IMKTG REPORT June 10 2002

IMARKETING REPORT 06.10.02: Yahoo, Spammers, Cable, iMarketing
>> Kmart thanked me, too. Now, if they would only return my phone calls.

Good morning execs,

Last week I experienced serious
issues with my email server. Al-
though I was up and running for
business, I was unable to send out
this publication. Sorry. This issue
includes everything you missed,
and there was lots. As you may
have realized by now, our friends
over at GasPedal have postponed
their Advanced Email Strategies
Seminar conference in NYC until
Wed, July 24. This week, starting
today is the Licensing Tradeshow.
Next week, the DMD Marketing
conference + expo. And starting
June 25, Techxny is on. All these
must-attend events will be taking
place at Javitz. Yours truly will be
at all, evaluating them so you can
save time and money. Our friends
at NYNMA are having some very
cool events this week and the week
of June 24. Check out NYNMA.org/events
for more details. Pheuw! And have
you been thanked by Kmart yet?
They kicked off another multi-million
waste-of-money thanking consumers
that kept shopping at their stores
during their most difficult bankruptcy.
Why is it a waste of money? In addition
to the hoopla they're creating, they're
cutting prices all over again, in some
"back-to-competing-with-Walmart"
mentality that they can't seem to shake
off. Wasn't it that bluelight special
discounting that got them in deeper
trouble in the first place? There's
nothing wrong with thanking your
customers, but they just needed a
different way to do it.

CONTENTS: (coverage from Tue, May 28 to Mon, June 9, 2002)
1. BRANDS&INSIGHTS: Yahoo Re-Design Evaluation
2. CONSUMERFOCUS: Public Enemy #1 Ain't Lawyers, It's Spammers
3. MEDIA&CONTENT: Niche Cable
4. MGMT&OPS: iMarketing Is Growing
QUESTIONS? See business information below.

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1. BRANDS&INSIGHTS: Yahoo Re-Design Evaluation

Top buttons, for "email", "finance", etc
have been repositioned into a more
cohesive order, definitely more conducive
to spending. Search bar's in the right
place, to the top left, the first place
English-reading consumers look when
reading. The categories under the
search bar have been cleaned up,
both in order and font, and clearly
organized to highlight fee-based services.
Personal assistant feature definitely puts
consumers closer to the functions on
Yahoo. The vertical box of tid-bits on
the far right has been colorized, one
content box was removed, while the
remaining content expanded, and tabs
add a comfort of some sort to the ap-
pearance of the whole portion. A time
and date has been added, which is always
nice to see. Although this beta version
has no obvious ads, like the original
version, it was supposed to have been
designed to open up the front page to
more ads. Although there's an overall
look and feel similar to Altavista or Excite,
I think that Yahoo is on the right track to
improving conversions to paying consumers
off this new look. I would suggest not
having changed all fonts, which is the
most dramatic change, since a content
publisher's fonts are it's identity. But if
it must be done, then a more gradual
change would probably be better.

BOTTOM LINE: The best thing about this
whole re-design is that Yahoo is requesting
massive amounts of consumer feedback.
They are leveraging the opinions of over 200+
million people worldwide to basically tell them
whether the changes suck or not, and what
should be done better. Execs, take note -
ALWAYS ask your consumers what they
think, since ultimately, it's them who will
determine whether your strategic decisions
are profitable or not.

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2. CONSUMERFOCUS: Public Enemy #1 Ain't Lawyers, It's Spammers

The week of May 27th, the biggest news
was spamming and consumer protection.
Everyone from Gov. Jesse Ventura to the
FTC was cracking down hard on those
practitioners of shadiness. "A federal
court has ordered the shutdown of a
company accused by the Federal Trade
Commission of hijacking Web surfers
on their way to their intended online
destinations and barraging them with pop-
up ads."; "(NY) State Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer announced his office's lawsuit
yesterday charging that the e-mail mar-
keting firm (MonsterHut Inc.) sent more
than 500 million unsolicited commercial
e-mails and falsely claimed they were
permission-based."

BOTTOM LINE: If you can't yell
louder than everyone else, how will
your consumers even know you exist?
Simple question, tough answer. Patience.
Brands aren't built overnight, so your
campaign shouldn't be trying to get a
quick fix every time. First, a long term
strategy and plan of execution must be
set before you begin doing anything.
All external communications should
follow this plan and should grow the
brand a little each time. If your goals
are to create and develop consumer
relationships, your messaging and
media should be in support of this goal.
If an email campaign doesn't quite
support this goal, then don't do it.
Everyone on your team, from your in-
house marketing staff to the vendors
you work with, should all be on the
same page when it comes to supporting
this strategy and plan. Your technology
should support this plan. Your boss
should support this plan. Your consumer
should understand your plan. This is
an ideal situation, but getting close to
this will guarantee you avoid being
considered annoying by your customers.

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3. MEDIA&CONTENT: Niche Cable

Although this publication is reserved for
internet topics, the subject of niche in TV
was too widespread to ignore, especially
since television recorded at least a 15%
increase in their upfront, their annual
shmooze-fest where advertisers committed
to spend $8+ billion for at least 80+% of TV
ad inventory. Niche was a HUGE deal
b/c cable companies like MTV and Nick
have proven their might with programming
like "Osbournes" and "SpongeBob Square-
Pants". Spanish-speaking Hispanics have
made Univision's broadcast of the World
Cup more popular than ESPNs broadcast
during competition involving Latin American
countries. Even cable news has been
deemed better than broadcast news.
Once the absolute kings of reaching
America, network broadcasters feared
no one. Now, even they are attempting
to go niche, following a strategy radio
broadcasters have been using to com-
pete for decades.

BOTTOM LINE: I've discussed niche
repeatedly on this publication, but why is
it so important? Consumers have way too
many choices in what to enjoy, and how to
enjoy it. All these choices aren't a result
of media companies just spewing out
content. These media companies justify
their content with a market that has a need.
As these markets get splintered more and
more, choices increase, and consumer segments
suddently turn niche. But the interesting
thing is that consumers have now become
conditioned to find their fave content and
you know what happens? They stop going
back to the general interest content they
thought was their only choice. As more
choices and how to enjoy them develop,
consumer media habits also change, forcing
media companies to reconsider fundamental
rules such as prime time is between 8p-10p
and you can't really reach people online
during the day. But here's the real problem:
advertisers haven't yet picked up on these
media habit changes. They still pay more for
out-dated and useless concepts such as
network broadcast primetime believing that
only the sophisticated consumer will seek out
niche content, or use the internet for info and
most of the country aren't that sophisticated
yet, and will always go back to network and
follow the same old prime-time schedule.
The NYTimes.com recently launched a new
concept called "site sessions" which sells
advertisers time-based campaigns rather
than CPM based, with hard facts indicating
how more consumers are logged on reading
the news from the office than watching TV.
This argument isn't supposed to change how
TV does their business - it's supposed to
answer why advertisers should change theirs.

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4. MGMT&OPS: iMarketing Is Growing

The concept of iMarketing is one that
takes time to educate a buyer on before
they're willing to commit. It's not like I
just walk into an office with a product
they're already familiar with and discuss
why mine is better. iMarketing doesn't
even have it's own market space yet,
with no actual dollar figures or market
players defined. However, that's slowly
changing. Last week, there was evidence
that companies are spending on iMarketing,
just under a different name: Forecasting,
Reputation Monitoring, Blogging.

BOTTOM LINE: These days, search
engines do more than deliver traffic. They
can accurate forecast consumer trends,
just by paying attention to what consumers
search for. When I present how iMarketing
leverages the resources on the internet to
profile your consumer, I'm saying that when
you just listen to your consumer, whether it
be a chat room or a search engine, they will
always tell you what they want. If you spend
all your time trying to tell them what you think
they want, it's going to tell you a whole lot
longer to sell your product. If your company
has hundreds of brands, how do you keep
track of all of them, misspellings, variations,
infringements, etc? You can't. The core of
iMarketing are the iMarketers. These people
are online 24/7 not just spreading the gospel
about your brand, but monitoring who's doing
or saying what about it, allowing large com-
panies to protect their assets and manage pr
nightmares. And guess what, whatever gets
printed online, almost always came from or
goes to an offline media, since most pubs
put the same content in all their points of
contact with consumers. Blogging has be-
come a consumer's best friend. It's an on-
line diary where, cheap to make, and very
personal, so you can count on consumers
checking it regularly. Bloggers love to read
other blogs as well. They log to link their
blogs to other blogs. They build niche com-
munities where there's a common thread
which marketers can exploit to understand
this segment. Macromedia marketed their
new Flash MX by authorizing their developers
to blog. And you know what, that's how
you develop a cult brand, just like Flash.
iMarketing is still a long way away from
becoming a must-have in every marketing
plan, however, that's only because no one
has ever taken the time to chronicle and
formulize what it is and how it helps marketers.

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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.

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