 |
|
IMARKETING REPORT 03.11.02:
using celebs; what's your niche?
>> intelligent internet marketing
Good Morning Execs,
EBAY is like crack. And after wit-
nessing my fiancée degenerate into
a drooling, mindless, clicking, yell-
ing-at-the-computer-screen, eBay
junkie, I am firmly convinced that
eBay will be the model of the future
for garbage- (read 'bargain') hunting,
shopaholics, a.k.a. women (no of-
fense to women, of course, since
without you, men wouldn't have
anything to wear, eat, or sit on).
FT.com, a Financial Times com-
pany, starts charging for their
content, taking lead from wsj.com.
YAHOOs GeoCities also charging
for uploading to your free hompage.
NETFLIX.com is going public.
This company rents & mails DVDs
right to your mailbox but has no
community and I don't think it
will it survive because of that.
Kozmo didn't. Urbanfetch didn't.
Expect this rash of charging for
stuff nobody really wants to pay
for & IPOs based on this model,
to result in a new breed of entre-
prenuer that think they've now
figured out how to make their
crappy biz plans finally work.
Fleet spends $14MM on CRM plans
after spending more millions telling
you how great & speedy their tellers
are. Since we all know that to be b.s.,
note how they are damaging their
brand with consumers by saying one
thing and not delivering. If CITIBANK
doesn't buy them out, expect to
hear them experiencing some problems
soon.
Next week is the HipHop SuperCon
http://www.hhsc2002.com/,
a trade-
show/expo for the business of hiphop.
You need to get down with that tril-
lion-dollar market.
Enjoy the rest of the report.
CONTENTS:
1. BRANDS: ENTERTAINMENT: using celebs or not
2. BRANDRESEARCH: TRENDS: what's your niche?
3. THECONSUMER: COMMUNITY: don't do one offs
4. CONSUMERFOCUS: GLBT: don't call 'em queer.
5. MEDIA/ADSALES: SEARCHENGINES: GoTo gets 'em.
6. MANAGEMENT: STRATEGIES: trade you for that.
7. OPERATIONS: ETAILING: dynamic pricing for survival.
8. MUSIC&MOVIES: a case for drastic change of the system.
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
1. BRANDS: ENTERTAINMENT
Powerful personalities are obliterating
good judgment as they're being fought
over for new programs, brand spokes-
persons, and even leaders of faltering
ventures. But what kind of audiences
does a recognized personality attract?
And is it worth associating your brand
with this personality?
BOTTOM LINE: Lou Dobbs' audience
base didn't do much for SPACE.com.
Did Shatner do the trick at Priceline?
Yup. And was rehired for more ads.
Celebs are a great way to rent a specific
audience for your brands instantly, giving
you very niche traffic, and putting you
on advertiser's radars. However, there
are pitfalls. Always consider the match
b/w your brand and a celeb pre-signing up.
Sean Jean endorser P. Diddy has had more
deaths circling his name than the plague,
and yet, that doesn't seem to affect his
audience base.
READ MORE:
http://www.nypost.com/business/11720.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020305/3912440s.htm
http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-03-05/New_York_Now/Television/a-143342.asp
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR1117861690&c=10
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/05/sports/othersports/05SAND.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-03-05/News_and_Views/Media_and_Business/a-143347.asp
http://www.nypost.com/business/11720.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/business/yourmoney/10MAGS.html
top
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
2. BRANDRESEARCH: TRENDS
Why choose AOL over MSN?
Why pay $23.95 over $21.95?
Why buy from one and not the
other if the prices are the same?
As many businesses are faced with
the challenge of outdoing a com-
petitor online, it is important to
differentiate your brand, not by
price, but by how you answer your
customer's needs.
BOTTOM LINE: Chris Dikmen,
president of the Professional Internet
Travel Association, says "Everyone's
doing [CRM], but what can you do
that Expedia or Travelocity
won't do?
The key is to focus as a true expert in
certain areas." In other words, find a
niche and stick to it. Yes, I know
you've heard it before. But look at
KMart. $30 billion in sales, and they
just figured it out. Focusing in on a
niche also means providing a com-
munity where your very specific
consumers feel welcome and always
want to participate.
READ MORE:
http://www.twcrossroads.com/news/newswrapper.asp?ArticleID=31543&Keyword=Travel+Technology
top
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
3. THECONSUMER: COMMUNITY
CALGON bath and body brand heads
to FL to promote their brands with
spring breakers, then take their pics
and post them on a specially made site,
so target consumers can vote for their
fave pics. Typical, but won't work.
BOTTOM LINE: Consumers love to
check out pics online, but it has to be
via a community that's lasting. If
you're planning a community for the
sake of having people check out your
products, your best bet (and most cost
effective) is to hook up with an esta-
blished community builder, rather than
build your own and have to incentivize
with cash or other rewards.
READ MORE:
http://www.btobonline.com
top
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
4. CONSUMERFOCUS: GLBT
"The National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force will release a first-of-its-kind
survey of 2,500 black lesbians, gay
men, bisexuals and transgendered people"
where it is expected that Af. Am gay
males do not identify themselves as
"queer", which some gays believe to be
the all-encompassing, universal term
that the GLBT community wants to
be identified as. So should you still use
the term in your external communi-
cations to your black GBLT consumers?
BOTTOM LINE: We have the tech
to target consumers on a one-to-one basis,
so why even bother segmenting? Marketers
need to segment. It makes mass scale
campaigns easier. However, mass scale
segmenting can feasibly be done to niche
audiences numbering no more than a few
thousand. Thus, it is possible to target
Af. Am GLBT audiences. And now that
you know you shouldn't refer to them as
"queer", you're on the right track to
successfully targeting this sub-sub-sub
consumer segment.
READ MORE:
http://content.gay.com/channels/news/boykin/boykin_34.html
top
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
5. MEDIA/ADSALES: SEARCHENGINES
After pissing away $5 billion dollars
on crap, Idealab actually got one right,
as OVERTUREs GOTO.com is ex-
pected to surpass Yahoo in online ad
rev this year, proving the runaway
success of auctioning search engine
listings. Notice I said auctioning, not
selling. The difference is that the
bidder only pays for the keywords
s/he wants at the price s/he wants.
Yes, the deeper the pockets, the less
fair it becomes, but if you pick the
right words, & you're successful, then
you should earn enough from your sales
conversions to afford good keywords.
BOTTOM LINE: I must admit that
I've never been a staunch supporter
of paying for search results. There
are so many other ways you can generate
results. The key is to first have goals,
then design your strategy around that.
If you simply want traffic, then pay
for searches. If you're a search results
provider, then hell yeah, milk the sh!t
out of this new trend before it's too late.
Don't wait for the next bubble. Consumers
are clearly interested in looking for
relevant stuff online, and they use
paid results to locate this stuff. In other
news, GOOGLE
now talks Klingon.
READ MORE:
http://www.iconocast.com/issue/9001,1,0302,06,1.html
top
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
6. MANAGEMENT: STRATEGIES
Corporate trading just jumped out as
a strong topic last week in periodicals.
This is where companies swap excess
(or impaired) inventory for something
else they want, like media. So why
should you care?
BOTTOM LINE: Imagine having too
much adspace available. Now you can
trade it for something you need, like
air travel, real estate, or even restaurant
reservations. Imagine being in any of these
other industries, and not having a big
enough ad budget. Well, you no longer
have to be shut out of the media space
you want because you can trade your
stuff for adspace. I know what you're
thinking: You want cash to pay your
bills. Well, the main idea is that you
use your corp trading to wine and dine
clients, fly around the world, and get
office space, making cash unnecessary.
READ MORE:
http://www.activeinternational.com/Corporate/Advertising.html
top
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
7. OPERATIONS: ETAILING
The GAP once understood it's custo-
mers. It stopped and has lost some
50% of its value. It successfully de-
veloped it's brands into niche consu-
mer segments, but overdid it, missed
trends, and overstocked. The GAP,
just like KMART, forgot that their
customers made the decisions, not
them. Just because they had it, didn't
mean consumers wanted it. This is
seen over and over again, online &
off, and retailers still ignore it. Al-
though it's a big stretch to consider
all retailing change to the eBay way,
that's the last frontier for retailers,
in order to stand out above the rest.
BOTTOM LINE: It's all about dynamic
pricing, letting the customer decide
what they want to pay for your brand,
and making sure that the cost of getting
your brands to your customers is as
cheap as possible. That's why professional
service companies make so much money.
Not a lot of inventory. Once you under-
stand the industry you're in and how the
supply chain operates with relation to
your customer's needs, you can wring
out cost savings by trying to lower
your costs and set up some sort of
dynamic (or auction) pricing system.
top
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
8. MUSIC&MOVIES
"Admissions hit 40-year high as studio
ad spending rises. The movie industry
is spending substantially more to sell
movies that are costing substantially
less." There shouldn't be any surprise
to this discovery by a movie industry
president. After spending millions of
dollars advertising months before any
release, the actual release only stays
in the consumers minds for an avg
of about 3 to 4 weeks, during which
it has to re-coup all of the money
spent organizing, producing, promo-
ting, and distributing this venture.
BOTTOM LINE: So why doesn't the
industry throw all it's muscle to Napster-
like technologies, that make it consi-
derably cheaper to promote and distri-
bute films? B/c their mindset is that all
users of these technologies want every-
thing free. And you know, they're right.
"Ipsos Reid finds that as of 2001, 84%
US music downloaders say it is not likely
they will pay to download or stream music."
If the entertainment industry drastically
updates their laws and revenue model to
compensate for how users want to be
treated, they stand a chance of surviving
the next 10 years. Til then, get your $ out.
READ MORE:
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR1117861893&c=10
http://www.emarketer.com
top
>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>
>>>>>
Disclaimer:
The recommendations, commentary and opinions published herein are based on public
information sometimes referenced via hyperlinks. Any similarities or likeness
to any ideas or commentary from any other sources not referenced is purely coincidental.
al berrios & co. cannot control any results occurring from advice obtained
from this publication nor any opinion(s) conveyed by any reader of this publication.
(c) 2001-2005. All Rights Reserved. al berrios & company, inc. Published
by al berrios & co. This Report may not be reproduced or redistributed in
any form without written permission from al berrios & co., subject to penalty.