Interesting idea. Engaging use of sound and motion. Interesting way to sample music. Disappointing when it doesn't respond properly. When you touch the CD in the wall it is supposed to change tracks, and it doesn't do that quickly enough, look what happens.
- Contributed by Ian WhitneyIf you read the recent post on Sony's Blu-Ray's recent victory over Toshiba in the HD-DVD space, you know Toshiba pulled out of the race the moment they calculated they couldn't win. In today's Wall Street Journal, Toshiba's CEO, Atsutoshi Nishida commented on the move:
"One has to take calculated risks in business, but it's also important to switch gears immediately if you think your decision was wrong. We were doing this to win, and if we weren't going to win then we had to pull out, especially since consumers were already asking for a single standard."
Moving quickly on bad news is bold step, especially for Japanese CEO, many of whom might have postponed a decision even in the face of the inevitable, in order to save face. Building on this, the Wall Street Journal cited five management tips from the Toshiba CEO:
For those of you who are concerned about Toshiba's future, don't worry too much. CEO Nishida reminds us that HD DVD was one of 45 strategic business units or "areas of growth" and 44 still remain.
Like competing samurai clans, Sony and Toshiba's corporate rivalry is the stuff of legend in Japan. Their most recent public conflict came to its conclusion today following Wal Mart's announcement to abandon Toshiba's HD DVD format in favor of Sony's Blu-Ray disk technology.
Both technologies offer a significant advantage in their ability to store up to six times more data than traditional DVDs, enabling more content and higher resolution for today's HD television monitors. Analysts think Sony's retail success with PS3, based on Blu-Ray technology, was the factor that ultimately favored Sony over Toshiba.
Wal Mart's announcement was not the first strike against Toshiba, but it was certainly the decisive one. Last May, Time Warner announced it would no longer support titles on both high-definition video formats, choosing Sony Blu-Ray as its format of choice. This was the tipping point. Like the VHS vs. Beta wars of a generation ago (which, ironically, Sony's BetaMax format famously lost), it was clear that the world needed only one standard. Supporting two standards may in theory create competition but is ultimately inefficient. Retailers have neither the desire nor the shelf space to carry two technologies that do the same thing, be they DVDs or the hardware that reads them. When Netflix and Best Buy announced their support of BluRay earlier this month, it was clear the battle was waning; Wal Mart's announcement made Sony's victory complete.
The announcement leaves not one, but two losers. The first is Toshiba, having spent millions developing this technology, leaving them no choice but to move on to the next battle. The other losers are Early Adopters, who pay a premium for buying first-generation technology, and sometimes pay the price for supporting the wrong brand.
For Early Adopters, however, there is a silver lining. Since Wal Mart's announcement, the price of HD DVD disks has suddenly dropped by half. Buy now - supplies are limited.
A number of recent articles, here is one, covered the announcement of Microsoft's partnership with MediaCart and Wakefern Foods (ShopRite) to deliver interactive shopping carts into ShopRite stores.
Working at a retail focused agency, it is always interesting to see investment in our arena by major media players, e.g. CBS buying SignStorey.
Along with the creation of Nielsen In-Store and P.R.I.S.M., these types of announcements bring increasing credibility to the industry and attention to the power of in-store marketing. Further, this represents a marrying of online technology (Atlas) and an in-store vehicle, which shows a very positive evolution of thinking.
However, all that excitement aside, I have a certain amount of skepticism about the success of this vehicle. I think for a select group of early adopters, it will be embraced. But for many shoppers, are they really ready for this?
Grocery shopping used to be simple; go to store, get cart, put stuff you need in it, sometimes there were signs that told you what was on-sale. Now, you can enter your shopping list online before you go, it'll download to your cart computer; and tell you about specials on a contextual basis when you hit the right aisle. As a marketer, again, think this is fantastic. Love the blend of technology and context to deliver truly targeted ads. However, I'm just not sure your average shopper will think they "need" all this, but that's just my opinion. Time will tell.
On a side note, (and I owe this to a colleague at another in-store company) what happens when carts are stolen? Your average shopping cart costs something like $150 (i looked it up). What happens $1,000 shopping carts start disappearing? How are retailers going to feel about losses in that arena on a daily basis? I mean this in all seriousness, and would love to hear how the deals are configured and if they account for loss like this.
15,000 attendees turned out to the 2007 Cable Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, and more than a few must have been perplexed by this year's improbable show theme:
"Competition works. Consumers win."
For an industry many consider anti-competitive and consumer-unfriendly, the show theme seemed counter-intuitive, if not outrageous. Competition? Perhaps the idea was to pacify Day One's featured speaker: Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC.
The FCC under Chairman Martin has been publicly critical of the Big Cable. This chart, compiled by the New York Times, helps explain why. The cost of cable television in the United States has outpaced inflation by a significant margin. This fact seems to indicate that the cable industry - led by Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider - is taking advantage of a monopoly status to raise rates at will.
The cable industry strongly insists there is no monopoly. While Comcast is by far the largest provider of pay TV, they go head-to-head with other cable providers, like Time Warner, in many local markets. What's more, phone companies like Qwest offer the same bundled packages - phone, high-speed internet and pay TV (through satellite partners) nationwide. Comcast would point out that they lost 65,000 subscribers in the last quarter. There's plenty of competition, the cable industry contends. The cable industry has been deregulated since 1996 through an act of Congress, and that's just the way Big Cable likes it.
Chairman Martin has been pushing the other members of the five-member commission to invoke the "70/70" rule of the Cable Communications act: when 70% of U.S. households are cable-ready, and 70% of those households subscribe to cable, the government is empowered to regulate the industry in favor of lower prices and more diverse programming. In an agency meeting last week, the commission rejected the "70-70" finding, citing unreliable data, in a vote considered a blow to cable consumers in general and Chairman Martin in particular.
Despite this defeat, the FCC have recently affected other, smaller changes that benefit consumers and the competitive landscape. For example, as of last month, specific cable companies may no longer have exclusivity on apartment buildings; building managers must allow competition between rival cable companies and satellite TV.
But this represents only a minor victory for consumers. In the remaining 13 months of his appointment, Martin's goals are more ambitious:
Chairman Martin is drafting a revised proposal for a possible vote at the agency's next meeting, scheduled for December 18th. Consumer groups and cable proponents alike eagerly await the outcome. Is Big Cable too big? Does the pay-TV industry require government regulation? How will TV viewers benefit from greater competition? Stay tuned.
A recent NY Times articled feature P&G's latest branded entertainment efforts with Crescent Heights and Tide.
Living solely online, the show will consist of 3 minute episodes about a recent college graduate, Ashley, who moves to Los Angeles from
Wisconsin to start a career in public relations, and her emerging
circle of friends and romantic interests. While product will be integrated to a degree, the larger connection as P&G sees it is with people and their clothes.
"We want to speak to people about more than just laundry,” said Kevin Crociata, Tide’s associate marketing director. “We provide benefits to the fabrics she wears on daily basis. They have much more meaning."
Tide media (TV spots, print ads, etc...) will be tagged with a drive to the online property. While many branded online TV efforts have failed of late, ie Bud TV, it will be interesting to see if P&G can reconnect with its Soap Opera roots in a new way with new consumers.
Ebay has come out with a couple new TV spots that put the thrill of shopping front and center. These are all about the outcome, the prize at the conclusion of an auction. While another spot highlights the thrill of the hunt in all its competitiveness and passion, ultimately these folks plainly feel like, well, losers if they don't end of with the prized item.
It closely parallels something we looked into in our Shopper Study, namely the path of a shopper in a Master relationship with the retailer.
More here.
A few days ago a couple folks over at Strawberry Frog's blog Viva la Revolución posted a video of people waiting in line for the iPhone in NYC.
This brings to light a few intersecting themes... the cult of the
brand, of course, but also a shopping culture that brings people to buy
the same product after waiting in line for 12 hours when they could do
so a day later in only 15 minutes. One guy brought the significance to
life when he said,
"This moment here is going to be very
important. How we feel about this, spending 4, 5, 600 dollars, we'd
better be satisfied because if not there's going to be no other reason
to buy it."
What separates these retail first movers from the rest of us? Do they share the same DNA as people waiting in line for the newest Star Wars movie? Are they simply collecting another merit badge for the Mac Scouts?
I find this type of devoted shopper behavior to be more significant than, say, waiting for a concert ticket or storming the sales at 5:00am on Black Friday. There is a justification for those behaviors because it's a simple supply and demand issue. But in this case there was meaning and significance in the act itself. Imagine how much sweeter unpacking the new iPhone would be if it was accompanied by war stories of missed showers and a sore back from sleeping on the sidewalk?
Maybe this is an example of people creating scarcity and tension where there is none. I suppose you could call it manufactured adversity. In other words, they are creating drama, a story, and a role for themselves in that story.
Sounds a lot more fun than just running out to pick up some stamps, milk, beer and an iPhone, doesn't it?
