Results tagged “Marketing” from ScottandMargo.net

I've mentioned in the past how much I hate the idea that some people have about cell phones that they're just a conduit to push marketing material to a person wherever they are. I don't want content from a communications provider. I want connectivity to the network. That holds true for voice and data.

So Verizon decides that they're going to push banner ads in addition to the web content that their customers are downloading with their cell phones next year according to a NY Times article (Verizon to Allow Ads on Its Mobile Phones). Nice. I wonder if the bits that those ads take up count with the limited data plans.

Have I mentioned that that I'm in the market for a new phone and carrier? (number portability is a wonderful thing).

I was kinda considering Verizon even with their bad selection of phones because of their recent Consumer Reports ratings. Not anymore. The article mentions Sprint is already doing this...Margo's been on Sprint for many years and hates it, so I never really considered them.

Yesterday, Seth Godin posts a message on his blog for John Harrobin, VP of marketing and digital media for Verizon because apparently you can't just contact the guy directly. Seth asks a couple of questions that everyone in marketing should ask themselves before they decide to add more advertising to something out here in the digital world:

Here are the two questions I hope you'll ask yourself:
a. what does the money we make from this effort do to the long-term profitability of our relationship with customers and
b. is this something consumers want? How many calls a day does Verizon get asking for more spam/advertising on their cell phones?

Now, the only relationship I'm interested in with my cell carrier is that they give me connectivity and stay out of my way if I keep paying the bill. Dumping more advertising down that connection isn't a good way to maintain even those minimal requirements for a relationship.

Anyone over at Verizon listening?

Technorati Tags: Cellular, Marketing, Technology

I've been thinking about this one for a bit. I don't buy a huge amount of music, but I'm finding that I'm buying more music online that I'm finding out about online from either podcasts or getting full-length MP3's to listen to from their websites.

Podcasts

i am jen - The Broken EP

Electronic Periodic - Element 11

Blind With Rain - The Chemical Window
Mankind is Obsolete - Rise

Industrial Radio Podcast - Blind with Rain pops up every once in a while on the podcast. Mankind is Obsolete popped up recently as a single song episode that I can't locate and again in the most recent female vocalist theme in episode 39.

Samantha Murphy - Somewhere Between Starving and Stardom

This one's a little different than the rest. I didn't actually buy it. The first podcast I ever listened to (Mashcast by Alex...which looks like it folded not long after that) did a giveaway contest for this album. I won, and got a signed copy for free. One of these days I'm going to get around to buying a copy to give away to someone.

Full length downloadables

Otto's Daughter - Becoming 001

They had a bunch of downloadable full length MP3's on their old site. The new one doesn't seem to have them up, but they have some videos posted. I preordered Becoming 001 and got it autographed. The new album, A New Kind of Heronie, is doing a preorder special again...the CD will be signed, a poster comes with this time and you get entered in a giveaway for a Daisy Rock guitar and a pre-release MP3 of one of the tracks from the album. I pre-ordered, natch.

Lunarclick - The EP and Toxicology

Kind of like Otto's Daughter, I found them from a link somewhere and there were full length MP3's on the site. The site's kind of down right now pending a redesign. I hope they don't forget the music. They're also planning a remix contest for the song Circles that I intend to participate in.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Music

The first ad below is one of the new ads for the Nintendo Wii. It's the first in a series and shows some of the gameplay possibilities with its new controller concept.

I like it. "Wii would like to play." There's one with better games here but they don't want to allow embedding for that one.

This next ad is for Sony's Playstation 3.

WTF? Weird, creepy stuff. I don't get it.

Will it work? I don't know. Personally, I'm leaning towards the PS3 anyway but am having a hard time with the idea of spending $600 on a gaming machine. I can get an Xbox 360 and a Wii for less and keep my PS2 for my old games (Guitar Hero anyone?)

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, Marketing, Technology

Julian Robichaux came up with an interesting idea for an advertising campaign for Lotus Notes and Domino the other day. I like it.

"Need e-mail? Yeah, it can do that. Client and web applications? Yeah, that too. Portal? Yeah. Blog, wiki, RSS reader? Yes, yes, yes. Web services? Yes, we could do this all day..."

Where I'm working, I'm pretty well known at this point as the guy who says that a lot. When I started where I'm working, if I saw a problem that could be relatively simply solved by using Domino, I'll point it out and explain as well as I can. Eventually somehow it became a cliche....problem stated, "you can do that with Domino", eye roll. Sometimes a lone admin isn't a great candidate for a technology advocate, but I try...

So what I'm saying is that while I think "yeah, it can do that too" is true and a good idea, I would hate to see it turn out like my efforts have turned out.

Technorati Tags: Domino, Lotus, Marketing, Technology

I have a hard time believing that their menu has changed when every time I call any automated phone system over the last couple of years.

I'm sure it's some focus-group-tested technique to get people to pay more attention to the prompts. Problem is that as far as I'm concerned, it doens't help and makes things take longer. When I'm calling, I only want one thing...to talk to a human that can help. If I was doing something that I wanted to deal with a computer for, I'd do it over the web.

Technorati Tags: Customer service, Marketing

TiVo Product Watch

“Looking for a new car? Planning a family vacation? Interested in new cooking techniques? Product Watch can help. Just choose a category that interests you and the amazing TiVo® service will automatically find and deliver relevant video clips straight to your Now Playing List. Find Product Watch under ”Music, Photos, Products, & More.“

I have Seth Godin's blog in my RSS aggregator since I saw the video of him giving a speech at Google. One of the things he seems to say over and over again that marketing and products need to solve a problem or answer a question (at least that's what I got from the talk).

What problem does TiVo Product Showcase solve for Tivo's customers? I know what it solves for Tivo...”How do we make more money with advertising on TiVo DVR's?“ Is there any Tivo user out there that is asking themselves ”I wish my Tivo showed me more advertising“?

I don't know about anyone else out there but I got my Tivo to a) watch the shows I want when I want and b) to be able to skip the commercials in shows that I'm watching. Tivo Product showcase doesn't solve any problems for me. What it does do is make me wonder if it's going to start recording stuff even if I don't put anything in its watchlist. It also makes me wonder what I'm going to replace my Tivo with if they finally go over the line and start forcing me to watch Tivo's commercials instead of allowing me to watch what I want.

If I'm looking for information about cars or electronics or vacations, I would think that the best place to start looking is in the search engine of your choice...not waiting for your Tivo to cough up a paid commercial.

Is anyone out there actually going to use Tivo Product Watch?? I'd like to hear an honest ”I'd really use this because...“ response from someone. I don't see any user-oriented reasons for this ”feature“.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, ProductWatch, Technology, Tivo

...or why I shop at Amazon....

I had a series of dental visits recently (and two more to come next month) that has convinced me to pick up an electric toothbrush. The dentist recommended a Sonicare brush, which they sold and dispensed in-house (some variant of the “Elite” that's only distributed through dental offices). I didn't get it there because I like to shop around a bit before I buy. When I got home, I did some comparing of the different Sonicare models and found the top of the line Elite 9500 Custom for a couple bucks less than what the dentist was charging. Sweet. Click, click, ordered.

We seem to get really quick delivery here in Centreville, so I pretty much always pick Super Saver shipping from Amazon. They estimate 5-9 days, but I tend to average 2-3 days for most items so there's no reason normally to pay for faster shipping. I made the order on Thursday night though, and I had a change of heart thinking that Super Saver might push the delivery to the next week, so I modified my order to ship 2nd Day instead so I'd (probably) get it on Saturday.

Not long after, I get the ship notification. I check the tracking and it looks like it went out UPS Ground, and that the estimated delivery date was Tuesday (6/6/06 by the way). That's not 2nd Day. I checked my invoice and I was charged for it. I must have changed it in time for Amazon's billing system but not in time for the shipping system.

I emailed the Customer service system this morning explaining what the expected result was, what happened instead and what I wanted (my $10 extra that I paid for faster shipping).

I got an email back a couple hours later apologizing for the mixup, informing me that a credit for the $10 is being processed (and I should see it in 2-3 days) and:

Because your business is important to us, I'd like to give you a
$5.00 promotional certificate for use toward your next
Amazon.com order.

This amount has been automatically redeemed onto your account.
You will not receive a claim code.

I expected not having any trouble getting getting my $10 in unused shipping back but was completely surprised by the $5-off on top. It was a minor problem and I really didn't consider it a big deal. To Amazon, $5 is nothing but the offer says that they're interested in doing something extra to make their customers feel appreciated.

I appreciate it. Especially in an age where most companies have dropped “customer service” in favor of “customer management”. Thank you, Amazon. Keep it up.

Technorati Tags: Amazon.com, Blogging, Customer service, Shopping

Via Gizmodo

Fancy Features Don't Sell Cell Phones

Maybe because I'm paying more attention to this issue, but here's another one. PCWorld is reporting on a JDPower survey that tends to agree with most of what I've been writing about cell phones. The article goes into details of what respondents said motivated them to choose the phone that they bought. The top 2 are style and price, not any particular feature.

Read it all..it's not too long, I promise. :)

The money quote for me is:

"Ease of use was a frequently cited factor in choice of phones, Parsons said. The ideal is to be able to start up a special service in just one or two keystrokes, he said.

"As they layer these new services on the phone, it's going to be more difficult to get to that nirvana," Parsons said.""

Well put. Are you listening, TMobile (or Cinglar, Verizon, etc)? Just give me what I want and you'll have my business. Maybe next time I won't buy a used phone on EBay and grow a little loyalty while I'm at it.

Technorati Tags: Cellular, Gadgets, Marketing, Technology

Via Slashdot

Some Cell Phone Owners Spurn Gadgetry

This is exactly what I was talking about the other day. The first section in the article says it best:

“Nathan Bales represents a troubling trend for cellular phone carriers. The Kansas City-area countertop installer recently traded in a number of feature-laden phones for a stripped-down model. He said he didn't like using them to surf the Internet, rarely took pictures with them and couldn't stand scrolling through seemingly endless menus to get the functions to work.”

He goes on to say that he's not a “cyber-savvy” guy in the quote, which I can't relate to but the above paragraph says what I've been saying to anyone that asks for quite a while.

Most of the rest of the article is about how the providers are trying to figure out how to get over this particular hurdle. Somehow they think that the problem is that people don't understand the technology. Some don't probably. Most of the people that the telecom industry are trying to reach just aren't interested. A phone is a phone. Can it be so hard to get a phone that doesn't suck, isn't cheap and junky, and is maybe a little sexy without being bogged down with all of this extra crap? Or at least unlock things so we can uninstall it if I want.

I made my decision on this topic at least for the short term. I just bought an unlocked Sony Ericsson T610 on EBay. I'm going to use it til it breaks (or I lose it again), and when it does, I'll take a look at what's out there...and if the market hasn't changed, I'll buy another T610 on EBay.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, Marketing, Technology

Why is it that the big ISPs seem to think that people want some kind of content from them? I'm going to pick pn Verizon for a bit only because this is my most recent experience. I've had similar experience in the past with Cox and Earthlink in the past.

When you go to the Verizon FiOS Online Services page, it tells you that you can "Kick start your FiOS experience". FiOS experience? I thought it was a fiber-based DSL service.

The rest of the page goes into how they're offering "Verizon Yahoo! for FiOS" or "Verizon FiOS Internet wirh MSN Premium." Both are basically Verizon FiOS branded Yahoo and MSN Premium offerings. When I had my FiOS install done actually, I had to insist a couple times that a) I don't want MSN Premium or Yahoo whether it's free or not and b) I don't want them to install any other software on my computer.

I have something to share with internet providers out there....

All I want from my internet service provider is a pipe. I want them to get bits from my house to the internet and back. That's it. There's enough "content" out there on the internet that I don't need my ISP's marketing team trying to make it into a "Verizon FiOS" experience. It's like picking up the phone and chatting with the Verizon 411 operator because you want to talk to someone. Why would I do that?

Please, just give me what I'm paying for and get out of my way.

I do have to say that once you get past the marketing push, Verizon hasn't stepped in on my "experience" so far. On the install and the pre-install marketing they make it look like you need all of this extra crap, but you don't need any of it. That includes the setup/config software and their router. I just wish I didn't have to go through the marketing obstacle course to get there.

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Technology, Marketing