Focusing on strengths and differentiation is nothing new to marketing, but those basic tenets seem to get lost in favor of cleverness and “wow” factors.

Southwest’s latest campaign really resonates, though.

Bags are important to flyers.  How often do you hear horror stories about airlines losing bags?  I know my Facebook news stream is littered with stories this holiday season of airlines losing their bags.

Southwest recognizes bags’ importance to customers, and plays off of that.

“Bags fly free” isn’t just about saving the customer money. Where other airlines are saying, “your bags are 1) an inconvenience and 2) an opportunity for us to make a few more dollars”, Southwest uses bags as an opportunity.

Their latest commercial paints a picture of burly men handling bags personally, and getting teary-eyed when they get on the plane and fly away.

“Bags are my life,” one handler says.

“I love bags,” another says, waving goodbye to his traveling friends.

That message, combined with the lack of fees, is Southwest saying to its customer that bags are important to you, so they’re important to the airline.   The implication is they won’t lose your bags, because they care — and the humans behind the actual baggage handling care.

It’s a starkly different picture than that of the “stereotypical baggage handler” — an angry man that’s doing his best to test the structural integrity of your baggage.

And it’s a refreshing change.  Travelers are tired of the “same old” from airlines, which includes late flights, nickel and dime charges at every opportunity, and lost luggage.

Southwest’s message, which revolves around something as simple as the lack of a fee around the first piece of luggage, effectively points out that they are an airline intent on bucking the trends set by their industry. And of winning the customer satisfaction battle.

But then there are the run of the mill banner ads.  Ones that have very little or no relevance to the content and whose sole method of gathering attention is being annoying.  Previously, this meant garish colors, annoying Flash animations or animated GIFs.  But, for some reason — perhaps file size limitations, perhaps content providers refusing to break a certain threshold of annoyance — sound had been blissfully missing from the majority of banner ads.  You saw it every now and then, but it wasn’t that widespread.  (At least, it wasn’t that widespread at the sites I was visiting.)

But now there’s a series of banner ads pointing out that I’ve won an iPod or a computer or a boat or something.  I don’t actually remember.  Nothing new, really.  The same ad has been around forever in some incarnation or another (which means it must actually be effective, which makes me worry about the IQ of the human race).

But this ad has added voices, now.  Sometimes, a perky female reads the copy to me, telling me I’ve won.  Sometimes it’s a fresh-sounding male.  Either way, it’s annoying.  Very annoying.

So, I’m sitting here listening to some tunes and reading a website that will remain unnamed and unlinked because it carries this ad.  Then the perky female starts reading the ad out loud while I try to read some content.  The ad runs its course while I’m reading and find a link that I decide to follow.  I click the link, a new page loads, and the ad reloads.  Which means… guess what!  I may have won!  I repeat this process one more time before running away from the site with my speakers muted.

To recap: I click on the ad exactly zero times and leave the site and am very reluctant to go back.  Was it worth it, content provider?  I’m probably not the only reader thinking this.  Remember content providers — make sure the ads on your site won’t cost you readers.

There are, however, a lot of drinks I am a fan of — Izze Soda, several different cream sodas, Sonic-style limeades, and well-made lemonade, to name a few. Fresh juices are also great.

You can get these at some delis, markets like Central Market or Whole Foods Store, but never at your chain convenience store like 7-11 or a gas station market.

I feel like 7-11 is devoting too much space to the energy drink segment and not enough to other specialty drinks. Maybe their market isn’t growing as fast, but a few more non-standard choices would be great. It’d really get me in their doors more often, anyway, and I believe there’s plenty of room — I’ve seen smaller delis carry a nice drink selection.

Sonic has the right idea — they have a wide selection of unique drink items. That gets people into their drive-in, where they’re likely to grab a quick meal while they’re there. I think 7-11 (I refer to 7-11 mostly in this post, but I understand in the northern US they’re far less common, and there’s a different dominant convenience store chain — insert your convenience store chain of choice wherever you see 7-11 in this post) could see a similar business boost from carrying non-standard drinks.

Several people suggested I try Fiji water (and by “several people” I mean “several females”), because it tastes better.  I decided to take the recommendation.

I was driving by Whole Foods Market, and I figured as long as I was buying yuppie water for $0.99 cents for a small bottle, I might as well go all out and get it from a yuppie store like Whole Foods.  I bought a single bottle in the trademark Fiji light blue yet squarish bottle.  I got to my car, took a gulp, and decided that it tasted suspiciously like water.  It did have a bit less taste than most water I’ve had, probably because of fewer impurities or something.  But doggone it, I think I’m getting used to my impurities — I prefer other waters, I reckon.

But the dealbreaker for me is the squarish bottle.  As I started to drive out of the Whole Foods parking lot, I tried to put the Fiji bottle into my car’s cupholder.  But it was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole — literally.  Despite the bottle not being very big, the square shape ensured it didn’t fit into my cupholder.  Totally annoying.

I understand why the Fiji Water Company would want to have a unique design for their bottle, to make it recognizable.  And it doesn’t appear to be hurting their business.  But I feel it’s an example of form being placed above function unecessarily.  It’s a nice looking bottle.  But round bottles just make more sense sometimes, even if everyone else uses them.  Maybe I’m just overly practical sometimes, and a little old fashioned, but I like my bottles round.

That’s a lousy promo, if you ask me.  Your odds of winning are small, and odds are the winner will be some guy buying a spindle of CD-Rs for $10.  It’s not enough of an incentive for me to make my purchase on this specific day and at a CompUSA, at that.  “Get Comped” sounds great as a copyline but in practice isn’t a great promotion.  I’d be far more inclined to visit the store for a “Big Sale” type of promotion.

But!  If you happen to be in the area of a CompUSA and have nothing better to do but stop in, you can win without actually having to buy something (I think there’s some sort of law that requires it).  If you read the fine print (pdf), you will find:

To enter without purchase or obligation: Tell any CompUSA cashier that you want to play for free and he/she will scan a game card at the register to see if you are a winner (“Free Play”). Limit one Free Play per person per hour of the Game Period. The official time (time stamp) of a CompUSA purchase transaction is the second when the Free Play is first recognized by CompUSA’s POS System as an authorized Free Play as determined by CompUSA in its sole discretion.

So just go in and ask for your “Free Play.”  You probably won’t win, but at least you did’t spend $2000 on a Sony Vaio to find out.  Another plan, if you have room on your credit card — buy that $4000 HDTV and return it the second you realize you didn’t win.

It’s not so much that the new Geico campaign is bad, but more that their previous campaign was really good.  Why move away from it?

The old campaign, featuring someone delivering really bad news but capping it by exclaiming that he/she saved money by switching to Geico, was funny and easily memorable.  The tagline “but I saved money by switching to Geico!” was entering the realm of standard pop culture vernacular.  People were saying it left and right, raising Geico awareness (heck, I switched to Geico) and getting people to the web site for a free insurance quote.

Not only that, the commercials were surely cheap to make, as far as production.  No special effects, no fancy scenes — just some people in a common, everyday setting, like a doctor’s office.  The new gecko is entirely computer rendered — and that costs significantly more than a few struggling actors on a makeshift set.

I can understand the argument that Geico wanted to avoid the commercials becoming stale, but I think the campaign was far from reaching that stage.  There were plenty of more creative and funny scenarios a good writer could have come up with.

The way I see it, a company went from a successful campaign that’s all over pop culture to a new one that’s far less creative, less memorable, and more expensive.  Change isn’t necessarily a good thing.  Change has to have strong backing reasons and strong execution to be effective.  If you have a good thing going, why change it?  Stick to it until it starts to show more signs of leaking water before trying to move in a new direction.  Businesses too often make changes for the sake of making changes — which often moves them further from success than they were previously.

I found out about this in a commercial, but the commercial was so bad and the product so pointless that I can’t remember the brand or the manufacturer. 

What’s the point of using the same product in your hair as on the rest of your body?  What advantage does this give you?  Yes, you have one less bottle in the shower.  Yes, you have one less product to buy at the grocery store, but you have to buy it twice as often.  And you still have to carry around conditioner, unless this includes that.  Maybe they can also mix in some gel, aftershave, and toothpaste while they’re at it.  Not only that, your entire person, from head to toe, will smell the same.  I find the concept kind of weird.

The commercial is pointless.  There’s a guy in the shower, all soapy and just doing his bathing thing.  Also in the room, outside the shower, is his wife applying makeup in front of a mirror.  She asks him which of her friends he would be most interested in hooking up with.  Camera goes back to the husband in the shower, with a clearly worried look, saying nothing.  He takes the same soap he was using on his body, puts some in his hair, and shampoos away.  The wife gives suggestions.  The husband says nothing and shampoos his hair.  Bring on the tagline, end the commercial.

What in the world does that exchange have to do with a soap/shampoo combo?  I am thoroughly baffled.  The guy could have used separate shampoo and soap, despite his wife’s questioning. 

I wish I could remember the product name, but my brain was busy trying to figure out the point of the commercial to be bothered with such details.  How do commercials like this make it all the way to the air?  When the company pays the ad agency a ton of money to make a commercial, and the agency delivers this, how does everyone in the company say, “Wow, good stuff!  Air it!”  Surely somewhere along the line someone must have had a clue.  Go figure.

Sure, their prices might not be the best, their service might not be the best, their selection might not be the best… whatever. I don’t care anymore. Best Buy has done something that so few companies do — they’ve listened to their customers. And their customers have overwhelmingly said they hate mail-in rebates. So Best Buy is getting rid of mail-in rebates.

It’s a brilliant plan. Find out things your customers hate, and get rid of those things. Executive Vice President Ron Boire explains it, and in a stunning turn of events, a corporate executive makes a statement that makes perfect sense:

“Our customers told us they hate mail-in rebate programs. As a result, we’re working as a company and partnering with our vendors to find new solutions to give our customers a better shopping experience, while remaining competitive on pricing.”

I love it!

I know from the standpoint of the business, mail-in rebates are great — they let retailers advertise a low price, then demand a higher amount of actual cash from the customer when they try to actually purchase the product. They giggle as they point out the little asterisk next to the price in the ad, but assure the customer that he or she will almost definitely get their money from the rebate, assuming the other company is in the mood to give it to them. Meanwhile, they giggle even more knowing full well that the majority of people will forget to ever fill the forms out to get the rebate.

I personally have long been a hater of mail-in rebates. I’m one of those people that never remembers to mail them in until after the expiration date, which is usually a few days after I buy the product. I found one in my car the other day, sitting un-filled-out, having expired months ago. Bye-bye, $25.

The nice thing about rebates is that every now and then, the company actually does mail you the rebate if you follow all their annoying instructions (but there is the very real chance the company will misplace your rebate, in which case, tough tooties). When that happens, always months and months after the initial purchase, you’re surprised by the free money arriving in the mail, because you’ve long since written off the rebate as never arriving.

But me, I’d rather just save the money in the first place, rather than have to collect 19 receipts, cut proofs of purchase and barcodes, fill out forms, dance in a circle, and then find a mailbox to put all the paperwork in, so that it can shortly thereafter be misplaced by the company.

Thus, today, I salute you, Best Buy.

Even back in high school, my friends and I had the problem of the little plastic things at the tips of shoelaces always falling apart, leaving the shoelace tips with nothing to protect them against the elements and eventual fraying. This was such a problem that back in middle school, Jeremy Hays included it as a part of an ad-hoc comedy routine he told while we were “running” the mile once a week in PE (our run was more like a leisurely stroll). To this day, it holds a space in my brain that should probably be devoted to remembering what appointment I have at any given time. So Hays, you get a co-author credit on this post.

At any rate, the shoelace fraying becomes a major problem when you have to relace your shoes. And in my case, that’s almost every day. I don’t know how it happens, but I’ll lace my shoes, have both ends of the laces equal length, tie them, and then a few days later one side is magically three times as long as the other. Meaning it has to be relaced. Does this happen to everyone, or am I doing something wrong? People do say I tie my shoes weirdly. I probably flunked shoe-tying back in kindergarten.

I’m starting to ramble. Anyway, the relacing is a pain in the neck because of the lack of the plastic things on the end of the shoelaces. Now, all you smarty-pants out there will probably say to just buy new shoelaces. This invokes two problems:

1) I am cheap.
2) I can never find shoelaces that match the style of my shoes.

I liked my OLD shoelaces just fine, thank you, minus the part about the tips being frayed from here to next Tuesday.

This brings me (finally) to the actual topic of the post: my cool idea. And that cool idea is a shoelace tip re-plasticker. I think glue or wax or something would do, really, rather than an actual plastic polymer. You make this little machine that looks kind of like a miniature waffle iron, plug it in, stick your shoelace tip in there, press down, hit a button, and voila, the heated glue or wax or whatever is put around the shoelace tip, giving you a nice fresh plastic tip. I bet someone could make something like that pretty cheap, and you’d only have to buy new shoelaces on the rare occasion that they break.

Someone out there get on that, and we’ll split the revenue.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and had a little trouble getting back to sleep, so I turned on the TV and flipped through a few channels. First thing on the screen was an infomercial on the local ABC affiliate for a program that supposedly gets you rich by trading in the exchanges market. A lady in a newsroom-like setting was asking a suit clearly rehearsed questions that he happily answered, the gist of all of his answers being that it’s easy and everyone, including you personally, will get rich if you follow their instructions. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the screen was the fine print, explaining that NOT everyone, including you personally, will get rich, and in fact could lose all your money. But no one wants to hear that.

I stayed on the channel for about 30 seconds before switching to another channel and seeing another infomercial. This was in the Oprah-like setup, a few people on a stage in front of a Live Studio Audience ™. My brain escaped out my left ear before I could make a mental note of what they were selling, but I’m sure it was available in 5 small payments.

Now, the question is — who actually watches these things? Somebody must be watching them, and buying the products, if they stay on TV. Not that many people, though, or else these things would be on during prime-time (Ross Perot style) — but enough people that half the channels on TV at any given post-2am time are showing infomercials.

It’s ingrained into my head to be skeptical of infomercials — even though I’m not instantly skeptical of commercials. I’m even thinking about going to Burger King for lunch today after seeing countless commercials featuring that creepy mute king playing football or being King Kong. But if I see a product in an infomercial, I will immediately not give it any consideration — even if it’s something I could really use, like a little machine that puts little plastic things back on the end of your shoelaces (wow, that’s such a good idea I might just write a separate post about it sometime soon). I’m sure a lot of people think that way — but not everyone. At what point do you become totally jaded to infomercials? Or maybe I’m just in the minority?

In a way, I kind of feel bad for Creative. I remember when every computer had a Sound Blaster sound card in it (I even shelled out major bucks for a Wave Blaster so I could listen to MIDIs in super-high quality back in 1994 or so). Now, computers have on-board sound and hardcore gamers, movie watchers, and recording specialists are the only people that buy sound cards (many of whom don’t touch Creative products — such as the recording industry).

Then Apple came along and swiped the portable digital player market out from under them (Creative was in the portable digital media business in 1999, the iPod didn’t come along until 2001). Apple’s iPod was so successful and market-dominant that the term “Podcast” was coined when broadcasting via RSS notifications became popular — even though the technology for Podcasting predates the popularity explosion of digital portable music players.

Companies not named Apple hate the fact that Apple’s product gets a mention in association with a generic technology. Microsoft fought back by declaring that Podcasts are actually blogcasts.

Creative is fighting back by trying to deny the existence of the iPod and its widespread popularity:

Podcasts, short for Personal On Demand broadCast, are audio files you can download into any MP3 player or computer.

Great thinking Creative! Try to deny the entire etymology of a word. Try to pretend it is what it isn’t. Face it, Creative. The term Podcast exists because iPods are extremely popular. It doesn’t necessarily mean your product stinks, which it really doesn’t — it just means Apple has a stranglehold on the market and thus the slang that comes from that market. Besides, look on the bright side! Kleenex doesn’t dominate the tissue market anymore, does it?

You heard it here first: the McRib will never really go away. McDonalds loves the attention too much. Like Mallory said, there will probably be cockroaches ruling a post-meteor-hit Earth, happily dining on McRib sandwiches.

McDonalds even went so far as to leave themselves an out, this time. “It’s going away super forever really superduper not lying!! But we’ll sponsor a petition and encourage everyone to sign it so we don’t get rid of it.” The McRib website, as of this writing, reports a bit over 100,000 signatures to the petition. For an internet petition, that’s nothing. Someone could start a petition to give Screech from Saved by the Bell his own late-night talk show focusing on barnyard animals, and it’d have more signatures in a couple of days.

Not only that, who starts a petition against themselves? People start petitions to combat something a company or the government is doing. McDonalds is begging us to give them the attention they want by getting us to combat retiring the McRib. You know what? Good riddance. That sandwich is messy and tastes gross. I got one once, had half of it on my face and shirt, and wished that more of it had missed my stomach. If you like barbeque products, get some good stuff. Here in Dallas, at least, there are barbeque sandwich shops everywhere. You won’t pay that much more and you’ll get a better culinary experience.

On the bright side, McDonalds does have some cool tshirts to go with the promotion. We were giving them out at the Mavericks game the other night. There were two versions, both all black — one had a “McRib Farewell Tour” on the front in a cool font, and the other simply had a drawing of a bone crossed out Ghostbusters style. “No bone.” I wanted to keep one of those for myself, for use in non-McRib situations, but we gave them all away.

Not only was McDonalds giving us tshirts to give out, though, but also free coupons for McRibs. Why try so hard to promote a menu item you’re getting rid of? Only because you’re obviously not getting rid of it.

The example Mark gives is a pretty ideal one — get a big site, such as the New York Times, to pay the smaller sites that link to them when those links result in extra ad views or ad clicks, depending on the ad model at the large site.

I’m all for this, personally. I’d love to see a little change come my way if I happen to link to CNN.com. The problem comes in the challenges in keeping the system legitimate and free from scams, as well as in tracking what users are actually revenue generators.

If you pay for every click through to your site, then you have the current simple ad system as it is now. Now, if you only pay if the click through to your site becomes an ad click through, then we have a new system. As with cost per click systems, robots that just click through things to generate revenue will have to be tracked. The trail of clicks to track has become longer, and with every extra step, the harder it is to keep the system clean, from a technical standpoint.

Advertisers will also be curious about this sytem — how likely are these visitors to buy their products? They’ll want to know what kind of sites are benefitting from this revenue sharing and they’ll want to know whether the extra ad clickers are actually well-formed leads or casual browsers.

I’m always in favor of monetizing every last inch of the long tail, but I’m skeptical (as are many of the commenters on Mark’s site) of the effectiveness and plausibility of it.

But I’d love to be proven wrong.

A lot of people were expecting Apple, via iTunes, to eventually sell music videos and movies. I didn’t see people predicting that an intermediary step before movies would be the purchase of television shows, however. And it’s a logical step — before asking people to commit to purchasing longer, probably more expensive content, why not see if they’ll commit to purchasing shorter television shows for $1.99 each?

Portable movies have been done before, anyway (portable DVD players, PSP-formatted movies) — just not downloadable portable movies. A question that remains to be answered, however, is how people will feel about downloading very large movie files? A 4megabyte song is one thing. A 50+megabyte movie is another.

Another question — will the shows be commercial free? I would hope so, as you’re paying $1.99 for them. But perhaps the $1.99 is just a delivery fee — and the commercials are still included?

Having personal access to television shows so soon after their broadcast is the next step in an impending paradigm shift regarding television. It started with TiVo allowing you to watch your favorite shows when its convenient (and without the hassles of VCRs). This is the next step. I doubt television will ever fully move to an on-demand format (people learn about new shows through surfing, of course), but choice for the viewer is always a good thing.

I’ll be interested in seeing how popular this becomes. Will people eat up the chance to watch their favorite shows whenever they want, without TiVo? Or will people scoff at the idea of paying for something they can get for free?

I was sort of right — Apple did update the iMac line. But they also did release that video iPod.

If I’d have waited a little longer on getting the iPod nano, I would have been faced with the tough decision of 30gig iPod with video (wider and thinner), or the sleek nano. Of course, since I got the nano, I don’t have to make that decision.

But, pretending that I still had to make the choice, I think I would choose the nano again. Portable video, to me, isn’t that important. Watching video while away from home is an opportunity thing. If your commute to work involves the subway or the bus, watching your favorite TV show on the way sounds like a wonderful way to pass the time. But as my commute to work involves driving through annoying traffic, watching the latest episode of Lost while doing it is out of the question. On the other hand, I have plenty of opportunities to listen to music while on the go — at the gym, at work, etc. For that reason, a smaller, sleeker music-only player makes more sense for me.

I still feel the iPod with video is a great product (even if it is wider than older iPods), and, much like the PSP, an important step toward the convergence of technologies. Now, can someone get me a real Apple phone and not this Motorola ROKR stuff?

Coverage of the announcement:
- Apple
- CNN (via Associated Press)
- Engadget

Well, I’ve changed back to Yahoo.

Google did do a better job of giving me more relevant ads — a post about the Dallas Cowboys gave ads to buy Cowboy tickets and memorabelia. With Yahoo, the same post got me ads about San Diego web design (one of the comments mentioned Dallas’ opponent, the San Diego Chargers).

But the even with the lower clickthrough rates, Yahoo is bringing in more revenue. So I’ve switched back to Yahoo.

While the ads aren’t as relevant as Google’s, Yahoo’s ability to label your blog audience as being interested in specific types of ads is useful in generating different ads. My blog front page tends to see the same Yahoo ads fairly regularly — so I plan to experiment with changing my blog “focus” on occasion to see if that boosts ad variety and clickthrough rates. As my blog tends to focus on several different topics (whatever happens to be on my mind), there isn’t one single category that I feel is a significantly closer fit than any of the others.

I like Yahoo Publisher Network a lot, but I’d like to see more relevant ads. And let me know if you’re seeing any exceedingly funky ads.

Their recent announcement of entering the contextual advertising world is no different. Even so, when Microsoft enters a market, people listen.

I’d be interested in trying out Microsoft’s offering. It features the ability to select a demographic for your ads — an interesting feature.

Right now, AdCenter is in closed beta.

If Microsoft is going to beat out the incumbent Google and the rising Yahoo, they’ll have to be pretty impressive. Things I’d like to see: the ability to see what specific ads people are clicking on, the ability to have more design control over the ad area, well targeted ads, and an amazing CPC.

I can dream, right?

Coverage of Microsoft AdCenter:
- MSN jumps in with talk about their new contextual ad program (Jensense)
- Microsoft unveils adCenter (Ars Technica)

It featured people in various uniforms from “respected” jobs — a doctor, a nurse, a policeman (if my memory serves me) — but each of their uniforms had a McDonald’s nametag. They later revealed that each of those people’s first jobs was working at McDonald’s. It concluded by asking you to show appreciation for the McDonald’s employee.

McDonald’s employees do have a bad rap; they’re often portrayed as being rude, uneducated, and poor. The term “McJob” isn’t a compliment. This spot aimed to try to ease the harshness of the usual portrayal.

I’m curious as to whether there was an incident that caused McDonald’s to decide to spend the money to make such a campaign; I can’t imagine the spot will help sell many Big Macs. Are they having trouble recruiting workers because of the stigma attached to working the drivethrough? I can’t say I’d want to work at McDonald’s, but it’s honest work. At least those people are trying to earn a living, rather than trying to live off handouts.

This immediately rends one reaction: huh?

This purchase wouldn’t be a Google buying a Technorati type of deal — it would make perfect sense for a search company to purchase a smaller search company that’s doing well within a niche. eBay bought PayPal a while back, which made sense — PayPal was used mostly for eBayers to pay other eBayers.

But eBay and Skype? Any attempts to rationalize some sort of synergy there (“Call the seller for free!”) are a stretch. It comes down to one thing: eBay has money and needs to spend it. They’re probably fearing future growth in their arena — they already have complete dominance of the market, so gains are going to level out. They’re going to be adding service to China soon, which will provide a boost, but there’s limits to how far this revenue stream will carry them. An article on market analyst site the Street quotes an analyst that sums it up well:

” ‘If eBay was considering whether to make this move, it would be a not-so-subtle admission that growth is slowing,’ says Hoefer & Arnett analyst Marty Pyykkonen, who has a reduce rating on eBay.”

So eBay has climbed the online auction mountain, planted their flag, and are looking for new mountains. Skype is a major player in the VoIP world — but the VoIP world is still a small one compared to tradational communication methods. Is eBay hoping to become a communications leader next?

Analysts have noted that it’s unusual for an internet company to look into a leap so far outside its market — and could be groundbreaking. Will Microsoft try to build bicycles? Will Google look into making guitar amplifiers? No, they probably won’t, but are those scenarios any more out-of-left-field than eBay and telecom?

Stockholders definitely worry — eBay stocks dropped well over a dollar on the news. But it looks like eBay is at least looking into taking some risks, and for that, deserve some level of praise. As long as it’s a calculated risk.