Category Archives: marketplace news

the truth is out there – maybe

expanding your market? – just look north

canadians get it right - nifty book from our north of the border neighbors

MX Performance is one of those books that just feels fresh. Cutting edge without that familiar snarky tone that’s becoming a little too common elsewhere, MXP covers the events and lifestyle of it’s title from BC to Nova Scotia and everything inbetween, including action from below the border.

Does the sport need another pub? Wrong question. What enthusiast magazine is delivered to each and every CMRC (Canadian Motorsport Racing Club) member? That’s a qualified mailing list of a little more than 14,000 riders. Then there’s subscribers, and single-issue sales. Hip graphics, groovy chicks and plenty of content.

market targets two-wheelers

mainstream swims downstream - bikers a demonstrable sub-demo

The New York Times Media and Advertising critic Stuart Elliot writes in this week’s column that the nation’s insurers are casting a new net to fetch up bikers, separate and apart from campaigns targeting car, truck and suv owners and none so aggressively as Allstate.

You’ve probably seen Allstate’s print versions in the obvious enthusiast books. The effort from Leo Burnett is also running broadcast, cable and web banners, all circled around the Allstate Garage microsite, a really nifty little piece of Flash ingenuity that’s surprisingly practical and used Indian Larry’s Legacy shop for content. Dissin’ OCC? Looks like, well okay with us.

The $10MM campaign’s aimed squarely at the owners of the country’s estimated 9-million registered bikes. What’s the point? To create awareness of Allstate’s mc channel.

Other industry players include market top dog Progressive, Geico and State Farm.

print’s best heads? ever?

the title says it all - there’s nothing like a great head

So you think coming up with a great headline’s no big deal? So easy a cave man can do it? The New York Post, R. Murdoch’s over the top rant rag, begs to differ. And so do I, even though I’m sure no fan of Lord Rupert’s ideas regarding media’s role.

This summary of the worst of the worst, titled using the Post’s most famous headline ever, succinctly crosses the “t” and dots every “i” of the headline writer’s craft.

Take a walk on the guilty pleasures side of life and explore the Greatest Hits of a tabloid’s reason for being. Buy it for the graphic. Read it for the laughs. Think about it when you consider your next ad’s hook.

P.S. My favorite will always be a now-defunct Weekly World News cover headline, “Fat Woman Impaled On Bicycle Seat.” Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.

hartfiel out at mpn — doh!

Good friend and industry icon Robin Hartfiel was abruptly let go yesterday by Athletic Business Publications, publishers of Motorcycle Product News where he’d hung his helmet as publisher/editor since leaving the same position at Dealernews in October of ’03 after 14 years of service to Advanstar.

A self-described Luddite who nonetheless knows how to crank out the occasionally curmugeonly and always well informed copy regardless of the platform, Hartfiel’s powersports insight is both deep and wide, assuring the next company that wins the inevitable bidding war for his services a Rolodex of contacts and a lifetime of accumulated product knowledge gleaned from covering the industry for both consumer and trade pubs.

Those same skills were responsible for breathing new life into a brand that was drifting when he grabbed the reins, quickly resulting in more sharply focused magazine that got the relationship with the dealer readership back on track.

Whither now MPN? Good question, as Hartfiel’s pool of knowledge is matched by only a few in the business and they don’t seem likely candidates for a move – or move back – to Madison. The decision, coming as it does at a time when print in general’s hemoraging ad pages, could at the least encourage defections from an advertising audience in a down market that’s already nervous and in retreat.

want fries with that?

cover your eyes and don’t read the rest

Harley’s Hog Club notwithstanding, snorting pig brains might cause, among other things, numbness and weakness in the extremities.

According to a story in the Washington Post, some of the folks working at Quality Pork Processor’s “head table” reported the symptoms after, um, using compressed air to remove the deceased porker’s former thought processor, a process referred to as “blowing brains” which researchers now think may have atomized some of the material that was subsequently inhaled.

Everything but the oink? You betcha. The product is shipped to, among other recipients, Korea and China.

’08 forecast – more biz-based social networks

reading the tea leaves becomes more challenging

British-based vnunet.com thinks 2008 will mark several milestones as social networking becomes increasingly integrated into the consumer business model, a shift predicted for ’07 that wasn’t as widespread as imagined.

Feedback and influence from social networks will ultimately become more significant factors in the purchasing decision cycle.

Our view is that print will remain the media of record even as consumers make the wholesale move to web-driven info for purchase-related decisions.

Social nets – for better or worse – will get more and more use as endorsement gateways offering peer-to-peer near-realtime dialogues. In practical terms, if as seems likely, I’ll now have to replace a perfectly decent HD DVD player with a Blu-ray DVD player to go with all my other DVD dammit players that have become useful as kickstand supports. Sorting out the pluses and minuses will take place on a social net somewhere, as opposed to waiting for the latest “Electronics Monthly” to show up on Border’s magazine rack.

Conclusion? If you’re not blogging your product, and/or watching what’s being blogged about your product, your competitor is. Which means their widget will come up, and your widget won’t.

like a snowball in a blizzard

when good ideas go wrong - there’s usually a reason

In my time I’ve made my share of photo mistakes, and they’ve usually been the result of bad lighting decisions. So I couldn’t help but notice this manufacturer’s attempt to illustrate the product in a natural setting, the usual goal of product publicity. Unless the product features camouflage and the setting is the deep woods.

Photographers like to complain about the difficulty of certain setups as “being like” taking a picure of a lump of coal in a mineshaft. Or a snowball in a blizzard. Or, more common, of that newly polished piece of billet. In this case the result isn’t fatal, but for one obvious reason it falls short of being an eyestopper.

The lack of separation of product from background directs the eye to the model, not the product. Next time try some portable location lighting or prepare to spend a few hours in Photoshop to knock the background down a bit and open up the product.

dakar fallout circles the globe

scuderia west’s team rally pan am was deeply disappointed

Team Rally Pan Am issued a press release that, apart from regret, wondered if perhaps the Portugal and Morroco legs couldn’t have been salvaged before cancelling outright the entire event. The privateers from San Fran had hoped this would be their breakout year with Jonah Street again seeking a podium.

“It’s unfortunate that so many people’s livelihoods are affected by a few people’s attitudes.  I was looking forward to the race this year, and my whole team and I are extremely disappointed. This would
have been a great race for us,” said Street.

Charlie Rauseo, team manager, said that “It is a huge blow to our team.  This is the race we look forward to and spend all year preparing for.”

“After having spent many months training and preparing for this rally, the team regrets not having the chance to prove itself on this international stage. It is unfortunate that the race was not run at least in Morocco so that sponsors could receive some of the exposure from this great race, and supporters and fans could cheer on Jonah as he raced for the win.”