mart is what it is – huge, lumbering, and with a very narrowly defined sex appeal. One thing’s for certain, probably. “Always low prices” is history.
A recent New York Times article on the creeping – make that galloping – upward price spiral at the nation’s best or otherwise restaurants got me to thinking about how discretionary selections are made in general and how they might be manipulated in the competitive aftermarket powersports sector.
To recap, the piece begins with the premise that in many parts of the country entrees are now topping the $40 mark, and that’s often without any side item; $6-dollar brocolli, anyone? We’ll leave aside comments regarding value, as that invariably involves judgements based on ambience, location, and how much we care to contribute to the owner’s IRA.
Instead, I focused on one aspect of this new trend that in hindsight seems obvious: restauranteurs discovery that even though diners may not order the most expensive item on the menu, the presence of even one over the top dinner pushed the per ticket price of other entree selections up as a result.
In other words, if the price spread were from $20 to $40 with stops in between, the higher the top price, the greater the likelihood diners would bump their choice to a higher priced entree that stopped just short of the most expensive selection. This is a clear example of discretionary spending manipulated by product positioning.
So one conclusion might be that by including a very high premium priced product in your catalog, odds are favorable that customers might increase their price threshold by a like factor, even if no one actually bought the highest price product offered, and assuming (probably) that the hi-low-median gap wasn’t too exagerated.
Perhaps this is what Neiman-Marcus has known all along; Fabrege eggs and gold-plated Hummers aside, it’s good for the bottom line regardless of resistance to the most expensive piece up for grabs.
I continue to bring up the rear on news that’s already been shredded and discarded with a few random observations that, taken together, may or may not be significant.
Lets start with HFM CEO Jack Kliger’s comment that, “We are no longer threatened by digital media,” in remarks to the American Magazine Conference in Phoenix last week. “We are figuring out how to use it to our advantage,” he continued, which is reassuring news to other publishers who continue to lose share to net-com and on the heels of the Wall Street Journal’s announcement that they’ll now offer color to advertisers. Just slightly coincidental was news that WSJ’s September ad revenues shrank nearly 6%, while classified lineage was down over 13%.
I’m not that interested, from way down here at the bottom of the hill, in the stats or dollars (combined advertising and circulation gross revenue of the top 300 books up 5.2% in ’05, down from 8% in ’04) in play. There are a few print pubs that have approached the problem in a very creative way, but most haven’t. My opinion? The decision makers just aren’t that hip to what the gamers have to offer in the way of engagement. In other words, Rolling Stone gets it. Rider doesn’t. Enough already with the garbage heavy metal bass loops, especially those that start on load. Ditto site design that’s a couple of “Alien” sequels late for a date.
And there’s this: who, really, has the time for so much fragmentation? Multi-tasking aside, there just aren’t enough lifetimes, especially when a lot of folks spend way too much time on their own sites and blogs. Uh, like this.
Print’s not going away. Culture, not to mention the paper mills, won’t let it. But perhaps it’s role will change from primary content informer to primary digital media supporter. For example, there’s little argument that print is the preferred format for long copy. Despite repeated attempts, there’s been very little success with publishing books in digital format. There may come a time when some recombinant strain of hi-def will change that, but for now screen res scrolling just doesn’t come close to the efficiency — and tactile pleasure — of a page at a time on paper.
Still, there’s no denying that when it comes to immediacy digital wins hands down. And that ain’t changing back. Anyone with a need to know now gets results straight to their Blackberry. Most of the rest of us log in and download the latest eZimes and html push content to our mail program.
And have you heard Apple’s hype that “many businesses” are now handing out iPods by the box full to grateful employess? Yep, this so they can podcast the spin du jour straight into the only slightly sweaty palms of their employees. (As someone who really digs podcasts, I’ll say that there might be too much of a good thing at work in this example.)
Back to Mr. Kliger’s views. I think they are threatened, to the extent that there’s no way — ever — to bundle sound and video with print. Oh, well, maybe you can throw in a “features packed” cd with that new sub, but they’ll only wind up as coasters on the assisted living wing of the old folks home.
They’ll grow, though, when the boundaries of traditional print are torn down and the perhaps left brain disciplines and experience of magazine journalism are paired with the Tony Hawk right brain hang out world of cell phone video and Garage Band crazy audio capabilities. It’ll be hybrid. And I won’t predict shape, size or color.
As of today, the networks continue to scramble as they define and redefine why broadcast is relevant and oh, by the way, you can ALSO catch content AND MUCH MORE at our web site. Referring back to the second paragraph, it seems clear who’s using whom to whose advantage.
And the offspring will only get faster and more efficient, while the parent(s) struggle to keep their seat at the head of the table.