You go to school for this, right?

I am, by no means, a marketing expert. I took one introductory marketing class as part of my engineering degree but beyond that have now experience or training. Irrespective of that fact, I do love to dissect ad campaigns and marketing decisions and this week I’ve come across two that I consider to be completely wrongheaded.

The first is a new plan by Fox and ABC, which you can read about here, to delay the online availability of new season TV shows by over a week. Essentially, by keeping new shows off of network web sites, or services like Hulu and Netflix, the networks hope to drive more people to the TV to watch the shows live, where ad revenues are greater. There’s one problem with this line of thinking – it’s completely wrong.

The majority of people who watch TV online fall into one of three categories. There are the ones who are going to pirate the show no matter what. There’s no way to stop piracy, no matter what they’d have you believe, and trying only ends up hurting the legitimate customers as they have to deal with ridiculous restrictions and limitations, so the most sensible thing to do it just ignore this group entirely. They’re already lost.

The next group are those who can’t or won’t pay for cable. Delaying release isn’t going to convince them to pay $100 a month to watch four shows. Instead it will drive most of them to piracy, while a small number will deal with the wait period. Fewer online views means ad revenue goes down. Unlike broadcast, online views can be precisely monitored and networks can’t use the typical games to artificially inflate their ratings. Online, advertisers know exactly what they’re paying for, so losing viewers here is serious.

The third group are those who simply missed the episode when it broadcast and want to catch up before the next one airs. The 8 day waiting period makes this impossible so, once again, this group will be driven to the torrent sites where they can immediately get a copy of the episode they want to watch, usually in higher quality than they would find on the official site anyway. The networks are claiming they will develop a method for those with a cable subscription to access the shows without the delay, but that will require them actually following through, will require you to be signed up with the right cable company, and be in the right place. All of this merely adds extra hassle, especially when compared to the alternative.

Viewers want access to their media in a timely fashion, on whatever device, or devices, they want. Offer them that and most will gladly pay. Fail to do so and follow in the steps of the music industry.

This week’s second marketing fail is on the radio. Rogers broadcasting has launched a new Top 40 radio station in Vancouver, nothing exciting there. Where it starts to get confusing is when you look at the name. It’s called Sonic. It shares its name, iconography, and website design with another station here in Edmonton which Rogers bought a few years ago. Still nothing too unusual, since media companies often use the same name for local stations across the country to create a brand. The difference here is that Sonic Vancouver is a Top 40 station, while Sonic Edmonton is an Alternative Rock station. Why share the name? There isn’t a lot of overlap in pop and alt rock listeners, so using the same name isn’t going to help build the listener base in either city through name recognition. Sonic Edmonton started as a fiercely independent station and when it was purchased there were concerns of homogenization, which so far have been mostly unfounded. This latest move could reignite those fears. It’s possible that Rogers is readying a format change in Edmonton, preparing to roll out Sonic as a top 40 brand in each of the major markets, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense either, as it has consistently performed as the number 4 station in the city and last year won the national broadcasters’ award for best radio station in the country in any genre. There may be some logical reason for this decision, but from the outside it just looks like a poor move that will damage the brand in both markets.

As I said, I have no particular expertise in marketing, but it appears Fox, ABC, and Rogers could all use some help.

Sleep well,

DTE

Don’t Be Evil

It was with those words that Google defined its mission as a company. Don’t be evil in the way you treat your employees, don’t be evil in the way you treat your customers, don’t be evil in the way you treat your competitors. It was the motto they very publicly promised to live by. Coming on the heels of the antitrust case against Microsoft, who many in the tech community and the public at large viewed as evil incarnate, it was a motto that earned Google a lot of goodwill. Though there has been some discrepancy as to whether they always live up to this goal, they are still generally viewed as the “good guys”. Recent weeks have seen two large developments with the company, which will likely cause many to once again evaluate whether Google is still striving not to be evil.
Several weeks ago, Google launched the invite-only beta of their new social network, Google+. This arena is still firmly controlled by Facebook, but if anyone has a chance of unseating the current champ, it will have to be a company with built in recognition and it will have to offer very definite improvements over Facebook. It launched to much media buzz and invites were so sought after that they were shut down in less than a week. It was easy to find descriptions of all the Google+ offered, but without actually using the service, it’s difficult to understand just how all the elements fit together. That being said, I recently acquired an invitation to join (thanks Sherwin), so I’m going to try to explain my impressions anyway. To my mind, there are three elements which could give the service an edge: security, integration, and unification.
Security has long been one of the major complaints levelled against Facebook. It’s definitely possibly to control exactly who sees your information on Facebook, but the security settings are far from streamlined and may appear impenetrable to an inexperienced user. In addition, by default most things are left open on Facebook. That strategy has served the company well both in the fact that it greatly aided the speed of adoption, making it very easy to find friends on the network, and also by making the network a paradise for targeted advertising, which is how Facebook makes the bulk of its profits. Since it knows a huge amount of information about you, and since you’ve agreed to let that be shared with advertisers, you can get ads directly related to your interests, which means you are more likely to click them, which results in cash in Facebook’s coffers. Google+, in contrast, is very upfront with who can see your information and defaults to hiding most of it from public view. All of your “friends” on the service must be placed into a “circle”, which is basically a group which you can name – eg. Friends, Family, Coworkers, People I Hate, whatever you want. Whenever you post anything on the service, you can select which of those circles can see it. It’s a very elegant, easy to understand way to manage your privacy.

The second potential advantage Google has is integration. They are still the largest search provider by far,through Gmail are one of the largest email providers, and in YouTube are also the largest distributor of web video. Combine that with their calendar, documents, RSS reader, web browser, and desktop and mobile operating systems and Google is pretty much anywhere you want to be. Google+ is integrated into all of these. Once you sign up, it appears in the menu bar at the top of all their sites, meaning you don’t just visit Google+, you take it with you, and it uses all of the services you already use.

Those little “+1” buttons that have been showing up all over the web in recent months? They are Google+’s version of the “Like” button, but in addition to posting the item you “plus” to your feed, they also impact your search results on all Google pages, meaning that the more you use the service, the better your search results will match your own individual tastes. This is where Google makes its money. Rather than giving your information to advertisers to create targeted ads, Google uses your behaviour across the web to give you the most relevant adds. It’s a small but important difference. Whether you feel more comfortable with one or the other is up to you.

The third and potentially most important advantage of Google+ is unification. Most people use multiple social networks already, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. There are enough people that want to be able to do everything in one place that there are a glut of third party programs that allow you to manage all of them within a single program but at best you’re still just controlling each individually within a single window. By coming late to the party Google has the advantage of being able to copy the best elements of each and allow you to do it all seamlessly within one interface. The most obvious one is Facebook, since Google+ allows you and your friends to follow each other, post updates, share links, pictures, and videos. But it also behaves like Twitter, since you can add anyone to any circle, you can create a “Following” circle where you put people who you are interested in seeing updates from and all of their public updates will show up in your feed. You won’t share anything with them unless they put you into one of their circles, in  which case they would get your public feed. This makes it easy to post something general that will go out to the web at large, like you would on Twitter, and something personal that only close friends can see, like you might on Facebook. Google+ also takes aim at Foursquare with its Google Places integration. Places has been built into the web and mobile version of maps for a long time, but will really take off if Google+ does.

My own impressions of the service are mostly positive. I really like the layout and integration, as well as the fact that it already has a strong mobile app, which I think is essential for a social network and something that Facebook largely ignores. I don’t think Facebook is going anywhere anything soon, but Google+ does a lot of things right and if it can hold out long enough, it might just come out on top.

The second major development in Google land is the announcement today that they will be buying Motorola for $12.5 billion. Google’s Android operating system is already the most widely used mobile OS in the world but, until now, they relied exclusively on other companies to build the hardware. Now Google will have control of the complete chain, from concept to putting the product in the customers hand. The flagship Google phones – Nexus 1, Nexus S, Nexus Prime – have always been the best of the Android phones, so the new Motorola phones will likely be the new cream of the Android crop. In addition to the phone division, this acquisition is important to Google in two other, even larger, ways. The first is Motorola’s extensive patent collection. Ownership of these will allow Google to expand further and fend off the patent infringement lawsuits that have begun to head their way. Finally, Motorola also has the largest market share of cable boxes. Having such a large install base will allow Google to put GoogleTV in a lot of homes and help smooth things over with the cable companies which are currently working to stop GoogleTV from receiving content.

So what does all this mean? In short, it means that soon Google will be everywhere. If it has a screen, and even if it doesn’t, Google seems to want to be your connection into that device. This sounds a little like the Microsoft of 15 years ago, only less hostile. Personally, I love Google’s apparent vision for the future. Let’s just hope they can stick to their old motto.

Sleep well,

DTE

The High Cost of Living

So, another week has gone by at my house, so, in keeping with my recent decision, I figured it was time for another post. There isn’t a whole lot to report this time around, so I’ll keep it brief.

I’ve already made most of the larger changes to the house that I intend to make for the time being, so the work I did on the house this week was pretty minor. I found the shower downstairs to be a little small and the shower head was mounted too low for me, so I put up a shower rod and curtain upstairs so I can use the tub shower. The shower head is quite a bit higher and, since it’s also the tub, there’s a lot more room. I dug around in the ceiling in the basement so that I could turn on the two water faucets outside my house. I tried, in vain, to replace the burnt out lights in the light fixture in the master bedroom. I bought CFL’s to put in but discovered that the enclosure is fitted so tightly to the shape of old incandescent bulb that nothing else will fit. Bored yet? Hey, I never claimed any of this stuff was going to be interesting.

Slightly more interesting is the food situation. The first thing you realize when you go to stock a kitchen from scratch is that it cost a hell of a lot of money to stock a kitchen from scratch. The first grocery run cost me $230 and today I spent an additional $90. If you were to go through my kitchen, though, you’d wonder where all that money went. Everything still feels barren. A lot of that money has been spent on that you only have to buy infrequently, so the weekly bill will go down, but it’s still quite expensive. The other food related challenge is figuring out what to buy. I kind of enjoy cooking, but prior to moving out rarely cooked full meals. I have a few cookbooks that I’m using, but the book I really want doesn’t seem to exist. What I’d really like is a cookbook that starts off with a list of 30 or so ingredients that you can go out and buy and then be able to prepare any recipe in the book. As it stands I have to pick out all the recipes for the week ahead of time or go shopping before every meal because, odds are, I don’t have most of the ingredients on hand. Someone needs to come up with my version of a cookbook, or if it already exists somewhere, please point me to it!

So, what’s happening with the rest of my goals from last time? Well, you just spent the last minute or two reading one of them. It’s been a long time since I wrote two posts in a week when it wasn’t Upfronts. The reading is also going well; I’ve managed to read every single night so far, last thing before I go to sleep. It seems to be having the added effect of helping me get to sleep much faster. As I wrote a couple years ago, it’s always difficult for me to get to sleep. Spending that last half hour or so before bed reading seems to help focus my thoughts a little, which in turn leads to less thinking and replaying of scenarios when I do finally turn off the light. My other two goals were the getting healthier ones, which I knew were going to be the more difficult ones to motivate myself to do. As you might expect from that lead-in, I haven’t made any progress on either of them. I didn’t join a gym, get outside, or change my eating habits beyond just making sure that I eat three times each day. It occurs to me just now that I was doing well with that last one until today, since it’s now 4 pm and I realize I haven’t eaten anything yet. Oh well, try again next week.

That’s it for today. I had intended to keep this short, but it doesn’t look like I quite succeeded. I’ll write again soon and keep working on toning down my linguistic diarrhea .

Sleep well,

DTE

The Road to Hell…

So I’m about to fall into that oldest of blogging clichés. If you were to examine all of the blogs on the internet (as opposed to the blogs on the TV?) I have no doubt that the vast majority of them would include a post with some variation on the theme I’m writing on today. Usually these posts can be found just a few entries before the blog’s final entry. They are, in most cases, a blog’s last spasm of energy, the death rattle before the blog becomes a grave. Just like the grave of your Aunt Gertrude – you know, the one no one really liked – it sits gathering dust, never visited and all but forgotten; a monument to an unremarkable life.

But before we get to the actual subject, let’s take a quick look at what brought me here. I recently purchased a house, ostensibly meaning I have now completed my metamorphosis from layabout teenager to full-on adulthood (apparently there is no middle ground, so the last several years exist only in some kind of nether-realm).  I finally moved in last Sunday, so I’ve been living here for a full week now. In the midst of all packing, unpacking, rearranging, and other activities associated with moving, I’ve had a few moments to think. One of the things that I’ve come up with is that moving into a new house is also the ideal time to re-evaluate my current routines and attempt to establish some new ones. Specifically, there are four routines I would like to alter/implement.

The first thing I’d like to do is return to reading more. I’ve always been a very avid reader, but since I started my current job last September, I haven’t had time. What I’d like to do is ensure that I read every single day. I’ll read for at least half an hour each night before I go to sleep, regardless of what time that is. This could come back to bite me, since I’m normally protective of the few hours of sleep I get, but I want to try to make it work.

Secondly, I want to become more active. My job is very sedentary so I need to make an effort to combat that during my personal time. It’s been pointed out to me, in not so subtle ways, that I may be putting on a little weight, so this should probably be a priority. I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do about this yet, but it will likely be some combination of a gym membership, bike riding, and *shudder* running.

The third is tied to the second, in that it also involves getting healthier, this time by eating healthier. It’s not that the food I eat now is terribly unhealthy. The main problem is that I tend to not eat at all and it is after those unintentional fasts that I load up on the junk. I plan to figure out a well balanced meal plan and then force myself to stick to it.

And, finally, we make it to the fourth routine, and also to the blogging cliché I mentioned at the top of the post. I’m going to try to blog more. Yes, I know, all the blogs say that, and there’s no reason to assume I’ll be any more successful at it than the others, but I intend to try. I’ve always enjoyed writing, and language in general (because the purple prose that fills this blog wasn’t indication enough, right?) and this is a convenient way to be able to write on a regular basis. To do this, though, I am going to have to change the format somewhat. I’ll still write my lengthy posts at about the same frequency that I do now, but I want to fill in the gaps between those posts with shorter entries. I’ll try it out for a couple months to see how it goes and hope I can keep up. One advantage I do have over all the millions of blogs out there who promise to post more and then die is that if I fail at posting more regularly, my blog won’t die. Instead, it’ll just return to it’s current format of a post every month or two. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

So, with all that being said, I’ll sign off now (see, they’re already shorter!). Hopefully you’ll see another new post here soon.

Sleep well,

DTE