Last week our 2001 Prius started acting strangely, and today SF Toyota gave me the bad news. The hybrid battery is shot and a replacement will cost just under $3700, tax included. We’re a year and half 8 months out of warranty, it turns out, so the repair cost is 100% our responsibility.
Our 2001 Prius in happier times. Photo courtesy sfgate.com.
This is a vehicle that was on the front page of the SF Chronicle in 2001, as a poster child for early adopters of green technology. We’ve bought another Prius since then and I’ve been looking with interest at the lithium-powered next generation coming in 2012. But this changes the equation. If you can expect to pay for a $3700 repair at 70,000 miles, the car suddenly becomes much more expensive as well as less reliable… what happens if the failure occurs elsewhere than in a major city?
I remember the naysayers when we bought it: “the battery’s going to die and it will cost you a fortune.” The reviewers scoffed at this: batteries don’t last forever, but it is unlikely to fail in the driving life of the vehicle. Too bad that’s not true. The $3700 new battery is warranted for 12 months. I guess that tells you something.
News like this could have a chilling effect on hybrid sales, just when we need a nitty-gritty, ready-right-now antidote for energy waste and climate change. (I love seeing the MPG on our 2006 Prius creep over 50, combined with the fact that the car has actually been made less efficient in order to come close to zeroing out the emissions.)
We’re putting our house on the market in San Francisco and I’ve been interviewing agents all week. Each neighborhood in San Francisco (ours is the Lower Haight) has its own personality and a corresponding base of people who want to live there, so a realtor’s knowledge of our area was very important. I prepped for this process in part by looking at names on “for sale” signs and visiting nearby open houses… which, it turns out, is a strategy almost nobody uses any more.
I learned that today most buyers start their home search on the internet and that the vast majority of sales in San Francisco are originally researched direct from the online Multiple Listing Service. That would be different in some areas, but in SF there is strong cooperation among agents and nobody has proprietary listings.
So, it follows that two things are critically important in choosing a realtor: a/the way in which they actually utilize the web to present their homes and b/their overall comfort level with the web in the way they market their services and the homes they represent.
Agents that don’t put multiple photographs of the property online, so prospective buyers can see what it looks like before they go to the house, are putting their sellers at a big disadvantage. I’d say the more information the better—floor plans, detail photographs, go for it—so long as they are organized so I know what I am looking at. And, don’t do it with a slow-to-load flash presentation on a third party website accompanied with a music track. One of our top choices did just that and it hurt them in the final decision.
Romancing the home is fine (and it can and should be done with good staging and good, well-lit photography—and of course a great verbal narrative!) but it can’t be at the expense of accessibility to the basic information that a buyer is looking for as they click through many listings.
As for web savvy, the realtor we went with didn’t have the flashiest (nor Flash®-iest) website but it was solid. He was one of two, out of 7, who was following me on Twitter prior to the appointment. (The other one sent me an email announcing that they were following me, which is not cool.) He had also researched me personally and knew, for example, of my lack of success in selling a screenplay. (Fortunately he did not offer opinions as to why that was.) And, after we met, he was one of the few who followed up with a PDF version of the presentation.
But this was also the only realtor who sent a personal thank you note via snail mail after the meeting. And he was totally and immediately attentive to follow-up contacts from me or my wife (who was 3000 miles away, making email accessibility essential). In the end, the day was won with smart selling using all the tools available, both old and new.
Bing is the Mac OS of the search world. (Yep, that’s ironic.) It only has a small market share, but those users have become so loyal that it has to be considered in any search marketing plan. Succeeding against all odds when other search engines were becoming an afterthought, Bing did it the same way as Google: an innovative software algorithm.
Now, Bing is taking on another Google property with its enhanced Streetside which was introduced at CES 1010. This is like Google Maps combined with Google’s directory features, but with more information and better organized. If you’re looking at a restaurant, for example, you can see ratings from a variety of sources and an aggregate quality score.
Yet what is most cool is the Photosynth feature, which allows multiple users to contribute their own visuals of a landmark which are then stitched together to enable a 3D view that can be much more information-rich than Google’s Streetview. For a heavily documented site, like the Rome Coliseum in the example, you can zoom in on a detail and do a virtual walkaround.
I shot a video with a demo of Streetside by a Microsoft boother. The really cool stuff, demoing Photosynth, is toward the end.
foneGEAR's non-booth. Some teaser signage on those mirrored walls would have helped.
Can you create buzz at CES without showing any product? A couple of companies tried exactly that. First up is a company called foneGEAR. They decided sometime before the show to completely revamp their product line and positioning so, rather than show their current product, they elected to turn their large and expensive booth into a giant “coming soon” sign. The curious were funneled down a mirrored passageway where a single booth rep swiped their card and gave them a key code to unlock a product preview on their website. Booth traffic was pretty light… it might have been a good idea to put a few teaser messages on those long blank walls.
The case of PowerMat is more interesting. Their booth was jammed on Friday and I couldn’t get a demo because they were tied up with Good Morning America. All this with no product on display, just a loop of TV commercials in which hipsters place their iPhones and other portable devices on a pad and it goes bzz! and starts charging. Wireless charging, that’s cool!
But since I didn’t get the demo I read up in the press kit, and discovered PowerMat’s secret: you can’t just fling the device down, it has to be in a special inductive power sleeve that’s not obvious in the commercials. And early users and reviewers have lots of complaints like: it’s hard to get the sleeve on and off; it’s too bulky; it interferes with the compass in the GPS.
All hat, no cattle? PowerMat booth at CES.
I returned Saturday and asked a booth staffer why they aren’t exhibiting product. (Meanwhile, traditional media guys are circling waiting for their demos like hungry sharks, sensing they’re really onto something. After all, everybody knows the pain of plugging in to charge your phone. Oh, to be free!) He said they did have product out the first thing on Thursday and there was such a mad scramble for it they put it away.
Now, this isn’t a stealth product. You can buy it at Amazon and Best Buy. I’ll take him at face value, even though creating mystery around a buggy product rather than showing seems like a pretty cool marketing strategy. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain..
Last month, like most consumers, I fell victim to “wrap rage” as I attempted to pry various gifts out of the theft-resistant clamshell packages in which they were packed. MeadWestvaco’s Natralock® is getting some attention at CES, a tradeshow featuring thousands of consumer products manufacturers, with a packaging system that is less paranoid but still secure. The secret is a cardboard backing containing an impossible-to-tear inner layer of film that can also include a security chip. Thus the plastic clamshell overlays attached to the card can be simpler and cheaper, display the product better, and because they are smaller they are less expensive to store and ship and gentler on their ultimate destination, the landfill.
Speaking of landfill, I asked Todd McDonald of Tegrant, the partner that manufactures the card backing and the system used to attach it to the package, what if I wanted to make my clamshell out of cornstarch plastic (which I learned is technically called PLA) so it would decompose? Consumer electronics companies wouldn’t do that, he explained, because it isn’t as transparent so the product doesn’t look as good. More important, PLA melts at high temperatures such as inside a warehouse in Texas in summer.
Also, he went on to explain, virtually no PLA actually gets decomposed anyway because it goes right into landfill where it is undesirable to have decomposition. That’s because decomposition produces methane, which can make the soil unstable and is also a greenhouse gas. Methane produced in a controlled environment, where it can be converted to fuel, is a good thing but landfills can’t do that. Landfills don’t decompose. When one is occasionally excavated, the headlines on 50s newspapers are still readable.
Todd, who is a Certified Packaging Professional (CPP) went on to describe his reservations with PET, the plastic now used universally for food containers because it is recyclable. The problem is, again, that virtually none of this plastic actually gets recycled; unless it’s got a deposit on it, it goes into the landfill. And PET takes twice as much petroleum in manufacturing as the PVC it replaces. A complex tradeoff.
Cool idea, but the sound isn't all that great.
Meanwhile, across the hall in the digital lifestyle pavilion, www.OrigAudio.com (“the origami of audio”) is going in the opposite direction with an audio speaker made out of recycled cardboard—a cardboard box, in other words. You can get two of them for $19.95. Or if you prefer you can make your own speaker from any old resonant trash you may have lying around with the $49.95 Rock-It, a vibration speaker system that attaches to a cereal box, a milk carton or an inflated plastic bag and creates vibration in the object to generate sound. No clamshell packaging is used for either product.
Yesterday at CES I got a demo of a soon-to-be-released product aimed at parents concerned about their kids. There are two modules. Mobile Protector is a phone app they receive along with their first mobile phone. It allows the parents to control what numbers they dial and receive, whether or not they can text and under what restrictions. If they like, the parents can serve as a switchboard: incoming calls come to them and they can answer, decline or forward to their kid’s phone.
When the child reaches driving age, a vehicle mounted console called Driver Protector is added. Parents will now know where the young driver is at all times and they can set up a “Geofence” to be sure the kids are staying within an approved area. If the kid strays, or texts while driving, the phone can shut down automatically. They can tell if the kid is driving too fast, and if they are in an accident there is an alert triggered by sudden deceleration or the deployment of an air bag.
Mobile Protector demo at CES. Afterward, a woman from the audience allowed herself to be tased for our amusement.
The interesting thing is that these products have been developed and will be released by Taser. Yeah, that Taser. I asked the booth guy how this fit with the weaponry and he said Taser’s motto is “protect life”—as in, using our product will help you protect the things in life that matter; as in, if you mess up we’ll tase you but hopefully not kill you.
I see this cutting two ways in the marketplace depending on how it’s marketed and received. Best case is that kids think it’s cool: mom and dad have given me my own Taser, sorta, to keep me safe. Worst case is they think it’s an onerous form of parental subjugation. Let’s see how it plays out.
This year I pre-registered as a blogger at CES, and as a result I’ve received hundreds of press announcements via email over the past couple of months. Coincidentally, I was reading the just-released new edition of David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR
on the plane coming out. Scott’s premise is that the internet has changed public relations because, instead of hawking their message to the media, businesses can now promote themselves by speaking to the public directly—via blogs, content on their own website, posts and responses on networking sites and viral media.
I did an evaluation of the PR emails I’d received with this in mind. The pitches that grabbed me were the ones that were written like news stories and tied to a course of action I could take at CES to find out more and bring it to my own readership. Find out why Apple is up but Sony dropped seven spots in the Greenpeace rating of green manufacturers. Team up with Dr Dre, Lady Gaga and Monster to fight AIDS in Africa. See how Natralock ends “wrap rage” with the end of hard-to-open clamshell packages.
The interesting thing is, many of these are the kind of made-up stories or manufactured events that used to be easy to make fun of: a marketer whipping up fake news because they couldn’t find a legitimate product benefit. Now I’m reading them as a recipient of information, not a conduit, and they become relevant. I’m eager to blog about it and add my own spin, and then the flack’s work is well rewarded.
By comparison, landing side by side in the inbox, traditional press releases just didn’t cut it. (“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: La Cie announces new server for business.”) And some of the senders show a lack of finesse in using email as a medium. No-nos in my book include emaiing the press release as an attachment rather than including it in the body of the email (with this sea of info, why would I take an extra step to read your release?); addressing me as your bud because, you know, it’s email (e.g. starting with “hope all is well” or “hope you had a good holiday”); and sending a graphics-heavy announcement without ALT tags which is basically illegible unless I download the visuals (I’m looking at you, Vizio).
Scott’s theory is that there is a huge sea of traditional flacks who are trying to hang on or just don’t get it, and I guess this would be evidence. Meanwhile, I’ve got a couple of upcoming posts in the hopper, based on those pre-show emails I received.
Just finished my first day at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. The aisles are packed, at times so much so you can’t get through. But there are no exhibits in the huge Sands center this year, several of the areas in the back of the South Hall are blocked off, and one of the ballrooms usually used for the Hilton International pavilions is dark. In the main hall, OEM no-names share the prime spots with the likes of LG and Panasonic. My guess is that exhibitors panicked and stayed away while significantly more attendees are here than last year, signaling their intent to lift us out of our gloom.
According to show sponsor CEA, consumer electronics sales were off 7.8% in 2009 yet with higher volume led by bargain hunters. Sales for 2010 are projected to be up “slightly” from this terrible level. So it was interesting to see what attracted the most attention at the show.
Most popular trend that is going nowhere: 3D TV. Everybody is standing in lines to get into the theater rooms and see it but my prediction is, this is like the hot girl you’re never going to bring home to meet mom. Once the 3D glasses get stepped on or lost in the couch cushions, the party is over. (One vendor, TCL, shows a Fresnel lens type 3D where the picture is slightly different as you sift your vision, and doesn’t require glasses, but it doesn’t really have the drama of the polarized glasses kind.)
Bad news for the 3D TV folks: virtually no traffic in the zone promoting mobile TV, a technology that is designed to provide high quality reception in a moving vehicle. If you don’t want your kids to watch live TV in the car, my prediction is you won’t want to watch 3D at home either. There’s a limit to how much fun you can have.
Entourage Edge gives you the best of both worlds. It’s an e-reader AND a tablet computer.
Attracting a lot of crowds: e-readers. Diverse interpretations and executions of what Kindle left out, many with added value content such as newspaper subscriptions, complete with graphics, delivered along with your e-books. There was prediction Apple would show its new tablet at the show, but I haven’t seen it. (SF pundits mention Moscone Center is mysteriously unbooked for several days in late January, suggesting an Apple stealth event coming then.)
I saw several specific technologies of interest. Will report on some of these tomorrow.
This is my first year as an “official” blogger at CES (why the quotes, dude?). I’m already a day late because many of the press events are held on Thursday so they can get coverage before the throngs arrive. Definitely sorry to miss Lady Gaga at the Monster booth. Wonder if I’ll run into her later tonight when I arrive, maybe at the Showstoppers Expo?
The first time I attended this show was before many of my readers were born, probably, back in the 80s. I was an account exec at an agency representing The Federated Group, a home entertainment chain that has since gone to its reward. Accommodations were incredibly hard to find pre-internet efficiency. I was put up at the Showboat, somewhere downtown and far from the action. It was all demos of Betamax and Quadraphonic. I did not have fun.
Today the CES incorporates many of the vendors who used to be at COMDEX and they’re primarily my focus in attending. As a marketer, I like to hang back in demos and watch my audience to see what questions they have and what bullet points make their eyes light up (or become less glazed over). I also like to look for new or interesting technology which often comes not from startups (it’s very expensive to exhibit here) but from backwaters divisions of major companies—Panasonic’s heat pump washer/dryer, covered last year, being a good example.
And, as a marketer I like to look at the way all these companies are marketing themselves. If you’re into home entertainment, how do you establish through your booth display that your product is “entertaining”? If it’s a new technology, how do you show in a microsecond what it does? Now that I’m on the press list I get to see lots of flackery, good and bad, in the press releases and invites sent out. Most intriguing so far is Gracenote’s display at the Showstoppers tonight, which promises only “surprises”. Hope I am. More later.
On New Years Eve, I stopped by BJ’s, the Costco equivalent in upstate NY. I’d received a coupon in the mail good for a 60 day trial membership, expiring 12/31. Since membership is normally $45 a year, this was my opportunity to check it out at no cost or risk if the savings weren’t that great or the products weren’t that useful (I imagine these are the two objections most prospective members would have).
The associate was happy to sign me up, but she wanted to mention another offer: get 14 months for the price of 12, AND a coupon good for $10 off any purchase, AND a full money-back guarantee for the life of my membership. But, I had to choose one offer or the other. If I signed up for the free trial then I couldn’t get the $10 later on. And since I’ve got an unconditional money back guarantee, doesn’t that count as a free trial anyway?
Didn’t have time to do any shopping, so I happily handed over my $45 when I’d planned to spend $0 and walked out with a fistful of coupons and not a trace of buyer’s remorse. If anyone knows a better-designed upsell than this one, I’d love to hear about it!
