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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Six months from now, all might be forgotten. But in the meantime, the fallout and lost production from the e. coli contamination of Natural Selection Foods’ share of the $300-million fresh spinach industry has been disasterous. Not only have stores cleared their shelves of the product, but restaurants have followed suit by banishing dishes containing spinach from their menus.

As a result, a first-ever industry image campaign is ready in the wings, waiting for an expected FDA advisory following their investigation before launching.

Unlike the oil and tobacco industries, posessing both deep pockets and addicted customers, the link between consumer and spinach is rather tenuous. Might spinach eaters switch to kiwis? Maybe. Perhaps dried cranberries.

Growers can’t afford to ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Thus the campaign. Yet the basis for the erosion in consumer confidence lies at the very core of the fresh produce industry.

Some years ago, burger chain Jack In The Box® was hit with an identical problem. They recovered because they were able to prove to the public’s satisfaction that the problem was solved, in part by hammering the hell out of their burger patties on the grill. See? Nothing wrong with these sandwiches, taste aside. No such remedy in this case.

As a culture we’ve grown used to the advantages of corporate concentration. This is a perfect example of the kind of disaster that can cripple a market. Time will tell if the cure is as illustrative.

Here’s something to consider when you’re trying to make sense out of your media projections. Consumer controlled content is a concept that’s now accepted and it means advertisers no longer control what is seen or when.

Today, I’m as likely to view original content downloaded as a podcast to my video iPod (left) in addition to cable, print, internet web site, direct mail, e-mail or point-of-purchase messages. So far, I don’t do messaging or use my phone browser — that time will depend on a keyboard that’s convenient and portable.

A rude awakening to subscription radio heavyweights Sirius (my provider) and XM, neither of which saw the ubiquitous iPod — easily adapted to play through car stereo — as a contender for their commercial free entertainment channels. Ouch! Why pay $13 bucks a month from here to forever when you’re likely to listen to a small fraction of the content? (My prediction is they’ll add more intimacy by way of on-air personalities, kind of like FM was in the beginning.)

The fractionalization of media has reached critical mass. Technology chases market which chases content. Immediate conclusions have it that connecting is less a case of market selection, more a case of content. Why? Because in the era of total connectivity, like thinkers who discover a message that resonates will distribute to their own — and that’s a good thing, assuming you’ve got the right message in place at the right time.